By D.K. Holm
February 18, 2005
[nota bene: The following column, by necessity, contains some spoilers! If you don't want to know the ending of the movies mentioned, don't read on.]
Vengeance is His
OLD BOY
You have to be really diligent to track down Asian films, especially Korean films which, by all accounts, including a recent issue of FILM COMMENT, come from the most exciting national cinema now working.
So to keep up, you have to read JAPAN TIMES and the SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST, and then, unless you live there, you've got to wait for these films to come out on DVD, usually by HKFlix.com, because they are more likely than not to escape the attention of most American distributors. Some titles, however, do penetrate the American market in large part thanks to HVE and Tartan and a few other DVD distributors. Otherwise, you have to get a multi-region DVD player.
It doesn't help the cause of Asian cinema here when Americans badly remake the more high profile Japanese films (not that Japanese and Korean companies aren't immune to remaking each others films themselves). These lame efforts only end up dissipating the excitement the hard-to-view originals generate.
Overall, interest in Asian films has gone in cycles. First there was the Martial arts vogue of the 1970s; shortly thereafter some interesting titles by King Hu and other Shaw Brothers directors made an impact. Then in the late 1980s, HK films were "rediscovered" and John Woo and Tsui Hark rose to prominence, just about the time they were played out in their native land. Japan took over for a while recently with its horror films and urban decay epics, and now Korea is the hot locus of great geek cinema. Films such as THE ISLE, about an &M romance, and SHIRI, about a North Korean hitwoman, sound great on paper to one who has a hard time keeping up.
But OLD BOY, Chan-wook Park's second foray into revenge literature after IF YOU WERE ME (and his fifth feature as a director), won the Grand Prize at the 57th Cannes festival, the one that Tarantino chaired, and so thus is hitting American shores as a art film. Which is strange. OLD BOY is a Tarantino - De Palma level fantasy of diabolic cruelty with a final plunge into sorrowful madness or fantasy that rivals BRAZIL (or, some would argue, MINORITY REPORT).
I happen to go into OLD BOY knowing nothing of the plot except vaguely that it was a revenge tale. I think that may be the best way to experience it. The plot is fairly complex as it unfolds scene to scene, but ends up being perfectly logical and relatively simple in retrospect, like MEMENTO or any Tarantino film.
Professional reviewers tend to know too much about movies in advance, which deprives them of that wonderful frisson that comes from following a good plot as it unfolds. Reviewers also tend to forget, I think, that stories are the main draw for average viewers. Wrapped up in weekly grosses, auteur signatures, star career moves, studio fortunes, and exhibition issues, movie reviewers end up looking for something elevated, transcendental, or poetic, or something that confirms their prejudices or hobbyhorses, and forget that mass audiences are there for a ripping yarn and a few laughs.
In any case, here's what happens in the first five minutes. A "typical" Asian businessman Dae-su Oh (Min-sik Choi), is revealed to be under arrest and in the waiting room of a small regional police station. In jump cuts we see him riding waves of calm and remorse followed by rambunctious, aggression, and heckling.
A friend arrives at the station to pick him up. Dae-su Oh and pal stop at a phone booth in the pouring rain to call Dae-su Oh's family. It's his daughter's birthday and he has blown it off to get drunk. But when the friend turns around, Dae-su Oh has vanished.
He wakes up in a makeshift prison with a fake cityscape on the wall, as if he were an Asian femme Nikita. What unfolds over the next few minutes is surprising enough. And then there is the title card … 15 years later.
It's as startling as the title card in CAST AWAY, where we learn that Hanks has been alone on the island for four years. When Dae-su Oh finally gets out, he embarks on a search for the key to his confinement, but he is a modernist Edmond Dantes, doomed to failure.
For a few scenes Chan-wook Park fools you. Dae-su Oh looks like he is going to be a hero with verve and determination. There is a scene with some street toughs, and later a brilliant fight in a cramped hallway, that give you hope. They are like the early scenes in TRUE ROMANCE that undermine audience expectations in a different way, by showing the nerd comic store clerk to be way better than you thought he was.
But as in a De Palma film, or a LaBute film, hope exists only to be dashed to the ground with the utmost cruelty. I can imagine ole' Brian getting a real hard on over the villain of this piece, a genius of evil machinations, and who anticipates every move, understands psychology better than anyone else. Like a Hannibal Lecter, he brings his victims literally to their knees. OLDBOY is like an elaboration on OBSESSION. That one thing that we hold dearest, will be used against us, the way Smiley used the otherwise steely Karla's love for his daughter against him.
Chan-wook Park operates here with a quiet authority. OLDBOY doesn't have the visual pyrotechnics of, say, SNATCH, but the occasional visual touch — Oh emerging from a suitcase, that hallway fight with its De Palmian (or Godardian) tracking shot — is all the more distinctive for that, and always serves the emotional tone of the moment.
OLDBOY ends about where it begins, with a victim perched on a high precipice. Between these two heights, which serve as points of decision for someone, lies a profound tragedy. But it is the tragedy of weakness brings.
I don't know if the movie is a metaphor for the conflict between North and South Korea, with the villain bearing the weight of southern fears of an implacable, disciplined enemy, and Dae-su Oh, drunken, disrespectful to his family, sloppy, but ultimately innocent, is the northern prey, obsessed with television, easily manipulated. Sometimes a thriller is just a thriller. But even if there is an underlying political parable, it won't detract from the emotional power of one of the most disturbing movies ever made.
Head Monitor
Caught up with the 80th anniversary issue of THE NEW YORKER, and stumbled upon its profile of David Milch, in re DEADWOOD, though Milch is also famous for pushing network barriers with NYPD BLUE.
In the past, the NEW YORKER has been very good with screenwriter profiles, and Mark Singer's piece is no exception. Like nearly every other TV writer — Aaron Sorkin, Jerry Stahl, and Stephen Gaghan come to mind — Milch is in "recovery." Where do these guys find time to run around and find drugs while maintaining the heavy load of running a show? Or maybe it is that working in television and movies is not as hard as it looks.
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Anyway, the most interesting aspect of the story is Milch's working methods. According to Singer he lies on the floor in a room full of underlings and looks at a computer monitor, which is designed to take his dictation. Then he talks through the scene he is working on. This experience is supposed to be "educational" for the 12 or so assistants, interns, and students in the room, and Milch is said to begin most of these writing sessions with a lengthy discourse on narrative theory. The main purpose of this Olympian setup is for Milch to circumvent "the processes of my consciousness which are not well-adapted to constructive behavior."
Nocturnal Transmissions
For a long time a lot of movie buffs have been turning away from movies and looking on television, that long mocked medium, as having matured, become much better than movies.
But in a sense that is a return to roots, because most of us saw televisions first, and caught up to movies (as things projected on a screen in a different place you had to pay to get into) later. It's a full circle, in a way, for a certain generation.
But whereas a movie works its way into your affections through immediate impression and then massive repetition, a TV series works on you over time via infinite variation within its rigid series "bible." But first off, a show has to impress you, and the best way to hook a viewer is to have a top-notch credit sequence.
If TV is better than movies, TV show credit sequences are often as good as the show that follows, as with DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES, or even better, as with CARNIVAL. In fact, you could go through a whole mountain of TV shows on DVD and assess them via their credit sequences. That is I what I propose to do here. Looking over TV shows from over 30 years, you can see that there are different styles of credit sequences, some much better than others, and that there are implicit rules for a successful show.
For example, MORK & MINDY: THE COMPLETE FIRST SEASON (Paramount, 1978 - 79, $39.95, four discs, Tuesday, September 7, 2004), which is about an alien sent to study human beings who ends up living with a human girl in Colorado, uses a pleasant theme song and clips to assure the viewer that this will be a pleasant, reassuring experience. This is typical of the middlebrow product from the Gary Marshall factory that also produced HAPPY DAYS, and LAVERNE AND SHIRLEY.
MORK was one of the first shows built around a popular comedian. It also happened to make him even more famous. Williams used to make a joke in his act about being forever linked with "nanu nanu" by fellow drunks in bars. But after a move to the big screen and four Oscar nods and one win, Williams has seemingly left Mork behind.
But if Williams is tiresome as a guest on talk programs, he is terrible when he runs the show. Williams suffers from attention deficit disorder. If he doesn't get all the attention, he thinks there's a deficit.
With his suspenders and colored shirt, he comes across as that hateful, attention-demanding thing, a mime. All he is missing is the white gloves and he could be a living Disney cartoon character. It used to be charming when Pam Dawber, once the cutest girl alive, who ever lived or ever will live, would crack up on camera in the face of yet another Williams improv. Today, Williams's Mork seems entirely artificial, and you just want to run from the room screaming. On the other hand, it's hard to think of another role that Williams could have fit into on network TV.
This Paramount set comes with the first 24 eps of the show, but no extras. The transfers are fine, and the sound audible.
Beginning the same season as MORK, TAXI: THE COMPLETE FIRST SEASON (Paramount, 1978 - 79, $49.95, three discs, Tuesday, October 12, 2004) proved to be a much more "human" and mature show. You could tell from the opening credits. Its wistful, melancholy flute theme (by Bob James?) transitioning to light jazz, its beautiful shot of a taxi on the 59th Street Bridge (supposedly with Tony Danza driving). It sets the right mood for a program about dashed dreams, about people stalled in transition.
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The show comes from the fertile mind of James Brooks, and like most of Brooks's show, indeed most sitcoms in general, it's a workplace comedy, a working out of tensions for the pacification of the viewer, who is less witty, less able to stand up to bosses, and less able to advance on the basis of looks or intelligence. In DeVito's Louie De Palma, Brooks created the monster boss, the living nightmare of every red, white, and blue collar worker. Like most of Brooks's shows, it became a Petri dish for talent, unlike most work places.
Paramount's TAXI offers the 22-episodes of the first season in full frame with audible sound, and no supplements.
Probably the greatest credit sequence comes in THE GREATEST AMERICAN HERO: SEASON ONE (Anchor bay, 1981, $59.95, four discs, Tuesday, February 1, 2005), and it is solely because of the hit song, "Believe It or Not" by Joey Scarbury. The song was a hit, but the show wasn't. The rest of the credit sequence shows scratchy clips from one or two of the programs early episodes, emphasizing the action over the humor.
The premise was that a special education teacher (William Katt), stuck in the desert with a CIA agent, encounters a UFO which leaves behind a special suit that turns its wearer into a super hero. Unfortunately, the "hero" loses the instructions, and has a hard time, among other things, landing.
A Stephen J. Cannell show, GREATEST also employed the trick of having a gentle hippie type guy paired with a right wing fanatic (played by Robert Culp), like the Flagg character from MASH. It's like Dharma getting stuck on a mission with G. Gordon Liddy.
Unfortunately, the combo wasn't enough to draw audiences, and the show survived only three partial seasons. Anchor Bay has taken the show seriously, however, and compiles the first season together with the unaired pilot for a chick version of the show, 75 minutes worth of new video interviews with Katt, Culp, and Cannell, and co-stars Connie Sellecca and William Pare.
CHEERS: SEASON 4 (Paramount, 1985 - 86, $39.95, three double sided discs, Tuesday, February 8) also enjoys a great opening credit sequence. It has a great, moody song that puts you in the right mindset. By the fourth season, CHEERS hadn't succumbed to the temptation of highlighting the stars with clips. Instead, it remains a succession of burnished vintage images.
But the Boston bar owned by a former baseball player is not a place, as the song says, where "everyone knows your name" and "everyone's glad you came." I would hate to be a customer in that bar. The tension, the competition, the recreation of high school hierarchies of who is in and who is out, the smell of failure, the irrational hatreds of one for another (why does Carla hate Cliff so much?).
Still, if you get into the spirit of the show it is hilarious, and is much more intelligent than most sitcoms (and in fact, led to FRAZIER). This is the season that introduced Woody, along with some members of Carla's family, and the sardonic Bebe Neuwirth as the controlling future Lilith Crane. In other words, it is one of the most important seasons in the show's run.
Paramount's full frame transfers of the 26 episodes are good and the 2.0 audio is fairly good. There are no extras.
MIAMI VICE: SEASON ONE (Universal, 1984 - 85, $59.95, three double sided discs, Tuesday, February 8, 2005) was both a step forward for network television and a step back. On the one hand it brought stylishness and trend setting to network television (remember the Miami Device?). It introduced music video style editing into even mundane scenes (which today, look once again mundane), and gave numerous future hot actors early exposure.
On the other hand, for all its innovations it was just another prime time cop show, with all the clichés, such as the good guy about to shoot the trapped back guy, with his partner behind him trying to talk him down by saying, "Don't do it. Not this way."
Michael Mann, who only produced the show, but didn't invent it, shows his influence, but each episode feels awfully padded, with lots of filler dialogue in which characters explain things to each other that they should already know. One Mann touch, however, is the masculine sentimentality of professionals sacrificing all for their jobs and for society at large.
The first season is probably not the best introduction to the series. The second and third are probably the best, before inattention and set tensions blew it all apart. Still, Universal has put together a nice package with lots of bonus material on the first side of the first disc, with five short featurettes that more or less answer all the questions the series raises, about crime in Miami, about the music, and about its influence on the culture.
I was surprised to realize that MACGYVER: THE COMPLETE FIRST SEASON (Paramount, 1985 - 86, $38.99, six discs, Tuesday, January 25, 2005) came out in the mid-1980s. It always seemed like a much older show than that, like something Disney would air in the 1960s.
Anderson proved to be an agreeable, non-threatening TV star, and the gimmick of the show, that MacGyver could make a bomb out of anything, and the program became the favorite of stay-at-home retired moms everywhere. The credit sequence reminded me a little of what ALIAS does now, parading MacGyver's various tricks. MACGYVER is a very relaxing show, and Paramount relies on its charms to sell the set: there are no extras.
Three seasons later, television is still relying on credit clips to "explain" the series to viewers. Thus it is so in TOUR OF DUTY: THE COMPLETE SECOND SEASON (Columbia Tristar, 1988-89, $49.95, Four single sided discs, Tuesday, December 28, 2004), another short lived show that tried to cash in on the interest created in Vietnam by CHINA BEACH, with Dana Delany, and MASH.
TOUR's Delaney is Kim Delaney, later of NYPD BLUE and then briefly CSI: MIAMI, before her career went into free fall (she is practically unrecognizable of late on THE O C). She is a reporter trying to dig up scoops on how the war is being fought, but the show itself puts its emphasis on the men fighting. Thus the show, like the nation itself, was terminally divided about Vietnam.
Once the credits are over, the show itself has to put forward interesting stories. TOUR elected to tell the same old war stories and devolve into a soap opera, which is what all action programs do when they crawl off to die. Columbia Tristar's set of the second season comes with no extras but does announce on the box that it has "a new music track," which probably means that the music rights of the original series were unrenewable. In any case, fans of the show aren't getting the full, original presentation.
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Another cozy program is INSPECTOR ALLEYN MYSTERIES (Acorn Media, 1993, $59.95, four discs, Tuesday, February 8, 2005), which lasted two seasons on British television. There is something kind of royalty worshipping about the series, which is based on Ngaio Marsh's long series of novels about an aristocrat (Patrick Malahide) who slummed by becoming an inspector at Scotland Yard. The mysteries are clever and interesting, but probably because the books do the series dwells on the soap opera elements of the Inspector's dull love life. The credit sequence is relatively flat. Usually British shows exploit the opening to comment on the subject of the series, but here not.
Acorn's box set presents four of the first season's five episodes, and also leaves out the pilot, which aired in 1990. The transfers are pretty good in a field where often they look pretty bad, blurry, and muted. The set offers extras in the form of text bios of the stars and of Marsh.
FOREVER KNIGHT: THE TRILOGY: PART TWO (Columbia-Tristar, 1994 - 95, $59.97, six discs, Tuesday, January 4, with season one issued the same day) is one of those goofy Canadian series that tries to do too much at once. It is both a vampire series and a cop show, as Nicholas Knight, an aging vampire who has forsaken immortality, functions as a police detective by day.
The Anne Rice derivative series became something of a cult mostly because there are a lot of vampire aficionados out there. This is the middle set of the three-season program, which ends rather bleakly with the death of all the main characters. Here though in the second season it is a series of rather routine murder mysteries with a blood lust inflection to it. The show looks great, however, and has a moody atmosphere.
Columbia Tristar offers FOREVER KNIGHT with commentary tracks by the shows creator, James D. Parriott and two of its stars. It also appears to offer the Canadian version of the show, rather then the America (two to three versions were made of each episode for different international markets). Also on hand is a "making of" featurette, and some answers to fan "questions."
If WISEGUY offered the innovation of longer story arcs over a season or a half-season, then
MURDER ONE: THE COMPLETE FIRST SEASON (Fox, 1995 - 96, $59.95, three double sided discs, Tuesday, February 8) carried on that tradition. It was founded on the proposition that after the O. J. Simpson trial America thirsted for more long running trial stories. Unfortunately, the credit sequence, with its harpsichord music, its obscured images of the cast, and its emblem of a broken stone of justice, announced a humorless and somber palate for a show that was inviting viewer commitment week to week.
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MURDER ONE also had the misfortune to open opposite ER, which, to put it obviously, is still on. After a year-end hiatus, the show moved to a new night, and with streamlined episodes — no more subplots per episode with bizarre L A LAW like secondary cases. Personally, I fast forwarded through those to get to the main story, and was relieved when the producers dropped them after about the 10th ep. They were perhaps meant to be funny but ended up only being creepy and cruel, like the plot line with the dog whose vocal cords were cut by an irritated neighbor, or the one about the closeted gay, played by Richard Schiff, who is caught in a bathroom. Naturally, he commits suicide just before learning that the firm got him off.
What remains after that is the trial part of the show itself, with all the well-worn plot points of the genre, such as the surprise witness and the charges of this or that lawyer going on a "fishing expedition." I can't say I was particularly surprised by the surprise ending, but I was grateful to be able to see the whole thing in a couple of sittings instead of lurching from week to week for piecemeal dispensations of plot points.
Fox's set of MURDER ONE comes with the bonus of the unaired episode 9 plus two audio commentary tracks, one with the "accused," Jason Gedrick, and another with director Randy Zisk, which are lightweight but informative, and new video interviews with several of the stars, including the still fetching (if you like overbites) Mary McCormack.
My views on FRASIER have been established. In
FRASIER: THE COMPLETE FOURTH SEASON (Paramount, 1996 - 97, $39.95, four discs, Tuesday, February 1, 2005) Niles has left Maris and moved in with Frasier; Marsha Mason plays Martin's girlfriend; and Dan Butler become more of a regular.
It's kind of a holding pattern seasons, fresh and informed, but treading a little water. It maintains the high standards, but goes over and over again the characters' same traits without development. There are no extras on the set, and there probably don't need to be: the show is enough.
One bit of trivia: quoting TVTome, in the last ep of the season, "When Laura mistakenly leaves the messages about her arrival on Frasier's answering machine, she says she's coming in on American Airlines, Flight 11. That flight was one of the planes that terrorists crashed into the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001, more than four years after the episode aired. Aboard that plane were David Angell, creator and executive producer of FRASIER; and his wife, Lynn."
I've never understood why guys dislike chick shows. If you want to see fabulous babes in great clothes, what better forum than a show designed to lure female viewers? A male would then be more entertained watching JUDGING AMY and DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES than MCGYVER (which in its way, is also a chick show). Therefore, CHARMED: THE COMPLETE FIRST SEASON (Paramount, 1998 - 99, $49.95, six discs, Tuesday, February 1, 2005) is hugely entertaining. How could it not be with three splendid girls sharing the lead, and numerous guest chicks?
Set in San Francisco, the series follows the adventures of three sisters who, combining talents, form a force for fighting evil. There have been cast fluctuations in the show, and it has verged on tragedy at times, but nevertheless has survived for almost a decade. It's actually enjoyable if you get into it, and I would advocate that any male truly interested in women watch it for educational purposes (like Clint Eastwood reading women's magazines in HEARTBREAK RIDGE).
Paramount's offers up another supplements free set but the transfers are excellent and the sound good. It lacks, however, the unaired pilot of the show.
They are almost done with DAWSON'S CREEK: THE COMPLETE FOURTH SEASON (Columbia Tristar, 2000 - 01, $49.95, four discs, Tuesday, October 5, 2004). Just a few more seasons all the whole cultishly mocked series will be on DVD. DAWSON'S CREEK elects to have posing stars looking at the camera for its credit sequence, and the theme song has been a source of contention throughout the show's years. The over all effect of this credit sequence is to announce what the series actually is, a soap opera.
Season four is the one in which the nimble Joey has ended up with the doltish Pacey, the Andie McPhee character is shipped out, Dawson starts hanging out with Gretchen, who is Pacey's sister (and who doesn't last the season), and Joey gets a new job. Joey also loses her virginity — to the dread Pacey! It's also senior year at Capeside high school, and all the kids are the class of 2001. Dawson gets a sister, and then heads off to USC.
Here is my concern about DAWSON'S CREEK, which is that ultimately it puts forth the belief that love is hopeless and happiness is an illusion, and this bleakness is solely a function of the fact that TV shows have to continually come up with conflicts for its characters. At a certain transition point fans of a show begin to identify with the characters they like, and while invested in these characters' fates they are subject to the manipulations of the writers who often are straining to come up with material rather than following a logical thought out story line (like on THE WIRE). I certainly don't think that DAWSON'S CREEK ended where Kevin Williamson, the founder who was kicked off the show, intended it to go, and that kinda saps my interest in the show's episodes that fall outside his supervision. Still, Katie Holmes is the cutest girl in the world, cuter than any girl who has ever lived or who ever will live.
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Columbia Tristar's DAWSON set is relatively packed, with several audio tracks by producer Paul Stupin, and some other minor features, such as a trivia game. The set looks and sounds good.
After sustaining its high comedy for 10 seasons, but conveying the impression of settling for the routine of genius wit, FRASIER went out with a bang in FRASIER: THE COMPLETE FINAL SEASON (Paramount, 2003 - 04, $49.95, four discs, Tuesday, November 16, 2004).
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This is the season in which Daphne gives birth, everyone finally thinks that Frasier is gay, Maris (still never seen) is thrown in jail for killing her new lover, Lilith makes her last appearance, Dan Butler only appears once, Frasier's first wife, Nanny G. makes an appearance, Helen Mirren played the final guest caller, Martin marries his girlfriend Ronee, Roz takes over the station, and Frasier takes a (better paying) job in San Francisco. It's a fairly tear-inducing season as it wraps up nearly every thread established over the previous 10 years, and makes many silent tributes to the show's history (for example, the deliver guy who removes a chair from Frasier's apartment is the same guy who delivered it in the very first episode).
Paramount has issued this season out of order (between the fourth and the fifth season) and offers up a few short extras in which the cast and crew weigh in on the show's impact and their emotions about closing it down.
Soon, all network television drams will be either a LAW AND ORDER or a CSI. Maybe CBS will even change its call letters to CSI, and NBC to LAO. CSI: MIAMI: THE COMPLETE SECOND SEASON (Paramount, 2003 - 04, $66.95, seven discs, Tuesday, January 4, 2005).
I didn't really care for CSI: MIAMI in its first season. Unlike its predecessor, it was more of a soap opera, and the cases were less about the cleverness of the investigators than the moral force of David Caruso as the horribly named Horatio Caine pontificating on everything he saw as wrong with the world. With noted gun lover and prissy republican ideologue Emily Procter also in the show, it appeared to be the right wing bookend to CSI VEGAS.
Now, however, I feel a little different about the show precisely because it doesn't work. It's awkwardness and its obsessions (pedophiles, showing women in handcuffs) make it strangely more interesting. Sometimes I really do not understand what the characters are saying to each other, or why. Especially Procter's character. I really don't understand her motivation half the time.
But also, the character play by Sofia Milos is given greater prominence. Milos had a bit part in the episode of THE SOPRANOS when the crew went to Italy for a deal and to all those who saw the show became their Goddess. The ravishingly beautiful Milos plays Caine's widowed sister-in-law with whom he is clearly in love, not that much of a stretch, really.
The second season also experimented subtly with the CSI template. For all its seeming progressiveness in special effects and content, this kind of show is mostly pro forma. What some of the directors do is step away from the expected TV level medium shot and counter-shot. In the episode "Extremes," for example, the camera bores in on Caine and the villain, highlighting just parts of their faces intently, as if these were an art film. The consequence is that actual non-verbal meaning invades the show.
Paramount has packed the set. There are seven audio commentaries, along with featurettes about the show's look and the lab. There is also a retrospective survey of the second season and some of its high points and special problems. Also the widescreen transfers are excellent, with superb DD 5.1.
And speaking of shows set in Vegas, LAS VEGAS: UNCUT AND UNCENSORED SEASON ONE (Universal, 2003 - 04, $59.95, three double sided discs, Tuesday, January 4, 2005) proves to be a surprisingly good program. You think it is going to be some BAYWATCH kind of thing, and it does have some of those sexy and exploitative elements, but in fact the creators manage to come up with some interesting and clever plots from their thin premise, which is about the surveillance team working out of a prestigious Vegas hotel (called the Montecito).
One episode concerns a stolen Ferrari. Another concerns Ivy League students taking on the odds. In another a magician disappears for real off the stage. In yet another, Vegas experiences a power failure. What I found interesting was how they were able to wring out new tales from what seems to be a dried up landscape. And the cast is engaging. There's a lot to be said for cheerfulness from a performer.
Universals compilation of the first season is among the most packed of this batch of DVDs. There are four commentary tracks by with creator Gary Scott Thompson and various members of the cast. And since this is the "uncut" version of the NBC show, little moments of jiggle and violence are put back in. Other supplements include "Rumble in the Montecito: Jon Bon Jovi and John Elway," a glorified TV commercial, "Inside the Montecito" in which creator Thompson explains the show; "Las Vegas: The Big Gamble" about the town itself, plus various commercials for the AFL, the show, and the city.
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MONK: SEASON TWO (Universal, 2003, $59.95, four discs, Tuesday, January 11, 2005) is another one of those shows that tries to capture the eccentricity of its main character by showing clips of him doing odd things. In this case it is Adrian Monk (Tony Shalhoub), a former cop with obsessive-compulsive disorder. It's in the spirit of British mystery series, in which the sleuth has some kind of flaw, such as Cracker and gambling. The show has been kicking around from network to cable, where it is divided into two sub seasons per season with some false season "finales." but it has its fans. As a measure of its cult esteem, the popular MONK credit tune by Jeff Beal was supplanted by Randy Newman's "It's a Jungle Out There."
The mysteries are clever, in that MURDER SHE WROTE village widow manner but the charm of the show comes from the slow torturing of Monk, such as in the second episode when a case in Mexico leaves him deprived of his necessary security pillows and year's supply of bottled water.
This Universal DVD set comes with a profile of the show, and profiles of two of the regular characters, plus a "precinct tour." The transfer is crisp and bright and the sound good.
Like FREAKS AND GEEKS, WONDERFALLS: THE COMPLETE VIEWER COLLECTION (Fox, 2004, $39.95, three discs, Tuesday, February 1, 2005) is one of those short-lived shows that developed a dedicated cult that proved helpless in the face of network intransigence. It has one of those ornate credit sequences, like CARNIVALE and DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES, that bespeak the complex ambitions of its creators. What's good about the set is that it includes all the shows that didn't air after it was cancelled.
WONDERFALLS is actually a good show but I can see why people didn't get into it, or rather, why the network pulled the plug after four broadcasts. It's difficult and requires concentration (like THE WIRE), and like FREAKS AND GEEKS is a "dramady," a difficult genre to reduce to a high concept.
It's in the JOAN OF ARCADIA mode, with main character Jaye Tyler a college dropout who has returned home to work in the Niagara Falls gift shop. She is vaguely questioning the meaning of life, not unlike Lindsay on FREAKS AND GEEKS, and inanimate objects, which speak to her when she least expects it, have chosen her as a vehicle for helping others. These objects may be merely mediums for the spirits of Native Americans to communicate to Jaye.
The disc has a modest number of supplements, including six audio commentaries with creators and cast, plus a documentary about the show, a special effects "making of" and a music video.
We tend to kowtow to British television just as much as we do British actors (at the Oscars, anyway). But British shows can be just as dull as anything the networks aired in the grim 1960s. Take ISLAND AT WAR (Acorn Media, 2004, $59.99, three discs, Tuesday, February 15, 2005). It actually has an interesting premise. Like that great novel, THE BOOK OF EBENEZER LE PAGE, it is set on an island (though here fictional) in the English Channel, the only parts of English territory occupied by the Germans during World War II. The show's six episodes follow the effects of the occupation on four families on St. Gregory (the credit sequence shows a swastika hovering over the Channel which clearly symbolizes the mini-series's premise).
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I think that this is the kind of show that is more rewarding on a second viewing, however. It takes a good two hours to sort out who is who and which characters you are suppose to care about. By then, you have missed the plot. Perhaps the way to watch is to view each ep twice as you go along. In any case, it is a show that demands concentration, but thwarts it with a slow pace and characters who look too much alike.
Acorn Media's transfers of the 90 minute shows is solid, with good sound. Supplements include information about the historical background to the series, cast interviews, photos, and cast bios.
The most eagerly awaited compilation for me has been
THE SHIELD: SEASON 3 (Fox, 2004, $59.95, four discs, Tuesday, February 22, 2005). It's difficult to pick your favorite from among great shows like THE WIRE and THE SOPRANOS. Let's just say that it is among my three top programs. And season three was strong, a lot stronger than season two, with the cinch tightening around Vic Mackey and his Strike Team. If you didn't watch it while the season aired, I envy you, for you will be immersed in some fine writing, great characters, and tension inducing plot turns.
Eight of the shows have commentary tracks, usually led by creator Shawn Ryan, but not always. One, for episode 13, gathers together all the women on the show to talk about its impact. Almost every episode has a couple of deleted moments (with optional commentary), and there is a "making of" focusing just on the season finale.
Not all the deleteds needed to go. For example, episode five has a deleted scene in which Dutch complains about his mom after a call from her, and then tells Claudette that his mom has 11 cats. Retained, this would have set up a moment about eight episodes later, when Dutch, after a brutal encounter with a serial rapist and murderer, strangles a neighborhood cat that has been bugging him. Will Dutch, singularly focused on serial killers, become one himself in subsequent seasons?
NEXT TIME:MERCHANT OF VENICE, the cinema of Richard Quine, more Asian action films, movies on music, several STAR TREKS, and more!
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