Welcome to the Imaginarium

What can I say about Terry Gilliam's 2009 movie, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus? What is it about, who is in it, and what is it like?

It's about a kind of medicine show, a horse drawn gypsy wagon/stage show that parks around London and tries to get paying customers to experience the Imaginarium. It stars a ripe aged Christopher Plummer as Dr. Parnassus, with Lily Cole as his teenaged daughter, Andrew Garfield as his assistant (and Cole's suitor), and Vern Troyer as Percival, their imp. But things aren't as busker-happy as they seem: Dr. Parnassus has made a bet with the Devil (Tom Waits!) for the possession of his daughter.

Then they rescue Heath Ledger who they find hanged under the bridge, and he turns everything upside down. He is a bit more of a go-getter than the Imaginarium crew, although his past is a mystery. Another mystery is that he changes when he goes through the world of the Imaginarium: changes into Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell.

But what is it like? It can get pretty surrealistic - the experience of the Imaginarium takes you into the mind of Dr. Parnassus and gives you a choice between Good and Evil, Virtue and Vice, Dr. Parnassus or Tom Waits. These imaginary worlds are very Terry Gilliam. He even has a giant policeman's head, which is half Monty Python, half Zardoz. The "real world" part of the film has a nice gritty backstreet urban gypsy look and feel.

Of course, it was Heath Ledger's last role. After he died, several actors filled in for him, and the movie was altered to account for this. It takes a certain kind of movie to make this work. And this is that kind of movie.

I liked this a lot, but I'm not sure it was completely successful. For one thing, the conflict between Parnassus and the Devil was somewhat muddled. Maybe it's because he was played by Tom Waits with a pencil-thin mustache, but he is rather sympathetic. Dr. Parnassus, on the other hand, doesn't seem to be especially good. And I was disappointed by how they resolved Ledger's mystery. This one could have been a lot more ambiguous.

But maybe I just missed the point. Either way, I didn't let it bother me. Don't let it bother you either, just let it roll over you, like a great horse-drawn caravan.

Big Harryhausen Deal

Way back when, I asked Mrs. Spenser a question from the Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule Film Quiz, "Your favourite Harryhausen film/monster?" She answered Ymir from 20 Million Miles to Earth.

We got the Blu-ray disc and watched the colorized version, but didn't listen to Tim Burton interviewing Ray Harryhausen on the extras. I think this answers another question from the quiz: "Can you think of a black & white movie that might actually improve if it was in color?" It has a nice hand-tinted postcard look, but more realistic. Not garish, just a touch pastel.

The story: A spaceship crashes in the sea near Sicily. Some fishermen get one living and one dead American astronauts out, and a little Italian boy finds a strange biological sample and sells it to a biologist and his beautiful daughter. The sample quickly grows to monstrous size and threatens (for a change) Rome.

The monster (never identified as Ymir in the movie) is a green reptile with a Harryhausenly animated tail. As in so many of his films, the monster steals all the scenes. He is also rather lovable, and possibly a vegetarian (or perhaps a sulfur-tarian). Nonetheless, when he gets big enough to fight an elephant, he heads to the Roman zoo, and ... You can guess how it ends.

As it turns out, Mrs. Spenser didn't remember this monster at all. She was thinking of something else from her deep childhood. No matter. It's a good sci-fi B movie made great by some Roman locations and Harryhausen's monster.

Cracking Up

I don't want to keep complaining every time I get a bad disk from Netflix, but here I go: This weekend, out of 3 disks, 2 were cracked. Not a little scratched, but inch-long cracks. So - a 3-day weekend, no plans but to watch movies, and only one will play. Coincidentally (?) all 3 disks were blu-ray.

Oh sure, they will replace them immediately. So we'll get the replacements Tues, after the long weekend. We'll watch them next weekend, just like we would if we had returned normal, playable disks. In other words, Netflix's prompt replacement policy means nothing to us.

I'm an ordinary working stiff. I don't go out much and I like to watch movies on weekends: one on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Netflix works perfectly for me - when it works.

OK, at least there's streaming, so we can watch something. But the quality is way below blu-ray, and the selection is not all it could be. (For example, we watched Convoy when we discovered the first problem. Review is coming, but -SPOILER- it was pretty bad.)

There, I've vented. The moral is to check your disks immediately on arrival. You may be able to get a replacement before the weekend. I'd complain to Netflix, but they have a policy if you get too many unplayable disks: They blame it on you and suspend your account.

Update: I got a comment from Mythical Monkey, who says that he had the same problem. Sounds like a trend - off to the Google! Indeed, several people have seen a high percentage of damaged blu-ray disks. See for ex this article on Engadget. We might just want to drop the blu-ray account, save the $4.00/mo and let them get this straightened out.

Low Ball

Look, we're big fans of Mel Brooks, but Spaceballs stinks on ice. It's a dimwitted Star Wars parody that makes Episodes 1-3 look like The Godfather.

Rick Moranis does a nice job as Dark Helmet (the Vader character), and Brooks is all right as the evil president. Daphne Zuniga has the Princess Leia look down, but that's about all she brings to the role. The Han Solo and Chewbacca roles are played by Bill Pullman (in a big step down from Zero Effect) and John Candy as a man-dog named Barf. When Candy can't get any laughs wearing a dog costume, you know you've got problems.

The jokes are not funny. The delivery is labored, stilted in a way that wouldn't have gone over in vaudeville. The visual gags rarely deliver - except maybe the Princess's braid bun headphones.

"Best" of all was the Ghostbusters-style funky theme song, sung by the Spinners (!) and produced by Jellybean (!!!). I know that all movies in the 80s had theme songs like this, but why!?!

In conclusion: this is the first movie we watched in Blu-ray.