My Top Ten Covid Quarantine Films

As we close out the year 2020, I wanted to spend a post writing about the new film discoveries I made this year, directly due to being stuck in quarantine for so many months.  These are the films I probably wouldn't have watched if 2020 played out the way we all thought it would back in January.  I'm leaving out all the films from before 1980, which were mostly watched for other projects.  The movies below are unranked, and ordered by release date.  

 I want to emphasize that these are not the best films that I watched - just my favorites.      

Twenty Years Later (1984) - Also known as "A Man Marked For Death."  This is a Brazilian documentary about an unfinished film.  In 1964, an attempt was made to make a biopic on João Pedro Teixeira, a farmworker organizer who had been recently assassinated.  Director Eduardo Cotinho tracks down the people who were involved, including Teixeira's widow, who takes the opportunity to come out of hiding and try to reunite with some of her scattered children.   

Earth Girls are Easy (1988) - A wildly campy artifact of the '80s follows a Valley girl manicurist, played by Geena Davis, as she searches for true love.  She spurns her square fiancé for the charms of three wacky aliens who crash land in her pool - and happen to be played by Jim Carrey, Damon Wayans, and a very sexy Jeff Goldblum.  Featuring Julie Brown as a ditzy blond for the ages, and endless sendups of LA culture, it's so cheerfully goofy and sex-positive, I couldn't resist. 

The Wedding Banquet (1993) - Ang Lee's first real breakthrough success.  It follows a gay Taiwanese immigrant, who decides to marry one of his tenants to placate his traditional parents - all the while hiding his relationship with his white boyfriend.  This film gave me everything I wanted from "The Farewell" - a real tug of war between Eastern and Western values, filial piety versus personal fulfillment, and a happy ending for everyone.  And Lee's cameo is one for the ages.

Open Your Eyes (1997) - It's fascinating how this film works in all the ways that its remake, "Vanilla Sky," does not.   Eduardo Noriega and Penelope Cruz are perfect as the dreamer and the dream girl.  The genre elements really sneak up on you, and pay off beautifully.  Moreover, the size of the film is right, and the mood and the tone are right, creating a poignancy to the love story that proved very, very difficult to recreate.  I liked "Vanilla Sky," but there's really no comparison.  

Legally Blonde (2001) - Of course I was familiar with Elle Woods the character, but I'd somehow gotten away with not having seen her film until now.  "Legally Blonde" is utterly predictable all the way through, but that doesn't negate the effortless charm of Reese Witherspoon, or the joyous girl power oomph of Elle's triumphant legal career.  I wish I'd seen this earlier, back when it first came out, because I got more nostalgia from it than anything else.  And fabulous fashion tips, of course.    

The Ring (2002) - I think this is the film people still think of when they talk about Gore Verbinski films.  It's such an effective piece of horror, using every trick in the digital tool box to create this terrifying universe full of unsettling images, and then actively erasing enough of the fourth wall to leave the audience traumatized for life.  I wish the characters were a little more substantial - especially the Naomi Watts part - but the filmmakers really came through where it counted.

Pride and Prejudice (2005) - In the back of my head I always thought of this as a Keira Knightley vehicle, when it's really a beautifully balanced ensemble piece that's absolutely stuffed with sterling acting talent, with Joe Wright at the helm.  This was actually Wright's feature debut, and you can see the beginnings of his more fanciful cinematic tics developing.  To date, this is the only filmed version of the novel I've seen, and certainly my favorite Austen adaptation, period.  

Apocalypto (2006) - It's easy to be cynical about "Apocalypto," which is essentially an exercise in a couple of Western filmmakers applying a very Hollywood style narrative to the struggles of indigenous South American peoples in the face of exploitation and colonization.  On the other hand, it's so well executed, and when have you ever seen another production of this size starring all unknowns speaking Mayan throughout?  More epic blockbusters should be taking notes.

Boy (2010) - Taika Waititi's deeply personal film about a Maori kid in the '80s who has to come to terms with the truth about his absent father.  The film is pure Waititi - fanciful, funny, accessible, and not afraid of tackling some deeply painful subject matter.  And I love that Waititi himself plays the deadbeat dad, who has the worst possible reasons for coming back into his kids' lives.  You can trace every one of Waititi's subsequent cinematic successes back to this film.

The Interview (2014) - The screen duo of Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg have confounded and annoyed me over the years, but they finally found a target for their deeply immature antics that I approve of - North Korea!  I don't know if it's the Randall Park performance as Kim Jong-un, or the stupid but highly effective bit with the dog, but I was totally on the same wavelength with the comedy for the entire film.  It's the opposite of smart and insightful - but it sure is funny.  

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The Audible "Sandman"

Radio plays and audio books aren't something that I usually have much interest in, but I'm a big fan of the Neil Gaiman "Sandman" comics, and the Audible audio adaptation is the first time the series has been officially dramatized.  With the Netflix live action series still far off in the future, beset by delays, I figured this would be a good way to revisit the material.  So, I signed up for my free Audible trial, and dove in.

The "Sandman" audio drama covers the first twenty issues of the comic and the first two major storylines.  It's roughly eleven hours long altogether, and is narrated by author Neil Gaiman.  The biggest hurdle the show has to overcome is that it's adapting comics, where a lot of the storytelling is done through the visuals.  There's a lot of additional narration and description provided by Gaiman to try and fill the gaps, which helps significantly, but sometimes falls short.  There's a section that pays homage to "Little Nemo in Slumberland," for instance, that doesn't come across at all.  I also found it curious that the audio series is so faithful to the comics, retaining the issue-by-issue structure, and even keeping in the odd cameos from "Justice League" characters that were meant to help tie the comic to the DC Universe.  The early days of the "Sandman" were very inconsistent and experimental, before Gaiman ahd really nailed down what the tone and major themes of the comic were going to be.  The only significant change I noticed in the audio versions, aside from the aforementioned narration, was updating a nonbinary character's pronouns.

Still, I enjoyed the whole eleven hour experience thoroughly.  It's been a long time since I've read some of these stories, and I got thoroughly caught up in many of the installments.  The era-hopping "Men of Good Fortune" one-shot worked so much better as an audio drama than I expected.  The African folktale "Tales in the Sand" is a standout for its excellent performances - and none of primary cast members even appear in it.  "Sandman" boasts an impressive roster of actors, directed by the venerable Dirk Maggs.  The headliner is James McAvoy as Morpheus, the King of Dreams, sounding exactly as broody and ancient and otherworldly as I hoped.  Kat Dennings' take on Death is a little on the bratty side, but she grew on me quickly.  However, the real fun is listening for all familiar voices that pop up in the smaller roles.  Michael Sheen voices Lucifer as David Bowie doing Lucifer.  Taron Edgerton totally steals the episode where he plays supernatural investigator John Constantine.  Andy Serkis does not get remotely enough airtime as Matthew the Raven.  Really, the only casting choice I take issue with is Justin Vivian Bond as Desire, who certainly has the right credentials for the role, but just doesn't exude enough danger or malice.

Still, I found myself missing the contributions of Mike Dringenberg, Sam Kieth, Michael Zulli, Dave McKean and the other artists who contributed so much to the "Sandman" comics.  From what I've seen from the reactions around the web, the best way to enjoy the audio drama may be to listen to it while reading along with the comics, if you've got them handy.  That way, you get the best of both worlds.  And yet, the audio drama is a perfectly good entry point into the "Sandman" universe, and I hope that we'll eventually get similar adaptations of the other fifty-plus issues of the comic.  I  want to hear Neil Gaiman narrate the ending of "A Game of You," and describe some of the sequences in "Season of the Mists."    

I also suspect that the Audible version of "Sandman" will end up being more to my taste than whatever Netflix is cooking up.  The cast alone would probably be impossible to match for a live-action adaptation.  Gaiman has also made it clear that there are plans to update and combine storylines from the comics - I don't expect they'd keep the one-shots like "Facade."  Still, I very badly do want to see the end result, and the Audible "Sandman" has only made that more obvious for me.    

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"Over the Moon" and Chinese Animation

I've been keeping an eye on the efforts of the Chinese animation industry for a while now, which has progressed by leaps and bounds over the last decade.  One of the most promising new ventures is Pearl Studio, which is a sort-of successor to Oriental DreamWorks.  Their goal is specifically to produce animation aimed at Chinese audiences, at a level of quality on par with the big U.S. studios.  "Over the Moon" is their second feature after 2019's "Abominable."  It's also the feature directing debut of former Disney Renaissance animator Glen Keane.  And I have a lot of mixed feelings about this one.

Fei-Fei (Cathy Ang) is a little girl who loves the story of the Moon Goddess Chang-e (Philippa Soo).  Sadly her mother (Ruthie Ann Miles) falls ill and passes away.  Four years later, her father (John Cho) intends to marry Mrs. Zhong (Sandra Oh), the mother of a rambunctious boy named Chin (Robert G Chiu), to Fei-Fei's horror.  She decides to build a rocketship to go to the moon to find Chang-e.  She does not reckon on Chin sneaking along on the adventure with her, or Chang-e being very different from what she imagined.  Also, Ken Jeong voices a fluorescent green moon pangolin named Gobi, because why not?

I always thought that the autumn moon festival would be good subject matter for an animated film, because it's got a lot of fun elements - the Chinese legend of Chang-e, her companion the Jade Rabbit, and of course all the fuss around mooncakes.  I was not, however, pleased to find that "Over the Moon" goes the route of mashing all these ideas into a very familiar template - the '90s Disney musical.  Okay, that's not fair.  The film does make a good attempt to try and wrestle with Fei-Fei's feelings of grief and uncertainty about her family and future, painting a picture of complicated family dynamics similar to PIXAR's "Coco."  Unfortunately, the story keeps getting tripped up by all the usual trappings of a typical Western animated kids' film - animal sidekicks, busy action scenes, and a whopping nine song numbers.

This in and of itself wouldn't be a problem if the execution weren't so lackluster.  Similar to the new live-action version of "Mulan," it's very apparent that the chief creative forces here were Westerners doing their very best to work with Eastern concepts that they didn't have much firsthand knowledge of.  There are no obvious errors, but tonally the film always feels a little too self-conscious and hemmed-in, lacking in verve.  The animation is gorgeous, but is noticeably subdued at times.  Part of the issue with having so many song numbers is that only two of them are properly paired with interesting animation.  Several simply involve the characters singing to each other or into empty space.  While there are some strong sequences, like the hand-drawn segments telling the story of Chang-e, the film often struggles to give us interesting things to look at.  Character designs are derivative and uninspired.  Fei-Fei in particular seems to be a gawky mishmash of the "science girl" trope and previous characters from "Abominable." 

I kept finding myself asking uncomfortable questions.  Fei-Fei and Chin both have animal sidekicks that don't talk, probably because talking animals are frowned upon by the Chinese censors.  Chang-e's animal companion, the Jade Rabbit, doesn't talk either, despite clearly being a magical moon creature.  But Ken Jeong's neon pangolin shows up around midway through the picture seemingly just to be chattery comic relief, which is apparently just fine.  Were the pangolin and the Jade Rabbit originally the same character?   Is it really that important to have a Disney-style comic character like this in the film?  Then again, the film's best creation is easily the little brother, Chin, who is one of those super-enthusiastic, super-optimistic, rough-and tumble kids who never gets discouraged, and is a valuable source of humor.  Without him and the pangolin, "Over the Moon" would be a pretty glum affair.  

And then there's the whole business of Chang-e pining for her lost love while acting as the mercurial ruler (and pop star) for the moon kingdom of Luminaria.  You can see the parallels that the filmmakers were going for, trying to compare Fei-Fei and Chang-e's situations, but the pacing is so rushed, the stakes are so muddled, and the characters are so thinly drawn, it's hard to get invested in what's going on.  Luminaria is in peril!  Because Chang-e is sad!  Oh no, I guess?  I can applaud the ambition here, but I can't ignore that the film is plagued with story problems and half-baked concepts that really undercut its effectiveness.    

A lot of this feels like nitpicking, but I was really rooting for this film, and I wanted it to be good.  It has so much talent involved that I've been keeping tabs on, and so many bits and pieces of things I'm so happy to see in a major animated film.  To its credit, "Over the Moon" does not feel like a cheap imitation the way so many of these other Chinese features have lately.  However, it does feel very compromised, very safe, and pretty dull.  Philippa Soo singing Chang-e's "Extraluminaria" is great, but the rest of the film is a real let-down, I'm sorry to say.

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My Top Ten Episodes of "The West Wing" (The Sorkin Years)

Below, find my top ten episodes from the first four seasons of "The West Wing."  I don't plan to finish the series, but after nearly 100 hours with the show, there are several episodes that I need to spotlight before parting ways.

Episodes are unranked and ordered by airdate.  And I will totally cheat and count two-parters as single entries.

"Pilot" - As everyone knows by now, Sorkin set up President Bartlett to have one of the best entrances ever, holding the appearance of Martin Sheen until nearly the end of the hour.  In the meantime, we get our little introductions to the rest of the show's roster as they rush to respond to Bartlett's biking mishap and several other issues.  And whatever you want to say about the character of Mandy Hampton, this was definitely her best episode.  

"In Excelsis Deo" - The show's first Christmas episode sees the White House fully decked out for the season, and the President sneaking out on a shopping trip.  However, the episode is really about giving Richard Schiff one of his best hours as Toby, who is prompted to do some holiday soul searching as he gets more and more invested in the death of a local homeless man.  It's also one of the best hours for Mrs. Landingham, the President's beloved secretary.

"Celestial Navigation" - I really appreciate the show's first season for its great sense of humor.  This is the episode where everything goes wrong, but Josh manages to turn it into a series of funny anecdotes as he's delivering a lecture at Georgetown.  There are some fantastic laugh lines and exchanges of dialogue here, culminating in Toby and Sam getting lost in Connecticut, and Josh having to deliver a press briefing and secretly creating a "secret plan to fight inflation."

"In the Shadow of Two Gunmen" - The second season opener makes for a fantastically entertaining depiction of a major crisis.  Watching the cops and secret service rushing around, the hospital and surgery scenes, and the aftermath - you might not even notice that Sorkin is busy setting up the rest of the season by revealing that the President has multiple sclerosis.  The flashbacks to everyone joining up with the first Bartlett campaign are also a lot of fun. 

"And It's Surely to Their Credit" - Ainsley Hayes is one of my favorite characters in the show, because she offered a different viewpoint.  Here, she joins the White House as a Republican and gets a terrible office and the cold shoulder for the bulk of the episode.  It's in stark contrast to the romanticized view that the show often has toward public service.  However, in the end, Sam fires people, and Ainsley gets the welcome she deserves  - totally unrealistic, but satisfying.

"Two Cathedrals" - It's the big showcase for Martin Sheen, who delivers a powerhouse monologue in a cathedral while battling through the worst crises of his administration - the oncoming scandal about his health that he's primarily responsible for, and the death of Mrs. Landingham.  The big press conference at the end of the episode is built up wonderfully, but of course we all know he's going to run again.  There are five more seasons of this show to fill.  

"Dead Irish Writers" - It's another big shindig at the White House, this one in honor of Abby's birthday, but she's not in the mood.  The episode is really an excuse to toss some guest stars into the mix and get all of the show's female characters together for a drunken chat in eveningwear  I love the subplot with Donna realizing she might be Canadian.  I love that Lord Marbury calls Leo an "old sock."  And I really do enjoy Stockard Channing getting a great hour as Abby Bartlett.  

"20 Hours in America" - Josh, Toby, and Donna get left behind by the Presidential motorcade and are stranded in Indiana.  Their journey across the hostile territory of the American heartland takes up two episodes full of hijinks, and leads to Donna delivering a very satisfying dressing down to her bosses.  Also, Admiral Fitzwallace and Dr. McNally are some of my favorite minor characters, and they get some killer lines here while dealing with the Qumari situation.  

"Angel Maintenance" - Probably best remembered as the one where everyone is stuck on Air Force One.  It's one of the funnier episodes of the season, with a small technical glitch turning into a lengthy ordeal, CJ wrangling a cabin full of reporters, and Will Bailey still finding his footing in the group dynamics.  I also really appreciate the subplot with Josh trying to put together an environmental bill with a Republican ally - torpedoed, alas, solely because of party politics. 

"Life on Mars" - I always liked Vice President Hoynes episodes, and it was a little disappointing to see him go out on such a tawdry scandal.  On the other hand, the way this episode is structured, with the flashback framing, and Joe Quincy's first day on the job, and everyone putting together the clues from the newspaper stories is such riveting stuff.  I like this far, far more than all the high stakes craziness of the season's finale episodes, which "Life on Mars" sets up.

Honorable Mentions: "The State Dinner," "17 People," "Hartsfield Landing," "Stirred," "Posse Comitatus," and "The Long Goodbye."  

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"The West Wing," Year Four

Spoilers ahead. 

This is the last season of "The West Wing" I'm going to watch for a couple of reasons.  First, it took me far too much effort to get through the back half of this season.  Second, along with the departure of Aaron Sorkin, this year saw a major round of departures from the cast.  Rob Lowe's Sam Seaborn bowed out, making way for Joshua Malina's Will Bailey. Lily Tomlin joined up as Bartlett's new secretary, Mrs. Fiderer.  Also, late in the year, it was made official that Ainsley Hayes had left the White House, to be replaced by new Deputy Counsel Joe Quincy, played by Matthew Perry.

And I like all the new characters, more or less, but they're not put to the best use.  You can tell that Sorkin was struggling to get through this year.  He lingers on some storylines week after week, like the assassination of the Qumari Minister of Defense, without it ever really paying off.  Sam's hopeless campaign for Congress is more or less abandoned, despite Toby getting involved.  Just getting through the President's censure and reelection is agonizing, and often overly glum and serious.  It feels like the Bartlett administration has gone from everything coming too easy to everything being in constant crisis.  Nowhere is this more apparent than in the finale, where we have a scandal bringing down the  Vice President, the birth of Toby's twins, Danny Concannon (welcome back Timothy Busfield) uncovering the assassination plot, the kidnapping of Zoey Bartlett (welcome back Elizabeth Moss), and the resulting invocation of the 25th Amendment all within the span of three episodes.    

The year certainly has its highlights.  The debate episodes were fun.  I liked the premiere, where Toby, Josh, and Donna get stuck in the farmlands of Indiana and have to "Planes, Trains, and Automobiles" their way back to the White House.  It's probably Donna's finest hour, and made me briefly wish for a version of "The West Wing" that was more like "Mad Men," where the ascension of women to power was a more consistent theme.  I hate to harp on this again, but the more I watched this year, the more it stuck in my craw.  Women are the assistants and the support players in this show to an overwhelming degree, and I'm sure Sorkin knew it, as he kept trying to give the female cast more to do.  He devoted a full episode to CJ dealing with her father's advancing Alzheimer's, and put Amy Gardner in the role of the First Lady's chief of staff.  

However, he's never quite able to get it right.  Andy Wyatt (Kathleen York) briefly ends up in the middle of a scandal as an unwed, pregnant Congresswoman, but the storyline is all about Toby and his insecurities.  Amy and Abby Bartlett are great together, but we don't see nearly enough of them.  And don't get me started on Will's pack of female interns, who are mostly named Lauren.  I liked Josh Malina in "Sports Night," but here, where he's playing Sorkin's most obvious stand-in, he's pretty insufferable.  Then again, I liked Toby better this season as he's finally forced to confront his personal history of emotional ineptitude.  Josh and his ego get less of the spotlight this year.  Charlie - well, more Charlie's always good, even if his storyline amounts to trying to win back Zoey from a foofy French fop.

I went ahead and watched the first two episodes of the fifth season just to see the cliffhanger resolved, and then read some of the spoilers for the last three seasons of "The West Wing." There are a handful of episodes that I'd like to check out individually.  CJ as the new Chief of Staff sounds amazing.  However, continuing on through another sixty-four episodes does not appeal to me in the least.  Maybe it's that my attention span has shrunk.  Maybe it's knowing that I could spend that time and catch up on the entirety of "Better Call Saul."  Maybe I'm just ready to change gears.

In any case, this is a good place to stop.  I'll have a Top Ten list for the Sorkin-era episodes of "The West Wing" posted in a couple of days.

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HBO Max and the Streaming Wars

Well, I guess I've put this post off long enough.  I wanted to wait a bit after the big announcement of Warner Bros. and HBO Max's bombshell streaming plans to see some of the reaction from various industry players.   Everybody seems to have their own take on Warners' decision to premiere their entire 2021 theatrical film lineup simultaneously on HBO Max and in theaters.  There has been plenty of healthy debate as to whether or not this is a good decision for them in the long run, but I'm pretty well convinced that there's no putting the genie back in the bottle, and simultaneous VOD/streaming  and theatrical releases are going to become much more common, if not the new normal for certain content.

As the pandemic rages on, the theatrical exhibition business is not expected to recover until spring at the earliest, and after that the studios are going to be faced with a logjam of blockbusters that have been delayed from 2020.  Warners claims to have a fairly weak lineup for 2021.  I may be highly anticipating "Dune" and "Godzilla v. Kong," but not everyone is.  I think it's a perfectly sound idea to sacrifice a year's worth of iffy box office profits to shore up the HBO Max streaming service, which had such a disappointing release a few months ago.  Now, how they executed this plan is what got them into trouble.  Warners screwed up by not getting its creative partners like Legendary, and the major talent involved, like "Dune" director Denis Villeneuve,  onboard.  I expect that Warners will work out deals to get everyone compensated eventually, but it's going to be very messy for them, which could have been avoided - or at least significantly ameliorated.  Now they have a very ugly PR fight on their hands from multiple fronts, and many of their talent relationships are in danger.  The exhibitors are unhappy, of course, but they have no leverage right now, and can only wait and see how this is going to play out. 

It's no surprise that this is riling up long-simmering worries over the effect of streaming on the basic workings of the movie business.  Nobody has really figured out how to measure the success of a film on a streaming service yet, as opposed to the concrete numbers from the box office.  Nielsens only debuted its charts for streaming content back in September.  The studios have already been dinged for self-dealing and skirting around paying royalties for streaming television content.  Now, those complicated, murky movie contracts are being dragged into this mess, and "Hollywood accounting" is about to come under much more scrutiny.  When streaming was only a secondary or ancillary source of revenue, this was a fight that everyone could afford to see play out slowly.  But now, streaming is quickly becoming central to the plans of AT&T and Disney, while the theaters are on indefinite pause, so we're likely to see the whole business of filmmaking fundamentally change in a hurry.   

How things are going to shake out is unknown.  Are the economics of a streaming-centric movie business going to allow for $200 million blockbusters anymore?  Would it really be such a bad thing if it didn't? After being stuck home for months with no big action movies, I honestly haven't missed them as much as I thought I would.  Are A list actors and directors getting big paydays based on box office performance a thing of the past?  Will certain COVID era measures, like more generous theater/studio revenue splits, and exceptions to awards eligibility requirements, end up sticking around for the long term?  Will we see box office revenue skewed even more towards international markets?  Are "new media" compensation deals finally going to be overhauled? How many of the big studios are still going to be in the movie business after all is said and done?

As the streamers keep battling for market share, trying to catch up to Netflix and Disney+, it's the consumers who are going to be the big winners for a while.  We're going to have more access to more content than ever before.  I'm thrilled that I'll be able to watch so many new films from home, as I don't plan to visit a theater again until COVID woes are well behind us.  Eventually, I'm sure prices for these services will go up, the flood of shiny content will slow down, and we will see some of these new ventures fail - Quibi is already kaput.  And Disney announced that they will be testing out bundles of streaming services, putting us right back on the road to the pay cable model again.    

Of course, this could all be too premature.   The HBO Max experiment could crash and burn, as theaters open back up and consumers decide they already have enough streaming services.  The piracy problem might prove insurmountable, with international rollouts still being slow.  As fast as change is happening now, we could just as easily see it stymied by the end of the pandemic and a lot of bitter lawsuits.

Whatever happens, I've been convinced to sign up for HBO Max next year.  So there's that.   

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I'm Not Happy With Disney Right Now

I wanted to write up a post on the Disney investor meeting announcements that happened roughly a week ago.  They made a giant list of announcements for films and television shows from all of their divisions, with a special emphasis on content for Disney+, which is definitely picking up steam.  But while some of the announcements made me happy, like a new musical called "Encanto" set in "magical realist" Colombia from WDAS, and a fun-looking new PIXAR movie called "Going Red" helmed by "Bao" director Domee Shi, they were utterly lost in a flood of reboots, spinoffs, sequels, and reimaginings.

Frankly, I was utterly aghast sitting through some of the presentations at the sheer number of nostalgia-driven projects that were being readied.  The offerings from the Disney motion picture and television units look especially dire.  We've been promised sequels for "Hocus Pocus," "Sister Act," and "Enchanted," and reboots of "Three Men and a Baby," "Diary of a Wimpy Kid," "Swiss Family Robinson," "Night at the Museum," and "Cheaper by the Dozen."  "The Mighty Ducks," "Turner and Hooch," and "Percy Jackson" are getting turned into a series.  The CGI version of "The Lion King" is getting a prequel. The live action "Beauty and the Beast" is getting a midquel.  "Chip ‘N Dale: Rescue Rangers" is getting the live action treatment, for some deranged reason.  "Cruella" is still a thing that is happening.  There are a couple of originals, mostly based around YA series and true-life stories of inspiring sports stars, but they got very little emphasis.  

This was echoed across nearly every unit.  PIXAR actually has a very promising slate of originals, with "Soul," "Luca," and "Going Red" up next, and a new series called "Win or Lose," but all the attention has been on the announcement of a new "Toy Story" spinoff called "Lightyear" due in 2022.  FX announced a Rolling Stones series and a new adaptation of James Clavell's "Shogun," but the big deal is that Noah Hawley is making an "Alien" series set on Earth, and I don't know if that's a good idea, honestly.   WDAS, to their credit, put features "Encanto" and "Raya and the Last Dragon" directly in the spotlight, but I couldn't help but notice that all but one of their animated series offerings, the Pan-African sci-fi series Iwájú, are all based directly on recent films: "Baymax," "Zootopia+," "Tiana" and "Moana, The Series."  To be fair, Disney has always done this with their animated films as far back as "The Little Mermaid."  We're usually not hit with so many at once, though. 

I know my reaction has a lot to do with the marketing here.  Disney is notoriously secretive about long term plans, and we just got a lot of information spanning years of content released all at once.  And this is all in the context of an investor presentation aimed at business and finance people, not the consumers.  Disney's tactics are not new, but it's a lot harder to ignore their more uncomfortably business-driven content decisions in this format.  The branded, already proven franchise stuff is being promoted more heavily because it looks safer to investors.  And the glut of announcements helps the narrative that Disney+ is going to have plenty of content to compete with the other streaming services.  

And this is why the two clear stars of the day were Lucasfilm and Marvel, which have at least a dozen titles apiece in the works for Disney+, in addition to theatrical projects.  I'm not looking forward to a Lando Calrissian miniseries, or two spinoffs from "The Mandalorian," but some of the "Star Wars" projects look fun.  I wonder if "Acolyte" might be a secret Mara Jade show.  Reading between the lines, the recently completed sequel trilogy was apparently viewed as such a failure, none of the new projects appear to be connected to them, with the possible exception of the "A Droid Story" series.  I do wonder about the wisdom of investing so much into this one universe after a single hit, "The Mandalorian," and some notable missteps.

As for Marvel, well, that universe has already proven the ability to sustain plenty of separate titles across many different platforms.  Also, they're committed to giving us some new and diverse heroes like Kamala Khan, Riri Williams, and Moon Knight, so I'm not going to complain.  Oh, and Samuel L. Jackson and Don Cheadle look to be finally the leads of their own projects.  Still, the Lucasfilm and Marvel projects share one big issue - the shared universe concept means it's going to take much more effort to keep up with the storytelling in these franchises.  I've already been very cool on elements of the Dave Filoni-verse being brought into "The Mandalorian" this year, and it looks like it's going to get about ten times worse very soon.

Oh boy.  I think it's finally happened.  I've grown out of Disney fandom.

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"Tenet" is So Christopher Nolan

Minor spoilers ahead

"Tenet" is not the best Christopher Nolan movie, but it is the most Christopher Nolan movie.  It's a puzzle-box science fiction film that takes its aesthetics straight from James Bond, that looks gorgeous, but is pretty incoherent.  The plot really isn't important for most of the film, though.  You'll recognize the usual character types - the stoic man-of-action hero, the charming wing man, the woman in trouble, and, of course, Michael Caine.  The protagonist doesn't even have a name, though he's played by John David Washington, which is a nice change from form.  

Despite all the complaints about the film's dialogue being impossible to follow, and those who like to take apart plotting minutiae will be endlessly frustrated, I found "Tenet" pretty digestible on a surface level.  The audio may be lacking, but the basic film language is perfectly clear.  Nolan goes so far as to color code the action in some scenes to better help us follow what's going on.  Washington plays a CIA agent who is recruited into a secret organization  called Tenet.  They're trying to combat forces from the distant future who have figured out a way to reverse the flow of time for objects, and even people, causing chaos around the world.  An arms dealer named Sator (Kenneth Branagh) is our main villain, and Washington recruits a friendly mercenary named Neil (Robert Pattinson), and Sator's unhappy wife Kat (Elizabeth Debicki) to help him counter Sator's nefarious plans.

"Tenet," for all its tricky experimenting with time, is an action film first and foremost, and offers plenty of visceral thrills that showcase plenty of fancy visual trickery.  Most of the film's most arresting images are built around one of the oldest, yet most effective tricks in cinema - rewinding the action.  Bullets unfire themselves.  Exploded buildings reassemble.  Soldiers march grimly backwards through clouds of dust and debris, all flowing in reverse.  Don't try to overthink the mechanics, the film explicitly warns, or you'll get a headache.  But you have to marvel at the sheer scope of some of these action sequences, taking the familiar building blocks of your standard car chases and gun battles, and doing something startlingly different with them.  

So it's a shame that the story built around these sequences comes off as such perfunctory stuff.  The biggest trouble really is that Nolan doesn't take the time to properly set up the story around those big action sequences - what the stakes are, or even what the goal is half the time.  We just get a torrent of mumbled exposition, and suddenly we're in the middle of another gorgeous bullet ballet.  I mean, viewers should be fine if they treat "Tenet" as a Bond movie, and just follow Neil and the Protagonist through the action.  Their mucking around with the timeline is pretty straightforward for this kind of narrative, and I doubt most people will get very lost.  Attempts to keep track of anyone's motives, strategy, and allegiances, however, are probably futile.  

"Tenet" is probably the closest to "Inception" of the other Nolan films, full of thinly drawn characters, big action sequences, and tons of style.  However, "Tenet" feels much more haphazardly put together, with a lot of characters who are around for a scene or two to provide information or pitch in for a big operation, and then disappear again.  Clemence Poesy, Himesh Patel, and Aaron Taylor-Johnson all make appearances as various Tenet operatives that fall into this category.  Most of the actors, especially Branagh and Pattinson, are good enough to make the best of playing broad types, but occasionally the dialogue gets so ridiculous, you have to marvel that any of it works as well as it does.

I expect "Tenet" will be best enjoyed by the usual Nolan fans, who will appreciate the twisty narrative, and the nerdy things like the incorporation of the Sator square.  The casual viewer will likely be impressed by the beautiful effects sequences, but not especially engaged.  The film is much too cold, imposing, and unfriendly to be a crowd pleaser.  Frankly, Christopher Nolan can't be making mistakes like the flub with the bad sound mix, not at this level and at this budget.  It makes it seem like he doesn't know what he's doing, which breaks our suspension of disbelief.  And that's a cardinal sin when it comes to the movies.

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The Joy of "Staged"

The first really successful fictional narrative specifically conceived for being filmed during the Coronavirus pandemic is the BBC comedy "Staged," which is now streaming on Hulu.  It's a very short, six-episode sitcom featuring Michael Sheen and David Tennant playing versions of themselves during the lockdown, trying to rehearse for a new stage production of "Six Characters in Search of an Author."  Simon Evans plays the director, who tries and mostly fails to keep the two of them on track.  Tennant's wife Georgia, Sheen's girlfriend Anna Lundberg, and Evans' sister Lucy Eaton (is she his actual sister or just playing one?) also make regular appearances.  Only one actress, Nina Sosanya, is playing a totally fictional character, the play's producer Jo. 

Everyone in "Staged" is portraying themselves as a little worse than they actually are.  Sheen and Tennant are petty and childish, constantly arguing over trivialities, including a great running gag about billing.  Evans is clearly playing himself as more ineffectual and spineless than he actually is.  However, there's that tantalizing dance with the line between fiction and reality.  We know Tennant and Sheen are friendly in real life, having recently co-starred in "Good Omens" together.  The series is shot entirely from the actual homes of the actors involved.  Kids and other family members are kept out of sight, but it's a given that they're just off screen.  Fans who have followed the careers of Tennant and Sheen will appreciate the many references to prior roles and productions, including everything from "The Pillowman" to "Unthinkable."  Eagle-eyed viewers might be able to catch a glimpse of a mini-TARDIS in the Tennants' back garden.  

All the action being confined to a series of Zoom calls and a few sparse "off camera" scenes should feel stifling and unnatural, except that this is how so much of our personal interactions are happening in the time of COVID.  So, the format of "Staged" ends up feeling very relatable and immediate.  Everyone is in little or no makeup, and dresses in a way that can be politely described as unkempt.  Topics of conversation include cabin fever, trying new hobbies, warring with pests, and letting too much slide.  The cameras stay entirely static, and production values are understandably minimal.  I love how some of the humorous bits are clearly improvised from what the actors could scrounge up from their own homes.  Tennant, for instance, is caught several times drinking from a mug with his own face on it.  

The Tennant and Sheen friendship anchors the show, similar to how Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon's friendship does with "The Trip" series.  Both actors are so charismatic and play off each other so well, that their bickering and sniping at each other is more fun than exasperating.  Six episodes feels like just about the right length, given the limited resources.  Two episodes depend entirely on the participation of Very Special Guest Stars, who provide new opportunities for mutual humiliation.  These are the two best episodes of the series, as the rest mostly tend to meander along without much real incident.  The worries over rehearsing the play are low stakes, and the more serious bits of manufactured drama feel unnecessary.  Still, there's a lot of enjoyment to be had from just watching two good actors having a go at each other.

Would "Staged" be so effective if we weren't stuck in lockdown?  Probably not, but it's also heartening to see everyone in the show doing their best to be creative in tough times, and figuring out how to make the best of a tricky situation.  We're going to be seeing a lot of pandemic themed media coming down the pipeline, processing the experience from many different angles. "Staged" takes the up close and personal approach, and it works.  Sheen and Tennant are lucky people in unusual circumstances, but I expect there won't be many viewers who can't see a little of themselves in these two - stuck at home for too long, fighting off boredom, giving in to the impulse to behave badly too often, and in great need of someone older and wiser to give them a good scolding.     

Depending on how long the lockdown goes on, it might be worth putting together another round or two of "Staged" to get us through.

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This is Animerama

If you're an anime fan for very long, you inevitably run across the existence of anime pornography, and if you were an anime fan in the '80s or '90s, you always had to thread the delicate needle of explaining to polite company that you were a fan of animation for adults, not "adult animation." Not that there's anything wrong with that.

The origins of adult anime, more commonly known as "hentai" can be traced back to a group of films released at the end of the 1960s and the early 1970s. Not the first, but easily the most influential hentai were a trilogy of features from Studio Mushi, the first two co-directed by the beloved creator of "Astro Boy," Osamu Tezuka. "1001 Arabian Nights" (1969), "Cleopatra" (1970), and "Belladonna of Sadness" (1973) were known as the "Animerama" films, intended to be a mix of anime and drama aimed at adult audiences. Tezuka was always a boundary-pusher and active in experimental film and manga projects throughout his career, so this wasn't out of character for him. "A Thousand and One Nights" was successful upon initial release, and the other two were not.

The Animerama films slid into obscurity for several decades, but "Belladonna of Sadness" has long been a cult favorite and underwent a critical reevaluation and restoration a few years ago thanks to Cinefamily. Helmed by Eiichi Yamamoto, who was also a director on the first two Animerama films, "Belladonna" is a much more serious work with arthouse aspirations. Structurally it's your basic rape and revenge flick, where a peasant woman named Jeanne (Aiko Nagayama) is violated by the local nobleman (Masaya Takahashi), and makes a deal with the Devil (Tatsuya Nakadai!) to gain power. It has a lot of sex in it, but depicted with mostly psychedelic surrealist imagery. There are some absurdist elements, like the Devil having a phallus for a head, but there's not a lot here you could really call comedic. The animation itself is extremely limited due to the low budget, and many scenes are really just narration or songs over still images. However, those images contain some stunners, including nightmarish watercolor backgrounds and a few sequences of free-form animated sensuality and erotica that nicely straddle the line between art and pornography.

I saw "Belladonna of Sadness" back in 2016, and enjoyed it, but didn't realize at the time it was part of a trilogy. Ironically, I'd run across "Cleopatra" and "A Thousand and One Nights" before, when I was reading up on old indie animated films from the '70s. "Cleopatra" had been retitled "Cleopatra: Queen of Sex" for the U.S. release, so I figured it was one of the ignominious "Fritz the Cat" ripoffs of the era, like "Down and Dirty Duck" or "Tarzoon: Shame of the Jungle." I finally stumbled upon original versions of "Cleopatra" and "A Thousand and One Nights" recently, and took the opportunity to watch them both. Unlike "Belladonna," these films are comedic pastiches, with a lot of zany gags, wild tangents, and nutty scenarios. "Cleopatra" has a science-fiction framing device where three time travelers are sent back to ancient Egypt to look for information on foiling an alien invasion.

And, I'm sorry to say that neither "A Thousand and One Nights" or "Cleopatra" hold up very well, in spite of larger budgets and more polished production values. Both films are these lengthy, sprawling adventure stories that run over two hours apiece. Despite a lot of bawdy humor and rape threats, the sex scenes are actually fairly brief, especially in "A Thousand and One Nights." The female characters are frequently running about bare-breasted, but there's no sign of any genitalia or explicit sexual activity, except in the most abstract form. Instead, "A Thousand and One Nights" is a mashup of several "Arabian Nights" stories, starring a wandering bum named Aldin (Yukio Aoshima). "Cleopatra" is a wildly melodramatic retelling of the life of Cleopatra (Chinatsu Nakayama), and her relationships with Julius Caesar (Hajime Hana) and Marc Antony (Osami Nabe).

I struggled during both films to find adequate points of comparison. "A Thousand and One Nights" was easier to parse. Aldin is a trickster hero who sort of resembles the Monkey Punch version of Lupin the Third, a genial ne'er-do-well pervert, who falls in love with the wrong girl and experiences some extreme bouts of good and bad luck. His adventures range from tender romance to Loony Toons style antics. The characters have no depth whatsoever, but the action is flashy and the buffoonery is very energetic. There's also a lot of leering misogyny here, especially the treatment of Aldin's beloved, a passive slave girl named Miriam (Kyoko Kishida). "A Thousand and One Nights" mostly just comes across as outdated and bizarre from a modern perspective, the humor very juvenile, and the sexuality pretty perfunctory.

Then there's "Cleopatra," which gives us a tragic heroine to take more seriously, but insists on including ridiculous elements like a zany pet leopard, a wacky wizard who gives the homely Egyptian queen a makeover, and the aforementioned time traveller framing story. Caesar has green skin for no apparent reason, and Marc Antony is a meathead provincial who has to be reassured that it doesn't matter that he's not as well-endowed as his predecessor. The film is clearly taking many of its cues from the 1963 version of "Cleopatra," that nearly bankrupted Twentieth Century Fox, and it doesn't surprise me that Tezuka and Yamamoto's "Cleopatra" pretty much bankrupted Mushi Studios. It's a weird cinematic mishmash of different tones, underdeveloped ideas, and never enough guts or focus to really deliver the kind of impactful drama that the material presents so much opportunity for.

The animation nerd part of me does appreciate both of these earlier films for their occasional psychedelia sequences, with homages to other artists and influences. They're a good example of various anime character and design tropes of the era. Occasionally there are little moments of wonderful creativity, like depicting Caesar's assassination in the form of a Noh drama. "A Thousand and One Nights" remains one of the longest animated films ever made, and there's some earnest boundary-breaking with the adult material. However, it wouldn't be until Studio Mushi was in its shaky final days and Eiichi Yamamoto got full creative control, that we would get "Belladonna of Sadness," the only Animerama film that seemed truly committed to being about adult subjects and sexuality.
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Trailers! Trailers! - Release Date Unknown Edition

I haven't done a trailer post for a while, for obvious reasons.  I figured that now would be a good time, in order to reorient myself for the oncoming movie year and beyond.  There are several high profile trailers I never got around to discussing in any capacity, so here we go. All links lead to Trailer Addict:

Dune - Let's get the big one out of the way first.  This was my most anticipated film of last year, and it's my most anticipated film of this year too.  The cast looks great.  Arrakis looks gorgeous.  I'm fully convinced that Denis Villeneuve has it in him to pull this off.  There's a lot of fan-baiting going on here, with the inclusion of the Litany Against Fear, and the Pink Floyd track, but I think it should look plenty intriguing to newcomers.  I can't wait to see the sandworms in action.  And I really hope Timothy Chalamet and Zendaya can pull in enough of the kids to get the sequel made.  

The Batman - I can't tell much from the first teaser, honestly, except that Matt Reeves has seriously doubled down on the dark and gritty aesthetic of the Christopher Nolan films.  This looks like a David Fincher thriller starring a guy in a cape, and it's giving off even less kid-friendly vibes than "Joker" somehow.  That worries me.  No wonder Warners so quickly announced that "The Batman" is a standalone film, and not part of the DCEU continuity.  Robert Pattinson as our newest Batman is not a bad choice at all, especially after "Tenet," but I'm still having a tough time reconciling the idea in my head.  The hair doesn't help.  Boy, does it not help.  

Suicide Squad - It's all about Polka Dot Man.  I just can't get over that the new James Gunn redo/sequel/whatever of "Suicide Squad" features David Dastmalchian as the ridiculous Batman villain Polka Dot Man.  Polka Dot Man!  Because of Gunn's track record, I'm tentatively looking forward to this.  And, well, he's bringing so many more fun people over to play - John Cena, Peter Capaldi, Nathan Fillion, and of course Michael Rooker.  And it's good to see that Margot Robbie and Viola Davis are sticking around from the last go around.  And Jared Leto is nowhere in sight.  There's no way that this one can be worse than the first attempt at "Suicide Squad," right?  Right?!  

Chaos Walking - The long delayed Doug Liman film has run into all kinds of production trouble behind the scenes, and is reported to be a giant mess.  However, it looks pretty intriguing from the footage we've seen so far.  People's thoughts being projected visually and audibly is an interesting new idea, though it reminds me an awful lot of "Annihilation" with its iridescent Shimmer-like projections.  This is one of several projects featuring Tom Holland in leading roles, as filmmakers try to capitalize off his Marvel stardom.   It'll also be a big test for Daisy Ridley, as she enters her post- "Star Wars" career.

Raya and the Last Dragon - The trailer doesn't show the dragon, which had its design leaked a while ago, and frankly looks very concerning.  I was hoping that seeing the design in motion would assuage some of my fears, but no luck yet.  Instead, the teaser trailer introduces us to Raya, a new Disney action heroine who hails from South Asia this time.  The visuals seem to be mostly Thai inspired, and are inadvertently echoing a lot of "Avatar: the Last Airbender."  I've never been able to get much of a useful impression out of Disney's trailers, since they keep so much close to the vest, so put this in the "wait and see category."

Judas and the Black Messiah - Finally, this is easily the best trailer I've seen in the past few months.  It's a wonderfully tense look at the assassination of Fred Hampton, one of the leaders of the Black Panther party in 1969.  Daniel Kaluuya and Lakeith Stanfield look amazing.  This is already far more interesting and more powerful than Aaron Sorkin's "The Trial of the Chicago 7," where Hampton also appeared.  It's one of several recent profiles of figures from the black power movement, and I hope to see more.  

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"Uncle Frank" and "Happiest Season"

I really need some comfort movies right now, and the streaming services are keen on giving them to me.  So here comes "Happiest Season" from Hulu, and "Uncle Frank" from Amazon Prime, two cuddly coming-out stories featuring a lot of good talent both behind and in front of the camera.  "Uncle Frank" is a more straightforward melodrama, set in 1973, about a young woman named Beth (Sophia Lillis) who discovers that her professor uncle, Frank (Paul Bettany) is secretly gay and in a relationship with a sweet-natured Saudi Arabian man named Walid (Peter Macdissi).  After the death of Frank's father (Stephen Root), Frank has to go home to South Carolina for the funeral, and finally face the rest of the family and his inner demons. 

The scope of "Uncle Frank" is very small and very personal, and I suppose that it says something about how far the LGBT culture has come that parts of the narrative are now very familiar.  There's the awkward subterfuge maintained by Frank and Walid for the benefit of various family members, the painful flashbacks to trauma suffered in Frank's youth, and the warmly matriarchal presence of veteran actresses Margo Martindale and Lois Smith, who play Frank's mother and aunt.  Writer/director Alan Ball is not interested in striking out in any original directions, but ensures that the material is delivered as well as it possibly can be.  Frank and Beth's family of narrow-minded but ultimately loving Southern folks are not caricatures.  Walid is a delightful, poignant character, and Macdissi's performance is one of the clear highlights of the film.  It's also rather comforting to see Sophia Lillis and Paul Bettany playing characters close to their actual ages, that are substantial roles with some real emotional complexity to them.  It feels like it's been ages since I've seen Bettany in a proper leading role with any sort of nuance.  He really should do this more often.      

"Happiest Season," by contrast, is a much lighter lesbian rom-com that's sneakily far more daring and interesting than it looks at first glance.  It's set up like a typical big family Christmas movie, where our heroine, Abby (Kristen Stwart), is invited to go home for the holidays with her girlfriend Harper (Makenzie Davis) to meet her family.  Abby has bought a ring and is keen to propose.  Alas, it turns out that Harper hasn't come out to her family, and gets Abby to agree to pretend that they're only roommates.  Hijinks ensue, as Abby meets Harper's politician father (Victor Garber), perfectionist mother (Mary Steenburgen), competitive older sister Sloane (Alison Brie), and oddball younger sister Jane (Mary Holland).  And then there are Harper's exes, Connor (Jake McDorman) and Riley (Aubrey Plaza).

I love the way that so many of the usual conventions of these films get turned on their heads here.  Abby spends a lot of time on phone calls with her comic-relief gay friend named John (a scene-stealing Dan Levy), and has several run-ins with an initially hostile Riley.  These two turn out to be her major pillars of emotional and moral support, being the two other out gay characters in the movie who can relate to what she's going through.  Harper's family is a wonderful minefield of long-simmering tensions and rivalries, and I love Allison Brie and Mary Holland as the sisters - one an uptight super mom, and the other a genial weirdo.  The film is the directing debut of Clea DuVall, who co-wrote the film with Holland.  And I'm happy to report that the relationships and the character dynamics here are all very solidly built, and the little moments of awkwardness and humor are very genuine and relatable. "Happiest Season" fits right in with the '90s Christmas comedies of my childhood - which were a little meaner and a little smarter than most of the output today.  And thus, much more fun.  

Of course, both movies end happily with romances flourishing and major family bonds renewed, because it's the holidays.  Both movies are good enough that they earn those endings though, and "Uncle Frank" wisely offers a little bitter to go with the sweet.  I think I prefer "Happiest Season," though, for just embracing its premise so wholeheartedly, and giving a bunch of talented actresses a chance to shine.

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"Mulan" and "The One and Only Ivan"

So, I'm already paying for a Disney+ subscription, and since it's been added to the back catalogue, I don't have to feel too guilty about watching the new live-action "Mulan" that has generated so much controversy.  But really, there's not much to say about it as a film.

Like all the other recent Disney remakes of their animated films, the new "Mulan" is pretty lackluster.  In a bid to appeal more to Chinese audiences, they removed most of the humor, the character of Mushu, and the songs.  They also swapped out the villain to a more historically accurate one, and rejiggered the big conflict to be more about Mulan (Liu Yifei) honoring her family and country instead of learning to be true to herself.  Vast sums of money were spent to ape Zhang Yimou visuals, and create some epic battle sequences, which all look great, but the story is pretty blah.  Writers Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver should get some points for trying to stick closer to the original source material, and director Niki Caro does her best to make the film feel more authentically Chinese, but the efforts to avoid offense just end up making the film feel more generic.

I was never much of a fan of the 1998 "Mulan" to begin with, but its strengths were mostly in its sense of humor and its characters, not its pageantry.  While I'm glad that this isn't a slavish copy of the animated film the way that "Beauty and the Beast" and "The Lion King" were, the new "Mulan" doesn't come up with much original material to distinguish itself the way that "Aladdin" did.  Liu Yifei has some screen presence, but the film maintains a certain distance, and Mulan never really gets much interiority.  There's also the constant distraction of the stunt casting.  While it's nice to see familiar character actors like Rosalind Chao, Tzi Ma, and Jason Scott Lee getting more of the spotlight as Mulan's parents and the villain, you've also got new characters like Donnie Yen's Commander Tung, and Gong Li's evil sorceress Xianniang, who seem to have been created solely as a way to get Donnie Yen and Gong Li into the movie.  Oh, and Jet Li plays the emperor, because why not?

I also took the opportunity to watch "The One and Only Ivan," based on the children's book by K.A. Applegate.  It's a sweet, unassuming little family film that reminds me a lot of the animal pictures Disney used to churn out regularly in the 90s, like the "Homeward Bound" and "101 Dalmatians" reboots.  The difference this time around is that all the animals are CGI.  The star of the picture is a gorilla named Ivan (Sam Rockwell), the central attraction of a tiny circus based out of a suburban shopping center, called the Big Top Mall.  HIs friends include elephants, a seal, dogs, birds, and a rabbit, all of them created in a computer, and all of them voiced by an array of celebrity talent.  Their human co-stars include Bryan Cranston as the circus ringmaster and owner Mack, and Ramon Rodriguez as a friendly janitor.

The film uses all the technology advancements from films like "The Jungle Book" and "The Lion King" to very good effect.  There were many shots where I couldn't tell that the CGI animals weren't the real thing.  It also allows for the adaptation of a story that couldn't be done in live action otherwise - at least, without resorting to the exploitation of endangered animals - an issue the film takes a firm stance against.  I should caution that the film is aimed directly at the sensibilities of younger children, and will probably be too twee for all but the most indulgent grown-ups.  It runs barely ninety minutes, and often feels like an extended test run for some of the featured effects technology.  However, "Ivan" is exactly the kind of middle-budget, middle tier kids' film that they're really not making enough of these days, and I'm not going to look a gift gorilla in the mouth.

And I'd really rather Disney be using their CGI magic to make films like this instead of "The Lion King II" or whatever else they've got percolating from the reboot machine.

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"DuckTales" Reboot, Year Two

Spoilers ahead.

Well, I went and binged the second season, and I'm glad that I did. The second season of the "DuckTales" reboot is right up there with the first, though not quite as intense or emotional. This year is all about getting to know Della Duck (Paget Brewster), who has been stranded on the moon for a decade, and finally figures out a way to get back to Earth. And underscoring how the new "DuckTales" takes its material much more seriously than the '87 series, there's a lot of time spent on Della's inexperience and growing pains as a parent. The other big throughline is Louie's development as a wits-wielding "sharpie" as he tries to follow in Scrooge's footsteps, and gets himself thoroughly tangled up in Scrooge and Glomgold's (Keith Ferguson) latest contest to be the richest duck in the world. The show seems to be spotlighting one of the kids every season.

And because "DuckTales" '17 loves its references and callbacks to the long and storied Duck/McDuck history, the show devotes many episodes to other familiar faces. Season two introduces us to Cousin Fethry (Tom Kenny) from the comics, reunites Donald with his "Three Caballeros" buddies Jose Carioca and Panchito (Bernardo de Paula and Arturo Del Puerto), and even finds ways to get Ludwig Von Drake (Corey Burton) and Bubba the caveduck (Dee Bradley Baker) in on the fun. The Christmas episode is an absolute smorgasbord of references, including the 1983 "Mickey's Christmas Carol" featurette where many of us first saw the animated Scrooge McDuck, the 1949 Carl Barks story "Lost in the Andes," and the 1938 Donald Duck short "Donald's Nephews," which contains the first mention of "Dumbella" Duck. Oh, and we get to see a teenage Donald Duck as a wannabe '90s grunge rocker. Seriously.

As much as I'm enjoying the show, I'm also starting to see some of the downsides to the never-ending expansion of the "DuckTales" universe. There are so many, many characters that there really isn't the room to give everyone their due. Sure, the guest stars like Storkules (Chris Diamantopoulos) are only around for an episode or two, but I sure could have used more time with Lena and Webby's new friend Violet (Libe Barer). Or with Launchpad and Darkwing Duck. Or with Gyro and Fenton and Gandra Dee (Jameela Jamil). Conversely, I've never been a big fan of the primary "DuckTales" villains, namely Glomgold and the Beagle Boys. Glomgold gets a lot of screentime this year, and he's a big improvement on the previous versions of the character, but he's still the kind of single minded dum-dum who ends up being at the center of a lot of filler. He's great for comedy in small doses, but often outstays his welcome. Ditto Ma Beagle (Margo Martindale) and her brood of barely differentiated hooligans. And then there's Manny the headless man-horse…. horse-man?

As a result, the second season of "DuckTales" has a lot of highs and lows. It loses a lot of the sense of ongoing mystery and familial tension that shored up some of the weaker installments in the first season. Instead, there are a lot of more episodes that feel very disconnected and self-contained, and not always for the best. The Cousin Fethry episode, for instance, is one of the more tedious adventures because it just amounts to Huey, Dewey, and Launchpad bumming around an underwater science outpost with a few predictable monster hijinks. The whole thing is based on a misunderstanding, and Huey and Dewey learn some very half-hearted lessons (don't be greedy, don't be afraid of becoming a nerd). The only saving grace is that the show figures out a way to tie this encounter into the season finale in a nice way.

On the other hand, you do get some very high highs, like the wonderful characterization of Della as a spitfire adventurer who desperately wants to make up for her mistakes and still has a lot of faults. She gets individual episodes with each of the kids, a few skirmishes with Scrooge and Beakley, a wildly funny episode with Launchpad, and a great reunion with Donald. This is how you introduce a new character into your main cast and get everyone to love her. It's actually hard to think of Donald without his history with Della now.

And it'll be really interesting going into next season, because another of the Duck universe's big characters is finally showing up - Daisy Duck.
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My Favorite Vincente Minnelli Film

There are few directors I can think of who are more synonymous with the Golden Age Hollywood studio system than Vincente Minnelli.  He worked with all the big stars of the era, and was as deft with melodramas as he was with comedies, but his most memorable projects were the big, spectacular MGM musicals.  He worked on over a dozen, including "The Band Wagon," "Meet Me in St. Louis," and "Brigadoon." He'd be brought in just to design musical sequences for films like "Strike Up the Band" and "Ziegfeld Follies."  His most beloved film, however, is the Gene Kelly musical "An American in Paris."

Initially I was a little hesitant about picking "An American in Paris" because I could never remember the plot very well.  And, no wonder - the plot is probably the least important part of the film.  The titular American is a painter named Jerry, played by Gene Kelly.  He falls for a beautiful French girl named Lise, played by Leslie Caron in her debut role.  Alas, Lise is already the girlfriend of one of Jerry's pals.  Jerry tries to woo her regardless.  All this is really just an excuse for dance numbers, song numbers, and beautiful flights of fancy that tend to exist in their own, beautifully discrete little sequences.  There's the delightful bit where Gene Kelly leads a passel of kids in a rendition of "I've Got Rhythm."  There's the scene of a pianist daydreaming that he's performing with an orchestra - and in his dream he's every member of that orchestra, the conductor, and even the audience.  

And then there's the ballet.  Seventeen minutes of pure, uninterrupted dancing set in highly stylized environments inspired by the work of celebrated French painters, including Renoir, Rousseau, and Toulouse-Lautrec.    The ballet is the film's grand finale, one that stops all the action dead in its tracks to cut away to a final dream sequence with no dialogue and no real narrative beyond embodying the main character's impressions of Paris and his secret yearnings for love.  It's so gorgeous that it's easily the most memorable part of "An American in Paris."   The set designs and art direction make it look like Gene Kelly and Leslie Caron are actually dancing inside the famous paintings, and interacting with the painted figures come to life.  Minnelli would later stage similar sequences in his Vincent Van Gogh biopic "Lust for Life," but nothing on the scale of the ones realized here.  

The sheer spectacle for the sake of spectacle of the ballet is unmatched by anything else in that era.  It's executed with so much care and craft, and involves so many complex technical elements - dozens of dancers, multiple sets, special effects, and all the different scene transitions - that probably no one but MGM at the height of its success would have had the resources to attempt such a feat of filmmaking.   The whole film is very much style over substance, but it's style elevated to the point where it essentially becomes the substance.  The dream Paris of Vincente Minnelli in no way resembles real life, and very little of the film was actually filmed in France.  Instead, nearly everything was recreated on the MGM backlot, including the fountain in the Place de la Concorde.  The preparations for the ballet sequence were so lengthy and complicated, Minnelli had time to film the Spencer Tracy comedy "Father's Little Dividend," during a break in production.

"An American in Paris" was one of the many MGM musicals produced by Arthur Freed during the studio's golden age, and represents a confluence of several major talents.  It was scripted by Alan Jay Lerner.  The songs were written by George Gershwin, with lyrics by his brother Ira, and musical direction by Saul Chaplin and Johnny Geen.  It has the rare distinction of being a film based on a musical composition, a Gershwin orchestral piece written in 1928 that shares the same name.  Minnelli and Gene Kelly were at their career peaks, and both had significant creative control over the production - everything from conceiving the ballet sequence to picking a newcomer as the leading lady.  

Minnelli would go on to make many other classic films, including "The Band Wagon" and "Gigi," and I strongly considered "The Band Wagon" for a spotlight, as it also contains a similar ballet sequence with Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse.  I prefer the one from "An American in Paris," though, for its towering stylistic ambitions and unparalleled beauty.  In my mind, it's one of the best examples of what musicals are all about. 

What I've Seen - Vincente Minnelli

Cabin in the Sky (1943)

Meet Me in St. Louis (1944)

The Clock (1945)

The Pirate (1948)

Father of the Bride (1950)

An American in Paris (1951)

The Bad and the Beautiful (1952)

The Band Wagon (1953)

Brigadoon (1954)

Kismet (1955)

Lust for Life (1956)

Tea and Sympathy (1956)

Gigi (1958)

Some Came Running (1958)

Bells Are Ringing (1960)

The Courtship of Eddie's Father (1963)

The Sandpiper (1965)

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