BuysAll those DVDs that seemed to be stuck at the post office last week? They all came in THIS week: The Damned United, Black Dynamite, Shaolin Soccer, Green Lantern, Batman Year One, the Urban Action Collection (with Black Belt Jones, Black Samson, Hot Potato and Three the Hard Way), The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill but Came Down a Mountain, Secret Diary of a Call Girl Final Season, Talons of Weng-Chiang Special Edition, Chuck Season 4 and How I Met Your Mother Season 1. Plus, I realized after hooking someone on DMZ that I hadn't gotten the last three trades, so I did, and picked up David Hine's Bulletproof Coffin while I was at it.
"Accomplishments"
DVDs: Chuck Season 4 is the season the show sells out. I want a show I like to survive (as a show I want to watch) by whatever means necessary, and product placement has always been a part of Chuck. However, this season they have the characters speak commercials for Subway, Toyota, and in the Jeffster webisodes, Halo Reach. It's pretty ridiculous. That's really my only complaint. Otherwise, it was a great season with some MAJOR geekworthy guest-stars, like recurring roles for Linda Hamilton and Timothy Dalton, plus appearances by Robert Englund, Harry Dean Stanton, Dolph Lundgren, Lou Ferrigno, Eric Roberts, Summer Glau, Richard Chamberlain, Lou Diamond Phillips and Robin Givens (plus lots of returning stars from past seasons). And I can't fault the stories, which all have that Chuck quality. The show's makers seem to be searching for a proper game changer all season, and eventually find it in the finale. Boy, do they ever. How about three or four game changers? The next season (which starts tomorrow) looks to be pretty fun as a result. In addition to the Halo Reach commercials, the extras include many deleted scenes, a fun outtakes montage, a feature that uses Zach Levi's directing stint to introduce the various heads of production (though sadly, no real season overview making of), and the jewel in the crown, a 10-minute feature on Joshua (Morgan) Gomez that makes him out to be a real-life stalker. Hilarious.
Who Am I? looks to me like Jackie Chan went on vacation in South Africa and and the Netherlands, and decided to come back to do a film in those two countries... to great effect! I thought the fact we didn't have the Hong Kong (or widescreen) version would be a downer, but not at all! Though the plot is nonsense, and most of the acting rubbish, it is a highly entertaining and inventive action comedy with vertiginous stunts, excellent use of locations and intense martial arts fighting. The plot - such as it is - has Jackie losing his memory and being as surprised as anyone that he has all these moves. The African tribe that initially adopts him think he's called Who-Am-I, turning the film early on into a drinking game. Suffering from amnesia, Who-Am-I must navigate of web of conspiracy surrounding a ridiculous power source... from space! No one cares though. This is all about sliding down buildings, spinning cars and clog-fighting. Dutch martial artist Ron Smoorenburg has to be the cleanest kicker I've ever seen. His moves look like animations from a video game. His bit has to number among Jackie Chan's 10 best fights.
The first Doctor, Steven and Dodo story, The Gunfighters, sending the TARDIS to the fight at the O.K. Corral, for a long while held a reputation as the very worst Doctor Who story of all time. A ridiculous assertion born from not being seen for a couple decades. Hopefully, its release on DVD will change some minds. This is a very well done send-up of the western genre, with nice sets, horses in the studio, and an actually exciting gun fight at the end. The comedy is fairly dark, but it's character-based, not outright parody as writer Donald Cotton's other story,The Myth Makers, was. Yes, the Ballad of the Last Chance Saloon that frames the narrative is over-played (and at times, completely bonkers), but I've got to give props to the production team for trying something new. I can well SEE why it wasn't fondly remembered - no monsters, oddly violent in the second half, and the tune - but like many historicals, it shines more brightly today than many dated SF scripts. The DVD includes the usual commentary track featuring many actors (who spend too much time trashing the new series for my tastes, but are otherwise insightful and interesting) and photo gallery (moving along to the Ballad), plus a long documentary on the show's troubled 3rd year (with lots of changing of the guard and people feeling burned, but it makes the point that were it not for those difficulties, Doctor Who might not have survived at all), and a Tomorrow's Times feature that showcases press comments about the 1st Doctor's era, presented by Mary Tamm (who's sassy, ironic tone makes this slow-paced feature sparkle).
Audios: The Celestial Toymaker must be insupportable without linking narration, because 1) it's low on dialog, and 2) it's pretty damn awful even WITH Peter Purves' narration. In this late 3rd season story, the 1st Doctor, Steven and Dodo are forced to play inane and pointless games by the titular immortal being played by Michael Gough. His talents are wasted. Hartnell is sidelined once again (history tells us that the new production team was trying to see if the show could work without him), turned mute and invisible while he plays a "trilogic game" for four episodes straight, a game that doesn't really make any sense. Dodo and Steven have much more to do, but there's never any sense of jeopardy despite the games all being death traps and the minions running them obvious cheaters (Dodo is especially dense, finding these games "fun"). On audio, you can't see what it all looks like, so you might feel forgiving towards this story, except that episode 4 does exist, and it looks rubbish. My least favorite Hartnell story?
Then I watched The Gunfighters (above) and came back to my DC player to listen to Steven's farewell story, The Savages. It's an odd duck, this moral fable our of H.G. Wells or the as-yet-unborn Trek about an upper class abusing a lower class, if a little ordinary, isn't bad, but it feels like the writer and new production team have never watched the show before. This will soon after lead them to produce The War Machines (which is the basis for a lot of Who to come), but here, even the characters are off-model. Steven is kind of prissy and Dodo takes charge. The Doctor is a doddering old man who is a legendary hero well-known by this future culture. While we're used to it (should I say, sick of it) thanks to New Who, it's pretty much the first time the Doctor's been recognized by humans in his travels. Nevertheless, it makes sense because we're in the far future here. Anyway, the don't keep the Doctor around for long, knocking him out for the better part of two of the four episodes while Steven, Dodo and some "savages" run around caves and corridors. At least Steven gets a proper send-off, which can't be said of Dodo in following story.
The Savages closes up the second CD Collection of Lost Doctor Who episodes, but there's an extra disc in there - a 55-minute episode of BBC4's Archive on 4 in which Shaun Ley investigates the missing 108 episodes. I didn't think there would be anything on there I hadn't already seen/heard in 2|entertain's DVDs, but there was! Though the stuff about why tapes were wiped and how kids in the 60s recorded the audio to re-listen to the show all gets featured on DVD, there are some great stories I hadn't heard before, such as how The Crusade was discovered as told by the people who made the discovery, as well as anecdotes on various hoaxes to come down the pike over the years. Among the actors interviewed, it's especially fun to hear from Pauline Collins (almost-companion Samantha Briggs, and later Queen Victoria). Now on to Collection 3!
Books: Brian Wood's DMZ vol.8 continues straight on from vol.7 and it's a testament to the strength of this series that I caught up very quickly despite having read that previous volume a year and a half ago. The two arcs collected from issues 42 to 49 of the monthly series include No Future, a Mattie-less story that puts is in the head of a would-be suicide bomber. How he got to that point is ripped right out of current affairs, much like the rest of DMZ. Ryan Kelly handles the art on No Future, sliding effortlessly into the world near our own usually interpreted by Riccardo Burchielli. Our protagonist Mattie Roth returns in Hearts and Minds who, in the wake of the election, is losing his moral center (journalistic integrity having been thrown out the window in the previous book). It's a "nothing will ever be the same" chapter in the story, as Manhattan may not survive the mayor bringing a live nuke onto the island.
DMZ vol. 9 - M.I.A. includes one of those excellent "Notes from the Underground" issues that gives more depth to the DMZ universe thanks to short stories and one-pagers drawn by a variety of artists. Then, it's headlong into the M.I.A. storyline, which basically returns Matty to his roots as an observer. In the past couple of volumes, he's gotten more and more involved until he compromised himself and made some very bad decisions. M.I.A. has him withdraw from active life to examine his own life and conscience, and the consequences of his actions. Those consequences include renewed attacks on Manhattan, making the DMZ even more of a hell hole. And though there's a return to the book's basic premise, there's no cheating here. Wood doesn't hit a magical reset button. That return to "normalcy" comes with a cost. A note on the packaging: Unless I'm mistaken, this is the first time a DMZ trade lacks a guest introduction, a sign that DC may now be taking this series for granted and is skimping on production values. It's not a big deal, but in-house support is flagging.
Work can be geeky too: Last Friday was our annual campus-wide Amazing Race, which I help organize every year. The twist this year was superimposing country outlines over each campus building and giving their challenges that country's feeling. There was fundraising for a humanitarian project, an incomprehensible cricket challenge, turning a teammate into a toilet paper mummy, building a compass from scratch, and geekiest of all, correctly writing and placing bubbles in a Tintin strip - I made sure there were a lot of Captain Haddock's insults in there too. The Athletics team won the competition, smoking the others out of the water not just with fast running, but by really owning the challenges. Good on them. Silver and bronze were taken by the Residence and Engineer school respectively.
Hyperion to a Satyr posts this week:
III.i. To Be or Not to Be - Tennant (2009)
Mark Millar can always be counted on to debase even the noblest of ideals. After (allegedly) following the Morrison map to Superman in Red Son, he killed all the superheroes in Wanted. The reigning supervillains were frequently analogs of DC and Marvel villains, with the Professor as Lex Luthor, victorious over a Superman analog (the "s" curl is unmistakable). He's still alive, but lobotomized and wheelchair-bound. Millar even throws in a poop joke for good measure.
