They Give Oscars for this Stuff?

I hate to pile on; in these blog posts I like to take iconoclastic positions that defy the Convention Wisdom (tm John Kenneth Galbraith).  But sometimes something happens that is so stupid, so idiotic, so completely meshugenah that I can’t help myself.

The Academy of Motion picture Arts & Sciences has announced that in the future there will be a category called "Best Popular Film."

God help us.

Here is the problem they are trying to address: several years ago (2008) a couple of really popular films that had some artistic merit, The Dark Knight and Wall-E, failed to get a best picture nomination.  Ratings for the Oscar ceremony were sagging, and the theory was that there was a direct link between TV ratings for the Oscar broadcast and the popularity of the nominees.  The academy then increased the number of nominees to a maximum of ten, expecting the additional five nominees to be what the press would call “popcorn movies.”

Alas, the Oscar voters, in their infinite wisdom, responded by nominating even more artsy-fartsy art house movies.  Don’t get me wrong, I love the Coen Brothers, but A Serious Man (2009) getting a Best picture nomination is just silly. 

Things didn’t improve, and big budget films of reasonably high quality kept missing a Best Picture nomination while artsy stuff like Moonlight and The Shape of Water kept winning.  So, if you can’t make the Academy voters nominate an action film for Best Picture, you create a new category that will force them to.

I recall reading somewhere that once J.D. Power and Associates did a survey expecting a certain make of car to win, and when it didn’t it created a category like “Best new American 4-door SUV with 8 cup holders” that was so narrowly defined that the car they wanted to honor was the only entrant.

Why is this a stupid idea?  First of all, there already is an award for Best Popular Film: it’s called M-O-N-E-Y.  I was amused when, in 2009, people predicted Avatar (a rare money-maker that did get a Best Picture nomination) would win Best Picture over The Hurt Locker because it made more money.  I predicted The Hurt Locker would win BECAUSE it made less money.  Except for Titanic (which is an outlier of epic dimensions), the biggest money-making film of the year rarely wins Best Picture.  It’s like the attitude in Hollywood is, “You made all that money, AND you want awards too?”

Secondly, what is a “popular” film?  Do you base it on total domestic gross?  Then what about films released late in the year that have only a few weeks before the nominations close?  Do you HAVE to nominate the five biggest blockbusters even if one is an Adam Sandler animated film that made $300 million despite being drek?  Does the artistic merit of the film still matter, or are we only comparing box office?  Is there a threshold below which films aren’t considered “popular”?  $100 million box office used to be the sign of a hit; Solo made that its opening weekend and was considered a bust.

Thirdly, what is the aesthetic criterion for judging “Best Popular Picture”?  Does the Oscar automatically go to the biggest money-maker?  If not, isn’t that subverting the point of the category?  Generally speaking, most of a year’s top box office champs are sequels, especially for children’s movies (Star Wars, Marvel, Hotel Transylvania 3, etc.).  What happens if a money-making sequel to a good film is not as good; does it still get consideration just because it made money?

Won’t this hurt the chances of a well-made blockbuster wining Best picture if it is considered a shoo-in for “Best Popular Film”?  Isn’t this creating a “ghetto” for money-making films that will mean they won’t be considered seriously in the “real” Oscar categories, including Best Actor or Actress as well as Best picture?

It’s times like this I recall the words of H.L. Mencken, who once said that “For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.”  If you think lower ratings of the Oscar telecast is a problem which is understandably ABC's position, and you think obscure (“unpopular”) films being nominated and winning Best Picture is a contributing factor, then come up with a more subtle way of fiddling with the voting then just giving “popular” films their own category. 

You people in the Academy are supposed to be creative; come up with something more imaginative!

The Doctor Is a Woman

We are about to enter a new era, boys and girls:  we can watch movies on our phones, we can watch Ant Man and The Wasp without having seen any prior Marvel movie (other than Ant Man) except for the last two minutes, and The Doctor doesn’t have a penis.  Oh what an age we live in.

In case you’ve been living under a rock, you probably know that the new Doctor Who debuting this Fall will have actress Jodie Whittaker portraying the venerable Gallifreyan.  A lot of people are making a big deal about this, but I’m sort of meh.

Don’t get me wrong, it clearly is a breakthrough in gender equality casting.  I think the only argument for making The Doctor a man for the past 55 years is that The Doctor frequently fin ds himself in situations where he has to take command and bark orders, and until recently a woman doing that would have had to carry some extra baggage.  It’s the age-old conundrum for women; men are commanding, but women are shrill.  However, we are well past the Margaret Thatcher era, and a woman won the popular election for President in the United States in 2016.  So yay us, we may now accept a woman as a leader.

The reason I am loath to treat a female Doctor with wild abandon is that I always considered The Doctor a rather asexual character to begin with.  Given that the show was originally conceived as a children’s educational program, he’d almost have to be.  During the entire run of the “Classic” Doctor Who series, there was never any discussion, speculation, or recognition of The Doctor’s love life.  He traveled with mini-skirted Jo Grant with nary a leer.  Sarah Jane Smith was nothing more than a good buddy.  Peter Davison’s Doctor traveled with an attractive Australian stewardess and a teenaged girl without any speculation about hanky-panky.  Colin Baker showed no interest in Peri’s, um, attributes, and Sylvester McCoy was nothing but avuncular with Ace.

This changed in the revived series, when Rose Tyler, an attractive London teenager, joined the Doctor and clearly had a thing for older men (much older, since he was over 900 years old at that point).  The Doctor physically changing into David Tenant only increased the attraction, and eventually it became mutual (there was also the episode where The Doctor became trapped in France with Madame Du Pompadour and the first thing she did was offer to show him her bedroom).  The Doctor’s next companion, Martha Jones, was even more overt in her finding The Doctor to be physically appealing, but he was rebounding from Rose and never reciprocated (personal aside: what an idiot!).  Amy Pond indicated several times that she thought the eleventh Doctor was sexy, and at her wedding she enthusiastically told The Doctor that he could “absolutely, definitely kiss the bride,” but he demurred. 

The only time the Doctor did seem to have some interest in someone of the opposite sex was when Peter Capaldi’s Doctor spent one night with River Song, but they’d been previously married and it was on a planet where the nights lasted twenty-four years, so presumably they found some way to pass the time.

So, to sum up, over the course of 55 years the Doctor has travelled with a number of extremely attractive young women, and until recently there was never any hint that he had much of a libido (to quote the lyric of the song One Night in Bangkok, “I get my kicks above the waistline, sunshine”).  Since the character was never defined by his masculinity, the gender switch shouldn’t engender (sorry) much of a change.

The switch is obviously partly motivated by the successful transition (sorry again) of The Master to Missy.  It’s all about the casting; personally, I thought John Simm made a HORRIBLE Master, so anything was bound to be an improvement.   Michelle Gomez was able to embody the qualities of the old Master, a sort of restrained but cheerful sociopathy, that Simm took over the top and then some.  Part of what I disliked about Simm’s portrayal was that his Master had a sexy trophy wife, something no previous incarnation of The Master ever gave a second thought to.  The Master didn’t care about sex; he just wanted to rule the universe.  What’s sex compared to that?

If new Doctor Who showrunner Chris Chibnall is smart, then the scripts for the next season of Doctor Who should treat the new Doctor exactly as the old one was treated. That’s why the show has lasted since the early 60’s; The Doctor, however different each incarnation is, is essentially fungible.  Their MOs may vary somewhat, their senses of humor get tweaked, their physical skills range from klutzy to expert at Venusian aikido, but in the end the Doctor is The Doctor.

Gender doesn’t enter into the Doctor’s persona, nor should it; unless the show wants to get into the nitty gritty of where little Time Lords and Ladies come from, and frankly that is TMI.

Retro Review: Warehouse 13

Retro-review: Warehouse 13

One of the benefits of the all-on-demand all-the-time access to media is that you can revisit beloved shows from your childhood, with the possibility that you’ll realize that your 10-year-old self had lousy taste in television.  Or you can revisit recently departed shows you sort of liked and try and figure out why you only liked them as opposed to loving them.

I recently finished binge-watching the recently departed (2009-2014) fantasy series Warehouse 13.  I liked the series well enough to remain a loyal viewer through its run, but it never was the appointment TV destination I thought it might be.  Re-watching all 64 episodes over a couple of months provides some perspective.  The show was about a team of agents that sought out and captured “artifacts” or common items (usually used by famous people) that gained supernatural powers through the emotions of people who used them.  So the bell used by Ivan Pavlov would make dogs come running (and make the user drool a lot), Lizzie Borden’s compact would force anyone using it to murder someone they loved, and Marilyn Monroe’s hairbrush would turn any woman’s hair blonde.  Warehouse 1 had been created by Alexander the Great, Egypt had hosted Warehouse 2, and subsequent Warehouses were hosted by the dominant world power and eventually America claimed Warehouse 13, which was set in the South Dakota town of Univille.

The commentary track on the pilot episode provided a key insight on a fact that perhaps shaded my perception of the show: one of the main draws was the credit line that the show was co-created by Jane Espenson, the brilliant writer of such Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel episodes as Band Candy, Guise Will be Guise and (my personal favorite Buffy episode) Earshot.  She also took her distinctive comedic touch to other non-Joss Whedon TV series such as The Gilmore Girls and Once Upon a Time.  But she was never mentioned once in the commentary, and I suddenly realized that she seems to have had no creative input into the show during its production, where Jack Kenny was the showrunner.  That certainly explains why the show never matched my expectations in the humor department.

Let me begin with the shows problems, which can start with the casting of the two leads.  The duo of Secret Service Agents tasked with “snagging, bagging, and tagging” mystical artifacts were played by Eddie McClintock and Joanne Kelly, two physically attractive actors who had proven to be more or less competent in other roles.  The main problem here is that they have no chemistry what so ever.  It’s like they are the anti-Mulder and Scully.  The show realized this early and decided to steer into the skid, so to speak, making a plot point of the fact that they had no chemistry.  In one episode an artifact affects them so they will pass out and lose their memories, so they take off their clothes and get into bed together because they knew that when they woke up, they would be certain it was impossible that they slept together so they would seek an alternate explanation.  Spoiler Alert: this entire plot line is abandoned in the final 6 episodes and at the end of the series they realize they love each other.

McClintock and Kelly were both problematic in their roles.  McClintock played Pete Latimer, an ex-alcoholic ex-Marine who worked for the Secret Service, but McClintock’s broad comic skills made him seem like an undisciplined, semi-literate, overgrown child.  Kelly, as Pete’s partner Myka Bering, is a stunningly gorgeous actress who seems embarrassed by her looks and awkwardly tried to hide her light under a bushel.  I swear that during season 4 she told the producers of Warehouse 13, “You know what, I’m just going to come in an hour later, so don’t worry about my hair or make-up, and I’ll just wear an oversized t-shirt for my costume.”

As I said, the plot of the show was that everyday objects gained the ability to affect people’s behavior in ways related to their origins.  Sometimes this was overly-literal, like the mirror used by Alice Liddel (the model for Alice in Wonderland) would suck people into an alternate dimension; sometimes the effect was rather random, like Harriet Tubman’s thimble giving people the ability to assume the appearance of other people (huh?).  Towards the end of the show’s run the artifacts became deus ex machinas, doing whatever was convenient to resolve the plot.

What was good about Warehouse 13?  Let me start with two words: Allison Scagliotti.  She joined the show early in its first season and quickly became the emotional fulcrum for the remainder of the series.  Also, unlike the principal pair of actors on the show, she had great platonic chemistry with her partner, played by Aaron Ashmore (they made the relationship platonic by establishing that Ashmore’s character was gay early on).  I stuck with the dismal show Stitchers primarily because of Scagliotti (and her co-star, Salli Richardson-Whitfield from Eureka).

Saul Rubinek did great work on Warehouse 13 as the curmudgeonly Artie, boss to everyone but a father figure to Scagliotti’s character.  The show did display a lot of imagination in its plotting, and did an excellent job of working out intricate seasonal arcs that were resolved reasonably well.  The show got some good guest performances from the likes of Anthony Stewart Head, Roger Rees, and especially Jamie Murray as the female H.G. Wells (she had the ideas, her brother wrote the books).  The show generally had good special effects given the small budget they had to work with.

Warehouse 13 is a minor entry in the history of science fiction on television, pleasantly diverting but mostly just empty calories.  I don’t mean to sound too disapproving; it is difficult to do mediocre science fiction on TV and Warehouse 13 was far better than mediocre.  But I can’t help wonder what the show might have become had creator Jane Espenson stayed on as the showrunner.  Warehouse 13 is another example of the importance of casting in the creative process of television production; Chris Carter, creator of The X-Files, conceded that David Duchovney and Gillian Anderson’s chemistry was a gift he couldn’t have manufactured. When it came to chemistry, Warehouse 13 was not visited by Santa Clause.