Author: Robert Greenberger

Paramount Pictures’ Centennial Collection chugs along, mining the 1950s and Audrey Hepburn again with the release on Tuesday of Funny Face. The musical, with Fred Astaire and Kay Thompson, unlike the earlier offerings in the series, has not aged well despite the loving restoration of the visuals.

Pop culture in the 1950s certainly centered on glamorous celebrities like Hepburn and the films were experimenting with visual techniques to combat the rise of television habits but sometimes their subjects were treated outlandishly.

Maggie Prescott (Thompson) is the force of nature that edits [[[Glamour]]], er, [[[Mode]]], er, [[[Quality]]] magazine.  The magazine wants to shoot on location, to lend a patina of intellectual sheen to the usually vapid model who seems more interesting in exaggerated poses than anything natural. She and top fashion photographer Dick Avery (Astaire) spontaneously decide on a “sinister” looking bookstore in Greenwich Village, hail a few cabs, and go in search. They find a dark, dusty shop with a young bookseller, Jo Stockton (Hepburn) as the sole occupant.  They storm in, take over the joint and include her in one picture then lock her out of the store since she was objecting to their disruption of the place.

Later, Avery latches on to the notion that she could be the fresh face a new campaign could be built around. He convinces her that by agreeing to model, she could be taken to Paris where she could be exposed to the great philosophical thinkers, including Prof. Emile Flostre (Michel Auclaire), who influenced the naïve girl. She accepts and is whisked to Paris where she at first indulges her intellect then gives in to her beauty.  The rest of the film chronicles her struggle to find herself as she straddles two worlds, neither very well.

Adapted from the 1927 stage musical, the update retained but four songs, two of which are memorable standards.  The rest are entirely forgettable including the signature opener, “Think Pink”.

As a story, it mocks the Beat Generation on two continents and treats Flostre as a great thinker, but his mind appears to be on one subject which is getting in to Hepburn’s pants. The rest of the script is breathless but you keep stopping to wonder about the absurdity of booking everyone into separate hotels or no one giving Stockton a schedule so she would know what was expected from her. Also, Stockton seems to suddenly give up on her interest in philosophy in favor of being a famous model when she could do both, it never had to be an either/or situation.

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Babylon A.D. is actually two separate films, one with some noble themes worthy of exploration and one that is a derivative action film.  Unfortunately, you have to suffer through the latter before the film oddly shifts gears and begins lightly exploring the former. The film is based on Maurice Georges Dantec’s [[[Babylon Babies], a science fiction novel exploring the notion of artificial intelligence being given organic life. In an interview on the DVD, on sale Tuesday, he wisely notes that he had written the book, said what he had to say and left the rest up to the filmmakers.

In the hands of writer Éric Besnard and French director Mathieu Kassovitz, the movie is a mess. The dark near-future, Europe has collapsed and anarchy or big business rules in place of government.  Vin Diesel stars as Toorop, a mercenary, who is coerced into boydguarding a young woman, heading from his monastery home to New York City.  Given little choice, he agrees and discovers she has a chaperone, a strong-willed Michelle Yeoh.  The girl, Aurora (Mélanie Thierry), seems an innocent at first but then begins displaying knowledge and experience impossible for someone raised in solitude.

Of course they’re chased and that’s where the mindless, seen-it-before action comes in.  While Diesel excels at this sort of stuff, it was not in the least bit thrilling, with the exception of the chase across Alaska.

Upon arrival in New York, the film suddenly changes gears and tone as we begin exploring the concepts involved but they are done in a monotonous way set against opposing forces who wish to control Aurora’s immaculately conceived children and the future of mankind. While there are plenty of good notions here, they’re buried under poor acting and pacing.

Diesel and Yeoh form an interesting bond during the few quiet moments but Thierry is such a blank slate it’s hard to tell if she has any talent. Lambert Wilson and Charlotte Rampling are wasted as the creators of the AI and therefore battle over its destiny.

Kassovitz blamed 20th on butchering the film and abandoning it this August after he labored for five years on bringing it to life.  Unfortunately, after five years of development work, one expects a more even, better conceived production.  Even the music from the normally reliable Hans Zimmer is uninspired.

Fox is releasing the film with the theatrical release and an unedited version, which does not help the story one whit.  The plethora of extras are nice, especially as you hear Dantec talk about his book and it makes you long for a film that interesting.  There are the usual making of features including a nice one on the arctic chase.

A special edition two-disc set comes with a few extra features including an animated prequel (erroneously billed as a graphic novel) that fills in some of the dramatic gaps that would have enhanced the overall production. A second disc contains a digital copy for computers and iPods.

Reviewing the Adult Swim DVDs has been educational and occasionally entertaining.  I find the third series, [[[Frisky Dingo Season Two]]], the most enjoyable because it takes absurd situations and characters and uses smart humor to get its point across.  The series, about Killface, an alien super-villain come to Earth and his struggles against the heroic Awesome X, pokes fun at the conventions of animation, super-heroics and action flicks.  They ratchet things up in season two, collected here, as Killface finds himself accidentally solving Global Warming and running for president.

Now the humor sharpens as creators Adam Reed and Matt Thompson skewer politics and does so while serializing the campaign across most of the twelve episode season, which ran on Cartoon Network from August – October 2007 and March 2008.  The escapades build as Killface’s newfound popularity has him begin ton contend with the political machine and rivals begin to figure out how to campaign against him.  You see everyone pander to one base after another; especially hilarious was when Killface discovers the Bible in “The Miracle”. Another fun running gag is the confusion between Fred Hunter and Fred Dryer, who starred in the NBC series [[[Hunter]]], with the notion that either is Vice Presidential material pretty offbeat.

Killface learning about life on Earth makes for some pointed commentary on society

The animation is as simple as Metalocaplypse but better designed with terrific, rich backgrounds plus varied looks to the people.  The dialogue and voice work is rather good which matches the quality of the writing.  Reed voices both hero and villain which is a nifty feat and he brings individual personality to both as he plays off himself, which is not easy.

The single disc DVD, on sales January 6, comes with a skit featuring the Xtacles, which is spinning off from the show.  They are dim-witted armored forces normally controlled by Awesome X, but with him currently off planet, they are without guidance leading to humor.  The series debuted two episodes in November and based on this skit, looks to be a little less clever than its host. The other extra is a political ad parody promoting the release of the DVD itself.