Diamonds are endeavor.

A megalomaniac designs a satellite to harness the sun’s power. And James Bond is there to rain on his parade.

Cold Open Pretty Orange Explosion Zone: James Bond 007 (Pierce Brosnan, in his 4^th and final turn as the superspy) surfs some rad waves into North Korea (reflecting the tenor of the times, no more Russians), infiltrating diamond dealers, led by General’s son Col. Moon and his lieutenant Zao. They blow Bond’s cover, and he hovercrafts (!) and fights his way to a dead-end, killing Col. Moon in the chase. We are always wondering why villains don’t just shoot Bond immediately, but now we can understand a revenge motive, as the General imprisons Bond and tortures him until he looks like Gandalf after a bad day in Mirkwood.

Opening titles slam in with Madonna’s Die Another Day, which is very catchy, but washed out with insufferable auto-tune that makes me wanna smack her in the mouth, for which she would thank me. Hey, it’s Madonna. The lyrics, “I’m gonna close my body now…” make a lot of sense over the montage of Bond being tortured and closing his body off to suffering. Graphics of naked women on fire and naked women made of ice – to presage the plot of the movie…

Bearded bloodied Bond is eventually traded back to MI6 for Zao (Rick Yune), who was obviously captured after the Pretty Orange Explosions, which gave him the oomph Bond gimmick  – diamonds burned into his face. When Bond is released by the General for the trade, he sincerely thinks the Koreans are going to shoot him in the back, and Brosnan really sells it. Gone is the smug, gone is the suave, here is a man readying himself for nothingness.

But Bond is far from home free – matter of fact, he is home-imprisoned – as MI6, like any government, doesn’t trust its captured agents, so keep him locked in quarantine, with M (Judi Dench) rescinding his 00 status. (There is a heated exchange over Bond’s cyanide pill, which he apparently “got rid of years ago.” Does this make him a good agent or a bad risk? Was he so over-confident about his powers of not breaking under torture that he thought he’d never need it?) He says he was set up in North Korea, so, abandoned by his people, he must go it alone to find the mole.

Berry as Jinx: ass ass in.

So it’s that old premise: Bring the hero low. Find the mole that ruined his life.

One of the funniest scenes of any Bond movie is surely Bond walking barefoot into a swanky hotel in his soaking hospital togs and Gandalf-beard, shirt open on wet torso, after escaping the MI6 facility and swimming the bay, telling the concierge, “My usual suite, please.”

Bond starts tracking Zao. Onto Cuba, where he meets the plain-bordering-on-ugly Halle Berry as she exits the sea (in obvious homage to Ursula Andress in DR. NO, except not so deformed). Suddenly she’s dry. Bond meets her. Suddenly she’s wet again.

Berry is Jizz—sorry, Jinx, and she’s as smug as Bond (because this was that odd time in the world when people were telling Halle Berry she was all that), though I don’t know why – she’s not even a quarter as pretty as Bond. Nice side-boob though. Jinx is also some ass– I mean, also some kind of assassin. The dynamic of an adept female spy working alongside Bond worked so well in TOMORROW NEVER DIES they do it again, with Jinx. She’s no damsel in distress, and Berry does a great job of selling the strong woman who’s every bit as badass as Bond.

Jinx is under the command of Michael Madsen, whose sudden appearance in the MI6 office alongside regulars like Colin Salmon, made me think HE was the mole (brand new face in the office, and a star to boot; from RESERVOIR DOGS in 1992, in the space of just the decade till 2002’s DIE ANOTHER DAY, amassing over 60 credits! He’s like the modern day Lyle Talbot!)

Written by Neal Purvis and Robert Wade (who both started with THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH, and would go on to write all the Daniel Craig era films), directed by Lee Tamahori (the brutal ONCE WERE WARRIORS, 1994), we once again feel the vignette-to-vignette nature of this Bond adventure. As with most of the convoluted plots of the Bond series, you can never quite work out the intricacies – but you always get the objective of each vignette.

Bond traces Zao to a DNA facility in Cuba. Jinx is there too, destroying files of herself. This place is one step beyond Witness Protection – it constructs new identities through “gene therapy” – reshaping your face completely. Zao escapes both Bond and Jinx. And Bond traces him to a London diamond merchant, Gustav Graves (the excellent Toby Stephens, smugger than Moore and Brosnan put together); a fencer, parachutist, knight, adventurer, whose oomph Bond gimmick is that he doesn’t sleep.

Gustav is constructing a satellite that can re-direct the sun’s golden beams on farmlands, or concentrate golden beams into destructive blasts. And he calls it… Goldeneye—no wait, that was copyrighted three films ago… damn! It woulda been perfect! (He calls it Icarus instead… does it bode well for anything if it’s named after the hubristic young mythological Greek who flew too close to the sun and died?)

I don’t know who’s cooler: the Black James Bond or Mr. White.

Bond touches tips with Gustav in a ferocious swordfight, well-staged through common rooms and libraries of this grande olde British club. Madonna cameos as a fencer; her accent cameos as British. When asked to bet on the Gustav-Bond fight, she demurs, “I don’t like cockfights.” It’s funny because she’s a slut.

Rosamund Pike is Miranda Frost, Gustav’s right-hand woman, young and smooth and ice-queen, turning down Bond’s advances. Until she sleeps with him. Oh, we can use the excuse that she’s a double-agent, but we all know it’s because in a Bond film, sexism wins.

Bond, back in the begrudging good graces of M, visits Q (John Cleese, now entrenched as the Quartermaster due to the tragic death of Desmond Llewelyn; sadly, Cleese would not continue into the Daniel Craig era). He previews an invisible car and, for a hot second, as his legs are refracted through the invisible car, we get an unintentional taste of The Minister of Silly Walks! Or maybe that was a sly wink?

Next insane location: an Ice Hotel. These things DO exist – which is a wonder in itself, constructed for tourist seasons and melted months later – but never in the fancy fashion of Gustav’s Ice Palace from this movie, a wholly impractical construct with hedonistic frills no sane ice hotelier would attempt). Jinx is there too!

We discover Gustav is actually Col. Moon whom Bond “killed” in the Cold Open Pretty Orange Explosion Zone, altered through gene therapy, Moon snidely admitting that Bond was his English character-model: “That unjustifiable swagger, those crass quips, the defense mechanism concealing such inadequacy…”

Bond: “So you live to die another day?”

It’s racism so deep we hardly see it. The plot twist required Bond to have a connection to the diamond dealer/sun king, and not realize it. So couldn’t they make this guy another Asian? At the least, an ambiguous Easterner? Instead of going all the way to WHITE MAN? Now I happen to be a fan of this particular white man (mostly because he looks like Clint Eastwood), but we can’t shake the feeling the movie is implying that another Asian guy would not have played well because all Asians look alike. Or – the filmmakers might think the audience would automatically regard him as the villain, because we opened with the North Korean villains. Thing is: we regard Gustav as the villain anyway, through his smugness and Bond’s suspicions, so… how do we get to kumbaya from here?… Do tell us, filmmakers!

The main annoying aspect is still the talking-not-shooting syndrome of all the bad guys. Or the shooting madly at the heroes when they’re running away, but as soon as the heroes give themselves up, the shooting stops. Frost says, with a sword at Jinx’s neck, “Drowning you didn’t seem to work. We’ll have to try something more to the point!”– Shutup with the puns and SKEWER HER!

For all their stupidities, Pierce Brosnan’s Bond films are enjoyable diversions, consistent in their tone and production design. It is during Brosnan’s tenure we see the upheaval in special effects technology in movies, reflected in the use of computers within the storylines of the movies themselves. As computers become more prevalent in this series of movies, so too does Computer Graphic Imagery in the production of the films. GOLDENEYE used that big green writing on computer monitors; by DIE ANOTHER DAY, we have digital readouts, modern-looking screens, virtual reality and holograms.

There’s a thug named Mr. Kil, a laser watch and laser guns, an invisible car, a ring that shatters glass, the villain’s solar suit that looks like Iron Man, a rocket car that races the satellite’s sun beam and – Bond para-sailing across rad waves with icebergs. Movie Maniacs, if you stayed for the gene technology that could change an Asian guy’s face into Nearly Clint Eastwood, you can suspend your disbelief for the parasailing.

I think it was more that Asian/Caucasian plot twist that alienated this movie with Bond fans than the parasailing, which was a dumb surface reason. By replacing the Asian guy with a Brit, the film lost our investment of emotion. It suddenly felt like it was forcing us to invest in a character which we should have a connection with – but which we don’t because – he’s not that character that we met for all of two minutes in the cold open, which we never had the chance to connect with anyway. It’s off the chain batshit. So we feel as lopsided as the airplane that flies through a Goldeneye sunbeam with Bond and Jinx and Frost and Clint Eastwood dressed like Iron Man.

A final scene finds James entering MI6 and laying Moneypenny (Samantha Bond) across her desk for a sensual pumpi—a hologram! Moneypenny’s fantasy… Still, it was kinda nice that both these characters got to makeout in this last turn for both of them.

Bond ends this caper with diamonds and Jizz.

END

Rich people wanting richer.

Another villain with a bomb. Another hero who must defuse it. That’s what the twisty confusing plot boils down to in the James Bond actioner THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH.

The cold open features a rather tame, though humorous, escape for a Bond movie, as Bond easily rappels down an office building (tied around a man’s waist at the top) – until we see the real cold open excitement: a powerboat chase of a damaging brunette in red leather (featuring Maria Grazia Cucinotta, who would also appear this year in THE SOPRANOS as “Isabella” S1E12). Featured gag is Bond’s boat doing a corkscrew jump out of the water (homage to the corkscrew car jump in THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN, 1974). After Bond damages more property and endangers more lives than any bad guy, the girl blows up (–awwww! What a waste of hotness!) and the opening titles slink in…

… with naked girls writhing in oil, while Garbage performs The World Is Not Enough.

Pierce Brosnan returns a third time as MI6 agent James Bond 007. Judi Dench is once again ‘M’ the boss, and Colin Salmon and Michael Kitchen return as office agents.

Desmond Llewelyn: The REAL secret weapon.

Desmond Llewelyn as weapons expert Q introduces “the young fellow who’ll be replacing me…” – John Cleese, who brings his A-game for the cameo! The producers wanted to film a farewell to Llewelyn in the last film (TOMORROW NEVER DIES) in case he retired, instead filming a quick goodbye here – and well they did, for 85-year-old Llewelyn would die tragically in a car accident one month after WORLD premiered. Bond even looks sad when he asks Q whether he is serious about retiring.

We did not know it at the time, but sadly, Llewelyn’s last words in a Bond film would be, “Always have an escape plan,” and as he descends out of sight, it would be the last we would see of him. The saddest cut of all is that Llewelyn expressed a desire to be in one more Bond film.

What would a Bond movie be without a car supplied by Q that shoots missiles? Bond uses such a car… and for the first time, when the car is ultimately destroyed, Bond makes a callback to his cantankerous pal: “Q’s not gonna like this!”

He might have provided the secret weapons, but all this time Desmond Llewelyn himself was the Bond series’ secret weapon.

Directed by Michael Apted (EXTREME MEASURES), this caper is set in motion when M’s personal friend is killed, leaving an oil empire for his daughter, Elektra (sultry Sophie Marceau, BRAVEHEART, 1995). A shoulder injury almost prevents Bond from pursuing the killer of Elektra’s father, but Bond plonks his hot doctor (Serena Scott Thomas) for a clean bill of health.

He makes contact with Elektra as a protector and ends up as an injector, if you take my meaning. On bedsheets that are getting progressively less concealing as the decade moves toward a new millennium. What I’m saying, boys, is – yes, there’s some nip slip…

As the hot chicks pile up, movie loses all credibility when it introduces Denise Richards as a physicist [record scratch]— named Christmas Jones, garbed in crop top and hot pants – because that’s how physicists dress. You read that right: Denise Richards is a Doctor of Physics — with not one scintilla of acting ability, as the producers discover when they mistakenly try to force lines of physics dialogue through those lubricious cupid-bow lips (“We’re safe from the radiation as long as the reactor coolant doesn’t burst!”) which were purposed by nature only for carnal intercourse grunts.

Christmas works for Elektra, who is trying to build an 800-mile pipeline “through Turkey, past the terrorists in Iraq, Iran and Syria.” Terrorists in those three countries? You don’t say! So they were praising allah and blowing up civilians back in the 90s, just like they are now? And 5,000 years ago, same. And I’m betting it will still be the same 10,000 years from now. Proving that there’s no cure for religious fuckheads.

A physicist arrives at work.

Some Bond movies snap our necks with all the unnecessary locations – WORLD is one of them. It just seems like writers Neal Purvis, Robert Wade and Bruce Feirstein are thinking up vignettes to keep the story kinetic, yet not giving a toss on how or why the characters would find themselves in those situations. Like Bond and Elektra skiing down a mountain pursued by “parahawks” (guys in snowmobiles, suspended by parachutes). Choppered to the top of this mountain to supposedly “check the survey lines,” Elektra has brought no equipment except her skis and panties, no camera, no tools, not even one stinking clipboard to take notes. What kind of “surveying” are you doing, woman? It’s just a romantic interlude for these two, interrupted by Parahawk Action Sequence, which we would find out later has no meaning to the plot anyway.

At the Azerbaijan oil fields, Bond sees a helicopter outfitted with five circular saws hanging below it, cutting through trees, clearing land. Like THAT isn’t foreshadowing. (It’s what cuts through Q’s car later!) Part of the story is set in Istanbul, but a real life terrorist bombing there forced the filmmakers to do those scenes at Pinewood instead. (Thank you SO much, religious fuckheads!)

Robbie Coltrane reprises his role as Russian gangster Zukovsky. (We met him in GOLDENEYE; he skipped a movie, he’s back again, though I’m sure his accent has become more schoolyard-Boris than his last go-around.)

Eventually we meet the terrorist behind the bomb, with his oomph-Bond-gimmick: “a stray bullet moving slowly through his brain, killing his nerves, so that he feels no pain, getting stronger until his eventual death.” Robert Carlyle, so impressive in TRAINSPOTTING and THE FULL MONTY, has nothing to do here as Renard, generic Bad Guy. His gimmick is never even utilized properly: when he and Bond eventually engage in hand-to-hand, over the thermonuclear device that Christmas can’t pronounce, Renard is not inordinately stronger than Bond, nor does he “feel no pain,” as every time Bond kicks him, he goes, “Oouf!” and “Aargh!” (Bovver boy Begbie was more resilient than this guy!…)

To further the annoyance at wasting such an ominous personality on generic punching, when Bond gets the drop on Renard – he’s the one now talking instead of shooting! You’d think he’d learn from all the talky villains who’ve gotten the drop on him, but maybe he thinks this is how international espionage is done?

At just over 2 hours long, we start to feel it, as the movie wends its way around the Middle Eastern world, especially when machine guns are popping off and bombs are blowing up and no one is getting hit except bad guys, and the air around Bond and Christmas.

When Elektra asks M to protect her personally, we have to ask ourselves what M can do that ten skilled male agents can’t. The trap is so obvious, it’s only a matter of time before M finds herself in an easily-escapable cell. But then, it would seem every trap for Bond is never designed to kill him either, but to put off his death, as Renard strands Bond in an exploding mine and Elektra ties him to a torture chair. (Maybe these people need more religion – to become better killers.)

The last sequence finds Bond and Christmas trapped in a sinking sub. Can’t get more claustrophobic than that. Well, you can if Denise Richards is saying her lines at your face like a first-year acting student. Really, couldn’t they have switched the Christmas role with Maria Grazia Cucinotta instead?! Tits AND brains.

– – – – – SPOILERS – – – – –

There’s a new villain dynamic in THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH – The Bond Girl is also The Bond Villain. (No, I’m not saying Robert Carlyle is a girl, I’m saying Sophie Marceau is playing both sides of the bed.)

Elektra was kidnapped by Renard when young, and embraced his ideology (Stockholm Syndrome, meet Patty Hearst), so even though Renard is the mad bomber, Elektra is his mad funder; he’s the muscle, but she’s the megalomaniac tactician calling the shots, aiming to rule the world through Big Oil, which, as we know, is a much more criminal enterprise than a simple kidnapper-bomber.

As usual, movie ends with Bond eating Christmas for dinner.

END

And behold, Jesus mud-wrestled the creature amidst the uterine juices of damnation.
And lo, it was icky.

Frankenstein’s Mobster.

MARY SHELLEY’S FRANKENSTEIN has the reputation for following its infamous source material closely – Mary Shelley’s groundbreaking 1818 novel, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. The fact that it follows the book only barely, and the fact that people yet put on airs when lauding the movie as authentic shows how much people actually read.

Kenneth Branagh directs and stars in this fevered, overwrought encomium to mad scientists and the monsters they create. Young scientist Victor Frankenstein (Branagh), inspired by boundary-pushing life-preservation experiments in 19^th century Geneva, contrives a method to create the spark of life in dead flesh. After experimenting with animals, bringing them back from death, Frankenstein constructs a man from body parts scavenged in science labs and graveyards – and reanimates him. Then, like every good Reality TV parent, Frankenstein abandons the creature. The reanimated man (played by Robert De Niro, in what looks like extremely painful makeup) is shunned by his creator, and embarks on a killing spree as a cry for help. At least, that’s what the creature says…

Frankenstein keeps the “monster” a secret from his betrothed Elizabeth (Helena Bonham Carter), and best friend Clerval (Tom Hulce). (I feel so sorry for Hulce in this role. At the time, he was cultivating a reputation of accepting only noteworthy acting gigs, which were rare. After his magnificent turn as a titan himself in 1984’s AMADEUS, this period piece, with its caliber of talent and majestic intent, seemed like a natural progression for him. Alas, his talents are muted by the material and the lackluster filmmaking.) Ian Holm is dad, on his gigantic English estate; Richard Briers is the old blind man with whom the monster finds a moment’s respite, and John Cleese makes an excellent serious cameo as an outlaw professor.

Historical Fact: early dildos just looked like monkey paws.

An element of the film that fakes us into believing it is loyal to the novel is the opening sequence featuring Aidan Quinn as Captain Walton, helming a foundering ship through arctic ice and coming upon Frankenstein pursuing his creature. The whole tale is then told in flashback by Frankenstein. This device is also used to frame the novel, but the novel goes deeper, telling it from the point of view of Walton relating Frankenstein’s tale, who, in turn, devotes a large chunk of dialogue to relating his creature’s tale, so the book seems like three flashbacks in one.

Another significant inclusion from the book: THE CREATURE SPEAKS! We have been so inundated with the avalanche of Frankenstein media (starting with the original 1931 film FRANKENSTEIN, starring Boris Karloff as the Monster) that portrays the creature as a big dumb galoot that we forget the creature was endued with a functioning brain and was quite articulate. (We can’t help thinking of Marty Feldman in Mel Brooks’s YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN, choosing a brain for the creature, marked “Abby Normal”…)

Of all the deviations from the book, there are two that benefit the film; first, John Cleese’s brain in the creature (Cleese is Professor Waldman, killed by a fanatic, whose head is cut into by Frankenstein for his intellect); second, instead of reanimating a nameless grab of body parts at the creature’s insistence of a female mate, Frankenstein reanimates his own lover – the murdered Elizabeth!

The Cleese-brain plot point is wasted, as the creature is struck on the head by a falling beam when birthed, effectively negating all those potentially interesting avenues involving a professor’s brain driving the leviathan. However, the reanimated-Elizabeth plotline is undoubtedly ominous and actually “scary.” In a weeping fervor, Frankenstein lops off the head of his original female (in this story, she is a relative of Frankenstein’s that the creature murdered; in the novel, a clutch of body-parts) and stitches on dead Elizabeth’s head (obviously following the handbook on Medical Procedures Made Simple.) When she comes to, Bonham Carter gives a disturbing performance as someone slowly discovering they are reanimated.

As Superman was the first true cinematic superhero, Frankenstein created the first cinematic Monster. In this telling, we sidle up pretty close to Shelley’s original vision of the creature itself – an intelligent being shunned and lonely, seeking revenge for the forced life thrust upon it – but even one of the world’s greatest actors cannot make us feel any compassion toward this poorly fleshed-out, tragic beast.

I truly think the problem lies in Shelley’s original work, for her Victor Frankenstein is a confused character whose emotions turn on a dime when it comes to desire to create a living being and then revulsion once that being is created. And so Branagh tries to portray that fickleness in the movie, but this is not a natural human reaction, so it misses the dramatic mark: When his new man-creature is birthed (in a scene that dwells too long on both Branagh and a naked De Niro entwined like female wrestlers in sensual amniotic slime), the creature is inadvertently chained and knocked unconscious. What does Franky do? Leave the creature hanging there and starts contemplating his navel. Are you a scientist, man?! Start doing tests, examining the creature’s metabolism, heart rate, skin regeneration, reflexes, etc.! What’s with all this philosophical mooning?

“We shall ride so hard that I will explode in my pantaloons from your mannequin buttocks rubbing urgently against me.”

Shelley creates a great allusion in the subtitle of her book, The Modern Prometheus, but chooses to go the route of simple-minded murder than the more interesting plot of society being exposed to this scientific wonder. As Prometheus stole forbidden knowledge of the gods and bequeathed it to Man, Victor Frankenstein treads that crucible, so we can excuse a modicum of self-examination and fear, but cannot we also revel in the unbounded excellence of the experiment’s success?

We must recall Mary Shelley was 18 when she penned this tale. Though her writing style is grandiose and exhibits a vocabulary which puts modern 18-year-olds to shame, her knowledge of scientific practices and story devices like characterization and motivation was virtually nil. She did a great job capturing the essence of a disturbing idea that probes at a primal fear of mankind – which is why the tale is so universally embraced – however she blithely set forth her characters’ actions, sprinkled liberally with flowery language, and hoped to disguise the fact there was hardly any substance behind their deeds.

The creature is also quite shallow, birthed with the intellect of an infant, soon turning to murder for no reason other than to jealously bait his creator. (And why do we perfunctorily call the creature a “monster” anyway? The “monster” epithet could probably be applied after he starts killing people, but we are conditioned to think of him as that from the outset!) And De Niro doesn’t help, seemingly just reading his lines and waiting for the knockoff bell to take off this goddam makeup. His leaden performance leads us to believe someone made him an offer he couldn’t refuse.

Shelley’s novel never mentions the process by which the living person is created, because – she was not a scientist, but every Frankenstein movie has utilized electricity/lightning to reanimate the creature. A creative new device here is – electric eels!

In the final telling, MARY SHELLEY’S FRANKENSTEIN has merits and demerits that cancel each other out. At least it’s sincere in trying to be authentic. But in its adherence to Shelley’s dated, drab approach, it becomes as inauthentic as all the other Frankensteins ever loosed into cinema. What do I mean by this? Well, as an example, the creature never raises his voice; he speaks calmly and articulately, because that was the ethos of the day – intelligent conversation, not Running and Screaming. The “terror” has not been updated to today’s “entertainment” standards.

The filmmakers also fail to convey the true intended horror of Frankenstein’s tale – the forbidden “tampering in God’s domain.” Although there is no religiosity in Shelley’s work, that unholy element was the unspoken heretical dread of creating life from nothing back in the 1800s. It was a trespass unforgivable. No one is getting that message now. Partly because we have become inured to the Frankenstein story over decades, partly because spiritual outrage is a thing of the past, and partly because the acting is so mediocre.

Next: THE GODFATHER PART IV, starring Abby Normal.

END

Noooobody expects I’ll need an orthopedic physician!…

Monty Python – The Autumn Years.

Their legs are grey, their ears are nulled, their eyes are old and bent. IT’S. Monty Python’s Flying Circus 2014. Oh, and one of them’s been dead for over 25 years like a very naughty boy.

MONTY PYTHON: AND NOW FOR SOMETHING RATHER SIMILAR is a documentary by IMAGINE, a BBC TV series (Season 23, Episode 4), following the Pythons as they prepare for their historic live shows at London’s O2 arena in July 2014. From all accounts – schedules, insurance, imminent deaths – their last ever appearance together onstage. You cannot, will not, and should not watch this feature without tears gushing like the mighty rivers of British Columbia down your lumberjack flannels; the nostalgia, the reunion, the glory, the Boys…

In 1998, the five remaining members of Monty Python (John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones and Michael Palin) convened in Aspen for a tribute by the U.S. Comedy Arts Festival. At that gathering (their last group appearance being 1982’s LIVE AT THE HOLLYWOOD BOWL; their last group film, 1983’s THE MEANING OF LIFE), when asked if they were going to “do something together again,” they made the “historical announcement” that they were!

So in July 2014, 16 years after making that promise (!) Monty Python at last align their stars and schedules to come together onstage for Monty Python Live (Mostly): One Down, Five to Go, a one-off live show at O2. It sold out in 43 seconds. In the end, 10 shows were performed.

Still crunchy after all these years…

But it was never about fun and games and keeping promises. Presenter Alan Yentob asks Eric Idle, “Why are you doing it?” We expect Eric to blurt, “The money.” That reliable go-to gag for people who obviously don’t need the money. And Eric actually blurts out, “The money”! Seriously. He outlines how they had to legally defend themselves from a producer on MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL who sued them, costing them a million pounds. Eric quipped to Jim Beach (manager of Queen, brought in for legal advice), “If we did a night at O2, we could pay this off in a second!” At the collective Python meeting the next day, Beach said the same thing. What a good idea, said Eric.

Eric Idle is painted as the one Python holding the mammoth production together, the producer if you will, organizing music, dancers, rehearsals, production design and finding the albatross; delegating, stipulating and fulminating, while the rest don’t really know where lieth those little things with the sort of raffia work base that has an attachment.

They’re busy. How busy? No one can tell. Yentob can go through each of their tales post-Python and still omit acres, oceans, planets of their storied careers. We hear about Palin’s travelogues and Diaries, but miss out on RIPPING YARNS (a natural progression from Python that I remember very fondly). We hear about Cleese’s FAWLTY TOWERS and A FISH CALLED WANDA, but not much else, even though he has appeared in over 70 productions since WANDA, TV series, video games, to say nothing of his speaking tours. And where does one start unspooling the surrealism of Terry Gilliam’s inimitable body of work (BRAZIL, THE FISHER KING, 12 MONKEYS, et al)? (So they focus on his most recent film and opera.) So it goes with Idle and Terry Jones as well, all short-changed because they’ve done too much. (And like Mr. Smoketoomuch, they’ve never thought about cutting down a little…)

Every time a classic Python sketch is mentioned, we see that sketch from the original series, not any permutations of it. It is a thing of beauty that it is.

Python memories are tied to an epoch when life was a simpler time, a better existence, a meaningful purpose. Python was not just for nerds and not just for elites. Python covered the spectrum, from Gumby Brain Specialist to Beethoven at home; from mountaineering hairdressers, to philosophy football. Monty Python’s flying circus was, and remains, the greatest comedy sketch show in history. So it’s a… disappointment… when we see the actual performances from the tour…

(The performances are not shown in this featurette, but can be found on YouTube.)

It’s not so much that their hair is gray, their teeth are false, their bowels are unreliable… Their conviction is lacking. Gone is the impeccable timing and energy of their youth, with each sketch being performed with a nudge nudge wink wink to the audience that everyone knows what’s coming next, so it doesn’t matter if it feels staged, if they forget lines or break out of character and corpse. And everybody expects The Spanish Inquisition… More than anything, it seems like “five slightly shriveled septuagenarians” (as the humorless Daily Mail put it) trying to fulfill a manifest, dutifully putting all the pieces where they belong.

Monty Python: The “Who’s Next?” Tour

In 2000, Eric did a tour called Eric Idle Exploits Monty Python. With Eric’s financial explanation about this tour, and with all the members not wanting to, or not having the time to, rehearse, and with the brand recognition they all enjoy when coming together (which only aids their individual pursuits), then surely it is now a case of Monty Python Exploits Monty Python. But then, isn’t that what we ALL do? Cherrypick our inimitable, explosive art from our youth and spend the rest of our wretched, diminishing lives trying to recreate it. Robert De Niro Exploits his Gangster Persona; Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley Exploit KISS; Pete Townshend Exploits The Who. But all the naiveté and nostalgia and sociological swirl of the times that were an integral part of creating that original art are in a different balance now. So one NEVER recaptures the EMOTION that was an integral part of that art, therefore any attempt at recapturing art FULLY will necessarily fail. I am saddened that that is the Truth – not in any capitalistic or cynical way – just in the sense that we all get older and snider. And nothing can retain the innocence and humor of youth. Sad sad sad. The reasons keep changing but I’m still weeping rivers.

But – as Cleese says – Python “made some people laugh.” And that is the bottom line. They did it. In such a giant way that it can never be undone. “Pythonesque” is not only in the Oxford English Dictionary – it’s in every English dictionary. They are part of history. They shine out like a shaft of gold when all around is black. Like a stream of bat’s piss.

Speaking of never being able to recapture art: Superman was in a wheelchair, Freddie Mercury died, Paul Stanley lost his voice, Clint Eastwood swerved rightwing nutjob, John Cleese can’t Silly Walk— Due to extensive knee surgeries, Cleese’s most iconic performance piece is nixed forever. And you ask why I’m still weeping rivers of British Columbia. Worse, the choreographer is putting the sketch to music and a host of young dancers play the ersatz Minister of Silly Walks. And that’s a biggus dickus bowl of wrong.

Carol Cleveland (the “seventh Python”) makes the show – aged like a fine wine (kept in a cellar for thirty years). Neil Innes (the other seventh Python), unfortunately does not. And Graham Chapman (not the Messiah, just a very naughty boy) appears in videos, his spirit living on in Python media and shows, so long after his death that he might just BE the Messiah….

Documentary ends on the five Pythons, gathered before the tempest, just about to hit the stage before their first show. Cut to black.

AND NOW FOR SOMETHING RATHER SIMILAR is an excellent – though hardly detailed – featurette. If nothing else, it provides a whirlwind overview of what Monty Python means to the world, an honest snapshot of where they are now, and a grandiose tribute to what may be their last performance together. Witty, intelligent, poignant, and of course, very, very silly. (And it pays the legal bills…)

END

Crood. Rhymes with Good.

Nicolas Cage is a caveman with a lowbrow attitude toward life and forward momentum, and in the animated comedy THE CROODS, Nicolas Cage is a caveman with a lowbrow attitude toward life and forward momentum.

He’s Grug, pater to a prehistoric family, who is faced with the decision to adapt or die. It’s the process of evolution writ small. Movie takes awhile to hook us with its uncute characters and obvious “message” telegraphs, but once it starts paying off, it bonks us over the head like a caveman scoring his mate.

When Ancient Aliens first appeared they anal-probed Nic Cage.

Grug’s family is attuned to ritual for survival. Every day they forage, every night return to their cave for exciting adventure stories from Grug (which all end the same way: “…and then they DIE!”) and pile up on each other to sleep until the sun returns. The message is clear: “Never be Not Afraid!” (A clearer way of seeing that in print is “Always be afraid!”) Stay close to the cave, never try anything new, distrust strangers and new experiences. Which means, of course, they will shortly have to disavow all these precepts to stay alive. Adapt or die.

Grug’s rambunctious daughter Eep (Emma Stone) ventures far from the cold stone cave one night and discovers a teen dream who can command Fire. Ryan Reynolds voices Guy, from a more advanced tribe, who is chasing the trail of higher ground before the world ends. After Grug’s family suffers a cave-in, they too must follow Guy’s “modern” ways if they wish to survive, to the chagrin of Grug, who sees Guy as a usurper of his leadership and masculinity.

The creature design is excellent – creative and unique: a slinky owl-predator, elaphantine swans, marauding bird flocks, land-walking whales, a psychedelic dodo, Guy’s belt-sloth (providing some “dun dun daaaah” moments), and a big cute sabertooth cat-creature that puts the fluffiness of the unicorn in DESPICABLE ME to shame. The family character design follows this thoughtful creativity. Look at Grug’s stoop, like a gorilla; he sometimes even walks on his knuckles (his superstitions and traditionalism make him a fish out of water in this road tale); while Eep represents curious, changing, dynamic youth, and is more upright. Grandma (voiced by Cloris Leachman) is so close to the roots of the evolutionary tree, she has a tail. While Guy represents total modernism with his totally upright posture and – bellbottoms. And a haute couture belt-sloth.

In an effort to compete with Guy’s natural ingenuity, Grug has “ideas” to prove himself worthy of leading the clan, He also starts thinking up new words and relating them to known ones, “Hug. Rhymes with Grug!”

Catherine Keener voices Grug’s wife, and Clark Duke voices their dopey son.

In a trek through a land that resembles AVATAR‘s Pandora, we do not immediately see that the love story is not between the boy and girl but between the girl and her father.

Animation has reached such a stage that when the mountain explodes, it looks too real for its own good. The family must leap a precipice, and only Grug’s powerful arms can hurl them across. Now the movie ramps into poignancy as Son realizes, “You’re not coming, are you?…” And Grug’s touching answer, “When you make it, so will I.” An instinctive knowledge that his genes will go on (albeit a touch cognizant for a lowbrow like Grug).  

Movie tugs at the heartstrings mightily as it ramps towards the inevitable sacrifice. With his family safe on the other side, Grug is alone. He finds a cave, and achieves his reconciliation with all things “new” as he draws a crude scene, an adventure tale where everyone, instead of dying, LIVES. Within his powerful arms.

By the time Grug says to his daughter, “Never be afraid!” I was weeping at how writers Chris Sanders, Kirk de Micco and John Cleese could pay off so poignantly what started out as just another dull redemption tale.

Crood. Rhymes with Good.

END

The Chamber of Feebness.

The sequel to HARRY POTTER AND THE SORCERER’S STONE, HARRY POTTER AND THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS, continues the richly-layered story of young wizard Harry Potter and his friends in their second year at Hogwarts, the school for enunciating British kids. A monster awaits in a chamber of secrets and only Harry can defeat it using numerous deus ex machinae.

At his step-parents’ home in London, we catch up with Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) meeting the bastard son of Gollum and Yoda EPISODE II – Dobby (voiced by Toby Jones), a self-flagellating, sado-masochist house elf, who warns him not to go back to Hogwarts. Harry is determined to find a way back though, and Dobby, for some reason, frames Harry with some mischief that, in any sane person’s house, would guarantee Harry would be kicked out of the house and back to boarding school. I’m missing the boat on the motivations of Harry’s step-parents; instead of getting rid of this boy they hate with a vengeance, they exile him to his room. Though how can mere bars on a window stop a magical person from escaping?

Ron Weasley (Rupert Grint) and his ginger bros break Harry out in a flying car– Stop right there – a thousand questions: Is the CAR flying? Or is it their WILL that is making the car fly? Why bother steering? It’s got no ailerons, stabilizers, rudders; does it run on gas?–

The overpopulated Weasley clan is introduced to Harry and they all teleport via green flame to Diegone Alley. Though instructed to speak clearly for the chant, Harry, who up to this point has spoken like an English professor on Branagh Juice, decides to pronounce it “dia-gon-ally” and gets transported diagonally into someone’s arsehole, we presume. No matter, for in this wretched place he meets Hermione (Emma Watson) – and the film at last becomes watchable.

What? Yes, I’ve noticed she’s grown, but I’m not looking there. Glorious. That aquiline nose, those waterfall locks… She repairs his glasses, “Oculis Repairos” (can you make me feel a little dirtier with those dumb spells, please?); you’d think he’d learn that spell himself, being a glasses-wearer. But maybe that’s his way of cultivating her little wizmuff.

The HARRY POTTER movies are well-made films (this sequel also directed by Chris Columbus), exquisite detail lavished on every scene, with excellent acting and production values. Yet I keep losing interest at regular intervals. Reason: magic. The Potterheads scream in my face, “But LORD OF THE RINGS (this series’ most obvious competition) has magic too!” Yes it does, but wields it in a more sensible manner. Every time the POTTER series uses arbitrary magic with no payoff or purpose, I roll my eyes and go, “Expecto Wankforus!” For example: Why are they changing animals into wine goblets? Is there any point to this at all? Any application in the real world? Any reason for it in the wizarding world? Is there any payoff? Harry breaks his arm and it’s immediately fixed by magic. That’s nice. Why write that it broke in the first place if the fix was so easy? And Dobby can make objects float, teleport, shoot fire out of his fingers – I mean, how does such a powerful creature become a slave in the first place?

When something is called “magical” it means it resembles magic (which is irrational, illogical and follows no laws of physics). It’s almost an insult. So you can’t call a HARRY POTTER film “magical” because it’s not like magic – it IS magic. It is irrational, illogical and follows no laws; the world of Harry Potter is unpredictable in the worst of ways. Any scientist will tell you that if the real world was as devoid of physics laws as this series of movies, everything in the Universe would be dead or in a state of chronic chaos.

The main cast all return, with an addition: Kenneth Branagh is new professor Gilderoy Lockhart, comic relief for the sinister Snape (Alan Rickman), and the one shining light in this movie (besides Hermione). In a fantastically cheesy performance, he’s the Defense Against Dark Arts teacher, more involved with his own legend than teaching, five-time winner of the Most Charming Smile award.

We are also introduced to Jason Isaacs as Lucius Malfoy, Draco’s (Tom Felton) dad, as glamorously fey with that long white hair, creating a red herring as the bad guy, but he’s only a bad guy to Dobby, who finger-fries him later anyway. A pointless subplot.

The House of Slytherin (who are regarded as tacit “bad guys” in the school pecking order) built the chamber of secrets, to unleash a horrible monster and purge the school of all who were unworthy to study magic. It’s all very scary until we realize it makes no sense; that the chamber is somewhere under the girl’s bathroom, and that the monster is just a big snake that is easily defeated by Harry because of a magic hat, a magic sword, a magic phoenix and a screenwriter (Steve Kloves) who puts them all together because author J.K. Rowling ran out of ideas.

Look at these two idiots hugging EACH OTHER!

With Weasley’s worried face working overtime, he and Harry drink a potion to turn them into two other guys. It’s FACE/OFF for nerdists! The same potion turns Hermione into a cat! Don’t even ask– but are you trying to make me commit statutory master stroking? She says in horror, “Look at my face!” Weasley (in one of his few smiling moments – or should that be ‘leering’) replies, “Look at your tail!” Oooh, I am, I am. You’re already thinking about it, aren’t you, Ronnie?

As the filmmakers stole Dobby from LOTR, now they steal the spider sequence from the same Peter Jackson series. Hundreds of giant spiders surround Ron and Harry –cough, Shelob!– their magic flying car saves them in the nick of plagiarism. (So the car does have a will of its own – or were one of them mind-controlling it? And if it can think for itself as it rescues them, why bother steering and gearing?… Oh, it’s “flight gear” is jammed, so it can’t fly? A physical lever to control a metaphysical action? You lost me at Making It Up As You Go Along…)

And then – Boredom, thy name is Quidditch. One of the balls chases after Harry. It’s obviously “tampered with,” but does the game stop? No. Draco keeps bashing into Harry maliciously in full view of all spectators. But does the game stop? No. Rules like World Championship Wrestling. When Harry breaks his arm, in a school full of magic professors, they let the comic relief Gilderoy fix it.

Christian Coulson is Tom Riddle, who gives us a Bond exposition to pad the film’s climax, and to give Dumbledore’s phoenix time to fly down into the catacombs and drop off a hat to Harry, in which materializes a magic sword to– ah, forget it!… Then smartypants Riddle mouths off that his spirit is in the magic book lying right next to Harry. Geez, Harry, spirit in book, basilisk tooth in hand; how about stabbing the tooth into the book to stop it from yapping and telling everyone how to stop it?

Phoenix drips tears on Harry’s wound. He heals like Wolverine. Magic. Love it. Anything goes.

Hagrid (Robbie Coltrane) arrives back from Azkaban prison. We never even knew he left. As the school cheers him like the star of the show, we are left wondering whose bitch he was.

END

He who sips from many cups, drinks from none.

The imitative art is an inferior who marries an inferior and has inferior offspring.
— Plato, The Republic, Book X.

Wow! A movie with NO original ideas! PLANET 51 is a glop of as many nudge-nudge wink-wink cultural references as cartoonly possible in an uninvolving 91-minute chase movie.

Set on an alien planet which is basically 1950’s Middle America with rounded edges, this animated comedy feature offers nothing in the way of ideas, creativity or entertainment. Its only hook is that the roles of alien and human have been reversed. A (very unlikable) human astronaut (voiced by Dwayne Johnson) lands on an alien planet claiming it for the Yewnited States, and finds it is already populated by little green beings (who are not even “alien,” just Middle Americans with antennae and no pants).

Astronaut Baker – the jingoistic selfish, provincial Ugly American – finds that HE is the “alien.” Uh huh. A twist so original I almost lost my Ziggy Stardust & The Spiders From Mars album.

On this planet (which is never actually called Planet 51), propaganda paints humans as “Humaniacs” out to eat your brains and turn you into a zombie. So astronaut Baker is hunted by the military and helped by a young native boy, Lem (voice of Justin Long), whose main concern is trying to get his smooth crotch onto the presumably smoother crotch of the native girl next door, Neera (Jessica Biel).

In just its first 15 minutes, PLANET 51 mentions, pays homage to, plagiarizes, satirizes, spoofs [intake big breath]: 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, BACK TO THE FUTURE, “duck and roll,” anal probing, Griffith Observatory, Pod People, APOLLO 13, LOST IN SPACE, STAR WARS, THE RIGHT STUFF, WAR OF THE WORLDS, E.T THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL, THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL, McCarthyism, THE SEVEN YEAR ITCH, Bob Dylan, The Macarena, Singing In The Rain, ALIEN, “Resistance is Futile,” GREASE, THE TERMINATOR, George W. Bush’s Military Commissions Act, every single cliché from 1950’s sci-fi films, even the Republican mindset (“the universe is over 500 miles long and contains over 1000 stars!”), and 1950 sexual propaganda, i.e. sex=death (just as two virginal teens are about to make out in a sci-fi movie, a Humaniac ship attacks and the girl says, “I knew this would happen if we made out!”). Even Lem’s name is the original acronym for the Apollo Lunar Module (Lunar Excursion Module).

There’s only so much referencing/homaging one can do before it all just piles into a dungheap of derivative plagiarism.

But it’s for the children! The Universal Excuse for cartoons infused with mediocrity and lack of ingenuity.

But I ask: which children will understand why astronaut Baker is humming Thus Spake Zarathustra while he’s planting his flag? Or the thousands upon thousands of other layered references? Stop bullshitting a bullshitter: The references are for adults – who are not so much “appreciating” them as being pummeled by them.

Just as in MONSTERS VS. ALIENS (which was also not funny), PLANET 51 hits a raw nerve when it makes a little kid accuse his mother of being taken over by aliens, so that the military will chase her and he can escape his dentist visit. In this toxic political nightmare that we call Amerika, where torture and denial of rights and suspension of habeas corpus are realities brought about by that felon imbecile who last stank up the Commander-in-Chief’s seat, this is just not funny.

John Cleese (as expected) lords it comedically over the other voice talent as Professor Kipple (a word stolen from Philip K. Dick’s novel that inspired BLADE RUNNER, Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep). And Gary Oldman, with his arsenal of voices, is majestic as the General, but the script lets him down.

When I saw the Handmade Films logo, I held out hope for this movie, but George Harrison’s original indie company – formed to provide funding for MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL and TIME BANDITS – has gone through so many corporate takeovers that it has morphed from supporting incendiaries like LOCK, STOCK AND TWO SMOKING BARRELS to insipids like PLANET 51. Ilion Animation is the animation studio. All we know is–

This ain’t Pixar.

END

The Day Keanu’s Face Muscles Stood Still.

Keanu Reeves elevates his One Facial Expression Method to new levels of expressionlessness in this wooden remake of the 1951 film.

Klaatu Cucumber
(expressionless)

Though excellent concepts are broached in both THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL films (1951 and 2008 versions), both films are ruined by their gutless denouements, failing to follow through on their stances of the human race not being worthy of continuing existence.In 1951, Michael Rennie, as alien Klaatu, landed in Washington in a glowing cardboard flying saucer; in 2008, a gaunt Keanu Reeves is Klaatu (which in alien language means, “OMG, he’s sexy AND mysterious!”), who lands in Manhattan in a spectacularly-visualized translucent sphere. Upon exiting his vehicle, he is shot, which precipitates the appearance of his bodyguard, Gort.

In 1951, mechanical man Gort was a foam rubber, eight-foot automaton who dumpled from side to side like a mummy – nothing you couldn’t outrun or outlaugh; in 2008, Gort thunders out as a 50-foot war machine, black metallic steel-flecked texture, Iron-Man-meets-the-Balrog, super conductive, super destructive.

Yes, the “effects” of 2008 elevate this movie above the original, as does the updating of social mores, better acting and “realism” – but let’s not talk of “realism” for either movie, as the English-speaking, oxygen-breathing, bipedal, humanoid, physics-bending Klaatu contravenes any discussion – suffice to say, 2008’s remake is not as cringe-inducing or naive as the 1951 original. The intriguing first act, fraught with scientific exposition, is where this EARTH STOOD STILL shines.

It keeps shining through the somber exchange between Klaatu and presidential spokeswoman, Regina Jackson (Kathy Bates), understating the superiority of unknown worlds beautifully:

Jackson: Do you represent a civilization?
Klaatu: I represent a group of civilizations.
Jackson: Where is this group of civilizations?
Klaatu: All around you.

Klaatu: Do you speak for the entire human race?
Jackson: I speak for the president of the United States. Now please tell me: Why have you come to our planet?
Klaatu: ‘Your’ planet?
Jackson: Yes, this is our planet.
Klaatu: No. It is not.

Oh, snap!

Then screenwriter David Scarpa pulls away from Edmund H. North’s original screenplay (from a story by Harry Bates), making Klaatu an environmentalist, giving new meaning to Little Green Men: “This planet has reached a Tipping Point” (trademark, Al Gore); “This planet can’t be allowed to perish” (trademark, Al Gore); “If the Earth dies, you die. If you die, the Earth survives” (trademark, Lex Luthor).

And everything shiny goes dull and everything dumb gets dumber.

Tasty spinner scientist, Helen Benson (Jennifer Connelly), befriends Klaatu and aids his quest to communicate with someone intelligent – that would rule out everyone from the military all the way down to the White House janitor; below the janitor, this would include the president and his cabinet, all the way down to the pets.

That’s where Monty Python steps in – Helen takes Klaatu to visit John Cleese (in an excellent cameo as The Smartest Man in the World – sounds like a Python sketch, doesn’t it?), who argues against humanity’s destruction by imploring Klaatu, “At the precipice, we change.” (Both John Cleese and Gort have way too little screentime.)

Cleese’s importuning counts for nothing, as Klaatu has an insider – James Hong (BALLS OF FURY, 2007) – an alien sent to Earth 70 years ago who has lived among us, studying our proclivities, who reports that – (we can smell it coming a mile away! The insufferable “Humans are warlike – BUT NOBLE” moment) – who reports to Klaatu that “Humans are warlike  – BUT NOBLE.”

‘Scuse me while I kiss the sky… and vomit.

You egregious wimps! Just once I’d like to see humans pay for their pompous arrogance! But how’s that going to happen when humans make the films?

In 1951, Michael Rennie very clearly said: “it is no concern of ours how you run your own planet, but if you threaten to extend your violence, this Earth of yours will be reduced to a burned out cinder.” Which means: only when Earth extends its belligerence off-planet will those “intergalactic police” step in and bring peace by… er, force.

In 2008, Klaatu’s intergalactic police are simply whining greenies, even though the ORIGINAL message could have served more potently in this age of human intergalactic endeavors (with our spaceships, probes, and terraforming equipment being sent to the planets, stars and other galaxies).

Instead, all the translucent globes that land serve as “arks,” transporting animals off-planet. Whereupon the plan is to then decimate the Earth, including humankind. What kind of a fertile land will that leave behind for the animals to return to? Not sure – but I do know that Jennifer Connelly could use my anal-probe.

Gort (whose ker-ray-zee 1950s-monster-name is a “scientific” acronym in the remake: Genetically Organized Robot Technology) disintegrates into trillions of little CGI insectoids who ravage the landscape, decimating cities like locusts. How can Klaatu-Keanu say the human race is “killing the planet,” with a straight face when Gort’s insectoids are doing the same thing? (Well, I guess when you don’t have facial acting muscles, you can say anything with a straight face…) And why are they eating buildings anyway? Giants Stadium is not “the human species” – but it makes for a spanky movie trailer.

To cap off the gutlessness and stupidity, Kleaanu has his “humans are a noble species” epiphany – as we knew he would – and sends out an electromagnetic pulse (we presume) that destroys the insectoids and brings on “the day the earth stood still” as it cuts all electricity, stops all traffic, boats, factories, etc. And lets the humans live. As he rises quietly into the cosmos to go green up another bunch of dweebs.

It is amazing the same paranoia exists in 2008 as it did in 1951; call it Cold War, call it Terrorism, the human species still trembles like lemmings at anything remotely “alien” – the opening scenes where the army surrounds Klaatu’s spaceship read exactly the same in both movies: grunts with itchy trigger fingers, supposedly the toughest humans on the planet, brown their panties at the first sign of “different” and start shooting arbitrarily. Then when the alien reacts in self-defense, the army accuses the aliens of attacking first. Sound familiar?

People consider the 1951 version “revolutionary” for its message. It is not – every ’50’s B-movie during the Atomic Age/Cold War soapboxed about “The decision of destruction or salvation rests with humans themselves.” Likewise, this 2008 version is as gutlessly pc as any prominent fad media these days soapboxing on “green or die.” As the ’50’s had to include their movie staple of Alien Carrying Earth Woman, the ’08 bows to its New Staples of the green message, American firepower coupled with inferiority complex, and annoying insectoid CGI (how many modern movies contain CGI insectoids for no reason? KONG 2005, CLOVERFIELD, LOST IN SPACE).

In 50 years, they will laugh at 2008’s THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL, as we laugh at the 1951 version – they will laugh at our ’08 social mores, laugh at our computers, at “tipping point” references, at the CGI insectoids, at the mixed messages…

As for the boy of wood who somehow made a career out of “acting” – Keanu – one person will not be laughing at him. Pinocchio.

END

“Er, mm-yes, can we dial the peril down to a 7, perhaps?

How We Know the Earth to be Banana-Shaped.

Delivered on a budget which would hardly diminish the air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow, MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL boasts the production values and inherent quality of a movie ten times its cost.A lesson in resourcefulness, HOLY GRAIL succeeds because it excels at what made Hollywood such a star-mart in the first place – its writing and acting. On a meager budget of 229,000 pounds (approx. $500,000), Python schools Hollywood on the Shakespearean value of playing all the parts yourselves, attending to authenticity in set dressing and costuming, and using really, really silly voices.

The Trojan Cucumber

The first feature film from Monty Python (Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Eric Idle, Terry Gilliam, Terry Jones, Michael Palin – five Englishmen and American Gilliam) would change the course of the comedy river as dramatically as Moses parted the Red Sea. Their arsenic-laced British television series, MONTY PYTHON’S FLYING CIRCUS (1969-1974) was the zenith of left-turn comedic outrage (in their lifetime, spawning the adjective “Pythonesque”) and HOLY GRAIL hailed the zenith of the troop’s creativity, capturing lightning in a parrot cage.

King Arthur (Chapman) is empowered by God to seek the Holy Grail, thus surrounding his royal person with the Knights of the Round Table, Sir Lancelot (Cleese), Sir Galahad (Palin), Sir Bedevere (Jones), Sir Robin (Idle) and, with his trusted steed, Patsy (Gilliam, clopping coconuts together simulating hoofbeats), he rides toward Camelot…

Camelot… where the Knights of the Round Table “dance whene’er we’re able” and “eat ham and jam and Spam a lot,” which Arthur surmises is “a silly place” and avoids, instead journeying with his troop through forests rank with evil, encountering the contempt of French soldiers at Castle Guy de Lombard (who taunt Arthur’s “Ke-niggits” most hurtfully), refrain from the sensuality of all-female Castle Anthrax (where Galahad The Chaste is rescued – somewhat unwillingly – from The Oral Sex), fall into nefarious service of The Knights Who Say Ni (though Arthur provides a well-tended shrubbery as payment, cutting down the mightiest tree in the forest with a herring is asking too much); past sentinels who will not let them pass, allying with Tim the Enchanter, battling a killer rabbit with the Holy Hand Grenade, fleeing the Legendary Black Beast of Aaaaargh, muddling their questions at the Bridge of Death with the Old Man from Scene 24 and ultimately crossing the Gorge of Eternal Peril.

Educated, lucid, atheistic, amoral, Monty Python could and did attack every taboo held by the stiff upper crust to the working class alike. Though many have tried – from America’s SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE to Britain’s LEAGUE OF GENTLEMEN, with Canada’s KIDS IN THE HALL brushing up against the magic before their untimely dissolution – retrospect has proved what a sui generis phenomenon Python was.

Of course, if you don’t “get” British humor (i.e. real humor) or if you don’t “get” Monty Python (for which there is no reason to continue living), let’s not bicker and argue over who killed who; you should wait here until I come and get him… And no singing!

Now go, before I taunt you a second time…

END

“Hi, we’re here for the Shrikes On Bikes event.”

Too much style IS a bad thing.

Despite the consensus that Cameron Diaz wantonly proffering her backside like a baboon in estrus makes for good cinema, my existence would be incalculably enhanced if I never witness this repulsive rectal display cloaked in ostensible good-natured humor ever again in my short span on this earth.

CHARLIE’S ANGELS: FULL THROTTLE is so plastic, it hurt my teeth. There is a plot somewhere, but they forgot to film it. There is a movie somewhere amidst all the explosions and over-lighting and inane dialogue, but everyone forgot to act in it.

Soft-porn Poffy

Which boat did I miss? Why are these puerile, cardboard doxies regarded as screen goddesses?; heroines for an arse-tattooed generation of over-fed, class-less, prepubescent, poorly-educated future streetwalkers? The just-plain-ugly Lucy Liu, the matron-plump, lisping, graceless Drew Barrymore and the flat-plastic Cameron Diaz, who’s idiot-grinning and asinine booty-shaking every ten minutes reaches stratospheric ludicrousness unequaled by the worst Ed Wood or Godzilla movie. None of these tarts is in the least appealing to me as a procreative heterosexual male.The Hammer dance? And all that imbecilic giggling? Only minimum-wage flunkies slaving over fast-food counters and born-again christians exhibit such a surfeit of fake sincerity. Either stop all that laughing and hugging on the couch – or continue along this pornographic thread that you yourselves have instigated – and give us a payoff. But at PG-13, as long as there are no swear words, simply insert as much lewd innuendo as possible and slide it past the feeble-minded censorship board.

Over-riding my desire to slap these three emasculating shrikes was the yearning to cudgel every half-wit who greenlit, funded, created and marketed this monstrous cinematic trash which, due to its distribution budget, has ingrained itself deeper into the world culture than the name of penicillin’s discoverer. (Alexander Fleming, on the off-chance you can tear your eyes from Diaz’s baboon rectum on display yet again.)

The unsophisticates may opine: “But it’s all in fun – it’s entertainment!” Well, so is overdosing on heroin, which is what this film’s barf-inducing action sequences resemble. The opening scene, in which the Angels run a truck carrying a helicopter off a bridge and then climb into the helicopter and fire its ignition and fly off (all within a 100-foot drop to a river) is enough to discern that this movie is definitively purely for the plastic popcorn and cardboard hot dog brigade (i.e. the swell of the bell-curve of movie-going audiences who have no discernment – for cuisine or film-making). And the Great Unwashed rise up in indignation, unwilling to be classified as bovine enough to be deceived into paying to be exploited – yet – how else did a movie aiming for low intelligence ever manage to make the amount of money it extracted from the viewing public?

The paradox: Director McG’s target demographic (4 to 7 year olds with an attention span no greater than 12 seconds exactly – the longest interval of time which ever elapses in this movie without an over-tweaked explosion, unrealistic wire stunt, CGI-drenched “action” sequence, irrelevant slomo passage, or gratuitous soft-porn allusion) will never have the perception to fathom the musical and visual cultural references which the movie is bloated with: The Sound Of Music, KC & The Sunshine Band, The Pink Panther, Flashdance, the Cape Fear remake, etc. Almost every sequence becomes a wink to the audience, as McG gets swallowed by his own anus by trying way too hard to impress upon his viewers that he’s in on these gags as well. His groveling as a sycophant far outweighs his talents as a film-maker.

Did anyone else notice the 20 million watts of obvious stage lighting on all characters all the time especially when they’re out in the sunlight and they don’t need it? Are we to consider that these hounds are so freakin’ beautiful that we wouldn’t want to miss one inch of their bootylicious backsides or frontsides in realistic shadow?

And speaking of bootylicious frontsides, the ab-crunched, testosterone-drenched Demi Moore appears in the movie solely to display her nakedness to Ashton Kutcher’s jealous mates in a socially-acceptable forum. Lord knows, she’ll never actually deign to ever visit a beach to do so – if you think these Hollywood starlets get their all-over tans by gadding about in natural sunshine, you must also believe that any film with over seven explosions in its 30-second trailer is a movie worth seeing.

John Cleese is the film’s only saving grace (along with Bruce Willis’ 30-second cameo), but Cleese’s screentime is diluted by his interaction with the mannequin Matt LeBlanc. LeBlanc should be thanking his goat-headed gods that he actually got the opportunity to even stand alongside the icon Cleese, let alone share screentime with him. The downside to appearing alongside Cleese was, of course, that it proved beyond a doubt that Matt LeBlanc isn’t really an actor. Or funny. Or ever has been. And should probably be put out of his misery like the hoss that he is.

A lot of sugar went into making this sour ipecac seem sweet. If I could just purloin one god-given opportunity to wrap my fingers around their collective throats, I’d illustrate the proper method to execute a FULL THROTTLE.

END
Orig: Dec 2004