12 mini-reviews for the short attention span, taken from dark corners of stevenl's video vault:

Blue (Red Dwarf) / directed by Ed Bye (1997, VHS off-air). Chris Barrie, Craig Charles, Danny John-Jules, Robert Llewellyn, Chloë Annett. To the astonishment of the rest of the crew, Lister begins to romanticize the memory of Rimmer. As a remedy, Kryten recreates key events taken from Rimmer's diary and builds a funhouse-type ride called "The Rimmer Experience." Lister's conclusion after a spin, "I never want to see or hear from that scum-sucking, lying, weasel-minded smeghead in my entire life!" And as far as the hologram version of Rimmer is concerned, he doesn't. One of the better episodes during the later seasons of this series.

Terrorform (Red Dwarf) / directed by Juliet May (1992, VHS off-air). Chris Barrie, Craig Charles, Danny John-Jules, Robert Llewellyn, Hattie Hayridge, Sara Stockbridge. Facing some of your worst fears is a theme here. There is a nice "tarantula" scene between the Cat and Lister. Bet you didn't know that millions of years in the future people are still using DOS. Rimmer lands on a planet formed by his own id. It turns out to be the Red Dwarf version of Forbidden Planet. In order to escape, the crew must convince Arnold he's a well-loved essential member of the team-- and that means a group hug. Once they are safe, Rimmer asks, "All that hugging stuff back there. It was just a way of escaping, wasn't it? I mean, you didn't really feel that deep down I'm an OK sort of bloke. That I'm not such a bad old stick once you get to know me. You didn't really mean any of that, did you?" And in a you-have-to-even-ask? tone, the boys reply in unison, "No." The nonsentimentalism of Red Dwarf is part of the appeal, and for some reason UK TV is much better at this than Americans.

What's Opera, Doc? / directed by Chuck Jones (1957, VHS off-air). Mel Blanc (voice), Arthur Q. Bryan (voice). For a whole generation of us, Warner Bros cartoons was our gateway into the world of classical music and opera. In this one, Elmer Fudd continues his eternal quest to kill Bugs Bunny, but this time in a Wagnerian setting. Elmer chases Bugs around singing "Kill the Wabbit! Kill the Wabbit! Kill the Wabbit!" to the tune of "Ride of the Valkyries" and so on. The fact that Richard Wagner's work is the product of a pretentious, heavy-handed smeghead and then becomes occupied by two silly animated characters creates a comedy stormfront that was probably lost on us kids, but we noticed our parents laughing pretty hard. I actually saw a performance of The Flying Dutchman in Seattle a couple years back and man, that whole scene is weird with a beard. It deserved cartoon treatment. Chuck Jones really outdid himself on the striking backgrounds, it would appear he was also poking fun at Disney's Fantasia. This title was voted the top cartoon of all time, yes, number one, in the book The 50 Greatest Cartoons : as Selected by 1,000 Animation Professionals. Personally, I think it's good, but certainly not the greatest of all. Still, Chuck Jones was probably the best animator Warner Bros. ever had. He grew up in Spokane (my native city!) and I wonder what there was about being raised in the Inland Empire that shaped his art.

The Mazarin Stone (The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes) / directed by Peter Hammond (1994, VHS off-air). Jeremy Brett, Edward Hardwicke, Charles Gray, Phyllis Calvert, Jon Finch, James Villiers, Denis Lill, Gavan O'Herlihy. Quite possibly the worst episode in the entire series. In this second-to-last program Jeremy Brett was so ill he hardly appears at all. And when he does show up, he looks and sounds awful. Charles Gray, who plays Sherlock's smarter brother, Mycroft, was brought in as a substitute. Gray was every bit as hammy as Brett, and wonderful in his role, but Sherlock Holmes he was not. Also, this was directed by Peter Hammond, who over time developed a style that became increasingly annoying and distracting. I'm sure he thought he was being edgy and artsy-- but the result is just plain irritating and gets in the way of telling the story. Consistent with the rest of this episode, the soundtrack is repetitious and overblown-- If Mycroft had forced the villain to sit down and listen to it for an hour, he would've had his confession straight away.

Three Pests in a Mess / directed by Del Lord (1945, VHS). Moe Howard, Larry Fine, Curly Howard, Christine McIntyre, Vernon Dent. A more disjointed than usual plot combined with Curly's obvious health problems and a total lack of eyepokes results in one of their weaker efforts. The story begins with the boys trying to patent a special new fly catcher invention and somehow ends up in a cemetery where they are scared out of their shoes by three mock ghouls. In spite of these flaws, the sound effects here are generous and help save it from being a total flop. Violence count: the ever-popular head konk: 21; Face slaps: 5; Kicked in butt: 2; One each of: Nose pinch, Jabbed in butt with knitting needles, Jabbed in cranium with knitting needles, Hit in head with bottle of ink, Shin kick, Butt jabbed with pitchfork.

A Gem of a Jam / directed by Del Lord (1943, VHS). Moe Howard, Larry Fine, Curly Howard, Dudley Dickerson (uncredited). The Three Stooges are night custodians in a physician's office, but a wounded criminal and his gang mistake them for surgeons and demand they remove a bullet immediately. In spite of the absence of eyepokes, this one is pretty good. Curly is very energetic. 10 face slaps, 8 head konks, 3 stomach hits, 2 ear pulls, one each of electrical shock, kicked in butt, and finger bitten.

We're No Angels / directed by Michael Curtiz (1955, VHS). Humphrey Bogart, Aldo Ray, Peter Ustinov, Joan Bennett, Basil Rathbone, Leo G. Carroll. A strange comedy set in Devil's Island, Christmas 1893. Three escaped convicts (Bogart, Ray, Ustinov) plan on robbing and killing a family as part of their flight from the island, but as they get to know them they realize these are nice people being victimized by money-grubbing bastards. So they set out to even the score in ways that would make Charles Addams proud. Several messages here about who really lives in prison. The pace is pretty slow going, and the cast is a very odd mixture. Ustinov seems best suited to the droll and dark humor in the dialogue. Just when the story was starting to pick up, my tape went screwy and I had to throw it away. Apparently my copy was once a rental VHS for a regional chain in New York State (Hudson, Copkae, Catskill, Valatie, and Coxsackie) called Video Cave.

American Beauty / directed by Sam Mendes (1999, VHS). Kevin Spacey, Annette Bening, Thora Birch, Wes Bentley, Chris Cooper, Peter Gallagher. The pivotal quote from the father/husband: "Both my wife and daughter think I'm this gigantic loser. And they're right. I have lost something. I'm not exactly sure what it is, but I know I didn't always feel this-- sedated. But you know what? It's never too late to get it back." And thus starts his mid-life awakening. I was slightly older than the main character in this film when I first saw it, and except for his Lolita obsession, a lot of what he was expressing rang true to me. Particularly since I was the father of a teenage daughter at the time. Us pure daughter-dads have earned special gray hairs on our heads peculiar only to us. In the end, Spacey's character (as the father) has the right attitude in order to survive, from what I can see. An excellent film with no villains, just a host of trapped and unhappy people in a sophisticated condemnation of American suburbia. Great acting all the way around, with particular attention to Chris Cooper as the next-door gun-worshipping ex-Marine homicidal homophobic closet-case. Spacey's even-toned zingers are always a treat, and there are plenty of them here. Creatively directed. Terrific soundtrack. Visually original. Oddly spritual. The plastic-bag-in-the-wind scene is the best "Let Go and God" example I've seen on film. Bagism, man. An amazing movie that still resonates a decade later in uncomfortable ways.

Betty Boop with Henry the Funniest Living American / directed by Dave Fleischer (1935, DVD). Mae Questel (voice). Yes, Henry, that creepy butt-faced walking embryo. Betty Boop puts Henry in charge of her pet shop for a brief time and pandemonium follows. Unfortunately, we don't see a lot of Betty in this one. Pretty slow for a Fleischer work. Apparently Henry as a moving picture didn't catch fire, as this was very possibly his sole animated appearance.

Best Years (The Century: America's Time; v. 3) / directed by Roger Goodman (1999, VHS). Peter Jennings (narration). John Updike, David Halberstam, Carl Reiner, Charles Champlin, David McCullough, Lee Grant, Neil Simon, Janet Leigh, John Glenn, Mickey Spillane, Sid Caesar. This entry in The Century series seems unusually crowded with celebrity talking heads as opposed to normal people in covering the 1946-1952 post-WWII period. The early years of the Cold War is the dominant topic. Churchill's "Iron Curtain" speech, Stalin's "five year everybody dies" plan, American occupation of Japan and Germany, the Berlin Airlift, Soviets get the atom bomb, we get the hydrogen bomb, home bomb shelters, birth of Red China, Korean War, Truman fires MacArthur, the Rosenbergs, Joe McCarthy, Hollywood blacklisting, Commie hunting. Other topics are included, such as the impact of returning vets and the creation of the G.I. Bill and places like Levittown. When Johnny came marching home the women returned to the house after having worked factory jobs as part of the war effort, but life would never be the same. Lee Grant: "I was married to a Marxist, and I was married to a fascist. And neither one of them ever took out the garbage." President Truman desegregated the military and federal government. Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in baseball and became a national hero. Eisenhower was elected in 1952, ending two decades of Democratic rule. Nixon's Checkers speech was a political landmark in the history of television, which was quickly becoming a major force in American culture. My favorite bit of trivia to come out of this jammed-packed documentary: the first hydrogen bomb was developed using an early computer called the Mathematical Analyzer, Numerical Integrator And Computer, or, MANIAC.

The Keeper of Traken (Doctor Who) / directed by John Black (1981, VHS off-air). Tom Baker, Matthew Waterhouse, Anthony Ainley, Sheila Ruskin, Denis Carey, John Woodnutt, Sarah Sutton. The Doctor lands on a planet of nice people who are seduced into evil by a being that looks like an Expressionist statue. To wrap your cranium around the concepts presented in this boring and confusing plot requires an investment of energy that is not worth the effort. I'd suggest just sitting back and enjoying the cheap special effects and incredibly hammy overacting. Tom Baker, all hair and teeth like a Kennedy, is surrounded by fellow capital-T Thespians: most notably Ainley and Ruskin. This is the first episode to use Ainley as The Master, and introduced future companion Nyssa. I kept wondering, aren't the cast members old enough to find real jobs? Actually, it is sort of weird to see serious actors in here that have appeared in classy productions elsewhere (Woodnutt), demonstrating that television can be just a job like any other.

Firestarter / directed by Mark L. Lester (1984, VHS). David Keith, Drew Barrymore, Freddie Jones, Heather Locklear, Martin Sheen, George C. Scott, Art Carney, Louise Fletcher, Moses Gunn. Not one of the better films based on a Stephen King novel. This pyrotechnic jubillee features a young girl with the power to make things spontaneously burn and/or blow up. So naturally the spooks in some secret government lab need to capture and possess her power. Oh, yeah, and her Dad has special mind powers which were the result of Fed scientists tinkering in God's domain. The movie has sort of a 1970s made-for-TV feel. A very good soundtrack-- for some other film but not this one. The weirdness and suspense I expect from a King-inspired story was missing. Barrymore, Sheen, Scott, Jones and Carney were all great actors trapped in a flatly directed work. Scott was particularly disturbing as the one-eyed ponytailed villain. Barrymore, who looks to be about 8 or 9 here, was a pretty amazing child actress and carries her role quite well. My favorite line came from Art Carney. A bunch of G-men have arrived on his farm to nab the little girl. Carney: "Show me your warrant or get the Hell off my land." G-man (smugly): "We don't need a warrant." Carney: "You do unless I woke up in Russia this morning." How charmingly naive we were back then. In 1987 this film was followed by the comedy Nice Girls Don't Explode with Michelle Meyrink, which also had a premise of a young woman who supposedly had pyrokinetic power. My advice, just skip Firestarter and head directly for the superior Meyrink movie.