Avenue Kurtodrome

Allow me to begin by saying that I’m currently watching a blank screen, furiously wondering how I could start my review of The X-Files: I Want To Believe. This cannot be a good sign. Not only have I seen every episode of the series, even those from the abomination called Season Nine, but I own them too. Most taped from when the episode ran on tv, some seasons were bought. On VHS. Hey, the show ran from 1993 to 2002.

So let me begin with the good news: the movie isn’t as awful as I had anticipated. Yes, it can’t have been nice for Chris Carter and c° when Fox told them in 2006 it would be “now or never”. If they’d waited any longer, the series would’ve lost all appeal. I find this bullshit: The Avengers was a 60s show and the movie - nay, abomination de luxe - was made in the late nineties. And yes, The X-Files were to the nineties what Miami Vice was to the 80s, but when did we see that movie? Sure, it was “now or never” for the cast to appear in the movie and still look credible enough for a movie that contained a bit more action than the average episode of Golden Girls, so it was a good thing that the movie was finished in 2008.
And it starred David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson as well as the perennial favourite sidekick… yes, Walter Skinner (as played by Mitch Pileggi) has - what could best be described as - a long cameo. Funnily enough, my friend and co-Xphile had just whispered to me “What has happened to Skinner?” just before the man appears.

More about the cast of this film later. First though, what’s up with the story? Okay, Chris Carter made the smart decision (although Duchovny may have played a part in this too) to have the story set in this year. We’re six years after the series finale and the movie opens with Scully doing what she did best: being a doctor. She’s approached with the request to find Mulder for a case that has the FBI baffled. If so, the FBI might drop the charges against him. Right, so Mulder is still a fugitive? How come they never found him? In Scully’s words: maybe they were happier with him as far as possible. Sounds acceptable.
Does the worst decision of the series play a part? Yes, William (the son of Mulder and Scully) gets a mention, but that’s it. Actually, that’s more than enough. It helped the series go down the drain and to have the name William mentioned does the movie quite some damage. Especially if William is mentioned in a scene where Mulder and Scully are together in bed and have been a couple for quite some time now. Part of what was so brilliant about X-Files’ predecessor (The Avengers) was that the sexual tension between Steed and Peel was implied. In her very last episode Emma Peel drives off in a car with someone who looks like Steed while Steed waves her goodbye. That is brilliant. Mulder and Scully discussing in bed and Scully making a reference to Mulder’s penis size… not so brilliant.

Possibly even worse: the rest of the cast. No bad word about Amanda Peet as Dakota Whitney (she who asks for Mulder’s help), she’s chosen quite well and her dribbling between belief in the paranormal and disbelief is one of the strengths of the series. She is backed by agent Mosley Drummy and if you think that’s a stupid name, just wait till you know who plays the part: rapper Xzibit (or Alvin ‘Xzibit’ Joiner - as he was credited in the movie). Right, are we attempting to get the idiotic youth vote? Because there’s no way Xzibit fits into this movie: he sticks out like a sore thumb, never looks credible and doesn’t give the least bit of proof he can act. Let me put it this way: unless it’s directed by David Cronenberg (who has proved to be good with actors I can’t otherwise stand), there’s no way I’ll ever watch a movie starring Xzibit again. Never. I don’t even feel like bothering to use my fingers to have his name appear in bold, that’s how awful he was. (Anyone want to watch an episode of Hannah Montana followed by a movie starring Lindsay Lohan? See, no problems with bold or italics there. Heck, I’ll even write the word asparagus in bold, but Xzibit? Nope. That’s how catastrophically bad the man is in this part.)

Speaking of actors, Canadian actor Callum Keith Rennie plays one of the bad people in the movie. It was quite nice to see a good actor in the movie adaptation of one of your favourite series. Don’t really know why I felt like mentioning that, maybe to get rid of that rapper taste. Billy Connelly joins the crew too: he plays Father Joe, a paedophile priest with paranormal powers. A large part of the film depends on one question: is Father Joe paranormal or a fraud? No problem, many of the episodes of The X-Files were based on that sort of questions. The thing is: a normal episode of the series would last 42 minutes, not 104. Sure, most of the movie plays like a double episode, but twice the length of one episode would still give you 84 minutes. I’m willing to accept that we need to discuss extra things: 1) Where is Mulder now? 2) What’s Scully doing these days? 3) Mulder and Scully have to go back to the FBI (combined with the regular mocking of Mulder’s beliefs). All that doesn’t conceal that the movie is at least 15 minutes overlong (possibly even longer).
And yes, it wouldn’t be an X-Files without mentions of Mulder’s sister and Scully’s crises of faith. As you may remember, Scully didn’t want to believe all of Mulder’s theories, but was a catholic. And yes, Chris Carter has a thing for milking God. A lot of episodes of The X-Files, Millennium and even Harsh Realm (that’s right, we’re pretending The Lone Gunmen never existed) featured discussions about the existence and powers of God. This movie isn’t different and yes, the fact that Scully is now a doctor who’s taking care of a mortally sick boy in a Christian hospital doesn’t help that.

So is this just an extended episode? In a way, yes. Is that bad? Nope. Remember the episode which took place in the past and all they did was wear older clothes and make cell phones huge? Well, I Want To Believe is more credible: Mulder and Scully look six years older now and the world is doing okay without them. However, by using almost every cliché from the series (his porn collection may not be mentioned, but Mulder is still chewing sunflower seeds by the dozens) and using it a bit too often, the movie makes itself so cosy in the series’ house you may find this guest a bit obnoxious.

None of it’s bad, some of it is just way too much in the picture and shown overlong. The trick to make the movie meatier by adding the plot of the sick boy Scully is trying to help is not really working. Sure, you as a viewer already knew what the evil people were up to, but allow me to say that Mulder and Scully probably needed a hint to find out what was truly happening. So yes, the inclusion of the sick kid wasn’t bad, but did we really need all those scenes? None of them are annoying, but the film outstays its welcome (or was that just for us, who were watching it in a cinema without air-conditioning?) by not ditching a handful of scenes that didn’t make the movie stronger (just longer).

But truly, the sight of Mulder and Scully kissing… was that necessary? Yes, we could’ve guessed it, but that doesn’t mean you have to rub our noses in it. Especially not in an abhorringly long dialogue between Mulder and Scully that makes little sense apart from repeating what’s already been said a couple of times.

I want to believe (yes, that was rather weak) in a director’s cut that throws some of those unnecessary scenes in the bin. Until then, people who watched the series may want to view the movie to see what’s happened to Mulder and Scully in two episodes stitched back to back. New viewers should avoid it as this material won’t make them understand why The X-Files was hailed as an important series in the nineties. And fans of Xzibit’s movie career should seek medical care as soon as possible.

A fan’s verdict: 6 or 6.5
A non-fan’s verdict: ermm, probably less

P.S. Don’t mind all the people leaving once the credits roll. There’s a completely daft scene at the end of the credits. Who said The X-Files took itself too serious?

My previous post concerned that odd television programme, Fuori Orario. It’s broadcast on Italian channel Rai Tre late at night. It’s shown nightly for a couple of minutes. Monday nights the show is longer and a documentary is shown. But the real stuff is broadcast during weekends. Fridays and Saturdays Fuori Orario kicks off between midnight and 2am and lasts until 7am. On Sunday nights it’s shown till 6am. What do they show? Movies. Sometimes extremely rare movies. And yes, that for nearly six hours. Every week.

Fuori Orario always starts with a clip montage of similar movies to that night’s theme. Then after a while the theme tune starts, a clip from L’Atalante set to the music of Patti Smith’s Because The Night, which looks a bit like this:

Maybe some more clips follow, it all depends on how packed the show is. Anyway, after a while the host appears. His name is Enrico Ghezzi and he has a peculiar way of hosting: we only hear him talk about the movies, but the image we get to see is an old video of him (two options: either him in white T-shirt and white background or him talking in an old radio booth). Which means audio and video are completely out of synch. It’s arthouse, baby! (If you’d like to see a sample of that, click here.) Luckily my Italian is rather poor, so I can just fast forward that bit. (To be honest, there’s still a third option: sometimes Ghezzi makes a new introduction. My favourite one is where he tried to stay out of the camera’s reach. And jumped. Or that one where we didn’t get to see him, but the camera moved from his chair to the wall and back again, for five minutes.)

But honestly, I don’t mind all that. And the reason is that the selected films are often brilliant and people who display such movie knowledge are allowed to do whatever they want, especially if their show lasts five to six hours. Name me one other movie programme which often shows movies by Koji Wakamatsu or a retrospective of Russian arthouse cinema from the fifties or a Samuel Fuller weekend.

This weekend Fuori Orario has but one theme: “De(u)tour”. Its opening montage on Friday contained footage of Gun Crazy (hmm!!!), They Live By Night, Bonnie and Clyde and a Takeshi Kitano movie I haven’t been able to identify. The movies themselves were so nice too, they get a special mention here. If you have no plans for next weekend, why don’t you try and rent all these movies and have a weekend of renegade couples on the road. You’ll enjoy yourselves.

FRIDAY

Another Day in Paradise (Larry Clark, 1997)
In the hope of a big score, two junkie couples team up to commit various drug robberies which go disastrously wrong leading to dissent, violence and murder. James Woods and Melanie Griffith star.

Running in madness, dying in love (Koji Wakamatsu, 1969)
A student comes home after a manifestation and has a fight with his brother. He accidently kills him. He tries to make it look like suicide and flees to Hokkaido, accompanied by the wife of his brother.

Stesso Sangue (Cessa & Eronico, 1987)
Two orphans (brother and sister, aged 24 and 14) leave the city and rob banks. Impending doom awaits. A road movie of despair, love and violence played against a background of desolate post-industrial landscapes. Excellent photography. Believable performances.

SATURDAY

98 Octanas (Fernando Lopes, 2006)
He and she don’t know each other but, both at loose ends, they meet at a gas station somewhere on the highway between Lisbon and Oporto. Almost without saying a word, they drive off in his car. What follows are the gas stations, the motels, the conversations and the silences, the revelations and the mysteries. She hopes he will take her to a primordial, almost mythical place: her grandmother’s home. In their solitude, each one of them can, simply, lose themselves or meet each other.

They Live By Night (Nicholas Ray, 1948)
The script involves a mail carrier (Farley Granger) who, worried about taking proper care of his pregnant wife (Cathy O’Donnell), impulsively swipes an envelope full of money. Hard upon that “one false step,” the family man finds himself caught up in a dark scheme involving blackmail and, several times over, murder.

The Honeymoon Killers (Leonard Kastle, 1970)
Based on the true story of Raymond Fernandez and Martha Beck, who met through a lonely-hearts correspondence club, Ray is weedy, feral, and untrustworthy; Martha is enormous, compulsive, and needy. Together, they play out a horrifying scheme in which he lures lonely women out on dates and proposes marriage to them, with she pretending to be his sister. They take the women’s savings and then murder them remorselessly. Dank, claustrophobic, and weirdly engrossing, this movie never quite gives in to the comforts of conventional narrative. Francois Truffaut named it as his favorite American film.
(followed by a conversation with director Kastle on the making of this, his only movie.)

SUNDAY

SCARECROW (Jerry Schatzberg, 1973)
Max is an ex-con who’s been saving money to open a car wash in Pittsburgh. Lionel is a sailor who’s returning home to the midwest to see the child born while he was at sea. They form an unlikely pair as the brawling Max learns a little how Lionel copes with the world: Lionel believes that the scarecrow doesn’t scare birds, but instead amuses them - birds find scare-crows funny.

ZABRISKIE POINT (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1970)
An epic portrait of late Sixties America, as seen through the portrayal of two of its children: anthropology student Daria (who’s helping a property developer build a village in the Los Angeles desert) and dropout Mark (who’s wanted by the authorities for allegedly killing a policeman during a student riot).

Fuori Orario’s sexually themed weekend was a bit strange. Not because of the subject, but because of its execution. On Friday night the transmission started with such a delay the programme was different from what had been promised in the tv guide. Still the two movies they’d planned to show (the homosexual drama Sex in Chains and Koji Wakamatsu’s Sex Jack) were shown, which cannot be said of day two. Completely unscheduled but perennially welcome, we got to see Hedy Lamarr again. If you need me to tell you the movie was Ekstase, you should be ashamed of yourself. And go and rent it now.

After Sex is Comedy by Breillat (which I skipped, as it was dubbed) it was time for another unscheduled event: Focus, the making of a porn movie. This documentary was filmed by Francis Leroi, also director of the porn movie Regarde-moi. Focus opens with Leroi admitting he’s financially forced to make the porn movie and really not looking forward to it. Leroi wrote, directed and produced saucy movies and porn movies from the 60s to the 80s. He is the producer of the cult porn Le Sexe Qui Parle (Pussy Talk - I’ll leave it to you to gather what the synopsis is) and some of his saucy movies have titles that make you expect the worse (Charlotte gets her panties wet, anyone?). If you want to look at his filmography, be my guest. In 1983 Leroi tried something different (just after the movie Ma Mère Se Prostitue - I wish I was making these up) and helmed the horror movie Le Démon dans l’Île. It’s still unwatched on my shelves, but apparently it’s quite a good horror movie. Sadly, Leroi couldn’t continue with his new found love and went back to directing movies about Emanuelle (chapters 4, 7 and the tv series) and Rêves de cuir. Finally the man cracked in 1995 and turned his back on cinema.

Fast forward to 2000 and his financial problems. Hardly motivated to direct another Film X (as porn movies are called in France), he decided to have a digital camera follow him and his actors. The result, Focus, was shown on Leroi’s website.

Hindsight is a nice thing. Now we know that Leroi died of cancer in 2002. This sheds an extra light on Focus and the unwillingness of the man to film another hardcore movie.

One of the key scenes is the fight Leroi has with his lead actress Ovidie. Ovidie acted in pornographic movies before directing porn movies herself and writing her Porno Manifesto. Right after Ovidie and Leroi are having words on a scene, the camera follows Ovidie. She tells the other people in the room she won’t allow being treated like this. By now she’s worked with Truffaut star Jean-Pierre Leaud (in the movie Le Pornographie, co-starring her and Jérémie Renier) and Diva director Jean-Jacques Beineix (in the movie Mortel Transfert) and claims she can tell when someone wants to abuse her. Leroi claims she’s an arrogant starlet. It’s hard to pick sides here, even though you tend to feel more sympathy for a dying man (but we don’t know if anyone at the time knew the man was in his final years). Basically, Leroi wanted to do another take of a sex scene. Ovidie claimed she’d already done all that was in her contract and that the director wanted to get her to do a sex scene for free. In the end a producer had to step in and tell both parties to leave each other alone.

Focus tells you what happens on the set of a glamourous pornographic movie. Material being stolen, sexual scenes being rehearsed (”So if he does this, you’ll do that…”) and egos clashing. I’m assuming there was also hardcore footage, but this being a national tv channel those scenes were not included (instead, they showed clips of Dreyer’s Gertrud, the movie they were going to show the following week). Allow me to speak for everyone when I remark: Ermm??!? (Quite odd to see a documentary about a porn movie mixed with arthouse cinema.) Focus also included interviews with people close to Leroi, most of them having worked with him on several movies.

One scene is completely different though: we see two people on a bench, sitting near the water. One is Leroi, the other is his mother. He asks her question, some of which she answers reluctantly. One is a vital question: how is it for a mother to realize her son is making his money by directing pornographic movies? The mother admits that wasn’t easy. Two people on a bench, saying true things as the water floats by.

The full title of the documentary is “Focus - Les Coulisses du Porno”. It’s no longer available on a website, you may find the film on DVD (but even that one seems to be out of stock).

Bonjour, tout le monde! If you don’t understand that sentence, it’ll be pointless to tune in to France 2 this Tuesday night (at 01.00). The movie shown is the obscure cult movie Qui êtes-vous, Polly Maggoo? (1966). If you are French or understand the language well, it’ll be well worth staying up for. If not, there are DVDs of the movie out there.

The movie was directed by photographer and filmmaker William Klein. It’s Klein’s debut feature (after a documentary about Cassius Clay). The movie opens with a fashion show, where a designer is about to show his new collection: iron plates bent around the models’ bodies. One girl complains the plate is cutting into her flesh, but never mind those minor details. Fashion magazine editor Miss Maxwell enters the room, ignoring the people in the audience muttering “There’s that dragonfly.” Maxwell likes the outfits, says it’s excellent (which is echoed by everyone else in the room - dragonfly or not, she’s famous and powerful) and claims the designer has “re-invented woman”.

One of the models is Polly Maggoo (Dorothy McGowan), the it-girl of 1966. Polly enters her room, only to find it filled by a camera crew and the producers of the television show “Qui êtes-vous?” (Who are you?), a show that claims to bare the soul of the interviews. The real question here is: who are you, Polly Maggoo?
Polly’s first attempt at self-analysis is abruptly stopped due to technical difficulties, her second attempt becomes a completely different story and, to top that all off, the production team lay words in her mouth. Who is Polly Maggoo? A beautiful girl with ugly teeth, who decides to keep her mouth opened rather than have her teeth fixed? A modern form of Cinderella? An American girl who becomes a model in Paris and learns a couple of French words and idioms every day? All of those? None of those?

The big producer of the show thinks Polly is nothing more but an empty shell: lots of poses on the outside, nothing on the inside. A model is like an onion: peel off the layers and you end up with… nothing.

Someone has a different opinion: Prince Igor (Sami Frey) is madly in love with Polly and wants her as his princes. The majesty of this small country has two spies sent to Paris, to dig up more information about Polly and to convince her to come to her monarchy. Despite displaying only incompetence, the spies manage to get near to Polly. Polly accepts the poster of the prince, which is apparently a sign of engagement in the Prince’s country.

Polly has another suitor: Gregoire (Jean Rochefort) is one of the people working on the tv show and feels rather confident: the more he sees Polly (while falling in love with her), the more he sees his role in the tv show grow. He assures himself, the producer and even Polly there’s more to Polly than just her outside.

Or is there? Is Polly nothing more than an empty shell with clothes, the flavour in the month who doesn’t know the month is almost over (the world changes, next thing you know mankind may travel to the Moon)?

Qui êtes-vous, Polly Maggoo? is a child of its time. If you didn’t know this was made in 1966, you’d guess it. London and Paris were in love with fashion (think of Carnaby street), pop-art hit the streets and above all the movies. Add to this the director of the film: William Klein came to Paris as a GI in 1947. He met the woman of his life there and has mainly operated from France ever since. In a way, this is reflected in Polly’s character. She’s also an American in Paris and in one of her daydreams she imagines how Gregoire’s family would react to her (the obvious stereotypes: is it true all the food in the US is canned? etc.).

For another link to Klein’s life, look at Miss Maxwell’s character. It was apparently based on Diana Vreeland, Klein’s former boss. She’s so satirized some wonder why Vreeland never sued. Miss Maxwell was played by Grayson Hall by the way: the actress was flown over from America for the role and had to learn French to do her part.
All of which brings us to the heart of the movie: it’s a satire, a mirror of its time laughing at itself. True, a movie like dates easily, but if it wants to be a sign of its time, that is not that big a problem. Yes, it looks as if it was made in 1966, but wasn’t that the subject of the movie? And have things changed? Really? Aren’t we still obsessed with models and celebrities? Aren’t we keen to think those models are dimwits? So we’ve been to the Moon ever since this movie was made, but did that change us?

A bit more annoying is the movie’s style: yes, it’s 1966 and it’s about fashion (albeit in glorious black and white, but executed to perfection - as one could expect from a director who’s also a photographer), but that swinging sixties style has always annoyed me. For me you’d have to be a Blow-Up or Femina Ridens to get away with it. Qui êtes-vous, Polly Maggoo? only succeeds in this partially, but it does. Maybe thanks to its satirical tone. Think of a Swinging Sixties satire, a Godard movie where the politics are traded in for fashion and philosophical rambling (I swear, a couple of scenes sound as if Godard and his gang were co-writing the film) and feel sorry for Polly Maggoo. Or not.

Here’s the opening scene (in French only), so you can check the lovely steelmetal dresses:

Here’s a scene with English subtitles. The tv crew ask Polly to tell the audience who she is:

P.S. It’s only a minor role, but always worth mentioning: Delphine Seyrig (Daughters of Darkness) also has a part in this movie.

WANNA WATCH ON TV?
France 2: Wed 30 July, 01.00-02.40

PREFER TO SEE IT ON DVD?
OPTION 1: ARTE’S RELEASE
NTSC Region 0
Aspect Ratio: 16/9
Languages: French or English
Subtitles: English
Bonus: In and out of Fashion (a documentary on Klein with many excerpts)
Available at the ARTE shop

OPTION 2: CRITERION’S ECLIPSE SERIES
A box set containing Klein’s movies Polly Maggoo, Mr. Freedom, Le Couple Temoin
Available at Amazon.com

If you’d force me to limit my George A. Romero collection to three movies, my choices would be Night of the Living Dead (for evident reasons), Martin (where Romero manages to keep you guessing what’s true and what’s not) and The Crazies. In The Crazies (which occasionally is also named Code Name: Trixie) a small town has more than a bit of bad luck. The water supply gets infected by a biological warfare virus and it doesn’t take long before people start attacking each other. And that’s when the army is sent in.

I had to think of The Crazies as much as of Night when I was watching Diary of the Dead recently. Day of the Dead will probably the bleakest zombie movie (by Romero) up to Diary, but The Crazies manages to outshine Day in its bleak vision. The President appears (well, an actor of course), but his words will only make your blood boil. Romero’s vision is one with hardly any hope, the undertone you’d expect from a movie made in the years of Watergate and Vietnam, made by a director who isn’t afraid to show what’s on his mind (and nowhere does Romero do this more evident than in Diary of the Dead).

The good news is that Anolis Entertainment, an Austrian DVD company, have just released The Crazies. Limited to 1500 editions only, the double dvd release is available as a steelbook with many extras which focus on director Romero and star Lynn Lowry. Anolis is a name you may remember: they were also the ones who released that wonderful velvet edition of Blood and Black Lace (by Mario Bava). This should already tell you someone took care of this release, enough to make it a wonderful must-have.

The extras include two commentaries (one by Romero, one by Lowry), a featurette on Lowry (with the lovely title “The Mute Hippie Girl on Acid with Rabies”) and several trailers (for The Crazies and other films by Romero).

If you don’t own The Crazies by now, it should be one of your next purchases. There are several versions of the movie out right now, but this R2 double disc steelbook by Anolis give this essential Romero a look you’ll cherish forever.

(Anolis will refer you to Amazon.de, but you can also get the movie at Xploited Cinema.)

THE CRAZIES - 2 DISC STEELBOOK
Anamorphic widescreen (16:9)
Language options: English, German
Subtitles: German (optional)

As ReGenesis is currently being shown on Belgian television (Friday night on canvas), I thought this would be a good time to reload this review from the Delirium Vault archives.

And now we move to the wacky world of television series…
ReGenesis is the name of the show and you’re in luck if you manage to track it down. It is a Canadian tv show (of which the third series has just been broadcast on Canadian tv), it hasn’t been bought by many tv stations (as far as I can tell, it’s only been bought by French tv in Europe - but, luckily, the pan-european channel ARTE bought it, so at least it could be seen in a handful of countries with one broadcast) and the series has been released on DVD. But only the first season. And only in the UK. Yes, we’re really trodding the thinnest line between cult and obscure here.

ReGenesis focuses on the life and works of David Sandström (played by Peter Outerbridge), a brilliant biochemist who drinks more than he speaks and has more enemies than friends because he’ll never shut his mouth and frankly often is quite an asshole.
But he’s also brilliant, though you may not get this impression when the series opens. Sandström is on the verge of breakdown and stumbles through the streets. He’s calling people on his cell phone. He confesses: “Now I’ve done it, I’ve gone too far…”
So what happened? Rewind six months…

Which brings us to my biggest problem with the series… the show likes to jump around in time. There are quite a lot of scenes throughout the series which don’t stop at the end, but suddenly rewind in hyperfast mode to a point earlier in that scene to focus on another character.
If that sounds confusing, let me explain. A scene opens with David Sandström walking into the office. He’s greated by Bob, an equally brilliant guy but overtly shy because he has Asperger syndrome. Bob tries to talk to David, but David says: “Not now, Bob.” and walks on, closes the door of his office and looks at the list of known victims of a virus outbreak. We see him scribbling and he gets an idea. He grabs the phone and makes an appointment with a fellow scientist. Suddenly the screen rewinds to the scene where David walks into the office. David ignores Bob again, but now we stick with Bob and we get to see why Bob wanted to talk to David.
This is mildly irritating at first, but you soon get used to it and - let’s be honest - it also shows how good the actors are, because these interwoven scenes were shot with two cameras and are occasionally quite long, so everyone clearly should know their position and lines, in order not to fuck up two scenes at one go.

So what’s the story? The first series opened with a flash forward to episode 12. David tells us things are completely fucked up and then we scroll back six months, to how it all began… with a race against time to identify the cause of a deadly virus, spreading rapidly and headed straight for the city. It’s up to Sandström’s NorBAC (North American Biotechnology Advisory Commission) to identify patient zero and contain the outbreak.
ReGenesis combines shorter stories (taking up only one episode, sometimes even less, sometimes a bit more) with a storyline that’s behind some of the stories and is spread over the entire season. Quite effective as a new story can be introduced at the beginning or the end of an episode and because you can’t tell whether this new story belongs to the larger scheme or whether it’s not related to any of the other plots.

What was a bit annoying (but prone to happen in series like this) is that, in my opinion, a bit too much happens to David Sandström. Especially in the first three episodes. And it’s only in the last two episodes (of the first series) that your suspension of disbelief has to work overtime again.
What is also helpful is that all the main characters have storylines dedicated to them. Which doesn’t only show there’s life outside a lab, but it helps you to think of the characters as human beings.

Now I am not a biochemist, though I did attend some scientific classes when I was younger, but the series focuses a lot on biology, viruses, chemistry and physics, so as a layman you can only guess how much of the theories in the series are bullshit. My first impression was that a lot of it was quite credible and Wikipedia informs us “extensive knowledge of various chemistry and biotechnology issues is required to find out why the plot in many episodes can’t be true (if it can’t)”.
Over on Amazon.co.uk, one happy customer informed the general public: “I’m a biochemist, and while I love science-based TV, I almost always have to watch with my suspension of disbelief cranked up to high. Not so with ReGenesis. Real, accurate science, and fascinating storylines. Of course the real genius is that they manage to make it accessible to the layman too without huge indigestible dollops of exposition. I watched the entire first season in less than two days, then made my husband (who wouldn’t know a carbon atom from a cheese sandwich) watch it too. He’s as hooked as I am [...]”

All in all, ReGenesis is a pretty intelligent series and quite rewarding for those who are lucky enough to find it somewhere (on TV or DVD).
You can read more about the series on its Wikipedia page, but beware of some spoilers.

I was going to review the series Harsh Realm, but it looks as if Lt. Thomas Hobbes has an important message, so I’ll give him access to my keyboard for a couple of seconds. Lt. Hobbes?

A world exists exactly like ours. You live in this world, your family and friends. And though you may not know it, I was sent to save you.

[Here the lieutenant pauses for a moment.]

It’s just a game.

Thank you, Lt. Hobbes.

Harsh Realm is a television series, though this might have slipped your mind. In fact, the only reason you may have known about it was that the creator was Chris Carter (you know, from The X-Files). The most acceptable reason you never heard of it: it only aired for three weeks and then was shelved for five years before someone decided to release what was out there on DVD. Which meant all three episodes as shown on tv, plus the six episodes that were already canned when Fox took the series off the air.

What follows now is a DVD review in two parts: the first will focus on the series outline and the three episodes that made it to the air (albeit that I only saw them 9 years later on DVD), the second will focus on the DVD exclusives (which include episodes 4 to 9).

If history will remember Chris Carter (and it will), this will mainly be for one thing: The X-Files, the hugely successful sci-fi series Carter and c° launched in the early 90s. The series was so popular (after a while - as even the first season ended with the closing of the FBI’s least liked department because Fox wanted to take the show off air) Fox asked Carter to come up with other shows.
Millennium never got the attention it should’ve deserved: although some episodes were in fact quite weak and it took a couple of episodes to get into the series’ arc (a cult inside the FBI that got bleaker every episode), it was generally quite watchable. Sadly, Carter and friends never seemed to decide whether the show was sci-fi or not, which did make the show bounce everywhere and occasionally look like the semi-retarded nephew of Mulder and Scully.

In 1999 (after three seasons) Millennium ended and Carter wanted to dive into new territory. Virtual territory, that is. Like Millennium reminded you of Profiler (NBC’s stab in the dark to copy the success of The X-Files), Harsh Realm reminded me of VR, another short-lived series you may have picked up late at night on BBC2. I guess, what I’m saying is: don’t write a series about virtual reality, there’s a fair chance it’ll be pulled.

Harsh Realm introduces you to Lt. Thomas Hobbes as portayed by Scott Bairstow. Bairstow worked for Carter before, in an X-Files episode (Miracle Man). If I draw this parallel, there’s a reason: Carter’s shows tended to refer to each other. The first episode includes Millennium’s Lance Henriksen as a guest star, Gillian Anderson is the voice of the introduction video Hobbes gets to see and Terry O’Quinn is even more evil in Harsh Realm than he was in Millennium.

Lt. Hobbes, happily sharing some time with his pregnant fiancee, is given a new task and has to leave for base immediately. It is there he learns there’s a virtual game (Harsh Realm) that was hacked by one of the first people to be sent there, a man called Santiago (O’Quinn). He is now a dictator in Harsh Realm and uses it as a test for the real world. Thus he must be stopped and Hobbes is the man to do it. Hobbes is hooked to a machine and off to virtual reality he is.

Soon Hobbes finds out that Harsh Realm is a copy of the real world (well, a copy that’s gone off a bit - quite a bit). Which means that there is a Sophie in Harsh Realm, but she only looks like the Sophie Hobbes is engaged to in the real world. Virtual characters (this means the people who aren’t sent to Harsh Realm by the enemy) can die like a tv set being switched off, but it’s best not to die if you’re an army officer playing the game. And as the first episode (bearing the wonderful title “Pilot”) ends, we discover Hobbes was lied to: we see his body in the real world, attached to wires to live in Harsh Realm, but the camera zooms out and we see Hobbes is part of hundreds of people taking part in this virtual game.

I guess you’ve discovered one of the biigest problems with Harsh Realm: it’s an immense stretch to believe all this information (even now, nine years later). Something which heavily annoys me (but Carter liked, according to his commentary) is the voice-over by either Hobbes or Sophie, writing letters to each other (most of those undelivered as he’s stuck in the virtual world and she’s stuck in the real world, having been told her partner died on duty). To me they sound quite contrived and I feel the constant urge to fast forward them, as they only tell their lover they’d like to be reunited again. Anyway yes, Sophie is told Hobbes died on his secret mission, but a mysterious woman tells her this is a lie and gives her a couple of clues Sophie may want to investigate. It turns out that this mysterious woman (named Inga Fossa - oh Carter, you and your silly names) has the ability to switch between the real world and the virtual world.

Hobbes wants to locate Santiago and gets help from two people, Pinnochio and Florence. Florence is a mute woman with a gift: she can heal people. Oh, and she’s a real fighting machine. Pinnochio is like Hobbes, but he doesn’t seem keen to leave Harsh Realm. His secret is explained in episode three: in real life he has a disfigured face.
This was good for the series: a complaint often heard is that it was hard to relate to the main characters. This gave at least Pinnochio a bit of background to make him look less like a one-dimensional virtual character.

As for Hobbes, it is a bit irritating that he’s so ‘good’ he seems to get into trouble almost every episode. The Jesus references aside, it’s a bit unlikely this sort of character could last long in Harsh Realm. Which is why Pinnochio and Florence stay with him, to get him out of the trouble he manage to get himself into time and again.

If you watch Harsh Realm, it becomes clear that the series is clever enough to have an intrigue you’ll only discover after a couple of episodes. Sadly the viewers didn’t show this patience and the series was pulled after three weeks. A shame really, as one of the better episodes was up next. But more on that later, in part two of this review.
What’s there to conclude after three episodes? That Hobbes is annoyingly good, that part of the build-up was excellent (the idea of the Harsh Realm world, Sophie being told Hobbes is dead, the mystery of certain characters…) and some of it annoying (the letters, the voice-over). But mainly the notion that there was so much more discover, stuff you couldn’t find out in three episodes. So let’s look forward then to part two of this review: the stuff viewers never got to see…

Hands up if you’ve seen the Oscars. I’m not doing that because I want to count how many people tuned in, I just want to rob you from your money for doing that. Just like you’ve already been robbed from your soul by watching the awards show.
All kidding aside, the award ceremony wasn’t broadcast in my area (well, not if you don’t count a subscription-based movie channel owned by evil people whose phone number does not end in 666 for no reason, I assume) and I was left to view red carpet footage (two hours of “Who are you wearing?”) and a montage offered by Daily Show fora (as Jon Stewart was this year’s host).

The Oscar ratings were the lowest ever recorded and most of this has to do with 2007 being not a very strong year. In fact, the only nominated movie to make more than $100 million was Juno.

So let’s avoid the Oscars once again and focus on a more prestigious award ceremony: The Kermodes.

Movie critic Mark Kermode used BBC2’s Culture Show once again to give his own prize away. The winners received a statue and their names will be remembered forever. Here’s the list:

Best Actor: Sam Riley (Control) (Kermode: “And I can’t even stomach Joy Division.”)
Best Actress: Anamaria Marinca (4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days)
Best Music: Jonny Greenwood (There Will Be Blood) (banned from the Oscars for including a previously released track)
Best Foreign Language Movie: Julian Schnabel (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly)
Best Director: David Cronenberg (Eastern Promises)
Best Movie: Andrew Dominik (The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford)
Lifetime Achievement Award: Ken Russell

Now how’s that for a list?

If you are lucky enough to have access to the wonderful pan-European channel ARTE, then you may be more than glad to read that after only being shown every fortnight in November and going on hiatus in December, ARTE Trash returns in January and promises to be back every week.

But wait, don’t choose the wrong day to sit in front of your tv set ready for an overdose of erotic or bloodthirsty movie: ARTE has moved the show to a new date (sadly, that’s Friday) and a slightly earlier slot (23.30).

The good news? ARTE Trash returns with a promising first month: brand new Spanish horror, a Takeshi Miike and a genuine slice of British horror from the Seventies.

To celebrate the return of a tv programme that shows horror (so rare a treat these days), I’ve written a small guide for the first three movies, so Delirium Vault readers can know what to expect: feel lucky, punks!

JANUARY 2008 SCHEDULE

11/01: Películas para no dormir: La habitación del niño (2006)
“Películas para no dormir” (Films To Keep You Awake) was a six-part series of horror films made for tv but directed by horror directors. Amongst them Ibanez-Serrador (Who Would Kill A Child?), but also Jaume Balaguero (Darkness, Los Sin Nombre…), Mateo Gil (Abre Los Ojos) and Alex de l’Iglesia.
Alex is the son of underrated director Eloy de l’Iglesia (Cannibal Man, The Glass Ceiling), but has been building a quite interesting filmography himself: Accion Mutante, El Dia de la Bestia, La Communidad… He also directed “The Baby’s Room” a.k.a. “La habitación del niño” which is kicking off ARTE Trash’s 2008 series.

18/01: Gozu (2003)
From the acclaimed director Takashi Miike comes a Yakuza/ horror film to shock and amaze audiences everywhere! When Minami is sent to kill his mentor Ozaki who is in the midst of a nervous breakdown he embarks on a journey of unexplained natural phenomenon that only the director of such films as “Audition”, “Dead or Alive” and “Ichi the Killer” can provide in this surreal Lynchian/Cronenberg-like movie.
Some claim this movie is Miike’s masterpiece, some think it’s too ethereal for that. Be the judge of it yourselves.

25/01: Doomwatch (1972)
The waters surrounding an island become contaminated by chemical dumping, and people who eat fish caught in those waters become deformed and violent.
Tigon gave Peter Sasdy the chance to make this slice of British horror.
Doomwatch was based on a tv series with the same name, which was shown from 1970 to 1972 on the BBC. Most of the cast returned for the film, which - to say the least - was not received with a warm welcome. As for the series, good luck with finding the episodes: the BBC erased most of the tapes after transmission, so what was left was found elsewhere. The entire second season can be found, but several episodes of series 1 and 3 are missing. The penultimate episode, “Sex and Violence” was never transmitted and the last episode, “The Devil’s Demolition”, was never completed (after the production was abandoned). In 1999 Channel 5 tried to revive the series, but only the feature-length pilot was made and shown. I guess our lesson is, if you want to make a successful series, you’d better not call it “Doomwatch”.

ARTE Trash will continue in February, so watch the Delirium Vault forums for more.

Sprechen Sie Deutsch?
If so, it might be a good idea to tune in to ZDF on Saturday nights because the second German channel will show the entire series of Mabuse films in two nights.

Doctor Mabuse was an evil mastermind, concocted by director Fritz Lang and Thea von Harbou in 1922 (though based on a novel by Norbert Jacques). The five-hour-long movie Dr Mabuse der Spieler led to a sequel in 1933 and to a series of movies in the 60s.

It was Fritz Lang who started the Mabuse series in 1922 and it helped to launch his career long before Metropolis was even made. The first ‘new’ Mabuse film, in 1960, was also directed by Lang and would become his last feature.
The 60s series of Mabuse films was probably an answer to the ever popular Edgar Wallace movies and in total six Mabuse movies were made during this revival.

The seventh one was a Spanish movie that had little to do with Mabuse and didn’t seem to have a plot. Not surprisingly it was Jess Franco who directed La Venganza del doctor Mabuse.

ZDF will broadcast the six Mabuse movies from the 60s spread over two nights. Like many series of movies, the punch was out of the series after a couple of entries, so especially the first night shouldn’t be missed. Die 1000 Augen des Dr Mabuse was directed by Lang, Im Stahlnetz des dr Mabuse was helmed by Harald Reinl (Die Schlangengrube und das Pendel) and was a nice sequel. The first night concludes with Das Testament des Doctor Mabuse (often confused with Lang’s movie from 1933).

Dr. Mabuse-Nacht I: 19/08 - Die 1000 Augen des Dr Mabuse, Im Stahlnetz des Dr Mabuse & Das Testament des Dr Mabuse (ZDF, 00.55 - 05.30)
Dr. Mabuse-Nacht II: Die unsichtbaren Krallen des Dr. Mabuse, Scotland Yard jagt Dr. Mabuse & Die Todesstrahlen des Dr. Mabuse (ZDF, 01.00 - 05.20)