AFTERTHOUGHTS (81)
HITCHHIKING TO SATURN 2008 (2)

So this year’s Saturns (held last night at the Universal Hilton Hotel in Universal City) have come and gone, and the notable wins are:

300:
Best Action/Adventure/Thriller Film
Best Direction (Zack Snyder)

Blade Runner:
Best Special Edition DVD Release (5 Disc Ultimate Collector’s Edition)

Cloverfield:
Best Science Fiction Film

Dexter:
Best Syndicated/Cable Television Series

Eastern Promises:
Best International Film

Heroes:
Best Television Series on DVD (Season 1)

Lost:
Best Network Television Series
Best Actor on Television (Matthew Fox)
Best Supporting Actor on Television (Michael Emerson)
Best Supporting Actress on Television (Elizabeth Mitchell)

The Mist:
Best Supporting Actress, Film (Marcia Gay Harden)

No Country For Old Men:
Best Supporting Actor, Film (Javier Bardem)

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street:
Best Horror Film
Best Costume (Colleen Atwood)

Twin Peaks:
Best Retro Television Series on DVD (The Definitive Gold Box Edition)

I’m happy for Lost, naturally, though Elizabeth Mitchell’s win for Best Supporting Actress on Television was actually a tie with Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles’ Summer Glau.
For my money (and the tremendous work she’s put in on Lost), Mitchell should have taken the category, lock, stock, and barrel.
And, as with any other awards night, there were the disappointments: El Orfanato, Stardust, Battlestar Galactica, and Pushing Daisies, all getting shut-out, as well as a bunch of other criminal calls (Jennifer Love Hewitt over Anna Friel and Evangeline Lilly?!), but hey, there’s some awfully neat stuff up there, so I’ll just accentuate the positive…
Oh, and aside from Guillermo del Toro receiving the George Pal Memorial Award for his “visionary genius,” Matt Reeves was also recognized with The Filmmakers Showcase Award, for directing Cloverfield.

To all the nominees and winners at this year’s Saturns, congratulations. (You can find a complete—and downloadable—list of winners here.)

Parting shot: Reviews of 300, Cloverfield, Eastern Promises, The Mist, No Country For Old Men, and Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, can be found in the Archive, along with episodic recaps/reviews of Dexter, Heroes, and Lost.

(Images courtesy of impawards.com [Lost]; bloody-disgusting.com [Cloverfield OS]; ew.com [Javier Bardem in No Country For Old Men]; filmz.ru [Marcia Gay Harden in The Mist]; and empireonline.com [Guillermo del Toro].)

VEXILLE – 2077 NIPPON SAKOKU
(THE ISOLATION OF JAPAN)
(Review)

The year is 2077, and it’s been a decade since Japan’s decision to refuse regulation of their robotics technology, precipitating the country’s withdrawal from the U.N. and the rest of the world. But the manoeuvres of Daiwa Heavy Industries, Japan’s leading megacorp, will cause a squad of S.W.O.R.D. operatives led by Commander Leon Fayden (Shosuke Tanihara, from Takashi Miike’s Gokudo Sengokushi: Fudo) to infiltrate Japanese territory to discover exactly what has been taking place within their borders.
This is the basic premise of Vexille – 2077 Nippon Sakoku, and it turns out to be a solid exercise in scifi anime.

Granted, personality is scarce, particularly from title character Vexille (Meisa Kuroki; Chakushin Ari Final), who is little more than a cipher, and Leon, who is arguably, even less.
But this is, after all, the kind of anime where all the characters really need to do is look cool, while most of the heavy lifting is done by the high-flown scifi concepts and the visuals.
It’s to Vexille’s credit though, that an intriguing layer of humanity is injected into the plot when the current situation in Tokyo is revealed. That pocket of emotion proves enough to both fuel the narrative and balance the excellent, adrenaline-laced action. (And even when the emotional blackmail bomb—which you just know will eventually be deployed—goes off, it still bloody works.)
The presence of music tracks by the likes of The Prodigy, Underworld, DJ Shadow, and Dead Can Dance, as well as soundtrack supervisor DJ Paul Oakenfold, also manage to spike the proceedings nicely.

Armed with a great Death Star trench-inspired sequence and curious echoes of Dune and Blade Runner, Vexille is brought to us by Fumihiko Sori (Ping Pong), who was on the visual effects team of James Cameron’s Titanic (working on CG characters), and acted as producer and visual effects director on 2004’s Appleseed.
Co-writing the script with Haruka Handa, Sori manages to explore the dire consequences of a monopoly of power, and how true immortality can be found in the legacy one leaves behind.
Stumbling in a couple of spots—particularly in a pivotal climactic decision that seems to come from nowhere, and the manner in which Leon drops off the narrative’s radar for a significant section of the film—Vexille’s script nonetheless powers an anime that plays some familiar sci-fi riffs just differently enough to warrant some serious attention.

(Vexille – 2077 Nippon Sakoku OS courtesy of sgforums.com; image courtesy of tiff07.ca.)

CHUCK
Season 1 Episode 5
“Chuck Versus the Sizzling Shrimp”
Written by Scott Rosenbaum
Directed by David Solomon
(WARNING: SPOILERS)

An “Evening of Morgan” (Chuck, Sarah, Ellie, and Morgan enjoy sizzling shrimp and Enter the Dragon) is cut short when Chuck spots Chinese agent Mei-Ling (Gwendoline Yeo, who was seen as Xiao-Mei on Desperate Housewives, and heard as Mercy Graves in the two-part opening of The Batman’s current season) disguised as a waitress at the Bamboo Dragon (“Home of the Sizzling Shrimp”). Tasked by Casey to go over a bunch of files to try and uncover why Mei-Ling is on US soil, Chuck ends up standing Ellie up, and worse, leaving her alone with Morgan.
The next morning, Ellie’s pissed. This has been happening a lot lately, Chuck going MIA, and she makes sure to remind him about the following evening, the siblings’ own October version of Mother’s Day.

Meanwhile, over at the Buy More, Big Mike implements a 24-hour sales competition: first prize, an iPhone, and second prize, a large pizza with two, count ‘em, two toppings! Despite the tantalizing allure of second prize though, Morgan knows he’s screwed, ‘cause he sucks at sales.
So he asks Chuck to help him out, but Chuck’s already been told by Casey that tonight will be his first stakeout at the Bamboo Dragon. And he can’t help Morgan the following evening either, since it’s the Bartowski Mother’s Day celebration. So Chuck says he’ll help Morgan after his “date” with Sarah.

That evening, an elderly man in a wheelchair, identified as Ben Lo Pan (James Hong, recognizable to SF fans the world over as Hannibal Chew, the eyemaker from Blade Runner), arrives at the Bamboo Dragon, followed by Mei-Ling. Chuck flashes on Mei-Ling’s weapon, and realizes she’s here to assassinate Lo Pan.
Casey and Sarah go into the Bamboo Dragon, while Chuck is told to stay in the van.
Inside, gunfire breaks out, and Lo Pan wheels himself out of the restaurant. Chuck sees Lo Pan and decides to help the old man, getting him to his limo.
Just then, Chuck witnesses Lo Pan’s bodyguards take a bound and gagged Chinese man out of the Bamboo Dragon and stuff him into the limo’s trunk, before it speeds off. Mei-Ling arrives and demands to know where the limo is headed, but of course, Chuck doesn’t know.
Before Mei-Ling runs off as Sarah and Casey arrive, she tells Chuck that Lo Pan is Triad, and she was here to rescue her brother.

Chuck is feeling guilty about inadvertently helping the bad guy, but is told by Sarah and Casey to stay out of it, as Mei-Ling is now a rogue element (the Chinese government did not sign off on the assassination/rescue mission, despite Lo Pan’s threat of killing Mei-Ling’s brother, who works for the Chinese consulate).
At the Buy More, Mei-Ling calls Chuck, demanding his help to get her brother back. So Chuck talks to Casey and Sarah, and proposes that they help Mei-Ling, if, in exchange, Mei-Ling would defect to the USA. Casey says if she defects, he’ll personally help save her brother.
So when Mei-Ling tries to get at Chuck, a stand-off that ends with the Chinese agent holding a gun to Chuck, he gets Mei-Ling to agree to the whole “defect to save my brother” deal. (After all, should she still be loyal to a government that was willing to let her brother die?)

As the agents lay out the rescue plan, Ellie is busy in the kitchen preparing for Mother’s Day. But when Chuck’s expertise with security systems is needed once again, he gets drafted to be the eyes and ears of the op. Chuck goes along since he owes Mei-Ling, but insists he needs to get back home by eight, or Ellie skewers him.
Of course, the rescue goes awry, and all three agents are caught by the baddies. Though Casey tells Chuck to just go home and not call the cops, Chuck tails them back to the Bamboo Dragon.
Chuck creates a diversion with fireworks, gets inside the restaurant, and sets the agents free. While the agents make short work of the baddies, Chuck stops Lo Pan from wheeling away a second time.
Chuck, of course, misses the Mother’s Day dinner.

While all that action goes down, Ellie and Morgan share an “I miss Chuck” moment, and Morgan tells Ellie he’s currently the lowest seller at the store, and rather than have Big Mike fire him, he’d rather commit seppuku and resign.
And when Chuck gets back home, Ellie confronts him. Chuck is extremely apologetic, but despite Ellie’s disappointment, she gets it: Chuck’s in love with Sarah, and this is the first really good thing to happen to him in a really long while. She also says that Chuck’s always been a good brother and a good friend, and that he shouldn’t lose that, girlfriend or no girlfriend.
So Chuck asks to re-schedule Mother’s Day, and Ellie agrees.

The next morning at the Buy More, Morgan is about to resign, has in fact, already handed in his resignation letter, when he suddenly gets a big sale, courtesy of Ellie, who decides to do her gift shopping early. The sudden sale boosts Morgan to second place, so he rushes to retrieve the resignation letter (and his large pizza with two toppings).
It turns out though that, a) there is no pizza—and no iPhone either—as Big Mike just wanted to motivate the employees, and b) Big Mike wouldn’t have accepted the resignation in the first place, as Morgan is currently filling the Hispanic employee slot.

Meanwhile, Mei-Ling bids her brother goodbye, and officially defects.

And at the Mother’s Day dinner (to which Ellie invites both Morgan and Sarah, making a break from the tradition of just both siblings celebrating), Chuck explains to Sarah its significance: it’s the anniversary of the day their mother left, abandoning them with a father who wasn’t really there, even if he was.
So Mother’s Day is a celebration of the day when it became abundantly clear that they only really had each other. Now though, Ellie is willing to open up that special day to include the other special people in their lives. (Sadly Capt. Awesome couldn’t get off work.)

Once again, what’s clearly doing it for me in Chuck are the character moments, and in this particular episode, we get to see the toll all this secrecy is taking on Chuck’s personal life, how juggling the secret agent stuff, Buy More, his friendship with Morgan, and his relationship with Ellie, is exacting a price.
And not only is it clear that Chuck’s having a hard time with all this, but it’s also plainly evident that both Morgan and Ellie miss having him around.
Yes, Chuck isn’t perfect (some action bits are better than others), but as I’ve said before, it’s an entertaining hour, fun and funny, while being dramatic too.
Chuck’s a sweet ride, people. You should really check it out.

(Images courtesy of nbc.com.)

ENTOURAGE
Season 4 Episode 10
“Snow Job”
Written by: Doug Ellin and Ally Musika
Directed by: Ken Whittingham

We return to developments on the Lost in the Clouds adaptation Billy is supposed to be working on.
Dana Gordon freaks when Walsh sends in a script called Silo, which is a futuristic space epic that has absolutely zero to do with Lost in the Clouds. Since E is MIA (more on that later), Ari has Vince read the script himself to see what the problem is. (Besides, Vince is producing.)
Thus begins a crisis as Walsh refuses to write the script the studio paid for (the money already having been spent so he can’t even return it). Ari zooms into Kill Mode and offers up Richard Kelly (who kicked my a$$ into orbit with Donnie Darko) as the new writer/director to replace Walsh. But after reading the script, Vince finds he loves it and wants to do this movie instead of Lost in the Clouds.
Vince even winds up talking to Walsh on the phone, Billy having locked himself into the bathroom with a bottle of whiskey and a gun, since he believed he’d frakked Vince up good with Silo. Of course, Vince loved the script, and the gun wasn’t loaded anyway.
Vince then tells Ari to read the script, and to make it happen.
Ari keeps on going on Kill Mode, bysteps Dana Gordon, and goes directly to her boss, Richard Wimmer (John Heard). What follows is a great scene where Ari Gold, SuperAgent, works his magic, and convinces Wimmer that Silo is the summer tentpole the studio needs to get it out of the red. When Dana is asked for her opinion on the script, she describes it as “Blade Runner meets Field of Dreams,” and Wimmer is sold.
At the end of it all though, Dana’s still pissed and wishes Ari would just die. (I love Dana.)


And while all this drama is going on, E is on his first day on the job as Anna Faris’ manager, at a photo shoot way up in the hills where cellular reception is nonexistent.
At the shoot, E meets Anna’s boyfriend, Dave (CSI: NY’s A.J. Buckley), who’s been hanging around Anna of late, since the CW passed on his pilot.
Dave is opinionated, ultra-critical, and jealous that E may have a thing for Anna (which of course, he does). Dave winds up making a complete a$$ of himself, and Anna dumps him.
E arrives as the boys, Ari, and Billy are toasting to Silo. Demanding to know what went down, E is tossed the script, and when he flips it open, asks, “Where’s the snow?”


As with the previous episode, this one’s a great half-hour, as we slide back into Hollywood mode and see Vince’s new project coming together. We also see E getting in deeper with Anna Faris, and not being available for Vince and Ari when the whole Silo thing exploded. It should be interesting to see if (or when) Vince will call E out about his responsibilities.

(Images courtesy of hbo.com.)