Review – Eye of the Needle

The set-up in this spy thriller is actually quite good. A Nazi secret agent (Donald Sutherland) discovers that an “army” under Patton’s command is actually an elaborate ruse intended to draw German forces away from the real location of the impending D-Day invasion. For awhile the story stays interesting as the anti-hero evades capture and tries to sneak photos of the fake invasion force out of England. But eventually he ends up hiding out in the isolated home of a disabled RAF veteran (Christopher Cazenove) and his lonely wife (Kate Nelligan). Creepy love triangle gives way to a relentless game of cat and mouse, an unfortunate, non-thrilling end to a picture that was reasonably entertaining up until then. Mildly amusing

The eight biggest media moments of 2010

This has been a crazy year. Truth be told, I’ve been so caught up with non-media stuff that a lot of the things I’d normally focus on got ignored. Still, it was an eventful year. Here are the highlights.

Show death – Several of the shows we regularly watched ran their final episodes this year. Oddly, none of them got the rug yanked out from under them. So at least they got the chance to wrap things up in tidy, story-arc-friendly ways. Lost was the most notable casualty, Abrams and company running out of weirdness and calling it quits even though they probably could have kept drawing audiences for another season or two. Likewise The Tudors concluded with Henry VIII’s death, a natural enough place to stop even though they could have continued to follow the Tudor monarchies with additional episodes if they’d been inclined.

More show death – On the other hand, 24 met a more traditional slipping-ratings death. In its heyday it drew a ton of attention and more than a little controversy, but by the end it passed on not with a bang but a whimper. They could have killed it more dramatically, but honestly it wouldn’t have mattered. Too bad, too. When it was going strong it was actually fairly entertaining.

The Lawrence Welk Easter show – Easter weekend was a strange time for me. That Saturday the strangeness was compounded when I found myself in a waiting room while a nearby television screened KCPT’s broadcast of an old Lawrence Welk Easter show. His cadre of abnormally cheerful regulars all dressed as giant, brightly-colored, fuzzy bunnies, ducklings and chicks singing about Peter Cottontail and Abbot the Rabbit … well, it was all just a little much.

My semi-triumphant return to the movie theater – For the past few years I’ve been avoiding movie theaters. Though this change in my media habits was completely justified, I admit I did miss the big screen experience a bit. So with the assistance of some fellow filmgoers I managed to make it to a few more theater-screened movies this year. Though it wasn’t exactly a “thank goodness I decided to come back” experience, it was at least a little nice to be back.

The death of the printed version of the Advocate – I’m a big fan of dead tree newspapers. Thus it was with great pain that I helped the staff of the student newspaper I advise to make the transition from print to web-only. Though it saddened me greatly to make the change, the time for change had come.

The Tea Party on the dance show – For some reason Sarah Palin’s daughter’s appearance on Dancing with the Stars seemed to cause quite a stir. Sure, she was talentless. Yes, the Tea Partiers out there kept calling in and voting for her. That’s America. If nothing else, it should serve as a sobering reminder that “Palin should run in 2012 because Obama will beat her easily” could be famous last words.

Midterm elections nonsense – And speaking of elections, we sat through another one. They just seem to get more and more vicious each time. It makes me shudder to think about what we’ll be “treated” to the next time around.

The phone, the phone – For the longest time the Lens household resisted any kind of Internet presence in the house. It just seemed too much like work creeping into our personal lives. But in June the time came to replace our old cell phones, and we made the jump to smart phones. That got the ball rolling, and by the end of the year we had a WiFi hub in the house. Time and tide.

Review – Stepping Out

Though this might have been good fodder for a not-especially-talented high school theatre class, it worked neither on Broadway (73 performances) nor as a movie. Liza Minnelli plays an aging never-was teaching an ensemble of talentless tap students. When the class is offered the chance to perform in a charity benefit, the teacher struggles to whip them into shape. A series of contrived plot twists and cliché character developments ensues. The cast features several familiar faces – not to mention Richard Harris writing the screenplay based on his own original theatre piece – but overall the cake gets left out in the rain. Mildly amusing [note: upon further investigation, it turns out that the Richard Harris who wrote this is a different guy from the Richard Harris who sang “MacArthur Park.” Still, the line is good enough to leave it in.]

Review – Ice Quake

If I’m going to watch a SyFy movie, I want one of two things: apocalyptic destruction or entertainingly dreadful CGI monsters. This production delivers neither. Instead we get an underground river of liquid methane that’s expanding, causing earthquakes and other disturbances. To be sure, this would suck if it was really happening. But it’s nowhere near dramatic enough to make an amusingly bad movie. See if desperate

Review – Tell Tale

The title may be Poe, but the plot is an awkward graft of Body Parts and Coma. A heart transplant recipient (Josh Lucas) discovers that he recognizes people he’s never met and remembers things that never happened to him. With the help of a homicide detective (Brian Cox), he slowly – ever so slowly – uncovers the connection between his donor and a criminal conspiracy as ludicrous as it is boring. The production values are reasonably good, so it’s a shame they weren’t put to use making a picture a little truer to the alleged source story. See if desperate

Review – Philosophy of a Knife

I rented this (or streamed it from Netflix to be more precise) based on the mistaken assumption that it was a documentary about Unit 731, the infamous facility in Manchuria where the Japanese military performed horrible medical experiments on prisoners during World War Two. So imagine my considerable annoyance when it turned out to be an extended exercise in industrial noise video and torture porn. The picture revels in graphic recreations of torment – particularly sexual abuse – with almost no historical context or other redeeming quality. Indeed, the old Russian guy they interview no doubt to lend some sense of legitimacy to the visceral “thrills” appears to have little or no firsthand knowledge about 731’s activities. The result is an ugly, nasty mess intended solely to entertain audiences with sexual proclivities that require the intervention of mental health professionals. In the interest of full disclosure, I acknowledge that this is actually a review of only the first half of the video. After two hours of filth and degradation, I wasn’t prepared to prolong my misery. Avoid at all costs

Review – Salem Witch Trials

The subject of religious persecution and the presence of Kirstie Alley in the lead had my Scientology detector turned up to 11. However, this seemed to be a fairly straightforward telling of the title tale. The trials are portrayed as motivated by religious fanaticism in the service of land-grabbing greed, particularly on the parts of Rev. Parris and Thomas Putnam (Henry Czerny and Jay O. Sanders respectively, who are hard to tell apart in their Puritan outfits). At least it wasn’t quite as arty-stuffy as Arthur Miller’s version. Mildly amusing