Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #101: 3rd Rock from the Sun (1996-2001).

Now, hear me out. I know this was a well-received and fairly top-rating sitcom during its primetime run. But amidst all the other hit '90s sitcoms (Friends, Seinfeld and Frasier being the three biggest), today 3rd Rock from the Sun seems really the most forgotten and, both retrospectively and from a contemporary perspective, the most niche. That, to me, qualifies it for cult status.

I was raised on this remorselessly funny and unexpectedly wise show; practically every Sunday night when it aired in Australia, my whole family watched and enjoyed it together, and I proudly now own the entire series box set. It follows four aliens who've been sent to Earth to conduct a study of human life and culture for their supreme leader, the Big Giant Head. To pull this off, they disguise themselves as a regular human family, the Solomons: there's Dick (John Lithgow in the role he was born to play), the imperious but immature High Commander; Sally (Kristen Johnston) the ferocious military expert who must adjust to being a woman on Earth; Tommy (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), the elderly intelligence specialist who's now a teenage boy; and Harry (French Stewart), the bizarre messenger who only came along because their ship had a spare seat. They assume residence in the small town of Rutherford, Ohio, where Dick works as a physics professor at Rutherford University, but this jeopardizes their mission because he instantly falls heads over heels in love with his ambitious but neurotic colleague Mary Albright (Jane Curtin). Meanwhile, all the Solomons have to learn to integrate with their chainsmoking, horny landlady Mamie Dubcek (Elmarie Wendel); Dick's professorial arch-nemesis Vincent Strudwick (Ron West), whose daughter Alyssa (Larissa Oleynik) Tommy dates, no less; his invariably sassy assistant Nina (Simbi Khali); and Sally's cop boyfriend Don Orville (Wayne Knight), among others.

3rd Rock from the Sun won eight Emmys (including five combined for Lithgow and Johnston) and two Golden Globes over its six seasons, and today it has aged barely, if at all. I can understand if it's not for everybody; it's as unsubtle as sitcoms come. But that's just why I've always adored it; I prefer comedy that goes for in-your-face territory, and I don't think that style can't be genuinely witty or multi-layered, either. Like most TV shows its quality does slip near the end, but it never jumped the shark. Creators Bonnie and Terry Turner and their fellow writers collectively do a very sharp job of drawing this premise out and managing the science of joke-telling, but 3rd Rock simply wouldn't have been the same without its immaculate cast. Over all six seasons their chemistry, comic timing and enthusiasm for the project never falters once. But from re-watching it as an adult, what now strikes me as most unusual about it is its wisdom. The Solomons quickly fit in so well with their surroundings because overall they're actually just as normal and sane, if not more so, than the human characters. That's a very profound and important sentiment to convey, in these times of deep conflict and disunity.

All in all, 3rd Rock from the Sun is a timelessly entertaining and insightful cult slice of television history.

Another one exits through Canberra's revolving door.

When will it fucking stop? After two leadership spills in just a week, yesterday Malcolm Turnbull resigned as Australia's PM, with Scott Mor(ris)on winning the ballot to succeed him. That now makes it five prime ministers we've had in a decade! Six if you count Kevin Rudd twice! (Although I don't.) Morrison, the former Treasurer (and ScoMo, as he's affectionately (?) known) may have just inherited the anchor of a sinking ship - and I don't just mean his own party or their government.

Scott Morrison in his quite unfortunate Wikipedia photo.

I wish him good luck, sincerely. As Treasurer I doubted he could deliver a fucking newspaper, never mind a surplus. This last Liberal Party leadership ballot came down to him, Peter Dutton, a man whose stint as Immigration Minister became like a roll-call of judgment gaffes and human rights violations (and whose head resembles an unwashed potato), and Julie Bishop, best known for her death stare. I was actually backing Bishop, who I've always found quite aloof but who's nonetheless more in-touch and hard-working than Dutton and Morrison combined. 

Another key player in this running gag's reoccurrence this week was Mattias Cormann.

A Belgian immigrant to Oz, I wouldn't be surprised if one of Cormann's grandparents participated in Belgium's invasion of the Congo. And I would say he should return to Belgium, but that'd really just be moving the problem elsewhere.

This on-going trend of Australia's prime ministers being overthrown from within almost - almost - makes me actually miss John Howard, who was PM for what I still consider 11 dreadful years. If it continues, I'll be waiting for the Greens (Australia's environmentalism party, obviously, for you non-Aussie readers) to cut a tree down, make it into a doorstop and try to jam the revolving leadership door once and for all. That would increase one problem but at least help another. 

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #100: Escaflowne (2000).

High schooler Hitomi Kanzaki is in a real rut. Her life feels meaningless, and she's experiencing bizarre dreams, so naturally she's depressed and just wants to vanish. After falling out with her only friend she is whisked away to a mythical realm, Gaea, where she inherits the control of Escaflowne, an apocalyptic weapon fated to spring to life when a prophesied "wing goddess" surfaces. Meanwhile, Gaea, is enduring its own threat: that of invasion from the Black Dragon Clan, who are certain Hitomi is the wing goddess herself who will restore Escaflowne. Now Hitomi must discover her true destiny as she bonds with the heroic rebel leader Van and helps to stop Lord Folken, the Clan's master and Van's corrupted brother, to bring peace and harmony to Gaea again.

Escaflowne is a re-telling of the 1996 Japanese anime TV series The Vision of Escaflowne, which I haven't seen. Therefore I have nothing I can judge it against, but to my otherwise unfamiliar mind and eyes this 2000 film version really works. Director Kazuki Akane and and screenwriter Ryota Yamaguchi cohesively synthesise all the setting and tone shifts into a thoroughly flowing plot that isn't too hard to follow, and Akane and his team of animators infuse each scene with striking visual detail, clarity and flair. The characters are all very likeable but with realistically adult edges to them which the Japanese and English voice casts handle very sincerely, and Yoko Kanno's and Hajime Mizoguchi's pulsating score increases the suspense even more.

 The plot may sound quite cliched (part Rapunzel, part The Mists of Avalon, part Princess Mononoke), at least from how I've just described it, but Escaflowne nonetheless exudes confidence and consistency, and in astutely fusing adolescent romance with fantasy and adventure, it does ultimately cut a fairly unique swathe of its own. Studio Ghibli may the dominant name in anime films but theirs are by no means the only gems, and Escaflowne is one of many which prove that.

Assessing Fraser Anning.

This is Australian Senator Fraser Anning. This week he has monopolised the national headlines after his maiden speech to Parliament, in which he advocated a strict ban on Muslim immigration, even using the term "final solution," which is of course synonymous with the Holocaust, for reasons including that they are (apparently) coming here just to live off welfare and steal Australians' job, and that all terrorists today are Muslims. Even Pauline Hanson, his former boss who's infamously worn a burqa in Parliament (among other controversies), has publicly claimed he crossed a line, and other politicians and public figures from all sides have condemned him for it.

Now, for research and balance purposes I've just read the full speech, out of context. He was a farmer before entering politics, and roughly the first half of his speech regarded his concerns and ideas for agricultural welfare and productivity. That all added up for me, even if I have no experience living on the land, and I do support it. But then when he turned his focus to immigration, I objectively think his sentiments indeed became as horrible as has been claimed. In addition to perpetuating such negative Islamic stereotypes, he repeatedly emphasised Australia's apparent basis in his own Eurocentric, Christian views and values (while also ignoring the negatives that have been associated with that faith, no less) and made no mention anywhere of even the word "indigenous." Before that, he also lambasted the concept of gender fluidity as garbage considering the fact there are only two genders. Now, yes, there are only two physical genders, but there are not so few gender identities.

Anning's boss, Katter's Australian Party leader and founder Bob Katter (and I think he should rename his party "Katter's REACTIONARY Australian Party": KRAP), held a press conference on Wednesday to come to Anning's defence. Well, he left that characteristically looking like a hostile rodeo clown. Anyway, I was repulsed when I heard the media reports of Anning's speech, but as I read it just now my anger continued to mount. I hope everybody who supported his Senate candidacy in 2017 (and I'm ashamed to say he's a Senator for my state, Queensland) has reacted similarly and won't give him a second chance. 

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #99: The Blues Brothers (1980).

When "Joliet" Jake Blues (John Belushi) is released from prison, his brother Elwood (Dan Aykroyd) collects him to go and visit the Mother Superior (Kathleen Freeman), called "The Penguin," of the orphanage where they were raised in Chicago. While giving them a hell of a whacking due to their obscene language and rebellious attitudes, she tells them it's closing down because it's five grand in debt and the Church has discontinued funding the place. It has just eleven days left to gather the cash, but that gives the boys an idea: reform their blues band and stage a massive show! But that proves far easier said than done, because their former bandmates have all either settled down or abandoned music altogether. But Jake and Elwood are committed to reeling them back in, even if that's just where their problems will start. They claim to be on a mission from God, but in order to fulfil it they'll have to endure the angry wrath of Chicago police, a local neo-Nazi branch, touring country band the Good Ol' Boys, and a vindictive mystery woman (the late Carrie Fisher, hysterical as the polar opposite of Princess Leia) among others...

Iconic US film critic Roger Ebert called The Blues Brothers "the Sherman tank of movie musicals," and that just about encapsulates it. Based on Aykroyd and Belushi's original Saturday Night Live sketch, John Landis' riotous stick of cult dynamite is as relentlessly anarchic and immediate as cinema comes. Upon release in 1980 it critically and commercially tanked (sorry, I couldn't resist) and in the latter sense I can see why, as Universal may not have known how to market it (as a musical, a comedy, an action film or a buddy chase film). But rather like The Rocky Horror Picture Show five years earlier, The Blues Brothers gradually found its niche through midnight screenings and thanks largely to them, the rental sales rose and rose before it finally returned a profit and deservedly acquired some mainstream popularity. Titbits about it have now permeated common pop culture trivia: which world record did it once hold? For the most cars crashed in a movie. Which singers respectively ran the restaurant, owned the music store, preached to the church congregation and performed on stage with the boys? Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles, James Brown and Cab Calloway. How many film directors are seen in it? Four: Aykroyd, Landis (as a cop in the mall chase scene), Frank Oz (as one of Jake's corrections officers) and Steven Spielberg (the accountant at the end). Which supermodel is the chic girl who helps Jake and Elwood with a ride? Twiggy. Who encourages them to consult Reverend James? John Lee Hooker. What kind of music do they have at Bob's Country Bunker? "We got both kinds, we got country and western!" And who completes their band? Steve Cropper, Duck Dunn, Murphy Dunne, Willie Hall, Tom Malone, Lou Marini, Matt "Guitar" Murphy" and Alan "The food here is really expensive. The soup is fucking ten dollars!" Rubin.

Beyond the dynamic musical sequences and consistent laughs, though, are surely those utterly incendiary car chases. Landis just handles them with the exuberance of a kid playing a new video game for the first time, and the work of cinematographer Stephen M. Katz and editor George Falsey Jr. makes their pacing and rhythm sharp enough to cut through a block of timber. I firmly think the climactic car chase is the greatest one ever filmed. And throughout, the whole cast appear to be having the absolute time of their lives. All in all, The Blues Brothers is a timelessly entertaining firecracker of a movie.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #98: The Fisher King (1991).

Jack Lucas (Jeff Bridges) would feel right at home in a studio with Howard Stern or Australia's Alan Jones etcetera. He's a New York City talkback radio shock jock who consciously and unabashedly takes the provocation of that occupation to the Nth degree every night. But after he gives an answer to one question that inspires the caller to open fire in a local bar, he's immediately sacked. Several months later he's now working at a rental store under the eye of his feisty girlfriend Anne (a deservedly Oscar-winning Mercedes Ruehl) until she tires of his lazy, cynical ways and herself throws him out. When he then spends a homeless night under the Brooklyn Bridge, he stops a gang of thugs from attacking Parry (the late but immortal Robin Williams in one of his finest turns), a bona fide eccentric bum who models himself on one of King Arthur's knights - and, oh yes, a man whose wife died in the shooting Jack's radio rant inspired. With practically nothing left but each other, Parry and Jack quickly bond, so much so that Jack even brings him along when Anne re-opens her door for Jack. Now, if only to help his own prospects, Jack sets out to help Parry woo the quiet but sweet Lydia (Amanda Plummer), while they both find some happiness in reality.

Terry Gilliam is unquestionably one of the weirdest filmmakers of our time, by any national industry's standards. After his breakthrough as the American member of Monty Python, he made his directorial name with true exercises in unconventionality like Brazil (1985) and The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988). 1991's The Fisher King was something of a step to the mainstream - his idea of "mainstream," that is. Working from Richard LaGravenese's ingeniously genre-blending and sharply plotted screenplay (which deserved the Oscar for which it was nominated), Gilliam's vision here is like My Own Private Idaho (minus the gay element) meets The Princess Bride and it fits both our protagonists' mentalities like a glove. Enhancing this is George Fenton's distinctively quirky score and richly fanciful production design, both also Oscar-nominated.

But it's the cast who conjure up the greatest magic here. Bridges ultimately inspires sympathy for such a tactless wastrel of a man, Ruehl reverts seamlessly between laughs and emotion with remarkable authority, Plummer is beautifully delicate and as a homeless cabaret singer Jack and Parry meet in a shelter and then recruit to play a matchmaker, an hysterical Michael Jeter will make you think only he was even considered for that part. But surely outdoing them all is Williams, in arguably the performance of his career (alongside 2002's One Hour Photo). He fills Parry with such rambunctiousness, worldliness and an underlying fragility that you just can't look away from him. (He was also Oscar-nominated here, but sadly for him this came out the same year as The Silence of the Lambs.) Also look for cameos from Kathy Najimy, Tom Waits and a pre-Frasier David Hyde Pierce.

If I can fault this one in any way, it's that I think it's about twenty minutes overlong. But nonetheless, each time I watch The Fisher King, I always finish it wanting to cast my reel in alongside him.

My Senses and My Defences.

It can strike me anywhere at all,
Even at home if something heavy falls.
It's a feeling to make you want to hit the road,
A phenomenon with my ilk called sensory overload.

I get it from sounds that are sudden and loud,
Or even if I spend too long in a crowd.
But my greatest trigger is being tickled or poked,
Others can laugh there but to me it's no joke.

I hated having my face painted as a child,
Because unlike for others, for me it didn't feel mild.
Each brushstroke of it made me want to cry,
And now I can pinpoint the exact reason why.

Now while as an adult those hazards remain,
Living my life is something from which I won't refrain.
Because whether I'm considered simple or insane,
Many before me have shown there's nothing you can't gain.

Celluloid violence and viewers' processing.

We hear constantly about violence in art and the media supposedly influencing real-life violence and crime. I don't know if that's always true, though it must sometimes be. Regardless, one aspect of this, I think, is how each viewer processes screen violence. This week I saw Peter Jackson's early film Braindead (1992), truly one of the goriest I've ever seen. It's a horror comedy, and that second aspect made the violence somewhat easier for me to stomach. Could that be true for audiences overall?

The most violent movie I've ever seen, at least regarding focus and tone, is The Passion of the Christ (2004); I've never been religious in my life, but that left me truly gut-wrenched nonetheless. However, that was of course as dramatic as cinema comes. And maybe it's because I'm a horror (particularly horror comedy) junkie, but I find violence in overtly emotional works like that, particularly when they ask us to empathise with the protagonist, to be more challenging.

Like everything else art-related, its reception is subjective, and that's one of its beauties. It means everybody can have their own reactions to and interpretations of it. What makes your flinch in your seat, or even have to look away? Cartoonish or supernatural violence or the kind more rooted in reality and history?

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #97: Sin City (2005).

Four stories are unfolding over one night in Basin City, all of which will emphasise why it's been nicknamed Sin City. In the book-ending "The Customer Is Always Right," the Salesman (Josh Hartnett) meets the Customer (Marley Shelton) on a balcony and lulls her into a false sense of security with a kiss before shooting her with a silenced gun, saying as he then leaves that in the morning he will cash the cheque she gave him. Later, he returns disguised as a doctor to lure a more unsuspecting casualty in.

Next in "That Yellow Bastard," aging cop John Hartigan (Bruce Willis) is battling through angina as he continues his quest to find and kill serial child killer Roark Junior (Nick Stahl) before his fourth captive, eleven-year-old Nancy Callahan (Jessica Alba), is raped and murdered. It doesn't help that Junior's father (Powers Boothe) is a hugely corrupt senator who's bribed the police to cover his son crimes up. When Hartigan finds Nancy and discovers she's grown up to be a stripper he rescues her from Roark Junior, but when she then expresses her love for him he must make a hard sacrifice for them both.

Thirdly in "The Hard Goodbye," ex-con Marv (Mickey Rourke) is having a one-night-stand with bombshell Goldie (Jaime King) before he wakes the next morning to find she's been murdered in her sleep. Against the advice of his lesbian parole officer Lucille (Carla Gugino), a furious Marv flees the scene before the cops arrive and then interrogates several informants to learn who ordered the murder: the Roarks. He then visits their farm where he encounters the culprit, the cannibal Kevin (Elijah Wood, of all people), who's also captured Lucille. After some crooked cops kill her, Marv interrogates them to discover Cardinal Patrick Roark (Rutger Hauer) organised Goldie's murder. He then heads to Old Town, the red light district, where Goldie's sister Wendy (also Jaime King), whom he earlier thought he'd seen as an hallucination, captures him, thinking he did it. After convincing her he didn't, they return to the farm to settle scores before Marv is finally sent to prison and put on death row.

Finally in "The Big Fat Kill," Shellie's (Brittany Murphy) ex Jackie Boy (Benicio Del Toro) and his cronies are abusing her and flee when her boyfriend Dwight (Clive Owen) violently warns him to stop it. Jackie Boy and his mob now go to Old Town with Dwight in pursuit, and when Jackie abuses young prostitute Becky (Alexis Bledel) in the presence of Dwight, prostitute leader Gail (Rosario Dawson) and her martial artist expert offsider Miho (Devon Aoki), a bloody street war erupts. Numerous mercenaries try to defuse the situation but they are all shot dead, before an injured Becky escapes.

Sin City must be one of the most distinctive and groundbreaking films of this century so far. Based on Frank Miller's edgy graphic (in more ways than one) novel series, he and co-directors Robert Rodriguez and (for one scene) Quentin Tarantino established a melding of their minds to somehow make these four stories mesh. (Rodriguez even quit the Directors Guild of America to make it with Miller because they forbade him from doing so.) The result is simply breathtaking: immensely violent and gratuitous, certainly, but also beautiful and meticulously detailed. This is especially thanks to the very bold and exquisite colour processing, black and white with selected objects in specific colours, used for consistency with the source material and to emphasise good from bad. Rodriguez' editing and particularly photography (he shoots and cuts all his own films) bring this aesthetic's uniqueness out even more; the cinematography is utterly Oscar-worthy, in fact.

The performances are all dynamic, too, as characters much more layered and observed than usual for this kind of comic book pulp fiction. Just focusing on the majors: Willis inverts his iconic supercop role John McClane into a committed but very haggard man who probably should've handed his cop badge in a few years ago. Wood, straying as far from Frodo Baggins as possible, shows great relish and physical energy as the flesh-eating Kevin, Dawson sinks her teeth equally enjoyably into Gail and Owen convinces all the way as what could've otherwise been just another protective boyfriend role. But surely it's Mickey Rourke who steals the show. However little his part must've challenged him, his authority and comic timing here are just blistering.

Without this 2005 adaptation of Sin City, we probably wouldn't have seen those of V for Vendetta, Watchmen or 300 et cetera. I really think it sparked that chain of live-action Hollywood takes on graphic novels, for better or worse. None of the others can hold a candle to it, either, and nor can the 2014 sequel Sin City: A Dame to Kill For. That one's all bark and no bite, but not even it can diminish its flawless predecessor.