|
|
|
The Film Crew  is not a TV show, but it should be, and perhaps will be one day. It stars “Mystery Science Theatre 3000” vets Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy and Bill Corbett doing essentially the same thing they did at MST3K – mocking poorly crafted old cinema. “Wild Women of Wongo” (1958), represents the Crew’s third DVD outing and their first in color, following “Hollywood After Dark” and “Killers From Space.”
“Wongo” is the prehistoric tale of an island of half-naked primitive supermodels who meet their first-ever hot caveman.
Those readily made sport of this time around: David Schwimmer, Jeff Probst, Steve Irwin, Kiss guitarist Paul Stanley, Ossie Davis, Peter Pan, Boromir, Jim Jarmusch, Bam Bam Rubble, Tonya Harding, Clay Aiken, Cher, Al Jolson, Ed Grimley, Angus Young, the Menendez Bros., William Kennedy Smith, Ted Nugent, John Turturro, MTV’s spring break coverage, Natalie Maines, Adam Sandler, Saudi Arabia, Yoda, Gwen Stefani, Chris Farley, Carnie Wilson, Harvey Keitel, Rob Schneider, John C. McGinley, P.J. Harvey, Sandra Bernhart, Cass Elliott, Bruno Kirby, Cindy Williams, Adam Baldwin, Sarah Jessica Parker and Kathy Najimi.
There’s a great running gag about a Montgomery Burns lookalike. And the volumes of material dealing with the unimpressive Wongoian “dragon-god” is divinely guffaw-inducing.
The bonus features, however meager, offer a big step up from prior Film Crew extras (Nelson is particularly amusing here). In one, the Wongo priestess forces the Crew cast to dance. In the other, the boys re-enact “Wongo’s” moving finale.
Posted in | »
|
Season two of “Rome” picks up only minutes after the events of season one, with Marc Anthony squatting over what’s left of Caesar on the bloody senate floor. Lucius Vorenus cradles the corpse of his wife. Titus Pullo sits in the meadow with his pretty ex-slave.
James Purefoy takes center stage is season two, stepping up heroically as the fierce, profane and gratifyingly vengeful Antony, the Brock Samson of ancient Europe. Set upon by a dozen of Brutus’ knife-wielding thugs the minute he leaves Caesar’s corpse, he manages to fend off the throng of assassins as he embarks upon his long, cunning and brutal sprint toward justice.
Antony is not the only attraction as the series’ final episodes unspool. There’s Gaius Octavian (Max Pirkis, then Simon Woods), who has evolved into a being of extraordinary persuasive ability - and improbably proves himself even gutsier and brainier than Antony. There’s Marcus Junius Brutus (Tobias Menzies, never more Rickmanesque), Antony and Octavian’s sneering, scheming nemesis. There’s David Bamber as the cowardly, duplicitous Marcus Tullius Cicero. And there’s Pullo (Ray Stevenson) and Vorenus (Kevin McKidd), whose post-Caesar stories build toward adventures brimming with horror, tragedy, heartbreak and mayhem.
I adore this series, and believe I prefer this second season of “Rome” to the excellent first; the later season’s plot zips along like rocketships, owing to what I’d guess was an abbreviated episode order from HBO. (It makes my temples throb to think that ten times as many people were watching “Desperate Housewives” Sunday nights at 9 p.m.)
The 10 season-two episodes are augmented by extras designed to enhance one’s appreciation of the series:
* “A Tale of Two Romes” (20:30). Twins Romulus and Remus are said to have co-founded Rome in 753 B.C., and this minidoc looks at the city’s dual communities: the 30-odd richest patrician families who resided on Palatine Hill with Atia and the not-so-rich plebeians who resided on Aventine Hill with Vorenus, where there was no real police or courts.
* “The Making of Rome, Season II” (22:52). Learn that extras on treadmills in front of bluescreens were computerized and electronically cloned to form Rome’s sprawling civil-war armies. Learn that one episode required 768 costumes. Learn that beautiful Kerry Condon, who plays Octavia, actually speaks with an Irish accent. Learn that series director Tim Van Patton still talks like he did when he played Salami on “The White Shadow.”
* “The Rise of Octavian: Rome’s First Emperor” (20:44). While Caesar’s heir was highly self-interested, he also turned out to be a spectacularly productive and popular dictator. Learn that as Rome’s first emperor, Octavian ended a century of civil wars and ruled for 41 years. (I happened to catch the Elizabeth Taylor “Cleopatra” on cable this week, and it’s striking how differently Octavian is portrayed in that movie by Roddy McDowell, all sickly and sinister.)
* “Antony & Cleopatra” (14:48). Historian Jonathan Stamp suggests that both Caesar and Antony were attracted by the Egyptian monarch’s undisguised ambition. A coin bearing Cleopatra’s profile demonstates that she was considerably less attractive than Elizabeth Taylor or Lyndsey Marshal, but Stamp allows that she had other virtues: “She’s very clever! She’s speaks lots of languages, she was the first Ptolemaic pharaoh to speak ancient Egyptian, so she’s super-bright, super-accomplished, brilliant singer, brilliant dancer, plays lots of instruments, obviously great at chit-chat and talk and schmoozing and all the rest of it. One has to suspect fabulous in bed. Quite a package.”
* Each episode comes with “All Roads Lead To Rome,” an optional scene-specific pop-up text feature that adds historical context to the proceedings.
Commentaries include:
* Co-creator/showrunner Bruno Heller and co-producer/historical consultant Jonathan Stamp on 2.1, “Passover.”
* Director John Maybury and actress Lindsay Duncan (Servilia) on 2.7, “Death Mask.”
* Producer John Melfi and director Carl Franklin on 2.8, “A Necessary Fiction.”
* Actor James Purfoy (Mark Antony) on 2.9, “Deus Impeditio Esuritori Nullus.”
* Co-creator/showrunner Bruno Heller and co-producer/historical consultant Jonathan Stamp on series finale 2.10, “De Patre Vostro.”
As with “The Tick Vs. Season One,” “The Tick Vs. Season Two” cannot be billed as a complete season set because it’s short an episode. 2.2, titled “Alone Together,” about the Galacticus-like Omnipotus, is the missing component, and presumably sits out the set due to copyright issues. Sadly, this was the only season-two episode script credited to future “Venture Bros.” mastermind Christopher McCulloch. (One wonders why the “Venture Bros.” season sets, which feature the Impossible Four, don’t stir Marvel’s ire. Perhaps because litigation-happy Disney isn’t behind that production?)
The 12 second-season episodes that did make the new set pit the slow-witted superhero and his mothman sidekick against the Swiss Commandos, Venus & Milo, Leonardo, the Deadly Bulb, Brainchild & The Idea Men, El Seed & Rosebud, the Ottoman Empress, Queen of the Ants Betty, Santa Clause, The Whats and the Heys, the Fin and the Terror.
In 2.8, originally aired in 1995, we learn that The Tick’s universe boasts a TV series titled “Heroes,” about superpowered people.
Super Friends: The Legendary Super Powers Show was the 1984 almost-final season of “Super Friends.”
It was the first cartoon to feature the interplanetary mass murderer Darkseid, a character Marvel legend Jack Kirby introduced to the DC Comics universe in 1971. Darkseid had largely vanished from DC comics by 1984, and “The Legendary Super Powers Show” restored him to the comics' supervillain A-list. (Note that Darkseid and his minions utilize the wormhole-like Boom Tubes in the series, but for some reason they’re renamed “stargates.”)
Another notable aspect is TV’s live-action Batman, Adam West, with this season took over from character actor Olan Soule the role of “Super Friends’” Batman.
The season introduced the chrome Terminatoresque honeycomb-brain version of Brainiac, as he appeared in Action Comics the previous year.
On the hero side, the show brought to Saturday-morning animation the insanely powerful comic-book character Firestorm, who could turn instantly turn anything into anything else.
Non-funnybook Hanna Barbera ringers like the Apache Chief, Samurai, Black Vulcan, El Dorado and the Wonder Twins were brought forward from previous seasons, but at the expense of bona fide DC heroes like Flash, Atom, Hawkman, Aquaman and Green Arrow, who may appear in the title sequence, but do not appear in the episodes. (Green Lantern cameos in only one segment.)
More negatives. Standards of the era prevented the heroes from actually beating on anybody. Only eight half-hours (comprised of 16 11-minute stories) were produced for the season.
Extras include two documentaries: “Evolution: New Heroes, Vilier Villains and Ethnic Additions” (17:43) and “The Super Powers Collection: The Effect of the Toy Industry on the Super Friends” (7:37). Five segments feature DC historian (and “Kingdom Come” author) Mark Waid interviewing those five segments’ writers.
The beginning of the end. I never saw a “Simpsons” episode wholly devoid of funny until the series’ 10th season rolled around. Not every episode was a dud, but I remember the dud-to-decent ratio falling to about 50:50 with this era. Sadly, this season does not represent the series’ nadir; season 10 looks downright spectacular when compared to its 21st century counterparts.
“Marvel at our superior gate-sliding technology!”
Killers From Space represents the first sci-fi effort mocked by the Film Crew comedy collective, comprised of latter-day “Mystery Science Theatre 3000” vets Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy and Bill Corbett.
They make great sport of the movie’s interstellar props, its muppet-y bemittened aliens, star Peter Graves’ history with “Mission: Impossible” and “Biography,” and how long it takes for killers from space to actually turn up in this budget 1954 RKO thriller.
Posted in | »
|
Strictly speaking, The Film Crew: Hollywood After Dark? Not a TV title!
But I’m covering it here anyway because this direct-to-DVD project does mark a bold return to the vintage-cinema mocking of three “Mystery Science Theatre 3000” vets: Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy and Bill Corbett, who played Mike, Servo and Crow.
These are not, I grant you, the original “MST3K”-ers. Corbett replaced Trace Beaulieu as Crow in 1997. Head writer Nelson replaced comedian Joel Hodgson as series lead in 1993. Even Murphy replaced Josh Weinstein as Tom Servo way back in 1990.
“Film Crew” Mini-FAQ:
Is it as funny as MST3K?
The commentaries for “Hollywood After Dark” and “Killers From Space” both qualify as laugh-out-loud funny, as both literally made me laugh aloud. As with many MST3K installments, there are dry patches aplenty, but they’re worth sitting though to get to the good stuff.
Is a pre-feature short mocked?
There are no pre-feature shorts.
Do we see the commentators’ shadows in front of the screen?
No. During the movie, Nelson, Murphy and Corbett are heard but not seen. (The trio watch their movie on a tiny monitor; Kevin Murphy’s shadow alone could obscure the entire picture.)
Isn’t this already downloadable on Mike Nelson’s website or something?
You might be thinking of rifftrax.com, which offers audio-only commentaries that you’re supposed to synch up with expensive DVD swill like “The Phantom Menace,” “Star Trek: Generations” and “Fantastic Four.” Nelson often does these with Murphy, and sometimes with Murphy and Corbett, and other times with his hot, funny wife and at least once with the dude who played Doogie Howser. But Rifftrax is a separate, similar, project separate from The Film Crew. Did I mention separate?
Are there Film Crew skits?
There are!
How can there be skits without commercials to break up the movie?
There’s a pre-movie segment, a “lunch break” segment and a post-movie segment. Each disc also comes with a brief bonus skit featuring one of the players.
Do the commentators dwell in space on a super-secret satellite? Are the commentators put there to see how much filmic torture they can endure?
No and no. The three commentators are merely hired by a mogul named Bob Honcho to create commentary tracks for DVDs that have none.
Is there a funny title song explaining the premise? Is the phrase “you should really just relax” employed?
There is some goofy, twangy title music. The premise is so simple, however, that no lyrics are required (or offered).
Do you miss the bots?
I miss the bots. The graying, well-fed team of Murphy and Corbett are rather less telegenic than their puppet counterparts.
Space Ghost went on to about 100 segments of “Space Ghost Coast to Coast, but the interplanetary space-cop’s origins can be traced to the 20 episodes of Space Ghost & Dino Boy: The Complete Series that ran on CBS Saturday mornings from 1966 to 1967 and introduced the world to space-villains Zorak, Brak and Moltar. It premiered a year after CBS’ “Lost In Space” (a likely inspiration) and two days after “Star Trek.”
In those days, Space Ghost ran with a masked monkey and a pair of equally-masked fraternal twins named Jan and Jace. Jace was voiced by a kid actor named Tim Mathieson, who would grow up, change his last name to Matheson, and play Otter in “Animal House” and vice president John Hoynes on “The West Wing.” Space Ghost was voiced by future “Laugh-In” announcer Gary Owens.
Each of the 18 half-hour first-season episodes contained two self-contained 8-minute “Space Ghost” stories separated by one 7-minute “Dino Boy” story. Dino Boy, who never met Space Ghost in the show, was a tween whose plane crashed on a prehistoric island where dinosaurs (and a friendly caveman named “Ugh”) dwelled.
Dino Boy was pushed out of picture in September 1967 when two more “Space Ghost” half-hours (containing a total of six “Space Ghost” segments) aired. These two episodes, also included on the new set, served to introduce audiences to guest-stars who were about to star in their own Saturday-morning series on CBS that season, among them the Mighty Mightor, the Herculoids, Moby Dick, and Shazzan the Genie.
Not included on the set are the “Space Ghost” segments made in 1981 to serve as components of NBC’s 11-episode hourlong “Space Stars” show (which featured also new episodes of “The Herculoids,” the “Jetsons” spin-off “Astro and the Space-Mutts,” and “Teen Force”).
NBC’s answer to “Space Ghost” was Birdman & The Galaxy Trio , which premiered in 1967.
Birdman’s real name in those days was Ray Randall, who was drafted by a top-secret government agency after the sun-god Ra endowed Ray with wings, a solar shield and the ability to project solar rays. Birdboy, Birdgirl, Mentok, Vulturo and the eagle sidekick Avenger, familiar to fans of “Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law,” made their debuts here.
The Galaxy Trio, who had their own segments (and never met Birdman in the series), were Vapor Man, Meteor Man and Gravity Girl, superpowered extraterrestrials who worked for the Galactic Patrol interplanetary law enforcement agency. They share their superpowers with other natives of their respective homeworlds, suggesting they may have been inspired, in part, by DC Comics’ Legion of Super-Heroes. Gravity Girl came from the planet Gravitas. “Gravitas” is Kiefer Sutherland’s favorite word.
Following the pattern of “Space Ghost and Dino Boy,” each of the 20 “Birdman and the Galaxy Trio” half-hour episodes on the new set . Each episode features two self-contained “Birdman” segments and one self-contained “Galaxy Trio” segment.
It's not cool that the Galaxy Trio didn't play a bigger role in "Harvey Birdman."
Posted in | »
|
|
|
