Movie Quote of the Week

It is easy to understand why the most beautiful poems about England in the spring were written by poets living in Italy at the time.
--George Sanders, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947)

TV Quote of the Week

I knew there was more to English television than Masterpiece Theatre.
--Kate Hodge, She-Wolf of London, “Nice Girls Don't”

All the British Shows That I Have Seen

1. Being Human: The First and Second Seasons (UK). Between its attempts to appropriate cultural territory last touched by my beloved Buffy the Vampire Slayer and its whole "Look, Ma, We're Not Victorian" attitude, I should hate this series, but instead I have found it shamelessly addictive. Annie the ghost is my favorite character on the show thus far -- perhaps because she is the most positive character on the show. (Let's face it. Positive characters are not always easy to write nowadays.) Mitchell the ageless vampire and George the reluctant werewolf are likable in their own way too but it is Annie that provides the glue that keeps this from being just another endless stroll in the supernatural darkness. I will undoubtedly have more to say when I view the third season.

2. Shameless: The First Season (UK). I have seen so many shows and movies about the dysfunctional lives of people who live in the ghetto or the barrio that I often forget that white poor people live dysfunctional lives too. And no, I am not waxing sarcastic here. One of the major problems with focusing exclusively on the problems of the dark-skinned poor is the subsequent tendency to define poverty, substance abuse and other social problems as an ethnic thing and not a human thing. After all, as long as we can define such issues as a "black thing" or a "Latino thing," light-skinned people don't have to worry about them -- and the problems never get solved. Yet as I grow older and spend more time with people in general, it becomes obvious that you can find just as much dysfunctionality among the white poor as you can anywhere else. Indeed, it is kinda depressing to note how many such problems get ignored because no one expects to find those type of problems in a white neighborhood -- and it is even more depressing to note how the experiences of my Hispanic relatives who were born in poverty and worked their way out indicate that such things do not necessarily have to be that way.

Anyway, Shameless is one of the few TV shows that I have seen that focuses on the dysfunctional white poor. Of course, it helps in terms of audience acceptability that the show is set in Great Britain, which means most white Americans are not likely to take it personally. Moreover, it revolves around a family led by a drunken patriarch named Frank Gallagher -- so the Brits can just as well pretend such dysfunctions are an Irish thing and not a British thing. Oh, well. When the show is on the ball, it does a great job of describing the not so quiet desperation of Gallagher's children without glamourizing the behavior of their alcoholic father. Indeed, one of the virtues of the show is that its writers are realistic enough to not even pretend that the father is likely to get his act together any time soon. Instead the show chooses to focus on the oldest daughter and her efforts to keep the family together despite a mother who left home years ago and a father who rarely does anything save make things worse.

If the show has one major problem, it is that it wraps up everything so neatly in the first season that it is hard to believe that the show did not end right there. But then certain troubles never cease to be.

Pop Song of the Week: “Wot”

Class conflict in a 1982 British music video: Discuss.

Love in the Age of the En-Lightning-Ment

When we last left Tyrone Power, he was playing a journalist named Stephen Fitzgerald who was journeying to the Emerald Isle to meet cute with his future love interest. This time out in the 1951 movie I'll Never Forget You, he is a scientist named Peter Standish who is visiting Mother England in order to participate in a very important atomic experiment, only to end up traveling back in time via lightning bolt to the Age of Enlightenment where he promptly changes places with a rich American who is preparing to wed a charming young damsel who just happens to be the beautiful daughter of a local aristocrat. Nice work if you can get it, eh?

Unfortunately, life in 1784 England does not quite suit Standish as much as he would have supposed and to make matters worse, he keeps giving away the fact that he knows so much about the locals' future. In short, he is just ignorant enough of eighteenth century ways to attract the suspicions of the locals and too knowledgeable enough about things his counterpart would not know to win their trust. As if Standish's life is not complicated enough, he finds himself falling for the sister of his counterpart's intended, a scandalous complication in any century.

Will Standish be able to win over the good people of 1784 London? Or will he end up in an insane asylum?

Since this movie is not billed as an example of alternative history, it does not take a lot of imagination to guess that the eventual ending will be a less than happy one. Indeed, this movie has one of the most depressing endings for a romantic movie that I have seen in a long while.

Yet it gives nothing away to note that it hints at an ultimately happy ending for Standish as well. Add to that the witticisms of Dennis Price as Standish's British “cousin” -- one of those black sheep relatives who is inevitably more fun to listen to than the white lamb kinfolk -- and the movie is actually quite watchable. After all, it is hard to hate a movie that has enough confidence in its audience to not only include Dr. Samuel Johnson as a character but to do so without going out of its way to explain who he was or why he was so famous. And I must confess that I find it amusing to see yet another old movie which treats marriage between cousins as no big deal while most modern Americans I know would regard the same idea with horror.

Besides, after having seen my share of “time travel for dummies” movies, I could not help finding it refreshing to finally see a movie that had a fairly realistic attitude about how a visitor from the future would be received in real life. After all, as my father used to note whenever he and I were watching old syndicated reruns of Time Tunnel, it is not like we sophisticated people in the modern era would automatically accept the word of a person who claimed to be from our future. Indeed, if such a person turned up in Washington D.C., he or she would be very lucky if he or she did not vanish into the clutches of Homeland Security. And that is just one of the more optimistic scenarios.

While I must admit that it would be fun to see a movie in which such a traveler actually did change history, I am not sure I trust modern Hollywood to bring off such a story with the same panache we see in I'll Never Forget You. Mind you, I will admit that title needs work. But apart from that, I found it quite memorable.

Pop Song of the Week: “Tunnel of Love”

The British have such a cheerful attitude toward life.

TV Quote of the Week

I am not taking home some English curse.
--Kate Hodge, She-Wolf of London, “She-Wolf of London”

Movie Quote of the Week

No, my darling, you’re wrong. Our day may possibly come and we may take back that which belongs to France or to America. But no one has ever taken back anything from England.
--Claudette Colbert, Tovarich (1937)

Latino Lycanthropy


What is it about werewolf movies that sends filmmakers scurrying back to the safety of good old Mother England? What is wrong with the good old U.S.A.?

Granted, Guy Endore managed to successfully get away with setting a werewolf novel (The Werewolf of Paris) in nineteenth-century France and the Hammer film based upon his book took it a step further and set its werewolf story in Spain. Plus more recently John Sayles set a werewolf story (The Howling) here in the States. Then, of course, there was the more recent werewolf movie An American Werewolf in Paris, but the less said about that one, the better. There was also the French movie The Brotherhood of the Wolf but I am not quite sure that it is fair to consider that a werewolf movie though it is considerably better than An American Werewolf in Paris.

Anyway, for the most part, when we Americans usually think of werewolves, we think of England. Thus we get titles like Werewolf of London, She-Wolf of London and An American Werewolf in London. Perhaps because we have gotten used to associating horror stories with the English or perhaps because we prefer the contrast between the traditional British stiff upper lip and a raging beast. Or perhaps we have got so used to having our best horror stories done by the English that we seem to forget that other people can do them too.

Perhaps it is just as well we do not see more attempts to import the werewolf legend into America given the number of people around the world who already like to associate the Yanks with barbarism. And as a Latino, I should find my obsession with werewolves especially ironic because so many of the characteristics associated with werewolves -- hairiness, thick eyebrows, violent tempers and funny hands -- are also associated with Latinos. Coincidence?

Who knows?

In any event, one would think that any werewolf movie that had a Hispanic actor like Benicio del Toro playing the lead character would be right up my alley. And it would be nice to say that 2010’s The Wolfman was the ideal werewolf movie. Indeed, it would be nice to say at the very least that The Wolfman was a memorable movie, but unlike many horror films I’ve seen, I doubt it will be remembered as fondly as the original 1941 Universal movie which bore a similar name. In fact, I suspect the producers will be lucky if the film is remembered at all within a decade or two.

Part of the problem is that this particular werewolf movie has nothing particularly interesting to say. It starts promisingly enough with the death of some poor English guy being stalked by what appears to be the second coming of the Hound of the Baskervilles. Then it is revealed that said victim is the brother of Del Toro’s Lawrence Talbot character. Why he does not look much like Del Toro is never adequately explained. We are shown a portrait of Lawrence’s Latin mother but it is never explained whether or not she was also the mother of Lawrence’s brother or whether they were half-brothers. Was Lawrence’s mother really just the mistress of Lawrence’s father or is there some other explanation? The film never explains and normally it would not matter if the actual story was half as interesting as such questions. But it is not.

The film does have some potentially interesting angles though. For example, Del Toro’s Talbot is a Shakespearean actor with obvious father issues. Since his father is played by a British actor (Anthony Hopkins), it’s tempting to predict more than a few obvious references to Hamlet and Macbeth but fortunately the movie does not go that route. However, the route it does travel is not much of an improvement.

Nor do Talbot’s acting skills play any crucial role in his investigation of his brother’s death. Since the movie is called The Wolfman, it’s not much of a surprise that the mystery culprit behind his brother’s death turns out to be a werewolf. Nor is it shocking that Talbot ends up being bitten by said werewolf.

I was surprised to find out that Emily Blunt played the would-be bride of Talbot’s late brother. Ms. Blunt looks very good in period dress and it would be nice to say that her character played a memorable role in this movie but unfortunately, she is more often an afterthought. The film flirts with the idea of a romance between her and Talbot but it never develops it too fully or convincingly -- which is a shame since such a development would have made the climax of the movie a lot more powerful.

The most memorable part of the movie is the brief view we get of Talbot’s late mother. In many ways, she seems symbolic of the film’s problems since apart from Ms. Blunt, she is very easily the most eye-catching part of the cast -- yet the movie has no idea what to do with her save to kill her off.

For that matter, it has no idea what to do with Del Toro or Hopkins save to use them in combination with elements from far better movies. Perhaps the true problem lies in the fact that such an expensive production with high-profile actors dares not say anything particularly new or original lest it lose its potential audience. And yet by playing it safe, it ensures that any repeat viewings this movie might gain would be few. Very few. So perhaps this production was indeed cursed. But not in a way that can be ended with a silver bullet.

Book of the Week



Okay, Ms. Lesley Hazleton's book England, Bloody England: An Expatriate's Return was published in 1988 so it might seem a bit dated to some nowadays. And I suspect that if I ever did visit England, I would be pleased if I found out that the country was not quite as bad as when Ms. Hazleton wrote about it.

Still...

I found it to be a refreshing change of pace from the usual Anglocentric travelogue that has nothing but unadorned praise for all things British. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but all too often, it seems as if such praise is inevitably followed by utter contempt by all things not British.

Then again, when you grow up among people who often had to pay a bitter price for not being of English descent, you tend to be a bit biased about this sort of thing.

Anyway, I like to think the book is well worth reading even if you don't agree with me.

Pensamientos Acerca de Televisión

Keen Eddie: “Pilot”

Best known as the TV series actor Mark Valley starred in before he moved on to Boston Legal and Human Target, Keen Eddie showed a lot of potential in its first episode but unfortunately, it had a lot of dubious humor as well. (For example, a running gag involved the title character's pet dog having forced sex with his roommate's cat. Classy.)

The plot involved a New York City police detective (the Keen Eddie of the title) who screwed up the bust of an international drug ring when he allowed himself to be lured onto a false trail by a mysterious femme fatale. In order to atone for his mistake, he was sent to London and assigned to work with Scotland Yard to track down the British side of said drug ring. He was forced to share his apartment with a young British college student (played by Sienna Miller) and his pet pit bull -- an animal he tried to leave behind in New York but did not quite succeed.

It would undoubtedly surprise few veteran cop show fans to note that Eddie did succeed in redeeming himself in the eyes of his transatlantic colleagues in this episode but not until after a series of amusing culture clashes. The result was the start of a promising series which would have liked to seem sophisticated but more often came across as sophomoric. For every scene which was undeniably clever, there was yet another scene which was -- ahem -- dumb. And the use of annoyingly repeated scenes to emphasize humor on this show was a technique which got old really fast.

On the plus side, the show did provide work for a lot of talented British actors who rarely get seen by American TV viewers. Plus Valley proved with this series that he had a lot more flair for comedy than he ever got to show when he was playing straight man to James Spader on Boston Legal.

Too bad the scripts for this show were not as good. Now that would have been keen.

What the Hell?

I saw this cartoon from a nineteenth-century issue of Punch on Wikipedia and I'm hoping that it's a joke by some modern artist. But knowing the prejudices of nineteenth-century Englishmen, I somehow doubt it.

So apparently I'm not the only one who reads political messages into fictional characters. Unfortunately.

Fortunately, whoever drew this is long dead but still...I really don't want to see a modern equivalent.

Pensamientos Acerca de Televisión

Doctor Who (The Second Series): “The Next Doctor”

Wow! Who knew there were so many Hispanic people running around the British Isles? First we get the Maria character in the Doctor Who spinoff, The Sarah Jane Adventures, and now we've got Rosita, who pops up in Victorian London in time for the latest episode. Unfortunately, Rosita appears to be a bit lower down on the social scale than Maria. Plus the episode hints that she was a streetwalker. Which is hardly the type of stereotype I expected to see in this series, but alas, there it is.

Rosita, for what it's worth, is also black, and it could be said that she was deliberately written to combine the features of the Doctor's last three assistants (Rose, Martha and Donna). Unfortunately, she's not an official assistant though. The doctor she helps out is not the same doctor we all know and love but rather another character altogether. The script hints that that this doctor might be a future incarnation of the present doctor but apart from owning a sonic screwdriver, he doesn't seem much like a doctor.

Meanwhile, the Cybermen are back. And a mysterious lady in red appears to be associated with them.

Can the present doctor solve the mystery of the future doctor, defeat the Cybermen and save the day?

Well, what do you think?

Movie Quote of the Week

Major, we already run the misfits outta our country. We sent ‘em back to England.
--Tom Selleck, Quigley Down Under (1990)

Nobody Expects the Spanish Armada!

They are making a sequel to Elizabeth called The Golden Age, and if the trailer is any indication, it's all about the Spanish Armada and Queen Elizabeth I's response to it. I must confess I found it a bit amusing to watch the trailer and see Captain Barbossa playing an Elizabethian courtier and Clive Owen playing Sir Walter Raleigh. (What? No cameo for Miranda Richardson?)

And yet...

I have to admit it. I'm getting sick of seeing yet another movie about the British royal family. Not to mention yet more foreign propaganda.