"Earth" Review, Plus Bonus John Candy

The New Yorker film reviewer of 1930 ("J.C.M."), after pooh-pooing the trend toward larger-format films (so-called "three-dimensional films" that "fill the whole proscenium"), provides a great review of a movie that has always confused me: "Earth" by Alexander Dovzhenko (translated in this case as "Soil").

To conclude my memoirs on a lofty and dignified note, I should mention "Soil," a new Russian film. The picture is concerned with the favorite dramatic theme of the Soviet artists: the introduction of new methods of farming to the local wheatlands. Of more interest to these unusual people than the awakening of pure love or the dawn of passion is the coming of the tractor. I must say, too, that there are more persons in this town absorbed in this subject than one might suspect. Down there at that little Eighth Street house, where the picture has been shown, the crowd gets very excited, and there is applause, and even now and then a hiss... In "Soil," a silent picture, a caption was thrown on the screen, a comment of the older peasant as the tractor comes over the hilltop. "There is no God," he says at the sight, and this statement was suddenly met with applause by some of the guests. You will be happy to learn that at once the faithful downed the applause with pious hisses. The whole moment was very intense, and it was a great relief to everyone when the picture passed on to some closeups of apples seen from various angles.

I can certainly understand and appreciate most propaganda, but "Earth" left me totally confused. I couldn't figure out if it was a love song to the soil, a warning to farmers, or an outright parody. Maybe it was all three?

You can hardly say the same about "Hey Giorgy!" This was one of several hilarious SCTV spoofs of Russian television.

Giorgy! If he's not helping somebody, he's helping somebody else! Featuring a bevy of Eastern European immigrants waving at John Candy somewhere in North York.

"Survivors 1975," Season One and a Bit

I had extremely low expectations of "Survivors," mainly because it was created by Terry Nation.

I associate Nation with some of the most plodding and formulaic Doctor Who scripts, usually involving some combination of killer virus, invisible monster, deep chasm, and cowardly-character-makes-brave-sacrifice. Nation's hack jobs for Doctor Who were notorious; the show's producers had a running joke about him just selling them the same Dalek script over and over again.

So when I heard that Nation had created a television series about -- you guessed it -- a killer virus, I just HAD to find out how the invisible monster fit in. But I'm sad to say that "Survivors" is anything but formulaic or plodding...in fact, for the first half, it's absolutely brilliant.

These are not your typical Terry Nation characters; they are complex, understated, and always interesting to watch. Sure there's a funny little Welsh tramp that you can laugh at...but then comes episode nine, "Law and Order," which is the first of two truly harrowing treatments of the "survival" theme: what do you do with a funny little Welsh tramp who isn't so funny anymore?

This theme is pretty simple: when almost everybody in the world dies suddenly, and the diverse survivors have to...well, survive...how do they live through the first few days when they can no longer rely on anybody else, let alone the creature comforts they've known since birth? How do they cope with their shock and grief? How do they find each other? What sort of communities can they form, and how do those communities relate to other groups who disagree with their philosophy? Who the hell knows how to make coal, and what will they do when the tea runs out?

That's the basis of season one, but it's so much more than that, because all of this is approached in a quiet way: no music, no big moments, no flash or spectacle. By contrasting the 1975 series with the new 2008 remake, the Outland Institute explains what is so wonderful and refreshing about this approach, compared to the way it would be (and is) done today. The 1975 series is has an almost documentary style, complete with atmospheric filmed outdoor footage.

Until halfway through the season, however, when things go downhill a bit. First of all, this was the transition period when the BBC was switching from film to "O.B." for their program inserts, and the outdoors look far less "real" when they start using videotape.

This is made worse by the simultaneous arrival (in episode seven) of Hana Maria Pravda, a woman who stands out from the otherwise excellent cast by turning all of her scenes into overwrought babooshka-stereotype cartoons. Combine her with the quietest bunch of cheerfully-prancing "feral dogs" -- especially in one scene when she must actually be ATTACKED by them -- and you get the first glimmers that things are going downhill.

And they do. The plots become more heavy-handed and deliberate, each episode involving the destruction of yet another hard-won and essential social advancement due to the stupidity of others, often the stupidity of the children whose sole purpose is Get Into Trouble or Get Others Into Trouble.

I also have to mention what I refer to as "The Tritovore Technique" (using convenient accidents to get rid of characters who would be too burdensome to keep around) and "The Lucy Saxon Technique" (using secondary characters to kill villains because the primary characters are too principled to do it themselves), which become more and more obvious as the show goes on.

I thought I'd give up after watching the first season, but the second season -- following a truly ridiculous Tritovore-style character-purge of last-season's dross -- has introduced Ruth, a character who harkens back to the complicated and interesting survivors of old. And the second story of the season ("Greater Love") is, once again, unpredictable and beautiful and terrible.

Here's to Ruth and Jenny and Greg and the rest of the survivors. May their wheat ripen, may their sheep multiply, may their babies survive and their horses never go lame. And may they never suffer the indignity of a crappy remake.

Oh, well that already happened.

The World of Tomorrow

This makes me laugh and laugh and laugh:



It's from season two, episode four of "Look Around You," a bizarre British spoof of '80s educational programs. While most of the show requires complete viewing to enjoy, this clip stands alone. I can't describe how much I love it.

If you want more, here's the clip that got me hooked: a look at synthesizers with "Synthesizer Patel." My God.

Yaaaaaaarrrr, Night Moves!

You're a student in southern Ontario during the early '90s, and you haven't yet learned moderation. After a crazy night out with friends, you come home at 3am, and you feel like you're going a bit insane: the room is spinning, you feel spectacularly ill, you're exhausted, but your brain is running laps around your spectacularly-abused body. There's nobody you can talk to, there's no way to distract yourself...where do you turn?

Global TV's "Night Moves."



Somewhere in Toronto, a cameraman with a steadycam walked slowly through streets, subways, and deserted buildings. Sometimes you'd be in a car driving through the main streets and back roads of the city. No narrative, no structure, just some smooth jazz and a vicarious trip through the deserted city.

WHAT A GREAT IDEA. I'm sure it was conceived primarily as a cheap way to fill the early hours with Canadian content, but I (and many, many others) viewed "Night Moves" as a life-saver.

It's still fabulous, and has the added bonus of being a time capsule for the ever-changing city. I'm thrilled that I've finally found it again. Thank you, Global!

The Vivienne Vyle Show

Jennifer Saunders makes me nervous because she's too damn good. She has raised my expectations so high that I get SCARED when something new comes out; how can her Next Big Show possibly be as good as the last one? It can't! And when she finally fails I don't want to know about it!

But I rented The Vivienne Vyle Show anyway, and I'm halfway through, and it's amazing.

Saunders plays the title character, a talk show hostess who specializes in being cruel to her disgusting freakshow guests. Meanwhile she's married to a gay "kept man," and desperate to have a child, and equally desperate to expand her repertoire (especially if that means going to America).

The comedy doesn't have the "cartoon" quality of Absolutely Fabulous, but it's still just as bizarre, cruel, and unpredictable. The whole tone is that of a constant, somewhat disturbing simmer; situations build slowly and then just as slowly resolve, while underneath it all the hilarity seeps in almost subliminally. It's subtle.

This works because the cast is spectacular and their characters are meaty. The more deadpan they get, the funnier they are...and the more uncomfortable you become, because -- unlike Ab Fab -- these folks are REAL.

Best of all is bad mom and manic show producer Helena de'Wend, played by Natasha Richardson. Her style of acting is indescribable: mush-mouthed, violent, and totally insane. She's a textbook Jennifer Saunders character played to perfection.

I leave you with a clip of one of their production meetings. I can only hope that the rest of the episodes are just as good...though next time Saunders makes a new series I'll be even MORE afraid of watching it.

Torchwood Season 3

I thought that Torchwood season one was generally bad, and that season two was downright terrible, but I've stuck with the series because it has potential. I felt that if the writers would only recognize the strengths of the premise -- and brutally stomp out all of the self-introduced weaknesses -- they'd end up with something truly great.

Usually my prayers go unanswered, but season three of Torchwood is absolutely amazing. They've darkened the tone, chucked the juvenile sexuality, trimmed off the extraneous character complications, and written within the budget. It is five episodes of perfectly-maintained suspense, anxiety, and outright horror. The aliens -- known as the "456" -- are the most terrifying creatures I've seen since...well, Alien.

In true Russell T. Davies style, however, the focus of the show -- and the REAL monsters -- are the buerocrats and functionaries who serve to represent humanity at its worst. It's bad enough that the 456 exist...what makes it TRULY bad are the petty foibles of those we expect to protect us.

If you've never watched Torchwood, go out and rent season three. Skip seasons one and two entirely; don't worry, you'll catch on quick enough. You might squirm when John Barrowman does his obligatory crying, but this time around it's kept to a tolerable level, and he really DOES have something to cry about.



PS: Actually this was very similar in tone and theme to a 1998 British mini-series called "Invasion: Earth." You might even accuse Davies of (perhaps unconsciously) copying it. Still, the particulars are different enough to make both series' distinct AND worth watching.

A New Gesture of Extreme Consternation

It's always nice to learn a new gesture to add to your repertoire! Just as learning a new word can help you express yourself better, so can learning a new gesture help you reveal your innermost feelings to others.

I'm particularly fascinated by "gestures of extreme consternation." Previously, my favourite gesture of this type was to be seen only in Bollywood movies, when the heroine accidentally hits the hero on the head with a kitchen utensil; instead of putting her hands to her face and saying "Oh NO!" the way our western sitcom characters would, the Bollywood female would raise her hands to shoulder-level and flap them forwards and backwards quickly, like she were putting out a shoulder pad fire.

While watching Benny Hill this week I discovered an entirely new gesture of extreme consternation, one that I think was uniquely British: when Benny Hill does something cruel to you in a restaurant, put one hand on the top of your head, stick the thumb of your other hand in your mouth, and then moan terribly while stroking your nose:


I'm not kidding. That's Louise English in the picture, doing the most exaggerated version of this gesture that I've seen so far (usually the "hand on the head" element is not included).

What is this supposed to mean? I think it means "I am so shocked and upset that I've reverted to infancy!" But it's presented in such a nonchalant way that I suspect this wasn't just part of Benny Hill's show...I think it might have happened in British screwball comedies in general. But the first time *I* saw this I sat up in my chair and said "What the HECK?!?"

Somehow I can't bring myself to watch a "Carry On" movie in order to do more research.

The Emancipated '80s

Some days, to pass the time, I read back issues of '80s computer magazines. It's a nerdy pursuit but sometimes I run across something interesting.

The North American computer scene was pretty stoic. Lots of horny kids owned computers, but the magazines themselves tried to maintain a certain respectability, writing in a fact-based journalistic style in an attempt inform and edify. "Creative Computing" was downright dry and businesslike in its approach, whereas even the less formal magazines kept their childish shenanigans to a minimum.

Then there was Crash.

Published in England and devoted to the ZX Spectrum, Crash Magazine was a swill of pre-adolescent humour, faux hipness, and over-the-top gore. Add Oliver Frey's strangely homoerotic cover art and you have an untinted window into the minds of repressed British childhood during the middle '80s. It's boring and annoying and repetative, yes, but it's a type of sensationalistic weirdness that I've never been exposed to before.

"Tip pages" were very popular in these magazines. Readers would write in with advice for beating the games, or programming cheats, or maps of the sprawling levels which typified Spectrum games. Crash's tip page was nothing special until -- in 1986 -- the previous tip page compiler stepped aside and he was replaced with...A GIRL!

Hannah Smith's hiring was presented initially as some form of female emancipation: women could be smart and clever and competitive just like men! But some of the spotty readers wrote in to say typical '80s things like "Women should go back to where they belong and stop taking men's jobs," as though being the self-styled "girlie tipster" for Crash Magazine was a high-paying position of executive power.

What's most bizarre, however -- and what, in retrospect, was very typical of the '80s reaction to female empowerment -- was how other readers (and the editors) would simultaneously defend and DEGRADE women. All the male readers said things like "Get out of your chauvinist caves, you idiots! This is the '80s! Hannah Smith is great and she's GORGEOUS! Please give her my PHONE NUMBER!" The female readers said "Just because we're weak and frilly doesn't mean we can't do a man's job!" And the editors...

...well, the editors printed covers like this:


...and they wrote articles about how sweaty she got during aerobics, and they tried to set up a jello-wrestling contest with another female writer...

...all while defending her right to be a member of the team.

I'm not saying that England was particularly sexist at the time -- they had Benny Hill, sure, but they also had Margaret Thatcher. Reading these magazines, I'm remembering that this was how female emancipation was treated by the average person in the mid '80s: "Sure women should have the freedom to do whatever they want...as long as they do it in my pants!" There are still lots of people who have that attitude, surely, but you don't see NEARLY so many of them, and they CERTAINLY don't have a mainstream high-profile forum for their views (not without being viewed as crackpots, at least).

This leads me to Benny Hill. I've been watching his 1982 specials today and comparing them to both his older '60s programs and to today's television shows. They're creepy because Hill had gotten older while his female talent got younger (and more scantily clad), and 95% of the jokes involved Hill and his cronies trying to squeeze some woman's bum...

...but what's weird is that Hill almost always suffers HUMILIATION for this. The women outwit him, or he suffers some sort of punishment for his actions, and we (the viewer) are left respecting THEM and laughing at HIM (while still chuckling at his impotent horny buffoonery).

What's my point? I only have an inkling of one. It seems to me that as sexualized and marginalized as the Hill's Angels and Hannah Smiths were, they DID embody a sort of privilege and power as long as they remained at arm's length. By being intelligent and beautiful they had control of the scripted, imaginary situations they were put in. They were very much the superwomen...fetishized goddesses on pedestals.

When I do drag I'm very aware of this aspect of idealized femininity, so I see the attraction to it, and I also see the benefit of it...

...but it all DOES fall apart when reality enters the picture. The average woman on the street is NOT one of Hill's Angels, and NO women live inside his television scripts. The REAL world is a dangerous place for the desired female, and its one where that element of sexual power tends to wane as the years go by.

So it's certainly good that today's Hannah Smiths are not so routinely dismissed as "girlie tipsters" (though it does seem to me that many women would embrace that type of diminutive for themselves). Things have certainly changed publicly, and that's a good thing.

As for the rest of it, though...gender, sexuality, society, and politics are a terrible stew.

The Tommyknockers Knocked On My Door, Hung Around for Three Hours, and Then Clogged My Toilet

Stephen King annoys me but I recognize that -- under all the repetition and hackery -- there's a big slice of brilliance in him. No matter how bad any given Stephen King book is, the idea BEHIND the book is usually a whopper.

"The Tommyknockers" fits this description perfectly. I haven't read it since it came out, but I remember it being a relatively poor -- and over-long -- treatment of a fantastic plot. It's unsurprising that the mini-series -- which I watched today -- took out most of the good ideas, drastically simplified the plot itself, and tacked on a horrible ending.

Television scriptwriters really do seem to think that we (the viewers) are incapable of dealing with complex ideas. The truly great thing about King's original book was that the "Tommyknocker" aliens were terribly flawed and destructive creatures; they could do amazing things but were far too selfish and short-tempered to really thrive. This was presented as a racial trait in the novel, and was a sly mirroring of humanity's own foibles: we have great power and adaptability but we're also very primitive, and there's nothing more dangerous than a baby with a loaded gun.

This element added an indispensible level to the book...it explained everything and lent itself to a lot of great plot twists. But in the mini-series, of course, the aliens were just hissing bad guys who wanted to exploit humankind, an idea that reduced it all to a typical "invasion earth" story.

Another thing that television scriptwriters Absolutely Must Do is add a climactic straight-forward fight -- good versus evil! -- and then make sure that everybody's alright in the end, no matter how improbable such a thing might be. I was pleased to see that, in the mini-series, all the infected townspeople underwent an instant spa-treatment as soon as the aliens died...they even got magically-applied lipstick and mascara!

But the show wasn't ALL bad. Traci Lords is always fun, and the major set-piece in the book ("What's happening in the barn?") was even more gruesome on screen. Yay!

Still, I feel personally insulted when a piece of entertainment treats me like I'm stupid. I'm not, and I'm hardly alone in LIKING a bit of a challenge!

JJ Sucks Me In

Hey, I'm older than I look (I hope!) Somehow I can't handle a full week of Open Ears concerts while still holding down my 9-5 job. So tonight I decided to stay home, play with my cat, get some work done, and actually sleep.

But first I went to YouTube to check out the latest videos I've subscribed to, and...well, you know how it is. You see a "related video" that sounds intriguing, and twenty minutes later you're sucked into a collection of horribly addictive clips.

JUDGE JUDY.

My grandmother watches court shows all day, every day. She told me this on Easter and I scoffed at her. I said she was rotting her brain. She agreed.

I just spent two hours watching clips from Judge Judy, because I'm just as susceptible to brain rot as anybody else. My only defense, your honour, is that I never INTENDED to watch them. At worst I am guilty of SECOND DEGREE consumption, so please go easy on me.

To try to get SOMETHING worthwhile out of this monumental waste of time, let me explain why Court TV is so addictive. It's because we spend all day feeling like we're the innocent ones and everybody else is guilty, but we're punished while the guilty people go free. We don't want to wallow in wishy-washy stuff like "points of view" and "selection bias" and "willful blindness of our own stupidity," we just want an omnipotent being to come down and say "You're right, they're wrong, you're better than they are, NEXT!"

Fictional television programs give us a bit of this thrill, but they throw in a bunch of other things and -- after all -- it's only fiction. Reality TV gets closer to home but we still sort of know it isn't real. Trashy talk shows fulfil our need to watch people who are stupider than us actually FIGHT, because sometimes we don't want JUSTICE, we just want some righteous inbred ass-kicking.

But Judge Judy...she is the authority figure we want to have on our side, the one who not only comes down and clearly draws the line between right and wrong, but also delivers the ass-kicking as a sort of frosty dessert. We see exaggerated cases where one person is clearly lying, or stupid, or evil, or all of the above, and then we see us on the other side -- the rightous one who is still fallible enough to get whupped by JJ now and then -- and then the holy fires of Judy come down and reward the right people and send the wrong people away to pay what they owe and make a final statement ("Don't trust JERKS, is all I have to say.")

There are a lot of other things going on as well. We respect Judge Judy's no-nonsense practicality and her ability to get straight to the point (in the editing room). We like to think that Judy would give us a break and approve of our behaviour. We also like the freakshow of people who are clearly stupider than we are...it makes us feel superior in our intelligence, amazed at their incompetence, and furious at their attempted duplicity. If they happen to WIN a case we can get angry that those stupid people were taken ADVANTAGE of, and we can mentally pat them on the head and say "Thanks for being honest, stupid person."

This is all an extension of what we do every day...but it's a HUGE extension. It's narcissistic and polarizing and a gross distortion of what human disagreements are really about. I mean, sure, there ARE times when people go to court for indefensible reasons and get their butts kicked, but usually it's a matter of subtlety, perception, and who-said-what...

...you know, all that stuff we hate thinking about every day because we know that WE are always RIGHT.

Judge Judy, you are fulfilling human needs that are, ultimately, anti-social and demented. But you're funny anyway.

As an Aside...

...watching Jim Cramer get PUMMELED on the Daily Show is simply too painful. Like, I can't finish. Once his voice starts shaking I get embarrassed and I turn it off.

If I ever lie and Jon Stewart catches me, I think I'd rather run away to Antarctica than appear on his show.

Calling Out the Canned Midnight Special Performers

I'm finally watching the 1980 "Midnight Special" DVD and I'm having a rich experience that I'd never anticipated; in seeing the performances range sequentially from 1973 to 1980, I've gotten a sense of the changes in both music style and performance over that period.

My conclusions are by no means scientific -- each season of "Midnight Special" has been compressed to an hour's worth of performances by a small number of artists -- but I have watched the folk renaissance wane and disappear (Gordon Lightfoot, Janis Ian); the growth of disco out of R&B and funk into an increasingly glittery spectacle (from James Brown to Earth, Wind & Fire to Donna Summer to Amii Stewart); the mainstreaming of hard rock (AC/DC) and punk (Blondie); the slow death of glam into a more watered down style (Nick Gilder); and the sudden appearance of white guys with red suspenders and metallic hats, inflicting their humourless, spastic, disturbingly misogynistic dance routines on big-haired ladies with silver stiletto heels.

So, like, the '80s have arrived.

Most interesting, however, has been the evolution of canned performances, which have become increasingly more common and stylized, apparently paving the way for MTV.

Since I love spotting canned performances -- and since some people seem to never notice this sort of thing -- I present this handy guide for figuring out when your favourite '70s band is faking you out.

THE CANNED PERFORMANCE SPECTRUM

Straight Up: Everybody in the band is playing their instruments, the singer is really singing, and nothing significant has been added to the mix. This is obvious because the song doesn't sound exactly like the album, and nothing sounds totally perfect.

As an example, here's Heart playing "Crazy On You." It's all so improvisational, they're all looking at each other to keep the playing tight, the vocals are unprocessed and "real," it doesn't sound like the single, and...well, there's an ENERGY.

If you spot the things listed in the following categories, however, then your favourite band is putting you on.

Embellished: Most of the band is really playing and the singer is really singing, but they're playing along with a backing tape which includes horns, a string section, and/or vocal harmonies.

You can spot this if you hear horns or strings, but there is no horn or string section on stage. Keyboards in the '70s were far from reproducing those sorts of sounds, so a mysterious keyboard player cannot be responsible. You can also spot this if the harmony sounds TOO GOOD, and the people supposedly SINGING the harmony are just the band members.

If the harmony is being sung by dedicated backup singers, however, then there's more chance they're legitimate (but beware when two backup singers suddenly sound like four, and they don't do any apparent improvisation, and they overlap in a way that would be impossible for only two people).

You can also spot this if the drummer is wearing headphones, which means he's listening to the backing tape (or a click track) in order to stay in sync. Otherwise the drums are prerecorded and the drummer is just faking it, in which case he's NOT wearing headphones and he's hitting cymbals that you can't actually hear. When this happens, though, pains have been taken to make the drums at least SOUND live (as opposed to the next example).

Here's a good example: Golden Earring's "Radar Love." The vocals and guitar are certainly real, and the bass might be as well, but the drums, keyboards, horns, and most of the backup vocals are fake. The drummer ALMOST pulls it off but you can see moments where he gets it wrong. It's all most obvious near the end.

Singer Only: The band is not playing their instruments, but the singer is really singing along to a backing tape. You can tell this if the vocals sound a bit rough but the rest of the music sounds exactly like the studio version. Also if the instruments -- especially the drums -- sound double-tracked or otherwise produced in a way that wouldn't work live: particularly thumpy or whizzy, for example.

If the musicians don't seem to be paying any attention to each other when the song changes tempo, chances are they aren't really playing...in a live performance they tend to glance around to make sure they're all switching to the right beat at the right time. This is especially obvious at the end of songs which have those big synchronized "WHAM!" (wait for it...) "WHAM!" (one more time...wait) "WHAM! ... WHAM! WHAM! WHAM-WHAM-WHAMWHAMWHAMWHAAAAM" (waaaaait...) (waaaaait...) (waaaaaaaaait...) "WHAM!" endings.

This brings us to the BIGGEST (and most ridiculous) sign of a canned performance: if a song DOESN'T end with a synchronized "WHAM!" and instead actually FADES OUT, then nobody is playing, and I bet the singer isn't singing either (see below). There's a reason why live songs don't fade out: it's impossible, and even if somebody went through all the trouble to make it happen it would just look stupid.

In some cases they'll dispense with the artifice altogether and just put the singer alone on the stage. This is a dead giveaway. You don't go through the trouble of laboriously soundchecking a band just to hide them behind a curtain (though there appeared to be a trend for disco and R&B singers to sometimes put their bandmates in a dark, obscure area, maybe to make the singing and theatrical dancing more prominent).

Here's ABBA's "Mamma Mia" as an example. The "ABBA sound" was so treated and produced that it could NEVER sound that way live, but you can hear the way their live vocals stand out from the rest of the song. Amusingly, the men AREN'T actually singing.

Milli Vanilli: It's all pre-recorded and the singer is lip-syncing. This sounds EXACTLY like the single version, and the vocals sound far too smooth and "treated" to be live. The singer drastically changes the position and distance of her microphone with absolutely no change in the quality or volume of her vocals. She dances in a way that would otherwise leave her out-of-breath, or at least cause her to "hitch" occasionally. She doesn't improv or say "thanks" at the end.

Here's Olivia Netwon-John's "Magic." That is NOT a live voice, it is far too smooth and echoey, it's been sent through a half-dozen sweetening filters. It also sounds exactly like the single. A slightly more subtle example is Hall & Oates' "Kiss On My List," which again is far too slick and -- ha ha -- fades out at the end.

...

On "Midnight Special," this spectrum gradually shifted from the "Straight Up" to the "Milli Vanilli" area as the years went by. I wonder if the "studio sound" was getting harder to reproduce on stage, or if expectations were simply changing?

At the same time, the audience went from a huge auditorium full of real people sitting down, to a smaller selection of dancing club "characters" -- including, yes, a shiek -- in a way that seems to represent a shift of attitude...instead of the viewer joining an audience to watch a band perform live, it's become the viewer watching a stable of dancers, with a band in the background as an afterthought...like the viewer is just a dancer listening to the radio. A case of nightclubs and their frenetic, hyped-up subcultures killing the live band, maybe?

I assume the logical next step was "Solid Gold," which (to my memory) was just dancers performing to prerecorded hits without anybody from the band even being there.

And after that? I don't know. Any thoughts?

Bob And Rose Concluded

When I wrote my original post about the TV series "Bob and Rose," I'd only watched half of it.

I finished the other half tonight and I am floored.

Stunned.

Thrilled.

That's not to say there weren't any false notes in the final episodes -- I count two, and one of them was unfortunately the final shot of the program -- but that doesn't matter. You never get perfection out of a TV show, but "Bob and Rose" is the closest I've ever seen.

Russell T. Davies, The Writer's Tale, Doctor Who, Bob and Rose

I like the new Doctor Who series. Sometimes I even love it. At other times, however, I hate it. And the things I both love AND hate usually come down to the show's writer, producer, and script editor, Russell T. Davies.

He's written some of the worst episodes of the show, and many of his more bombastic ideas have come under criticism, but there's no doubt that the actual TONE of the show -- that is, the underlying approach and feel of every single thing that happens -- is pretty darn brilliant...and Davies controls that portion of the program with an iron fist. And when he actually pulls off one of his more audacious stunts, you can only sit in awe.

If I simply loved or hated him I'd have had no reason to buy "The Writer's Tale", but I was SO CURIOUS to know what goes on in his head...so after considerable delay and hardship (not to mention cost), I managed to track it down.

It's a collection of emails exchanged between Davies and journalist Benjamin Cook, all written during the development of Doctor Who's fourth season. Much of the book is Davies agonizing about scriptwriting. Responsible for the program's highest-profile episodes, Davies is under immense pressure to come through with scripts that are on budget and on time, but he simply can't bring himself to write until the deadline has almost passed. In the meantime he's responsible for editing -- and often completely rewriting -- the scripts for other episodes, and also overseeing the show in general.

"The Writer's Tale" is an enlightening book in many different ways. Fans wondering why certain decisions were made can get an uncomfortably close look at Davies' scriptwriting process, from the first collection of ideas -- usually gags or momentous climaxes -- to the filming and editing. You begin to understand how those wonderful and stupid moments made it into the show.

But more importantly, the book is simply about HOW RUSSELL T. DAVIES WRITES, regardless of the fact that he's writing "Doctor Who." Benjamin Cook is constantly asking probing questions -- "How do you make the audience care about a character?" and "How do you write dialog that sounds natural?" -- and instead of replying with pithy (but vague and useless) writer's workshop responses, Davies REALLY, REALLY EXPLAINS IT. He positively AGONIZES over the answers. I've come away learning more about the actual process of writing than I ever got from those "Creative Writing" courses I took in university.

It helps that Davies writes excellent emails. They're essays in themselves, and usually very funny...in fact, they come out sounding like the characters in "Doctor Who" itself. He's also an accomplished illustrator, so the book is full of the sketches he drew of various scenes while he was writing the scripts.

Throughout the book, Davies constantly refers to the way he wrote his other shows, the ones before "Doctor Who." Curious, I went to the local video store to see if they had anything...and I was fortunate to stumble across "Bob and Rose."


Holy cow, this show is amazing.

Besides the great actors and straight-forward direction, you've got a truly original storyline: a woman (Rose) who is dissatisfied with her long-term boyfriend ends up befriending a gay man (Bob) who is equally dissatisfied with his mating prospects. Spontaneously, and almost accidentally, the two of them have sex...

...and all hell breaks loose. Bob has a quietly insane female friend who sabotages all of his promising relationships, for fear that he'll care about somebody other than her. Rose breaks up with her boyfriend and decides not to move away from home, where her mother has just invited a decidedly shady man to live. Most importantly, Bob is gay...but he sees something in Rose that is more attractive and offers more kinship than anybody else he's ever met. How can Rose deal with his ambivalence? How can their friends deal with the fact that they're going out? Will Bob's rabidly gay-activist mother accept that her son, for whom she's thrown herself into the cause of worldwide equality for all homosexuals, is...gasp...dating a woman?

The show is ingenious. Davies simply knows how people behave, and the actors portray these behaviours to perfection. He has a knack for perfect-pitch dialogue and zinger pronouncements that suddenly sneak up on you and make you (literally) shout "HOLY SH*T!" It has the perfect balance of comedy and drama, sociology and artifice...it is in my eyes, as of the third episode at least, The Best TV Show I've Ever Seen. Ever.

So if you know something about Davies' personality then you understand the problem with "Doctor Who." He loves the science fiction, but he also loves people and reality and the everyday stuff that all of us do. In "Doctor Who" he feels a need to cram all that stuff into 45-minute episodes that somehow gel...sometimes they do, and sometimes you end up with aliens that fart.

It doesn't help, too, that Davies seems to be surrounded by "yes men" who are too in awe (or afraid) to tell him when something DOESN'T work. He acknowledges this a bit in "The Writer's Tale," and coupled with the ridiculous workload and responsibility that the show saddles him with...well, it's no wonder that he's quitting now.

Previous to reading the book and watching "Bob and Rose," I was just happy that Russell T. Davies would no longer write for "Doctor Who," leaving behind a legacy, a fan base, and a story arc that a more disciplined writer (Steven Moffat) could inherit.

I'm still happy about that...but now I'm eager to see what Davies comes up with next. I think that with a less schizophrenic format and a brand new start, he could come up with something amazing. And now that he's famous, maybe shows like "Bob and Rose" will be appreciated.

PS: The show's funniest moment so far. The desperate female pack go to a straight bar in order to pick up men. One of the women yells "There's a man in a rabbit suit!" A ridiculous man on the dancefloor -- who is indeed wearing a scruffy rabbit suit -- pouts at the women and flips his floppy ear.

All of them go "Awwwwwwwwwww," as though this were just the cutest thing.


Well, you have to see it yourself. Like so many moments in the show, it speaks volumes in a simple, ridiculous scene.

Doctor Who Season Four

For the last few months, friends on Facebook had been dropping hints at how wonderful season four of the new Doctor Who was. With each episode broadcast, they'd update their status: "This is AMAZING!" and "I can't BELIEVE it!" and "Better and BETTER!"

In the meantime I have been totally in the dark, waiting for the DVDs to arrive. Now that I've watched the complete season -- and the commentaries -- I can only say...

...well, yeah. It's pretty incredible.

For some reason these new Doctor Who seasons always fail to grab me for the first five episodes. During the process of introducing the new companion, and "seeding" the story arc, and exposing us to gobs of Russell T. Davies' envelope-pushing wonkiness, the initial stories always seem a bit DESPERATE. And coming on the heels of the previous year's Christmas special -- in which we learned oppressively heavy-handed truths about the Great and Wonderful Goodness of People Who Will Sacrifice Themselves For The Greater Good -- well, I found it hard to swallow the season four setups.

Part of the problem was that I couldn't watch Catherine Tate without thinking of the "Go On, Just GUESS!" woman.



So even though I had a tough time taking Tate seriously as Donna -- not just her, but also the season's somewhat desperate theme that she is the Most Important Person In All The Universe -- and even though the first "two parter" was pretty rotten (as usual), suddenly there was...

..."The Unicorn and the Wasp." The Doctor and companion find themselves in the middle of an elaborate murder mystery which involves Agatha Christie and a giant wasp, and the wasp is actually an illegitimate love-child who tends to "buzz" his esses when he gets very angry...

...and it's just about the funniest thing I've ever seen. Next comes the "Silence of the Library / Forest of the Dead" two-parter, surely one of the SCARIEST Doctor Who episodes ever...until the NEXT episode, "Midnight," which is not just terrifying but also an enormously risky dramatic venture which Davies refers to as "The Goblin in the Corner." I'm amazed that "Midnight" ever got made, and I'm even more amazed that it worked so perfectly.

After that the totally bleak "Turn Left" -- complete with nuclear destruction, refugees, and concentration camps -- and the season finale that brings past companions and spin-off characters together for an amazing punch-out with Davros, and Sarah Jane looking her worst nightmare right in the face...

...and then, to finish it all off, the most tragic and depressing companion farewell in the history of the series, as she is sentenced to forget all of her triumphs and once again become the shallow, pathetic, doomed and blinkered person she started off as...

Wow. Brilliant. Far too often it's wanky and ridiculous and WAAAY too confusing -- the final episode in particular -- but at its best, season four is some of the most amazing television I've ever seen. If you don't feel I've spoiled everything for you, you really should check it out.

PS: Want some great fun? Listen to the commentary for "The Doctor's Daughter." It features Catherine Tate and Georgia Moffett, who have an absolute blast remembering the filming of the episode...but sitting on the same couch with them is the poor guy who conducts the orchestra for the musical score. Tate and Moffett totally exclude him in a way that could be interpreted as deliberately cruel...by the end he goes completely silent, steamrollered by the overpowering girl-party "no boys allowed" estrogen bond. It makes you want to cry.

Muffy vs. Palin

I don't believe it. I'm actually going to watch the Palin/Biden Vice Presidential debate. I even have my Palin Bingo card.

Why am I so interested? Because I want to believe that slick, deceptive, and ignorant people are totally naked under a spotlight, though I know that isn't usually true. Chances are she'll do just fine...this is a debate, not an interview.

But oh, if she says something vacuous and stupid I'll be SO vindicated.

The Universe - FOX News Edition

I'll watch any science DVD that comes my way, and I have a special soft spot for shows about space. Anything that helps me get a grasp of the vastness, complexity, and beauty of the universe is a good thing!

Except for this History Channel program called "The Universe," my disdain for which I cannot put into words.

But let me try.

The program is OFFICIALLY called "The Universe," but I suspect that the full title is "The Universe is Full of Scary Stuff and HOLY SH*T, WE COULD ALL DIE AT ANY MINUTE!" It's produced in the bombastic style generally used for self-serious war movies, full of loaded adjectives and contextual tricks to convey one thing and one thing only: THREAT.

The music -- which never ends -- is of the type used by TV stations to brand military offenses. The announcer's delivery alternates between doomed acceptance and self-referential downplaying...everything he says sounds like the promo for a cheesy TV show. Even when he's describing the atmosphere on Mars, he's saying it in the same tone he would use to say something like "Buffy is 100% man-killing hot stuff, but a bigger enemy is slouching over the horizon...and he could unleash the very powers of hell. On. EARTH."

I knew something was wrong in the very first episode, which was called "Secrets of the Sun" but was really "Secrets of How the Sun COULD KILL YOU." Despite all the overwrought gravitas about the power at its core and the turmoil on its surface -- complete with real disaster footage from earth, as though there was a relevant comparison -- the bulk of the episode was about solar flares and the predictions about the Next Big One.

HOLY COW, WHAT'LL HAPPEN?!? Show us footage of stuff on fire, and rioting, and mass chaos! More CGI of violent solar winds and snapping magnetic force lines! ARGH! ARRRRGH!

But wait...here are the BRAVE NASA TECHNICIANS who tirelessly scour the sky in order to predict these solar storms! Thank goodness these selfless soldiers of the stars are there to protect us, with their fingers always on the button that...well, puts satellites to sleep for a few hours until the storm passes. BUT THAT'S REALLY BRAVE!

Then, of course, all the stuff about the sun eventually expanding and burning the earth "like a charcoal briquette." End of episode.

I kid you not. Any bits of actual, scanty SCIENCE is trampled by the whiz-bang visuals and endless depictions of disaster. The sun is even scarier than TERRORISTS!

I figured I'd give the show a chance and watch the second episode -- "Mars: The Red Planet" -- because I figured they couldn't make Mars frightening. WAS I EVER WRONG! The surface used to have this HUGE VOLCANO, and that volcano might have RIPPED A GIANT CHASM RIGHT ACROSS THE PLANET! And do you know what would happen if you visited Mars? YOU'D DIE! YOU CAN'T BREATHE THERE! How did Mars turn into such an inhospitable place? BECAUSE THE VICIOUS, DEADLY SUN RIPPED AWAY ITS ATMOSPHERE! AND ONCE PEOPLE THOUGHT THERE WERE EVIL ALIENS THERE, WAITING TO INVADE! MARS IS TERRIFYING!

You can imagine how the third episode -- "The End of the Earth" -- turned out, with its killer asteroids and exclusive focus on "The Big Rip" (SO much more scary than any of the other hypotheses), and don't forget about the VICIOUS, DEADLY SUN, and the same handful of earnest science-guys explaining that we're all gonna die...though probably not for another 50 billion years, shhhh.

As usual, though, there are Fearless American Scientists protecting us, "cosmic bounty hunters" who "refuse to be bullied by the asteroids." Jesus RETCH!

The fourth episode was "Jupiter: The Giant Planet." I managed to sit through fifteen minutes because I wanted to know how Jupiter was gonna kill us. Fortunately it doesn't appear that Jupiter -- "a giant ball of intrigue" -- is out to murder our babies and steal our freedom, but -- here you go -- it tends to draw asteroids into its own orbit...ASTEROIDS THAT WOULD OTHERWISE HIT EARTH AND DESTROY CIVILIZATION AS WE KNOW IT! Cue disaster footage again, and CGI images of disintegrating buildings and fifty-foot tidal waves.

What the f*ck is wrong with people? Can we only engage with things if we consider them to be threats? Are events only interesting if they involve violent turmoil? Maybe I'm so disgusted because I grew up on a diet of Carl Sagan, for whom the universe was a big and comforting pair of breasts, but most of the problem is that I have NEVER seen an emotionally-manipulative, fear-mongering science show about SPACE before. I'd understand if the show was PROMOTED as such, but it's not.

I can't tell you about the atrocities in the rest of the show, but the episode list gives a few hints. Seriously, if I didn't know better I'd think this was a joke:

EPISODE SIX: "A survivor of one of the most violent 'neighborhoods' in the universe, learn how earth was created and discover what creatures hold clues to how life began. What evil forces threaten the demise of Earth?"

EPISODE SEVEN: "Scorched by their proximity to the sun, Mercury and Venus are hostile worlds; one gouged with craters from cosmic collisions and the other a vortex of sulfur, carbon dioxide and acid rain. Prime examples of planets gone awry, do they serve as a warning for ominous scenarios that might someday threaten Earth?"

EPISODE TEN: "Ignited by the power of the atom, burning with light, heat and wrath [?], stars are anything but peaceful. They collide, devour each other, and explode in enormous supernovas--the biggest explosions in the Universe."

EPISODE TWELVE: "Super massive black holes can figuratively 'lasso' the Earth out of the solar system. A clash between two galaxies can result in a barbaric ritual called 'galactic cannibalism' in which the dominant galaxy's super massive black hole eats the weaker one. Magnetars are a cosmic magnetic force so strong it could wipe out data on every credit card on the planet."

And on and on and on. These people should be ashamed of themselves.

Torchwood Season 2

Yes, okay, my loyalty to Torchwood is mostly because I'm a Doctor Who nerd. SUE ME!

But I also watch the show because its POTENTIAL is so huge. You've got a diverse, quirky cast -- most of whom are amazing actors -- under the guidance of one of the most wonderfully-conceived action heroes in history. Their mandate is open-ended and they have a dedicated pool of creative writers. Their fan base is such that they can hardly do wrong, allowing the show to experiment without fear of losing popularity.

So why did the first season mostly suck? And why did the second season suck even WORSE?

You don't have to be Tosh to figure out the reasons. There are three of them.

First, the budget is simply too low, so when they attempt to pull off Doctor Who-style scenes of mayhem they end up looking like a CGI version of...well, the '80s Doctor Who. I'm thinking mainly of the "space whale" and the "exploding Cardiff" scene, which left me wondering if I'd developed an astigmatism or if it really DID look like crap.

Second, John Barrowman can only play one role well, that of the sexy, flippant, mostly-likeable hero. When forced to branch out -- particularly in the presence of more capable actors like Eve Myles, Burn Gorman, and Naoko Mori -- he's a space whale out of water. When he was forced to cry in the first series he looked like he was taking a dump. I'm pleased to report that he's a better crier in the second series, where instead he looks like a small child about to blubber. I expect this is how Barrowman really cries.

All this would be fine, however, if it weren't for the third and most heinous problem with the series: the producers seem unaware of Barrowman's limitations -- and the obvious strengths of the Torchwood premise -- and therefore constantly shoehorn emotionally over-the-top moments into plots that don't NEED them.

This is (mostly) fine in the new Doctor Who, where the characters and mythology provide plenty of fodder for emotional blowouts. But in Torchwood, putting a requisite ten-minute weepy scene into every episode is like adding emotional depth to a Flash Gordon serial: unnecessary, distracting, and obvious.

So season two's Mostly Random Arc involving Jack's lost brother ("GRAY!!! GRAY!!!") is ridiculous, and just gives the characters yet another opportunity to say "I'm sorry...I'm so sorry."

Try contrasting "Something Borrowed," the only really good episode in the series, with one of the crappy ones like "Meat." In "Something Borrowed," the Torchwood team runs around battling a sexy alien in a ridiculous setting, cracking witty jokes and being self-referential and basically having a good time. Captain Jack gets to strut around and be tough, Gwen gets to be funny, and even Rhys is a welcome (and essential) part of the episode, instead of just saying "Darn it, Gwen, YER NEVER HOOOME!"

But in "Meat" you have an overly-ambitious, budget-free bunch of crap effects, and a pointless subplot about Rhys perhaps being evil (though we know he's not), and a heavy-handed message about...cruelty to animals, or something. You even have the conscious-stricken younger brother shouting "I DIDN'T AGREE TO THIS!" and Rhys complaining that Gwen is (yes) never home, and Jack's first opportunity this season to say (snicker) "I'm sorry..." and then (yes) "...I'm SO SORRY."

"Something Borrowed" knows that Torchwood can just be FUN. "Meat" wants to be relevant and complicated and heart-rending. One passes, one fails. WAKE UP, PRODUCTION TEAM!

Add to this yet another limping climax full of random obstacles (for which each member has a relevant skill) and the main character saying "I forgive you" to the evil mastermind (where have we heard that before, a year ago, in the climax to a show which is an anagram of "Torchwood"?) and you have, essentially, a load of whatever Barrowman was trying to crap out in the first series.

It's not ALL bad. I loved the "Owen's dead" subplot, and the cast reductions in the final episode were brilliantly performed (and tear-jerking, not least because those actors represented 66% of the team's acting talent). And whenever the show DECIDED to be funny, I laughed. And I thought "Maybe they've figured it out...maybe they understand that they should titillate me, and scare me, and make me laugh?"

Then, seconds later, Gwen would start mooning about how Torchwood had hardened her, and Owen was covering up his soft interior by being a brash jerk, and somehow Ianto still had security clearance after sneaking his cyberwoman girlfriend into the Hub. Oh, give me a break.

Then The Little Truck Goes Under The Big Truck, And Then The Big Truck...

I just got the weirdest telephone survey.

Most of it was normal and seemed to center around my usage of Interac ("Also called Debit") and my recognition of the Interac brand. She wanted a detailed description of any Interac-related logos that I could remember, and she typed in every single word of my long description.

The logo I tried to describe was this one, though I'd completely forgotten that the word "Interac" was on it, and that the entire hand was illustrated instead of just the thumb. And I seemed to remember that the logo was brown.

Funny how these logos penetrate our heads halfway.

Then she asked me if I'd seen any advertisements for Interac during the past month, so I told her that I don't have cable so I don't see any television advertisements at all. Like the marketing-research drone she was, she next described a television commercial to me in great detail. It went something like this, written in terms simple enough for a child to understand, devoid of all energy, and spoken with a rapid-fire and somewhat cute Quebecois accent:

Have you ever seen or have you been told about a commercial about a man in an office who gets up from his desk and walks to the door, and then the camera moves down to show a small truck under his desk, which moves to follow him out of his office. Down in the street we see a big truck, and the little truck goes under the big truck, scraping its paint. The little truck almost collides with a second big truck. A street cleaning truck drives down the street, and the little truck becomes caught in its brushes and is thrown back out into the street. The man enters a store, and the little truck follows him into the store. Have you ever seen or have you been told about this commercial?

Errrr...no, like I said, but it sounds like a sort of crappy commercial.

I personally like being in these surveys because I consider myself the outlier, the result that needs to be discarded because I'm not exposed to the advertising that their focus groups are. It doesn't matter what I think about their commercial, because even if they make a better commercial I'll probably never see it. My "loyalty" to Interac is entirely due it being the most convenient way to pay for things.

The Gay-Musician-Love-Dog Disconnect

Today I bought a copy of Erasure's "Hits!" DVD. The word "campy" isn't sufficient to describe it, so I have coined a much more extreme term: "bivouwacky."

Particularly bivouwacky is the video for "Heavenly Action," in which Andy Bell plays a spaceman who runs afoul of a nosferatu-styled villain played by Vince Clark.

I was initially distracted by all the creepy cherubs, but then I twigged to the way the song's lyrics had been realized. "Heavenly Action" was a straight-forward love song, and it was an open secret even then that Bell was gay -- his space-suit ensemble in the video included ruby high heels, for goodness sake -- so it really would have been strange to show him falling in love with a WOMAN.

To get around this they portrayed him falling in love with a DOG.



You just weren't going to see same-sex love on MTV in 1985 -- I suppose bestiality was more acceptable -- so this puts me in mind of OTHER popular love songs written by the Don't-Ask-Don't-Tell musicians of the time. Freddie Mercury wrote some eternal love songs ("Love of My Life" etc.) which any sane person assumed were actually about men, but Queen's videos -- as far as I remember -- didn't ever show the objects of his affection (though by the time of the EXTREMELY biviouwacky "I Want To Break Free" he was a John Waters-style, mustachioed hair-hopper pushing a vacuum).

We were too busy looking at Elton John's hair implants to notice his music video partners, you simply couldn't think of Fred Schneider as a sexual human being, and it seemed to me that Jimmy Somerville wrote more about oppression than love. Marc Almond skirted around the issue by simply being sleezy-kinky, though there was a strange disconnect between him being a flaming, somewhat chipmunky homosexual AND a sex symbol for teenage girls at the same time.

So I wonder what Andy Bell and Vince Clark thought about the "dog-lover" concept in "Heavenly Action." Chances are they enjoyed the ridiculousness of it all, but it must have sucked to have a heartfelt love song treated that way.