The X-Files: I Want To Believe

A few years back I recalled how much I enjoyed watching the X-Files and so went out and bought the first four seasons on DVD with the intention of sitting down and having some good entertainment. I recall thinking that after the X-Files movie, the whole programme got a bit stupid, and clearly David Duchovny preferred to be anywhere but the set of the X-Files. I was, as it turns out, slightly wrong, as the Duchovny was obviously bored out of his brain as of about half-way though season three, and while I had intended to buy season five, it proved too much like hard work so I gave up and left it at the end of Season Four with Mulder apparently having shot himself in the head.

Kick-ass way to end a series that - having the lead character commit suicide.

That said I had a pang of nostalgia when I started seeing the previews for the new X-Files movie, and so I decided to go and see it, regardless of what other people told me. And, I have to say, it's something of a curious beast.

The last movie was steeped in the mythology of the X-Files which seemed pretty much made up as Chris Carter went along, desperate to try and put every last thing he had invented into the mythology. As a consequence, you had to be a fan, really, to watch the first movie. This time around that's all been tossed aside and instead we are given a stand-alone movie that has nothing really to do with the mythology, except for a passing reference to Mulder's late sister, although thankfully Mulder reassures us that she really is dead (this time, thank God).

An FBI agent has disappeared and a convicted paedophile has information regarding the case, apparently able to experience some sort of psychic vision. The paedophile - a priest - doesn't garner a lot of favour with Scully who is having difficulty with priests as it stands; her boss - another priest - eager to let one of her patients die than allow painful stem cell therapy be undertaken. Meanwhile Mulder, on the other hand, is pretty amiable to the priest's suggestions, especially when he bleeds from his eyes. FBI agent Dakota Whitney is caught in the middle, desperate to believe that the priest's visions will lead them to a break in the case, but at the same time still skeptical.

David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson are pretty much back on form as Mulder and Scully - even Duchovny actually shows some interest this time round - although both are now playing the agents in a completely different context to how they were once seen; neither Mulder nor Scully are FBI agents any longer, and both are in a relationship - Scully at one point confirming that she is in love with Mulder. Their son, William, is cursorily mentioned with the hint that he is no longer with us. There are some nice continuity touches to the television series - Mulder eats sunflower seeds still, and still has his "I Want To Believe" poster, and Scully is still the sceptic, though this time she has every reason to be as sceptical as she is.

Amanda Peet and XZibit play the two new FBI agents, and both deliver acceptable performances without really exciting anything on screen. More exciting for this particular fan was the appearance (completely without fanfare) of Mitch Pileggi reprising his role as AD Walter Skinner. Skinner was such an integral part of The X-Files, and Pileggi was usually the one thing that saved many an episode from falling on its arse, that it would have been a severe disappointment had he not turned up.

However, truth be told, it is Billy Connolly as the paedophilic priest who steals the entire movie, and every scene he turns up in. Playing a paedophile is not particularly easy, and to try to garner sympathy is a hard thing indeed, but like Scully, the audience finds themselves disgusted with the priest's behaviour but as the film progresses it is easy to see how Mulder can forgive a man who is trying so hard to seek redemption.

It's worth making a few more notes about the film: Mark Snow is back composing, and he gives us a score that isn't really memorable but isn't at all intrusive, and his reworked version of the X-Files theme at the end is quite grand. The actual cinematography of the movie is outstanding, and filming in the snow really gives a good mood to the film.

Overall the film is somewhat bizarre, starting at a point vastly different from the television series so the fans are going to be a little unsettled, and not featuring any alien incursions which will unsettle the casual viewer who has that expectation. That said, it's not a bad film, and is worth the watch.

"B"
PS - How awesome, though, is the teaser poster for the movie???

Star Trek III: The Search For Spock

There is an unwritten rule of thumb that says that every odd numbered Star Trek movie is crap, while all the even numbered movies are great. If you were to sit down and compare, say "The Motion Picture" or "The Final Frontier" to "The Undiscovered Country" or "The Wrath Of Kahn" it's pretty easy to see how that rule is bang on the money. Star Trek III, though, is not quite so easy to dismiss.

Taking place pretty much straight after the previous movie, we find Kirk getting something of an ear-bashing from Spock's father, Sarek, about Spock's soul no longer existing, while McCoy seems to be getting more and more Spock-like as time wears on.

Ultimately, and despite the fact that they are expressly forbidden from doing so, Kirk and his faithful crew decide to travel to Genesis where Spock's body is, taking McCoy with them - who is apparently possessing Spock's soul - and then reuniting the two on Vulcan. However, little do they know that on Genesis, something has happened that has recreated Spock...

The Search For Spock, like The Wrath Of Kahn, plays like an episode of the series, but much bigger and grander, and is actually the better off for doing so. Unlike later films in the series, it is the Enterprise crew who are the central characters, with only their Klingon opponent getting any other real screen time. This is a good thing as the script actually allows William Shatner and
DeForest Kelly to shine. Shatner is a complete fruit cake, and I don't have a lot of time for Kirk, but I must admit that there is a sneaky little piece of nostaligic love for the character, and it's great to see him on screen doing what only Kirk can do.

McCoy, on the other hand, was an odd sort of character in the television series; ostensibly one of the three leads, but more often than not as sidelined as the rest of the crew in favour of Kirk and Spock. In this movie where Spock is not actually present, McCoy steps up and takes the lead rather magnificently.

Checkov, Sulu, Scotty and Uhuru all get smaller roles to play that prove essential to the overall plot of the movie, but none of them get quite as large a chunk of the action as Saavik, returning from The Wrath Of Kahn, but now portrayed by Robin Curtis as opposed to Kirstie Allie. No great loss to be brutally honest, but Curtis doesn't really deliver anything astonishingly memorable, despite the fact that, apparently, the fans fell in love with the woman.

No, in spite of all of this it is Christopher Lloyd, strangely cast as the Klingon commander Kruge, who actually makes the movie, straying just the right side of OTT in his vicious performance of a driven Klingon who has a strange love as well, possessing not only a girlfriend who is willing to sacrifice her life for his cause, but also a dog-like creature that Kruge is quite upset about when it gets killed. It seems very strange on paper, and yet it works in that same strange way.

However, regardless of how good the performances are, there is still something lacking in Star Trek III: The Search For Spock, and it is actually the decision to have Leonard Nimoy direct the film. It lacks pace and punch and no matter how much the actors deliver, it doesn't seem to make its way onto the screen. It is beautifully shot with some wonderful costume work and music, and with the aforementioned acting, the only thing that is letting the team down has to be the direction. This is a shame because the movie has more than enough otherwise to really shine.

"B"

Child Of Time

In the early 00's when there was a fair amount of certainty that Doctor Who was never coming back so we should just be jolly grateful for whatever we get, no matter what format it is, a company called Telos secured the rights to create Doctor Who novellas. There were normal novels coming out, but there was a bit of a rule that said the novels should reflect the era of the
Doctor being written for, which meant that only the eighth Doctor could have novels that were a little "radical". Telos felt no such constraints and they produced a number of interesting works, but one of the best was one called "The Cabinet Of Light" in which a Doctor (unknown incarnation) worked with black spiv Honore Lechausseur and the mysterious Emily Blandish against a creature made of bits and its mistress. Short years later Doctor Who was given a new lease of life and Telos lost the rights to make these novels, but Honore and Emily were a bit of a hit and so they were given their own spin-off series.

Til now the Time Hunter novellas have been quite interesting, pursuing different ideas and giving us the opportunity to see time travellers in a slightly different way. We still know nothing about Emily and Honore has become more of an action hero than a pseudo-Doctor. Sadly, all good things come to an end, and thanks to declining sales, the Time Hunter series has been wrapped up with Child Of Time, a book which attempts to tie up all the loose ends, including the video Daemos Rising.

As a consequence of the publishers banging on about the Daemos Rising connection, and given that most readers of the novellas are Doctor Who fans, and as such a novel featuring gargoyles being brought to life...well, it's not too difficult to work out who are the villains in this particular novel. There are some nice connections to the Doctor Who universe of norm (and it's difficult to work out whether this is a parallel universe for Doctor Who, or not) with some great references to The Daemons, and all of this neatly ties the series back into its origins. What's more impressive is the fact that Dr Smith actually makes an appearance. Clearly this is the same Doctor that was in The Cabinet Of Light, and so the fact that Telos had the balls to use the Doctor, albeit pseudonomonously, is actually a fantastic way to come full circle.

However, we've come a fair way with Honore and Emily and it's great to see the two of them really take center stage for the final showdown. The characters have been well developed by various writers over the years, and its a testament to them that there is a twinge of sadness in me at the thought of having lost these two characters.

Child Of Time is a great novel for those who loved the series and particularly for those Doctor Who fans who really enjoyed The Cabinet Of Light - the payoff is worth the wait. If you don't read it though, I wouldn't suggest you pick it up. It will confusing and ultimately annoying.

"A"

Kate Ellis

Australia has a lot of things going for it, but one of our few undiscovered treasures - or at least undiscovered by me anyway - is, rather surprisingly, our minister for sport. Now, politicians are generally old, fuddy-duddies with little or no interest in making people happy - unless that happiness coincides with getting a few votes. In Australia, most of our ministers are the same, except for our minister for sport, Kate Ellis.

Because she is hot.

I'm not just talking in a casual way, I'm talking in a pretty damn fine way. Oh she's no blonde bimbo. No, she's your girl-next-door type, with a smile that just melts you and dimples that only enhance the effect. She's got a bit of a kick-arse figure (although because she's a minister she needs to cover it up more often that not and that is gravely disappointing for virtually everyone), and looks great in jeans.

How do I know this? Because she was on Good News Week this week, wearing jeans and showing off her great figure in them. She was also showing that she has a sense of humour, not least because she went on the programme, but also because she made a rather hilarious joke about how her being a karaoke queen ended at about the same time as the government began it's crackdown on binge drinking - entirely coincidentally. She also made an entertaining comment about a young ten year old bodybuilder, suggesting that her campaign to bring fitness to the youth of today was in the hope that everyone would do it, not just one ten year old doing it for everyone.

Kate Ellis rocks and should be our next prime minister. That is all there is to say on the matter.

"A+"

Meet Dave

Not that this is terribly important, but this is the first movie my almost-three-week old daughter saw. Obviously it's now been two days since she saw it, so she is actually three weeks now. She was very good and stayed awake for the first hour of the movie before sleeping for the last forty-four minutes of it, which I think shows particularly good taste.

Back in the day - and I'm talking the 80s here, when Jean-Claude Van Damme was a legitimate action hero and Bill Murray didn't have his head up his arse - Eddie Murphy was the king of comedy flicks. And it basically came down to the fact that someone, somewhere, knew what Murphy was good at; put the man in a buddy flick, make him a charismatic, street wise, punster, and give him a solid straight man to play off. Oh yes, we got Beverly Hills Cop, 48 Hours, Trading Places, Coming To America...hell, even Beverly Hills Cop II had a certain charm about it. Then the naughty nineties hit and suddenly Eddie wasn't quite as funny as he used to be. He stopped doing buddy movies and started to be the solo star of his movies. And it wasn't so great. Worse, he stumbled on the idea that he should have someone to play off - and that someone should be himself...under latex.

Meet Dave is about a group of tiny aliens who crash on Earth to destroy it in order to save their planet. The thing is, their spaceship is a human-sized version of the captain. Cue Eddie playing both the Captain and the spaceship, and of course, cue utter hilarity as Eddie acts learning to walk, learning to speak and...other stuff.

The problem is, and it's a biggie people, the spaceship is supposed to be a sympathetic, unapproachable figure, and that's not really the kind of character dear old Eddie is good at playing. "In the day" he was the wise-cracking, charismatic one, not the moody, marshmallow-centered one. And Eddie is a bit of a one trick pony. The part, really, would have been handled better by someone like Will Ferrell or Steve Carrel who are both really good at playing that sympathetic, cold kind of character. Even John C Reilly, failing Ferrell.

The rest of the cast suffer from being pretty much underdeveloped. Gabrielle Union plays the third in command of the ship, who has a crush on the captain, and seems to be mildly bi-polar, being cold and efficient most of the time, but every so often bursting out into the Earth-affected character. Everyone else on the ship is a stereotype: the secretly gay security guard; the dorky engineer; the uptight second officer; the fat waste disposal guy...the list goes on. The real humans are not that much better off, although at least they get a little more dialogue to play with.

Meet Dave is actually a pretty neat concept, but it is just poorly executed. Even the special effects look...well, a little less than special. It would be cheaper to watch it on DVD and probably look just as good.

"C+"

Law & Order: Criminal Intent - Depths (Season 7)

As you know, of course, I have felt that since Warren Leight took over as show runner for Criminal Intent, the programme has dropped the ball somewhat, churning out what is moderately good entertainment, but essentially a sad attempt to marry the CSI format to the CI format and, of course, failing miserably because the two simply don't mesh in that way. CI relies on certain basic things that the writers seemed to have forgotten - showing us the crime from the criminal's point of view and using Goren as a specialist detective that can see things others can't.

And this week, the programme is back on form. Hip hip hooray!

Starting off with the curious murder of a man underwater (and sticking to the new house style of CI which means we get funky editing of the events over a funky hip track) that initially appears to be all about another terrorist plot, it soon turns into a rather bizarre attempt by a man to ensure that his son will be left with the fortune that is his legacy by not revealing one of his ancestors was a slave trader. It's a bit tricky and a bit complex, but it's actually a brilliant little story that gives us the opportunity to see the criminals do their bit, without giving away exactly who the murderer is; as well as give us the chance for Goren to investigate in his own unique fashion - in this case, doing extensive research at a library.

Characterwise, it is the regulars who shine. The guest cast all turn in more than satisfactory performances, though Kelli Giddish does a very good job as the manipulative blonde who uses her looks to get her way; but all are more than convincing when the ultimate villain of the piece tricks them all into framing each other for the original murder.
But, yes, it is the regulars who are stealing the show, as well they should. Vincent D'Onofrio gives us the Goren we remember: at the beginning of the episode he is instantly aware that the corpse can't be too old due to a scent he picked up, while at the end he gets to mentally trick the villain into giving himself away. Eames is back to being his straight man, but thank god she actually likes him again this episode, supporting everything he does and even covering for him when he pushes the socialite into the water. D'Onofrio is keen to show us that Goren still has little time for Captain Ross, and there appears to be tension between Ross and semi-regular ME Rodgers, which Goren significantly observes. One can only wonder if that particular plot thread is going to lead anywhere.

Ultimately, though, this is an incredible return to form for Criminal Intent, and an emminently watchable episode.

"A+"

Playboy: June

Events have overtaken me a little this month and that being the way, even as July comes to a close, let me finally get around to reviewing the girls of Playboy for June. A bit slack I know, but what can I do.

Starting off with the Playmate of the Month, Miss July - Laura Croft is a rather attractive young brunette who, despite tickling my fancy, brings to mind many of the Playmates of the last few years, fitting into a new kind of "brunette trad Playmate" mould. Although very attractive, she's not particularly unique in any way and as such one gets the feeling that Playboy is playing it safe with their playmates this year.

Amanda English is CyberGirl of the Month, which was probably a safe bet given her competition and the fact that Playboy never seems to let twins or triplets get that monthly slot. The only problem that Amanda has is she tends to looks very dour in her photoshoots which tends to destroy the fun that Playboy models project. However, that seems to be a problem with a lot of the CyberGirls, and probably comes from the fact that this section of the Playboy model-dom dispenses with the "girl next door" approach. Crystal Enloe leads the Cyberpack this month, followed by Lexi Lombardelli, Katie Anderson, Tasha Nicole and Bryleigh Rayne. Proper outfits have been tossed aside in the photoshoots this month, with Lombardelli, Anderson and Nicole all wearing lingerie, Rayne in a bikini and Enloe in...err, well it appears to be a wrap of some sort. Lombardelli and Rayne have both featured in various other Playboy photoshoots and so the bets are on that one of these two will take out CGOM in four months time, which is a bit disappointing because they are fairly obvious choices. Enloe has quite a unique look about her, not a perfect model, but certainly very interesting. Anderson is suprising by not being a waif and her curves make for a delightful photoshoot. However, my vote for CGOM is Tasha Nicole who is extremely exotic looking. Her pouting photo shoot and sudden smiles scream Playmate to me, so hopefully she'll get the chance. Oh, and just for the record, Lombardelli actually makes it out of Brazil this month - surprise, surprise.

Actually I should add that while the Cybergirls tend to have a high skank factor, this month none of them give off that vibe and most are quite close to the Playboy ideal, which is quite sweet.

Rachael Schultz is the Coed Of The Month, and as alluded to earlier, this is probably more because of her previous model appearances than actually being the best choice for the job. Although to be fair, she probably is, on reflection. Her photoshoots are a little surprising because Schultz appears to be quite nervous in them, her smiles being small and shaky, which is odd given her other modelling. The girls though, are Amanda King, Dariya Snejenko, McKenzie Taylor and Monica Chairez. King has modelled for Playboy before, and comes across less as a new-to-it-all coed and more an experienced model. It's a little surprising she's a Coed rather than a CyberGirl. Snejenko also comes across as an experienced model, and both she and King both seem a little too old to be Coeds. For me, the Coeds should be between 18 and 22, and when they appear to be older you find yourself questioning their university credentials. Amanda King is my favourite for the month, both in that she seems very fresh-faced and also that she is very attractive. Finally the latino Chairez finishes the group - attractive and exotic, but just shy of King for the best of the month.

June was a good month for the Playboy fold, but as mentioned earlier, Playboy seemed to be playing very safe with a collection of typical caucasian and latino girls.

"B"