Cancelling Lodge 49 will go down as one of AMC's most regretted mistakes. It's a delightful multi-faceted series that I'd been meaning to give more attention to here. It's just hard to sum up what a charmingly esoteric experience it is if you've not seen it. (The Prague Paradox by L. Marvin Metz is off the flippin' chain!) Early ads focused on the superficial The Big Lebowski similarities so I didn't expect it to grow on me exponentially with each episode. The ensemble cast & their dialogue sparkled. It's about alchemy, economics, & the friends we made along the way. I was pleasantly surprised it wasn't cancelled after its inaugural season. The second season was even more superlative, featuring a dumpling eating contest between Sonya Cassidy & Paul Giamatti! Apparently AMC only wants to be The Walking Dead Channel now. Please join me in campaigning alternate outlets to pick up Lodge 49 for a third season! I won't let the cancellation bear deprive the world of its idiosyncrasy!
Reviews
3 Reviews
The Tick
(2016–2019)
Amazon's The Tick, Where Is Thy "SPOON?"
2 September 2016
Warning: Spoilers
The first attempt at a live action The Tick was underwhelming because it skewed more towards sitcom for lack of a budget for superhero hijinks. Amazon's The Tick is disappointing in the opposite direction. This show takes itself way too seriously. It feels like yet another standard superhero show(Can you believe we're now at a point where we've got so many to choose from?)that just happens to have the Tick in it. So far this show is just playing superhero tropes straight rather than comically sending them up. Where has its absurdist satire gone?
Peter Serafinowicz puts in a good performance the titular blue titan, but he has the legacies of Townsend Coleman & Patrick Warburton against him. Some of his delivery seemed too fast & sarcastic. He still gets the best dialogue, but the episode was so gritty that Tick's ramblings felt tacked on rather than the zenith of its kooky spirit. The scene where bullets bounce off him was cute & a welcome action upgrade from the last adaptation, but it still wasn't enough. Whereas the previous live action Tick costume missed the built-in mask, this one is missing his distinctive lantern jaw. A jaw prosthesis really should've been part of the costume to give Serafinowicz the most heroic visage possible. For a comic book character with so few details, why can they never get his face perfect?
Arthur is more of the central character, & he is a depressing PTSD mess after watching his dad die during a super-battle. Now he's investigating a sinister conspiracy by the killer too. Arthur doesn't need a tragic origin! (The Tick comics weren't quite as upbeat as the cartoon, but Oedipus getting non-fatally stabbed was its darkest moment.) It was more novel when Arthur just decided to wear a costume without a personal tragedy motivating him. He doesn't even choose the moth suit; the Tick foists it upon him.
How did the Tick know were Arthur lives? One theory is that the Tick is a figment of Arthur's imagination made into an independent corporeal being like Abbey from Misfits. This would be like Dr. John Watson imagining Sherlock Holmes into existence. This is suggested by a blue nightlight talking to Arthur in the Tick's voice, although it could just be a dream instead of a childhood flashback. Creator Ben Edlund has directly called the Tick a parasite, so maybe this version has the power to psychically leech onto Arthur's mind instead? Or perhaps there is no explanation because it's a continuity error? The mystery of the Tick is going to be a big piece of Edlund's proposed multi-year master-plan, but I'm not convinced we needed a massive reinterpretation of the Tick to begin with since a complicated backstory doesn't subvert genre expectations. I'm fond of "The Luny Bin" where it reveals that instead of being a guy in a costume with an origin story, the Tick is simply the Tick. I'd be delighted if that was what these possible red herrings were leading up to, but I imagine everybody else would feel cheated.
If anything, the first episode was too tonally consistent. Director Wally Pfister, cinematographer to Christopher Nolan's pretentious Batman movies, grounded everything so that even Edlund's jokes fell inert. The Terror's ship looking like a flying Titans' Tower isn't inherently hysterical, especially when its appearance is surrounded by multiple traumatic homicides. The Terror remains a mean old coot (Jackie Earle Haley is always fantastic), but merely blinding Flag Force Five & shooting them in their faces felt so pedestrian. They missed a golden opportunity for giving them a ludicrous death that you could only get from a superhero comedy. Shooting your enemies in the face may be effective, but it's not whimsical escapism. It comes off like cynically laughing at comic books rather than laughing with them. The only genuinely funny part in the entire episode was when The Terror stole Arthur's ice cream because I am a terrible person.
This new version of The Tick definitely does things differently than the prior adaptations, but in doing so it feels homogenized. It has better production values than the Tick's last TV outing but with even less of its unique charm. Just because Ben Edlund can make a dour version of The Tick doesn't mean it's worth paying to watch it as an ongoing series.
Peter Serafinowicz puts in a good performance the titular blue titan, but he has the legacies of Townsend Coleman & Patrick Warburton against him. Some of his delivery seemed too fast & sarcastic. He still gets the best dialogue, but the episode was so gritty that Tick's ramblings felt tacked on rather than the zenith of its kooky spirit. The scene where bullets bounce off him was cute & a welcome action upgrade from the last adaptation, but it still wasn't enough. Whereas the previous live action Tick costume missed the built-in mask, this one is missing his distinctive lantern jaw. A jaw prosthesis really should've been part of the costume to give Serafinowicz the most heroic visage possible. For a comic book character with so few details, why can they never get his face perfect?
Arthur is more of the central character, & he is a depressing PTSD mess after watching his dad die during a super-battle. Now he's investigating a sinister conspiracy by the killer too. Arthur doesn't need a tragic origin! (The Tick comics weren't quite as upbeat as the cartoon, but Oedipus getting non-fatally stabbed was its darkest moment.) It was more novel when Arthur just decided to wear a costume without a personal tragedy motivating him. He doesn't even choose the moth suit; the Tick foists it upon him.
How did the Tick know were Arthur lives? One theory is that the Tick is a figment of Arthur's imagination made into an independent corporeal being like Abbey from Misfits. This would be like Dr. John Watson imagining Sherlock Holmes into existence. This is suggested by a blue nightlight talking to Arthur in the Tick's voice, although it could just be a dream instead of a childhood flashback. Creator Ben Edlund has directly called the Tick a parasite, so maybe this version has the power to psychically leech onto Arthur's mind instead? Or perhaps there is no explanation because it's a continuity error? The mystery of the Tick is going to be a big piece of Edlund's proposed multi-year master-plan, but I'm not convinced we needed a massive reinterpretation of the Tick to begin with since a complicated backstory doesn't subvert genre expectations. I'm fond of "The Luny Bin" where it reveals that instead of being a guy in a costume with an origin story, the Tick is simply the Tick. I'd be delighted if that was what these possible red herrings were leading up to, but I imagine everybody else would feel cheated.
If anything, the first episode was too tonally consistent. Director Wally Pfister, cinematographer to Christopher Nolan's pretentious Batman movies, grounded everything so that even Edlund's jokes fell inert. The Terror's ship looking like a flying Titans' Tower isn't inherently hysterical, especially when its appearance is surrounded by multiple traumatic homicides. The Terror remains a mean old coot (Jackie Earle Haley is always fantastic), but merely blinding Flag Force Five & shooting them in their faces felt so pedestrian. They missed a golden opportunity for giving them a ludicrous death that you could only get from a superhero comedy. Shooting your enemies in the face may be effective, but it's not whimsical escapism. It comes off like cynically laughing at comic books rather than laughing with them. The only genuinely funny part in the entire episode was when The Terror stole Arthur's ice cream because I am a terrible person.
This new version of The Tick definitely does things differently than the prior adaptations, but in doing so it feels homogenized. It has better production values than the Tick's last TV outing but with even less of its unique charm. Just because Ben Edlund can make a dour version of The Tick doesn't mean it's worth paying to watch it as an ongoing series.
Green Eyes
(I) (2013)
Strong debut
9 September 2015
Green Eyes is a strong debut from director Jack Gattanella. It's best described as a moody relationship psychodrama. This is a tale of mental disorders, infidelity, drug abuse, death, and grief in a non-linear format. In addition to the solid cinematography, he gets riveting performances from up & coming thespians including Audrey Lorea, Tom Wesson, Zack Abramowitz, and Dasha Kittredge. It'd be absurd to expect the same production values as million dollar Hollywood movie, but this indie film makes the most of its more limited resources. After such a promising debut, it'd be great to see Gattanella have a larger budget to experiment with in his second feature.
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