Culture Shock 06.05.14: Influential Japanese anime 'Space Adventure Cobra' comes to US

With an overly literal title like "Space Adventure Cobra," you know it has to be translated from Japanese.

Like "Super Dimension Fortress Macross" (aka "Robotech"), "Beast King GoLion" ("Voltron"), "Space Battleship Yamato" ("Starblazers") and "Science Ninja Team Gatchaman" ("Battle of the Planets"), "Space Adventure Cobra" hails from the golden age of Japanese animation. But unlike them, it didn't make the trip to America in the late 1970s and early '80s. It was something we first-generation anime fans could only read about, unless we were lucky enough to score bootleg VHS tapes that some other fan had subtitled. So it never got an Americanized title like "Sailor Moon" (known in Japan as "Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon").

One fan was alt rocker Matthew Sweet, whose music video for his breakout 1991 hit "Girlfriend" is mostly footage from the 1982 "Space Adventure Cobra" movie.

Back then we knew only that "Space Adventure Cobra" was about a pirate named Cobra who had adventures in space, and that it looked pretty cool. Turns out both are true.

The "Cobra" movie finally hit VHS in 1998 and was released on DVD just two years ago.

Now American anime fans can finally see the 31-episode TV series, too. Right Stuf, one of America's most venerable anime distributors, has released "Space Adventure Cobra" in two DVD box sets, which retail for roughly $40 each. Complete episodes are also online at Right Stuf's YouTube channel, youtube.com/user/nozomient.

Set in the far future, the series starts by borrowing from Philip K. Dick's "We Can Remember It For You Wholesale," which later became the 1990 movie "Total Recall."

A bored office worker can't afford a vacation, so he instead opts to have one implanted in his brain, so he can remember it as if it really happened. Instead, the implantation process awakens repressed memories: The office worker is really Cobra, a legendary space pirate who five years earlier changed his face, wiped his memory and went into hiding from the sinister Pirate Guild.

Now that Cobra remembers who he is, he decides to hit the spaceways again, even if that means avoiding both the Guild, which still wants him either to join or die, and the Galactic Patrol.

So, along with Lady, his android partner, Cobra sets out in his starship to have adventures, which, oddly enough, don't involve any real piracy, although he isn't averse to a heist or two for a good cause.

Cobra is the prototype for the heroes and anti-heroes who would come along later in "Cowboy Bebop," "Trigun" and "Outlaw Star."

His first adventure, which in heavily altered form is also the basis for the 1982 movie, involves a beautiful bounty hunter named Jane, her two twin sisters and a map to their father's hidden treasure.

Naturally, Cobra isn't the only pirate on the trail. The Pirate Guild's most dangerous member, the cold, calculating Crystal Bowie, is after it, too.

How to describe Crystal Bowie? Imagine a homicidal robot encased in a clear, laser-proof shell. Now imagine that robot is named after David Bowie.

Cobra's life of adventure is pure wish fulfillment. He has the best ship. He's surrounded by beautiful women. And concealed in his left arm is the "psycho-gun," a deadly weapon that never misses its target. How did he get such a magical device? It's not important. But it is enough to make you wonder if maybe this whole Cobra thing is really just the bored office worker's virtual vacation after all.

Even though it's 30 years old, "Space Adventure Cobra" holds up well compared to a lot of other animation from the same period. That's mostly because of the series' lush, airbrushed style. Almost any random frame of "Space Adventure Cobra" would look great painted on the side of a van — the sort of van on which you don't come a knockin' when it's a rockin'.

That's apt, because that's exactly the sort of van Cobra would drive if he didn't have a spaceship.

Culture Shock 05.29.14: 'Days of Future Past' gives X-Men a second chance

Given the obstacles it must overcome, that "X-Men: Days of Future Past" works at all is a pleasant surprise. That it's one of the best superhero movies to date qualifies as a minor miracle.

The X-Men franchise is one of the few Marvel Comics properties still outside Marvel and Disney's carefully constructed Marvel Cinematic Universe. That has its pluses and minuses.

The X-Men work better when kept at a distance from Marvel's other superheroes, who get in the way of the mutant vs. human dynamic that's central to the premise. That said, Fox's track record with Marvel's mutants is mixed. Only "X2: X-Men United" and "X-Men: First Class" are in the same league as Marvel's in-house productions.

But with Bryan Singer, who directed the first two X-Men outings, returning to the helm, "Days of Future Past" not only hangs with the best of them — "The Avengers," "Iron Man" and "Captain America: The Winter Soldier" — in many ways it raises the bar.

Singer and Fox have a message for Joss Whedon and Marvel/Disney: "Game on, bub."

Adapted from a 1981 story by Chris Claremont and John Byrne ("Uncanny X-Men" Vol. 1, Nos. 141-142), "Days of Future Past" opens in the near future, where a war between humans and mutants has laid waste to everything and left most of the mutant population dead or imprisoned in concentration camps. The only mutants still roaming free are a handful of X-Men and their former enemy Magneto (Ian McKellen). They're just steps ahead of the Sentinels, an army of robots that can adapt to combat any mutant, no matter his or her abilities.

With no other options left to them, Professor Xavier (Patrick Stewart) and Magneto hatch a plan to save the future by changing the past. That means sending someone back in time to prevent the act that ultimately leads to mutantkind's annihilation.

There's some explanatory handwaving, but eventually they send Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) back to 1973, where he wakes up in his younger body with a mission to find the younger Xavier (James McAvoy) and Magneto (Michael Fassbender), whom we met in "First Class."

Only together can they stop Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) from killing Bolivar Trask (Peter Dinklage), a weapons designer who believes mutants herald humanity's extinction.

Trask's answer to the "mutant problem" is the Sentinels. But ironically, it's his assassination that leads the government to fund the Sentinel program, which it had previously passed on.

Mystique's solution is actually the problem it's meant to solve.

Wolverine's mission has just two complications. First, the young Xavier, deep in a depression following the events of "First Class," has given up on his dream of mutants and humans living together in peace. Second, Magneto is imprisoned beneath the world's most secure building. And even if Wolverine can bring them together, they hate and distrust one another.

Even with all that story to deal with, Singer delivers plenty of well-staged action.

Singer wisely dispenses with the "First Class" supporting cast, keeping only Nicholas Hoult's Beast, to focus on the main characters and what they do with their second chance. Even franchise mainstay Storm (Halle Berry) gets only a few lines, although she does finally get to show off her powers.

Storm kicking butt minus Berry's wooden line readings equals a win-win for the audience.

That leaves room for a few new additions, of whom Quicksilver (Evan Peters) is the undisputed scene stealer. No spoilers, but Quicksilver's big scene, improbably set to Jim Croce's "Time in a Bottle," will have you smiling.

As much as "Days of Future Past" is about second chances for the characters, it's a second chance for Singer, too. He walked away from the third X-Men film to direct 2006's "Superman Returns," a misguided effort that led to Warner Bros. starting over last year with "Man of Steel." In his absence, Brett Ratner directed 2006's wretched "X-Men: The Last Stand."

With "Days of Future Past," Singer sets the X-Men right in more ways than one.

Culture Shock 05.22.14: 'Godzilla' takes its time but is worth the wait

In the first half of Gareth Edwards' re-imagined "Godzilla," we only glimpse the title character.

Dorsal spikes cut through the water like a shark's fin as Godzilla crosses the Pacific trailed by a U.S. Navy carrier battle group. In one memorable shot, the partially submerged Godzilla dwarfs an aircraft carrier sailing beside him. You half expect someone to say, "You're gonna need a bigger boat."

Just in case that doesn't remind you of "Jaws," most of the main characters are named Brody.

The 2014 model "Godzilla" is the second attempt by an American studio to adapt Japan's most recognizable cinema icon. The widely reviled 1998 "Godzilla" pitted a giant iguana against "Ferris Buller's Day Off" star Matthew Broderick, with a script that was "Jurassic Park" meets Dino De Laurentiis' campy 1976 "King Kong." Whatever it was, it wasn't a Godzilla movie.

This one takes some inspiration from Steven Spielberg's "Jaws," but at its heart, this "Godzilla" is surprisingly faithful to the Japanese version, especially as depicted in the "Heisei series" films Toho produced from 1984 to 1995.

As a bonus, instead of Ferris Buller, we get Heisenberg.

Fifteen years ago, an accident destroyed a Japanese nuclear power plant where Joe Brody (Bryan Cranston of "Breaking Bad") was an engineer. The accident also killed Joe's wife (Juliette Binoche in a glorified cameo) and rendered the surrounding city a no man's land.

In the present day, Joe is still in Japan, searching for answers to a disaster he doesn't believe was caused by an earthquake or other natural occurrence. Just so you know he's obsessed, he wallpapers his apartment with newspaper clippings, because that's what borderline psychos in movies do.

Half a world away in San Francisco, Joe's son Ford Brody (Aaron Taylor-Johnson of "Kick-Ass") is a bomb disposal expert returning home to his wife and son (Elizabeth Olsen and Carson Bolde) from a 14-month tour of duty. He's barely unpacked when a call comes from Japan: His dad tried to break into the quarantine zone and needs Ford to come bail him out. This is a movie with giant monsters but no Western Union, but it gets the Brody boys together for when the action starts.

Of course, Joe is right. The nuclear plant was destroyed by a prehistoric monster that's still cocooned at ground zero, feeding on the radiation. And a secret organization led by Ken Watanabe's Dr. Ichiro Serizawa has been studying such creatures since the first one reawakened in 1954. (One guess which monster that is.) But before Joe and Serizawa can compare notes, the cocooned monster — designated MUTO for "massive unidentified terrestrial organism" — wakes up, lays waste to everything and flies east toward California, where Ford's wife and son live. Bummer, right?

By this point, you may be wondering where Godzilla comes in. Serizawa has been talking about him from the start, and his presence looms over everything, but it takes Godzilla an hour to show up.

Fortunately, when he does, he doesn't disappoint. This is no oversized iguana.

Be very, very quiet. Godzilla is hunting MUTOs.

Cranston can chew scenery with the best of them, and Watanabe's Serizawa ably fills the traditional role of the one person who is sympathetic to Godzilla. But otherwise it's hard to care about any of the human characters, and the Navy's plan to nuke the monsters is so stupid you wonder if humanity even deserves to survive. Fortunately, the slow buildup pays off when the monsters fight, and at least the monsters' motivations, driven by the most Darwinian of instincts, make sense.

Also, you can't deny that Edwards and cinematographer Seamus McGarvey ("The Avengers") have shot one of the best-looking Godzilla movies ever.

If there is a message here — and Godzilla movies usually have a message — it's that nature is chaotic but self-correcting. The MUTO awakes, but so does Godzilla, "the alpha predator." If humans don't upset the balance, order will return — after two or three cities have been flattened, give or take.

It's the Tao of Godzilla. When Serizawa says, "Let them fight," he's speaking for the movie as well as for the audience.

Culture Shock 05.15.14: Changing Godzilla reflects a nation's mood

Godzilla first stomps Tokyo in 1954's "Godzilla."

One of my earliest movie-going memories is my grandmother taking me to a Saturday matinee showing of "Godzilla on Monster Island," aka "Godzilla vs. Gigan."

This was Godzilla smack in the middle of his kid-friendly phase. During the 1970s, Godzilla kiddie matinees were common. It was the high tide of Godzilla's popularity in America.

Blue Oyster Cult released its 1977 album "Spectres," which included the single "Godzilla." Mattel produced a popular Godzilla toy (with spring-loaded claw and flicking tongue) that now fetches hundreds of dollars on eBay. NBC aired Hanna-Barbera's now-infamous "Godzilla" cartoon featuring Godzilla's dorky nephew Godzooky. And Marvel Comics published 24 issues of "Godzilla: King of the Monsters," which saw Godzilla square off against the Avengers, SHIELD and other Marvel heroes.

Godzilla vs. the Avengers!

Apart from the Hanna-Barbera cartoon, about which the less said the better, these American Godzillas kept him in his original role — a chaotic and destructive force of nature — rather than adopting the "protector of Earth" role Godzilla had by then assumed in Japan. For many Americans, Godzilla's hero period is yet another inexplicable artifact from the culture that is Japan.

In the Japanese context, it makes perfect sense. Many things about Godzilla may change, but for 60 years one thing has remained constant: Godzilla is Japan's most reliable mood indicator.

The original "Godzilla," aka "Gojira," opened in Japanese cinemas on Nov. 3, 1954, less than a decade after Japan's defeat in World War II and the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It is a bleak and somber film, much more so than the Raymond Burr version most Americans have seen.

The '54 "Godzilla" is the product of a Japan still reeling from defeat, and Godzilla, a prehistoric creature awakened by atomic bomb tests, is a terrifying reminder of nuclear disaster.

That's the part Godzilla would play until the mid-'60s. With 1964's "Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster," Godzilla began to change. Toho, the studio that produced the Godzilla films, began pushing the character in a more heroic direction, having him team up with two other monsters, Rodan and Mothra, to fight the outer-space menace of Ghidorah. By "Godzilla vs. the Sea Monster" two years later, the transformation was complete. In that film, Godzilla defeats a terrorist army and its giant lobster monster, and in the process helps save the terrorists' captives.

Godzilla's flying dropkick in "Godzilla vs. Megalon" (1973).

Godzilla's change coincided with increasing Japanese confidence. In the '60s, Japan was a growing economic power. Also, it had begun building its first nuclear power facilities, taming for peaceful purposes the same atomic power that had leveled two of its cities and given birth to Godzilla in the first place. If the atom could be tamed, Godzilla could be, too.

Nowhere is the transformation more pronounced than in 1971's "Godzilla vs. Hedorah," aka "Godzilla vs. the Smog Monster," which pits Godzilla against a monster literally made of pollution. Godzilla here is completely domesticated. Children play with Godzilla toys, while Godzilla might as well be a cheerleader for nuclear power over smoke-belching factories.

The next change comes in the 1980s. Godzilla returns to his "force of nature" mode just as Japan reaches a peak of national prestige. Then by 1991's "Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah," Godzilla is saving Japan from time travelers who want to prevent Japan from becoming the future's dominant world power. Ironically, that was just as Japan's "lost decade" of stagnation began — pride before a fall.

So, Toho killed off Godzilla in 1995's "Godzilla vs. Destoroyah" only to revive him as a leaner and meaner monster in 1999's "Godzilla 2000," a symbol of what Japan needed to become to regain its confidence. (The Japanese don't regard the 1998 American-made "Godzilla" as a true Godzilla, and neither do I.) Then, after five more films, Fukushima happened.

So, now comes a new, American-made "Godzilla," the first Godzilla film since 2011's tsunami-spawned Fukushima meltdown. As Blue Oyster Cult sang, "History shows again and again how nature points up the folly of men."

In Fukushima's wake, Japan's answer is to let someone else deal with Godzilla for a while.

Culture Shock 05.08.14: WGN's 'Salem' is a Salem you've never seen

George Sibley knows a secret. There are witches in Salem, and his wife Mary is one of them.

But George will never tell. You see, he has a frog in his throat — literally. Mary put it there so she can control him, because she's a witch and that's apparently something witches do. And since Sibley is the most powerful man in Salem, that makes Mary the real power in Salem.

If WGN America's first scripted series weren't trying so hard to convince us it's a serious drama, one would swear at times it's a comedy. To say the least, it's a strange retelling of the witch trials. It even has you almost rooting for the infamous Puritan minister and pamphleteer Cotton Mather, author of the best-selling anti-dancing manifesto "A Cloud of Witness Against Balls and Dances."

The Salem witch trials of 1692 and 1693, during which 20 people were executed, have never been portrayed quite like this. In this telling, the witches are real, meaning they have supernatural abilities straight out of the Brothers Grimm. They're also the force behind Salem's witch-hunting hysteria, throwing suspicion on unsuspecting citizens so as to divert attention from their own schemes. The Puritans are just pawns, unwittingly bringing about their own destruction.

The big brain behind "Salem" is Brannon Braga, who does here to American history what he did to the laws of physics back when he was writing "Star Trek." Among other transgressions, Braga wrote the episode of "Star Trek: Voyager" in which Capt. Janeway and Lt. Paris travel faster than warp 10, turn into salamanders and have salamander babies together.

"Salem" isn't the first time Braga has gotten all weird with amphibians.

The story starts with John Alden (Shane West, "Nikita") going off to fight in King William's War. John is the son of one of Salem's founders, but he's so fed up with the Puritans he'd just as soon go off to fight the French. That also means leaving behind the woman he loves, the not-yet Mary Sibley (Janet Montgomery), who is secretly pregnant with his child.

So John goes off, gets captured by the Indians, spends years missing and presumed dead, and returns only to learn Mary is married to wealthy invalid George Sibley (Michael Mulheren).

Oh, and while he was away, Mary underwent a ritual that rid her of her unborn child in exchange for membership in Salem's witch coven, which sounds like Pat Robertson's worst nightmare.

Mary wants revenge on Salem's Puritan ruling class, whom she blames for taking away everything she ever loved. By the time John comes strolling back into the village, alive and bitter, her plans are too far along to abandon.

The coven's plan is to tear Salem apart by fomenting hysteria and framing innocent people for witchcraft. And their No. 1 pawn is Mather, played by Seth Gabel ("Fringe").

This is not a portrayal the historical Cotton Mather would recognize. While Gabel's Mather shares the original's religious fervor and daddy issues, he retreats from his burdens by drinking heavily and having relations with women of the night.

Both activities were big no-nos in Puritan circles — although drinking and legal bordellos were common in the other colonies. The real Mather would be aghast.

For that matter, he'd find everything about "Salem" objectionable. This is a sexed-up Salem that pushes the boundaries of basic cable. Expect regular helpings of bare backsides and sideboobs, to go along with the gruesome executions and brandings.

Gabel's Mather, with all his doubts, is more compelling and sympathetic than either West's bland Alden or Montgomery's Mary. Mary's willingness to sacrifice the innocent in her quest for power loses her our sympathy almost from the start. At least when Mather executes someone it's because he's been duped and manipulated. Mary knows exactly what she's doing.

"Salem" plays like an alternate history of America's founding. If the witches turn out to be the Illuminati, secretly manipulating America since it's founding days, I won't be the least surprised.

"Salem" airs Sunday nights at 9 CT on WGN America. New episodes appear Mondays on Hulu Plus.

Culture Shock 05.01.14: Syfy looks to shake up its 'Sharknado' image

In television, as in any business, branding matters. You can have the greatest product on Earth, and it won't matter a bit if your brand sends customers fleeing.

TNT knows drama. USA is where characters are welcome. AMC is all about advertising executives and zombies, which has a kind of synergy if you think about it.

And Syfy is the "Sharknado" channel, although that may be about to change.

There are worse fates. Never mind the lack of music, MTV is more like VTM nowadays, as in "Vacuous Teenage Moms." "Sharknado," on the other hand, was the surprise hit of 2013 on social media and gained viewers with repeat airings. The third broadcast attracted 2.1 million viewers, a record for a Syfy original movie repeat, according to Entertainment Weekly.

There's a lot to be said for cheesy movies. If I had my way, there would be a channel that aired nothing but reruns of "USA Up All Night." I'll take USA Network's early 1990s late-night schedule of "Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama," "Chopping Mall" and "Hell Comes to Frogtown" over yet another "NCIS" marathon any day.

Come to think about it, 2014 Syfy is a lot like 1990s USA. Back them, USA Network was known for cheesy movies, WWF wrestling and originals such as "Silk Stalkings" and "La Femme Nikita" (a Canadian co-production). Today, Syfy is known for cheesy movies, WWE wrestling and originals such as "Warehouse 13" and "Continuum" (a Canadian co-production). All entertaining, but apart from the rare "Sharknado" fluke, nothing that gets viewers talking the next morning.

Syfy used to air a show that did have its audience talking: "Battlestar Galactica." Then, for reasons that make sense only to television executives, Syfy declared a moratorium on shows set in space. An odd decision for a channel originally called The Sci-Fi Channel, I know.

But Syfy is also the channel that didn't know what to do with "Doctor Who," and Syfy's loss is  BBC America's highest-rated program and a reliable buzz generator. Meanwhile, Syfy has "Sharknado," "Ghost Shark," "Sharktopus," "Dinoshark" and the TV movie that kickstarted Syfy's love affair with monster-hybrid insanity, "Mansquito," which is oddly shark-free.

You have to figure Syfy's execs are just a little jealous of the science fiction and fantasy programming generating buzz for their competition, whether it's "Doctor Who" or "The Walking Dead"  on AMC or "Game of Thrones" on HBO. Syfy is an also-ran in the genre it used to own.

So, it's big news that Syfy is showing interest in its reason for being. The channel is heading back into space, embracing tech-heavy science fiction and, like all those other channels, looking to adapt best-selling novels.

One project already has a 10-episode order, and it will likely be the most ambitious series Syfy has aired to date, to say nothing of having the hardest science of any Syfy series. Maybe the success of "Gravity" has changed the mindset around the Syfy offices.

If Syfy is looking for its own "Game of Thrones," it may have found it in "The Expanse," based on "Leviathan Wakes" and its sequels by James S.A. Corey (the pseudonym for Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck). And wouldn't you know it, the cover of "Leviathan Wakes" has a nice blurb from "Game of Thrones" author George R.R. Martin.

"Leviathan Wakes" has warring factions, pitched battles and lots of unexpected death. So it is a bit like "Game of Thrones," only in space and without all the sex. So maybe it's not like "Game of Thrones" at all. Never mind. But it can air on basic cable without upsetting the usual suspects.

But even if "The Expanse" is good, will anyone tune in? Syfy has an established brand, one it spent years cultivating. And that brand doesn't scream intelligent, sophisticated, science-literate entertainment.

It's a brand that screams we're gonna need a bigger boat — and probably a bigger flyswatter, too.

Culture Shock 04.24.14: The king is dead, and I feel fine

He's dead, Jim.

I hope you're up to speed on "Game of Thrones." Spoilers are coming.

While the TV series deviates from the novels in many respects, HBO's "Game of Thrones" doesn't shy away from the one thing for which author George R.R. Martin has become best known: killing off your favorite characters in the most shocking, gruesome and heartbreaking ways possible.

It can be devastating. And since most "Game of Thrones" viewers evidently haven't read the books, Twitter explodes every time a major character dies. (Twitter is so much better than a water cooler.)

First it was poor Ned Stark. We'd been led to believe he was the star of the show, then boom. At the end of season 1, his head's on a pike.

We should have suspected as much. Dying is what Sean Bean's characters do best.

Then came the "Red Wedding." You can Google it. Some viewers are still in therapy for that one.

So, occasionally, as if in some half-hearted attempt to make it up to us, Martin kills off someone we  want to see dead. Two episodes into season 4, the TV show caught up to the most satisfying "Game of Thrones" death of them all.

Here lies Joffrey Baratheon, the most hated character on television. Indeed, possibly the most hated character in all of fiction. Hated by readers. Hated by viewers. Hated by small, inoffensive woodland creatures. And hated, most of all, by his fellow "Game of Thrones" characters, one of whom decided to do him in.

King Joffrey died as he lived, as a royal pain to all around him. He played second fiddle to no one. He may have been stupid, arrogant, petty, murderous, selfish, ignorant and, above all, a whiner, but no one came close to stoking the white hot burning hatred he did. He generated enough seething hatred to keep winter at bay.

And now he's gone — poisoned at his own royal wedding. He choked, he gagged, he turned an amusing shade of purple and then he died, crying in his mother's arms like the pathetic little loser brat he always was. The Red Wedding was tragic, but the "Purple Wedding," as fans call it, was a party.

Did I remember to mention Joffrey's mother is also his aunt, making him the slow-witted, inbred spawn of an incestuous relationship between sister and brother? I don't know how that could have slipped my mind.

Joffrey's mother/aunt Cersei (Lena Headey) is the only character who didn't hate Joffrey, and her lack of hatred is why everyone hates her. She knew full well the sort of monster she was raising. It brings to mind the Roman Emperor Tiberius, who said, "I am nursing a viper in Rome's bosom."

That viper was the mad Emperor Caligula, who, coincidentally, had a fondness for incest.

The only problem with Joffrey's death is it didn't take long enough. I think most of us would have happily watched an entire hour of Joffrey retching his liquefied guts out while crying for Mommy.

Joffrey's demise is probably the most satisfying screen death since Anne Archer unloaded a handgun into Glenn Close.

Yes, Martin deserves credit for creating such a despicable character in the first place, for dredging up such a hateful beast from the dark recesses of his sick, twisted mind. But most of the credit goes to Jack Gleeson, who brought the towheaded twerp to life — and death.

If anyone in the "Game of Thrones" cast deserves an Emmy, it's Gleeson, who had the thankless task of giving us someone to hate, and he excelled beyond all our hopes. In a show full of characters deserving of painful, lingering deaths, he outdid them all.

And Gleeson did it without much of a character to work with, really. Other screen villains at least get to be witty or smart. Not Joffrey. He was pure awfulness, with no redeeming or even faintly humanizing qualities. He was nothing but id.

In terms of the story, King Joffrey's death means little. Westeros is still a brutal land besieged by bloodthirsty tyrants and soft-hearted fools. But for a brief moment, it brought America together.

Culture Shock 04.17.14: 'Oculus' is a clever chiller that exceeds expectations

Any movie starring Karen Gillan ("Doctor Who”) and Katee Sackhoff ("Battlestar Galactica”) seems bound to raise some unrealistic expectations.

But surprisingly, director/screenwriter Mike Flanagan's "Oculus” meets expectations and more.

"Oculus” is a creepy, clever horror film that challenges both its cast and the audience to keep up.

The story unfolds half in flashback. We learn that 11 years ago, Alan Russell (Rory Cochrane, "CSI: Miami”) tortured and murdered his wife Marie (Sackhoff). He then tried to kill the couple's two children, 12-year-old Kaylie (Annalise Basso) and 10-year-old Tim (Garrett Ryan).

But Tim managed to grab his father's gun and kill him first. That's the official story, anyway.

Ever since, Tim has been in a psychiatric hospital, where the doctors have helped him come to terms with what he had to do.

In the present day, the now 21-year-old Tim (Brenton Thwaites of the upcoming "Maleficent”) is ready to leave the hospital and start living his life, as near normal as he can. But his older sister (Gillan) expects him to help take care of unfinished business first.

That unfinished business involves an antique mirror their father kept in his home office – a mirror Kaylie believes is possessed by an evil that drove both of their parents mad. But that's exactly the ghost story Tim's doctors convinced him was a delusion, a fantasy concocted by a frightened boy to avoid the reality of his having killed his father.

"They really did a number on your head,” Kaylie tells Tim when she learns he no longer believes in the magic mirror, the ghosts inside it, or that it possessed their father and turned him into a deranged killer.

As far as Tim is concerned, that's crazy talk. What's more likely, he asks, that a couple of scared kids made up a story or that a mirror is haunted? He has a point. Then he repeats the psychological explanation his doctors gave him, how memories aren't like recordings. Instead, they're as much invention as reality. Another good point, and one to keep and mind, if you can.

For Kaylie, who bounced between foster homes and endured the taunts of classmates, the mirror is an obsession. It's implied she took a job in an auction house just so she could track down the mirror, which was sold off following her parents' deaths. Now the mirror is in Kaylie's possession at last, and she has just a few days before it goes off to its next unlucky owner.

That's a few days to prove the mirror is evil and her father wasn't a murderer but a victim.

Some of the film's most harrowing moments come during the flashbacks, and Sackhoff delivers most of them. The mirror plays with Marie's head almost from the start, toying with her insecurities even as one of the spirits inside it (Kate Siegel) seduces her husband.

Gillan is equally good as the confident and determined older Kaylie, whose ingenious plan to make the mirror reveal itself may be just a bit too ingenious for her and Tim's own good.

Basso and Ryan, as the young Kaylie and Tim, are a pleasant surprise. In a genre where children usually run the gamut from grating to insufferable, they deliver emotional performances that elicit our sympathy rather than our annoyance.

While "Oculus” shouldn't be confused with Oculus Rift, the virtual reality headset recently acquired by Facebook, it does much the same thing. It makes the unreal seem real. Where "Oculus” excels is in making us almost as disoriented as the characters onscreen.

Flanagan's Escher painting of a narrative jumps between past and present, illusion and (maybe) reality. If you come away thinking the story has resolved into a neat conclusion, think again.

Is the mirror even haunted, or is it all a delusion? And if it is a delusion, whose delusion is it?

Even the final scene should keep you guessing. We see through the movie darkly.

Culture Shock 04.10.14: 'Captain America' pits patriotism vs. the government

Since he defrosted 50 years ago in "The Avengers" Vol. 1, No. 4, Captain America has been at odds with his government almost as often as he's been on its payroll.

The world of Vietnam and Watergate into which Steve Rogers awoke is nowhere near as black and white as the world of Hitler and Tojo he left behind. In a 1974 "Captain America" storyline, Rogers becomes so disillusioned he abandons his Captain America alter ego, taking on a new costume and a new name: Nomad. He becomes a patriot without a country.

His Nomad persona was short-lived, but not so the idea behind it. Ever since, Captain America, the iconic symbol of freedom and patriotism, has drawn a bright line between serving America's ideals and serving its government. That's the Captain America we get in the ninth film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, "Captain America: The Winter Soldier." And it's one of the franchise's best.

Picking up where "The Avengers" left off, Captain America (Chris Evans) is still working for the global spy agency SHIELD and still catching up on everything he missed since going into deep freeze in 1945. (He still hasn't crossed "Star Wars" off his to-do list.)

Cap's latest mission teams him with an elite SHIELD strike force and Scarlett Johansson's Black Widow to rescue a ship hijacked by pirates. From the start things aren't all they seem. The ship isn't just any ship. It's crewed by SHIELD personnel on a classified mission, and Rogers is already getting tired of cleaning up SHIELD's little accidents.

Back at headquarters, Director Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) decides it's time to bring Cap in on the big secret. SHIELD is about to launch Project Insight. Three specially designed SHIELD helicarriers will stay airborne at all times, identifying and eliminating threats before they happen.

Project Insight is preemptive war meets the National Security Agency, and Rogers is far from convinced. "This isn't freedom," he says in a trailer-worthy summation. "This is fear."

Like the underrated "Iron Man 3," this is a superhero movie with more going on than the surface pyrotechnics. This is the comic book equivalent of a post-Watergate thriller. It's no coincidence that Fury's immediate superior in the SHIELD hierarchy is played by Robert Redford ("Three Days of the Condor," "All the President's Men"). Redford brings more than gravitas; he brings a direct link to 1970s paranoia. But like they say, are you paranoid if they're really out to get you?

When an attempt is made on Fury's life, all signs point to an inside job. SHIELD has been compromised, and Cap isn't sure he can trust anyone. Even the Black Widow, who helped Cap save the world during the Battle of New York, isn't above suspicion.

The only person to whom Cap can turn is a fellow Army vet, Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie), and even Sam has a secret, although one that's not a secret to readers of the "Captain America" comic.

All the while, threats from Cap's past keep cropping up, from Hydra, the formerly Nazi-backed super-science cult, to mad scientist Arnim Zola (Toby Jones) to the mysterious assassin known only as the Winter Soldier (Sebastian Stan).

While that may seem like too much for one movie, directors Anthony and Joe Russo skillfully juggle all the balls screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely throw at them. And they still find time to stage some of the best action sequences in any of the Marvel films to date.

In her third supporting outing as the Black Widow, Johansson proves it's past time the Widow got her own movie. And Mackie is instantly likable in his sidekick role. But it's Evans who must and does carry the film, giving Cap a humanity other iconic characters often lack. (I'm thinking of Henry Cavill's Superman in "Man of Steel," who always seems to be faking it.)

By the time "The Winter Soldier" reaches its climax, Captain America stands ready to reveal everyone's dirty secrets. He has become Marvel's Edward Snowden, which is only appropriate, given Snowden has become the real world's Nomad.

Culture Shock 04.03.14: 'Ms. 45' gives audience a lot to think about

Thana is a seamstress working in New York's garment district. Every day after work, she and her co-workers run a gauntlet.

Judging by director Abel Ferrara's 1981 film "Ms. 45," men in New York City have little to do but stand on street corners and hurl lewd comments at every woman who walks by. Thana's friends, being New Yorkers, give as good as they get. But Thana (Zoë Lund) is mute. All she can do is passively absorb each unwelcome come-on.

Then Ferrara cuts to Thana shopping in a supermarket. She's in the meat department, of course. She has moved from one kind of meat market to another.

It's easy to read one's sexual politics into "Ms. 45." Ferrara, who also directed the even more controversial "Bad Lieutenant" with Harvey Keitel, and Nicholas St. John, Ferrara's go-to screenwriter, give us a lot to work with. But at its core, "Ms. 45" is simpler than that.

"Ms. 45" is what can happen when the voiceless fight back.

Long out of print, "Ms. 45" returns looking better than ever. Drafthouse Films, the distribution arm of the Austin, Texas-based Alamo Drafthouse theater, has restored and released "Ms. 45" on Blu-ray, DVD and Amazon's video on demand. And early-'80s New York's grime and seediness have seldom been reproduced in such clarity and detail.

"Ms. 45" deserves no less. While overshadowed by "Bad Lieutenant," "Ms. 45" is Ferrara's masterpiece, anchored by Lund's affecting performance. The multi-talented Lund, who died in 1999, wrote the screenplay for "Bad Lieutenant," but in "Ms. 45," she is Ferrara's muse.

Ferrara wastes no time taking Thana's situation from bad to worse. On one of her walks home, a man in a clown mask (Ferrara) pulls Thana into an alley and sexually assaults her. Afterward, she walks home, dazed, only to walk in on a burglar, who then assaults her a second time.

The double attacks recall the most infamous of rape/revenge films: 1978's "I Spit on Your Grave," which wore its feminist revenge fantasy ambitions on its sleeve when originally released under the title "Day of the Woman."

"Ms. 45" is a direct descendant of "I Spit on Your Grave" and 1972's "The Last House on the Left," although it's more stylish and less lurid then either of those polarizing exploitation flicks.

When Thana turns the tables and kills her second attacker, the symbolism is ripe. First she sends him reeling with a blow from a glass apple paperweight, then she finishes him off with an iron. The overworked symbols of woman's deception and domesticity get their revenge.

And so does Thana.

When she kills a pimp, she strikes a blow for women everywhere. And when she kills an Arab oil sheik looking for a good time, it's almost was if she were standing up for all America. This is just a few years after the Arab oil embargo, after all.

In the film's most memorable scene, Ferrara stages a standoff that could have come out of a Sergio Leone Western. She lures a half dozen would-be attackers into an alley and guns them down with the kind of cold-blooded precision that would impress Clint Eastwood's Man with No Name.

As perversely playful as the scene is, though, it's also a sign Thana has crossed the line. From here, her vigilante justice descends into indiscriminate violence. No man is innocent, and no man is safe. The heroine's dark turn is what sets "Ms. 45" apart from the rape/revenge films that came before it. You might not agree with Camille Keaton's bloody rampage in "I Spit on Your Grave," but you at least know her victims have it coming.

By the time Thana dons her Halloween party costume — a nun's habit — she has become an angel of death. Unable to speak, unable to make others listen, Thana's story comes down to this.

Deprived of her voice for so long, Thana finds it again only at the very end. And in the end, all she can do is scream.

Culture Shock 03.27.14: Lack of facts keeps Flight 370 compelling

Planes similar to Flight 19, which disappeared in 1945 in the Bermuda
Triangle.

It is Sunday. It has been 17 days since Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 disappeared en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, and CNN's Martin Savidge is still inside the flight simulator.

He always seems to be there. Night or day, CNN anchors throw to him so he can explain what might have happened to Flight 370, based on the latest theories and conjectures, fragments and wild guesses.

"It's official. I am now known on the street as 'The cockpit guy'," he tweets.

This is how reporters become minor celebrities. It's not exactly Bernard Shaw reporting by phone from beneath a table in his hotel room as the missiles rain down on Baghdad during the first Iraq War, but at least there's little risk of becoming collateral damage. That's a plus.

The fate of Flight 370 and its 239 passengers and crew is morbidly fascinating all out of proportion to its intrinsic newsworthiness. Is the coverage too much? Maybe. But it's not exactly as if a steady stream of cable news pundits war-gaming the Crimean War 2.0 on live TV is particularly enlightening either. If you want to know what's up with Crimea, you're better off reading a history book and drawing your own conclusions.

But if you want to know what's up with that missing airplane in the Indian Ocean, your guess is as good as anyone's, and almost everyone has a guess.

Terrorism experts suspect terrorism. Engineers suspect mechanical failure.

Before the plane's debris was found in the ocean, a retired general known for his off-the-wall views was sure the plane was hijacked and taken to Pakistan because something something al-Qaida.

Did you know UFO sightings in and around Malaysia surged right before Flight 370 disappeared? I read that on the Internet, which is great if you believe everything you read on the Internet.

Is it possible Flight 370 went through a wormhole caused by the Large Hadron Collider? I just made that up, but does that make it not true? You can't prove it isn't.

The Flight 370 story is ill-suited to continuous, 24/7 news coverage. We know almost nothing. Facts we think we know one day end up disproved the next. And as far as American viewers are concerned, it's all taking place a world away. When it's daytime here, it's nighttime there. Most of our speculation occurs during the dead period when the search has been scaled back for the night.

When it comes to Flight 370, most of our "breaking news" is neither.

But CNN's ratings spike doesn't lie. A lot of us are addicted to Flight 370 news, even when it isn't news. Maybe especially when it isn't news.

It's the mystery that captivates because it's so unlikely. A large passenger jet vanishes for 17 days with barely a trace? In 2014? The government has spy satellites that can read your mail from orbit. So, how does a Boeing 777 just disappear?

Mundane explanations, the sort that invoke the science of how things like satellites and GPS and cellphones really work, don't satisfy. Never mind if they're true. Psychologically speaking, big mysteries demand big answers. Missing airplanes are by definition big mysteries. That's how we get six seasons of "Lost" on TV and Stephen King's "The Langoliers."

That's how we get the Bermuda Triangle. In 1945, Flight 19, composed of five TBM Avenger torpedo bombers, disappeared in the triangle. The most likely explanation is the pilots, mostly trainees, got lost and ditched their plans in rough waters as they ran out of fuel. The pilots and their planes were never found, but they were last seen in Steven Spielberg's "Close Encounters of the Third Kind."

You disappear into history, and you reappear as mythology.

Before there were airplanes, there were ships. The Mary Celeste was discovered adrift at sea, its crew missing. Books and movies followed, but few hard facts.

Hard facts would only get in the way. When there are facts, everyone gets to call it a day.

If only there were more facts, Martin Savidge might get to go home.

Culture Shock 03.20.14: New 'Cosmos' gets A for science, D- for history

Neil deGrasse Tyson takes the conn.

Astrophysicist and science populizer Neil deGrasse Tyson begins our tour of the cosmos — and his new Fox TV series "Cosmos: A SpaceTime Odyssey" — with a trip through the solar system.

Past Mars we go, then on to the outer planets: the gas giants Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and finally Neptune, discovered only in 1846, which should tell you something about the reliability of the 4,000-year-old practice of astrology.

Next, on to the icy bodies beyond the planets. One of those icy bodies is Pluto, cast out of the planetary pantheon in part because of Tyson's tireless anti-Pluto campaign. The murderer has returned to the scene of his crime.

My personal grudge aside, Tyson is the natural successor to Carl Sagan, who brought the wonders of the universe, from faraway stars to the atoms in our bodies, into our living rooms in his 1980 PBS series "Cosmos."

To an 8-year-old, even one watching on a snowy, rabbit-eared, black-and-white TV, Sagan's "Cosmos" was enthralling and illuminating. It was even a little bit haunting, thanks to liberal use of music by ambient composer Vangelis ("Chariots of Fire") and Sagan's reminders of just how small we are compared to the immensity of the cosmos.

Sagan's "Cosmos" was filled with spiritual awe. Like Albert Einstein before him, Sagan flirted with the pantheism of Benedict de Spinoza, the heretical, 17th century Jewish philosopher.

Spinoza defined the cosmos and God as one and the same. That view doesn't put humanity at the center of the universe, but it does give us a crucial role.

"We're made of star-stuff," Sagan said. "We are a way for the cosmos to know itself."

We are still getting to know the cosmos, and Tyson gives us a refresher course.

If Sagan was a spiritualist, Tyson is a kid in a candy store, a wide-eyed 8-year-old with an adult astrophysicist's knowledge and a natural storyteller's gifts. He's no less in awe of the universe, but he is equally in awe of following in Sagan's footsteps on what Sagan called the "shore of the cosmic ocean."

Tyson starts where Sagan did. We tour the universe in a "spaceship of the imagination," only with better special effects. We see what all of cosmic history would look like compressed into a single year.

Hint: All of our written history takes place in the last minute of the last hour of the last day.

Science moves on. New discoveries happen all the time, and we've learned a lot since 1980. Back then Pluto was still a planet.

The new "Cosmos" also adds animated history lessons. They dramatize the lives of scientists who have expanded our knowledge. This is where we most see the influence of executive producer Seth MacFarlane (yes, the creator of "Family Guy").

Unfortunately, this is also where the new "Cosmos" trips up.

The first episode focuses on 16th century Italian friar Giordano Bruno, who believed, contrary to prevailing views of the time, that the universe was infinite. The Roman Inquisition burned Bruno at the stake, and "Cosmos" holds him up as a martyr for free inquiry.

Actually, Bruno's theological — not scientific — speculation about the universe's size played little role in his ending up on the Inquisition’s naughty list. The church was more put off by his heretical views on the divinity of Christ. Anyone can Google it, so there is no excuse for "Cosmos" getting it wrong.

The second episode is on more solid ground, in more ways than one. The action shifts from outer space to inner space, to the molecular processes that drive evolution. What humans did over thousands of years, turning wolves into every breed of dog we see, natural selection did over hundreds of millions of years, turning single cells into every plant, every animal and every slime mold.

The story of the cosmos remains as vibrant now as when Sagan was our guide, and not just because today's 8-year-olds get to watch on better TVs.

Culture Shock 03.13.14: '300' follow-up unaware of its own absurdity

"300: Rise of an Empire" won't win any awards for truth in labeling. It probably won't win any awards at all, unless there is an award for sheer ferocity of screen presence. In that case, Eva Green has it all sown up.

The "300" refers to the 300 Spartans who died at the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 B.C. Their story was told in Zack Snyder's 2006 film "300," but this follow-up isn't about them.

"The Rise of an Empire" could refer to the Persians, led by the "god-king" Xerxes, ruler of history's largest empire up to that time. But this is a tale of the Persian Empire at its greatest extent, not during its rise to glory.

Maybe "Rise of an Empire" refers to the rise of the Athenian Empire? That would make sense.

After defending its freedom from the encroaching Persians, the Athenian democracy would go on to lord it over most of the other city-states in the Athenian sphere of influence. That would precipitate a disastrous war with Sparta and ultimately leave Greece vulnerable to the Macedonians, who conquered Greece, then Persia and finally all of the known world.

History is full of ironies like that. Nations become what they most hate and fear, then fall because of it. One might even draw parallels to the present day, if one were moderately ambitious.

But "300: Rise of an Empire" isn't ambitious at all. It's a movie about people hacking other people to bits in slow motion, while director Noam Murro splashes CGI blood on the screen like a homicidal Jackson Pollock. Either that is your sort of thing or prepare to be bored after the first five minutes. Like the "Matrix" films' "bullet time," the slow-fast-slow butchery of the "300" franchise gets old fast.

There's no shame in making a mindless action movie, even if a little extra effort could produce something more. But there is something shameful about making a mindless action movie that takes itself far too seriously. "300: Rise of an Empire" never cracks a smile, much less a joke. It's all deadly serious business, no matter how absurd it gets. And boy does it get absurd.

When the Spartan Queen Gorgo (Lena Headey) recounts Xerxes' origin story, it sounds like the prologue to one of Stephen Sommers' "Mummy" films. Xerxes (Rodrigo Santoro) goes on a vision quest and returns a bald giant who thinks he's a god. This Xerxes, a caricature created by comic-book auteur Frank Miller, is more supervillain than historical figure. Yet Murro and co-screenwriter/co-producer Snyder intend us to think of Xerxes as terrifying rather than laughable.

Also too serious for his own good is the Greek leader Themistokles (Sullivan Stapleton). In "300," the Spartan King Leonidas (Gerard Butler) is so over the top he explodes into scene-chewing camp. Stapleton's level-headed Athenian is too sober for that. He's a better leader and also a more introspective one, although that isn't saying much. But he isn't exactly interesting to watch.

He's a bundle of warrior cliches, and Snyder's script calls on him to give not one, but two "rally the troops" speeches. Even Shakespeare’s King Henry V wasn't so bold as to give more than one.

None of the characters are developed, and we don't care who lives and who dies. We know the Greeks will win despite the odds, relying on their faster ships, superior strategy and seemingly divine luck. But Murro reduces all that to severed limbs and smashed ships.

The one thing that stands out is Eva Green's portrayal of the Persian naval commander Artemisia.

Green's feral warrior queen, a Greek with a grudge against the Greeks, is a welcome change from the first film's overbearing machismo. Artemisia prowls through every scene like a great cat, owning each second of her screen time. Alone among the cast and crew, Green knows "Rise of an Empire" is a joke. She brings a delightful madness to Artemisia's quest for revenge.

Artemisia has no time for hollow platitudes about democracy or freedom, and when she gleefully kisses the severed head of a general who has failed her, it almost makes enduring the rest of the movie worthwhile. Almost.

Culture Shock 03.06.14: Ramis reflected America's love of the little guy

Sometimes, as Freud said, a cigar is just a cigar. Sometimes a Twinkie is just a Twinkie.

But sometimes a Twinkie is a metaphor for all the smiles and laughter a talented individual gave to the world. In the case of Harold Ramis, that was a big Twinkie.

As a writer, director and actor, Ramis, who died Feb. 24 at age 69, was at least partly responsible for some of the greatest film comedies of his generation, if not ever. "Caddyshack," "Stripes" and his most accomplished work, "Groundhog Day," are classics. Ramis perfected the smart dumb film. Or maybe the dumb smart film, if there's a difference.

With few exceptions, "Groundhog Day" being one of them, Ramis' films pitted ordinary, down-to-earth working stiffs against the humorless bluenoses of the Establishment. The Establishment could be the Army or it could be the old-money fossils who run the country club. It didn't matter. Ramis was on the side of the irreverent Everyman, forever pointing and laughing at the emperor's general state of undress. And we laughed along with him.

Of course we did. Audiences have been on the side of the little guy since Charlie Chaplin's Little Tramp.

The late Pauline Kael often wrote that movies are our most democratic art form. It might chafe the egos of certain auteurs, but movies reflect the culture far, far more than they influence it.

As the 1980s got into full swing, Ramis didn't waver in his devotion to the little guy. He just found a different little guy.

The result was the film that first pops to mind at the mention of the name "Harold Ramis."

"Ghostbusters" is the ultimate comedy for the age of the blockbuster. It and "Back to the Future," released a year later in 1985, were comedies for the "Star Wars" generation. They had big budgets and glossy special effects. But they never forgot they were comedies.

And as Ronald Reagan cruised to a re-election landslide, Ramis, along with co-screenwriter Dan Aykroyd and director Ivan Reitman, tapped into the ascendant libertarian strain of standing up for the little guy and sticking it to The Man.

"Ghostbusters" isn't an explicitly political movie. It just reflects its time and place. Start with the brilliantly simple premise of pest exterminators who hunt ghosts instead of cockroaches or mice, and everything else follows. But sometimes a Twinkie has a creamy filling of political subtext.

Like most pest controllers, the Ghostbusters are small businessmen, and who is the enemy of small business? The government, which comes along with petty regulations and needless bureaucracy. In "Ghostbusters," the government is embodied by the humorless and self-righteous Walter Peck, portrayed by a pitch perfect William Atherton.

Peck represents the Environmental Protection Agency. Other Hollywood movies treat the EPA as almost saintly. Those films, however, aren't comedies but allegedly serious dramas.

Lefty writer David Sirota says "Ghostbusters" is a "cinematic version of what would later become the very real Blackwater — and what would be the anti-government, privatize-everything narrative of the twenty-first century." That's like saying just because pest control isn't nationalized, therefore Blackwater. Never mind that the private sector and government contractors aren't a 1-to-1 correlation.

Ghostbusters is capitalism. Blackwater is crony capitalism. Ghostbusters is the outsider. Blackwater is the Platonic ideal of a politically connected insider, trading on special favors rather than entrepreneurship.

Even more so than drama, comedy must reflect the culture. Otherwise no one gets the joke and no one laughs. Ramis always knew that America is the culture of the little guy, even — and especially — in the '80s.

Culture Shock 02.27.14: 'Witchboard' returns but the chill is gone

The best movie based on a board game is "Clue." The worst is "Battleship." Somewhere in between is "Witchboard," based on the popular Parker Brothers game Ouija, in which players pretend to communicate with the dead.

Think of Ouija as the home version of such television shows as "Crossing Over with John Edward" or "Ghost Hunters." It's a lovely parting gift for the dearly departed.

Some people will believe anything, including that a $19.99 novelty item available at Toys R Us is a good way to carry on conversations with ghosts. In my experience, Ouija boards are mostly a good way for tipsy partygoers to get a shriek out of their more gullible, more inebriated friends.

When it comes to shrieks, Ouija boards are more successful than 1986's "Witchboard," which is disappointingly timid when it comes to delivering the goods. Chalk it up as another movie that was better when I was a teenager. Twenty-eight years later, the chill is gone. But "Witchboard" is back, new to Blu-ray and DVD from Shout Factory as part of the label's deep dive into 1980s horror.

"Witchboard" opens at (where else?) a party, where we meet our three leads. There's Jim (Todd Allen), his girlfriend Linda (Tawny Kitaen, of Whitesnake music video fame and "Celebrity Rehab" infamy) and her ex, Brandon (soap star Stephen Nichols of "Days of Our Lives").

"Jim, His Girlfriend and Her Ex" almost sounds like an Italian sex comedy, or a sitcom set in a pizza parlor, maybe. But I digress.

Jim and Brandon are also former friends, and there's so much simmering resentment in the room you wonder how Brandon got invited to the party in the first place.

That's when Brandon breaks out his Ouija board, because demonstrating one's occult prowess is always a good way to prove that your ex picked the wrong guy. Anyway, Brandon makes contact with the spirit of a 10-year-old boy, which Jim immediately ticks off by asking stupid questions.

Linda, however, is impressed. The next morning she starts fooling around with the Ouija board on her own, which, as it turns out, is something you should never, never do. (Don't board games come with instructions?) Before long, she's exhibiting strange behavior, such as using profanity. As "The Exorcist" taught us, talking dirty is a sure sign of a woman possessed.

It comes down to a race against time. Can Linda's boyfriend and her ex put aside their differences before she ends up the host of an evil spirit? More importantly, why would she date either of these jerks in the first place? (Spoiler: They eventually act less like jerks, but the question stands.)

Writer/director Kevin Tenney hit pay dirt with "Witchboard," which was popular enough to spawn two sequels, one of which he directed. Tenney is currently seeking to finance a remake.

But nostalgic fondness aside, the film has not aged well. It's not suspenseful, the jump scenes barely register and the comic relief falls flat.

The comedy mostly comes from Zarabeth (Kathleen Wilhoite), a psychic whom Brandon enlists to exorcise Linda's apartment. Imagine if Steve Urkel died and was reincarnated as a white woman. That's Zarabeth. After she awakes from her exorcism trance, you expect her to look around the room, see the resulting mess and ask, "Did I do that?" Now that's scary.

Even the unintentional humor doesn't go far. At best, we get to snicker at the '80s hair. There are so many mullets in "Witchboard" you might think you're at a hockey game in Manitoba.

But on to what you really want to know: Does Kitaen take her clothes off? Yes, yes she does, in a shower scene that exists just for that purpose. But if a topless Tawny is what you want, you're better served tracking down a copy of 1984's "Gwendoline," with Kitaen in the titular role. Believe me, in "Gwendoline" she can hardly Kitaen herself.

I apologize for the previous paragraph. I was briefly possessed by the spirit of Gene Shalit.

What do you mean Gene Shalit isn't dead?

Culture Shock 02.20.14: How fan fiction took over entertainment

At this moment, someone is probably writing "Sherlock"
fan fiction, which makes it fan fiction about fan fiction.

As production gears up for the next "Star Wars" film, the first under the Disney banner, experts are combing the vast expanse of "Star Wars" novels, comic books, video games and cartoons. They're deciding what to keep and what to discard.

What survives will be the official "Star Wars" canon — official in the sense it has Disney's OK. The remainder will be out of continuity and taking on, for practical purposes, the same unofficial status as the fan-written stories on the Internet.

Yet the new "Star Wars" trilogy will be fan fiction, too, in the dictionary sense. Disney has handed Lucasfilm's centerpiece to J.J. Abrams, a fan of "Star Wars" since childhood. Many of us Abrams' age have imagined the "Star Wars" sequels we'd like to see. He gets to make his.

It's a fine line between fiction and fan fiction. It's so fine that major entertainment companies have turned an amateur's hobby into a business model. And almost no one lining up for movie tickets or queuing up Netflix gives it a second thought.

Fan fiction has a poor reputation, and anyone who has read much of it knows why. When he was at the website Topless Robot, io9.com's Rob Bricken had a feature called Fan Fiction Friday. It was a weekly mocking of the worst of the worst. He took the column with him to io9, but it didn't last long there. Some things are too awful even for a Gawker Media-owned site.

But amateur-produced fan fiction is just the start. Look at the term "fan fiction" and what it literally means: fiction written by fans. That describes much of our entertainment.

Sherlock Holmes is the perfect example. Arthur Conan Doyle died in 1930, yet the Great Detective's adventures continue. Fans of the character have come up with their own takes, usually with the blessing of the Doyle estate, which demands only respect and a piece of the action. That has led to Nicholas Meyer's "The Seven-Per-Cent Solution" (Holmes meets Sigmund Freud), films that turn Holmes into an action hero, and two television programs that reimagine Sherlock in the present day.

The entertainment giants who stride the present landscape will turn almost any intellectual property into a franchise. They prize name recognition above all else. And long-lived franchises are bound to fall into the hands of people who grew up with them.

Most comics published by Marvel and DC since the 1980s qualify as fan fiction, and that has had a stultifying effect on the art. Marvel Comics wished away Spider-Man's marriage to Mary Jane Watson because the publisher's then editor-in-chief wanted Spider-Man to remain the young, bachelor Spider-Man he grew up with.

That happens when fans call the shots: Nostalgia beats growth almost every time. Yet if the fan happens to be Alan Moore, then he might write a couple of the best Superman stories ever, which is exactly what Moore did in the 1980s.

Moore made a career of fan fiction. His "League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" is based on characters from Victorian novels that have fallen into the public domain. And Moore is neither the first nor last to raid Victorian literature. Kim Newman's "Anno Dracula" novels do it.

So, too, does Showtime's upcoming series "Penny Dreadful." The nice thing about public domain characters is you don't need anyone's permission to use them in your fan fiction.

That said, permission is getting easier to come by. Amazon.com has struck deals allowing writers of fanfics set in certain fictional worlds to sell their stories, with the rights-holders getting a cut. Want to write and sell your own "Vampire Diaries" stories? Now you can, if that's your thing.

There's a temptation to point to the rise of fan fiction as a sign of artistic decline or even the death of originality. But fanfic has been around thousands of years. The ancient Greeks may have invented it.

Consider a story that lumps together all your favorite heroes and sends them on a perilous voyage. You might call it fan fiction. The Greeks called it "Jason and the Argonauts."

Culture Shock 02.13.14: 'Lego Movie' fast, fun and deeper than you imagine

Judging by the children who shared the theater with me, "The Lego Movie" is a perfectly entertaining and enthralling hour and 40 minutes.

It's fast-paced, colorful and funny on multiple levels, which should satisfy both kids and their parents. But it's more than a movie. For children, Lego is the hottest toy of the age, inspiring clubs, camps and competitions. For parents, Lego plays to our nostalgia. Lego has been around since 1949, yet it has never been as popular, as omnipresent as it is now.

At first glance, "The Lego Movie" is only a slightly better idea than making a movie out of the game Battleship. Consider me a skeptic won over. The only thing "The Lego Movie" and "Battleship" have in common is Liam Neeson, who voices Bad Cop, a henchman who can spin his head to become Good Cop, providing one of the movie's best running gags.

Just as Lego blocks are what you make of them — the message at the heart of the movie — "The Lego Movie" is what you make of it. Produced by Warner Bros. and Village Roadshow Pictures, it's reminiscent of another deeply layered Warner/Village Roadshow production: Lana and Andy Wachowski's "The Matrix," plus a bit of Disney's "Tron."

The difference is "The Lego Movie" knows what "The Matrix," with its highfalutin pseudo-philosophy of raging against the machine, can't dare admit: It's more fun inside the matrix than outside. Live in a world where you can defy gravity and learn kung fu in an instant, or live in the post-apocalypse? Is that even a question? Like Willy Wonka, I'll take the world of pure imagination.

Chris Pratt ("Parks and Recreation") is Emmet, a construction worker. Like any good construction worker, he always follows the blueprints, but he takes that philosophy to the extreme. From breakfast to bedtime, everything he does is according to "the instructions," a kind of self-help manual read and followed by just about all of the Lego people in their shiny, orderly Legoland.

Emmet is more into following the instructions than most, until he spots an unfamiliar person lurking around a Lego debris pile, falls down a hole and unwittingly discovers the Piece of Resistance.

Suddenly, Emmet finds he is the chosen one, prophesied to save the world from Lord Business (Will Ferrell), an evil overlord scheming to eliminate all change from the world.

Lord Business wants everything just so, so that it will be perfect and according to plan. And once it is that way, he intends to keep it that way.

Naturally, a resistance group seeks to stop him, because, ironically, that's the plan in these sorts of movies. There's the beautiful, spunky heroine with the trying-too-hard-to-be-cool name Wyldstyle (Elizabeth Banks). There's the wise, old Merlin/Obi-Wan/Morpheus figure Vitruvius (Morgan Freeman). And there's Batman.

Yes, Batman, voiced by a scene-stealing Will Arnett ("Arrested Development"). Only this Batman has a bigger secret than the fact he's also Bruce Wayne, which everyone knows anyway. And it turns out Batman and his fellow DC Comics superheroes aren't the only pop-culture characters who appear, but saying more would ruin one of the film's best and funniest surprises.

It's unusual for a Hollywood product — and movies are products — to admit it's possible for corporate brands to coexist with creativity and spontaneity, much less admit a corporate brand can aid and abet creativity and spontaneity. But ask the kids playing with their Legos. They know it's true.

"The Lego Movie" satirizes bland corporate music and vacuous corporate "self-help" programs, but like Bad Cop and Good Cop, there's another side to the story.

Is "The Lego Movie" a 100-minute commercial? Obviously, but just weeks removed from the Super Bowl, where the commercials were, as usual, more entertaining than the marquee event, why is that a concern? Commercial art has been a thing since before Andy Warhol conned his way into art galleries.

If "The Lego Movie" teaches us anything, it's that commercialism doesn't have to be the bad guy.

Culture Shock 02.06.14: 'Watchmen' remains 'Man of Steel' director's best

Who re-watches "Watchmen"?

Zack Snyder's ambitious adaptation of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' landmark graphic novel is now an afterthought. It's lost in the hype that separates Snyder's most recent blockbuster, "Man of Steel," from its pending sequel, unofficially known as "Batman vs. Superman," now delayed until May 2016.

As a filmmaker, Snyder is a perfectly good video game developer. Theaters showing his films could charge an extra $10 if they provided joysticks.

"Man of Steel" contains some good ideas but is structurally and thematically a mess, the story serving merely as a way to get from one overwrought action scene to the next. His adaptation of Frank Miller's graphic novel "300" turned Miller's already tedious ode to the manly virtues of war and nationalism into a slow-motion blitzkrieg of blood and boasting. "This is Sparta!" No, this is boring.

For the "300" sequel, "300: Rise of an Empire," opening March 7, Snyder turns over the director's chair to Noam Murro. Snyder nevertheless has a hand in the screenplay, and audiences will likely not notice any difference.

Yet in the midst of this, Snyder made what remains his best film, the now largely overlooked and underrated superhero epic "Watchmen."

That's not exactly praise. "Watchmen" works while Snyder's other films don't because there is so little of Snyder in the finished result. Snyder's slavish devotion to the source material and overly literal approach to his adaptation turn Moore and Gibbons into the movie's de facto directors.

Despite the cinematic qualities of Gibbon's art and layouts, "Watchmen" is unfilmable in any strict sense, but its central murder mystery and the grandiose plot behind it are straightforward enough. So, Snyder doesn't so much adapt them as simply transfer them to the screen, using the graphic novel as his storyboard. He is almost the 21st century equivalent of a medieval scribe, painstakingly copying an earlier manuscript to the best of his ability, mistakes and all, because the writing itself is considered sacred.

"Almost," however, is the key. For better and for worse, some of Snyder's own sensibilities still manage to slip through, no matter how worshipful he tries to be.

"Watchmen" is already a graphic, graphic novel, but its violence is never gratuitous. That isn't enough, however, for the blood-soaked director of "300." During Rorschach's prison escape, Snyder ramps up the blood, broken bones and dismemberments. There's no real purpose to it; he does it because he can.

Other times, Snyder seems to succeed despite himself. He sets the love scene between Nite Owl (Patrick Wilson) and Silk Spectre (Malin Akerman) to Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah," and not the late Jeff Buckley's desperately sincere cover, which has become nearly ubiquitous in TV dramas, but Cohen's syrupy original. The lyrics, including a verse about the depowering of Samson at the scissor-wielding hands of Delilah, are in contrast to the onscreen action, which sees Nite Owl overcoming his impotence after resuming his costumed identity. Taken in context, Snyder seems to be going for sincerity, but Cohen's lounge act turns the whole thing into parody, which is closer to what Moore had in mind in the first place.

But his biggest misstep is when he alters Ozymandias' master plan. Moore meant it to be silly, borrowing the scheme from an episode of "The Outer Limits." When Moore has Ozymandias (Matthew Goode) say, "I'm not a Republic serial villain," it's ironic because that's exactly what Ozymandias is. Snyder, ever literal, doesn't get the joke.

Fortunately, Snyder's deviations from the graphic novel are few. Despite Snyder's name in the credits, "Watchmen" isn't really his movie. That's why it's the best Zack Snyder film, and the one most demanding repeat viewings. That is the joke.

Culture Shock 01.30.14: The Caped Crusader rises

As I sit at my desk writing this, the Caped Crusader — one-half of the Dynamic Duo — looks on. He has a slight smile on his face, in contrast to his usual grim determination. In place of his customary white-slit eye holes, he has twinkling baby blues. These are eyes clear of vision and of sharp focus.

These eyes see justice, good citizen. Rest assured, they say, all is well.

The Caped Crusader.

As I type this, Batman gives me a knowing nod of the head. Wait! No, it's just my imagination. It's not a nod but a bobble. This Batman is a bobblehead I keep on my desk, right next to my coffee mug, an Associated Press paperweight and my Pez dispensers. And for the first time in decades, this Batman bears an unmistakable resemblance to Adam West, Batman of the pow! bam! boom! 1960s TV show, who for years was the character's most visible depiction — and his curse.

Two weeks ago, Conan O'Brien — of all people — let slip the news via Twitter: The 1966-68 “Batman” TV series is finally coming to home video, sometime this year.

That's not exactly an official announcement, but Warner Bros. confirmed the news shortly after Conan's tweet. The studio will release all three seasons of “Batman” on DVD in 2014. All else remains a mystery: price, bonus features, whether there also will be a high-definition Blu-ray release, etc. Knowing the long wait for “Batman” is almost over will have to be enough — for now.

So, why the long wait? As usual, lawyers are to blame. Warner Bros. owns DC Comics, which owns Batman. The '66 TV series, however, is owned by Fox. And as there was no such thing as home video in the 1960s, bringing “Batman” to home video required a lot of negotiation.

Contentious, time-consuming negotiation.

Signs of a deal began to appear last year, when licensed products based on the '66 “Batman” — like my bobblehead — hit the market. DC Comics even released a digital comic book series based on the '66 show. “Batman '66” so captures the spirit of Adam West's Batman and Burt Ward's Robin, the Boy Wonder, it's like watching reruns.

The reruns, by the way, never went away entirely. They currently air Saturdays on Me-TV (WZDX 54.3), but they're no substitute for owning the series. And there is a lot of pent-up demand to be met. Readers of the website TVShowsOnDVD.com have long ranked “Batman” as their second-most-requested unreleased TV show, after only “The Wonder Years,” which remains unreleased because of music licensing issues. Those pesky lawyers again.

And before you ask: The quickie “Batman” movie made between seasons 1 and 2 falls under a different deal, and Fox released it on DVD years ago.

Given all this anticipation for the TV series' home video debut, it's worth keeping in mind there was a time when Bat-fans despised it.

"Faster, Robin! The rear projection is gaining on us!"

While a parody of morally upright, square-jawed and just plain square superheroes, the '66 “Batman” nevertheless reflected the goofy sensibility of 1950s and '60s Batman comics. But by the '70s and '80s, comic book Batman had grown darker, and the Dark Knight bore little resemblance to the Caped Crusader. Fans resented their favorite hero still being known mostly for his campy Adam West incarnation.

Now, however, after the doom and gloom of Christopher Nolan's “The Dark Knight” and “The Dark Knight Rises,” it's safe for fans to admit their shameful secret: Many of them liked West's Batman all along. And maybe, just maybe, “The Dark Knight Rises” shows how it can be even more absurd to take Batman too seriously.

When it's at last available as a convenient box set, perfect for weekend binge viewing, the '66 “Batman” will be ready for a long-overdue reappraisal. Every Batman reflects his day, and the duly deputized Batman who protected Gotham during the social unrest of the late '60s is no different.

Culture Shock 01.23.14: The Groucho Marxism of Armond White

Armond White trolls his fellow critics and his readers with
his annual "Better-Than List."

You've probably never heard of Armond White, which is a shame.

White is a unique voice in film criticism, combining fearlessness, encyclopedic knowledge and a sensibility best described as unhinged. Like the films of Alejandro Jodorowsky, you're never entirely sure if White's criticism is brilliant or just bizarre, serious or an elaborate put-on. It is performance art that exists apart from the films he examines.

This month, White, formerly of the late, lamented New York Press and currently editor of CityArts.info, became the first person ever excommunicated from the New York Film Critics Circle, an organization White chaired three times, as he boasts via his Twitter handle, 3xchair.

White's crime was allegedly heckling "12 Years a Slave" director Steve McQueen as McQueen took the stage to receive the NYFCC's award for best director. White disputes the received account of events, but the incident does seem like vintage Armond. During his chairmanship in 2011, White presided over an NYFCC awards dinner that is now legend. His passive-aggressive, and sometimes just aggressive barbs made Annette Bening cry.

And White is no fan of McQueen's work, especially "12 Years a Slave," which White savaged, as is his fashion. White may be idiosyncratic, but he has an entirely understandable dislike for condescension, which may explain his visceral reaction to "12 Years."

White — who is black, I'm obliged here to note — called the film "torture porn," comparing it to "Hostel" and "The Human Centipede." White concludes his City Arts review with, " '12 Years a Slave' is ultimate proof that Hollywood's respect for Black humanity is in absurd, patronizing, Oscar-winning decline."

I've not seen "12 Years" yet, so I can't say whether I agree with White's assessment. But I have seen McQueen's shallow "sex addiction" drama "Shame," which White rightly dismisses as "a sex-phobic art fraud." McQueen has a track record of producing critically acclaimed phonies.

But "Shame" was about sex, and despite what you may think, Hollywood still isn't comfortable with sex. A movie that says slavery is bad, on the other hand, is "important," which is why "12 Years" is now a front-runner for a Best Picture Oscar.

That brings us back to White's excommunication and my suspicion that it was about more than White allegedly being rude in public. White has been rude in public before. Just ask Bening. The difference is, this time he did the unpardonable, not only contradicting 97 percent of his peers (according to Rotten Tomatoes) but doing so loudly, unflinchingly about a movie they deem "important," because without "12 Years a Slave," how are any of us to know slavery is wrong, eh?

It's impossible not to see some politics at play here and sense that White's fellow critics have had enough of his politically incorrect opinions. Tolerating White's baffling love affair with Adam Sandler films is one thing (see his absurd rave of "Jack and Jill"). His deeming the "Schindler's List" of slavery films a fraud, however, is another. It's a sense reinforced by Mollie Hemingway's observation, at thefederalist.com, that many of the same critics who damned "The Passion of the Christ" on the basis of its brutality praised "12 Years" for the same. Torture porn is in the ideology of the beholder.

The late Roger Ebert called White a "troll." It's true, to an extent. White's annual "Better-Than" lists, in which he pits movies he favors against the consensus favorites, elevate trolling to an art. And as a fellow contrarian, I'm fully in agreement with about half his better-than picks. The others....

If White is simply an embarrassment in public, the NYFCC could ban him from the awards dinner without banning him entirely. White is a vital part of American film criticism. Infuriating, occasionally insane, but vital precisely because he is so infuriating and insane.

Yet I suspect White is secretly pleased with his ouster. No contrarian can really want to belong to a group that would have him as a member, and Armond White is a Groucho Marxist film critic.