Archive for March, 2010

Starring Seth Rogen, James Franco, Danny McBride, Gary Cole, Kevin Corrigan, Craig Robinson, Rosie Perez, Ed Begley Jr..

Directed by David Gordon Green.

B-


"It's just… I'm kind of flabbergasted when you say things like that. It's weird."

Critics of

Pineapple Express

will no doubt call the film languid, overlong, self-indulgent. But its supporters will know better: the movie is stoned. Or, at the very least, it

plays

like it's stoned. If you're on the fence about seeing

Pineapple Express

– a "stoner comedy" about a guy who witnesses a murder and goes on the lam with his drug dealer — that may tell you a lot of what you need to know.

I'm not a smoker myself, but I've been around plenty, and the experience of watching

Pineapple Express

is akin to that of watching a bunch of stoners for two hours. Now, that is partly because we actually

are

watching a bunch of stoners for two hours: the characters here rarely have a clear-headed moment. But it also manifests itself in the film's rhythms, its pacing, its comic timing. Scenes go on longer than any sober person could possibly think was appropriate. Long conversations go around in circles. The movie insists, with a disarming earnestness, that unremarkable bits of physical slapstick are the funniest thing on the planet. It's a "stoner comedy" in every sense of the word, more committed to that genre than any movie I've ever seen.

Its pedigree is impeccable. Steered by comedy producer extraordinaire Judd Apatow, written by

Superbad

's Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, and directed by America's great white indie hope David Gordon Green,

Pineapple Express

obviously has talent and brains behind it, and often it shows. There are a lot of laughs, thanks to the talent and chemistry of co-stars Rogen and James Franco, the screenplay's boundless exuberance, and the occasional bit of delirious randomness (there's a reaction shot of Rogen early in the film that makes me giggle every time I think about it). The stoned quality I mentioned above gives the movie a loose, unpredictable feel: it could go in any damn direction it pleases, and often does.

At the same time, when I said that watching

Pineapple Express

was akin to watching a bunch of stoners for two hours, I meant that it was akin to watching a bunch of stoners for

two hours

. Some sequences are so attenuated that they become funny for that reason alone, but it adds up, and at a certain point you just want to hurry the film along. There's a scene toward the end, where the characters are gathered at a diner, giddily recapping the events of the previous evening, and it just goes on and on and on, and at that point I became

convinced

that

Pineapple Express

was, simply, never going to end. It did, eventually, but I got the feeling that it was only because of practical constraints. They could have gone on talking forever.

I've long been complaining — usually with good humor — that the folks in Apatow production mill lack the discipline to edit their films down to something genuinely inspired.

Knocked Up

and

Superbad

are funny at two hours, but may have been masterpieces at 95 minutes. In this respect,

Pineapple Express

is both better and worse: on one hand, there's no masterpiece inside it at all, which is a drag; on the other, there's actually a plausible thematic justification for its expansiveness.

So, I don't know. This is a mightily strange movie, at times very funny; I can certainly recommend it to those who are curious about it. Those who can't stand being around stoners may like it less. I could swear I smelled like pot when I left the theater. Could have been my fellow theatergoers. Could have been the movie.

–Eugene Novikov

And new trailer included in copies of God of War III gives us a teasing glance of night driving, a new addition to the generally sun-dappled world of Gran Turismo.

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From what little we can see of it, Gran Turismo 5's night driving looks to be every bit as appealing as its day driving. While I'm still not that big on Sony's racing simulator, if they can combine the night driving with vehicle damage so I can brake and take out an opponent's headlights, I'll be first in line at the store.

Send an email to Michael Fahey, the author of this post, at fahey@kotaku.com.

A fitfully engaging around, “The Matrix Minute” gets so diverse balls in the aura, most auds will solely cry “bollocks” before the final blood has been shed. Fact this is the in spite of together that made “Blade” for New Form a line will act up some weight, but distribs are tenable to look at this chronicle of an artist who falls from grace, and in with a detrimental crowd, as a Gink Ritchie knockoff. Should be easy to push on vid, though.

Start is promising enough, with handsome protag Billy Byrne (Max Beesley, who toplined a BBC re-do of “Tom Jones”) in a snowbound northern chalet, addressing the lens with a carpe diem message. A lot of crappy days led up to that moment, as we see in unfolding flashbacks detailing his fast rise and even more precipitous drop as flavor of the nanosecond on the London art scene.

To begin with, he’s just another happy wanker, hanging out with his slobbish boho buddies and the kind of pretty, no-BS g.f. (Kate Ashfield) who shows up more often in movies than in real life. Billy’s about to have a major show and, thanks to his sleekly manipulative agent (Anthony Higgins), is soon off on a roller coaster ride of excess and adulation, with stops in Japan and Germany, where he’s snapped by cult photog Udo Kier. The artist’s fame precedes him back home, and doors suddenly open, including the one to a chic new, S&M-themed nightclub run by gangster types. Our young artiste seems smitten by it all, but the g.f. eventually gets sick of his self-absorbed ranting.

“Quit your moaning,” she finally yells, and auds will know just how she feels. Pic’s main problem isn’t that Billy is so different from your average, inarticulate twentysomething but that he’s so much like them. Second problem, also huge, is helmer Stephen Norrington’s refusal to show us what all the fuss is about; Billy doesn’t really discuss his stuff, let alone display it, so it’s awfully hard to judge what’s at stake, aesthetically or as simple entertainment.

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This risk-averse strategy is fatal to a tale that plainly wants to traffic in edgy ideas about art and commerce. Norrington is probably leaving the sketchbook blank so we can draw parallels with the frustrating process of picmaking. But without the details, analogies are feeble, and helmer ends up filling all that empty space with a garish subplot about squatters living beneath the Albert Hall.

This Dickensian crowd is led by a white-haired ex-actor (vet Tom Bell), and among the urchins is a young gamine (Emily Corrie) who takes a shine to the down-and-out Billy, although not much comes of this union. Things heat up, and then fall apart, when the nightclub thugs invade the underground domain, looking for drugs purloined by the Fagin-like old-timer. Climax, in which children with slingshots battle baddies with clubs and AK-47s is a stupefying example of mindless mayhem masquerading as comedy.

Pic’s constant use of rain-soaked streets and trendy electronica exerts a potent mood even as it underlines qualities that feel hopelessly dated even before “The Last Minute” is up.

In Matador, Pedro Almodovar displays more polished filmmaking technique, but moves away from social commentary for a frenzied feeding on themes of carnal and blood obsession. The film’s pulsing sexuality and mock mystery design could utterly specialty audiences, but those unfamiliar with Spanish group may not fully cognizant some of pic’s corrosive, satirical subtexts.

Angel (Antonio Banderas), an emotionally repressed 21-year-old who lives with his conservative harridan of a mother, secretly attends the bullfighting school of Diego (Nacho Martinez), a gored-into-retirement ex-champion matador with the sexual appetite of a lusty bull. Diego supplements his relationship with the gorgeous but vacuous fashion model Eva (Eva Cobo) with diversionary flings, hardcore bondage porn and ’snuff’ videos and, as it transpires, the occasional murder of pretty girls whom he buries on the grounds of his opulent estate in suburban Madrid.

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Frustrated in his attempt to win the respect of his hero maestro, Angel one night attempts to rape the matador’s girlfriend, but fails in humiliating fashion. When young girls are reported missing, Angel confesses to their murders and is taken into custody while the police search for evidence. Angel is assigned a feminist lawyer, Maria (Assumpta Serna), who, it turns out, has the greatest obsession of all for the fallen matador.

Almodovar unfolds this convoluted plot with zig-zagging surrealism and a careening, sordidly erotic energy that effectively undermines the culturally institutionalized repression targeted by the filmmaker. Serna and Martinez stand out as victims of psycho-sexual passion gone amok, while supporting performances are very effective.

DIGNITARY WARS: EPISODE III — REVENGE OF THE SITH

I was in Brazil for the early convergence screening of SW3. My impaired visit to Brazil, this time I spent ten fabulous days in Rio and Brasilia highlighted by a visit to Casa de Dom Inacio in Abadiania where the miracle surgeon Joao de Deus operates in trance on unskilful patients, myriad with incurable diseases. The Entities working through Joao de Deus have an uncontrollable closeness. The surgeries are both invisible and physical. On my next trip to Brazil I will participate in Quimbanda and Candomble religious ceremonies. I want to experience every aspect, both light and vile, of the miraculous.

Therefore, I penetrate Chancellor Palpatine?s (Ian McDiarmid) stoical approach to Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen) no matter what the two sides of The Force. My reasons are near less mythological than Skywalker?s.

As far as I am concerned, Skywalker betrayed the Jedis the before you can say ‘Jack Robinson’ he began a relationship with a woman. Marrying was against the Jedi code. Keeping this secret from the Jedi Convention was an offense that would have summarily ended his tear. He would be the only Jedi Knight with children.

Isn?t it strange that the Jedi Knights are usually very sensitive to each other?s feelings and tiny disturbances in the Force but never see on that The Chosen One is having gender with a domestic? His loyalties lie elsewhere.

The thrust of SW3 is this: Why does Skywalker give back to the melancholy side? Because he was taken away from his mother at a young life-span? Because the Jedis left his mother a slave to die a vile termination? Because he is plagued by guilt and resentment? Because the Jedi Congregation refused to give him the crown of Master that he deserved? (Like offspring Alexander the Horrible, Skywalker?s faux-fathers were ongoing in his way!) No. No. No. Skywalker turns to the cheerless side out of selfless swain!

Accomplished! George Lucas, you triumphed! Pol Pot, Stalin, Hitler. If merely they had blamed it all on inamorato.

When a Dalai Lama dies, a group of lamas search the country?s villages for his reincarnation. The child who is chosen is taken away to be raised and trained. The chosen one-liner?s family is honored. Their budgetary situation greatly improves. The Jedis are not interested in mothers. A innate is a secondary nuisance (as single foster-parent Lucas can affirm.)

SW3 stands as a remarkable achievement. Every moment is enthralling. The remarkable effects are dizzying and the finely crafted story unites all the dangling pieces. All the nagging questions are answered. This time, the dialogue is mature, insightful, and haunting. George Lucas delivered the goods!

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But DV weeps.

SW3 opens without talk but in a rousing space duel. Jedi Knight Anakin Skywalker and his mentor, Obi-Feeble Kenobi (Ewan McGregor), are engaging a Sith armada led by Deem Dooku (Christopher Lee) and metal droid General Grievous (who suffers from emphysema). They capture the Republic's Chancellor Palpatine. Palpatine ?senses? Skywalker?s frustrations and entices him with a fantastic story of the power of the Dark Side. It would have turned me.

Palpatine (only Lucas knows what lurks in his childhood) gets Skywalker appointed to the Jedi Council though the Conference members, headed by Mace Windu (Samuel L. Jackson) are not exuberant. Obi-Wan wants Skywalker to spy on Palpatine, who has ambitions to become Emperor. Espionage is against Jedi ethnics, supposing Skywalker, with a cryptic wife, shouldn?t balk. But it does disparage Obi-Wan?s own morals in question.

Skywalker keeps dreaming his politically savvy wife Padme (Natalie Portman) wish sink in childbirth. Palpatine uses his knowledge of this to drive into Skywalker and makes him his protégé.

As far as what Skywalker does to qualify for his moniker DV, in all probability, it is a suitably-known custom of monarchs and rulers entirely history. You must get rid of the potential competition. They grow up to spadework armies. When Roman ruler Octavian conquered Cleopatra Vll?s empire, he killed her son by Julius Caesar, Caesarion.
A observe by Areius sums up the thinking: ?It is bad to have too many Caesars.?
Because of God, the Ewoks stay home. Jar Jar is an extra. While I skilled in Yoda is everybody?s expedient master, he?s just a flying rodent to me. I?m glad he?s gone into hiding where he can commune with colleague forest creatures.
The maturity of the structure of SW3 elevates it to the most beneficent film of the year. Every image is gorgeous. Every set meticulously designed. I especially liked the ground encounter that recalled Ridley Scott?s GLADIATOR. With SW3, let us all hail Lucas for pleasing fans with an emotionally significant, and very artful, storyline. And, when DV suits up, what a magnificent moment in film history!
Christensen holds the gauge, ably supported by McGregor. Their relationship is frail, yet only Christensen allows youthful snobbishness to show. Portman needed a insulting acting coach to strengthen her character. Her Padme should press held her child?s future as a foremost priority. Lucas does give Padme the strongest tete-e-tete via a political statement, but Portman?s rickety, little girl voice flattens its smashing.
I saw SW3 at Santa Fe Station?s redone Century Theatres in Las Vegas. Santa Fe Station?s Director of Marketing, Carol Thompson, took a small corps of us on an opening day excursion and we watched the movie in the antisocial VIP screening room. Santa Fe Passenger station knows how to cosset their high rollers who want to spend some time away from the tables. Santa Fe Spot?s Century Theatres is exclusive one of two theaters showing a digital copy of SW3.
Victoria Alexander answers your emails. She can be reached by visiting FilmsInReview.com or, directly, at

masauu@aol.com

.
STAR WARS: PART III — REVENGE OF THE SITH
20th Century Fox
A Lucasfilm Ltd. production
Credits:
Writer-director: George Lucas
Canada entrepreneur: Rick McCallum
Mr Big financial manager: George Lucas
Top banana of photography: David Tattersall
Production designer: Gavin Bocquet
Music: John Williams
Costumes: Trisha Biggar
Editors: Roger Barton, Ben Burtt
Cast:
Obi-Ineffectual Kenobi: Ewan McGregor
Padme: Natalie Portman
Anakin Skywalker: Hayden Christensen
Supreme Chancellor Palpatine: Ian McDiarmid
Mace Windu: Samuel L. Jackson
Sen. Organa: Jimmy Smits
Yoda (voice): Frank Oz
C-3PO: Anthony Daniels
R2D2: Kenny Baker
Count Dooku: Christopher Lee
Queen of Naboo: Keisha Fortress-Hughes
MPAA rating PG-13
Running time — 140 minutes

  • Posted Mar 5, 2010

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Richard Donner’s “Radio Flyer” is a extraordinarily unsteady combination of elements, a mixed breed combination of “Nightmare on Elm Street” and “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.” Misguide in a little “E.T.” too. For extra uplift.

The goal of this strenuous hammering together of spare parts is the creation of a sense of childlike wonder. It’s an aqueous tale about the power of imagination, and how, by a leap of sublime inspiration, two young brothers overcome their fear to escape a cruelly abusive father. They manage this by the unlikeliest of means — by collecting a load of old junk and building an airplane out of their trusty red Radio Flyer wagon. The wonder is the thing ever gets off the ground. The plane, that is. The movie is a crash-and-burn job.

The story — told in flashback by Tom Hanks, who is one of the brothers, to his two eager young sons — begins in the late ’60s as Mike and Bobby (Elijah Wood and Joseph Mazzello) are traveling with their mom (Lorraine Bracco) from New Jersey to their new home in the small suburban town of Novato, Calif. Their real father has deserted them, but soon they have a new dad — a welder who, every day after work, lumbers out into the garage to get drunk. We never really see this stepfather’s face, and this is by design. He’s not really a person; he’s a monster, a Freddy Krueger father who, tanked on suds, takes out his unexplained rage on the younger of the boys.

The kids believe in monsters; their existence is one of the Seven Great Abilities and Fascinations of Childhood that the narrator keeps telling us about. (Another is the ability to fly.) There are grace notes in David Mickey Evans’s self-consciously literary script, and what appears to be a genuine interest in the inner lives of children. But Donner directs the story for effect, not affect; he’s not interested in anything beyond getting his audience to jump to his cues.

In Donner’s hands, the serious issue of child abuse is reduced to a mere device too. And it’s a mark of Donner’s cynicism that he manipulates our emotions so shamelessly with such genuinely grave material. Both Wood and Mazzello have moments when their hypersensitive cuteness isn’t being shoved down our throats, but, under the circumstances, about the best they can do is not completely alienate us. Bracco, who, as a waitress working double shifts, is barely in the film, gives real bite to her few scattered moments on screen, but, ultimately, her character is marginal.

Donner has a reputation for manhandling scripts, and you get the feeling that buried beneath his stalker-movie techniques is a real movie, with a genuine feel for its characters and its subject. Having stomped on the accelerator in the “Lethal Weapon” movies, he may have his gears locked permanently in overdrive. At any rate, his touch is lethal.


Reviewed by Glenn Erickson



Note: part of this review is adapted from an earlier Savant article about
Movies with Astral Collisions.



When Worlds Collide is a naive but fondly remembered science fiction epic from the dawn of
the first wave of sci fi movies, that brief period in time when big studios were still willing to commit
relatively large budgets
to the genre. A 1930s concoction probably inspired by Abel Gance’s La fin du monde, this is
a George Pal movie that skirts the racism of its literary source, but retains its religious framework,
bathing the show in the kind of sanctimony that typifies the movies of Cecil B. De Mille, for
whom the script was commissioned twenty years before.


Abridgement:


Freelance navigator David Randall (Richard Derr) jumps into the middle of period-shattering
events when he delivers a set of photographic plates from a South African observatory to the
New York lab of Cole Hendron (Larry Keating). The astronomical bed basically line is that two rogue interstellar
planets, dubbed Bellus and Zyra, are going to collide with and destroy the Earth in one eight months’
time. While Hendron scrambles to build a ‘Space Ark’ to ferry a unprofound group of humans away from Earth
and out of harm’s disintegrate, Randall finds himself attracted to Hendron’s daughter Joyce (Barbara Rush),
working ardently on the spaceship project all the while knowing there’s no urge to take a bush lead
along to servants start a new society. But before the final striking, the same of the planetoids will pass
completion enough to Earth to cause cataclysmic earthquakes and flooding - and there’s a chance nobody
determination survive if they agree to the Space Ark from being completed in time.


George Pal’s When Worlds Collide is a 1951 best special
effects Oscar winner, and was also nominated for best cinematography.  The two depression-era
novels on which it was based, by Wylie and Balmer, When Worlds Collide and After Worlds
Collide,
are so popular they remain in print to this day.  Despite the fact that they are
filled with racist
hatred for anything Asian, and are overrun with cockeyed religous symbolism, the books were
standard fare in school libraries of the ’60s.  Devout producer Pal retained the Christ metaphor
of the books that made the stellar apocalypse into a thinly disguised Second Coming.  Two heavenly
bodies, the planet Bronson Alpha (or Bellus in the film) and its smaller satellite Bronson Beta
(Zyra) will intersect Earth’s orbit in only eight months.  Bellus, representing the Old Testament
Jehovah, will smash the Earth to pulp, killing every living soul.  No simple flood this time
folks … but Earth has a second chance, of sorts.  A few weeks before Bellus, its moon Zyra,
representing Jesus Christ, will pass close by our planet, causing massive earthquakes, tidal waves
and other assorted havoc.  Only the Chosen Few technocrats who believe in science and are daring
enough to build Space Arks to fly to Zyra will be saved.



Seen today, When Worlds Collide is a charming hoot, but still a far better movie than the idiotic
Armageddon.  It begins and
ends with the ponderous opening and closing of a Bible.  Bellus, schmellus, we know who’s
really wiping out the Earth!  The inside of the Space Ark is arrayed like a church, with
the faithful in the pews and the pilots (churchmen?) up in the pulpit.  The chosen passengers
really seem to be some kind of Elect, for their peers left behind immediately riot like hooligans to
steal seats on the only ride off the planet.



Scientific details are curious, especially from the maker of the fastidiously accurate Destination
Moon.
 Eight months isn’t long enough to design and perfect a pencil sharpener, but the
Arkian engineers are able to research, design, build and test an incredibly advanced rocketship, as civilization
crumbles around them, no less.  The (admittedly cool-looking) Space Ark is launched from a ramp
that goes down into a
valley before zooming up the next mountainside.  Since most of the momentum accrued on the down-slide
would be lost taking the curve,  the Ark may as well have started from the bottom of the slide and
not wasted the fuel.  Speaking of fuel, the fuel gauge on this super rocket is a simple indicator
marked ‘full’, ‘half’ and ‘empty’.  
2


  Just what’s being taken along on this joy ride is amusing as well. Domestic farm animals are brought on
board literally two by two,
Noah-style, as if a single pair of animals could restore a species. That applies to the paired-off
sixteen or so couples who win the lottery to take the trip and presumably make babies for the
future of mankind. Nowadays, it would seem obvious that
if you could only take forty people, the best hope for mankind would be to make most of the human passengers
female scientists, doctors and engineers - all extemely young and all fit to bear children. The male
component of the passenger list might only be test tubes of sperm for later artificial insemination. Why
waste cargo weight on a bunch of redundant drones, when you need all the breeder females you can
get? Are we saving mankind here, or is there a sexual fantasy lurking behind all the bible talk?
This kind of thinking would really make the Dr.
Strangeloves and General Turgidsons of our present system lose some sleep!


The only preparation for arrival on Zyra is a crash landing, which is accomplished on a field of snow in
the mountains.  Previous
glimpses of the terrain show only ice and dense clouds for hundreds of miles.  Yet when the hatch
is opened, the view awaiting the Arkians is that of a verdant paradise, complete with an inspirational
sunset and unexplained (unless one takes into account the book After Worlds Collide 
1
) pyramid-like structures on the horizon.  Typical is the scene where the cocksure pilot throws open
the airlock without first testing the atmosphere because, “It’s the only place we can go!”



The dramatic and moral logic of When Worlds is just as thoughtlessly presented as its science.
 Essential Ark personnel risk their lives, pointlessly taking supplies to flood survivors who are
doomed anyway.  During the lottery for the 40 seats on the Ark, none of the young engineers and
scientists offers the least objection when the head of the project arbitrarily reserves space for
his daughter, her boyfriend, a kid rescued from a rooftop, and a stray dog!  The project leader
also bends the rules to allow yet another lottery loser to take cuts in the line for the Ark, to
stay with her boyfriend.  No wonder the losers are rioting!



The multimillionaire investor who bankrolls the Ark (John Hoyt) is refused his agreed-upon ticket to
ride because he’s a cynical malcontent.  How his riches made the Ark possible is a mystery, when a
big point is made that, with the world ending, money no longer has any value.  A cripple restricted
to a wheelchair, he prefigures Doctor Strangelove when the coming of doomsday unaccountably
restores his ability to walk. Since the genial, gentle George Pal was serious about his Sunday school
bible theme, this is clearly meant to be an apocalyptic miracle. You’ve got ten minutes to live, Mr.
Moneybags, so go have yourself a stroll.


The impressive special effects wow’ed ‘em in 1951, and can still spark imagination and wonder. The Space
Ark is a beautiful silver rocket that looks great against the dramatic painted skies. The miniatures are
reasonably well-photographed, and besides some poorly-scaled fire and smoke, most of the effects
shots are breathtaking in Technicolor. The onrushing Bellus looming in the night sky is appropriately
frightening.
The destruction of the first passing of the rogue planets is somewhat limited in scope, to a fairly successful
matte of water pouring into Manhattan, followed by several glimpses of just-passable paintings of ocean liners
floating next to the Chrysler building, etc. The rest of the footage is made up of every volcano, flood,
and earthquake stock shot in Technicolor that the producer could get his hands on, including bits from
For Whom the Bell Tolls and Crash Dive!





Paramount’s DVD of When Worlds Collide is reasonable but a little disappointing. As with
War of the Worlds, the deluxe laserdisc of a few years back (with its isolated music track!)
is still the better show. The image
on this DVD is on the harsh side, with annoying fringing appearing against lines of strong contrast (green
on my monitor,which I have to admit is getting less reliable for judging this sort of thing). A point of
comparison is the crash landing on Zyra - on the laser, the wires used to pull the model of the Ark can be
clearly seen after the ship comes to a standstill - but on the less distince DVD, they’re invisible.


When Worlds Collide
was a Technicolor movie, and it’s obvious that going back to the three strips was not done; so what we’re
looking at is probably a file negative combined from the three strips a long time ago to make Eastmancolor
prints, perhaps for the reissue back in 1975. The green fringing might be from color misregistration, but
the expert I saw the disc with also suspected an overuse of image enhancement. The film-to-tape people
cleaned up the changeover cues and removed dirt from the film, but also may have used digital enhancement too
strongly - the frequent shots of newspaper headlines all have annoying contrast colors outlining what
should be plain black letters on white. These will be less of a bother on smaller monitors, but on a big set, it
looks like the television rabbit ears need tweaking.





On a scale of Excellent, Good, Fair, and Poor,

When Worlds Collide rates:

Movie: Good

Video: Fair

Sound: Good

Supplements: Trailer

Packaging: Keep case

Reviewed: October 5, 2001




Footnote:



1.
It seems that George Pal did a temporary final shot for When Worlds Collide using a
quick oil study for the final vista of Zyra.  He learned the lesson many a special effects vendor has
learned: Paramount said, ‘Looks great to us!’ and ordered the cut locked.  That’s why Collide
ends with Zyra looking like a background in a Road Runner cartoon.  Pal had envisioned a vista
combining a 3-D miniature and mattes,  like one of the planetscapes seen in the beginning of
War of the Worlds.  The fact that the artist added After Worlds Collide- style
pyramids shows the end painting was never meant to be used.  Nobody was planning a sequel film, as
the final shot implies.
Return


2. I stand corrected on my bad engineering skills here, and for repeating another
author’s criticism of When Worlds Collide without checking it out myself. The ramp going down and then up is not a bad idea because the
fuel and power being used to accelerate the ship down the ramp is coming from the sled it rests on,
not the ship itself. The rocket’s engines aren’t ignited until the the second, Up half of the rollercoaster
ramp - the rocket is already going 100 mph or so when it’s own engines come into use!
Return






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DVD Savant Passage © Copyright 2001 Glenn Erickson


Go UNDEVELOPED to the Savant Main Page.

An all-star curiosity,

Counter-intelligence agent Heartbeat

(1969) was a TV-movie that served as the pilot for the long-event series

Medical Center

(1969-76). When it first aired in April 1969, the spring before its debut as a series that fall, it was called

U.M.C.

, as in "University Medical Center." However, the well-established turn over sourced on this Warner Archive release seems to be a crowded-frame/open-matte version of an abroad false variety, which re-frames nicely zoomed to 1.78:1 on widescreen TVs. (At the everything, MGM's cropped widescreen standard was 1.75:1) A trailer that's included as an in addition feature seems to support this theory.

The 100-minute show is dated in many respects but interesting for its cast, and to a lesser extent for its place in the development of the hospital drama genre; clearly this was a big step forward toward a more realistic style. The transfer is old and fairly ragged, but okay.

Dr. Joseph Gannon - Man in a Suitcase star Richard Bradford, in the role that was later played on Medical Center by Chad Everett - is a respected younger surgeon whose mentor, Dr. Lee Forestman (Edward G. Robinson) is dying of heart disease. Heart surgeon Dr. Easler (Maurice Evans) replaces three of Forestman's valves but that's not enough - he needs a heart transplant.

Meanwhile, Gannon's latest patient, wealthy Raymond Hanson (William Windom) has suffered multiple pulmonary embolisms after a fall in his home, during an argument with wife Joanna (Kim Stanley). Gannon learns Hanson has signed papers donating his body to the Medical Center - and his heart is a perfect match for the critically ill Forestman. Despite agonizing over the deteriorating condition of his mentor with girlfriend 'Mike' (Shelley Fabares), Gannon does everything he can to keep Hanson alive. But it's no use, and the rich man's heart is eventually transplanted into Forestman's chest.

This doesn't sit well with Joanna. Thanks to a conniving but failing medical student of Gannon's, Tim Martin (Don Quine), she learns of Gannon's relationship to Forestman, and files suit against the young doctor.

Operation Heartbeat is of interest mainly for its all-star cast of character actors, many of whom were at the time as associated with features as much as television. Though prominently featured on Warner Archive's DVD case (I direct your eyeballs about three inches to the upper-right) Edward G. Robinson spends most of the film flat on his back, on the operating table (several times) or behind an oxygen tent. Though not a particularly challenging role he's terrific as almost always, and in one scene, perhaps saying goodbye to Gannon as he's prepped for his final surgery, Robinson is quite touching. ("If I should run out of gas ….")

Maurice Evans and James Daly (as Dr. Paul Lochner, who'd return for Medical Center) had both recently played orangutans in Planet of the Apes (1968); Edward G. Robinson was himself originally cast as Dr. Zaius, the part eventually played by Evans, but dropped out. I doubt there was a lot of "Apes" nostalgia on the Operation Heartbeat set, but probably this association came up once or twice.

Besides heavyweights like Robinson and Stanley, the last-third of the picture, which unfortunately regresses into a Perry Mason-like courtroom melodrama, features more terrific character actors: J.D. Cannon is excellent as Gannon's attorney, Kevin McCarthy is amusingly, deliberately hammy as Stanley's grandstanding one, and jowly Robert Emhardt is the judge. More stars: the racially diverse hospital staff includes an Asian chief resident (James Shigeta) and black consulting doctor (William Marshall). Audrey Totter, also on the series, turns up briefly as a nurse.

Operation Heartbeat was a step in a more realistic direction and away from soapy predecessors like Ben Casey and Dr. Kildare earlier in the decade. The TV-movie at least was filmed in and around a real university hospital, while the fairly good studio sets (including a multi-level operating theater) incorporated lots of real or at least realistic-looking, technologically advanced medical equipment. Procedures are described with more scientific accuracy and the procedures are authentically dramatized, at least in 1969 TV terms.

The drama is served less well. The basic premise, that a surgeon would be allowed to treat both Hanson and Forestman, with all the obvious conflicts of interest, seems awfully improbable, or that the hospital would permit him to visit with Hanson's widow at home, after the transplant surgery has been completed.

Richard Bradford is fine in the leading role; it's not clear why he lost out to Chad Everett on the series; perhaps it was his prematurely graying hair, especially noticeable in scenes opposite white-haired Daly.

One final note: The transplant storyline was quite timely. The show premiered on April 17, 1969. Except for the first human-to-human heart transplant famously performed by Dr. Christiaan Barnard in December 1967, most of the major breakthroughs in this field occurred throughout 1968 and early-'69 - just as this aired.

Video & Audio

Operation Heartbeat is in full-frame format. The colors are somewhat faded, there are visible scratches at the heads and tails of reels, and there's video noise here and there, but overall the presentation is okay. As stated above, director Boris Sagal seems to have shot it with both 4:3 full-frame and 1.75:1 theatrical matting in mind, and it looks fine zoomed to 1.78:1. The mono audio is acceptable. There are no Extra Features save for that trailer, no subtitle or alternate language options.

Parting Thoughts

Though no better than so-so, Operation Heartbeat is worth a look for its cast and place in the development of the medical drama television drama. Recommended.

Stuart Galbraith IV's latest audio commentary, for AnimEigo's Tora-san DVD boxed set, is on sale now.

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