TV

DVD review: Masters of Horror: Pelts

Anchor Bay have put together a decent package for Pelts. The film is one of the weakest products to which Argento has ever attached his name, but it’s hard to find fault with the transfer or the quality of the (admittedly somewhat limited) extras. In any event, Argento completists are going to want to own this no matter what, so it gets the strongest recommendation I can give, considering the quality of the film itself.

Dario Argento cashes a pay-cheque with Pelts, his contribution to the second season of Masters of Horror. I investigate Anchor Bay’s R1 DVD, courtesy of DVD Pacific.

DVD debacle

My review copy of the R1 US DVD release of Pelts, Dario Argento’s episode in the second season of the Masters of Horror TV series arrived this morning. I’ve not had a chance to watch it all, but I’ve sampled the audio commentary, featuring writer Matt Venne, which seems very good. As bad as the script is, he sounds like an intelligent, knowledgeable guy, and his enthusiasm is pretty infectious. Otherwise, the sampling of extras seems a bit lacklustre, especially compared with the inferior Jenifer, which, by all accounts, was loaded to the gills with extras on the US release (I have the Danish release, which is somewhat pared down).

Expect a full review at DVD Times in the next week or so.

Comedy hanging in Simpsons movie

The first full (i.e. non-teaser) trailer for the upcoming The Simpsons Movie has arrived online. It does indeed look truly awful - just as bad, if not worse than, the most recent seasons of the TV show - but what really caught my attention is the fact that the film seems to have a comedy strangulation scene in it. What’s wrong with a hilarious hanging, you might ask? Well, I would have thought nothing, but apparently the British Board of Film Censors have other ideas. Back in March, I reported that they had vandalised Out West, an episode of The Ren & Stimpy Show, removing the closing “Hanging Song” and the entire narrative justification for the episode. A little later, they practiced similar butchery on an episode of Satoshi Kon’s anime series Paranoia Agent, presenting the Video Recordings Act 1984 as flimsy justification for their mangling (despite plenty of hanging scenes, both hilarious and otherwise, being allowed in films in the past).

Now, both Ren & Stimpy and Paranoia Agent are obscure enough, at least in the UK, for any backlash against their destruction to be muted at best… but I wonder if the BBFC will be so cavalier with something as well-known and popular as The Simpsons? We will be watching them closely, and we will be checking to see whether or not they take the scissors to this beloved franchise and risk incurring the wrath of thousands of spotty-faced fanatics. Now we’ll see whether the BBFC are completely unbiased and only censor when they absolutely have to.

If you want to discuss this matter with the BBFC, who deface art for a living, I suggest you send them an email.

iHate Macs

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past few years, you’ve probably come across a series of advertisements created by Apple to persuade PC users to jack in their beige boxes (actually, I haven’t actually seen a beige PC for some time, but the cliché remains) and replace them with glossy Macintosh machines. These ads are infuriatingly annoying for several reasons. Not only do they propagate stereotypes and blatant untruths that would see Steve Jobs’ smirking face sued into oblivion if “PC” was a copyrighted brand name like “Mac” (notice how they’re very careful to refer to “PCs” rather than “Windows”), they are also literally painful to watch and listen to, with their skin-crawling, whimsical, Will & Grace-style musical accompaniment, not to mention the preening tosser playing the role of the Mac.

Well, these ads have now made it to the UK, with the slight change that the two American actors playing the PC and Mac have been replaced by David Mitchell and Robert Webb, respectively. These two, best known as Mark and Jeremy from the UK comedy series Peep Show, are an odd choice, for several reasons. Mark is stuffy but ultimately well-intentioned and likeable, while Jeremy is a lazy, pretentious twat who causes harm to everyone who gets in his way. Given that Jeremy is playing the Mac in these commercials, this is either a wonderful slam-dunk of irony on the part of the casting director, or else Apple really are completely clueless as to how they are perceived by the bulk of the computer-using populace.

It is no secret, you see, that I hate Macs. I don’t just dislike them: I detest them with a passion. It’s not their superficiality, or the genuine belief of their apostles that they’re somehow getting a better deal despite forking over copious amounts of cash for what amounts to nothing more than overpriced junk - I’d like to think that I’m able to look past the “image”. No, I hate them because they are infuriatingly cumbersome to use, suffer from a complete lack of meaningful software, and, contrary to popular belief, are (at least based on my own personal experience) actually less reliable than Windows PCs. Back in February 2005, my brother made the ill-advised purchase of a Mac G5, his 48-hour experience with which has been well-documented. During those 48 hours, more obscenities were uttered in this house than in an entire week. If you want the full lowdown, I suggest reading his post, which, written just after the dratted thing had been boxed up, captures the immediacy of his rage.

I think Charlie Brooker, who recently wrote a rant against Macs, puts it best:

PCs are the ramshackle computers of the people. You can build your own from scratch, then customise it into oblivion. Sometimes you have to slap it to make it work properly, just like the Tardis (Doctor Who, incidentally, would definitely use a PC). PCs have charm; Macs ooze pretension. When I sit down to use a Mac, the first thing I think is, “I hate Macs”, and then I think, “Why has this rubbish aspirational ornament only got one mouse button?” Losing that second mouse button feels like losing a limb. If the ads were really honest, Webb would be standing there with one arm, struggling to open a packet of peanuts while Mitchell effortlessly tore his apart with both hands. But then, if the ads were really honest, Webb would be dressed in unbelievably po-faced avant-garde clothing with a gigantic glowing apple on his back. And instead of conducting a proper conversation, he would be repeatedly congratulating himself for looking so cool, and banging on about how he was going to use his new laptop to write a novel, without ever getting round to doing it, like a mediocre idiot.

Okay, so I wouldn’t generalise quite that much. I know a number of Mac users, and they are all intelligent, well-adjusted people. But I know shit when I smell it, and as far as I’m concerned, the Mac is just an overpriced toy - as Brooker puts it, “Macs are glorified Fisher-Price activity centres for adults.”

So much to see, so little time

It looks as if this is going to be quite a busy month for me as far as reviews are concerned. In addition to Brokeback Mountain (HD DVD) and Waking the Dead: Series 4 (DVD), which are hold-overs from January that I still need to complete (and I really should also do a write-up on last year’s Waking the Dead: Series 3, for the sake of completeness), I’ve also put in reservations for this month’s upcoming releases of Lucio Fulci’s Perversion Story (personally, I prefer its more literal translation title of One on Top of the Other), and Dario Argento’s episode for the second season of Masters of Horror, Pelts. Having already seen both, albeit not in the most ideal form, I’m expecting to lavish praise on the former and deliver a more lukewarm appraisal to the latter, although I am looking forward to seeing them both again.

I’ve also managed to snag a chance to review Paramount’s upcoming (February 20th) HD DVD of Babel, the latest film by Alejandro González Iñárritu, whose previous film, 21 Grams, I thought was excellent. Incidentally, it’s nice to see Paramount finally releasing something in high definition, even if its arrival does little more than to highlight how threadbare their slate of titles is: barring this, Failure to Launch and Payback are the only titles they have announced for 2007 so far. Oh, and interestingly enough, for Babel they would appear to have abandoned VC-1 as their HD DVD codec in favour of AVC (the Blu-ray variant is MPEG2, because Sony handles their HD release on the Blu front).

Oh, and I finally got fed up waiting for Amazon.fr to ship my copy of Beatrice Cenci, and ordered it instead from Fnac, who actually have it in stock. In the past, I’ve found Amazon (.fr, .co.uk, .com - you name it) to be irritatingly slow for deliveries. Basically, unless it says “Usually dispatched within 24 hours”, it’s more or less a foregone conclusion that it won’t actually ship for weeks, if at all. The same is true of the recently released Grande Collection edition of Asterix and the Goths, which I also cancelled from Amazon and ordered from Fnac (its partner in the February release schedule, Asterix and Obelix All at Sea, did, however, leave Amazon in a reasonably timely fashion). Amazon.co.uk did, however, dispatch my copy of the score to The Iron Giant, which I ordered last night, in less than 12 hours. Luckily, I should be able to afford all these expenses, given that I punted my Xbox 360 HD DVD add-on to a friend for £130 today.

DVDs I bought or received in the month of January

• Brokeback Mountain (R0 USA, HD DVD/SD DVD combo)
• The Iguana with the Tongue of Fire (R0 Germany, SD DVD)
• A Lizard in a Woman’s Skin: Remastered Edition (R1 USA, SD DVD)
• The Mephisto Waltz (R2 Spain, SD DVD)
• Waking the Dead: Series 4 (R2 UK, SD DVD)

DVD and HD DVD purchases this month were somewhat overshadowed by the ordering of a Playstation 3 and some Blu-ray discs to play on it. Look for impressions on these some time in early February.

Digging up missing discs

This morning, I received check discs of the fourth series of Waking the Dead for review from 2 Entertain. Well, to be slightly more accurate, I received check discs last Friday, but, for some reason, the four discs included in the package contained only the first eight (out of a total of twelve) episodes. To make matters doubly baffling, the press release that came with the discs referred to this being a three-disc set…? The problem was rectified this morning, however, with the arrival of another package, this one containing six discs, which means that all the episodes are now accounted for. Presumably this means that the commercially available package will be comprised of three dual-sided DVDs. That’s the only reason I can come up with for this bizarre discrepancy.

Make your mind up, Warner!

Source: High-Def Digest

Seemingly intent on dragging this misbegotten format war out for as long as possible, Warner is set to announce HD DVD/Blu-ray hybrid discs at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES), due to begin on January 8th. What exactly does this mean for the industry? In reality, I suspect not a whole lot. It means that studios supporting both formats will be able to release a single disc for both, but it’s unlikely to suddenly bring Blu-ray only or HD DVD only studios into the dual-format fold. It will also probably mean more expensive discs for consumers, which is never a good thing if you want a new format to succeed.

In an exclusive pre-CES interview with the Times, Barry M. Meyer, the chairman and chief executive of Warner Brothers, claims the studio created the idea of Total HD as it became apparent that while neither the Blu-ray or HD DVD formats would be going away anytime soon, continued consumer reluctance to invest in rival technologies could stall the widespread adoption of high-definition.

“The next best thing is to recognize that there will be two formats, and to make that not a negative for the consumer,” said Meyer. “We [Warner] felt that the most significant constituency for us to satisfy was the consumer first, and the retailer second. The retailer wants to sell hardware and doesn’t want to be forced into stocking two formats for everything. This is ideal for them.”

As for CES in general, who knows how things are going to pan out? One visitor asked me for my predictions regarding the show, so I might as well reiterate them here:

• A least one major manufacturer will announce an HD DVD player
• Warner will announce the Matrix trilogy and perhaps some Hitchcock and Kubrick titles, in addition to some more recent blockbusters like A Scanner Darkly
• Universal will do likewise, perhaps with some Hitchcocks and more recent offerings
• Paramount will continue their lacklustre support of both formats
• Perhaps a couple of TV box sets
• If any Blu-ray supporter makes a commitment to HD DVD, it will be Lions Gate
• New Line may or may not say something with regard to their HD plans

Bear in mind that these are mere guesses, not informed predictions, so don’t take them as in any way reliable. Still, it’ll be interesting to see how many, if any, turn out to be accurate.

The Year in Review

2006 - the year of HD

Note: I’m not going to cover worldwide hot topics like the execution of Saddam Hussein or the continued botch-job that is the situation in Iraq. This is simply a set of personal musings about my own experiences this year.

On a technological front, by far the biggest development on the HMS Whimsy this year was the arrival of an HD DVD player - a late change from our original intention to pick up a Blu-ray player. Originally, I had expected to perhaps have half a dozen titles in high definition by the end of the year, but have in fact ended up with 21 (plus another two that Lyris bought). Certainly a number of these are films that I probably wouldn’t have bought had their been a better selection available, but still, if you’d told me that, a mere six months after its launch, the format would included crystal-clear copies of Casablanca and The Adventures of Robin Hood, not to mention more obscure cult titles like An American Werewolf in London and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, I wouldn’t have believed you. All in all, HD DVD got off to a great start in 2006, with I only hope will continue to be bettered in 2007.

Including both standard definition and high definition, I bought or received for review a total of 107 DVDs. I wrote 66 reviews for DVD Times (two down from last year’s record of 68), and went to the cinema a whopping two times. I watched 216 films (including those watched more than once), 99 of which I had never seen before. These tended to be of the more obscure variety, although I did see a number of “major” (both in the sense of being “important” and of being blockbusters that just about everyone ended up seeing) titles that had, for one reason or another, passed me by until last year, including Trains, Planes & Automobiles, Welcome to the Dollhouse, Sympathy for Lady Vengeance, The Tragedy of Macbeth, Blade Runner, Tout Va Bien, Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, Collateral, Corpse Bride, The Piano Teacher, Theatre of Blood, A History of Violence, V for Vendetta, 5x2, Bitter Moon, Walkabout, Fritz the Cat, Vertigo, Exorcist II: The Heretic, The Descent, The Constant Gardener, Serenity, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest, The Bourne Identity, The Bourne Supremacy, Duck Soup, Strictly Ballroom, The Fifth Element, Ghost World, Cars, Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion, Being John Malkovich, Black Sunday, The Omen (remake), Witchfinder General, Topaz, Torn Curtain, Casino Royale, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Miami Vice, Basic Instinct and The Adventures of Robin Hood. Quite clearly, this list features some real gems and some absolute garbage, including gems that I thought would be garbage and garbage that I thought would be gems.

In terms of television, meanwhile, I watched the first two seasons of Veronica Mars and the final season of Alias. I also went through the entire seven-season run of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, with its steadily diminishing returns post-Season 5 gradually driving me towards the brink of suicide (I exaggerate). The long-running medical drama Casualty also celebrated its 20th anniversary, with the launch of the first three series on DVD - it’s anyone’s guess how long they will continue this, given that each series becomes progressively longer, until they eventually run for more or less the entire year. Speaking of Casualty, that particular show shocked me in delivering perhaps the best two hours of television I’d seen all year, with the much-heralded return of former writer (and Waking the Dead creator) Barbara Machin for a one-off guest writing gig. Much to my delight, the magnificent Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace was finally released on DVD, although the same team’s follow-up, the satirical chat-show Man to Man with Dean Learner, turned out to be a huge disappointment. The fifth season of Spooks also aired, and, while it was suitably engaging, it sacrificed some of the subtlety of previous years in favour of increasingly unbelievable conspiracies and hostile takeovers. Oh, and on the TV/film front, Channel 4’s dedicated film channel, FilmFour, became free in July, providing the UK with its first free-to-air channel dedicated to movies.

After over a year’s worth of procrastination, I finally recorded a new fan commentary, this time for Dario Argento’s Profondo Rosso. Once again, feedback for this seems to have been largely positive, although it’s anyone’s guess what I’ll think of it myself when I finally brave listening to it again.

The Third Mother, the long-awaited conclusion to Argento’s Three Mothers trilogy (started with Suspiria and Inferno in 1977 and 1980 respectively), finally went into production, wrapping at some point in late November/early December, with a projected May 2007 release date. Argento also helmed another episode in the American Masters of Horror television series: Pelts turned out to be less shameful than 2005’s Jenifer, but a far cry from his home-grown exploits nonetheless. Meanwhile, the much-feared Hollywood remake of Suspiria was finally axed.

After much talk of the two companies going their separate ways, Disney bought Pixar and instated John Lasseter as the joint president of feature animation for both studios. Shortly before the end of the year, it was announced that, following the release of Meet the Robinsons, Disney would be abandoning CG animation entirely and returning to the hand-drawn realm in which it made its name.

Once more in the animated world, John Kricfalusi, the creator of The Ren & Stimpy Show and the industry’s last great hope, started up an excellent blog in February. July also saw the release on DVD of Ren & Stimpy: The Lost Episodes, containing six new installments featuring everyone’s favourite dog and cat duo, three of which had never even aired on TV. Sadly, there seems to be no indication that sales of the DVD have persuaded Paramount to order more episodes.

I got into computer games this year to a far greater extent than I had for some time, picking up Guild Wars: Factions, Guild Wars: Nightfall, The Movies: Stunts and Effects, Dreamfall: The Longest Journey and Lara Croft: Tomb Raider: Legend, as well as replaying Baldur’s Gate II: Shadows of Amn, Icewind Dale II, Starcraft: Brood War and Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos. Lyris also picked up the new Nintendo Wii console in November, resulting in much enjoyment as all on sundry made asses of themselves waving its newfangled controller about. Oh, and Blizzard Entertainment “postponed indefinitely” (read “cancelled”) its troubled console action game Starcraft: Ghost, much to the disappointment of the three or four people that still cared about it.

I also bought rather more technological gadgets than is normal for me: I picked up a digital camera in February, and a swish new widescreen LCD monitor in June. I also replaced my Creative Zen Micro MP3 player with a Sony NW-HD5 in November, and made the mistake of buying an nVidia-based video card for my computer in December (the replacement ATI model will hopefully arrive soon after business returns to normal after the New Year holiday).

In September, I finally finished my MLitt, handed in my dissertation, and, much to my shock, was awared a Distinction. Unable to find a job, I went on unemployment benefit - what fun.

Oh, and on the web site front, September saw a new site design and a return to Movable Type as a publishing platform after slightly over a year with Blogger. In November, meanwhile, I finally got sick of my useless host, Fuitadnet, constantly screwing up and making life difficult, and moved to Donym, where the rent is cheaper and everything runs much more smoothly to boot.

Silent night, Holby night…

Many of you probably know that I am something of a fan of the British medical drama series Casualty. These days, the show is sometimes so bad that I wonder why I don’t pack it in, but the two-part Christmas special that ran last night and tonight reminded me why I still tune in every week. These episodes were written by Barbara Machin, the creator of the excellent Waking the Dead and one of the show’s regular writers when it was at its peak, and she managed to deliver something that I’d thought the show was no longer capable of: cutting-edge, intense drama (as opposed to the soap we tend to be served up). It was like stepping into a time machine and going back a decade or so to when the show was of a consistently high standard and something that was unmissable television rather than the schedule-filler it so often seems to be now.

The concept itself is something that I’m sure has been done before in countless other shows, but nonetheless felt fresh and unique. Essentially, it told the same story from the perspective of three different characters, one after the other, with the focus shifting each time it was replayed, allowing the audience to see things that hadn’t been apparent before. Obviously, having every episode play like this would be pointless, which is what what really pleased me was the quality of the drama itself. Characters who had, for months or years, been stuck in the background or were written completely out of character, came to the forefront and seemed like their old selves again. I never expected this show to ever again amaze me and have me absolutely gripped, but I have no happily been proved wrong. This was not just the best episode of Casualty in years but one of the finest television programmes I’ve seen all year. I am, quite literally, stunned.

Mann oh mann

This morning, I received a review copy of the HD DVD/SD DVD combo of Michael Mann’s Miami Vice courtesy of DVD Pacific. I’ve never seen the 80s TV series on which the film is based, so I really didn’t know what to expect.

All I can say is that I’m glad this was a review copy and thus something I didn’t have to pay for, except with the two hours and twenty minutes of my life that I’ll never get back. Miami Vice is an incoherent mess, an eyesore and assault on the ears. It’s one hundred and forty minutes of Colin Farrell and Jamie Foxx slicking back their hair and/or adjusting their shades as they swagger around various seaside locations with their jaws firmly set and their designer shades glinting in the sunlight. The plot feels like your average 45-minute cop show stretched out to beyond the normal length of a feature film, while the characters are nothing more than mere archetypes who spit out corny dialogue and offer us glaring insights into their tedious and insincere emotions.

Style-wise, the film is all over the place. Mann shot it using a combination of traditional 35mm and 1080p high definition. Some of it looks fine, but the night scenes look absolutely vile, filled with obnoxious amounts of digital noise. Meanwhile, a whole lot of scenes have what can only be described as a motion blur effect, presumably the result of shooting the footage interlaced and then deinterlacing it for the final transfer. Mann used similar techniques on his previous film, Collateral, and they were just as bad there. If this is the future of cinema, I think I’d prefer to remain in the past. Oh, and the camerawork is dreadful, too: I get that Mann wanted to convey a sense of urgency, but when your viewpoint is jittering all of the place, Blair Witch-style, I feel ready to vomit rather than being drawn into the action.

Simply put, this is the worst film I’ve added to my HD collection thus far. A 3/10 is, I feel, extremely generous. Not recommended. The disc itself, however, is very good, with an array of extras that I’ll no doubt have to plough through and a solid transfer that does the best it can with the uninspiring quality of the source materials.

Alias Season 5: there’s only one Sydney Bristow

Half-way through the fifth and final season of Alias, the entire show had to be put on hold in order to accommodate the pregnancy of star/producer Jennifer Garner, resulting in a shorter than usual run of 17 episodes. The compressed length, in addition to having to write the first half of the season around Garner’s ballooning stomach (fairly straightforwardly, the writers had her character become pregnant too), not to mention the fact that creator JJ Abrams was busy directing Mission Impossible 3, should have spelled disaster for the show… But they didn’t. Indeed, after a thoroughly disappointing fourth season, Alias Season 5 is a welcome return to form.

Due to Garner’s pregnancy, the first half of the season necessitates something of a change of format, given that the show’s mainstay was always the sight of Sydney Bristow performing energetic stunts in exotic attire. To compensate for the increasingly chair-bound Sydney, the writers draft in a bunch of new recruits, one of whom, Rachel Gibson (Rachel Nichols), finds herself in much the same situation that Sydney was during Season 1. As such, despite signalling something of a departure, Season 5 also recalls the old glory days, with the wide-eyed, naive Rachel serving as a suitable stand-in for the increasingly worldly-wise Sydney. The best of the new characters, however, is the feisty French criminal Renée Rienne (Élodie Bouchez), who ends up helping Team Alias out on several occasions. I would happily have watched an entire show centred around Renée (a spin-off would have been great), but unfortunately the writers make little use for her, and she drops out of the show some time before the end.

There are a few bum notes, and one of these is the third new major character, the moody agent Thomas Grace (Balthazzar Getty). To put it bluntly, he isn’t interesting, and a rather pointless subplot involving his dead wife distracts from the main points of interest, and seems to have been developed before the writers were aware that they wouldn’t be getting another season. Elsewhere, several of the show’s mainstays are becoming rather repetitive and predictable, including the is-he-or-is-he-not-evil Arvin Sloane (Ron Rifkin), who has been kept around for so long and has changed sides so many times, and yet always given another chance, that it’s got to the point of being ludicrous. By far the worst mistake, however, is

Highlight below to reveal spoiler text:

Otherwise, though, this is a fine season. It’s not as good as Seasons 1 and 2, but it’s a major improvement on Season 4. Alias was always one of the most impressive-looking shows on television, and this one is no exception, with slick cinematography and a single Los Angeles back-lot standing in convincingly for every location from Cambodia to Siberia. Unlike so many shows, Alias goes out with a bang, and manages not to disgrace itself as it does so.

Dario Argento film rankings

Updated to include Pelts and to reflect my own personal changes in taste since I last did one of these.

• 1. Suspiria (1977) 10/10
• 2. Profondo Rosso (1975) 10/10
• 3. Opera (1987) 10/10
• 4. The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1970) 9/10
• 5. Inferno (1980) 9/10
• 6. The Stendhal Syndrome (1996) 9/10
• 7. Tenebre (1982) 9/10
• 8. Four Flies on Grey Velvet (1971) 8/10
• 9. Phenomena (1985) 8/10
• 10. The Card Player (2004) 7/10
• 11. The Cat O’ Nine Tails (1971) 7/10
• 12. Non Ho Sonno (2001) 7/10
• 13. Trauma (1993) 6/10
• 14. Do You Like Hitchcock? (2005, TV) 6/10
• 15. Door into Darkness: Eyewitness (1973) 6/10
• 16. Masters of Horror: Pelts (2006, TV) 5/10
• 17. Door into Darkness: The Tram (1973, TV) 4/10
• 18. The Phantom of the Opera (1998) 4/10
• 19. Masters of Horror: Jenifer (2005, TV) 3/10

Who knows where The Third Mother will end up?

Pelts: an Argento/PETA co-production

It’s no secret that I didn’t think much of Jenifer, Dario Argento’s first episode in the Masters of Horror anthology series. Actually, that’s something of an understatement: I thought it was phenomenally bad, dethroning The Phantom of the Opera from its position as the worst thing he’d ever directed. Its problem, for me, was that it could have been directed by anyone - and by that I don’t mean that it didn’t “look like an Argento film” (whatever that means), which is what the episode’s defenders invariably try to twist my words into. Rather, it was the sort of bland, anonymous point-and-shoot affair that any semi-competent director for hire could have pulled off. Basically, if it hadn’t said “a film by Dario Argento” at the start, virtually no-one would have paid it a blind bit of notice, making the decision to fly Argento over from Italy to direct it a rather pointless endeavour. Jenifer was more a vehicle for its star/writer Steven Weber than for Argento, making the decision to market the episode around Argento’s name rather than Weber’s disingenuous at best, downright dishonest at worst.

As such, I was prepared for more of the same with Pelts, his contribution to the show’s second season. My expectations were so low that I couldn’t possibly have been disappointed, and as such it’s perhaps not entirely surprising that Pelts is better than I expected. Certainly, it’s still pretty clear that Argento is slumming it, calling “cut” and “action” and picking up a pay-cheque for his efforts, and it’s still pretty near the bottom of the barrel as far as his impressive filmography goes, but it’s nowhere near as embarrassing as Jenifer. Heavily flawed, sure; ultimately pointless, of course; but this time at least there are a few hints to suggest that a filmmaker with actual talent is behind the lens.

The plot, this time, is somewhat more suited to the tastes of Argento, a vegetarian who has owned several cats and believes we should be doing more to protect the rights of insects. Basically, a poacher (John Saxon, who previously appeared in Argento’s classic Tenebre - that’s two big names slumming it) and his dimwitted hick son butcher a bunch of raccoons (or “coons”, as they call them, in one of the script’s less than subtle racism allegories), with an eye to making a tidy profit on what they both agree are the finest pelts ever seen. Junior bashes in Papa’s head with a baseball bat, however, prior to mashing his own face in one of the loathsome pair’s own gin-traps. Enter Jake (Meat Loaf - yes, Meat Loaf), the furrier to whom the pair intended to sell their goods. Seemingly unconcerned by the two dead bodies in front of him, Jake pockets the pelts and, stricken by their beauty, plots to make the finest coat known to man - with an eye to convincing his favourite lap-dancer, Shanna (Ellen Ewusie), to let him fuck her in the ass (I’m not making this up).

The film’s most impressive moments come during the opening titles, which are set against moody shots of the furrier’s various pieces of equipment, most of them dripping with blood. Argento certainly lays on the gore thick and fast here, some of it successfully, some of it not. Of the various extended death scenes, the best is that of a seamstress who sews up her own eyes, nostrils and mouth (nearly all of the deaths are self-inflicted). Less impressive is that of a man who tears out his own innards: it’s just the same Z-grade schlock peddled by Troma, only with more convincing effects. Likewise, the cinematography, by Attila Szalay (who also shot Jenifer), is highly variable: the scenes in the strip-club are the best, with copious amounts of red, blue and purple back-lighting that at times manages to evoke that of Suspiria, albeit greatly toned down; many of the exteriors, however, look flat and lifeless, with Jake’s visit to the poachers’ hut looking as bad as Jenifer in terms of lack of imagination. By and large, though, this “film’s” look is a massive step up from that of its predecessor.

Script and acting are another story, however. The plot was adapted by first-timer Matt Venne from a short story by F. Paul Wilson. I’ve not read the source material, but I can’t imagine it being particularly inspiring, given that it’s essentially just a series of grisly suicides, seemingly stemming from coming into contact with the pelts. As such, you can find the same themes of transferral and infection of the mind that are present in Jenifer if you want to attach an auteurist reading to these episodes - personally, I don’t. These are not “Dario Argento films” in the traditional sense, given that he receives no writing credits on them, instead seemingly having picked his favourite from a list of pre-existing screenplays. The performances, meanwhile, verge on embarrassing. Meat Loaf chews the scenery like nothing on earth, screaming, slavering and stomping around with a face that could curdle milk, while even the reliable John Saxon struggles to make anything of his one-dimensional role. The characters are all flat in the extreme, as it happens, and Argento, presumably realising he wasn’t going to get anything approaching a decent performance out of Ellen Ewusie, instead has her spend the bulk of her screen-time with her breasts out. Oh, and there’s a good old-fashioned gratuitous girl-on-girl sex scene too - the Masters of Horror team presumably think that this sort of thing, in addition to gallons of karo syrup, can be considered “pushing the boundaries”, but it all reeks a little of desperation. The two women look so uncomfortable during their sex scene that it’s hard not to feel sorry for them.

I don’t really have much else to say. It’s better than Jenifer, but once again it uses the Argento name to market a generic, poorly-written splatterfest that any number of no-name directors for hire could have pulled off. The Argento of old would have been able to direct this sort of thing blindfolded and with one arm behind his back, but at least there are a handful glimpses of the old spirit, even if they are present here in a greatly dumbed down form. Pelts is ultimately really just a means to an end - apparently it is thanks to his Masters of Horror work that The Third Mother is being made at all. Them’s the breaks, I guess, and, as such, I’m willing to accept half-baked Argento if it ultimately leads to some sort of a return to form. 5/10.

PS. PETA did not in fact have anything to do with the making of Pelts, in case anyone was under any false impressions. I’m sure Argento has more sense than to associate with such an organisation.

Pelts?

Pelts, Dario Argento’s episode in the second season of the Masters of Horror television series apparently aired last night. I’ll offer my thoughts as soon as I’ve got my hands on a copy, although, given how bad Jenifer was, I’m more than prepared for the worst. But hey - maybe I’ll be wrong.

Veronica Mars, take two

Following on from my previous post, I ploughed through the remainder of Season 2 of Veronica Mars last night and this morning. And my opinions are largely unchanged: the same strengths and weaknesses that I outlined last night remained till the end. A more detailed explanation is in order, however.

The show is set in the (imaginary) small town of Neptune, home of dodgy millionaires and their snotty children, as well as the less well-off. The show looks at this “class divide” from the perspective of Veronica Mars (Kristen Bell), a teenager who used to be in with the popular crowd until a series of unfortunate happenings resulted in her being ostracised by her so-called friends. She and her parents ended up becoming virtual social pariahs after her sheriff father, Keith (Enrico Colantoni), put the blame for the murder of Veronica’s best friend, Lily (Amanda Seyfried), on her father… sorry, all these relationships are really complicated. Mrs. Mars ran off, Keith lost his job and ended up making a living as a private investigator, and Veronica, no longer on the in-crowd, helped him out.

That was Season 1. As Season 2 begins, the previous year’s various cases have been wrapped up. Lily’s killer (I’m not saying who, for those who haven’t seen Season 1) is behind bars, and Veronica has managed to regain much of her cred with the in-crowd. Tensions between the haves and the have-nots are at an all-time high, though, and Veronica finds herself stuck right in the middle. She soon has other problems to contend with, though, including a bus full of children from her school hurtling off a cliff for seemingly no reason… a bus that she should have been on. Did someone want her dead, and did it have anything to do with the events of the previous year?

I’ll give creator Rob Thomas and his writers credit for one thing: they know how to capture the audience’s interest. Whatever flaws the show might have, it has a very addictive quality. There are always unanswered questions, meaning that there’s always something to entice you to go straight to the next episode as soon as the current one finishes. Like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, upon which this show was clearly quite heavily modelled, it follows a conventional structure of most episodes having their own self-contained cases, with a couple of larger mysteries being played out over the course of the season’s 22 episodes. The “cases of the week” vary in terms of quality, but most of them do a commendable job of trying to do something unexpected… although not always successfully. The main case, meanwhile, has a decent line-up of potential suspects, including both new and old characters. The complex relationships between the various characters, meanwhile, provide ample scope for secrets, lies and intrigue, even if the soap opera elements to tend to become a little unbelievable in their complexity.

What doesn’t work, though, is that I really struggle to relate to the characters, understand what they see in each other, or even like the majority of them in the slightest. Veronica begins the season in the arms of the obnoxious Logan (Jason Dohring), before promptly ditching him for her previous boyfriend, Logan’s best friend Duncan (Teddy Dunn). By the end of the season, she’s back with Logan again. (See what I meant about the ridiculousness of the soap elements?) Logan is the sort of creep that you’d actually cross the street to avoid, making Veronica’s attraction to him decidedly implausible, while Veronica spends most of her waking hours being so sarcastic to everyone she comes into contact with that it’s a wonder she has any friends at all. Of all the regular characters, the most likeable is Keith Mars, with Colantoni’s performance being by far the best on the show.

There are also some rather irritating continuity issues, with character developments and plot threads being introduced in one episode, only to promptly be forgotten for extended periods. Early in the season, for example, Veronica’s friend Wallace’s (Percy Daggs) estranged father shows up, and various events lead to father and son eloping together. Wallace is out of the picture for several episodes, before promptly returning, and the business with his father, and his disappearance, never being dealt with. In Buffy, or other US shows I enjoy like Alias, you generally get the sense that everything that happens to the characters is working towards some sort of master plan, or at least that they are adding to their life experience and allowing them to develop, even if only in minute ways. With Veronica Mars, that sort of long-term planning doesn’t seem to exist, at least not to the same extent.

Broadly speaking, though, I can understand why this show has so many ardent followers, and I certainly enjoyed watching both seasons (I’ll probably pick up Season 3 when it comes out on DVD, but it doesn’t appear to air in the UK and I’m not obsessive enough to be motivated to download the episodes as they air in the US). It features the same cheery, irreverent take on film noir that Buffy did with horror, and as such, I can see it appealing to the same crowd. The second season even features appearances by Alyson Hannigan and Joss Whedon himself, while Charisma Carpenter is featured on a more extended basis.

Update, December 19, 2006 05:57 PM: Fixed dead link.

DVD telly fun

My copy of the R2 UK DVD of the fifth and final season of Alias arrived today. Given the excellent image quality of its predecessors, I’m expecting big things in the technical department, although I am a little wary as to the quality of the episodes themselves, given that (a) Jennifer Garner’s pregnancy had to be written around, also resulting in a shorter season of only 17 episodes rather than the usual 22, and (b) Season 4 was a huge disappointment, barring the enjoyable but ludicrous two-part finale.

In any event, I won’t be watching it until I’ve finished Season 2 of Veronica Mars. I’m about two-thirds of the way through that now, and my verdict, so far, is that, if you’ve already seen Season 1, it’s very much more of the same, which is both a good thing and a bad thing. On the plus side, the various mysteries are generally well-plotted, and the longer arcs that snake their way through the entire season are enough to keep you tuning in - this is definitely a show that’s very “moreish”. On the negative side, I still find myself getting irritated by the fact that major plot developments and characters are introduced, only to be unceremoniously dumped and not picked up again till later. (In one episode at around the middle of the season, for example, Veronica and her father have a major falling-out, ending with her saying he won’t ever be able to trust her again. Next week, they’re bestest buds again.) I also tend to find that the vast majority of the characters are vaguely unpleasant at best, and downright despicable at worst, while the least offensive character, Mac, is hardly ever around.

Still, I shall persevere, and I’m certainly not finding the experience of watching it unpleasant. On the contrary, I always find myself eager to find out what happens next, and end up watching “just one more” episode. Hopefully I’ll be able to deliver my final verdict on the season in the next week or so.

V for Vendetta

My HD DVD of V for Vendetta finally arrived today from Amazon.com. Incidentally, I’m glad I decided to order my copy from them - my regular supplier, DVD Pacific, seem to have only just got copies in stock, and, in any event, Amazon’s shipping times and, for HD DVDs, prices, seem to be pretty much the same as DVD Pacific’s anyway.

Anyway, the disc. This is a very good but not outstanding presentation. I’d put it in the same category as the likes of Constantine and Million Dollar Baby: essentially, a smooth, rich presentation with a pleasing amount of detail and no visible compression artefacts, but not an out of this world eye-popper like Serenity (to date, still the most incredible home video presentation I’ve ever seen of a film) or Unleashed. Some edge enhancement is visible, and the image doesn’t have the crispness of some of the more stellar titles, but it is all in all a very nice-looking transfer.

As for extras, we get an exclusive In-Movie Experience, which I’ve briefly sampled and found to be somewhat better than those found on the likes of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Also, all of the extras from the 2-disc special edition DVD have been ported over. And yes, that includes the Natalie Portman SNL short so tragically absent from the UK DVD releases.

Expect a full review at DVD Times by the end of the week.

Oh, and it seems that, despite HD DVD players not yet being available in the UK, Play.com are already shipping copies of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, a title which is not yet available in the US. The word on the street is that this is actually a US disc, right down to the FBI warning and MPAA ratings screen at the start of the disc. If nothing else, this bodes well for future UK HD DVD releases, at least from Warner.

Man to Man with Dean Learner

And once again it’s shit. By my count, that’s two complete duds, one mediocre and one slightly amusing.

Veronica Mars and chums

My copy of the second season of Veronica Mars arrived this morning. I’ve watched the first two episodes, and three things strike me:

(1) The Previously on Veronica Mars… recaps that are meant to occur at the start of each episode have been unceremoniously shaved off, a la the US releases of Buffy and Angel. This strikes me as annoying for several reasons: first, the Season 1 set had them intact; second, just because we have access to all 22 episodes in one box doesn’t mean we haven’t forgotten what happened several episodes earlier; third, it disrupts the timing and momentum, and, in the first episode, results in a noticeable jump in the audio (I’ve no idea whether any other episodes are effective.

(2) The transfers have been improved somewhat since the previous season. Season 1 looked abnormally soft, and the grain pattern caused some noticeable artefacting. Season 2 isn’t perfect - it’s certainly not in the same league as the PAL transfers for Alias - but it’s a lot easier on the eyes than its predecessor.

(3) There are no English subtitles - only French and Spanish. What is this, the dark ages?

All in all, though, I’ve enjoyed the first couple of episodes. It looks like it’s going to be pretty engaging stuff. Does Veronica have to be quite so smug, though? A superiority complex is really not an attractive trait in a protagonist. Look where it got Buffy in her final season…