Change Your Image
t_smitts
Reviews
Dave (1993)
A terrific film whether you're into politics or not
Dave Kovic is a friendly owner of a temp agency, helping people find jobs. He also happens to bear an uncanny resemblance to Bill Mitchell, the President of the United States. While making a bit of money on the side impersonating the President at events, Dave catches the eye of government officials who hire him as a security double for the real President.
Things get complicated when the real President Mitchell, a cold and uncaring man with an estranged marriage, suffers a massive stroke (while having an affair with his secretary), leaving him effectively a vegetable. Bob Alexander, the President's equally ruthless Chief of Staff gets the the idea to have Dave keep impersonating Mitchell while arranging for the "boy scout" Vice President to be forced out of office, and having "President Mitchell" appoint Bob as the new VP, ensuring he'll be President once Dave steps aside.
What he doesn't count on is Dave starting to become passionate about the chance to help people and becoming a better President (and a better husband) than the real one ever was.
This movie demands a lot of suspension of disbelief that such a thing could ever be pulled off. Certainly, fantasy, not only in such a deception successfully being pulled off, but in the policies Dave manages to institute (if only!) but Kevin Kline is terrific here, pulling off the warmth of Dave, the arrogance of President Mitchell, or the former playing the latter, with equal ease. It's definitely a feel good movie, with a "good guys win" theme to it. Something to enjoy when you want something light but still somewhat smart.
From the Earth to the Moon: Galileo Was Right (1998)
Nothing like a little science on the moon!
As successful moon landings progressed, the focus began to shift from proving procedures and hardware to studying the strange new environment the astronauts found themselves in, in lunar orbit and on the lunar surface. This meant turning the astronauts into geologists, to prepare to best describe their environment and to identify the most useful samples. Some later Apollo missions are being cancelled because of budget cuts, so NASA wants to get the most bang for its buck on the missions it has left. The hopes are high that Apollo 15 will be a truly scientific mission.
To that end, Harrison "Jack" Schmitt, the LM Pilot on the Apollo 15 back-up crew, and a professional geologist, unlike the other pilot-astronauts, recruits his old mentor, Professor Lee Silver to "bring out the scientific mind" in Schmitt's colleagues.
Dave Scott, commander of the Apollo 15 prime crew is somewhat dubious at first, but after some field expeditions with the Professor, he not only starts to come around, but works to maximize the scientific return on his mission. He works to fit more scientific equipment into the LM's weight limit. When mission planners argue over two possible landing sites, Marius Hills or Hadley Rille, Scott recommends Appenine mountains at Hadley Rille, the more ambitious of the two sites, partly because its features, both impact and volcanic, make it the best choice for learning how the moon came to be, but also because "there's something to be said for exploring beautiful places. It's good for the spirit."
While Dave Scott and his LM Pilot Jim Irwin are learning under Silver, their crew-mate, Command Module Pilot Col. Alfred Worden is getting some lessons of his own from the excitable Egytptian scientist Farouk el-Baz. While Scott and Irwin are on the surface, Worden will be flying high above the lunar surface in the command module, and with el-Baz's help, he will learn to study the sights below him.
When the astronauts reach the moon, their teachers' training is well paid off. Scott and Irwin even find what may be a piece of the moon's primordial crust, possibly as old the solar system itself, later dubbed "the Genesis Rock".
In one of Scott's final acts on the moon, he performs a symbolic test of Galileo's theory that objects of different mass will fall at the same speed in a vacuum. He drops a hammer and a feather, which, sure enough, hit the ground at the same. Galileo was right.
Personally, I've felt the astronauts on later missions like this got the better deal. With their longer stays on the surface, they could do more, make more discoveries, and really explore. Perhaps this is the appeal of this episode for me. I've never had an interest in geology, but I'm sure a charismatic teacher like Lee Silver could've changed that. The enthusiasm he cultivates in the astronauts in this episode is quite infectious.
The episode takes a few licences with history. If you read "A Man on the Moon" by Andrew Chaykin, the book upon which this series was based, you'll see that it was actually Jim Lovell, while training for the Apollo 13 mission, who was the skeptical commander eventually won over by Silver. Scott, by all accounts, was quite enthusiastic about science from the beginning.
Liberties aside, great episode all around. Wonderful performances by Tom Amandes as Schmitt, David Clennon as Silver, and Brett Cullen as Dave Scott (the real Dave Scott happened to be on set as a technical adviser).
Definitely worth checking out.
From the Earth to the Moon: We Interrupt This Program (1998)
The weakest episode of the series by unfortunate circumstance
Tom Hanks and the crew of "From the Earth to the Moon" have given us some fascinating insights into the space program; the Gemini program, the Apollo One fire, the building of the Lunar Mondule, Apollo 8 ending the turbulent year of 1968 on a high note, the historic landing of Apollo 11, and even the irreverent fun of Apollo 12.
Then they had to deal with Apollo 13.
Now unless you've been in a coma for the past fifteen years, you know that mission was dramatized in the highly acclaimed movie of the same name. In fact Tom Hanks, Ron Howard, and a good portion of the cast and crew had come over to work on this project after finishing the movie. Add to that the fact that the movie was only three years old at the time and thus still fresh in people's minds, and you see why it would have been unthinkable to simply rehash the story with different actors.
Of course they were stuck between a rock and a hard place, because you can't really skip over it (even though they essentially did with Apollo 10 and later with Apollo 16). You can't really show the story from the POV of mission control or the astronauts' families since the movies pretty much covered that as well. What to do then?
What we're left with apparently, is an episode told from the point of view of the TV reporters who covered the story. More specifically, it depicts Emmett Seaborn, clearly based on Walter Cronkite; (my guess is they didn't want to show the real guy, as he was associated with another network). Played by the likable (and, unfortunately, late) Lane Smith, Seaborn had appeared in most of the preceding episodes, essentially as a Greek chorus.
Here, he comes to the forefront, reporting on the crisis of the mission as it unfolds. On the other hand, we have Brett Hutchins, an ambitious and hungry young reporter played by Jay Mohr, who'd much rather cover more sensationalist aspects, such as the reactions of the astronauts' families. Seaborn is appalled by such an invasion of privacy, but the network exec clearly find Hutchins' approach more appealing, giving him more support while the older Seaborn is marginalized.
After the astronauts splash down to safety, Hutchins is shut out of a NASA press briefing for going after the astronaut families, and it appears the little weasel has finally gotten his comeuppance. Unfortunately not. A NASA official, unwilling to alienate the press, lets him back in. In a rather depressing ending, Hutchins gets the big story while Seaborn is phased out. I'm guess it was supposed to represent the honest Cronkite-types of the journalism world being replaced with the more sensationalistic ones prevalent today.
Aside from the dissatisfying ending, my main problem was largely that in a series depicting real people and real events, we had a conflict that never happened between two people who don't exist. Seaborn and Hutchins are completely fictional (if composites of real people). What does any of this have to do with going to the moon? Why should I care?
Ultimately, I can't fault Hanks, Howard, and company too much, since I really couldn't come up with a better angle that hadn't already been covered either. The irony is if the movie "Apollo 13" hadn't been as successful as it was, this mini-series almost certainly wouldn't have gotten made. Maybe the price was having this weak episode. That doesn't excuse the series' other weak episode "The Original Wives Club", however, but that's another story.
My Name Is Earl: The Birthday Party (2007)
Perhaps the best of the season?
It's not the first birthday Earl's had since he started his list (That was the one Joy and Crabman scheduled their ill-fated first attempt to get married on in "Joy's Wedding", remember?) but it's been over a year since Earl resolved to turn over a new leaf and he thinks it's a good time to reflect on all the good he's done in the past year. Unfortunately, his family and friends seem to think otherwise, constantly bringing up his past misdeeds.
This was a fun episode, one that's centered on how much Earl's changed how much everyone recognizes it (or not).
As usual, things work out in the end. I'd rather not say how but I will say there's some nice touches along the way. Having Earl's dad specifically mention that Earl's done a lot of good in the past year is particularly satisfying, given how estranged they were when we first met him in "Cost Dad the Election". Any episode where Silas Weir Mitchell returns as Earl's friend Donny Jones is always welcome. Plus there's a cool little horror movie moment when Earl is confronted by Didi, his one-legged one-night-stand. This episode also happens to explain why she's so mad at Earl to begin with. (Did he ever give her back her car, anyway?).
Maybe not as thoughtful as the typical episode when Earl crosses something off his list and learns a lesson along the way, but one that nonetheless leaves you feeling good at the end.
(P.S. Check out Nescobar-A-Lop-Lop continuing his compulsion to steal pens.)
Angel (1999)
A spin-off done right.
(Spoilers for Seasons One through Three)
While it certainly had a lot going for it, "Angel" also had a few things going against it, not the least of which was the question that would the audience accept an Angel independent of Buffy? It took a while to get there but "Angel" has finally emerged as its own show.
As with many shows, it did spend much of its first season struggling to define and assert itself. Difficulty finding something for Cordelia to do, and the lukewarm reaction to the killing-off of Doyle and arrival of Wesley didn't help matters. It also relied excessively on crossovers from "Buffy" during the first two seasons. Crossovers are fun but too many hampers a spin-off's ability to be seen as its own show.
By the start of the second season however, things were looking up. We saw the introduction of vampire hunter Charles Gunn, the crooning demon Lorne (AKA "the Host"), and Angel's old flame Darla. The supernatural law firm of Wolfram & Hart proved an interesting adversary (especially the lawyers Lindsay and Lilah). Cordelia and Wesley have grown to the point that their less than sympathetic portrayals on "Buffy" are almost unrecognizable. And though a three-episode trip to Lorne's home dimension didn't go over as well as was hoped, it did introduce us to the adorable Fred, a delightful addition to the cast.
This season will apparently explore consequences Angel is facing both for his reckless actions in the previous season and for suffering he caused as an evil vampire back in the 18th century. Each addition to the story arc leaves one hungry for more!
With "Buffy" having moved to another network, and interaction between the shows is now next to nothing for the moment. For "Angel" this may be the best thing to happen to it. It may force more people to see "Angel" not as an extension of "Buffy", but rather a fascinating and exciting show of its own worth watching.
Conrad Bloom (1998)
Actually not that bad...
In the three NBC sitcoms Mark Feuertein has co-starred in, he's done a wonderful job of diplaying confusion about the bizarre antics of the women around him, but still taking it in stride. On "Caroline in the City" it was Caroline, on "Fired Up", it was Gwen and Teri, on "Conrad Bloom" it was basically the rest of the cast. Although I was sorry to see "Fired Up" go, I was more than happy to see Mark as a sitcom lead, knowing full he had enough experience in the genre to hold his own. He had a wonderful chemistry with the supporting actors, especially Lauren Graham (his ex-girlfriend-turned-best-friend Molly) and Jessica Stone (his co-worker Shelley, who recently became a mother). I would love to have seen a romance between Conrad and one of them. The show's premise was more original than most and the writing was quite clever. Sadly NBC did not agree. The show was given a dreadful timeslot on Monday night (EVERY sitcom NBC has put there has come to an early end, no doubt because most of the target audience is watch football on ABC) and it's fate was soon sealed. However those who were wise enough to have taped most of the episodes (myself included) will have had the pleasure of watching and remembering the sitcom classic that never was.