The FBI’s Most Unwanted 5.5: Mulder’s Mucho Macho Movie!

I don’t really have any memory of watching the fifth season of The X-Files first time around, so I think I went into Fight the Future (1998) as a lapsed follower rather than a slathering devotee, when it opened in UK cinemas… still, I find it hard to credit the creative staff’s assertion that this spin-off movie could be enjoyed by a virginal-viewer who hadn’t seen at least a couple of seasons of its parent show. In the same way that many of the monsters-of-the-week that M&S face are mutants blessed/cursed with preternatural powers, FtF is essentially a season finale that’s been injected with “action movie” growth hormones (and plenty money), and rampaged its way onto cinema screens. Obviously it’s not my place to tell you how to watch this (or any other) movie, but it really makes much more sense as a bridge between seasons five and six, rather than as a satisfying, self-contained experience in itself.

This is especially true if (like me) you’re feminist with a Scully fixation, because here she’s reduced to little more than Mulder’s spunky sidechick, and droopy damsel-in-distress. I feel like Jan Brady complaining about her sister Marcia here, but this movie really is all about “Mulder, Mulder, Mulder!” It’s his hunch that directs the erstwhile agents to the hospital in the opening scene, while everyone else is searching the FBI office opposite… he’s the one who finds the bomb… he’s the one who suspects the supposed disposal expert is up to no-good… he’s the one who guesses where the tanker trucks are heading… he’s the one who first realises bees are about to be released inside the dome… and ultimately he’s the one who gets to do all the tough-guy stunts and save the day. Meh. Mulder himself does pays some vague lip-service to the notion that Scully is a vital presence in his life, but the movie itself depicts her as little more than an annoying adjunct to his investigations. As I say, this would be a far more egregious error if it weren’t for the fact that David Duchovny’s prominence in the movie meant that Gillian Anderson got so much screentime to herself in the previous season… as well as episodes, such as “Bad Blood” (ep #5.12), where Mulder is the one who’s duped and doped by the villain, and needs to be rescued by her!

So, no fave Scully moments to note here, but I did find myself feeling strangely happy to see ‘The Cigarette-Smoking Man’ smirking his way on to the “cinema” screen. This isn’t something I’ve really had the time/space to talk about in previous posts, but I find it hard to believe that when they originally cast William B. Davis in the role, he was just supposed to be a silent Suit stood in the background, looking sinister but never actually saying anything! He has such a great voice, and such a great delivery, that it’s impossible to imagine the show without him now. He’s also become quite a sympathetic and amusing villain, now that they’ve fleshed out his backstory a bit… and I love the idea (implied in ep #4.07), that he’d happily give up the whole cloak-and-dagger conspiracy-stuff, if he could just find someone to publish his prose! He doesn’t really get a lot to do here either, but I enjoyed his appearances all the same, and I’m glad that the producers eventually realised the actor’s full potential.

Meanwhile, Martin Landau appeared as ‘Alvin Kurtzweil’ a paranoid doctor and part-time conspiracy theorist, who tips Mulder off to The Syndicate’s behind-the-scenes shenanigans… Terry O’Quinn made his second X-Files appearance, this time as self-sacrificing “Special Agent in Charge” ‘Darius Michaud’… Lucas Black had a small cameo as ‘Stevie’, the little boy who falls prey to a long-buried puddle of “black oil”*… and Gary Grubbs had an even smaller cameo as the ‘Fire Captain’ who comes to his rescue. As for female supporting players, well… Blythe Danner appeared as ‘Assistant Director Jana Cassidy’, a high-ranking official in the FBI who sits behind a table and says stuff at Scully… and Glenne Headly had a small-but-amusing cameo as the sceptical ‘Barmaid’ who cuts off Mulder’s booze supply. And, er, that’s pretty much the end of that list. Feh.

Beyond that, I did appreciate how much information this movie provided, regarding The Syndicate’s long-term aspirations and operations (although no one’s actually referred to them as “The Syndicate” onscreen yet… I’m just calling them that because the Wiki does). The soundtrack album even came with a hidden track, in which Chris Carter explained the show’s mythology, as he understood it up to that point… which is definitely worth a listen, if you can find a copy (look for a long-ass MP3 of The Dust Brothers’ cover of “The X-Files Theme”, and skip ahead to 10m30s). After all the obfuscation and inconsistency, it’s nice to have something solid to wrap my head around for once. Wonder how long that feeling will last…?

———–

* Can I just note here how silly it sounds to me every time someone says “black oil”? I know that there are many different kinds of oil, and they come in a variety of colours, but you say the word “oil” to most people, and they’ll picture the black stuff that comes out of wells (“Texas Tea”!), so it seems like rather a silly name to give it, considering how vague and non-threatening it sounds… like “clear water” or “brown wood” or something. And “Purity” just sounds like a celebrity perfume… oy!

Behind The Battle

I watched Battle: Los Angeles (2011) last October, and enjoyed it in a mindless time-filler sort of way, but haven’t thought much about it since… at least until this morning, when I found this adorable photograph posted on Michelle Rodriguez’s Facebook wall, showing her posing with co-star Joey King during a break from filming.

According to some vague notes I made in my journal at the time: “M-Rod didn’t show up until a good way in, and she didn’t get much to do once she was on-screen… but she did elicit a few intentional chuckles, so bless her for that.” Apparently I didn’t notice King, even though (as far as I can tell) her character manages to survive the shaky-cam slaughter and live to see another rubble-strewn day. As an underage civvy, it’s unlikely they’d bring her back for a sequel… unless the army gets so desperate and depleted  they draft her anyway? That could be kinda cool actually, because she looks pretty bad-ass here!

The FBI’s Most Unwanted 5: Snaps To Scully

[Contains a syringe of sinister green SPOILERS!!!]

According to Chris Carter’s master plan, the fifth season of The X-Files was going to be its last, with the TV show segueing into a series of big-screen adventures, beginning with Fight the Future… which was actually being filmed concurrently with this “final” season, resulting in a shorter-than-usual episode count, a couple of M&S-free flashback stories, and several solo Scully adventures. Hurrah!

The first of these, “Christmas Carol” (ep #5.6), finds our heroine being contacted by the ghost of her dead sister, who nudges her towards the discovery of a sickly girl (played by Lauren Diewold), who turns out to be Scully’s secret surrogate daughter! As with many of the clone/alien-bounty-hunter stories, I wasn’t really sure what was going on here… or why anyone would think it’s a good idea to genetically engineer a hybrid race of humanoids who release a deadly toxic gas whenever they bleed… but it gave Gillian Anderson another chance to do some top-class acting, and I’m always grateful for that. Then, in ep #5.10 (“Chinga”), the over-worked agent decides to take a well-deserved vacation, but foolishly chooses to venture into Stephen King’s horrorverse, via a small seaside town in Maine. Apparently Anderson was reprimanded for not taking this episode seriously, but I can’t blame her because the characterisation of Scully and Mulder (David Duchovny) here is the worst I’ve seen to date… don’t get me wrong, I thought it was a properly scary story in and of itself, but it stands-out as a pretty lousy X-Files episode. While I’m kvetching, the emphasis on Scully’s family life following her cancer-scare-and-subsequent-cure meant that we got to spend an awful lot of time with her big brother Bill, who managed to be obnoxiously wrong about pretty much everything all the time. Gah! Shut up, Bill!

On a more positive note, my favourite Scully moment of this season would have to be either her virtual-reality rumble (not tumble) with a gang of sexy nurses in ep #5.11 (“Kill Switch”, co-written by cyber-punk legend William Gibson), or her weary-working-gal sitcom antics in ep #5.12 (“Bad Blood”), adorably dumping an autopsied corpse’s guts into the scales while envying his recent pizza dinner! Bless her. There’s some top-notch flirting between her and Luke Wilson in this episode too (shame he turned out to be a secret-vampire!), and I loved the ultra-sceptical scoffing she did in Mulder’s subjective version of events. Come to think about it, that may well be my fave episode to date… it’s certainly the funniest comedy episode!

Besides the fancy guest writers, there were some pretty exciting supporting-players this season, so let’s get on with the laundry list: Diana Scarwid appeared in ep #5.8 (“Kitsunegari”) as ‘Linda Bowman’, the twin-sister of returning villain ‘Robert “The Pusher” Modell’ (Robert Wisden), who shares her sibling’s mind-control powers. After debuting as a non-speaking extra in a previous season, Sarah-Jane Redmond made her second X-Files appearance in ep #5.9 (“Schizogeny”) as ‘Karin Matthews’, a tormented therapist who projects her own history of abuse onto her patients, then uses her supernatural powers to execute their innocent fathers, and anyone else who gets in her way! Or maybe it’s her father’s supernatural power she uses, while possessed by his spirit? I’m not too clear on that point, sorry. By a rather spooky coincidence, this season also features separate supporting turns by three of the female stars of Ginger Snaps, two years before they worked together on that cult Canadian horror-comedy! First up was Katharine Isabelle, playing ‘Lisa Baiocchi’, one of the aforementioned therapist’s unfortunate patients… who ends up locked in a basement, along with the rotting remains of her father! Ick!

Jenny-Lynn Hutcheson appeared in ep #9.10 as ‘Polly Turner’, the petulant, possessed owner of an evil talking doll! This was Hutcheson’s third (and most prominent) X-Files appearance, before going on to appear in an episode of Millennium, and subsequently “retiring” from acting. Kristin Lehman appeared in ep #5.11 as ‘Esther Nairn’ (aka “Invisigoth”), a kicky computer hacker who is targeted for deletion by a sentient computer virus. I have to say, she’s my fave supporting character so far (despite her deplorable treatment of Scully), thanks to her strong look, impressive tech-skills and bad-ass attitude! It’s also kinda cool to see a goth-y hacker zapping people with a taser, almost a decade before ‘Lisbeth Salander’ (the eponymous “Girl with the Dragon Tattoo”) was born in print form. I could happily see Esther getting her own spin-off series, but if anyone tried it now they’d just be accused of plagiarising Stieg Larsson! As I said before, this episode also featured several sexy nurses, and chief among them was ‘Nurse Nancy, played by Kate Luyben … who has also had minor roles in Millennium, Harsh Realm, Shanghai Noon and True Blood. Veronica Cartwright made her debut in ep #5.13 (“Patient X”) as ‘Cassandra Spender’, a proud alien abductee and mother of the sceptical ‘Agent Spender’ (Chris Owens) (who continued to cock a snook at M&S for the remainder of the season). Besides roles in such genre classics as The Birds, Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978), Alien and Flight of the Navigator, the venerable Cartwright also appeared as Jack’s oblivious mother in an episode of Will & Grace.

Jane Perry appeared in ep #5.15 (“Travelers”) as ‘Dorothy Bahnsen’, the original custodian of the FBI’s X-Files, who originally filed the “Unsolved” cases under “U”, until she ran out of room and started shoving them into the “X” section instead! Perry appeared in the previous season as a ‘Day Care Operator’ whose big scene was relegated to the deleted section… and I really liked her character here, so it’s kind of a shame they didn’t use her for more flashback episodes. Lili Taylor appeared in ep #5.16 (“Mind’s Eye”) as ‘Marty Glenn’, a (metaphorically) spiky, sight-impaired street hustler, who shares a psychic link with a serial killer! Eep! Taylor specifically requested a role on the show, because she was such a big fan, and also an old drama school classmate of Anderson’s (DePaul University, Chicago). Despite that connection, most of her scenes are with Duchovny, but they have a great, sparky chemistry together, and Taylor even earned an Emmy nomination for her performance (before eventually landing a major role on Six Feet Under as ‘Lisa Kimmel’, Nate’s New Age-y girlfriend). Our second Snaps alumn, Emily Perkins, appeared in ep #5.17 (“All Souls”) as a set of estranged quadruplets, all born with polydactyl hands and feet, as well as various crippling health issues (and maybe wing-stubs too!). Perkins gives an typically intense performance here, and ably demonstrates her commitment to her craft… but it isn’t necessarily the best showcase for her as a walking-talking actress, since her multiple characters are all mute, and spend most of their screentime either scampering around in the dark, or frozen in a prayerful death-pose! Poor thing. Our third-and-final Snaps co-star, Mimi Rogers, debuted in ep #5.20 (erroneously titled “The End”) as ‘Special Agent Diana Fowley’, an ex-girlfriend of Mulder’s with similarly spooky interest, who ruffles Scully’s feathers. Tch!

On the manly side of things: Richard Belzer appeared in ep #5.3 (“Unusual Suspects”), as ‘Detective John Munch’, in a mind-boggling Lone Gunmen-centric crossover… made all the more inexplicable by the fact that his own show, Homicide, wasn’t even on the same network! Anthony Rapp appeared in ep #5.4 (“Detour”), as a (sadly non-singing) techie, who uses an infrared-camera-doodad to track a camouflaged forest creature. John O’Hurley appeared in ep #5.3 as the “mad scientist” creator of a hideous, disfigured Cher fan named “The Great Mutato”. John Pyper-Ferguson appeared in ep #5.6/7 as a police detective helping Scully to crack the whole alien-clone-spawn case. Chad Lindberg appeared in ep #5.9 as a feckless slacker whose father is dragged into a mud-pit by murderous tree roots. Luke Wilson and Brent Butt appeared in ep #5.12, as a hunky/goofy Texan sheriff, and short-lived coroner, respectively. Chris Owens made his first appearance as ‘Jeffrey Spender’ (boo! hiss!) in ep #5.13, although he had previously appeared as the ‘Young Cigarette Smoking Man’ and also the ‘The Great Mutato’. Versatile guy! Darren McGavin appeared in ep #5.15 as ‘Agent Arthur Dales’, one of Mulder’s unwitting predecessors. And the late Daniel von Bargen appeared in ep #5.12 (“The Pine Bluff Variant”) as a prominent member of an anti-government militia, who are planning a large-scale bio-terrorism attack… with Sam Anderson as the senior U.S. Attorney attempting to cover-up their shenanigans.

Mermaids Vs. Angels!

Now that I have a carrier-bag of X-Files DVDs to work through, I find I have a lot less patience when it comes to watching the random movies that crop up on TV. For instance, this weekend Ch5 were showing Mermaids (1990) and Michael (1996) as part of a mini marathon of Bob-Hoskins-Movies-With-One-Word-Titles-Beginning-With-The-Letter-”M”, but I couldn’t really settle into either one of them.

In theory Mermaids should be a must-watch, because the cast features two of my all-time biggest teen crushes, Winona Ryder and Christina Ricci… but their characters are saddled with so many quirks, that I found it very hard to care about them as people, rather than contrived fictional creations. And I had the same issue with Cher’s itinerant-mother-character that I did with the Mom in Perfect Man… I just think it’s cruel and selfish to uproot your kids every time an ill-advised romantic affair goes south, and I kinda hated her for it, from the outset. Of course, I watched this flick back in the VHS days, so I had a vague memory of the story getting more and more melodramatic as it went along, and frankly I just wasn’t in the mood for that, so I turned it off after about fifteen minutes or so. Still, it was fun to travel back to a time (however briefly) when Ryder was the cutest, coolest girl in the world. Sigh…

As for Michael, well… I’m still fascinated by movies about angels and demons, and I do like the idea of an archangel who’s running out of time on the material plane, and just wants to indulge in some earthly pleasures before he goes (including random violence!?), but the movie itself was a predictable, schmaltzy drag. To be fair, Andie MacDowell is pretty adorable in the leading role of a dog-trainer pretending to be an “angel expert” (for reasons I can’t be bothered going into)… still, the high point for me was when Joey Lauren Adams popped up as a chirpy pie waitress, and had a few cute scenes with Travolta, rocking a slight (presumably natural) Southern accent, and dancing around like a loved-up Dharma. Bless her. According to the credits, Carla Gugino played the honeymooning ‘Bride’ who drives the protags to the motel where they meet Adams’s character, but I didn’t recognise her at all when I watched it. That was long before she became famous though… and she only had a line or two at most.

[In case you were wondering, the low point (among many, many cringe-worthy moments) had to be Richard Schiff’s cameo as a wacky “Italian waiter” with a truly atrocious accent… I’m guessing that clip wasn’t on the show-reel he used when applying for a role on The West Wing!]

JLA News Flash!

Apparently Joey Lauren Adams will be appearing at Fandomfest Comic and Toy Expo (Louisville KY, USA), next weekend (26th-28th July)… although this was only announced a couple of days ago, and the website doesn’t say how long she’ll be there, or what she’ll be doing! Kevin Smith, Jason Mewes, Michael Rooker and Brian O’Halloran will also be popping in to the convention at various times… which would have meant a pretty good haul of autographs for my Mallrats script-book, if I wasn’t stuck on the wrong side of the Atlantic right now! Also, Gillian Anderson will be posing with the great unwashed for official photo ops, so once again my envy goes out to everyone attending… have fun, damn you!

Oh, while Googling I also found an adorable video on the Funny or Die site, with JLA reminiscing about some of her previous films (the good, the bad, and the ugly). It’s just a quick little thang, but very entertaining all the same.

An Experimental Girl

[Contains throaty torch-singin’ SPOILERS!!!]

Back in the day, I was a huge Kevin Smith fanboy… and while that obsession has dimmed over the years, I’m still extremely fond of his early “View Askew-niverse” flicks, for all their faults. To date Chasing Amy (1997) is the only film I’ve ever seen multiple times at the cinema, and I must have watched my VHS copy to death… but I was reticent to revisit it on DVD, because it’s so evocative of a very specific and emotive time in my life, and therefore not something I could just casually dip into for chuckles. Now, having finally grasped the nostalgia nettle, I find myself reflecting back on what the film meant to me then, and what it means to me now.

Back then I was still a student, barely out of my teens, and only just beginning to wrap my head around the concept of human sexuality in general. Since then I’ve come to believe that you can’t really fit people into rigid little boxes, when it comes to who they fancy, and who they fall in love with. I understand why, for the sake of political solidarity, it makes sense to insist that people are born either Gay or Straight, and can’t ever waiver… but I prefer to think of human beings as constantly evolving and questioning… and I think it’s dangerous to get stuck in these ruts, when life is so short, and there’s so little chance of finding True Love in the first place. I hadn’t actually heard of the “Kinsey Scale” until Juno Temple’s character used it as an ice-breaker in Kaboom, but I think it’s a far more useful point of reference, suggesting that sexuality is a continuum rather than two strictly defined forks, that never the twain shall hook-up. And while many may scoff at Amy’s story of a straight man apparently “turning” a lesbian, I’m prepared to take the character at her word when she explains that she’s looking for a Soulmate, and she doesn’t want to exclude fifty per cent of the population, either because society tells her it’s icky and wrong to date other women, or for fear that her sisters would think she was “selling out” and betraying “the cause”. All she wants is freedom of choice… even if her choice happens to be hetero. And I think Amy explores this choice in a very intelligent and engaging way, in-between all the “dick and fart jokes”!

It’s also a pretty compelling study of how the male ego can scupper a seemingly perfect relationship… poking at the primitive part of a man’s brain that demands a woman be totally and retroactively faithful to the image of purity and innocence that he’s projected on to her. ‘Holden’ (Ben Affleck) can happily accept that the new love of his life ‘Alyssa’ (Joey Lauren Adams) has slept with other women… but when he discovers that in her youth she also had threesomes with obnoxious male jocks, and even (according to urban myth) experimented with bestiality, he completely and irrevocably loses his shit. It should be enough for him to know that she’s finished with all that kinky stuff now, and is completely and utterly in Love with him. It should be, but it isn’t. He can barely even stand the sight of her, until a wiser friend talks him around… and even then, he goes and screws it all up by concluding that the solution to his problem is to propose an ill-conceived three-way with his homophobic flatmate, ‘Banky’ (Jason Lee), so they can all share in some freaky sexual shenanigans together, and he won’t feel so sheltered and square. Gah! Stupid, stupid man!

Incidentally, I was a little jarred by how much of an a-hole Banky is, after coming back to the film after such a long break. In those pre-My Name is Earl days, I used to think Lee was the coolest mothertrucker alive, and there’s no denying he gives a fantastically charismatic performance here… but his character throws hate-words like “f*ggot” around with such a cavalier disregard, I did find myself flinching along with the other characters (first Hooper, then Alyssa, then Holden) who call him on his abysmal attitude. I wouldn’t like to speculate on why he is the way he is, but I’m glad that both he and Holden seem to have found some inner-peace and maturity in the “one year later” epilogue.

As for the cast, well… the performance JLA gives here is straight-up Oscar-worthy, and everyone on the commentary agrees that she is an incredibly smart, sparky and generous actress… but this remains her most high-profile leading role to date (in a part that was written specifically for her by Smith after they worked together on Mallrats), and I can’t help thinking that her career may have been impeded by her voice. Personally, I love the way JLA sounds… I have a real soft-spot for “baby-voiced” actresses like Jennifer Tilly and Christine Cavanaugh, and could happily listen to them talk all day and night… but I do remember one Amy screening I was at where some frustrated a-hole behind me yelled for her character to “Shut! Up!”, during a scene where she’s wailing away at Holden. JLA admitted in an interview at the time that hers is “not a normal voice. It doesn’t fit into people’s preconceptions about what a woman’s voice should sound like… I’m sure it’s helped me get some roles, [b]ut Chasing Amy, I almost didn’t get. There was concern the voice would grate on some people… which some critics said it did.” And obviously those critics are entitled to their (stupid, wrong) opinions… so long as they don’t shout them out while I’m trying to watch the film, dammit! Vocal pitch aside, Alyssa remains one of my all-time “geek-girl” crushes… a smart, funny, sexy girl, who writes her own songs and draws her own comic books! That’s the jackpot, baby!

Alyssa aside, Amy is a bit of a sausage-fest, but I have to give a shout-out to Guinevere Turner, who plays the ex-band-mate who calls our heroine up on to the stage, for her big musical number. After all these years, I’ve only just discovered that Turner was also the screenwriter responsible for such films as American Psycho, The Notorious Bettie Page and BloodRayne (although, as noted in my post on that movie, she can’t be held accountable for the quality of the final product there). Not only did Smith name a character in Mallrats after her, he also stated that the whole plot of Amy was inspired by a brief scene from an earlier movie of hers, Go Fish. Turner was also the first person outside the View Askew offices to read an early draft of this script, so she could offer her notes as a real-life woman/lesbian/screenwriter.

One of the many benefits of watching this film on DVD rather than VHS is that I also got to enjoy a deleted scene featuring Illeana Douglas as Alyssa’s resentful ‘Roommate’. It’s easy to see why it was cut, because the way her character rags on Holden is pretty damn on-the-nose… but she does look mighty fine while she’s doing it, so I’m glad it was preserved for posterity all the same.

Note: I also have to salute Smith himself for the way he talks about JLA on the commentary track. The two of them were dating during the making of the film, but had broken up by the time it came to release the “home video” version, so there are several self-depreciating jokes about his broken heart, but he only has the most complimentary things to say about her performance, and her commitment to the project. Bless.

The FBI’s Most Unwanted 4: Naah-Ram-Ew!

[Contains icky inbred SPOILERS!!!]

It looked like Scully was going to get a relatively easy ride in the fourth season of The X-Files… right up until she was diagnosed with terminal cancer, that is. Most normal people would hear this devastating news from a sympathetic medical professional… but Scully ain’t “normal people”, so instead she’s tipped off by a tumour-eating mutant who’s looking to nosh on her noggin’! To be fair, her fate was foreshadowed in the previous season, when she encountered a support group who were suffering from the same fatal side-effects of their abductions. And it does give Gillian Anderson a lot more to work with on the performance-front, picking up an Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series for ep #4.14 (“Memento Mori”), in which she and Mulder (David Duchovny) investigate the truth behind her condition. I was surprised to discover that the episode in which she goes on a boozy, rebellious bender (ep #4.13, “Never Again”) was originally scheduled to come before the episode in which she first learns of her tumour (ep #4.12, “Leonard Betts”), which would have lent far less weight and meaning to her distracted demeanour and angsty “acting out”… so thank goodness they swapped the running order to suit the Super Bowl! Despite the traumatic impetus behind it, I loved seeing Scully’s inner “bad girl” come out to play… and particularly enjoyed the (surprisingly sexy) scene where she gets a psychotropic tattoo of an Ouroboros on her back. Shame we didn’t get to hear what the tat had to say for itself, though…

Noteworthy supporting players (of either gender) were even thinner on the ground this season… although the opening episode (“Herrenvolk”) did introduce Mulder’s shiny-new-and-secretly-evil informant ‘Marita Covarrubias’, played by Laurie Holden. Aside from her turn as ‘Cybil Bennett’, the cute motorcycle cop in the Silent Hill movie, Holden is probably best known to genre fans as ‘Andrea’ (aka “The Stupidest Woman Alive”), from The Walking Dead. Kristen Cloke appeared in ep #4.5 (“The Field Where I Died”) as ‘Melissa Riedal-Ephesian’, a suicide-cult member with multiple personalities, who may also be the reincarnation of a woman Mulder was in love with during the American Civil War! Apparently Cloke is the wife of the episode’s co-writer, Glen Morgan, and the part was tailored specifically to showcase her talents as a mimic… and I have to say, I did enjoy seeing her switch from persona-to-persona, even when it started getting a little silly (the deleted scene featuring another two personalities would really have been pushing the viewer’s tolerance, although it’s a fun sequence in itself). I also loved the idea that souls not only reincarnate, but also end up being drawn to the other souls they’ve grown fond of in previous incarnations, taking on different roles and dynamics, like partners in an endless, cosmic dance! Shame the actual story around all of this philosophising was a bit of a clunker.

O-Lan Jones appeared in ep #4.6 (“Sanguinarium”) as ‘Rebecca Waite’, a nurse at a cosmetic surgery clinic who tries to use the power of Wicca to protect her patients from an evil, face-stealing surgeon. Aside from cameos in Tim Burton’s Edward Scissorhands and Mars Attacks! (where she looked much cuter than she does here), Jones also cropped up in Natural Born Killers, and boasts an early credit as ‘Pretty Girl’ in The Right Stuff. Carly McKillip appeared in ep #4.10 (“Paper Hearts”), as ‘Caitlin Ross’, a little girl who’s kidnapped by a serial-child-killer who’s been released from prison into Mulder’s (rather lax) custody, in the hope that he can lead the agent to the remains of his sister. I thought it was an interesting idea to suggest that Samantha may have actually been kidnapped/killed by a human criminal, and that Mulder had simply dreamt up all the alien stuff as a coping mechanism… but he’s already seen so much proof of extra-terrestrial life by this point (not to mention all the clones of Samantha he’d met only a few weeks earlier!), that it doesn’t make a lot of sense that Mulder would be so easily derailed by this creep’s mind-games. I loved all the stuff with the laser-light though… that was a great effect! Apparently McKillip played the title role in a Canadian sitcom called Alice, I Think, as well as the daughter of Jeff Fahey’s character in a 90s action-drama called The Marshal. She’s also the co-founder of country music duo One More Girl, with her sister Britt McKillip (of Dead Like Me fame), and the gals will be appearing at various festivals across Canadia this summer, so check ‘em out, y’all!

Simi Mehta appeared in ep #4.11 (“El Mundo Gira”) as ‘Gabrielle Buente’, the conflicted cousin of a suspected murderer who is slowly turning into a “Chupacabra”-like monster. I was quite enjoying this episode up until the closing scene which claimed that because illegal immigrants are (metaphorically) invisible to most everyday Americans, they somehow remain (literally?) invisible to passers-by, even when they’ve turned into freaky supernatural creatures with bumpy grey heads, stood by a busy road trying to thumb a lift! Yeah… um, no. I thought Mehta was damn pretty, and put in a very lively and passionate performance… but she hasn’t done any acting since the 90s, and the only other big credit on her resume is a two episode cameo on Get Real, a short-lived comedy-drama which marked the screen debut of Anne Hathaway (two years before The Princess Diaries). Bona fide film-star Jodie Foster lent her voice to a psychotic talking tattoo named ‘Betty’, in ep #4.13… but never actually showed her famous face onscreen. As noted in my first post, Foster’s character in Silence of the Lambs was the original inspiration for Scully, so it’s a shame we didn’t get to see these two women sharing a scene together. According to legend, Quentin Tarantino was offered the chance to direct this episode, but was prevented from doing so by the Director’s Guild of America. Spoilsports!

Ironically (?), while Foster was holed up in a recording studio, esteemed voice-over artist Christine Cavanaugh made a rare on-screen appearance in ep #4.20 (“Small Potatoes”) as ‘Amanda Nelligan’, the adorably addled mother of a newborn baby with a wagging tail, who claims the father was a Jedi Knight named “Luke Skywalker”. Cavanaugh is best known for lending her ear-candy voice to such beloved children’s characters as ‘Babe’ the eponymous sheep-pig, ‘Chuckie Finster’ in Rugrats, and ‘Dexter’ in Dexter’s Laboratory. Sadly she retired from the business in 2001, for unspecified personal reasons, but left a hefty legacy of laughter behind her, for future generations of children (and adults) to enjoy. And finally, Vanessa Morley made her last credited appearance as ‘Young Samantha Mulder’ in ep #4.23 (“Demons”), via a series of trippy, drug-induced flashbacks . She may not have been the first (or last) actress to play the role, but she was the longest serving Samantha of any age, and she played some of the most memorable scenes with the grown-up Mulder, both in the past and the present day. Apparently she also got stung during the scene in ep #4.1 with the killer bees, inspiring Anderson to present her with an award for “bravery beyond the call of duty” made by the props department! Bless.

On the manly side of things: Tucker Smallwood appeared in ep #4.2 (“Home”), as ‘Sheriff Andy Taylor’… and true to its reputation, that episode really is all kinds of f*cked up! Rubén Blades appeared in ep #4.11 as an INS agent who helps M&S track down a suspected murderer/Chupacabra played by Raymond Cruz. Paul McCrane appeared in ep #4.12 (“Leonard Betts”) as an EMT with the ability to regrow any damaged body-part… except the hair on his balding head, apparently! And finally, former series writer Darin Morgan appeared in ep #4.20 as a shape-shifting custodian, who impregnates a group of local women by impersonating their (infertile) husbands. It’s probably one of my favourite eps of the season… partly for Cavanaugh’s cameo, and partly for the way Morgan’s character comes to pity Mulder after taking a walk in his shoes (and handsome face) for a couple of days!

Note: The final episode ends with Scully declaring that a distraught Mulder committed suicide off-screen. I suspect she may be fibbing.

Fan Disservice (A Slight Reprise)

[Contains prop guns loaded with live SPOILERS!]

For the last few weeks, CW has been burning off the six remaining episodes of Cult… and, because I’m a masochistic completist, I’ve been making myself watch the damn thing through to the bitter end. It was quite bracing, after the post-cancellation hiatus, to be smacked in the face with the show’s unique brand of irritating and insulting stupidity again… but I’ve already ranted about that at length, so let’s move on to fresh stupidities, shall we?

The most laughable element in retrospect is that the season’s Big Bad villain, didn’t really need to be a villain at all… it would have been perfectly possible for him to achieve his ultimate goal (to find out what happened to his crazy cult-leading father) through peaceful, legal means, considering he had a substantial amount of personal wealth, dashing good looks and ample charm, not mention a lifelong friend serving as a police detective, willing to go above and beyond the call of duty to help his cause. I mean, the supposed “heroes” of the series were able to uncover all sorts of clues regarding what happened to the cult in a couple of weeks, and they were F*CKING IDIOTS!!! So, there really wasn’t any need whatsoever for all the killing, lying and kidnapping. Guy could have just set up the “True Believers” club as a totally legit, public enterprise to help him identify the best puzzle-solvers among the TV show’s audience, had them sign a watertight confidentiality agreement, then set them to work solving the mystery… either with the aid of private detectives or the local police department (who really should have been investigating the case themselves, back in the day). If he was half as smart and well organised as he seemed to be, and wasn’t just a badly written villain on a crappy TV show, he would have seen how counter-productive and wasteful all the innocent bloodshed, brianwashing and abductions were, right from the start… especially since he inevitably found himself getting attacked by his own disenchanted followers, once the truth came out. And what possessed him to use his daughter to seduce sundry men along the way, I’ll never know! Gah!

The only bright spot in these final six episodes was a brief scene in which Alona Tal’s actress character (‘Marti Gerritsen’) was working out with a personal trainer, learning some self-defence moves after her nasty run-in with a stalker. Tal looks properly fit, and would probably make a pretty kick-ass action heroine… which makes it all the more infuriating that the faux-show-within-a-show wasn’t the real show to begin with, so we could see her taking down some perps on the regular!

In conclusion: The finale’s cliff-hanger, wherein it’s revealed that the first cult was actually killed off by an even bigger, meaner and more mysterious cult, who covet an ancient artefact resembling a TV remote control, makes me very, very glad this show was cancelled, and will never ever, ever, ever return. In the immortal words of Liz Lemon: Shut it down!

The Big Bang Balance

[Contains “Disney Princess” cos-playing SPOILERS!]

Here in the UK, the sixth season of The Big Bang Theory came to a cliff-hanging close last night… leaving me to ponder what the series would be like if Leonard actually did get eaten by sharks on his expedition to the North Sea. As far as I’m concerned, promoting Melissa Rauch and Mayim Bialik to the main cast was the smartest thing the showrunners have done since the series started, and now that Raj is finally able to speak to them without an alcoholic crutch (something I would have tackled at the end of the first season, but never mind), I can’t help wishing that the producers could correct the gender balance, and give the ladies equal screentime.

If I were the King of TV, I’d move Penny and Amy into the main apartment, give Sheldon the smaller apartment, while Howard & Bernadette continue to live together, and Raj maintains his swinging bachelor pad. I’d also make the show more like a nerdier version of Friends, with each character having their own solo adventures away from the main group, then all meeting up together again for hugs and take-out. Sadly, I’m sure Johnny Galecki (who’s a very good actor, saddled with a very boring character) has a cast-iron contract and no desire to be unemployed, so this is unlikely to happen anytime soon. Boo!

Loopy

[Contains motorcade-cruisin’ SPOILERS!]

Last Saturday, BBC2 were showing In the Loop (2009), so I thought it might be fun to watch it again, to see how it compared to writer/director Armando Iannucci’s subsequent HBO sitcom Veep.

In truth, aside from his signature style of sweary, semi-improvised political satire, they’re actually very different animals. The only obvious duplication, character and casting wise*, is Anna Chlumsky as ‘Liza Weld’, the ambitious assistant to a senior female politico, whose con-heavy paper on the consequences of launching an impulsive invasion of Iraq draws her into the (metaphorical) crossfire between the Hawks and Doves in D.C. Aside from a few great quips and put-downs, she also gets to pull some of her trademark funny faces… my favourite being her look of confused, cordial terror when James Gandolfini’s ‘Lieutenant General Miller’ waves at her through a transparent office wall while taking a meeting with her boss.

Speaking of whom, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Diplomacy ‘Karen Clark’, is played by the mighty Mimi Kennedy (aka Dharma’s Mom!), and may well be one of the most honourable and honest characters to ever appear in the Iannucci-verse! Right from the get-go she lays out her opposition to the invasion, and tries her best to avert it through the official channels open to her… and when her peace-keeping efforts fail, she decisively tenders her (unsolicited) resignation. No back-stabbing or back-pedalling, no game playing, no fudging the facts, no weasel words… just straight-up, undiluted integrity and idealism. Bless her. Since many of the scenes were improvised, I’d assume that Clark’s integrity was influenced by Kennedy’s own off-screen activism… and she plays the part beautifully, wringing laughs from her character’s heart-breaking earnestness, even when she’s bleeding from the gums! “I’m not a monster, Liza!” [While trawling for images, I found a short and sweet interview (at a blog called Three Imaginary Girls), in which Kennedy and Chlumsky discuss the filming process, and their onscreen double-act]

On the British side of things, Thick of It veterans Olivia Poulet and Joanna Scanlan score a couple of solid cameos, while Gina McKee gets to deliver one of my fave lines in the entire film, suggesting that their party’s terrifying Director of Communications, ‘Malcolm Tucker’ (Peter Capaldi), constructed his equally wrathful protégé ‘Jamie’ in a lab out of “bits of old psychopath”. Hee!

As I’ve said before, this style of satire is a little too cynical and acidic for me to love it outright, but I can still admire the eloquence and intelligence behind it…  and there are a lot of very funny jokes and quotable zingers to be enjoyed here… even if the real-life shenanigans that inspired the script are so damn depressing…

———–

* Besides the presence of a tall, gawky Jonah-esque junior staffer, named ‘Chad’ (Zach Woods), I mean.