Confessions of a Superhero - Trailer

You have to see this documentary, it’s amazing. Whenever you think you get a handle on these people their lives take the most bizarre turns.

Ink - Trailer #3

Here’s a movie whose popularity spread via word-of-mouth after its DVD had been ripped onto The Pirate Bay. I was told by the friend who recommended it to me to suspend judgment for the first twenty minutes, which was probably a wise decision - the story makes me feel like I’m sixteen again and reading a really good YA sci-fi/fantasy novel. It also doesn’t hurt that the fight sequences are pretty great, considering its obviously tiny budget.

You can buy a DVD/Blu-ray copy here, Netflix it or download it via… whatever means you desire - there’s a “Donate” button on the website explicitly for viewers who want to support the production without buying a DVD.

THE PRISONER [2009]

The Village is still here, although it’s now much larger, and instead of a curfew there are nightclubs and impeccably clean restaurants. The giant white orb still patrols its borders. People are still referred to by numbers instead of names - and No. 2 is the character presiding over the Village, while No. 6 is the character determined to escape. But that’s where the similarities end. Despite the narrative complexity and character depth demanded by today’s discerning television viewers, this remake is so goddamn boring compared to its predecessor.

It certainly looks spectacular, as the framegrabs above indicate, and the reveal at the end isn’t the biggest letdown in the world (even if it does take the entire final episode to explain). I think that this version’s abandonment of the comic elements of the original are probably its biggest weaknesses here. The idea of a secret village in the middle of nowhere where everyone is referred to by number and weather balloons act as security systems is incredibly easy to mock, and the original deflected that camp aspect through incorporating satire and witty dialogue - as well as sticking to a formula which allowed the audience to slowly realize the utter impossibility of No. 6 escaping from the Village, so that all escape attempts made by the protagonist contained an undercurrent of hilarious dramatic irony. The remake, on the other hand, is a very straight-faced affair with Jim Caviezel looking bewildered and yelling a lot while Ian McKellen hides his emotional pain behind a smug exterior. And centering the mythology around No. 2’s emotional backstory rather than No. 6 or the Village as a whole seems like a mistake: building a 6-hour narrative around escape attempts and resistance against authority seems a lot more exciting than delving into the family dynamics of the man in charge.

Maybe I’m just exhausted with 21st-century diatribes against “the digital surveillance state” which attempt to create a mysterious aura around bad TV-static effects and evil corporations who behave and operate at a significant disconnect with the way the world actually works. Who knows? In any case, I may have tolerated this (and perhaps even enjoyed it) if its runtime were cut in half. As it stands it’s just a particularly beautiful piece of bland, vague notions.

Amazing rotoscoping job in this Spanish promo for LOST’s final season. These networks are getting really creative with this restriction that they cannot show any upcoming footage!

The Prisoner Puzzle - Interview with Patrick McGoohan [1977]

McGoohan (who passed away this January) comes off as… difficult to get along with in this interview, as he does on the show. He mentions how he believes No. 6 was left essentially unchanged by the events which transpired in the series, which I think really speaks to the strength of the character. On other shows of this writing caliber, characters mature and develop, but No. 6 - from beginning to end - is defined solely by his ridiculously strong sense of individuality and desire for freedom. It completely works because the series contains only 17 episodes - Lost would have imploded, much less be able to sustain itself over six seasons, if it contained a character whose sole motivation every episode was to get off the island by any means necessary.

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A television critic gets a little obsessive over the 2-minute opening sequence of The Prisoner and dissects it in the video above.