Author: Jim McLennan

Bad Girls: season four

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★★★★
“Back behind bars, and back on track.”

badgirls4The real strength of Bad Girls is the almost limitless possibilities of the scenario; if ever things are in danger of getting stale, it’s easy to lob in fresh characters to get the pot stirred up and create whatever angles you want. Exhibit A: new governor, Neil Grayling (Gadds), whose arrival gave the show a whole new direction, at least among the staff – and particularly Jim Fenner, who discovered a whole new viewpoint of sexual harassment. Not that it really made him see the error of his ways, of course.

Obviously, within the general prison population, life went on as before. Well, that’s if “as before” means murder, suicide and escape attempts, a birth… And – with the departure of Helen and Nikki at the end of Series Three – new lesbian couple, Cassie and Roisin, though their whining grew increasingly tiresome as the series went on. Truth be told, there also wasn’t a great deal of light in this season; after a while, you yearned for something to take the weight off. Even the two Julies seemed on a downward spiral.

However, the strongest point of the show this year was the full-flowering of Yvonne Atkins (Henry), who has become the focus around which the series revolves, and one of the best female characters in any TV series. It started with her being set-up for murder, but by the end, we were aware there was much more to this fabulously complex character, underneath the hard shell. Every scene with her in it was a delight to watch, and kept the show a shining jewel in the crown of British television. The cliffhanger at the end (who lives? who dies?) had Chris scurrying immediately for Ebay, and series five.

Star: Linda Henry, Jack Ellis, James Gaddas, Isabelle Amyes

Alias: season four

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★★★
“Fourth verse – same as the first.”

Poor Alias. Shunted from its Sunday slot to make way for Desperate Housewives – which proved successful beyond SD-6’s wildest dreams – this season felt as if JJ Abrams was more devoted to his second child, Lost (again, the owner of bigger ratings). By the end of the season it was Sydney, Jack, and their associates who found themselves both lost and somewhat desperate in TV-land, despite much-improved viewing figures – largely a result of following Lost, which got about 30% more audience.

Replacing the arcane beauty of Rambaldi and complex plans from the middle ages, was what seemed like an endless string of long-lost relatives and associates from the more recent past. Careless of Sydney to lose all these, wasn’t it? And somehow we went back to Season One: Sloan running operations, with Sydney sure he’s up to no good somehow. Abrams said it was a return to the core concept of the show, but it felt more like a shortage of ideas.

Not to say there weren’t moments; most tied to Sonia Braga, Isabella Rossellini and Lena Olin, a triumphant trio of femmes fatales whose scheming reached Shakespearean levels. [spoilers!] Sophia framed Irina for putting a hit on Sydney, and got ex-husband Jack to shoot Irina – only, was it really her? [end spoilers] In lesser hands, this could have been one step above “and it was all a dream”; these three magnificent actresses undoubtedly saved the day.

What the series lacked was any real enemy for Sydney, up until the later episodes. Anna Espinosa made a welcome return, but the show felt like it was marking time at best, with a final “twist” that seemed to have been made up at the last minute, and showed little evidence of advance thought. Plus, all the action scenes continue to be infected with the jump-cut editing that made it impossible to tell what is going on.

There was, however, just enough to keep us around for season five. Perhaps the biggest surprise – and the one with most potential – was the deft touch showed by Garner behind the camera; the episode she directed was one of the series highlights. Given the disappointments which have been her movies to date, might this show a possible direction for her future career?

Star: Jennifer Garner, Michael Vartan, Victor Garber, Ron Rifkin

The Lost Angel

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★★
“If Dirty Harry had a daughter…with issues.”

The daughter of Clint does her best in this police thriller but, despite one decent twist, and a couple of half-decent scenes, this collapses under the weight of too familiar a storyline and some rampant overacting. Inspector Billie Palmer (Eastwood) is assigned to catch a killer who has promised a victim a day for 20 days, and is living up to their promise. Events centre around a local deaf priest (Rhys-Davies), but she also must deal with a disgruntled suspect whom she shot, a traumatic incident in her past, and a suspiciously knowledgeable informant. Oh, and a laughably gratuitous sex scene that appears out of nowhere, 80 minutes in.

It’s as if the film-makers didn’t believe any single thread would hold our interest, and decided instead to shovel them on without real logic – hey, if you don’t like this plot, don’t worry, there’ll be another one along in a minute. Which is a shame, since a couple of the ideas have potential, and if better developed, could have made for a decent movie. However, there’s no way any police officer, special crimes or not, would get away with behaving the way Palmer does; in particular, her method of interrogating Goth red herring, C.Thomas Howell (chewing every bit of scenery within reach), is not in the manual, except perhaps at Club Lapdance.

Despite this, ah, no-nonsense approach, which extends to most aspects of her detective work, there’s a reason this one has been sitting on the shelf for the past couple of years. Eastwood does have some of her father’s presence, but needs to make a significantly better choice of material if she is to reach the same level of stardom.

[This film was released by MTI on DVD, April 26th – for more details, visit their website]

Dir: Dimitri Logothetis
Star: Alison Eastwood, Nickolas Celozzi II, Judd Nelson, John Rhys-Davies

Lipstick & Dynamite

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★★★★
“Lives up to its subtitle: The First Ladies of Wrestling”

I first heard about this film last spring, at the Cauliflower Alley Club convention in Las Vegas, a get-together for retired wrestlers and their fans. Two attendees, Banner and Martinez, talked about their part in the film, and we were immediately intrigued; a year later, I’m pleased to say this largely lives up to expectations. It takes you back to a time before pro wrestling was synonymous with the WWE, and the characters here are fabulous. They’re led by Gillem, now in her 80’s, occasionally difficult to understand (they subtitle her comments) but with a life that went from the ring to lion-taming. She’s merely one example, and the results are fascinating.

That’s not to say this is perfect film-making. There’s too little structure – a vague thread about an upcoming reunion is about all – and the film jumps about in history with little apparent purpose. There’s a vaguely misanthropic bent too, in that almost all men are rapists, abusive fathers or cheating husbands; it’d also have been nice to have the women wrestlers better located, culturally, in the era of which they were part. We get some priceless What’s My Line? footage, and we’d love to have seen more of this. Instead, it’s mostly talking-heads, and no matter how interesting, this eventually gets old . Much of the actual footage of bouts comes off the Wrestling Women USA DVD from Something Weird, and there’s also chunks from Pin Down Girl, neither of which are memorable.

But in the end, the subject is an inspired choice, and the film certainly does the topic justice. You’re left with profound respect for ladies who went against the mores of popular society and stepped into the ring, often sacrificing their health – and in one case, their life – for our entertainment. This documentary is a fitting tribute to these marvellous women.

Dir: Ruth Leitman
Star: Gladys Gillem, The Fabulous Moolah, Ida May Martinez, Penny Banner

Girlfight

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★★★★
The story of a girl who “didn’t make the cheerleading team”.

The opening shot zooms in on Rodriguez with her head down; slowly, she raises her head, and stares into the camera with ferocious intensity. If this renders the rest of the film largely redundant, it’s not really anyone’s fault. In Michelle Rodriguez, the makers have the perfect person to play Diana, a pissed-off, troubled/troublesome) teen, who finds that violence does solve problems after all. Okay, that’s not perhaps the message the authors intended, but when Diana finally lays into her father, it certainly seems that way.

However, that’s typical of the honesty the film shows: uplifting, without sugar-coating the harshness of life or the toughness of training. Though it’s hard to remember a time when Rodriguez’ stare wasn’t a cliche (see S.W.A.T.), the rawness of her emotion shines out, and getting someone with little screen experience turns out brilliantly in the end, even if it could have backfired badly, and completely sunk the picture. Rodriguez certainly puts the fear of God in me, that’s for sure. While the rest of the cast are much lower-key, and barely memorable, they do their jobs adequately, in roles that are little more than cliches e.g. ex-boxer turned trainer.

However, by making Diana’s boyfriend a boxer too, it adds a significant spark, even if the “Gender Blind” boxing tournament that pits them against each other for the climax, is contrived, ludicrous, and can be found nowhere in the real world, AFAIK. Yet the film brings you along so well, that it’s easy to take that final step, which provides more than adequate closure for Diana – if not necessarily anyone else.

Dir: Karyn Kusama
Star: Michelle Rodriguez, Jaime Tirelli, Paul Calderon, Santiago Douglas

Action Heroines of History

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The year 2004 will not go down as a great vintage for historical movies, thanks to Troy, Alexander, King Arthur, etc. In contrast, films that feature original ideas, even if they are sequels, have done well, but there are so many interesting stories contained in history that I see no need to stick with the familiar. To illustrate this point I have compiled a selection of pieces on successful women from history, whose stories would all make good movies.

As well as factual details, the pieces include suggestions of how the films could be constructed to marry historical fact and cinematic drama. These are a pair of influences which tend to be uneasy bedfellows, but too often accuracy ends up sacrificed wholesale, for reasons which tend to be questionable at best. This isn’t necessary; as these cases show, there is potential for an interesting film that still remains credible.

The heroines come from widely different eras, and while they vary in their importance as far as making a difference, I find them all fascinating, and feel strongly that they deserve to be better known. Part of the reason they are not is, I believe, down to historians, who seem far more interested in women who meet with a tragic end. For example: Cleopatra (suicide), Boudicca (suicide), Joan of Arc (burned at the stake), or Mary Queen of Scots (beheaded). I’m sure that many people would appreciate a film featuring women who come out a winner, and these articles will hopefully generate some interest in such historical figures.

Making history: historical heroines to Hollywood

See also

 

Cutie Honey

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★★★★
“She giggles! She plays with her cat! She kicks ass!”

The picture on the right probably does a better job of explaining what Cutey Honey is about than I ever could; part-girl, part nano-technology, rebuilt post-car crash with superpowers and some interesting costumes, which require fuelling through junk food. After her uncle is kidnapped by the evil Sister Jill (Sakai) and his/her/its minions – Jill is part tree, and has also been kidnapping women en masse, in order to drain their lifeforce – only Cutie (Sato) can save the day, assisted by a no-nonsense policewoman (Ichikawa) and a journalist who, basically, acts as “Exposition-San” (Murakami).

Director Anno is best known for the (over-rated) anime series, Evangelion, so who better to convert a manga/anime heroine to the big screen? Certainly, the first ten minutes are utterly fabulous, capturing the comic-book essence perfectly, thanks in part to magnificent design work. The sets, costumes and even hair (particularly of the villains) are first-class, even in a movie that is clearly tongue-in-cheek; the clues include villains who break into song, and really big explosions which cause no damage at all.

While the film doesn’t quite live up to its opening and, frankly, occasionally drags in the middle, it’s largely entertaining, especially in the action sequences. Sato does a good job in both “uber-perky” and “intense” modes, while Ichikawa benefits from little touches like her glasses, which turn out to be total affectation. Much as in Evangelion, the end is some kind of deep, philosophical mess, rather than the knockdown battle we all want to see; however, it annoyed me much less here, arguably fitting the heroine’s sunny disposition. Hollywood, with a lot to learn about making comic to cinema adaptations, could do much worse than taking Cutie 1.0.1.

Dir: Hideaki Anno
Star: Eriko Sato, Mikako Ichikawa, Jun Murakami, Eisuke Sakai

Kunoichi: Lady Ninja

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★★
“What?”

A combination of the seventh and eighth in the series, I believe it’s the first entry (I don’t think there’s any connection to Lady Ninja: Reflections of Darkness) to get Western distribution so far, and boy, it shows. I can only presume it makes sense if you’ve seen the preceding six, because it sure as hell doesn’t on its own. A group of seven nuns decide to take revenge for an attack on their convent by becoming ninjas, and acquiring skills like “Nipple Shock Wave”. Which is exactly what it sounds like, even if most of the actual arterial violence is carried out by their ally, a one-eyed swordsman called Yagyu Jubei (Ozawa).

It fails to make sense on a whole variety of levels. Individual scenes are barely coherent; neighbouring ones don’t connect with each other; and the overall result could be imitated by channel-surfing a series of ninja-based TV stations. Mind you, Friday the 13th Part VII would make no sense if it was your first exposure to the series, and if you’re prepared to waive your constitutional right to know what the hell is going on, there’s still moderate fun to be had here – as long as your definition of “fun” encompasses large amounts of spurty dismemberment.

The problem with the heroines is mostly their poorly-defined characters; it’s hard to tell any member of our magnificent seven apart. They look similar, dress the same, and possess few distinguishing features. Overall, I can’t say how much blame lies with the film-makers, and how much with distributors Media Blasters for skipping the first six parts; either way, this isn’t recommended any more than halfheartedly.

Dir: Hitoshi Ozawa
Star: Yuko Moriyama, Hitoshi Ozawa, Non, Momoka Saeki
a.k.a. Kunoichi ninpô chô Yagyû gaiden: Edobana jigoku-hen

Ferocious Female Freedom Fighters

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★½
“Interesting, only if you want a lesson on making a poor movie worse.”

After the excesses of Lady Terminator, I hoped for something equally as berserk here: instead, however, I got a reminder of why I sometimes hate Troma so much. Here, they took a fairly lame Indonesian movie (called, I believe, The Stabilizer) and handed it to the brother of head honcho Lloyd Kaufmann, who wrote a “funny” script and dubbed it: imagine What’s Up Tiger Lily with fart gags replacing all wit and humour. Here’s a sample: they make the hero an Elvis impersonator. Oh, hold my sides, for I fear they may split with laughter…not.

Fortunately, the DVD offers the option of the original soundtrack which is, at least, slightly less grating. The main plot there concerns a judo champion (Arnaz), lured into working for a criminal syndicate that stages dreadful women’s wrestling matches on the side. Her trainer (Prima) is actually a good guy, and together, they struggle to bring down the villains. There’s a lot else going on (the heroine’s kid brother desperately needs an operation), but it’s of no interest. Indeed, even the main plot is lame, and while the martial arts battles are okay, any entertainment value is more than negated by the horrible wrestling, which make WEW look like the golden era of All Japan Women.

I admit, I did laugh at the mud fight, which replaces Barbarian Queen 2 as the most gratuitous ever – one second our heroines are jogging along a road, the next… Otherwise, though, it’s easy to see why Troma opted to dub it, even if the end result stinks worse than week-old diapers. Why they bought it in the first place, however, remains a mystery.

Dir: Jopi Burnama
Star: Eva Arnaz, Barry Prima, Ruth Pelupessi, Youstine Rais

Rumble Roses

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★★★★
“Let’s Get Ready to Rumble…”

This is our first ever video game review on gwg.org, and just so you know I’m not making any of this up, here’s a synopsis of the storyline for this one, taken from IGN.com: “A sick and twisted half-naked scientist has decided to dress up like a nurse and hold an international wrestling tournament for the world’s greatest female grapplers. Once the women have entered, the evil doctor then takes samples of their DNA so that she can create a cyborg super-soldier to do her bidding for some unknown purpose. In the meantime, the mad puppeteer has also decided to brainwash all the contestants she’s met by turning them into an army of trashy, leglock-giving bad girls with skirts so short they should be called Smurfs.”

On the off-chance that you are not already whizzing out the door to your nearest electronics store to obtain this title, I’ll tell you more, but first a little background. I’m not a great computer game player, having completed precisely three in my life (Zork, Doom and Tomb Raider), but Chris bought me this for Christmas [how I love my wife!], so naturally I felt morally obliged to play it… The basic concept is straight out of Game Cliche Academy; a bunch of characters with various motives, get together to beat the crap out of each other in a range of interesting ways. See also Street Fighter II, Mortal Kombat, Dead or Alive, etc. etc. The key difference here that while most offer a token woman or two, here, every character is female, which may be a unique feature for a Western release [there was an AJW game for the Playstation, but it was Japan only]

It’s kinda hard to decide whether this is feminist or sexist. There’s no doubt that these are strong, independent women who can kick ass with the best of them. Yet they also wear outfits which would prove structurally unfeasible in real life, and you could say the same thing about physical attributes resembling a multiple Zeppelin pile-up. Then there’s “mud mode” (left), which is exactly what it sounds like. Of course, this cheesecake aspect is far from unheard of: Dead or Alive: Beach Volleyball took the female characters from the beat-em-up game and put them in swimsuits to play volleyball against each other. Yet, its roleplaying aspects made that one a favourite with our teenage daughter as much as our son. That’s unlikely here, shall we say.

On the other hand, the in-ring battles are still a step or two more credible than anything I’ve seen out of a regular all-woman federation in the US [I did enjoy the Heatwave show staged by IZW here in Phoenix, which was a one-off event], and approximately ten miles ahead of the farce that passes for woman’s wrestling in the WWE these days. Admittedly, in terms of personality, they’re from the shallow end of the character pool – teacher, nurse, punk rock chick, etc – but again, this compares not unfavourably with the sole flavour, Silicone Slut, available in the WWE.

My playing-style is your average button-masher, but it took me only an hour or so to beat the game with my first character – there are ten to choose from at the beginning, and playing through story mode in each one unlocks their alter-ego. Play through all 20, and you can be the bosses too, but be warned: the voice acting is horrible, and the storylines positively wince-inducing. In addition, you can play straightforward exhibition matches, and carrying out certain tasks, known as “vows” e.g. winning inside three minutes, can cause characters to switch from good to bad versions too. A problem here seems to be that you can’t have both alignments active simultaneously, so you’re not able to have Reiko Hinomoto (nice) take on Rowdy Reiko (naughty).

The controls are similar for all the characters, but they have different move sets, so that adds variety. Personally, I sorely wanted a practice mode (like Dead or Alive, for example); as is, the only way to learn is in actual matches, hardly the best way. I remain clueless about blocking attacks, but muddled through, despite some annoying occasions where my AI opponent seemed to perform a lengthy string of attacks that I could do nothing to counter. On offense, successful moves gradually fill up your meter (the yellow bar at the top); each completion gives you the chance to perform a lethal attack. Computer-controlled fighters tend not to use it immediately; don’t make that mistake, as a lethality, followed up if necessary by a pin attempt, is a good way to win.

The graphics kick ass. An awful lot of polygons (I believe around 10,000!) go into each character, with detailed hair, costumes, tattoos, backgrounds and other refinements that look good even on the biggest TV set. However, when the wrestlers run, it sometimes doesn’t work at all. The music is pretty lame J-Pop, so you’ll probably rapidly find yourself turning off the entrance videos too. On the down side, as well as practice mode, we could have used tag matches, survival mode, create-a-character, a bigger range of locations… The options present here are pretty sparse, though in gaming I suppose it’s usually better not to be a jack-of-all-trades.

Still, with all the different characters, there would certainly be plenty to keep the dedicated completist playing. I’m not sure I’ll have quite the stamina to do that, and it’s more likely to be the kind of thing I pick up casually for half an hour. It is definitely a guys’ game – our aforementioned teenage daughter used the word “nasty” more than once while spectating – and contains enough elements to have Chris’s eyes rolling, such as the mud and gallery mode. But as a crass, shallow, mildly guilty pleasure, it’s great, and despite some obvious short-comings with the story and lack of variety, as a wrestling game, it’s actually pretty good. Now, if you’ll pardon me, I must go ice down my thumbs.

Dist: Konami
Platform: Playstation 2