Quasi-PunkWatch: Kolivia Taylor Dudley

Watching this week’s episode of The Mindy Project (ep #1.16) , I couldn’t help being distracted by the toothsome tattoo artist who was inking up special guest star Seth Rogen’s shoulder. It was such a fleeting appearance I wouldn’t normally consider it worth blogging about, except for two things (no, not her boobs):

1) The actress playing the role was listed in the end credits as “Kolivia Taylor Dudley”, which got me wondering… “Who’s called ‘Kolivia’?” Well, not *her*, for one! Apparently it was just a typo, because her actual, factual name is Olivia… and she’s previously appeared in Don’t Trust the B—- in Apartment 23, Chernobyl Diaries and CSI: Miami. 

2) As far as I can tell from the other photos available online, the tats she sports in this episode were all fake… which seems a little weird considering how small the role actually was (she had two lines, and one of them was “Next!”). Seems like it would have been quicker and easier to hire an actress who came with her own ink already embedded. Not that I begrudge Miss Dudley the work… I was just a little disappointed, is all.

Dial “T-800”, Toll Free!

[Contains organic SPOILERS layered over a steel endoskeleton]

Back in my school days, I was obsessed with Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991), and I can remember drawing countless cartoons of “Arnie” strolling around being a bad-ass borg… although these days, I’m more interested in the movie’s representation of  ‘Sarah Connor’ as an icon of ass-kicking “Amazon feminism”. When Terminator Salvation was released in 2009, Linda Hamilton (the one true Sarah) suggested that the series “was perfect with two films. It was a complete circle, and it was enough in itself.” After all the hype we’d had in the previous flicks about ‘John Connor’s importance to the future of the human race, I was all in favour of them continuing the series by depicting his post-apocalyptic rise to glory… it’s just a shame that what they came up with was so blandly, blatantly, and proudly derivative of its predecessors. Apparently T4’s director, Mr. McG, made his creative team watch the first three flicks over and over again, so they could cannibalise/“homage” the most iconic and eye-catching sequences wholesale… and I strongly object to that, both as a writer, and a former fan of the franchise.

The highlight of the movie for me was probably Moon Bloodgood’s character ‘Blair Williams’… although, on reflection, she was really more of a tough-talking damsel-in-distress than an ass-kicking Amazon. There was also a really odd little scene where she’s planning to camp overnight near a seemingly abandoned garage with secret sleeper-nator ‘Marcus’, and she says to him: “Find something we can burn. I’ll be at my base tomorrow.” I’ve been having trouble with my digibox lately, so it’s possible there was a glitch in the recording that made it skip a word or two, to create this nonsensical, non-sequitur… but the subtitles seemed pretty certain that was what she said. Quite a head-scratcher. Despite that, I thought Bloodgood gave a very committed and convincing performance, in an underwritten role.

The lowlight of the movie would have to be Jadagrace Berry’s character ‘Star’. The movie’s Wikipedia page claims that the tyke was rendered mute by the trauma of living in a post-apocalyptic world, but that her condition has “given her the unnatural ability to sense when a SkyNet machine is approaching.” Which would be pretty darn useful, if she were actually able to verbalise this early-warning in some way. In the case of the attack that leads to her capture, all she does is silently stare off into the distance, a couple of seconds before a giant robot rips through the roof! So, not much of a “heads up” there, really. She spends the majority of the movie being coddled and rescued… and since she doesn’t have a single word of dialogue, they could’ve easily replaced her character with a cute puppy or an antique vase! How Jadagrace managed to score a starring role in her own TV series off the back of such an inauspicious debut, I’ll never know… but snaps to her for that.

I was also disappointed by how little screentime Helena Bonham Carter got as ‘Dr. Serena Kogan’… although, for the sake of plot plausibility, it might have been better if she’d had even fewer scenes. Why SkyNet felt the need to resurrect Marcus after he’d completed his unwitting mission, and then use Kogan’s digitised avatar to explain its entire scheme to him, I’m not really sure. It makes a certain amount of sense when an arrogant human villain feels the need to crow about their cleverness to the hero, but I don’t see why a ruthless sentient computer would waste valuable resources on healing and motivating a potential enemy-within! Was hubris programmed into its matrix too? Jinkies!

Necrophiliads

Watching ITV2 last night, I was disturbed to discover that the late Audrey Hepburn had been digitally disinterred to shill for Galaxy chocolate, twenty years after her death. Shudder. The soul-crushing clip stars a preternaturally young A-Hep sat on a bus that’s stuck in a traffic jam (presumably on its way to the Uncanny Valley), where she flirts with some generic tool-bag in an open-top sports car, while cheerfully tucking into the chocolate bar her grave-robbers forced into her cold, dead, colourised hand. Shudder. There are several moments where her movements become quite stiff and mechanical, suggesting that she’s either an evil robot duplicate, or a character from an old Resident Evil cut-scene. Shudder. Oh, and obviously this abomination is accompanied by “Moon River”, because if you’re going to piss on someone’s legacy you may as well go the whole hog, right? Gah!

Apparently A-Hep’s sons authorised this posthumous degradation, claiming in a press release: “Our mother often spoke about her love of chocolate and how it lifted her spirit so we’re sure she would have been proud of her role as the face of Galaxy. The advert perfectly captures her playful spirit and we hope audiences enjoy it as much as they enjoyed her movies.” Feh.

For the record, Cadbury’s Dairy Milk tastes better, and it’s fair trade, and their factory isn’t built on an old Hollywood burial ground, so I highly recommend that everyone buy that instead.

“No Life Without Wife”

Despite the obvious differences in genres, locations, and time periods, it’s impossible to watch Gurinder Chadha’s Bride and Prejudice (2004) without comparing it to other works inspired by, or adapted from, Jane Austen’s novel. I think Bridget Jones’s Diary probably did a better job of modernising the story for British audiences, by streamlining the cast of characters, and grounding the story in a more relatable milieu… but still, there’s a lot to be said for the exotic globe-trotting that occurs in Chadha’s version, as the heroine follows her ‘Darcy’ from Amritsar to L.A., via Goa, London and the Grand Canyon!

In this iteration, ‘Elizabeth Bennet’ is recast as a feisty Indian gal named ‘Lalita Bakshi’, played by Aishwarya Rai… while Darcy is an arrogant American hotelier, played by Martin Henderson. Personally, I didn’t think he was nearly dickish enough in the earlier scenes… but then, I’m judging him in comparison to the previous Darcy’s I’ve seen on screen, rather than as a character in himself. Likewise, his nice-but-dim chum, ‘Mr. Bingley’ (aka ‘Mr. Balraj’), is a little too bright and bold here… although I did enjoy seeing Naveen Andrews busting out some dance moves, and playing a lighter comedy role for once. Shame he didn’t have more scenes, really.

Meanwhile, the supporting Bennet sisters have been whittled down to three Bakshis: ‘Jaya’ (Jane), played by Namrata Shirodkar… ‘Maya’ (Mary), played by Meghna Kothari (aka Meghnaa)… and Lakhi Bakshi (Lydia Bennet), played by Peeya Rai Chowdhary. Aishwarya Rai may have been voted the Most Beautiful Woman in the World™, but I have to say I found Lalita a little too vanilla for my tastes, so this time around my favourite sister was Maya… mostly because of the show-stopping, scene-stealing “Cobra Dance” she does to entertain the family’s astonished house guests! They all react as if it’s terribly embarrassing (or just plain terrible), but I thought it was fantastic. Certainly more impressive than Lalita’s acoustic guitar-playing on the beach, anyway. Oh, and Darcy’s younger sister ‘Georgie’ was played by Alexis Bledel… but she’s a lot less likeable in this version than she is in the others, as she inadvertently mocks Lalita’s “gold-digging” mother, without knowing they’re related. Oopsie!

Overall, I thought this was a very colourful, cheerful musical-comedy, that managed to inject some adrenaline into an over-familiar story… and even if you don’t enjoy the songs or the jokes, you have to admit the scenery is superb!

Lecker!

I missed the announcement at the time, but earlier this month Amara Karan’s new film, Jadoo, had its “World Premiere Screening” at the 63rd Berlin International Film Festival. Fancy.

Jadoo is set in Leicester, and tells the story of two estranged Indian brothers, ‘Raja’ and ‘Jagi’, who run rival restaurants, on opposite sides of the same road! A decade earlier they came to blows over the family cookbook, and ended up ripping it in half… with one brother taking the starters, and the other taking the main courses. Ever since then they’ve been trying to top each other, despite the fact they’re incapable of cooking the perfect meal without the complete set of recipes. Enter Raga’s daughter, ‘Shalini’ (Karan), who hopes to reunite them in time to cadge a fancy banquet for her upcoming wedding… but can the two brothers bury the hatchet, without chopping each other’s fingers off in the process? I guess we’ll just have to wait for the film’s UK release in March to find out…

Sex(y) Therapy

I admit Anger Management isn’t the funniest sitcom on the air… in fact it can be downright painful at times… but the cast does include some very talented and charming actresses, so I feel compelled to keep watching regardless. And this week’s episode (2.7) very nearly justified the show’s entire existence with a couple of dream sequences in which Noureen DeWulf’s character, ‘Lacey’, fantasised about hooking up with Selma Blair’s character, ‘Kate’. I know, I know… this sort of lipstick lesbianism is just a cheap, exploitative ploy to attract viewers by appealing to their baser instincts… but it totally works!

Apparently FX have pre-ordered a mind boggling run of NINETY new episodes of this show…  and while I’m glad that Blair and her cast-mates have a steady gig to keep the wolf from their doors for the next few years, I can’t help wishing Guillermo del Toro would hurry up and complete the Hellboy trilogy already. I wanna know how the story ends and I wanna see her set stuff on fire again, dammit! Aside from this show, I’ve only seen DeWulf in minor supporting roles in dreck like Pledge This!, so I’m curious to see how she’d acquit herself in a larger role, with a more sophisticated script. Any fool can see she’s insanely gorgeous, but is she funny too? At this point, I honestly couldn’t say.

Brickin’ It

[Contains non-SPOILERS for a story in which nothing really happens]

There’s no doubt that Brick Lane (2007) is a very pretty film…. but it also left me with a serious case of the blahs. I haven’t read the original novel that it was based on, but I gather that the scope of events has been seriously compressed for the screen, with all sorts of supporting characters and dramatic meat excised… leaving behind some very weak soup indeed. To summarise, this film tells the story of ‘Nazneen’, a Bengali girl from rural Bangladesh, who is married off to a man more than twice her age, and whisked away to a low-rent flat in London, where she eventually raises two daughters of her own. I spent much of the running time tensed, waiting for something terribly violent or distressing to happen to the meek, practically mute Nazneen and her family… but by the time the end credits rolled, the other shoe still hadn’t dropped, and I didn’t know whether to feel cheated or relieved. The writers spent a fair amount of time setting up the threat posed by a bunch of right-wing bovver boys called “The Lion Hearts”… but all they ever did was print up some leaflets and shout a few racist slurs from off-screen!

For me, the major villain of the piece was Nazneen’s husband, ‘Chanu’, who one of the screenwriters rather bizarrely describes as a “sympathetic clown”. After the scene in the bedroom where he abruptly started humping his unwilling, wincing wife, without so much as a “please” or “thank-you”, I outright despised him… and no amount of subsequent wackiness (or supposed “wisdom”) could ever wash that sour taste from my mouth. Yes, he pays a little lip-service to the strength of his wife and daughters before leaving them to fend for themselves, but I don’t believe that he believed a word he was saying. He was just an insufferable, chauvinistic bore, and a douche-bag of the highest order… although that’s no reflection on the actor, Satish Kaushik, who does some great work in the role… I just have an aversion to men who treat women like doormats (and/or a “Fleshlight”).

As for the female cast members: Tannishtha Chatterjee, who plays the long-suffering Nazneen, may be extremely easy on the eye, but her character had so little spirit or spine, it was hard to root for her as a protagonist. At one point she opines: “No one told me there are different kinds of love. The kind that starts deep and slowly wears away… that seems you will never use it up and then one day it is finished. Then there is the kind you do not notice at first but which adds a little bit to itself every day like an oyster makes a pearl, grain by grain, a jewel from the sand. That is the kind I have come to know.” Yeah, I’m pretty sure she’s describing Stockholm Syndrome there. Feh! Far more appealing was her unorthodox and enterprising neighbour, ‘Razia’, played by Harvey Virdi… who’s had minor roles in Bend It Like Beckham, Anita and Me, and It’s a Wonderful Afterlife, as well as Sanjeev Bhaskar’s episode of Little Crackers, and the BBC sitcom Citizen Khan. I also have to give a shout-out to Lana Rahman, who played the youngest daughter, ‘Bibi’, and Naeema Begum, who played the elder daughter ‘Shahna’… neither of seem to have worked since, but I thought they were both very natural and convincing in the roles. Oh, and the mildly-threatening-until-she-isn’t money-lender, ‘Mrs. Islam’, was played by Lalita Ahmed… who’s also appeared in It’s a Wonderful Afterlife, Bollywood Queen and Bhaji on the Beach.

Note: I wasn’t specifically looking for it, but as the end credits rolled by I did  notice Amara Karan’s name listed in the “Thank You” section. Intriguing!

[cheap pun involving the word “bland”]

The first series of BBC1’s Blandings came to an end yesterday… in much the same way that it began, with plenty of broad buffoonery, occasionally grotesque imagery*, and a few mildly amusing moments scattered sparsely throughout.

Blandings Castle served as the setting for eleven novels and nine short stories by the humorist P. G. Wodehouse, and I have fond memories of a feature-length adaptation the Beeb put together back in 1995, starring Peter O’Toole as the permanently befuddled ‘Lord Emsworth’. So this latest effort had a lot to live up to, and I’m afraid it fell far short of my expectations. Having not read the original books, I can’t say how faithful this iteration was… all I know is that I was never in any particular rush to watch my recording of the latest episode.

On the plus side, I thought Jennifer Saunders did a great job as ‘Lady Constance’, a daunting dowager with an acidic tongue… in fact her withering insults and threats were the most consistently chuckle-worthy aspect of the show for me. The later eps also boasted cameos by Paloma Faith, as a ditsy showgirl with a total ignorance of life outside the city (ep 1.4.), and Jessica Hynes as ‘Lady Littlewood’, a disingenuous gold-digger with a snotty son (ep 1.6). Faith in particular took to the material like a duck to water, and made me wish there were some way to clone her, so that one twin could continue acting, while the other pursued a musical career. It’s not fair (on us) to make her choose, dammit!

———————————

* E.g. ‘Freddie’s repellent, Something About Mary-esque quiff getting a stiffy every time he saw an attractive young woman… or the closing shot of the finale featuring an obese pig nibbling away at a wobbling pink blancmange. Ick.

Sherlock-U-Like: Joan As Police Consultant

[Contains sleuthy, violin-eschewing SPOILERS]

Back in 2010, I was whining about the fact that no one had tried hooking Sherlock Holmes up with a female Watson, since cult 70s fave They Might Be Giants. Little did I know that just two years later CBS would be recruiting the inestimable Lucy Liu to play that very role in a modern-day police procedural, alongside Jonny Lee Miller as the legendary detective.

To begin with, the disgraced ex-surgeon, ‘Dr Joan Watson’, is merely an irritant to Sherlock… a “sober companion” employed by his estranged father, to keep the recovering addict on an even keel. Over the past sixteen episodes, however, the two have grown closer, and developed a healthy, robust respect for each other, while bonding over a mutual love of mystery solving and crime-fighting… but it wasn’t until this week’s episode, that Sherlock finally put his cards on the table, and admitted his true feelings for Joan. No, not the sort of icky romantic or sexy feelings that would scupper the working relationship they’d worked so hard to establish… but the simple, humble admission that he works better, both as a detective and as a human being, with her by his side, as his partner. I don’t mind admitting, I was a little weepy when I first watched the scene, and I’m getting a little weepy again now, just writing about it. With all of the rote, shop-worn V-Day schmaltz floating around at the moment, it was bracing to be presented with such a powerful display of genuine, platonic love between two people… even if that declaration basically amounted to asking her to spend more time poking around dead bodies with him and getting attacked by violent villains!

I’m not going to keep ragging on the BBC’s Sherlock, because… what’s the point? It wasn’t a show I could ever warm to, or even grudgingly tolerate, but it was hugely successful, and picked up plenty awards. I only bring it up again now for the sake of contrast… because Elementary is very much the Yin to Sherlock’s Yang. The latter seemed to be overstuffed with smugness, arrogance and a general disdain for women, while the former is chock full of heart and humanity. Not to say that the Holmes of Elementary is a soppy sentimentalist… he most assuredly is not… but his dismissive, detached demeanour, and obsessive analytical ways only make it all the more moving when he does drop his defences, and make an effort to communicate his emotions. And all credit to Miller for his brilliant portrayal here. I hadn’t really thought about him since Trainspotting, but he is clearly an excellent actor, who’s shown a real flare for playing the frequently infuriating know-it-all as a fully-rounded and vulnerable human being. Liu’s Watson, meanwhile, is a strong, smart, grounded and compassionate woman… and has ably proven herself the ideal companion for such an erratic, eccentric artist. They have great chemistry together, and make for a very compelling, and often very funny, double-act. How long the writers will be able to resist bringing them together as a romantic couple remains to be seen… but for the moment, their dynamic is perfect, and the series is shaping up to be a true classic of its genre.

[Note: As for the other woman in Sherlock’s life, ‘Irene Adler’, she’s been referenced as his long-lost true love… presumed dead, but I’m not buying that for a second!]

Rabbi Season

A friend of mine recently purchased an iPad, and was bragging about all the TV shows he was able to watch on it, via various digital services. While Ch4 offer a pretty impressive backlog of their old programmes through 4oD, I was disappointed to find that the BBC has yet to follow their lead… so my attempts to fill in several sizeable blanks in Mabel Aitken’s filmography were sadly thwarted by the fact that shows like Glasgow Kiss simply aren’t available anywhere, in any format. Apparently the first two series of Sea of Souls have been released on DVD, but Aitken only appeared in the third series… so that’s no use to me! Thankfully I discovered that some kind soul had posted her episode (among many others) on YouTube. Hurrah!

Having never seen the show before, I was worried I wouldn’t be able to follow along, but it was all pretty self-explanatory, with a single-serving “monster-of-the-week” story. Dawn Steele and Iain Robertson play two paranormal investigators, working out of a (fictional) Scottish university. Despite the fact that they’ve presumably faced supernatural phenomena in the previous eps, they come across as frustratingly sceptical here, scoffing at a fretful young man who claims a fortune teller prophesised his imminent demise, after spotting him with an incredibly beautiful red-head in the opening scene. Surprise, surprise, when Robertson’s character ‘Craig’ pops around to the fella’s flat to return his coat later that day, he’s already sleeping with the daisies. Oh no! Turns out that his flame-haired fiancée, ‘Sarah’ (Emma Campbell-Jones), is actually a succubus… and she promptly sets her sights on Craig, who immediately falls under her spell, and refuses to believe there might be anything remotely fishy or fatale about the flirty femme, even after she starts dry-humping the life-force out of his sleeping body. Frankly, Craig comes across as a pointlessly prickish patsy… like ‘Xander’ from Buffy without any of the wit, charm, or carpentry skills.

Meanwhile, Steele’s character ‘Justine’ may be a bit of a bore, but at least she has the good sense to hit the books, and read up on succubi… eventually contacting an “expert” on the subject, who arrives in the shapely form of super-cute lady rabbi named ‘Valerie Ashe’ (as played by the aforementioned Aitken!). Valerie is mostly used as a conduit for dry exposition, but Aitken still manages to bring her natural charm and playfulness to the part, making her the most engaging and sympathetic character in the whole show! Shame they didn’t make her a regular cast member… or give her a spin-off series…

[Note: This is the penultimate credit on Aitken’s resume, before 2007’s Wedding Belles… but if I have anything to do with it, this will simply mark the mid-point of her career, dammit!]