Monthly Archives: July 2022

Lisa Marie’s Week In Television: 6/25/22 — 7/2/22

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Emmy voting has officially closed but I’m still catching up on this year’s contenders.  I should be able to finish up over the upcoming week.

The Beatles: Get Back (Disney Plus)

This documentary, which was produced and put together by Peter Jackson, is about the recording of Let It Be and the final days of the Beatles.  Featuring actual footage of the Beatles joking, arguing, and acting like a dysfunctional family, this is a fascinating but extremely long documentary.  I watched the first episode on Saturday and I was exhausted by the time that it ended but I’m still looking forward to watching the remaining two episodes next week.

As far as the Beatles are concerned, I like George.

Better Things (Hulu)

I watched two episodes of the latest season of this sitcom on Tuesday.  Pamela Adlon’s great but the show was a bit depressing, in the way that so many sitcoms tend to be nowadays.  I guess the best way to put it is that the show has its moment but sometimes, it seemed to be trying too hard.

Bridgerton (Netflix)

I watched a bit of the second season on Thursday.  I liked the costumes.

Flack (Amazon Prime)

Ann Paquin plays a self-destructive, London PR agent.  I watched two episodes from the show’s second season.  Paquin was great and Sam Neill appears in a few episodes but the show itself was a bit predictable.  Even it’s cynicism felt a bit trendy.

The Flight Attendant (HBOMax)

Oh my God, I love this show!  Kaley Cuoco gives a brilliant performance as a flight attendant who is both a recovering alcoholic and an asset for the CIA.  I watched the second season this week and it wonderfully balanced comedy with action.

The Gilded Age (HBO)

This HBO series takes place in New York City in 1882 and it’s basically an American version of Downton Abbey, which is not surprising considering that it was created by Julian Fellowes.  The first season followed a host of characters as they navigated their way through New York’s demanding social world.  It was good but occasionally a bit uneven, largely because of the presence of Marian Brook (Louise Jacobson), who comes to New York to stay with her wealthy aunts (Christine Baranski and Cynthia Nixon).  Marian is supposed to be the audience surrogate but she’s such a dull and self-righteous character and Jacobson gave such a blah performance that I soon found myself dreading any scene that involved her.

Far more interesting were the characters of robber baron George Russell (Morgan Spector) and his ambitious wife, Bertha (Carrie Coon).  As long as the show focused on them and on the servants (all of whom has their own opinions on the wealthy people they served), The Gilded Age was compelling and entertaining.  It’s also a gorgeous show to look at.  I am looking forward to the the second season, though I hope there will be a bit less Marian drama to deal with.

Hacks (HBOMax)

I watched two episodes of the second season of this comedy.  Jean Smart plays an egocentric comedian.  Hannah Embinder plays her writer.  Embinder and especially Smart give good performances.  The rest of the show’s ensemble isn’t as interesting.

iCarly (Peacock)

Yay!  Carly’s back!  I binged the second season on Wednesday and this is a good example of how a show can be updated for the times without losing its charm.

Inspector Lewis (YouTube)

The Inspector and Hathaway had to solve another series of murders in Oxford.  Hathaway was trying to quit smoking and he was so miserable about it that I actually cheered a little when he lit up at the end.  Good for you, Hathaway!  I don’t smoke and I do think that people should be happy.

The Lincoln Lawyer (Netflix)

Eh.  I watched the first episode of this new legal series.  I enjoyed the movie with Matthew McConaughey but the show was boring.  It was David E. Kelley on autopilot.

MacGruber (Peacock)

It’s been a while since I’ve cared about SNL but I definitely remember MacGruber and I enjoyed his show on Peacock.  Will Forte is so underrated.

The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (Amazon Prime)

I finally watched the latest season of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.  It’s a good show, I just hope no one’s getting too attached to Lenny Bruce.

The Squid Game (Netflix)

In this South Korean show, a group of financially destitute people are recruited to play deadly games for the amusement of the wealthy.  I finally watched this show on Wednesday and Thursday and I was a bit surprised to learn that it lived up to its considerable hype.  I know that some people, including the show’s creator, say that its a critique of capitalism.  Myself, I feel that its a critique of authoritarianism but then again, I’m a capitalist.  The most important thing is that the imagery was memorably surreal and the cast did a good job of making things feel real.

Ted Lasso (Apple TV+)

I finally watched the first two episodes of this second season of this series on Wednesday.  I will probably never join the cult of Ted Lasso but I do agree with those who have praised Jason Sudeikis’s performance in the title role.  If there was ever a Ted Lasso/Barry/MacGruber cross-over event, I probably wouldn’t mind.

What We Do In The Shadows (Hulu)

What We Do In The Shadows actually airs on FX but I watched the 3rd season on Hulu.  It’s a funny show, sort of like The Office but with exceptionally crude vampires.  The third season was both funny and surprisingly poignant, as Colin Robinson actually died.  (Maybe he faked his death but then Nandor crushed his head while trying to revive him….)  This season also featured the brilliant Kristine Schaal as The Guide.

Yellowstone (Peacock)

I finally watched this show, binging the entire fourth season on Monday and Tuesday and, to my surprise, I really enjoyed it.  Kevin Costner plays a politically powerful rancher who has a lot of enemies.  The great Kelly Reilly plays his daughter.  The show was undeniably melodramatic but it was also a lot of fun, with great performances from Costner, Reilly, Wes Bentley, and Cole Hauser.  I’ve never been a huge fan of Costner in the past but this show makes the best use of his somewhat flinty screen presence.

Cone of Silence (1960, directed by Charles Frend)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Cone of Silence is a very British film about aviation.

George Sanders plays an investigator who is looking into a crash of a “Phoenix” jetliner.  The crash has been blamed on the pilot, Captain George Gort (Bernard Lee).  Because Gort was killed in the crash, he is not around to defend himself.  Gort had a previous crash on his record and had also been reprimanded for flying to low when he landed a flight in Calcutta.  To Phoenix Airlines, Gort is the perfect scapegoat but a series of flashbacks reveals that Gort was a good pilot and that the cowardly Captain Clive Judd (Peter Cushing) was responsible for the incident in Calcutta.  Captain Hugh Dallas (Michael Craig) tries to exonerate Gort’s name before another crash occurs.

Cone of Silence is named not for the famed listening device from Get Smart but instead for a key part of Gort’s certification process, where he has to fly a plane without being able to hear anyone or anything else around him.  That Gort manages to do so is one of the things that leads to Dallas believing the Gort couldn’t have been responsible for the later crash.  Bernard Lee is best-known for playing James Bond’s unflappable superior, M, and it’s interesting to see him playing a much more neurotic character in Cone of Silence.  Gort is a good pilot but he knows that, after his first crash, no one trusts his judgment and everyone is expecting him to fail and it gets to him.  It does not help that he has to deal with the weaselly Captain Judd, who is looking to blame anything that happens on Gort.  Cushing does a good job of playing Judd as someone who is outwardly friendly but who is ultimately only looking out for himself.

Cone of Silence was released at a time when jet travel was still considered to be a luxury and pilots were viewed as being the men who could do the impossible.  Not surprisingly, the film is full of lengthy scenes in which Captain Dallas and others explain every step that goes into flying a jet.  Great care was taken to get every detail right, even if it meant limiting the film’s dramatic potential.  This may have been fascinating to audiences in 1960, many of whom had never traveled on a plane, but today, Cone of Silence can feel dry and overly talky.  It’s good to see Sanders, Lee, and Cushing all in the same film but Cone of Silence is never as compelling as its cast.

Film Review: The Princess (dir by Le-Van Kiet)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

An unnamed Princess (Joey King) has been taken prisoner by the evil Julius (Dominic Cooper).  Julius wants to take control of the kingdom and the best way to do that is to force the Princess to marry him.  The morning of what is planned to be her forced wedding, the Princess wakes up handcuffed and trapped in one of those huge towers that always seem to turn up in movies like this.  The Princess takes one look out the window and is confronted by some cartoonish CGI that lets the viewer know that she’s really up high.

Fortunately, this Princess has spent most of her life training to be a warrior.  Under the tutelage of Linh (Veronica Ngo) and Khai (Kristofer Kamiyasu), the Princess has learned how to fight and defeat almost any enemy.  (“Fight from you heart,” Linh tells her.)  As such, the Princess has no fear of breaking her wrist so that she can remove the handcuffs.  Soon, she is running through the tower, fighting every man that she comes across.

The first few fight scenes are cool and I appreciated the scene where the Princess shot a man with a crossbow just as he started to yell the C-word because, seriously, you boys have been going overboard with that word lately.  Ultimately, though, there’s so many fight scenes that eventually, the viewer can’t help but notice that the fight choreography itself is rather simplistic.  The Princess spends a lot of time jumping and spinning around in slow motion.  She’s good at sliding across the floor while ducking her head to avoid swinging swords and flying arrows.  It’s enjoyable the first few times but, as the film progresses, it all gets a bit repetitive.  A huge part of the problem is that none of Julius’s henchmen appear to be particularly competent.  They keep making the same stupid mistakes over and over again and, as such, it’s not really empowering to watch The Princess defeat them because they’re all so clumsy that it seems anyone could defeat them.  Even Julius commits the cardinal sin of talking when he should be fighting.  A great hero needs a great villain and unfortunately, The Princess doesn’t provide that.  Still, the fight scenes are preferable to any scene that involves dialogue as the script sometimes seems to have been written by an AI programmed to include every cliché possible.  On the one hand, the Princess is smashing the patriarchy.  On the other hand, good intentions do not make up for clunky dialogue.

To be honest, there’s a certain cynicism at the heart of The Princess that’s a bit off-putting.  Written by two men and directed by another, The Princess is so proud of itself for featuring a young woman kicking ass that one has to wonder if the people responsible are seriously not aware that the action girl is one of the leading pop culture clichés of the past 20 years.  The main complaint about the action girl trope is that the character is often not given any personality or motivation beyond the fact that she can beat people up and look good while doing it.  The Princess doesn’t even bother to give its main character a name.  For all the talk about the fate of the kingdom, we never learn how the Princess feels about any of it.

As for the cast, neither Joey King nor Dominic Cooper are well-served by a script that doesn’t offer any sort of real depth to the characters.  Both deserve better.

AMV of the Day: Trouble (Kill La Kill)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

It’s the first day of a new month and perhaps a new era. What better time for an AMV?

Anime: Kill la Kill

Song: Trouble by Neon Jungle

Creator: VermillionAMV (as always, please consider subscribing to this creator’s YouTube channel)

Past AMVs of the Day

Beavis and Butt-Head Do The Universe (2022, directed by John Rice and Albert Calleros)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Beavis and Butt-Head, those two lovable, illiterate, and thoroughly moronic teenagers from Highland, Texas, are back and they are as dumb as ever!  Beavis and Butt-Head Do The Universe is their second movie adventure.  Currently streaming on Paramount Plus, it’s a smart comedy about dumb people.

In 1998, Bevis and Butt-Head (voice by their creator, Mike Judge) accidentally attend their school’s science fair and end up burning the whole place down.  The toughest judge in Texas sentences them to Space Camp, where they can learn responsibility.  As so often happens with these two, their utter stupidity is mistaken for genius and they end up going into space.  Their job is to help the space shuttle dock with the International Space Station.  Beavis and Butt-Head, however, think that they are being sent into space to “do it” with astronaut Serena Ryan (voiced by Andrea Savage).  Quicker then you can yell “Fire,” the boys manage to destroy the International Space Station and get sucked into a wormhole.

The boys find themselves transported to Galveston.  The year is 2022, not that Beavis and Butt-Head ever figure that out.  Their multiverse counterparts, Smart Beavis and Smart Butt-Head, materialize to warn them that, unless they go through the wormhole again, the universe could be destroyed.  Beavis and Butt-Head are more interested in returning to their house, seeing what’s on TV, and doing it with Serena.  Serena, who is now governor of Texas, would rather kill Beavis and Butt-Head in order to prevent anyone from discovering what actually happened on the space shuttle 14 years ago.

It’s a long journey from Galveston to Highland.  Beavis and Butt-Head get an iPhone to help and Beavis falls in love with Siri.  A trip to a university leads to Beavis and Butt-Head interrupting a sociology class and it also leads to one of the film’s best moments, when a white student with a man bun proceeds to interrupt all of the women in the class so that he can mansplain white privilege.  Beavis and Butt-Head take this to mean that they can steal without getting arrested and it turns out that they’re right, up until the moment they try to steal a police car.  A trip to prison leads to Beavis shouting that he is the great Cornholio while the universe itself grows closer to destruction.

Yes, Beavis and Butt-Head are just as moronic as ever but, fortunately, so is the sharpness of Mike Judge’s satiric wit.  It’s been close to 30 years since Beavis and Butt-Head made their debut on MTV and, through all that time, the main joke has remained the same.  Beavis and Butt-Head are such utter morons that almost everyone who meets them assumes that there must be something else going on beneath the surface.  In the past, it was just Mr. Van Driessen thinking that he could teach the boys how to be responsible by asking them to clean his house and not touch his valuable 8-track collection.  In Beavis and Butt-Head Do The Universe, it’s expanded to NASA trusting the boys with expensive equipment and human lives.  They fit right in at the college and they even manage to rally the prisoners in the county jail.  The government thinks that they must be aliens while Sarena worries that they could destroy her political career, even though neither one of them can even read a billboard.  Not even Smart Beavis and Smart Butt-Head can bring themselves to accept just how stupid their multiverse counterparts actually are!

But stupid, they are.  The world is all the better for it.

Film Review: Strategic Command (dir by Rick Jacobson)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

In the 1997 film, Strategic Command, Richard Norton plays a terrorist named Carlos …. wait for it …. Gruber.  If that last name sounds familiar, that’s because the villain of Die Hard was named Hans Gruber and the bad guy from Die Hard With A Vengeance was named Simon Gruber.  Gruber — the number one name in hostage situations!

Anyway, Carlos Gruber and his fellow terrorists steal a chemical called Bromax from the FBI.  Bromax is a chemical weapon, one that can be used to kill thousands of people.  It’s probably not a good idea for anyone to have Bromax, regardless of whether they are terrorists or the FBI.  What’s the point of Bromax, really?  It only has evil purposes.  Plus, it has a stupid name.

Gruber proceeds to hijack Air Force Two, holding the Vice President (Michael Cavanaugh) and several journalists hostage.  Gruber wants his fellow terrorists to be released from prison and he’s prepared to kill the Vice President if he doesn’t get what he wants.  Perhaps because Gruber realizes how little the Vice President actually does, Gruber is also willing to spray Bromax over America.

Not wanting to see America get Bromaxed, the President sends an elite force of special op. soldiers after Air Force Two.  Captain Rattner (Jsu Garcia, back when he was still using the name Nick Corri) is in charge of the mission and he doesn’t expect there to be any slip-ups.  Accompanying Rattner’s men is Rick Harding (Michael Dudikoff!), the inventor of Bromax!  Along with not wanting to see Bromax sprayed over America, Harding also wants to save the life of his wife, Michelle (Amanda Wyss, who co-starred with Jsu Garcia in the original Nightmare on Elm Street).  Michelle is one of the journalists on the plane.

Strategic Command is stupid, yet strangely likable.  It’s impossible not to admire the film’s attempt to be a huge action epic without actually spending any money.  As a result, Air Force 2 is a commercial airliner.  There’s a surprisingly small number of people involved on both sides of the plot.  The viewer might expect the hostage situation to be one of those big, “all hands on deck” emergencies but, instead, the President is content to send 6 people to get the job done.  Fortunately, there aren’t that many terrorists either.  This is action on a budget.

Adding to the film’s overall strangeness is the miscasting of Michael Dudikoff as a quiet and somewhat nerdy scientist.  This is one of those films where the viewer is meant to assume that a character is smart just because he’s wearing glasses.  Dudikoff is so miscast that, again, it all becomes strangely likable.  He and Richard Norton are so enthusiastic about chewing up the scenery that it’s kind of fun to watch.  Also fun to watch is the legitimate great actor Bryan Cranston, cast here as a vain and cowardly anchorman.  One gets the feeling that this is probably not a film that Cranston brags about but his performance isn’t bad at all.  Every film like this needs to have a self-important reporter who can get humiliated in some fashion and Cranston handles the role like a pro.

Strategic Command is dumb but kind of fun, in the way that many 90s direct-to-video action films tend to be.  It’s a good film for when you want to watch something that won’t necessarily require your full attention.  In fact, the less thought one gives to what happens in Strategic Command, the better.  Watch it for Dudikoff, Norton, and especially the one and only Bryan Cranston!

Book Review: Beowulf by Anonymous

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Wow, what an annoying book!

First published in 975, Beowulf tells the story of a Danish king named Hrothgar who can’t be bothered to be a good neighbor.  The loud parties at his mead hall ends up annoying both Grendel and his mother so Grendel takes it open himself to start killing Hrothgar’s men.  Hrothgar and his men are forced to abandon their mead hall …. which, well, that would be the solution right there, wouldn’t it?  I mean, they could just go somewhere where there isn’t a monster living nearby and build a new mead hall.  And maybe they could establish some new mead hall rules, like “Keep it down after 10 pm” and “You Don’t Have To Go Home But You Can’t Stay Here.”  But instead, Hrothgar decides to cry about it.  Seriously, dude, it’s just a mead hall!

Anyway, this jerk named Beowulf sails over to help out Hrothgar.  But before Beowulf can help out Hrothgar, he has to spend a lot of time bragging on himself and telling everyone that he’s the greatest warrior that has ever lived.  I mean, he goes on for so long that I was wondering if maybe he was just planning on boring everyone to death.  Beowulf goes on to kill Grendel with his bare hands and then, when Grendel’s mother complains, Beowulf kills her too.  Uhmmm …. yay, I guess.

Many years later, Beowulf is the king and one of his slaves steals a gold cup from a dragon.  Needless to say, the dragon is not happy about this and really, who can blame it?  I imagine that dragons spend a lot of time collecting their gold and it’s always struck me as odd that humans seem to think that they have the right to just steal from the dragons whenever they feel like it.  With the dragon threatening his kingdom, Beowulf has to come out of retirement to fight one final beast….

The main problem with Beowulf is that the main character is kind of a jerk and he has a really bad habit of bragging on himself.  If I was one of his subjects, I would dread having to ask him for help because Beowulf is apparently incapable of just doing something without using it as an excuse to puff himself up.  Instead, he has to brag about how he’s the only person in the world who could possibly do it and, to top it all off, he has to make everyone else feel bad about the fact that they’re having to ask Beowulf for a favor.  Beowulf is such a long-winded jerk that he makes Grendel and the Dragon seem sympathetic by comparison.

I’m not surprised that the author of Beowulf is anonymous.  Who would want to take credit for this?  For a far better look at life in the 8th Century, check out John Gardner’s Grendel.  Or go watch the Robert Zemeckis-directed 2007 film adaptation, which has its flaws but also features Angelina Jolie, Crispin Glover, Anthony Hopkins, and John Malkovich!  How can you wrong with a cast like that?