The Simpsons, season 4

The Simpsons was laugh-out-loud funny from its first episode, but season four is when it completed its journey from mere brilliance towards genuine transcendence. This show did for the 30 minute sitcom what The Beatles did for the 3 minute pop song; it literally expanded the very potential inherent in its medium.

Season four is widely hailed as the greatest Simpsons season ever. I disagree; I think the show achieved its zenith in season eight. But season four was a watershed for the series, the moment when our love and admiration for the show turned into awe and worship.

In its first couple of seasons, The Simpsons was plotted and paced much more like a conventional sitcom, but by season four it had achieved something unique. By season four, the plots get told with lightning-swift efficiency, leaving lots of room for flashbacks, fantasy sequences, non sequitur hilarity, and just a general level of goofiness unprecedented in commercial TV. The Simpsons makes everything else on TV look pedestrian, sluggish, and dull.

I think one big reason The Simpsons got so good so quickly is its annual Halloween episodes. Those episodes are great in themselves, but, more importantly, I think they showed the creative team just how much was really possible, just how far they could really go. The "Treehouse of Horror" segments are just 7 minutes long, so they had to learn to tell stories more quickly than is normal in TV. Also, the Halloween episodes encouraged a whole new level of surreality and an anything-goes attitude.

In some ways, these are just intensifications of regular Simpsons episodes, but that's precisely my point. By pushing at the limits of their medium, the creators of this show discovered that they were able to transcend them.

Every episode of the show is packed, overflowing with smart and funny ideas. And most of its funniest moments have nothing to do with telling the story; that's part of their charm, they feel extra, superfluous, the icing on the cake. The Simpsons is more icing than cake, and it's that richness and density that makes it so great. Moment for moment, it remains the most rewarding experience the medium of television has yet produced.

Here are 10 of my favorite moments from season four:

HOMER: [when the pull tab breaks off] Now my pudding is trapped forever!

"Steamboat Itchy" (The very first Itchy and Scratchy cartoon)

HOMER:[on the family of possums living in the monorail] I call the big one "Bitey."

BART: Didn't you wonder why you were getting checks for doing nothing?
GRANDPA: I figured, because the Democrats were in power again.

"Malaise Forever" (Inscription on Jimmy Carter's statue)

TROY McCLURE: You may remember me from such films as P is for Psycho and The President's Neck is Missing.

The Big British Book of Smiles

TV ANNOUNCER: The following is a public service announcement. Excessive alcohol consumption can cause liver damage and cancer of the rectum.
HOMER: Mmmm, beer!

WIGUM: I've got pictures of you Quimby.
QUIMBY: You don't scare me, that could be anyone's ass.

And my favorite Simpsons line of all time:

SMITHERS: I think women and sea men don't mix.

The Simpsons, season 4 (1992-93)
GRADE: A

The Chronicles of Riddick

This is an overblown sequel to a slick little horror/sci-fi film Pitch Black. Pitch Black was low budget and very effective; it established a simple and elegant premise, played faithfully by its own rules, and treated the audience to a fun time. In every conceivable way, The Chronicles of Riddick is the opposite of its predecessor.

Riddick is an overblown, illogical mess. The production design is muddy and derivative; it's like Ozzy Ozborne's house: everything is very expensive, but you can't buy good taste. The "story" lurches from one silly and illogical scene to the next, looking for excuses to kill things. The action is shot and edited in accordance with a principle seemingly wide-spread in Hollywood these days: confusing=exciting.

Vin Diesel has become a dull parody of himself, and he's one of the least intimidating "tough guys" in history. (Note to Vin's trainer: you really need to work on bulking up the delts. Can't Hollywood stars get good steroids anymore?) His gravel-voiced delivery is just embarrassing. Fortunately he doesn't speak much here.

This film is very impressed with its own pomposity. It weaves an elaborate "mythology," and the ending essentially announces that a sequel is on the way. As if sequels didn't have a bad enough reputation already.

The Chronicles of Riddick (2004)
GRADE: D

The Sopranos, season 1

HBO On Demand has the first five episodes of The Sopranos available, so naturally I've been watching them.

It's amazing how good this show is, and I'd forgotten how great Tony's domineering mother Livia Soprano was. She's so effortlessly and unconsciously cruel and manipulative and also laugh-out-loud funny at the same time. And she's a great example of how complex and interesting the characters on the show are.

She gives Tony a constant guilt trip about putting her in a "nursing home," yet everything she does (from setting her kitchen on fire to running over a friend with her car) makes placing her in a home the only possible solution. She clearly takes a perverse pleasure in making everyone's life miserable, including her own.

One thing that distinguishes The Sopranos is that it forces its audience to figure out what going on, it draws us in because we have to pay attention to make the crucial connections. Moreover, much of the energy of the show comes from the discrepancies it creates between what we know and what the characters know. This leads to rich situational ironies.

Take for example the fifth episode of the series "College." Here we see Tony taking Meadow on an interview tour of several colleges she's applied to; along the way, Tony spots a former mobster who turned state's evidence. Near the end of the show, Tony strangles him. Now most shows would end there, but then we see Tony and Meadow riding home. Meadow becomes suspicious and is just on the verge of realizing what Tony has done. So Tony pulls a guilt trip worthy of his mother, telling Meadow how his feelings are hurt that she doesn't trust him. This emotional black mail is every bit as vicious as the execution, but only we are in a position to realize that.

One of the things that really makes the show work is that Tony is always on the verge of self-knowledge but constantly shys away from it. This turns a structural problem for any TV series into a dramatic strength. TV characters can't change too drastically, they can't have the turning points or epiphanies that are crucial for most dramatic characters. But this show focuses on the conflict between Tony the mob boss and Tony the middle-class guy; the two fight to a stand still, and so while Tony never quite achieves the kind of insight that would lead to genuine change (either to reject evil or to embrace it), we, the audience, do. A neat dramatic trick that.

The Sopranos, season 1 (1999)
GRADE: A

The Terminal

Steven Spielberg continues to dazzle and amaze. Setting a whole movie in a single airport terminal is the kind of stunt Hitchcock liked to pull in films like Rear Window or Lifeboat, but Spielberg's tour de force never feels forced. He displays an apparently effortless cinematic grace.

The terminal in The Terminal never gets visually boring nor does it ever feel like it's trying to look good, it just does. And Spielberg once again displays his gift for casually establishing the geography of a setting so firmly that you never get lost or confused. Here he does it with several elaborate crane shots of the terminal early on, but it's only on reflection that you realize Spielberg's been spoon feeding you visual information.

If the film's visuals borrow from Hitchcock, its soul is pure Capra. Like so many Capraesque fables (from It Happened One Night, to Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, to It's a Wonderful Life) The Terminal relies on an improbable, fairy-tale premise. Once you buy into that premise, the movie unfolds from one delightful set piece to the next. Here we have to believe that Tom Hanks' Victor Navoski is stuck in the terminal and can't/won't leave. Accept that, and your off for a ride.

The ride includes some delightful subplots, like Victor's budding romance with Catherine Zeta-Jones' stewardess, or Victor playing matchmaker between two employees at the terminal. The movie has the lighter than air tone that made Catch Me if You Can such a joy to watch. The romance in particular is delicious, and it makes me more certain than ever that Spielberg may someday make a dazzlingly great romantic comedy.

All the supporting characters are quickly and sharply drawn and deeply and instantly engaging. Spielberg was, once upon a time, criticized for being more a technician than an "actor's director." That canard never had any validity (look at the performances in Jaws) but now I think it's safe to say that Spielberg gets more consistently and uniformly great performances than any director working today. Only Soderberg even comes close.

In a film full of great acting turns, Tom Hanks, as usual, stands out. Hanks is as effortlessly brilliant as his director, and that's saying something. His performance at times seems to be right out of a silent movie; he's as deft a physical comedian and as emotionally compelling as Charlie Chaplin in this film. Hanks' "Krakozhian" accent is every bit as convincing as his pitch perfect Boston and Alabamian accents in Catch Me if You Can and Forest Gump, but he never plays the accent for cheap laughs. Two minutes into the film, you've forgotten that this isn't Hanks' real accent.

The film is not as flawless as Spielberg's best work. The plot creaks in places and relies too much on convenient coincidence to keep things moving. Victor's motivation for wanting to go to New York just doesn't resonate like it should. The film would probably play better 20 minutes shorter, and they missed a golden opportunity by not having a jazz classics score. These are all minor quibbles that wouldn't matter too much, but the film's big flaw, its ending, is less excusable.

I was totally with the film until its last act, and then it simply falls apart. It abandon's Zeta-Jones' character, leaving the romantic plot totally unresolved. The villain's final decision is completely out of character and is made only to allow the film to end more quickly. The logic behind Vitor's actions here is opaque. The whole last half hour of the film is a mess that even Spielberg and Hanks can't charm their way out of.

It's a shame. If they'd worked the ending through as carefully as the set up, this would be a classic. As it is, it's just second-rate Spielberg.

THE TERMINAL (2004)
GRADE: B+

Salem's Lot

This "TNT Original" production is the second TV miniseries made from Stephen King's second novel. Like most adaptations of King's work, it's a pale, mediore reflection of a powerful and original story.

It's handicapped from the getgo because Rob Lowe plays the lead (David Soul played the lead in the 1979 version and was just as wooden as Lowe). Worse, they let Lowe narrate, and his voice-over's are coma inducing even when they focus on murders and childhood traumas. Richard Burton could read the phone book and make it sound dramatic; Rob Lowe reads Stephen King and makes it sound boring.

Much of the supporting cast is superb. Andre Braugher and James Cromwell are reliably brilliant actors, and when they've got the screen, they manage to pull us into story. Similarly, Dan Byrd gives a stand-out performance as 10 year old Mark Petrie. None of these actors is given as much screen time as Lowe, and the film suffers greatly for it.

The villains in the piece are badly miscast. Donald Sutherland is too old to be a convincing physical menace. Moreover, he overacts badly and without any enthusiam. He gnaws the scenery rather than chewing it. Rutger Hauer plays the vampire Barlow too low key to generate any terror. Hauer plays his first scene wearing eyeglasses, which undercuts his image and leads to distracting questions like how do vampires get fitted for a prescription? Hitchcock used to say, "The better the villain, the better the picture." These weak bad guys are the center piece of a weak film.

The effects are competent, but the horror scenes are too poorly staged to be frightening. And when they depart from King's originals, they invariably loose the narrative and logical coherence so crucial to making horror horrifying. So, in the novel, when Braugher's character confronts a vampire in his bedroom, he revokes his invitation to it in the name of God and the vampire flys off in a rage. In the TV version, Braugher tells the vamp to leave, he doesn't, then later flys off for no apparent reason.

What most filmmakers don't get about horror, and about fantasy in general, is that it has to play by the rules. Any deviation from the internal logic of the story is fatal. Fantasy has to be MORE, not less, logical than straightforward drama.

What makes Stephen King such an effective horror novelist is that he meticulously develops the reality of the world and the characters. It's not till after you've become totally invovled with story that the supernatural elements kick in, and you believe them implicitly, largely because you have so much already invested in the characters by that point. A miniseries ought to provide the room to explore the intricate plot lines and character developments that distinguish King's work. But, like the '79 version, this miniseries is in just two parts, barely three hours of screen time.

Someday, someone may turn Salem's Lot into an 8 or 10 hour miniseries with all the impact and creeping terror of the original. Let's hope it doesn't star Rob Lowe or David Soul.

Salem's Lot (2004)
GRADE: C

Scotland, PA

This film is a modernization of Macbeth. Instead of the kingdom of Scotland, the stakes here are a fastfood joint, it starts as "Duncan's" and becomes (wait for it) "MacBeth's." It recasts Shakespearean tragedy as knowing black comedy.

Most of the fun of the film comes from noticing the parallels with Shakespeare's play. So, whereas Lady Macbeth gets blood on her hands and tries to wash it off after it's long gone, Mrs. MacBeth gets a grease burn on her hand when Duncan is killed and spends the rest of the film looking for an oinment to remove it. Some of the parallels are clever, some are strained, but none of them are truly inspired.

The film is set in the 70's, and its soundtrack is filled with Classic Rock gems. The first half of the film sounds like a Bad Comany's greatest hits compilation, and the climax of the movie plays out to Three Dog Night's "Never Been to Spain." Unfortunately, these tend only to undermine the film since the songs are so much better than anything else in the movie.

First-time writer/director Billy Morrissette (whose wife Maura Tierney plays Pat MacBeth) simply doesn't have the imagination to bring out much of the potential in this original, if thin, premise. Morrissette lacks any sense of visual style, and he gives the film a deliberate pace that drags down any potential comic energy.

SCOTLAND, PA (2001)
GRADE: C+