Review: Other Space

Now that everyone has gotten into the original programming game, it's going to be easy for really good shows to get lost.

Give "Other Space" a shot, it's very funny.

It borrows the premise from "Red Dwarf," and half the cast of the pre-Mike seasons of "Mystery Science Theater," but y'know, it's stealing from the best of both.

And when I say it borrows from "Red Dwarf," I don't mean simply a space ship lost in space, "Other Space," takes "Red Dwarf's" warm approach to the characters.  They're knuckleheads, but not really far removed from people we know and love. They have hopes, dreams, desires, and they screw up big time, but they're trying. It's more about relationships than just rocket ships. And in that way it's more akin to "30 Rock," or "Kimmie Schmidt."

It's really just a workplace comedy with some very funny co-workers.

Convergence review: JSA, Shazam, Crime Syndicate

I picked up three of the Convergence books. I would have picked up more but I'm not a millionaire with unlimited time.

Convergence is of course DC Comics' all-title retcon in which characters live, characters die and the DC universe will never be the same. Until next year, when they erase everything again and start all over again, again.

I picked up three titles that grabbed my eye, JSA, since I'm a longtime fan, Shazam, always a favorite, and the Crime Syndicate, another favorite set of characters from the silver age who always had lots of potential.

All three books have the same set-up. Their home cities are under a dome and the characters are powerless until the end when the dome is lifted and they get their powers back, but they must battle gladiator-style with another city from another DC reality in its long history of DC realities. This was each individual writer's assignment: Write a story in these parameters.

Let's see how they did.

First the bad news. DC has always had nothing but contempt for its golden age characters and this continues in the first JSA Convergence issue. All it is are old JSA members, much much older than ever before, without their powers, moping about how old they are and whether or not their powers would even return if the shield came down.

That's all there is. Senior citizens complaining about how old they are. Psst. This isn't why people buy comics books.

On the last page they get their youth back … yet again … and you have to come back next month for anything resembling action.

Ripoff!

This has been a big problem with the JSA since Julie Schwartz and Gardner Fox brought them back in 1963. They had the idea that in the 12 years they were out of print, they aged 12 years. And they've been aging ever since. They're the only DC characters who age and every 10 years or so, a writer has to figure out a way to make them a little younger. In all the retcons it never occurred to anyone to remove them from World War II, and retcon their origins with the simple explainer, "The JSA formed 10 years ago."

The Crime Syndicate is a little better in that it has a story. The CSA'ers have to save Super Woman from her date with the electric chair. I have no idea why she was sentenced to death, that would have involved buying some 800 other Convergence titles. Once again, not a millionaire with unlimited time.

So they break into prison, and of course since the shield over their city has made them powerless, they're carrying machine guns.

Think about this: Superbeings carrying machine guns! Once again, not why people buy comic books. Maybe Punisher comic books, but not long-underwear type comic books.

The art is very good, Phil Winslade has a good eye for evoking Mike Sekowsky without actually using his style. (the variant cover is credited to Sekowsky and Gardner Fox, that really doesn't seem likely since Fox was a writer, unless they're giving him the credit for having the idea.).

The best of the three is the Shazam title.

There's an actual story going on, Billy Batson and his sister Mary are trying to solve a mystery, then get captured by a team of super villains. There are surprises, plot twists, a couple jokes and it's all very exciting. Stuff happens. I got an adventure for my $3.99.

I also got a writer and artist with a real love of the characters and their history.

When DC brought back Captain Marvel in the early 70s they decided to continue right where it left off some 20 years earlier. They had the same artists and writers pick up right where they left off. Then they threw that out the window by the end of the decade and had Don Newton totally modernize all the characters. Artist Evan "Doc" Shaners treads that line between the 1940s look and the modern look perfectly. Look at the drawings of Billy and Mary on page 6, they look like a scene from a movie in the 40s. Great stuff.

And when the Marvels show up at the end and start punching villains, I wondered why the other writers didn't think of doing this. Telling an actual story.

Film review: Home

I'm seeing a bunch of children's movies and they all seem to have the same ingredients. Hollywood has this template and it's OK for kids who haven't seen enough movies, for the grownups though…

Home is enjoyable and has its laughs, but ultimately you feel manipulated by the tried and true buttons Hollywood presses: A mother and child are reunited, not a dry eye in the house; the screw-up becomes the hero; everyone thinks the hero is dead … but he comes back. there's a big party at the end; we've seen these tropes a million time. Hollywood hedging its bets.

Jim Parsons plays an alien, but is pretty much playing his same character on "Big Bang," as human emotions and subtleties have to be constantly explained to him. He's on  a road trip with Tip, a little girl (Rhianna) and I'm still trying to shake "Lilo and Stitch" from my head.

The alien is on the run from his fellow aliens and Tip is looking for her mother. Meanwhile an evil alien race is coming close to destroy the earth unless … well you can pretty much figure out pretty quickly what they're after.

Steve Martin does best as the cowardly leader of the aliens. Funny is funny.

Take your kids, there's some wonderful animation, and great music, and a couple laugh-out-loud funny lines, but the rest of it will bring a big sense of deja vu.

Legally Blonde notes

I just saw the Upper Moreland (Pa.) High School's production of "Legally Blonde," and though  I'm not going to review it (the girl who sang while jumping rope though should just get an honorary Tony), it made me think of a character point from the film that bothered me.

Why are we rooting for Elle? She's perfect. She's one of those beautiful, perfectly coiffed, perfect-in-every way, affluent sorority sisters who could have any guy or career she wants. We laughed when John Belushi spit mashed potatoes on this character in "Animal House," and now we're rooting for her. It's kind of like wishing Margaret Dumont gets the best of Groucho Marx.

My other problem was  the film's sequel, which, like Home Alone 2, was really just a remake. The part of the first film in which she's actually cracking a case was the best part. I thought the sequel would be more of that, some actual Perry-Mason-in-Prada courtroom theatrics, but no.

Old timey film review: The Animal Kingdom

I'm a fan of Myrna Loy, it's on YouTube, what's not to love?

Well, this is pre-Thin Man Myrna Loy, and Hollywood still had no idea what to do with her. Here she's the bitch who makes Leslie Howard ditch all his friends within 15 minutes of their engagement. She also puts her nose in his business dealings.

Leslie Howard puts up with her and you just want to slap him. Ann Harding is the long-suffering former gal pal/ friend with benefits, who tries to stay noble while being shut out. The only other film I saw her in was "Double Harness." Good actress, but she played a martyr there, also.

It's all very talky, and stagy and you just know it was based on a drawing-room drama that might have been controversial in the day, but now it's kind of dreary and dated. And all the characters talk like they're in a drawing room drama from the '30s.

The negligees are skimpy and again I'm amazed that the negligees are wasted on really flat-chested women. Did bigger boobs evolve over the past 80 years, or is it Hollywood today won't cast you unless you wear a DD cup?

Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt

What a great way to binge watch.

Ellie Kemper has such an expressive face, and her character's constant optimism are such fun, a viewer can't help but love her. And the jokes come very fast.

As everyone knows, Kimmy has spent the last 15 years held hostage in a bunker by a cult leader. This  could have been "Hogan's Heroes" level tasteless, yet, Tina Fey and Robert Carlock made it all work. Kimmy is starting life fresh, it doesn't matter where she came from. This is Mary Richards leaving her failed relationship and moving to Minneapolis. It's really all the same, just more absurdist humor.

Speaking of which, UKS takes place in the same absurd New York City where "30 Rock" took place. Lots of fortuitous running into each other, and no part is too small to not be hilarious.

Notes:

Jane Krakowski is pretty much playing the same character from "30 Rock." She's vain and glamorous and deep down very insecure. Still, funny is funny.

Her roommate Tituss has been carrying most of the B plots, this is a little jarring because we shift from stories about fish-out-of-water Kimmy to Tituss going on auditions. "30 Rock" had A and B stories, but all the characters had the same employer. There's a disconnect between these characters' stories.

Recurring themes from "30 Rock" are turning up, a wolfman, an old man with dementia used as a plot device, the 15-year-old nemesis.

The last three episodes, tying up the arc that started with the first episode are probably the best. Tim Blake Nelson's Barney-Fife-only-dangerous, was hilarious, as was Fey's hapless Marcia Clark.

Still, as it took about a season for "30 Rock" to get into its groove, I expect UKS to only get better.

Lost Trek Lore

If you can find it, try to get Bill Planer’s “Lost Voyages of Star Trek.” It includes synopses of Star Trek scripts that were never filmed.

In the mid-70s, Paramount was going to start a “fourth television network” and its flagship show was to be “Star Trek: Phase II.” The adventures of the Enterprise’s second five-year journey.

Scripts were commissioned, the actors were going to reprise their roles, except for Leonard Nimoy.

New characters were drawn up: Decker, a headstrong, young first officer; Ilya, a psychic, and onetime lover of Decker’s, and Xon, a vulcan who, unlike Spock, actually enjoyed working on a ship with humans and wanted to be more like them. (These three characters might sound familiar.)

Then something big happened: Star Wars. 

Paramount executives who had spent every morning climbing over a new pile of mail from Star Trek fans begging for a Star Trek movie started asking themselves: Do we own any properties that have spaceships in them?

Plans for the fourth network and Phase II were scrapped. (Barry Diller, the Paramount executive spearheading this concept, would take it to Fox. You might have heard of this.)

Roddenberry was ordered: Make us a movie.

Then came an astonishing series of bad decisions, one understandable, the rest bewildering.

Bad decision one: Choosing the director. This is the understandable bad decision. We’re talking Robert Wise. “West Side Story,” “The Sound of Music,” Blockbusters both. But most important to Roddenberry: “The Day the Earth Stood Still.” Possibly the most cerebral science fiction drama up to that time, and probably to this day. (Call me what you must, 2001 a Space Odyssey was a pretentious overlong boring indulge-o-fest)

Rodddenberry didn’t want spaceships blowing each other up, he wanted a movie just like “The Day the Earth Stood Still”: men in military uniforms sitting around discussing what to do about the alien threat ... if it is a threat.

The problem is, after Star Wars, no one else wanted that. We wanted fast ships and explosions. Instead we got long long talky meetings, and interminable inspections of the outer hull of the Enterprise

Now the baffling decisions: Roddenberry went to the stack of scripts written for Phase II and found “In Thy Image,” a story about an Earth space probe that becomes self-aware and returns to meet its makers. 

Two problems with this script. A) it had been done before as an episode of Star Trek, B) the concept really doesn’t lend itself to a big budget motion picture experience. There are no villains! Now after “Wrath of Khan” I can’t argue that going back to the source material is a bad idea, but Khan was a sequel, building on the original. And if you’re going to spend $20 million (then a lot of money for a movie) to remake an episode of Star Trek, do “The Doomsday Machine” That episode just begs for the big-screen treatment. (Check out the CGI-improved version, you’ll see I’m right).

Baffling decision 2: “Let’s shave Persis Khambatta’s head!” 

Baffling decision 3: Upon finding out the revived Star Trek would be a movie, Leonard Nimoy was suddenly interested. At this point, Roddenberry thought, wow, I can keep Decker and Ilia, but I’ll have to kill off Xon. 

Kill off Xon? 

Roddenberry somehow was thinking that not only were the Star Trek Phase II episodes filmed, they were aired, and the fans would want an explanation on why Xon wasn’t in the movie.

How else to explain his role in the film as the quickly introduced, quickly dispatched Vulcan, making a movie that was a half hour too long even longer?

The film was released, became a hit, but was quickly nicknamed Star Trek: The Motionless Picture. 

So, Roddenbery went into exile and Paramount would never release another Star Trek film without phasers being fired and things blowing up.

When Roddenberry returned from exile, they let him produce an ambitious little TV program called Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Once again, he raided the box o’ scripts from Phase II. Only wherever it said Kirk, he crossed it out and wrote Picard. Decker became Riker; Ilia became Troi, and Xon became Data.

This man was the master of recycling.

As  pointed out in a Cracked article, Roddenberry’s talents were somewhat overrated in favor of people who worked for him. Cracked cites Gene Coon, but I would add DC Fontana and David Gerrold to the mix. When they left Next Generation things quickly went to crap. Interesting thought-provoking scripts were replaced with tropes that were moldy in the ‘60s. Evil twins, unambiguously-good good guys. A captain who surrendered seemingly every episode, the psychic who provided no insight that wasn’t always obvious, the boy genius for whom every episode had to stop in its tracks so someone could explain the plot to him, and a Klingon who got knocked on his ass in every fight.

Star Trek: Phase II could have been the best Star Trek series of them all. Roddenberry was always somehow Star Trek’s greatest champion and worst enemy.