Years:  2000, 2001
Genre:  TV series, Comedy
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Melissa Joan Hart, Beth Broderick, Caroline Rhea, Soleil Moon Frye, Elisa Donovan, Trevor Lissauer
Creator:  Nell Scovell
Run time:  8 hours
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

     I wonder if Triumph ever sued the makers of Sabrina, The Teenage Witch (the TV series) over their obvious ripoff of “Magic Power” for the opening credit theme.  I doubt it.  I think there is a good chance the guys in Triumph never watched the show.  You see, when you’re that busy being a constantly-touring second-rate power trio, you don’t have that much time to watch a constantly-airing, second-rate TV show.  I do remember this show, to some degree.  I don’t think I watched it much, what with being holed up in my room in the year 2000 with my Triumph records.  But I certainly remember Melissa Joan Hart, who was likely more famous than the series itself.  But by the time I took down one of my Triumph posters to make room for a Melissa Joan Hart poster, the show had been canceled and I had lost interest.

     The biggest problem with the series is that it is irritating.  The fact that Sabrina is a witch is basically irrelevant.  Every episode centres around silly young-woman shenanigans that you can get on any sitcom from the same era.  The only time her “magic powers” ever come in handy is when the writers seem to run out of quirky college highjinks with which to work, and Sabrina spends an episode in an alternate universe or the realm of witches, or whatever.  In the meantime, she has a talking cat.  Because she’s a witch.  In the Fifth Season, out on DVD February 17th from Paramount Home Entertainment, Sabrina has moved out of her house for the first time so she can go to college.  She now has roommates, and that’s where all the action is.

     And that’s the best thing about Sabrina, The Teenage Witch.  The casting.  Melissa Joan Hart really is very good as Sabrina, she is cute and charming, and suitably wide-eyed and naive.  Her aunts are funny and attractive and splendidly portrayed by Caroline Rhea and Beth Broderick.  In Season Five, her new roommates are Roxie, played by a gorgeous and talented young woman named Soleil Moon Frye, who used to be Punky Brewster.  Morgan, played by Elisa Donovan, is pretty and self-centred, another funny character.  And Miles is the nerdy super-genius, ably played by Trevor Lissauer.

     All these solid actors, however, can’t quite make up for the generic writing and the painfully ordinary nature of this show.  I like Sabrina, and I like Melissa Joan Hart, but watching an entire season is taxing at best.

I attended the press conference to announce the Genie Award nominees at the Aviation museum here in Ottawa yesterday.  I was there for about eight minutes – I didn’t realize it was such a black-tie affair, and I was decidedly underdressed.  I got what I wanted though – I got to see Gordon Pinsent announce the nominees with the gorgeous Caroline Neron, and I got the press kit.  Then I took off.  Not because I was underdressed, but there appeared to be a long photo opportunity afterward, one which had a long lineup, and that was pointless to me.  So I slipped out the back and came home to write this article.

Some of these movies are available on DVD, and I recommend finding them and watching them.  Most of them.  More on that later.  The Stone Angel, Passchendaele, Tout Est Parfait, Normal, Fugitive Pieces, Emotional Arithmetic and a few others are all available right now.  The Genies are not like the Oscars, where everything gets released all at once in a quest for the awards, which is a good thing.  Here’s the rundown:

Best Motion Picture:

Amal
Ce Qu’il Faut Pour Vivre
Normal
Passchendaele
Tout Est Parfait

Best Performance by an actor in a leading role:

Paul Gross – Passchendaele
Rupinder Nagra – Amal
Christopher Plummer – Emotional Arithmetic
Aaron Poole – This Beautiful City
Natar Ungalaaq – Ce Qu’il Faut Pour Vivre

Performance by an actress in a leading role:

Isabelle Blais – Borderline
Ellen Burstyn – The Stone Angel
Marianne Fortier – Maman Est Chez Le Coiffeur
Susan Sarandon – Emotional Arithmetic
Preity Zinta – Heaven on Earth

Performance by an actor in a supporting role:

Normand D’Amour – Tout Est Parfait
Benoit McGinnis – Le Banquet
Callum Keith Rennie – Normal
Rade Sherbedgia – Fugitive Pieces
Max Von Sydow – Emotional Arithmetic

Performance by an actress in a supporting role:

Celine Bonnier – Maman Est Chez Le Coiffeur
Kristin Booth – Young People Fucking
Eveline Gelinas – Ce Qu’il Faut Pour Vivre
Anie Pascale – Tout Est Parfait
Rosamund Pike – Fugitive Pieces

Achievement in direction:

Richie Mehta – Amal
Lyne Charlebois – Borderline
Benoit Pilon – Ce Qu’il Faut Pour Vivre
Carl Bessai – Normal
Yves-Christian Fournier – Tout Est Parfait

Best Documentary:

Infiniment Quebec
My Winnipeg
Up the Yangtze

Original Screenplay:

Ce Qu’il Faut Pour Vivre
Heaven on Earth
Normal
Real Time
Tout Est Parfait

Achievement in Art Direction:

Maman Est Chez le Coiffeur
Passchendaele
Fugitive Pieces
The Stone Angel
Le Piege Americain

Achievement in Cinematography:

Le Banquet
The Stone Angel
Le Piege Americain
Fugitive Pieces
Tout Est Parfait

Achievement in Costume Design:

Ce Qu’il Faut Pour Vivre
Who is KK Downey?
Le Piege Americain
Maman Est Chez le Coiffeur
Passchendaele

Achievement in Editing:

Le Banquet
C’est Pas Moi, Je Le Jure!
Ce Qu’il Faut Pour Vivre
Maman Est Chez le Coiffeur
Borderline

Achievement in Music – Original Score:

Emotional Arithmetic
Maman Est Chez le Coiffeur
Fugitive Pieces
Ce Qu’il Faut Pour Vivre
The Stone Angel

Achievement in Music – original song:

M’Accrocher? – Tout Est Parfait
Rahi Nagufta – Amal
Big Smoke – This Beautiful City

Achievement in overall sound:

Le Banquet
Le Piege Americain
Amal
Passchendaele
This Beautiful City

Achievement in Sound Editing:

Passchendaele
Le Piege Americain
This Beautiful City
The Broken Line
Le Banquet

Adapted Screenplay:

Amal
Borderline
Fugitive Pieces

Best Live Action Short Drama:

The Answer Key
La Battue
Can You Wave Bye-Bye?
Mon Nom Est Victor Gazon
Next Floor

Best Animated Short:

Drux Flux
The Facts in the Case of Mister Hollow
Sleeping Betty

That’s all of ‘em.  Here are some links to reviews of a few of these movies.

http://blog.rogersradiointernet.com/cynicalcinema/2009/02/03/passchendaele-out-february-3rd-510/

http://blog.rogersradiointernet.com/cynicalcinema/2008/09/10/tout-est-parfait-out-now-810/

http://blog.rogersradiointernet.com/cynicalcinema/2008/09/15/the-stone-angel-out-tomorrow-410/

http://blog.rogersradiointernet.com/cynicalcinema/2008/11/16/young-people-fing-out-now-610/

Because MTV seems to be one of the more popular movie-information locales in the world of late…lord knows, they no longer know anything about music…they decided to come up with a list of the biggest and best movie badasses of all time.  It’s a pretty standard list, with a couple of exceptions, and they want people to vote.  Here it is, so far:

Dirty Harry Harry Callaghan
Ellen Ripley in Alien
John McLane in Die Hard
Mad Max in Mad Max
Walker in Point Blank
Sarah Connor in Terminator
Pike Bishop in The Wild Bunch
Khan in Star Trek:  The Wrath of Khan
Boba Fett in Star Wars
John Rambo in First Blood

Some of this makes sense.  Harry Callaghan belongs on this list.  The scene where he’s shooting people while still eating his hot dog alone makes him worthy.  Ripley is worthy – she is definitely badass.  Sarah Connor belongs, but only for Terminator 2.  In the first Terminator she’s kind of just along for the ride, and does few badass things.  Rambo, I get it.  Sure.  And Pike in The Wild Bunch probably belongs more than anyone else.  That final scene where he leads the boys to certain death as they massacre an army is amazing, one of the most badass scenes in movie history. 

But Khan does not belong.  He’s basically a bad guy, which makes him sort of badass by extension, but he’s not a movie badass.  John McLane has moments of self-doubt in Die Hard.  No full-on movie badass has even a moment of doubt.  And Boba Fett?  Well, I suppose they just needed to get some Star Wars reference in.  Here is, I feel, a better list:

Josey Wales, The Outlaw Josey Wales.  No self-doubt for this man.  Tough as nails, looks everyone straight in the eye, and totally unflinching when it comes to pulling out the six-guns and throwing down with any number of bounty hunters and soldiers and generally bad dudes.  Like the old man says, “hell is coming to breakfast”.  Josey Wales brings hell with him wherever he goes.  Dirty Harry was certainly badass, as was the Man With No Name and more recently Walt Kowalski, but Josey Wales remains the most badass Clint Eastwood role of all time.

John Wayne.  In Everything John Wayne Has Ever Done.  How badass was John Wayne?  Well, the most badass actor of all time, in just about every role he played.  I was trying to pick just one of his roles.  Rooster Cogburn in True Grit?  The Shootist, Rio Bravo, Stagecoach, McClintock, Red River.  The list is endless.  In the end, I will take him as the title character in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, simply because Lee Marvin was terrifically badass in that movie.  And he paled in comparison to the Duke.

Porter in Payback.  Although I do love Lee Marvin’s performance in Point Blank, which was basically (OK, entirely) the same movie, the look on Mel Gibson’s face – complete apathy and calm – right before he yanks out that drug delivery kid’s nose ring seals the deal.  Porter is marginally more badass than Walker.  Marginally.

Mark Lee in A Better Tomorrow.  Chow Yun-Fat gets high marks for being consistently badass.  And many might consider him to be even more badass in Hard Boiled or The Killer.  But the scenes he has in this movie are superior to either of those movies in terms of sheer badass persona, and he created the trenchcoat and sunglasses badass action hero that populated Hong Kong movies for years afterward.  One of John Woo’s best.

Jet Li in Hero.  Well, he plays a character who, like Eastwood before him in those Spaghetti westerns, is “nameless”.  So I had to say it was Jet Li.  And he has created some other, truly badass characters in his time.  But in this one, he tops them all.  What makes Li so vcvery badass in just about any movie is the fact that he has the face of a nine-year-old boy.  He shouldn’t be dangerous.  He shouldn’t be able to kill you six tmies before you hit the ground.  But he can.  And that’s as badass as it gets.

Casey Ryback in Under Siege.  I had to get Seagal in here at least once.  The king of all that is badass, he has managed to find mostly movies that are laughably bad, surrounded by badassery that becomes laughable as well.  Under Siege narrowly beats out Out For Justice here, because in Under Siege he does not hold his gun like a sissy, and he does not run.  And any movie in which he runs, he looks like a sissy.  Also, he has his best badass foil of any movie ever, Tommy Lee Jones.

And then, to round out my Top Ten, I will include a couple from that MTV list.  Ellen Ripley, Sarah Connor (in Terminator 2), John Rambo in First Blood, and I would expand that Wild Bunch bit to include the entire Wild Bunch, not just William Holden.  Honourable mention to Alec Guiness and William Holden in Bridge on the River Kwai.

“Group 14 is locked, loaded” 

The second season of DEA debuts on Spike TV Tuesday, February 10th.  It will be a new year, and a new city (now that they’ve done Detroit, they are moving on).  But try as I might, I was all over Spike’s website, and I can’t tell at all what city it is going to be.  I guess they are keeping that a big secret until they unveil their new show tonight.  At the same time, the first season, DEA:  Detroit, is coming out on DVD from Paramount Home Entertainment. 

The first season sees a team of DEA (Drug Enforcement Agency) officers trying to take down dealers and grow-ops and crack houses on the mean streets of Detroit.  The cover of the DVD box says “you think you know what the letters DEA mean.  You don’t.”  Or something like that.  I no longer have the box in front of me because I’m typing this up at work.  I do remember, however, watching the series trying to figure out howmy perception, that “DEA” stood for “Drug Enforcement Agency” would be somehow changed by this program.  I am still waiting.  I still think that’s what those letters mean.

It really is a pretty cool world to observe though, that of the DEA agents who take down dealers, bust down doors, flip informants, and pile out of their team van like they’re the A-Team.  Because this is a Spike TV show, a lot of emphasis is placed on the danger in the job.  Every situation, according to the narrator, is “potentially deadly”.  Of course, this is likely true – every situation could well end in a gunfight or a car chase or something bad.  But after the fiftieth time hearing “potentially deadly”, I was pretty sure that no one would die.

The narrator treats this show like it’s Cops on steroids – only the most dangerous criminals, only the most Potentially Deadly Busts, Locked And Loaded, Guns At The Ready, and so forth.  Which is fine, but tiresome.  And really, there is more action on Cops, although that action usually involves shirtless wife-beaters, and is generally far less interesting.

In Season One, Detroit, you get to see all the behind-the scenes stuff.  Talks with confidential informants.  Drug dens full of HIV-positive needles.  Taped phone conversations, car chases that last three seconds before being abandoned, and all the black humour and stuff that I would assume goes on behind the scenes at the drug task force.  (I must say though, I’m not sure how concealed the identities really are of the people whose faces get blurred.  That worries me a little.)

I like the show, I think it’s interesting, and for the time being the episodes are all available, in their entirety, free at http://www.spike.com/show/26319  It’s a good way to see if you would like the show, and since those episodes will likely not be up forever, the series is now available on DVD should you want to check it out further.