Film Review: The Big Bus (1976)

I have never understood why Airplane!, released in 1980, was so fantastically successful and managed to spawn a sequel and a sub-genre of spoof comedies such as Scary Movie and Hot Shots! That success should have gone to The Big Bus, which was out four years previously, and by any scientific criteria (well, my own) is exactly 57.6% funnier than Airplane! One can even make a case that the latter was a blatant ripoff of the former, but in the world of comedy, theft is virtually a compliment.

The Big Bus, like Airplane!, is a spoof of disaster movies. The two films take the same approach with a non-stop barrage of jokes and sight gags. The difference being that Bus scores a higher percentage of hits. One reason for this is that in Joseph Bologna and Stockard Channing Bus has two fine actors who also have razor-sharp comic timing. He plays Dan Torrance, the bus driver with a dark secret in his past, and she's Kitty Baxter, the designer of the nuclear-powered bus that will revolutionize bus travel. Their scenes together are excellent, and the work of Robert Hays and Julie Hagerty in Airplane! doesn't compare at all.

The supporting cast in Bus is very good, especially Robert Mulligan and Sally Kellerman as The Couple With Relationship Problems. Honorable mention also has to go to Murphy Dunne as the world's most annoying cocktail lounge pianist. Now, don't get me wrong, I find bits of Airplane! amusing, especially the running gag about the addictions of the Lloyd Bridges character, but The Big Bus has more than its share of comic gems and a wonderfully cheesy score by David Shire. The clip below provides a good idea of what to expect.

Book Review: The Big O (2007) by Declan Burke

A warning: I didn't finish this book, so if you think it's unfair for someone to review a partially read book stop reading now. Still with me? Good. The Big O is a sad case of a good writer laid low by bad decisions. This crime fiction novel is, by any standards, an absolute dud. But, as I said, Burke is a good writer. His prose is crisp, quick-witted, and his dialogue can pack a punch. But he's like one of those Olympic figure skaters who look great, skate effortlessly, and then crash to the ice every time they try and do something clever.

Burke's first bad idea was to drink too deeply at the inspirational well of Elmore Leonard. Modern crime fiction has been heavily influenced by Leonard, but Burke appears to be mesmerized by the master. The standard Leonard plot has a criminal scheme at its centre, usually a swindle or complex theft, around which coalesces a variety of shady and not quite so shady characters. The players in these dramas have ulterior motives and alliances that often interfere with the course or the result of the central crime. Leonard has his characters do a kind of criminal dance of anticipation and reaction around the crime that's at the core of the story. Leonard makes the twists and turns of this dance tense and fascinating, but, most importantly, he keeps his stories moving forward at all times.

Burke has borrowed Leonard's plot structure but neglects to put his foot on the accelerator. The central crime in The Big O is the kidnapping for ransom of a plastic surgeon's wife. When I gave up on the book just past the halfway mark it was largely because the plot had barely advanced an inch. Characters are introduced, schemes discussed, and nothing happens. Burke works hard to show the unlikely links and cold-blooded alliances between the characters, but it all amounts to a lifeless schematic drawing. There's lots of talk, but nothing gets done.

Burke is so wanting to produce a Leonard he ends up draining his novel of any kind of regional flavour or identity. The story is set in Ireland, but Burke works very hard to avoid alerting us to this fact. Place names are barely mentioned, and the dialogue is pretty much stripped of any slang or nomenclature that would make us think these characters aren't from, say, Detroit. I'd call it a mid-Atlantic crime novel except that Burke leans so heavily to the west it becomes a mid-Lake St. Clair novel.

The main and minor characters come in two varieties: loathsome and not quite so loathsome. Burke has a sure, quick hand when creating a character, but here he's given us wall-to-wall shitheads. Elmore Leonard is also good at creating baddies, but he doesn't go overboard, as Burke does, in highlighting their nastiness. Leonard gives his villains positive and neutral qualities to make their negative qualities stand out all the more. Burke's characters have the asshole meter set at 11 at all times. What's worse is that Burke can't stop reminding us that they're rotten; for example, by page 50 we're very aware that Frank the plastic surgeon is a loser, a wanker, and a bastard. Unfortunately, Burke finds new and more redundant ways to tell us this over the next 100 pages. Shut up about it already!

Ray and Karen are partial exceptions to the nasty character parade. Ray is the kidnapper-for-hire and Karen is the surgeon's wife's friend. The problem with Ray and Karen is that way too much time is spent following their budding relationship. They flirt, they date, they banter, they have sex, they talk about sex, they breakup, they flirt, they talk some more about sex, and this goes on and on and on. Burke's second bad decision was to have these two in a relationship. It eats up a lot of time and it isn't the least bit interesting.

And now we come to Burke's worst idea: sex. The problem isn't descriptions of sex, which might have added a frisson of softcore fun to the proceedings, but his decision to have characters talk and think about sex more or less constantly. Burke seems to believe this is part of character-building but after a point it becomes distracting. In relation to this, there's a nasty streak of sexism in the novel. This takes the form of consistently describing women in terms of how sexually attractive or unattractive they are. Male characters aren't held up to the same standard. Early in the book a minor male character named Ferret is not described in any way, shape or form. A few pages later an even more minor female character is described as "an overweight woman with straggly hair." Ray meets another meaningless female character and spends a paragraph assessing her attractiveness, ending with the observation that "she'd want him to take her rough, like a pig snuffling truffles." Even the women get in on the act; Doyle, a female cop, is questioning a woman who's been kidnapped and threatened with rape. Her attacker also threatened to "staple her tits together" and Doyle thinks to herself that "...they'd need to be big staples. Marsha packing a pair of M&Ms in a training bra." Hilarious!

Like I said, I packed it in halfway through the novel, not too long after a R-rated Benny Hill-like scene in which Rossi, a demented thug, gets his erection caught in his zip. I wouldn't normally review a book I disliked this much, but it's frustrating to find an author who can clearly write, but who can't make an intelligent creative decision.

Film Review: Badlands (1973)

This is the one that set the template for films about sociopathic loners going on bullet-riddled road trips. Badlands spawned a flock of B-movie clones, as well as Natural Born Killers and True Romance. The last film amounted to a homage to Badlands, right down to re-using the original's signature musical theme, Gassenhauer by Carl Orff. The story is loosely based on the real-life killing spree by Charles Starkweather (how could he not be a killer with a name like that?) and his girlfriend Caril Fugate in the 1950s. Martin Sheen plays Kit, a loner who starts courting Holly, a 14-year old girl living with her father in small town South Dakota. Her father forbids the relationship and Kit kills him. He and Holly then camp out in the woods before driving across the Dakotas and Montana, evading pursuers and killing those who get in their way. They're finally caught in Montana and taken back to South Dakota.

This was director Terrence Malick's debut film and it was a groundbreaker in almost every way. One of the most notable aspects of the film is its non-judgemental tone. Malick's script and direction doesn't work to demonize Kit, instead he makes the film's tone match Kit's detached, unemotional personality. It's as though Kit is doing the directing. Kit is distracted and fascinated by oddities, trivialities and death. When we first see him he's working on a garbage truck and is examining a dead dog with a kind of bored curiosity. As he continues the route he has a momentary interest for any old thing that crosses his path. Malick's camera mimics Kit's worldview: arbitrary shots of landscapes and objects are scattered throughout the film, mirroring Kit's unfocused, random route through life. Kit is a monster, but Malick subtly conveys the hollowness that's at his core.

Holly, played by Sissy Spacek, is Kit's equal in moral blankness. His crimes don't faze her, even her father's death leaves no impression on her, and her first sexual experience leaves her wondering what all the fuss was about. Holly provides a dear diary-like voiceover for the film, and her flat, matter-of-fact tone and observations show that she's sees herself living out the plot of a pulp romance novel, albeit one with a high body count.

Badlands is also a great-looking film. Malick has a fantastic eye for landscapes, especially the way he integrates people and moving vehicles into the wide open spaces of the prairies. If David Lean had shot a film in these locations he couldn't have done any better. I lived in that part of the world for four years and Malick captures the look and feel of it perfectly:

The film ends on a dream-like shot of clouds and the setting sun taken from a plane that's carrying Kit and Holly back to South Dakota to face the law. Holly's voiceover lets us know that Kit got the electric chair and she got probation. She also married the son of the lawyer who defended her. The ending's dreamy feeling suggests that that's the way Kit and Holly saw life; as a waking dream in which nothing had any value or meaning. This is absolutely one of the best films of the 1970s, although it has suffered some neglect, largely because, I'm guessing, it doesn't sensationalize its subject matter.

Ten Good Things In Ten Crap Films

The law that states that even a blind squirrel will occasionally find a nut also says that buried within the reeking compost of bad films one can sometimes find a black truffle of cinematic excellence. And here they are:

10. Mr. Billion (1977)

This one starred Terence Hill, an Italian actor (real name Guido Falcone) that Hollywood tried to turn into an international star in several grisly films in the mid-1970s. Hill always looked glassy-eyed and wooden, rather like a reluctant student in an ESL class. This film has him trying to claim an inheritance in the U.S. with the help of Slim Pickens. The gem in this movie is a scene in which Pickens discovers that his beloved trailer home has been destroyed. Pickens grief is so real you'll actually feel your throat tightening.

9. Alligator (1980)

Yes, indie film hero John Sayles wrote the screenplay, but it's still a cheapo creature feature. The best thing in Alligator is Robert Forster, who delivers an amazing performace, particularly in a throwaway scene involving a suicide bomber who walks into a police station. Quentin Tarantino gave Forster the lead in Jackie Brown 17 years later largely because of his performance in this film.

8. Zardoz (1974)

The title character is a faux god whose giant head floats over Irish hills and moors bellowing out commands to his barbaric, post-apocalyptic followers. The head is a great magical/fantastical image. The rest of the movie is completely mad and bad, starting with Sean Connery's fetish wardrobe and ending with a plot that resembles a stoner's idea for a R-rated Star Trek episode.

7. Star Wars (1977)

I realize I'm in the minority position when I call Star Wars a crap film, but I just can't get past the bad dialogue and acting (Sir Alec excepted). The opening scene, however, with Princess Leia's space ship being chased by Vader's ship still gives me a thrill. Why? Because this was the first time special effects were truly special. I can remember being in the theatre and thinking that the film world was about to change. And then Carrie Fisher opened her mouth and everything went to hell.

6. Fraulein Doktor (1969)

I can't remember much about this film except that it was a mediocre spy story set in WW I. What I do remember is the final sequence, which is a poison gas attack by the Germans against the Allied lines. This entire sequence is stunning. It's like an apocalyptic fever dream as imagined by David Lean. The highlight is the sight of the German cavalry's horses completely swathed in gas mask suits. Yes, full suits. It all looks incredibly nightmarish, and Ennio Morricone's score only makes things better.

5. Jurassic Park 3 (2001)

Pterodactyls. I love pterodactyls, and this crap film has a bunch of 'em. It also has William H. Macy looking very uncomfortable as the star of an action film.

4. Godfather III (1990)

It's a toss-up which is worse: the dense, dull plot involving Vatican banking, or Sofia Coppola's acting. What's brilliant is the ending. The last scene is of Michael Corleone, who is living in hiding in Sicily, sitting by himself in the courtyard of a palazzo. He drops dead of a heart attack and the only creature to notice his passing is a dog who barks furiously at the inert body. This is an elegant and painful counterpoint to Vito Corleone's death in his own backyard in America while playing with his grandchild. Vito struggled to escape Sicily and Michael ends up back there as a fugitive. Too bad the ending isn't strong enough to rescue the rest of the film.

3. Excalibur (1981)

So much to choose from: the risible costumes (chrome suits of armour!); Nicol Williamson's performance as Widow Twankey, sorry, I mean Merlin; special effects borrowed from early Dr. Who; and set design from the people who did the It's A Small World ride at Disneyland. And yet the whole thing has a berserk, kitsch entertainment value. It's like watching a train full of clowns and wild animals crash into a building filled with paint, helium and fireworks; you don't know what's going to happen next, but it'll definitely be worth watching. And congrats to director John Boorman for putting two films (Zardoz was the other) on this list.

2. Zabriskie Point (1970)

Even by director Michelangelo Antonioni's elliptical, opaque standards this was an unholy mess. The story, what little there is of it, is a clumsy diatribe against Western consumerism and capitalism. His first misstep was hiring two non-actors for the lead roles. The male lead, Mark Frechette, later robbed a bank and died in prison. The female lead was Daria Halprin and she suffered a worse fate when in 1972 she married Dennis Hopper. The good bit? The last five minutes of the film shows a huge house planted in the middle of the desert blowing up good, real good. Antonioni lets us see its destruction from more than a dozen angles, with lots of slo-mo, and adds in gratuitous shots of fridges, bookcases, and other things blowing up. Think of it as the art house version of Jackass.

1. King Kong (1976)

More than 40 years after the original was made, the best innovation Hollywood could come up with was special make-up effects guru Rick Baker stuck inside a gorilla suit. It was a very nice gorilla suit, probably purchased on Rodeo Drive, but it was still just a suit. The other special effects, what little there was of them, were equally lame, and the plot and dialogue were no better than the average episode of The Love Boat. The diamond in the dross was Jeff Bridges, an actor who throughout his career has been cursed with appearing in ambitious films that fall flat on their face: TRON, Heaven's Gate, Tucker: The Man and his Dream, Starman, and even TRON: Legacy. Despite the dodgy films, Jeff is always a great actor, and in Kong he acts up a storm. When he's on the screen you can almost pretend that you're watching a good film.

Book Review: The Black Sheep (1842) by Honore de Balzac

The most byzantine, Machiavellian, cold-blooded scheming by the combined brains of the CIA and MI5 against their espionage counterparts on the other side of the Iron Curtain at the height of the Cold War could not begin to equal the plotting and counter-plotting displayed by the French bourgeoisie in pursuit of an inheritance as shown in The Black Sheep. Nineteenth century French literature is full of schemers, but no one wrote about them better than Balzac, and this novel has to be regarded as the Super Bowl of backstabbing, skullduggery, and double-crosses.

The plot? OK, I'll try. Agathe Rouget has two sons, Phillipe and Joseph, the first a soldier, the second an artist. They live in Paris, but Agathe is originally from Issoudun, where her much older brother, Jean-Jacques, lives with his mistress Flore. The first third of the novel takes place in Paris where we watch the gradual disintegration of Agathe's family, totally thanks to Phillipe, who is a thief, a cad, a bounder; in short, the black sheep of the family. Agathe loves him unreservedly and virtually ignores Joseph, who is a loyal and loving son. After the family's fortunes hit rock bottom, a desperate scheme is launched to secure money, and a piece of the will, from Jean-Jacques, who is totally in thrall to Flore and her live-in boyfriend Max, who is also an ex-soldier. The balance of the novel takes place in Issoudun where Phillipe and Max, who remain total bastards, fight it out to decide who will get to exploit Jean-Jacques. That describes about 15% of the plot, and keep in mind that this novel isn't particularly long.

The Black Sheep can be enjoyed just as a fast-moving, melodramatic tale about larger than life characters, but Balzac always had more on his mind than just churning out easy-to-digest dramas. The overriding theme in this novel is the pursuit of money in all ways and for all amounts. In Balzac's world money rules everything. It defines your social status and can literally make the difference between life and death. Not so different from today, really. Balzac takes an almost malicious relish in showing how all classes of citizens will do anything to acquire wealth or an income. His true feelings about money may best be shown through the character of Joseph, who spurns money-grubbing in favour of his art. After a great many years he gets both critical acclaim and wealth. And it's no accident that Balzac has Joseph use a skull as a piggy bank. It's fascinating to note that Balzac was way ahead of today's sociologists with his criticism of lotteries: "The passion for lotteries, so universally condemned, has never been studied. No one has realized that it was the opium of poverty. The lottery was the most powerful fairy in the world; did it not nurture magical hopes?" It's interesting and logical that Karl Marx intended to write a study of Balzac after he'd finished Das Kapital. Friedrich Engels was also a fan, saying once that a single Balzac was worth many Zolas.

In 19th century literature characterization wasn't something writers left to the reader's imagination. They told you what a character was all about and that was that. Here's Balzac describing a lawyer: "...with a shrill voice, a rough complexion, implacable eyes and the face of a weasel licking the blood of chickens from his lips..." Probably a face even mother could not love. There's something satisfying about the detail an author like Balzac goes into when describing his characters. He gives us all their physical features, as well as their personality and motivations in holographic depth. None of this elliptical, non-judgemental, modern character-building for M. Balzac. Although his characters can sometimes display cliches (one actually says "do not darken my door again"), they are, at heart, very, very real.

The Black Sheep is part of Balzac's 20-volume Human Comedy series of novels, and those I've read are as enjoyable as this one, although not all are this twisty.

A Reader's Guide to Book Reviews

Between reading a ton of books myself, and handling several tons more thanks to working at the library, I can say with confidence that the reviews and blurbs printed on the front, back and insides of virtually all books are worthless, mendacious, misleading, written-to-order, toadying, and not worth the 14pt, bolded Impact font they're written in. Is that last sentence hyperbolic and filled with outlandish claims? Yup; just like a lot of book reviews.

I do find that blurbs and reviews can actually make me pick up a book and give it a skim, but I've also learned what kinds of reviews can be safely ignored and which are warning signs of literary crap. To begin with, there are a whole category of books that don't have any reviews. This is usually hardcore genre fiction such as Harlequin romances and novels based on video games. These books don't need reviews because their readers are the reading equivalent of crack addicts. They're happy just to get their fix.

The next rung on the review ladder is occupied by Publishers Weekly and Kirkus Reviews. They are publishing industry whores. I'm sorry, but there's no other way to describe them unless, oh, let's see, I called them publishing industry crack whores. But that would be going too far. Those two entities give positive reviews to everything. They would give a glowing review to a letter bomb: "SURPRISING!", "PACKS A PUNCH!"

Next we encounter reviews by bloggers, fanzines, and various online sites devoted to different genres or authors. These are tricky reviews to judge. On the one hand they're not tied into the publishing industry, but on the other hand they are, first and foremost, fans, and not usually critical ones. These reviewers do have an acute sense of where to place a novel within its particular genre, so if a fanzine says that an author's new work is a cross between H.P. Lovecraft and early John Updike they're probably bang on.

Now we come to reviews by other authors. This is a minefield. The most obvious problem is the quid pro quo factor; authors give generous reviews in the expectation that the favour will be returned. The giveaway that you're reading a quid pro quo review is that the reviewer will only mention the positive aspects of the novel, leading the prospective reader to imagine that the novel is without flaw. If the author/reviewer does say something negative it will be prefaced with remarks like, "one minor problem is...", "if I have a quibble with...", "the only thing that could make this novel better is...", and so on. These footling objections are inevitably tossed-off in a sentence or two in the last paragraph, usually just before one last burst of effusive praise. Some authors seem particularly prone to doling out four star reviews to other authors. The leader in this regard is Lee Child, who seems to spend his free time between counting his millions with reading other thriller/mystery writers. Lee has a good word for everyone. This brings up another point about author/reviewers. They have a fondness, I believe, for praising writers they know to be inferior to themselves. My theory is that they take a perverse glee in directing readers to books that end up making their own works look that much better. Like I said, it's a theory.

And why are authors' reviews featured on books? Film studios don't plaster their print ads with quotes from directors and scriptwriters. Did Green Lantern have blurbs from other directors? "Jean-Luc Godard says, 'Tense, gripping, capitalist filmmaking at its best!'" Godard is undoubtedly a big fan of comic book hero films, but it's interesting that studios don't bother to solicit praise from other people in the industry. The music industry is the same. Does Rhianna post fawning reviews about Lady Gaga's latest CD? Incestuous self-promotion seems to be a feature of the book world and no other.

Finally we come to reviews by major newspapers and magazines. Generally speaking they're a better guide than the others I've listed, but keep in mind that these reviewers are often authors as well so the usual warnings apply. The thing to watch out for with reviewers for the big papers is that they're often trying to make a name for themselves as masters of the perceptive, incisive, quote-worthy review. In short, they're actually more interested in how they sound to the reader rather than how well they communicate the merits of a book. Here's a reviewer from the Independent talking about David Mitchell's The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, "“The book leaves a reader, as Ghostwritten did, in a space beyond "belief or disbelief", citizen of several worlds but tyrant or serf in none..." I'll be left in a space beyond belief or disbelief? Is that death or a coma or utter confusion? Clearly, the Independent reviewer is mostly interested in promoting himself.

The most foolproof kind of review is provided by the author in the first few pages of whatever it is he or she has written. When I used to review film scripts for a living the rule of thumb was that if a script didn't grab you by the throat within the first ten pages you should toss it aside. The same applies to novels. Read the first ten paragraphs of a book and you should get a clear idea if the author can write well and whether they have anything interesting to say. It's no coincidence that the best writers often have great openings to their novels. Here's an example from Mortal Engines, a young adult steampunk series by Philip Reeve: "It was a dark, blustery afternoon in spring, and the city of London was chasing a small mining town across the dried-out bed of the the old North Sea." Now that's a first line that grabs you by the throat and a few other places.

TV review: Life's Too Short

At least when Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant steal ideas they steal from the best...themselves. Life's Too Short is a cannibalized, hybrid, call it what you will combination of The Office and Extras. The lead character is the dwarf actor Warwick Davis, who plays himself, a semi-successful actor running a talent agency in London for little people. The actor is Warwick Davis but his character is pure, 100% David Brent from The Office. The only thing missing is the goatee. The show's entertainment industry milieu is the same as Extras, including guest appearances by A and B-list celebrities playing themselves. The whole thing's a disaster.

The feeling I got while watching this series is that Gervais and Merchant had left a lot of comic ideas on the cutting room floor, as it were, after their two previous series, and they decided to recycle them in Life's Too Short. A scene with Liam Neeson, for example, is simply a variation on Patrick Stewart's bit in Extras where he tells Gervais about his great idea for a script that features nothing but naked women. Neeson's scene is amusing, but it feels secondhand, and, like the other celebrity cameos, it's shoehorned awkwardly into the story. The same can be said for Gervais and Merchant's appearances in each episode. They're there for their brand power appeal and end up becoming a distraction. Each show has a moment or two that's amusing, but on balance it's unfunny, and at times the attempts to spin comic gold from Davis' dwarfism feel really tasteless.

If there is a saving grace in this show it's Warwick Davis. Despite having to work with leftover David Brent material, he shows that he's an excellent  comic actor. Equally good is Rosamund Hanson who plays Cheryl, Warwick's secretary. She's only required to be dim, but thanks to her odd accent and drawling voice she steals just about every scene she's in. Give this series a miss unless the sight of a dwarf falling repeatedly out of a car's front seat strikes you as insanely hilarious.