Peanuts 1960's Collection

Looking back in abiding fondness I still smile at the things which delighted and informed and entertained me mightily when I was a child.

I still smile when I remember reading Dr. Seuss and Charlotte’s Web, Animal Farm and Greek mythology, The Mighty Avengers and Adventure Comics starring Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes.

I still smile remembering the joys that television could bring right into my living room: Star Trek and Batman…Lucy and Laugh-In…Mission Impossible and I Spy and Get Smart…Bonanza and Gunsmoke and Twilight Zone …and Charlie Brown.

The Charlie Brown specials were “must see TV” for me each and every year…I knew them by heart but, in the days before VCRs and DVDs, I anxiously awaited there annual returns with sweet anticipation.

The Peanuts 1960’s Collection is a 2-DVD set chockfull of lovely nostalgia, eternal laughs, and pure wonderfulness. Collected here are the 6 Charlie Brown specials from the sixties all gloriously re-mastered (they look and sound just great) featuring the perennial holiday specials A Charlie Brown Christmas (maybe the best animated Christmas show ever) and It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown (with the faithful Linus and the love-struck Sally camped out in the “most sincere” pumpkin patch waiting for the Great Pumpkin to come.)

The put upon, but ever resilient, Charlie Brown is, of course, at the heart of these shows (especially in the bittersweet charmer You’re in Love, Charlie Brown which centered on his crush on the unseen “Little Red Haired Girl”) but the ensemble of indelible characters…the wise and optimistic Linus, the bossy Lucy, the brassy Peppermint Patty, the piano virtuoso Schroeder, the assertive little sister Sally, and, of course, the irrepressible Snoopy (whose whimsical adventures and antics weave through all of the shows especially his showcase He’s Your Dog, Charlie Brown.)

The great music by the amazing Vince Guaraldi is also an indelible part of the shows and his life is engagingly explored in the new 35-minute documentary, The Maestro of Menlo Park, that (along with downloads of 2 songs…”Baseball Theme” and “Happiness Is”…from the soundtrack of A Boy Names Charlie Brown) rounds out this charming collection that should bring smiles to the faces of children of all ages (even and especially old duffers like me.)

Dexter

I don’t subscribe to Showtime so my previous exposure to Dexter…the macabre but surprisingly engaging crime drama starring Michael C. Hall…was from watching the pilot when it was posted on Showtime’s website just before the show debuted on the network. I enjoyed the pilot…featuring the titular character, a forensics expert for the Miami police department who is himself a serial killer who kills only other serial killers…and I looked forward to when the show was inevitably collected on DVD.

CBS is broadcasting an edited version of Dexter on Sunday nights (a happenstance created by the writer’s strike and the need to fill programming hours.) The edits were largely due to language (a couple of the supporting characters swear like sailors sometimes), for time, and for some of the more grisly bits (though, that said, the murders on the show are not always especially graphic…some of the stuff is no worse than what you might see on any given episode of CSI) but I was interested to see the difference.

Luckily I had received the season 1 DVD set of Dexter for Christmas and I took the occasion to finally sit down and watch all 12 episodes. Dexter is a stylish, black comic little gem of a series and Hall (late of the darkly comic Six Feet Under) is excellent as the titular character, a sociopath (though perhaps not as disconnected from his feelings as he so often claims to be) whose murderous impulses have been channeled into a “good” outlet by his late adoptive father, a policeman who recognized his son for what he was and taught Dexter a code that keeps him from killing the innocent.

Everyone in and around Dexter is damaged in their own ways…this includes his sister Deb (a police officer), his girlfriend (a skittish victim of spousal abuse), his nakedly ambitious boss, and an affable cop…and no one (save for one perpetually angry cop) seems to notice that there is something off about him. The series veers toward soap opera off and on but they pull back from that particular precipice almost every time.

Season 1’s overarching plot includes the hunt for Dexter’s opposite number, a macabre serial murdered who is dubbed the “Ice Truck Killer”, and while the identity of the killer is telegraphed fairly early on the eventual resolution of the conflict is ultimately satisfying. Dexter is probably not everyone’s cup of tea…the “hero” is a serial killer after all…but I found it oddly compelling and I look forward to season 2.

Superbad/Hot Fuzz

As the holiday season wound down, the packages were wrapped and mailed, the cards were sent and received, and a bit of melancholy (for reasons I won’t bore you with here) was coming upon me and so, of course, comedy was in order.

My good friends at Netflix delivered two movies which had received great notices so I looked forward to just sitting back and being mightily entertained. And even though neither movie was as consistently knee-slapping hilarious as had often been reported both provided some cathartic laughter.

Superbad is both crudely raunchy and sincerely sweet…the young actors (Michael Cera and Jonah Hill) at the center of the story are consistently amusing with an easy rapport (that they are too profane by half is a personal quibble…I’m not adverse to swearing but the sheer amount of profanity in the movie is more tiresome than funny after awhile.) Scenes are consistently stolen by Christopher Mintz-Plasse, who makes his film debut as the nerd-tastic “McLovin”, and Bill Hader and Seth Rogen as the world’s most irresponsible cops.

Superbad, for all of its seeming preoccupation with sex and drinking and partying, is at its heart a story of the bond between two friends on the brink of adulthood and that reveals a tender heart underneath the crass shenanigans of the movie.

Hot Fuzz, on the other hand, has no such tender heart but it is briskly funny in an acerbic way…presenting the story of straight-laced, ultra-effective supercop (Simon Pegg) who was “promoted” from the London police department to a seemingly bucolic village…at least until the final reel when the spoof of American action movies (with pointed, affectionate references to Bad Boys 2 and Point Break and sly winks to other films such as Chinatown) becomes what it was spoofing, an over-the-top, violent action cartoon shoot-‘em-up (if this was supposed to be ironic, the irony was lost on me…it just got louder and sillier as the climax rolled on…and on...and on…)

Neither of these movies would be on my list of all-time favorite comedies but both had just enough laughs to make me smile and when it came to curing some Christmas blues that was just what the doctor ordered :-)

A Christmas Story

Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life (with James Stewart and Donna Reed) is, by according to many, THE classic Christmas movie. There were times when the movie, which fell into public domain, seemed to being shown almost constantly between Thanksgiving and Christmas.

And yes it’s a fine movie…kind of dark along the way (Stewart’s George Bailey is seconds away from committing suicide at one point after all) and a bit saccharine at the end but fine…but for my money there are two Christmas themed motion pictures that are much better. One is the 1947 version of Miracle on 34^th Street (filmed in glorious black and white) with the incomparable Edmund Gwenn in his Oscar winning turn as Kris Kringle and the young Natalie Wood as Susan, a girl who rediscovers the wonders of childhood (the 1994 color version…with Richard Attenborough and Mara Wilson…is okay I guess but it pales by comparison to the original.)

But for my money the most engaging Christmas movie is 1983’s A Christmas Story…the whimsical (and sweetly comical), sardonic (but not snarky), nostalgic (but not overly sentimental) tale of Ralphie (played with guileless spunk by Peter Billingsley), his earnest quest to get a bb gun for Christmas (the story is set in the 40’s when bb guns were an uncontroversial present for a boy), and his interaction with his somewhat dysfunctional parents (his blustery father played with manic aplomb by Darren McGavin and his fluttery mother played with ditzy grace by Melinda Dillon.) The story is tied together and moved along by the breathlessly arch narration by Jean Shepard, the author of the semi-autobiographical story.

It’s not a deep or complicated story but it is charming and funny and touching (with just enough slapstick to keep things lively) and it never fails to make me smile. What more could you want from a Christmas movie? :-)

(The original theatrical trailer is below.)

Deadwood

I have, through the tender auspices of the good folks at Netflix, made my way through the third (and, alas, final) season of Deadwood. I went through the episodes slowly because I knew that they were the final episodes of this compelling series (HBO in its dubious wisdom decided not to continue the show) and I was loathe to rush through them (though the impulse to do so was always there, of course.)

Deadwood is (was) not for everyone…it is (was) gritty, bawdy, messy, absurd, engaging, and, most all, profane…but I relished all three seasons with all of its compelling drama, serpentine plotting, and wonderfully flawed and complex characters.

The language of the show was poetic and profane…most often both at the same time…and the locale was lived-in, rough hewn, muddy, messy, and ramshackle. I have no idea if any of this was true of Deadwood, South Dakota in the late 1800’s but it has a fierce verisimilitude that I quite readily accepted (even while accepting, however reluctantly, that people probably didn’t speak in the colorful profane poetic way the characters sometime did in the series.)

At the heart of the series was Ian McShane’s wondrous performance of the brutal, acerbic, savvy and, yes, profligately profane Al Swearengen, Deadwood’s manipulative power-broker (as well as a saloon owner and whoremaster). The third season was underscored by the conflict between Swearengen and the even more brutal George Hearst (Gerald McRaney is in very fine form as the complex, driven Hearst) and it is a violent, strategic, uncompromising chess match that is never anything less than wholly, awfully engaging.

There is not much resolved by the time the series ends and we are promised a movie or two to bring to some better resolution the plotlines that would have come together in the planned fourth season…I hope that the promise comes true but even if it doesn’t Deadwood is (was) still well worth the investment of time and (rapt) attention.

The Hoax

I haven’t been moved to go to the movie theater much this year and even my Netflix queue has been quiet for a while but as the year winds to a close I’m endeavoring to get caught up on some movies that I’ve missed this year. Case in point: Lasse Hallstrom’s interesting character piece, The Hoax, which came out to generally good reviews earlier this year.

The movie chronicles the audacious 1970s hoax perpetrated by Clifford Irving involving a supposed autobiography of the famously reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes. Irving scammed more than a million dollars from McGraw-Hill and Life Magazine and was well on his way to getting away with it before Hughes surfaced (in a news conference held via speakerphone) to scuttle his play.

The Hoax, with a screenplay based on Irving’s own book about the whole affair, juxtaposes the unfolding of Irving’s elaborate…and frankly bold…scheme against the events of the times (the Vietnam War and the protests against same, the Nixon Administration, etc.) to intriguing effect. It also strongly suggests that Irving’s plot was allowed to go forth due to a double dealing conspiracy between Hughes and his people and Nixon and his people.

I don’t know about that last bit but I do know that at the heart of this movie…which itself is briskly paced, engaging, and witty…is a bravura performance by Richard Gere that captures the charm, the intelligence, the deviousness, the callousness, and, eventually, the paranoid fantasies of Irving. Gere is amazing and so is Alfred Molina, playing Dick Suskind, Irving’s conflicted partner in crime; they play off each other with such fierce chemistry that they make the movie soar.

The rest of the cast…including Marcia Gay Harden, Stanley Tucci, and Hope Davis…are fine enough in underwritten supporting roles.

Clifford Irving is a charming rogue (something testified to by venerated CBS newsman Mike Wallace in one of the DVD’s bonus features) and this movie, however true it is itself (it’s based on Irving’s book so it’s skewed towards romanticizing his actions to some extent), has a real charm of its own.

No Direction Home: Bob Dylan

My goodness, 2005 has been a downright loquacious year for our pal Bob. First was the long awaited publication of his very Dylan-like…fascinating, frustrating, sober, wonderfully amusing, boldly informative, willfully oblique…memoir, Chronicles, Volume 1. And now comes this wonderful 200+ minute documentary about the early days of Bob Dylan’s career…and his influence on our popular music and our society.

With No Direction Home…shown on PBS and released before that on DVD…director Martin Scorsese and his fellow producers wove together film clips, interviews past and present, and thrilling performance clips to present Dylan not only as a great songwriter and a compelling performer but as a voice of his generation in the early 60’s (a role Dylan vehemently declined to buy into.)

And at the center is Dylan himself…feisty, irreverent, guarded, and acerbic in his younger days, candid and refreshingly straightforward in more recent interviews…looking back on that time (the film ends with his fabled 1966 motorcycle accident) clear-eyed and unwilling to bear any mantle beyond that of being “a song and dance man”.

This film reveals little about Dylan’s life and loves…that part of him is his and, as ever, he chooses keep it just so…and as much as possible about his music and its impact. It’s hard to imagine now, for example, how Dylan’s forsaking being a “folk singer” (just him, his acoustic guitar, and his harmonica) to plugging in as a rock ‘n’ roller (backed in these early days by most of the members of what would later become The Band.) The tumult may seem a bit silly now but it was a very serious, very polarizing event back when it happened and all of that is covered here wonderfully.

No Direction Home is a wonderful document of a certain time that resonates to this very day for fans of Bob Dylan…fans of popular music…and students of American culture and society during one of the pivotal moments (the 60’s) in our history.

Sports Night

Thank the powers-that-be for the DVD format's insatiable hunger for more material to present to eager consumers. TV shows that would have slipped into fond memory (or, if they're lucky, relegated to the vagaries of TVLand or some other nostalgia-hawking cable network) now get a new life in nifty DVD sets aimed at the hearts...and wallets...of those fans who enjoyed them.

Not to mention new shows which are making the leap to the format in record time (I stopped trying to keep up with the broadcasts of 24, for example, I just wait for the collection and enjoy it at my leisure; I quickly got off-track with Lost but didn't sweat it because I figure they will collect it sooner before later.)

This set...6 discs which include both seasons plus the pilot episode...is an excellent case in point when it comes to giving under-appreciated shows one more chance to delight old fans and, hopefully, maybe even gather new ones. Before he created The West Wing, Aaron Sorkin gave us Sports Night, a delightful series that never found the audience it deserved. The show's success was hampered by bad time slots, poor promotion, perhaps by its title (some people may have thought it actually was a sports show like ESPN's Sports Center), and perhaps by the fact that it didn't neatly fit into a category.

It was a fast-paced, smart, engagingly bittersweet (more sweet than bitter but still tart enough to never be cloying), and extremely well-written show about the behind-the-scenes interactions of people working on a network sports newscast...but sometimes it was a sparkling comedy and other times it was a moving drama (most often it was both almost at the same time) and there was even a touch of the soap opera to it (especially in regards to the series-long flirtation between the producer and one of her lead anchormen) and so it was hard to sum up in a few words (and evidenced by this paragraph :-)

The cast was uniformly excellent. It featured Peter Krause (who went on to star in HBO's marvelous Six Feet Under) and Josh Charles as the anchormen Casey and Dan with Felicity Huffman, currently of Desperate Housewives, as their producer Dana. (Casey and Dana's sometimes-coy, sometimes-earnest on-again, off-again relationship providing a lot of the aforementioned soap opera elements.)

Robert Guillaume (whose real-life stroke was deftly woven into the narrative of the show) as executive producer Isaac along with Sabrina Lloyd (late of the cult SF favorite Sliders) and Josh Malina (who followed Sorkin to The West Wing), as production assistants, rounded out the core cast. They were all joined by a fine array of supporting and guest actors (including Huffman's husband, the incomparable William H. Macy, who appeared in a number of episodes as a troubleshooter sent in to help right the show following the stroke of Guillaume's character.)

It was a lovely little TV show and I'm glad I have it to enjoy again and again thanks to the "magic" of DVD. (But hey, I'm still waiting for them to sort out the roadblocks and get around to collecting Hill Street Blues...)

Baseball: a film by Ken Burns

I'm not a hardcore baseball fan (pro football is my sports addiction of choice) but I do enjoy the game. And almost every year about this time, I'm drawn back to Baseball, Ken Burns' epic, elegant valentine to the national pastime that was first broadcast as a PBS mini-series in 1994.

Like The Civil War before it and Jazz after it, Burns lovingly explores baseball's history, poetry, and social impact with vintage photos and film along with interviews with people involved with the game (players, managers, broadcasters, etc.) as well as historians, social commentators, and famous fans (such as Billy Crystal, George Plimpton, and George Will) along with dramatic readings by an impressive host of celebrities (including Gregory Peck, Anthony Hopkins, Ossie Davis, Jason Robards, Paul Newman, Studs Turkel, and many others.)

The whole thing is anchored by the stately narration of John Chancellor.

It is indeed a valentine to the game (some complain that Burns plays fast and loose with some facts but I'm not in a position to argue that one way or the other) but, that said, it doesn't shy away from the darker aspects of Baseball's history (racism and segregation, cheating players, greedy owners, onerous contracts, etc.) and the less-than-heroic aspects of great, but still undeniably flawed (that is to say, human) players such as Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, and Mickey Mantle.

In each of Burns' big projects (this clocks in at 18+ hours broken down into 9 "innings" covering roughly a decade each...excepting the first "inning" which covers 1840-1900) one of the talking heads becomes the breakthrough commentator. With The Civil War, it was puckish historian Shelby Foote...Jazz had earnest musician/teacher Wynton Marsalis...and in Baseball it was John "Buck" O'Neil:


O'Neil (who, in the name of full disclosure, I have to admit to having a special fondness for because he strongly reminds me, in many ways, of my maternal grandfather) is a stately, wise, and charming focal point for the series who lived the game for decades (he was a star player and manager in the Negro Leagues and later he became a coach for the Chicago Cubs) and provided fascinating insights and anecdotes that helped make the series come even more alive.

It's a lovely, engaging series...just the thing to savor as springtime...and the baseball season...is ready to bloom into vibrant life once again.

The Incredibles DVD

I'm so jazzed. I loved this movie in the theater and I love it almost as much on DVD. Some of the experience is lost on TV (at least for those of us who don't have big honking flat screen doo dads :-) because portions of this delightful animated adventure features widescreen action that filled the movie screen to grand, eye-popping effect...but it's a minor quibble because at its heart this movie is about the characters (spandex-clad super-heroes and super-villains that they be) and their amazing, fantastic, bittersweet, grandly heroic, utterly human lives and this DVD showcases that wonderfully.

I haven't explored all of the generous bonus features of the 2-disc set yet (I just got the thing from my good pals at Costco online) but the short cartoon I have seen..."Jack Jack Attack"...is a hoot (and it fills in some continuity from the movie featuring the youngest Incredible and his harried, ditzy babysitter.)

So cool.

Bring the Pain

Some people are apparently concerned that Chris Rock might say or do something that will utterly scandalize the delicate sensibilities of the people watching the Academy Awards (jeez, more than a year afterward the fleeting glimpse of Janet Jackson's nipple still has a lot of people's panties in a bunch...it happened, the world didn't come to an end, get over it.)

It's not going to happen...Rock is a professional and he understands what works on whatever stage he's on (though, the fact that there's a possibility of something shaking the self-important pomposity off of the Oscar telecast...the fact that some people are even worried about it...is, to my mind, in and of itself a good thing...let the censor sweat a bit with his finger hovering over the button.)

I revisited this special, Rock's breakthrough moment, and found that nine years later it's still just flatout funny. Even the dated bits...O.J., Marion Berry...still kill. Rock's laser sharp wit gleefully skewers...and, at the same time, insightfully illuminates...ages-old conflicts between people (racial politics and sexual politics alike.) The now classic "Niggers vs. Black People" bit was instantly recognizable back then (I'd heard variations on that theme from my mother and my aunts since I was a child) and it still rings hilariously, horribly, undeniably true now.

Chris Rock was 30 when he recorded "Bring the Pain"...he'd been on the comedy club circuit, made a couple of movies, spent time on "Saturday Night Live" without really leaving that much of an impression...and he had the fierce bearing of a man seizing his moment, literally stalking the stage with feral, unblinking, fearless, profane energy. The threshold between journeyman and star was being crossed even if Rock...and the audience...might not have known it in the moment.

Rock has moved on since that time...but this special stands as a milestone in his career...but not the sum total of his career.

Punch-Drunk Love

Adam Sandler's Barry is full of anger and quiet desperation (or perhaps, in honor of the late Hunter S. Thompson, it might be better to say full of fear and loathing)...a socially awkward milquetoast beaten down by life and his 7 overbearing sisters and given to sudden, explosive bouts of unadulterated, "Hulk Smash!" rage. Emily Watson's Lena is less well defined...but she falls in love with him from just seeing his photo and realizing, in the words of the Harry Nilsson song (as sung by Shelley Duvall from the soundtrack of Robert Altman's Popeye) on the soundtrack, that "he needs me...he needs me...he needs me..."

This movie is, at its heart, just a little (sometimes gentle, sometimes dark and decidedly off-center) comedy about love...all about the healing, redeeming, undeniable power of love...boy meets girl, boy realizes what's been missing from his life, boy breaks out of his shell and his rut thanks to the love of the girl...wrapped in a sometimes enigmatic package (bringing in the business of a randomly abandoned and rescued harmonium, vengeful phone sex blackmailers, an ill-conceived plan involving airline miles and "Healthy Choice" pudding, and the apparent symbolism of seemingly endless halls, 4 thuggish blond brothers, and the 7 soul-deadening sisters.)

Sandler is wonderfully understated...shy and vulnerable yet ready to explode (in more ways than one) at any moment; Watson is ethereal...hard to get a handle on yet enormously appealing and attractive just the same. I was rooting for the characters...but in a detached way, not having found much emotional connection to either of them.

There is always something about P.T. Anderson's movies that leaves me admiring them but not really becoming emotionally invested in them. It was true of Magnolia. Even true, to a lesser extent, of Boogie Nights (a movie I liked a great deal.)

And it's certainly true about this one.

(Hard Eight being an exception to this rule to an extent...but even there the characters, while nicely sketched out, seemed a bit remote and hard to connect with.)

I'll be the first to admit that maybe I just don't "get it" about Anderson's movies and leave it at that. I'm glad I saw this one...thanks again, Netflix...but I doubt that I'll ever feel the need to revisit it.

Garden State

I love my Netflix subscription (okay, so maybe my feelings aren't quite that strong...but I do appreciate it a lot.) It's let me catch up with movies that I heard good things about but, for one reason or another, didn't get to see when they were in the theaters. Being laid up on a rainy day is, of course, a great time to kick back and watch a movie...and I'm certainly glad that I had this one on hand today.

Zach Braff's Garden State is everything I heard it was...warm, quirky, poignant, sweetly romantic. It's a lovely little movie...Braff is wonderfully low-key and Natalie Portman is radiant and adorable. It left me with warm buzz in my heart (and yes a happy little tear in my usually cynical eye.)

And it has a killer soundtrack to boot (gotta remember to add that CD to my Amazon.com wishlist before my birthday next month :-)