Netflix Friday #13: STRANGERS WITH CANDY

"... lather."

Oh, yes, you all know David Sedaris. Meet his funnier sister.

Amy Sedaris co-wrote a clutch of plays with her brother, did the hip improv circuit for a while, then transitioned to television. As the story goes, one night her friends Stephen Colbert and Paul Dinello ...

... yeah, sure, I'll let that sink in for a bit.

... Stephen Colbert and Paul Dinello showed her a tape of an inspirational speaker, one of those women recounting a life of prostitution, drug addiction, alcoholism and sexual antics far beyond the safe paths walked by men such as Keith Richards. They dreamed up the idea of such a woman -- the hyper-addicted, racist, omniverously sexual Jerri Blank -- returning to high school.

Strangers With Candy was born.

Each episode of Strangers is framed like an Afterschool Special or ABC Family show gone horribly, horribly wrong. You know the episode of your standard family sitcom, where the high school student is given an egg to care for, to teach them the responsibility of caring for a baby? Hijinks ensue!

On Strangers, they run out of eggs. So Jerri and her female best friend get a real baby. Which, at one point, Jerri attempts to sell, all as her relationship with her female best friend spirals into an abusive white trash sexual burn. She makes drugs so she can be friends with the cheerleaders. She tries to seduce her study partners, male and female, using her ... ugh ... "Liberty Bell." She puts on a puppet show for a "crippled boy" that ends in a bloody apocalypse. She joins a cult that ultimately rejects her after she urges them on to mass suicide. Her father's in a coma; her stepmother's a raging alcoholic; Stephen Colbert and Paul Dinello play teachers who share both a forbidden love and a deep hatred of their students.

Sedaris is remarkable in this show. Her Jerri is over the top and also logically consistent within the perverse alternate reality of the show. The physical transformation is amazing; Sedaris really stands out as a comedian willing to toss away her own good looks and join the British tradition of homely self-mockery.

All the episodes end in tragedy, a fair number in death.

Oh, and in dance. They all end in a dance number.



The show is monstrously politically incorrect, but for a point. The real versions of these shows, even the modern iterations, are part of the Agnewization of television (hello, Glass Teat). They all end with messages that reinforce conforming to the existing social order. (And yes, I'm looking at you supposedly subversive Glee on supposedly risky Fox)

The beauty of each Stranger episode is that, in theory, the plot is played straight. Despite the bizarre characters moving within the world, the events arrange themselves to impart a valuable lesson. And, wonderfully, Jerri manages to come to exactly the wrong conclusion at the end of every episode. Because she is horrible.

Strangers with Candy, Seasons 1-3, are your Netflix Streaming recommendation for this weekend.

NETFLIX FRIDAY #12: Bleak House

Murder! Class warfare! Plague! Betrayal! Obsession! A shocking expose of the intricacies and injustices of the 19th century British legal system!

No, seriously, it's great. I can't attempt to do the book justice in a summary, but it's an incredibly intricate story, cutting across every layer of British society, based off a long-running legal case with a massive treasure at the end of the rainbow. It is arguably Dickens' masterpiece, and this adaptation helps you understand just why he was the most popular writer on earth at the time.

I've written about this before, but it's worth revisiting as the TV industry is in flux. This amazing adaptation of Dickins' Bleak House is split into a one-hour pilot and then 14 more half-hour episodes. Half-hour single camera, highly serialized. This matches the structure and pace of the original text, which was, as our friends at Wikipedia let us know,"published in twenty monthly installments between March 1852 and September 1853." This transforms what could easily be another leisurely historical into a pulp machine.

I'd love to watch you try to convince an American network to do half-hour single-camera dramas. If web distro gives us anything (and it would be nice if it eventually did give us something other than fuel for executives to argue that they can't afford to pay us anymore), it'll be a variance in the locked storytelling formats. You're starting to see that with fiction distribution on the web -- people financing through Kickstarter novellas that there's no market for in the traditional magazine market.

Don't let this get lost in the discussion of the novelty of the broadcast format: you get a great, fast-moving little historical with an amazing performance by under-rated British actor Denis Lawson. What often comes across as a creepy, obsessive relationship between an older man and a vulnerable young woman becomes, in Lawson's hands, the lovely little story of a lonely, honorable, responsible man attracted to the only decent person in a hundred miles. Most of you may also recognize Lawson from Jekyll. But you know, he also played Wedge Antilles.

Let me repeat that: this British historical stars Wedge $^%# Antilles.

You've got Oscar nominated actress Carey Mulligan. A magnificently sinister Charles Dance. Also, Gillian Anderson in a period dress for bonus points. The class and economic issues in the story are incredibly relevant in today's New Class World. All working off an viciously lean script by epic British writer Andrew Davies, who also penned one of my favorite political ...

... wait a minute. BRB.

SWEET HOPPING JESUS! HOUSE OF CARDS IS ON NETFLIX STREAMING!!

Okay. I know what I"m writing about next week. No cheating, no reading, no spoilers on House of Cards, people. But in the meantime, your Netflix Instant Streaming recommendation for this week is the 2005 Bleak House series.

NETFLIX FRIDAY #11: SESSION 9

Creeeeeepy. It was this or House of the Devil, but I really think this is an under-rated little horror classic.

One of the first shot-on-digital flicks, Session 9 is bone simple: some guys get paid to pull asbestos out of an old mental hospital. The smart-ass of the group finds some recorded therapy sessions, and decides to throw them on the reel-to-reel during lunch breaks. (As one does.)

As the confessions of a sad, broken MPD patient from the 50's spools out into the darkness, at first you think he's unravelling a mystery, and then you think it's a ghost story ... and then it turns into something a lot worse than a ghost story.

It's a hell of a cast -- David Caruso, Josh Lucas, and Peter Mullan. ( I mean, Mullan's just sublime.) Brad Anderson's early in his career here, and for any of you shooting on a budget, it's worth seeing what he managed to pull off with the video equipment of ten frikkin' years ago. He takes great advantage of the heavy grain in the blacks, using it to evoke exactly the ambiguous blur the human eye deals with in shadow. There are things in the edge of the frame you can't quite make out, things that modern digital would make too clean. You really, really need to watch this one in the dark. It's the only way to truly appreciate some of the subtlety in the composition. A little screen glare would shank a few of the better moments.

Without the ability to do fancy camera bullshit, Anderson makes every shot count. Perfectly composed frames slide, never jerk over to something you'd rather not know about. But the main thing is the audio. A soundtrack that picks at your nerves. The insect buzz of a hot summer day, the grind of the machinery. Those voices. The personalities of the long-dead patient roll out on the tinny audiotape, one by one, getting progressively more disturbing. Until ...

... well, until you realize it's a trap, not just for them, but for you, the viewer. You were waiting for the bogeyman to show up to the party, and a bit too late you find he's the host and you've had way too much of this odd-tasting punch and-maybe-its-timetoliedownSHITITSTOOLATE.

Anyone who doesn't dig this also didn't like or get Robert Wise's The Haunting because you never see any ghosts. There, that's all I'll say, anything else would be a spoiler. Just watch the damn thing, at about midnight, for a perfect little creepfest. The last speech is still one of my favorite of any movie, ever.

Session 9 is your Netflix Instant Streaming recommend for this weekend. In the Comments, toss me your favorite underrated horror movie.

Netflix Friday #10: THEM!

Looooook at that poster. "Those giant ants have human eyes! This 1954 giant insect movie is very goofy!"

This 1954 giant insect movie is one of the ur-horror movies. And it is nowhere, nowhere near as goofy as that poster suggests. I'm not ashamed to say that most of my "science hero" writing is directly influenced by this flick. I think you can break discussion of this movie down into basically two points:

First, you can argue that while the horror movies of the 50's established many of the horror and monster movie tropes we now use, most were so campy they lacked the, ah, emotional resonance to impress on us how effective these tropes could be. Them! had an impact that echoes fifty years down the cinematic timestream. The opening of, say, The Giant Gila Monster or Beginning of the End use techniques we're familiar with: The Mysterious Attack, the Unsolved Disappearance -- they segue differently into the Oblivious Authority Figure and the Dogged Investigation. Those movies open like action movies.

Them! opens like a horror movie. In a genuinely creepy sequence, two cops discover a ravaged general store out on the Arizona highway. A hundred miles from nowhere, deep in the night ... The only survivor is a mute, terrified little girl. Strange sounds echo out from the darkness ...

There is a moment, watching this, when you realize "Holy shit, the opening of this 1954 horror movie is the template for Aliens." Anyone who doesn't see the hand of Them! (or at least the tropes established by Them!) in Jaws is just not paying attention.

The final action sequence is a full-on soldiers vs. monsters flamethrower battle in the tunnels beneath Los Angeles. This sequence would still be a viable set piece pitch for a summer tentpole flick in 2010.

Second, this film is the template for the science hero movies of the 60's and 70's. There's a nice solid investigative path here, and you see scientists using Very Big Brains to figure out what the hell's going on. Director Gordon Douglas teases out the giant ant reveal (yes, I typed that with a straight face), relying on a nicely creepy sound design and some very sophisticated shot choices. The first time the phrase "Them!" is said -- or rather, screamed -- is one of my favorite moments in cinema. The characters have to earn the reveal by figuring things out in enough detail to arrive at the monster's nature, rather than just having one smash through the roof of the lab.

Now, one hand you have The Thing, where the scientist is enabling the monster -- "Hi, I'm a dude in a white lab coat, and my job is to be the Metaphor of Science's Reckless Pursuit of the Unknown" -- and two-fisted army dudes need to put the monster to a right kicking. This is the model most people associate with these movies, and to a great degree the model we returned to in the 80's. But in Them!, you have the Army enabling the scientists.* There's a great little X-Files-y moment where the leads lay out how they're assembling a data map, correlating weird sightings and deaths -- and simultaneously covering up the presence of the monsters by discrediting those very same reports. Very Cryptonomicon.

It's always interesting to skim the Netflix comments (hey, somebody else saw the Aliens relationship!). I'm struck by how many times people comment on a movie like this "Hey, it's grerat to pop in a movie that's just fun and you don't have to think." Them! is just so goddam well-made, it's not mindless at all -- it's just effortless.

Them! streaming instantly on Netflix is your weekend recommendation. In the Comments, let's hear your favorite old-school horror or sci-fi movie. Let's say ... pre 1970's.









* The two-fisted hero/science guy team-up wound up morphing into the disaster movies of the 70's, then re-entering the sci-fi universe in the 90's with Independence Day. There's another interesting story at the root of that cinematic relationship ...

Netflix Friday #9: ONE FALSE MOVE

One False Move is the great little 90's neo-noir flick no one's ever heard of. Well, odds are a most of the readers of this blog have heard of it, but you're reading Rucka's Stumptown and Brubaker's Incognito. Let's do this one for the new folks.

Director Carl Franklin kicked in the doors to the big time with this dark thriller about, well, false moves. "False" in the sense of "poorly thought out". Bad choices.

It starts with a brutal -- and I mean, seriously, brutal -- murder during a drug heist*, a drug heist where killing people was a Very Bad Idea. The three people who committed the crime -- played by Michael Beach, a pre-Sling Blade Billy Bob Thornton, and Cynda Williams -- decide to hide out in the small town Cynda grew up in. A pre-pretty-much-everything Bill Paxton plays the garrolous, thoughtless small-town Sheriff swept up in a big city case, swept up in the chance to make the big leagues. All he has to do is babysit two LA cops while they wait for those killers to arrive in his town.

And the rest of the movie is waiting for all those characters to meet. Late in the third act.

Wait, what?

I drove a hell of a lot as a stand-up comic. There's a moment, when you're driving on ice ... when you suddenly realize that you've turned the wheel a fraction too quickly. You start to skid.

It's not the fast, squealing scream of tires-on-asphalt. It's slow-motion, an endless, silent moment where the back end of the car's just ... floating away from you. Nothing you do can stop what's happening -- hell, whenever you touch the wheel to correct, the spin speeds up, shimmies, begins to hint at the violence of the impact to come.

All you can do is drift, somehow both pilot and passenger, waiting for the inevitable crash with growing dread, amazed at how you can see it all happening.

Now imagine that feeling lasting for 90 minutes.

That's One False Move. Beat after beat, the characters, when given a choice, make the wrong one. Sometimes those choices are obviously between good and evil. Sometimes they're between smart and dumb. Once, the moment is as innocuous as choosing between kindness and thoughtlessness. And with each false move -- including one that lay far, far in the past -- you can see the climax assembling. In this movie the Fates don't weave, they play dominos.

The more I think about it, the more attractive a little book about early 90s neo-noir becomes. Other people are far more qualified to write such a book, so I'd like them to get off the stick and produce one quickly so I can read it.

One False Move, streaming instantly on Netflix, is your weekend recommendation.









*There are quite a few people who bail at this sequence. Don't. It's a great movie, and what's more, the moment is honest. This is what death looks like in Crime World.

Netflix Friday #8: ZULU

The idea that you can stream Zulu right to your TV is ... I'm frankly a little boggled. You have to understand, for years the only decent home video print of this 1964 masterpiece was the '97 laser disc. I toted around a VHS copy of that print for years. There was a DVD dump release, but the image on that was so smeary, on a 40" TV it was like watching a war flip-book illustrated by Monet.

And we had to walk uphill in the snow both ways to even see that. Kids today.

Zulu is the story of Rorke's Drift. Now, in 1879 the Zulu Nation decided they had enough of the British gits in the red serge and decided to drive them straight out of Africa and into the ocean. The British didn't take this seriously, as they were the world's greatest empire facing off against a bunch of locals with no armor and sharpened sticks. This, of course, was a horrible mistake. The Zulu tore through every British force they encountered like Russell Brand tearing through a dark room full of roofied Catholic schoolgirls. The entire goddam African nation was on the march, unstoppable ... until they hit Rorke's Drift.

Rorke's Drift, a shithole half-built outpost where 400 odd Welshmen and locals suddenly found themselves facing down about 4000 pissed off Zulu.

No escape. Holed up in a killbox with limited ammo. Ten to one odds.

This is the 1964 version of Aliens.

It's a great war movie. It's not pro-war, anti-war, anti-imperialism ... it's just about a bunch of guys in the wrong place at the wrong time using their brains and guts to beat overwhelming odds. Luckily for the 24th (2nd Warwickshire) Regiment of Foot, the guy in charge was one Lt. John Chard, an engineer who was not so big on heroic suicidal charges and very clever when it came to building redundant fortifications on the fly.

The movie's metadata is almost as fascinating as the movie itself. It's directed by Cy Endfield, blacklisted American director and noted card magician. John Chard's played by Stanley Baker, a guy you've probably never heard of, but who at one time was so hot they offered him the role of James Bond and he turned it down. Every fan of the film knows the story: Baker sank a lot of his own money into the film. It was his mission, his crusade. Zulu was his giant star turn. His triumph.

Except.

Except ... wait through those opening credits. Keep waiting. Yep, waaaaay past all those day players and IMDB trivia questions. Wait all the way until ...

"... and introducing MICHAEL CAINE"

Fuck. Yes.

Caine shows up as a fop on a horse. Barely gets your attention, almost teases your eye away from the other actors. By the end of the movie this flick is all his. He's taken it by the shirtfront, slapped it about, and announced that a Giant Goddam Movie Star has just arrived and you were lucky to see it happen.

The only caveat is the opening sequence 12 minutes. Incomprehensibly, the first twelve minutes consist solely of Missionary Jack Hawkins and his buxom daughter Ulla Jacobsson witnessing the mass wedding of young Zulu warriors and topless Zulu dancers. The ceremony is so overwhelming and ... um, I guess primal? ... um ... look , there's no explanation for it. It ends with an Ulla freak-out, edited as if the film were suddenly a bizarre blend of National Geographic Magazine and Reefer Madness. It's all so Hawkins can discover that the Zulu are on the march and rush off to play Captain (or rather Reverend) Exposition for the soldiers at the outpost. Just trust me -- get through those first 12 or so minutes, and you're up and running.

The incomparable Zulu starring Stanley Baker and Michael Caine, streaming instantly on Netflix, is your weekend recommendation.

Netflix Friday #7: INVADER ZIM

Yes, I bloody know it's Thursday. But Mike does Guitar Fridays. I could change this to Netflix Thursdays, but I'd much rather just post on Thursdays, and chalk it up to whimsy.

Invader Zim is streaming instantly. Oh, you lucky bastards.

"But John," I hear you say. "I can tell from the cover art -- quirky kid's cartoon. I already watch (and am amused by) Adventure Time with Finn & Jake and The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack. I do not need more quirky kiddie time-waster."

You are adorable. Adventure Time and its ilk are genially surreal, the kind of cartoons engineered to appeal to a moderately stoned audience. Invader Zim is E.T. written by David Cronenberg and directed by Takashi fucking Miike. *

Do me a favor, just try the first episode, "The Nightmare Begins". The relentless alien Irkens are setting off on their next galactic invasion plan. To prevent any more of his legendary screw-ups, they exile pint-sized sociopathic Invader Zim to ... well, nowhere. To die alone in space.

This was presented as a children's cartoon.

Zim stumbles upon Earth and decides to conquer it. He wears a backpack that allows him to scuttle around like a spider on spindly nightmare legs; his sidekick is a retarded killing machine/robot disguised as an adorable dog with undead eyes; he passes himself off as a green-skinned bug-eyed middle schooler, which often allows him to experiment on the living bodies of his ten year old classmates. Their. Living. Bodies.

This was presented as a children's cartoon.

Take your pick of moments that will leave you slackjawed with joyous horror.** The surrealist nightmare world of the "Skool". Hamstergeddon, the class pet gone horribly wrong. (where my Lovely Wife and I first heard the phrase we still bellow: "Have some of THIS!") The policeman with the transplanted mind of a squid. The fast food joint known as McMeaty's. The time travel episode where Zim, through proper application of rubber piggies in the time stream, reduces a ten year old boy to a shuddering cybernetic cripple. "A Room with a Moose". The one-two punch of the Halloween and Christmas specials -- the Christmas special is the one where Zim enslaves the world with an army of robotic Santas, while wearing an organic Santa flesh-suit. Santa. Flesh-suit.

This was presented as a children's cartoon.

There are a few clunkers in there, episodes that are more concept piece than story. But creator Jhonen Vasquez was doing something truly original and uncompromising: there was nothing like Zim on TV before its arrival, and nothing like it since its departure. He Made a New Thing.

Allegedly, high DVD sales and rerun ratings mean Zim may be coming back for another run this year. If that's true, time to bone up. If not, revel in what exists.

Invader Zim, streaming instantly on Netflix, is your Memorial Day Weekend recommendation. I know we've got some fans out there, so tell you what -- in the Comments, lay out the "Watch these 10 episodes" list for new viewers who may not want to plow through all 46 episodes.

Oh, and what the hell, it's a sci fi theme. Toss in any sci fi book recommendations you may have.







*Actually it's written by the filthily talented and bent Jhonen Vasquez, creator of the comic Johnny the Homicidal Maniac. But you get the metaphor.

**And I mean "joyous". Zim is laugh-out-loud funny. Oh, it's a high-pitched, nervous laugh, but a laugh nonetheless.

Netflix Friday #6: JEKYLL

You came thisclose to a long discussion about Pamela Sue Martin as Nancy Drew. That's also streaming on Netflix Instant. You can watch it any time. Instantly. In your home.

Any. Time.

Just lettin' you know.

Juuuuuust sayin'.

...

Now, a good chunk of you may have already seen this six-hour series from our friends at the BBC. But those of you who don't torrent probably missed this when the DVD blew through your local Best Buy.

James Nesbitt is Dr. Tom Jackman, a man with a problem. Michelle Ryan, rocking some seriously kicky boots, is hired to help him. Gina Bellman is Jackman's wife. She tricks you into thinking she's just playing the aggrieved wife role, and then transforms into an unexpectedly ruthless heroine. Gina was actually hired for Leverage based on footage we showed TNT from this show. As much as I love her work in Coupling, this is my favorite thing she's done.

Steven Moffat rolls the story out flawlessly, starting with what is easily the best opening on television in years. That opening five minutes is textbook. Little clues. Momentum. An actual goddam ticking clock.

Moffat expertly toys with the meta-text here. We know it's called Jekyll. He knows we know it's called Jekyll. He knows what clues we're putting together, and what conclusions we're drawing. He plays with that extra layer of emotion, laying it into his work as a crucial part of the narrative. Letting us draw the wrong conclusions is a crucial part of the mini-series. All the while this thing hurtles along at a classic pulp breakneck pace, with gasp-inducing acting moments that sneak up on you. Jekyll has a couple scenes that are textbook examples of:

a.) something's happened.

b.) the audience has to take a moment to figure out what's happened, yet it's timed perfectly so

c.) the characters are a perfect number of beats behind the audience, so the audience gets both the thrill of recognition and a horrible frisson of anticipation.

And Moffat knows who we're waiting for.

When ... he arrives, it's a triumph. Where an American show would fuck this up by ladling on special effects, this show, um, doesn't.

While the first hour is flawless, I think the back two sometimes get a little too clever/writery for their own good, even some of the beats I adore. A lot of things blow by unexplained in the end, and I can only hope that they'll be explored -- not cleared up, but explored -- if they ever get around to doing a sequel. Unfortunately Moffat's taken over a little show called Dr. Who this year, so he's a bit busy. Bastard.

BBC's Jekyll, streaming Instantly on Netflix, is your weekend recommendation. Tag your spoilers in the Comments -- there are moments in this show I am sorry I will never get to experience for the first time ... um, again (I'm honestly not sure how to construct that sentence). I want new viewers to get on the ride clean.

Netflix Friday #5: RED ROCK WEST

Before he slammed onto the scene with The Last Seduction, director John Dahl gave us the surreal little thriller Red Rock West. Both are late entries in the 80's/90's neo-noir wave, but while Seduction has a lot going for it -- Linda Fiorentio's legs and a surprising villain turn by Bill Pullman -- I'd argue Red Rock is the more interesting film.

Seduction, after all, plays pretty straight by noir standards. And granted Red Rock begins cleanly enough: Nicolas Cage drifts into a small desert town and finds himself in a classic noir setup. Murder for hire, mistaken identities, you know the drill. But after that familiar opening refrain, Red Rock's story roams like a sax solo around a familiar standard melody. From murderous to openly comedic to David Lynch and back again ... I'm sure the Germans have a word for "quirky, yet evoking genuine dread". Assume I used it here.

The real thrill is watching J.T. Walsh. Dennis Hopper chews scenery and Cage, well, he's busy perfecting the genial loser persona that would keep him employed for a decade. Meanwhile Walsh is calmly, malevolently centering every scene he's in. He wields a ... dark gravity. The mistake casting directors made with him later was in playing him as venal, or mad. Walsh is best here and in, say, The Grifters, where he is obviously, terribly sane. His death just five years after this movie was a real loss.

It's odd to see this flick sitting in a pack of movies like The Grifters and Last Seduction and the criminally under-rated One False Move. But while I love all of those movies for their momentum, I enjoy Red Rock precisely for its refusal to take itself too seriously. To borrow a gaming term, it's a beer and pretzels noir. Perfect for a casual Sunday download, and streaming now -- until November 30th -- on Netflix.

Netflix Friday #4: THE KING OF KONG

Saying the world can seem both very large and very small is hackneyed; however, I believe we've entered a period of time when those two conditions are interdependent.

This is a discussion we have in new media all the time -- who is famous, and what use is fame now? Paul F. Tomkins (thanks Wil) is a fine comic and well-known, but I wouldn't call him famous. And yet, he manages to get enough people in major cities to pledge to see his shows that he can make a living travelling from fan-cluster to fan-cluster across North America, summoned by people's need to see him perform. He has the respect and appreciation of a large enough group of people to fill his perceptual horizon. Does anyone need more? Is it even possible to rationaly understand what more is? Is that why famous people go mad?

I'm getting to the movie, I promise.

So we have Steve Weibe, an average guy who takes to practicing Donkey Kong after he's laid off. Anyone who's spent any time hacking away at video games can understand the impetus -- you spend time, you attain a goal, and the goals come at intervals short enough to reinforce the adrenal hit. I've occassionally floated outside myself while playing a video game at 4am, asking "what are you doing?", and getting the answer "Not failing to solve that Act Two problem."

Weibe gets good enough to consider going for the world record. He needs a damn win, in a way that we all understand.

That's when we go down the rabbit hole. That's when we meet Billy Mitchell, the reigning champion of that particular 80's arcade game (among others). While Weibe comes across as a somewhat obsessed hobbyist, a character all we geeks count among our friends, Mitchell has parlayed mastery --

-- I want to back up and take a run at this. Mitchell has parlayed mastery of an thirty-year old arcade game into a business empire that has nothing to do with that arcade game. A small empire, but one that fills his perceptual horizon. He has used that arcade game world record to fuel his own confidence, his own drive, his own success. That record may only be acknowledged by a small world, but its power within that world gives Billy Mitchell the lodestone he needs to survive and thrive in a big world where others become lost. Every morning, he wakes up "Billy Mitchell, world record holder in Donkey Kong", and that sustains him with a fierce power that would shame the faith of a Jesuit priest. In a world of losers, the lost and the damned, Billy Mitchell is a winner.

And Steve FUCKING Weibe is not going to take that from him.

You know what that is? That is the recipe for great. goddam. drama.

The relentless grind of small indignities. The cumulative blessings of small victories. Honor, cheating, ego, sacrifice, suspense ... The King of Kong is available for your Netflix Streaming enjoyment even as we speak.

Netflix Friday #3: WIRE IN THE BLOOD S1-S3

Robson Green. After a run on the early 90's British hit Soldier, Soldier -- widely considered one of the best television shows about serving in the armed forces ever made* -- Green was on the dreamboat track. His recording of "Unchained Melody" was the best selling single in Britain in '95.

He forms his own production company in '02 to leverage his fame, and what does he do? Wire in the Blood. It's as if just-post ER Clooney signed on to play Cracker, and out-Coltraned Coltrane.

Based on a series of very fine novels by Val McDermid, the series follows Green as psychiatrist Dr. Tony Hill, dragooned into helping the police catch killers by DCI Carol Jordan (Hermione Norris). Now, in the ordinary TV-land version he'd be quirky, she'd be adorably spiky -- it's Castle with psychobabble! Wheee!**

But no -- Hill's an unlikable obsessive who walks with a pre-occupied waddle, carries a battered blue plastic shopping bag as his briefcase, and has some serious sexual issues. Over the course of six seasons, his will is utterly broken by the abominations he witnesses. In the 2008 TV movie Prayer to the Bone, a suspect whom Hill believes has PTSD snaps at him: "Maybe you have PTSD." Hill considers for a moment and honestly answers: "Yes, I probably do."

Hill doesn't just catch killers -- he then often treats them. His sympathy never comes across as a TV technique of showing how sensitive he is; instead, it's a natural outgrowth of his obsessive need to understand and his basic humanity.

Some episodes do descend into high pulp (or, rather, ascend). But over the course of six seasons there are damn few clunkers, plenty of very dark moments and some great, twisty, fucked-up mysteries.

If there are six seasons, why do I only recommend S1-S3? Because if you watch all six you'll enjoy them, but those first three seasons are where you get to watch Hermione Norris break your goddam heart. No offense to her replacement, Simone Lahbib, but watching Green and Norris slowly circle in on a strangely noble co-dependency is just great, gut-level storytelling. I have had friends who wanted to quit writing after watching those first three seasons. (right, Kevin?)

Apparently, there is an American adaptation of this show being made right now. If they have the guts to do the same plotline in the pilot as Wire, I will buy every human involved a bottle of 21 yr old Macallan. Because, seriously -- yikes.

If you enjoy this selection, you can hunt down (non-streaming) Green's other series Touching Evil, the American version of which launched Jeffrey Donovan into leading man status in the TV casting club. Similar "broken leading man" conceit, lots of dark turns, and arguably the more consistent show. But for my money, Hermione Norris puts Wire over the top.







* I saw seasons 1 and 2 on bootlegs, back in the day. Great stuff.
** Full disclosure: I like Castle a lot. Perhaps too much.

Netflix Friday #2: AUDITION

Ahhh, Takashi Miike. For a long time one could just assume that if you were a horror fan or geek, you'd already seen this. But it's been ten years now. Newer and shinier Japanese horror has come, gone, and been mulched into tweener entertainment. Newer Japanese horror conforms to standard plot structure and pacing.

Takashi Miike thinks standard plot structure and pacing are for little girls.

The first time I saw this movie was during a Japanese Horror Film Marathon on DirectTv. I'd just gotten a big-screen, my friend Mike and Lovely Wife sat down to grab some late night horror.

For a while it's ... kind of a romantic comedy. A Widower, still devastated by his wife's death a decade earlier, is urged by his teen-age son to start dating again. His cheerfully amoral TV producer friend concocts a cunning plan. They'll hold auditions for an imaginary TV series in order for our sweet, likable but socially awkward Widower to meet young women.

Hijinks ensue!

If by hijinks, you mean staring at the screen, screaming "What the fuck? WHAT THE FUCK?"

It happens in a moment, in one shot, a tectonic shift in the movie. The train goes off the rails. And the train is on fire, and full of dynamite and naked clowns who live under your bed.

Be aware -- the pacing is glacial, and this is not a shock-horror movie. It's a slow accretion of creepiness. Do not even bother to watch this while there's daylight. This is meant to be watched at midnight, uninterrupted, to let it wash over you. For a good half the viewers, it'll be a "meh." For the half who find just the right night, it's a mood, a tone poem of unease.

No spoilers in the Comments, but feel free to recommend some other horror fun.

Netflix Friday #1 - INVASION: EARTH

Welcome to the first in what will be a "as long as my attention lasts" series, Netflix Friday, focusing on "Watch Instantly" selections from Netflix. There are a lot of shows you can stream off Netflix on your computer, or Roku, or through your Xbox 360 or Tivo HD -- but much is what we might generously call off-brand. I think it's worth the time to give you some choices for those rainy Sundays when you're in the mood for something right now.

Invasion: Earth has a very dumb title. It also has a truly creepy alien invasion narrative linked to some real world anomalies (creeping chromosomal feminization), time-lost humans, aliens who are alien, and pretty well-done SFX for a BBC production at the time. Most impressively, it has Maggie O'Neill as the lead (!) scientist (!!) using her goddam brain to piece together the alien plan. The manly RAF pilot -- who would become the lead in any other version of this mini-series -- has a good run but at no point distracts us from the fact that Rather Large Brains are required to unspool alien intentions.

And even then, it might not do us any good. These are creatures who have mastered interstellar travel. To paraphrase Warren Ellis, 1.5 million Earthling children die every year from diarrhea -- we have not yet mastered drinking water.

Tonally, I adore this thing. You know how a lot of alien invasion movies start with "Holy Shit, We Are In Way Over Our Head," but then swing into "Those Aliens Underestimated Our Plucky Resourcefulness!"?

Yeah. Not so much on the second bit.

I am obligated to admit that the 100 year alien invasion plan I used in Blue Beetle was heavily influenced by the effect this show had on me in the 90's. Bonus points for Fred Ward doing yeoman's work as the American general. Because in any British sci fi, it's only a matter of time before the Yanks show up with the heavies ...

Don't read any spoilers, and just enjoy. All six episodes of Invasion:Earth are your Netflix Streaming recommend for this weekend.