Who needs a Valentines episode? Glee got the mush-making done in its spring semester launch with “Yes/No,” a show with more relationship issues, drama, heart-tugging, meaningful moments and love songs than any formalized February event geared more to merchandizing than true love.
Was Yes/No one of Glee’s best episodes ever? If not, it was close.
But with so much happening, where do we start?
How about the end? Read the rest of this entry »
I covered movies, home video and TV for 30 years for major daily newspapers, so I notice things — little things — that don’t ring true. These things on screen can make me scream, since so often they’re so easily corrected, but they aren’t.
Take driving. The average person on TV or in a movie, while driving a car, spends most of their time needlessly looking directly at their passenger while talking to him or her. It takes about two seconds to veer into another lane and cause an accident, but this almost never happens, because the actor isn’t really driving. They’re “acting,” and quite badly — otherwise, they’d have acted the driving part too.
I know, it’s a little thing. But it drives me crazy — pun intended. Read the rest of this entry »
Yes, Glee: The Concert Movie flopped in theaters — was not boffo at the b.o. during its limited two-week run — but there’s no shame in that. It did gross over $18.6 million in domestic and foreign markets, which was twice its production cost, and it’s sure to get many more viewers now via the new Blu-ray and DVD release.
Plus, what all the nay-sayers and doom predictors of Glee conveniently overlook when they trample a trifle such as this concert flick is that the show they dismiss is an iTunes powerhouse. When Glee delivers strong contemporary pop instead of stale Broadway standards, it’s boffo, all right — in music sales. And music is what drives this show, sets it apart and makes it so special, whether delivered in episodes on the air, on a sold-out concert tour, in a mismanaged concert movie, on CD or via downloads.
Was Glee’s recent mashup of Adele’s Rumour Has It and Someone Like You a stiff? Does it reflect a slide in Glee’s popularity? Actually, no. It’s part of Glee’s 36 million-plus digital singles sales and was #1 on iTunes. So while TV ratings plateau, here’s a no-brainer alert: Glee’s music still matters. It serves stories as on other TV series. It makes people happy. It’s impactful. It sells. Haters, deal with it.
But I will say the concert movie is an inviting target. It didn’t fully work. And why is that?
What I see here is a missed opportunity — make that many misses. Read the rest of this entry »
OK, so the annual forced gaiety and overly abrupt love of giving got old quickly. But part of what I loved about Glee’s Extraordinary Merry Christmas was how old-fashioned it was — yet in sweetly quirky ways, right down to the inspired b&w ’60s silliness of New Directions’ TV Yule special for their local PBS station.
As its budding director, Artie was right: Give ‘em what they want. And in this case, that meant cutesy, upbeat frothiness as Kurt and Blaine played “bachelors” entertaining polite, perky guests at their Swiss chalet on Christmas Eve: Rachel, Mercedes, Puck, Finn, Santana, Brittany and the rest of the Cheerios, as well as Rory as an elf. (No Tina or Mike; Artie was directing; Sam and Quinn were feeding the homeless; and 15th NDer Sugar was a no-show for this show.)
Can we see more such screen gems within Glee? The series itself is an alternate universe — as I always say, Glee is a musical fantasy — and this warped world within it was a hoot and a stitch. Like the overheated and equally overproduced music video for Run Joey Run, the Yule special was almost a parody of a parody. (But where was the promised Chewbacca, who barely made an appearance beyond publicity shots for the show?) Read the rest of this entry »
From Star Trek to Batman to, now, Planet of the Apes, reboots have proven their mettle. Reboots are good. In fact, as in such simian cinema, reboots can be fantastic.
Yes, let’s get to the superlatives for this reboot of the 1968-born Apes series, rather than the unsatisfying “re-imagining” of the first two films by Tim Burton in 2001. It was time — and this time, they got it right by entwining the tale with an Outer Limits-style story of a scientist who dares to do great things but, in his bold reach, unleashes twisted results in the process.
These involve an Alzheimer’s cure turning into a monkey brain steroid, leading to a revolt of the San Francisco Bay Area’s simians, and I don’t mean bikers. From testing labs to the zoo, apes erupt onto SF’s scenic settings in a scary yet applaudable attack on human repression. And if that means facing down SF SWATs on the GGB, then it’s more than an anachronym. It’s anarchy — and deliriously entertaining.
I’ve lived in San Francisco, and there’s no more scenic city — and no better setting for a movie, especially one with warped weirdness. From Vertigo to 1978′s remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, there’s a strange symbiosis between sinister doings and a city where a chilly fog drifts across steep hills in the dead of night. And Apes, while also ranging beyond SF, taps that element.
OK, I’m not the biggest James Franco fan, but he does the job here with gravity and sincerity as the scientist whose “cure” turns tables on human-ape dominance. The tale also recalls Flowers For Algernon (Charly, to movie fans) as well as The Outer Limits’ The Sixth Finger, an accelerated evolution story with perhaps the greatest character arc in screen history.
So yes, Apes is damn interesting and intriguing, apart form all the action and flash. And the CG is as good as it gets. Go Ape. You’ll be glad you did.
Are you ready for an MST3K stab at Christopher Lee? A rare western? Quinn Martin’s TV schlock? Cheap sci-fi effects?
If so, you should be ready for Mystery Science Theater 3000: XXIII, the next DVD box set from Shout! Factory.
When released on March 27, 2012, it will feature another four MST3K episodes being offered on DVD for the first time: The Castle of Fu Manchu (with Lee), Last of the Wild Horses (the western), Code Name: Diamond Head (from Quinn Martin) and King Dinosaur (the ’50s sci-fi cheapie). Read the rest of this entry »
“Hold On to 16″ indeed. Hold on to this episode, for it may be the most upbeat Glee ever.
Everybody loved everybody. Finn and Blaine made peace — even bonded — while crazy Quinn and Mike’s strict dad had sudden changes of heart, as did New Directions’ exes in the Troubletones, who came back to the fold (lured by promises of lead vocals) after ND won Sectionals. With no Sue in sight, for one magical night, Glee was one big happy family.
For now — and perhaps through next week’s holiday show. But you know crises and crying will return, so hold on to “Hold On to 16″ if you, like me, love happy endings. This had Glee’s all-time happiest. Read the rest of this entry »
If Glee had begun Season 3 with the verve and vitality of Episode 7′s I Kissed A Girl, it wouldn’t have dipped in the ratings.
Anyone not feel this is the year’s best show to date?
First, the songs, which for those of us who heard them in advance already signaled a potent show musically. But when we saw how those songs served the story, it made all the difference. The six numbers composed by six women not only stood on their own, but also drove the story home, from romantic heartache (Jolene) to joyously defiant girl-power (I Kissed a Girl). Read the rest of this entry »
Though music is what most empowers Glee, at its best the show must meld such music to plot and characters. That’s where Glee can get spotty, as with this week’s Mash Off episode that produced the most entertaining song selections of the season so far, but didn’t add a story worth their impact.
I mean, since when was dodgeball integral to McKinley apart from this season’s colorful promotional motifs? If it’s worth a song, I guess Pat Benatar’s Hit Me With Your Best Shot, mashed up with Blondie’s One Thing Or Another, is fitting enough. But the only story was Santana again being a bigger bully than anyone who’s ever dumped on her former glee club. Yawn.
As for Will and Shelby’s surprise duet for You & I/You & I, it sounded good, but again didn’t serve a plot point. The two show choir coaches were supposed to be pushing a friendly rivalry, not harmonizing. And New Directions’ subsequent mash-up of Hall & Oates’ You Make My Dreams Come True and I Can’t Go For That, while bouncy and fun, advanced this tale about as much as another slushie in the face. (And what was that about Rory singing lead?)
At least an axe-wielding Puck’s Hot For Teacher, backed by his boys, was a riveting rocker that sold its lasciviousness well. Glee’s second Van Halen song (after Jump) again did the original justice. Read the rest of this entry »
Yes, there’s nothing like a thoughtful Christmas gift. And what could be more thoughtful than The Brute Man, The Violent Years, Time of the Apes and Mighty Jack, MST3K-style?
That’s what you’ll get in Mystery Science Theater 3000: XXII, due from Shout! Factory Dec. 6 in a four-disc box set also bulging with lots o’ extras. And since most Misties already know these films — though all four are making their DVD debut — let’s get straight to the juicy new stuff.
In terms of extras, best of these four discs is The Brute Man, which sports another ambitious featurette from Ballyhoo, the half-hour Trail of the Creeper: Making of The Brute Man. Handsomely produced, it’s really less about the movie and more about Rondo Hatton, the disfigured and tragic boogeyman of the film, and how he led a vanguard of new “monsters” for Universal when the studio cooled to its classic fright fiends in the mid-1940s.
