Batman Beyond

After the successes of both the Batman and Superman animated series, Bruce Timm and company decided to mix it up a little. The new series, tentatively entitled Batman Tomorrow, would feature a new Batman set in a near future cyberpunk setting. The Batman would be a young inexperienced punk from the streets, not the a socialite like Wayne. The aged Caped Crusader would be retired and coach the new kid from a radio link.

Like many fans at the time, I was not pleased to hear any of this. I liked Batman the way he was, I wasn’t interested in some hip ‘edgy’ take on such an iconic character. When the premier movie aired on the WB, I watched with crossed arms and a frown on my face. By the second episode, I was hooked.

The series introduces viewers to an aged Batman using a cybernetically-empowered super suit to continue fighting his war on crime well past his limit. In the middle of a case, he suffers an acute heart attack and pulls a gun on a crook to get the upper hand and save his hash. Traumatized by his own behavior, Bruce Wayne shuts down the Batcave, vowing never to be Batman again. The program jumps forward 20 years to a mad future world with skyscrapers built high into the strangely purple night sky. Gangs of Jokerz terrorize the citizens of Gotham City and an aged and bitter Bruce Wayne sits in his stately manor with only his dog Ace for company. That all changes one night when a moment of violence directs another young man to take up the mantle of the Bat and the war continues, this time with a new soldier at the front.

Opening Sequence

It’s no secret to any viewer of the Justice League cartoons that Timm, Tucker, Dini, Burnett and all the creators of the DC Animated projects are frustrated Marvel Comics fans. Astute viewers would easily catch sly nods to Marvel from the Defenders-like episode of Justice League where a Namor-like Aquaman, Dr Strange-like Dr Fate and very Hulk-like Solomon Grundy travel to the netherworld to many other stories that mirror the comics from the House of Ideas far more strongly than the original material they were adapting.

So it should come as no surprise that this new Batman is very much like Spider-Man. Terry McGuinnes (Batman Beyond) is a 17 year old high schooler with worries about his mom finding his costume or his girlfriend dumping him because he skipped out on her to fight a radioactive businessman. The weird part is not the constant homages to classic Spider-Man moments, but in the fact that they work so well. In one episode, Batman fights off a faux-Fantastic Four team of freaks who all end up dying horrifically (so it’s not always a love letter to Marvel).

In any case, the series is a wonderful success. It takes the Batman mythos and pulls it forward into a vision of the future. The villains (aside from the odd one) are all brand new which is a very impressive decision on the part of the production team. It must have occurred to them to simply re-invent the Penguin, Riddler, etc into a new sci-fi future model, but they shied away from that temptation in order to introduce all new villains like Shriek, the Golum, Curare, Stalker and many more. It’s also a real treat to see a cranky old Bruce Wayne still kicking and stubborn as a mule in his old age (something never even attempted in the comic book series aside from the Dark Knight Returns).

The series ran for three years and saw the stunning direct to DVD film ‘Return of the Joker’ released as well. In the film, threads from the previous Batman series connected into Batman Beyond to weave an amazing story that remains one of the all time best in the annals of Batman tales. It also is the only DC Animated film to date to be released in a vastly different ‘unrated’ version. The movie also gives Terry the opportunity to square off against the big daddy of all Batman villains, the Joker, where we find out just how different this new Batman is from the old one.

A sequel featuring an aged Selina Kyle (The Catwoman) was planned but shelved, only to have large portion of the plot mixed into the Justice League Unlimited episode Eulogy, which reveals secrets behind who Terry McGuiness really was all along.

The team was very careful to pay homage to the Batman mythology and legend in much the same ways that they had with their Batman The Animated Series in the 1990’s. It’s this reverence and respect for the material along with a seemingly bottomless amount of skill and talent that makes Batman Beyond such an incredible animated series.

The series was so successful that in 2000 Warner Bros. planned a live action film based on Batman Beyond with a screenplay provided by Paul Dini, Alan Burnett and acclaimed science fiction author Neal Stephenson consulting the duo. In the end, the studio favored the Batman Begins film pitch and shelved the project… but just imagine what a motion picture version would have been like?

You’re right, it would have sucked. But what we got is perhaps the best of the DC Animated series produced… though I’d love to see them top it!

Recommended:

Batman Beyond - Season One (DC Comics Classic Collection)
Batman Beyond - Season Two (DC Comics Classic Collection)
Batman Beyond - Season Three (DC Comics Classic Collection)
Batman Beyond - Return of the Joker (The Original Uncut Version)
Batman Animated

Superman - Doomsday DVD review

The new line of DC Universe animated feature films has begun with a big bang. Not wishing to start small, the team of Bruce Timm, Duane Capizzi, Andrea Romano decided to tackle the biggest money making story in comic books of recent years, the Death of Superman. A story that took roughly three years of monthly comic books to tell, the team cut many aspects of the comic from their version, reducing the tale to a feature film.

I should warn you that this review will contain spoilers. I highly recommend that you watch the film before you read further.

The fact that there had been a Justice League animated series that dealt with Doomsday as a villain and the Death of Superman could easily hinder any enjoyment of the film, but that is not the only hurdle Superman - Doomsday has to jump over.

Also, this film is not based entirely on the comic book and certainly not an extension of the Superman cartoon from the 1990’s or the Justice League cartoon. This is a new product entirely.

As a viewer of the previous Superman cartoons, I had grown to accept this updated version of the character and his world. This film launches the viewer into a slightly different version of Metropolis where Superman and Lois are very romantically involved yet she has no idea that her lover is really Superman… awkward.

Additionally, this world has no Batman, no JLA, no other super heroes at all. Given that Timm and company slaved over animating practically every character in DC Comics history (including the Viking Prince!), this is a major disappointment. I understand that given the length of the film it was impossible to show the reactions of the JLA to Superman’s death, however it is the way in which his death affected the world he lived in that the Death of Superman story found its meaning. Since we are restricted to these new versions of Lois, Jimmy Olsen and Perry White for these reactions, it is difficult to have any empathy for the situation. I mean, we only just met them!

Also missing from this film are the ‘pretenders to the throne’ Superboy, Cyborg Superman, The Eradicator and Steel. Again, I understand why they are not here but… it also takes away from the source material. In the place of these many ‘almost-Supermen’ that many fans of the comic loved we are given a rather confused Kryptonian clone who delivers harsh justice and is beaten to a pulp nightly by his creator, Lex Luthor.
All of the above are working against Superman - Doomsday from the outset. As a movie, it had a lot to work through. Did it succeed?

Yes.

The film is expertly animated and tells a very moving and engaging story about who Superman is and what role he serves in his world. By taking such a convoluted and lengthy tale written by committee, Timm and company have shown that they have what it takes to get this DC Universe series of films going. The fight sequences between Superman and Doomsday (by far the highlight of the film) are not to be missed and after animating hundreds of such fights throughout their careers, it was interesting to see the animation team try out new tricks. The voice acting is superb and the music is quite good as well. In short, it’s a great film and anyone who enjoys the DC Animated Series or Superman should check it out.

Included on the DVD is the documentary Requiem and Rebirth: Superman Lives! which interviews Roger Stern, Dan Jurgens, Louise Simonson, Jenette Khan and Paul Levitz on what it was like to kill a legend. Not only is it fascinating to watch the footage shot during key creative meetings (who thought of that!?), but it also shows how much emotion went into the stories. Watching Louise Simonson well up with tears as she recounts the phone call scene she wrote between Lois Lane and Ma Kent is a real tear jerker and indicates how much heart these creators put into their work.

This is a story that brought many readers to comics for the first time and that should not be forgotten. It’s also the landmark of the speculator boom which killed many a comic book store. It made money for the industry, took money from many non comic book fans who never saw a return on their ‘investment’ and made many business owners who devoted their lives to the comic book industry bankrupt.

Comic books are pretty weird and wild things.

This DVD is worth your money but… only buy one, please.

On Amazon:

Superman - Doomsday (DC Universe Animated Original Movie)
Superman/Doomsday Omnibus
Superman vs. Doomsday Collector Set

BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE

Italian director Dario Argento is a filmmaker like no other. His films are always visually stunning using extremely vivid colors and the most anxiety-inducing soundtracks you’ll ever hear (the music by Goblin in Suspiria is sure to get you kicked out of your apartment should you watch it at home, full volume).

Personally, I am more familiar with Suspiria, Phenomena and Inferno which have supernatural influences in them that feel at home in children’s fairy tales. In fact, the documentary on the Suspiria Special Edition explained that all of the doorknobs in the ballet school were installed at shoulder level to make the actresses seem childlike. However his first film, Bird With the Crystal Plumage, owes more to Hitchcock than Hans Christian Andersen.

The film concerns an American tourist who witnesses a woman getting attacked by a black-gloved killer, all the while trapped between glass doors. Shocked and tortured by his experience, he is forced to remain in Rome by the police. The film produces trademark thriller moments of unease and alienation as the witness is tormented by images of the crime that his mind will not let go of. Of course, there is a twist ending that turns everything on its end… including our ‘hero.’

A thriller in the purest form, the artistic touches that would make Argento a master of what became called ‘giallo horror’ are easily seen. The cinematography and stunning soundtrack by Ennio Morricone (of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly) produce an eerie unsettling experience that the viewer is not soon to forget.

Dario Argento on BBC

Originally released in a heavily edited version, Blue Underground have finally released the film in an unedited format, in fact an extra bit of violence was added… just to freak you out even more.

Just in time for Halloween.

On Amazon:
The Bird With the Crystal Plumage (2-Disc Special Edition)

Casa Negra

Viewed only by the black and white photos run in magazines such as ‘Famous Monsters,’ these Mexican Horror flicks were legendary for ages. Featuring unique cinematography and storylines involving the undead and time traveling cursed hammer-tongue equipped brain eaters… they promised everything a growing boy ever wanted.

Thanks to Casa Negra, these films have recently been restored and are available on DVD for the first time. With commentary from expert horror historian Michael Liuzza, the films are a gift to fans of schlock horror and a true rare glimpse into the past.

The Black Pit of Dr. M is a unique film in that it is regarded as a classic and completely unfit for the ’schlock’ label which many of the other films share. A story of damnation and fate, The Black Pit of Dr. M is every bit as bizarre and brilliant a film as La Belle et La Bette by Cocteau, complete with an inspired use of light and camera work which presents a dreamlike quality throughout the entire work.

Black Pit of Dr. M (aka Misterios de Ultratumba)

Boy favorite ‘Brainiac,’ is a hilarious film about a baron who swears vengeance upon his betters who sentence him to death as a witch. Hundreds of years later he returns as a charismatic man who sucks the brains out of his victims when their backs are turned. Adding to the impact, he often hypnotizes the victim’s spouse into a helpless witness to the event.

The movie can be watched with or without the awful dubbed English… which ofcourse adds to the charm. The films were hastily dubbed in English by K Gordon Murray in the 1950’s to meet the demand of horror hungry youth too hopped up on goof balls to notice the strange dialog.

Brainiac AKA El Baron Del Terror

In addition to these wonderful films, Casa Negra has released a host of others, including these two…

The Curse of the Crying Woman

The Witch’s Mirror

With the Halloween season fast approaching, these DVDs should find their way to your home theater system.

Head Trauma

With so many remakes and remodels of former film glories littering the floors of theaters across the world, it’s always a nice surprise to see a genuinely skilled and talented director through his hat into the ring.

The latest film from Lance Weiler (of The Last Broadcast) is an unsettling and masterfully directed movie that disturbs the audience in the vein of the great psychological thrillers that are so lacking nowadays. Expertly shot, the film also boasts an equally shocking soundtrack of ambient noise that stretches around the viewer, creating a unique environment of horror (unless you have a cheap mono system, I guess).

The movie concerns the life of wandering George Walker who we witness stumbling back to his grandmother’s house after being away from his home town for years. George is a mess. He lives like a hobo in a sleeping bag in the wild and once inside the home he grew up in, he still insists on living in a makeshift tent. As he attempts to clear the remains of numerous squatters who have slept in the house, he discovers a religious pamphlet in the vein of ‘Jack Chick’ which tells the tale of a lost soul on the road to damnation.

George then starts seeing half-glimpsed shadows at first of a hooded person in the house. In time, the hooded person becomes a dark creature haunting George as he steadily goes insane. All the while, a next door neighbor Julian is trying to help George at the insistence of his mother. Just like George himself, Julian isn’t sure if the intruder is in George’s head or not and tries to make sense of his crazy neighbor through illustration (provided by comic book great Steve Bisette).

The film spirals into progressively more unsettling and disturbing visuals as George starts to think he is going to Hell.

Trailer

After the release of the DVD, Weiler and crew have ‘remixed’ Head Trauma as a multi-media experience that is currently touring the country. Last month, the film played at the Museum of the Moving Image in NYC to rave reviews as seen below:

“Can things possibly get more intense from here? Of course. Horror 2.0 stalks the MoMI with indie auteur Lance Weiler’s multimedia expansion of his psycho-chiller Head Trauma: Audience members will receive menacing text messages and cell-phone calls, some even after the show. “I want to disturb people,” Weiler admits in what sounds like a motto for our times. Slashing at apathy, this is a genre whose dire warnings we ignore at our peril. One way or another, horror follows us home.”

- THE VILLAGE VOICE

“Lance Weiler’s first film, The Last Broadcast - often called the original Blair Witch Project - was shot for less than $1,000. Yet it grossed $4.5 million and became the first film to be transmitted via satellite directly to theaters. His encore? A traveling live-music mashup involving cell phones, big screens, indie rockers and meandering actors… “This is one of the only films where you’ll be asked to keep your cell phone on during the screening,” says Weiler.”

- WIRED

For info on how you can witness this unique version of the movie and for all the data on his next upcoming project, check out his site: lanceweiler.com

On Amazon

Head Trauma

The Last Broadcast

A scant year before The Blair Witch Project was released, Lance Weiler and Stefan Avalos produced this tale of myth and legend called The Last Broadcast. The similarities between the two have been used as a strike against Weiler’s film, which in my opinion is hardly fair or even valid. The Last Broadcast is a very clever film that pulls such a fast one on you that it’s difficult to see the movie for what it really is.

Introduced by a distant and awkward narrator with a nasally off-putting voice, the film attempts to fill in the blanks of one night’s events which took the lives of three young men ‘looking for trouble.’

The film develops the lives of two local cable access hosts Steven Avkast and Locus Wheeler of the program ‘Fact or Fiction’ and their steady rise to local success. The program itself is a bot of a joke, more a cross between Ripley’s and Wayne’s World than ‘In Search Of.’ But when the duo receives an anonymous suggestion to cover the myth of the Jersey Devil, everything changes.

Trailer

The New Jersey Pine Barrens stretch for miles in all directions, and also feature a legendary monster called The Jersey Devil by locals. Like Big Foot and other such monsters, no one has ever glimpsed the Devil on film, yet many believe there is ’something’ in the woods.

Seeking the help of local psychic Jim Seurd, the group attempt their most ambitious program ever, a simultaneous cable/web broadcast from the Pine Barrens. The idea is to freeze in the woods, spook out the viewers and have a laugh, but it all goes pear shaped pretty quickly, leaving only garbled pieces of video footage behind.

Narrator and host David Leigh attempts to put together as clear a picture as possible about what happened that night and even hires a high-tech wizard to restore the lost images on video.

An intelligent film that also takes stab after stab at the current obsession with ‘behind the scenes’ fandom, The Last Broadcast is a horror film cut from a different cloth. Rather than tell a simple thriller story, the filmmakers decided to make a statement on documentary-style film and the need for ‘the truth’ that such documentaries promise.

It reminds me of another TV program, the Prisoner, which exposed the reality that it was a TV program all long in the final episode. Hailed by some, the high-brow statement never sat well with others.

So this DVD does come with a ‘this might not be for you’ disclaimer.

On Amazon

The Last Broadcast

BATTLEFIELD BASEBALL

Finally a movie for people who hate team sports.

Battlefield Baseball is a bizarre shock-horror/comedy with many musical numbers written by manga comic book writer Gatarô Man. The film is absolutely absurd, following the dream of a frustrated High School baseball coach to get his team into the coveted Koshien Stadium. His star player, the aptly named Gorilla, is constantly followed by a team of cheerleaders, but he is not the star of the film.

The real star is the reluctant hero Jubeh (played by Tak Sakaguchi of Versus) who refuses to play Baseball despite the fact that he is a natural pitcher. The sad story behind his reluctance is eventually told in song… in short he tore a hole straight through his father just by pitching a ball to him in the back yard.

The enemy team of Gedo High School is quite formidable. This is mostly due to the fact that it is made of of crazed zombies who use explosives and killer baseball bats.

The actual gameplay is so violent that it defies description, as glimpsed in the trailer.

Trailer

I laughed, I cried, I filled my glass multiple times while watching this hidden gem. A movie unlike any other, Battlefield Baseball is a perfect flick to watch while the rest of the world cheers and roars to support their teams and I shrug in disinterest.

Personally, I think the MLB could learn a thing or two from this movie.

Available on Amazon.com

Battlefield Baseball

Marvel Zombie Attack!

I just realized that I’ve been giving lots of attention to the Distinguished Competition lately and have decided to fix that.

A lifelong Marvel Zombie (that’s what the editors called us, so that’s what I call me too), at one time in the late 80’s I collected roughly 11-13 titles (including the odd never seen since titles such as Strange Tales, Strikeforce Morituri, and Stalkers) , all published by Marvel. I’m still not sure how I could afford this and how I avoided all the Spider-Man titles.

Since that time, I’ve explored the other side of the street and now my weekly pull is mainly DC titles. Still, a large part of me will always be a card-carrying member of the Mighty Marvel Marching Society and in this post I will let you know about some very nice additions to your collection that you might not have.

Marvel Animated Features have been releasing straight to DVD cartoon films for a few years now with a roaring success. Their first attempt, the Ultimate Avengers - The Movie, practically flew off the shelves on release day and was quickly followed by a sequel featuring Black Panther, Ultimate Avengers 2 and the Invincible Iron Man film.

Marvel continues their foray into the DVD line with Doctor Strange: The Sorcerer Supreme. Like the other cartoon films, this one chronicles the decline of surgeon Stephen Strange, his search for himself in Tibet and the rise of the Sorcerer Supreme.

It’s a fun and innovative way to grab new readers in ways that the X-Men cartoon did in the 90’s and perhaps the 60’s cartoons back in the day.

The only problem here is that there are no Doctor Strange books to meet the need, should it arise, of Doctor Strange fans. If the viewer is unfortunate enough to enjoy the film and wants to read about this character, they can join the long line of disgruntled Doctor Strange fans who have been waiting for decades for a decent series.

I suppose in a pinch there are reprints, such as Essential Doctor Strange, Vol. 1 By Stan Lee and Steve Ditko.

Why not an animated Defenders movie?

Oh… right… no comic series.

Captain America recently made the papers by being brutally murdered in a crossfire plot that is still being untangled in his monthly comic.

But the story that writer Ed Brubaker has been working on goes beyond just Captain America #25 and according to Brubaker has been planned all along.

I’ve written about my love for Captain America on a previous post, but Ed Brubaker and artists Steve Epting and Mike Perkins took the ailing comic series that had been revamped and handled by so many creators that many were bored simply by seeing another issue 1 on the stands.

It was their loss because the fifth turn at the bat hit a home run. A vibrant, relevant and beautifully drawn series, the stories collected in the Captain America by Ed Brubaker Omnibus, Vol. 1 take the character for such a wild ride that you’d think that Cap had only just been defrosted from WWII.

Using the premise that Captain America is working with SHIELD to fight the Global War on Terror, the series takes a distinct turn for the dark as Captain America’s most dangerous villain the Red Skull is assassinated and returns more powerful than ever. Captain America has to grapple with his past, hos love for Sharon Carter and even the strange and unexpected return of a friend thought long dead… never knowing who is secretly pulling the strings of a deadly trap that springs on both Captain America and the reader.

If you buy just one of the Ginormous Marvel Omnibus books this year, let it be this one.

Captain America by Ed Brubaker Omnibus, Vol. 1 collects Captain America #1-25, The Captain America 65th Anniversary Special and Winter Soldier: Winter Kills.

Or this one.

When I was just getting started in this comic book thing, I snuck into my brother’s room and read his Frank Miller Daredevil comics. The most masterfully crafted comics in the business, Marvel has packaged the issues that made the Mayor of Sin City who he is today a number of times.

Finally, those Frank Miller issues I read are collected in the gigantic Daredevil by Frank Miller & Klaus Janson Omnibus.

If you have heard of Daredevil (not the movie) or Frank Miller himself, but never read the issues… you are missing out. It was in these issues (not X-Men) that the angst and agony of the 90’s was born. As a wee teenager I read the issue where Matt Murdock’s enhanced senses told him that his Elektra was still very much alive, leading him to crawl through the snow-covered cemetery and embrace her cold headstone.

The incredibly drawn pages were so moving and emotive that many a fan sighed, ‘this would make a great movie.’

Oh well… it’s still a great comic.

Frank Miller and Klaus Janson took a comic book no one cared about and made it into the most talked about comic series of the early 80’s. Now is your chance to buy a brick of brilliance for that nice Pier One coffee table.

Recommended Reading/Viewing:

Ultimate Avengers - The Movie
Ultimate Avengers 2
Daredevil by Frank Miller & Klaus Janson Omnibus
Captain America by Ed Brubaker Omnibus, Vol. 1
Doctor Strange: The Sorcerer Supreme

Blade Runner Final Cut

When I was 10 I saw Ridley Scott’s ‘Blade Runner’ in the theater. I know, my parents were bored and it looked like the perfect movie for me. Turns out they were right (for once) since this is still my favorite movie.

The constant rain-drenched streets, flying cars and weary expression of my hero Harrison Ford won my little mind over. I had not yet read a single Philip K Dick story yet the tale of a robot hunting cop who may be a robot himself immediately clicked with me.

That morning, I can clearly remember the daily paper’s article on the future depicted in Blade Runner as being pessimistic and bleak. The article showed the spinner cars and towering edifices intended to be office buildings.

I was just a kid still into Star Wars at the time, but I knew a good thing when I saw it. The mashed together old and new designs were so unlike the Buck Rogers and Star Wars visions of the future my kiddy eyes were used to. It was more than interesting, it seemed feasible and sadly inevitable.

Blade Runner does more than simply embrace the film noir look, it makes love to it, giving birth to a dark and alienated world completely divorced from itself. The film gave us images so vibrant and real such sky scraping buildings, the inescapable advertising, science gone mad, the constant flutter of cops overheads… that they have now happened.

The pervasive theme of loneliness is almost painted over those left behind after a galactic expansion into the unknown, (as the announcer offers a ‘new life in the off-world colonies!’). It’s such an ‘anti-science fiction’ world that I was then used to. Instead of zipping off into space for grand adventure, the characters in this world are living in a smoky haze filled with garbage and abandoned luggage.

A loner himself, Deckard (played by Ford) is a former cop trying to lose himself in the mishmash of urban cultures that has such trouble mixing with. It’s almost a relief when he is pulled into service of hunting Replicants by creepy origami enthusiast Gaf (played by the future Adama Edward James Olmos.

Yet Deckard still has such trouble understanding who he is and what he is doing in his life. Despite his boss assuring him that the subjects of his hunt are unfeeling androids, Deckard has trouble seeing himself as anything other than a murderer. He surrounds himself with his work but does very little detecting. His method seems to consist mainly of stumbling through a sloppy trail left by his quarry.

The theme of loneliness is personified in the Replicants, a life form so newly sentient that they are terrified by almost everything they experience. Unsure of what they are, unsure of what it is to be human (or if they even want to be human), they are lead into a mutiny in heaven (to coin a phrase from Nick Cave) by their leader Roy Batty. Roy enters a pilgrimage to his maker that ends in tears that he’s not even sure he’s making in the end. The tale that Blade Runner tells is so epic that it feels like a masterpiece from the future.

It wasn’t until 10 years later that I read the novel ‘Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?’ and learned that life in the eyes of the author, Philip K Dick, was both beautiful and terrifying… and far closer to the eventual mad landscape our current world has become.

To accompany the film, Marvel Comics released one of their best film adaptations (the other being the overlooked Time Bandits) with the help of Archie Goodwin and Al Williamson (of Flash Gordon fame). The comic was released as both a graphic novel and a mini-series.

For some confused reason, ERTL thought the movie was, like Star Wars, for kids and made a die-cast version of the spinner car used by the cops in the film.

A pair of video games were released as tie-ins, one for the Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum and Amstrad CPC 6128 by CRL Group PLC (1985) based on the music by Vangelis (due to licensing issues), and another action adventure PC game by Westwood Studios (1997).

Choose wisely which you hunt down on ebay first. Rumor has it that the Westwood Studios game is outstanding and years before it’s time.

The film is being released on a DVD much fancier than the digipak version I own for it’s 25th Anniversary. The rumor is that we’ll see a multi-disc box set including both 1982 original theatrical versions (U.S. domestic and uncensored International cuts), the 2006 remastered Director Cut’s, the remastered Final Cut, and bonus features, is scheduled for fall 2007. The Final Cut cleans up the print, sound mix and adds a few touches here and there to the overall product.

Further rumors state that Special Edition DVD is “finished” (due in autumn 2007) and will come as a five-disc set in a “Deckard briefcase” with state-of-the-art digital print.

Chances are, you are familiar with this movie, know it inside and out (with and without narration), but I urge you to look at the film with new eyes when it comes out in the fall.

Visit the Daily P.O.P. Shop!

The Five Doctors… kinda

 

How do you celebrate 20 years of a cultural phenomenon? This was the question posed to relative newcomer Producer John Nathan Turner in 1983 upon the 20th anniversary of the British institution that IS Doctor Who.

With a new Doctor in place played by ‘All Creatures Great & Small’ star Peter Davison, the series was doing quite well. JNT, as he is sometimes called, had re-introduced the Cybermen in ‘Earthshock’, a long missing villain of the program’s menagerie of villains, and hired the devilshly insane Anthony Ainley to revive the menacing and mincing Moriarty to the Doctor’s Holmes, the Master in Tom Baker’s final story, the mind bending/numbing ‘Logopolis’.

JNT had also exploded sometime unpopular companion Adric by slamming him into the Earth in the Creataceous period in a kind of alien bomb… it didn’t make much sense in context either but the result is what counts.

All in all, things were looking good.

So the work began on ‘The Five Doctors’.

But even the ramp-up for the celebratory program was saddled with problems

#1. Who will direct? A brief thought of obtaining the services of Waris Hussein (no relation to the modern day Red Skull Sadam) who had directed the first Doctor Who serial in 1963, ‘An Unearthly Child’.

That didn’t work out and Peter Moffatt (from ‘All Creatures’ who later to direct ‘The Two Doctors’ and ‘The Twin Dilemma’ with Colin Baker) was assigned at the last minute.

#2 Who will write the script? Fan favorite and all around genius Robert Holmes (creator of the Master, the Autons, the Sontarans… good stories such as ‘The Talons of Weng-Chiang‘) was assigned to write the script.

That fell through as well and script editor Terrance Dicks (of the ‘War Games’ and ‘State of Decay’ as well as penning all those Target Doctor Who books) filled in at the last minute.

#3 Will Tom Baker come back to the show? I’m not sure anyone even bothered to call him, to be honest.

No. In the end, he’s represented by footage from the unfinished story ‘Shada‘ by Douglas Adams (of ‘Hitchhiker’s Guide’ fame) and in the publicity photo above, a bronze-skinned wax dummy… with a ghastly grin that spooks the Hell out of the kids.

The end result is a story that is sometimes entertaining (Troughton and Pertwee both act as if they are the stars and by all rights could have carried the show if asked to return), and sections that are so dull that they are painful (for an anniversary blockbuster story, there’s lots of standing around, lumbering dialog and poor poor Peter Davison staring off into the distance with an odd fifty yard stare).

The story is more or less a disaster of events strung together with string and tape any child could see with gigantic plot-holes which turn a celebration of the program’s history into a head scratching event of ‘Well… hang on… that doesn’t make sense, does it?’

• Bringing the Master into the story as an agent of the Timelords is fun but silly nonsense. Surely there are more than two capable Timelords, right?
• Seeing the Master working with the Cybermen is interesting but in the end silly because he ‘double-crosses them’ in the most obvious way on the world’s smallest mine field.
• Bringing in a single Dalek only to defeat it by pushing it into a corner? Ditto.
• The Raston Warrior Robot is clever on paper but on the screen is a nothing but a nimble dancer in rather… flattering and distracting silver tights.
• Why does Jon Pertwee’s Doctor know of his upcoming regenerated form?
• Where did Sarah Jane’s K-9 come from?
• What’s with Troughton’s Doctor ‘I’m working for the Timelords’ schtick?
• What’s with the scene where Jamie and Zoe come back and the Doctor explains that they can’t remember him? Surely that just over-confuses and already confusing moment.
• Why is Zoe not in a cat suit?

But it’s all in good fun and just a silly romp through quarries with one last look back to the grand days of Doctor Who’s glory era.

In many ways, it mirrors the 10th anniversary story, the ‘The Three Doctors.’ It’s a silly and harmless run-around with a painfully flimsy plot. It’s a shame because the program at its best is incredibly inventive and brilliant television, producing some of the most imaginative episodes of science fiction on TV I’ve ever seen. ‘The Five Doctors’ isn’t really about anything and in the end is just a bit of flash and bang.

But sometimes you’re wanting that kind of thing, so it might work just fine.

Still, it could have been worse. (that’s Peter Davison in the Tomorrow People)

Or even this… (the 30th Anniversary 3-D epic Dimensions in Time)

Luckily there is a new brand of filmmaker out in the world, using the peak of technology to bring about a revised and refit version of the episodes.

We’ve seen Lucas rework Star Wars and now we have the young filmmaker farmergeddon71 to thank for the following story clips posted on youtube.

Enjoy.

Part One

Part Two