Tag: seal of approval

Alias: season two

  By

★★★★
“The Family That Slays Together, Stays Together…”

I’ve literally sprinted through from the living-room, where the two-hour season finale has just finished, leaving an aching void in our Sunday evenings that will remain until the third season starts in the fall. It was hard to see how the second series could live up to the first but, with a few relatively minor misgivings, it’s safe to say that the show has.

alias2Would have to admit that the start was somewhat slow. It was hardly a surprise to discover that most of the characters who were “dead” at the end of the first series made a miraculous comeback in the second. It’s exactly the sort of thing you expect from shows like this, and you wonder why they even bother. Indeed, much of the first half of the series was too predictable, revolving around the can-or-can’t Sydney trust her mother dilemma. No prizes for guessing the right answer there either.

The recovery began when ABC handed Alias the coveted post-Superbowl slot (though once the score in the game reached 34-3, its impact on ratings for Alias became doubtful). Still, it proved a pivotal episode, giving Abrams a chance to reinvent the show, and introduce it to a whole new audience too lazy to change the channel (due to overconsumption of beer and nachos, probably). This was apparent in some rather clunky back-exposition, and also an opening which featured Sydney in two sets of lingerie – a shameless, gratuitous piece of shallow exploitation, clearly designed to appeal to nobody but the gridiron fans. :-) They probably mistook it for another Victoria’ Secret commercial…

Luckily, there was a lot of actual content, too: The CIA moved in to take SD-6 down, and from then on, no longer was Sydney struggling to maintain her secret lives. The show would become a quest for Sloane, trying to stop him before he…well, no-one was quite sure what he was up to, but it never seemed likely to involve puppies and flowers. This episode also marked the start of an increasing body-count with one character murdered and replaced by an evil doppelganger, while later on, two spouses would also bite the dust.

With the Rambaldi story making a welcome reappearance, the season picked up steam, helped by cool guest stars: Rutger Hauer, Danny Trejo & David Carradine (a Buddhist monk!) – we just needed Udo Kier and we’d have been in cult heaven. Apparently lost in the duplicitous double-crossing was the action element, a disappointing facet. For example, not until the last 10 minutes of the two-hour season finale did Sydney get in some serious butt-kicking; we wondered if this was connected with Garner’s apparent weight gain. Too much comfort ice-cream after her recent break-up? Perhaps; though if she’s pregnant, you heard it here first.

With so many threads too, the story arcs seemed disjointed: in some cases, you’d go for weeks without hearing anything, before an abrupt reappearance. However, a continuing strength was the development of the supporting cast, with Sloane switching from evil mastermind to sympathetic antihero, even within the course of a single episode. Dixon, too, enjoyed a spectacular character arc over the second half, going from committed SD-6 employee to a borderline psychopath, whose obsession with catching Sloane surpassed even Sydney’s.

Our favourite episode of the season had beloved uber-geek Marshall going on a mission to London with Sydney. It combined action, humour, drama and pathos to great effect, ending with one of the best cliffhangers the series has yet managed – admittedly, we speak as big Marshall fans, and look forward to the character receiving a spinoff series. Hey, if it can happen to a mopey vampire, anything’s possible.

Fortunately, the Vaughn/Bristow romantic angle that begin to lurk, iceberg-like, towards the end of season one, has been played subtly enough that we are mostly able to ignore it. More remarkably, the Will/Francie relationship managed to become a genuine plot thread, thanks to a startling twist which raised the hairs on the back of our necks every time they shared a scene. Let’s just say that Francie isn’t the woman she used to be. :-)

Despite ratings that generally remain disappointing – it ranked only 92nd in prime-time shows – Alias was still renewed, a decision for which ABC can only be commended. However, they still seem uncertain about how to promote the show. Here we are, two seasons down, still waiting for the first to arrive on DVD – they could learn a lot from Fox, which got a huge boost to the ratings for the second run of 24 from the first’s availability on disc. [By coincidence, both Alias Season 1, and 24 Season 2 are scheduled for DVD release on September 2nd, 2003]

So where do we go in Series 3? We still have the Rambaldi machine; assembly now complete, but expect further machinations as they piece together the instruction manual, and discover they need a 240/110V convertor. :-) It looked for a moment like we would be missing one major character (who finally Got The Point), but sounds like he’s okay. However, the main thread appears to be Sydney, and her efforts to recover from what could simply be the mother of all hangovers – I mean, I sometimes wondered how I got home, but at least I usually woke up on the same continent. Funnily enough, I suspect there might be rather more to her blackout than one too many Babychams. The truth probably lies somewhere between that, and abduction by aliens, but we’ll have to wait until autumn to find out.

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

Queen’s High

  By

★★★★
“Nothing like Kill Bill at all – no, really! :-)”

It’s surprising no-one has mentioned the similarity this 1991 pic has to Kill Bill, especially given QT’s liking, both for lifting plots and Hong Kong movies. Here, Cynthia Khan plays Kwanny, the daughter in a gangster family whose wedding day is interrupted by the treacherous slaughter of her intended (and a good few others). Thus explodes a spiral of revenge and betrayal, in which she gets plenty of chance to use her martial arts and gun skills. Of course, there are differences – she is unaware of her enemy within – but the overlap is striking. No doubt Tarantino will claim not to have heard of it – any more than he’d seen City on Fire, before making Reservoir Dogs…

On its own merits, Queen’s High stands up nicely, after a sluggish start. You might be wondering how to keep track of a parade of characters, but don’t worry, they won’t last long. The wedding-day slaughter on its own gets it our seal of approval, a masterpiece of slo-mo squibbing that’s in my personal top ten of action heroine sequences, and brings a new meaning to “until death do us part”. It also lets Cynthia Khan, who has her share of acting talent, transform from happy daughter to avenging angel, as during In the Line of Duty 3. The action side finally bursts into life in the final reel, Kwanny taking on a whole warehouse of bad guys, and discovering who ordered the massacre. The film certainly has weaknesses, but such strengths easily make up for them.

Dir: Chris Lee Kin Sang
Star: Cynthia Khan, Simon Yam, Newton Lai, Shum Wai

Punch

  By

★★★★
“Girlfight Club”

Topless Female Boxing. There. The reader is paying attention. Yet, if the subject has been covered in a less appealing way than here, I probably don’t want to see it. Indeed, as the toplessness is neither vital to the plot, nor visually pleasing, you wonder why they bothered. The main character here is 18-year old Ariel (Bennett), whose relationship with her father (Riley) is disturbingly close, to the point that she punches his date Mary (Laskowski) for using – entirely aptly – the word “creepy”. This pisses-off Mary’s sister, Julie (McGeachie), an even badder-ass than Ariel, who channels anger into the previously mentioned TFB, with a 38-0 record. She confronts father and daughter, aiming to make them fix their mistake. Viewers will likely eagerly anticipate Ariel getting her ass handed to her by Julie…

I approached with caution, largely because the sleeve invokes Knockout, perhaps the worst boxing movie of all time [see the Trash City review, but don’t confuse with Knockouts]. Luckily, this is closer to Fight Club, not least in terms of violence as social therapy. We really liked Julie, who is entirely comfortable with her aggression, and McGeachie’s stare rivals Michelle Rodriguez for intensity. Generally though, it’s well written and acted; even minor characters such as a barman are fleshed out. The edgy, icky feel is enhanced by Bennett being the director’s daughter, inevitably raising questions about art and life. [I asked Chris what her reaction would be, if I directed a movie with our daughter doing full-frontal nudity. Unsurprisingly, her response involved my testicles and a dull blade.] Canadian, typically off-beat, and a good deal better than expected.

Dir: Guy Bennett
Star: Michael Riley, Sonja Bennett, Meredith McGeachie, Marcia Laskowski

Joan of Arc (1999)

  By

★★★★

joanofarcOne problem with history is that viewers likely know how it ends: if you want to surprise them, why bother making a historical drama? Joan of Arc knows this, so starts with her burning at the stake. It’s a bit of a double-edged sword: it robs the climax of its striking power, yet acknowledges without doubt, that this is a tragedy. The theme of manipulation is again strong here, with Joan discarded after having outlived her usefulness, despite an odd character change in the second half, where she drifts for a jarring moment into petulant bitch mode. It’s almost as if the makers hinted at a megalomaniacal side, crazed by power, and her fatalistic approach to her capture rings false – probably because it is nowhere near the truth. There’s more fabrication early on, with Joan an unwanted daughter who sees a friend (blind, no less) killed by enemy soldiers – must she always be some kind of post-traumatic stress survivor?

Once it hits its stride, however, there is rarely a wrong step, at least dramatically speaking – the French king again comes off as far more implicated in Joan’s death than evidence suggests. Neil Patrick Harris is convincing as Charles, who moves from self-doubt to certainty in his divine right to be king, then on to using that power against the one who put him there. Peter O’Toole too turns in a fine performance as Bishop Cauchon, though more facts are tampered with, allowing him to act as Charles’ spiritual advisor when he was actually always on the English/Burgundian side. That it’s a TV miniseries is apparent, with 15th century France populated by remarkably clear-skinned and straight-teethed people. There’s even hints of romance between Joan and her companion, Jean de Metz, which serves little purpose. The battle scenes, too, are all but bloodless – I wasn’t expecting the decapitations and arterial spurting seen in Besson’s film, but I didn’t really want the Middle Ages, sanitized for my protection. Even the guy dying of plague looks pretty good. [Chris noted a glaring continuity error at the end: on her way up to the stake, Joan is wearing shoes, but by the time she gets there, she’s barefoot!]

However, the main difference between this and The Messenger is that Joan of Arc is convincing. Perhaps with the advantage of having extra time (the DVD of the miniseries runs 189 minutes), they make the effort to show her interacting with other characters, and Sobieski’s calm, complete assurance is a striking contrast to Jovovich. The viewer can see why people would believe her, and it naturally follows they will too – Sobieski’s Emmy nomination was entirely well-deserved. Despite playing fast and loose with the facts (another example: Joan’s brother was not killed in battle, but lived to see her trial verdict overturned), this strong central performance holds the film together and, with the aid of the other fine actors, makes it eminently watchable. It may not be historically accurate, but it does a fine job of explaining why her myth is still honoured in the third millennium, without coming down in one camp or the other regarding the source of her visions. There are few TV miniseries worth watching, and fewer still worth owning, but this one comes highly recommended.

Dir: Christian Duguay
Star: Leelee Sobieski, Neil Patrick Harris, Peter O’Toole, Chad Willett

Xena: Warrior Princess

  By

“X(ena) marks the spot.”

“In a time of ancient gods, warlords and kings, a land in turmoil cried out for a hero.
She was Xena: a mighty princess, forged in the heat of battle.
The power. The passion. The danger. Her courage will change the world.”

Xena is one of the definitive action-heroine shows of all time. Originally appearing as a supporting character in a three-episode story arc on Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, in which she abandons her life as a warlord and opts instead to fight for good, as a way of making amends for her life. The producers opted to develop her as a spin-off, and the show ran for six seasons between 1995 and 2001, ending in a two-part finale (the review of which, below, was written first, hence it somewhat duplicates the overview here). It proved highly-popular for a show with no designated network home, pulling an audience in syndication of up to 7.8 million viewers during its second season, and inspiring a devoted fanbase that persists, even a decade after the show has come to an end.

I am not, apparently, the only person to remember the show fondly, and it is an important precursor to subsequent entries, both on television and in film. Joss Whedon has apparently credited the show with blazing the trail later followed by Buffy – not least in its musical episode, “Bitter Suite,” which was an obvious influence on “Once More, With Feeling”. The creator of Kill Bill, Quentin Tarantino, was also a fan of the show; as documented in Double Dare, he hired Lawless’s stunt double, Zoe Bell, to double for Uma Thurmann in his two movies.

Central to its success was the marvellously-named Lucy Lawless, a New Zealand actress who was, surprisingly, not the first choice for the role. It was originally Vanessa Angel, but she fell sick and was unable to take part – and the rest is, as they say, history. Lawless simply looks the part, possessing an undeniable physical presence. Unlike many heroines, it’s very easy to believe she genuinely looks like she could kick your ass! Add cheekbones that could cut class, plus a smile giving the impression she was perpetually one step ahead of you, so don’t even think about it, and you have the perfect person for the character.

Alongside Xena is Gabrielle (Renee O’Connor), who represents the moral compass of the show. Gabrielle left her home in a (mostly) peaceful village, to pursue a life of adventure with Xena, but became as much a spiritual adviser as sidekick. While certainly possessing the potential to be immensely irritating, in a Jiminy Cricket kind of way, she did perhaps have a more interesting character arc, described by one writer as “from a spunky kid into an idealistic fighter who didn’t kill, then a total pacifist, and finally a formidable but battle-weary warrior.”

Both the setting and the approaches taken to the storytelling are, to be honest, all over the place. The locations roam from Greece to China, the period could be anywhere over a spell of several centuries, and the dialogue is absolutely late-20th rather than even remotely classical. Similarly, the tone, even within a single episode, can leap from drama to pathos to comedy to a slugfest, without pausing for breath. It’s an approach which is difficult to pull off: even Hercules, from much the same creators, often seemed forced or trite, but Xena manages, by and large, to get away with its cheerful disregard to historical veracity and consistency of atmosphere. That it’s clearly not intended to be take seriously, is clear from the sound effects, where even a turning of Xena’s head is accompanied by a “Whoosh!”

There was enormous, often ferocious debate among fandom over the nature of Xena and Gabrielle’s relationship, some asserting they were a lesbian couple. While both showed plenty of evidence of heterosexuality, there was a lot of content open to interpretation – much of it absolutely deliberate, and known as “subtext” in Xena fandom. I never found it convincing. My issue with it was not one of sexuality, simply compatibility: Xena and Gabrielle were absolute opposites, in background, upbringing, personality and approach. They just didn’t “fit” each other, from what I could see, and there was no chemistry visible. Xena and Hercules: I could see that. Xena and the Queen of the Amazons: no problem there either. But Xena and Gabrielle? Sorry. Not buying this. It also played into the stereotype that any strong woman has to be a lesbian.

The ongoing discussions screaming matches in Xena fandom about this, as nicely documented in this piece, is largely what drove me away [s’funny, those screeching about tolerance often proved remarkably intolerant of others’ views]. Eventually from the show itself, as the makers opted to pander towards this vocal subset with increasing frequency, too often investing the show with elements which felt taken from a soap-opera. The finale was the only episode of that season I’d even seen. But the memories of the show remained, and when I discovered it on Netflix, I decided it was time to go back and watch the series. All 134 episodes. From the beginning. Seemed like a good idea at the time…

I’ll be covering them a season at a time. If you’re interested in more details, my notes can be found over on our forum, covering each episode in a bit more depth, with a pic from each.

Star: Lucy Lawless, Renee O’Connor, Ted Raimi, Hudson Leick

  • Xena: Warrior Princess season one

    Originally screened: September 1995

    It’s assumed viewers are at least somewhat familiar with Xena’s background, as she is first seen burying her armour in an effort to bury her past. Of course, this is about as successful as it usually is in fiction, and it’s not long before she’s saving villagers, including Gabrielle, from slavery. That includes an aerial battle atop platforms, which is the first sign of the show’s strong influence from Hong Kong action films; it was using wirework, in a way that predated its popular arrival in Hollywood. Similarly, the stunning New Zealand locations foreshadow Lord of the Rings, to the extent that I kept expecting to see hobbits gamboling along in Xena’s wake.

    There is a sense that the makers were still feeling their way to some extent, not quite certain how the relationships would work out, and the characters develop as the actors grew into them. The same goes for the action; especially early on, the doubling is clunkily shot, and Lawless is obviously not doing as much of her own work. The improvement over the course of the season was palpable, and by the end, both Xena and the stunt players had got a much better handle on the subtleties required. That said, I always had to wince when Xena would cartwheel her way into a situation – wouldn’t, oh, running have been quicker?

    There are some good guest appearances; Tim Thomerson plays a mercenary on the downside of his fame and career [think True Grit in ancient Greece], and we also see Karl Urban, who’d go on to play Bones in the Star Trek reboot. The best of these, however, is Bruce Campbell in “The Royal Couple of Thieves”. Show producer Rob Tapert was one of the producers of The Evil Dead, so has known Campbell for years, and used him to play Autolycus, the self-proclaimed King of Thieves. Xena demands his help to recover a potentially lethal religious relic, stolen from its owners, so the two have to pair up. The dialogue and coming timing here is great, and the same goes for “Warrior… Princess…” which sees Lawless play both Xena, and her look-alike, flighty princess Diana. It’s a startling demonstration of Lucy’s genuine talent as an actress.

    Player loading

    The best episode, however, is about as far from comedy as the show gets. I write a good deal more about it over on the forum, but it centers on Callisto, who watched her family die in a fire during a raid by Xena’s army, back when she was bad. Now, Callisto has set out to destroy Xena from the ground up. Featuring an amazingly psychotic performance from Hudson Leick as Callisto, it goes to prove that every great hero needs a great villain, and Callisto is the Joker to Xena’s Dark Knight. They play two sides of the same coin, Callisto pointing out that Xena has never been brought to justice for all her past crimes.

    Callisto is much further gone into the insanity abyss, as this speech she gives to Xena shows. “You let me go, and I will dedicate my life to killing everything you’ve loved: your friends, your family, your reputation, even your horse. You see, I am being so honest with you, because the idea of your pity is worse than death for me. You created a monster with integrity, Xena. Scary, isn’t it?” The show builds to a great battle between the two (above), inspired by a similar fight Jet Li had in Once Upon a Time in China. Watching this again… Yeah, I see why I loved the show!

    Season 1: Top 5 episodes

    # Jim IMDB voting
    1. Callisto Callisto
    2. The Royal Couple of Thieves Prometheus
    3. Warrior… Princess… Sins of the Past
    4. Sins of the Past The Greater Good
    5. Altared States Warrior… Princess…
    Continue reading →
  • Xena: Warrior Princess season two

    Originally screened: September 1996

    The defining moment of Xena’s sophomore season didn’t take place in any episode. In fact, it didn’t even take place in New Zealand, but thousands of miles away, During a rehearsal for an appearance on The Tonight show with Jay Leno, Lucy Lawless was thrown off a horse after it lost its footing, and broke her pelvis. It’s interesting to compare the reaction of the producers to what the Tapert/Raimi team did when the star of Spartacus, Andy Whitfield, was similarly a victim of severe misfortune, more than a decade later. There, they put the show entirely on hold and opted instead to film a prequel without him.

    Now, it’s not quite identical: Whitfield had cancer, which unfortunately proved fatal, and shooting had not commenced on his second series. Still, one wonders if, in hindsight, it might have been better – for the viewer at least – had the show gone on hiatus, rather than trying to (literally) limp along, with an action star incapable of doing any action for most of its run. Oh, you certainly have to admire the creative way in which everyone worked around it: rewriting an episode here, inserting a body swap there. But having Hudson Leick pretending to be Xena trapped in Callisto’s body, is like having Sir Anthony Hopkins play Clarice Sterling inside Hannibal Lecter. While I’m a huge Callisto mark, even I have to say, it completely negates the whole point.

    With Lawless’s limitations, the show was largely forced back on to the supporting characters post-fall, and that’s a bit of a mixed bag. Leick was better at being bad than being good, and Bruce Campbell was reliable as ever. But both Renee O’Connor and Ted Raimi were overexposed, and although they are fine in light comedy, they are just not capable of carrying a show from a dramatic point of view. Still, there were some solid episodes, my personal favorite being a successor to Warrior… Princess, giving Lawless three characters of disparate tone to juggle, and she does so magnificently. Despite general loathing in the fan community, I also enjoyed the Christmas episode, A Solstice Carol, for its loopy inventiveness. I mean… hula-hooping?

    There’s no doubt that the subtext between Xena and Gabrielle was more explicitly brought out in this series, with several sequences in various episodes that are clearly there purely to tease the fans. However, by the end of the seasons, there seems to have been a certain feeling, among some creators at least, that this had run its course. For instance, writer Chris Manheim said, “We kind of backpedaled a lot on all that [subtext]. I don’t know whether it’s getting read in no matter what we write. But I think we’ve said “Ah, we’ve had our run at that,” and just concentrate on other aspects of their relationship. Whatever people read into it they do… You can only do that so much before it gets to be old hat and kind of tired.”

    In terms of style and approach, the show covers even more ground here than the first time, from absolutely froth to grim darkness. Xena even gets crucified by Julius Caesar in one episode [confusingly, the actor responsible also crops up later, playing Cupid, complete with fluffy wings…]. I’m sure I’m not the only one who found themselves whistling Always Look on the Bright Side of Life, during the scene shown above right. Another unwitting Python reference is the wretched Here She Comss, Miss Amphipolis, a dreadful tale of drag-queen empowerment, featuring perhaps the least convincing female impersonator since John Cleese put on a dress – as on the left, watch that Adam’s apple bob….

    Having Xena wander round a beauty pageant, defusing tensions between both competitors and organizers, seems to represent both the most desperate and transparent effort by the makers to save her pelvis, and the nadir of the series thus far. [Though producer Steven Sears said that episode was unaffected, it’s hard to believe such a woeful installment was as originally intended, and Manheim said the story “came about partly because…Lucy couldn’t fight much.”] While the underlying cause was unfortunate and certainly outside the makers’ control, their reaction seemed more concerned with contractual obligation than show quality, and it’s hard to deny the resulting, significant drop-off in standards which can be seen post-accident in this series.

    Season 2: Top 5 episodes

    # Jim IMDB voting
    1. Warrior… Princess… Tramp A Day In The Life
    2. Return of Callisto Ten Little Warlords
    3. A Solstice Carol Return of Callisto
    4. Intimate Strangers A Necessary Evil
    5. A Necessary Evil Warrior… Princess… Tramp
    Continue reading →
  • Xena: Warrior Princess series finale

    “Get your yi-yi’s out.”

    I used to be a Xena fan; for the first couple of series, I was a die-hard, never missed an episode, bought the merchandise, went to the gatherings, etc. I loved (with one exception) the supporting cast – Joxer, Ares, Autolycus – and still reckon Callisto remains one of the great TV villainesses of all time.

    But the dynamic of the series slowly changed; Xena’s irritating sidekick, Gabrielle, started getting more screen time, and it became more of a relationship-based show than the action/humour cross which I knew and loved. Finally, around the end of Series 3, I gave up (I think the musical episode was a watershed – as with Buffy); not even the news that the series was ending could lure me back, and the finale in Summer 2001 passed me by. It even took me a month to decide to pick up the DVD, and then it was only ‘cos I had a Best Buy gift card burning a hole in my pocket. But I’m glad I did, as it’s an ending fit for a warrior princess.

    Warning: the following, of necessity, contains extreme spoilers for the show’s end. Readers are advised not to proceed if they wish to avoid such knowledge.

    Let’s get the spoiler out of the way first: the original title for this review was, Oh My God – They Killed Xena! You Bastards!, but wiser counsel prevailed. To screams of fury from the Hard Core Nut Balls (as Lawless herself once described the more extreme fans), Xena died. And this time, it was permanent – something of a change for a show in which fatality was previously only a minor inconvenience. Indeed, one of the problems was there was no longer any tension, characters having come back from the grave so many times, even death no longer had a sting. The reason for the reaction, it seems, was less the actual death, than the separation of Xena and Gabrielle. For a small but extremely vociferous part of fandom invested the relationship between those two with far more than the actresses (and most of the creators) intended. These “subtexters” wanted to see the two walk off into the sunset, hand-in-hand – probably sporting crew cuts and Birkenstocks too, if you catch my drift. The makers sometimes jokily acknowledged these obsessives, which was perhaps like trying to put a fire out by throwing petrol on it.

    The things which made them dislike the finale were, perhaps, the ones why I enjoyed it. I was never bothered by the concept of a Xena being a lesbian, it was just the idea that whiny waste of space Gabrielle was her partner which I found inconceivable: sidekick, yes; love interest, no. The finale largely downplayed Gabrielle’s role: she was entirely absent from the half told in flashback, concerning a previous adventure back when Xena was, shall we say, “morally independent”.  This created the drive for the film. The incident in question saw Xena ransoming a Japanese girl – forming a bond with her which certainly has subtextual elements of its own. But it all went horribly wrong, and Xena caused – albeit inadvertently – the deaths of 40,000 people. Now, the only way for her to find redemption is to kill the demon which consumed their souls…but the only way to do that is to become a ghost herself. While there’s the usual escape clause, at the end we discover that any return to life would condemn the souls forever; Xena is not prepared to do this, and so remains dead into eternity.

    xenafinLike the series itself, the finale veered wildly between the fabulous and the questionable, vacuuming up influences like Tarantino on speed. From Japan: Kwaidan, Shogun Assassin and Akira Kurosawa. From Hong Kong: A Chinese Ghost Story, Once Upon a Time in China, Swordsman. From the West: The Evil Dead and Sergio Leone – the former makes sense, since director Tapert produced that classic slice of low-budget horror. Fortunately, it has a lot of its own to admire, rather than being a series of homages; the story is great, and the acting largely excellent.

    The highlight is probably Xena’s death, a five-minute sequence of harrowing intensity featuring a never-ending hail of arrows, into which our heroine struggles, intent on finding a warrior’s death. It’s a fabulous combination of effects and acting, which would be worthy of any movie – at the end, there’s a mass exhalation of breath, as you realise that those who live by the sharp, pointy object, die by the sharp, pointy object. It’s entirely fitting, and if the show had ended there, I’d have had no complaints. The actual climax is clunky and contrived in comparison, though the shock value present remains huge, since you confidently expect the revival of Xena, right up until the credits roll.

    On the downside are various, jarring inaccuracies: Xena’s ghost hugs Gabrielle but is incapable of holding her chakram (the “round killing thing”, if you didn’t know); some of the “samurai” possess blatant New Zealand accents; a giant explosion implies the medieval Japanese possessed nuclear weapons (given the location, this is in somewhat dubious taste). If Xena really cared for Gabrielle, why send her on a wild-goose chase of resurrection, when Xena knew it wouldn’t happen? Why did Gabrielle pause to get a full-back tattoo first, before going off on this, presumably somewhat urgent, quest? These are clumsy and obvious flaws which could/should have been corrected.

    It still remains a brave and uncompromising finale, in an era when “final” is usually about the last word you’d use to describe them. While the door is not completely closed – not in a milieu where humans can become immortal and then get killed anyway – in all likelihood it is the end of Xena, and marks the close of her chapter. From a beginning as a minor character on another show, she became a cultural icon; whatever you may think of the series, its important place in female action heroine history cannot be denied.

    Dir: Rob Tapert
    Stars: Lucy Lawless, Renee O’Connor

    Continue reading →

Alias: season one

  By

★★★★
“Run Sydney Run”

“My name is Sydney Bristow. Seven years ago I was recruited by a secret branch of the CIA called SD-6. I was sworn to secrecy, but I couldn’t keep it from my fiancé. And when the head of SD-6 found out, he had him killed. That’s when I learned the truth: SD-6 is not part of the CIA. I’d been working for the very people I thought I was fighting against. So, I went to the only place that could help me take them down. Now I’m a double agent for the CIA, where my handler is a man named Michael Vaughn. Only one other person knows the truth about what I do: another double agent inside SD-6. Someone I hardly know…my father.”

“It’s everything you want, and more.” That was Chris’s opinion – I was kinda stuck for the right way to start, and as always, she delivered. As, indeed, Alias pretty much delivers, with a crunchy-yet-chewy first series that juggled drama, action and comedy to fine effect, twisting the plot frequently. One problem in TV drama is that you must allow viewers to tune in at any point and rapidly work out what was going on, and former Felicity scribe J.J. Abrams does so in less than 150 words – see above for the heroine’s monologue which opens each show.

The 22 episodes cover a struggle for control of medieval technology, Nostradamus-style prophecy, and other organizations (good and bad), plus Sidney’s missing mother, ongoing relationship with her father, and perpetual struggle to keep her friends from suffering the same fate as her late fiancee. Each episode contains elements of major and minor story arcs, propelling them alone, yet also stands up well on its own.

After a breathless start in which it seemed that Abrams used every conceivable plot device inside three episodes, he wisely moved into new territory. In particular the introduction of Rambaldi, perhaps the show’s most interesting character, who has actually been dead for several centuries. A Da Vinci-esque inventor, he left pieces of his inventions, and clues to their operation, hidden around the globe, and SD-6 are now on a scavenger hunt to find and utilise these, with Sydney their main operative. The CIA are doing exactly the same, also using her to stay one step ahead of SD-6.

alias1Garner is a good choice to play Sydney, a no-nonsense character who is never one to sit back when confronted with problems. She comes across as a well-rounded person with her own fears and doubts, rather than some kind of Bond-esque superspy. But perhaps the show’s greatest strength is the spectrum of supporting actors, who give the show depth when it could easily become a disjointed series of Lara Croft-like escapades. Marshall, SD-6’s “Q”, provides gadgets and geeky humour, while especial kudos are due to Ron Rifkin as SD-6 head Arvin Sloane. The man who orders the death of Sydney’s fiancee could easily have been a two-dimensional bad guy, but by the end of the show, you feel a great deal more sympathetic to his problems.

The influences are plentiful and obvious, most plainly Nikita and the (let’s be honest, rather lame) TV series which subsquently followed. There’s also a helping of Run Lola Run in there; creator Abrams listened to the soundtrack “almost incessantly” while writing the show, and has said, tongue in cheek, that he demands one scene of his heroine running in every episode. He certainly gets it, even if this does become a little predictable. The action quota generally is variable, but usually well-staged, with Garner doing more action than you might expect. And anyone that gets to beat up guest-star Quentin Tarantino wins my approval (at least it took him away from making more dire films!).

Though Sydney occasionally has romantic dalliances, she is somewhat unlucky in love – these men have an unfortunate tendency to die suddenly, and in one case, at Sydney’s own hands. This is probably a good thing, since I’m no fan of Unresolved Sexual Tension, finding it gets in the way of more important elements. Want romance? Go read Mills & Boon! This is an action series, after all, and I’d rather have Sydney kicking ass than going all gooey-eyed over, say, CIA handler Vaughn (Vartan). Their relationship is the subject of much fan fiction, but the ending of the first series would appear to have put the dampers on that department. [If you saw the finale, you’ll appreciate the particular viciousness of this comment]

Season one ended on a dramatic high with four characters potentially biting the big one, though no actual corpses were seen. Given this, and the twisty nature of the show in general, I think it’s safe to say a number of them will find a way to come back in the next series. I’m already looking forward to it.

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

Honey West

  By

★★★★
“A taste of Honey.”

Honey West’s significance in television history can’t be exaggerated. She was the first ever woman detective to be the central character in an American network series, and was arguably the medium’s first action-heroine. Even though it ran for just one season, it helped open the doors for those who followed, such as The Girl from U.N.C.L.E., Get Christie Love and Police Woman. The show was based on a series of books by husband-and-wife team Gloria and Forrest Fickling, writing as “G.G.Fickling”. Beginning in 1957 with This Girl For Hire, eleven novels were produced over the next half-decade, and noted producer Aaron Spelling bought the rights and turned it into a TV series, originally spinning off from Burke’s Law [Gloria Fickling states they were largely screwed over by Spelling, getting little beyond a credit].

Naturally, this being the mid-sixties, the racier elements of the pulp novels had to be toned down, but the presence of Forbidden Planet star Anne Francis added its own share of potential, especially to boys of the appropriate age, which according to Francis, included Oliver Stone. But she was just as fascinating to young girls. It’s hard to appreciate in a world of Rizzoli and Isles, Prime Suspect, etc, that this presented a character which had never been seen on television. Fans included Chris, who even used to have the Honey West doll – given it now is offered on Ebay for up to $250, she wishes she had kept it, in the original box and with all its accessories.

How does the show stand up, almost fifty years later? Firstly, you have to appreciate that…well, it’s fifty years later. Most obviously, this shows in that the action is basically woeful, by modern standards. Honey’s karate skills extend little beyond flipping people on to their back, with the odd chop – and, it appears, in the sixties, everyone had a spot on their neck which would trigger immediate unconsciousness when touched. The doubling, is often painfully obviously a man in a blonde wig, though frequent stand-in (and early MMA practitioner) Gene LeBell does have decent legs. Credit in this area for the later episodes to Sharon Lucas, another stunt-double, and we should be fair and point out that no show from the time could stand against modern era in terms of action.


The unofficial lyrics
“Honey West, she’s a P.I. – for real…
Karate and judo, amazing contraptions,
gadgets, a sports car, and the latest fashions.
Plus… She… Has… Got… An… Oh… Ce… Lot!
But she’s smart, and she’s sexy,
Though her partner’s a little bit bitchy.
So that’s why we love Honey West!
(For real).

In contrast, the show was ahead of its time in terms of gadgetry, with Honey using on an everyday basis tools that have become part of everyday life now, e.g. mobile phones, GPS, etc. Ok, the phone in question was still the size of a normal phone and attached to the car (a really neat Cobra sports model), but this was 1965. One could even argue that the sunglasses used as a two-way communication device, was the first appearance of a Bluetooth headset. Though the illusion of secrecy for these is somewhat damaged, shall we say, by the fact that, in order to communicate, you have to take the glasses off, raise the antenna, and speak directly in to the corner of the frame…

Fortunately, what works really well, and still seems as fresh and entertaining as the day the show first aired, are the characters. Honey is a delightfully feisty character, who wouldn’t seem out of place at all in the 21st century, refusing to be the “little woman” that was expected of her sex at the time. The show feels like it was an ancestor of Burn Notice, with the trio of West, partner Sam Bolt and Aunt Meg more than a little reminscent of Michael Weston, Fiona and his mother. Here, Sam has a bit of a temper, and is always trying to control Honey – despite being very clearly the junior partner [it appears the private detective agency was started by her father] But she blithely ignores him, and does exactly what she thinks best.

There is hardly ever any fat on the storylines, a necessity when you have only 25 minutes or so for the entire episode. The results are plots that are crisp, to the point and miniature models of well-done storytelling. As with the characters, they could largely be transplanted forward 45 years and used, almost without significant adjustment. Admittedly, this seemed to change towards the end of the series, with the last five or six episodes apparently written by eleven-year olds. These include such elements as Mexican gypsies with a pet gorilla in the basement, a killer robot and a bizarre, extended dream sequence where Honey imagines herself to be a movie star in a range of films. It’s a dubious contrast with the well-grounded approach to Honey’s character.

We also appreciated the parade of supporting actors, which include a significant number of familiar names, especially if you watch other shows from the era. Other names should be recognized regardless, including Kevin McCarthy, Michael J. Pollard, Richard Kiel, Joe Don Baker and Dick Clark. The music, by Joseph Mullendore, is an appropriate blast from the past, resulting in much snapping of fingers and shaking of shoulders from the GWG couch by myself and Chris. Indeed, Chris even came up with her own set of lyrics for the theme-tune, which you can find in the sidebar; we were singing lustily along with the opening credits, to the utter bemusement of our son. [The middle section is a bit tricky, and should probably only be attempted by trained professionals. We ended up going, “Raindrops on roses, and whiskers on kittens…” much of the time!]

 We have to mention Bruce, Honey’s pet ocelot. If you’re not sure what one of those is, think 30 pounds of wild feline. And, by most accounts, “wild” was the word. As Francis put it, “If a cat is happy, it bites and scratches; and if it is unhappy, it bites and scratches.” She was left bruised and in need of a tetanus shot by the end of some scenes, though Anne bore it with grace, as in the publicity pic (top left). It’s undeniably impressive to see a heroine deliver lines with impeccable aplomb, while a sizable carnivorous animal attempts to gnaw off her face. This, however, has not stopped Chris from wanting an ocelot for Christmas, I think our two geriatric dogs would object; something plush might be better for all concerned.

It’s the kind of show that, on a casual glance, is more laughable than anything – the first couple of episodes watched, we were mostly sniggering at the anachronisms and sixties stylings. But as the series wore on, that aspect ceased to be notable, and we found ourselves enjoying the relationships, snsppy repartee and characters present in the show, without any ‘ironic’ overtones. It wasn’t long before we found ourselves looking forward to watching an episode with our morning coffee, and were genuinely sorry to come to the end of the final installment.

The show initially did well enough in the ratings, making the top twenty programs, while Francis won a Golden Globe and was nominated for an Emmy, losing out to Barbara Stanwyck in The Big Valley. However, neither that nor the merchandising returns could save the show. its viewing figures were clobbered toward the end of its run by Gomer Pyle, though the decision not to renew the show for a second season was largely the result of network stinginess. As Francis remembers it, “ABC said, We can buy The Avengers cheaper than we can make Honey West. And that’s exactly what happened.” It was an ironic replacement, West being effectively “killed off” by her Transaatlantic cousin, Emma Peel.

There has been subsequent talk of a movie version, with Reese Witherspoon attached in 2001 and again in 2007, but nothing came of either project. Most recently, 7th Voyage Productions apparently bought the rights, but that was more than two years ago now, with little or no progress since. There have been a series of comics, but in a world where ABC will hand out a lot of money to botch a Charlie’s Angels remake, it’s a shame no-one has made a serious effort to reboot Honey, which in many ways is a property intrinsically better suited to the modern era.

Star: Anne Francis, John Ericson, Irene Hervey

Naked Killer

  By

★★★★

Take a large helping of Basic Instinct, toss in some Nikita, and just a pinch of obscurer works such as Intimate Confessions of a Chinese Courtesan. Toss into the blender, and crank up to 11. The story concerns Kitty (Yau); when she goes to take revenge on the gangsters who killed her family, she crosses paths with Sister Cindy (Yao), a hitwoman who only takes out male scum. She saves Kitty and trains her as a new apprentice, despite the close attentions of cop Tinam (Yam), besotted with Kitty. He has a murky past, and throws up every time he holds a gun, since he accidentally shot his brother. Which isn’t good, especially when Cindy’s last apprentice, Princess (Ng) and her sidekick Baby (Svenvara Madoka) come back for tea and revenge…

It’s a script by Wong Jing, about whom opinion is sharply split. Some HK cinema fans regard him as a talentless hack, leaping on trends and churning out dreck purely for the money – the IMDB currently gives him 85 directorial credits. However, he’s had a hand in more of my favourites than any other film-maker: God of Gamblers, City Hunter, The Magic Crystal, Tricky Brains, New Legend of Shaolin, so I’m a big fan. Here, though not officially in the chair, I sense his hand was not limited to a writing role, not least because, at the time he was, ah, “seeing” Chingmy Yau.

Whoever the auteur, the result is one of the more delirious and mad entries in the girls-with-guns genre: much as Suspiria nails a dreamlike quality in the horror field, so does Killer for action heroines. It’s a nightmarish version of the war between the sexes: murder isn’t enough for our assassinettes, castration also seems to be required, while Cindy keeps a basement full of drooling rapists for training purposes and, I sense, doesn’t really feel the rest of mankind are much better. Much the same depth (or lack thereof) applies to all the characters: the women are largely man-hating lesbians; the men, bumbling idiots.

It all looks superbly stylish, thanks in part to cinematography by Peter Pau (Crouching Tiger) – though no-one seems certain whether he shot the movie, or just the supercool trailer, which has a whole bunch of stuff that never appears in the actual film. But regardless, the action (even though the starlets lacked much of a martial arts background, they’re pretty impressive), costumes, dialogue, characters and storyline all mesh elegantly into a whole that is undeniably exploitation cinema at its finest.

Ng, in particular, nails her part with a relish that’s just fabulous, but Kelly Yao also does surprisingly well – her role is perhaps the most pivotal in the plot, and she’s required to do more than look pretty, which she does with a maturity and confident poise that borders on the balletic. Yau is about the closest to a sympathetic character the film has, being largely the victim of unfortunate circumstances, while Yam has pretty much made a career out of playing the troubled cop, and could do this kind of job with his eyes shut. Indeed, given the vomiting required, he largely does.

But in this film, there’s no doubt: this is a women’s world, and any men in it are barely tolerated, as long as they behave themselves and cause no trouble. You could debate the gender politics on view here almost endlessly, but one seriously doubts Wong Jing had the slightest interest in this angle, any more than the late Russ Meyer viewed Faster Pussycat as a stirring tale of female empowerment. The viewer is, naturally, free to take whatever party favours away they want; just don’t seek to impose such high moral thoughts on those of us who are simply after a head-spinning dose of dubious entertainment.

This one is best enjoyed – indeed, perhaps only truly enjoyable – after a 16-oz steak and several alcoholic drinks of choice. Sprawl on the couch with your head gently spinning, and enjoy the heady excesses as they unspool. The term “Cat. III cinema” (the HK version of an R-rating) means many things, and covers much territory, both good and bad; this is firmly at the upper end of the spectrum, and combines sex and violence in a giddy way rarely seen in Western cinema.

[A couple of caveats: be careful of the version you buy: the Fortune Star version released in the US through Fox is heavily cut, both for sex and violence. Oddly though, some parts that have been removed (such as bits from Baby’s pool assassination) turn up as background in the interviews. Go figure. It’s hard to work out why they were removed, especially when they left in the “hilarious” scene in which a severed penis is mistaken for an undercooked sausage. The Region 2 DVD from Hong Kong Legends is probably the best way to go, if you have a multi-region DVD player. Also avoid any dubbed version; even by the usual low standards of such things, the English track is awful.

And don’t get reeled in by the sequels in name only, which redefine suck to almost unexplored depths. You’d think that with a title like Naked Killer 2: Raped by an Angel and a cover like this, you could hardly go wrong. You will learn, very quickly, exactly how it’s possible: in my other incarnation, I wrote, “I can forgive many things in a Cat. III film; but boredom is not one of them,” which should be sufficient warning to stay well clear.]

Dir: Clarence Fok
Stars: Chingmy Yau, Simon Yam, Kelly Yao (Wai Yiu), Carrie Ng

Kill Bill, Volume 2

  By

★★★★
“And she’s not Kiddo-ing…”

Let’s be blunt: Kill Bill would probably have been a better movie, if the Weinsteins had told Tarantino, “No: you can not cut this into two – you’re going to have to edit it down like every other director.” The second section of the film is notably less strong than the first, its 135 minutes containing too much stuff which a better, less self-indulgent moviemaker would realise was superfluous and chop out.

Precisely what, I’ll get to in a minute. But I also have to say that when this film works, it does so extremely well, with moments – and a good number of more lengthy sequences – that are just about perfect. We learn why Elle Driver (Hannah) has only one eye; the relationship between Budd (Madsen) and Bill (Carradine); the reason the Bride quit her life as an international jet-setting killer; and how the Crazy 88’s didn’t actually have 88 members. All these elements are dealt with swiftly and efficiently, plugged in like jigsaw pieces in their correct place, so it’s not as if Tarantino can’t do the right thing.

The film is at its best in the middle, from when Beatrix Kiddo (Thurmann – her character’s name is revealed, making the bleeping-out in the first part seem like nothing more than a childish prank at the audience’s expense) takes a shotgun blast to the chest from Budd, on through a flashback to a training sequence with a kung-fu master (the wonderful Gordon Liu), Beatrix’s ‘resurrection’ and up to and including a brawl with Elle that is probably the most brutal woman-woman combat ever filmed by Hollywood.

But this is not the action-fest of part one; and more’s the pity, I would say. In fact, the Bride only actually kills one person in this film [since we go in expecting her to dispose of Budd, Elle and Bill, this should whet your appetite more than it counts as a spoiler] Save her fight with Elle, there is nothing that comes within a mile of the House of Blue Leaves battle which ended the first movie. This renders the two together as possessing an uneven tone, since that massacre is the climax of the combined stories told in Kill Bill 1+2, on just about every level of cinema. Tarantino would have been better off getting his spaghetti Western influences out there before the kung-fu ones.

Tarantino’s lust for rubbing chunks of pop culture in our face rears its ugly head early on, with Bill playing a flute, just as Carradine did in his Kung Fu days. It’s a pointless anachronism, which doesn’t fit the character, and is topped only at the end when Bill rambles on, pontificating about the symbolism of Superman and how it relates to Beatrix. I can see the lines spewing forth from Quentin’s smug mouth, or even Kevin Smith’s; coming out of Bill’s, they seem absurdly forced and artificial.

But when Tarantino just nods to other movies, rather than waving them in the air and shouting “Look at me! Amn’t I clever?”, it works – sometimes sublimely. Beatrix professes her love to Bill, saying she’d ride a motorcycle onto a speeding train for him, likely a reference to Michelle Yeoh’s amazing stunt in Supercop. It succeeds, because it’s such an effective image, you don’t need to know the details; if you do, it merely lends them extra resonance. Similarly, at the end, when Beatrix and her daughter are re-united, the latter wants to watch Shogun Assassin; her father demurs…because it’s “too long”. [If you don’t get that joke, Shogun was one of the most arterial movies ever released…up until KB 1, anyway]

Unfortunately, Tarantino then subjects us to lengthy footage of mom and little girl watching the film, another pointless indulgence. But generally, it’s when characters open their mouths that the film hits trouble; there’s hardly two lines of dialogue which could not be, and probably should have been, compacted into one. Whole scenes cry for removal, such as Budd’s day job, which tells us nothing about him that his habit of drinking from jars doesn’t say, more efficiently and cinematically. And if I wanted to learn the precise volume of Black Mamba venom injected per bite, I’d tune to the Discovery Channel.

The deluxe box set, with both movies and a host of extra footage is, undoubtedly inevitable, which is why I haven’t bothered with the initial release of Volume 1, and nor will I bother with Volume 2. When it arrives, I will be sorely tempted to take everything and produce a proper edit, running two hours or less, which will have everything we need and none of the dreck. Instead, for the moment, you have one extremely good film and one pretty good film. Under normal circumstances, I’d take that from Hollywood in a heartbeat. But when, with a little care, this could have been the finest action heroine movie of all time, I must admit to a little disappointment.

Dir: Quentin Tarantino
Stars: Uma Thurman, David Carradine, Daryl Hannah, Michael Madsen

"When this film works, it does so extremely well, with moments – and a good number of more lengthy sequences – that are just about perfect."

Nikita (film)

  By

★★★★½

nikitaLuc Besson’s original contains all the necessary elements which would become standard for the field. A criminal is “killed” by the government, only to be resurrected into a new life as an assassin for the authorities. Initially resistant, she eventually embraces her new life, but a romance reminds her of the world she left behind, and becomes a potentially lethal threat to her existence when it starts to interfere with her professional capabilities.

This kind of thing has been done so often since, in one form or another, it’s hard to remember how fresh and invigorating it seemed at the time. Even so, not many movies since have had the courage to make their heroine a junkie cop-killer, and it says a lot for both Parrilaud and Besson that Nikita still comes over as sympathetic. She’s a victim of circumstance, her only use to the state as a trained killer, but the film strongly makes the case that she remains a person, with feelings and emotions like the rest of us.

It is these that eventually prove her downfall, when she encounters Victor the cleaner (Jean Reno), and realises that he is what she will eventually become. Seeing him kill people, as easily as we would swat a fly, it’s clear that, no matter how lengthy her indoctrination and training, she still kept her essential humanity and there is a line she won’t cross. Mind you, the original ending was rather more explosive, with Nikita turning her skills to exact revenge on her creators. Whether through a lack of resources, or a desire for a less confrontational finale, this was dropped in favour of a softer, more ambivalent ending which was also copied by subsequent versions.

Though this might have been nice from an action heroine point of view – as is, you wonder why they bothered with all that specialized training – I’m more than prepared to settle for the actual version of the film. The performances are all sound, Parillaud’s in particular (her “singing” voice is a stroke of genius!), and Besson’s style shines through a bluish haze of raindrops, wet streets and car headlights. Avoid, at all costs, the English dubbed version: that’s what Point of No Return is for. Even if you can’t or won’t read subtitles, you will have little difficulty in understanding the film, such is the raw emotion the actors put into their portrayals.

At two hours long, there is perhaps a slight deficit of actual action, not least in comparison to the hyperkinetic pace of contemporary genre entries. Some facets of the film, such as the romance, seem overplayed, albeit largely because the actors get the significance over so well. However, it’s not as if you’ll find yourself looking at your watch, and – if you’ll pardon the pun – the execution here is almost flawless.

Dir: Luc Besson
Star: Anne Parillaud, Tcheky Karyo, Jean-Hugues Anglade, Jeanne Moreau