Venture Bros: Tag Sale — You’re It!
Why is Dr. Girlfriend with The Monarch? She’s smart and attractive, snappy dresser. Why does she hang out with (and fornicate) with that whining, petulant, impotent fraud?
Some of my favorite Brock moments are when he just doesn’t want to deal with the drama of a situation. When the secret service head asks him if he wants to see the chatting Misters in pretty pink dresses, he stares straight ahead and, voice thick with disinterest, says “No, I don’t want to see ’em in dresses.” The difference between Brock and a lot of other characters Patrick Warburton plays is that Brock seems to always have too much on his mind; his halting speech isn’t dim-wittedness but a reluctance to waste his breath on the unimportant, which is a great concept for an animated character.
Venture Bros: The Incredible Mr. Brisby
In a cartoon, or a movie, or a TV show, anything in popular culture really, when the creators want to point out that a character is lame, they name him Todd.
This is why I hate the name Todd.
Venture Bros: Eenie, Meeney, Miney…Magic!
Ah, yes. The appearance of Dr. Orpheus. My first time seeing this.
As someone who has worked closely with Mr. Steven Rattazzi over a few million shows, Dr. Orpheus is especially funny, as his declamatory style is only a slight exaggeration of what Steven is capable of once he gets a good heat under him. But without the spittle.
Dr. Orpheus makes a terrific counterpart to Rusty, in that they are both single parents stuck between a real and an imaginary world, but that Orpheus has somehow figured out a way to live the dream (much to his daughter’s mortification) and Rusty just feels tied down and constricted by his parental duties (which he tends to utterly ignore).
I love Hank and Dean’s pajamas, for two reasons.
1. Hank is nominally the more “grown up” twin, but he’s the one in the Aquaman jammies, whereas Dean gets the way-cooler Spider-Man jammies (which exactly match a set that my 5-year-old son has).
2. They don’t change out of them until way past noon.
In a way, the whole show is about this clash between the real world and the imaginary world we were promised as children by these fantasy shows. Every ten-year-old boy wants to be James Bond at some point, thinking that that’s what a “real man” must be like, and we continue to carry these fantasies around our in heads at some level even as adults, but Venture Bros. actually addresses the question of “well, what if James Bond (or Johnny Quest, or what have you) really existed?”
There was one single, solitary moment in Goldeneye that addressed this, and for a brief instant James Bond became an interesting person. Somebody says to Bond, in effect, “Look at you, you’re a miserable human being. You kill people for a living and you can’t sustain a relationship. The only things you know how to do is destroy things and fuck,” and you realize that Bond really is the sick fantasy of an adolescent mind. He feels no love and no compassion. He’s a monster. Whereas the most indelible moments of The Venture Bros. are those when real emotions and responsibilities intrude on the absurd adventures, whether it’s Brock Samson taking time to help Hank with his coin-catching game or Dr. Orpheus leaving a message for his daughter to not eat more than one pudding cup. The Bond fantasy of constant movement and no responsibilities (I can’t think of a better example of “no responsibilities” than a literal “license to kill”) butts up against the common, everyday ties to those we care about.
Venture Bros: Mid-life Chrysalis
My research is not complete, but I think this episode contains more disturbing images than any other.
1. Rusty in his toupee. Usually I’m struck by how much Dr. Venture resembles James Urbaniak, but with the wig on it’s truly alarming.
2. Brock losing his nerve. It’s so bizarre to see him at loose ends, without purpose, robbed of his spontaneity.
3. The Monarch masturbating to the image of his girlfriend making out with his arch-enemy. Oh. My. God. Perhaps the single most disturbing image in the history of animation.*
4. Rusty, without preamble, vomiting up reams of mucus to encase himself in.
That’s not even getting into the old, skanky and overweight strippers, the crumbling condom or the ugly pink tumor taking over Rusty’s head.
*Perhaps, even, the most disturbing image in the history of fantasy filmmaking. I don’t know why, but the mere idea of fantasy characters masturbating seems revolutionary and deeply subversive. Imagine Blofeld masturbating. Or Goldfinger. Or Darth Vader. Or even James Bond or Luke Skywalker or Gandalf the Great. Human nature insists that they all do, but, but —
— and then there’s the all-too realistic way that the Monarch goes about it. His hand idly tracing patterns on his chest, then slipping down to his abs, then — I can’t go on. It’s too disturbing.
Venture Bros: Careers in Science
A triumph.
Is it my imagination, or is the female astronaut with the big, bushy red hair but no face supposed to be a reference to the mayor’s assistant in Powerpuff Girls, who has the same haircut and the same unshowable face?
I’m curious if there was a number of character designs developed and rejected, or was the character faceless to begin with?
In general, the sweetest of the Venture Bros. episodes and the most generous in spirit. Rusty almost comes close to being likable.
It’s bizarre how the show walks this line between total parody and genuine drama. For instance, we are clearly not meant to take any of these characters as human beings, and yet they have all been given real backgrounds and personalities. They don’t just do whatever’s funny for a given situation, they react in character and without reliance on catchphrases or punchlines.
J.G. Thirwell’s music is overwhelming. Try watching the show on a home theater system with 5.1 surround sound.
Working Girl
A near-perfect re-telling of “Cinderella” where Cinderella acts as her own Fairy Godmother. Instead of being granted a beautiful dress by a supernatural entity, Melanie Griffith steals one belonging to her Wicked Stepmother and takes it upon herself to go to the Grand Ball. The message of the movie, ultimately, is “There ain’t no Fairy Godmothers in this world. You’ve got to do it all yourself.”
“Cinderella,” lest we forget, is a story about perception and deception. Cinderella hates herself, hates what she has been reduced to. She can only get into the Grand Ball if she lies to everyone and dresses up as a princess. If everyone thinks she is a princess, she stands a good chance of one day becoming a princess.
For those unfamiliar with the plot, in Working Girl Melanie Griffith pretends to be her boss, Sigourney Weaver, in order to put together a deal that was her own idea, but which Sigourney was trying to steal out from under her. In the process, she manages to steal Sigourney’s boyfriend, Harrison Ford. Will she pull off this deception and be accepted into the world of business, or will she always be a loser, shlumping around from one secretarial job to another with big hair?
(In “Cinderella,” the ticking clock is a literal one, the one that’s going to strike midnight. In Working Girl, the ticking clock is Sigourney Weaver’s broken leg.)
The acting in this movie is something else, even for a Mike Nichols film. Sure, Melanie Griffith seems poured into the role, and would never get another role like this in her career. But wait, here’s Harrison Ford, being effortlessly charismatic, funny and romantic as Prince Charming. And look, here’s Sigourney Weaver, peeling paint off the walls with a blistering, jaw-dropping performance as The Boss.
How did this happen? Were the actors especially inspired, is Mike Nichols just that good, or is it the script? Would anyone else be just as good in the roles? Can a script be foolproof?
And look, there’s Alec Baldwin, thin, and Kevin Spacey, overacting! And look! There’s Oliver Platt, and Caroline Aaron, and Phillip Bosco and Joan Cusack and the incomparable Nora Dunn and Olympia Dukakis and Ricki Lake! Ricki Lake, really? Yes! And who’s that tall guy without any lines in the bar scene? Why, it’s a young man named David Duchovny, in his first-ever role!
Makes a good double feature with Die Hard.
Absence of Malice
Kind of an anti-All the President’s Men. Shows the awesome power of the press (circa 1981, anyway) and its tendency to be used, abused and manipulated by crooks, politicians and angry lovers. Paging Judith Miller.
Two-time Oscar-winner Sally Field tries really hard to work up a head of steam as a bitter, cynical, seen-it-all reporter. Unfortunately, she’s in way over her head, and comes off as twitchy, flinty, whingeing and earnest.
Otherwise, the acting in this picture is rather stunning. Bob Balaban is worth the rental fee all by himself as a pissed-off, pint-size, gum-snapping D of J tough guy, and Don Hood is conflicted and palpable as an equivocating DA. Current President (in X-Men world) Josef Sommer is impressive as Sally’s sadder-but-wiser editor and Wilfred Brimley strolls in and blows everybody out of the water as some kind of governmental authority guy. One tends to forget that before Brimley turned to pitching oatmeal, he played fusty, angry middle-aged men better than just about anybody.
Paul Newman plays a wholesale liquor distributor, an occupation he would re-visit for Martin Scorsese five years into the future, apparently feeling that he had not yet fully illuminated the life of the American wholesale liquor distributor, his triumphs and tears, his loves and losses.
Sydney Pollack, surely one of our most accomplished directors, has an uncanny knack for bringing detailed naturalism and compassionate humanity to the most unlikely of scenarios. Strangely, he also has a knack for Ew!-inducing clinches. In 3 Days of the Condor, he has Faye Dunaway give herself to Robert Redford, a man she met a few hours earlier, and who had recently gagged her and bound her to a pipe by her own pantyhose. Here, Paul Newman and Sally Field drink and laugh and tumble into bed, despite the fact that they are bitter enemies in a life-or-death press war. Many years later, Harrison Ford and Kristen-Scott Thompson would furiously paw at each other in the front seat of a sedan in Random Hearts. I welcome any other observation of the phenomenon I will now refer to as The Pollack Clinch.
The Way We Were doesn’t count.
Contest!
Physical Evidence. Absence of Malice. Reasonable Doubt. Presumed Innocent. Q and A. The Verdict. Witness for the Prosecution. Anti-Trust. Under Suspicion. Class Action. Intolerable Cruelty. Irreconcilable Differences. A Civil Action.
Movies (mostly courtroom dramas, but often suspense thrillers,* and even the occasional romantic comedy) that use scraps of legal jargon for their titles have been around a long time. The question is: how long? Is it 1949’s Witness for the Prosecution, or is there something that predates it?
More to the point, why doesn’t the IMDb have a “genre search” function?
And, what are some other scraps of legal jargon that haven’t been used yet? Malice Aforethought, Murderous Intent, Assault with a Deadly Weapon, In Chambers, Suspended Sentence, Motion to Dismiss, Approach the Bench, I guess this could go on all day.
*Many of the suspense thriller titles on this list, one can see, also fall into the “Adjective Noun” genre of sure-fire moneymaking titles. Other examples being Fatal Attraction, Lethal Weapon, Final Analysis, Basic Instinct, Narrow Margin, Stray Dog, Hidden Fortress, Minority Report, Dark Water. I tell ya, nothing says “thriller” like Adjective Noun. It makes it a breath of fresh air when they come up with the occasional surprise like the imperative statement Die Hard, or the puzzling whatsit Face/Off.
3 Days of the Condor
I know what’s wrong with the CIA. It’s been infiltrated by Europeans.
I can kind of understand why we’ve got a Swedish triggerman in Max von Sydow, but why is Romanian John Houseman Cliff Robertson’s boss? And why has no one noticed? They don’t even bother to disguise their accents. Why doesn’t Cliff Robertson stand up in the middle of his briefing and say “Hey! This guy’s Romanian!”
In addition to them, one of Redford’s co-workers is a Canadian and his sexy Chinese-American friend is played by Chungking-born Tina Chen. No wonder he’s a sitting duck, he doesn’t even know that he’s surrounded by foreigners!
Similarly, why is German Josef Sommer the President of the United States in X-Men: The Last Stand? No wonder we’re losing the war on terror.
Anyway, SPOILER ALERT, Redford discovers that a high-up CIA guy is planning his own secret invasion of “the Mideast.” “It’s all about oil!” he splutters as he holds the old codger at gunpoint. Redford, fit to be tied that the will of the American electorate has been suborned by a rogue CIA guy, takes the story to the New York Times and then, for some inexplicable reason, decides to tell his boss Cliff Robertson before the Times has printed the story.
Back then, see, we used to have an actual free press, before Judy Miller was employed to sell the US the invasion of Iraq and Bob Woodward (Bob Woodward!) was hired to be a lackey cheerleader for the stupidest fucking moron to ever occupy the Oval Office.