Sit Rep

I've been busy...refilling my creative juices.

Before I commence with the script rewrites, I've been inching through a long reading list that's built up for the last several months. But there's light at the end of the tunnel. =)

And once I complete those, I'll start work on a planned novel or two (and squeeze in a new script here and there).

I expect to post thoughts on one or two of the fiction books I've read. December has surprisingly become a TV month. Must see if a new trend or two is developing.

I saw a few films, but didn't feel like writing anything up about 'em. Even though some studios (Paramount with $1 billion) raked in lots of money in 2007, most of the features released this year weren't very good, but served to lure people into coughing up their hard-earned dough. With theater prices rising and my time at a premium, I've been getting more and more discriminating lately.

The holidays were...OK. And I'm hopeful for getting my first fiction/film sale in 2008.

Only the gods know at this point (and any time travelers who can't share what they know without violating the integrity of the established timeline and bringing the universe as they know it to an end).

Hailing freqs closed.

Journeyman: "Perfidia"

"Series finale"
The last episode...most likely.

Things kick off when Dan lands in a heap on the courtyard of a mental institution with a cut on his head. As he gets his bearings, it's clear that it's not too serious. I raised an eyebrow when a patient said it was 2007.

Evan, a patient, comes up to Dan, saying he saw how Dan flashed in and said he was a time traveler, too. Evan says he hasn't been jumping since he started taking some prescription meds the people with arm vests made him take. I wasn't sure at first, but I leaned toward believing him. Evan says he has to get out to see his wife. Though Dan isn't sure, he goes along, creating a diversion to let Evan slip out, then flashes back to the present. There he learns that Evan got hit by a car while jaywalking during his quest to see his wife.

As Dan researches Evan, Annette urges Katie to leave Dan and Jack tries to get Dr. Langley to spill what he knows about time travel. Annette served no purpose except to vocalize the doubts that Katie must be feeling. Katie chooses to stay with Dan by the end, but if the series had continued, I'm sure we would've seen more drama in that area.

It was nice seeing Jack work as Dan's strongest ally, but if Langley had admitted to being in on Dan's time travel calling, what would that have accomplished? And his pregant girlfriend is nowhere to be seen.

Anyhow, Dan meets up with Livia on his next trip back to September 2007 (about the time he started jumping?). Livia's extremely unhappy as she's prepping to get married back in 1946. And she made sure not to repeat her faux pas with Dan by telling her next fiance about her time travel calling. Dan wishes her well and decides to continue helping Evan, while Livia wonders if he's the mission and if he has all his marbles. Evan points out that Livia's shoes give her away as a time traveler. LOL.

Incidentally one wonders how Livia appears with modern clothes and hairstyles so often?

When Dan and Livia help Evan get to his wife, she doesn't know him from Adam. Evan then admits to our duo that he made an enemy during one of his missions, who killed his wife. So he changed things to keep them from meeting at Stanford to let her live. Then his past self saw him and things went on steamrolling downhill...

When Dan flashes back to the present, he learns that Evan got shot by the security detail bird dogging the new husband of Evan's new spouse, a San Fran council member. Dan tells Evan on his next jaunt, but Evan doesn't care. He wants to prove to himself that he hasn't been completely erased from his wife's consciousness. Romantic, but then what once he establishes he's right?

Evan triggers a spark with his wife at a fundraising event for her new hubby, who's campaigning for reelection, when he takes her for a salsa whirl on the dance floor. When they finish, the two're giving each other rapturous smiles when Evan spontaneously drops dead. Apparently he's not meant to live no matter what. But this death is more annoying (and contrived) than the first two. And Dan and Livia also have to two-step a couple times to avoid running into the past Dan to keep the timeline on track. It seemed to me that the only reason past Dan didn't see them on at least two close calls was because the show's directors and writers ordained it. Dan and Livia exit when they witness past Dan get into a cab and flash for the first time.

When Dan gets back to the present, he finds Dr. Langley waiting for him at the newspaper. Our resident scientist admits to Dan that he's part of a group that watches time travelers (shades of the Buffy/Angel and Highlander watchers). There's more depth here, but I'm on the fence about this.

The powers that be are unknown to the time travel watchers (and the time travelers and viewers), but the system seems to be breaking down (for unknown reasons) since Dan (along with Livia) is apparently one of the last time travelers on the watchers' grid.

Unknown people are watching the time travelers, who want to exploit 'em. Dr. Langley and his group of watchers want to help keep the secret, and he pledges Dan his unflinching support. The jury's out on whether Langley is who he says he is, but we won't know that since the series is virtually cancelled now.

Dan goes home to Katie, who wants him to take the pills that Evan took to put a kibosh on his temporal sojourns. Only Dan doesn't see his jumping as a curse anymore, but as a calling in which he has the valuable ability to "set right what once went wrong" ("Quantum Leap" quote). Couldn't blame him. I'd make that choice.

Katie then reminds Dan of his promise in the pilot episode in which he said he'll "always come back home." Good nod to continuity. When Dan gives the affirmative, she says she'll "keep the light on." Great show of support. And the final note of a promising series.

When I look back on the series, I feel that a number of things caused potential viewers to change the channel when the latest installment of "Heroes" ended. One is the predictable time travel plots of the earlier episodes and the (overly?) complicated love quadrilateral of Dan, Livia, Jack, and Katie. On another note, Livia was apparently an independent time traveler before she conveniently stayed in the "present" for several years, where she went to law school and met Dan and got engaged before leaping again. Then once Dan started leaping, she apparently leaped only to join him and play a poor man's Al Calavicci to Dan's Sam Beckett.

The second and more major issue was the incongruences througout the show (like Livia's modern clothes) and the lack of a "cause" generating the "effect": Dan's time jumps.

"Cause and effect." A major principal of science and science fiction. And good storytelling no matter what the genre.

The series established the "what" of its premise: Dan traveling through time a la "Quantum Leap"'s Sam Becket to help people.

But the dramatic "how" Dan is sent through time and "why" Dan being born during the passage of a fictional comet makes him a time traveler.

Without knowing the "how" at all and a part of the "why" until the next to last episode, Dan's jumps through time come across to me as contrived.

Only because I'm a SF fan (especially time travel) did I have the patience to stick with "Journeyman" through its growing pains. Unfortunately, the general viewing audience didn't have my kind of patience. Hence the dropping ratings and NBC's refusal to pick up the series' option.

In Hollywood, many self-proclaimed SF film/TV producers and writers say it's possible to do anything with SF. I would point out that the best SF stories work on internally consistent and logical rules that are effectively relayed to readers and viewers.

IMHO, "Journeyman" didn't do this and paid the price with its premature cancellation. Hopefully, others will learn this lesson.

Journeyman: "The Hanged Man"

"Adventurous"
Good, but probably too late.

This episode started on an up beat with Dan and Katie starting to get...intimate when Dan gets zapped away to 1984 in the back of a mom's and son's mobile camper as it's teetering on the edge of the cliff.

Dan helps the two innocents escape, but gets trapped in the RV as it tumbles down a mountain. And, through no fault of his, Dan leaves a digital camera at the feet of the people he saved. Dan completes his tumble down the stairs of his newspaper's office building. He then goes home to regain his bearings, where he meets his daughter, Caroline for the first time. Zack's gone. First clue he did something to change the timeline. Cool.

Dan recounts with Katie the time they conceived Zack, but Katie sets him straight with the story of how Caroline was born. Katie doesn't remember Zack, and she doesn't want him to do anything to "restore" the timeline. Nice conflict. When Dan goes back to the newspaper, his boss holds up a digital video flimsy with info on a story assignment (2nd clue), and he finds a virtual 3D GUI in place of a pedantic solid screen and hard drive tower (3rd clue). I want my own hyperadvanced personal computer, but I expect to wait a decade or two for tech in this timeline to get to that point.

Dan does some research and sees that a computer company has been behind some major breakthroughs for the last 20 years, which everyone else takes in stride.

He flashes back, meets up with Livia, and try to recover the camera, which the son is trying to sell to the computer company his mom just joined. No joy on the first try.

Meantime, life continues as normal with Caroline instead of Zach. Dan's brother, Jack, is dealing with getting his girlfriend pregnant accidentally and Katie's sister, Annette, is urging her to leave Dan before he does something to hurt her. When Dan zaps back, he runs into a psychic, who Katie brought over to the house to ask about life, fortune, etc. The psychic gushes over Dan, saying she never met someone with his aura. Apparently, time travelers aren't too thick on the ground.

Dan sees that nothing's changed, and he's got an uphill battle. When he contacts the mom in the present, he sees that she's blind and her son is missing. Dan and the viewer put two and two together, realizing that the son was apparently offed for the camera.

He flashes back, meets up with Livia, and tracks the son as he mets with a company nerd to sell the camera to get enough money to help his mom, who's going blind from diabetes. It goes without saying that his buyers are dying to get their hands on "advanced technology that people will kill for." The company security chief, one very wooden lady, has some security guards pursue Dan and Livia when they take the camera. Dan tosses the camera into a trash compactor, where it goes CRACK, and he and Livia zap away as the security goons fill the space they'd occupied with lead--and nail their boss instead. The son runs off safe.

When Dan flashes back to the present, his Star Trek PC is gone, the son is on his way to inventing a digital ocular implant that'll give sight back to the blind, and Zach is back. Dan gives his son a squeeze that takes the blood from his head.

And the psychic reappears to tell Dan that he and one other (Livia) were born during the passing of the Joseph Lee Comet (fictional I believe).

Good drama throughout. Regarding the Comet, I would think that if it's passing marked and linked Dan and Livia as special, there'd be others who'd be part of the time travelers club. That angle hasn't been developed in the previous episodes and won't be in the future if NBC doesn't pick up the series' option. I also feel that this sort of info needed to be included in the pilot episode to help new viewers suspend their disbelief and buy into the premise. Too little, most likely too late I expect.

Rightly or wrongly, the show has bled viewers from the beginning, which led to a ratings plummet, and the series' likely death knell in NBC's eyes.

Too bad because I feel this "Quantum Leap"-like show has the potential to improve and overcome its shortcomings, but it'll never be.

Except in the alternate reality where the show's option has been picked up and a full first season is ordered. Being a leaper would be helpful about now.

Supernatural: "A Very Supernatural Christmas"

"Another great installment"
Christmas a la Supernatural.

The Anti Claus. A demon St. Nick who goes around killing people when they hang special wreaths in their homes.

Only on "Supernatural."

I'm sorry I missed this series in the first season. But after watching a replay of the first season finale before the second season premiere, I've been watching ever since.

Bobby was mentioned several times in the "Present" and the flashbacks. Ruby and Bela were absent--again. Ruby does have a link with Sam and Bela is a riot, but I wonder if they merited being added to the cast? Too bad the CW execs're interfering with a dark show by insisting that female cast members be added, shooting the episodes during the day, and cutting down on the alternative rock score. If someone had to be added in, Jo from Season 2 would've been great IMHO. She would've been the Princess Leia to Dean and Sam's Han and Luke duo. Too bad the actress is unavailable.

About the episode, it's a hoot (in a dark, disturbing way) to see an evil Claus going around to collect people (adults not children) to snack on.

As the episode goes on, it flashes back to Dean's and Sam's boyhood. We see that they're living on their own with Dean looking after Sam while their dad and Bobby are hunting demons. Dean is trying to keep Sam in the dark about monsters and what their dad's doing, but Sam's a smart kid and he figures things out. Seeing Dean give Sam some presents he lifted--er, got from a nearby convenience shop was nice.

Dean and Sam catch wind of some Christmas time kidnappings around Ypsilanti, Michigan. The producers didn't show enough of the setting for those who know Michigan to see how realistic it was, but it wasn't too important. Anyhow, the brothers investigate, posing as FBI suits at the homes of the missing people. Very sharp looking when they're gussied up. They then go to a run down Christmas theme park, where they see if they can spot a demon among the part-time holiday workers. They focus on one broken-down, grizzled Santa who tells a kid he has something special for the kid. When he hobbles away with a hemmorhoid? limp, the brothers decide to follow "St. Nicotine." The brothers're in their car outside St. Nicotine's trailer house when they see the old man pull the drapes on his window shut, then hear a scream. They rush in with their sawed off shot guns loaded with salt, and see St. Nicotine watching a movie. They then start singing "Silent Night" off tune and wing it where they forget the lyrics. St. Nicotine joins in and they step out with uncomfortable smiles. LOL.

The brothers (Sam really) notice that the victimized homes have wreaths of meadowlark? (wrong spelling) hanging over the fire place. They trace the wreaths to the home of the Carrigan's, an older WASP-looking couple taken straight out of the "Beavers." Ergo they're the demons.

The brothers investigate their basement, find a red demon Santa suit, some butcher cutlery, and...a sack with body parts. Just as they're about to open it, the Ma and Pa Carrigan get the jump on 'em, toss 'em around like they're rag dolls, and knock 'em out.

Dean and Sam wake up in the Carrigans' kitchen bound to chairs. The Carrigans say they're pagan gods only taking their due. They've adjusted over the last 2000 years since Christianity kicked in, going down from a few hundred sacrifices per year to 2-3. And they've gone to great lengths to assimilate, playing bridge every week with their neighbors. They're readying Sam and Dean, taking some blood from both and a fingernail from Sam. When Sam swears, Ma Carrigan suggests he says "fudge," which he adopts. Frequently. Pa Carrigan's poised to yank a tooth from Dean's mouth when someone knocks at the door. Reluctantly they answer it to find a neighbor inviting them to go caroling. They beg off and go back to the kitchen, which is empty.

Dean and Sam lead 'em into the living room and go mano a mano with 'em again. They use branches from the Carrigans' real live Christmas tree to stake 'em.

Dean and Sam cap things by exchanging presents they lifted--obtained at a store, reflecting on how it may be the last Christmas for Dean.

If there was one thing I thought could've been done, it was to show Sam's growing darkside in the context of the episode. And maybe the confrontation with the pagan gods could've happened at night. And since they were defeated without special measures, maybe it would've been better to class 'em as pagan demigods. I'd think that gods would be untouchable for mere humans to take out with what's at hand.

Good episode all around, though. Hopefully, this season will be brought to a satisfying conclusion considering the WGA strike is upon us.

Moonlight: "Sleeping Beauty"

"Series Classic"
The best "Moonlight" yet!

Having watched "Forever Knight," "Buffy," and "Angel," I was curious about "Moonlight."

I'm glad I decided to give the show a chance because it's been getting better with each week. David Greenwalt (ex-"Buffy," "Angel," etc. producer) helped provide early development for the series before he had to leave for health reasons. Hopefully, the producers who stayed on, Ron Koslow and Trevor Munson, keep up the momentum that Greenwalt helped build. Many critics were skeptical at the start of the season, saying that "Moonlight" is just another play on a tired old theme. Problem is every story has been told, so there are no "new" plots. It's up to the producers/writers to provide viewers with interesting characters in difficult situations. I feel that they're passing that test--so far.

Regarding this episode, we've got two parallel storylines: an old man on life support in NYC who hires a pro assassin to take out Mick's best friend, Josef, a 400 year old vamp, and Coraline back as a human, hanging on for dear life from a stake to the heart she got courtesy of Beth in the previous episode "Fleur de Lis."

Mick and Beth overlook Coraline, who's just breathing. Luckily Beth only nicked her heart, but she did puncture a lung. Unfortunately, Coraline has a major infection. She tells Nick she came back from the dead as a human for him (a la Angel's Darla). Should we be touched or freaked out? =) Unfortunately, she doesn't spill the beans before she goes unconscious.

Meantime, the hitman sneaks up on Josef in his office as he's playing poker with two other vamps, lays down a hail of automatic weapons fire, and tosses two incendiary grenades to blow out the office. Nice job.

Mick and Beth show up to investigate. No signs of remains. Josef is dead to the world. Mick is grieving and Beth is so torn for him. Except Josef's waiting for our budding couple when they show up in Mick's apartment and asks if they're ready to help find out killed him. LOL. I knew he survived. But I didn't mind.

Thanks to video surveillance and IR imaging records they got from the security system in Josef's business building, Mick and Beth ID the hitman and learn from a hacker friend of Beth's that he's an ex green beret and black ops specialist. If one is merely mortal and doesn't have an army of guards with the latest military spec, it'd be wise to worry.

Despite Mick's warning to stay low in his apartment, Josef gets stir crazy and goes back to his office to claim some cash. Unfortunately, his security chief calls in the hitman for a payoff and gets a bullet in the forehead for his trouble.

Meantime, Josef is opening a fireproof safe in his bombed out office. He picks up a few wads of cash, then lingers over a heart-shaped pendant. The hitman shows up behind him with a semiautomatic 9 mm complete with silencer.

But Mick comes in the nick of time to toss the guy around. The hitman's very good. He gets in some good punches and stabs Mick in the gut with a smooth special ops knife move. If only he weren't fighting an undead opponent with the strength of 4 (or so) men who could regenerate. Nice tight fight sequence. A few of the cuts were a bit too abrupt, though. Anyhow, Mick has the the guy hanging over a balcony, gets the name of his employer (John Witley), then bangs his head against a column to knock him out. He turns to Josef for help in carrying the guy out, but Josef has vamoosed.

After Mick hands the hitman off to the police, Beth shows up with info. Witley's a 93 year old real estate developer with a daughter who disappeared in 1955. We cut back to the hospital, where the doctor wonders why Coraline doesn't have a fever from her infection and how her body has lost 2 degrees fahrenheit. A nurse checks on Coraline. As she leans in close, Coraline's eyes go grey and her fangs extend. But Coraline fights off the bloodlust and the nurse walks out none the wiser. I knew the "cure" she took was temporary.

Beth is packing to go to NYC when her boyfriend Josh shows up. He asks her to look him in the eye and say there's nothing going on with Mick. As she averts her eyes, Mick shows up to pick her up. Josh leaves and Beth looks after him, heart struck.

Somehow, the hitman, while handcuffed in the back of a LA police squad car, is able to take out two cops and escapes. (He's really good.) The hitman then goes back to Whitley in NYC. He inserts a hypodermic into an IV line, ready to inject an air bubble in Whitley, and asks him how Josef could've survived the hit...

Josef shows up in an apartment at NYC.

Mick and Beth arrive at Whitley's residence, where the old man gives them the diary of his daughter, Sarah. Seems that Sarah met Josef back in '55, fell in love, and vanished.

Mick and Beth track Josef to the apartment, where they find Josef--and Whitley's daughter. She's lying in a coma, not a day over 21. Josef says he met her one day in Grand Central station waiting for a train (like in any classic movie) and fell in love against his will. Josef tried to hide being a vamp from her, but somehow she knew and she didn't care. She then kept after him for months to "turn" her so they could be together. Reluctantly, he does. But she didn't revive. So he kept her cared for till maybe modern medicine could do something for her. I couldn't help wondering if Dr. Crusher or Dr. Bashir could beam in and run a sensor scan.

That's when the hitman crashes in through a window, wearing a harness and detachable line. As everyone jumps for the floor, he empties a gun clip into Josef, then stakes him in the heart. As he wonders why Josef doesn't die, Mick intervenes again. This time the fight's short and he breaks the hitman's neck to take him out for good.

Mick finally understands why Josef has been telling him that it can't work out between vamps and humans. But Mick insists that anything's possible.

As Beth catches a taxi for the airport to catch a flight to LA, Mick asks her to go out with him to enjoy a night in NYC. But Beth says no cuz she wants to settle things with Josh.

Coraline meantime seems to be reaching a critical point in her hospital room. Her're bloodshot when they open, then her heart monitor at the nurse's station flatlines. When a trauma team comes pounding in with paddles and a crash cart, Coraline's bed is empty.

I sense some foreboding developments down the road.

If only someone would kick the bloody WGA and AMTP in their collective backsides to end the strike, so that we can see the first season of "Moonlight" finish. I expect that when viewers are hit with rerun after rerun in 2008, more of a public outcry will build up to help those two entities get their acts together.

Fortunately, the inital order of 13 episodes seems to be mostly done from what I've heard. I like that we got to see more of Josef in this episode, who I felt was underused through the season so far. It wasn't essential, but I wouldn't have minded seeing him in action.

If there's one quibble I have, I wonder why the hitman, who has access to the latest military hardware didn't load up on grenade launchers, phosporous bullets, flame throwers, home made napalm, etc. once he learned that he was going up against vampires?

Classic shaolin kungfu and more modern aikido teaches people how to go with the flow and use the strength of another against an opponent. Problem is, it can take at least 20 years to master. Lacking 20 years, using explosives and incendiary munitions against vampires is the way to go. The hitman should've done more research and packed more than a stake before coming back for a rematch.

Great episode all around, though.

The Batman: "The Metal Face of Comedy"

"Adventurous"
The mother of all Joker episodes. So far.

Because I've seen every episode of "Batman: The Animated Series" (BAS) at least once, I've been so-so about "The Batman's" Joker.

But he's been getting better.

When this episode opens, we see a masked figure flipping about an evening cityscape. I'm not up on all the comic book lore, but as I watch the guy, I'm wondering if it's Nightwing. And it is! Ergo this must be Bludhaven in the future with Robin/Dick all grown up.

Nightwing makes his way into a foundry? and finds a vat of molten metal?/chemicals?. A baddie, Captain Slash (never heard of him), shows up and the two commence with the kung fu fighting. Surprisingly, Nightwing gets his butt handed to him and is hurled into the vat. Before one can process that Nightwing is dead, a green skull flashes on the vat, which is on a screen. Then we see Robin in the Batcave moaning over losing another match with Captain Slash. Sigh of relief.

Bats strolls by and puzzles over Robin's Nightwing alias (nice allusion to upcoming canon here). Robin goes on about how the player behind Captain Slash must be the coolest guy ever.

Cut to a warehouse with Martin, a nerd jonesing on stomping all over Nightwing yet again. LOL.

Then he answers a call from Joker, "Slacker!" Our clown prince asks Slacker--Martin if he has a handle on some robotic joker in the boxes who're supposed to be robbing the bank he's capmed outside of with Harley and the twin goons. A techie working for Joker. Interesting addition to the Clown's ensemble of henchman. Undoutedly an animated series response to present times.

As a robo joker thuds into the gang's van, Joker decides he'd rather do something else. Feed Martin to the hyenas. But Martin pulls a rabbit out of his hat with a new gizmo: a video game encased in a helmet that lets one mentally download money into a bank account of one's choosing. If one accepts the helmet (doesn't question the illogic too deeply that is), the episode will fall into place. I'm not asking for Trek level technobabble, but I would like to understand how playing a video game (not clear what kind here) will let a user directly connect to a binary computer system (neural interface via RF transmission?).

Meantime, Bruce is showing some investors/business associates beyond cutting edge nanites that can bond together to form any solid object they're programmed to assume and self replicate when necessary. Bruce is about to expound on what an awesome new tech Wayne Industries has developed when he gets a Batwave on his portable scanner. Bruce adlibs, telling a nearby white coat to regale his visitors with all the specs and diagrams, and exits post haste.

We cut to a bank where Joker and the twin goons are pulling off a heist with Martin's helmeted skeleton key. Joker's accessing the money (where's the video game?) when Bats and Robin crash in. Robin takes out the two twins by himself (don't question this too hard) while Bats flings a batarang at Martin's helmet to cut Joker's withdrawal short. Only there's a short and a virtual Joker (don't question this too) is looking at our dynamic duo and Joker from a computer screen. Before Bats can contain virtual Joker, Martin downloads him away to the gang's home computer system. Bats deposits the real Joker in a hospital to recover from his helmet shock and goes searching for the virtual Joker, who tells Martin and the gang that he won't stand for being a digital bit. Martin says he's heard of something that'll fit the bill, but they need a diversion...

In the Batcave, Batman and Robin (along with the rest of Gotham) spy a surprise broadcast of virtual Joker on every TV, computer screen, and electronic billboard. The city watches spellbound as virtual Joker hangs out with Captain Slash in virtual Bludhaven. Nightwing shows up, deletes Captain Slash, and almost gets Virtual Joker, who downloads into the Bruce's company lab. He then assembles into nano Joker (or 2.0 as he called himself) a la Russel Crowe from the flick "Virtuosity." Coincidence? A similar idea developed independently? I wonder (but not too hard).

Anyhow, nano Joker breaks out of the lab and evades the Dynamic Duo by turning into a cloud and flitting away. Literally. Meantime, the real Joker (1.0) wakes up and checks himself out of the hospital by leaping out a window.

Both Jokers show up in the gang's warehouse, where Harley (haven't mentioned yet that it's great having the original Harl's voice in this series too) and the goons are wondering who to follow. Both Jokers promise to work together (and lie like rugs).

They go to knock off a major gem repository, but 2.0 double crosses 1.0, leaving him for Bats to collar. Except Bats focuses on 2.0, trying to shock him. Didn't work. Wasn't surprised. Actually I was surprised Bats tried that gambit.

1.0 and the gang take off during all this. 2.0 then goes after 'em with Bats and Robin on his trail. Bats summons the batmobile, and he jumps in with Robin. Only the batmobile starts shrinking on them since it's a nano copy. Bats deactivates the nanomobile with a handy EMP pulse (why didn't he use it on 2.0 earlier?). He then summons the Batmobile again (why didn't it show up before?) and they go racing after 1.0 and the gang. Bats also radios Alfred to send something "big" to help take on 2.0.

They're brought up short by a Gotham cop with his squad car blocking the road. The cop asks for Harl's license, registration, and 1.0, morphing into 2.0. LOL.

The gang says 2.0 rocks and 1.0 wonders how he picked such loyal henchmen. 2.0 also nabs the Dynamic Duo when they show up, rants about how he'll create a nano version of Gotham in place of the real one which he'll run, then catapults 1.0 and the Dynamic Duo (literally) out of the city.

The Batsuit comes zooming in then, and Bats acrobatically slips into it while in mid air and saves Robin and 1.0. He sets Robin down with 1.0 who's securely bound, and goes after 2.0, who replicates enough nanites to turn King Kong huge. Bats flits around, shooting and busting up giganto 2.0, who just reassembles and laughs him off. As 1.0 cheers Bats on, he cuts his bonds, then gives Robin the slip. He reunites with the gang, who all say they'd rather be with him than 2.0, who's too much. As Joker rejects 'em, Robin catches 'em all again.

Robin spies Martin's Captain Slash logo on his laptop pieces it together that they're each other's worst online enemy. As giganto 2.0 infiltrates Bats' suit with nanites, Robin and Martin team up to download virtual Joker out of Bruce's nanites.

To boost the download command signal, Bats hooks a rooftop satellite antenna into his suit and aims it a looming 2.0. In a nick of time, Robin initiates the beam.

The nanites fall to pieces and virtual Joker finds himself back in virtual Bludhaven, where Nightwing shows up and gives him a virtual pounding. LOL.

Bats and Robin then send the real Joker and gang back to Arkham, where they'll rest for a bit before breaking out again.

Fun episode if you don't harp on the fuzzy SF (like why didn't the Wayne Industry techs hardwire an abort code into the nanites?). It would've been nice to have Batgirl involved. She's been underused this year, and has missed out on all the super hero team ups except for the Martian Manhunter.

Stargate Atlantis: "This Mortal Coil" Part 1

"Unoriginal"
The producers force Atlantis fans to say goodbye to Weir. And the show has developed a major case of Trek Syndrome: Recycled Plotlines.

We open with an Atlantis team that finds a duplicated Elizabeth Weir and learns they're duplicates living in a duplicate Atlantis so that "good" replicators can learn what it means to be human in order to ascend like the Ancients. Elizabeth Weir was killed (off stage months earlier) and so was her duplicate along with the rest of her duplicate team. The duplicate team learned very easily they were duplicates. They give the "real" team a Replicator black box that lets them track all Replicator Aurora-class warships (no evolution of new vessel types in the last ten thousand years?).

There's potential here to for a recurring plotline with Elizabeth learning what it means to be a duplicate amid the original Atlantis Team, but the Replicators show up to obliterate everyone. Elizabeth and the other duplicates don't have to struggle with a decision to sacrifice themselves as they let the "real" team escape. And when some Replicators find their crashed jumper, it's not Elizabeth who has the last line, but duplicate Sheppherd: "We fooled you (the Replicators). And we almost fooled ourselves."

This episode closes with tons of Replicator ship icons blipping all over a schematic of the Pegasus Galaxy and Rodney saying, "Oh, crap."

Carter was not only absent again, but the "real" Atlantis team functioned fine without her and neglected to even mention she wasn't around because she was, say, back on Earth making a report to the IOA (a poor man's malevolent NID).

"Mortal Coil, Part 1" leaves us with an impending doom to look forward to. (Good news). This episode has shades of robot duplicate SG 1 (Season 1 "Tin Man" & Season 4 "Double Jeopardy") and the Season 8 Amanda Carter replicant storyline. The bad news is that this episode isn't up to par with those it borrowed ideas from. I am a fan of SG 1 and Atlantis. I love the main storyline of the Pegasus Replicators being sicced on the Wraith and how the stakes have been raised by having the Replicators destroy defenseless humans to get at our favorite life-sucking two-legged parasites.

BUT, IMHO, many of the episodes are being produced in a flat, by the numbers, lifeless way in which there's no tension within the scenes, the dialogue is on the nose and expository, and there's little or no internal character struggle and external antagonist opposition. "Mortal Coil, Part 1" is the flatest of this new trend in Atlantis. I believe the writers of this episode were responsible for a number of equally flat SG 1 episodes over the last 10 years. AND Season 4 has been hampered by the questionable (in my view) killing off of Elizabeth Weir. Joe Flanigan's desire to keep Weir in the series and have the Atlantis team try to save her has been overridden by the showrunners to the detriment of the series.

Amanda Tapping was brought in to supposedly add a new character dynamic (blatantly bring over SG 1 fans more like): lead tactical missions and help Rodney and Zelenka pull off scientific miracles. Except when she sporadically appears from filming the two SG 1 films "Continuum" and "Ark of Truth," she acts exactly like Weir. If we're going to see Carter in charge, why not let her BE Carter? The one SG 1 member who wouldn't already duplicate the skill sets of the established Atlantis team AND would contribute to the mission is Daniel Jackson: resident expert on the Ancients, former Ascended human, archaeologist, and a living conscience.

Sadly, the producers seem to be ignoring the fans and aren't properly executing a mistaken change in the series' direction. I feel the series premiere was great. The first half of the first season was a shakedown. The second half of the first season through the end of the second season was the series' longest run of consistent development and drama. Season 3 was uneven, but finished with an exclamation point. Season 4 seems to be playing safe. With SG 1 cancelled and a new series still in development, the renewal of Atlantis for a 5th season is supposed to be great news. But if Season 4 keeps going the way it has been, I wonder how many people will stick around for next year?

I'm sad to see the show being sent stumbling in its new direction.

The Batman: "Ring Toss"

"Above average"
Musical rings anyone?

In Batman's latest Justice League team up, we have Green Lantern (GL). Not Kyle Raynor. Not John Stewart. But Hal Jordan.

Fine with me.

This episode seemed to cram a lot in. Maybe too much.

It opens with Dick at grade school waiting for a pickup. Some kids invite him to play basketball, but when Alfred shows up in the limo, Dick slinks off embarrassed. He complains to Alfred about not fitting in with the other kids. Alfred reminds Dick that he goes winging through the night in tights, wearing a mask, fighting bad guys at Batman's side, and our Boy Wonder clams up.

Then Alfred mentions that Master Bruce is entertaining another visiting hero: GL. Dick gets psyched up, and we don't hear another word of feeling apart from the other kids at school. What's the point of bringing it up in the first place?

Anyhow, Bats is scanning the known galaxy from the Batcave (nice) in search of GL's nemesis who escaped from an interstellar jail cell to wreak vengeance on him. I'll give you three guesses--it's Sinestro. Who else? With merely 21st century Wayne Corp. technology, Bats can't find a trace of this week's Big Bad. Dick shows up soon afterward and gushes over GL. After weathering Dick's fanboy adulation, GL goes to the Gotham? Airport to step back into his secret ID and recharge his power ring--except Sinestro shows up to take his ring to get even more powerful and lays a hurting on him.

GL puts up a good fight, but yellow trumps green--and his ring still needs a new charge. Before Sinestro can take his ring, GL sends it away with instructions to find Bats.

Sinestro leaves Hal unconscious and goes searching for the ring, which bumps into Penguin who's on his way to crash Bruce Wayne's latest charity event. After bumping into Pengie's top hat, the ring lets Mr. Cobblepot try it on for size.

I raised an eyebrow at this. I thought that all green lantern rings were set up to 1) seek out only worthy users and 2) not perpetrate evildoing.

Penguin goes on to gleefully rob Bruce's charity, a bank, a jewelry shop, and an antique car dealership. When I compare this to the Season Five JLU episode "The Great Brain Robbery" where the Flash and Lex Luthor switched bodies, this character trait mixing episode seemed a bit flat to me. I thought we could see Penguin using GL's ring to create an illicit Cobblepot estate or something rather than use his newfound superpower to go on a stereotypical robbery spree. And this seemed to take away from the main? issue of the GL vs Sinestro battle.

Batman and Robin soon catch up with Penguin, who holds 'em off with a ring that still hasn't run out of juice. Then Sinestro finally reappears and chases after Pengie, who lights out like a chicken with its head cut off. Hal also wakes up and somehow stays on the periphery as Penguin zips all over Gotham with Bats, Robin, and Sinestro hot after him.

Penguin soon gives the ring up to Bats, who starts to give Sinestro a challenge--except the ring is starting (again) to run low on juice.

Bats then tosses the ring back to Hal, who charges it back up, and can suddenly stand up to Sinestro even though his ring isn't supposed to be able to handle yellow projections.

Bats steps in to pickpocket Sinestro's yellow power ring and put him down for the count. Hal then soars heavenward to deliver Sinestro back into his "stasis field" to cap this week's adventure. What's the moral of this episode except to show that Hal and Sinestro aren't too extraordinary without their rings?

Batman on the other hand showed a nice touch with GL's ring. It woulda been interesting to see what he would've done with it for a full twenty minutes, except it wasn't his "style" and he doesn't need it to be a hero. This wasn't a bad episode, but I felt it could've been better.

Grey's Anatomy: "Crash Into Me" Part 2

"Pivotal"
Another great two-parter.

I have something of a love-hate view towards "Grey's Anatomy" (GA). The show is very good, but it amazes me how Shonda Rhimes and the producers can have fine stuff come out almost hand in hand with questionable creative choices. I for one did not care for the backdoor pilot of "Private Practice" wedged into Season 3's "The Other Side of This Life, Parts 1 & 2." If Shonda wanted to jumpstart another series, why not just air it separately in its entirety and not at the expense of a good GA episode? I'm indifferent to "Private Practice" and won't miss it if cancelled.

Anyhow, I digress...

As in many episodes, contrivances pop up to conveniently ramp up the drama, but I feel "Crash Into Me, Parts 1 & 2" upholds GA's knack for two-parters. Our characters scramble to save patients in difficult surgeries that experience one complication after another and several people juggle personal issues while they're in their patients' innards up to their elbows.

Watching Lexie bond with Nick (Seth Green), struggle to keep his carotid sealed...and fail couldn't not pull at the heart strings. Something might've started if he'd lived. And I had the feeling he would've been better for her than Alex.

Seeing Bailey overcome her distaste to save a neo Nazi paramedic suffering from internal injuries while her husband announced he was giving up on their marriage... Talk about being caught on the horns of a dilemma. Her speech to George about telling her husband to take their "vows" to heart was riveting. George's line: "Can I just do charts?" Priceless.

There's Alex working on a patient with both Eva and Lexie watching. I expected more fireworks. We'll just have to see in later episodes what the fall out will be.

For the first time in a while, I found myself liking Meredith as she reverted to form as a caring doctor faced with a no win situation, sticking a needle into the expanding heart of a trapped paramedic before helping him get out of an upside down, crushed ambulance passenger compartment while his dead partner's body lies inches away (with the Chief guiding her along the way. And then she persuades the wife of the dead man's partner to stay and be there for his good as much as for her own.

The season long rut Meredith has been locked into of hating her likeable half-sister, Lexie, and running away from a relationship with McDreamy has been making her extremely unlikable to me. It would've been...interesting if Derrick and Lexie had built on their meeting at the bar. But then we wouldn't be able to enjoy watching Derrick and Rose come together. Where one door closes, another opens. I'm more than willing to slam the door on Meredith for Rose's sake.

Letting Lexie dance with her and her friends at her mom's house kinda announces that Meredith is softening. But it comes out of the blue for me. I'm afraid I missed what made Meredith ease up enough to include Lexie for the first time.

And Meredith telling Derrick that she's trying to overcome her fear and doesn't want him to date other people was nice, but I wonder if it's too little too late?

The sparks are starting to fly between Derrick and nurse Rose, who saved Derrick's operation by getting their computer imager to work again despite being "nervous and flawed." Thank god for those three semesters of computer science she had at Santa Barbara. Needless to say, Derrick was able to continue excising the tumor from the brain of the black lady ambulance driver (the neo Nazi's partner no less) who crashed her rig (extremely convenient for the two-parter's sake) into the ambulance that Meredith and the Chief were performing triage at.

I originally started as Meredith-Derrick shipper. But I won't mind if Derrick begins something with Rose. (In fact, I think Giselle of "Enchanted" is better for him.) Somehow, I doubt Shonda and her braintrust will let these two be, though. But that's one reason why viewers will keep tuning in: to find out what'll happen between Derrick and Rose.

Hopefully the writers strike will be settled sooner rather than later. There aren't too many more Season 4 episodes left in the can, which is a shame since I feel this season of GA is turning out to be one of the better ones.

A lot of interesting things happening in this two-parter. Just skimming the highlights is a long essay.

Legion of Superheroes: "Message in a Bottle"

"Series Classic"
Best Superman (Kal El, that is) episode yet.

I've been really impressed with "Legion" this season. I latched onto it when the Cartoon Network cancelled "Justice League" (JLA) in all its pop culture wisdom. I was so-so on the first season of Legion, but saw flashes of inspiration, which made me stick with the show. Being produced by the team behind JLA helped, too. Regarding this episode, I felt it was virtually perfect in every regard. The only quibble I have was not adding Supe's 41st century clone, Kel El in this episode. Kel El has history with Imperiex, he'd love to see the Fortress (and Krypton), and he foreshadowed a dark path that Brainy is going to take (more on that later).

It's tough to play with established canon in any show, but I feel this episode did a great job of providing a standalone adventure and keeping the Superman mythos intact.

Imperiex leads Validus and a divison's worth of destructo bots to the Fortress of Solitude in the 31st century. Superman, Brainy, and assorted pals race to confront our baddie.

Imperiex, his cohorts, and Superman all get miniaturized and transported to the miniaturized city of Kandor, the surviving capital of Krypton stored in a bottle! Not having read every comic book there is has a bright side: getting great surprises in the animated series regularly. =)

I had no idea there was a "messenger" crystal created by Jor El that had been keeping Krypton intact before Brainiac 1.0 shrunk Kandor and removed it from the planet--spelling the end of Krypton. Of course Imperiex would want the "messenger" as a weapon of mass destruction to destroy planets that dare to defy him. Again I wish that Kel El had been included in this episode. He deserves to see Kandor (not to mention Krypton) as much as Kal.

The moment I saw the simulated red sun in the Kandor "sky," I knew Superman was in it deep against Imperiex. Seeing him wrestle with a failure of his he hadn't experienced yet (not restoring his fellow Kryptonians and their city to their normal size) was awesome. Brainy and company bringing up the cavalry and giving Superman a power suit was a nice development. Superman having his power suit broken just before the major confrontation with Imperiex was a great reversal in an episode full of twists and turns.

And watching Brainy face his demon (Brainiac 1.0) was the stuff of the highest drama. The second he input the info about restoring Kandor from his early generation "evil" ancestor, I knew there were going to be consequences down the road. Brainy's "smirk" immediately after the download and after he wiped Superman's memory to remove the temptation for Superman to restore Kandor in the 21st century and preserve the timeline established for the Legion.

The memory wipe is another great story twist. Watching the Kandorians supercharge and go mano a mano with Imperiex's goons when Brainy turns the sun yellow was loads of fun. And seeing Krypton restored and Kandor returned to the planet and back to normal was a fitting climax.

It's awesome when animated writers show they understand great characters and storytelling, better even than many film and TV writers.

The moment when Kel El confronted Brainy with the line "Once a brainiac always a brainiac" in "The Man From the Edge of Tomorrow, Part 1," I knew we were going to have a subplot to run in parallel with the main storyline of stopping Imperiex from creating a 31st century empire.
I'm really looking forward to seeing what happens in the rest of the season.

Some episodes are much better than others. This is one of the great ones.

Battlestar Galactica: "Razor"

"Series classic"
Best BSG in a while.

Being hyped as a tele-event on Sci Fi for months, I found "BSG: Razor" to be more of a souped up season 2 two episode parter rather than a feature extravaganza. But by BSG standards, that's really good.

Two storylines were combined here: the first days of Lee Adama in command of the Battlestar Pegasus--with the backstory of Admiral Cain and the Pegasus spoonfed in--and an encounter with the Protectors, a force of active original mechanical cylons, and the hybrid organic cylon they were protecting. Admiral Adama almost stumbled across the cylon organic experiments 40 years earlier on the tail end of the 1st Cylon War in the recent SciFi miniepisode series (November 2007) on a young Bill Adama.

I won't go into too many specific plot spoilers here so much as speak on general story points and character developments.

Personally, I feel that Season 2 was the highlight of the new BSG series with Season 3 (especially the second half) being a disappointment. I want the the producers to prove to me and the rest of the core viewership who're left that Season 4 will be up to snuff. That said, "Razor" fit the tone of Season 2 perfectly and added another magnitude of drama to that chapter in the series.

It was great seeing Admiral Cain again, and awesome to see the events alluded to by Colonel Fisk in "Pegasus." We're tied into Pegasus' past following the Cylon attack that obliterated the Colonies and the "Present" of Season 2 through the character of Kendra Shaw. For those who want to know, the survivor count hints at the time of "Downloaded."

Watching Kendra go from raw aide to ruthless soldier under Cain's guidance is spellbinding to say the least. And watching her butt heads with Starbuck as Lee's new XO is a treat. Being "Cain's legacy," she wouldn't hesitate to do what Tigh only dreamed of in putting Starback in her place. It would've been interesting to see how her and Starbuck would've gotten along is she hadn't been killed off at the end (more on that later).

Seeing Lee command in his own right was a pleasure. I can only imagine what would've happened had the the producers decided to not have the Colonials settle on New Caprica and set in motion the events that led to Lee sacrificing the Pegasus. This "what if" of Lee's development as a battlestar commander tantalizes me.

Cain was what we expected her to be: equal parts hero and villain. Sequences that show us Cain as a girl who was left an orphan by the 1st Cylon War weren't shown with the telemovie. But they're part of the extended version on the upcoming DVD (12-4-07). These sequences help us understand why Cain turned out to be a military die hard who sees herself as an unflinching weapon. A razor (though she was holding a folding knife at one point while imprinting on Kendra in a dramatic speech). Seeing Starbuck holding the knife following Kendra's death hints that she's the current holder of "Cain's legacy" (which doesn't bode well for the remnants of humanity in Season 4). What I don't understand, though, is why Cain didn't have the nerve to go through with her assasination plan of Adama in "Resurrection Ship (RS), Part 2," but she shot her former XO (who she'd served with for years) in the head with his own weapon without a blink. What accounts for Cain's sporadic flashes of humanity (in "RS, part 2") and hesitation? Something that I missed also was why Cain was so inflexible in pursuing an attack on a cylon station against odds of 4 to 1 when she'd assured her command staff in private that she wouldn't waste lives and resources on "a mad quest for revenge." Either this is inconsistent character development or Cain was lying to eveyone--and herself. The fact that Cain was revealed to have a relationship with Gina, a version of organic cylon model number 6, didn't have any impact on the story and could've been omitted completely. Something not dramatized on the telemovie, but I'm sure will be included in the DVD version, is the torture (beatings and gang raping) of Gina. These events will show how a Nazi fascist state comes into being on Pegasus under Cain's aegis in contrast to the morally grey, but still humane family atmosphere that Adama preserved on Galactica.

The Protector cylons were pretty lethal for outdated models. The impression given is that there was one base star's worth of them, but it's mentioned once that a "fleet" attacked the Pegasus at one point. A slip I'm sure. The scene with the three cylon fighter pilots and a "By your command" line was priceless. When Kendra leads Starbuck and on team onto the old base star to rescue some human hostages, I found myself wondering how they could find their way around, how many cylons were guarding the vessel, and why all opposition on the ship had vanished as Kendra got a warning from the hybrid about Starbuck being the "destroyer" of humanity just before Kendra nuked the ship. The warning about Starbuck from the hybrid nicely foreshadows one of Season 4's main issues. I'm still on the fence about that, though. I wondered why the hybrid offered Kendra the heads up? It indicates to me that this particular model wasn't such a bad person. And I wondered why the Protectors didn't seem to be taking orders from the hybrid?

Kendra blowing herself up tells me that she feels remorse about what she did as a soldier under Cain's command, but her taunting the hybrid "You should be afraid" struck me as insensitive and contradictory. But then she's human--and flawed. So where's the line between humans and organic cylons? At the end, Adama tells Lee that without him, Tigh, and President Roslin keeping him honest, he might've done some of the same things as Cain. I can see Adama being darker, but not going quite the same route as Cain. For one thing, Cain ignored and then shot her former XO, Colonel Belzen for not following questionable orders. Belzen was the closest thing to family and a conscience she had. Adama shooting Lee, Starbuck, Tigh, Helo, the Chief, etc is unthinkable.

All in all this is a strong episode, tele-event, what have you. "BSG: Razor" was meant as an entree for Season 4, which was originally scheduled to air on Sci Fi in January 2008, I believe, but was pushed back to at least April 2008 because of the bloody WGA strike. (Hopefully the studios and networks will see reason before too long.) I expect it'll have to hold us over for a while.

Review: "Enchanted" a royal treat


An animated Disney girl becomes a flesh-and-blood sweetheart
in this tongue-in-cheek homage to Disney fairy tales by Disney.

The first two-thirds of "Enchanted" is sweet, charming, almost-perfect, can't-wipe-the-smile-from-your-face fun. Simply put, it's endearing and, well, enchanting.

The movie works on a second level by lovingly evoking Disney's classic canon. "Enchanted" references everything from "Snow White" to "Beauty and the Beast," with gentle satire and sly references (pay attention to little details and character names). Helmer Kevin Lima ("Tarzan," "Enchanted") working with the script by Bill Kelly ("Blast From The Past"), takes traditional Disney fairytale animation and combines it with live action that forms a unique romantic comedy.

Narrated by Julie Andrews ("Mary Poppins"), the fun begins in the classically animated land of Andalasia. There we meet a young woman named Giselle
(Amy Adams, "Junebug"), a sweet innocent who, like Snow White, befriends woodland creatures; shares Belle's taste in gowns, and has Ariel's flowing red hair. She dances about her tree house and sings of a prince who will come and give her "true love's kiss." Her animal friends represent a Who's Who of Disney cartoon creature history: a chipmunk, blue birds, a baby deer, a gray rabbit, an owl, a warthog and more.

This sweet, idealistic beginning is basically a condensed all-too-familiar Disney classic. Giselle falls into danger when a six-storey green troll, drawn by her song, comes around to eat her and is saved by the brave, charming, and somewhat dim Prince Edward (James Marsden, "X-Men").
Having found in each other the one who completes their “heart’s duet,” Giselle and Edward finish the song about the magic of "True Love's Kiss", instantly fall in love and ride off to be "married in the morning!"

But not all is well. Queen Narissa (Susan Sarandon, "In the Valley of Elah"),
Edward's wicked stepmother, knows that if he marries, she will lose her throne forever. So Narissa, magically disguised as a crone in black hood and gown, dupes Giselle, on her wedding day, to make a wish at a magical fountain with a sparkling waterfall. As Giselle leans forward to make a wish -- of course, to live happily ever after with her prince -- the crone gives her a shove and the would be princess falls into the fountain and lands in a place "where there are no happily ever afters." Where else but real life midtown Manhattan?

Giselle lands, in of all places, underneath a manhole cover in Times Square.
In classic New Yorker fashion, passers-by give the hoop-skirted belle barely a glance. In no time flat, her tiara is stolen by a homeless man and she's doused by rain, but hope reigns supreme when Giselle spies the 'Palace' she's been searching for (actually the billboard fronting of a run down casino).
That's where she meets divorce attorney and single dad McDreamy -- er Robert (Patrick Dempsey, TV's "Grey's Anatomy") as his young daughter Morgan (Rachel Covey, "Duane Hopwood"), recently denied the fairy tale book she'd asked for, spies a real live Princess asking to be let into the palace.

When Giselle asks for directions to a nearby meadow or hollow tree, Robert reluctantly lets her spend the night on his couch in his SoHo apartment. He finds the act of a good Samaritan difficult to undo and before he knows it his curtains have been turned into frocks
and his singing houseguest is cleaning house. She leans out a window and puts out her signature call: "Aahhh. Aahhh. Aaa -- ahhh."

But rather than cuddly blue jays, squirrels, rabbits, and the like, NYC’s finest urban pests come a running: rats, pigeons, flies, and cockroaches. Though taken aback, Giselle pushes on to make "new friends," orchestrating the clean up of Robert’s apartment with her happy pest cohorts to the tune of a "Happy Working Song" (a spoof on Snow White’s "Whistle While You Work"). As the apartment is tidied, birds get injured and plates are dropped. In the film's most hilariously inspired scene -- helpful cockroaches clean the tub! And at the end, a pigeon eats one of the poor roaches.

Of course, this domesticity
is misinterpreted by Nancy, Robert's girlfriend of five years (Idina Menzel, "Rent"),
who is nonetheless wooed back by a disbelieving Robert with Giselle's advice. And if he's surprised that works, imagine his dilemma when her prince, Edward,
really does arrive, accompanied by Pip, a most 'animated' chipmunk, Giselle’s best animated friend.
Emerging in Times Square with his high boots, puffed shirt, and sharp sword,
he attacks a city bus and refers to everyone as “peasants.”

Giselle and Edward aren’t the only ones to have traveled through the manhole, though. The Queen’s lovestruck lackey, Nathaniel (Timothy Spall, "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire"),
comes along. Somehow, in an apparently thinly populated Andalasia, Nathaniel kept Edward busy for years with hunting trolls and other adventures, while steering the young prince away from likely maidens. Nathaniel seems surprisingly New York savvy from the start, slipping into disguises, complete with international accents, and Edward is too self-absorbed to notice or care. When the two buy food in a cafeteria and get a motel room, I find myself wondering how they pay for it all? Gold coins?

Unbeknownst to everyone but Pip (who can’t speak anymore, just pantomime) is the fact that Nathaniel is spying for the queen and has orders to give Giselle a poisoned apple. But when Nathaniel fails twice to off Giselle, Narissa herself makes an appearance
-- right in time for the upcoming "Kings and Queens ball."

There's one other thigh-slapper song and dance production: a mock ballad called "That's How You Know," deploying hundreds of performers,
including rollerbladers and a mariachi band, at locations all over Central Park.
During it, Giselle runs up a hill arms outstretched, a la famous shots in "Beauty and the Beast" and "The Sound of Music."

It's a show-stopper in more ways than one, unfortunately.

Director Kevin Lima and credited screenwriter Bill Kelly are hard pressed to maintain the momentum over the next hour or so, which plays out a lot like a clichéd, tune-free Disney Channel movie.

The film tries to recreate "Sleeping Beauty"'s epic confrontation with the evil witch in gloomy, Gothic Forbidden Mountain. Here, Narissa poisons Giselle at the King and Queen ball. But Robert revives Giselle with a kiss just before the clock strikes twelve. The Queen then turns into a fire-breathing, six-storey tall dragon and takes Robert outside with her and up the skyscraper they’re all in. Giselle heads after them -- once she tosses aside her shoes.

The special effect is disconcerting, and not particularly special. It's as if in the final reel, it was decided to give the men something to do. I feel the ball could’ve been another song-and-dance set piece for Giselle, but it was Robert who ended up muttering a few lyrics.
And what exactly was the point of casting Idina Menzel, one of Broadway's leading musical performers, and not giving her anything to sing? Still, until then, the story is a winner. I expect the songs by Alan Menken ("The Little Mermaid," "Beauty and the Beast") and Stephen Schwartz (Disney's "The Hunchback of Notre Dame") will be new classics and they're perfectly placed within "Enchanted."

A singer and trained dancer, Amy Adams is pitch perfect as the beautiful Giselle, both animated and live, giving her wide eyed innocence and wonder.
James Marsden plays the self-absorbed and flawless Prince Edward with goofy charm.
Patrick Dempsey has the tough role as the comedy’s straight man but he gives it his best as McDreamy, er -- Robert, a NYC cynical divorce with a buried heart of gold.
If nothing else, it's worth seeing just for the cartoonish performances of Adams and Marsden as the real-life versions of a classic Disney princess and her Prince Charming. Adams owns her character down to the faintest gasp, twirl, and smile, captivating the audience and carrying the film on her shoulders.
I won’t be shocked if she gets an Oscar nomination for this role.

"Enchanted" is fun most of the way, thanks in part to updates of familiar Disney scenes: like poison fruit comes in the form of a vile apple martini and the magic mirror being a motel television. But the film sends mixed messages about love as Adams' princess falls in true love with Dempsey's skeptical modern bachelor.

As Giselle waits for Edward to come for her, she discovers how the real world has a different view of love from fairytale land. She's confused by ideas like "dating"
and how Robert and his girlfriend Nancy could be in love for years but not yet married. Giselle's outright shocked by the idea of divorce, a discovery that drives her to tears. Giselle says, "Separated forever and ever?" when she learns a client of Robert's is divorcing her husband.

Burned by a former love, Robert is a calloused realist in love and unaffected by the divorce he’s overseeing. He views love in a practical, business-like fashion. The polar opposite of Giselle. Over and over, he explains to Giselle that love can't happen in a day, is not magical, and is a commitment that takes work. Giselle's lovey-dovey version of love, he explains bitterly, is mere fantasy. "Many marriages are happy if they just don't end," he says. "Forget happily ever after."

Giselle and Robert's discussions about love are intriguing and well placed in a Disney family movie. After all, Disney is a chief perpetrator of the Hollywood myth of easy, instant and magical love. The kind where fireworks ring out, cartoon birds sing and couples are magically connected in happiness. It's a breath of fresh air to find a movie stressing that love only begins with magical feelings, but from there, it's about choice and commitment. By featuring characters with very different and very incomplete perspectives on love, "Enchanted" is in position to explore what love really means. Giselle and Robert have the opportunity to learn from each other and apply in their respective relationships the truth that successful love needs both real-world commitment and fairyland romance. And for a while, it seems that maybe that's where all the love talk is headed.

Until the two-thirds mark hits.

The climactic scene changes Giselle. She stops singing and loses some of her innocence and joy. And while the film applauds this change as a positive step in her personal growth, it feels sad to me. Giselle is a strong woman, dynamic character, and great role model, one who’ll be the next popular princess in Disney lore, but the real world changes her, and I'm not sure all the changes are actually positive. For her sake, I almost wish Giselle would've stayed in Andalasia. But I guess then I wouldn't have had so much fun seeing her bring a little bit of that world here.

Instead of using Giselle’s and Robert’s relationships to show a realistic and affirming view of love, "Enchanted" sends mixed messages about what love is. It talks a lot about commitment, but chucks commitment out the window. It talks about the need for couples to get to know each other, but instead affirms the idea that true love is something magically discovered nearly immediately. "Enchanted" didn’t define love incorrectly, but left it unclear and confusing. It feels to me like the filmmakers took the easy way out with a crowd-pleasing resolution at the expense of its values and message.

Why wouldn’t Robert warm to Giselle? She’s sunny, has control of woodland creatures through her voice, and can inspire a couple on the verge of divorce to stay together. But what does Robert offer Giselle? A relationship in the real world where more than half of marriages don’t last? What chemistry does Giselle really have with Robert other than the fact that the story mandated her to become a "real woman" who fell in love with a real guy?

Although "Enchanted" doesn't fully take advantage of its unique idea, it's still a hugely entertaining, clever comic fairy tale. But when it ended, I wondered, Is Giselle better off now? What happens two years down the road?

WGA Writers Strike

I don't normally care to talk about the fiction/film industries, but this seems too important an event to pass up.

Those familiar with the entertainment biz know that film/TV writers went on strike on Monday, November 5, 2007, to settle disputes over proper compensation on residuals for DVDs and other media like the internet. This strike, the first since 1988, has led to the stoppage of production of every American TV broadcast and cable show. Films are still ongoing, but as time goes by, they will be affected, too.

Studio reps say they're surprised that the writers chose to strike and are disappointed because they feel they've made strides in accomodating the writers' demands. Former studio head Michael Eisner for one believes it's a mistake to strike now because the incomes the writers seek aren't available now, but will be three or more years later since alternative media is still developing.

I have a hard time believing the position of the studios. Writers are lashed to the lowest position in the totem pole in the entertainment world. They get the least respect and earn the least, but all projects stem from written scripts. SciFi Channel for one forced webisodes of BSG, requiring the writers to write for free and without credits. Something I don't understand is why they were written and produced in the first place.

I for one prefer to see TV & film production continue, but with outrages like this happening, I'd be perfectly happy to see the established Hollywood system collapse under its own weight. If the strike has to go on for a couple years before the studios and networks see reason, so be it.

Vive la strike!

Review: “Lust, Caution”

Being a fan of Ang Lee, whose “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” masterpiece is one of my top 5 favorite films, I couldn’t resist tracking down the small art house theater in my area that was showing his latest work, which is out only in limited US release: "Lust, Caution."

The Eileen Chang short story that's the basis for Lee's adaptation is as economical as a wound ball of silk thread: Chang packs a lot of emotional yardage into a very small space as she examines, without demystifying the complex relationship between a young Chinese spy in Japanese-occupied Shanghai and the dangerous collaborator she has been assigned to seduce.

Reactions to Lee’s film range from fascinated to bored. I fall toward the latter to my disappointment. I can see that Lee admires Chang's story. But I would say Lee and his long-time screenwriting collaborators, Wang Hui Ling and James Schamus, have stretched Chang's delicate story into a thin, underfed epic.

The life of "Lust, Caution" is poured into the last third; most of what comes before is a long expository flashback buildup, which I felt could’ve been told from the beginning and shortened--greatly.

The picture opens in Shanghai 1942, in the home of Mr. Yee (Tony Leung, one of Asia’s top leading men), security head of the Chinese government that’s collaborating with the occupying Japanese, where his talkative wife (Joan Chen) is entertaining a mahjong party of well-dressed friends. One of them is the beautiful Mrs. Mak Tai Tai (newcomer Tang Wei), the wife of a Hong Kong importer-exporter. When Mr. Yee stops by the table, he and Mrs. Mak share glances that indicate they’re somehow involved. But it’s later revealed that she’s also involved with young Kuang Yu Min (Chinese pop star Wang Leehom), who’s in the resistance.

Mak Tai Tai makes an excuse to leave the game. She goes to a downtown cafe in downtown, where she makes a phone call to Kuang and a group of other men, sits down at a table and begins to remember the past, specifically events in Hong Kong four years earlier.

Cut back to 1938 Hong Kong, where the supposed Mrs. Mak is revealed as college student Wang Chia Chi, an idealistic, naïve girl, who’s enticed into a rebellious, anti-Japanese theatre troupe by Kuang. She develops a crush on him and finds an unexpected calling as a natural actress, who inspires audience members to tearful cries of “China will not fall!” in her troupe’s first patriotic performance. When Kuang gets the idea to turn their group into an unaffiliated amateur resistance cell, she goes along and allows him to persuade her to take the Mak disguise so that she can get close enough to Yee to lure the traitor to his death. But the plot fails when Yee leaves abruptly for Shanghai to accept a promotion, escaping the group’s assassination attempt.

Flash ahead to 1941, when after some difficult years Kuang approaches Wang to resume her role as Mrs. Mak to attempt to seduce Yee again for the same purpose. Under the official auspices of the Communist resistance, Wang goes to Shanghai and this time entangles Yee in a stormy, passionate affair. The outwardly stoic Yee seems on the verge of abandoning his usual cautiousness to his desires, when Wang comes to a crossroad.

Not only are the mission and her life at stake, but so is her real identity. Her role as Mrs. Mak is not only a facade for Yee, but also a trap for herself. And soon she must choose whether it's more valuable to play a false person who is trusted and loved, or a real one whom she barely acknowledges herself.

Defining oneself is a favorite theme of Lee's. In this film, he makes some of his most devastating observations about human nature, finding in his main character a woman who has no identity until she creates one for others. In an early scene, Wang sits in a movie theater crying while watching “Intermezzo”; it's a telling moment because it immediately precedes her emergence as an actress and speaks to the connection between the fiction of a "character" and the emotion it generates within her.

She becomes consumed by playing Mrs. Mak, not only because she completely believes the truth of her role, but because the Yees believe as well. It makes her self-delusion that much more powerful, and when she eventually sleeps with Mr. Yee, their sex scenes are charged with deep emotional intensity because he expresses a need to reveal himself to another person and she feels the gratification of finally becoming someone. To her, convincing him she is Mrs. Mak is actually being Mrs. Mak, and it empowers her--both emotionally and physically--as a fully-formed person rather than the discarded daughter of an expatriate or some street urchin playing with patrician-class values.

At the same time, the real world frequently imposes its unflinching gaze on her gambit and reminds her that she isn't acting in some assassination play, but part of a real plot. In an early sequence that concludes her first "performance" as Mrs. Mak, Wang witnesses her fellow actors clumsily murder another collaborator--a sight too real and unglamorous for her to stay "in character." Later, she receives a precious stone ring that reveals Yee's love, in the process unleashing her own buried feelings. Both events reconnect Wang with her humanity, corrupted by playing her role of Mrs. Mak, ultimately showing her how she not only betrayed those closest to her, but herself as well

Punctuated by several skillfully photographed and intense, even sadomasochistic, love scenes, “Lust, Caution” presents complex characters. Yee, on the surface, appears to be a harsh, even hateful man. But his feelings for Wang bring out another side of him. The relationship between Mr. Yee and Wang with her divided identity is the central dynamic of "Lust, Caution." Both people play roles within roles, engaging in intricate double and triple games that get so complex they become ensnared in entanglements neither one anticipates or wants.

The one place the protagonists are naked, both literally and psychologically, is when they make love, and the sex scenes in "Lust, Caution" are both explicit and essential to illustrating the intensity of their relationship. The sex is graphic and rough. While they might not admit it, this appears to be the only place where the protagonists are honest with each other, where the complex, tortured, ever-changing relationship between them plays itself out.

Wei, Leung and Leehom are all brilliant in their roles. Lee manipulates their characters to evoke sad, beautiful and profound human truths. He pits the two halves of Wang’s character against each other and positions them against her two would-be suitors, Yee and Kuang, creating a dynamic where two men are fighting for two different women in the same frail frame.

Leung's Yee is a man full of secrets, and he finds in Mak a person in whom he can confide--if not the sordid details of his business, at the very least his tormented feelings. Meanwhile, Kuang vows to protect the shrinking-violet Wang from harm, but fails to recognize her real identity until it is too late, as she has already succumbed to the reassuring validation of the Yees' acceptance. (Her question to him--"Why didn't you do that before?"--after he kisses her is one of the movie's most heartbreaking moments.) Lee exercises control of these shifting emotional dynamics to not only maximize the drama in the last third of the film, but to show the desperate and destructive ways that Wang has sealed her own fate.

Thing is, these character subtleties weren’t obviously apparent to me on first, second, or third reflection--and not just because I spent almost half my time reading the English subtitles. I wonder how well the casual viewer will pick up on the character nuances that Lee wove into the film? Something I also didn’t understand was how Wang, after being clumsily initiated into the world of sex by a fellow actor in her troupe, found the seductiveness she needed to entice Yee, particularly in the moments before her first sex encounter with him in which he raped her. And I found it coincidental that she could sing a very touching song to Yee about how they were “needle and thread,” who would never part. I found myself wondering about Yee’s reasons for collaborating with the Japanese, whether he was in it for his own gain or he sincerely believed that working with the Japanese would benefit China? I found it interesting that Wang could speak English, but it didn’t seem relevant to her character and the story, so the few English scenes could have just as well been done in Mandarin. And Kuang’s competing interest in Wang gets a bit lost by the wayside as the story meanders along.

The bones for a great movie are in the film: The tormented femme fatale, the lethal but alluring man she must seduce, the exotic locales, the political intrigue--all punctuated by startling sex between lust-struck hunter and prey. But Lee doesn't zero in on them. He allows long gaps of silence to insinuate themselves unnecessarily between lines of dialogue. He also lavishes a great deal of attention on several shots of Wang sitting in a cafe, dabbing perfume on her wrists: The detail is straight out of Chang's story, but there, it's fleet and concise; Lee stretches it out, crushing it by attempting to load it with importance.

What Chang wrote about eloquently and succinctly--how easily the noblest intentions can be corrupted by love, or at least the promise of it--gets lost in the film. The film focuses so much on the details--like a mahjong game that lasts forever, but we Westerners still don’t understand--we lose sight of the lead actors, whose relationship is all but buried till the last 40 minutes or so of the film.

"Lust, Caution" (shot by Rodrigo Prieto) does have a polished retro-dreamy look. And Lee couldn't have chosen better actors for the cast. It's always a pleasure to watch Joan Chen. She doesn't have much to do here, but playing an aging, possessive beauty, she casts a quiet spell over the picture. Tang, with her fine features and always-questioning eyes, plays Wang with a deft balance of delicacy and toughness to stand up to Leung.

Leung's performance is less moodily romantic than any of those he has given in his work with director Wong Kar-Wai (including "Chunking Express" and "In the Mood for Love")--but here, he pushes beyond romanticism into unsettling territory. His Mr. Yee is at first unreadable, like a distant danger signal at sea that we can't quite make out through the fog. But later in the movie, as Yee's relationship with Wang deepens, he slips into focus. This may be the most unlikable character Leung has ever played--he's such an appealing presence that you can't imagine any director asking him to convey the ruthlessness that this role demands. But Leung pulls off the nearly impossible, making us feel sympathy for a man driven largely by selfish impulses, a man whose cruelty is almost dissolved by love, but not quite as he lets Wang meet her fate--with anguish.

Rated NC-17 for its intense sex scenes (which were cut in the Far East release for Chinese authorities), "Lust, Caution" shows flashes of craft and poignance, teasing people with what it could have been in my opinion.

Review: "American Gangster"

Inspired by an article profiling drug dealer Frank Lucas for “New York” magazine seven years ago, "American Gangster" really means business.

The film opens strong as Frank (Denzel Washington) pours gas on an unknown Puerto Rican man, sets him ablazing and then pumps a couple of shots into the guy as rough mercy. Things don't get any nicer from there.

Frank is the driver for Bumpy Jones (Clarence Williams III), the benevolent gangster-lord of Harlem. But Bumpy, incensed by a discount department store, mutters a final judgment before dying of a heart attack: "This is what's wrong with America -- it's gotten so big you can't find your way ... What right do they have cutting out the suppliers, pushing all the middlemen out, buying direct from the manufacturer?"

Bumpy's not long in the ground before Frank seizes on his dying mentor's words and spins them to his own benefit. He flies to war-torn Vietnam, making his way deep into the jungle and using his entire savings to buy a load of pure heroin from a Chinese warlord, which he then smuggles into the U.S. aboard military planes with the connivance of an army friend and sells in high grade at cut-rate prices on the street, branding his merchandise “Blue Magic” for quality and racking up sales. As he continues his unusual and brilliant import scheme, he brings his family up from Tar Heel country (The movie gets his roots wrong, saying he's from Greensboro, North Carolina: He grew up in tiny LaGrange, about 10 miles southeast of Goldsboro, which he left at 12 in the early 1940s.) to New York City, where he buys an estate for his gray-haired mother (Ruby Dee, just turned 83) and takes his brothers (including Huey, played by Chiwetel Ejiofor) into the business; works out a distribution deal with his Harlem rival Nicky Barnes (Cuba Gooding, Jr.) and Italian mafioso Dominic Cattano (Armand Assante); and weds a beauty contest winner (Lymari Nadal). Frank’s on top of the world, leaving no trace of evidence connecting him to his “Blue Magic” and underplaying the flashy gangland stereotype but ruling his empire when necessary with an iron -- and violent -- hand.

Of course, there’s the law to deal with, on the one hand the corrupt New York City special investigations squad led by chief narcotics detective Trupo (Josh Brolin), who menacingly demands his usual cut of the profits. But he proves less threatening to Frank’s business than Richie Roberts (Russell Crowe), this film’s version of Eliot Ness, a detective whose squeaky-clean career is not mirrored by his messy personal life: a custody battle with his wife (Carla Gugino) over his son, womanizing, and financial troubles. But Richie gets appointed by his boss (Ted Levine) to lead a special narcotics federal task force, and he's determined bring down some major criminals, including Frank.

Richie faces his own challenges on the other side of the law. NYC police are, in general, so corrupt that an honest cop is a pariah. When Richie seizes and surrenders $970,000 to his superior officer, the cynical joke -- "Where's the rest of it?" is funny only because it's based in truth. Most of Richie's fellow cops would have taken the cash, and they can't trust someone so trustworthy. The first Ali-Frazier fight serves as a reference point for the film, which spans the years from 1968 to the mid 1970s.

Director Ridley Scott (whose “Gladiator” masterpiece is one of my ten favorite films) and screenwriter Steve Zaillian try to develop each character equally, though it's really Washington's charismatic crook who holds our interest. That's no knock on Crowe, who's solid. Zaillian's script works to portray Frank and Richie as mirror-image strivers -- Frank looking for new possibilities in dealing, Richie going to law school at night -- and shows us how innovations in crime are matched by innovations in crime fighting. Frank wants to work around the Italian mob’s established structure of heroin importing; Richie wants to work without the corrupt infrastructure of the local cops.

Eventually, Richie fastens on Frank and breaks up his brazen, all-or-nothing attempt to ship in one huge last load of heroin as the American effort in Vietnam is collapsing. Before long the two men are facing one another in jail, with Frank negotiating turn state’s evidence in return for special treatment, and Richie getting his opportunity to show off his legal chops in court.

As Frank’s and Richie’s stories gradually intersect, the film’s tone wavers between different themes. Is “American Gangster” a parable of American capitalism, where men like Frank sell narcotics because it's the most profitable work available? Is it a cautionary, rise-and-fall tale about a drug dealer's life and times? Is it the portrait of a dogged cop trying to crack a narcotics smuggling ring? Or of a cop fighting the more insidious evil of police corruption? Or is it just a riveting tale of cop-versus-crook, with two formidable foes circling each other warily, never meeting until their final showdown? The listed possibilities call to mind a host of other films, like “Traffic,” “Scarface,” “The French Connection,” “Prince of the City,” “Heat.”

There are many moments when Ridley Scott's epic feels like a patchwork made of other films, other images. One music cue recycles Bobby Womack's title song from “Across 110th Street.” Frank's twisted vision of the American dream ("This is where I'm from. This is where my family is. My business. My mother. This is my place. This is my country. This is America.") sounds like a paraphrase from “The Godfather.”

But there are also many strong moments where something unique flashes through “American Gangster,” which make you wish there were more of them. Frank's such a businessman that he considers how Nicky Barnes dilutes his dope to maximize street profit "trademark infringement." Richie only becomes aware of Frank's importance after spotting him seated many rows ahead of better-known criminals at the Frasier-Ali fight: "His seats were phenomenal. ..." In a devastating third act speech, Ruby Dee gives the movie its one resounding note of moral outrage. And in the film's most tense scene -- and the one that suggests what “American Gangster” might have been -- Richie's search of Frank's dope plane is derailed by a sneering U.S. Attorney (Roger Bart) because he simply can't believe the idea Frank's been able to get a direct connection, racism overriding police work.

Ridley Scott, who took over for Antoine Fuqua ("Training Day"), puts together a spectacular film on the production level. He and his crew get details right: the clothes, the look of a Harlem diner, the naked women assembling packets of "Blue Magic" heroin in an apartment in the projects, where a wild chase through the hallways caps the film. Scott treats us to many wide street shots and scenes in crowded clubs. Every element from the store fronts to the cars to the costumes look completely genuine. You believe what’s happening at every minute of “American Gangster” could be a very close recreation of what actually went down. There’s a legitimacy to the production that elevates it above what many other directors can do.

But the emotional fire burns only intermittently. We’re never given much of a reason to care about Frank or Richie and so the film becomes a vivid recreation without a dramatic purpose. Everyone involved got the "how" and the "what" of this story down great but forgot the "why." We never learn much about either Frank or Richie beyond their actions and it makes the whole piece shockingly cold and detached.

Except for one 30-second story about seeing a cousin killed by racist cops in North Carolina, we learn nothing about Frank’s past: He's just an empty-hearted killer with the shrewd instincts of a corporate head, and he's willing to get his fingers bloody when necessary. We learn more about Richie in comparison, who's portrayed as one of the few honest cops in North Jersey in the 1960s. But not how or why he turned out that way.

The last 40 minutes of "American Gangster" are as brilliantly directed, acted and action-packed as anything since, well, last year's Oscar-winning mob movie "The Departed," but the film runs long at 157 minutes. Washington and Crowe, two of today’s best leading men, have an easy chemistry when they collide. Still, there isn’t much to their characters. Scott is a great visual designer, but he has rarely brought full human dimension to his characters and I don't feel he does it here.

“American Gangster” is too well made not to enjoy, but it doesn’t get under one’s skin. It’s a good film that feels like it could have been great.