"Accomplishments"
DVDs: Flipped, among other things this week, The Last King of Scotland. Based on the novel of the same name, the film follows a fictional young Scottish doctor who gets in over his head when the 1970s' new president of Uganda, the factual Idi Amin, takes him under his wing. As a child of the 70s, I didn't know the history, and it's fascinating and outrageous. I got this to see Forest Whitaker's (deserved) Oscar-winning performance, but I dare say it's an acting showcase across the board. Everyone is excellent in it, and filming in Uganda itself lends the film an authenticity it might not otherwise have had. The DVD includes a director's commentary, deleted scenes (with commentary), an excellent making of that examines the life of the real Idi Amin, and more Hollywoodian featurettes about casting and such.
Our Kung Fu selection this week was The Bride with White Hair 2, which I thought would be an inferior follow-up to the original, seeing as the original director took a producer's seat on it only. But I think I rather like it more than the original (accepting, of course, that you need the first film as context). The almost expressionistic élans of direction are still there - it's a beautiful-looking film - but while Leslie Cheung has a very small part in it, we get to see the Bride unleash her fury a lot more thanks to the absence of the demented Siamese twin villains of the original. This is a plus in my book because they were just too evil. Brigitte Lin's Bride cuts a more sympathetic figure at the center of a tragic love story. The new characters offer an acceptable counterpoint to the original romance as well. I'm recommending the two films, but you do have to swallow the musical montages. Oh, early 90s!
The Horns of Nimon has to be the nadir of the Tom Baker's long stint as the 4th Doctor. Wow, is it ever horrible. I mean, I found stuff to praise even in Underworld and Creature from the Pit, but Nimon... Well, Romana's rather good in it, if only because she gets to be the Doctor while Tom Baker is busy being Tom Baker, all silliness, googly eyes and bending down to talk to the tin dog. This story is the ultimate expression of everything that was wrong about the Graham Williams era: Out-of-control lead actor, possibly the most horribly over-the-top performance by a guest actor (yes, I'm counting Brian Blessed), terrible design, a naff monster (a space minotaur precariously moving on platform shoes) and a dull-ass plot mildly based on a Greek myth. Say what you will of Full Circle (and I have), it's an upswing from this. The show wouldn't look this bad until the 6th Doctor's years, and as if to agree, the DVD doesn't even provide a making of. Even Timelash got a making of! What it does have is the terrific first part of the slick and often touching documentary on Blue Peter's ties to Who (the equally excellent second on the TV Movie DVD). Worth the price of admission alone. There's also an interview with writer Anthony Read in which he's a little more critical than in the commentary hosted by Lalla Ward, and a pilot attempt to put electronic music on parts of an episode, which makes it harder to understand why JNT went in that direction the next year.
Meglos, seen after this stretch of rather bad 4th Doctor stories, probably seems better than it is. The camp silliness is there - after all, this is a story about an evil cactus - but is just used as strangeness rather than send-up. Tom Baker gives two very good performances (making Lalla Ward's usual commentary criticisms unfair - she's pricklier than the eponymous villain), and Romana's good too, as are the guest players, especially Jacqueline Hill who you just wish had had a bigger part (or at least earned her death) or came back as Barbara instead. The effects and design are reasonable, the time loop idea well realized, the humor well dosed, and it's very pacey (despite the over-long reprises). I'm not saying it's an instant classic, but Tom Baker redeems himself in his last season with work like this. The DVD includes a nice walking conversation between the writers, a featurette on the Scene Sync system the story tested, a lovely retrospective on Hill's career, and a 5-minute bit that explains entropy - the theme of the season - but which may confuse more than illuminate.
The Ark (1st Doctor, Steven and Dodo) is the template for such stories as The Long Game/Bad Wolf and most closely, The Ark in Space/Revenge of the Cybermen. The TARDIS spends two episodes in each of two eras on the same space-worthy "ark". It's an ambitious story - live exotic animals in studio, giant screens, model shots - but your mileage may vary on the Monoids, perhaps among Doctor Who's silliest aliens. And while the science fiction story of the first two episodes is strong, the two later episodes devolve into "alien invasion" territory rather quickly. Plot aside, it remains a visually and conceptually interesting serial that might even make you like Dodo a little bit. The commentary track includes Peter Purves (Steven) and the director being rather too critical of the story, a documentary on H.G. Wells' influence on the program, an insubstantial piece of fluff on the Monoids, and a making of that lingers on the use of Riverside studios through this story. The extras are a bit lazy, using the same talking heads as one another even if they're not exactly relevant.
Audios: The Death Collectors by Stewart Sheargold is a 7th Doctor (no companions) audio that is immensely atmospheric and lands the TARDIS on a space station docked with a ship from an alien culture composed of corpses clinging to life, in orbit around a quarantined planet where a deadly virus - actually some kind of deathly life form - has extinguished all life. The three-episode thriller works well, with a creepy Hal 2000-type computer called Nancy providing some of the chills. A good cast and well-produced sound take this beyond its somewhat standard plot elements. The release also includes the one-episode "Spider's Shadow", an interesting time loop story told non-chronologically and uses the audio format interestingly, as if it were on shuffle. Again, Sheargold provides clever SF ideas and atmosphere.
The Boy That Time Forgot by Paul Magrs has the 5th Doctor and Nyssa using block transfer computation (that old nugget!) to try and get their stolen TARDIS back from Brewster, an experiment that sends them and a couple of Victorians to an historical anomaly in the prehistoric past where an elderly Adric rules a society of super-scorpions. Well, it IS a Paul Magrs script. Resurrecting Adric? Sure, why not, and it's a good adventure. However, I found it immensely distracting all the way through because old Adric (played by Andrew Sachs) sounds NOTHING like young Adric (Matthew Waterhouse). Not in timbre, not in accent, not in vocabulary. I spent the entire time thinking it was all a hoax (well, it IS a Paul Magrs script). Very strange casting, and it keeps the audio idling at "fair".
Hyperion to a Satyr posts this week:
II.ii. Rosencrantz & Guildenstern - Zeffirelli '90
II.ii. Rosencrantz & Guildenstern - Kline '90
DVDs: Flipped, among other things this week, The Last King of Scotland. Based on the novel of the same name, the film follows a fictional young Scottish doctor who gets in over his head when the 1970s' new president of Uganda, the factual Idi Amin, takes him under his wing. As a child of the 70s, I didn't know the history, and it's fascinating and outrageous. I got this to see Forest Whitaker's (deserved) Oscar-winning performance, but I dare say it's an acting showcase across the board. Everyone is excellent in it, and filming in Uganda itself lends the film an authenticity it might not otherwise have had. The DVD includes a director's commentary, deleted scenes (with commentary), an excellent making of that examines the life of the real Idi Amin, and more Hollywoodian featurettes about casting and such.
Our Kung Fu selection this week was The Bride with White Hair 2, which I thought would be an inferior follow-up to the original, seeing as the original director took a producer's seat on it only. But I think I rather like it more than the original (accepting, of course, that you need the first film as context). The almost expressionistic élans of direction are still there - it's a beautiful-looking film - but while Leslie Cheung has a very small part in it, we get to see the Bride unleash her fury a lot more thanks to the absence of the demented Siamese twin villains of the original. This is a plus in my book because they were just too evil. Brigitte Lin's Bride cuts a more sympathetic figure at the center of a tragic love story. The new characters offer an acceptable counterpoint to the original romance as well. I'm recommending the two films, but you do have to swallow the musical montages. Oh, early 90s!
The Horns of Nimon has to be the nadir of the Tom Baker's long stint as the 4th Doctor. Wow, is it ever horrible. I mean, I found stuff to praise even in Underworld and Creature from the Pit, but Nimon... Well, Romana's rather good in it, if only because she gets to be the Doctor while Tom Baker is busy being Tom Baker, all silliness, googly eyes and bending down to talk to the tin dog. This story is the ultimate expression of everything that was wrong about the Graham Williams era: Out-of-control lead actor, possibly the most horribly over-the-top performance by a guest actor (yes, I'm counting Brian Blessed), terrible design, a naff monster (a space minotaur precariously moving on platform shoes) and a dull-ass plot mildly based on a Greek myth. Say what you will of Full Circle (and I have), it's an upswing from this. The show wouldn't look this bad until the 6th Doctor's years, and as if to agree, the DVD doesn't even provide a making of. Even Timelash got a making of! What it does have is the terrific first part of the slick and often touching documentary on Blue Peter's ties to Who (the equally excellent second on the TV Movie DVD). Worth the price of admission alone. There's also an interview with writer Anthony Read in which he's a little more critical than in the commentary hosted by Lalla Ward, and a pilot attempt to put electronic music on parts of an episode, which makes it harder to understand why JNT went in that direction the next year.
Meglos, seen after this stretch of rather bad 4th Doctor stories, probably seems better than it is. The camp silliness is there - after all, this is a story about an evil cactus - but is just used as strangeness rather than send-up. Tom Baker gives two very good performances (making Lalla Ward's usual commentary criticisms unfair - she's pricklier than the eponymous villain), and Romana's good too, as are the guest players, especially Jacqueline Hill who you just wish had had a bigger part (or at least earned her death) or came back as Barbara instead. The effects and design are reasonable, the time loop idea well realized, the humor well dosed, and it's very pacey (despite the over-long reprises). I'm not saying it's an instant classic, but Tom Baker redeems himself in his last season with work like this. The DVD includes a nice walking conversation between the writers, a featurette on the Scene Sync system the story tested, a lovely retrospective on Hill's career, and a 5-minute bit that explains entropy - the theme of the season - but which may confuse more than illuminate.
The Ark (1st Doctor, Steven and Dodo) is the template for such stories as The Long Game/Bad Wolf and most closely, The Ark in Space/Revenge of the Cybermen. The TARDIS spends two episodes in each of two eras on the same space-worthy "ark". It's an ambitious story - live exotic animals in studio, giant screens, model shots - but your mileage may vary on the Monoids, perhaps among Doctor Who's silliest aliens. And while the science fiction story of the first two episodes is strong, the two later episodes devolve into "alien invasion" territory rather quickly. Plot aside, it remains a visually and conceptually interesting serial that might even make you like Dodo a little bit. The commentary track includes Peter Purves (Steven) and the director being rather too critical of the story, a documentary on H.G. Wells' influence on the program, an insubstantial piece of fluff on the Monoids, and a making of that lingers on the use of Riverside studios through this story. The extras are a bit lazy, using the same talking heads as one another even if they're not exactly relevant.
Audios: The Death Collectors by Stewart Sheargold is a 7th Doctor (no companions) audio that is immensely atmospheric and lands the TARDIS on a space station docked with a ship from an alien culture composed of corpses clinging to life, in orbit around a quarantined planet where a deadly virus - actually some kind of deathly life form - has extinguished all life. The three-episode thriller works well, with a creepy Hal 2000-type computer called Nancy providing some of the chills. A good cast and well-produced sound take this beyond its somewhat standard plot elements. The release also includes the one-episode "Spider's Shadow", an interesting time loop story told non-chronologically and uses the audio format interestingly, as if it were on shuffle. Again, Sheargold provides clever SF ideas and atmosphere.
The Boy That Time Forgot by Paul Magrs has the 5th Doctor and Nyssa using block transfer computation (that old nugget!) to try and get their stolen TARDIS back from Brewster, an experiment that sends them and a couple of Victorians to an historical anomaly in the prehistoric past where an elderly Adric rules a society of super-scorpions. Well, it IS a Paul Magrs script. Resurrecting Adric? Sure, why not, and it's a good adventure. However, I found it immensely distracting all the way through because old Adric (played by Andrew Sachs) sounds NOTHING like young Adric (Matthew Waterhouse). Not in timbre, not in accent, not in vocabulary. I spent the entire time thinking it was all a hoax (well, it IS a Paul Magrs script). Very strange casting, and it keeps the audio idling at "fair".Hyperion to a Satyr posts this week:
II.ii. Rosencrantz & Guildenstern - Zeffirelli '90
II.ii. Rosencrantz & Guildenstern - Kline '90
Comments
S17: Just awful.
I rate neither season very highly despite a fairly good story here and there.