There seems to be an awful lot of fantasy on TV this week. Fantasy; in all its shapes, forms and flights of fancy—Darkness versus Light, The Darkness Within, Strangeness from Without, Alien Presence, Time Shifting Through Time.
THING CALLS THE TUNE
Fantasy comes in many guises; comic strips, graphic novels, novels, TV shows, and, above all, from the creative minds of gifted writers, directors and filmmakers.
The Dark Knight [M-Net.Wednesday.23.10] is yet one more look at Batman and his ongoing battle against the forces of evil. Oh! were the whole thing quite so simple. Christian Bale dons the visor, while Heath Ledger gives the performance that won him a posthumous Oscar.
THE JOKER IS WILD
The shades of darkness are broadly stroked; nothing is safe on The Dark Knight’s brutal, kaleidoscopic canvass. The cast is unerringly good, especially Aaron Eckart as Two Face. In what was to be his last real part, Ledger gives a barely concealed manic edge to his award winning role.
The film is loud, grim and unrelentingly violent and made me long for the days when the only thing Adam West had to worry about, when he played Bruce Wayne on film and TV, was whether his suit could successfully hide his paunch and what Robin fancied for dinner.
THE BEST FAMILY OF ALL
At about the same time as Batman and his Robin were running around American TV screens, there was another series that made me, aged about eleven, want to emigrate to the USA. Just so I could watch Gomez, Mortitica and family do their stuff with Lurch and Thing. Some ancient friend of my grandmothers had had a few original Charles Addams cartoons, I loved them then and I love them still.
PICTURE PERFECT
When The Addams Family [e.tv.Saturday.20.00] finally made it to the big screen in 1991, they were sheer perfection. Raul Julia starred as Gomez, Anjelica Huston was Morticia and the very wonderful Christina Ricci was Child Wednesday.
They are all there, Uncle Fester, Pugsley, Lurch—watch them, they’re a class act.
The X Files, as a TV show, created a frothing fan base, all of its own. The shows transition to the big screen has not been wholly successful. Certainly, the second movie, The X-Files: I Want To Believe, [M-Net.Friday.21.00] starring, as usual, David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson as Mulder and Scully, is for hard core addicts only.
SIGNS AND PORTENTS
Marvel Comic genius, Stan Lee, created The X-Men, those mutants with minds, hearts and souls.
LOOPY DE LOUP
In their third big screen outing, The X-Men: The Last Stand [e.tv.Sunday.20.00] the action is a little tired; running low on steam and ideas, but Hugh Jackman as Wolverine still has masses of animal appeal.
HOW IT ALL BEGAN
There are two fantasy films directed by M. Night Shyamalan on show this week, both starring Joaquin Phoenix. For some reason, Signs [SABC3.Friday.19.30] with Mel Gibson, all about alien invasion and a crisis of faith was a big hit.
SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES.....
Unlike The Village, [SABC3.Saturday.19.30] with Adrien Brody and William Hurt about a community, living in the past, where time appears to stands still (or does it?) was a box office dud.
THE MENACE FROM WITHIN
I found The Village more intriguing, and one hell of a lot more believable. Forces from inside or, better still, seemingly benign human ones, are always more sinister than any fanged monster or flat- headed alien.
This is very true in Fear, [SABC3.Sunday.22.00] where hunky Mark Wahlberg romances Reece Witherspoon. He doesn’t need red eyes that light up or a fondness for virginal blood, the very real human tension is palpable. It’s the classic ‘Is he trying to kill me, and if he is, do I care?’ scenario. Both leads are impressive and the roller coaster scene is heart thumping.
Talking of virginal blood, to really enjoy Dracula: Dead and Loving It, [e.tv.Saturday.14.00] you need to know and love all the ‘in’ jokes that have, over the years, accumulated around the thirsty Count. Like the sexual ‘turn on’ of jagged teeth and how to sound like Bela Lugosi.
GOING FOR THE JUGULAR
Director Mel Brooks demands that kind of knowledge from his audience. Brooks can be very funny; he always shows great comic promise but seldom, as here, fully follows through.
The cast, however, has a wonderful time, watch out for Anne Bancroft in a cameo, as Madame Ouspenskaya. The real Maria Ouspenskaya was a quirky Eastern European character actress. She made her Hollywood debut at the age of sixty and spent a lot of her career speaking terrible curses in a thick Slavic accent.
CURSES FROM THE GYPSY WOMAN-MARIA OUSPENKAYA TELLS IT LIKE IT IS
Anne Bancroft, who was Mel Brooks wife in real life, was perhaps most famous for being Dustin Hoffman’s Mrs. Robinson in The Graduate.
Hoffman is on TV this week in Perfume: The Story of a Murderer [M-Net.Monday.21.30] about a spooky young man trying to distil the ultimate fragrance. There are no sympathetic characters, no empathy, just flat fatigue, and a sense of relief when it finally finishes.
A bit of a waste of talent though, Hoffman is good, as always, in a supporting role, but Ben Whishaw, so interesting as one of the Dylan personas in I’m Not There, is just plain creepy.
Wait until you Meet Joe Black, [SABC1.Sunday.22.00] He is sensitive, kind, good looking too. Brad Pitt, in the title role, is death in human form, but, what a sweetie he is.
DON'T BE SCARED OF DEATH
The rest of the cast, especially Anthony Hopkins, keeps the joke going pretty well. The movie is not a patch on the original Death Takes A Holiday, made as long ago as 1934.But, then, I don’t think it set out to be.
The Fight Club, [M-Net.Saturday.22.40] dubiously received at the time, has since earned cult status, questioning as it does, traditional social norms and authority. Unfortunately, it was first released at the time when a boy called Dylan and his friend Eric Harris unleashed hell on those around them. The plot of The Fight Club ran a little close to the bone and made some people very nervous.
CULT STATUS NOW-BRAD AND THE BOYS
Edward Norton leads a sparkling cast that includes Brad Pitt and Helena Bonham Carter — the film comes at you, wave after wave. Of course you relate. It captures, so well, the feeling when the boredom, the sameness, the staleness, makes you yearn for physical release.
John Grisham and Stephen King are probably the most popular writers in English today. Both have short stories on the screen this week. The most interesting thing about Grisham’s The Gingerbread Man, [SABC1.Friday.22.00] apart from it being one of Robert Altman’s last films, is the participation of South African actress Embeth Davidtz.
DAVIDTZ WITH KENNETH BRANAGH
She is a graduate of Rhodes University, and is a veteran of Capab and Maynardville, she is a marvelous actress and deserves to be more famous than she is.
There are lots of famous people in The Gingerbread Man, Kenneth Branagh, Robert Downey,Jr. and Robert Duvall among them. Sad to say, the film isn’t very good at all.
DID I WRITE THAT?
King’s novella The Secret Window, [e.tv.Sunday.01.25] is, in a strange way, not unlike The Fight Club, with the thread of clouded identity running through it. Johnny Depp is mesmeric, as he is in Mike Newell’s excellent, if depressing, Donnie Brasco [e.tv.Sunday.22.10] with Al Pacino.
HEAT AND DUST
Excellent too, is Alejandro González Inárritu’s Babel, [M-Net.Friday.00.50] with it’s core story, starring Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett, and the parallel shifts going on around it, moving forward, pulling back, how everything has a cause and effect, each move anyone makes, ripples into and onto the lives of others. It is a great piece of cinema.
My pick must be The Addams Family [e.tv.Saturday.20.00] Enjoy.