The style and writing of this wonderful show seamlessly blend the screwball comedy and detective movies of the 40’s and 50’s while creating a show that would break all the rules of network television and create something truly unique.

Moonlighting
4 & 1/2 Stars

Memory is a fickle thing.  Going back and watching television shows I enjoyed during my youth can run the gamut of disaster (Knight Rider, Dukes of Hazard) to a renewed appreciation (M.A.S.H.).  So with more than a little pessimism I sat down to spend some time with the first and second seasons of Moonlighting.  I remember enjoying the show as a kid, but a funny thing happened as I started watching.  Not only did I rediscover what I liked as a kid, but I found a new appreciation for the style and writing of this wonderful show that seamlessly blends the screwball comedy and detective movies of the 40’s and 50’s while creating a show that would break all the rules of network television and create something truly unique .  In the words of Agnes DiPesto it’s simply “Great, Great!”

Retired Blue Moon Shampoo model Maddie Hayes (Cybil Shepherd) wakes up one day to find out that her accountant has stolen all her money and fled the country.  With no real options she begins to try and sell off her few business interests which were all bought for tax write-off purposes.  One of these happens to be a small detective agency headed by David Addison (Bruce Willis) with the help of secretary Agnes DiPesto (Allyce Beasley) who always answers the phone in rhyme and a host of faceless assistants who do little more than sit and there desks waiting for David to call for the next limbo contest.  When a man is murdered and the mystery drops right into Maddie’s lap (literally) the show takes off.  David eventually talks Maddie into keeping the agency, solve the mystery, and they become partners trying to make a profitable business out of the now renamed Blue Moon Detective Agency.  The two go on to bumble their way to solving many mysteries, argue and fight continuously, slam doors, wink at the camera, yell, scream, and provide us with hours of entertainment.

Turn your way back machines to the year 1985 Sherman.  After some success on working on Remington Steele, Glen Gordon Caron was asked to create a pilot for a new man/woman partner detective show.  Not a big fan of the genre, but given carte blanche to do whatever he wanted, he created a show that was more comedy than suspense, more about the relationships between men and women than about detective and suspect, and a show that would break many of televisions rules.  To begin with the show was an hour long comedy, an extreme rarity today much less in 1985.  The characters would occasionally talk to the viewers or make comments about this week’s episode or belonging on cable.  In the Christmas episode (the entire episode written as an allegory) the characters actually step off set onto the soundstage to be serenaded by the crew and their friends and family signing Noel, Noel. 

They also pushed the boundaries for what could be done in an hour of television.  The black and white episode was shot on old film stock with the black and white cameras that were tracked down.  Not only that, but each of the two black and white sequences were shot in different styles, paying homage to both the old MGM movies and the “Marloweske” detective films.  The studio being very anxious about showing a black and white episode asked for an explanation at the beginning (thinking people wouldn’t understand why their televisions lost all color twelve minutes in).  So who do they get to do it?  Orson—freakin’—Welles!  Exactly one week before his death.  In many ways the show was well ahead of its time and television creators who have taken chances (a certain vampire slayer bursting into song comes to mind) owe quite a bit to this little niche cult television show that somehow, to the surprise of all involved, became a huge phenomenon and ABC’s #1 show in the late 80’s. 

Other great episodes include two Agnes DiPesto episodes, Next Stop Murder, a different take on Murder on the Orient Express, and North by North DiPesto, which if I have to tell you what it’s spoofing you won’t get the joke.  Great suspenseful plot twist abound in The Lady in the Iron Mask which has a hilarious chase sequence and The Bride of Tupperman where a man offers our detectives $25,000 to find his perfect mate.  What can you say about a series that has one episode that includes a food fight, The Murder’s in the Mail, and another that deals seriously with both sides of the euthanasia debate, Witness For the Execution?

You get your money’s worth (list price $49.98) here for 6 discs packed with 24 episodes and full of extras.  Commentary tracks for five different episodes including the pilot and the black and white episode The Dream Sequence Always Rings Twice feature the creator, different writers and directors and both Bruce Willis and Cybil Shepherd do commentary for one episode each.  The commentary is surprising good, especially for Dream Sequence, discussing the Orson Welles cameo and the process of making the black and white episode.  Also included are 3 different documentaries and a collection of old promos that aired for the show.  The menus are easily accessible, and the episodes can be viewed individually or you can select the play all option that will show all the disc’s episodes consecutively (I can’t tell you how much nicer this is than constantly going back to the main menu to play the next episode).  My only real complaint is the housing of the discs.  It’s well made, but usually with this type of container there is a sleeve to slide the single holder into, since there isn’t one provided here the sides tend to push out and allow dust inside relatively easily, with no way to keep the case closed.

Aside from the disappointment for the case, I was extremely pleased with this package.  The documentaries are interesting, the commentaries are informative and entertaining, and the show works as well today as it did 20 years ago when it aired.  I’d recommend this to anyone who remembers the show, or anyone who enjoys screwball slapstick comedy and/or pretty good mystery stories.  Also look for many familiar faces making guest appearances (Tim Robbins, Whoopi Goldberg, Dana Delany, Mark Linn-Baker, Eve Marie Saint, Paul Rudd, and Richard Belzer just being a few).

As zombie movies go, Undead gets points for trying to throw the audience some plot curveballs, but like any zombie movie it’s really just an excuse to keep you guessing which characters live and which die (There’s not a lot of difficulty in this instance).  The action is over the top, and the gore is split pretty evenly between clever physical effects and CGI trickery.  Which is a bit sad, as George Romero’s budget forced he and Tom Savini to create some incredibly resourceful effects, while the Spierig brothers just rely on CGI (with one brain punching exception).

The film can’t decide if it wants to be as it jumps from low-brow comedy to horror to action with little breathing room in between.  Were the actors up to the task, it might have worked itself out, but budget woes kept each scene to one or two takes each and it shows.  Similarly the camera work seems uneven, with most of the film bathed in a dark blue filter (which obscures a good deal of detail), but sometimes it jumps back to a full RGB spectrum. 

Undead
2 & 1/2 Stars

The advance word on the ultra-low budget Undead had it pegged as a return to the romp and gore of Peter Jackson’s Dead Alive, so expecatations were high.  Sadly this nugget of zombie love doesn’t live up to it’s own hype, but it still managed to be an entertaining bloodfest.

Written and directed by a team of first-time-out brothers Michael and Peter Spierig, starring no one you’ve ever heard of, and made for about 4 dollars, Undead takes all the allegory and pretention out of zombie films and puts it right back in the blood bucket, where it belongs.  This time around, meteors have bombarded the small down of Berkeley, turning residents into flesh-craving zombies.  Local beauty queen Rene (Felicity Mason) gets her depature from Berkeley cut short by an attack, only to be saved by the local gun nut (and loony) Marion (Mungo McKay), whom she follows to find refuge.  Soon enough they’re joined by two constables (Emma Randall and Dirk Hunter), as well as a young couple (Rob Jenkins and Lisa Cunningham).  Due to lack of supplies and the needs of pregnant Sallyanne (Cunningham), the group is forced to battle their way across town, only to find that some force has walled off the town and is abducting it’s inhabitants.

As zombie movies go, Undead gets points for trying to throw the audience some plot curveballs, but like any zombie movie it’s really just an excuse to keep you guessing which characters live and which die (There’s not a lot of difficulty in this instance).  The action is over the top, and the gore is split pretty evenly between clever physical effects and CGI trickery.  Which is a bit sad, as George Romero’s budget forced he and Tom Savini to create some incredibly resourceful effects, while the Spierig brothers just rely on CGI (with one brain punching exception).

The film can’t decide if it wants to be as it jumps from low-brow comedy to horror to action with little breathing room in between.  Were the actors up to the task, it might have worked itself out, but budget woes kept each scene to one or two takes each and it shows.  Similarly the camera work seems uneven, with most of the film bathed in a dark blue filter (which obscures a good deal of detail), but sometimes it jumps back to a full RGB spectrum. 

All in all Undead should provide zombie fans with a gore-treat free of the current pretentions, but it’s no second coming of Peter Jackson.

ZolarCzakl slaughters Romero!

In the wonderfully twisted world of horror and exploitation flicks exists the lumbering, rotting, twitching beast of apocalyptic doom and gut-wrenching gore known as the zombie film. Most fans of these movies know that George A. Romero was essentially the creator of the modern zombie film; before his groundbreaking low budget feature Night of the Living Dead (1968) zombies were of the robotic voodoo kind, controlled by an evil master to do his will. Night of the Living Dead presented zombies as re-animated dead bodies, mindlessly devouring human flesh in an evil quest to destroy and conquer all life on the planet. Pretty heavy stuff, except that Night and the two sequels that followed are so damned fun to watch and are hallmarks of truly great horror entertainment.
Night had a simple premise: a radiation accident causes the bodies of the recently deceased to rise from their graves and start munching on the living, a small group of which hole up in an abandoned farmhouse and try to fend off the ghouls. Romero followed this eleven years later with the much gorier Dawn of the Dead, which concentrates on a group of survivors fending off the zombies in a shopping mall. The third installment of the series was 1985’s Day of the Dead, where a group of soldiers and a group of scientists wage battles on each other while trying to survive in an underground bunker and fend off the relentless walking dead.
So now twenty years later, George A. Romero has unleashed the fourth installment in his Living Dead series, Land of the Dead. With the recent success of movies such as 28 Days Later, Cabin Fever, the remake of Dawn of the Dead, and splatter-comedy Shaun of the Dead, it would seem that zombies are making a comeback, and who better to show them all how it’s done than Romero himself? Surely with studio backing, a fairly large budget, famous actors such as John Leguizamo and Dennis Hopper, and today’s special effects technology, Romero has finally made his zombie masterpiece, right?
Well, kiddies, I’m sorry to say that it just ain’t so.
But first, the story: it is the present day and many years since the initial zombie attacks. A group of military-like zombie hunters, led by the perfectly-coiffed Riley (Simon Baker) and racial stereotype Cholo (John Leguizamo) protect the inner sanctum of what may be the last city populated by the living. The wealthy live in a mall-like fortress owned by businessman Kaufman (Dennis Hopper), who eventually hires Riley to take care of a little business concerning Cholo and some missing weaponry. Added to this, the throng of living dead are beginning to organize themselves a bit more and soon become a major threat as they start to march upon the walled-in city. Riley and his small group of loyal friends find themselves with a lot of problems to fix and thousands of zombies to decimate in many stomach-churning ways.

Let me get right to it and tell you that this movie left me feeling on the colder side of lukewarm. While all of the Dead films concentrate on the conflicts that occur between the living humans as they struggle against the zombies, Land does this in a far less convincing manner than the other three. The other Dead movies have something that this one lacks: heart. A big part of this comes from the one-dimensional characters that simply don’t allow you to care about whether they live or die. You don’t care about their motivations and you don’t care about their problems, therefore you ultimately don’t care about the movie.
Sure, you might say that these movies are mainly about the zombies and the blood and the intestines being pulled out of people’s body cavities, but if you think that’s what makes the Romero Dead movies great then you’re missing half the picture. You can get gore almost anywhere; check out Cabin Fever and a slew of other half-assed movies for that. What you get with a Romero picture is the action and gore plus little observations on humanity that might just make you think a bit about life. You get both for the price of one, and at eight bucks a movie ticket, you should be getting that with Land of the Dead. Unfortunately, it seems that someone shot this movie in the head on the way from script to screen.
What do we get in Land of the Dead? We get a overly good-looking and thorougly unconvincing “hero” in Riley, who is sensitive and perfect in everything that he does and has about as much depth as a plastic kiddie pool. We get Cholo, who acts like the most cliched “spic” that Hollywood could come up with and has absolutely no redeeming qualities whatsoever. You also get Dennis Hopper, who puts in a decent enough performance but seems like he’s just going through the motions in a lot of it. He has his moments of that patented Hopper craziness and gets in a few good lines here and there, but ultimately seems kind of wasted in this role.
There’s also a love interest of sorts for Riley in the character of Slack (Asia Argento), whom Riley rescues from being eaten by zombies in a kind of gladiator game in the city’s underground (if that sounds really stupid, it’s because it is). She’s a hooker, but given the chance just happens to be incredibly handy with high-tech weaponry and guerilla tactics. In other words, she’s a horribly contrived and completely unbelievable character who only exists to be a sexy counterpart to our bland leading man.
Ok, ok, we get it. The characters suck. But you still haven’t convinced me that this isn’t all about blood and guts. How are the zombies?

Well, there’s a main zombie, a former gas station attendant who kind of leads the ghouls around on their quest to kill and eat. The problems I found with this zombie are that first of all, he looks less like a zombie and more like one of the vampires from From Dusk Til Dawn, and second, there’s no real exploration of why he can suddenly think where all the other zombies before weren’t really able to. This zombie suddenly knows what’s going on and feels compassion for his fallen zombie brethren and finally leads the attack on the city. Ok, how?

“Mommy!”

Beyond that, all of the other zombies look cool and act like zombies should. The special effects are executed well and there are plenty of gross-out moments to please any fan of gurgling blood and ripped out spines. It’s all fine and good, but honestly I was expecting a little more. Each Dead movie has had a progression in its over-the-top violence and inventive ways of killing creatures off, but this one seems to just recycle things from past movies. There’s nothing really all that memorable in any of the gory scenes, especially if you compare them to the scene at the end of Day of the Dead where the zombies rip screaming Joe Pilato in half and show him his guts. Now that’s great stuff.
I imagine many people will see this film and say that it is a fine addition to the hallowed halls of the zombie film, which it may be. Others may be encouraged to tell me to take the stick out of my ass and just enjoy the goddamn movie. Well, perhaps they have a point. But I feel that there is a lot of room for artistic creativity in the realm of horror and exploitation, even if that art only ends up being visible as a nice attempt. I think that there wasn’t even an attempt made in Land of the Dead and that disappoints me. However, I’ve thought about it and realized that even if this movie had nothing to do with the series and was made by another director, I would still be disappointed. And that’s what ultimately counts in my appraisal of this zombie flick.

…

Dead WreckoningRead More »

Quite simply, Home Movies has long been one of my favorite animated series (or even in general), and I’m delighted that these sets might give the show the kind of exposure it truly deserves. It’s smart, touching comedy delivered with brilliant style, so do yourself a favor and give it whirl. Fans will find lots to love on this must-have set, and initiates will discover this is a perfect introduction to a show that’s worthy of your time and money. Go! Go now! Get Home Movies: Season 2. You won’t be disappointed.

Home Movies : Season 2
5 Stars

Home Movies was the kind of show that was just too good to stick around for long. After debuting on UPN and promptly going on hiatus, it jumped over to Cartoon Network as part of the Adult Swim lineup where it lasted another 3 seasons before finally caving in against the hordes of talking food, whacked out scientists, and Mission Hill reruns, but over the course of it’s 4 year run Home Movies became the epitome of a great sitcom. Great characters, perfect dialogue, and hilariously goofy situations all delivered in a style that would be impossible to imitate.

You need this

Shout! Factory has just recently released the Season 2 DVD set, which marked the Cartoon Network debut, along with the abandonment of Squiggle-Vision animation in favor of a more traditional (if still minimalist) style. While a great continuation of the first season, Season 2 found creator Brendon Small and his cast of cohorts still finding their footing in the now expanded world of Small’s eponymous creation, but this time out the jokes are a little tighter, the scenarios more elaborate, and the humor just a tad more biting.

Young filmmaker Brendon and his pals Melissa (Melissa Bardin Gratsky) and Jason (H. Jon Benjamin) may be the center of the mostly improvised show, but the goofily deranged soccer coach John McGuirk (also voiced by Benjamin) may just be one of televisions funniest characters. Fat, lazy, and usually drunk, McGuirk dispenses his barroom wisdom to Brendon with the authority and conviction of a man possessing a complete lack of social grace and awareness. Whether it’s cashing in on his insomnia to get enough research money to buy a DVD player, or his hilariously pathetic attempts to get a date, McGuirk’s man-child antics provide the most solid humor of this show. Not to say that the rest of the cast is lacking; far from it. Small’s world is filled with oddballs and misfits, each with their own bizarre charms and idiosyncrasies that are equally exasperating and uproariously funny.

In this season, the gang films some of their best movies like “Starboy and the Captain of Outerspace” (which also happens to spawn some of my favorite songs of the series), while Brendon experiences the pain of young love when he tries to woo a young ballerina as well as dealing with his dad and his new fiancee.  Paula loses her job teaching adult education classes and embarks on a bizarre trek back into the workforce, while McGuirk is…well, McGuirk.  Which is more than enough, I assure you.  This season has two of my favorite episodes (The Party and The Wedding), both of which showcase nearly every member of Home Movie’s extended cast.  In The Party, Bredon is coerced into making a tribute film for Fenton, a whiney brat whose Robert Altman-esque birthday party enables Jason to endulge in his goofy addiction to candy, while McGuirk crashes the party with two six-packs of beer only to become both the entertainment and the voice of parental reason.  In the season finale The Wedding, Brendon’s poison ivy infection turns him into a hideous monster while Paula tries to cope with her ex-husband re-marrying.  And yet again, McGuirk steals the show when one of Paula’s friends makes some serious advances on the completely cluess soccer coach. 

It’s difficult to convey how brilliant this show is in text, as it’s genius lies in the improvised dialogue between the characters.  They talk over each other, thoughts are paused and dropped, and every conversation feels like you’re listening to real (if incredibly goofy) people talking about their lives.  It’s a show filled to the brim with inter-character chemistry, and you’ll find the subtle jokes endlessly as entertaining as the overt ones.  Say for instance in The Party, when 9 year old Jason is deep in the throes of a candy bender and responds to Melissa’s admonsihment with ‘No one’s looking at me! They’re looking at you and your litle rich bitch dress!’  It’s such a perfect take on grown-up addiction, and coming from a chocolate and gummi bear covered kid, it’s jawdroppingly funny.

Quite simply, Home Movies has long been one of my favorite animated series (or even in general), and I’m delighted that these sets might give the show the kind of exposure it truly deserves. It’s smart, touching comedy delivered with brilliant style, so do yourself a favor and give it whirl. Fans will find lots to love on this must-have set, and initiates will discover this is a perfect introduction to a show that’s worthy of your time and money. Go! Go now! Get Home Movies: Season 2. You won’t be disappointed.