Dollhouse Isn't All Fun And Games

Last night finally brought the premiere of the eagerly-anticipated new Joss Whedon series, Dollhouse. Thanks to previous creations Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel and, to a lesser degree, Firefly, Whedon has developed a small but devoted fan base that will follow him anywhere (something that he shares with J Michael Straczynski and J.J. Abrams, but which is far from the norm in TV circles). I like each of those earlier Whedon-vehicles enough that I'd try practically anything that came out with his name attached, and so I was there, butt in seat, for last night's 9:00 debut on Fox. (I continue to be amused by the rather-clever marketing move of combining Summer Glau from Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles with Eliza Dushku in promoting Fox's Durable Dame Doubleheader.)

Many of the reviews that I'd read beforehand were pretty rough on Dollhouse. One of the most common complaints expressed - that the audience can't bond with or invest in a main character who's essentially a cipher in terms of personality (i.e. she doesn't have one of her own) - is something that I think probably will hurt the series, over time, if it's not addressed. Sure, it's going to be fun to see Eliza Dushku take on vastly different characters as Echo every week. In the premiere, she first plays a lovestruck party-girl who's convinced that she's just met "the one" in the person of some spoiled rich brat (ironically named "Matt") who really just wanted a perfect weekend of sex and adventure with a disposable hottie. When the clock runs out on Matt's birthday present to himself, Echo's de-programmed and then later re-built as a super-competent, no-nonsense hostage negotiator who's being rented by an ultra-wealthy Mexican expatriot whose 12-year old daughter has been kidnapped. The two Echo imprints couldn't be less alike (although even an all-business attitude, updo and glasses do little to diminish Dushku's hotness in the latter role) and so the show very quickly establishes its premise. But we're still stuck with the original problem: we want to, but can't, get to know the real Echo. (In story terms, there is no "real Echo," but you know what I mean!)

We do learn that Echo is far from unique in her existence as a new rewritable memory format, though. When not out "on assignment," she resides with the rest of the "agents" in "the Dollhouse," which is some shadowy organization that's run by Adelle DeWitt (Olivia Williams, who you may remember as Bruce Willis' wife in The Sixth Sense). Ms DeWitt's motivations, as well as her resources and credibility, are suspect as the show begins, but her stated stance, at least, is that she's "helping people." We see other men and women in various stages of "dollification" (I just made that word up!), making it clear that having your original memories and personality ripped out of you and tossed in the garbage isn't actually as easy a process as... well, a really stupid person might believe it to be! Each agent gets "dolled up" in a high-tech chair that's (I'm sorry) way too similar to the one used in NBC's My Own Worst Enemy (which not only beat Dollhouse out of the 2008/09 gate by about 5 months but also managed to get canceled before the Fox show had even debuted!). They also get reset to semi-blankness in the same impressive-looking recliner after completing their assignment, at which point they apparently get to wander around the Dollhouse aimlessly, engaging in coed showering and mindless chatter until climbing into slots in the floor and going night-night.

There's a line early on about how the authorities would surely shut down the Dollhouse and toss its management into jail if its existence was ever found out, which of course means that there's already an FBI hunk Paul Ballard (Tahmoh Penikett, "Helo" of Battlestar Galactica fame) on the case. Whedon's sometimes a little too "by the book" for my tastes, and the pilot of Dollhouse suffers more than a little from that weakness. Besides the various points of conflict being immediately established and beaten over the head with a hammer - not only is the FBI agent in conflict with his own superiors over his pursuit of the mysterious "Dollhouse" urban legend that he's tracking with unprofessional zeal and career-limiting tactlessness, but as that conversation plays out, we're shown shots of Ballard in a boxing ring with another man! and no, I'm not making that up! - there's also one flashback scene with a pre-Echo Dushku voicing the Whedonistic refrain, "every action has consequences." It's the sort of thing that seemed fresh and exciting on TV 10 years ago but which comes across more like a crutch when I see it used by the same guy, over and over again. (One bit of Whedon schtick that was mostly absent from the pilot, and which I didn't miss at all, was the use of humourous dialogue to undercut, and sometimes undermine, tension. I personally hope that it makes no more than cameo appearances as the series progresses, as I find that it takes me out of the scene more often than not.)

There are also some credibility gaps that need to be filled, if the show is really going to last. We need to find out why these people would agree to essentially commit suicide in order to become tools-for-rent (which I imagine we will), how any private organization could ever expect to pull off an operation of this size in total secrecy when they're renting their services out to anyone who'll pay (not exactly a top-secret approach, that!), where the ground-breaking technology itself comes from (and I'm hoping that we're not really expected to believe that it's the work of the one annoying hot-shot genius that we've seen so far) and why anyone wealthy enough to afford the Dollhouse's services wouldn't simply hire actual experts instead of "dolled-up" ones.

Those criticisms aside, I actually quite enjoyed a lot of what Dollhouse offered up in its debut. Amy Acker (Fred Burkle/Illyria in Angel, as well as Kelly Payton in Alias) plays Dr Claire Saunders, a scarred woman with what's certainly going to prove to be an interesting backstory. I'll freely cop to being a big fan of the actress, as I think she's lit up the scene every time I've come across her. Rather than trading on her good looks to play the same character each time, Acker has ranged from Southern small-town science nerd (Fred) to cold-blooded killer (Kelly) to other-worldly god-in-human-form (Illyria), and I've bought it each time. I can hardly wait to see what Dr Saunders has in store for us in future episodes.

I also liked that there's some moral ambiguity in place right from the start. One of the handlers (played by Harry Lennix), for example, is already beginning to question the neutral stance that the organization takes in matters involving innocents in harm's way. That sort of thing may get tiresome quickly, though, if there isn't any evolution. And as I said to my wife at one point, viewed one way the Dollhouse is really nothing more than a high-priced whorehouse. If I'm rich and can therefore rent Eliza Dushku to use as my sex toy before tossing her back, how is that anything other than prostitution? Hopefully the show will deal with that angle before long.

Overall, I'm intrigued enough by what I saw, as well as trusting enough in the Whedon track record, to sign up for more Dollhouse. I think I read that 13 episodes were ordered by Fox, so we'll at least get that much. Whether the show follows in the footsteps of Buffy (7 seasons) and Angel (5 seasons) or goes the way of the late, lamented Firefly (13 episodes) remains to be seen. I think that it needs to step its game some to stick around, but at least it got off to an interesting start.

Review: The Bourne Trilogy

I don't usually lump movies together for review, but I'm making an exception in this case, for a number of reasons.

For one thing, I watched all three Bourne movies in relatively quick succession this year. I'd seen Identity once before, but Supremacy and Ultimatum were both new to me this time around. Because of that, the three films have blended together in my head, ever so slightly, as I reflect back on them now.

Another reason to regard them as a whole, at least for the purposes of reviewing them, is the formulaic nature of the films. They really do tend to be cookie-cutter productions, as I imagine the original Robert Ludlum novels were, as well. Each of the movies begins with Jason Bourne experiencing some kind of partial flashback, the significance of which even he doesn't fully understand until late in the proceedings. We learn early in the first installment that he's the result of a blacker-than-black ops program that turned him into a government-sponsored assassin with a photographic memory, heightened reflexes, incredible fighting prowess and an uncanny ability to instantly read any situation he finds himself in, among other, similarly-handy traits. One of the mainstays of each movie, then, is the inevitable scene in which he has to battle his opposite number in the form of yet another product of that same "super-killer" program. It's Bourne versus his mirror image, to the death... or something close to it, anyway. There's also the big reveal at the end, where we (and Bourne) finally discover exactly why he's been wracked by the specific memory fragments that have been shown throughout his travels. And travel he does, to exotic locations like Paris, London, Madrid, Moscow, Tangiers, Berlin and even New York City.

I think in some ways the Bourne movies came along at exactly the right time to maximize their appeal. Superheroes are all the rage in Hollywood right now, after all, and Bourne fits that description rather nicely. Everything about him requires that comic book-ish suspension of disbelief that allows us to believe that a man from a doomed planet can fly, or that one billionaire would choose to fight crime in a bat-costume while another pulls it off by building himself a suit of armour out of missile parts and bailing wire. Bourne might just have found the audience slightly less accepting of his shenanigans if these other heroes weren't out there, helping to soften the ground for all concerned.

As for the individual components of this trilogy, I'd definitely say that each successive chapter seemed less enjoyable than the one before it. I was very impressed with The Bourne Identity, even seeing it for the second time. I thought that the action was very well done, with a nice balance between plot, character and stunts. The romance between Jason (Matt Damon) and Marie (Franka Potente, of Run Lola Run fame) was completely believable to me, and developed slowly enough that I became invested in it. Not that anyone would mistake this picture for a romantic comedy, but within the action genre, the interplay between these two characters worked very well.

The best thing about The Bourne Supremacy was the addition of Joan Allen to the cast. She added an element that had been missing in the original (an authority figure you could empathize with and actually root for) but in most other ways the second Bourne adventure seemed diluted compared to the first. Once the character of Marie was written out early on in the movie, Bourne's single-minded determination to fill in the latest gap in his memory lacked any kind of human backdrop upon which to really care about it. I did love the final scene, though, in which Bourne confronts the daughter of two of his past victims and provides her with some closure.

The Bourne Ultimatum, in comparison, felt somewhat hollow and contrived. Perhaps it's just the fact that it's all just "more of the same" by this point, but I actually found myself bored during parts of Ultimatum. There's also at least one logic gaffe in the plot that took me right out of the experience (the idiotic part in which Bourne actually tells a certain character that he's sitting in the other man's office when there was absolutely no need to, which results in Bourne being chased across the city when he could simply have walked away at his leisure had he just kept his mouth shut) but mostly I'd just grown tired of the sameness and craved a bit of variety. The Julia Stiles character, returning once again ("Nicky Parsons" shows up in all three installments), seemed destined for something more here... only to be sent off to Siberia (figuratively) just when her role finally got interesting (albeit disturbingly similar to Marie's circumstances, two films earlier). Not a terrible film, all things considered, but just as certainly not up to the level of its predecessors.

Overall, I was glad to watch all three, but will probably remember the first one the longest. As an interesting bit of trivia, the 2nd and 3rd films were directed by Paul Greengrass, who was on tap to direct Watchmen before that earlier attempt fell apart. Will Zack Snyder's version of that classic comic book series, in theatres in less than a month now, make us all happy that Greengrass didn't get the chance, or will we be left to wistfully wonder, "What if...?" once we see what Snyder's come up with? Only time will tell, I guess.

Rating (The Bourne Identity): *** 1/2
Rating (The Bourne Supremacy): ***
Rating (The Bourne Ultimatum): ** 1/2

Review: Frost/Nixon

35 years after Watergate, it's hard to adequately convey just how significant those events really were. I remember, as a pre-teen, hearing the word "Watergate" on the news every night, and eventually being so disappointed when it turned out that it was "only" a building in Washington where some burglars working for one party (Richard Nixon's Republican administration) had bugged a political headquarters belonging to the other party (the Democratic National Committee). My young mind had expected Watergate to be revealed as the codename for some secret branch of the Nixon government that was assassinating political rivals or wiping out foreign countries. Little did I know that it would be another decade still, amid the shadowy rule of Ronald Reagan, before we'd get those sorts of conspiratorial charges leveled at a sitting president!

As history has shown, Nixon's greatest mistake was his decision to try to cover up what had transpired at the Watergate office. He apparently valued loyalty above all else, and so made what could only be described as an ill-considered attempt to make the whole mess go away, obstructing justice in the process. Or, perhaps, he was simply corrupt through and through, and had actually initiated the dirty tricks himself. That latter scenario was never reliably proven; the cover-up, on the other hand, became increasingly obvious as the days fell off the calendar between the break-in in June of 1972 and his resignation (the first ever by a U.S. President) 26 months later. Eighteen and a half minutes of missing White House recordings (all of the conversations were taped in those days, thanks to President Lyndon B Johnson) seemed to confirm that Nixon had done something that he didn't want the world to know about, as did his initial refusal to turn the tapes over at all. Over that two-year stretch, even the staunchest Nixon supporters were pushed to the breaking point, and the United States of America endured perhaps its greatest loss of trust between its people and its government (despite George W. Bush's best efforts to top Nixon). If you're under the age of 30 and have taken it for granted your entire life that "all politicians are crooked", you can lay more of the blame for that bias at the feet of "Tricky Dick" Nixon than with anyone else.

With all of that as background, I went into Frost/Nixon with a great deal of interest sprinkled with a healthy dollop of doubt. After all, the Nixon interviews that David Frost conducted in 1977 came long after the excitement had died down to some degree: Nixon had resigned 3 years earlier, Ford had replaced him and promptly pardoned his former boss, and Jimmy Carter had swept Ford out of office in the 1976 election (meaning, incidentally, that Gerald Ford had operated as both the VP and President of the United States without ever once being elected to either position!) I therefore couldn't help but wonder: what manner of heat could there really have been around the matter of the ex-president giving a series of interviews to a British TV personality known mostly for puff pieces?

And, in fact, that's exactly the question that Ron Howard's film sets out to answer, in an amazingly-entertaining fashion. We see that David Frost had a terrible time drumming up any interest from advertisers or the American TV networks, to the point where he had to self-finance it with some help from his friends. While Nixon himself drooled at the six-figure payment that he would get out of it, virtually no one outside of Frost's inner circle was enthusiastic in the least about the project. Ford had declared the U.S.'s "long national nightmare" to be over when he took office, and Carter had actually made that a reality when he whisked Nixon's pardoner out the door. So naturally the only people who wanted to ever see Nixon's face again hoped that it would come to them from behind bars (which Ford's "stay out of jail for free" card had precluded) or in some frank admission of guilt. And what were the chances that a lightweight like Frost could ever get that out of Tricky Dick?

I found Frost/Nixon to be a thrilling trip back through time, filled to the brim with reminders of just what our part of the world was like in the 1970s. It also provides a great deal of suspense - some of that muted, unfortunately, by the decision to show what is undoubtedly the film's key emotional turning point in just about every talk show appearance made on behalf of the movie - as well as standout performances by Michael Sheen and Frank Langella in the two title roles. Langella, in particular, absolutely inhabits the former president in every way: voice, demeanour, body language and presence. Despite not really looking all that much like Nixon, I caught myself several times having to look for clues that it wasn't archival footage that had suddenly been spliced in.

If you're a history buff at all, then I think that you'll love Frost/Nixon as much as I did. But for those who prefer a faster pace and lighter fare in your entertainment, I imagine that this one may not be your cup of tea. It is, after all, very tightly focused on one specific moment in history: two men, each attempting to rejuvenate his career at the expense of the other. It's quite the intense battle, but at no point does a gun get fired or any bombs go off. And yet I still couldn't take my eyes off the screen!

Rating: ****