Georgia (Ellen Muth) is 18 years old and a school drop-out. Her mother has had it with her lazy child and kicks her out of bed for her first day of work. It’s a horrible filing job, the result of Georgia’s sarcasm against Dolores Herbig of the temp office. That’s not the worst part of the job… the lunch hour only lasts 35 minutes and during her lunch break Georgia is hit by a toilet seat that came loose off the space station MIR. Georgia is instantly killed, but that’s not the end of her. It turns out there’s such a thing as Grim Reapers, whose job it is to touch those about to die. The gang of four is led by Rube (Mandy Patinkin), the calm leader who insists the Reapers have breakfast as Der Waffle House. This is where everyone gets their post-it notes, containing the name of the nearly deceased, the place and estimated time of death.
However, it’s not the Reapers’ job to kill people. This is caused by accidents and occasionally these accidents are helped by Gravelings, a kind of monster that can only be seen by the Reapers. Reapers can be seen by the living, but they can’t be recognised. To the living, a Reaper looks different than they used to do. Which is why Rube often tells Georgia not to hang around her parents’ house.

Georgia’s parents are Joy (much like the character in Drop The Dead Donkey an ill-chosen name as Joy is bitter and sarcastic), Clancy (a teacher who seems to have been sleeping with one of his students) and Georgia’s younger sister, Reggie (Britt McKillip). In her first scene, Reggie is represented by a floating pair of glasses. As far as Georgia was concerned, her sister might as well have been invisible. Something she regrets in her afterlife: not only did Reggie look up to her older sister, Georgia’s death causes Reggie to become a troubled kid with weird hobbies and more sarcasm and bitterness than is good for an eleven-year-old. Clancy’s adultery causes Joy (Cynthia Stevenson) to become even more sarcastic towards her husband and overprotective to Reggie. Who’s absolutely not amused. In fact, what keeps Reggie sane (at least to herself) is the belief that, albeit deceased, Georgia is still hanging around. She may not be wrong there: Undead George even shows up at Joy’s yard sale, where she hopes to sell George’s stuff. Which is painful in many ways: it makes George talk to her mum (who doesn’t recognise her) and Reggie upset because she felt a need to cling to her sister’s stuff.

This scene very much embodies the spirit of Dead Like Me, it’s a dark comedy with a lot of tragedy. There isn’t a main character that doesn’t have a couple of layers. Rube is a bit of an enigma, equally to the viewers as to the other Reapers. Reapers don’t age, by the way. Rube still looks the same as he did in the 1920s, when he died. Reapers keep their function till they’ve touched enough nearly dead. Which means that George will have to stay eighteen for the rest of her afterlife. Something she isn’t too happy with, a sign the writers actually remembered how most 18-year-olds felt.

I have mentioned the other Reapers, so it’s only fair to introduce them. You’ve heard of Rube and George, then there’s Roxy (Jasmine Guy) who makes a living writing parking tickets and hopes everyone will swallow her rock-hard façade. Mason (Callum Blue) died in the 1960s during a drug experiment and has been testing every kind of drugs every since. It’s not as if anything can kill him… The most familiar looking Reaper will be Betty, who’s played by Rebecca Gayheart, the daring woman George looks up to. Not for too long… after a couple of episodes Betty grabs a chance to leave the Reapers and follow the Big Lights (I’m trying to make it sound as unreligious as the show managed to portray it). Taking over from Betty is Daisy Adair (Laura Harris), former extra in the movies, who died during the making of Gone with the Wind.
As mentioned above, Roxy has a job and she isn’t the only one. Rube advises Georgia to get a job as well. Which is why Georgia Lass creates Millie, who gets a job as the helper of… Delores Herbig of the temp agency Happy Time. Of all the jobs in the world… actually, Millie has a much better relationship with Delores than Georgia ever had.

The first season of Dead Like Me, fourteen episodes including a feature-length pilot episode, is remarkably strong. There’s only one weak episode, which mainly exists of flashbacks and a bit of filler material to make it look like an episode, but overall it’s a very strong series. I’ve mentioned before that the show is also funny and most of that is in a brainy sort of way. But there’s also the recurring pleasure of certain deaths, engineered by the Gravelings, which look like the better moments from the Final Destination movies. Not that every death is funny, one of Georgia’s first death is a young girl, played by Jodelle Ferland (Tideland, Silent Hill). We’ve once said that Jodelle had a nose to end up in the better horror movies. Looks like the little girl was also a guest actress in one of the better series of the noughties. Overall the show may have earned eight nominations (including two Emmys), but it never won an award and you’ll have a tough time finding people who’ve seen the show.

Which is a bitter shame. Try and find the show on DVD and have a look at the show’s opening credits:

In Das Millionenspiel we meet Bernhard Lotz (Jörg Pleva), this month’s contestant in the widely watched television gave Das Millionenspiel (The Million Game). If Lotz makes it to the end of this live broadcast, he’ll be the proud owner of a million Deutsche Mark (roughly half a million Euro). If he doesn’t get the money, it’s because he has been killed. To make it a bit more exciting for the viewers, there’s a gang of hitmen behind Lotz. If this trio, the “Köhlerbande”, manages to kill the contestant, they get the money. Sounds like a pretty exciting game show? That’s why Lotz is contestant number seventeen.

What makes Das Millionenspiel interesting is that it is filmed as a tv broadcast. Thus does the quizmaster occasionally interrupt the game for a necessary message from the sponsors (commercials which are evidently a satire on society and pretty far-out: there’s one promoting sharp knives which ends in an housewife being stabbed for talking too much and one diet pills commercial that features a stark naked guy, with his hand prudishly placed over the right area).
Also, in what has now become a regular feature on the news bulletins, the show also walks up to the viewers and asks them their opinion on the game show. Additionally, viewers get the chance to help Lotz or to rat him out to his hunters.

This happens because the show is filmed partially in the studio and partially on the contestant’s tail. The contestant is constantly tracked by cameras and, if the cameramen lose the contestant’s steps, the audience can help out the show, trying to find the contestant once again. It’ll all help the ratings.

This is also a good thing for the film: it was made for television and may not have had the biggest budget, but for some reason this helps to make the film more real. Sometimes it’s not too bad to be shabby.

The film is based on the short story “The Prize of Peril” by Robert Sheckley. The movie Le Prix du Danger (by Yves Boisset) was also based on this story and it’s the French film that – according to some sources – was watched by Stephen King, whose The Running Man (also made into a film starring Arnold Schwarzenegger) eerily resembles the Sheckley story. It can’t have been Das Millionenspiel because the film was shelved in 1977, due to legal reasons. Administrative errors had made it unclear whether the producers did have the rights to the story. The case was finally resolved in 2002 and led to the film’s third transmission in 32 years. In 2009 the film was finally released on DVD.

To me, one of the oddest parts of the film was the masked show ballet that was hired to lighten the mood of the live finale of the game show. The film itself may have predicted the reality shows of the previous decade, but the dancers reveal the film’s age, the most hallucinating era mankind has ever seen. On the other hand, it makes the film only more cult, not? And to make it even more cult: the soundtrack was made by the people behind Can.

As the gameshow host would say: make sure you watch it. For now, here’s a clip:

But now, by way of an introduction, we go back a couple of weeks when I reviewed the German film Gib gas, ich will Spass. The music phenomenon that was Neue Deutsche Welle was mentioned here, but – as there was no way of fitting it into the review – one of the best known German songs was omitted. Here now, the video (albeit in a somewhat altered format – nothing like widescreen, eh) of Trio‘s “Da Da Da”.

P.S. For those who can stomach more, here’s Trio performing Anna, lass mich rein live on German television. It’s not often you see someone eating during a performance.

Now we’re not saying that Jude Law isn’t doing something good, but…

- the Newswipe clip did make Jude look like a bit of a tit. Or a bad actor. “Ooh, when are you going? July? Hmm, I’m free as well.” Send an Oscar.
- Secondly and most importantly… he may not have remembered the journalist’s name (adding “Thank God”), but when he’s reminded of her name, he spits on the ground. Always a sign of bad manners.
- … and then he adds he’s doing all the great work and how this journalist “with her fat arse” shouldn’t dare to be critical of him and ‘Angie’ Jolie, who are hard-working celebrities and who are making the world a better place. Not only does he miss the entire point of Marina Hyde’s views in her book (she is critical of the celebs who are doing it to improve their image, but she’s even more critical of the news media, who have made it thus that things are only news-worthy when Jude Law pops up), we’re not also sure Ms Hyde has a fat bottom. Anyway, what we are sure about is that Marina Hyde doesn’t only write about celebrities, she also writes about sports and politics.

But then again, that is the difference between looking something up (like we do) and making rude remarks about people with different opinions. Then again, it does take more time to google someone (or, heaven forbid, read a book) than it does to spit on the ground. But that is why Jude Law is an asshole.

(interview by Movies.ie)

But no, dirty mind, Gib gas, ich will Spass is not smut, but a music film with Markus and Nena. The former a highly successful pop star, the latter an unknown pop star. And now, a quarter of a century later, the roles seem to be reversed. Because there’s a lot of chance you know Nena from her global hit “99 Luftballons” (a.k.a. 99 Red Balloons), but who is Markus? Think of Patrick Wolf who is accidently teleported to the 1980s and – these teleportations never go great, just watch The Fly – discovers his poppiest of sounds. Mind you, this film was made in 1983, when Germany found its new voice and answer to punk and new wave by inventing the Neue Deutsche Welle (literally New German Wave). Back in 1982, “Ich Will Spass” by Markus might have been refreshing rather than annoying. Make up your own mind because this is Markus’s biggest hit and the title track of the film (as performed in a music show where the average age of the viewer was 56):

So he wants fun, our Markus. And he’ll get it in this film as he’s the new boy in school, short trousers but a fast bike. Because rebellion, like a mullet, doesn’t grow in one day. Markus, who plays Robby, has the hots for Tina, as portrayed by Nena. Tina finds Robby silly rather than sexy and has more sexual feelings for Tino, who works full time on a fair and has his own convertible. And a mullet. And – what would romance be without language? – because Tino and Tina sounds cool.Tina convinces Tino to run off together, but when she can’t make it to the rendez-vous spot in time, Tino drives off with another chick. Her suitcase already packed and hoping to see Tino again, Tina convinces Robby to drive away together. Robby, naive enough to think Tina loves him as much as he loves her, gladly accepts. Tina’s feelings towards Tino are addressed in one of Nena’s biggest hits Nur geträumt: “Ich hab’ heute nichts versäumt, denn ich hab’ nur vor dir geträumt” (I haven’t wasted today, because I only dreamt of you). Don’t believe me, here’s the clip from the English dubbed version of the film:

And, of course, the search for Tino will ultimately end in Tina losing her heart to Robby. Seems like a sugar sweet teen flick, how can this be of any value to the cult-loving readership of DV? Well, there are several reasons: no matter how bad this film can be – and believe me, this will be a guilty pleasure – it’s nowhere as embarrassing as Crossroads or most of Madonna‘s output. The director is Wolfgang Büld, who had previously made a couple of documentaries about punk and reggae. Büld had noticed the Neue Deutsche Welle movement was becoming more mainstream and felt like pushing the genre by making a teen flick with the movement’s protagonists in several of the roles. Apart from Markus and newcomer Nena in the leads the film also included a cameo by the band Extrabreit.
Nevertheless, the film is pretty weak in as much as the ‘story’ is flimsy (it’s basically Robby and Tina driving after Tina’s love interest you couldn’t care about) and the jokes are either silly or horrible: one running gag is Tina’s classmate, seen in the clip above, who is always eating meat products. It’s not that I explained it badly, that’s what he does: he mainly boasts about how much he loves eating sausages and how many he can eat. I’ll pause briefly, so you can chuckle at this hilarious concept. A boy who eats fried meat… utter and utter genius! Equally hilarious is having older actor Karl Dall play a handful of tiny roles, in an attempt to make the viewer chuckle “Look, it’s Karl again, ha-ha!” And of course it doesn’t help that it’s a movie that’s mainly made to push the music. In the following clip, Robby and Tina have made it to the airport, just too late to catch Tino. Tina manages to make contact with him and they agree to meet each other in Venice. After this, Nena has to link the fluttering Tina running back to Robby to one of her songs (Ganz oben). The result, complete with a hilarious drunk pilot, looks like this:

Which makes it all the more surprising to see Robby and Tina end up in Venice. While arguing, Robby is abducted by a group of nymphomaniacs (I wish I was making this up) and Tina chases the gondola on foot, with Nena’s Tanz auf dem Vulkan as soundtrack to the scene. But watch at (or fast forward to) 2:47 to spot a surprising cameo…

Admit that this is a cameo you wouldn’t have expected in such a bubblegum movie. Ultimately, Carla Rhode of Der Tagesspiegel reviewed the film best: “I would have like to have fun too, but Nena, Markus and director Wolfgang Büld left me unsatisfied. What did the film attempt to be? A story about runaways, a musical or was it just a handful of uninspired scenes chucked together to fill the voids between songs by Nena and Markus?” Then again, I told you this would a guilty pleasure and it’s up to you whether a couple of Nena songs, Nena’s nude back and a reference to Don’t Look Now are enough to watch a corny movie for 85 minutes. Not that the film pretended to be Goethe. After all, the title is Gib Gas, Ich Will Spass.

3/10

P.S. Büld must’ve liked the experience because, two years later, he made Der Formel Eins Film, an equally corny film promoting Formel Eins (the German Top of The Pops) and featuring a.o. Falco (Jeanny, Rock me Amadeus, …)

Jun 4: Zinda Laash (Dracula in Pakistan)
Professor Tabini is experimenting on an elixir that he believes will beat death. When he tries it on himself, however, things don’t work out as planned and he dies. When his assistant finds him no longer among the living, she carries him down stairs and slaps him into the crypt in the basement. Unfortunately for her, he rises from the grave and chomps down on her neck.

Jun 11: Mercano, El Marciano (Mercano The Martian)
When his pet is killed by a probe from earth, Mercano, a Martian, travels to earth angered. Landing in Buenos Aires, at first noone takes any notice of him.

Jun 18: Gib Gas, ich will Spass
Pert Tina (played by Nena – of “99 Luftballons” fame) is sick of school and the muff in her Bavarian village. She wants to go with Tino – attendant of a visiting auto-scooter – who has to leave the place for dubious reasons. However he lets her down and leaves alone. Now Tina persuades fellow student Robby, who has a crush on her, to take her on a random trip with his motor-scooter. It seems only to be a matter of time until he realizes that she’s just using him to follow her boyfriend – or will the shy Robby manage to win her heart on their chaotic journey?

Jun 25: O Fantasma
Young and handsome Sergio works the night shift as a trash collector in Lisbon, Portugal. He can’t force himself to connect with his pretty female co-worker Fatima, who displays an avid interest in him, so instead Sergio roams the city with the trash company’s pet dog. Eventually Sergio becomes fascinated with a sleek motorcycle, and then also its arrogant owner – a young man totally indifferent to Sergio. The frustrated trash collector’s surfacing desires unleash his darkest impulses, sending him down a dangerous path of violence, depravity and degradation.

More? Then watch this!

JANUARY
Jan 15: Marquis
Jan 22: Animal Love (Ulrich Seidl)
Jan 29: Twentynine Palms (Bruno Dumont)

FEBRUARY
Feb 5: Geierwally (Walter Bockmayer)

MARCH
Mar 12: Lone Wolf and Cub: Sword of Vengeance
Mar 19: Lone Wolf and Cub: Baby Cart at the River Styx
Mar 26: Lone Wolf and Cub: Baby Cart to Hades

APRIL
Apr 2: Lone Wolf and Cub: Baby Cart in Peril
Apr 9: Lone Wolf and Cub: Baby Cart in the Land of Demons
Apr 16: Lone Wolf and Cub: White Heaven in Hell
Apr 23: Daddy, Darling (Joseph Sarno)
Apr 30: Abigail Leslie is back in town (Joseph Sarno)

MAY
May 7: The Happiness of the Katakuris (Takashi Miike)
May 21: Bad Boy Bubby (Rolf De Heer)
May 28: Attack of the Giant Moussaka

JUNE
Jun 4: Zinda Laash (Dracula in Pakistan)
Jun 11: Mercano, El Marciano (Mercano The Martian)
Jun 18: Gib Gas, ich will Spass
Jun 25: O Fantasma
(For more info on June’s movies, go to this post)

JULY
July 2: The Battle Wizard (Shaw Brothers)
July 9: Love Camp (with Laura Gemser)
July 16: Go Go Second Time Virgin (Koji Wakamatsu)
July 23: Avant que j’oublie
July 30: Beauty’s Exotic Dance: Torture! (pinku)

AUGUST
Aug 6: Alucarda

Arte’s schedule only runs until August 6 at this point, so further episodes of Arte Trash – if any – will be posted here soon.

First up, The Wicker Man. A British cult classic starring Edward Woodward, Britt Ekland and Christopher Lee. The maypole dances, the veiled eroticism, the wicker man… one would have to be mad to attempt a remake of such a film. Enter Neil LaBute, director of a handful of movies best described as “not the ideal first date movie”. LaBute, it seems, avidly studies misogyny and makes uncomfortable films about the subject. Sounds like the ideal man for the remake then.
Well, in all fairness, The Wicker Man could’ve been a lot worse. It’s hard to care for Nicolas Cage, but LaBute does manage to compare the human world to the bee world without looking too much like a pompous ass. What a shame then that someone felt the need to include supernatural elements (or maybe it’s all a dream – sigh… bored): Cage as an officer you don’t really like forcing a mother to stop her car and being forced to watch how the car, the mother and her daughter are suddenly devoured by flames. Was there really a need for such a scene? No, there wasn’t.
In fact, The Wicker Man seems to have more of such scenes and fast forwarding seemed the easy way out. Still, after arriving at the end credits I felt like I’d skipped some vital elements, rewound the dvd and watched the film again, my hopes for a good film shattered. Funnily enough, the film seemed a lot better now and only Cage (surely a bit miscast) and the alleged supernatural elements bugged me this time. Was the film good? No, there were too many elements disturbing my enjoyment to classify this film as ‘good’, but by no means is it as bad as a lot of people say. At least, LaBute managed to adapt the film into a LaBute film, despite the hammy plotlines and Cage. Neither fish nor flesh then and so a five out of ten was awarded.

Next up, The Prisoner. I don’t think I’ve hated the announcement of a 60s series more since the news an Avengers movie would be made. Only the fact that Patrick McGoohan had an executive producer’s credit seemed like a bit of good news. So let’s start with the good news…
The new Prisoner‘s series didn’t feel the need to have an ocean around. When Jesus (sorry, Jim Caviezel a.k.a. Six) escapes, he finds himself in some sort of desert. Number 2 is also there, this time portrayed by Ian McKellan. He does a good job and the idea of summoning a couple to his place and demanding they’d bring a pie was a great touch. It was virtually pointless, but the shot of McKellan enjoying the cake gave him some sort of monarch status. The worse news is that the remake is more naturalistic when it comes to ‘numbers’ living together in a village: they breed and the result is a baby with a new name… sorry, number. The old series was more sexless and for some reason, that felt better: it gave The Village a more washed-out feeling. The remade Village more looks like a Stanford experiment gone wild.
The worst news is that the original series was almost impossible to remake: McGoohan wasn’t just Number 6, the show was his brainchild and he wrote and directed some of the episodes. Basically, Patrick McGoohan was The Prisoner.
Add to this frequent vapid flashbacks which annoy more than they intrigue and you’re stuck with the notion you’re watching a remake of a show that doesn’t have the personality of the original. After watching one episode, I couldn’t be bothered to make sure I’d watch all the other episodes. I may watch them when accidently stumbing upon them, but I won’t feel a nanosecond of loss if I’ve missed an episode. The photography is good and it’s decently made, but that’s about the nicest compliment I can think of. 3/10, if I’m being generous.

And so, the night of remakes has come to an end and one conclusion stares us directly in the eye: originality can’t be overrated.

Last night I dreamt of Amy Pond. The feisty new companion to the brand new Doctor Who. By now the series has become so huge only the noise of the Tardis was enough for the Beeb to promote it. But it’s no longer the Doctor Who we’ve had on our screens since 2005… never mind that Christopher Eccleston backed out after one series, the second series still kept a lot of things from the revamp. First and foremost Rose Tyler (Billie Piper), who – never mind the other companions – remained a quinessential companion to Doctors 9 and 10 (even popping up from a parallel universe in the biggest time of need). Doctor Who is back, but every inch of your television set was keen to prove one thing: the times have changed.

Yes, Matt Smith stepped in as the new Doctor, but that’s not all: the Tardis also regenerated into a brand new look and the Doctor met his new companion, Emilia Pond. Step above the scripts and you’ll see more change: this is no longer the brain child of Russell T. Davies, this is the era of Steven Moffat. To prove this, the credits have changed (blimey, there’s a lot of lightning in the universe!), the soundtrack of the credits is different and the series even has a new font. Which, I have to say, I’m not a big fan of: mainly because it’s the sort of font crappy sci-fi series use when they pretend to be Alien.
Moffat was no stranger to the show, having penned already some of the best episodes of the Davies era: Moffat was the first to convince me the Doctor could be scary (remember “Are you my mummy?” from The Empty Child?) and he was also responsible for The Girl in the Fireplace (more about that one later) and Blink, causing lots of kids and even teens to be more aware of statues. If we extend the writers’ legacy to their more adult work, you might say that Doctor Who has now moved from Queer as Folk to Coupling, a change I can only welcome (as a huge fan of the show – apart from the last series). Nowhere did this get more obvious than in the scene where the Doctor causes haywire on all electrical devices in the square at the duckless duck pond and a woman’s electric wheelchair suddenly ran off, with the confused pensioner as a reluctant prisoner.

But back to Amy Pond and Madame de Pompadour… in The Girl in the Fireplace Reinette was occasionally visited by the Doctor in what seemed only seconds to him but years to her. Near the end of the episode, the Doctor was too late to say goodbye to her, making her character quite tragic. Emilia Pond seems to have suffered a similar fate: it was hard not to feel sorry for the young girl who waited all night in the garden, on her hastily assembled suitcase in her best clothes. Miserable as she was, the Doctor (who’d promised to be back in five minutes) seemed her ticket out of this world, but his five minutes became her twelve years and four psychiatrists. As she grew from little girl to young woman and from Emilia to Amy, Moffat provided us with a wonderful red herring: the first images of Karen Gillan showed her as policewoman Amy Pond (one wonders if that was a nod to Torchwood‘s Gwen). Fooled us! And if twelve years weren’t long enough, the Doctor’s short trip to the Moon seemed to have lasted another two years. It took little Emilia Pond fourteen years before she finally saw the inside of the Tardis… you can bet the eleventh Doctor will have a tough companion with this one.

Matt Smith seemed to fit in David Tennant’s shoes, even though the script made it a bit easier for him by explicitly showing him as the successor to the ten previous Doctors, in a montage that showed all ten Doctors and some of the enemies the Doctor had to battle it out with (was I the only one who wondered why the Ood were there?). The flashback bubble burst open and there he was, Doctor n°11. It wasn’t the only time Moffat allowed the new actor to look for an identity: the episode contained scenes where the Doctor was looking for a new wardrobe and a catchphrase to take over from the Tenth’s “Allons-y!”. No success this time, maybe next week…

Next week’s episode wasn’t announced at the end of the episode and even the Doctor Who site is deliberately quiet about it, even showing an archive photo of (guest star) Sophie Okonedo from another show. What we did get to see was a brief glimpse of what lies ahead in the next three months and it looks as if the Doctor isn’t the one with the biggest plans. According to some sources, a romantic scene between the Doctor and Amy lies ahead of us and the preview definitely hinted at this, but then again, was Miss Pond really a policewoman?

All in all, this episode was not unlike The end of time (part two), in that it had to combine an adventure with the need to tie some loose ends. But whereas the 75-minute long goodbye scene suffered a bit from the overkill effect The Return of the King is renowned for, the hour-long introduction to the era of Moffat, Smith and Pond didn’t bore me one minute. All I can say is, in the words of the previous Doctor: Allons-y!