The current season of Doctor Who has been an object lesson in the perils of expecting too much. As I’ve discussed previously, new showrunner Steven Moffat has been responsible for several of the very best episodes of the revived Who. While I knew that it was highly improbable that an entire season could equal the heights of “The Girl in the Fireplace,” I certainly believed that some truly extraordinary television was coming. Yet, with only one episode to go (in England, at least*), I can’t help but feel a bit let down.

Now, of course, it would be silly to actually complain about this season. I’ve been a Whovian for several decades, long enough to have suffered through terrible, incomprehensible and (worst of all) boring stories. Nothing this year has approached the horrors of “The Horns of Nimon,” “Warrior’s Gate,” “Timelash” or “Ghost Light.”** It’s still a very good time to be a fan.

It’s just that Moffat’s reputation as writer, producer and uber-Whovian suggested that we wouldn’t see any of the lazy plotting or dubious decision-making that occasionally marked Russell T. Davies’ run. Then came “Victory of the Daleks,” which threw away its killer premise (Winston Churchill employs the Daleks to fight World War II for him) in favor of a non-story that did little more than reboot the Doctor’s deadliest foes.

The controversial redesign of the Daleks themselves seems another example of something that could’ve used one more pass through the production office. I think that they look great from the front, and I like the candy colors which recall the ’60s Dalek feature films. However, the odd “hunchback” of their profile view just seems off. I know that it’s a minor detail, and that I’ll get used to it, yet I can’t help but be boggled that Moffat looked at it and said, “yes, that’s the one.”

Even Steven’s own scripts have struck me as not quite fully-baked. “The Beast Below” lived up to the series’ new focus as a modern-day fairy tale–and it was certainly a lot of fun–yet in hindsight the plot made very little sense. A couple of episodes later, Moffat revived his dreaded Weeping Angels for a two-parter intended to do for them what Aliens did for Alien. While not entirely unsuccessful, he had to do an awful lot of handwaving and flat-out fudging to turn an entire army of unstoppable monsters into a plausibly-defeated menace.

As the season winds down, I find myself more satisfied by the episodes written by hired hands than by those coming from the pen of the Grand Moff. “Amy’s Choice,” “Vincent and the Doctor” and “The Lodger” have been my favorites to date. And again, that seems wrong. This is the first year of new Who that doesn’t seem to have hit an out-of-the-park homer (remember to insert cricket equivalent here).

Which brings me to “The Pandorica Opens,” the opening half of the season finale. (ALL SPOILERS FROM THIS POINT FORWARD. YOU-HAVE-BEEN-WARNED.)

What’s becoming clear is that Moffat has been playing a much larger game. If some of the earlier episodes have been lacking in logic, it may be because Steven has been focused on the big picture of the seasonal story arc.*** Inexplicable events have been planted throughout, all apparently tied into the over-plot. And I think that’s somewhat a problem; rather than telling fully satisfying tales, he’s been laying down pieces to form the puzzle box of the titular “Pandorica.”

“The Pandorica Opens” is very much in the tradition of Russell Davies’ season-ending spectacles. Once again, there’s an attempt to top everything that’s come before. Previous years have featured mass armies of Daleks, the Master’s total conquest of Earth, the return of Gallifrey and the threat of omniversal armageddon. So, where could they possibly go from there?

How about an unholy alliance of pretty much every alien species the Doctor has ever faced? Daleks, Cybermen, Sontarans, Autons, Sycorax, Judoon, Silurians and Atraxi are joined by whatever happened to be lying around the creature shop**** to construct a fiendishly intricate trap for their archfoe. Oh, and to save the universe.

It’s still unclear what’s really going on. Throughout the season there have been cracks in time, presumed to have been created by the explosion of the Doctor’s TARDIS sometime in the near future. The cracks have erased characters from history (including Amy Pond’s fiance Rory) and generally made a mess of things. And there’s an still-unrevealed menace which may or may not be behind it all. Is it, as some have speculated, a future version of the Doctor, his mind broken by his imprisonment within the Pandorica?

As he put it himself, “There’s one thing you never put in a trap, if you’re clever, if you’re smart, if you value your continuing existence, if you ever want to live to see tomorrow, there is one thing you never, ever put in a trap. Me.”

We’ll know in a few days. And we’ll also know whether Steven Moffat manages to pull his big, timey-wimey ball of stuff into a satisfying story.

*As always, I am using Gallifreyan blogging technology to write this from several weeks in the future, when “The Pandorica Opens” has already aired on BBC America.

**That’s right, I said it. I HATE “Ghost Light.”

***Old-school Who dabbled in season-long story arcs long before the likes of Twin Peaks, but never to the extent that new Who has embraced them.

****Also name-checked were such classic series enemies as the Zygons, Terileptils and Drahvins. Sadly, the budget appears to have fallen short of granting them screen time.

Dave Doctor Who reviews, wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey

WARNING: The following post is nothing but spoilers for the final episode of Lost. Turn back now, if ye wish to be unspoilt!

As the airdate of the Lost finale approached, I became concerned the series might end in one of two ways:

• Jack and Locke sitting alone on the beach, starting the Jacob/Man in Black cycle of violence all over again.
• A final title card replacing the word “Lost” with “Found.”

Fortunately, neither of these happened. In hindsight, the actual final shot (Jack’s eyeball closing for the last time) was just as obvious, but it hadn’t occurred to me.

While I wasn’t surprised that my wife and I reacted very differently to the episode, it seemed odd that I was less bothered by its focus on matters of emotion and spirituality rather than explanations of the nature and purpose of the Island. I think of myself as more skeptical about the possibility of life after death, and more likely to get caught up in niggling details like the experiments of the Dharama Initiative. Yet I felt generally satisfied by the conclusion whereas Vic was frustrated by what she felt was a cop-out.

That said, we both bawled uncontrollably. I think it was the dog. I was already tearing up during the final scene between Ben and Locke (yes, not Charlie and Claire or Sayid and Shannon, but Ben and Locke), then again during the last group hug. Yet, it was the shot of Vincent the dog sitting next to Jack to be with him as he died that sent both of us right over the precipice.

Emotionally, it all worked for me. I enjoyed that final opportunity to see (most) everyone together again, reconciling their “happy endings” in the so-called Sideways world with their memories of the friendship and love that developed during their stay on the Island. It felt earned. And after all the death on the show (by the end, they were down to about a dozen surviving characters, and that’s including Penny and Walt), it was comforting to have everyone back for a tearful curtain call.

I suppose that I wasn’t too bothered by the lack of hard explanations because I was already reconciled to my expectation that we’d already found out pretty much everything we were likely to learn about the Island, the Others and the Dharma folks. With the producers being coy about such simple details as the Man in Black’s name, I didn’t think it likely that they would offer a definitive answer about the Glowy Cave That Must Be Protected.

I’ll admit that I would’ve preferred that the final conflict not have come down to protecting a Mysterious Glowy Cave that had only been introduced two episodes ago. However, I can live with that. The Glowy Cave is clearly a MacGuffin; what it does is less important than how the characters react to it. Once you start down the path of explaining The Origin of the Glowy Cave, you’re entering Kingdom of the Crystal Skull territory. Maybe the glow represents immortality, absolute power or unlimited rice pudding. Maybe it’s the contents of Marsellus Wallace’s briefcase, or Repo Man’s trunk. I think that all you really need to know is that pulling the cork from the bottle is bad.

Besides, when the producers actually began to answer questions, the results could be rather clunky. Oh, hey, remember those mysterious whispers? They were the voices of those who had died on the Island yet hadn’t passed on! Do you feel better being told that?

A popular speculation in the early seasons of Lost was the castaways were dead and the Island was Purgatory. (After all, that’s Twilight Zone twist ending #2, right next to “It was Earth all along!”)  This was flatly denied by producers Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof. Yet…that’s precisely what the Island was for characters such as Michael. And, while I take the show at its word that the events on the Island “really happened,” the Sideways world which dominated so much of this final season turned out to be itself a transitional afterlife.

Like the Glowy Cave, it’s best not to get too bogged down in the nature of the Sideways world. Was it the product of the atomic explosion that concluded Season Five? A gift from Hurley in his new, semi-omnipotent role? Whatever. It’s clearly not too bad a Purgatory, given that one can realize their rock n’ roll dreams and/or get it on with Rebecca Mader therein. And let’s not think too much about an afterlife in which people can be murdered again, or give birth to the same children a second time.

Already, the concluding minutes are being wildly misinterpreted. I read a couple of reviews that suggest that the entire story is Jack’s hallucination just before his post-plane crash death, even though 1) that would be an unforgivable cheat, 2) the show definitively states otherwise, and 3) he’s wearing different clothes.

Similarly, there are some who feel the views of the airplane wreckage over the closing credits are intended to suggest that there were never any survivors in the first place. I’ll be honest, I don’t know the point of those shots, but I’m going to take it on faith that the explanation given within the show is the explanation. Everyone died…eventually. Whether it was sooner or later, for a time they all wound up in the same metaphysical place. There’s enough wiggle room so that if you absolutely want to turn it into something less satisfying, you can do it.

For my own part, I’m content. There was enough there there. And I’m ready to move on.

Dave TV big hug, Lost, reviews

I’m writing this from Austin, Texas, where I’ve spent the past few days attending the PBS Annual Meeting. But I’m not writing about that this evening. If you want the scoop about upcoming public TV series, you can check out my updates on TV Worth Blogging.

No, tonight I’m online to tell you about the place that’s going to make me sorry to leave Austin tomorrow afternoon: the Alamo Drafthouse Ritz. It’s one of those “brew n’ view” theaters with liquor and a full food service brought right to your seat, but that’s not what makes it the most awesome movie house I’ve ever visited. The Alamo Ritz is a year-round gonzo film festival: not content with cult and trash offerings, it features value-added shows such as a “quote-a-long” Princess Bride and a screening of Armageddon featuring live explosions. If I lived in Austin, I would be at the Ritz all of the freakin’ time.

Tonight I had the chance to visit the KLRU-TV studios to see where they shoot Austin City Limits, but then I found out that the Ritz was showing the neo-classic of bad cinema, Birdemic. It was no contest at all.

I only knew Birdemic: Shock and Terror (to give it its full title) by reputation and its gloriously awful trailer. Imagine The Birds remade by someone who had no idea what Hitchcock was trying to accomplish, with a budget of 100 bucks and the best computer graphics that 1979 could offer.

See for yourself.

One could watch Birdemic in the comfort of one’s own home, but the best way to experience it is in the company of a theater full of willing victims. Preferably, as I did, with a molten chocolate cake ala mode on one’s lap.

It did not disappoint.

Birdemic has most of the hallmarks of a truly classic bad movie. You get banal dialogue that sounded as if someone transcribed everyday conversations. (“The eagles killed Becky” is one of the better howlers.) You get a cast of amateur actors presumably filled out by various friends and relatives. You get bogglingly bad special effects, in this case crudely superimposed CGI eagles which hover in midair. Oh, and you get lots and lots of driving scenes. A fair amount of the movie appears to be happening in real time.

However, what makes it especially precious is the basic incompetence of the direction and cinematography. There aren’t any day-for-night shots, but there are mismatched camera angles, missing dialogue and multiple jump cuts within a single scene. Every shot lingers for several seconds too long. There’s no effort made to loop dialogue muffled by nearby ocean waves, or to clear passing vacationers from the background of the frame.

This is one laid-back birdocalypse. The characters stop for a frickin’ picnic in the midst of birdmageddon.

While the script doesn’t quite reach the insane logic of Ed Wood, it does feature Wood’s endearing earnestness. This is a movie that wears its heart on its sleeve, with a plaintive message about humanity’s rape of Mother Earth. Both a gun-toting scientist and a treehouse-living naturalist make didactic speeches to the camera explaining how global warming is to blame for the bird flu epidemic that is causing eagles (and only eagles, it seems) to go berserk. (None of them, however, offer any insight as to what causes the birds to explode on impact.)

So, Birdemic was worth the $8.50 ticket price. But you know what really made the experience at the Alamo Ritz special? The trailer which declared the theater to be a “no talking zone,” and made it clear that they meant it.

Dave Movies Birdemic, reviews, so bad it's good

I’d been looking forward to Date Night from the moment I heard of it. Steve Carell and Tina Fey trying to survive a romantic action comedy? Bring it!

Really, the only thing puzzling about the teaming of Fey and Carell is that it took this long. As other reviews have noted, they’re completely convincing as long-married couple Phil and Claire*. They seem so at ease with each other as performers that one might think that they had worked together for many years rather than merely sharing adjacent timeslots on NBC.

Date Night itself is sort of a duo, but its two sides aren’t quite as compatible. One is the mistaken-identity, crooks-and-chases, screwball comedy promised by the trailers. The other movie roiling beneath that surface is one about the quiet desperation of two people married for so many years that they risk becoming “awesome roommates.”

Thankfully, the filmmakers mostly stuck to the screwball. Because that other movie trying to get out would’ve been kinda depressing. As it was, there were moments–particularly a pulled-over-to-the-side-of-the-road discussion that showed Fey’s acting chops–that hit a little too close to home.

In addition, the initial scenes of Fey and Carell putting themselves in the hands of a pair of corrupt, gun-wielding cops struck me as a bit too intense for what is otherwise a very silly story. (The couple were mistaken for a pair of criminals with an incriminating flash drive after stealing a reservation at a packed restaurant.)

While the caper aspects of the storyline weren’t especially believable, I did buy into Claire and Phil’s approach toward extricating themselves from the situation. Early on we saw them engaging in some clever mimicry of other restaurant patrons, so it wasn’t too much of a stretch for them to begin affecting makeshift disguises and stereotypical accents. And while Date Night never got as self-referential as the Scream films, I did have the sense that these were people who had watched entirely too many police procedural TV shows and were using what they’d learned.

There are some very funny parts, including an over-the-top chase involving two cars linked at their front bumpers. (I’ve never quite been sure why, but I always find hilarious scenes in which people scream and scream and scream.) On the other hand, a tandem pole-dancing number for the benefit of the evil D.A. (played by the creepy, alien sheriff from the TV series Invasion) went on perhaps a bit too long.

While Date Night may not have been quite as good as Fey’s first feature film, Mean Girls, I hope that she tries another action comedy. Especially if Steve Carell can play as well.

*Coincidentally, Phil and Claire are also the names of one of the married couples on the ABC sitcom Modern Family.

Dave Tina Fey Date Night, reviews, Steve Carell

The new series of Doctor Who made its BBC America premiere on April 17, a mere two weeks after it aired in the U.K. If you are reading this review before that date, it’s because I discovered the wibbly-wobbly, time-wimey WordPress hack that allows me to post retroactively. Where I sit it’s Monday, April 19.*

BBC America was certainly brave in choosing to delay the debut of the 11th Doctor. They had to know that Doctor Who fans are no longer living in an era where they have to worry about PAL-to-NTSC transfers. It can’t have escaped their notice that there are several methods by which television shows can almost immediately be shared worldwide. Yet they held their ground, and I salute them.

It was tough waiting out those two weeks.

So, anyway, the 11th Doctor.

It’s a tradition to fear the arrival of a new Doctor Who. Oh sure, most of the time you’ll be fine. You’ll get a Peter Davison or David Tennant, and you can afford to exhale. But every once in a while someone tries to slip you a Colin Baker.

I remember the first time that I saw this early promotional photo of Colin Baker as the 6th Doctor in Starlog magazine. I believe that my first thought was WHAT THE FUCK THEY HIRED A CLOWN. (Yes, my thoughts know where to find the Caps Lock key.)

So, even since Ronald McDonald and his Amazing Technicolor Umbrella, I’ve greeted the announcement of each new Doctor Who with suspicion. And with Doctor Number 11 looking uncomfortably like Crispin Glover (stays Crispin even in milk!), I was especially nervous.

I needn’t have worried. Matt Smith hits the ball right out of the park (remember to insert equivalent cricket term here). He owns the Doctor, playing him as a charming madman.

(WARNING: ALL SPOILERS FROM THIS POINT ONWARD.)

His early scenes with Caitlin Blackwood, the child actress who plays the young version of new companion Amy Pond, are a delight. Especially fun is the sequence in which she tries in vain to find foods that the newly regenerated Doctor will like, only to have him repeatedly spit them across her kitchen. Little Caitlin is so good, and has such a rapport with Smith, that for a few moments I hoped for an entirely different take on the traditional Doctor/companion relationship. But I suppose dragging a seven-year-old into an endless series of dangers wouldn’t be such a hot idea.

That’s okay, because the all-grown-up Amy is a bit of all right as well. That’s her to the left, wearing the Dr. Elizabeth Shaw Memorial Miniskirt.

Keeping in mind that Doctor Who is now in the hands of writer/producer Stephen Moffat, the man who brought us the saucy comedy Coupling, it’s perhaps not much of a surprise that Amy’s livelihood involves delivering “kiss-o-grams.” (Oh, so that’s what we’re calling it these days!)

Karen Gillan as Amy is a lot of breezy fun. At first glance it looks like she might be part of one of the all-time-great Doctor/companion double acts.

The introductory story, “The Eleventh Hour,” isn’t much more than an excuse to reintroduce the series and provide Amy and the Doctor twenty minutes to save the world. It’s about an escaped alien “multiform” and the belligerent intergalactic police officers that track it to Earth.

Amazingly, the Atraxi–who resemble an eyeball stuck to a snowflake**–manage to beat even the Judoon for sheer bull (rhino)-headedness. At least the Judoon are competent, if overzealous, law officers. The Atraxi method of recapturing an escapee amounts to broadcasting the same unhelpful message over and over again, then threatening to incinerate the planet.

Again, the Atraxi and “Prisoner Zero” are really just a distraction; the real story here is the first (and second, and third) encounter between Amy and the Doctor. And, as he did in previous scripts such as “The Girl in the Fireplace” and “Blink,” Steven Moffat enjoys playing with the implications of someone whose relationship with time is, at best, relative.

My present-day self can’t wait to catch up with the future me who is writing this review! Only another twelve days until the premiere!

*If you’re seeing this on April 5, don’t worry. You have eight entire days to prepare for the arrival of the meteor.

**Thankfully they do not wear the kiss-o-gram costume!

Dave Doctor Who reviews, wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey

Despite my lifelong love of stop-motion animator Ray Harryhausen, I must confess that I’ve never had that much affection for his final film, Clash of the Titans. The story, based very loosely* on the Greek myth of Perseus, was a bit of a muddle. More damningly, the special effects–with the exception of the suspenseful confrontation with the gorgon Medusa–didn’t impress me that much either. And then there was that damned robot owl.**

Harryhausen’s retirement was well-timed. He not only went out with a box-office hit, he never had to confront the reality that his groundbreaking techniques would have appeared increasingly outdated in the Age of Industrial Light & Magic.

In turn, ILM gave way to the Age of Silicon, in which anything that can be imagined can be brought to three-dimensional life provided that one has the computing power. These days, even a Roger Corman sized-budget can produce a passable Dinoshark. And $125 million–about seven times the cost of Harryhausen’s last hurrah–can buy you the convincing mythical menagerie seen in this weekend’s remake of Clash of the Titans.

What I found most surprising about the new Titans is the extent to which it hews to the original.***  There’s an added subplot about an attempt by Hades to oust Zeus from Mt. Olympus, but otherwise it hits many of the same story beats. The Kraken returns, as does Calibos the beastman. There’s another brood of giant scorpions, even though their appearance in the middle of a Greek myth makes no more sense this time than it did back in ’81. The damned robot owl, however, only rates a cameo.

Early trailers for the film suggested that it would resemble 300 with a pounding rock soundtrack, but this proved not to be the case. While the action sequences display modern sensibilities, alternating between quick cuts and slow-motion, at its core Clash is rather old-fashioned. When you get right down to it, it’s a movie in which paycheck-cashing famous actors dress in shimmering togas and play with tiny statues of their mortal pawns, while buff heroes battle harpies and ride flying horses. It’s the stuff of countless Saturday matinees.

The weak spot in this new Clash is Sam Worthington, who, it must be said, is no Harry Hamlin. Worthington seems to be the go-to guy if you want someone to Make! Short angry pronouncements! And with his inexplicable buzz cut, he seems to have walked in from an entirely different movie. Harryhausen flicks weren’t exactly known for their strong central characters, but at least Sinbad and Jason seemed to be having more fun than Worthington’s Perseus, who spends most of his screen time pissed off.

There’s another kinda, sorta mythological movie out right now: How to Train Your Dragon, the latest offering from Dreamworks Animation. Despite a terrible title (an unfortunate remnant of the children’s book series on which it’s based) and one of the worst marketing campaigns I’ve ever seen, it’s an utterly charming story about a studious, imaginative boy who forms an unlikely friendship with the most mysterious of the dragons that assault his Viking village on a nightly basis.

Unlike most Dreamworks cartoons, Dragon avoids pop culture references and emphasizes character over comedy. That’s not to say that there isn’t humor: the dialogue is at times intentionally anachronistic and, for some reason, the Vikings have Scottish accents. Yet the overall effect is far less wacky than the commercials suggest.

At its center, it’s a boy-and-his-dog**** story in parallel with a sweet tale about a child trying to win the affection of his father while charting his own path among his more bloodthirsty kin.

I think that the highest praise that I can give How to Train Your Dragon is that it’s a Dreamworks film that displays the heart I usually associate with Pixar. And while it (thankfully) never goes ventures into Old Yeller territory, it does make one decision in its final scenes that was darker than I would’ve expected from the company that gave the world Shrek.

*Fidelity to mythology wasn’t one of Harryhausen’s priorities. For example, The Golden Voyage of Sinbad intermingled Arabian, Greek and Hindu elements. And in his version of Clash of the Titans, Cerberus the three-headed dog got shortchanged a head.

**Bubo was a magical, clockwork bird intended to pander to the Star Wars generation. In the ’80s, not even Greek mythology could avoid the cute robot sidekick.

***And, just as in the original, the Titans themselves never put in an appearance.

****The animators get a lot of personality out of “Toothless” the dragon. Maybe it’s just because I’m a cat person, but Toothless’ facial reactions struck me as more feline than canine.

Dave Movies Clash of the Titans, How to Train Your Dragon, Ray Harryhausen, reviews

The first trailer for Avatar left me convinced that James Cameron’s $300 million comeback film would be a titanic flop. It stunk of Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, the 2001 Japanese flick which burned bags of money to create a photorealistic, computer generated sci-fi world that absolutely no one cared about.

The next trailer was more promising, yet what it promised was Dances with Wolves. It was the traditional white man’s guilt fantasy: white man meets noble savages (who, inevitably, use every part of the buffalo), goes native, and ultimately leads a revolt against his former people.

Bonus: it also looked to be a heavy-handed eco fable featuring a literal “mother earth.” James Cameron was back, and he would speak for the trees.

I was unimpressed. Pretty to look at, I thought, but this was what he’d spent the last fifteen years developing? I was certain that only the Cameron faithful would show up on opening weekend. The Avatar toys infiltrating big box stores nationwide would be buried alongside those for Dragonball: Evolution and Astro Boy: The Movie.

Okay, so I was wrong about that. (But not about Dances with Gaia.)

Despite my lack of enthusiasm for Avatar, I felt that I really ought to see it. Sure, I was intrigued by the technology. I’m also a sucker for good 3-D. But in the end, I think that what I wanted most was to be able to bitch about it with authority.

Last weekend I drove up to visit my dad (who is conveniently located near an IMAX theater), and plunked down my $12.50.

The verdict? Pretty much I expected. Gorgeous and groundbreaking. Pity about the script.

Briefly, Avatar is the story of a paraplegic soldier transported to the planet Pandora, his mind transferred into an artificially-created copy of the indigenous population. The Na’vi are ten-foot tall, blue humanoids who literally link to their environment via a tendril/hair thingy. These plug-and-play Smurfs (who are 30 apples high) live in a hollow tree sitting on the largest known deposit of unobtanium (no shit, that’s what they call it), an isotope of mcguffinite so valuable it can buy entire cities. (And yet, the local mining company official keeps a chunk of it on his desk. Really?)

Avatar leaves no doubt that there are no longer limits on what can be depicted on screen if one has the money and computing power. While I’m not sure that Cameron’s in-camera animatics (which allowed him to see digital characters in a virtual set while directing the live actors) will change the way that movies are made, it will certainly change how very expensive movies are made.

I was impressed by his advanced technique for capturing facial movements, allowing the performances of Zoe Saldana and Sigourney Weaver to shine through their digital makeovers. Cameron seems to have emerged from the “uncanny valley” that made Robert Zemeckis’ computer-generated Tom Hanks and Jim Carrey so unsettling. However, I wonder how many sins are covered by the blue, cat-like features of the Na’vi. The real test, I think, would be to create a realistic duplicate of the actor’s own face.

Much was made of Cameron’s attempt at world-building, but I didn’t find it so remarkable. Several years ago, the crew of Peter Jackson’s King Kong similarly created an entire ecosystem for Skull Island.

I did, however, appreciate the believably* alien flora and fauna, and wasn’t surprised to see that artist Wayne Douglas Barlowe (whose seminal work Barlowe’s Guide to Extraterrestrials sits on my bookshelf) did an early design pass on them. The use of phosphorescence was a clever way of tying together the Pandoran biosphere**.

*Not so sure about the lizard whose defense mechanism was to turn into a tiny helicopter and helplessly rotate six inches from where it had been sitting. Dangling food is still food.

**Curiously, most of the animal life was six-limbed, yet the Na’vi had only two arms and two legs. Did they originate elsewhere?

Unfortunately, Cameron spent far less time on the script that he did on the production design. I might have forgiven the “seen it all before” plot if each of the story beats hadn’t been equally telegraphed. Was there any doubt that Jake would reclaim his standing with the Na’vi by taming that family-sized pterodactyl, or that Mother Nature would listen to his plea* and assemble her horde of uintatheriums and displacer beasts to save the day?

*And just why was Jake so much more Na’vi than the Na’vi anyhow?

Having seen Cameron’s Aliens a great many times, I couldn’t shake a feeling of déjà vu when the evil military commander climbed into a mechanical suit and threatened Jake’s ferocious warrior girlfriend Neytiri. I half-expected Jake to shout, “Get away from that bitch, you bastard!”

Wired magazine’s recent feature article about Avatar explained what inspired James Cameron to become a filmmaker: a fit of jealous pique after seeing the original Star Wars. Star Wars, it said, “was the film he should have made.”

Since that didn’t happen, he settled for producing a space western in which a technological empire is defeated by bow and arrow-wielding primitives, and all life is connected by a mystic energy field. I hear that his next film will be about a globe-trotting anthropologist.

Dave Movies 3-D, Avatar, James Cameron, reviews

It took two weeks, but yesterday afternoon I finished reading Under the Dome, Stephen King’s 1,060+ page magnum opus about a small town which suddenly finds itself trapped underneath an invisible force bubble.

Many articles about the novel have cited its similarity to The Simpsons Movie–in which a glass dome is lowered over Homer’s city of Springfield–but the idea is older than that. In Arch Oboler’s 1966 3-D film The Bubble, aliens sealed a trio of travelers in a spooky community populated by pre-programmed townfolk.

And, when you get right down to it, it’s your basic Twilight Zone concept: trap a group of people under mysterious circumstances and watch them turn on each other. It’s “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street” writ large.

While Under the Dome covers some of that familiar “Maple Street” ground–our tendency to look for enemies amongst our neighbors–it’s really about the cruelty of crowds. A collective may commit atrocities that would never occur to a single person. The specter of Abu Gharib haunts the memories of the book’s lead character, an ex-soldier named Dale Barbara.

The story is set in the near future during President Obama’s second term, but it appears to be looking back to the Bush/Cheney administration. King evokes its incompetence and venality in the personage of Chester’s Mill’s ineffective First Selectman Andy Sanders and the power behind the throne, Big Jim Rennie.

Rennie proves that one need not resort to aliens or vampires to peer deep into evil. A scripture-quoting hypocrite, he studiously avoids bad words (“clustermug” is a favored substitute) even as he sows terror, commits bare-handed murder and operates the largest meth lab in the country. One of his verbal tics is to suggest, with each new death under his watch, that the deceased is now sitting at Jesus’ table eating pork chops and/or peach cobbler. By the end of the book, Jesus needs to add several extra leaves to that table.

Big Jim pursues power without purpose. His drug business has brought him millions of dollars, yet he has no ambitions beyond lording it over his small community. He sees the Dome as an opportunity to make his dominance permanent, backed up by a newly-minted police force composed of the town’s worst thugs.

I’d originally thought that Under the Dome would be a portrayal of the long-term effects of life with ever-diminishing supplies and a breakdown of the old social order, and I’d still like to read that book. Instead, King’s working under a much-accelerated timeline. Chester’s Mill is a (literal) bomb waiting to be set off, and it takes only days for everything to go to hell.

The story is frustrating at times. Rennie is one of those bad guys with an uncanny knack of being three steps ahead of the good guys. Our heroes are woefully disorganized, with an unfortunate tendency to confront Big Jim one at a time. Not a good idea, especially if he’s in arm’s reach of his golden baseball.

If I have one disappointment with Under the Dome, it’s that there’s never a big showdown of ideologies. We don’t find out how the community at large reacts once the wheels begin coming off Big Jim’s Hummer. This is a story in which good perseveres because it runs for the hills once the shit comes down.

While there aren’t any true monsters here (except perhaps for a few ghosts), there are a pair of hideous creatures. Junior Rennie is unknowingly in the final stages of brain cancer which turns him into a killer and necrophiliac. Then there’s the self-styled Chef who runs the meth factory, a cadaverous character who sees God’s work in every crystal.

There’s also at least one mythical creature among King’s vast cast. The publisher of the town paper is an allegedly dyed-in-the-wool Republican who drives a Prius and appears to value facts and reason over Rennie’s appeals to base emotion. But hey, I guess I can allow the author one completely unbelievable idea.

Don’t go Under the Dome expecting the truly unexpected. When it comes to the nature and purpose of the invisible bubble, King tips his hand relatively early. The answer is one which would’ve seemed familiar to Rod Serling.

That said, it’s an engrossing book. It’s only easy to put down because it’s so damned heavy.

Dave Books reviews, Stephen King, Under the Dome

So, I spent part of my vacation day at the theater watching 2012.

Don’t look at me like that. I’ve seen what you do with your time.

Yes, I knew going in that it was nothing more than disaster porn. But hey, I grew up in the days of Irwin Allen. I saw Earthquake in Sensurround. I watched Shelley Winters drown again and again. And goodness knows how many times When Worlds Collide aired on WGN-TV’s Family Classics. Someone’s mother dies of cancer? That’s heartbreaking. Millions of people perish in a fiery abyss? That’s entertainment!

Of course, there was also the Roland Emmerich factor. To be charitable, the man’s work isn’t known for intricately plotted scripts and deep characterizations. Yet I enjoyed Stargate and yes, Independence Day. (Shut up about the computer virus, already. It was a fun movie and I don’t care.)

In the end, my desire to see the earth burn won out over the scars I’ve carried since Emmerich’s Godzilla remake.

The disaster porn portions of 2012 were great fun, but unfortunately the rest of it was more Godzilla or The Day After Tomorrow than Independence Day.

Let’s get one thing out of the way right now. Yes, the “end of the Mayan calendar in 2012″ thing is bullshit. Doesn’t matter. I read Silver Age comic books; I’m not all that worried about scientific accuracy or spurious folklore in my popcorn flicks.

Fortunately, aside from a few “the Mayans knew this was coming” references, the 2012 apocalypse apocrypha doesn’t come up all that much. For the most part, 2012‘s scenario owes more to old-timey sci-fi disasters like Crack in the World or the aforementioned When Worlds Collide. Rising temperatures within the earth’s core buckle the crust, causing colossal earthquakes, subsidences and tsunami.

The disaster scenes, especially the harrowing flight through a collapsing Los Angeles, are an E-ticket amusement park attraction. That’s not a criticism. But they definitely have the feel of an out-of-control Indiana Jones ride.

Now, that scene in the trailer with John Cusack’s plane staying just ahead of cracks in the earth and falling debris? Pretty much the whole first half of the film is like that. Cusack barely escapes L.A., then barely escapes Yellowstone, then barely escapes Las Vegas. His character has an impenetrable shield of script immunity. Nothing is gonna stop him surviving the end of the world and reuniting his broken family.

I found it amusing that I’ve been to every one of the U.S. locations marked for destruction. Santa Monica? Check. Hawaii? Check. It was like my most destructive vacation video.

I got a kick out of the audacious and ridiculous disaster scenes. I’m pretty sure that I spotted the Pope being crushed in the collapse of the Vatican.

But when landmarks weren’t going splat, it was rough going. The whole John Cusack and his estranged spouse and her new husband angle played out in the most pedestrian manner possible. And with few exceptions–notably a cameo by Woody Harrelson as a pickle-eating conspiracy theorist–there wasn’t a lot of humor. I like Cusack, but in terms of cocky heroics, he’s no Will Smith.

Plus, did I mention that is was 158 minutes long? (When Worlds Collide was 83 minutes.) Just when the whole thing seems to be wrapping up, there’s an entire third (or fourth) act where they’ve got to pull the thing out of the thing before the other thing hits a really big thing.

It should not be a spoiler that John Cusack survives. Never mind that it would’ve been more dramatically appropriate for him to die in defense of his former family and their New Dad, or that it would’ve been somewhat unexpected for a big star like Cusack to be ground between two enormous gears. (Modern filmmakers forget that Gene Hackman–the star of The Poseidon Adventure–went down with the ship.)

This is a Roland Emmerich film. And that means that not only does Cusack make it to the credits, so does the dog.

Dave Movies 2012, disaster porn, reviews, Roland Emmerich

Amidst all of the hoopla over NBC giving over five hours a week of prime time to Jay Leno, another story has been largely lost: the (creative) resurgence of the Peacock’s Thursday comedy lineup. If anything, it’s better than ever; even back in it’s “Must See TV” days, NBC’s Thursday inevitably had one series that was simply placeholding. There’s no Jesse or Veronica’s Closet here.

Now, none of them are “hits,” even under the greatly diminished expectations of today’s broadcast industry. The biggest audience success is The Office, which pulls down a 5 rating on a good day. And, despite all the awards and the post-Palin buzz surrounding Tina Fey, 30 Rock is nothing like a mass-audience appeal show. (In fact, the running storyline this season has the show-within-a-show trying to hire new talent in an attempt to win over “real America.”)

Unfortunately, the two newcomers–Community and Parks and Recreation–aren’t doing even that well in terms of Nielsen numbers. Yet for me they’ve made Thursday a night on which I can anticipate the laughing off of my ass.

(One caveat here: I am not a fan of The Office. I know people like it, but neither version of the series has ever done a thing for me. I checked out a few early episodes because of Steve Carell, but it comes from the school of comedy that depends on awkward pauses and cringe-worthy moments.)

Community is built around Joel McHale–a comedian Vic and I have enjoyed as the host of E’s The Soup.–but I think that the real strength of the series is its ensemble. McHale plays a lawyer who has to go back to school after his dodgy college degree is invalidated. Smitten with a hot, young thing named Britta, he creates a fake Spanish study group in an attempt to bed her, but the group soon takes on a life of its own. It becomes, if you will, a community.

I like how it takes a bunch of random people who would normally have no reason to hang together and bounces them off each other in unexpected ways. In addition to McHale’s semi-skeevy Jeff and aforementioned lust interest Britta, there’s divorcee Shirley, ex-football star Troy, film student/savant Abed, brainy Annie and elder weirdo Pierce.

Pierce is played by Chevy Chase, someone I’d long ago written off as a once-funny asshole. But here he reminds me of what I liked about him in the first place. And, to my surprise, he can still pull off a pratfall.

I must admit that I’ve become rather fond of Alison Brie as Annie. No doubt that some of that is wish-fulfillment; her character is exactly the sort of girlfriend I longed for back in high school. But I like that she’s been able to throw off the shackles of simply being “the smart one” on the show. A recent episode had her as an all-too-willing enabler of an experiment in psychological torture to which only Abed was immune.

Abed is the breakout character of the show, a milder version of Sheldon on The Big Bang Theory. Like Sheldon, he appears to be living with Asperger’s, but unlike him, he seems to be a keen student of character. Last week’s episode hinged around his strangely prescient student films based on the lives of his fellow study groupees.

Also, he makes a great Batman.

Meanwhile, Parks and Recreation has turned from a fluttering Office-wannabe into the night’s most dependable comedy. During its short test-run last season it didn’t generate a lot of laughs, but I could at least see the potential there.

Like Community, I was drawn to the show by the presence of someone I’ve liked elsewhere: Saturday Night Live star Amy Poehler. Poehler’s character, well-intentioned deputy director Leslie Knope, has been toned down a lot this season after initial episodes played her as intensely-focused yet clueless. She’s become much more self-aware and therefore more sympathetic, even as she’s continued on her tireless crusade to turn the local dumping pit into a children’s park.

The show has a great deal of fun lampooning small-town politics, with ferocious turf-battles fought over the likes of zoning permits. Pawnee, Indiana is a place with a rich history of institutionalized racism (decorated with such hilarious WPA-era murals as “A Lively Fisting“), where everyone acknowledges that the library is “evil” (its librarians are notoriously vicious schemers).

Here again, Parks and Recreation benefits from a strong supporting cast, including Aziz Ansari as Tom Haverford, who adopted his unlikely, white bread moniker because he didn’t think his given name of Darwish Sabir Ismael Gani would get him far in politics. He’s the office sleaze, but there are hints of heart lurking underneath.

And, as with Alison Brie over on Community, I like Rashida Jones as Leslie’s friend Ann. Rashida is the daughter of Quincy Jones and Peggy Lipton (of The Mod Squad), and she’s easy on my bleary eyes. She’s also pretty funny, even though she’s more of the straight woman to the more broadly comic characters.

The funniest of these is Ron Swanson, played by former University of Illinois grad Nick Offerman. (He graduated in 1993 according to Wikipedia; that’s four years after I started work here!) Swanson’s deadpan minimalism masks his inner absurdity. He moonlights as saxophonist “Duke Silver;” has a thing for dark-haired women and breakfast foods; and has two ex-wives and a mother all named Tammy. (One of the Tammys is Offerman’s real-life wife Megan Mullally, who recently played the wicked head of the Pawnee library.)

I could do without the series’ employment of the fake-documentary style used by The Office. That sort of thing works fine in a one-off like This is Spinal Tap, but for an on-going series it starts to grate after a while. I mean, really, there’s been a film crew following around Jim and Pam for five years?

While both Parks and Recreation and Community continue to struggle in the ratings, hopefully NBC has enough other problems that it will be patient with them. For me, at least, they really are Must See TV.

Dave TV Alison Brie, Community, Parks and Recreation, Rashida Jones, reviews