Al Franken: God Spoke

I put this in my Netflix queue and was deeply horrified that I forgot to remove it. When it arrived, I almost didn't watch it.



This film documents the "moment" Al Franken turned from comic writer to political activist. Al Franken is most famous for going on SNL in the late 70s and saying his name over and over. To many people the name “Al Franken” was a punch-line. It was an ironic and bold act for the writer. Basically proving all the things we’ve been told about media brainwashing by (ironically) doing it to a public at large. His career has been downhill ever since.

Until now. Actually, it’s probably more true to say he’s just famous again for getting other people to say his name. Bill O’Reilly and Anne Coulter to name but two. When Franken came out with his book “Lying Liars …” Bill O’Reilly went nuts, both in public and, it seems, in private, forcing the Fox network to sue Al Franken. This was his finest moment. He called O’Reilly on his shit in a public forum that O’Reilly couldn’t control (you know, that’s how those shows work – the format is controlled by the host. O’Reilly can just yell at someone until he decides to cut their time. That’s how he appears “smart” when he’s just a bully. On other shows, famously Letterman this past year, he looks like an intolerant bully.) But, Al decided to step away from the safety net of “comedian” and become serious about politics. That’s what this “film” is about … the invention of Air America, the liberal radio answer to Rush Limbaugh.

Problems:

I’ve always said that political humor is the second lowest form of humor (the lowest being “kicked in the balls” type humor.) Politics are transitory and, for the most part, disconnected from the human experience. In the last 10 years the dissection of “news audiences” has polarized political types into “conservatives” and “liberals” … and never the ‘tween shall meet. The problem with this is that most people actually are in between. Very few are hard left or right, despite the media proselytizing on both sides.

For example, I am politically liberal and personally conservative. Unlike “Liberal Conservatives,” I refer to myself as a “Conservative Liberal” … if at all. I’m closer to a Libertarian in that, if you really get to the truth about most issues you find they cannot be solved with anything but an appeal some “meta” issue. Since, the only faith I have is a faith in science and fact, anything that doesn’t adhere must be deemed “meta.” For example: abortion is a meta-ethical issue. The only answer is an answer drawn from belief and faith, not fact. My answer therefore comes to a logical response (I don’t know, so I can’t tell you you can’t) and a personal one (I’ve known people who’ve had them and they were really messed up.) In short, any meta-ethical issue cannot be legislated. Neither the Democrats nor the Republicans represent this agenda, so I am neither.

But, if you believe people like my brother or Bill O’Reilly, I’m just avoiding the issue.

And, now the far left have decided to answer. And, just as the sad truth must have met Dennis Miller that his very clever act needed severe dumbing down for his new-found faith in the Republican party, Franken found that his new audience didn’t really want to wade seriously into the hate methods of O’Reilly and Coulter. The Daily Show does a good job of taking them down many more pegs then their hate speech ever built.

This film really could have been worse, but fortunately it does most of the story telling by letting Bill O'Reilly be the villain. When it does drag it is usually the moment when you can’t go where Al is going. I can not cry because John Kerry didn’t win the election. I feel bad that Bush won (because he’s an idiot), but John Kerry wasn’t much better. To see Al go from cynic to believer and not know how is a bit Faustian. O’Reilly really does get his last laugh by playing the devil.

Fletch (the Jane Doe Edition)

“Don’t talk to me like that, assface. I don’t work for you yet.”

“What do you do?”
“I’m a shepherd.”

“Can I get you anything?”
“Yes, I’ll have a bloody Mary, a steak sandwich and a … steak sandwich.”

“Can I get you anything?”
“Yes, can you get me a copy of the Beatles’ White album? Oh, and bring me the head of Alfredo Garcia while your out there.”

Well, here it is, a special edition of Chevy Chase’s best (or only good) movie. There are two ways to review this: the movie and the DVD. Let’s go with the latter first.

The DVD

Well, the movie both look and sound fine. It’s a bit grainy and could have used a slight color correction, but otherwise, it is exactly what you would expect. The bonus features are annoying at best and absurd at worst. What is most obviously missing is an interview with Chevy Chase and no one knows why. It likely has to do with the fact that a new Fletch movie (“Fletch Won”) is in production and Chevy was flatly denied consideration. No one has been cast in the lead thus far.

So, without any real significant bonus features, the best thing about the DVD is the movie itself with decent quality anamorphic transfer and 5.1 sound.

The Movie

Irwin "Fletch" Fletch is a journalist who writes under the name Jane Doe. While investigating a boom of drug dealing on the beach, Fletch is approached by a rich man, Alan Stanwyck.

“If you reject the proposition, you keep the thousand - and your mouth shut.”
“Does this proposition entail my dressing up as Little Bo Peep?”

Stanwyck claims to have bone cancer and, in order to spare himself pain but allow his family to collect an expensive life insurance policy on him (invalid if he kills himself) he found what he assumes to be an aimless drifter. This is a mistake.

“Will you murder me?”
“Sure”

The drugs on the beach and Stanwyck become intertwined in Fletch’s investigations … and hilarity ensues …


My Review

There is a strange misconception that “Fletch” was a cult film instead of a pretty decent success. It was strong enough to get a sequel made (though why they chose to diverge from the novel’s I do not know.) And perhaps it is the sequel bogs the memory down, but the original is very classy, very funny, very solid. Based on the first in a series of novels by Gregory Mcdonald, the film has a very solid backbone of a well-toned plot. Add to that the presence of Chevy Chase whose sarcastic one-liners and affront to authority seem tailor made for the character.

A comment made by one of the cast (the alamony attourney) nailed it: “Fletch/Chevy says exactly what you wished you’d have said in a given situation.” And that is it and that is the perfect description. While most of the time Chevy Chase’s smart ass thing is annoying, you feel in “Fletch” that has some purpose because he’s trying to find out something pretty important.

The fact that I still want to be Fletch – my wisecracking is still just as vicious – and that I have read most of the novels means that this is clearly a film that I hold in high esteem. It is probably in the top 10 movies of all time and tied with “Ghostbusters” and “Raiders of the Lost Arc” for best movies of 80s.

The week that was … Roundup

I think we are into a sweeps period because it certainly seemed like television got a bit better. Obviously, I can’t be everywhere or all things to all people. In fact, I don’t watch a lot of prime time shows (and most of the time I catch up “later” on dvd.)

24
Let’s see, last week’s “24” was good, but not quite into the sweeps month, so I’m sure they were holding back.

“As the clock ticks closer to the final hours of Day Six, Jack Bauer copes with the consequences of taking matters into his own hands while Audrey endures what appears to be a post-traumatic reaction to being held captive. Emotions escalate as CTU responds to a setback and the Administration receives an alarming message from Russian President Suvarov.” (TVrage.com) Also, the president’s squeeze is a feed for a Russian spy.

As I said, it was good … not great. As I said before, this show is largely one massive blast at credulity the moment they asked us to believe Jack Bauer could get across Los Angeles in less than 5 minutes. And, it is getting pretty well dumped on by the media and the public.

Heroes




“Five Years Gone” – This was easily the best episode of the season. Hiro and Ando are five years into the future where the bomb has gone off and New York is destroyed. He immediately meets his future self and then the cop Parkman bursts in and takes him prisoner. Nathan is president and Mohinder has been working with him since the bombs went off.




An awful lot happens and frankly it isn’t fair to spoil it. But, it is definitely the best episode of the season. Not only does it contain a hell of a lot of material and very little padding, but it also leaves a lot of possibilities open for future episodes.

Frankly, I’m surprised this show has been a hit at all, beating “24” most nights. The only problem with it is that it tends to take a month off at a time, throwing the viewer off track a bit. I suppose this is the problem with having huge special effects budgets and more imaginative storylines.

House
While the plot might not have been memorable, this episode rang with witty dialogue:

"He has acute scrotum."
"Adorable, at least. Ah, come on, how was not going to go for that joke?"

Lost“The Brig” – Well, we finally get a good Locke episode, with the added bonus of giving Sawyer something to do. Locke comes back from the others (after a really crytic opening) and tells him that he has infiltrated the Others' camp and has taken Ben hostage, and needs Sawyer to kill him. Sawyer questions why Locke would come to him, and Locke explains that, thanks to the files the Others have on all of the Flight 815 survivors, he knows that Sawyer killed a man in Sydney. Locke turns and leaves, and Sawyer reluctantly follows.



In fact, it turns out that Locke’s father (the same man who took his kidney and threw him out a window) was the man who Sawyer has been hunting all these years. How’d he get to the island? Well, of course, we don’t really know that do we. We assume he’s been kidnapped by the “Others.”




And now the theory has been somewhat addressed and teasingly floated out there … “Are they all dead? Is this purgatory or hell?”

Well, probably not either.

Lost has been renewed to 2012, but the number of episodes per year has been cut down to 16 and will run in one chunk. How this will effect the overall quality of the show (Better or Worse?)


Jericho

I’ve been catching up on this show. End of the world. Nuclear war and … yet, a lot of people survived quite well. Well enough to have the usual host of rather banal every day problem. I sort of wish that CBS wasn’t behind it, because it has to be very family oriented. In fact this is a combination of “Survivors” (BBC) and “The Waltons.”



I suppose the problem that continually keeps coming up is the reluctance for the show to deal with real problems. Months and months go by and the issue of the complete breakdown of society is almost never really dealt with (unlike “Survivors” where the question “Would you know how to make something if you had to?” is asked almost immediately.) The mom and pop, down-home, leaving my wife, having a baby, the old values are still the best values stuff drags the story down.

And, is it any wonder that in the Pilot the only black people we see is Mr. Hawkins … the man who turns out to me “not what he seems” ???

The Wednesday whine

A friend recommended I watch the BBC crime show “Wire in the Blood” and, after the first season, I can honestly say … it’s ok.




Not wonderful, but I have rented season 2. The thing about crime shows is that they are almost always in some way derivative of Sherlock Holmes. The central character is always some eccentric genius with some anti-social character traits (Monk, Colombo, etc.) In fact, though I’ve always thought of writing a mystery novel, this seems to be the problem with the genre … what’s the mystery? There seems to be only two ways to tell a mystery story

1. Character-centric – Sherlock type character and his quirks solve traditional mystery.
2. The mysteries themselves are convoluted to deliberately confuse audience (which is really NOT a mystery … but hey …).

Wire in the Blood starts with type one and ends up with type 2.

Monk was at least more successful at maintaining type one (they did think up one hell of a character trait) but lost it when Sharona left. I lost interest. Sadly, however, as it was a really good show.

Other than that I have been busy this week. I did watch Bill Bailey’s “Cosmic Jam” finally the other day. This is in the earlier Bill Bailey, playing up his long-hair hippie image, telling more jokes about drugs than I think even he felt comfortable with. Classically trained musician and now having been in a few really great shows (“Black Books”), his image has come back down to earth a bit more.




I started watching "Part Troll", which is newer and LOT funnier, but I got a bit tired.

I recently saw the newest Steven Wright special (it’s been like 20 years since the last one I saw, when I saw him live in ’87) … and I was reminded how, like a lot of comedians who first start out, they usually have an image they present. Especially if they are weird. Steven Wright is very much the same comic he was 20 years ago (“My nephew has HDADD; High Definition Attention Deficit Disorder. He can barely concentrate, but when he does, he’s very clear.”) but the show was a little short and padded out with a very long dull film at the end.

Anyway, I am saving a lot of stuff for the weekend.

Tonight Kristin Hersh (Throwing Muses chief muse) is playing in Austin and I'm really annoyed that I can't go. It would mean taking part of the afternoon and part of tomorrow off and that just wouldn't fly. Sorry, Kristin. Couldn’t stop in Houston?

The Weekend Roundup

Well, I caught up with Doctor Who reviews and I have to admit I’m still really bummed out on the whole Dalek crater. Man that story was lame. I can’t explain why. I watched the Confidential and although all the production team were ebullient as usual (the words “brilliant” and “marvelous” flow effortless from Russell T Davies mouth) I just didn’t like it. In fact, even though “Love and Monsters” last year must easily rate as the worst story ever, I could still overlook it because it didn’t really matter. But, this a two-part Dalek story and it will probably figure into the conclusion of this season. So, seriously bummed out.


Felt so bad that I ended up watching the PBS “America at a Crossroads” specials that I hadn’t gotten around to from the week(s) before.



An excellent, if very depressing look at terrorism and the rise of fundamentalist Islam in the world. Sometimes it was extremely interesting (the history of the rise of Bin Laden, etc.), sometimes very depressing (the soldiers in Iraq), sometimes a little dull or on the fringe (the transvestite competition in Indonesia???) Mostly it is kind of scary that the world is so on the edge right now and sad because Islam, at one time, was the most advanced religion on the planet, saving works from the pre-Christian period like the Greek philosophers from the burnings.




I also finally got to see “Gunpowder, Treason and Plot,” a two-part BBC production from a couple of years ago. Not the greatest thing in the world. The first part is a fairly straight attempt to dramatize the events of Mary Queen of Scotts, although it lacks any real interest in the choice of actors (particularly Clemence Poesy as Mary Queen of Scots). The second part is about James I and the actual “Gunpowder Plot” mentioned in the title. In a strange decision the cast begin talking to camera and Robert Carlyle clearly thinks he’s playing Richard III. Add in Tim McInnerny (“Blackadder”) and Richard Coyle (Jeff from “Coupling”) and things seem a little more off-kilter. However, overall it was still a good performance.

I caught up with “Lost” – A mostly flashback episode that usually makes me hate the fact that I like the show. It’s so stuffed with padding that sometimes it’s not a show at all. This was a Jin and Sun centric episode and we find out, hey, Jin is the father of the child, but the child and Sun will die. So, it’s a sort of bad news or bad news type thing. Also, she’s the reason Jin went to work for her father as a thug in the first place. Not terribly interesting.



And, a woman fell out of the sky with a picture of Desmond and his girlfriend. But, having fallen out of a helicopter, we didn’t get much chance to chat. She speaks Spanish and Italian, except when she said “Desmond.” Then, the eye-patch guy comes out of the forest and, after Jin kicks his ass, he helps out. We did find out that they found the plane and no one is looking for them … whatever that means.




Mostly the weekend was just resting. I’m still a little sick from last week, though now it has gone to my stomach. Wonderful.

Evolution of the Daleks - the aftermath

Actually, the more I think about it, the more I do hate it. It was really poorly conceived. I won't say that this is entirely Helen Raynor's fault, since she was pretty much given her brief with all the elements. From what I can tell in Confidential the major contribution she brought to it was Hooverville (which was the best part of it, really.) But, it's "marvelous" and "brilliant" and "fabulous" ... never trust anyone who says this stuff all the time.

What really gets me about this show, apart from what I've already written, is simple - the premise that the Doctor is the last of the Time Lords after this Time War with the Daleks ... ostensibly to get rid of Gallifrey and give mystery to the main character once again ... but, what we have is this constant referencing of the above over and over ... not to mention the Doctor's name, etc. The mystery isn't there. In fact, it's less mysterious than it's ever been in the show's history.

In series One (whatever) in 2005, the Dalek story arc was central to entire season and even the 9th Doctor's personna. His entire existence was geared toward his final battle, his emotional growth, etc. The Daleks were restored to being scary.
Last season they were trotted out as a "trick" at the end of the series. This year, they've become exactly what they started out as before the reinvention ... silly. I would have prefered just a simple Dalek story without all the "final solution, last of the daleks" stuff. Let alone the entirely stupid Dalek-human discovering his "feelings." Man, that was stupid in the 1966 Star Trek episode "What Little Girls are Made of" ...




Sorry fans, the show was doing so well, but if Dalek Caan turns up in the finale at all ... please pull the plug.

Doctor Who “Daleks In Manhattan” and “Evolutions of the Daleks”

5/10 - I didn’t hate it …

Plot - The Doctor and Martha arrive at the Statue of Liberty. There is no real reason given as to why Martha is still with the Doctor (in the last episode, he said "one more" ... and at the end explains about the Time War with the Daleks.)

Seeing the uncompleted Empire State Building, the Doctor estimates the date, while Martha finds a newspaper dated November 1st 1930. The Doctor notes the headline 'Hooverville Mystery Deepens' and reads about people going missing. He then takes Martha to Central Park where a Hooverville is located.

At the top of the Empire State Building, Mr Diagoras orders a foreman to speed up construction on the mast. When the foreman refuses, Mr Diagoras summons one of his 'Masters' to deal with him. Dalek Caan and two Pig Men emerge from the lift, and Mr Diagoras tells them that the foreman is disobeying his orders. Dalek Caan has the foreman taken away for 'the final experiment'. He then orders Mr Diagoras to recruit more 'bodies' for the final experiment.





Savage pig creatures hide in the sewers, and at the bottom of the Empire State Building, some of the Doctor's greatest and oldest enemies, the Cult of Skaro, are at work, preparing their most horrific plan yet...

Rant - Oh well, I guess the last Dalek will be popping up in the end … again. I’m really sick of the Daleks. Sorry new fans, but they’ve been around so long. They don’t need to be in every season. I think that’s the lesson the old series learned after the 3rd year. Perhaps this time around they’ll learn it, too. Still, better them than farting aliens.



My Review - In short, this is a feeble story. It’s a King King homage with very little substance or originality. Unlike “Dalek,” the big return two years ago, now it’s gone on long enough. The production team have boxed themselves in with Time War and the “last of the Daleks.” No one bothers to explain that, in a show about Time Travel, how do you go back and forth through time and yet these two events remain a constant. (?)



I think, much like the return of the Cybermen last year, there had better be a big payoff for this story to hold water. On its own, its rubbish.

Doctor Who - The Wrath of Caan