Category: Reviews

REVIEW: Wolverine & Blade Anime

wolverine-anime-300x405-5296873Marvel’s attempt to bring their characters into the world of anime didn’t fare terribly well as four series from Madhouse arrived and sank without much of a ripple. Conceived and vaguely interconnected from Warren Ellis, the projects had noble goals but failed to excite or even tell great stories.

You may have seen them on G4 since they weren’t important enough for the major animation channels or you might have caught Iron Man and X-Men when Sony Home Entertainment released them a few months back. Coming Tuesday are the final two, Blade and Wolverine, and these are no stronger than their predecessors. On the one hand, the color palette is nicely chosen to lend atmosphere to Blade, but then the animation is so stiff and limited vampires and people alike seem to be moving through sludge.

Wolverine, actually the second of the quartet to air from January 7 through March 25, 2011, concerns itself with a search of Mariko Yashida, gone an entire year, and winds up having him slice his way through the Yakuza and AIM. We learn that his paramour had been taken by her father so she could wed Hideki Kurohagi and we’re never given a good reason why it took so long for the canucklehead to figure out she was gone.

Structurally, each episode has fighting, chasing, talking and cliffhangers as the quest takes Wolverine from place to place in search of Mariko. As a result, each stop along the way features different threats and weapons but by episode seven it all starts feeling the same and you just want the story to get on to something fresh. Obvious foes, such as Omega Red turns up so in addition to bullets and knives we get Adamantium versus carbonadium but again, the animation limits just how much you can enjoy it.

Of course he and Yukio will endure all the obstacles and Ellis is wise to keep the tragic ending consistent with the comics although it’s far less effective after having been dragged out

The English voice cast is headed up by Milo Ventimiglia (Heroes) and does a credible job as the Canadian war machine. He’s backed by a lot of veteran vocal actors but no real names other than Scott Porter as Cyclops, who guest stars in one episode as a nod to the four series being interconnected (Wolverine returned the favor in both Iron Man and Blade).

The Blade storyline is less a quest and more a battle between the Daywalker and his eternal foe Deacon Frost. The final entry in the Marvel Anime Universe, it aired July 1 through September 16, 2011. In this case, Blade happens to be in Japan when he comes across a group of vampires that is known only as Existence. Episode one is a recap of who Blade is, which was wise for its audience, and then takes us to discos and vampire hangouts and lot so of murky stuff going on. There are young women being taken, blood farms, people who want the secret of Blade’s ability to walk in the sunlight, etc. Lots of chasing, fighting, biting and staking. My problem is that none of the characters were interesting enough to make me care and my mind kept wandering while vampires did their thing.

Here, the English vocal cast is headed up by Harold Perrineau (Lost) who does a surprisingly effective job.

I continue to find it laughable the vast differences in translation between the English dubbed soundtrack and the closed captioning since the word choices for the latter alter some of the meaning and characterization.

Both discs come with brief and not terribly informative pieces on the anime project and each character’s place in that world. They’re nice to have but totally superfluous. These are affordably priced two-disc DVDs that are good if you love the characters are anime or, preferably, both.

The Remake Chronicles: Rear Window

The Remake Chronicles: Rear Window

First Commentary by Adam-Troy Castro

Rear Window (1954). Directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Screenplay by John Michael Hayes, from the story by Cornell Woolrich. Starring James Stewart, Grace Kelly, Wendell Corey, Raymond Burr, Thelma Ritter. 112 minutes. *** 1/2

Rear Window (1998). Directed by Jeff Bleckner. Screenplay by Larry Gross and Eric Overmyer, from the story by Cornell Woolrich. Starring Christopher Reeve, Darryl Hannah, Robert Forster. 89 minutes. **

Other Related Films:  Too many ripoffs and homages to count, among them Disturbia (2007), which is so similar to Woolrich’s story that the owners of the film had to go to court to get a ruling that they hadn’t violated Rear Window’s copyright.

This one’s an oddity, folks: a remake that was actually based on a breathtakingly brilliant idea for a variation on a movie that was a classic to begin with, that nevertheless utterly failed to live up to its promise.

The source was the short story “It Had To Be Murder,” by suspense great Cornell Woolrich, all about a man temporarily laid up with a broken leg who has nothing better to do while he heals than look out the window and watch the lives of his neighbors. As it happens, one of those neighbors has a murderous secret involving the sudden disappearance of his wife. Our hero gradually pieces together the clues – all predicated on his neighbor’s odd behavior, all of which has other potentially innocent explanation — and ultimately brings the malefactor to justice.

There is no girlfriend in the story, no great emotional character arc linking the mystery to a pivotal crisis in the hero’s life. It’s just something that happens to him, something that makes his brief existence as an invalid a little more interesting than it might have been otherwise. (Other Woolrich stories are more emotionally fraught: the failure of SOME great moviemaker to adapt his horrific stunner, “Momentum,” remains a mystery.)  The subsequent movies required more, and are in at least case significantly more satisfying.

rear-window_cartel

The Original

The 1954 version written by John Michael Hayes and directed by Alfred Hitchcock presents us with the case of one L.B. (nickamed “Jeff”) Jefferies (James Stewart), an international action photographer who is laid up in his rarely-used Greenwich Village after getting a killer photo of a race car wreck, which he evidently got from standing in the road while the twisted wreckage spun ass-over-teakettle toward him. (In a sense: serves him right). We gather from much of the dialogue about his activities, taking photos in hot spots around the world, that getting the impossibly dangerous shot is his specialty. The man is a danger junkie, now confined to a wheelchair and about to go crazy as he waits the last few days for his cast to be taken off. He’s an action hero reduced to inaction hero. He has nothing better to do than to look out the rear window and watch the lives of his neighbors.

The courtyard his tiny apartment overlooks is one of the great indoor sets in the entire history of the movies. It is a complete, living neighborhood in and of itself, comprised of a number of different buildings of different design, overlooking a central area where the inhabitants have carved out flower beds and little patches of lawn. There’s even an alley, through which Jeff can see the street, and passing cars. For the 112 minutes of the movie, the action never moves from this place, except to pull deeper into Jeff’s apartment where he has conversations of varying import with his visiting nurse Stella (Thelma Ritter), his old war buddy Tom Doyle (Wendell Corey), and his socialite girlfriend Lisa (Grace Kelly), who is pressing him for further commitment.

The first thing to note here is that this is a guy who honestly cannot decide whether he wants to be married to Grace Kelly. This is a plot point that has appalled friends I’ve shown the film. But some men do flee domesticity, and one of the grand, subtle jokes of the vast multi-layered tableau that fes Jeff as he looks out his window and spies on the outside world is that every single life he spies upon presents him with another possible future, depending on whether he says yea or nay to Lisa. There’s the pair of ardent honeymooners, pulling down the shades and initiating an implied marathon love-making session that seems to go sour after only a couple of days; there’s “Miss Lonelyhearts,” the miserable woman stuck in a particularly miserable and increasingly despairing singlehood; there’s “Miss Torso,” the good-time party gal who always has men hanging around and represents the erotic opportunities Jeff might enjoy if he ever lets Lisa go; there’s the middle-aged couple with the little dog, who every night drag their mattresses out to the fire escape and snore away in relative comfort, all sense of passion gone; and finally, there’s the Thorvalds, whose marriage has turned toxic, and who have so little to say to one another that they’re almost always visibly in separate rooms, framed by different windows. It’s worth noting that nowhere in this slice of life are there any children. Children would fall outside the metaphor, which is like all great dramatic metaphors felt without any particular effort to underline it. What Jeff sees is very firmly the face of Jeff’s dilemma.  The second thing to note here is that all of these spied-upon characters have an arc of sorts, played with perfect modulation as the drama in the Thorvald apartment – where the much put-upon husband (Raymond Burr) appears to have offed his wife – takes center stage. Almost all of them pay off. So does the drama in Jeff’s apartment, where in between banter with Stella and romantic complications with Lisa, he resists and then embraces his obsession with Thorvald’s apparent crime. It’s a marvelously layered film, with comedy and relationship drama and even questions over the creepiness of Jeff’s activities all braided together in a tapestry of remarkable design. These days, some viewers may find it requires patience. But it rewards that patience. I don’t think it has a single dull moment, and key among its best attributes is the way the clues to Mrs. Thorvald’s murder don’t just pile up in some facile way, but at times offer competing explanations, and reasons to turn away.

Nor is Jeff given a free ride on the moral issues. His voyeurism – hardly asexual, but certainly bored – is criticized by everybody in his circle, and the movie takes delight in using this to indict the audience. The moral issues are so nuanced that it is even possible to feel sorry for Thorvald, after everything Jeff has put him through in order to prove his case. Thorvald is not an evil man, per se; just a very unhappy, very weak, very trapped one who has done a horrendously evil thing, and when he confronts Jeff (who he presumes to be a blackmailer) with an anguished, “What do you want from me?”, that one line is likely the most empathetic moment of Raymond Burr’s career.

But then all the performances in the film work at an equal level. It is among the best films of James Stewart’s career and one of the best of Grace Kelly’s. Even the supporting players across the courtyard inhabit their roles with grace and a deep sense of humor. It’s very nearly a perfect film, and though it’s been imitated a dozen times, it’s hard to think of any wrinkle that would even stand a chance of improving on it.

Enter Christopher Reeve.

The Remake

The sad but stirring twist in the life of Christopher Reeve is so well known that it need not be recapped here; suffice it to say that I concur with author Brad Meltzer’s take on the man, that he achieved fame by playing the indestructible Superman and greatness standing in the mortality of all of us Clark Kents.

I don’t hold with the popular wisdom that Reeve was never great on screen except as Superman; I would argue that he was pretty damn chilling as a sociopathic playwright in Deathtrap, and pretty damn good a couple of other times. He was certainly no liability in Remains Of The Day opposite Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson. performed in front of the camera on several occasions following the terrible accident that made him a quadriplegic, and was therefore a natural when somebody hit upon the startling brainstorm of casting him as the lead in an updated Rear Window. Why wouldn’t it work? Jeff in the original is pretty damned vulnerable as a man of action who has been sidelined by a mere broken leg; how much more helpless will his character be, when he cannot move a muscle under his shoulders, and requires live-in help just to get a cup of water when he wants one? Wouldn’t that ramp up the scares even more?

This is not a unique idea. As it happens, there is an entire subgenre of what we’ll now call “handicap thrillers,” involving physically impaired characters who must overcome their limitations in order to overcome the evil intentions of various murderers and thugs. Among them: the terrifying Wait Until Dark, which starred Audrey Hepburn in the adaptation of the Broadway play about a “world champion blind woman” terrorized by gangsters searching for a cache of drugs in her apartment;  See No Evil, which pit a blind Mia Farrow against another murderous plot; and Mute Witness, about a woman who…well, you can figure out the rest. There are even other thrillers featuring lead characters in wheelchairs. Hell, thriller writer Jeffery Deaver has written a pretty damn terrific series of novels about his quadriplegic forensic scientist Lincoln Rhyme, one of which was made into an unfortunately not-very-good movie with Denzel Washington and Angelina Jolie.

The inherent claustrophobia of Rear Window should have worked wonders with the predicament applied to a quadriplegic, and with a quadriplegic we all loved in the lead.

And this much needs to be said: in spurts, Reeve is terrific. He always excelled at the dazzling smile during an emotionally vulnerable moment, and has several opportunities to pull off that trick here. Throughout this film, he has scenes that play off the heartbreaking realities of life as a one-time vital person reduced to immobility, including one where he regards a closet teeming with clothes that he will likely never wear again. Early scenes, with him in the hospital bleakly wishing he was dead, are downright painful to watch, in light of our certain knowledge that Reeve lived those moments and felt those feelings.

But – and boy, do I feel like a heel for advancing this case – he also sabotaged this movie’s effectiveness as a thriller from the get-go.

The problem is that, by the time it was made,  Reeve was quite rightly an advocate for spinal cord research, and for state-of-the-art medical treatments for people with spinal cord injury…and as such, acutely aware that this movie, by far his most substantial acting role after the accident, was the best place to advocate for his cause. So he made demands, and nobody involved with the production had the heart or the good sense to say no to him. So it begins with him in the hospital, features him declaring that he will walk again someday, and includes scenes of him undergoing arduous physical rehabilitation to triumphant music long before he even gets to the apartment where he will observe the murder across the way.

This is absolutely fine if you’re making an issues drama of the challenges faced by quadriplegics, less fine if you’re making a thriller – a short TV movie, no less – where all these scenes take time and bleed tension from the story you’re supposed to be here to tell. Another problem arising from this is that, as a result of all this can-do spirit, the character he plays is exactly the same at the beginning of the movie as he is at the end; he doesn’t rise to the occasion, and he doesn’t learn about himself. His character arc is a straight line.

The story might have worked better if Reeve had been a despairing recent quad who imagined he had little to live for, for most of the film, and was brought back to some interest in life by his engagement with the murder scene across the street…a natural plot development given how many quads attempt suicide in the early years of their disability – but such attention to emotional realities, or at least dramatic ones, would have interfered with his personal mission to make this a hidden advocacy film.

Reeve’s advocacy harmed the film in another way. At the time, he also said he wanted to show the kind of tech available, to aid quadriplegics in living fulfilled lives. So there’s a lot of that, in his character’s home: including voice-activated computers that control the lights, the elevator, the phones, and so on. His character has an attendant in residence at all times, a fulfilling career with partners who respect him, and a beautiful woman who by the end of the movie will fall in love with him. This is all nice stuff to have. It doesn’t replace a functioning body, but it makes the transition to a disabled life as easy as it can be. So what we have, here, is quadriplegia as Christopher Reeve lived it – which, while it functions as drama, is absolute death when it comes to a film of suspense. Imagine he was a quad of more modest resources, living on disability, in a cramped space with only limited assistance – and THEN suspected that a murder was taking place across the street. This guy can afford to set up surveillance equipment, just in case he misses anything – and, by the way, unlike the original film’s protagonist, whose voyeurism bothered his nurse, his girlfriend, and his cop buddy, this guy’s video cameras are treated as cool stuff by almost everybody concerned. The voyeuristic aspects never receive substantive criticism.

Time hasn’t been kind to the concept, either. In 1954, the rarity of air conditioning – a factor in other Hitchcock movies discussed here in the past– meant that it was perfectly reasonable for the residents of a middle-class apartment complex to live their lives in full view, playing out entire dramas in view of their windows. In 1998, it doesn’t make nearly as much sense…especially since the Hitchcock provided a far more spacious courtyard with apartments set at varying angles and not the direct-line-of-sight posited by this movie. Also – as any thriller writer will tell you – the invention of the cellular telephone has been absolute hell on plotting, and its inclusion in the remake is no exception. Too, the killer here is a one-dimensional designated asshole, not nearly as interesting or as oddly sympathetic as Raymond Burr was in the original.

Finally, there is no wonderfully complex courtyard across the way: just a single dull edifice that fills Reeve’s line of sight and offers him what amounts to a collection in television sets in the form of conveniently-placed windows. There is no comparison to what we were given in  1954. It’s flat, in every sense of the word. This was not Reeve’s worst remake of a notable film: his last movie as a fully-abled man was a terrible version of Village of The Damned, and we will someday cover his participation in a truly unfortunate version of The Front Page. (It was called Switching Channels, and he played opposite Burt Reynolds and Kathleen Turner.) All we can say of this one is that it just didn’t work.

The View From The Apartment

1954 version, an undisputed classic. 1998 version, a missed opportunity.

*

And now, I watch from cover as the wife engages in sinister activities…

Second Commentary by Judi B. Castro

Rear Window (1954). Directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Screenplay by John Michael Hayes, from the story by Cornell Woolrich. Starring James Stewart, Grace Kelly, Wendell Corey, Raymond Burr, Thelma Ritter. 112 minutes. *** 1/2

Rear Window (1998). Directed by Jeff Bleckner. Screenplay by Larry Gross and Eric Overmyer, from the story by Cornell Woolrich. Starring Christopher Reeve, Darryl Hannah, Robert Forster. 89 minutes. **

Other Related Films: Too many ripoffs and hommages to count, among them Disturbia (2007), which is so similar to Woolrich’s story that the owners of the film had to go to court to get a ruling that they hadn’t violated Rear Window’s copyright.

I so wanted to like the 1998 rethink of Rear Window.  I mean come on it had Superman starring and proving he just might really be.  Besides, the original was really showing a few grey hairs (not just the one’s previously claimed by Jimmy Stewart). But, alas, it was not to be.

In 1954, and even up to the mid 70’s, it may have been commonplace for someone to become a temporary voyeur via injury or illness.  Boredom had fewer releases than today, little television, no computers or video games.  Books were limited at most libraries by budget and distance to said library.  And most magazines came out monthly, so a long convalescence had a lot of downtime.  So its believable that the Stewart character could easily start watching his summertime neighbors and playing mind games with himself.  Its even possible that those same folks might not notice him watching, or could pass it off as just a friendly guy at his window.  Creepy neighbor watching became the meme much later.

The things I find totally unbelievable for that time or EVER, is that any straight man, whether injured or not, rich or poor, or whatever, could have Grace Kelly in her most gorgeous state, throwing herself at him (and wantonly at that) and he can resist and actually ignore her!  PUHLEEZE!  Dude didn’t have a broken leg, They were feeding him large quantities of saltpeter.  Next, the home nurse never insists he leave the apartment, just cleans him up and lets him hobble about his two rooms.  Six to eight weeks in solitary confinement?  Is that doctor recommended?

Now, how about that remake?  I can believe that architect Christopher Reeve has enough cash reserve for all the wondrous toys both medical and electronic he buys after his accident.  I’m sure he had much better access than the average newly paralyzed patient and just figured he could walk back into (so to speak) his job and most of his old life.  Ummm…  ??? How?  Most of his firm’s partners would attempt to block him from anything to do with the job or the public and claim it was for his own sake.

Now, how about the crux of each thriller, the supposed murder of the neighbor’s wife.

In both films the murder is based on the supposition that a disappearing wife meant a murder had been committed.  Neither is proven conclusively, but both disabled leads taunt the murderer into a full on attack.  In the 1954 film, I honestly believe that Jimmy Stewart, hobbled or not, had a fighting chance against Raymond Burr. Not so with Chris Reeves.  How could he?  His ability to defend himself was purely run and hide.  he couldn’t draw a gun or knife on his attacker, he could only call 911 if that.  The suspense was only if he could breathe long enough for help to arrive.  In other words, uhh, no really.

So, to sum up.  1998 had a good try at an update, but needed less disability to keep the suspense alive.  1954 needed a leading character who wasn’t wearing a giant “L” on his forehead for the whole film.

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REVIEW: Leverage Season Four

leverage-season-4-lev4he-001_packshots_dvd_3d_r1_rgb-300x400-3485209Most television series hit the fourth season mark with the characters firmly established allowing the creators and performers a chance to stretch a bit, certain they won’t lose their audience. The better shows know just how far to stretch, how far to push the formula, and when to pull back. Thankfully, TNT’s Leverage toed the line carefully by varying the stories told in the two half season comprising the 15 episode fourth season. The series has never been anything less than a delight as the con men turned good guys find corruption everywhere they turn and can’t help themselves, coming to the rescue.

The series features a strong, tight ensemble that is allowed to grow and develop, making us love the characters just a little bit more. The fourth season came out on a four disc set last week, just in time for the fifth season’s debut. One of the performers, Christian Kane, tweeted this was a vital season debut and wanted as many to tune in as possible. The reason rests on the ratings which, despite a solid creative run, saw the total viewers drop a dangerous 13% from the previous season. Another drop like that and the fifth may be the end.

But for now, we can revisit the highlights of what made the fourth season so much fun. It starts with the ever-changing locales for stories, starting with the season opener set on a hazardous mountain climb. Set just weeks after the end of the previous season, Nate (Timothy Hutton) and Sophie (Gina Bellman) have to explore what it means to them and the team now that they’ve (finally) slept together. The other romantic entanglement, Parker (Beth Riesgraf) and Hardison (Aldis Hodge), finally started to move after dancing around the matter the previous season.

leverage04a-300x288-1944694The meta story reveals that Jack Latimer (Leon Rippy) has been bugging their HQ and profiting from their exploits by investing against the marks. When he comes clean and asks for their help, Nate has to find a way out, setting up a finale that resolves many issues haunting the character from the first season. Along the way, though, there’s plenty of fun.

The story with the biggest wink to the fans is “The Ten Li’l Grifters Job” where Hutton got to dress as his father’s version of Ellery queen and the costume mystery is filled with literary and television detectives. One of the most interesting bits of storytelling can be found in the parallel stories in “The Girls’ Night Out Job” and “The Boys’ Night Out Job”. Old friends and foes surface, especially the fun return of Sterling (Mark Sheppard) in “The Queen’s Gambit Job” that adds to his character.

But it becomes clear towards the end that someone knows the quintet too well. Events lead to the death of Nate’s father, Jimmy (Tom Skerritt) with the architect of the murder revealed to be Victor Dubenich (Saul Rubenik), the first man taken down by the team in the pilot.  Nate is forced to find a way of changing the odds. He does so by having the team recruit strongman Quinn (Clayne Crawford), Parker’s mentor Archie Leech (Richard Chamberlain), hacker Colin (Chaos) Mason (Wil Wheaton), and Nate’s ex-wife Maggie Collins (Kari Matchett). The final two episodes of the season tie things up from the past as the team looks towards the future. It’s dramatic and fun and extremely satisfying.

leverage-the-van-gogh-job-season-4-episode-4-15-550x366-300x200-1783440The show never lets it take itself too seriously and just when you think it’ll get maudlin, something quirky happens. The formula and cast is elastic enough to allow a wide variety of stories from the typical “The Boiler Room Job” to the somewhat strained “The Cross my Heart Job”, set in an airport. Creatively, the most interesting episode may have been “The Van Gogh Job” with the cast filling roles in a flashback story set during World War II.

There is a smattering of extras spread across the four discs but all are on the short side. You get a featurette on the season opener along with some deleted scenes. There’s a six minute glimpse into the writers’ room, deleted scenes from four other episodes and finally the usual assortment of outtakes. Funnier may be the parody, “The Office Job” Every episode though, comes with commentary and if they are all as interesting as the few I sampled, their worth a listen.

I adore the series and find Parker one of the freshest characters on the air today. Revisiting these characters every summer and winter is a distinct delight so the new DVD set comes well recommended.

Review: “Why We Broke Up” by Daniel Handler, Illustrated by Maira Kalman

Review: “Why We Broke Up” by Daniel Handler, Illustrated by Maira Kalman

Handler has written for younger readers before: under his pen-name Lemony Snicket, he’s written one long, excellent middle-grade series (A Series of Unfortunate Events) and several one-offs, mostly of those ostensibly for even younger readers than that. But Why We Broke Up is a novel aimed at teenagers, a YA novel rather than a middle-grade, and it appears under Handler’s own name, both of which feel important. Why We Broke Up is also told in first person by a character in the story — the novel itself is a long letter that she writes to her ex-boyfriend to accompany a box full of the detritus of their relationship — and in an emotionally colored, immediate voice much more like Handler’s adult novels (particularly his first book, the similarly teenager-focused The Basic Eight) than like the cool, detached, almost nihilistic voice of Lemony Snicket.

Minerva aims Why We Broke Up directly at that ex-boyfriend, Ed, in the way that angry ex-lovers always do. She’s young and unsteady and intensely wounded by what Ed did — what that was, we don’t learn until late in the novel — and digging through the wreckage of their lives to grab each memento and stab it back at him, hoping to hurt him the way he hurt her.

Min suspects, though — as we readers do — that he won’t be hurt the way she was; that he doesn’t have that capacity. Min and Ed were at opposite ends of high-school life: she was a foreign-movie-loving, semi-outcast underachiever, while he was a thoughtless, beloved basketball star. How could they have anything in common to begin with? How could they ever get together?

Why We Broke Up tells that story — what they found in common, how they spent their time, how they fell in love. And, then, how Ed screwed it all up. Handler seamlessly creates the voice of a real young woman — as he did in Basic Eighty, though Min isn’t nearly as screwed up as Flannery — and tells his story entirely through what she tells Ed (and, through him, us).

Why We Broke Up is also heavily illustrated — there’s a full-page painting by Kalman to begin each chapter, plus some smaller pieces as well — but those are entirely illustrations; they show the things that Min is writing about (and throwing into that box) rather than telling the story in a direct way. Kalman’s art has a loose, quick quality about it that fits well with Min’s headlong letter-writing; they both feel like things done immediately to express immediate emotion.

Why We Broke Up has the immediacy and emotion of a broken heart; it’s a thoughtful and heartfelt story of two people who just didn’t connect the way they should have, and what that meant for one of them. Even if you’re no longer a teenager, you might well appreciate Why We Broke Up if your heart was ever broken. (Also, it has a great back-cover line-up of quotes from fine writers talking about their own heartbreaks — my favorite is from Brian Selznick: “I knew I had to break up with Ann Rosenberg after she chose a teal dress for the prom. I had never heard of teal. Also, I was gay.”)

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REVIEW: American Reunion

american-reunion-bluray-300x325-7264922Great film comedies have memorable characters and incidents, usually showing a knack for brilliant casting, and covering turf previously untouched. In 1999, American Pie did all of the above and was a wonderfully funny bit of fluff. It gave us some fine performances, including a resurgent Eugene Levy, the bit with the apple pie, made band camp sound cool, and of course Shannon Elizabeth’s swell nakedness.

The sequels that followed, both theatrical and direct-to-video tried to cash in on the craze but merely retread familiar turf and got less and less funny. Poor Levy would back the truck to the bank to unload all the cash he got to make appearances to at least somehow connect the series together.

However, here we are nine years after American Wedding with American Reunion and it suddenly feels familiar and fresh at the same time. This time around, writer/directors Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg, allow the original characters to age so we’re perfectly okay with revisiting them. It’s always good at a reunion to see who got fat, who lost hair, who has succeeded and who has never changed and we get that and more here.

While the storyline announces it’s been thirteen years since high school graduation, putting the characters at 31 or so, everyone looks way too old to be convincing, a danger of casting 20-somethings to play teens. So, what’s everyone been up to? Jim Levenstein (Jason Biggs) and Michelle (Alyson Hannigan) have the most interesting dilemma: married and deeply in love but burdened with jobs and an infant so their sex life is nonexistent, except in private, solo moments. Chris “Oz” Ostreicher (Chris Klein) is the most successful of the bunch, a sportscaster who gained national attention for appearing on a dance show. And then there’s Stifler (Seann William Scott), who has a lifetime subscription to the Peter Pan Syndrome and is drifting through life.

american-reunion1-small-660x440-300x200-5416983The gang, with new significant others, arrive for the reunion and everyone reverts to form, including Oz, who sees his ex, Heather (Mena Suvari), and is smitten all over again.

Time has passed, though as we see Levy now a widower still mourning his wife’s death while next door neighbor Kara (Ali Cobrin), who Jim used to babysit is now a gorgeous hot to trot 18 year old. It’s Kara who gets to have the memorable nude scene this time around and they cast well since she’s gorgeous and nicely handled the comedic aspects.

All the old gang including Kevin (Thomas Ian Nicholas), Finch (Eddie Kaye Thomas), Finch’s Mother (Jennifer Coolidge), John (John Cho), Vicky (Tara Reid). And others reprise their roles. Newcomers include Dania Ramirez as the ugly duckling turned into hot swan. As a result, all the old feelings, jealousies and behaviors are brought to the fore in interesting ways. It’s far from brilliant and mostly predictable, robbing the fourth film, out Tuesday from Universal Home Entertainment, of being spectacular. The funniest fresh bit may well be Oz losing the dance competition, hosted by Neil Patrick Harris in a nice cameo, to Gilbert Gottfried.

american-reunion-alyson-hannigan-dania-ramirez-300x199-9598836Like walking into the kitchen and the aroma of Mom’s fresh apple pie and being catapulted back to happier, simpler times, this film is a welcome addition to the series and a good chance to see familiar faces who don’t visit often enough.

The transfer to Blu-ray is well handled so the visuals and sound are sharp, not that the film needs either to be entertaining. The Combo Pack comes with Blu-ray and DVD both sold separately, plus an ultraviolet code. The Blu-ray comes replete with 12 bonus features and a commentary. The DVD has some of the features plus the commentary. Although sold as a package with the theatrical and Unrated version, there’s a minute that separates them so blink and you miss it.

Among the extras is a 10:32 “Reunion Reunion” which is all surface and the gag reel is surprisingly tame. Funnier is the “Ouch! My Balls” featurette focusing on the amount of crotch punching the film relies on. Of the handful of deleted scenes only one with Stifler is missed since it sets up the conclusion of his arc. Dancing with Oz and Hangin’ with Jason B are so-so pieces. Clearly the effort was to be funny on the feature itself. The best of the lot is the interactive yearbook where you can  select a character and trace their history across the franchise with clips, cast discussions , their most embarrassing moment and their favorite activities.

REVIEW: Margaret

The world seen through the eyes of a teenager is an overly complex place, spoiled but adults who overly nuance everything while teens see it all with unjaded clarity. Such a worldview can be permanently altered by a single action and the resulting repercussions, which ripple in waves, touching many in unexpected ways. From that premise comes writer/director Kenneth Lonergan’s Margaret, a film whose making is as tortured as its premise.

Originally scheduled for release by Fox Searchlight in 2007, Lonergan (You Can Count on Me) labored over the production and then the editing until the release date came and went, prompting law suits. He finally delivered a cut totaling 3:06, far longer than the 2:30 the studio insisted upon, which became a part of the suit. Finally, Martin Scorsese and Thelma Schoonmaker stepped in to craft a cut that the director and studio could live with and the movie opened in December.

You missed it. You probably never heard of it or vaguely recall it was something Anna Paquin shot before True Blood made her a superstar. Before that series though, she was always an accomplished actress rarely given the right roles to demonstrate that but Lonergan wrote Lisa Cohen with Paquin in mind and she delivers a riveting performance worthy of your attention. Fortunately, the film is available as a Blu-ray Combo Pack on Tuesday and comes complete with both cuts of the film.

Twentieth Century Home Entertainment recently sent me a screener of the studio cut and it is extremely powerful and moving. Lisa is a 17 year old girl living with her divorced mother Joan (J. Smith-Cameron), an actress, and younger brother. Preparing to spend the summer at a ranch with Dad, she is seeking the proper cowboy hat when she spots one atop bus driver Jason “Maretti” Berstone (Mark Ruffalo). Chasing the bus in the hopes of boarding it and talking to him, he is distracted long enough to run a red light and strike a pedestrian (Alison Janney). Margaret comforts the woman whose life quickly ebbs away and with that the movie is launched.

Margaret gives a false statement, at Joan’s urging, to the police and the guilt weighs on her. She struggles with the memory of the event, the lie, the lack of justice in a cruel world and questions the meaning of life itself. As a result, she is adrift, thrashing out at friends and family alike. She is distanced from her mother, who is distracted first by the impending opening of her Broadway show and then an unlikely romance with a foreign businessman (Jean Reno). Lisa confides in her math teacher (Matt Damon) and ignores her English teacher (Matthew Broderick) and best friend (Olivia Thirlby). She does, though, make a conscious decision to lose her virginity to a stoner (Kieran Culkin) in what has to be one of the most honest lovemaking scenes in a long time.

Eventually, the weight of the lie and lack of proper closure eat at Lisa who connects with Emily (Jeannie Berlin), the victim’s closest friend, and together an odd bond is formed. Lisa confronts Jason, berates the police who have closed the case, and seeks legal remedies. She has made Jason losing his job, protecting potential victims, her mission and focuses solely on that with dramatic results.

As you can see, this has a hefty cast that underplay their parts. Emily is brittle and rude and not terribly warm to Lisa but they’re in this together, a relationship Joan has trouble accepting. No adult can say the right things or make the right moves to salve Lisa’s fevered conscience and Paquin runs with it. Lisa is appealing and sympathetic for the most part, but far from ideal and perfect.

The movie is heavy and dramatic but Lonergan brings a precision to the dialogue and storytelling, making it feel honest and real. He lets his characters argue, including some nice scenes in high school where the kids debate current events and Shakespeare with fervor. There’s one false note, a blunt statement Lisa makes to two of her teachers late in the film that feels out of left field with no follow up. Still, the movie is well worth your attention.

As for who Margaret is, she is a character in Gerard Manley Hopkins’ poem “Spring and Fall: To a Young Child”.

Review: Kyotofu – Japan in NYC

So you want a light bite, some coffee or tea or sake, healthy food, atmosphere cozy and unpretentious, but sophisticated, even romantic? Search no further than Hell’s Kitchen for the Japanese dessert bar Kyotofu (705 Ninth Ave. bet. W. 47th & W. 48th Sts.). Originally from Kyoto and other Japanese locations, you can also find a spot in Seoul, South Korea, plus the products are sold at Dean & Deluca and served on eastbound ANA flights from the US. Opened in 2006 here, they’ve been New York Magazine’s cupcake champs since ’10. And it’s all based upon the humble soybean. You’d never know it by the universal raves they receive and the always-happily occupied seats in the bar and dining areas.

The staff is mostly Japanese and totally knowledgeable about the authentic modern Japanese fusion menu (on my four dinner, sake, and dessert visits with a single gentleman friend on various weeknights), and the crowd is mixed but heavily Asian. This is the real deal, not an otaku novelty hang-out— beautiful, modern, clean-white décor, soft indirect lighting, fresh, like all the food and drink they serve. My in-house dinner favorites include the cha soba noodles or the curry rice (kurobuta sausage added) and warm sweet potato cake for dessert. My go-to sake there is the Ginjo Dewazakura “Oka” Yamagata with its light and delicate taste and aroma of cherry blossoms. (starters: $7-$12, sides: $4-$6, “comfort mains”: $10-$16, prix fixe sampler of starter + bento: $24, desserts: $8-$12, prix fixe sampler for 2 of 3-course dessert chef’s selection: $28).

For special occasions or just everyday opulence, they put together these lovely and abundantly filled gift assortment boxes that ship easily and safely ($14-$48). They are beautiful in their subtle and elegant attention to detail (e.g., hand-tied double ribbons to seal the box) and inside are neatly-sealed packages nicely shareable by 2 or just fine for tea for one.  There was nothing in their limited edition Valentine’s Day assortments (that can be purchased in other gift boxes year-round) that I didn’t like. The valrhona miso chocolate brownies are rich, soft, gooey—outstanding! My favs were anything with strawberry—cupcakes or little flower-shaped financiers that pop in your mouth and fill it with flavor that is like a soft fragrance—they tasted of freshly picked strawberries dancing on your tongue! The shortbread cookies did not taste like they were missing any butter (brown rice, black sesame, green tea, and my favorite – citrus) and were both a great balance of savory and sweet. The bite-sized cupcakes have lush and giant flavor and you cannot help but smile when you eat them.

Well worth the special trip that people tweet about and come from out of town to experience. Besides the restaurant, there’s online sales and a bakery for take-home delights. Let Date Night, Fun Night, Anything-Night Begin!

REVIEW: Mirror, Mirror

In December, I had the pleasure of teaching fairy tales to seniors and we explored how the basic stories have been told and retold around the world and through the ages. The core concepts remain vital and can withstand wildly varying interpretations. Before Walt Disney began cementing a single version of each tale in the global consciousness, they were adapted time and again based on the culture and need of the ages.

I was reminded of this all over again when prime time offered us both Once Upon a Time and Grimm, which were vastly different takes on some of the most beloved fairy tales. The former obviously owes a lot to its corporate masters, Walt Disney, but even so, the versions of Snow White, the Queen, Pinocchio, and so on do not identically match their animated counterparts. Grimm uses the fairy tales as a launching point and goes in a wildly different direction.

Similarly, there are the competing Snow White epics that were released this year. The clear winner was the box office smash Snow White and the Huntsman, which is already spawning a sequel despite having some of the worst storytelling gaps I’ve seen in ages. At the other end of the spectrum was Mirror Mirror, which opened first and flopped badly despite having Julia Roberts as the Queen. Now out on DVD from 20th Century Home Entertainment, Mirror Mirror suffers poorly in comparison with its competitor and worse, with its own trailers.

The trailers showed us a slyly funny interpretation of the classic story and promised more but what we got was something silly and over the top and not especially clever. Tarsem Singh once more shows us, as he did in Immortals, that story is secondary to imagery. Marc Klein and Jason Keller tell a story that makes somewhat more sense than The Huntsman but they fail to make any of the characters particularly memorable nor does Singh elicit interesting performances allowing the cast to rise above the material.

Instead, a particularly strong cast is wasted looking fabulous in utterly absurd costuming. Roberts flounces about, vain and petty, but without real motivation. Lily Collins is a prettier Snow than Kristin Stewart and at least gets to train before fighting but has so little of note to do. Nathan Lane heads a supporting cast that is entirely flat and unoriginal. Even the seven dwarves are stereotypical and not especially funny. Having Lord Stark, that is Sean Bean, play the King in a wintry land invites poor comparisons with A Game of Thrones.

The movie lies flat and remains not particularly entertaining nor does it surprise us even once. And that’s a shame since the story could be played nicely for laughs, poking some gentle fun at the many interpretations or psychological motivations but it attempts nothing so interesting. There’s no motivation for the Queen’s cruel rule or explanation offered as the nature of the magic mirror and her more staid persona within the glass.

On the other hand, the Blu-ray edition looks particularly nice, so the costuming and sets look swell. It’s great to watch at home along with excellent sound.

The disc comes with a bunch of perfunctory extras such as the five deleted scenes which are not missed, including the alternate opening. Looking through the Mirror (12:58) tries to make you believe the cast and crew really think they’re making a good film. The end credits are accompanied with an over-the-top Bollywood production number and I Believe I Can Dance (11:01) is an overlong look at how choreographer Paul Becker taught Collins, Mare Winning ham, Michael Lerner, and others to dance. The silliest bonus is Prince and Puppies (1:59) as real puppies review Armie Hammer’s romantic side. The most interesting featurette is Mirror, Mirror Storybook, a remote-controlled “storybook” version of the film.

Given the potential in the cast and the source material, and knowing there was a competing version also in production, you would have thought Singh would have risen to the occasion, making this film all the more disappointing.

The Amazing Spider-Man: The ComicMix Mixed Review

Glenn and Mike were at the movies – separately – just so they could have a heart-to-heart conversation about The Amazing Spider-Man. This time, each has a fairly different opinion.

Of course, there are spoilers ahead.

Glenn: So, this is going to be an interesting exercise. I believe I could hear your teeth grinding from Norwalk…

Mike: You liked it?

Glenn: Most of it, yes.

Mike: Jeez. I found only the last third the least bit tolerable. What did you like about it?

Glenn: The casting, for starters.

Mike: The casting was fine. But it was in service of a director who put everything he learned in community college up on the screen.

Glenn: Andrew Garfield won me over very quickly, with a naturalness that Tobey Maguire never quite seemed to have. Emma Stone could have carried the film even if she didn’t look just like a John Romita drawing.

Mike: The direction was amateurish and the script was worse. They’re lucky this wasn’t an adaptation of an Alan Moore story.

Glenn: I’m curious – what marked this as amateurish to you? The action scenes played fine, the character scenes worked to the actor’s credits – although I think the film may have trod a bit too much to the sort of aspirational stuff out of a Aaron Sorkin script… of course, that might have been a subconscious reaction to Uncle Ben Bartlett.

Mike: Gwen is the nexus of all coincidences. Her dad just happens to be a police chief in charge of the Spider-Man beat. She just happens to have an after-school job that gives her seemingly complete access to all areas and secrets of one of America’s largest high-science development companies – at 17 years-old – where she just happens to work for the arch-villain, who just happens to be the lab partner of the hero’s dead father.

Glenn: Yes, there’s a bunch of coincidences jammed there. But she was a science geek in the comics, just at the college level, and her dad was a police captain.

And yes, Connors and Richard Parker also happen to work for the upcoming big bad villain, too.

Mike: And all that was spread out over several years’ worth of comics. Here, this was all crammed into two hours – although, to be fair, it seemed like much longer. There’s coincidence, and there’s really bad storytelling. This is really bad storytelling. I really wanted to like this movie. Unfortunately, we knew two best actors weren’t going to make it out of the movie alive. There most certainly is such a thing as a great remake. The classic versions of Maltese Falcon and Wizard of Oz were both remakes. The Amazing Spider-Man is in absolutely no danger of joining this crowd. A remake has to answer the question “Why bother?” This movie, like the Superman remake, didn’t.

Glenn: Two best actors? I mean, we knew that Uncle Ben had to die. I can see a few reasons for retelling the story. For one thing, the effects work has improved a lot in places – the web-swinging in particular. Although the Lizard… well, you don’t always get it perfect.

Mike: Yeah, and we knew the Titanic was going to sink. But the latest movie was about a lot more than the sinking of a boat; ASM wasn’t about anything we hadn’t seen before. Why didn’t they show us Spidey actually using his powers? The webbing thing was fairly cool, but outside of that we rarely saw him in action. He’d be on the ground and there’d be a quick cut to him stuck to the ceiling. Web-slinging through the Manhattan cityscape? Nope; it was mostly long-shots or Peter’s point of view. You don’t have to get the villain perfect, just menacing. Certainly the Goblin looked less-than-stellar in the original.

Glenn: Just out of curiosity, did you see it in 3-D?

Mike: No, 2-D. Which doesn’t address a single one of my storytelling and direction complaints. You rarely saw Spider-Man being Spider-Man. Not even if he pops out of the screen and eats the popcorn out of your lap, 3-D has nothing to do with storytelling. Certainly not in this movie. It doesn’t come close to the Sixth Avenue shots in the first movie. Talk about your John Romita influence…

Glenn: The action sequences, web-slinging, etc. worked for me in 3-D. The Lizard – well, it’s a giant lizard. Hoping for emotion in a lizard’s face is going to be an uphill battle, no matter what insurance company mascots teach us.

Mike: You don’t have to get the villain perfect. Certainly the Green Goblin looked less-than-stellar in the original. But the Lizard looked like the Hulk had pooped out a baddie.

Glenn: Of course, there’s a point. How many times can Spider-Man lose his mask in this film?

Mike: About as often as they want the 12 year-old girls to go all Beatles over Garfield. Who, by the way, looks about 30. Did they cast Garfield and Stone because Dwayne Hickman and Tuesday Weld looked too young?

Glenn: Yeah, college age would have been easy to believe. High school?

Mike: And Peter, Gwen, and obviously ol’ Lizzieface certainly weren’t New Yorkers in the least. Flash might have been, Ben and May and Stacy certainly were, but the three leads seem like they never even visited New York. Conners had been there longer than Peter has been alive.

Glenn: I don’t think the Lizard was a poor choice of villain. Curt Connors was played well… except for that “must turn evil” bit, and even there, it played in character more than Doctor Octopus’s character turn in Spider-Man 2.

Mike:. It was in character for the original comics version that evolved over decades. In a two-hour movie (that played like an eight-day bicycle marathon), it was almost campy. At least Alfred Molena had the chops to pull Doc Ock off. I’d seen scarier villains on Doctor Who… in the black-and-white days!

Glenn: One thing that did work for me was the more naturalistic interactions between characters. Garfield and Stone clicked here in a way that Maguire and Dunst never quite did; for that matter, Garfield seemed more natural with everyone – Sally Field’s Aunt May, Martin Sheen’s Uncle Ben, Denis Leary’s Captain George Stacy, and even the crooks.

Mike: I agree, but those moments were brief. ASM wasn’t about the one-man Greek chorus, and that’s good. It’s about a 17 year-old, but only at times did they allow themselves to go there. Tell me. Did you like this movie as much this morning as you did last night?

Glenn: No, but I’ve had a morning that would make Pollyanna grumpy.

Mike: Did anybody applaud at the end? At my screening, absolutely nobody applauded. Not a one. Virtually everybody who wasn’t in the comics business left before the end of the credits.

Glenn: A decent amount of applause, nothing like the roar at the end of Avengers.

And I have to wonder how this plays in the rest of the country, since Spider-Man is really such a New York character.

Mike: That didn’t hurt the development and the success of Marvel Comics, which was almost entirely New York based for decades, and largely remains that way today. There was nothing particularly New Yorkish about the movie. It could have happened in Cleveland or Phoenix.

Glenn: There’s that same moment in this film that came in the first Spider-Man where New Yorkers pull together to help Spidey out.

Mike: New Yorkers like to think they live in the only city that pulls together in a crisis. It’s human nature. It’s what’s kept humans alive as a species. And wolves.

Glenn: Sadly, it didn’t work nearly as well as it did in the first one, mainly due to a big logic problem. There’s a helicopter right above him. Why doesn’t he just hitch a ride on that?

Mike: By the end of the movie I think only Flash Thompson didn’t know Peter was Spider-Man – and he was the one guy who should have figured that out, given all the scenes where Peter used his powers against him.

Glenn: Flash, despite his name, has never been that quick. And Aunt May – well, I don’t know if she knows or not.

Mike: I was never certain what Aunt May understood, except getting over her husband’s death right quick. Oh, and the costume really sucked. Seriously. Cirque du Soleil should stick to cribbing Mummenschanz.

Glenn: One of the nicer bits between Peter and Aunt May is there’s a lot of unspoken subtext there, with her obviously knowing there’s something Peter’s not telling her, but not knowing quite what – maybe that Peter’s suddenly going in for rough trade or something.

Mike: Sally Field handled each scene quite well; not once did I think “Flying Nun!” But together the movie made May Parker seem schizo.

Glenn: Was there anything you liked about this movie?

Mike: Denis Leary, both his performance and the way they handled his character.

Glenn: Agreed.

Mike: This movie will do well opening weekend because opening weekend lasts six days and has a major holiday in there. But I don’t see it conquering the world. I can understand Garfield wanting to be in Avengers 2. He wants to be in a good super-hero movie.

Glenn: I’m still thinking Sally Field is too young to play Aunt May, but that’s purely a construct that carries over from the comics that has almost no logical basis. Of course she shouldn’t be old enough to be his grandmother, but still.

Mike: You’re absolutely right – if May was Ben’s husband and Ben was Richard’s brother, then Sally was the right age. In the comics Aunt May was born sometime before Barnabas Collins. I should point out I liked this movie more than most of my companions. One, who’s about 17, said it was the worst movie he ever saw. Ric Meyers (who thought less of this than I did) and I replied in unison: “You’re still young.”

Glenn: And ironically, my companion is one of the surliest bastards in comics and prose (David A. Mack, the killer of the Borg) and he enjoyed it even more than I did. This may be the rare film where I can’t easily say in advance whether or not a particular viewer will enjoy themselves.

Mike: Yeah, well I give it a thumb’s up – where the sun don’t shine.

Glenn: I give it a thumb, index finger, and pinky up. Which makes for a very tough review. But hey, kids, go and find out for yourselves.

REVIEW: “Redshirts” by John Scalzi

REVIEW: “Redshirts” by John Scalzi

It is simply impossible to declare a novel “not funny.” Humor is so personal that all any person can really do is declare whether he laughed or not.

And so I’ll say this: John Scalzi‘s new novel, Redshirts, has four quotes on the back cover (from luminaries Melinda Snodgrass, Joe Hill, Lev Grossman, and Patrick Rothfuss), all of which make a point to note how funny this book is. On the other hand, I didn’t laugh or smirk before page 120 out of 230 pages of the novel proper [1], and, even after that point, there were only a couple of wan smiles and some light chuckles. This reader must then humbly submit that Redshirts did not strike him as funny as it did the blurbers, and that will inevitably color the rest of this review. Please set your expectations accordingly.

I’ve read all of Scalzi’s novels to date, and grumbled about all of them, which proves something, I suppose. (Probably about me, and probably nothing good, either.) I’ve come to realize that I’m engaging in the common but fruitless effort of wishing that Scalzi was a different writer — or that he were interested in writing different kinds of books — than is actually the case. He clearly has it in him to write “serious” SF of weight and rigor — the mostly-successful novella The God Engines (see my review) shows that, as does his best novel, The Ghost Brigades (which I covered in a more cursory manner) — but it’s also becoming clear that he doesn’t want to be a “serious SF writer,” that he’s more in the vein of Keith Laumer, James H. Schmitz or H. Beam Piper, writing zippy novels set in mildly generic universes with wisecracking heroes who always win out in the end. (I didn’t review his first novel, Agent to the Stars, but I did also cover Old Man’s War, The Last Colony — and then a follow-up on the Old Man’s War-iverse in general — The Android’s Dream, Zoe’s Tale, and then last year’s Fuzzy Nation, so the really devoted reader can trace my history of looking for things in Scalzi novels that I should not expect to find there.) Thus, Redshirts — a novel set in a deliberately generic medium-future setting, with plenty of elbows to the reader’s ribs and references to SF media properties that we are all already familiar with [2], that almost but not quite turns into a giant fuzzy-dog story along the way — is exactly the novel we should have expected from Scalzi, and the reaction to that novel (it’s already hit the New York Times bestseller list) bears that out.

Which is all a long way around saying that Scalzi’s work is deeply resistant to criticism (if not entirely invulnerable to it) and that I, personally, am not well-placed as a critic to do justice to Redshirts in the manner it deserves. (Which would either be an excoriating attack on its flabby second-handedness — though that would also be entirely missing the point; it’s second-handed on purpose — or a loving appreciation written either entirely in Klingon or in quotes from famous TV sci-fi shows, a la Jonathan Lethem’s “The Anxiety of Influence.”)

Redshirts is a slobbery sheepdog of a novel, eager to show off its good nature — it’s a quick, easy read, full of snappy dialogue delivered by characters without too many attributes to confuse the reader and delivered, for the most part, in little-described interior spaces, so as to keep the narrative from being cluttered up by action or description. It’s set in a very Star Trek-y future — very original series Trek, to be precise, for maximum audience identification with the premise and the least amount of friction for Scalzi’s few twists in the tale.

The year is 2456, and the Federation Universal Union has just assigned young Ensign Andrew Dahl to the flagship, Enterprise Intrepid, where he soon learns that junior and low-ranked crew members — whom we know as “Redshirts,” though Dahl doesn’t — die at an unusual rate, and because of exceedingly unlikely events, during “Away Missions.” Dahl, and his fellow not-terribly-well-characterized Ensigns [3], do not want to die, and so they try to figure out why this is, eventually turning to the creepy loner Jenkins (who lives, alone and hidden, in the Jeffries tubes cargo tunnels deep within Intrepid), who has a theory So Crazy that it just might be true.

That theory is amusing, and would be even more amusing at about 2 AM in some convention party, anytime in the past forty years. But it doesn’t lead — in my opinion, of course — to anything really funny afterward, just another succession of scenes of not-well-characterized people shooting mildly-witty dialogue at each other in some more undescribed rooms for another hundred pages until the novel ends. The first half of Redshirts isn’t frightening or ominous enough — and God Engines is proof that Scalzi can do really ominous danger-on-a-starship, when he wants to — and the second half isn’t as big or funny as it should be, either. (It resembles, more than anything else, a rewrite of one particular Star Trek story.)

Redshirts is content to be amusing and pleasant, rather than digging any deeper. It is not a failure in any possible sense of the term, but it may leave some readers wanting more, particularly if they’re long-time SF readers who have seen Redshirt‘s Phildickian premises used more evocatively and subtly by other writers. If you just wondered what a Trek redshirt might have thought about his predicament, and aren’t expecting much, you will enjoy Redshirts. If you hoped for a more complicated, interesting answer to the predicament of high-casualty crewmen, I’d suggest instead looking for the excellent (and mostly ignored) novel Expendable by James Alan Gardner.

[1] There are also three “codas” — related short stories — which add another 90ish pages to the book. They’re in different modes, though, and none of them are funny — none of them seem to aim at being funny, either. They’re the best writing Scalzi does in this book, and that plus the example of God Engines implies that Scalzi is deliberately tuning his novelistic output to a particular market.

[2] My reaction to the use of these as “jokes” is approximated by this T-shirt.

[3] Scalzi eventually has a clever in-universe explanation for this; Redshirts is quite cleverly designed to be precisely the way it is, though one must wonder if spending that much energy emulating mediocrity is really worthwhile.

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