Year:  1984
Genre:  Blu-Ray, Romance, Drama
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Kevin Bacon, Lori Singer, John Lithgow, Chris Penn, Dianne Wiest Notable bit parts:  Sarah Jessica Parker
Director:  Herbert Ross
Run time:  107 minutes
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

     Sometimes, a movie comes along that defines a generation.  And sometimes, that movie is later relegated to the dustbin of history, because that generation wasn’t really worth reflecting.  And sometimes, the Blu-Ray box of a movie SAYS that it was one of these generation-defining movies, and I stop and think, no.  That is just not true.  At least, I hope it isn’t true.

     Such is the case with the Blu-Ray issue of Footloose, out September 27^th from Paramount Home Entertainment.  Really?  This movie defined a generation?  A generation, I suppose, where movies were painful and silly, featured long dance montages that drag out that pain, and women had big hair and irritating personalities.  That’s not a generation I want to remember. 

     On the other hand, it might be a movie that reflects a generation where Kevin Bacon was really young, where Chris Penn was thin and still alive, and Sarah Jessica Parker was a secondary character actress, and John Lithgow was the bad guy minister, and Lori Singer was super hot and slutty despite being awful.  Now THAT’s the kind of generation I like.

     There is a Footloose remake coming to big screens in a couple of weeks, which I guess prompted this Blu-Ray release.  Once again, it’s going to be about a small town somewhere in the U.S. where rock and roll and dancing have been outlawed.  I’m pretty sure it won’t define OUR generation any more than it defined 1984.  I’m not even sure Footloose would have defined a generation in 1950.

     My wife loves movies from the 80s, since she is of that generation.  She watches Grease and Dirty Dancing every time they are on TV, even though we already own both movies on VHS and DVD and Blu-Ray and in box sets and special editions and so forth.  She is clearly the target audience for Footloose, which is also about dancing and rebellious kids from out of town.  But she HATES Footloose.  Even with a terrific transfer onto Blu-Ray.  I can’t say that I disagree with her.

Years:  1980, 1981, 1982, 1984, 1985, 1986, 1988, 1989
Genre:  Horror, Slasher, Garbage
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Kevin Bacon, Betsy Palmer, Cory Feldman, Crispin Glover, Kane Hodder
Eye candy:  All kinds of dumb young naked (mostly horny) chicks with knives in them
Directors:  Sean S. Cunningham, Steve Miner, Danny Steinmann, Tom McLoughlin, John Carl Buechler, Rob Hedden
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

     On October 4th, the horror box sets start appearing, beginning with the Friday the 13th Limited Edition Gift Set from Paramount Home Entertainment.  This 8-disc box contains the first eight Friday movies (as some purists would have it – the REAL 8 Friday movies).  If you want the ninth and tenth also (Freddy Vs. Jason and the bonkers slasher-in-space opus Jason X), they are available together on a bargain double feature DVD from Alliance Films the same day.

     The first eight movies are, of course, Friday the 13th, Friday the 13th Part II, Friday the 13th Part III (in 3-D – the box set comes with the glasses), Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter, Friday the 13th: A New Beginning, Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives, Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood, and Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan.  For individual reviews, click the above links.

     The thing is, all of these movies are genuinely terrible.  The Friday series has been one of the most consistently awful film series in history, and has become famous…why I don’t really know.  Maybe just volume.  But the fact remains that it HAS become famous, a weird cult thing for people with bad taste and those with a keenly developed sense of irony.  And for those people this box set is just about perfect.

     It comes with a mask – just in time for Hallowe’en!  The mask is decently made, but way too small for the average adult.  And of course the average Friday the 13th geek IS an adult.  In my house, the only person who could fit into the mask was my 11-year-old stepson, who is too young to watch Friday the 13th movies anyway.

     That being said, what makes this box set work is the geeky minutiae in the booklet.  Each movie has stats – number of kills (21 in Jason Takes Manhattan!) and weapons used.  How many sex scenes and stalled cars in Jason Lives?  Which is the one movie where a character other than Jason exhibits supernatural powers (telekenisis!)? 

     THIS is the sort of thing Friday buffs love.  I think most of the recognize the awfulness of the films, so they must care more about body count and spear-gun-vs.-hatchet than they do about really enjoying the films.  And that’s exactly what this box set does.  It caters to the audience for the movies, and I think that audience will be thrilled.

Years:  1984, 1985
Country:  United States
Genre:  TV series, Soap opera, Drama
Language:  English
Starring:  Joan Collins, John Forsythe, Linda Evans, John James, Diahann Carroll, Billy Dee Williams, Heather Locklear, Jack Coleman, Pamela Bellwood, Gordon Thomson, Michael Nader, Catherine Oxenberg 
Guest starring:  Pamela Sue Martin, Kevin McCarthy, Billy Campbell, John Saxon, Richard Hatch, Rock Hudson, Matthew Lawrence, Ali MacGraw, Emma Samms, Kerry Armstrong, Maxwell Caulfield
Creators:  Richard Shapiro, Esther Shapiro
Producer:  Aaron Spelling
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

     First, the good news – legendary actress Ali McGraw (The Getaway, Love Story) joins the cast of Dynasty toward the end of Season Five.  Also, screen icon Rock Hudson makes his final on-screen appearance on Dynasty before his AIDS-related death in 1985.  Joan Collins remains vindictive sneaky and malicious, and Heather Locklear remains hot, as do several other cast members. 

     But the good news continues!  Season Five of Dynasty remains split into two volumes, for some reason.  But both volume 1 and volume 2 of Season Five are being released at the same time – July 5th, from Paramount Home Entertainment.  So there’s none of that annoying “waiting” for the next volume!  How exciting for Dynasty lovers! 

     And finally, the last of the good news – Season Five, packaged together in the two volumes now – ends with the most famous episode in Dynasty history, and likely the most famous episode in soap opera history this side of the “Who Shot JR” episode of Dallas.  That of course is the big finale, the royal wedding marred by the Moldavian Massacre, where terrorists show up and murder everyone.

     Now the bad news – not everyone is actually going to die in the Moldavian massacre, and there WILL be a sixth season of Dynasty.  I’m sorry.  Also, to find out who lives and who dies, we will now have to wait until that sixth season is released.  So although we get these two volumes together, we’re going to have to wait for the resolution to the real cliffhanger at the end.

     The real bad news, though, is that this is still a silly soap opera, and despite the presence of Locklear, Hudson, McGraw and other big-ish names, it’s still weak acting and silly premises and other nonsense.  The season starts off with a car accident, and Fallon (Pamela Sue Martin)disappears.  Alexis (Joan Collins) is on trial for murder, and fighting-reconciling every minute with her sons and family.  And this drama takes up much of Volume One, while the Moldavians and the upcoming Royal Wedding take up most of volume two. 

     It’s all obnoxious and silly and soap-opera-ish.  Which is fine for the big fans of the soap operas – both of you, go out there and grab this one!  For the rest of us, the real bad news is this – it’s still Dynasty.

Year:  1984
Genre:  Action, Kung-fu
Country:  Hong Kong
Language:  Mandarin w/ English subtitles, English dubbing
Starring:  Gordon Liu, Chang Chan-Peng, Chia Yung, Ching Chu, Alexander Fu-Sheng, Lily Li, Kara Hui, Ching-Ching Yeung, Lung Wei Wang
Directors:  Lau Kar-Leung, Liu Chia-Leung
Run time:  97 minutes
DVD distributor:  Alliance Films

     There’s a really interesting story behind 8 Diagram Pole Fighter, out October 26th from Alliance Films in their ongoing Shaw Brothers re-release series.  The off-camera story explains a lot of the movie, and I needed to do some research to find out why the movie was structured so strangely.  This movie supposedly has a kernel of truth to it, in that it is based on the historic massacre of the Yang family by the double-crossing Mongol general Pan Mai.

     Only two male members of the Yang clan survive the ambush, both of whom are referred to only by their numbers.  Fifth Brother (Gordon Liu of the Kill Bill movies) and Sixth Brother (Alexander Fu-Sheng) return from the massacre demented, out of their minds crazy.  Fifth Brother comes home, attacks his family in his delerium, then takes off.  Then Sixth Brother returns as well, attacking his family in his delerium, but he stays.  Then two simultaneous stories are told.

     Sixth Brother remains at home, insane, while his sisters and mother try to come to grips with the tragedy.  Fifth Brother goes off wandering, eventually bursting into a monastery and demanding to become a monk.  The monks will not accept him, because the hatred and violence in his heart are clearly at odds with their Buddhist pacifism.  But he stays anyway, shaving his own head and forcing his way into the monks’ training sessions, even though he is unwelcome.

     This should really be the story of Fifth Brother, his transformation and his quest for revenge.  But here’s where the outside story comes in.  Alexander Fu-Sheng, who played Sixth Brother, actually died during the production of the movie.  So the focus had to be shifted from Sixth Brother to Fifth Brother, and Gordon Liu did all the things Fu-Sheng was supposed to do.  The movie is pretty seamless, given that huge development in the middle, and although it creates a continuity issue or two, that’s nothing new in a mid-80s kung-fu flick.

     The best thing about these films is usually the cheesiness.  And that is abundant here, also.  I get the pole fighter bit.  (Other names for this movie include Invincible Pole Fighter, Magnificent Pole Fighters, Cudgel Fighter and of course many more.)  But the 8 diagrams?  No mention of anything in the movie that has to do with eight diagrams and pole fighting.  The English dubbing and the English subtitles don’t match up in any way, so if you watch with both on at the same time, it’s like you’re watching two entirely different movies.  Which, in a sense, you are.

     But despite all the glorious cheese, it’s the fights themselves that set 8 Diagram Pole Fighter apart from many other Shaw Brothers classics from the same era.  Liu and Fu-Sheng are over-the-top and silly when they’re acting crazy, but Liu more than makes up for it with his pole fighting skills and his vengeful demeanor.  The fight I included in the video at the beginning of this review is a great one, but the one that opens the movie, where the Yang family is massacred, is even better.  This one is a real classic.

Years:  1974, 1978, 1979, 1980, 1984, 1986, 1987, 1988, 1989, 1990
Genre:  Cartoon, Political
Country:  East Germany
Language:  No dialogue, German credits not translated
Directors:  Otto Sacher, Klaus Georgi, Sieglinde Hamacher, Marion Rasche, Hans Moser, Thomas Rosie, Lutz Stutzner, Peter Mibach
Run time:  57 minutes
Special Features:  Behind The Scenes at the DEFA Animation Studio, film essays, biographies and filmographies
DVD distributor:  First Run Features

     The description of Red Cartoons indicates that it’s a collection of 16 short animated films from the former East Germany, produced by the country’s DEFA Sutiod For Animation Films between 1974 and 1990.  These films are apparently full of social and political satire that would never have been allowed in live action films by the oppressive regime at the time.  That being said, I can find that satire in only a few of the shorts.

     This had me feeling like an idiot for a long time – how come I can’t see the subversive nature of these cartoons?  Am I so poorly versed in the customs and conventions of the former East Germany and, indeed, the world that I’m the only one who can’t see this stuff?  I GOT the cartoons, but not the satire.  What’s wrong with me?

     The first cartoon is called Drum Beat.  And, admittedly, I didn’t understand that one at all, even as just a cartoon.  This guy has a drum, see.  His wife drops it on his head, but that’s cool he has more.  Then he walks around with it and ends up in a drum band.  That’s about it.  I don’t get it.

     The second film, from the same director (Otto Sacher) is called Stars And Flowers.  At least I got that one.  A guy who lives in the stars longs to touch the flower on the ground, and a guy who lives on the ground longs to touch the stars in the sky.  Loneliness sees a shocking abuse of emergency services as an old man sets fire to his Christmas tree so he will have the companionship of the fire department and the ambulance attendants.

     Variants sees two neighbours in a dispute over what appear to be raked leaves, and although a trip to court works out their differences, it doesn’t fix their animosity toward each other.  The Rescue is a tale of greed and selfishness which involves a remarkable number of people who manage to fall down a series of crevasses.  Seven Rights of a Viewer explores seven different ways an audience can respond to a performer, from the great (showering him with flowers) to the terrible (getting up and leaving).

     Hello sees an unfortunate man, plagued by noises everywhere he goes and trying to escape.  Deserted islands offer him no solitude, nor do forests or mountains or anything else.  Eventually he meets Satan in the desert.  I think I get that one.  Consequence is a satire I get.  After applauding vigorously for a film that details how driving in cars pollutes and destroys nthe environment, the audience gets into their cars and drives home.

     The Solution involves a bunch of birds sitting on a wire.  One little bird at the end is a non-conformist, which of course means he sits the opposite direction as the rest of the flock.  And of course his little friends rat him out.  And he gets roundly punished.  Until eventually everyone else comes around, so to speak.  Belly And Soul is about people feigning interest in the performance of a pianist while secretly trying to get to the massive spread of food that has been laid out following the concert.

     The Breakdown sees a man desperately asking for help at the side of the road, as his car has apparently fallen in a hole.  Finally, th smallest car stops to help and pull him out, with surprising results.  I get the satire in this one too.  That makes two.  The Full Circle is the story of a plant that produces gas masks, polluting so much in the process that the people in the town are forced to wear…gas masks, of course.  And Mr. Daff Is Shooting A Film makes a joke out of a poor sap of a bus driver.

     The Monument sees the unveiling of a massive statue to great applause, then people forget about it pretty much right away.  Then the statue gets a phone call.  And ends up alone in what appears to be a desert, in an Ozymandias sort of finale.  I don’t really get it.  Sunday seems to depict a church, where everyone is going to look at a plant, and tickets are being ripped at the door and everyone, including the priest, is getting patted down.  I guess to make sure they are not bringing in their own water bottles or snacks.

     The final short on the set is Island Joke, wherein three shipwrecked and frozen men have a chance to warm themselves up with a blanket tossed to them by a helpful mermaid.  Not understanding the gesture, they do what they figure is most obvious with the blanket – they build themselves a flag and salute it.  Here, again, is a satire I can understand.

     About four of the sixteen shorts are obvious satires, at least to me.  Maybe six.  I would have really liked to see a special feature that explained a little more.  There are several special features on the disc, but one is a wordless slide show that just shows people working at DEFA, and the others are essays about the East German film industry and animation.  Which is all great stuff – very informative and interesting, but I would have liked to see something that dealt more specifically with the sixteen films that were chosen to be featured on this disc.

     Even though I didn’t understand a few of the films, I liked them.  I thought they were all charming, and this is a disc I can see myself watching over and over.  But the fact that I liked them all so much was the reason I wanted to know more about them.  Thanks to the special features I know a little more about the directors and a lot more about the East German industry, but no more about the films themselves.  Red Cartoons comes out January 19th from First Run Features.

“I’m a hooker!  A hooker!”

Years:  1983-1984
Country:  United States
Starring:  James Brolin, Bette Davis, Anne Baxter, Connie Sellecca, Nathan Cook
Guest starring:  Roy Thinnes, Vera Miles, Robert Stack, Martin Landau, Tori Spelling, Scott Baio, Robert Vaughn, Heather Locklear, Dick Van Patten, Engelbert Humperdinck, Mel Torme, Shelley Winters, Markie Post, Lynn Redgrave, Connie Stevens, Morgan Fairchild, Adrienne Barbeau, Lew Ayres, Eva Gabor, and dozens and dozens of others
Created by:  Aaron Spelling
Run time:  19 hours, 29 minutes
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

     In 1950, Bette Davis and Anne Baxter were two of the greatest actresses in the world.  Starring together in All About Eve, one of the greatest motion pictures of all time, Davis was already the greatest living actress, and Baxter was just becoming a superstar in her own right, winning an Oscar for her role as the scheming, backstabbing, ambitious Eve and going on to star in The Ten Commandments.  A magnificent movie.  Everyone in the world needs to see All About Eve at least once.  I am mentioning it in my review of Hotel because no one, ever, needs to see Hotel.  This TV series, created by Aaron Spelling on the heels of Dynasty and a bunch of other cheesy programs.

     However, Hotel was actually more similar to The Love Boat than it was to any of Spelling’s other productions.  The laughable, over-the-top soap opera silliness is pure Spelling, and the characters of James Brolin and Connie Sellecca could have appeared in 90210 or Dynasty without missing a beat.  However, the format seems to owe a heck of a lot to The Love Boat.  Every episode featured a number of guest stars who show up to have affairs, or to die mysteriously, or just to provide some comic relief through annoying behaviour.  Then they are gone the next show, just like the guests on The Love Boat.  Which was actually a better show.

     At least with Hotel, the main cast of characters has adventures and romances and other soap-opera business that lasts from episode to episode, so there is somewhat of a connection from one to the next.  But really, Brolin is playing Captain Stubing with a beard, Connie Sellecca is his Julie McCoy, and Nathan Cook is his Isaac the Bartender.  Even the theme music, which seems to start at the beginning of every episode and end just before the final credits, is remarkably reminiscent of that earlier, cheesier show.  However, The Love Boat knew it was cheesy.  Hotel tries to pretend it isn’t.  That’s why it’s worse.

     Well, it’s also worse because it stars Bette Davis and Anne Baxter.  To see these two cinematic legends, so late in their careers, be reduced to taking a role in such a preposterous inane melodrama is truly sad.  I don’t blame either of them – I am assuming they were just not offered any real roles.  At least Katherine Hepburn got On Golden Pond.  Bette Davis and Anne Baxter got kicked in the leg.  The irony here though, is this: 

     In their magnificent starring vehicle All About Eve, in 1950, Baxter played Eve, a scheming and duplicitous aspiring actress who wanted nothing more than to befriend Davis.  Davis was the star of all stars on the stage, and taking her down would mean the Baxter would be able to assume her pedestal and become the star herself.  In Hotel, Bette Davis appears as the hotel owner in the pilot episode, but due to poor health she had to step down and was replaced by…Anne Baxter.  That may have been the idea, but I think even Eve Harrington would have been pretty pissed off at a role like this.

     Hotel, Season One comes out on DVD July 21st from Paramount Home Entertainment.

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     Paramount Home Entertainment released a magnificent Blu-Ray box set on May 12th, featuring the first six Star Trek movies in stunning high-definition, with an extra disc featuring an interview that will, I’m sure, thrill nerds the world over.  It’s a 70-minute piece called The Captain’s Chair, where five huge stars have been brought together to reminisce about Star Trek – Whoopi Goldberg, William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, Patrick Stewart and Jonathan Frakes talk, for 70 minutes, about Star Trek.  I found this to be terribly boring.  But I am not (even though I just watched SIX Blu-Ray movies), a Trekkie.  Or, Trekker.  Whatever.  I suspect that those who are Trekkies(ers) would love this exclusive content.

     There are extensive special features, including commentaries and interviews and behind the scenes stuff and nerd stuff on every single disc.  However, it’s the movies that everyone cares about, so I will review them one at a time.  Here goes:

Star Trek The Motion Picture (****4/10): 

“It’s life, Captain.  But not life as we know it.” 

     It’s hard to believe that Star Trek lasted so long given the silliness of the original series and the poor quality of this first movie.  This is, really, a bad movie.  It’s all special effects, which are great in Blu-Ray, but totally pointless.  The movie goes on way too long, trying to cram one special effect on top of another for the entire two-hour-plus running time.  The movie opens with some special effects, then other special effects, then Spock talking to his Vulcan elders.  They are about to present him with a medallion, which symbolizes his attainment of Total Logic.  I thought right away – if he has truly attained Total Logic, banishing all emotion from his psyche, would he really need a medallion to symbolize that?  That isn’t terribly logical, is it?

     From there the movie gets sillier and sillier.  Kirk is an admiral now, and he is sour at his desk job.  This will continue over the course of several movies.  A mysterious cloud is approaching the Earth, and the crew of the Enterprise go inside to discover an entity that has achieved self-awareness and seeks its creator.  And there are more special effects.  Which seems to take all the charm out of the movie, and all the interesting features of the characters, and turns it all flat.  Considering this is a Star Trek movie and it’s in outer space and it involves Kirk and the Enterprise and so forth, Star Trek The Motion Picture is sadly devoid, utterly, of wonder and charm.

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (*********9/10): 

“Who am I hiding from?”
“From yourself!” 

     Thank God the series continued, for this terrifically campy and silly film!  And make no mistake, this movie is CAMPY.  And SILLY.  It is a battle of two titanic overactors – who will suffer an aneurysm from overacting first?  Kirk or Khan?  Shatner or Ricardo Montalban?  Khan rages, shakes his fist, and quotes Moby Dick at Shatner.  Shatner emotes, sighs, screams and quotes A Tale Of Two Cities at Khan.  Shatner makes a dramatic entrance, bathed in blue light as his silhouette emerges in a doorway.  Montalban, not to be upstaged, emerges from a sandstorm and takes off the hood of his robe in a truly dramatic moment of revelation – It’s KHAN!

     It certainly helps to have seen the Khan episode of the original series, but it isn’t necessary.  That would explain fully why Khan is so obsessed with killing Kirk.  However, reading Moby Dick could prepare you for this as well.  Khan is basically Captain Ahab, so obsessed with his White Whale, Kirk, that he is willing to die in order to take down his nemesis.  Kirk and Spock are meanwhile living out A Tale Of Two Cities, quotes from the book and everything – “it is a far, far better thing that I do…”

     We learn that some scientists have managed to create life from nothing, in a project called Genesis.  We also learn that Kirk has a son.  Which appears to be forgotten rather quickly, but I’m sure it means something in a later movie.  What makes Wrath of Khan work the best of all the Star Trek pictures is that Ricardo Montalban is the only appropriate foil for William Shatner.  Only a massive overactor can truly be a nemesis to another massive overactor.  Given all the silliness, however, Wrath of Khan has a surprisingly moving conclusion as Khan brings destruction upon himself, Kirk embraces his son, Spock makes the ultimate sacrifice, and they all quote Moby Dick and A Tale of Two Cities.

Star Trek III: The Search For Spock (********8/10): 

“I have been, and always shall be, your friend.” 

     This movie, amazingly, is almost as good as Wrath Of Khan, although it is far less cheesy than its predecessor.  Gone is Ricardo Montalban, despite his attempt to stab at Kirk from Hell’s Heart, and so forth.  Instead, we get Christopher Lloyd in the role of nemesis, Bad Guy and all around irritant to the crew of the Enterprise.  He is a Klingon warlord who is after that Genesis thing that was introduced in Khan.  He too is a massive overactor, but his overacting is just one marble short of being Doc from Back To the Future, and that is just distracting.  And too silly for an otherwise serious movie.

     The central story, however, is not that of Kirk Versus the Klingon.  It is, of course, the Search For Spock.  Spock can’t die, you see, and he has somehow begun to regenerate on the planet to which his body was fired at the end of the second film.  When the Enterprise crew beam down to that planet to rescue him (and go through the weird Vulcan ritual where his mind is put back into his body and so forth), the planet is growing at a crazy rate, and Spock with it.  This has the terrifically convenient effect of making sure that at the end of the movie, Spock can once again be played by Leonard Nimoy!  (Who also directed.)

     There are some solid scenes, and some solid camp as well.  Shatner, in mourning, basically puts on this cheesy and bizarre puppy-dog face.  He may as well be pouting and whining and licking his hands.  The Klingon Bird Of Prey spaceship looks amazing in HD.  Christopher Lloyd’s rat-dog-gremlin pet thing looks idiotic in HD.  There is a solid scene breaking Bones out of the brig as the crew goes renegade to bring Spock home.  And of course, the ship always takes off just as the planet explodes, and Kirk is beamed up just as the fire gets to him, and everything happens Just In The Nick Of Time.

     In Search For Spock, Kirk’s son dies.  Which is, apparently, why he was introduced in the second film.  It gives Shatner a chance to do some pretty funny emotional over-acting, but it appears to be forgotten rather quickly.  I mean, it was his son.  Not SPOCK!  And now everything is cool and they can take Spock back to Vulcan to get his mind right.  The costumes there are cool.  They look good in HD.  The next movie involves whales.

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (******6/10): 

“A joke is a story with a humourous climax.”

     Explaining the plot of The Voyage Home could backfire.  This could easily be interpreted as a joke.  They need to go back in time to get humpback whales and bring them to the future so they can communicate with this probe which is somehow shutting down all electronic devices within a several thousand mile radius.  So they go to Sea World in 1989…seriously.  This is the plot of the movie.  Remember when Jaws went to Sea World in the third one?  Remember how cheesy and stupid that was?

     Amazingly though, The Voyage Home is not, really, that stupid.  It’s certainly silly.  After all, it’s the 80s, and there HAS to be a punk kid making too much noise on the bus who gets his comeuppance, and there has to be sleazy accountant types, and there has to be a hot blonde woman with big hair who cares deeply about animals…basically, Kirk and Spock and Bones and the rest of them appear to have been beamed back right into the middle of Crocodile Dundee.  Then there is a Culture Clash!  And hilarity ensues!  Leonard Nimoy directed this one too, and he deserves credit for not letting it become…well…Crocodile Dundee.  Well, not totally.

     The fun parts of this movie involve Spock, mostly, who is still not back to his old self.  He is now a total straight-arrow Vulcan, using only logic and unable to carry on a regular conversation with anyone.  Bones wants to fight with him and argue with him like old times, but every time he tries, he hits a brick wall.  There are some moments of real humour there.  Shatner is as understated as he can possibly be, most of the time, mostly because Spock is the star of the film this time around.  And, of course, they are all going to save the world.  With whales.

     “Captain!  There be whales here!”

     They get the whales, save the right two, of COURSE they manage to get to them just before a whaling vessel – whaling vessels being everwhere in the ocean – and we learn some good, helpful environmental lessons along the way.  There is a real ambitious desire to make an environmental point in this movie, and I appreciate that.  But the whales ARE pretty silly.  And then, just to hammer home the point that this is THE 80s, the final credits roll to a synth tune, over still photos from the movie we’ve just seen, like the end of some dreadful 80s TV show.  It’s like Star Trek by way of Magnum P.I.

Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (****4/10):

“All I ask is a tall ship, and a star to steer her by.”

     It appears that by the time Star Trek V came around, Gene Roddenberry and his entourage had completely run out of ideas.  I mean, even the title – the Final Frontier?  Where have I heard that before?  Leonard Nimoy left the director’s chair for this one, and left William Shatner in charge.  What we get is a staggeringly strange mishmash of stupidity and idiocy, and not necessarily in that order.  We DO get to see Spock put that Vulcan neck knock-out thing on a horse.  Which is something neat.  A horse.

     The movie opens, as did Mission: Impossible II (both dreadful movies) with William Shatner free-climbing a rock face in Yosemite National Park.  This shows how Extreme he is.  You see, he is camping with Spock and Bones.  This goes on for a while.  The camping.  And the brotherly love and the joshing and the cameraderie and the campfire and so forth.  When they are finally called back to emergency duty, they are strangely awkward with each other, like they had a gay threesome in the woods and must never speak of it again.

     They are called back into action because Spock’s half-brother, a cult leaderish type guy, has escaped from somewhere and taken over the Enterprise.  So Kirk and Spock and Bones run around the ship, trying to evade the rest of their crewmates who are under the spell of the cult leader, until they finally cross a barrier that no one has crossed in history.  (Judging by their reaction to crossing this barrier, they are timidly going where no man has gone before.)  On the other side, they meet God, or some approximation of him who appears to be inspired by the Wizard of Oz, and Spock fires a laser gun from a Klingon ship, and everyone goes home happy.

Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (*******7/10):

“The Federation is no more than a homo-sapiens only club.”

     Kim Catrall joins the cast of Star Trek for a brief one-movie stint as a sharp-eyebrowed, pointy-eared character who looks like Spock.  This leads me to believe that she may be a Vulcan.  Spock is a Vulcan.  She looks like Spock.  She is a Vulcan.  That is logic, and Spock would be proud, I think.  By this point, the rest of the crew is pretty old.  Shatner and Nimoy are long in the tooth, James Doohan is large in the paunch, and Bones and Chekov and Sulu are pretty tired.  Good thing Catrall and Christian Slater are there to infuse the series with a little bit of youthful exuberance.  Not that they are any good.

     You know who is good though?  Christopher Plummer.  He is the best Star Trek villain since Khan, and like Mr. Montalban, his character has a tendancy to quote from great literature – in this case, Shakespeare.  Plummer plays General Chang, a Klingon general who plans to get rid of Kirk once and for all.  The setting is a series of Klingon-Federation peace talks, and Kirk represents the bigotry of the human beings against the Klingon race.  This is not just the one-sided view of Klingons.  Kirk is genuinely prejudiced against Klingons, because they killed his son.  (I know, I know, he barely seemed upset about it at the time, but his is a slow-burning anger.)

     Some Klingons are killed while in the care of the crew of the Enterprise, and of course Kirk is blamed.  Of course, he also didn’t do it.  But he gets arrested anyway, and sent to an underground labour camp in the Dilithium mines for Klingon prisoners.  While there, he has sex with some space-hottie who then shape-shifts into – an exact replica of Kirk!  In some kind of bizarre plot  to murder Kirk while he’s “trying to escape”.  This is the second-most remarkable Shatner-vs-Shatner scene since the finale of White Comanche back in 1967.

     In the end, the success of Star Trek VI rests mostly on the shoulders of Plummer, Nimoy and Catrall, who do most of the interesting things in the film.  Bones, Chekhov, Uhura and Scotty are all pretty obnoxious here.  As Shatner has toned down his overacting, the rest of the cast appears to be determined to compensate.  They are virtually insufferable.  But the movie works anyway, with it’s racial overtones, sci-fi atmosphere, courtroom drama, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome scene and prison escape.  This movie has everything!  And most of it works.  And so concludes the Star Trek Original Motion Picture Collection, on Blu-Ray now.

     “Second star to the left.  And straight on ’til morning.”

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      Truly, I gave the Star Trek Original Motion Picture Collection a better rating simply because I’m a completist.  I like the fact that there are a ton of extra special features on each disc, and the full series comes with an extra disc for Star Trek fanatics where William Shatner talks to Patrick Stewart for an hour and a half.  None of this is particularly useful to the non-fanatic, but it’s essential to a good Blu-Ray release.  And really, I like the three movies contained in the Trilogy.  Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan is deservedly a classic movie, Star Trek III: The Search For Spock is a decent follow-up, and Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home closes out the little trilogy nicely.

     But I liked Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country quite a lot.  In fact, I liked it better than Star Trek IV.  And I always like to have a complete collection.  That being said, Star Trek The Motion Picture was awful, and the William Shatner-directed Star Trex V: The Final Frontier was even worse.  So you’re not missing out on much if you go with the trilogy instead.  The special features on all three discs are the exact same that you get on those same three movies were you to get them in the full set.  Just know that there are options out there!

   I want to state, before I get into this review, that Dynasty is, in fact, a terrible show.  It is one of those soap operas that could be used as the shining, overblown poster child for all other soaps that came before or since.  It was a prime-time soap, which means that it was considerably better than one of those daytime soaps that film thirty episodes in a day for nine dollars.  But it isn’t as good as Melrose Place, Beverly Hills 90210, Dallas or even Street Legal when it comes to prime-time soapery.  There is just so much predictable pap – murder plots and suicides and illegitimate children and nefarious business dealings and nepotism and double crosses and on and on and on it goes.  And this is just the first two episodes.

   It’s too much.  Let me explain.  You see, as Season Four Volume One of Dynasty begins, Alexis and Krystle are caught in a fire in a cabin…a fire someone deliberately set!  Alexis (Joan Collins), the first wife of Blake Carrington (John Forsythe), and Krystle (Linda Evans), Blake’s current wife, are rivals who hate each other.  But someone tried to kill them both – or did they?  We get thrown several suspects in the first episode of Season Four (out April 7th from Paramount Home Entertainment).  One of them is Alexis herself – what if she set the fire to dispose of Krystle and then got trapped?  What about Mark, who showed up to save both women?

   Then Alexis accuses her ex-husband Blake, and then her son…Adam?  I think?  There are lots of sons, I can’t remember which is which…at any rate, this gives us about eleven suspects, before the real attempted-killer confesses and takes his own life, resolving everything rather quickly.  Even though none of the evidence makes sense when it comes to that guy being the real arsonist.  But whatever, he did it, now he committed suicide, now we move on.  In the meantime, Kirby is torn up worrying about her baby – you see, she is married to Jeff, but the baby is actually another man’s child, and how does she tell Jeff, or should she, and maybe it would be easier to fall off a horse and miscarry.  If only it were that easy.

   Then there is the tension at the Carrington business office as Alexis, from her hospital bed, pits her children against each other, and some of them go behind the backs of others to make deals, and so on and so forth.  It is then revealed that Alexis drove Joseph to attempt to murder her with the fire because she was threatening to reveal to Kirby the true nature of her mother, and then someone tried to muder Alexis in the hospital, but that may have just been a bad dream, or maybe it was a second murderer, because a lot of people want her dead, because she’s a horrible bitch, but Joseph had already taken his own life so it couldn’t be him….

   OK.  I suspect that very few people care about the rest of Season Four Volume One of Dynasty.  And those that DO care will likely not be swayed one way or another by a DVD set review by me.  Really, this review serves one function only, and that is letting Dynasty fans know that their soap is on DVD today.  And although I could write forty more plot points here, I have watched only the first three episodes of this DVD, because of time constraints.  This show is just awful.  Now I’m going to watch the final eleven episodes, because I just have to know what happened to Kirby’s baby, and whether Blake will finally accept his gay son, and whether another attempt will be made on the life of that freaky-looking old lady…the sad thing here is, I’m not even joking.  This show is dreadful.  And I’m addicted.

“You lost your manhood the day your child was conceived.”

   Melodrama!  Lunacy!  Murder and adultery and evil and mayhem!  If it sounds like I am describing a soap opera, well, I am.  Sidney Sheldon’s Master of the Game IS, in fact, a soap opera.  It may not be interminable like Days of Our Lives, which has, from what I understand, been following the same characters on the same story lines for forty-four years.  And I say that it isn’t interminable, simply because it does, in fact, end.  It takes an awfully long time to end.  It takes two discs and about seven hours, but after watching a bit the finish line seems farther and farther away.  It feels like eleven discs and seven weeks long.

   I say that Master of the Game is a soap opera because it is melodramatic.  And because it has a soap-opera-esque plot, involving bastard children, and paternity, and women who fight the men they love even though those men don’t love them and then in the middle of the fistfight the old feelings that lie dormant awaken in these men and they make out and have sex.  There is diamond mining, but it’s soap-opera easy diamond mining that doesn’t require a huge set and lots of money.  These diamonds, you see, just sit on the beach off the coast of Cape Town.  And the acting is of a soap-opera quality, which means that this series feels like it was written the day before the actors received the script and it was acted out immediately on a cheap-ass soundstage.

   Of course, none of this is actually the case.  The sets are good, the story was written (appropriately) by Sidney Sheldon in his novel Master of the Game, and (some) of the actors are above the caliber of those on soap operas.  Among those is Donald Pleasance, who shows up for Part One but ends up losing his daughter to a revenge-minded Ian Charleson, killing a bartender, and then blowing his own head off.  So Part Two has no Donald Pleasance, and suffers because of it.  Instead it has more Ian Charleson, playing Jamie MacGregor, a tycoon whose desire for revenge is eventually overcome by the wiles of his wife.  They have children, and then they die, and the children are growing up, and so Part Two ends.

   From there, Harry Hamlin and Dyan Cannon and David Birney are running the show, mostly Dyan Cannon.  She is one of those evil wealthy women who is willing to cheat, deceive, steal, and murder if it means her will is done.  She manipulates people, tricks people and does all kinds of mean crap over the course of the next four hours.  And they are four interminable hours.  Dyan Cannon was never much of an actress.  She’s at least pretty hot though.  I think this may well have been an interesting book, although I have never read any of the works of Sidney Sheldon.  But with a book I can put it down, go on to other things, and forget about it for a while.  It might take me seven weeks to read a book this size, but at least it would be on my terms.

   With the DVD, we don’t get that, though.  We get soap opera actors acting out a soap opera story hastily thrown together, with more emphasis placed on set design than on character development.  Shouldn’t a seven hour miniseries involve almost all character development?  This one seems to try, but has no idea how to go about doing it.  Master of the Game comes out March 24th from Paramount Home Entertainment.

Why indeed? There must be some hardcore Family Ties fans out there in the world. I assume they are 80s fanatics, the same folks who insist that vinyl ALWAYS sounds better than CD, who subscribe to the Game Show Network and play along with the 50,000 Dollar Pyramid, who crank We Built This City and Duran Duran at every party, and who still wear jean jackets with Motley Crue logos on the back. I’m certain these people exist, and I imagine they have followed the careers of Michael J. Fox and Alan Thicke for a good chunk of their natural adult lives. They may be the same people who purchase Three’s Company box sets and eagerly anticipate the next season of the Rockford Files on DVD. But I must admit, I am not one of them. My formative years occured some time after the 80s were over, and I feel good about having missed that decade for the most part. I feel I may have benefitted from being exposed to the likes of Guns ‘N Roses a little earlier, or perhaps watching Raging Bull when I was much younger. But I caught up on those few shining moments of the 80s in a few short weeks, and I feel I can now comfortably leave the decade completely in my wake.

Growing up IN the 80s, I was a sheltered child. Oh, I would occasionally be able to watch Hockey Night in Canada with my dad on a Saturday night, getting bedtime measurements like “ten more minutes or four more whistles, you pick”. Invariably I would choose to go to bed after four more whistles, because there was a chance that four whistles would take longer than ten minutes, and then I would win. Had I been a contestant on those 80s game shows, I would have been, every time, the guy who chose the “mystery box”. And I also relished the arguments that would arise. A goal, I would insist, did not count as a whistle, nor did a shattered pane of glass. Those were unforseen stoppages, and therefore could not be included in my expectations of play for the rest of the game, and as such I still have three whistles to go. My father would counter with the always-logical “go to bed”. I lost most of the arguments, but I felt I had made my position understood, and that as I trundled off to bed, he would at least feel bad sitting there, watching the rest of the hockey game, regretful that he had sent me to bed despite my victorious logical arguments.

But that was about all the TV I watched. I was allowed to watch Wonderstruck after school, a program which seemed delightful to me at the time simply because it was science-related and I was (and still am) somewhat of a science nerd. I was also allowed to watch Degrassi Junior High, but I quickly decided it was not worth my while, because each episode would be followed with a long, painful discussion with my mom concerning my opinions on the issues raised on that particular episode. “What do you think about abortion?” she would say. “Can’t I go to bed?” would be my reply. After a while I gave up on even watching the show. As the years progressed, I began to feel more and more as though I was getting away with something when I managed to be quiet all night and maybe, just maybe, mom didn’t see me there and I would catch an entire episode of one of her programs. Street Legal was big in my house at the time, my mom was a big fan. This was either because we only got three channels and she didn’t know anything better existed, or because at the time it was actually quality programming. When I now catch an episode of my favourite TV program from that time, MacGyver, I am struck with how foolish I must have been to think that was good. It was horrible TV, much like the other shows I remember – Seeing Things, Muder She Wrote, Melrose Place and 90210.

However, Street Legal DID leave a lasting impression, if only because for several years thereafter, Cynthia Dale (or, Olivia Novak, I suppose) and women like her were the main objects of my youthful desire. I was twenty-six before I finally figured out how to score one of those women, (it turns out the best way is just showing up) but boy did I practice in the meantime. What I mean by all this is that I had seen maybe one episode, ever, of Family Ties. So when Paramount offered to send me Season Three to review, in time for it’s February 12th release, I thought perhaps it was time to catch up on this forgotten classic, one that I missed the first time around. I have managed to catch re-runs of such gems as Three’s Company and The Cosby Show and Happy Days on TV, so I know what I’m missing there, but Family Ties seems to be largely ignored in the world of televised re-runs from the 80s sit-com vault.

In watching the show, I could understand that Michael J. Fox was destined for something greater. He was a fine actor on TV, and went on to become a major film star, in vehicles such as Teen Wolf, and Teen Wolf II. I’m not sure he ever did anything else. Oh, right. Some trilogy or other. Also in the 80s. But, like the rest of the cast, and the show itself, Fox was destined to be stuck in the 80s. Unable to escape the quagmire that dragged down so many of his contemporaries…Tina Yothers, Kirk Cameron, Alan Thicke, Suzanne Somers et al. OK. I’m being told that Family Ties IS in the re-run world, along with Laverne and Shirley and other quality programming. My mother-in-law, who is sitting behind me, is apparently a big proponent of the 80s. I have seen Michael Gross on an episode of Law and Order, and apparently he has some kind of recurring role on ER, and starred in Tremors 3: Back to Perfection, a fine cinematic experience if there ever was one. Meredith Baxter has vanished off the face of the earth. Tina Yothers is in a band of some kind. And Justine Bateman, who I think may have had the most potential of anyone on that series, was most recently in a movie where she played a corpse with a carrot up her butt.

In season 3, there were some notable guest stars, most notably Geena Davis, who appeared in an episode as a hot but useless nanny. This was part of the season 3 story arc, where Meredith Baxter is pregnant and eventually has a child. Geena Davis, since then, has done fairly well for herself. Marc Price, who played “Skippy”, looks to be gone forever, much like Jaleel White, who played the exact same character as Steven Erkel on Family Matters. Which, come to think of it, was basically Family Ties with African-American characters. Come to think of it again, every sit-com from that era was a version of Family Ties. The biggest difference between Family Ties and Roseanne was that the parents were fatter. The biggest difference between Family Ties and Growing Pains was…ummm…Kirk Cameron? And the only difference between Family Ties and today’s sit-coms is that the fathers are now always stupid. So…I am not terribly glad that I just watched twenty-four episodes of this show. But, Paramount sent me the DVD, so I better at the very least mention it. Too bad they don’t carry MacGyver.