Year:  1995
Genre:  Comedy
Country:  United States
Language:   English
Starring:   Alicia Silverstone, Stacey Dash, Brittany Murphy, Paul Rudd, Donald Faison, Elisa Donovan, Breckin Meyer, Wallace Shawn, Jeremy Sisto, Dan Hedaya
Director:  Amy Heckerling
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

     I had forgotten how much I enjoyed Clueless until I saw the Blu-Ray release, out May 1^st from Paramount Home Entertainment.  I had even forgotten that Alicia Silverstone was once really hot and a pretty decent actress.  Although I will say that putting out a video of her spitting chewed up food into her baby’s mouth was a pretty poor way to get her back into the public eye, and a weak promotional idea for the Clueless Blu-Ray.  I think a Playboy spread or something might have generated more interest and less cringing.  Just a thought, remember that when Excess Baggage gets the Blu-Ray upgrade.

     I had also forgotten that Brittany Murphy and Paul Rudd co-starred in Clueless before they went on to bigger and better things.  (Or – in Murphy’s case – sadder and more tragic things.)  The weirdest thing about the movie though, is that the REASON I couldn’t remember liking it in 1995 was that I didn’t really remember anything at all about the movie.  Because it isn’t memorable. 

     It’s vapid, and empty, (and that’s the point), and it is genuinely a LOT of fun.  But the empty kind of fun, like eating a whole tub of cookie dough ice cream or spending two hours and three hundred bucks at a strip club.  You come out of it knowing you had a good time, but four hours later you can’t for the life of you put your finger on exactly why.

Years:  1995, 1997, 1999, 2001
Genre:  TV series, Comedy
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Kelsey Grammer, David Hyde Pierce, John Mahoney, Peri Gilpin, Jane Leeves
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

     Frasier was always a great show, and eight of the best episodes are now packaged together on the Frasier Fan Favorites DVD out March 6^th from Paramount Home Entertainment.  I was kind of hoping for a bunch of episodes that reunited Frasier with his old friends from Cheers, like the one where Diane comes to Seattle wither her new play.

     But I guess that since the Cheers Fan Favorites is being released on the same day, there’s not really much point in bringing all those characters back.  Instead, we get what feels like eight randomly chosen episodes –

     Frasier gets sick and Niles fills in for him at the radio station, which makes Frasier paranoid that Niles could take his job.  Frasier gets caught in Daphne’s room a couple of times and they fight.  There’s a radio play, a bunch of episodes where Niles lusts after Daphne, and a huge amount of romantic misunderstandings. 

     Had I not been a Frasier fan for years, I would think that the show was nothing but romantic misunderstandings and people chasing other people.  Actually, I guess it kind of was.

     But it was a great show about chasing women and then misunderstanding them.  The only problem with a DVD featuring eight of the fan favorite episodes is that it leaves me wanting more.  In addition to wanting the Cheers related episodes, I wanted some with Lilith, which I always thought were funniest.  Then again, the Cheers Fan Favorites covers all the Lilith bases as well!

Year:  1995
Genre:  TV series, Drama, Science Fiction, Adventure
Country:  Canada
Language:  English
Starring:   Colette Stevenson, Alan Scarfe, John Bach, C. David Johnson, Stephen Lovatt, Gordon Michael Woolvett, Andy Marshall
Run time:  22 episodes (1 hour each, 1 season)
DVD distributor:  Alliance Films

     Colette Stevenson provides Mysterious Island with its eye candy, but her hotness is seriously offset by the fact that her character on the show, Joanna, spends the whole show with her husband Jack.  Jack is played by that guy who was Chuck Tchobanian on Street Legal (C. David Johnson), and there you have maybe the only two stars on the show who are even vaguely recognizable to the average Canadian viewer.

     The other actors did some stuff too.  Gordon Michael Woolvett was in Andromeda, Stephen Lovatt made a few appearances on Hercules and Xena, and Alan Scarfe guest-starred on a couple of episodes of Star Trek.  Andy Marshall was recently in four episodes of Soul, whatever that is, and John Bach was a bit actor in two of the Lord of the Rings movies.  Anyone remember who Madril was?  Not me.

     At any rate, recognizable or not, these are B-grade actors at best, in a C-grade series that makes little sense.  I have never read the Jules Verne book (Mysterious Island) upon which this series is based.  But having watched many of the 22 episodes on the Complete Series DVD, out June 14th from Alliance Films, I can only assume it’s a dreadful book.  Or, which is more likely, the TV series has almost nothing in common with the book.

     The series opens with a married couple and their kid, an old army captain and his former slave, and a foreign reporter being captured during the U.S. Civil War.  They are scheduled to be executed but escape via hot air balloon.  Then the balloon is shot down over the ocean by a creepy loner mad scientist living on a deserted island so he can experiment on the castaways.

     And so begins the series.  The castaways never get to see Captain Nemo (until the very end), but they quickly realize something is amiss on this island.  Something is also, of course, amiss in the what-year-is-it-here test – the U.S. Civil War is in full swing.  I know, because I recently watched Ken Burns’ masterful Civil War documentary, that this places the show between the years of 1861-1865.  Captain Nemo, the mysterious weirdo on an island, has closed-circuit television cameras set up everywhere, remarkably powerful submarines, and several other gizmos that seem to me to be out of the realm of the technology available in the 1860s.

     The biggest problem with the series though, is that 90% of it feels like padding.  sure, there’s a tiny bit of plot development from episode to episode, but so little I kept forgetting it was going anywhere.  When you have some unseen diabolical madman unleashing earthquakes and landslides toward these people, is there any need to have them get into extra trouble on their own?

     For example – a landslide, triggered by an earthquake, triggered by Captain Nemo, traps the Australian reporter under a giant boulder.  The captain and the ex-slave run off in one direction to find something helpful, but get poisoned by some gas in the ground and must help each other back, heroically.  Then the ex-slave and the young boy run off in another direction to get some other help, and the kid gets his foot caught in rocks in a puddle as the tide is coming in.  Which leads to more help and more heroics.

     And that ends up being the whole some.  One character gets trapped somewhere, somehow, under something.  Then the others put their collective minds together in order to help that one character out of the dilemma.  And…then…it ends, as Captain Nemo shows himself, explains his diabolical (if a little nonsensical) plan, and then he leaves.  The end.  Mysterious Island ran only one season, in 1995, and then it was done.  Mercifully.

“It’s open season on all suckheads”

Blade (********8/10)

 Year:  1998
Genre:  Action, Comic book
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Wesley Snipes, Kris Kristofferson, Stephen Dorff, Udo Kier, Donal Logue
Eye candy:  N’Bushe Wright, Traci Lords, Sanaa Lathan
Director:  Steve Norrington
Run time:  121 minutes
DVD distributor:  Alliance Films
Related reviews:  Blade trilogy

     The original Blade movie was terrific, a real breath of fresh air in the world of comic book movies.  Wesley Snipes was big, muscular, bad-ass and mean.  Kris Kristofferson was amazing as Whistler, Blade’s mentor.  And Stephen Dorff was terrific as the bad guy, a vampire who wanted to trigger the Blood Tide – an event that would, I think, turn everyone in the world into a vampire.  Or something.  The point is, this movie was awesome.  Sword fighting, guns, vampires disintegrating and great special effects, and Snipes as the most ass-kicking, toughest, meanest comic book character of all time.  There was even some good comedy – mostly provided by Donal Logue, who kept getting his arm chopped off.  And for the really cult comic book fans – some appearances by Traci Lords and Udo Kier.  Terrific!  The second Blade is still better, but I love the original too.

“Every time someone farts, a demon gets his wings”

Spawn (***3/10)

Year:  1997
Genre:  Comic book, Action
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Michael Jai White, John Leguizamo, Martin Sheen
Eye candy:  Theresa Randle, Melinda Clarke
Director:  Mark A.Z. Dippe
Run time:  97 minutes
DVD distributor:  Alliance Films

     If there is one thing that ruins Spawn (and make no mistake, this movie is RUINED), it’s John Leguizamo as the disgusting, irritating, obnoxious clown.  I THINK he’s supposed to be comic relief.  But there is nothing funny about him at any moment in this awful, awful movie.  If there are other factors ruining Spawn, there are a few to choose from.  A ludicrous plot, Martin Sheen’s illogical, nonsensical character, an unnecessary appearance by a cute young kid to add some heart to the film, and some silly special effects involving a cape that seems to billow and flap erratically for no good reason.  Other than that, Michael Jai White is pretty good, and most of the movie is visually impressive.  If only John Leguizamo and the kiddie stuff had been taken out.  This would be an AMAZING nine-minute movie.

“I trust only one person Jax, and you’re looking at her.”

Mortal Kombat (*****5/10)

Year:  1995
Genre:  Action, Video game
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Robin Shou, Linden Ashby, Christopher Lambert, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa
Eye candy:  Talisa Soto, Bridgette Wilson
Director:  Paul W.S. Anderson
Run time:  101 minutes
DVD distributor:  Alliance Films

     Mortal Kombat verges on being a movie that is so-bad-it’s good.  Nothing but fights, most of them poorly done and poorly choreographed, and a plot that is less than threadbare.  Of course, it’s a battle for the fate of the world.  And for some reason there is a hot chick there (Bridgette Wilson, who has no idea how to fight), and a self-centred movie star (Linden Ashby, who is also a rather unconvincing fighter).  The bad guy makes absolutely sure that the hot chick and the movie star go to his martial arts tournament.  We never know why.  The good guy learns his lessons from his creepy and useless master (Christopher Lambert) just in time to defeat the bad guy…somehow…thanks to the lessons.  I think.  There is a poorly animated monster who also fights. 

     This was one of the first movies based on video games.  And despite being truly dreadful, Hollywood kept making more video game movies, for some reason.  In fact, this movie was successful enough to spawn (no pun intended) a sequel where only Robin Shou returned.  And Talisa Soto, which was nice.  Sonya Blade was now played by Sandra Hess, who was maybe a little hotter but no more convincing than Wilson.  Mortal Kombat was, cinematically, an utter failure.  But it was a pretty entertaining one for those of us who love the awful.

     Why these three movies were packaged together, I don’t know.  Two are comic book movies – but one (Mortal Kombat) is not.  Two involve giant black guys flexing, but one (Mortal Kombat) does not.  Two involve martial arts moves and fight scenes, but one (Spawn) does not.  Two of them were absolutely dreadful, but one (Blade) was not.  I guess there was enough crossover to merit this set.  But I would still go with the Blade Trilogy, if I had my druthers.  And I DO have my druthers.

“That HIV’ll make your life hang sideways…”

Year:  1995
Genre:  Comedy
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Ice Cube, Nia Long, Chris Tucker, Tom “Tiny” Lister Jr, Tony Cox, John Witherspoon, Anna Maria Horsford, Regina King, Faizon Love, Anthony Johnson, Bernie Mac
Eye candy:  Kathleen Bradley and Nia Long.  Oh my, Nia Long.  Oh my stars.
Interesting extra:  Michael Clarke Duncan
Director:  F. Gary Gray
Run time:  97 minutes
DVD distributor:  Alliance Films
DVD extras:  Music videos (“Friday” and “Keep Their Heads Ringing”), Friday Straight Up featurette (25 minutes), introduction by Ice Cube (20 seconds), deleted scenes, and interviews with director F. Gary Gray and producer Patricia Charbonneau

     Really, Ice Cube?  “That HIV’ll make your life hang sideways?”  I seemto remember different lyrics to your song.  That song being the title track to the movie Friday, on the Friday soundtrack that I wore out on my CD player by playing it day after day in my room in the summer of 1996.  It’s pretty cool to have the video for “Friday” as a special feature on this DVD.  But the edited version is…the edited version.  Ditto for Dr. Dre’s video for “Keep Their Heads Ringing”.  Two fantastic songs, but dumbed down they just don’t work.

     In fact, that goes against the whole idea behind Friday in general.  Nothing about this movie is dumbed down, and that’s what makes it so great.  This was a revolutionary movie in many ways, and it has deservedly become a cult classic in the 14 years since its release.  Do you remember Ice Cube in 1995?  Not just Boyz N Tha Hood Ice Cube, but Amerikkka’s Most Wanted, “Straight Outta Compton” Ice Cube?  This guy was the baddest man on the planet, the hardest man in the hardest group in the most hardcore genre of music in the world.  He may never have smiled, ever, in his entire life.  And he was going to make a comedy.  And it was going to be good.

     And Friday was good.  Sure, it became a cult classic in the stoner world because of its attitude (and considerable humour) concerning weed.  And yes, more than anything else it IS a stoner comedy.  But it is much more as well.  It was one of the very first movies to show South Central Los Angeles as a real place, rather than a bullet-ridden, gangster-filled area where death is constantly around the corner.  What “gangstas” (Big Worm) exist in Friday are just funny.  It’s also a terrific family comedy, a great buddy film, and one of the films that influenced the way black people made movies for years to come.

     But maybe more than anything, the most impressive thing about Friday is the cast.  It’s easy to forget that Ice Cube was the baddest, toughest, angriest man alive in 1995 because he has since done movies like The Longshots and Are We There Yet.  Friday proved that he wasn’t just a rapper, or a one-hit movie wonder, or a decent actor, but that he could write as well, that he could do comedy as well as drama, that he could play a loser as well as he could a gangster, and that he had incredible talent at whatever it was he decided to do.

     Then there’s Chris Tucker.  Tucker of course went on to be famous for being really irritating in the Rush Hour series and even more irritating in The Fifth Element.  “Tiny” Lister, who played Deebo in Friday, went on to a very successful movie career (including a role as the president of the U.S. in…also…The Fifth Element).  Nia Long is one of the hottest women alive, and she starred with Ice Cube in Boyz N The Hood before they did Friday.  Later on, they starred together in Are We There Yet.  Tony Cox is likely most famous for his roles in Me Myself And Irene and Bad Santa.  (Some fun trivia – he was also an wewok in Return of the Jedi.  OK, maybe I should have said fun nerd trivia.)

     Then there’s Regina King (Ray), Faizon Love (Idlewild), and Bernie Mac (Ocean’s Eleven).  And some other, less-nerdy (but only slightly) trivia?  In the Friday scene where Deebo knocks out Red, Michael Clarke Duncan is an extra, playing beside the house with Smokey.  He never has a line in the movie.  I didn’t know this until today.  And I know this today because I watched all the special features on the Deluxe Edition, out October 13th from Alliance Films.  The best is the Friday Straight Up featurette, which features interesting tidbits like that one, or the one about the guy who lived in the neighbourhood and refused to move off the wall where he was drinking, even when the crew was filming.  (You can see him on the wall in one scene in particular.)

     The special features are a very good reason to pick up the Deluxe Edition of Friday.  I have only one complaint.  The actors and producers and directors all share their fondness for the film, and they all share their stories about making it (well, except for Chris Tucker because he’s too big a star now, I imagine.)  But they seem, for the most part, to miss the biggest reason the movie became such a smash cult hit, and had such lasting power.  Weed.  There were other reasons, to be sure.  And even non-potheads should enjoy this film.  But don’t pretend it had nothing to do with stoners and stoner culture.  That’s just disingenuous.  And the movie is far from that.

“You’re eating…muppet!”

     When The State works, it really works.  The sketch in Season Two about hunting, killing and eating muppets is one of the funniest things I have ever seen.  Same goes for the sketch where Humphrey Bogart (as an amalgam of Sam Spade and Rick Blaine) hosts a talk show with Peter Lorre as his Ed McMahon-type sidekick.  In that case, it really works because Thomas Lennon does a remarkably good impression of Lorre, who is easy to caricature but not easy to do well.  (I know because I have been practising a Peter Lorre impression for Hallowe’en 2009 for about four years now, ever since my Edward G. Robinson costume went over so badly in 2005.)

     However, The State does not always work.  In fact, it’s more miss than hit.  It’s hard for me, as a proper country-loving Harper-fearing Canadian, not to compare this sketch-comedy show with The Kids In The Hall.  They are very similar shows.  Just like the Kids, The State quite often makes reference to themselves as actors on their own show.  Also, there are a lot of recurring bits, and men dressed in drag to play female parts.  Now, I always thought that the Kids In The Hall (who dressed up in drag as female characters because all the actors were male) were making some kind of high-brow reference to Shakespearean times when only men were allowed to be actors, so they had to play the female parts as well.

     Then again, I rarely watched Kids In The Hall without having altered my perception beforehand somehow.  Which could explain the connection I derived between them and Shakespeare.  Now that I am older and I watch television sober sometimes, I no longer remember why I thought this.  Now I find Kids In the Hall to be hit-and-miss, just like The State.  And after watching all four seasons of The State, I felt as though it might have been a good idea for them to add at least one more woman to the cast.  The whole “guy dressed in drag to play a wife in a sketch thing” isn’t really played for laughs here, and it’s not even interesting after the fifth time.  It really seems like it’s more out of convenience than anything.  One more woman in the cast would have fixed that pretty easily.

     And there are quite a few comedic situations where a hot chick would come in really handy.  Hot chicks are a terrific comedic device – the Kids didn’t really need one, because their comedy was more often in need of a hot guy.  And they could always seem to find one.  There are far fewer gay-themed sketches on The State, so a really hot chick could certainly help out.  Not that Kerri Kenney-Silver isn’t attractive, but she is almost always playing a totally generic wife or mother or girlfriend, and no one ever bothers to make her look good.  Except in one or two sketches where it’s necessary.

     There are a ton of people from this show who went on to bigger and better things once it was canceled after the fourth season.  Joe Lo Truglio, Kerri Kenney-Silver, and Thomas Lennon went on to star in the far superior Reno 911.  Michael Ian Black went on to co-write screenplays for movies like Run Fatboy Run, and he directed Wedding Daze.  Ken Marino has appeared in a variety of movies like The Ten and Wet Hot American Summer.  As a launching pad, The State was a pretty good show.  As a show, it wasn’t terrific.  Some of the best stuff in the Complete Series, out July 14th from Paramount Home Entertainment, comes on the Bonus Disc of stuff that never made it to the air.

     The good stuff makes The State worth watching.  But there is a lot of boring and bad stuff to sit through in order to get to that good stuff.  Part of that is because the recurring bits are usually the worst ones.  There is one called “Old Fashioned Guy” that gets pretty old, pretty fast.  There is another about a character named Doug (Michael Showalter) that just never works.  Then again, I used to hate that recurring “Stuart” sketch on Mad TV, and other people seemed to love that piece of crap.  So there is likely an audience for the bad stuff on The State too.  If you liked Stuart, you will like the bad stuff.  And you should probably pick this up.

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To hear the review

     Lesbian Nation, a DVD out May 19th from First Run Features, is a collection of lesbian-themed short films, some better than others.  Also out today is the big highlight of the DVD, Lavender Limelight, a 57-minute behind the scenes look at lesbian film makers (and there are not a lot of them).  For a little more money, you can get all the other short films on this DVD set as well, and that’s probably worthwhile.  Both this set and Lavender Limelight can be ordered here.  Here is a look at each individual short film:

Carmelita Tropicana: Your Kunst Is Your Waffen (1994) (*******7/10): 

“Open your eyes, honey, ’cause Latinas come in all different colours!” 

     28 minutes long, this short film is about a Latina performance artist and protester who ends up in prison with a bunch of other protesting girls after a mini-riot in the East Village.  Most of the film takes place in the jail cell where four women are being held.  There are also some bizarre art sequences thrown in, which may or may not belong in the movie.  Frankly, they seem to be art-for-art’s sake.  There are also a few Spanish song-and-dance numbers, which are strangely compelling in a bonkers kind of way.  The fact that the women are lesbians seems to be incidental to the story, since they are fighting tooth and nail against racism, sexism, and all types of oppression in general.  The lesbian things just gives them another thing to be angry about.

     Even though a lot of the film appears to be contrived and silly, it still manages to be oddly inspiring and fun.  The over-acting stars are entertaining in their ham-fisted performances, and although almost all the dialogue is either angry shouting or Empoerment Shourting, it all works well enough to keep the movie fun for 28 minutes.  Any more and it would have been too much.  But 28 minutes is just right.

Jumping The Gun (1996) (******6/10):

“Your place or mine?”

     Just a few minutes long, Jumping The Gun is a welcome little addition to this DVD set.  After a one-night stand with a badass biker chick, a young woman wakes up early and while her companion sleeps, she imagines their entire relationship together by means of a typewriter, like she’s writing a short story.  It’s all over very quickly, but packs a full, lyrical story into the few minutes of screen time it has.  It’s a neat little fantasy sequence that works.

Little Women in Transit (1996) (*****5/10):

“Dad, are you ever disappointed that you never had any boys.”
“Sometimes.”

     A twelve-year-old girl sits in the middle of the back seat of a car between her two older sisters during a car trip.  She is writing in her notebook, and soon gets into a fight with her older sister about Louisa May Alcott and bras and other things.  Jennie’s sister torments her with lesbian taunts – Louisa May Alcott was a lesbian.  Jennie has three nipples, and all lesbians have three nipples.  It’s brief, about six minutes, but neat.  The father is basically one of those Peanuts adults, in the drivers seat, and the end is a bit of a shock.  But there’s nothing really compelling about the short.

Playing The Part (1995) (********8/10):

“This young man is going places.  I think I want him for my daughter.”

     Playing The Part is a 38-minute short film about a young lesbian trying to come out to her parents.  She is so conflicted about the prospect of doing so, and so frightened, that she does just about anything she can to avoid the confrontation that is sure to ensue.  She does some strange things, like trying to provoke her mother by turning her room into a pigsty.  She interviews her grandmother and father, and hides her lover from her family for quite a while.  It goes on a bit too long – by the time the actual Coming Out happens, I was pretty impatient.  I think that’s the idea here, that I feel as uncomfortable and impatient as she does, but I really did want to just fast-forward to the part where the whole thing gets resolved.

     High-society balls and a rich-girl lifestyle form the backdrop to the woman’s inner conflict – what should be a wonderful life for just about anyone else is actually oppressive for her, as the expectations of that society are keenly felt at every turn.  And, at every turn, she can’t tell her family and she runs away from the inevitable talk.  And, in the end, she doesn’t tell them at all.  I thought I would be annoyed, even angry, over such a non-ending after such a long (short) film that made me so impatient to begin with.  But I wasn’t.  As it turns out, I loved the ending.  I was happy I had been able to watch the reflective journey, and the actual confrontation itself may well have been anti-climactic.  Playing The Part really works, and shows that the journey is always more interesting than the destination.

Lavender Limelight (*********9/10):

     The full review of this terrific documentary I have done seperately, because it is being released on its own by First Run Features the same day as Lesbian Nation.  A great movie.