Wonder Showzen: Season 1

How subversive is "Wonder Showzen," the hilariously twisted "Sesame Street"
parody that premiered in 2005? The allegedly hip and rebellious (but actually
very corporate) MTV aired it on its pot-smoking little brother MTV2 instead. It
was too awesome to appear on MTV, suckas!!

The brainchild of New York writer/musician/performers John Lee and Vernon
Chatman, "Wonder Showzen" is part of the post-modern no-taboos comedy that has
become popular the last few years (witness the film "The Aristocrats" and
comedians like Sarah Silverman) but that has been around since Richard Pryor and
Lenny Bruce, of course.

But where some comics have an underlying point to make -- a REASON to break
all the taboos -- "Wonder Showzen" seems interested only in deconstructing the
"kids show" format and pumping it full of unbridled lunacy. It exists just to be
funny, in other words, not to make yo...
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Swept Away

The Film:

The Mediterranean Sea On a luxurious yacht with plenty of snobbish customers
Gennarino Carunchio (Giancarlo Giannini) is forced to endure the constant abuse
of Raffaella Lanzetti (Mariangela Malato). A passionate communist who can hardly
tolerate the bourgeois attitude of Mrs. Lanzetti and her friends Gennarino would
often sit quietly in his kitchen enjoying a cup of espresso. Secretly he would
curse on Mrs. Lanzetti wishing that one day she would have to endure the same
degrading abuse those around her are graced with. And when an improvised
late-afternoon trip goes awry the impossible happens - Gennarino Carunchio and
Raffaella Lanzetti find themselves stranded on a deserted island in the middle
of the Mediterranean Sea. Mrs. Lanzeti w...
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The Fantastic World of M. C. Escher

Once upon a time, M.C. Escher's images launched a thousand drug trips. Until
seeing this good but far from exhaustive study I wasn't aware of the esteem they
have earned in both art and scientific circles. The prolific artist is more than
a collection of coffee table art books -- his graphic images go much farther
than simple optical illusions and have inspired learned mathematical
analysis.

Maurits Cornelis Escher died in 1972, aged 73 years. Michele Emmer's docu
covers some details of his formative period but doesn't really explain how he
got into his particular field except to offer that he found inspiration in
complicated Spanish mosaic tiles. Many of his images rely on perspective tricks,
in actuality, the misinterpretation of perspective clues in two-dimensional
representations of 3-dimensional objects. Figures of people, weird birds,
liz...
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Thank God It's Friday

Thank God It's Friday is not a terrific piece of filmmaking, but it is
a glorious memento from 1978, when Disco fever hit Hollywood in full force. The
movement had already peaked but the clubs continued in LA for at least a couple
more years, quickly melding into a predominantly gay thing -- The Village People
are already represented on the soundtrack of this picture. As a phenomenon Disco
was exaggerated, it was but true for a trendy demographic that was young, single
and had the money for nightclubbing. I remember a UCLA film school party in
early 1976 where the new 'thing' was to practice line dancing to pre-techno
music. The department was beginning to be organized along social lines, as
opposed to the loner-activist slant of the early 70s. Those kids were pretty
progressive. Savant didn't get involved because he lacked the 1) clothes,
2)...
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Get Shorty / Be Cool

Get Shorty and Be Cool span an interesting ten years for MGM.
The first film was part of a wave of box office successes that pumped new life
into the moribund studio, which had been floundering for fifteen years and
hadn't yet shaken the economic disaster represented by being bought by Giancarlo
Paretti in 1989. Alan Ladd Jr. didn't get very far beyond patching up bad
financing but Frank Mancuso re-launched a strong new James Bond
(Goldeneye) and managed a string of hits, like The Birdcage.
Whereas MGM had previously been a losing proposition avoided by hot talent, for
over a year it attracted "A" class projects.

Ten years later, the Get Shorty team returned to the Chili well with a
sequel. This time the studio's oft-threatened demise actually took place,
practically as production wrapped. Frank Mancuso had l...
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