DVD Review – Fawlty Towers – The Complete Remastered Series

(a special thanks to the good folks at American Pop for sending me a reviewers copy of this DVD!)

Say hello to Fawlty Towers: The Complete Collection Remastered! This newly-remastered collection of the classic BBC comedy series will have you laughing like almost nothing else!

I’d had surprisingly little exposure to Fawlty Towers until fairly recently. Back when I was a wee lad I remember seeing about two episodes of the show. Lately I’ve seen a heck of a lot more and found it to be one of the best, most consistently funny shows ever made!

The series follows the lives of people staying and working in Fawlty Towers, what is possibly the worst hotel in all of England. It’s located on the British coast where, it turns out, people actually voluntarily go for vacations during the summer (having swam in the Pacific Ocean in an area just about as far north as Southern England, I think they’re quite mad). The hotel is run by the impossible-to-deal-with Basil Fawlty (John Cleese). With him are his long-suffering wife, longer-suffering maid and even longer-suffering Spanish bellhop, the scene stealing Manuel (Andrew Sachs).

The plots tend to be very simple, and occasionally reveal a great deal about the age of the show (it was made in 1975 and 1979), but the execution is genius. The comic timing on display is incredible, particularly that of Sachs and Cleese.

This newly remastered version of the show contains all twelve episodes (12?! That’s it?! Not a lot, I know, but the recent great shows The Office and Extras also only have twelve standard episodes each), of the show. You also get a whole raft of extra features, including commentaries, interviews, outtakes, a little booklet and even a Torquay Tourist Guide! Nice!

This is a very funny show and a heck of a good deal. I can’t possibly praise it enough. Go pick it up!

DVD Review – Battlestar Galactica: The Plan

The Cylons have a plan… We’d heard and seen that concept a lot through the run of the spectacular TV series Battlestar Galactica. We didn’t know what the plan was, really, beyond nuking the Colonies and eventually destroying humanity, but we assumed it was a pretty darn interesting plan!

Battlestar Galactica: The Plan, the latest direct-to-DVD release from the SyFy Channel, shows us exactly what the plan was, and, as it turns out, it was… er… basically to nuke the Colonies and wipe out humanity. Everything else that happend was largely them reacting to the fact that there were still human remnants out there.

The movie tells the story of the Cylon attack on the Colonies (and shows it in loving detail), and also tells us some of exactly what the Cylons were doing within the Fleet and on Caprica back during the early days of the series. You see how Cavil controlled Boomer, what Simon was up to both in the Fleet and on Caprica, you see how Anders and his crew ended up fighting as a resistance group and you really get an idea of how much of a puppet-master Cavil was.

You’ll see all the main characters on the show, though many of them just through re-used footage. You won’t see Lucy Lawless’ Cylon character, but you do see all the others, including a wonderful shot with two Cavils seeing the Final Five all standing together.

You’ll also see a lot more nudity than you might expect, including at least one gratuitious penis shot, and several breasts. You’ll also see Edward James Olmos’ wife in the all-together and you’ll even see the upper half of the face of the long-missing Boxey.

Extras on the DVD include deleted scenes, some behind the scenes stuff, a trailer for Caprica (which if you haven’t yet seen, why not?), and a commentary by Edward James Olmos (who directed the movie), and Jane Espenson (who wrote it).

Ultimately this is an excellent, if somewhat lacking, movie. I would’ve liked to have seen them do this as a four-hour film rather than two, because it would’ve been nice to carry it all the way to the end of the series. But that’s ok. For what is likely to be the last of the re-imagined BSG, it’s pretty good and I’m happy with it!

DVD Review – Transformers

I will be seeing the new Transformers film later this week. In the meantime, here’s a copy of the DVD review of Transformers I wrote and posted on Amazon! Enjoy!

Throughout the mid-1980’s, I always made it a point to get home from school as quickly as possible to watch channel 11, KSTW, as they showed Transformers, the original animated series. It was one of my favorite shows, though I owned hardly any of the toys.

I largely forgot about my favorite robots until 1999 when a friend of mine turned me on to Beast Wars Transformers, which had mildly good animation and incredibly good plots (gotta love that Dinobot! And Waspinator? One of my favorites. Plus the return of Ravage, Starscream (more or less), and shots of the inside of the Autobot ark! What’s not to like?). When some of the other Transformers spin-offs came along, I lost interest, but I did buy, and enjoy, several of the toys. At one point I owned about 120 different Transformers toys and liked ‘em all!

So you can imagine how pleased I was when I heard about a live action Transformers movie from Steven Speilberg and how horrified I was when I heard Michael Bay would be directing.

I am no great fan of Michael Bay. I consider him, in fact, to be one of the worst directors of the last 20 years or so. I’m sure there are people who are worse than him, but they seldom get the budgets he does, and thus aren’t able to inflict their horror on the wider world.

Hi, I'm Michael Bay. I'm here to rape your childhood. Please bend over and give me your hard-earned money.

In a recent “South Park” episode, there were some people talking to Michael Bay about his ideas of a plot of a movie. He kept talking about great special effects and things blowing up, and they kept trying to explain to him that he was talking about SFX and not plot. He said he didn’t know the difference. Sighing, one of the men said, “We know, Mister Bay. We know.” That sums up what might be called the “Michael Bay School of Filmmaking”.

“Transformers” combines all the best aspects of a Michael Bay film (things getting blowed up real good), with all the worst aspects of a Michael Bay film (paper-thin plot, horrible characterization, idiodic attempts at KOMEDY!, and, by my count, at least FIVE shots of an aircraft in flight with an orange filter shot against the sun. This is apparently Michael Bay’s signature shot, and it’s very, very annoying). The fact that the film succeeds as much as it does is, I feel, something it does in spite of everything Michael Bay could do to drag it down.

This movie is at its best when it concentrates on either a: the Transformers, or b: the relationship between Sam and his girlfriend (or, at least in my mind, the other guy, Miles, who seemed to want to be Sam’s boyfriend… I could just be reading into it, however). The robots are incredibly well-rendered and hearing Peter Cullen do the voice of Optimus Prime is something to make every fan-boy cheer!

The film fails badly, however, when it explores what we shall laughingly call sub-plots (much more sub than plot). There are so many pointless, useless, tacked on characters. Off the top of my head, the black hacker, the “Section Seven” guy and, sadly, Jazz, who, *** SPOILER ALERT! ***, seemed to exist only to be killed off, thus making this YET ANOTHER film where the black character dies first.

I was also confused by how close Hoover Dam appears to be to Los Angeles, how a government organization founded in the 1920’s gets a very modern name like “Section Seven” and how Sam’s parents are apparently so deaf, blind and stupid as to not see/hear the Autobots in their backyard (Dad thought it was an earthquake?! Come on, now. I’ve lived in So Cali. When an earthquake happens, it doesn’t feel like anything else). I was also very, very annoyed by the whole “The government knew about this all along and covered it up!” idea because that’s, you know, stupid.

My only other complaints are that the fight in Los Angles, when I saw it on the big screen, actually left me feeling vaguely overwhelmed and slightly hypnotised. My brain could not process everything that I was seeing. I’m not the sort of person who has seizures caused by strobe lights, but too many more viewings of the film on a big screen might change that.

Lastly I was miffed about Megatron. He had very, very little screen time, almost no characterization and was not voiced by Frank Welker. Yes, Hugo Weaving did a fine job, though I wouldn’t have known it was him if I wasn’t told, but it’s just not the same. Plus he didn’t really DO anything much, other than break stuff. Megatron should be more than that.

Despite the flaws, this is a very entertaining film and surprisingly watchable. I am very much looking forward to the sequel (let’s get Soundwave, Shockwave and Grimlock onto the screen!), but I really hope Michael Bay gets kept far, far away from it. I don’t think my brain can handle another of his movies.

DVD Review – The Third Man

The Third Man. Orson Welles. Joseph Cotten. Carol Reed. What a great team, and what an excellent, entertaining little film this is! I’d heard of it, off and on, throughout the years, but never seen it until I had the joy of getting the Criterion Edition of the film, so I come to it as fairly recent first-time viewer.

The movie’s plot, as you know, centers around an American writer, Holly Martens, who goes to post-War Vienna to work for a friend named Harry Lime. When he gets there, he finds that Lime has met an untidy end, one that gets more and more untidy as Martens begins to pull at the loose threads of the story, until finally he finds a truth he never expected.

As I said, I’d only recently seen the film for the first time, and I was very impressed by it! The acting was amazingly good as was the direction, and the plot was sensational! Kept me guessing all the way through (am I the only one who thought the balloon-man was a certain character in disguise? I bet not).

The film is also filled with incredible moments. The aforementioned ballon-man. The appearance of Welles, which is probably the best reveal in movie history. The cukoo-clock speech. The chase through the sewers was VERY impressive and that alone makes the film worth watching!

The movie was based on a story by Grahm Greene. I’ve never read any of his works, but this movie makes me want to. Likewise, while I’ve heard of Orson Welles and Joseph Cotton, and admired their performances in Citizen Kane, I’d never heard of Carol Reed until this movie. Apparently I now have some catching up to do.

The extras on the DVD are all reasonably nifty. It IS a Criterion DVD, after all, and they seldom disapoint. The price tag might be a little steep, but who cares? It’s one of the best movies ever made, and worth every penny.

DVD Review – You Are Not Alone

Ah, You Are Not Alone, a film notorious among a certain group for a scene of two boys showering together. Yes, it certainly has that, but thankfully it also has much, much more.

My first thought with this film was that it was rather like Dazed & Confused, except Danish and more obviously gay. Otherwise there are a LOT of similarities. You several story threads, some drug use, plenty of music and lots of sexuality, in addition to a huge supply of long-haired 1970’s boys.

The film centers around a group of boys at an all-boys boarding school in Denmark. We follow several of them through their adventures, but mainly focus on a student named Bo and the son of the headmaster, Kim, who he falls in love with.

Other plots include a cafeteria worker who apparently enjoys deflowering underage boys, two boys who often fight with each other, a pair of other boys getting it on in the showers (to prove that, no, in fact the main characters are not alone), some townies who cause problems for our heroes, and one boy who gets suspended for display large amounts of pornography, which leads to a good ole (as it were), fashioned student uprising.

I was actually surprised at how good this film was. I cared about all the characters, not just the main two, and was interested in the fates of all of them. I was also quite pleased that unlike in most gay fiction, we don’t have anyone get gay-bashed, commit suicide, or wind up dead.

The only thing that even slightly got on my nerves with this movie were the songs which I am sure sound great in Danish, but don’t work so well when you’re reading English subtitles.

Overall this is a good movie I’d recommend to just about anyone, gay or straight. Especially teenagers, as there’s several good lessons to be learned from this film about standing up to authority and tolerating other people’s sexuality. It’s a lesson more people can and should learn.

DVD Review – The Dreamers

Ah, NC-17. Possibly one of the dumber ratings out there. The concept is great! Tag movies, like this, that aren’t made for kids but are for an adult audience, with a rating that keeps kids away. In principle this is great! In execution, it’s been deeply flawed. Newspapers won’t advertise films with this rating, most reviewers won’t review them, and studios won’t generally allow them to be released. It’s to the credit of Fox that they allowed this rather nice little movie to be put out uncut (though one of the male leads isn’t… ha! Penis joke!).

The Dreamers concerns an American in Paris, played by Michael “Drop-pants Gorgeous” Pitt. He’s a student visiting there who falls in with a twin brother/sister pair who love movies as much as he does. The twins aren’t quite incestual, but they’re as close as anyone can get.

The movie is something of a love-note to cinema. You see clips from a lot of the greatest movies of the early days of film, and get to see the kids recreate several of the scenes for their own (occasionally erotic), amusement. The movie also expertly highlights Paris in the late 1960’s, giving you a real feel for the time and place and for what was going on.

Where the film fails… well, it doesn’t fail in any real big ways. I gave it four stars because it felt like something was missing, though I couldn’t put my finger on what (part of it is that the two male leads have an obvious simmering attraction to each other that doesn’t get acted upon in the movie. I understand it does in the book the film is based on). There wasn’t anything bad or wrong about the movie, but something did seem to be missing.

One thing that isn’t missing, though, is acres of bare flesh. If you’re one of those who doesn’t like to see close-ups of penises and vaginas, then this likely isn’t the film for you.

I’d actually recommend this movie for just about anyone over the age of 13 or so, provided you’re a parent who doesn’t mind your kids seeing a movie with lots of sexuality but no violence. If you’d prefer it the other way around, perhaps you need to rethink your priorities.

I haven’t seen many other Bertolucci films, so I can’t really compare them to this one. I know I liked it, though, and it’s worth owning on this DVD, with plenty of extras, including a commentary by Bertolucci himself. Buy and enjoy!

DVD Review – Milk

What an amazing movie Milk was! Not just as a great example of gay cinema done right, though it certainly is that. No, it stands on its own as a movie showing the portrait of a man who didn’t intend to become political, wound up doing so, and ended up paying the ultimate price.

The film tells the story of Harvey Milk and his boyfriend (James Franco), moving to San Francisco and promptly running into the kind of evil prejudice against gays that one would these days expect to see only at a CPAC meeting. This energizes and angers him to the point where he starts to get involved and begins his efforts to run for office. Initially his biggest enemies are the other prominent gays, but soon he’s able to overcome and get elected, right in time to start a major fight with Anita Bryant and her crowd.

Sadly his promising political career is cut short as another member of the San Francisco government guns down Milk and the mayor. He later plead not-guilty due to reasons of insanity, using the famous “Twinkie Defense”, but it’s pretty clear from what we see here that, no, he wasn’t nuts; just another bigot who couldn’t stand the gays and was really ticked when one of them, Milk, broke a political promise to him.

Sean Penn gives the performance of his career as gay activist/politician Harvey Milk. He completely disappears into the role. At no point was I “aware” that I was just watching someone act, as often happens with films. No, he is extremely convincing and does an incredible job worthy of the Best Actor award he received for the role.

The writing and directing are quite effective as well. This is the sort of movie that could’ve very quickly wound up being nothing more than a preachy screed in favor of gay rights, but thankfully it instead is something far more entertaining and interesting.

Further I, as someone who is bisexual, gained new appreciation for the gay rights movement. I’m too young to remember what it was like during the 1970’s for gays, but from this movie I now have an inkling, and I’m glad there were people like Milk who were around to fight against the monsters like Bryant and her bunch. Realistically the worse we face these days is fights over same-sex marriage, gay adoption and the right to serve in the military. What was fought for back then was a simple right to exist and this movie really brought home that point.

This DVD is light on special features, but has the film, which is the main thing. I’m sure the studio will double-dip at some point in the future, but in the meantime, this is a great buy!

DVD Review – Caprica

Welcome to Caprica, the pilot for the BSG spinoff that will start airing next year. For reasons unclear to me, the soon-to-be renamed SyFy Channel has chosen to release this episode on DVD well before the show airs. I don’t get why they’re doing this, but whatever.

The show takes place 58 years before BSG and tells the story of Caprica and the other colonies before the Cylons destroyed everything. It primarily centers around Daniel Greystone, who is busily inventing Cylons, and a lawyer named Joseph Adama, who, unlike what his father said about him in BSG, turns out to be basically a bought mob lawyer and not a great civil rights attorney. I actually appreciated that, since we all know kids to idolize their parents. The idea that Bill Adama’s father might’ve not been what his son remembered made perfect sense.

The plot of the pilot centers around Greystone and Adama’s daughters, who are both killed in a terrorist attack staged by a guy entirely too attractive to off himself that way. The terrorists are religious zealots who believe in monotheism and are willing to kill for it.

Greystone is shattered by his daughter’s death, but then he finds out she’s made a computer version of herself that has sentience. If only there was some way to put that into the cyborg bodies he’s developing…

This episode suffers somewhat in comparison to BSG. It isn’t bad by any means, but it’s not nearly as good, especially when you compare pilot episodes. BSG’s pilot was much more stand-alone then this and had a stronger overall story-line. The characters were also more interesting.

Still and all, what there is here shows some real potential, and I am looking forward to watching the series when it airs (though they will have to hack up this pilot quite a bit, given the large number of bare-breasted women you see in it. Gods forbid people should see women topless! Anarchy!). And, what the heck, at least it’s something better than most of the dreck the SyFy Channel airs.

DVD Review – Family Guy: Blue Harvest

Seth McFarlane is, clearly, a geek. I for one am quite happy about this. What other TV show is there with so many hilarious references to things like Speed Racer, Star Trek and, of course, Star Wars?

According to the commentary on this DVD, the show did so many SW spoofs they were told by the Legal Department they needed to knock it off or Lucasfilm might have grounds for action against them. Rather than stop, McFarlane and friends went to George Lucas and got permission to do a full hour-long episode.

The result? Family Guy – Blue Harvest Special Edition (w/ limited-edition collectibles).

Not only is this a hilarious Star Wars spoof, but we also get references to things like American Dad!,Airplane!, Doctor Who, Robot Chicken, the Wilhelm Scream, the pointless contents of gift-baskets and why repairing a Y-wing engine can be risky.

There’s some dead-on parody of various elements in SW, like the illogic of stormtroopers noticing that a door is locked and ignoring it, and the fact that parsecs are a measurement of distance not time. On the plus side, Han/Peter does shoot first, so there ya go.

Really my only real criticism of the episode is that it is, if anything, too short. But what there is of it is really good.

This collector’s edition DVD set is really nice. In addition to the episode (with footage not shown on TV), you get tons of extras, including commentary and a fun interview with George Lucas! Plus, hey, trading cards and a t-shirt. The shirt is, of course, XL. Never it let it be said they don’t know their fan-base.

If you like “Family Guy” and “Star Wars”, buy this. If you don’t, you’ll sink into a cesspit of self-loathing and hatred that you’ll never work your way out of… well, ok, possibly not. But you will miss out on something very entertaining, and that’s bad enough!

DVD Review – Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children

So having posted my FFVI:AC drinking game the other day, I thought I’d post a review of the movie itself today! Enjoy!

Ah, Final Fantasy. How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. FF1… FF2… FF3… FF4… FF5… FF6… FF7… FF9… FF10… FF12… (FF8… not so much. FF11… never played)

For gamers like me, RPG freaks born in the 1970’s, the “Final Fantasy” series of games is, in many ways, the pinacle of what video game RPGs should be. Epic, beautiful, clever, touching, etc.

The previous CGI FF film, Final Fantasy – The Spirits Within,did not live up to the fine tradition of the video games. The plot was, let’s face it, bizzare at best (I so hate Gaia theory… it makes no sense! Earth as a living organism my left eye!). The voice-over work was unexceptional. The animation was great, but that was about it.

Now, however, we have Final Fantasy VII – Advent Children.And it is good. Not great. But it is good.

The plot basically centers around a Sephiroth cosplaying freak (translation for non-otaku: femmy-looking bad-guy impersonating another femmy-looking bad-guy), who is trying to revive a Great Power of Evil ™, in order to… to… you know, I’m still not entirely sure. Destroy the world? Have a mom? Something like that.

Really the plot doesn’t matter. This is a movie about incredible sights, amazing sounds, stunning action sequences and a really, really hot main character (O, Cloud! My Cloud!). The CGI is really breath-taking. The characters are as close to photo-realistic as anything I’ve ever seen.

The fight sequences are just as impressive, if somewhat physics-violating (how is someone who is airborne supposed to boost someone else who is airborne? Still, this isn’t as bad as Superman Returns, where Superman lifted something he was standing on at the time he was lifting it). Basically the fights are very much what you might expect of a CGI anime.

And the music! Oh, goodness, the music! Nobuo Uematsu is an extremely skilled composer and this film really highlights that. “Cloud’s Theme” and “One-Winged Angel” are the best tracks, but the rest is spectacular, too! Heck, there’s one part where any FF fan will laugh as the “Victory Music” plays! Just buying he soundtack alone would be worth it.

This movie really is complete fan service. There’s nothing wrong with that, but if you haven’t played the game, expect to be very, very lost. Still, long as you’re lost you might as well enjoy the brilliant sights and sounds.

If you haven’t played the video game, the movie won’t make a lot of sense, but even still it is worth seeing.