Jordan Hoffman Dot Com

From my review on UGO.com.

“Everything’s so GREEEEEN!” – Mel Brooks as King Louis XVI after doing a line of cocaine in The History of the World, Part I , and Jordan Hoffman while screening A&E’s version of The Andromeda Strain

It is axiomatic that the book is always better than the movie. Once you’ve experienced a story from the inside out, a film (or TV) version will always seem ephemeral by comparison. There are a few arguable exceptions to this (The Shining and Alfred Hitchcock’s source material come to mind) but to me there is no better refutation of the rule that Robert Wise’s 1971 production of Michael Crichton’s medical thriller The Andromeda Strain. What in print is an airport- friendly page turner with an unfulfilling ending was transformed by Wise and the notable effects/design maestro Douglas Trumbull into a cinematic feast serving up twin helpings of candy colored psychedelia and future shock paranoia. The Andromeda Strain had an impact on design that lasted an entire decade, perhaps more so even than 2001: A Space Odyssey as it was a populist work. There are few films that can match it for tone. But, much like the book, it has a dingus ending that comes very close to ruining everything. For years I’ve been gunning for an updated version of The Andromeda Strain. And now, in an age when television events can have production values and writers equal to that of feature films, I nearly wet myself with anticipation at the news of A&E’s two-parter. Oh…the disappointment.

The basics: a satellite crashes back to Earth, is dragged home to a small town in a pickup truck, opened up and suddenly everyone drops dead. Well, almost everyone. Some people just go violently bananas for a while. . . except for an old drunk and a crying baby – a key clue from the earlier iterations that is held over more out of inertia than anything else. These two characters present the same revelations, except by this point in the new story we’ve moved on to bigger and badder problems. That is a common curiosity here. This version of The Andromeda Strain feels like someone retelling an old joke, but diminishing certain beats and emphasizing others based on who is in the audience.

The miniseries is set in an alternate now. The US has fallen victim to other bioterror attacks since the Anthrax letters of 2001. This specificity does an awful lot to destroy the grandeur of the threat as presented in the novel and film. Indeed, with frequent cuts to Presidential situation rooms and a double-crossing Army general, we are less in the minds of civilian doctors brought in to help treat an epidemic than in the last, lost episode of E-Ring.

There are twin protagonists here. Benjamin Bratt is winning and charismatic as Dr. Stone, the civilian doctor named head of Project Wildfire – Homeland Security’s “Oh Sh*t!” last measure against unexplained bioterror. Representing the age of embedded journalism is Eric McCormack, alarmingly bad as Jack Nash, the investigative reporter who won’t take no for an answer. Indeed, other than Bratt and Viola Davis as a medical research specialist, all of the acting is downright unbearable. The real mystery is not how to stop the killer virus from mutating, but how Christa Miller has an acting career. Imagine a cast where Ricky Schroeder is one of the strongest links and you’ve got this show.

Military and presidential scheming, no doubt an addition brought in to “open the story up” deflates all the tension that should be building. We don’t care at all about these characters and when we are with them at the Wildfire base it is a bland place to be. The opportunity to dazzle us with technology is wasted as we see the same old crap. The set looks like a BSG cast-off and the computer readouts have no originality. What was once multicolored is now just green.

By the time we get to night two there comes the problem of how to show when rivers or the very air is infected. The producers decided that slapping a haze of brown ought to do the trick. It looks like it was accomplished by my Mother with iMovie. What’s worse is that when the brown vapor descends on the Army there are…rock guitars!!! Veins bulge and blood turns to sand as the drums charge in and kick ass. Luckily, we have now entered the “bad enough it is campy” zone, so we’re having a good time now.

The final shame comes with the new ending. Here’s the punchline: it’s not bad. Maybe a little derivative of one of the Star Trek films, but it is a far better try than what was there before. One of the writers somewhere along the way solved the problem that’s been plaguing this property since day one. And it is yours for the taking if you can wade through the first three hours and forty five minutes.

Early in this documentary, Alan Dershowitz tells a joke. A married couple goes to a rabbi with a problem. The husband tells his side of the story and the rabbi says, “You’re right.” The wife tells her side and the rabbi says, “You’re right.” The rabbinical student, who has been witness to all this, turns to his teacher and says, “Rabbi, they can’t both be right.” And the rabbi says, “You’re right.”

This movie is “about” abortion but it is really about ambiguity in life. Amusing, yes, that a film about “gray areas” should be shot in black and white. While ample time is devoted to the lunatic fringe on either side, the real heart of this movie is the middle. The people face to face with real personal choices, not abstraction. A Greek chorus of scholars (Dershowitz, Chomsky, Peter Singer and more) all agree on one thing: there are no absolutes.

Kaye’s very unique documentary (both in substance and in form) isn’t easy too watch – there is a lot of raw emotion and, alarmingly, a lot of frank medical footage – but it is quite a marvelous piece of work. If this film doesn’t make you take stock of your beliefs you simply must not have any.

From my review at UGO.com 

Warning:  minor spoilers 

I’ll answer the most important question first. Yes, there is a Wilhlem scream in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. It comes during the second big action sequence when fils-de-Indy (played not as annoyingly as you’d might think by Shia LaBoeuf) races his vintage Harley through a college library. The Lucas/Spielberg clique’s canned sound effect of choice (with the appropriate online cult following) is delivered center frame, direct to the camera lens, by a horn-rimmed nerd. See? They do care.

Anyone who claims that Indy 4 (as anyone with anything resembling a busy schedule is forced to call this film) is yet another example of Lucasfilm raping your childhood is overstating the case. At the very worse, this film is merely mumbling lewd things to your childhood in a public restroom.

I am a glass half full kind o’ guy, so it is in my nature to focus on the positive. On display in Crystal Skull are a number of quite good set pieces, one sequence in particular that rivals the truck chase from Raiders of the Lost Ark. There are ample creepy-crawlies, plenty of John Williams’ blasting trumpets and a terrific villain. Indeed, Cate Blanchett, as cinema’s first paranormal Marxist-Leninist, can take her black leather boots, shiny rapier and severe bob haircut and evenly redistribute my wealth any time she wishes (if you know what I mean….)

The negatives, and oh man they do exist, all fall under the same hot dog vendor sized umbrella. I don’t buy Indiana Jones in the 1950s. The whole point of Indiana Jones is that he apes the serial films of the 1930s and 1940s. To see him “updated” to 1957 sets up a fish-out-of-water disconnect that sounds a wrong note throughout the entire film. Indy at the soda fountain? Where’s Marty McFly?

Of course, this is a necessity. Computer generated technology has gone far, but it can’t reverse the aging process. You want Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones, you have to deal with him getting older. And while Spielberg & co. should be commended for never trying to hide this (indeed, the very first thing you see of Dr. Jones is a bird’s-eye-view of his male pattern baldness) the movie as a genre piece just doesn’t feel right in this context. When the macguffins are A-bombs and little green men, I wonder if this is really a job for Indiana Jones.

The little green men are, indeed, at the end of Indy’s chase here, and if that is a spoiler, well, it is your fault for never googling Crystal Skull or listening to Art Bell. Turns out Indy was brought in as an expert at Roswell, New Mexico and now, years later, Cate Blanchett (who apparently can perform Bolshevik Vulcan Mind Melds) is following the clues to what she thinks will give the Workers of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics the upper hand in the Cold War. And here you thought it was just tractors.

Along the chase to the Mayan Temple with mileage that serves as the film’s nutty conclusion we meet John Hurt (wasted in a pretty dumbass role as the fellow archaeologist who’s “seen to much”), Karen Allen as Indy’s old flame Marion Ravenwood (it’s nice to see a woman who doesn’t look like a movie star in a movie now and then), Ray Winstone as comic relief (kinda) and young Shia LaBoeuf as the heir apparent to Indy’s whip. I can not deny that there’s something likable about Shia – even though I slapped my forehead and groaned at his entrance in full Wild One leather and sneer. By the end of the picture, though, he won me over, daddy-os and all.

So, am I recommending Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull? Yes, of course I am. You think I’m some kinda Commie freak? From the opening dissolve of the Paramount logo (best use of the gag in the series, perhaps) to the final reprise of the Indy theme I had a big, stupid grin on my face. Too much CGI (they didn’t need it in the Raiders truck chase, why do they need it here?), a convoluted script, no Sallah, a tone-deaf moment when Indy channels (I sh*t you not) Jerry Lewis and a couple of boring patches, yes, but by tomorrow all I’ll remember are the fun parts. Bring on Indy 5!

I liked this movie when it came out and have even defended it here and there. I haven’t seen it since and, guess what, it really does suck!

It’s just a mess. And why does everyone have to curse so much! It’s funny, because the actors are better than in Aliens, but they aren’t given anything to do except yell and curse. When they all get killed you don’t know anything about any of them – and they don’t even die all that interestingly. In fact, you can’t even see anything. And when you do see something, it is bad CGI. Fooey.

And the whole futurist, extremo, quasi-Christianity….I dunno….I get enough of that with Gaius Baltar.

Boo on this movie. After the opening credits, it isn’t even in space. I like space!

And here’s where I shock you: this movie isn’t all that terrific. It is good, pretty darned good, but nowhere near the first and, as far as thrills are concerned, not even as good as Temple of Doom.

Reasons: no chemistry with the girl. I bet you even forgot their was a girl in this one. Marion Ravenwood, Willie Scott – those are female leads to rival Indy. I just watched this movie and I’ve already forgotten this woman’s character’s name. Fraulien something, that’s all I can tell you.

Also: the story is real clunky. Jones’ father spends weeks in a library looking for an X, but Indy finds it in 30 seconds? They go to Berlin and immediately find the missing diary and Hitler too? On the first try? And that whole tank fight on the cliff scene – a bit flat. Compare it to the truck scene in Raiders (okay, maybe unfair, as the truck scene in Raiders might be the best action sequence in all of cinema, but, hey, if you are a franchise property you have to outdo yourself, right?) and it just doesn’t cut it.

Last complaint: the score. We have very little of the epic themes from the first two films. The score here is pretty standard with occasional splashes of recognizability. Feh.

Don’t get me wrong – I’m not saying “Thumbs Down” – Marcus Brody and Sallah are back, for God’s sake – I’m just saying not as good as you remember.

I may very well be inflating this grade, I know, but I was expecting to hate this upon revisiting it. Our collective memories have not been very kind to this film and, yes, the dialogue in the opening scene is really cheesy – and the exposition of the “power of the stones” has less bite than the description of the Ark – but, I can not lie – this movie is a lot of fun.

And every moment with Short Round is fantastic. Kid actors are usually so awful, but Short Round Effin’ Rules!

And what ever happened to Cate Kapshaw (other than marrying the director?) She’s got good comic timing and the best knockers in the entire Indy franchise (Sallah included!)

My favorite part of this movie is that Indy knows the bad guy’s name (Mola Ram) even though it is never once spoken or told to him. That’s just awesome.

As soon as the Suburu with black tape all over it to mirror EVH’s guitar pulled up I knew we were in for a good time.

I love Van Halen. The *real* Van Halen, that is. Sure, they had one or two good songs with Sammy Hagar (and maybe with Gary Cherone, who knows?) but the Diamond Dave years are where it’s at. VH with DLR was one of the first bands I ever got into. And every one of those tapes (TAPES!) I knew inside and out. Van Halen, Van Halen II, Women and Children First, Fair Warning, Diver Down and 1984 – not a bunk track in the collection.

I went to the concert on a whim – as much an excuse to hang out with two good friends I really don’t get the chance to see as much as I’d like – and, frankly, had very low expectations. Maybe it was the Miller High Life talking, but I thought it was terrific. Eddie was sharp as ever (best was the intro into Mean Streets – no, it was the Eruption–>Cathedral–>Eruption solo – no it was the licks on Hot For Teacher – who can narrow it down?) Alex was kickin’ ass even though he had a gong and never used it and Dave in his stupid hats and General coats was a load of fun. Even the pudgy kid was good.

Dave did some decent kicks, not quite what he could do in the Jump video, but pretty good for a man his age. He also took his shirt off, used some big words, saluted the slutty women of New Jersey and made some dumbass jokes that, as I had confirmed for me from someone who went to the MSG show, were the same jokes he’s been telling on the whole tour.

I can’t remember the last time I went to a hockey arena to see a concert and don’t see it happening again any time soon, but when I wore my Van Halen T-shirt the next day and total strangers in the street pointed at me and said “Awesome!” I knew, somehow, I’d been somewhere special.

I think there is some sort of rule that if you are an Eastern European filmmaker you have to have at least one scene of marathon group drinking in some sort of brightly lit holiday ball room. (Hell, Milos Forman managed to squeeze a whole movie outta that.) The Prefab People doesn’t disappoint on this measure, but it does disappoint if you are looking for a dreamy, surreal cinematic symphony like Tarr is known for. (I’ve only seen his Werkmeister Harmonies which is a carnival of long takes, music and tracking shots.) This is more of a kitchen sink, Mike Leigh-like slice of life presentation of a marriage falling apart. We open with the man stomping out the front door and leaving the woman behind, crying, with the scared kids and then we flash back to fragments of scenes of what got them there. We don’t really know who these people are – we just get to observe the moments, knowing they are leading to an unhappy end. Very low-budget and low-fi (those aren’t sound effects, that’s the rattle of the camera), the performances are sincere and the camera is probing. Not a pleasant film, necessarily, but an interesting experiment, especially considering where this filmmaker is headed.

Much like The Simpsons Movie, this direct to DVD feature can best be described as one long Futurama episode. One of those really confusing heavy SF twisty-turny ultra nerdy paradox-laden Futurama episodes with Al Gore in them. You know, the best ones.

Can’t wait to watch this one again with graph paper to see if I can actually follow all of the shifts in the space-time continuum!

Here’s something that they don’t tell you when you poke around and learn about Celine – he’s really effing funny. Misogynistic, racist, a probable Nazi sympathizer (if not full on collaborator) yes – but also really funny. The horrors on WWI are on full display starting with chapter two, but the vibe I got is much more P. J. O’Rourke than Erich Maria Remarque.

The first 250 pages are a plotless screed as “Ferdinand” looks down his nose at war, then the homefront, then Colonization in Africa, then New York, then the Ford factory in Detroit, with nothing but scorn for society and its inhabitants – those disgusting humans. Ferdinand is not above it, though, loaded with semen and feces and the barbarous human need to expel both of these at regular intervals.

Finally a return to France and setting up shop as a physician in a low-rent part of Paris where the focus is more on the bottom line than Hippocrates. Here something resembling a traditional plot comes in with a cast of despicable characters all screwing each other, literally and figuratively, to pass the time. Ferdinand finds himself, at the end, the head of a local insane asylum, the only natural place to be.

Every page of Celine’s book is like a punch in the eye of horrible, humorous depravity – and endless bon mots. Snuck between the nihilism, usually in ellipses, are short phrases of remarkable beauty. Celine was a hero the Beats and it is obvious why – nearly everything he writes is quotable (I’d give you some examples, but then I wouldn’t know where to stop) and, surely, if spake with the right cadence (or French accent) will make you sound real, real deep.

A very entertaining, although ultimately depressing book.

In 1997 Lou Reed released what I consider his greatest achievement other than 1989’s New York, Set The Twilight Reeling. I went absolutely batshit for this album and still dig it out from time to time. In 2000 he followed it up with the just-okay Ecstacy. It is no Twilight so after a few spins it went straight into the library.

I dug it out recently and while I agree with my original assessment that it is lesser Lou, there is still a great deal to enjoy on it (other than the money shot cover art.)

Tunes like “Paranoia Key of E” and “Future Farmers of America” have a really good groove and are very hummable.

The masterpiece, though, is the incredibly purple “Modern Dance” – a song that actually has the audacity to rhyme “Moon” and “June.” The lyrics to “Modern Dance” are so absurd they achieve a sort of brilliance; the song itself has the chord progressions of a classic showtune, but with Reed’s fuzz guitar and, um, unique vocal delivery. Everything that is awesome and awful about Lou Reed (he may be a fool, but he’s our fool) can be found on this track. It is, in its own way, absolutely fucking perfect.

Here it is on YouTube. He dresses like a chicken.

Hey – it’s Will Riker flirting with all the girls on DS9, yakking with Kira Nerys, her showing him the Defiant and – OH SNAP! He’s gone crazy! Wait, no, it’s not Will Riker at all. It’s Tom Riker. And TOM Riker’s gone crazy! He’s with the Maquis (okay, maybe not crazy crazy) and he’s on a suicide mission (he IS crazy!)

Sisko has to join forces with Gul Dukat (ewww) and find the Defiant. Damn the Defiant!

Turns out Dukat uncovers some shenanigans in the Obsidian Order (Riker’s plan all along? Kinda, but not really, but okay) that’s something of a reverse-Maquis. The plot thickens. Plus Dukat has feelings. What-ev. Great episode.

I remain very much in the minority, but I still feel that this is a pretty damned good movie.

The first 20 minutes – the Enterprise-B prologue – remains fanfuckingtastic. On its own, it is the greatest short film of the 1990s. The two big problems everyone’s got with this film are real, however.

1) The Nexus – it makes no sense. How is Guinan there? How does Picard find Kirk? How do Picard and Kirk leave? Why don’t they stop Soran at a different time, if they can go anywhere, instead of when he is armed and about to do damage? Why must Soran divert the energy ribbon to the planet and not fly a ship into it (he was in the El Aurian transport the first time, right?) Data says that the ribbon would destroy the ship but a) what does Soran care? and b) he was on a ship the first time – WTF?!!?

2) Kirk’s death. Sledding down an incline on a footbridge? Fuck you. You wanna kill Captain Kirk he better be at the epicenter of a supernova. Come on.

Okay, with that out of my system, it is a good movie. It keeps moving and has lots of nifty effects that hold up 14 years later. And poor Malcolm McDowell – he does a good job here and no one ever bothered to thank him.

Jadzia shtups some guy from a planet interphasing in & out of our corporeal dimension. They figure out a way to stay together. But it doesn’t work. Kinda like this episode doesn’t work.

This is one of those dreams where no matter how much you climb you just keep falling in deeper. O’Brien accidentally sets off a Fail Safe defense system for “Terok Nor” that, one screw up after another, leads to the whole station about to blow up. Garak tries to help out – to no avail. Gul Dukat comes by to twiddle his mustache and then – d’oh! – he’s stuck there too. Only Sisko and save the day with his kick-ass-itude.

Very fun stuff.

Quark accidentally smuggles a Jem’Hadar infant (they grow up so fast!) onto the station. Kira wants to kill it, Sisko wants to farm it out to Starfleet for study, but Odo (bristling at the idea of it living in a lab) uses his status as a “Founder” to try and domesticate him.

Not a lot of luck.

Sisko allows Odo to drop him off in the Gamma Quadrant, like throwing a fish back in a pond. Not a smart move, maybe, but for Odo sometimes you bend.

DS9 goes into the WTF mode with a highly Philip K. Dick-inspired story. Kira is kidnapped by Cardassians and awakens to find herself…one of them? Hw-hwhat?!?!?

The story is that she is not Kira Nerys, Bajoran freedom fighter, but actually a deep cover Cardassian agent who agreed to have her memory wiped for heavy infiltration. And all her memories are implants, etc.

Further twists occur when we discover that this new Nerys’ “father” is actually a Cardassian dissident. Things go around in circles a few times til we wind up where we started, but not without a good load of fun along the way.

Although I generally find further inquiry into the mechanics of the Trill race fascinating, this episode takes as many of its cues from the odd episode of Scooby Doo than anything else. The upshot is that the Dax Symbiote was hosted, for a brief spell, by someone that Jadzia (and the other Daxes) didn’t know about. Indeed, these few months have been blocked from her memory, lest a horrible secret be learned. Of course, the system that is blocking the memory (a drug?) is wearing down, causing Jadzia to go all goofy. Sisko & co. learn this – it ain’t as hard to be a Trill host as you might think. But keep that on the d.l., lest there be a panic in the streets. In exchange for Jadzia’s life, they agree – something Picard would probably not have done. (Not that he would have let Jadzia die, he just would have moralized for so long that the Trills would have relented.)

I make this episode sound better than it is. It is mostly bad Terry Farrell acting.