A "Stone" With Serious Flaws

"Stone" wants to tackle deep and heavy themes, like morality, spirituality, crime, and punishment, but aside from making some broad allusions and belabored metaphors, really doesn't get around to business. In the opening scene, we watch a young wife summon up the courage to leave an unhappy marriage, only to be brutally coerced into staying, when her husband dangles their sleeping daughter out of the second-story bedroom window and threatens to let her fall. After the wife capitulates and the husband relents, the wife hurries to close the window, inadvertently killing a bee. This is easily the most interesting and effective part of the entire film, and it features none of the principle actors and is only briefly alluded to later in the story.

Several decades later, the couple is now played by Robert DeNiro and Frances Conroy, and are identified as Jack and Madylyn Mabry. Jack is a correctional officer near retirement, who interviews potential parolees to determine if they are no longer a danger to society. One of his final cases is Gerald "Stone" Creeson (Edward Norton), an arsonist who wants very badly to make parole, though he still refuses to admit to his crime and shows no remorse. Stone has a wife waiting for him, Lucetta (Milla Jovovich), who loves him so much that she would do anything to help him get out of prison. This includes seducing Jack and leading him astray, with predictably dire consequences.

"Stone" is primarily a character study of Jack Mabry, who is a stickler for the rules and procedure, faithfully goes to church with his wife every Sunday, and seems perfectly content. The intrusion of Stone and Lucetta into his life challenges his worldview. Jack's dark side emerges, first tentatively as he begins to question his faith, and then in more obvious and destructive ways. The breakdown of these moral boundaries and Jack being forced to confront his own hypocrisy should be plenty of material for "Stone" to chew on, but the film gets ambitious and tries to tie this to a deeper crisis of faith. And this is where it falters.

Most of spiritual elements in the film call attention to themselves but are never explored in any meaningful way. Rather, they tend to distract from the rest of the film. Religious radio programs and readings of passages from the Bible provide a lot of portentous background noise. At one point Stone has an epiphany and converts to a half-baked religion called Zukandor, which allows him to prattle on about alternate systems of spirituality and set up one of the primary metaphors in the film - that the coming of spiritual enlightenment is first signaled through sound. Hence the bee in the first scene and recurring buzzing noises on the soundtrack throughout.

The concepts found in "Stone" are engaging, and the actors are all talented and capable, but the execution is severely lacking. Too much time is wasted on establishing the mood and tone instead of tending to the development of the cold, difficult characters and predictable plot. It is not easy to empathize with any of the leads. Robert DeNiro adds what texture he can to Jack Mabry, but there's not enough there to make us care about his disintegrating marriage and existential turmoil. Edward Norton's Stone is a collection of odd characteristics that don't seem to fit together, not the least of which are ridiculous-looking cornrows and a thick, indeterminate accent that doesn't match his lovely wife's.

That brings us to Milla Jovovich, who gives the best performance out of the entire cast. Lucetta has some some interesting dimensions that Jovovich brings out perfectly, going beyond simply supplying a sexual presence and some passive-aggressive seduction tactics. It's clear that underneath the baby-talk and the innocent looks, someone far warier lies in wait. Having seen Jovovich stuck in wide-eyed ingenue and woman-child roles far too often, it was nice to see her expand on her usual screen persona. I wish she'd been given more to do here. Frances Conroy as the long-suffering Madylyn Mabry also makes the most of her few limited, but vital scenes.

I may fault "Stone" for being too ambitious, but at least its ambitions are honest. John Curran is a fine director, who was also responsible for the wonderful, underseen "Painted Veil." Writer Angus MacLachlan gave us "Junebug." Even if they were ultimately unsuccessful, they deserve due credit for trying to do something different and original with "Stone," which is more than I can say for a lot filmmakers currently churning out cookie-cutter crime dramas. "Stone" is a muddled mess, but I get the feeling it was on the right track to something better.

Is This the End of Fanboy Cinema?

The Internet has been buzzing about the underperformance of "Sucker Punch" at the box office this weekend, which came in second to the second "Wimpy Kid" movie. Everyone seems intent on tearing director Zack Snyder apart for the film's content, but I have not yet see the movie, so any sort of dissection of its merits from me is going to have to wait. Instead, I'm going to go the more meta route today and look at what the poor performances of "Sucker Punch" and the recent alien buddy comedy "Paul" mean for the future of fanboy cinema.

Roughly six months ago, when the highly anticipated "Scott Pilgrim vs. the World" took a dive, I posited that the broader mainstream culture wasn't yet receptive to the tastes of the video-game loving, anime-watching, twenty-something Comic-Con nerd crowd. There would be other chances in the future, though, for this kind of movie to connect. The studios were still gamely trying to court the fanboy audience, and there were several high profile projects still waiting on the horizon. But then "Tron Legacy" only did so-so, "The Green Hornet" did even worse, "Paul" barely registered on anyone's radar, and now "Sucker Punch" is being excoriated for the worst excesses associated with its target audience. Does this mean that the studios will stop making films aimed at fanboys?

I don't think so. Looking back over the recent films primarily targeted at the young male audience, there haven't been many real financial disasters. "Kick Ass" and "Tron" both made their budgets back. "The Green Hornet" was a bigger hit overseas, and "Paul" was made for so little money, it's already broken even. Only "Scott Pilgrim" and "Sucker Punch" can rightly be called bombs, and they both had comparatively modest budgets, so the losses weren't that steep. "Sucker Punch" only had a price tag of $82 million, though the shock-and-awe marketing price probably pushes that figure up some. Many similar effects-heavy action films have budgets well north of $100 million.

The real issue here is that there hasn't been a big blockbuster that's been primarily driven by the comic book crowd lately. Sure, "The Expendables" and the various superhero films appeal to the fanboy crowd and enjoy solid attendance by the young male quadrant, but a significant portion of their audiences are female, or older, or younger, or generally more mainstream. Everyone is excited for "The Dark Knight Rises," not just the fanboy crowd. What we haven't seen is film aimed solely at that specific fanboy demographic that has become a moneymaker on the same level as something like "Twilight," which also plays to a similar audience - teenage girls.

Four years ago, the surprise success of "300" sent everyone scrambling to find the next big comic book hit, but as time has worn on and those hits failed to materialize, the craze has just about run its course. Perhaps the fanboys are more discerning or more difficult to predict, but the message that is coming across loud and clear right now is that they are not as dependable as they were once perceived to be. If the fanboys can't be sold on something like "Sucker Punch," which is stuffed to the gills with everything that could possibly appeal to the young male psyche, then the studios have no financial interest in making more movies like it.

This is not the end of fanboy cinema, but I suspect that future efforts will be scaled back in size and scope. We're not going to see another risky "Watchmen" level production any time soon, and only rarely a "Sucker Punch" or a "Scott Pilgrim." Kiss those dreams of a big-budget R-rated "Preacher" goodbye. We'll also no longer see marketing campaigns that solely pander to fanboy sensibilities. I can't help wondering if "Scott Pilgrim" would have attracted a bigger audience if it had pushed its more tender romantic elements at female viewers, instead of spending all the ad money trying to razzle-dazzle the gamer crowd. Oh, and Zack Snyder will keep working, but he's not going to be given carte blanche with the "Superman" reboot. I doubt anyone would give him final cut over a shoe commercial for the foreseeable future.

But is this a bad thing? I liked "Scott Pilgrim vs. the World," and I appreciated the influx of original projects that the fanboy genre brought in, but it's been difficult to ignore some of the excesses. I have to say it's been nice to see the fanboy crowd's usual puffed-up sense of entitlement get deflated a bit lately. You can not argue that "Sucker Punch" has any kind of broad appeal when it enjoyed such a massive marketing blitz and still got KO'd by a no-frills kids' movie with a tiny $20 million budget. The truth is that fanboys are a niche audience, and the genre movies that they prize, full of sex and violence and mayhem, are niche films that should really be treated as such.

Swimming With Spoilers

It's been a couple of days since the blow-up over Hollywood's latest misadventures in casting, so I think it's safe to pick up where I left off at the end of the Katniss post. Why is all the additional media back-and-forth between creative minds and their audience a bad thing? One of the unintended consequences is that those potential audience members who may not be familiar with a property are getting way too much information about the upcoming film projects. As I was reading up on the arguments for why Jennifer Lawrence was or wasn't appropriate for the part of Katniss, many commentators, some professional, some not, launched into long, detailed descriptions of the character and revealed a lot about the particulars of "The Hunger Games" and its sequels that curious viewers shouldn't be privy to the this stage. The filmmakers inevitably got in on the act too. Even "Hunger Games" author Suzanne Collins, in a letter defending Jennifer Lawrence, included a reference to a particularly crucial character moment for Katniss that also happens to spoil a major plot point.

Sometimes the casting notices themselves are spoilers, and the discussion and conjecture surrounding them can be inescapable. I spent days trying to avoid the news of precisely who Joseph Gordon Levitt had signed on to play in the new "Batman" film, "The Dark Knight Rises." Don't worry, I won't give anything away here, but just making my usual rounds on entertainment news sites was like a game of cat-and-mouse. Headlines ranged from the straightforward (JGL Cast as Character X) to coy (Guess who JGL is Playing?) to teasing (JGL is Not Playing Rumored Characters Y or Z!) to the infuriating (JGL Playing Secret Alter Ego of Character X, Which is a Massive Spoiler to Anyone Who Doesn't Read DC Comics). To top it all off, a few days later word came down that maybe the initial reports had gotten it wrong and Gordon-Levitt was not playing Character X after all. Character X, by the way, is a very minor personage in the "Batman" universe, whose entire life history was nonetheless laid bare for us out by every commentator trying to find something new to say about the matter. It's enough to drive a fangirl around the bend.

I spent much of last summer trying to learn as little as possible about "Inception," and now over a year in advance of "The Dark Knight Rises," I find myself already dodging spoilers left and right. I feel for anyone unfamiliar with "Akira" trying to weigh in on the casting controversy, who has to brave constant references to the famous climax of the 1988 "Akira" anime, that really works much better if you don't know it's coming. Fortunately this kind of thing only tends to happen with the most massively popular genre titles that already have established fanbases behind them. To my knowledge nobody has spoiled anything about Tomas Alfredson's new film version of "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy," due out in theaters in September, which happens to share some key cast members with "The Dark Knight Rises." "Tinker" being aimed at somewhat less excitable grown-ups, there hasn't been the glut of coverage that a "Batman" film garners for simply being a "Batman" film.

We'd all be better off with less information flying around, but at this point, I don't think there's anything that can stop the fans from speculating about who's getting cast as what, or the media from trying to capitalize on the speculation. But to their credit, Christopher Nolan and the others working on "The Dark Knight Rises" haven't been actively encouraging the guessing games, and the film's production doesn't appear to be affected by it. It's different with "The Hunger Games," which is in a much more vulnerable stage and risks more my engaging so directly with the fandom here. Though there are obvious benefits to getting feedback and opinions, ultimately the kind of back-and-forth we've been seeing lately is a distraction. Sometimes the fans are wrong and need to be ignored, not pandered to. I think there's some merit to the complaints about the "Hunger Games" casting process, and I'm as suspicious about whitewashing as anyone, but there's been nothing to warrant this kind of intense response. The studio's tactics to justify their decision leave me worried that they're already spending too much time trying to sell the picture instead of making it something worth watching.

Finally, by using the casting process to garner publicity in the first place in various news articles and interviews, I think the "Hunger Games" brought a lot of the controversy down upon itself. The studios don't do themselves any favors by encouraging the endless voracity of the entertainment news cycle like this. The spoiler gauntlet gets worse, potential flaws are magnified, and you only end up encouraging the naysayers if you give them too much attention and acknowledgment. Controversies could easily crop up over other creative decisions beyond casting. For instance, why was Gary Ross, a director best known for life-affirming feel-good movies like "Pleasantville" and "Seabiscuit" chosen to helm an action film about teenagers killing each other in a dystopian Battle Royale? Why was Steve Kloves, who scripted the "Harry Potter" movies, given the job of adapting the famously nihilistic "Akira"? Moreover, there is such a thing as over-exposure, and it happens a lot faster than it used to. "Hunger Games" is supposed to be a trilogy, and should be wary of wearing out its welcome too quickly.

As for me, of all the projects discussed, I find myself looking forward to is the one I know least about - "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy." Apparently Colin Firth, Gary Oldman, Tom Hardy, Mark Strong, Benedict Cumberbatch, and John Hurt are in it. That's all I need to know - and care to know.

In For a "Long Good Friday"

I get a real kick out of watching films that I was slightly too young to have seen when they premiered, especially when they feature prominent current actors in early performances. It's a little like paging through someone's yearbook, seeing what they looked like before you knew them. "The Long Good Friday," a British gangster film from the late 70s, is a good example. There's Helen Mirren, long before "Prime Suspect" or any of the Elizabeths, playing the steely gun moll Victoria. There's Pierce Brosnan, impossibly young in his first film, as an anonymous assassin. And finally there's Bob Hoskins in the role that launched him to fame, as the mobster kingpin Harold Shand. I first knew Hoskins in big-budget fare like "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" and "Hook," but I didn't see any of his British films until much, much later, and always had in image of him in my head as a slightly irascible, but intrinsically lovable everyman. After this movie, that is no longer the case.

Harold Shand is a London mobster at the height of his criminal career, enjoying prosperity, power, and a certain status in his community. He wants to go straight as a legitimate businessman, and is trying to strike a deal with members of the American mafia to back a real estate development project. However, his plans are disrupted by a series of attacks targeted at his closest allies and operations. Many involve bombings, leading one nervous cop on Harold's payroll to suspect the IRA. Harold, however, has more immediate enemies in mind. He turns the London underground upside-down to find those responsible, all the while trying to maintain the illusion for the Americans and himself that everything is under control. But as Harold grows increasingly desperate, he lashes out at those closest to him, including longtime girlfriend Victoria, and his right-hand man Jeff (Derek Thompson).

"The Long Good Friday" is Bob Hoskins' show from start to finish. He gives a tour-de-force performance as Harold, a thuggish gangster who dreams of respectability, but is quick to resort to blunt violence, which proves to be his undoing. A lot of actors can summon brutal menace, and Hoskins brings a great physical element to the role, but few have the charisma and acting chops to really make you love them for their savagery. Harold Shand is a terrible man who does terrible things to everyone around him, but there's such humanity in him you have to sympathize with his plight regardless. In one of the most shocking scenes, he abruptly kills a man with a liquor bottle. But the act of violence is not nearly so affecting as the immediate look of pain and regret on Hoskins' face when he realizes what he's done, or the cold rage that descends on him in the wake of it.

Helen Mirren pairs up well with him as Victoria. Though their relationship is not the focus of the film, I found it one of the more interesting elements in the story. They behave like a married couple, though there is no indication that they are married, and several incidents show that Victoria is at least as important to Howard's criminal organization as any of his lieutenants. She enhances his facade as an intelligent, gracious hostess, but can be counted on to take care of coarser business in a pinch. When Harold erupts, she's the one who doesn't hesitate to confront him, to talk him down and keep him from self-destruction. Yet her formidable strength has its limits. I'm used to seeing wives and girlfriends in mobster movies relegated to domestic purgatory or addiction subplots, so Victoria was a treat.

My knowledge of British film still being woefully limited, director John Mackenzie is not someone I'm familiar with, but he does impressive work here. He gets a lot of exciting stuff to play with, like the bombings and the murders and various other action sequences. But what I really appreciated was how well he situates the story in London, many scenes shot on location and making use of local landmarks. He also gives Bob Hoskins plenty of room to really sell his performance, and deftly accentuates certain moments, perhaps most famously in the film's ending sequence where the frame of the film itself seems to close in on Harold. Barrie Keefe's script is a lot of fun, full of colorful lines that kept catching me off guard. Finally, mention must be made of the jazzy electronica score by Francis Monkman, that really gets the blood pumping and ready for mayhem.

As with many older films, I'm a little surprised that I had never heard of "The Long Good Friday" until now, and that it's not more well-known in the U.S. Any fan of "The Godfather" or "Goodfellas" would love this, and Harold Shand is easily Bob Hoskins' most iconic character - well, that I've seen so far. So if you've a yen for mobster movies, seek out and enjoy. And I need to go poke around the rest of Hoskins' filmography and see who else turns up.

Breaking Up With the New York Times

According the the New York Times website, I've read nearly two hundred articles this month, far in excess of the twenty free ones that are allowed before readers will be asked to pay a subscription fee in order to access their online articles and other content. The paywall comes down on March 28th, and I haven't decided what I'm going to do yet. Do I limit my browsing to only reading one full article per weekday? Do I triangulate the content of the articles from blogger responses? Do I pony up and pay the subscription fee? This last one is unlikely because I don't feel I spend enough time on the site to justify the expense. Every time I pay for any sort of subscription service, I get the urge to overuse it to make sure I'm getting my money's worth. This is how I once ended up seeing sixty movies in a single month one summer, on the Blockbuster All-Access Pass. I have no urge to read the New York Times digital cover to cover every day, and I'm not keen on paying for the privilege to do so.

But here's what I'm not going to do. I'm not going to entertain the notion of piracy or finding ways around the paywall, such as by monkeying around with cookies or multiple accounts. If the New York Times wants to charge for previously free content, they're perfectly within their rights to do so. We've heard rumblings of potential financial issues off and on over the years, and I'd rather the Times survive in its current form behind a paywall than fall prey to cutbacks, or worse the clutches of Rupert Murdoch. Speaking of Murdoch, the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times have already had paywalls up for some time now, and other major publications are thinking of following suit. The internet has not been kind to the publishing industry, replacing or rendering obsolete many of their former streams of revenue like classified ads. Many papers have folded or consolidated, and the remaining ones have shed jobs and cut back on coverage.

I feel mildly guilty every time I hear another newspaper is gone, or that reporters are juggling multiple beats, or that a local paper is going to have to do without its arts editor. I'm certainly one of those contributing to the problem, since I get the bulk of my news from the Internet and can't remember the last time I actually sat down with the print version of any newspaper or news magazine. As a kid, my parents got the Sunday edition of the Los Angeles Times every week, and we briefly had a subscription to TIME Magazine. Now I depend on news aggregators like Google News and read more commentary about certain items in the news than the actual news itself. I go to Craigslist for job listings, and the Weather Underground for the five-day forecast, and Moviefone for theater schedules. I know reporters are important, and that a free press provides an important checks against those with power. Professional journalists can't be replaced with amateur bloggers without the quality of our news coverage suffering. And the fact that a few companies own so many papers and other media outlets worries me.

So while it might be a mild hassle for me to remember not to click on the links to New York Times articles unless I want to use one of my twenty free articles per month to access it, in the end I don't mind. I can get along perfectly well without reading the New York Times regularly, but I think we would all be worse off in the long run if the New York Times didn't exist or was forced to compromise itself for financial reasons. The reason I started reading the Times in the first place was because I liked the fact that their writers would still occasionally use words that I had to look up in the dictionary - or rather, at Dictionary.com. I never want that to change. So I'll probably still look over their headlines to get a sense of the big stories of the day, and read a few articles when I'm looking for in-depth reporting on particular topics, but I'll probably start relying on other sources for my news. The BBC is always good for world affairs, I've been meaning to listen to more NPR, and I always go to the Los Angeles Times for local stories anyway.

It's never a nice feeling to be dumped, but I guess the relationship just wasn't working out. Money troubles are always the hardest to get over, and at the end of the day I guess my pagehits just couldn't make up for your deficit of ad revenue. Best of luck, New York Times. Maybe we'll get back together someday when I can afford you.

A Time to "Get Low"

I wanted to like "Get Low" more than it really deserved. It's a small film, full of older, very familiar actors who I have been watching for ages. It's also a period American film, and a comedy with next to no objectionable material, so I was biased in its favor from the start. You might wonder how first-time director Aaron Schneider ever got this film off the ground and managed to assemble a cast of this caliber, but the story provides such irresistible characters, it's no wonder the likes of Robert Duvall and Bill Murray got involved.

"Get Low" is set in the American Midwest sometime in the 1930s, when horse-drawn carriages were not yet an uncommon sight. After years of isolation in a small homestead in the woods, a hermit named Felix Bush (Robert Duvall) comes to town one day, in search of a funeral. He's turned away by the reverend, but happens to catch the attention of Buddy Robinson (Lucas Black), a young man who works for the local mortician, Frank Quinn (Bill Murray). In spite of Felix's bad reputation and antagonistic demeanor, Frank decides that this is an opportunity his ailing business cannot afford to pass up. He and Buddy take on Felix as a customer, and discover that what he's really after is a funeral party that will take place while he is still alive, so that he can attend himself. And so follows Felix Bush's return to civilization as he prepares for the momentous event. While Frank mounts a campaign to entice everyone "with a story to tell" about Felix Bush to attend the funeral party, Felix reconnects with an old love, Mattie (Sissy Spacek), and struggles to exorcise the personal demons that drove him to shun human company in the first place.

The first half of "Get Low" really had me hooked, because the performances are excellent. Robert Duvall is note perfect as Felix, a plainspoken, no-nonsense old-timer who is as stubborn as his beloved mule. When we first see him in full beard, and wilderness trappings, Duvall is almost invisible in the character, but then the story rolls on, and he emerges, little by little. The process of his redemption and renewal is a joy to watch. However, Bill Murray nearly steals the show as Frank Quinn, a born opportunist and fast-talker who isn't quite as slick as he wants to be, and turns out to be a decent guy underneath. His frustrations and clashes with Felix produce some of the film's best moments. And it's always good to see Sissy Spacek, adorable as ever, who can still summon deep wells of hurt and regret at a moment's notice. Gerald McRaney and Bill Cobbs also show up for good turns in smaller roles, and Lucas Black holds his own against both Duvall and Murray in multiple scenes, despite portraying a fairly unremarkable character.

So it regrets me to inform you that the script has some substantial story problems and one almost fatal flaw, which is that it fails to stick the ending. The entire story builds up to the funeral, and summons up all this tension and suspense over what will be said there and the secrets that might be revealed. What we get is certainly a resolution, but not one that feels very satisfying, and it inevitably comes off as a letdown. The last fifteen minutes feel awfully rushed, and I have to wonder if the production ran out of time or money or some important bits got cut out for whatever reason. However, "Get Low" gets so many important things right. Schneider nails the tone, which is a little more sentimental and pastoral than the norm, without ever becoming maudlin. Likewise, the pacing is on the slow side, but it never feels like the movie isn't moving forward. The visuals, especially the shots of the woods, are very easy on the eyes. Finally the dialogue, written by Chris Provenzano and C. Gaby Mitchell, is wry and sharp and frequently very funny.

So there's a lot to like about "Get Low," and I'm grateful for any chance to see Duvall, Spacek, and Murray still doing good work as they get older. Such gentle, low-key comedies are a rarity these days, and this one left me with nothing but a sense of affection for everyone involved. Even with the flaws, I have to appreciate the effort it must have taken to mount this production. Here's hoping we see more like it in the future.

An Update from "Farscape"

I'm a little more than a season into "Farscape" now and the show has been steadily improving. Spoilers will be minimal, but I will be discussing cast changes and some of the character development, so be on guard. In my last post with my first impressions of the series, I noted that the characters came off as a little generic because we hadn't delved much into their pasts and nobody had the chance to grow or change yet. Now just about everyone has enjoyed some time in the spotlight individually, and we've gotten to know them better.

D'Argo (Anthony Simcoe) and Zhaan (Virginia Hey) both have big personal demons to combat, Crichton (Ben Browder) is still too often the voice of reason, but he's proven wrong about as often as he's right, and Aeryn Sun (Claudia Black) has softened up considerably since the earliest episodes. Rygel XVI (Jonathan Hardy) is still little more than comic relief, but he's good at it, and I've gotten so used to his presence that sometimes I don't even remember he's a puppet anymore. Even the "biomechanoid" ship, Moya, had her own major story arc that led up to a big cliffhanger at the end of the season. Ironically, the character who has gone through the most personal growth has been the villain, Crais (Lani Tupu). At the start of Season Two, he's no longer the big bad of "Farscape," having ceded the position to one of the two newcomers to the cast.

This would be Scorpius (Wayne Pygram), a twisted Skarran scientist working for the Peacekeepers who is studying wormhole technology, and wants to get his hands on Crichton in the hopes of digging useful information out of his head. Scorpius is a more straightforward villain than Crais was, with a ghoulish visage, a lot of black leather, and a few mad-scientist quirks. He's a lot more fun to watch too, and the show has already used his more over-the-top style of evil for comedic purposes. The other newcomer is Chiana (Gigi Edgley), a grey-skinned Nebari thief girl, who looks and acts like a refugee from an interstellar touring production of Andrew Lloyd Webber's "Cats." However, she has a very sharp, slightly caustic personality that is a lot of fun, and she makes a good addition to Moya's crew.

Chiana is also another of the "Farscape" characters who is very appealing to look at, with great makeup and costume design. By contrast there's been some noticeable cutting back with some of the other regulars. D'Argo's prosthetics have a more rigid, bronzed appearance now, and Zhaan has been in high-necked, long-sleeved robes constantly, no doubt to cut down on the amount of time both actors have to spend in the makeup chair. I don't find the cost-cutting measures to have much negative impact. In fact, I'm a little relieved that they're reigning in the scale of some of these stories. Many first season episodes got too ambitious with the fancy aliens, with very hit-or-miss results. In one episode with multiple Delvians, the race that Zhaan belongs to, all of the new characters looked significantly off. However, installments that only feature a single new creature or character tend to come off much better.

The rest of the production has been pretty consistent. I still think that the directors are too enamored with slow-motion shots, dutch angles, and other distracting camera tricks, but there's less of the wonky editing and awkward musical transitions that made the early episodes so frustrating. The cast has settled into their roles, and some of the performances, like Claudia Black's and Ben Browder's have steadily improved. Crichton still makes about one really groan-worthy pop culture reference per episode, but at least he's finally ditched his T-shirts and spacesuits for some more dignified Peacekeeper duds. And as predicted, the writing also improved as the stories got more serialized. The last five episodes of the first season is one big story that is better than anything else "Farscape" has done. But that said, the show's format is much closer to "Star Trek" than "Babylon 5," with very little overarching structure built into each season so far.

What I like best about "Farscape" right now is the ensemble. There's a nice sitcom regularity to Rygel's betrayals, D'Argo and Aeryn's bouts of aggression, Crichton being a know-it-all, Chiana being a sneak, and Zhaan playing den mother. It took a while for all the pieces to fall into place, but now that they have, "Farscape" is turning out to be a really fun character-driven action show. It feels like something I would have watched ten years ago on the weekend lineup of my old syndicated station, with "Xena: Warrior Princess" and the 90s "Outer Limits" reboot. I don't think it's up there with the greats of science fiction television yet, but it's still got a few seasons to go, and I'm looking forward to them.