End Of Season Review - Battlestar Galactica

Is it fair to say that sci fi fans are split into two factions over the best genre shows on TV right now? In my time reading talkbacks and comment sections online, Lost talkbacks are often invaded by hardcore Battlestar Galactica fans dissing the island-based dissertation on free will for "making it up as it goes along", and Battlestar Galactica talkbacks feature, well, less attacks, but perhaps that's because Lost fans are more polite. Yes, I am firmly in the former category, and so my perception is distorted by that fandom. Lost pushes all of my buttons, whereas BSG makes me angry almost as often as it makes me happy. This picture expresses the chasm between the two fanbases (at least as far as I see it).


It was not always this way. The opening mini and the first season were as good as TV gets. It was relevant, it was exciting, it was cleverly referential with regards to the original series, and it featured the most incredible effects yet shown on TV. It's shallow of me to love the show for that, but Zoic's effects work was simply staggering. That was merely the cherry on top of a lot of really terrific drama. I was absolutely thrilled that SciFi was making something so challenging and clever.


Over time, my opinion changed. By the end of season two we had had way too many placeholder episodes, which meant the finale crammed in several episodes' worth of drama into an hour of TV. It was good drama, but rushed through in an unsatisfying blur of action and revelation and unconvincing fatsuits. The other sin of that season (and the subsequent season) was the amount of time spent focusing on possibly the least interesting couple on TV at the expense of a lot of other exciting avenues. Yes, no Apobuck 'shipper am I. Or Starders, or Apoulla, or any combination.


Apollo and Starbuck bore me to tears, and we have spent way too much time watching them come up with reasons not to just start spacehumping. My least favourite Apobuck moment came when Starbuck used religion as a reason to not just bang Apollo's grumpy brains out. We have no idea what the provisions of her religion are, as none of these details have been explained convincingly (more on that bugbear later), so this just smacked of contrivance. The main reason for their inability to just get it on (other than that they are boring, badly written teenagers who love the drama of their relationship) is that Starbuck was involved with the now "dead" Zack Adama, Lee's brother, who looms over them and Apollo's dad, the flat-out AWESOME Bill Adama, from "beyond the grave".


The amount of time spent agonising over a character who is not actually on the show is dead air, and as such seems odd. Unless, of course, Zack is the final Cylon. The fact that the prequel series Caprica seems to revolve around the Adama family's connections with the scientist who created the Cylons suggest it might be. The arrival of Zack will justify all of the attention on two boring-ass flyers at the expense of so many other more interesting relationships. How the son of a human could be a Cylon has yet to be explained, but we're convinced it will be him (kudos to the AV Club commenter, whose name escapes me, who suggested it a few months ago). If not, why the hell are we devoting this much time to these guys? Now that they've reached earth together will they become Adam and Eve? Surely a show as smart as this one won't be so stupid as to do that.


If I had problems with season two, season three tested our patience to the limit. After a very very strong opening featuring some of the most astonishing drama on any show last year, the show got into a funk, with Baltar doing something something on the Cylon Basestar, Tyrol staring at a carving for two episodes, Apollo and Starbuck getting pissed at each other, and lots of other truly dreary nonsense that I'm blotting out because those empty scenes are taking up space in my head I could use to get excited about the Watchmen trailer (shut up over-sensitive fanboys, it looks great). By then, even some top quality space explosions couldn't keep me interested. An attempt to watch the Razor TV movie faltered in the middle of a huge battle sequence due to lack of interest (and I've yet to finish it). How is this possible? Usually I live for this stuff.


I thought it would take a miracle to make me give a damn about Battlestar Galactica again, but in the end something less dramatic but equally as wonderful happened; Jane Espenson wrote two episodes of the show and introduced some quality writing, something the show was sorely in need of. That's not to say that the fourth season of BSG was instantly made flawless, because there were plenty of annoyances, longueurs, and poor performances. That's also not to say the rest of the BSG writing team are uniformly dreadful; Ronald D. Moore, Bradley Thomson and David Weddle (and Mark Verheiden, occasionally) still do sterling work, but we still get some horrendous dialogue, cringe-making dramatic devices, and confusing expansion of the BSG mythos. If you don't believe me about the terrible devices, consider Gaeta and his lost leg. A strangely dramatic plot-thread for a minor character, but made almost unwatchable by the conceit that, in his post-op delirium, he keeps warbling tuneless, pretentious songs reflecting that episode's moral dilemmas. Even more improbably, anyone walking into the recovery room was obligated to comment on how lovely it was. Gah! I know you've been living without music for a while, but it didn't used to sound like that. Oh well, at least it wasn't a Dylan song.


However, even at its best (and its best is very very good), the show has lacked a spark in its writing, possibly due to budget and network pressures, or, as I sometimes suspect, the mythology of the show has been insufficiently worked out in advance. I once started a huge post about my frustration with the show, and perhaps I'll get back to that soon. Right now, I want to go apeshit over Espenson's expanded role on the show, which saw her get solo credit on two episodes, a step up from co-writing a season three episode with former 24 producer Anne Cofell Saunders (who has left BSG to work on Chuck). Her first episode was dismissed by some talkbackers as a placeholder, and though it didn't feature space battles or mythos-defining weirdness, it did have words coming out of people's mouths that didn't sound like they were written by a robot. Or an infinite number of Grace Parks working away on an infinite number of archaic typewriters.


If I never warmed to BSG the way I warmed to Lost or Deadwood or Friday Night Lights or anything from the Mutant Enemy Factory of Awesomeness, it's because the dialogue never came alive. Even when I was really enthusiastic about it (from the opening mini-series to about the halfway mark in season two), I wished the dialogue had some sass, or spunk, or surprise. When spoken by the show's best actors (I'm thinking Edward James Olmos, Mary McDonell, James Callis, or Tricia Helfer) that dialogue sounded just fine, but then talented performers can transcend something flat. However, when handled by some of the less polished performers (it gives me no pleasure to aim my stinkeye at Grace Park, Katee Sackhoff, Michael Trucco, and some of the other random actors playing minor characters littering the screen), the shortcomings of the writing becomes all too apparent.


With Espenson on board, even that placeholder episode felt fresh and entertaining and relevant. Even better, her second episode, the penultimate one of this mini-season, had all of the visual wow and big drama that the talkbackers thought was lacking before, and even though she was lumbered with the kind of poorly explained dream sequence stuff that so often irks me on this show (by which I mean Laura Roslin's visions of her death), she imbued them with humour and humanity, and avoided the purple melodrama that can often seep into these moments. I just wanted to ambush the rest of the writers with a screening of it, all the while yelling, "This is how you do it!"


Even better, the finale, written by Weddle and Thompson, was infinitely better than the dire season three finale, and though it flirted with the same Dylan nonsense that blighted that previous episode, mainly it was concerned with getting on with telling the story and blowing our minds. Which it did, with five minutes of exultation, heightened emotion, and finally a total loss of hope. As shocked as I was by the final shot of Jeremy Bentham in Lost, BSG's bravura pan across the leaders of the human/Cylon coalition and the desolate surface of a ruined earth might have been even more astonishing. In that moment I was relieved that I had stuck with the show even when the third season had annoyed me so much.


Of course, the ten episode mini-season wasn't exclusively Espenson-level writing and mind-blowing reveals. The quality level still rose and fell rapidly, often within the same episode. Though I was grateful that the focus on Apollo/Starbuck, the plot that had derailed the previous season, had been dialled back, we still had her and Anders acting out their risible and dreary psycho-drama. Even knowing that she is unwittingly the number one Cylon pin-up (with both Leoben and Anders obsessed with getting into her unflattering space-pants) didn't make it any more interesting. Having the two of them stuck on a garbage scow with the cream of the fleet (a plot device that made absolutely zero sense) was televisual torture, made worse by the histrionic performances from the entire crew.


Back with the fleet, things were sporadically interesting with patches of blurg. The Tyrol/Cally plot was resolved with Cally getting blasted out of an airlock, a turn of events that pleased us greatly. Aaron Douglas and Nicki Clyne had been lumbered with the worst kind of kitchen-sink drama, with Tyrol hiding from his shrill wife and horrible kid, a domestic situation complicated further with the revelation that he was a Cylon and their child was a human/Cylon hybrid. That fact alone created immensely important drama that changed the whole direction of the show, and...


Oh, that's right. Their hybrid baby is seemingly nowhere near as important as Athena and Helo's kid. Ron Moore pretty much admitted that at last year's Comic-Con, but has yet to explain why one is important and the other is not. You'd think that the decision to make Tyrol a Cylon was a spur of the moment thing, but BSG would never just make it up as they go along, would they? That's Lost I'm thinking of. [/bitter] That said, Tyrol's reaction to Cally's death was terrific, and brilliantly written by Espenson. His breakdown in the Galactica bar was a season highlight. As Tyrol was also well-served by Espenson (and Cofell Saunders) last season, it's fair to say I only like him when she writes him. Fingers crossed we get more of that in the last ten episodes.


Baltar's transformation into opportunistic messiah was also welcome, after he was reduced to a wibbling loser last season. Seeing him stumbling into his destiny as ineffectual self-help guru with his customary mixture of bluster and self-loathing was great fun, as was his growing influence within the fleet, as his monotheistic religion becomes more appealing to the increasingly desperate refugees. One of the aspects of BSG that has interested me the least is the slowly building focus on religion. The show has always had a religious aspect, but I tended not to pay much attention to the details of the conflicting religions of the humans and Cylons, thinking them little more than signifiers of the shows comment on contemporary tensions, but as the fourth season wore on I had the horrible feeling that I should have been paying attention all along, and we were going to get to the final stretch of the show without a proper working knowledge of the significance of all of that guff about the twelve Gods and what have you. Was I going to have to go back and rewatch the whole show to catch all of this stuff?


By the time the finale had rolled around, I felt almost certain that the Cylons and the humans are all worshipping the wrong thing, that there is a force shaping their destinies but it is not the God we think of, but some force of physics or space/time or multi-dimensional space (Roslin's visions during FTL jumps makes me wonder about that) that is beyond comprehension, and certainly beyond the superstitious teachings of the twelve tribes and the Cylons. At least, I hope so. I find the religious plotline far more interesting as a tool to dramatise tensions between the characters than as a complex but ultimately uninteresting mythology running through the show. That way lies The Sacred Scrolls of Borzon and The Temple of Astroculite and much other silliness that doesn't fit into this plot, though regrettably it has wandered in that direction from time to time. Thankfully the show appears to be using God as a source of conflict, which is believable and way more interesting.


Plus, as an added bonus, James Callis has been fantastic as a reluctant messiah winging it in front of an adoring following and coming up with a philosophy even more vapid than Oprah's latest pet belief system The Secret, if that's possible. At the end of last season he was walking around in robes looking like Future Space Jesus, which was amusing but sledgehammer subtle. At least now he just looks like a cult leader, which is pretty much what he is.


I've been bitching about a large proportion of the plotlines, but there were stories within the mini-season that I really liked. While I was irked by Ron Moore's admission that Roslin's cancer remission was another spur of the moment writing choice (a choice that AICN BSG talkbackers were in denial over, having spent three years making snotty cracks about Lost being made up on the fly), it's given Mary McDonnell yet more chances to show off her considerable acting skills. Confession time: before BSG I couldn't stand McDonnell at all, finding her rictus grin performances in Donnie Darko and Grand Canyon unwatchable. I could just about get over my antipathy in Sneakers, but that's because Sneakers is the awesomest. Setec Astronomy! Yeah, that's right, bitches.


In BSG, however, she has been uniformly magnificent. This season has provided her with some of her best acting opportunities, as Roslin's humanity and morality get tested by the ever-worsening situation within the fleet, the continuing fallout from the occupation on New Caprica, the urge to overrule the council as they vacillate and bicker, and her wavering faith, which has caused her to misinterpret signs and omens, as well as damage her empathic connection with those around her. Best of all, she almost killed Baltar after he finally confessed to accidentally betraying humanity, before a vision of her own death showed her the error of her ways. It was an acting tour de force that made the regular PointyShouty moments look even more feeble by comparison.


If that scene amazed me, a few minutes later I blubbed like a perspective-free fanboy as Roslin was reunited with Bill Adama, and finally told him she loved him. His response, "About time", is only beaten by Ben Linus' emotionless, "So?" from the Lost finale. Edward James Olmos has been my favourite actor on BSG from very early on, and his stoic decision to wait for Roslin in a Raptor with only her favourite book for company was a season highlight. Of course, in the finale the breakdown he has probably been fending of for years finally happened upon finding out that his best friend, Saul Tigh, was (improbably) a Cylon all along. Olmos performed the shit out of the moment, meaning poor Jamie Bamber was forced to brace himself against the acting maelstrom next to him.


The Cylons finally achieved their full potential, having previously been mysterious monoliths of force with only hints at their inner turmoil. Slowly we've seen cracks emerge; Leoben's obsession with Starbuck, D'Anna's breakdown, the rebellions of the Six's and Athena's. Sadly those moments were often sidelined in order to return to yet more Apollo/Starbuck angstifying, a narrative choice that drove me to distraction. This season flirted with the same lack of focus, as a Cylon civil war broke out for thirty seconds in the middle of an episode and then went unmentioned for a couple of weeks while we got to watch Tigh hallucinate at a Six instead. It was a tad frustrating.


The other thing that has bothered me over the last couple of seasons is how the show spends less time focusing on the mechanics of the fleet, how the humans are attempting to retain their connection to their history by creating a system of government and law, and how that system is unable to cope with the demands of life on the run. As we approach the finale we're dealing more with more "sci fi" elements, such as time looping and the possible intervention of a god-like force. Last year I was bummed out by the increased focus on prophecy (a bit of a bug-bear of mine, as it can lead to some lazy plotting in all kinds of fiction), but this season has been promising, especially as potential messiah Baltar is still pretty much the same horndog as ever, except now he has new ways to justify his sleazy behaviour.


Prophecy, when used to do little more than foreshadow future events, is a crutch for lazy writers. This half-season has hinted that there is more to the religious plot than we thought. Prophecy is still a key factor, but that wonderful final shot hints that the rails that our protagonists are running on might not be heading in the direction they expected. That's what I've been waiting for since the mini-series "prequel", so many of the reservations I've had over these ten episodes faded. I will still hold onto my coveted memory of the less glamorous aspects of the show, the politicking, the debates, the worrying about water or food or power. I loved that stuff almost as much as the explosions.


Funnily enough, it was that stuff that made Lost a trial to watch sometimes. I didn't mind it all in the first season, but Robinson Crusoe-esque food gathering and water collection drama has been done before, and for the first season there was a lot of that. It was perhaps a lighter and more fun show as a result, but I only really started loving it once Desmond appeared with tales of the Dharma Initiative. BSG, on the other hand, has followed a similar arc, but my interest has dwindled the further we've moved from the nuts-and-bolts tales. I guess it's because it's more interesting to me to see how the human race would struggle to survive following mass extinction and exile on spluttering spaceships than it is to see people chasing boars through a jungle.


That increasingly dense mythology isn't the only similarity BSG shares with Lost. We also have the exploration of the concept of fate via the sci fi trope of distorted time (if the "This has happened before, and will happen again," line is as important as it seems), reluctant leadership (Jack and Apollo), suspicion, and, most importantly, a refusal to reduce conflict to a Manichean battle, preferring instead to show good and bad and all the infinite gradations between through a distorted lens. By now we have multiple factions within both human and Cylon camps, and now both races are having to join forces, just as the Losties and the Others are moving closer together. Of course, they're not the only shows to explore what it's like to live on the hazy line between right and wrong. The Sopranos, The Wire, The Shield, Mad Men, and Dexter all do it too to varying degrees of success, but it's good to see genre TV do it while remaining genuine sci fi and not some watered down amalgam of genres or another bratty child of the late-70s space opera movies that fathered the original version of this show. Plus, we get all of that moral ambiguity and ethical curiosity while retaining the large explosions. When has Dexter ever offered a spectacle as exciting as this? When has Mad Men? And no, I'm not talking about the insanity taking hold of Don Draper's brain.


The long and short of it is, the fourth season of BSG featured many of the annoying things that have made the trip so far such a slog, but the new focus that has come with the definite end-date has re-ignited my interest in it. When I'm feeling uncharitable, I'll bitch about it even now. Most of the sub-plots still hold no interest for me. Anders, Gaeta, at least one version of Boomer, Starbuck, Helo and Dualla could be written out (Dualla pretty much has) and I wouldn't even notice, unless it meant more screentime for the sorely under-used Doc Cottle or the magnificently oily Zarek, in which case I would rejoice. It can often look so dark as to be almost impossible to comprehend, though I will grant that sometimes that choice pays off. The peculiar pixellated imagery on the Cylon Rebel Baseship was a lovely touch. (This picture also features Tricia Helfer being awesome, as usual.)


The biggest variable on the show is Michael Hogan. Will he be amazing this week? Or will he make my head hurt with the growly line-readings and scenery-chomping? I think his acting ability is determined by some astrological event or something. In this season he let his inner crazy out a bit too often; the scenes featuring him and the Six he keeps hallucinating at were simultaneously creepy, incomprehensible, and moving. Still, he gets a Shades of Caruso Free Pass for his superb work during Tigh's Al-Zawahiri period. I'll just choose to forget subtlety-free moments like the one below in honour of those fine performances in the past.


All of that remains, and yet my interest in the show has been totally reawakened. I'm even considering rewatching it from the start in prep for the finale. That's a lot of watching to pack in on top of The Shield and Wonderfalls and maybe Buffy and all of the other shows we were going to watch during Summer hiatus that we didn't get around to. Not that I consider it a hardship. Roll on the final ten episodes, the spin-off show, and the follow-up movie, which is written by Jane Espenson and therefore will be awesome. You have my word on that.

End of Season Review - Doctor Who

Before I venture any further, let me get a few things straight. I don't think Doctor Who deserves to be dismissed as just a kid's show. I also don't think it's healthy that this is regularly the best British TV has to offer, though that's down to some sloppy habits among TV commissioning editors and writing teams in general. I don't think the show peaked with Genesis of the Daleks, and I don't think Torchwood should ever have been commissioned. I also don't think Russell T. Davies is the worst thing that ever happened to the show, don't think he's a hack, and don't hate him for bringing a sliver of LGBT content and naughtiness to mainstream teatime TV.


On the other hand, I do think Martha is the best companion since Leela, or maybe Turlough. I also think the season three finale was the best one yet, featuring some of the strongest performances and best written drama of the entire revamped show. I also think the show is much better now Billie Piper is not around, though I never went so far as to actually dislike her.


If you're one of one of those Whovians who would fit the description of "mosquito" that RTD makes here, you'll probably be disgusted by at least one of the statements above, so consider that a warning. Considering the poorly behaved fanboys on some of the talkbacks I've frequented over the last year or so, I'm keen to stay off their radar for fear of somehow being infected by their humourless and didactic worldview, especially those who whined about the non-regeneration in this episode, which ended up being a clever idea opening up some surprising story opportunities.


Right, now that's out of the way, time to wonk on about the fourth season, which was a disappointment after the highs of season three. RTD has stated he wanted to leave the show when it was on a high, but for this fanboy, he was a season too late (unless next year's specials are life-alteringly good). That's not to say I thought this season was bad, but last year we had Blink, the amazing Paul Cornell Family of Blood two-parter, and the finale (I won't apologise for loving all of it, and thinking The Master's decision not to regenerate just to spite The Doctor was the highpoint of the show so far). This year we had a less wonderful two-parter from new showrunner Moffat, and maybe RTD's Midnight, which was most notable for showing how a large budget can be unnecessary when you have a great idea to build from. Other than that, there was little to get excited about.


That said, it's still good TV, and the Beeb should be proud. Certainly the show has benefited greatly from some increased confidence from the show's directors, who, for the most part, have toned down the frenetic and garish excesses of the first couple of seasons (Euros Lyn, I'm pointing a wizened finger at you). While Who stars two actors who are not afraid to do what can only be described as ACT-ING! when given the chance, they've wisely dialled it back as much as possible this year. Most of the best moments this year were reflective, a sign that the Who team know they can do more with less.


Also great this year was Catherine Tate as Donna, who seems to have confounded expectation and won over most of the sceptics, me included. Her previous appearance in the 2006 Christmas special had not outraged me as much as I thought it would; by the end of the episode I had started to like her. Much the same thing happened this year. The thought of 13 episodes of her shtick was unappealing, and early trailers hinted that she was going to honk away ad nauseum, but it was not long before I had begun to enjoy the chemistry between her and Tennant (who has, yet again, been a marvel this year). Her lack of tolerance for The Doctor's usual dismissive line of bullshit was a breath of fresh air for the show. And by that, I don't mean, "Martha was shit because she loved The Doctor soooo much," because I don't hold to that opinion and Martha was so awesome she can even break the fourth wall. When has any other companion done that? Eh?


The casting of Tate confirmed for me the suspicion I've had for a while now, that the Who team are that rare thing in UK TV; a bunch of talented people who know what they are doing and actually give a shit about it. Whereas a lot of UK shows seem to have been made by people who consider it beneath them (this is not a provable fact, merely a hunch), Who showrunners seems to really care about the show, and care about making RTD proud. It's the jewel in BBC Drama's crown, and everyone working on it is determined to keep it that way. Though I was one of the doubters who thought that the appointment of Tate as companion was a populist move that would ruin the show, it was clear just a couple of episodes in that she was hired on the basis of the stories that could be told with her onboard, not to mention her ability (shared by Tennant) to swap between comedic and dramatic as if at the flick of a switch. Besides, if the showrunners were only interested in doing what they thought would be popular, they could just as easily have hired Amanda Burton, or Fearne Cotton, or (God help us) Lily Allen. They played it smart, and from now on I'll give them the benefit of the doubt. This does not extend to the Torchwood team, nor the actual Torchwood members, who refused to follow the example of Tosh and Owen and just die already.


And yet it was an underwhelming year despite that effort. I'm not going to attribute this to anything other than a dissipation of the energy that the team must have felt last year knowing that they had an international hit on their hands. RTD has done what I consider to be an excellent job on the show, but his control over the show, which often involves Whedon-like rewriting of episodes and total control over almost everything, has slipped a little, perhaps becoming a bit self-indulgent. The season finale packed in a lot of back-slapping references to episodes past, as well as wrapping up everything he had set in place, not to mention adding about fifteen dei ex machinis of varying credibility.


Fair enough, but the show was still going to carry on without him. Though Steven Moffat is hoping start afresh, it nevertheless felt like RTD had constructed the season more as a goodbye to himself than as his goodbye to the show. This also meant that, with lots of ground to cover, some plots were rattled through with undue haste. The much-bally-hooed return of Rozzzzze didn't work at all, with her presence insufficiently explained and her perfect arc ending (which was, shall we say, "borrowed" from Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy) revisited with a semi-happy ending that needed an hour of fantastical preparation, retconning, and merry contrivance to actually work. I don't really mind it that much, but I liked the way the Rose/Doctor relationship was left at the end of season two, so this felt a little like pandering, even though it did give Tennant a chance to emote brilliantly. Plus, returning to the same locale and acting things out differently was a nice touch.


Mind you, that downer season two ending couldn't really stand anymore, what with the fates of the other companions being even more tragic. If Rose remained Doctor-less and alone, being a companion would be the most awful thing that could happen to a person. One of the other highlights of the season (if you could call it that) was the horrible fate of Donna, every memory of her exploits removed prior to being returned to her miserable existence as a gobby temp with a narrow worldview and the worst mother ever. Though her fate had been signposted throughout the season (the daft alternate history episode hinted at it, as did the "We're not a couple" running joke that foresigned the DoctorDonna twinning and separation), it was still a wrench to see it happen. And if you think that's the worst thing that could happen, Martha is doomed to an even worse fate; working with Torchwood full-time, now with hapless Mickey around as well. I know, Martha, I feel like crying too!


As for the rest of the season, not much of it stood out, sadly. Though Masticator maintains that the Adipose were a grave error of judgement, I thought the first episode was a strong and entertaining start, lengthy and not very interesting scenes of window-washing peril notwithstanding. After that, though, the show got into a rather dreary groove. The Pompeii episode was notable for some impressive production values, plus Peter Capaldi and Phil Davis giving it some proper thespianic effort, but then we were stuck with the silly Ood and their detachable brains, the hopelessly overlong Sontaran two-parter that squandered Martha's return (a cardinal sin!), and then something about Agatha Christie being terrorised by a giant alien wasp, which is the sort of idea that must have been scratched onto the writer's bedside notepad in the middle of the night.


There was also the one where The Doctor got cloned, creating a young female version of himself who liked fighting. At the time I thought the not-that-great idea of a "daughter" flying around was done as well as it could be done, and that the twist at the end was nifty, but you know you're in trouble when the episode was ultimately so forgettable that I just had to look up which episode came after the Sontaran one.


None of them were bad, per se, but they were a bit dull, though enlivened by the committed performances of the leads. As I'm sure was the same with many fans, we had high hopes for the Steven Moffat two-parter, but the first part, though filled with clever detail, was sadly familiar. Screened after the announcement that Moffat was to become the showrunner in 2010, it was unfortunate that the first episode was littered with ideas cribbed from his previous episodes. The shuffling antagonist repeating a phrase (The Empty Child), the alien menace carefully adopted from a creepy and ubiquitous real-world thing for maximum scare-the-kids impact (shadows are piranhas, statues are Quantum Assassins), glitchy technological deus ex machina introduced early on in a way that makes it seem like a threat (nanobots in The Doctor Dances, the hard drive containing the survivors in The Forest of the Dead), the introduction of a significant supporting character who becomes attracted or drawn to the Doctor while never becoming a full companion (Captain Jack in The Empty Child, Madame de Pompadour in The Girl In The Fireplace, Sally Sparrow in Blink), etc. etc.


Though the first part showed more flair than any of the previous season four episodes, and though the Vashta Nerada were a great enemy, it still felt like a rehash of better episodes. Luckily, the conclusion was as strong as any Who episode yet, with Donna's incarceration in a virtual world leading to another unhappy ending for her, and The Doctor racing to store the memory of his future wife/companion/something inside the world computer in a bravura sequence that had me bawling. Thematically it was more confident than most, dealing as it did with memory and fate, though perhaps it could have tied theme and plot together a bit tighter, but who am I to carp (seriously, blogger vs. Moffat = FAIL on my part). Forest of the Dead was easily one of the highlights of this TV year, as will be reflected in our forthcoming Shades of Caruso Awards (basically, the Emmys, but good).


The following episode, Midnight, featured a monumentally creepy performance from Leslie Sharp, as well as a bleak message that felt like The Mist but with more parroted dialogue. It was a terrific, economical conceit, and well-played, but the thing I liked most about it is that it not only did it show The Doctor's estrangement from humanity (nicely foreshadowing the final moment of the season), it also upended his obnoxious belief in the wonderfulness of we hairless apes. In another internet venue, Masticator once explained his problem with RTD, which I will quote here, if he doesn't mind:

RTD-penned episodes, while perfectly well written, almost always include some kind of moralising bollocks about duty or family or how BRILLIANT humans are or something. It's not that it's a bad choice necessarily, but it smacks of trying too hard to make the show Important and Memorable and For The Ages and suchlike, whereas what it often makes it is No Fun.

I'd like to think my co-blogger will have been happy seeing RTD taking a torch to that concept. Oh, and in case you're wondering, he then said:

And fucking Voyage Of The Damned was very nearly inexcusable, especially as it had seemingly been written as a vehicle for Kylie. Kylie!

Amen, brother.


That was the start of a four-episode run by RTD, the last three comprising that homage to himself mentioned earlier. The follow-up to Midnight, featuring a alternate history revolving around Donna, was almost another highpoint, though undone by the time-altering space beetle effect. As much of Who looks very professional this practical effect stood out as glaringly as the papier-mâché monsters of olden days, and though I'd like to think I can look beyond surface flaws and appreciate the show for its ideas, I have to draw the line at a big plastic beetle, especially when the episode ended up being as drab (and illogical) as it was. Or maybe I just wasn't that excited to see Rose back. For her legions of adoring fans, I'm sure she made up for the deadly alien/novelty rucksack Donna was wearing.


The return of Rose and her surplus teefs was part of RTD's effort to bring back pretty much every supporting character who had spent a lot of time with The Doctor, and it was fun to see them all (he even managed to make Ianto funny, which bodes well, considering he will be scripting some Torchwood in the future), but no one really got to do much. I gather viewers outside the UK were not bothered about the return of Davros, but it's a big deal for Whovians. The blind, paraplegic, alien Hitler was good value for money, though, with a nutzoid plan (destroy everything ever), rampant monologing delivered at a decibel level dangerous to human ears, and the temerity to accuse The Doctor (or rather his peeved human clone) of genocide. Dude, you were just going to obliterate reality itself! I think that, on a scale of naughtiness, Davros and his clone-cronies are a mite worse. Still, even though he is now supposedly dead, he was around long enough to treat us to this fantastic moment.


Unfortunately, he has been betrayed by Dalek (James) Caan, a Dalek even more berzonkers than that spats-wearing freak Dalek (Triple) Sec. Though I was sick to death of the sight of Daleks by the time Dalek Caan delivered his treacherous smackdown of his former boss, I did appreciate that RTD was willing to portray his favourite villains as occasionally self-loathing individuals instead of just hive-mind space Nazis. That said, they're gone, right? Does this final fate of them really count as a really really proper real final fate for realsies? Steven Moffat says so, so fingers crossed. Because seriously, when you've been given a final judgement on your superevil philosophy by a Dalek wearing his balls on his head, you have been definitively served.


Concerns about the treatment of the Daleks and the companions all fade when considering the best scene in the episode, and possibly the season full-stop/period. After saving Donna's life by wiping her mind clean and returning her to her miserable suburban drudgery, The Doctor explained the situation to her odious mother Sylvia and adorable grandfather Wilfrid (Jacqueline King and Bernard Cribbins), and the mess of emotions coming at the end of an already grueling finale finally got to me. The flash of anger that The Doctor aimed at Sylvia and her oblivious and arrogant hostility was so perfectly judged I wanted to write a letter to David Tennant with love hearts all over it.


This was followed by a scene I watched through a veil of tears, as The Doctor and Wilfrid eulogised the Donna that could never be again, and Wilfrid promised to keep an eye out for the Tardis. It was just a teensy bit moving. ::choke::


So what next? Christmas specials, a new showrunner, possibly a new Doctor (please God not The Nesbitt). All I know is that right now I'll just have to cherish the tenure of Tennant in the lead role. It's considered so gauche to seriously praise someone who is beloved by the masses without making some kind of mealy-mouthed justification, but screw that. He is a marvel. The final shot, with The Doctor alone and pondering the seemingly endless fallout from The Time War, was perfect.


You'd better believe I'm going to get tickets to see his Hamlet.

The Power Of Hellboy Compels Me (To Praise Him)

I come not to bury Hellboy II: The Golden Army, but to praise it, and it comes as an enormous surprise. Don't get me wrong, I like Guillermo Del Toro's movies a lot, and think he is a stand-up tip-top A-1 kinda chap, with the nerdery and the vision and the amusing personality. I would like to have a beer with him and shoot the shit about pressing nerd issues. However, and this is a piddling thing to be bringing up but it has to be said, as much as I've liked his movies in the past, I've never loved one. Not even my personal favourite Del Toro movie Blade II, even though it featured Dr. Wesley T. Snipes hanging out with Donnie Muthafukken Yen and fighting a superpowered and evil version of that chap from Bros.


Of course, I appreciate his imagination and attention to detail, and love his committal to fantastical cinema, but especially with his English language films, I've always been unable to fully embrace them. I've agonised over it, as everyone fell over themselves to praise Pan's Labyrinth, which I thought was very good but not great (on the other hand, Canyon loved it to pieces). My suspicion is that his pacing, which can be bordering on lethargic, is the key to my resistance. Slow pacing is fine, but it still has to have a proper ebb and flow, and his movies often stop when they should start, and bolt forward when the audience is ready for a rest. It's not a total dealbreaker, but it does bug me.

With the world in his pocket following Pan's success, it was a pleasant surprise to see he was willing to use that cache to resurrect his Hellboy sequel project, that had languished for so long that I figured it was pointless to wait for it. Mind you, it would have been an even more pleasant surprise had Del Toro used that clout to get his At The Mountains Of Madness project up and running. Though there are some interesting film adaptations of Lovecraft's work (especially the wondrous From Beyond), right now the best visualisation of squirming Lovecraftian gods is in Hellboy itself, hinting that Del Toro has a better grasp on what constitutes a squamous, undying monstrosity from beyond space and time than the makers of The Dunwich Horror, a filmic nightmare I endured recently that reduced the sickening and vast terror of the multitude of unholy Old Gods to a bunch of rubber snakes filmed in negative and waved at the actors. I guess Del Toro is more attached to working on Mike Mignola's creations than those of a despicable sexist, racist Luddite fucking prick asshole of a person (who wrote a bunch of entertaining and influential novels, but still).


(Quick note: it seems The Dunwich Horror, featuring a hatstand performance from Dean Stockwell aiming the full force of his Aleister-Crowley-esque lechery at Sandra Dee, was co-written by Curtis Hanson. I am aware that this might only be interesting to me, especially as who on earth has seen The Dunwich Horror? And who else would own up to it? Wicked Les Baxter soundtrack, though.)

It's been said many a time that Hellboy represents Del Toro's most personal movies, which I always thought to be a bit rich seeing as how Mike Mignola created the character, but his passion for the character (of which the effort to bring the sequel to the screen is proof enough) certainly seems genuine. That still meant that I was not excited about The Golden Army. The first movie was busy but lifeless, filled with pleasing moments that amounted to not that much. It was a movie I wanted to love but just couldn't, though I did like the casting of Ron Perlman as the titular character, and some of the imagery was stunning. At the time, prior to my realisation that Del Toro's movies didn't affect me as much as they seemed to affect others, I figured it was just that I wasn't a fan of the comic, and had trouble warming to the character, whom I just could not picture as a living thing in my head. Is he humourless? Is he tough? Compassionate? Though Mignola's art is rightly lauded, the stories lay dead on the page in front of me. (I know, heresy, right?)


Perlman's incarnation of Hellboy as a cocky and insecure teenager in a large demon body was good enough for me to finally understand where Mignola was coming from, meaning I now read the comics with Perlman's voice in my head in much the same way as I read Batman comics with Kevin Conroy's voice in mind. Nevertheless, the appeal of the character eludes me. He's big and strong, sappy and impulsive, and will probably destroy the world one day. That's all fine, but though numerous other characters with those traits entertain me, Hellboy still strikes me as the germ of a good idea that has not yet been fully fleshed out.

To make things worse, the first movie was saddled with the distracting casting of David Hyde-Pierce as the voice of Abe Sapien ("Why does that fishman sound like Niles Crane?"), Rupert Evans as the deeply unlikeable Myers, and Selma Blair as Liz Sherman (her monotone grates on my ears). Even Jeffrey Tambor's inclusion as the officious Manning and a lovably sincere performance by John Hurt wasn't enough to make the difference. Just like the comics, the movie refused to come alive. I've seen it a number of times, and I never have the good time I am hoping for.


It was a slew of good reviews, and an early preview screening cleverly scheduled by Universal to generate word of mouth, that prompted me to try the sequel out, though I will say that even if I'm not as crazy about Del Toro's movies, I don't think there will ever be a time when I decide against seeing them at some point. As usual, though, I had reservations. Uninspiring jokes fall flat throughout, dialogue sounds like first-draft fill-ins instead of polished lines, the pace is stop-start (and, disastrously, grinds to an almost total halt one scene away from the big reveal of the Golden Army), too many events are packed in, and the transparent first act set-up of the final showdown doesn't mitigate the fact that the heroes "triumph" because of a deus ex machina-like get-out clause that is desperately overused in fantasy and sci-fi cinema. The best that can be said of that is that, as Hellboy II is about the death of myth by modernity, hewing so closely to a tried-and-true folk tale plot is understandable, but that didn't stop a groan from escaping my lips as it was introduced.


What's worse, there are some horribly difficult choices made by the characters in the final act, and the last scene, with the BPRD coming to a decision about their future, may be intended as a response to the aftermath of their choices, but it's not enough to balance out the consequences of their actions. Considering how overstuffed and stretched-out the movie is, it's ironic that the final scene, which really needed time to breathe, is suddenly over almost as quickly as it started, crashing into one of the ugliest end-credit crawls I've seen in a long time. It was like being woken up with a bucket of hot water in the face. Plus, the amount of editing wipes used was only exceeded by the amount of times Luke Goss, as Prince Nuada, swishes his big extendy-spear around like a big show-off. Yes yes, he's very good with his big stick thingy, but we don't need to see him flashing it about in ever scene. He can't even pull it out of his belt without adding some flourish or other. Stupid cocky elf-prince thing.


And yet, and yet... This might be the first Del Toro movie I love. I'm not sure yet. I need to see it again, partly to test out the hypothesis, and partly to see what the movie is like without one of the worst audiences ever assembled. If the crowd I saw The Dark Knight with was one of the best ever, this was the polar opposite, with noisy assholes, eardrum-splitting amounts of snack bag rustling, the presence of a woman wearing all the bangles in the free world walking in and out (thus generating a sound like the concept of jewellery having a fight with itself), and, best of all, the thoughtless slimecreep sitting in front of me whose phone rang four separate times about an hour into the movie and who offered to knock my face off when I poked him and told him to just, please, pretty please, just shut the fuck up goddamnit!!! Luckily he left before the end of the film, so I didn't have to have a bigass ruck. I may not be the streetfighting kung fu panda/human hybrid I imagine myself to be at times, but I can kick balls like a motherfucker.

Why did I love it even though it frustrated me continually? It's pretty simple. The slapstick tone of the movie, though not actually backed up by many functioning jokes, is endearing, and with Doug Jones doing an excellent job voicing Abe, Selma Blair offscreen for the majority of the movie, and Myers exiled to Antarctica (hah!), the good-natured chemistry between the non-human freaks wins out. Even better, though I am no fan of Family Guy, Seth McFarlane's work as ectoplasmic tight-ass Johann Krauss charmed my socks off. His inclusion provides many of the film's highpoints. Sadly Jeffrey Tambor doesn't get much to do, and what little he does is not that amusing, but it's enough just to have him around. Whenever the movie relaxes its grip on you, or a joke falls flat, the enthusiasm of the cast and the jovial air will win you back. At least, until things get more serious.


It's been noted that the tone shifts a lot, and that can't be denied, but the darkening of the film, at the end of a huge setpiece next to the Brooklyn Bridge, doesn't overwhelm the rest of the movie, serving instead to depress Hellboy enough to make him reckless enough to battle Prince Nuada without realising he is outmatched, setting in motion the final act. That crisis of conscience also sets up a terrific scene between Hellboy and Abe, drunkenly singing along to Can't Smile Without You. Sure, having tough hero characters crooning a Manilow song is nothing new (see also: Angel and his love of Mandy), but it still works beautifully. With this movie, you're never far away from a light moment that will leave a smile on your face, even if it never makes you laugh all that much. And yes, I'm aware that is the most faint-praise comment either, but I mean it sincerely. If you see the movie, you might see where I'm coming from.

The thing that definitively tipped me over into affection for the film, however, was what the astonishing design, from the costumes and sets to the menagerie of incredible creatures. Yes, this is what Del Toro does best, but what Hellboy II represents is Del Toro doing what he does best about 500 times more than he usually does. I cannot believe how much there is going on in the movie, with almost every scene filled with jaw-dropping detail, all of it rendered with such love and care that it is impossible not to be drawn in. Even better, the use of physical effects and practical make-up means the world is much more appealing than the thin 2D CGI worlds we usually see. Now, I love CGI and am excited to see it used properly, but the physical effects on display here (enhanced by some elegant CGI, of course) are utterly magnificent. You can tell those scenes have been crafted with pure love from everyone involved. I especially liked the faux-stop motion sequence in the opening fairy tale, which must have been CGI but looked hand-made. It's an aesthetically perfect sequence.


The rightly lauded Troll Market sequence is where I stopped being annoyed and began to fall in love with the movie. The cascade of fantastical imagery is overwhelming. When I buy the DVD (yes, it's a certainty), I'm hoping there will be a five hour documentary about the making of that scene. There are so many astonishing creature designs, flashing past the camera faster than the eye can comprehend, that I need to spend time picking out every detail. There is so much going on, much of it on set (as far as I can tell), that I cannot begin to figure out how the crew could have made it work, and that's before we get onto the subject of the $85m budget. How did Del Toro manage this wealth of imagery on that (relatively low) budget? Every other film I've seen this year, many of which are far more expensive, look pitiful next to this. Only The Fall (directed by... TARSEM!!!) stands a chance of being more ravishing, but I will have to wait until 3rd October to catch that (yes, it finally has a UK release date). I'm hoping that, next year, Hellboy II sweeps the technical Oscars. I certainly think it has Visual Effects, Make-Up, and Production Design sewn up.


Speaking of CGI, the best scene in the film comes right after the Troll Market sequence, with Hellboy battling a huge and beautifully realised forest god under the Brooklyn Bridge. I had spent the majority of the Troll Market scene trying to figure out how it would be possible for me to adequately express how breathtakingly beautiful and surprising the film had suddenly become, knowing that words could never hope to sum it up. It was just as Hellboy and his team leave the market that a shorthand way to describe it came to me; it's like a live-action Miyazaki movie. Seems I'm not the first person to make that leap; A. O. Scott said much the same thing here. The bizarre fairytale logic of Del Toro and Mignola's world was reminiscent of the unique but seemingly familiar rules that govern the worlds of Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke, though sadly Hellboy II's rather formulaic plot seems all the more disappointing considering the peculiar turns Miyazaki's movies take (at least to this Western mind).


That was okay, though. The forest god design evoked the forest spirit Daidarabocchi from Mononoke (just as the Tooth Fairies reminded me of a hostile version of Miyazaki's design for the Kodami tree spirits), and the battle between this enormous ethereal yet deadly green monster and Hellboy is already entertaining before the misguided and murderous Prince Nuada pricks our hero's conscience, playing off his fear of rejection by humanity, and his seemingly unstoppable loneliness. For the first time in the movie, Hellboy's actions have real weight. It's at that point that the movie becomes about his growing understanding of his untenable situation, torn between two worlds that don't welcome him. It's only fitting that he spends the next few scenes trying to get drunk, not realising that he is soon to find out that not fitting in is the least of his problems, if the beautifully realised Angel of Death is to be believed.


Hellboy II's wondrousness is so great that I'm strongly considering reappraising the comic and maybe even getting the second animated Hellboy DVD (even though the first was merely okay). It has made me hesitantly excited about The Hobbit, which I thought would be a flawed prequel to one of my favourite movie trilogies ever. As I said earlier, Del Toro's scripts are never as good as his visual flights of fancy, and so I'm hoping the two movies will be scripted by the killer team of Jackson, Walsh and Boyens, which would increase its chances of being super-awesome. In the meantime, if you're in the US, you should have seen this by now. If you're outside the US, the movie is being released internationally at a snail's pace. As soon as it lands on your shores, go see it immediately. Even if the narrative leaves you cold, and that exasperating pace jolts you back and forth like a bus with a faulty engine, those stunning visuals will make your eyes vibrate with joy. Hopefully the international box office is sufficient to get a third movie greenlit. I never thought I would want another Hellboy movie, but this flawed yet thrilling installment has changed my mind on that. When it is released properly, I look forward to watching it again, hopefully this time without the threat of violence from phone-wielding assholes.

Wahlberg and Phoenix PWN The Night

We've been mean to Mark Wahlberg this year. His memorable performance in The Happening has inspired us to make mock of his doofy reactions to imminent lethal plant-flatus. Also, in a previous post, Canyon's dissection of James Mangold's passable Walk The Line has been seen by some as a full-on assault on both Reese Witherspoon and Joaquin Phoenix, which is certainly not the case. In order to make up for the criticism (either actual or perceived), may I say that Wahlberg and Phoenix were both magnificent in James Gray's endearingly old-fashioned We Own The Night. (N.B. Canyon has asked me to stress her objection to the use of the phrase PWN in the title. Apologies to anyone offended by its presence.)


It's not a perfect film, with many plot elements feeling second-hand, and certain third act developments feeling rather contrived, but Gray has nevertheless created a Lumetian family/crime drama about loyalty and sacrifice with a careful pace, lovely compositions, subtle period elements (it's set in the late 80s but doesn't bombard the viewers with tacky references a la The Wedding Singer), and uniformly impressive performances. It might not be Prince of the City or Q&A, but it held my interest throughout.


While Wahlberg's performance was good enough to make me forgive him for his peculiar choices in The Happening*, and Eva Mendes makes great work of a meatier girlfriend role than is usual in these movies, Phoenix gives possibly a career best performance as the black sheep of a cop family headed by a stern Robert Duvall (excellent as ever). For the first half of the movie his bluster and rejection of his law-enforcing family seem like a poorly constructed shell in order to impress the Russian immigrants he does business with, a necessary mask enabling him to maintain control over his nightclub operation. That confidence, and his plan to expand his business across New York, is shattered by a war that breaks out between the cops and a ruthless drug dealer who has ties to his nightclub that he had been oblivious to. As his family is torn apart by the hostilities, his arrogance disappears, leaving behind someone as lost and pathetic as a teenager in over his head, who then has to figure out what is really important to him and find a way to fight for it. His journey from cocky kid to panicky avenger was beautifully portrayed.


That's not why I'm going on about the movie, though. I liked it a lot even while recognising its flaws (it does follow a well-worn cop movie track, with only the surprising final line differentiating it from a lot of other similar movies), but I loved that James Gray added two excellent set-pieces, both of which felt like they had been created by 70s-era Friedkin or DePalma. The first, a drug bust with Phoenix wearing a wire and heading into a seedy coke lab, is great and tense, though it does feature some cliched developments ("Why are you sweating so much?" "Safe word! Safe word!"). It works because Phoenix sells it, and Gray wisely films it almost exclusively from his point of view, with an achingly slow pace to drag out the tension. It ends with one of the most painful looking stunts I've ever seen.


The second setpiece, with Phoenix trying to gain control of a car during a rain-soaked ambush, is even better. Echoing Friedkin's French Connection chase, the camera rarely leaves Phoenix's car as the convoy of police-cars is knocked off the road by a murkily filmed assailant. The agonising close-ups of him as he realises the horror of what is about to happen are what sell the scene, instead of purotechnics and stunts. While we're watching action, it's grounded in emotion throughout. If you want to see the chase on its own, this kind chap has YouTubed it, but I recommend you take the plunge and watch the whole movie. Out of context, it's not as effective. (I might win an award for stating the obvious with this post.)


Storyboarding obviously still goes on today, with pre-vis allowing filmmakers to plot out scenes in full prior to shooting, but action sequences are often so chaotically edited and re-edited in the months (or weeks) prior to relase that they never quite feel like they have a beginning, middle and end. Though I loved the insane carnage at the end of Transformers, that was despite its unformed, unclear nature, not because of it. I don't have a bug up my ass about the "ADD" editing of many modern action scenes; often they are so well shot or staged that I can still enjoy them and am willing to fill in blanks in the action narrative that should have been included but haven't because the editors are overworked and don't have the time or footage to get things under control.


However, I still love a well-crafted setpiece, and the car chase (if you can even call it that) in We Own The Night is one of the best I've seen in years, and all the better for being short and sweet. You can tell Gray sat down with his fellow filmmakers and worked out every shot in advance, knowing that each one had to appear for the scene to work, that cutting any shot short would ruin the rhythm and dampen the impact of the sequence, and then making sure that it all went off without complication or substitution. It sounds like I'm just praising Gray for doing something really basic, when in fact I'm glad he constructed what amounts to a homage to old-school filmmaking. Once upon a time this was how you thrilled an audience; pure cinema, as Hitchcock might have thought it, a suspense scene built on the manipulation of the audience's hopes and fears through image and sound but not dialogue (Phoenix's cries of terror are there to crank up the tension, not impart information, other than, "This shit is fucked up").


That said, I'm still looking forward to the next CGI-gasm from Michael Bay. What?!?! I can enjoy both kinds of films. Don't box me in, daddio.

* Speaking of forgiveness for The Happening, Zooey Deschanel is also off the hook for her poorly judged performance now that she has teamed up with M. Ward for the She and Him project. I'm not a fan of 60s Mary-Wilson-esque girl singers, but that style, when fused with alt.country, and Deschanel's charming vocals, works pretty well. I think the album is a teeny bit weak, but it's stuck in my head pretty well, and keeps getting played by me when tired and unable to resist, so it's got to be doing something right. Here's the video for their first single, Why Do You Let Me Stay Here?



Holy shit! Zooey smiles and looks engaged! Miracles can happen.

What's So Great About The Dark Knight?

It's been over a week since I saw The Dark Knight, and yet I have not blogged about it, mostly because of the bizarre reactions to the movie as expressed all over the internet. It's the fastest backlash I've ever seen, which garnered an equally fast backlash against the backlash. As of now, with a worldwide box office gross that stands at the approximate figure of $597,387,000 after seventeen days (after being released in only a few countries), and IMDb users voting it the best movie of all time (as of today's date), there are seemingly only two available opinions about it: "it's a masterpiece", and "no it's not".

Warning to the four people who have yet to see The Dark Knight: Spoilers ahoy!


From my obsessive trawl through the heated debate which is popping up everywhere like weeds in a poorly tended garden, the opinion of the blogospherical joint consciousness seems to be bouncing back to an overall negative view of the movie's merits. Over the last couple of days I've seen The Dark Knight lambasted for not featuring enough Joker, for showing too much Joker and not enough Batman, for rushing Harvey Dent's transformation, for being too violent, for not being violent enough, for spending too much time on Dent at the expense of the Joker, for being too long, for not developing its ideas far enough, for not explaining the Joker properly, for smelling of rotten eggs, for being too loud (because Christopher Nolan is going from screen to screen adjusting the volume), for being badly lit (!!!!!), for not generating genital-obliteringly powerful spontaneous orgasms in those who see it like we were all promised, etc. etc. etc.

As a result of the excitement and enthusiasm of the fanboy massive, the drubbings have been especially vicious. Armond White's increasingly notorious panning (during which he suggests only 21 year olds could be enthusiastic about it, and compares it poorly against De Palma’s vapid and messy Black Dahlia, of all films) and Kevin Uhlich’s dissection of the film are especially forthright, coming early and thus gathering the majority of internet hatred like some much hatey pollen to a bee’s leg, much of which is so knee-jerk and poorly written that it does the fanbase a terrible disservice. There was more to come; Patrick Goldstein from the LA Times comments on the rapidly growing phenomenon here, and this Cinematical article followed the growing online controversy here, at the bottom of which you will find comments from critic David Edelstein, commenting on being flamed by many Batfans. It’s all depressing, but, as Cinematical points out, at least there’s this excellent response to Keith Uhlich and Stephanie Zacharek's reviews at Only The Cinema. It is possible to engage with the critics in an intelligent, non-flamy manner, and that proves it.

The question I pose myself, though, is can I do that? If some critics had an overwhelmingly negative reaction to the movie, then that's the experience they had. Obviously there's nothing wrong with that. And yet, my gut response to these criticisms, from paid reviewers and unpaid bloggers, is "What the fuck is wrong with these people? It's a work of unbelievable integrity, vision, and genius!!!" I'm not leaving insulting and poorly written comments on people's blogs, but still, I've been pissed. It's only once I've stopped gripping my Batman action figures with all the force of my frustration that I realise I've gone fucking crazy. What is going on here? Why have I taken leave of my senses in the same way that the Batman fanbase has? And why would I do that when Batman isn't even my favourite superhero? Or even in my top ten? It's deeply worrying, and a few days ruminating on it leads me to believe we (the fanboys) are all being silly, losing our perspective, but that we do have reason to be irked by some of the negative remarks, i.e. those that have been made from either a position of ignorance or snobbery. The problem with that is, how can I tell genuine, justifiable dislike from expressions of that critic's bias against movies of this type?

First, I'll address my craziness. One of my fears (an unprovable one) is that the negativity is just a reaction to the crazy praise it was getting prior to release. If this is one explanation, I understand, considering Peter "Shill" Travers was first out of the gate with the line "the haunting and visionary Dark Knight soars on the wings of untamed imagination", which is beyond parody. The IMDb vote craziness certainly justifies a slapped forehead of horror, even if you really loved the movie. Not that it matters much in the scheme of things, but it can make a viewer predisposed to disliking the film just because the fanboys are crazy (I gather this is one of the reasons people reject Joss Whedon; his fans are often seen as too enthusiastic). As I say, there's no way I can prove this, but it happens.


Another part of my frustration is definitely rooted in my nerdiness, and the reflexive defensiveness I have towards myself and those of my ilk (I make it sound like we're a put-upon ethnic group, for crying out loud), hoping for some validation from the critical establishment that the superhero genre (or the sci fi genre, or the horror genre, etc.) that I love so much is not just treated as the low-quality flotsam and jetsam of modern culture, that they are understood to be tools and canvasses for telling stories and exploring modern life, and not just whizz-bang-zoom spectacles that overload the eye but avoid the heart and brain. I realise that that defensiveness is my problem, not anyone else's. However, how can I take the thoughts of a critic seriously is his or her dislike of a genre is not backed up by anything other than a sense that it is not worthy of serious appraisal?

I get that critics might have biases against filmmakers; hell, I get angered to the point of localised space/time warpage at Lars Von Trier's experiments in audience baiting. But an entire genre? Canyon and I once had a long conversation about romantic comedies, and she made me see how crazy it is to dismiss every movie in a genre just because it doesn't appeal to me. She was right. We both think the genre has been ill-served over the last few years, but that's not the genre's fault. The movies have just often been uninspiring. That's not a criticism that can be levelled at the superhero genre (which bleeds into the action and sci fi genres, or the crime genre as in The Dark Knight). This year has already seen the vastly entertaining Iron Man and the bold failure Hancock (which tried to approach the genre from a different angle, though it didn't really succeed the way I had hoped), though the unambitious but amusing Incredible Hulk didn't help my argument. Luckily, The Dark Knight reaches higher than all of them. Which is where the difference of opinion seems to fall most often.

Sure, a lot of people are down on the movie for the filming of the action. To be honest, I only had a problem in the hostage sequence toward the end of the movie, though that could have been because I was trying to get my head around the moral quandary at the heart of the scene and I was freaking out a little (because, emotionally, I'm like a small child). Others think some actors didn't get much to do (I'd say Gyllenhaal definitely got the short end of the stick), and that Batman was sidelined (I'm not sure about that, but if that's your take on it, then... well... that's your take on it, I guess). Some hated the palette (totally! It really needed some garish reds and oranges and maybe some lemon yellows!). I'm sure someone out there hated it because the Scarecrow didn't get enough to do, or Killer Croc wasn't introduced, or because Batman contradicted something he said in a Denny O'Neil issue from the 70s. I would be crazy to have a problem with any of that opinion (except the palette criticism).

That’s not the kind of thing I want to rail against, though. I don’t agree with much of that, but it’s someone else’s opinion. However, what really does gall me is that UK critics seem to hate the movie mostly for trying to expand its ambition beyond the parameters of the superhero genre that they have decided upon, thinking it incapable of being more than a reductive and nuance-free depiction of a black and white battle between opposing forces. If you think no critic would ever dismiss an entire genre like that, read this wilfully nasty and unfair review by Michael Atkinson.

Somehow the entirety of American culture, young and middle-yeared and old, is embracing the childish universe of superheroes – which is structured around the easily-distracted worldview of kids, not around the reasoned, complex worldview we would hope children would grow into. Does America need that badly a post-post-9/11 big Daddy to vanquish danger so we can slumber in our cradles? The much-lamented infantilization of the mass populace continues, and at what cost?

As you can imagine, I have no truck with that opinion, nor with the rest of his pissy review, especially his comments about there being no story there, which baffle me. He must have been scribbling “HATE HATE HATE” in his notebook during it and forgot to watch it. That said, fair play to him for nailing his colours to the mast. UK critics exhibit similar bias, but don’t go as far in expressing their hatred. Superhero movies represent the most obvious example of dumbing-down in modern culture? Is he serious? The wish-fulfilment aspect of the genre is definitely an important part of it, but it’s not the most important, especially when a movie like The Dark Knight comes along and challenges that specific notion. Is he angry because once the genre is legitimised by this and, hopefully, Watchmen, he will have to go to the trouble of finding a new knee-jerk enemy of culture to hate on (I doubt this would happen, somehow)?


If you have read this blog before, you'll know that I have a bee in my BatBonnet about possible bias against genre movies (and all of the Shades of Caruso team has a problem with the possible bias against genre TV). I had hoped that The Dark Knight, directed by a Brit, would avoid that kind of thoughtless dismissal, but sadly not. I'm not saying the UK reviews are proof of a definite bias, and I'm certainly not saying it amounts to any more than a hill of biased beans in this crazy mixed-up world, but if I'm ever going to take the work of a critic seriously, I don't want to have to work around their preconceptions about an entire genre. Michael Atkinson in particular is someone I cannot bring myself to read again, not because he insulted me and my brethren, but because he is incapable of seeing the merits of a large proportion of popular culture, the best examples of which often become cultural signifiers or benchmarks of artistic quality over time. It’s not I'm having a hissy-fit just because his worldview doesn’t tally with mine 100%; whose does? It’s that he refuses to grapple with these pop-culture phenomena in a serious manner. I may not like comedies that do little more than spoof other movies in the most flat and obvious way possible, but I’ll at least engage with them, a position that once led to an unexpected fit of giggles experienced while watching Scary Movie 4 (bravo, Anna Faris. Bravo).

Anyway, here are some examples of what I see as an obnoxious bias against the superhero genre in the UK press, which was far more negative than the US press. Sukhdev Sandhu, in the Daily Telegraph, liked the movie, and yet still had to get a dig in [from this point on, italics mine]:

anyone who prefers their entertainment with less rather than more of a message may wish to shield their ears during the dialogue about the "cost of power"... Other reservations: shouldn't Nolan, marvellous as his directing here is, be creating original films rather than rebooting and retooling franchise fare? Why can't Hollywood put a tenth as much of the craft and vim into its average releases as it does into what is ultimately only a superhero movie?

Philip French seemed to like it more than most, but also said:

The Dark Knight is a clever, loud, technically brilliant film, superbly designed by Nathan Crowley and dramatically lit by Wally Pfister. Whether such a movie can bear the increasing moral weight imposed upon it is another matter.

Peter Bradshaw, whose Iron Man review annoyed me earlier this year, seemed to thoroughly enjoy The Dark Knight, but even so, is under the impression Christopher Nolan is doomed to do nothing but make nothing but summer superhero movies for the rest of his life:

Nolan has made an enormously profitable smash with the Batman franchise, but at the risk of sounding priggish, I can't help thinking it may be a bit of a career blind-alley for the talented director who gave us brilliant and disquieting movies like Following (1998) and Memento (2000), whose inventions still linger in the mind. The Dark Knight's massive box-office success has surely given Nolan the means to write his own cheque, and in addition something sweeter still - clout. I hope that he will use it to cultivate movies that are smaller and more manoeuvrable than that great armoured Batmobile.

Anthony Quinn thought it average, but when he gets the chronology of the film wrong you tend to think he wasn't really paying attention:

Art and entertainment feel locked in a deadly struggle, which accounts for the movie's peculiar schizoid personality. Just when it poses its most heart-stopping question – how do you tell a loved one facing imminent death that "everything's going to be all right"? – it swerves into a maniacal car chase, with our hero now hot-rodding a vehicle known as a Batpod, a kind of monster-truck tyre with a seat. The ear-lacerating volume and the automotive mayhem that attend these action sequences seem to be doing everything possible to shake whatever subtleties that may have entered one ear straight out of the other.

Dude! The shots of the BatPod racing through the streets are not part of a chase, but a tension-cranking cross-cut between the imminent death of two characters and Batman's attempts to save one of them. Surely this is self-evident, unless you're trying to score points against it. Fellow Independent reviewer Jonathan Romney also seems to have not been paying attention:

Played again by Christian Bale, he now speaks, when masked, in a gravelly synthetic bass; he also has an eerie habit of suddenly appearing out of and vanishing into shadows.

He now speaks and hides in shadows? What was he doing in the first movie, then? His comments about the Batmobile in the next paragraph suggest he didn’t see Batman Begins at all:

This is an impressive film in many ways, and Nolan directs with real confidence, yet the overall result feels cumbersome. The tenor is set by Nolan's conception of the Batmobile – a clanking all-terrain engine of war, a chunk of brutalist engineering that manifestly weighs tons. There's something comparably tank-like about the film, and despite several genuinely head-spinning moments, it all comes to feel grimly overwhelming, a vision of total war you fear will never end.

For goodness' sake, no one expected a return to Adam West and bad puns, but this cocktail of ultraviolence, artillery and pessimism makes for a gruelling, even depressing experience. Perhaps Warner Bros could offer the next episode to Werner Herzog, just to cheer things up a bit.

We see a genre damned for being fluffy, or damned for trying to do something more ambitious. Why did Nolan bother? Especially when Britain has its very own Michael Atkinson, except with a tiny IQ and a fear of the modern. Christopher Tookey, you win some kind of horrible internet award for being an out-of-touch Toryboy waggling a miserly fist at a world you can’t even be bothered to try to understand:

You can take a character out of a comic-strip, but you can't take the comic-strip out of the character. Batman is not a tragic hero at all, but an adolescent action-figure with the kind of problems most of us can only dream of having. This may make him good box-office - especially among males who feel ineffectual, impoverished and lacking in even one personality - but it doesn't give him the depth of Hamlet.

Oh Tookey, you little bitch!

This summer blockbuster explores grand themes: whether it can be right to use torture on terrorists; the conflict between public and private morality; and whether the public prefers to be told lies rather than deal with the truth. The Nolan brothers are clearly determined not to be confused with the Nolan Sisters [ZING!]. I appreciate their ambition, but they've over-reached - and lost their sense of humour... Their film is compromised by the perceived demands of its audience. It's grimly sadistic. It doesn't fight terror, it embraces it. Ledger becomes, in a curiously twisted way, the moral centre of the film, and this makes The Dark Knight an unintentionally sick spectacle, pretending to justify law and justice, but in reality celebrating violence and chaos.

Perhaps when you're a critic sitting in the dark with a bunch of similarly disgruntled men and women whose heads have been filled with talk of movie genius, it's easy to think that, but how does that account for the reaction of the audience I saw it with, comprising a demographic of men and women of differing ages, ethnicities, and cultural expectations, who reacted most strongly to Tiny Lister's disposal of the detonator during the ferry scene. I know I choked up at his decision, and the room erupted into applause and cheering. Sorry, Tookey. The Joker actually lost completely, both in Gotham and the real world. Rail against the Hypothetical Idiot all you like, but he/she is HYPOTHETICAL! Get used to it.

It wasn’t all bad. While this incoherent rant on the Guardian’s Comment Is Free section does little to dispel the suspicion that CiF is The Great Blogging Graveyard, this blog from The Times is endearingly nerdy and filled with good points . In fact, James Christopher is the only UK critic that seemed to really love it, though Cosmo Landesman's point-missing Sunday Times drubbing made up for that. The FT’s magnificent critic, Nigel Andrews, wasn’t crazy about it either, but at least his review was well-written and contained many good points, as always.

So is it just a knee-jerk dismissal of the genre? Surely something like that would have been universally applied across transatlantic lines, and while I’ve linked to some reviews that have just sneered, “superheroes are for kids”, most critics embraced the film for taking the genre seriously and showing what it is capable of illuminating. Jenny McCartney, who also rails against its rating in a dramatic piece full of Daily Mail-esque "WHAT ABOUT THE CHILDREN!?!?!?!!?? panic, also says in her dismissive review:

This is essentially an adult action thriller, in which the action itself is often difficult to discern from the darkened screen, a roaring tangle of crashes and explosions and muttered imprecations. Added to this is a jumbled sprinkling of philosophy on the nature of heroism, villainy and the necessary lies it takes to keep the public believing in something grander than selfish survival.

If the meaning behind the mayhem is difficult for an adult to perceive, it would be well nigh impossible for a child. But then, despite the heavy marketing and the almost inconceivably indulgent 12A rating (meaning that any under-12 can see it with an adult) this is not a film that pre-adolescent children should watch.

The Independent ran a piece about the rating that put the BBFC's decision in a clearer light, but I'm still pissed that the BBFC chose to do that (either in a fit of liberalism or due to pressure from Warner Bros.), if only because this adult movie now ends up being treated as Public Enemy No. 1 Child Corrupter (knocking Grand Theft Auto IV off its perch of evil) when it is plain to see it is not a movie for children. It's an adult movie dealing with adult themes (in a manner I found easy to follow, UK film critics, and I'm not alone in that judgment, I'm sure), and that it came during the summer months, when film critics froth at the mouth at the lack of substance to Hollywood movies, has served to confuse panicky critics who were expecting nothing more than BOOM BANG.


Yet what do we get? Relief that it is possible to fuse serious subject matter with the expected number of WOW moments? Of course not. Just anger that something from such a tawdry genre, designed merely to appeal to children, would be crazy enough to try to address a serious subject in a thoughtful manner, when it should only be full of explosions and bright colours and two-dimensional motivations and not be seen by anyone who has the complete Bergman collection at home, because liking genre movies means you are a simpleton and emotional retard who is incapable of seeing more than two sides to a conflict.

Of course, if The Dark Knight was like that it would be hated for not having any ambition, but what are you going to do? American culture is morally corrupt and intellectually dead, anyway. Oh, if only Christopher Nolan could return to the country that recognised his talent and threw money at it all those years ago! Then he could make another version of Northanger Abbey or Jane Eyre! Or a comedy about two mis-matched Islington professionals trying to find love in the middle of a multicultural city that conspicuously fails to show any significant characters of non-white ethnicity! Or Happy-Go-Fucking-Lucky!

Even worse than all of that, some writers are reading the film as a pro-Bush, pro-rendition, pro-phone-tapping argument. It's not pro-phone tapping or rendition. These actions undertaken by Batman are shown to have negative effects. Lao, captured by Batman and dragged back to Gotham to testify against Maroni, is brought into immediate danger and killed by The Joker. Batman raises the game with his bold actions and loses the love of his life, the way out of his psychic torment (though he was deluding himself all along with that), and even his support from the world, having to paint himself as a villain, a martyrdom that must have been borrowed from the little bits of messianic symbolism left over from Wall*E.

Yes, Batman prevails, but the Joker is still around, and to just capture him he has to betray himself and isolate himself from everyone, symbolised by the switching off of the phone-tapping program (which I thought was a nice nod to Brother Eye). If it is a straight reading from this to America and the War on Terror, it's saying, "if you're going to play as dirty as the bad guys, you're going to have to give up everything that you are and everything that you have, and even then you're not going to win. The only way the battle can be won is if we all agree to not lose our heads, to remember on an individual level that we are human". The battle rages between two men high above the city, but it is won with two simple choices by two "mortal" men, one “evil”, one “good”.

That's how it is done. We're not meant to approve of Batman's actions; Morgan Freeman, as the audience surrogate, proves that with his displeasure over "Brother Eye". Critics seem to have missed that point, thinking that because it's a superhero, he is the one we should be automatically applauding, which means the Nolans are expecting us to accept his immoral tactics, but that's not the case. We're meant to be horrified. Considering all of this talk about the movie not being as deep as people thought, it seems it was too deep for those who couldn't appreciate that glaringly obvious fact. The only writer who seemed to understand that the movie was loosely playing with War on Terror tropes without actually transposing them directly from our world to the world of Batman was Moriarty’s customarily excellent take from AICN. Some of the other cultural commentators would do well to read that.


Why should I care what anyone else thinks? Why would I get so monstrously obsessed with the experiences of people I'll never meet, and I regularly both agree and disagree with? And, perhaps most pertinently, why would I doubt the opinions of others, thinking them the product of some innate snobbery or inherited bias, and not just their actual opinion made from a point of view that is merely different from mine and not caused by some form of voluntary cultural myopia? Possibly because of all of the films I've seen recently, this was the one that moved me the most, more than almost any movie I have seen in the last few years. Believe me, I was as annoyed by the relentless hype as anyone, and tried to keep as open a mind as possible, fully expecting to like the movie but not love it, especially after a pre-Dark Knight viewing of Batman Begins revealed that I had increased reservations about it since it was first released.

Those efforts were futile. The Dark Knight amazed me more than I could ever have hoped, leaving me emotionally drained even before the final, heartbreaking scene. The escalation of The Joker's campaign of psychological torture, the city's response to it, and Batman's final sacrifice shattered me. Is that merely because I love superheroes and superhero movies? Maybe, but for the most part I forgot I was watching one. It was more like watching L.A. Confidential than a "popcorn flick".

Was it because I saw it in IMAX? Possibly. We were lucky enough to see it at the Leows IMAX in New York, with a mostly fantastic audience (except for the shrieky woman sitting in front of us who refused to turn off her phone and tried to kill the guy who asked her). Every big moment in the movie was greeted with laughter or applause; the pencil trick, the BatPod, the end of the big chase sequence, The Joker shuffling out of the hospital, and best of all, Tiny Lister and the detonator. I'm not ashamed to say that made me cry. What I suspect would have already been an overwhelming moment was made even more moving by the elation around me.

While critics have carped about the action scenes and what they consider to be faux-profundity, the only flaw in the movie that I could see was that Heath Ledger’s performance was of such an otherworldly nature that it overshadowed Aaron Eckhart’s excellent work as the inspirational Harvey Dent, and the twisted psychotic Two-Face. In the middle of a superb cast taking the subject matter as seriously as possible, he was a stand-out. Even better, those incredible IMAX shots of Gotham, shot with glorious precision by Wally Pfister, took our breath away. On that vast screen it was like looking through a window at a real world (I know it was filmed in Chicago, but surely there were buildings added in post-production). As we left Loews and walked around New York, it felt like we were still in the movie, so much so that I expected Batman to zoom past at any moment.


That feeling lasted all day, keeping the movie running through my head long after we left, riding past a construction site covered in signs featuring the word Gotham, and on to the Lincoln Tunnel, with its art deco spires. I didn't just see a movie; I had an amazing experience, and New York was only half of it. I've proselytised about IMAX before, and been obnoxious about it on message boards, but really, if you want to see The Dark Knight in such a way as to make it hard to care about the flaws or shortcomings of the film, you need to see it on a bigass screen. Maybe it won't work for me on a small screen. Maybe in time my high opinion of it will fade over time just as it has for Batman Begins. Perhaps critics who were agnostic about it would love it in IMAX, seen with an enthusiastic audience, especially one that isn't baying for blood like The Hapless Tookey imagines. Who can say? All I know is that for now at least, it might not be the best film I've ever seen, but I can't imagine 2008 offering up anything superior. It was everything I had hoped for and much much more. Now we have to see if it holds up to further viewings, as soon as IMAX Waterloo has some tickets spare.

Lazy Post Courtesy Of Barry Levinson

I'm the worst procrastinator I know. I just spent an hour pootling around on the internet instead of washing up dishes and sheets. Fair enough, but I also did that because I'm too lazy to reach over and pick up a 360 controller and play Half-Life 2, possibly because I know starting that up will mean I definitely do nothing else for the rest of the day. Nevertheless, that's some outrageous laziness, so I'll make myself feel better by writing about it. I guess this is what it is to be a blogger.

Anyway, while looking for Watchmen Comic-Con footage after being inspired by these incredible posters, I stumbled across this trailer, for Barry Levinson's new movie What Just Happened:



I'm in two minds about Levinson, who hasn't made anything I've wanted to see since Wag The Dog. He's made some stuff I hope to never see again (especially Sleepers), but Diner remains a favourite of mine, and Bugsy and Tin Men are fantastic. He does seem to have a strange selection of projects on the way, though, including yet another TV series based on Leslie Charteris' Saint novels, this time starring Thomas-Jane-clone James Purefoy, and an adaptation of Bill Bryson's A Walk In The Woods, with, get this, Robert Redford playing Bryson. I know!

It's written by producer Art Linson, adapting his own book. I have a copy of that somewhere, stuck under a pile of cheap second-hand sci fi and popular science books. I got it back in the days when I would read pretty much any book about the film industry, and yet that remains untouched. Even I had no stomach for something that appeared to be as self-pitying as that, and we're talking about not bothering to read a teeny-tiny 192 page book. Seriously, Art, if you don't want a job as a successful Hollywood producer, I'll trade you right now. I bet the best day on my crappy job is far less gratifying than even your worst day trying to prise the latest hot actor off the wall of his trailer.

Anyway, the movie looks like little more than the usual Hollywood navelgazing silliness, which is galling as Levinson has already plundered this well a couple of times previously. That said, there are interesting things about it, such as the cast, featuring Stanley Tucci, Catherine Keener and Robin Wright Penn who, from the trailer, looks like she gets to play yet another miserable wife, just like in Unbreakable and Beowulf. Levinson has also managed to get the terrifying Michael Wincott to cry like a baby. For that precious image, I thank him. But hey, check it out! Is Bruce Willis channeling genius singer/songwriter Will Oldham?


Excellent. And ZOMG! It's internet search term sensation Moon Bloodgood!


Sadly, from what I can tell from the trailer, she has been cast as Miscellaneous Superhottie Doing Sexxy Things With Chopsticks, doing little more than making Art Linson feel better about himself by flirting with his onscreen representative (aka Robert De Niro). Still, at least appearing in the excellent-but-doomed Journeyman and the not-at-all-excellent-yet-equally-doomed Pathfinder is not stopping her getting work. She's also going to appear in McG's Terminator Salvation in a frighteningly good cast that includes Christian Bale, Bryce Dallas Howard, and Helena Bonham Carter, which is great news.

In less great news, she's also in Street Fighter: The Legend Of Chun-Li, which is an early contender for worst film of 2009. In the middle of a frighteningly uninspiring cast, Moon plays second fiddle to Kristin Kreuk as Chun-Li, Michael Clarke Duncan as Balrog (I can see that, but Grand L. Bush will probably remain the definitive Balrog), Neal McDonough as Bison (??!?!?!?), and Chris Klein as Nash. Plus, it's directed by hapless Doom helmer Andrzej Bartkowiak; Paul W.S. Anderson was obviously too busy doing post on Death Race to take the job. It's rare that a nerd-film is announced that I have no interest in, but they managed it. If it's good, I'll eat my words, lightly braised in a vowel sauce, but I don't hold out much hope.

::sigh:: I guess I should do that washing now. In the meantime, knock yourselves out with the first animated installment of Get Your War On (beware, NSFW).