Gotham (2014) - Pilot

Raise your hands if you think the world needed more of Batman’s origins? Yeah, me neither, but here we are once more we venturing into the dark streets of Gotham City, this time courtesy of the Fox Network. Right out of the gate a network show based on the early years of Batman has to fight that attitude, and as most prequel stories don’t work because the interesting parts of the story have already been told that attitude is pretty justified. Smallville lasted ten seasons without Clark donning the cape and flying to the rescue, but he still had superpower and fought many villains (often lame villains I must add) but he was still a superhero, but Bruce Wayne here is just a little kid with nary a batarang in site.


Enter Detective James Gordon (Ben McKenzie) a hero soldier newly arrived in Gotham who slowly comes to the realization that he may be one of the few honest cops in the entire city. He’s partnered with Detective Harvey Bullock (Donal Logue) who is definitely one of the crooked ones, but he is a man with definite shades of grey. Bullock isn’t a bad man he just came to the realization a while ago that the only way to survive in Gotham is to play the rigged game as is, because to attempt to change it is to die.

The Odd Couple

So is the show a Gotham police procedural? No, because we are constantly bombarded with characters that will later be in the top tier of Batman’s Rogues Gallery. If not handled well this could get really annoying really fast. The most egregious example of this is young Selina Kyle (Camren Bicondova) who will someday become Catwoman. The pilot begins with us following her through the streets of Gotham while she steals milk from a woman’s groceries and pickpockets a guy’s wallet. I was okay with seeing cute as a button Selina Kyle parkouring her way across the rooftops of Gotham and only slightly groaned when she gave the stolen milk to an alley cat (get it, she likes cats), but when it turns out she witness the murder of Thomas and Martha Wayne I was about to give up on the show after only seeing five minutes. Then Ben McKenzie’s James Gordon entered the picture and the show began to slowly win me back.

 Manic Pixie Cat Girl.

We also have police forensic specialist Edward Nygma (Cory Michael Smith) who likes to answer direct questions with riddles. This is something I’m betting would get you fired after about a week. Then we have Oswald Cobblepot (Robin Taylor) who we see with a pointy nose and an umbrella, oh and he’s total psychopath. A little abused girl named Ivy pops up briefly because apparently name checking three future villains wasn’t enough.

I sense something fowl in the air.

Lucky for us the show mainly sticks with Gordan and Bullock as they try to solve the Wayne murders. Through the investigation we meet Fish Mooney (Jada Pinkett Smith) a local underworld boss and then Carmine Falcone (John Doman) who clearly is the man who runs Gotham. For the most part this was what made the show work as Gotham is shown here as kind of like a gothic New York by way of The French Connection and if the series stays more or less along those lines it could work. If it starts doing super villain of the week schtick it will falter and fail. Well I almost forgot to mention one of my favorite actors and that is Sean Pertwee who plays Alfred Pennyworth Bruce Wayne’s ever faithful butler. Neither he nor Bruce (David Mazouz) is given much to do in this episode and really what can one do with a young Bruce Wayne? He’s not old enough to start his training yet so aside from Alfred giving the kid advice and sandwiches I can’t see where the show is going to take these two.

At what point do you think the show will suggest, “The Butler did it.”

That Selina Kyle is seen popping up at the Wayne funeral and later at the entrance to Wayne Manor has me worried. Are we going to get young Bruce and Selina going off to solve mysteries together? *shudder*
 
He’s hoping that the show runners have a few good ideas up their sleeves because right not it has me interested enough to keep watching, but I remain intensely skeptical all the same.

"The Mucker" by Edgar Rice Burroughs - Book Review

When one thinks of author Edgar Rice Burroughs the name Tarzan readily leaps to mind or maybe John Carter and his adventures on Mars, but Burroughs was not just a prolific writer of jungle or Martian adventures his bibliography stretches from the mean streets of Chicago to the mesas of the Wild West,  so I thought it would be fun to take a look some of his lesser known works. First up The Mucker.

Written in 1913 and first published in the pages of All-Star Weekly the story of The Mucker follows the adventures of one Billy Byrne a self-professed thug who haunts the nasty streets of West Side Chicago daring any man, woman or child to cross him. Billy Byrne is not your typical Burroughs character; he has no secret noble origins or even a decent family life, a bastard through and through and is more likely to be found drunk than sober if given a choice. He would think nothing of kicking a man when he was down or beating an opponent into a bloody pulp long after they could defend themselves. Aside from his massive physique his greatest characteristic is his hate for the upper-class and by extension the cops who protect them. Billy Byrne is a man born of hate and living in a modern jungle where the phrase survival of the fittest is more than just words.

The story takes off when Billy Byrne is fingered for a murder he didn’t commit causing him to go on the lam, fleeing to San Francisco just steps ahead of the law. At a local dive he tries to get a couple of sailors drunk so he can roll them but the tables are turned when he is slipped a mickey and finds himself shanghaied aboard The Halfmoon, a ship crewed by not the nicest people in the world. There are those aboard The Halfmoon who have a darker mission and that is to kidnap a millionaire’s daughter, the beautiful socialite Barbara Harding, and either ransom her or trick her into marriage. Billy has no moral dilemma when it comes to this sort of activity and he’d sooner push in the face of a pretty socialite than kiss it, but when Miss Harding courageously stands up to Billy, calling him a coward and a mucker, he starts to see her and himself in a different light.

The book does a great job of showing the gradual change of what in most books would be a villainous slob into a heroic character. Onboard The Halfmoon he is forced to work hard and give up drink, and when acting instinctually finds himself doing heroic acts. During a hurricane he saves the life of one of the kidnappers, and later at considerable risk to his own life saves Barbara Harding by getting her ashore when The Halfmoon sinks in the storm.

Burroughs takes on the debate of “Nurture vs Nature” by saying that both environment and how one was raised have a great effect on how someone turns out, but that if a person is intrinsically good deep down, he can overcome both of those. Basically even a dark and nasty slob may have some decency deep down and if given the opportunity he can make a change for the better. So I think Burroughs arguments on human nature veer closer to the genetic, you are born either good or evil and environment or how one I raised is not the defining scale tipper.

Now I don’t want to make it sound like The Mucker is a treatise on the predisposition of good or evil, this is a fun and rousing pulp fiction novel that just happens to have a complex character as its protagonist. When Billy, Barbara and the crew of The Halfmoon wash ashore on a strange island after the ship breaks apart the adventure element of the book kicks into high gear because this island is inhabited by classic Burroughs’ trope, The Lost Civilization. In this case it is Feudal Japanese Samurai who fled Japan and took up residence on this remote island and after years and years of interbreeding with the local Malaysian headhunters have turned into a rather nasty and cruel society.

It will come as no surprise to any reader that Billy Byrne will have to rescue Barbara from these Samurai headhunters and that thrown together in this dangerous primitive world the two will fall in love, with only the social gulf between them being the only obstacle even Billy’s great brawn can’t seem to overcome. In The Mucker Edgar Rice Burroughs gives us your standard high adventure but with a variety of interesting ideas and settings, where multiple characters grow and change throughout the book and though Barbara Harding does fall into the “Damsel in Distress” role she is much richer and feistier character than say Dejah Thoris in the John Carter books. This is a book I can highly recommend to fans of Burroughs and pulp heroes.

Return of the Mucker

                     

Not so easily to recommend is the sequel called Return of the Mucker which was published a couple of years later and is sadly not of the same calibre as the original, once again fleeing the law for the crime he did not commit Billy Byrne crosses over into Mexico where he gets himself mixed up with various Mexican revolutionaries. To say that Burroughs depiction of Mexicans is borderline, if not outright racist at times, would be fair, but the story and not period racism is the biggest problem with this book as the reader must wade through multiple rescues of various characters with nary a plot in sight.  Redundant and teidous would be the two biggest descriptors of this book.  There was a third book in the series, more of a spin-off than a sequel really, called The Oakdale Affair which doesn’t even have the fun adventurous Mucker but it follows a secondary character from Return of the Mucker who just isn’t as interesting or entertaining a character as our rough yet lovable Mucker.

The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T

Dr. Seuss has to be the most recognizable name in children’s literature, countless kids learned to read by studying the complex nuances of Green Eggs and Ham, so it is no surprise that his books have supplied a surplus of material to Hollywood. To this day there are only two Christmas Specials I refuse to miss; A Charlie Brown Christmas and How the Grinch Stole Christmas, and that is only the tippy-top of awesomeness that is Dr. Seuss as there have been many more animated specials from the great Doctor.

But what of live action adaptations? Can the somewhat Daliesque worlds of Dr. Seuss be brought into theaters with actual actors and sets? With the advent of modern special effects, improved make-up artistry and computer generated images one would think this is no problem, but you would be wrong.

 

Oh so very wrong.

So we have has established bringing Dr. Seuss’s stories to life isn’t all that easy, even with the all the advances the movies have made in technology, but way back in 1953 Theodor Seuss Geisel got together with Columbia Pictures to bring an original story to the big screen, and it was amazing.

"None shall pass."

The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T was directed by Roy Rowland and produced by the great Stanley Kramer and remains the only movie written for the screen by Dr. Seuss, and that is a shame. Theodore Seuss Geisel wanted to make a movie that would take into account "Themes of world dominance and oppression coming out of World War II” and the result was a whimsically fun story about a boy and his evil piano teacher.

 

Or a boy and his beanie.

Bart Collins (Tommy Rettig) does not want to learn to play the piano, he would rather be out playing baseball or one of other countless more fun activities a young boy could be doing, but he is forced by his widowed mother Heloise (Mary Healy) to spend countless hours tickling the ivories under the demanding tutelage of Dr. Terwilliker (Hans Conried).

 

"Ten Happy Fingers"

The movie starts off with a the weirdest of dream sequences, and in this particular movie that is saying something, as young Bart is chased around by a group strange figures that attempt to nab him in their colorful nets. This opening sets the tone of the movie and is I’m sure what lost many people back in 1953.

 

A Nightmarescape.

Bart is yanked out of his dream and admonished by Dr. Terwilliker for not being better focused on his piano playing. With a resigned sigh Bart returns to his practice while still wishing for some form of escape. His one hope is that local plumber August Zabladowski (Peter Lind Hayes) could someday intervene and rescue both him and his mother from the Rasputin like Terwilliker. Sadly Zabladowski seems more interested in sinks than in the beautiful widow.

 

The Widow and the Plumber. 

Mere moments later Bart is dozing at the piano again, one must wonder if Bart possibly suffers from narcolepsy, and he enters the dream world of the  “Happy Fingers Institute” where Dr. Terwilliker has created a massive two tiered piano that is designed to be operated by 500 boys.

Bart wants no part of this and refuses to return to his cell so he runs and tries to enlist the help of Mr. Zabladowski, who has been hired to install al the required sinks for the institute, but the plumber doesn’t want to get involved.

Bart finds out from August that his mother is at the institute and currently in the Number Two spot and seems to be running things for D. Terwilliker.

“Dr. Terwilliker does not believe in baseballs, golf balls, basketballs or tennis balls, ping-pong balls, snowballs, croquet balls or hockey pucks. Dr. Terwilliker believes only in the piano!”

Terwilliker finds out that Bart has not returned to his cell and immediately orders he be found and sent to the dungeon.

 

Searching for Bart.

Squad “A” begins to hunt for the poor kid as Heloise activates the searchlights. One would immediately assume this eliminates her from ever earning mother of the year but it turns out that Terwilliker is a master hypnotist and keeps her entranced most of the time.

 

Doctor Caligari was clearly an architect here.

Bart must run from numerous patrols, dodge searchlights and avoid the roller-skating twins who are conjoined at the beard. If that’s sounds weird I’m understating things.

 

The Twins.

Of course the greatest moment in this film is duel between Zabladowski and Dr. Terwilliker. Bart finally convinces the ever blasé plumber to go and check out what’s really going on and rescue his mom, this leads to a mental showdown that is just glorious.

The Hypno Duel

It’s this kind of thing that gives one hope for humanity, that a beloved children’s author and a major motion picture studio could come together and creates something so monumentally abstract and wonderful is just incredible.

 

Ladder to nowhere.

Of course the sad note is that the film was a box office flop, some audience members left after the first fifteen minutes. Now this was the early fifties so I’m betting expressionistic filmmaking in family features wasn’t something audiences were ready for, hell I doubt if released today it would get much of a better reception as the film is really for a viewers open to the delightfully bizarre and I’m not sure if there are enough of us out there to make a film like this break even.

Now the film is not without its flaws, some of the musical numbers aren’t all that great and tend to go on too long, but for me that is a minor quibble and didn’t lesson my enjoyment in the least. 

Note: There were originally 18 songs but wisely nine of them were cut out. *shudder*

 

Musical numbers on acid.

The movie does rest heavily on the acting chops of a kid and overall young Tommy Rettig does a fine job but the standout performer here is the great Hans Conried as Dr. Terwilliker, his brilliant performance as a mad musician bent on piano players to rule the world is simply inspired.

 

Hans Conried, genius!

One truly can’t do this film justice with mere words; this is something that has to be experienced, from the design and craftsmanship of the sets to all the talented performers who poor their heart and souls into this truly magical project.

Thank you Theodore Geisel, wherever you are.

The Giver (2014)

 

Dystopian fiction is all the rage these days as young adult books like The Hunger Games and Divergent have massive fan bases and just beg to be adapted to the big screen. So why has Lois Lowry’s 1993 immensely popular book taken so long to make it to theaters? The quick and easy answer is that some stories just aren’t meant to exist out of their original medium and I’d say The Giver is a perfect example of this, now I’m not saying The Giver is an impossible book to adapt but much of its charm and power derives from the written word and its connection to the reader. Much of this is lost in a visual medium.

Jeff Bridges spent twenty years trying to get this book made into a film, with his father Lloyd Bridges to play the title character, but he had a hard time getting studio backing. My guess is wiser heads saw the difficulties of translating this particular book to the screen, but now with films like The Hunger Games making huge box office bucks I’m guessing the risk seemed worth it. Sadly the lacklustre reviews and box office results prove they probably should have kept the book on the shelf a bit longer, and director Philip Noyce could have found something else better to do with his time.

 

Meryl Streep is the Wicked Witch of The Community.

One of the bigger changes from the book is the ramping up the ages of the kids, in the book the three main children are twelve years old while in the movie they shift that up to sixteen, and like in Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief I’m betting part of the reasoning here is for the ease of shooting with older actors as the restrictions when shooting with minors can be very costly to a production. This I completely understand, and was ready to let slide, but then they also completely changed the characters of the kids. Hell, I can’t even recognize anybody from the book in this movie.

 

Did we really need a love story subplot?

The hardest thing in creating a futuristic society is getting your audience to understand how this particular world works; you have to do it in as fast and economical way as possible so as to get on with the main plot of your story. In a book an author has multiple ways of getting that information across but in a movie you can easily run the danger of the infodump on the audience, which could cause them to just give up, but if you don't give them enough you could be leaving them completely confused.

 

 "Just sit right back and you'll here a tale a tale of a fateful trip."

In this “Community” there are no emotions, colors or anything but a nice bland engineered sameness, it’s when Jonas (Brenton Thwaites) starts seeing colors that he realises he may be different from everyone else and which is what leads him to be selected as “The Receiver of Memories.”  An important job with grave responsibilities.  Being as the movie spends so little time showing us how this society functions we don't know how grave or how important this job is.

 

Welcome to Pleasantville.

The Giver was not an action/mystery book but that is exactly what we get here. In the movie Jonas must fight the system, expose it to his friends and escape to the outside world, while in the book his growth through the acquisition of memories is subtle and profound and does not lead him to punching out is best friend. His best friend Asher (Cameron Monaghan) becomes a Drone Pilot and ends up chosen to hunt down Jonas; this is so far from the book Asher that it almost had me abandoning the film at that point to go and make a nice cocoa and calm myself down. Fiona (Odeya Rush) plays the girlfriend that Jonas tries to expose the conspiracies to; he also gets her to stopping taking her medication so she can fall in love with him.

 

"Soylent Green is people!"

His parents are played, and completely wasted in this movie, by Katie Holmes and Alexander Skarsgård who both provide almost nothing to the story.  In the book the relationship between Jonas' father and the baby Gabriel is crucial to understanding how this society functions.  In the movie he is just bland euthanasia guy, while Katie Holmes is given the sole job of just staring worriedly at things.  Also Taylor Swift is in this movie for some reason.

 

Jeff Bridges seen here explaining to Brenton that story and character don't matter.

Jeff Bridges isn't terrible so much as looking incredibly bored most of the time and really isn’t given much to do anyway; he’s just a plot expository device and does almost nothing to motivate Jonas. The movie also has this ridiculous idea that the baby Gabriel, who Jonas finds out will be euthanized,  has same birthmark that he and The Giver have as if they are somehow genetically marked to be memory receptacles. I think not wanting a baby to die is enough motivation we didn’t need any more reason than that.

 

Gone Baby Gone.

The design of The Community in the movie is fine, that until we see it is on some lost plateau above the clouds where below it and beyond the desert are huge energy pylons of some kind that keep memories from getting into The Community. That is some seriously unnecessary bullshit here and only added so we can get ridiculous scenes of Jonas escaping and running from drones.

 

"Beam me up, Asher!"

I just recently read the book, on recommendation of a friend, so I’m really curious as to how long time fans of this book who read it and loved it as children take to this Hollywood version.  My advice to those that have not read the book, please avoid this movie and head to your local library or book store and pick up Lois Lowry's amazing novel.

 

A fantastic read awaits you.

Dracula (1979)

Before there were vampires being interviewed and well before any of them sparkled there was John Badham’s Dracula in what must be the earliest truly romantic vampire movie. Now Dracula has always been tied with sexuality but this 1979 version, based on the Broadway play by Hamilton Deane and John L. Balderston, is more geared toward a female perspective than what you got from Bram Stoker’s novel.

 

“It’s ladies night every night at Castle Dracula.”

This version of Dracula begins with the wreck of Demeter as the ship is tossed by a storm while some horrible creature kills the crew. So right off the bat *snicker* we diverge wildly from the novel as this movie skips Transylvania completely. No poor Jonathon Harker being harassed by the Brides of Dracula and no final showdown between our heroes and Dracula on his home turf.

 

We may not get Castle Dracula but Carfax Abbey is pretty awesome.

The other major change is what I call “Character Scrabble” as in this version Mina (Jan Francis) is the first London victim of Dracula and it is Lucy (Kate Nelligan) that becomes the focus of the battle between Dracula and our heroes, a complete opposite of the book.  This Mina is also the daughter of Van Helsing (Laurence Olivier) and not engaged to Johnathon Harker (Trevor Eve) while Lucy is now the daughter of Doctor Seward (Donald Pleasence) and is the one engaged to Harker. These changes seem completely arbitrary and made more to separate themselves from the original than for any artistic reason I can imagine.

A sickly Mina is the one that finds poor Dracula washed ashore after the wreck of the Demeter and she clearly immediately has the hots for him, and can you blame her? Sadly she is only the Count’s appetizer and it is Lucy that is the films main course.

 

Can you really blame her?

Dracula (Frank Langella) is more your Jane Austen type character than the one from Stoker’s book, he is a monster as so far as it goes that he must feed on blood to survive, but he and Lucy do seem to genuinely fall in love throughout the course of the picture. Langella originated this version from the aforementioned stage adaptation and he made it quite clear that he would not be wearing fangs or dripping blood in this movie, so the studio had to make due with vampire Mina and Lucy popping fangs.

 

Mina, not the most attractive of vampires.

Gone in this version of Dracula are Lucy’s suitors as the cast is cut down to just three heroes; Van Helsing, Harker, and Seward. At no point do these guys ever come across as a threat to Dracula, and Harker is so boring one cannot blame Lucy for picking Dracula over him.

 

The vampire hunters.

It’s Mina’s death that summons the great Doctor Van Helsing and one can only thank the stars and John Badham for casting the great Laurence Oliver as he is just fantastic in the part, as well is the scene stealing presence of Donald Pleasence who is always a welcome addition in any movie. With these two great actors you know you’re in for a fun time and they both elevate the material.

 

“Jonathon, I think we should see other people.”

Now as good as Oliver and Pleasence are the star of this film is clearly Frank Langella as the title character. Langella’s Dracula is pure sex on toast. With flowing capes and low cut blouses, this Dracula is designed to get women’s juices flowing and almost every frame he is on he exudes raw sexuality. His vampire powers are almost unnecessary as what Victorian woman could resist his pure animal magnetism.

“

Look into my eyes.”

It’s the love story between Lucy and Dracula that really makes this version stand out among its peers, this Lucy is a strong and capable woman that though Dracula attempts a little vampiric mesmerism it is soon clear to all that he need no such tactics to win Lucy.

 

Dinner with the Count.

The one scene that is a bit of an oddity is when Dracula and Lucy finally do the nasty.  For the most part the film is a true gothic tale but once our two leads start to get it on we get an abstract laser light show.  It is a pretty enough visual, created by fame credit sequence designer Marice Binder, but doesn’t really fit in with the tone of the rest of the movie.

 

Pink Floyd’s Dracula.

The heroes will of course try and thwart the evil Count.  They will hunt down his minions, figure out his game plan and do whatever it takes stop to his centuries long reign of terror.

 

Staking your daughter has got to be tough.

This is a rare Dracula movie that ends with a strangely hopeful ending. The Prince of Darkness, having escaped Carfax Abbey with Lucy, battles Van Helsing and Harker in the hold of a ship bound for Romania. Van Helsing is ironically staked by Dracula during the struggle but with his dying act he sends a cargo hook into Dracula’s back allowing Harker to haul him up out of the hold and into the sunlight. We see Dracula scream in rage as his skin begins to burn but we don’t get the shot of him turning to ash as has happened to poor Christopher Lee on so many occasions, what we see is a cape fluttering away on the winds. The music and Lucy staring up at fluttering cape with a wistful expressions makes one believe that she thinks he got away and that maybe someday they will be reunited.

 

Hoisted on his own petard.

John Badham’s Dracula is an excellent entry in the filmography of the world’s most famous vampire, Frank Langella’s creature is more charm than horror and vastly entertaining.  Another thing I shan’t forget to mention is the score by legendary film composer John Williams which is just hauntingly beautiful and quite memorable.

Sadly the poor box office results showed that maybe the public weren’t quite ready for a “tragic” vampire love story.  At least not quite yet.