Posts by Gino Sassani

"Rule 91: When you decide to walk away, don't look back."

CBS releases the 19th season of NCIS on DVD, and just the sound of that gives one reason to pause. There are few shows or franchises that get to live in that rarified air. In the modern age of television, only the Dick Wolf Law & Order series has accomplished this kind of sheer mass of episodes. The NCIS landscape is certainly in for some big changes. The New Orleans show ended with its 7th season last year, a new NCIS: Hawaii has now had its first year, and we'll be talking about that show in the days to come. The franchise will crossed its 900th episode this season with the addition of NCIS: Hawaii. CBS still had production facilities in the Island State, and those will soon be put to good use extending the family that actually started with JAG, and if you include that 10-year run, the franchise is over 1000 episodes. Shows don't last that long without doing something right.

“In the 1940’s, a new genre – film noir – emerged from the world of hard-boiled pulp magazines, paperback thrillers, and sensational crime movies. These films, tough and unsentimental, depicted a black and white universe at once brutal, erotic, and morally ambiguous.”

Film Noir officially started in the 40’s, but the movement was well underway by the early 30’s. You can trace its roots to the Great Depression and the arrival of the dime pulp magazines. These were highly stylized, mostly mystery stories that provided cheap escapism for the masses who were not having a good time of it. Writers like Raymond Chandler crafted the mold that was easily transferred to the silver screen. These were low-budget films that were intended to be second billing with the more mainstream releases. They were shot quickly. Many have a very flat look, created intentionally. The lighting was often minimal, crafting odd shadows and unusual textures. The dialog wasn’t intended to be natural or realistic. These characters usually spoke in clichés and had names like Mac, Griff, or Dollface. There was often a shade of gray to these characters. Good and evil were not always so clear cut. Gangsters became common themes of the genre. And while the dialog might have been cheesy, the cinematography was often gritty and almost ultra-realistic. At times the films played out like documentaries, often including narration. The narrator would always be a voice of authority; often film reel stars were used. The films were heavily influenced by German Expressionism, perfected by the likes of Fritz Lang in the silent era and carried over to more modern themes. The films always contained a steady supply of stock characters and actors. It was smoky rooms and neon lights. It was a reflection on the times. It was Film Noir.

"Most things happen unexpectedly, even the apocalypse!"

I can't deny that Italians, we love to cook and eat. It's a stereotype that I embrace with pride. So it shouldn't be too much of a surprise that food finds its way intruding in other aspects of life. In the 50's and 60's we called the Italian western films of directors like Sergio Leone Spaghetti Westerns. Later we would talk about the Italian horror films from masters like Mario Bava and Dario Argento Spaghetti Nightmares. Well, why should we leave out the same period's Italian science fiction films? So even if it's not terribly original, I'm going to coin the term Ziti Sci-Fi. One of the true masters of Ziti Sci-Fi has to be director Antonio Margheriti. Don't be too surprised if you don't know the name. His films were always low-budget affairs, and he usually directed under the more American-sounding name of Anthony Dawson or Anthony M. Dawson. He understood that the American audience was the Holy Grail of box office success, so he attempted to make his films appear in the promotions as if they might be American or at least British films. Like many foreign genre films at that time, it was also important to get a relatively well-known American actor to lend their name to the project. The original Godzilla shot American scenes that featured Raymond Burr to sell here, and Margheriti was no different. Now thanks to a restoration and release by Film Detective, we get to see one of his better films.

"For those of you who haven't met me, you might call me the undernourished Alfred Hitchcock. The great British craftsman and I do share something in common: an interest in the oddball, a predilection toward the bizarre. And this place is nothing if not bizarre, by virtue of the paintings you see hanging around me."

When I mention the name Rod Serling, I'll bet that The Twilight Zone is the first thing that pops into your head. And why not? It would be very hard, indeed, to argue against the impact that The Twilight Zone has had on television. To say that the series was a milestone in that medium would be an understatement of the worst kind. When Rod Serling brought his landmark series to CBS in October of 1959, television was still very new. No one was quite sure what the future held for that magical box. For five years Rod Serling would enter our living rooms with the most bizarre tales we'd ever seen. But no matter how exotic and strange the stories might appear on the surface, Serling always brought our own humanity into vividly sharp focus before it was over. When the series had run its course, we didn't hear much from Serling for over a decade. He continued writing, of course. His screenplay for the 1968 Planet Of The Apes would lead to record-breaking at the box office, but Serling's home was always that magical box, and it didn't take long for him to find his way back.

With streaming working the way it does now, every studio in the world is churning out hours and hours of television to please a growing number of viewers on multiple platforms. There's more material produced in one year today than was produced in any decade leading up to the day Netflix opened the door on a new trend. It's changed the way we watch television, and that extends to the networks that still operate over the airwaves. We no longer sit and watch an hour or two of television in what was once called prime time. Now we binge. The latest statistics tell us that the average person watches a minimum of four hours at a time, usually the same show. That means not only more content but a greater range of content types. A-list actors and filmmakers are joining the trend, and they're now able to cater to pretty much every taste or genre. Along comes AMC+ and the first effort to bring the Spaghetti Western to "television". That Dirty Black Bag hearkens back to the Clint Eastwood and Sergio Leone collaborations of the 1960's. All of the trademark elements are there. But is it as good? The short answer is no. But it's not quite fair to let the evaluation stand there.

The Western town of Greenvale is populated more by characters than stories. For pretty much the bulk of these first eight episodes, the story doesn't really connect. The longer you watch, the more some things tie together, but when it's all said and done, what stays with you the most are the characters and their unique worldviews. I guess you could call this a sit-west, along the lines of a situation comedy. The drama and the entertainment come from a series of situations that are obviously contrived to give these characters a place to live, breathe, and yeah ... die.

"All I know is that it was a tragedy. A terrible tragedy. I probably shouldn't say this, but some of those kids, eh ... no big loss, if I were honest. But those girls were special. They were champions."

What happens when you take a concept like Lost and sprinkle in a little Lord Of The Flies, the 1993 film Alive, and work in a bit of Pretty Little Liars and a heavy dose of pretty much any reality series out there? You'd get Showtime's latest creepy entry, Yellow Jackets. The new drama is one of those shows where they pack on the secrets and teases and then try to walk that tightrope of giving you enough resolution to keep you from giving up but maintain enough promise of more shockers to come so that you keep coming back for more. It's not an easy thing to navigate, and there are times that Yellow Jackets does that pretty well. The problem that I see in the show's future is how long can you keep this pace going? Ages of the actors is going to quickly become a factor, so I suspect this show will have to take advantage of what time they have and try to get another season or two out of the material.