The Podcast Inundation

I usually write a post about the film and TV related podcasts I've been listening to every year around this time, but the current situation being what it is, I thought the topic required some more meta commentary.

Everybody is podcasting.  In the age of COVID-19, one of the few categories of media that has been largely unaffected has been the humble podcast.  And now everybody in the entertainment industry has one.  Beloved cinematographer Roger Deakins started his in May.  Former "Community" castmates Joel McHale and Ken Jeong started "The Darkest Timeline" podcast in late March, and have been wrangling an increasingly star-studded guest list.  Emily V. Gordon and Kumail Nanjiani created a six-episode series, mostly talking about movies.  There are new podcasts about "The Wire" and "The Sopranos," with various talent from those shows involved.  Also, I am dying to get my hands on the new Audible adaptation of "The Sandman" starring James McAvoy, which I hope will help tide me over until that Netflix show gets rolling.  

The trouble is - and this may well be the most extreme of all first world problems - I have drastically reduced time to listen to podcasts right now.  Having shifted to working from home, I no longer have a commute.  Frequently facing gaps in childcare, I'm often working while parenting, which means headphones and earbuds are out of the question.  I could listen to podcasts while out of the house running errands, or those rare instances when I get to exercise by myself, but that only adds up to a fraction of the time I used to have available.  For me, quarantine has meant a drastic reduction in privacy and time I get to spend alone.  When I do have time to myself, I default to watching a show or movie out of habit.  A week's worth of pre-COVID podcasts took me about two months to get through while sheltering in place.  

And when I went back to my RSS and Podbean  feeds for my next batch of shows, I was hit by the flood.  So many podcasters who were previously juggling multiple projects suddenly had way more time to devote to their podcasts, and podcast they did.  I'd expected a few gaps here and there for various shows, but this wasn't the case at all.  I mostly listen to film related podcasts that cover a mix of old and new releases.  With theatrical releases paused, most of them transitioned right over to VOD releases or decided to discuss old favorites instead.  Is "Tenet" delayed again?  Well, let's do a Christopher Nolan retrospective and talk about his Batman trilogy and the tenth anniversary of "Inception."  The Double Toasted guys are reviewing stuff from the so-bad-its-good pile, while the Slashfilmcast seems to have embraced the chance to watch random older films like the Japanese foodie classic "Tampopo."

I wound up with over eighty hours of podcasts, even after significantly pruning down the offerings.  In some cases this wasn't difficult - a few of the shows I follow did change their formats to cover topics I wasn't interested in.  In most other cases, however, I had more trouble.  What's more, I wanted to hear about how people were coping with the lockdowns and how they were reacting to the Black Lives Matter protests.  There have been movies and television shows being released regularly during the past few months, not to mention the launches of multiple new streaming services including HBO Now, Peacock, and Quibi (RIP).  I wanted to hear all of those discussions.  And I realized that I missed being plugged into the entertainment world, and the little piece of normalcy that listening to podcasts afforded me.    

So, over the last week or so I've adjusted my routine.  I've cut down on videos and spend more of my evenings listening to podcasts while doing chores.  Sometimes I only get in twenty minutes or so, but I find the podcasts much better for my mental health than obsessing over news broadcasts.  Still, I was relieved to learn that "Unspooled," one of the classic film podcasts I've been doggedly trying to keep up with, wrapped up recently and won't be adding more episodes to the considerable backlog I have to work through.  And I've been secretly happy every time that I note that some of the more sporadically updated shows I follow have taken another week or two off.    

I'm still way behind, but little by little I'm catching up.  Hopefully by the time the pandemic is over, I'll have at least that tiny part of my life straightened out. 

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"The Trial of the Chicago 7" and "Kajillionaire"

I've become a lot less patient with certain "based on a true story" style melodramas over the years, because the dramatic license they take goes a step or two too far.  Take Aaron Sorkin's latest, "The Trial of the Chicago 7," which he wrote and directed.  Clearly, a lot of research and a lot of effort went into depicting the famous trial of prominent '60s activists who were charged with inciting the 1968 Chicago riots, including Tom Hayden (Eddie Redmayne) and Rennie Davis (Alex Sharp) of Students for a Democratic Society, Abbie Hoffman (Sacha Baron Cohen) and Jerry Rubin (Jeremy Strong) of the Youth International Party, and Bobby Seale (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) of the Black Panther Party.  This is very timely and interesting material, full of strong characters and some great little moments of pointed commentary and humor.  Sorkin, unfortunately, can't seem to curb his own worst impulses.

Let's take the character of David Dellinger (John Carroll Lynch), a noted pacifist who is one of the accused.  Near the end of the trial, the actions of presiding Judge Hoffman (Frank Langella) are so outrageously unfair and upsetting, Dellinger gets in a scuffle and throws a punch at a guard.  This incident is completely manufactured.  Worse, it goes completely against the nature of the real Dellinger, who was committed to nonviolent action.  Similarly, the movie ends on an obviously manufactured moment of Hollywood courtroom heroism that combined several bits of real events and blew them up to epic proportions.  I'll all for dramatizations taking some liberties, like the the three heroines of "Hidden Figures" somehow all being close friends, but the events of "Chicago 7" are already so outsized and present so much juicy drama that I don't understand why the filmmakers thought that they had to resort to this kind of pandering  to generate more.

What really gets to me is that there are some wonderful scenes in "Chicago 7."  Tom Hayden being grilled on his part in the riots by his lawyer, William Kunstler (Mark Rylance), is fantastic.  Abbie Hoffman on the stand and having back-and-forth with federal prosecutor Richard Schultz (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is great.  Michael Keaton as former Attorney General Ramsey Clark is a standout in spite of his brief appearances, and Jeremy Strong as Jerry Rubin is just delightful.  Sorkin absolutely understands how to put together a crowd-pleasing, impactful picture. He just strikes me as awfully disingenuous as a storyteller this time out, which ends up terribly undercutting the messages that he's trying to get across.

    

I'm much happier to see the return of Miranda July, with one of her most accessible films, "Kajillionaire."  It's got the most conventional narrative by far, though the characters are anything but.  The Dyne family is a trio of grifters.  Robert (Richard Jenkins) and Theresa (Debra Winger) are the parents of Old Dolio (Evan Rachel Wood), a young woman in her twenties.  All of them are a walking shambles, but Old Dolio looks especially peculiar, dressed in baggy clothes with shaggy long hair.  As we watch the three of them pull a series of cons together, it becomes apparent that Old Dolio is woefully undersocialized and has been neglected by her parents to the point where she's emotionally stunted.  Then they meet a young woman named Melanie (Gina Rodriguez), who the parents bring into one of their jobs, and everything changes.  

"Kajillionaire" is full of wacky, off-the-wall concepts and moments of farce.  There's the landlord who cries constantly, and rents the Dynes an office space where foam seeps through the cracks in the walls twice a day.  There's the funny limbo walk that the Dynes do in order to sneak by the landlord's office, and Old Dolio's bizarre fake ninja moves to evade security cameras.  There's the fascinating visit to the house of a dying man, who wants to hear the sounds of  his family as he goes, prompting the Dynes to playact being the normal household that they never were.  There's the entire childhood's worth of birthday presents.  There's the part where Old Dolio dances.  And yet, underlying the comedy is some truly touching, genuine human drama as Old Dolio faces her worst fears about her parents and learns to open up to the rest of the world.

I am compelled as a movie nerd to compare "Kajillionare" to the work of whimsical auteurs like Wes Anderson and Michel Gondry, because it exists in a world that plays by its own metaphysical rules, has such a distinctive style and, and gives performers like Evan Rachel Wood and Gina Rodriguez the opportunity to deliver some great comic performances.  However, what I especially appreciate about July's work is that it's so minimalist and unfussy, so emotionally well grounded, and it looks at these relationships through a different lens than we typically see.   No matter your background, I doubt there's anyone  out there who won't empathize with Old Dolio and Melanie as they try to navigate their rocky personal crises, or discover new aspects of themselves. 

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"Charlie Brown" Leaves the Airwaves

So, here's an interesting sign of the times.  For the first time since it premiered in 1966, "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown" will not air this season on network television.  Neither will "A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving" or "A Charlie Brown Christmas."  All three specials will be streaming exclusively on AppleTV+, thanks to a new deal with the Peanuts' rights holders.  And just so you don't think that Apple is being too much of a grinch, all three specials will be free to stream online for a few days each.  You can catch "The Great Pumpkin," for instance, free from October 30th to November 1st.  There's no word yet on whether it's just for this year or not.     

On the one hand, as an animation fan, this turn of events doesn't strike me as an inherently bad thing.  A prime time network broadcast is not the best place to watch these holiday specials anymore.  Over the years we've constantly seen the networks mucking around with the integrity of the programs - snipping out scenes to make room for more commercials, shrinking the credit blocks, or experimenting with the format.  The accompanying advertisements seem to keep getting more obnoxious and intrusive every year.  I continue to loathe those little pop-up style, screen obliterating, animated logo bugs.  Streaming has been mercifully free of ads so far.  These holiday specials have also regularly been shuffled around to different channels and rights holders - currently AMC has most of the Rankin/Bass Christmas specials after they aired for decades on Freeform/ABC Family.  

On the other hand, it is worth noting that while the streaming revolution is in full swing, not everyone has ready access to the internet, and the older audiences most likely to be watching the "Charlie Brown" specials may be the least internet-savvy.  As much as I love the Peanuts characters, like the Muppets, they have struggled to connect with younger generations, and play best to nostalgic old fogeys like me.  And I admit that I do have great memories of watching many of these holiday specials.  "The Great Pumpkin" was not one of my favorites, but I appreciated that it was a constant, one of those TV programs that would come back every year until it became an easy point of reference.  For a while it was paired with the "Garfield" Halloween special, mirroring the front page of the newspaper comics section that featured "Peanuts" and "Garfield" together for a good chunk of my childhood.  "The Great Pumpkin" not only outlasted "Garfield," but it's also pretty well outlasted newspapers.

Network and cable television losing content to streaming has been a recurring theme lately as the major media companies focus their efforts on improving the libraries of their new streaming services.  TV and cable are slowly becoming the second stringers, steadily losing more and more viewers and scrambling for ways to adjust.  The number of Comcast subscribers is currently about 15% the number of Netflix users, and less than half the number of Disney+ users.  COVID can be directly blamed for some of this fall's network programming gaps, resulting in CBS putting the first seasons of "Star Trek: Discovery" and "One Day at a Time" on their schedules, but this is only accelerating something that's already been happening for a long time.  We can view it as a good thing for the Peanuts that their holiday specials are considered valuable enough for Apple to be making a deal like this.

And yet, these older perennials will only retain their popularity if people still watch them, and with a major platform change this is far from a given.  Media history is littered with examples.  Ted Turner bought exclusive cable rights to "The Wizard of Oz" and "Gone With the Wind," and as a result they largely disappeared from popular culture.  The old WB and Disney shorts were pulled from network and syndicated stations in the '90s to help pad out cable content, and now they're largely gone too.  I can't think of much else that has remained on broadcast television for so long in its near-original state - which begs the question: am I really nostalgic for these old holiday specials like "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown" or am I nostalgic for the experience of stumbling across them on network television every couple of years?  And when was the last time that happened anyway?

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I Think Way Too Much About Star Ratings

It's been a while since I've had a real navel-gazer of a post. Today, I'm going to ramble a bit about the star ratings system. Despite avoiding numerical ratings in my written reviews, I do use them in other contexts, especially with films. They're handy shorthand for my gut feelings about a film - and with something as reductive as star ratings, they can only reflect something as subjective as gut feelings.

So, let's look at the typical five star ratings system. How do I determine what gets four stars and what gets five? What is the meaningful difference between one rating and the next? I've written a bit about using star ratings, but not about what those ratings actually mean to me.

Let's start with the star ratings I use most often, *** and ***½ stars. I feel that the average score for all films is probably lower, about **½, but I have the benefit of choosing which films I want to watch and write about. I don't watch movies for a living, so I can happily avoid the bulk of the dreck. However, being able to pick from the more promising films skews my average scores higher than they would be if I were watching every movie actually released. I've thought about adjusting for this, taking away a half or even full star from reviews to make my average **½, but that doesn't mesh with how I think about and categorize films.

Like most people, a *** rating is where I draw the line at a movie being counted as good or recommendable. That's easily converted to a 6/10 or 60%, which is the threshold for being a "fresh" film on Rottentomatoes. In most grading rubrics, that's also the minimum score for a passing grade. And that's more or less what I think of films that I rate ***. They get a pass. They're good enough to be worth watching for two hours. They provide an acceptable level of entertainment and diversion. They might do one or two things especially well, but there are also some flaws. Recent films I've given this rating include "Underwater," a solid action adventure film, and "Vivarium," an existential horror.

A ***½ rating is for films that strike me as more memorable, that are better put together and have more signs of creative vision. They're not always entirely successful, but these are the films that have managed to convince me that they have some real creative juices flowing. For instance, there's "The Lovebirds," which follows a pretty typical comedy template, but also serves as a good showcase for the particular talents and humor of Issa Rae and Kumail Nanjiani. Or there's "The Gentlemen," which is not one of Guy Ritchie's best gangster films, but it's an awful lot of fun, and Matthew McConaughy turns in a great lead performance. I also gave "Onward" ***½ stars, despite my not connecting to it very well. It's not one I enjoyed much, but it's clearly a very good film aimed at someone else.

Higher ratings are easier and more fun to talk about. A five star film is a rare bird, an indisputable classic. There are maybe one or two a year. The last film I gave that rating was "Little Women." A ****½ film is a very strong film that just misses the mark for being a classic - usually something in that tier that I have minor quibbles about. "Marriage Story" and "Parasite" are currently both in this category for me. These are among my favorite films of the year, that I connected with very strongly, but there just wasn't that gut feeling that I was watching one of the greats. Four star films are pretty common, displaying all-around strong technical and creative skill, but maybe with a few notable weaknesses. "Jojo Rabbit," "1917," and "Us" are all films in my Top Ten that I'd put here.

On the flip side, I use negative ratings more rarely and it's harder for me to differentiate among the lowest ratings on the scale. A **½ film is not necessarily a film I wouldn't recommend, just one with some noticeable flaws that affect my enjoyment. "Bloodshot" is a good example, an energetic cheesy action flick that stone-faced Vin Diesel is taking much too seriously. A two star film is one where something has seriously gone awry, often in the basic conception. Two star films can still have elements that are enjoyable, but the film as a whole doesn't work. See "Scoob!" or "Guns Akimbo." I still watch plenty of films in the two star range, and lots of them are popular.

I come across one star and *½ star films less often, because I'm usually pretty good at dodging these. The last *½ star film I watched was "Inheritance," a real stinker where 90% of the film was awful, but it did have a halfway decent performance by Simon Pegg that I thought was better than the film deserved. So, it wasn't totally awful the way a one star film would be. It's actually pretty difficult to get a one star rating out of me, because I'm usually able to find something likeable about even the worst piece of dreck. So my one star films are often also the ones that have managed to tick me off in some way, like the later Michael Bay "Transformers" movies.

And is there anything worse than that? Well, there's the worst of the worst, which I don't watch if I can help it. There are maybe five films that I've rated zero stars, but these were productions so incompetent that the finished product should barely even be counted as films. I'm talking about foreign knockoffs, ranty propaganda pieces, and amateur stuff like "The Room." In some ways getting a ½ star is worse, because that's what I give horrible films that at least display some technical competence. "Dolittle," for instance, got ½ a star. As for why I bothered to watch it, well, sometimes you've just got to see the disasters for yourself.

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"Hamilton" is Worth the Wait

Spoilers ahead.

After putting it off and putting it off for ages, I finally watched the Disney+ live taping of the Broadway musical "Hamilton" with the original cast. Of course, I've been hearing about the show for ages, and I'm familiar with a good chunk of the song and much of the talent involved. Lin Manuel-Miranda and Daveed Diggs are everywhere lately. However, I always held back from learning too much in case I ever had the chance to actually see the show myself. I suspected I might have to wait until a film adaptation - I guess I was half right.

So, for those of you who've been under a rock for the past five years, "Hamilton" is a stage musical about America's forgotten founding father, Alexander Hamilton (Lin Manuel-Miranda), an American Revolutionary and the country's first Treasury Secretary. He's the man who wrote most of the Federalist Papers and set up the U.S. banking system, but is best remembered for having been shot and killed in a duel by his rival Aaron Burr. (Leslie Odom Jr.) Lin-Manuel Miranda wrote and composed the show, intending to use modern styles of music - including hip-hop R&B, rap, and soul - to bring the story of America's founding into a more contemporary context. To that end, the cast is comprised of almost all non-white actors, the major exception being Jonathan Groff as a campy King Geroge III. Miranda plays Hamilton, Phillipa Soo and Renée Elise Goldsberry play his love interests, and Christopher Jackson, Daveed Diggs, Anthony Ramos, and Okieriete Onaodowan juggle multiple roles as various founding fathers. Diggs, for instance, appears as the Marquis de Lafayette in the first half of the show, and Thomas Jefferson in the back half.

Filming a traditional stage performance is always a tricky business, because all the choreography and performances and stagecraft are meant to play to a live audience, not a screen. "Hamilton" has some of the usual issues with having to choose between close-up shots to capture a particular performance, or wide shots to take in everything else that's happening on the stage. Fortunately, "Hamilton" is structured around the individual performances rather than the larger scale spectacle, and there aren't that many sequences where I felt like I was missing too much of the experience. It really is a beautifully executed musical, and the camera was able to catch a lot of the little moments of humor and theatricality that you could never get by just listening to the soundtrack - the costume and scene changes, the little winks at the dual roles, and the bits of pantomime. Jonathan Groff literally spits his lyrics as King George III. Phillippa Soo's Eliza clearly doesn't want her husband going anywhere when she sends him off to war. Daveed Diggs and Leslie Odom Jr. are just plain amazing to watch.

Speaking of which, that's what I've been doing a lot in the past few days - listening to parts of the "Hamilton" soundtrack and rewatching certain parts of the filmed version over and over again. The more famous songs have been circulating in the wider culture for a while now, so I've fixated on "Hurricane" leading into "The Reynolds Pamphlet," parts of the second act that I hadn't heard yet. There's also "Helpless" and "Satisfied," the first time I've seen a flashback handled in a stage show quite like this. The duels, of course, are completely different without accompanying visuals. And then there's the whole ending, starting with "The Election of 1800" through "Obedient Servant" and "The World Was Wide Enough" to "Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story."

It's also been a lot of fun to go back to all the old reviews and the spoofs and the interviews from back in 2016 when the "Hamilton" phenomenon was really taking off. I might be coming late to the party, but it's nice being able to share in the giddy feeling of discovery and enthusiasm for a really significant piece of media, just a bit. As much as I enjoyed the filmed version, it also emphasized for me that there's no substitute for the live version. I'll still be looking for my chance to see "Hamilton" in a proper theatrical setting as soon as I can.

And hopefully the success of "Hamilton" on Disney+ will lead to other musicals becoming available in a similar way. I hear HBO has "American Utopia" in the works.


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My Favorite Dario Argento Film

It took me a while to really warm up to the work of Dario Argento, the most prominent purveyor of Italian horror films, better known as giallo.  "Suspiria" intrigued me with its bright colors and deadly imagery, but the open-ended narrative left me puzzled.  "The Bird With Crystal Plumage" had some fantastic suspense sequences, but didn't seem to add up to much.  The films were always entertaining and inventive in their easy dispensation of horror schlock, but sometimes outlandish to the point of being bizarre.

Eventually I began to be drawn in by the unapologetic viscerality of Argento's work, the recurring themes and ideas, and the artistry of the gore.  He does a few things particularly well - the depictions of the supernatural, the sinister first person POV shots of his killers and monsters, and the way he establishes this exciting mood of mystery and danger.  Plot is secondary to incident - in fact Argento was known to build his films around his suspense and murder sequences.  And those murder sequences still stand out as unusually brutal, bloody, and visceral even today.  Rendered in vivid colors, full of mysterious symbols, and often elaborately shot with unusual angles, the deaths in an Argento film are always the main event.

"Profundo Rosso," known in the US as "Deep Red" is the Argento film that worked best for me, because it manages to maintain this thrilling, heightened atmosphere of suspense all the way through the whole film.  From the very first scene, a Christmas flashback that turns deadly, we're treated to a deeply unsettling mix of the innocent and the horrific - disturbing images of nightmarish toys, scribbled children's drawings of evil deeds, and a small boy holding a very big knife next to the Christmas tree.  Most of the mystery plotting revolves around David Hemmings' detective character decoding psychic visions and a ghastly picture book, but when we see a glimpse or two of the world through the eyes of the disturbed killer, and the color palette turns the red up to lurid levels, you can feel the psychopathy bleeding through the screen.

Likewise, while there are hints of the supernatural all over the film, and the killer has an obsession with toys, the actual kills in "Deep Red" are mostly very realistic and well grounded. The most we see of the killer for the bulk of the film is a pair of black leather glove-clad hands.  These hands do not merely wield a gun from deep in the shadows, but reach out to actively bash victims' heads against walls, and drown a woman in a boiling bath.  The murders have to play out in close-ups, because Argento shows them to us from the killer's point of view, but takes pains not to ever show us the killer.  It's been widely reported that Argento was wearing the black gloves himself in all the close-ups.  And it's thanks to his efforts, that the third act can present us with the rude shock of a monstrous puppet figure sprinting straight towards the next target - and for a few moments it sure seems like a possessed demon toy may have been the real killer all along.  

We have to talk about the music, supplied by the prog-rock group Goblin, who Argento would go on to collaborate with on many other films.  I find it difficult to think of Argento films without the work of Goblin, whose ominous, sonorous tracks are a great match for Argento's off-the-wall camera work and psychedelic mise en scene.  "Deep Red" was their first project together, and it makes such a difference to the whole tone and feel of the film - adding a new layer of fantasy and psychological texture  to Argento's giallo wonderland.  And of all the amazing sets and settings that have appeared in Argento's films, my favorite is the decaying "Deep Red" mansion, with its ivy-covered stonework and telltale chipping plaster.  Like so many other things in Argento films, it's a vision of beauty totally corrupted by the forces of evil.  But it is still beautiful, if you can appreciate it for what it is.   

So Happy Halloween, everyone.  May all your dreams be sweet, and may all  your nightmares be Italian.

What I've Seen - Dario Argento

The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1970)

The Cat o' Nine Tails (1971)

Four Flies on Grey Velvet (1971

Deep Red (1975)

Suspiria (1977)

Inferno (1980)

Tenebrae (1982)

Phenomena (1985)

Opera (1987)

The Stendhal Syndrome (1996)

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My Top Ten Miniseries

Well, this is going to be another of those lists with a lot of obvious omissions. I haven't seen "Roots" or "Shogun" or dozens of the other most famous, most culturally resonant television miniseries. However, I have seen an awful lot of miniseries anyway, and I thought it was time to enumerate my favorites. It's only fair, having done the TV movies last time. Entries below are unranked and arranged by airdate. Spoilers should be minimal.

I, Claudius (1976) - It's Roman history as a bitter family drama, from the point of view of the unlikely Emperor Claudius. Did any other television production ever have a cast as amazing as this one? The BBC made this very cheaply, with little by way of production values, which just meant there was less getting in the way of the magnificent performances. And while all the various acting greats playing the various Emperors are all well and good, the standout is Sian Phillps as Livia - as great a screen villain as there has ever been.

Berlin Alexanderplatz (1980) - Possibly Rainer Werner Fassbender's magnum opus, a fifteen hour adaptation of the Alfred Doblin novel looks at the tragic life of a man in Weimar Germany. The production is sparse, and the early hours fairly repetitive and mundane. However, the surreal finale is worth all the tedium, paying off all the various character relationships and conflicts with a bizarre dream sequence. Again, there's not much to the production, as was Fassbender's usual style, but it certainly doesn't hurt the drama.

V (1983) - Honestly, I don't remember which of the multiple "V" miniseries I saw first, but some of my earliest memories of television were watching the alien invasion unfold night after night with rapt attention. Television miniseries were truly events in the '70s and '80s, because it was never certain if you were ever going to see them rerun. And, having not seen much classic sci-fi at that point, I think "V" was my first real exposure to the whole concept of the alien invasion. Another reason why the 2009 reboot was so disappointing.

The Decalogue (1989) - Krzystof Kieslowski's series about the Ten Commandments is an anthology of different stories, each related to a different Commandement, and several linked to each other via common characters, locations, and other elements. It's an uneven series, but a rewarding one. Two of the hour-long installments would be expanded into full features, "A Short Film About Love" and "A Short Film About Killing." "Killing" is easily the best of the lot, depicting the career of a young murderer and his eventual capture.

Gulliver's Travels (1996) and Merlin (1998) - In the '90s, the fantasy miniseries produced by Robert Halmis Sr. and Jr. were everywhere. These two were my favorites of the lot, both featuring all-star casts, a ton of shiny special effects sequences, and fabulous looking (and sounding) productions. And though both deviated significantly from their source material, they were both very good examples of modernizing and streamlining these older adventure stories for new audiences. I wish current Hollywood producers would take notes.

Band of Brothers (1999) - But if you want to talk about high production values, HBO spared no expense to dramatize the experiences of Easy Company during WWII. The most high budget television production of its time, "Band of Brothers" remains one of the most beloved depictions of WWII in any medium. I think this is because it stays on the ground with the soldiers for the most part, and is ever sympathetic to their experiences and their losses. And the episode where they discover the concentration camp, is of course, impossible to forget.

FLCL (2000) - Studio Gainax's tale of an alien woman crashing the life of a bored youngster on the verge of adolescence. It's anime style overload - incredibly fast paced, aggressively bombastic, and cool, with a rock score that is out of this world. Personally, I think the whole thing is a giant metaphor for puberty, but with a lot of good humor and a lot of animated weirdness that only anime can provide. Yeah, it originally premiered as an OAV in Japan, but "FLCL" aired as a miniseries in the U.S on Cartoon Network, so I'm giving it a spot on this list.

Angels in America (2003) - I'm the most hesitant about including this one, because there are parts of Mike Nichols' adaptation of the Tony Kushner play that never quite clicked with me. However, I just adore the whole spirit and idea of the work, the soul searching of the LGBT community in its darkest hour, and characters grappling with some of America's worst demons (and angels). The cast, of course, is full of familiar faces doing some of their best work. Al Pacino's aging, ailing version of Roy Cohn is especially powerful.

Over the Garden Wall (2014) - Created by Patrick McHale for Cartoon Network, this is a singularly unusual cartoon. It's an autumnal mystery series that builds its fantasy world and introduces its characters little by little, bite by bite. There are ten episodes of ten minutes each, short enough to watch all in one sitting, but structured in a way that keeps each installment feeling brief and fragmentary. It's a very spooky show for brave children, but endlessly charming. I love all the little nods toward older spooky media too.

Chernobyl (2019) - The brilliance of this show hit me when I realized Craig Mazin hadn't just made a miniseries about the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, but about the modern day climate of anti-science and denialism that has gotten us all into so much trouble. Anchored by the performances of Jared Harris and Stellan Skarsgaard, "Chernobyl" finally puts the disaster in very human terms, shining a light on the heroism of the unsung Soviets who sacrificed so much to contain the damage, and everyone who dared to tell the truth.

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"Palm Springs" and "Eurovision"

I've never appreciated summer comedies so much, and streamers Netflix and Hulu have delivered this year. Some mild spoilers lie ahead.

Let's start with the off-kilter romantic comedy "Palm Springs," starring Andy Samberg and Cristin Milioti as Nyles and Sarah, who are both attending a wedding. Sarah is the maid of honor and sister of the bride, Tala (Camila Mendes), while Nyles is the boyfriend of Misty (Meredith Hagner), one of the bridesmaids. Nyles and Sarah are, of course, on a collision course with each other, though there are some considerable personal issues they have to work through. Nyles is stuck in the mother of all ruts, bored with his existence, and largely just does what he wants without any thought of consequences. Misty's life is a mess, and she can't escape a series of terrible choices she's made. Both of them are pretty terrible people, but the type of terrible people who are a lot of fun to watch.

"Palm Springs" is the latest production of Lonely Island, and it's the first feature for both the screenwriter, Andy Siara, and the director, Max Barbakow. The filmmakers manage to take a premise we've seen over and over again and give it some new twists, largely through the use of meta elements and a lot of absurdity. Nyles and Sarah's demented courtship gets them into all sorts of unexpected situations, from barfights and dance routines, to tangling with a very persistent, revenge-minded fellow named Roy (J.K. Simmons). There's a lot of unexpected detail to characters' patterns of behaviors which have some great payoffs and punchlines. Keep in mind that while this is ultimately a romantic comedy at its core, it's the comedy that gets all the attention, and its very much Lonely Island style snark with a bit of a mean streak. Samberg and Milioti make a good pairing, but their characters are both very prickly and the actual romance is kept to a bare minimum. And that's just fine.

Now on to "Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga," which is a genial spoof on the annual televised international song competition that most Americans have never heard of. Will Ferrell and Rachel McAdams star as Lars Erickssong and Sigrit Ericksdóttir, the members of the band Fire Saga. They're Icelandic Eurovision hopefuls who are your typical small town kids with big dreams - though rapidly approaching middle age. Lars is obsessed with Eurovision, desperate to overcome his reputation as a failure and prove himself to his disapproving father Erick (Pierce Brosnan). One thing leads to another, and Fire Saga gets their shot. On the international stage, they encounter new friends and rivals, including the sexy Greek contestant Mita Xenakis (Melissanthi Mahut), and the sexy and very suspicious Russian, Alexander Lemtov (Dan Stevens). Longtime BBC presenter and Eurovision commentator Graham Norton is also on hand, of course.

"Eurovision" falls in line with Ferrell's prior comedies like "Blades of Glory," "Anchorman," and "Talladega Nights: The Legend of Ricky Bobby." "Eurovision" is a little less crass and a little more family friendly, but Ferrell is doing his usual overgrown manchild schtick despite serious diminishing returns. Rachel McAdams is more fun, and I'm glad that she's getting more comedy roles, because she's delightful in these kookier, sillier parts. And "Eurovision" is a deeply, deeply silly movie. It totally plays up the camp value of the show and the usual rising star tropes, while adding all sorts of wacky elements like Lars being haunted by the ghost of a former contestant, and Sigrit earnestly believing in elves. Dan Stevens frequently steals the show as the flamboyant Russian who is hiding a big secret very badly. The film is fairly well written with a bunch of solid running jokes and a nice, heartfelt finale.

It's a "Eurovision" movie, so expect plenty of songs and performances. Many of the numbers are surprisingly catchy, and make for good earworms. Most of the actors had their singing dubbed by professionals, and there are a few fun cameos from prior Eurovision contestants and other entertainers. And Eurovision fans need not worry - everyone is in on the joke, and the show is treated with loving affection by the filmmakers. I wouldn't be surprised if the contest actually picked up some new fans because of this.

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My Top Ten Films of 1963

This is part of my continuing series looking back on films from the years before I began this blog. The ten films below are unranked and listed in no particular order. Enjoy.

8 ½ - Fellini's self-examination through cinema is a magnificent culmination of so many of the director's best impulses and filmmaking ideas. It's also his most cinematically adventurous, mixing fantasy, reality, the personal, the fictional, and the symbolic. This may be the first Fellini film that properly feels "Felliniesque," with its wildly freewheeling style, wonderfully mobile camera, and the parade of circus imagery. The movie contains one of my favorite endings of all time, one that is simultaneously a beautiful summation of Fellini's worldview and a piece of spectacle that could only exist in the movies.

The Big City - This is my favorite Satyajiit Ray film, a great example of a culturally specific story being told in very universal terms. We watch the members of a family adjust to changing economic and social realities in India at a particular point in time - allowing the wife to join the working world and putting her husband and father-in-law in existential crisis. It's such a beautifully balanced film, juggling multiple main characters and viewpoints, and handling its themes with nuance and consideration. It may look like a typical social drama at first glance, but demonstrates over and over that Ray has more on his mind.

Charade - This is a perfect combination of romantic comedy and Hitchcockian thriller, starring Audrey Hepburn and Cary Grant. They are exactly the right pair to sustain the mood of suspense and romantic tension as they race around Paris trying to evade assassins and solve a mystery. Add one of Henry Mancini's best scores and a delightful Peter Stone script full of twists on top of twists, and the film feels effortlessly charming and buoyant. It's difficult to appreciate how well made and nimble "Charade" is until you look at all the subsequent films that have tried and failed to imitate it over the years.

Winter Light - One of Ingmar Bergman's quieter, introspective films on the themes of faith and doubt. A pastor struggles through a crisis of faith, and has encounters with various parishioners as he tries to grapple with his inner demons. This is a very grounded film, taking place in the present day and dealing with modern concerns. It's often viewed as Bergman's final word on the existence of God, but there are no clear answers - just the continuing fight against doubt and dread. It's the kind of cinema about Christianity that I appreciate more over time, as this kind of film is so rarely made anymore.

Passenger - The unfinished Andrzej Munk film examines the power struggle between two women who first met as a female prisoner and a female guard at Auschwitz. The story itself is absorbing, and contains very good performances from the two leads. However, the decision to release the film in its unfinished state is much more fascinating, since the documentary elements and the explanatory framing device employed by directors Witold Lesiewicz and Andrzej Brzozowski, who assembled Munk's incomplete footage, give a sort of unique found-footage effect to the presentation I've never seen duplicated.

Judex - Georges Franju's homage to the silent era and the work of Louis Feuillade is better than the original. The little touches of surrealism, especially the party scene with the bird masks, are fabulous. The leading man, Channing Pollock, was one of the preeminent magicians of his time, and brings just the right amount of style and showmanship to the main character, the masked vigilante Judex. While I appreciate the serials that this was based on, the technical limitations always kept me from embracing them fully. "Judex," however, successfully updates the material while retaining the thrills and mystery.

The Leopard - Luchino Visconti's historical epic examines the twilight of the Sicilian nobility in 1860, on the eve of revolution and a new social order. He considers both the high and the low classes against the backdrop of Italian history, combining insightful social commentary with lavish spectacle. The famous ball sequence is one of the highlights of Italian cinema, not because of the grandeur of the art direction or the scale of the production, but because of the wistful nostalgia of the portrayal. It's Burt Lancaster's Prince, walking alone through the celebration, realizing his time is over, and seeing the end of his era.

The Great Escape - An all-star WWII escape film that makes for an unlikely crowd pleaser. It's three hours long, and doesn't end happily for most of the characters. However, it's also a perfectly constructed heist story that celebrates the ingenuity and gumption of its heroes, and puts Steve McQueen on a motorcycle in the last act where he belongs. A great deal of its appeal is its simplicity - there are few side plots, characters are kept sparse and iconic, and you always know who you're rooting for. It's a long, tense buildup to one of the best finales of the genre, and it's done just right.

The Fire Within - Nobody broods on film the way Louis Malle's characters do. And so it is with the protagonist of "The Fire Within," a depressed young man who wanders around Paris, deciding whether or not to kill himself. Accompanied by Erik Satie's piano music, we watch his adventures unfold - a journey of increasing alienation and distance from the rest of society. It's a glum, introspective movie, but also a beautifully intimate experience. You can see Malle working through many of his own existential questions in the film, and exploring the ins and outs of a Paris that he clearly loves.

The Birds - Leave it to Alfred Hitchcock to turn a B-movie premise into one of the great horror pictures of the '60s. There's no reason given for why the birds turn on us, no logic, no message, and no real narrative beyond the humans wanting to stay alive. And as a result, "The Birds" offers a purely visceral thrill. Nobody remembers the names of the characters or the particulars of their relationships, but everyone remembers the crows on the jungle gym and the seagulls attacking the phone booth. Everyone remembers the terror and the unease that linger long after the film is over.


Honorable mention
Lilies of the Field
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So, How Much of a Problem is "Cuties"?

First things first.  I've seen the film.  I liked the film.  The controversial dance scenes do work in context, though I found them uncomfortable to watch and in poor taste - deliberately so.  Still, I doubt the film would have suffered much if they'd been toned down. 

For those of you who have somehow not heard, Netflix recently premiered the French film "Cuties" on its service, about the travails of an eleven year-old Senegalese Muslim immigrant girl named Amy (Fathia Youssouf) who is growing up in France.  She finds her traditional home life stifling, and becomes fixated on a group of girls from her school who have formed an amateur dance group - the Cuties.  Amy befriends the girls and starts dressing in more revealing clothes.  She steals a phone and finds videos online of adult dancers, who she copies.  As she becomes more and more rebellious, her home life starts falling apart.  When she posts a pornographic photo on social media, she's rejected by the Cuties.  The film has drawn criticism for having the young actresses perform sexually suggestive dance moves onscreen, some involving simulated sex, though these scenes are meant to be viewed as shocking and disturbing. 

It's been fascinating to see how a fairly obscure French art film has blown up into a moral outrage in America.  "Cuties" director Maïmouna Doucouré intended to depict the difficulties of navigating modern girlhood, reflecting her own background as a Senegalese immigrant.  The girls are shown to be exposed to sexually charged images and copying them without understanding what they're doing.  Amy receives mostly positive reactions to her efforts up until she unwittingly goes too far, and then the consequences are dire.  The film is clearly against sexualizing preteen girls - except that the filmmakers may have ended up sexualizing preteen girls in the course of making the film.  But while I agree that the filmmakers crossed a line and deserve criticism, none of the film's content is sexuallly explicit, and the incendiary reaction has been totally out of proportion.  The Netflix marketing of "Cuties" was the first to draw fire, with a poster showing the girls in their skimpy dance outfits in the middle of a performance.  Then trailers and clips of the dance performances started circulating - mostly out of context - and Doucouré started getting death threats.      

So, we have a couple of different things to keep in mind here.  First, "Cuties" is a film that probably never would have been made in the U.S., where the culture around sex and sexuality is very different from France.  You can suggest all the perversity you like in the U.S., but even the tamest sexual acts are rarely depicted diretly, and any perceived danger to children can sink a project.  Still, these content controversies come up every few years, usually involving coming-of-age films featuring underage kids exploring their sexuality.  The thing is, these are usually tiny indie and art house films, like Larry Clark's "Ken Park," that play very limited audiences.  In the past, most of these films would get into a ratings fight with an MPAA, get a tiny release, and then disappear into obscurity.  "Cuties," on the other hand, was sold like something for general audiences.  Because it was on Netflix, it skipped the MPAA entirely, as well as the layers and layers of censorship and curation that a piece of media has to go through to be shown on traditional TV platforms.  Netflix released "Cuties" with a TV-MA rating, but its ad campaign made it look similar to shows  like "Cheer" and "Dance Moms" that feature young performers and are for general audiences.    

 

I think it's that disconnect more than anything else that is fanning the flames here.  Most of the people angriest about "Cuties" have not watched the film, and don't watch similar content.  It's perfectly legitimate to be upset about the preteen and teenage actresses who participated in the film being put into a compromising position by the filmmakers.  However, the calls to cancel Netflix won't stop films like this from being made.  The French film industry is totally behind Doucouré, and there has not been a similar outrage around "Cuties" in France.  The only thing that will happen if Netflix does drop the film is what usually happens to controversial films like this - they become harder to see, and thus easier for mainstream American audiences to pretend that they don't exist.

In the meantime, "Cuties" has become one of the most streamed titles on the platform since its premiere.  My hope is that all the attention will help to shine a light on the film's concerns - the easy access that kids have to adult content online, and the mixed messages girls see about womanhood.  These are important topics, and I hope more media tackle them - but more responsibly in the future.  

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Twelve Hours of "The Third Day"

"The Third Day" is a miniseries co-produced by HBO and Sky Atlantic, a mystery series about a cult that resides on the remote Osea Island. The series is six episodes long, divided into two parts with a special livestream event titled "Autumn" bridging the two halves.  I haven't watched any of the actual episodes of the show so far, but "Autumn" was something that immediately grabbed my attention.  It's a twelve hour long episode, done all in one shot and one take, which was filmed and streamed live over Facebook, on October 3rd.  I didn't watch the stream live, not having heard about the stunt until it was over.  However, the videos of the whole event are still available for free on Facebook for now, and I ended up sitting through some significant chunks of it, while skipping ahead through the slower bits.

And there are a lot of slower bits when you're talking about a twelve hour livestream of an epic piece of performance art.  "The Third Day," follows a character named Sam, played by Jude Law, who comes to Osea and gets caught up in the internal conflicts of the cult.  "Autumn" depicts their religious festival, Esus and the Sea, from sunup to sundown.  The first hour or two of the livestream just shows the camera slowly traveling around the island and into the Osea community, watching various people making preparations.  At one point an old man eats a sandwich.  A little later, we come across a field of what appear to be bodies, but are actually effigies filled with straw being prepared for the ceremony.  Jude Law shows up about two hours in, and then he's quickly dragged away to what looks like a recreation of the Last Supper taking place half-submerged in the ocean.  Not having the context of the previous episodes of the show, it was fun trying to puzzle out what was going on.  The audio is only so-so, and I think I only heard about thirty percent of the spoken dialogue - but you don't really need it to follow what's happening. 

Soon it becomes clear that Sam is being forced to undergo a series of trials, representing the journey of the cult's martyr figure Esus, in order to become the new leader of Osea.  This includes digging his own grave, dragging a wooden boat a long distance to the sea, and balancing on a platform over the ocean until he falls in the water from exhaustion.  It's a marathon piece of acting from Jude Law, and the dozens of other actors we see onscreen.  And I can't imagine the Herculean efforts that were going on, on the other side of the camera in order to pull this off.  I've seen films done all in one shot and one take before, but this is twelve hours of uninterrupted viewing with very few cheats.  The camera does check in on multiple characters and locations, so performers get breaks, but it also stays on certain scenes for an uncomfortably long time.  Jude Law drags that boat all the way to the shore in real time, and we see every step he takes to get there.  The amount of immersiveness and dramatic momentum achieved by the production is terrific.  

 

However, as mesmerizing and impressive as "Autumn" is, it doesn't make me want to watch the rest of "The Third Day."  Going through the synopses of the earlier episodes, this looks like a more grounded take on "The Wicker Man," with less sensationalism and violence.  I'm not particularly interested in this, even if it's only six hours of screen time compared to how many I've already spent watching people wander around Osea in the livestream event.  The viewing experiences are very different, as the regular episodes of "The Third Day" don't appear to incorporate any of the techniques or storytelling devices used in "Autumn."  And I wouldn't watch a version of "Autumn" that was edited down to fit the time constraints of the other episodes either. 

In any case, "The Third Day" pulled off a fantastic experiment in merging live theater with television drama, and creating a really unique piece of art.  I hope we see more like it.

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The First Five of "Grace and Frankie"

It's easy to see how "Grace and Frankie" has managed to outlast just about every other Netflix show currently running. It's a thirty minute sitcom about the adventures of two newly single women in their 70s, with an absolutely incredible cast. Businesswoman Grace (Jane Fonda) and artsy hippie Frankie (Lily Tomlin) have been married to their lawyer husbands, Robert (Martin Sheen) and Sol (Sam Waterston), for decades. In the pilot episode, Robert and Sol announce that they are leaving their wives - and marrying each other.

Grace and Frankie make for a good odd couple, forced to share a beach house together while sorting out their upturned lives. We also spend time with Robert and Sol, who are settling into a new phase of their relationship, which is not without its own bumps. And then there are the kids - Grace and Robert's daughters Briana (June Diane Raphael) and Mallory (Brooklyn Decker), and Frankie and Sol's sons Bud (Baron Vaughn) and Coyote (Ethan Embry), all grown adults. Since Robert and Sol were partners at their law firm together for ages, they've all been socially in each other's orbits forever, and there's quite a bit of past history. Coyote, for instance, is recovering from substance abuse and still has an unrequited crush on Mallory.

For the most part, however, the show stays firmly focused on Grace and Frankie and the woes of being an aging woman. Within the first five episodes, they contend with health scares, obsolescence, and the prospect of retirement homes. They drive each other crazy, but provide each other invaluable support. The leads are well matched - though Tomlin tends to fall into a supporting position more often. It's good to see a show this high profile putting the realistic woes of its underserved older audience front and center. However, everything stays within the format of your typical sitcom. One episode is set at a friend's funeral. One episode involves an awkward dinner party. As touching as it is to see Jane Fonda taking out her hair extensions, or being ignored at the liquor store, every episode ends with some laughs and uplift, avoiding much introspection or melancholy.

And this is perfectly fine, but it's not long before the material starts to feel very familiar. It's easy enough to imagine any number of other older actresses in the parts, and it becomes increasingly clear that the show would not exist without the participation of Fonda and Tomlin. These actresses are icons of the '60s and '70s, and I can't help feeling frustrated that a fairly standard sitcom is the best that Hollywood has to offer them. It's not as bad as the dreadful "Book Club," which Fonda starred in a few years ago with Candice Bergen and Diane Keaton, but "Grace and Frankie" doesn't offer much of a challenge for either actress. With Martin Sheen and Sam Waterston, at least there's the novelty of seeing them play a gay couple. I haven't seen Ethan Embry in anything in years, but he's perfect as a still-twitchy ex-addict. I've seen Fonda and Tomlin play very similar characters before - to the point where I think it would have been more fun if they switched roles.

Still, I have to keep in mind that most sitcoms aren't at their best in their first seasons, and "Grace and Frankie" is currently on their sixth. By all accounts, the show improves considerably in its second year and has found a loyal audience. I haven't been a regular sitcom watcher in a while, and it was surprising how difficult I found it to get back into the particular rhythms of a half hour comedy. Just when I think the show is making the slightest bit of headway with a character or situation, suddenly we're magically back to the status quo and nothing has really changed. The fifth episode is a particularly egregious example, where a really big, interesting turn of events turns out to be a dream sequence.

Then again, "Grace and Frankie" isn't trying to be more than light entertainment that pointedly acknowledges some of the age-related challenges facing its leads. And in that respect, it's pretty successful. It's not a show for me, and this is where I plan to leave it, but it's the right show for plenty of people out there. When I mature a little more, I'm sure I'll come to appreciate it far more than I do now.


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"GLOW," Year Three

Spoilers ahead for the first two seasons.

"GLOW" goes to Las Vegas in season three, which is not as exciting as it sounds, especially as they're stuck there for several months and quickly get bored with the routine of performing the same stage show for the Fan-Tan hotel/casino night after night. There are several new relationships and storylines that spring up, as well as advancements on existing ones. Ruth is still seeing Russell (Victor Quinaz), but is also getting closer to Sam. Debbie finds the long commute from L.A. intolerable, but starts dating a man named Tex (Toby Huss). Cherry and Keith (Bashir Salahuddin) are trying for a baby. Rhonda and Bash are settling into married life, but run into several unresolved issues.

This is all very watchable, but there's no getting away from the fact that the pace of the show is slowed way, way down, and the atmosphere has changed considerably. This is no longer a story of plucky underdogs struggling for survival, but about what happens when the characters achieve a small measure of success, and are forced to pause their lives for long enough to confront some of the issues that they've left on the back burner. Ruth's real dilemma this season is trying to figure out how to still pursue her dream of being a serious actress. And this is pretty tedious and not handled in the best way. Debbie, Sam, and Bash have better storylines, fortunately, but they're all rather slow-moving and melodramatic. There's a noticeable deficit in the action and humor that made the first two seasons feel so exhilarating. The wrestling has been cut to nearly nothing. There's no more suspense over how the show is going to work, because the show is the same every night - albeit with a few variations for special occasions.

What's worse is that the extended ensemble cast gets neglected. There are a few bright spots, like Sheila taking acting classes and Cherry questioning the prospect of motherhood, but otherwise the little side plots and arcs are mostly a bust. Tamme's situation has a lot of potential, when injuries threaten her ability to keep wrestling, but we spend far too little time with her, and the idea doesn't really get developed well. Carmen's frustrations boil over in the last episode, but her solution doesn't really jive with what she's been doing for the rest of the season. I'm also not a fan of how the show handles some issues like Jenny's background and Arthie embracing an LGBT identity. I'm glad the show is promoting more diverse stories, but they push a little too hard on the messaging this year. One episode features an actual hate crime, which has little to no impact on anyone except Arthie.

There's one new major character, Sandy (Geena Davis), the entertainment director of the Fan-Tan. She's not very interesting and doesn't get much to do that justifies the stunt casting. The Las Vegas setting in general is on the lackluster side. Understandably, the show couldn't afford a full '80s recreation of the Strip, so we're stuck mostly at the Fan-Tan and a few peripheral locations. An awful lot of this season is set in hotel rooms again. I do like seeing the less glamorous side of Vegas as experienced by the workers, and the sense of being trapped in one place for too long. In addition, Vegas has a reputation for being out of the normal flow of things, where it's difficult to keep track of seasons and the passage of time. Attempts to break up the season with hiking trips and holiday specials can only do so much. And there are no formal experiments remotely like the episode-within-an-episode show again.

There's only one season left of "GLOW," and I think that's for the best. Even if the Vegas episodes turn out to be only a detour in the show's quality rather than a real decline, we're clearly getting to the point where some of these characters' stories are reaching some logical endpoints. The third season of "GLOW" was more of a disappointment a than failure - there are still two or three very strong episodes and the Bash and Rhonda storyline is excellent - but it's pretty well stymied my enthusiasm for the show.

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Looking Back on "The Toys That Made Us"

I've been cleaning out my Netflix queue, and came upon this documentary series about nostalgic toy lines. Twelve hour-long episodes have been produced so far, covering toys that have made an outsized cultural impact, like LEGO or Transformers. Action figures are of special interest, with episodes devoted to "Star Wars," "Star Trek," "Power Rangers," and WWF/WWE toys. I've seen programs like this before, airing in odd hours on the Discovery or Travel Channels. "The Toys That Made Us," however, benefits from going a little more in depth and leaning heavily on interviews with the creative talent involved.

I instantly became very absorbed by the show, because it answered so many questions I had about certain pieces of '80s and '90s kid culture that I didn't realize I still had. "Transformers," for instance, was huge when I was young. I knew the toys originated in Japan. I knew that there had been a popular cartoon and movie. However, "The Toys That Made Us" cleared up that Hasbro's original '80s toy line had been licensed and rebranded from two existing Japanese toy lines, and all of the franchise's beloved characters and mythology were dreamed up by a couple of Marvel comics writers. The famous musical cues and taglines had originated from the ad campaign for the toys before being incorporated into the 1984 cartoon. Oh, and the reason why I never seem to recall Megatron actually transforming into anything is because he was based on a toy that transformed into a replica Walther P-38 pistol.

For the first time, I was seeing the executives and artists and marketing people who had been working behind the scenes, who rebranded the '60s G.I. Joe toy into the beloved action figure line in the '80s, or who created Hello Kitty because their company was tired of paying licensing fees for the "Peanuts" characters. The episode devoted to "Star Wars" toys is the first out of the gate, because many of the subsequent installments are about other toy lines trying to copy or ride the coattails of their success. I suspect that some viewers might come away disillusioned when they learn that so many beloved toys were made by cobbling together bits and pieces of pre-existing ones, and some cutthroat business decisions drove certain creative decisions - witness the lovely old ladies who used to work on Barbie, cackling over how they took down Jem and the Bratz dolls.

And it was nice learning a little more about the companies behind the toys - Kenner, Mattel, Hasbro, Playmates, and all the rest. Most of the episodes are built around your standard mini-history lessons and talking head interviews, but since the series is mostly about older toys, there are significant ups and downs with even the most successful franchises. LEGO, for instance, nearly went bankrupt in the early 2000s because they didn't anticipate how cyclical their business was becoming. There's usually a nice spin put on toy lines like "Masters of the Universe" going totally kaput in the end, but there's also a refreshing honesty to how the series views the toys. Some fans participate in the show, but they aren't the main focus here. Likewise, the companies aren't allowed to sugarcoat the truth the way you see in "official" accounts like the recent LEGO documentary.

I don't much care for some of the gimmicks that "The Toys That Made Us" uses. The narration and commentary rife with dad jokes can get grating at times, and the low-budget re-enactors and terrible theme music do absolutely nothing for me. However, the show is well researched and informative. The Hello Kitty episode spends a lot of time explaining the concept of "kawaii," and tying Kitty's popularity to Japanese idol culture and celebrity kitsch. The Barbie episode finally gives us a reasonable explanation for the doll's impossible proportions - she was designed that way to make her clothes look better on her. There are some episodes where I wish the series had spent more time talking about the toys themselves rather than all the marketing and media madness related to them, but not many.

Finally, I appreciate that "The Toys That Made Us" is so blunt about the relationship between toys and media and marketing efforts. I find it fascinating that some of the most popular kids' series of the '80s, especially for boys, came directly out of advertising campaigns for action figures - "Transformers," "He-Man," "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles," and "G.I. Joe." I confess that I never connected much to any of these, probably by design, but at least now I've found a way to decode and kind of understand what makes them tick.

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