Meadowlands

View

LYNCH MOB
‘Meadowlands’ as dark as David

“Meadowlands” is the second show this year to employ an international cast for a story about a criminal family with a transvestite son and a quick-witted daughter. And also like “The Riches,” on FX, this eight-part Showtime series relocates its family to an isolated suburban neighborhood where their secrets fall prey to nosy neighbors packing guns and souped-up sex drives. But the “Meadowlands” soil is significantly darker and 100 percent more corpse-ridden. Its newly arrived Brogan family, and their awaiting antagonists, are haunted by the kind of violent memories and sociopathic run-ins that dare not stray into the realm of easy laughs. So it is there where the similarities to “The Riches” end and another familiar sensibility takes over.

Duane Clark and Paul Walker direct the series but their inspiration is easy to spot. Spiritually and stylistically, David Lynch is the founder of “Meadowlands” and Twin Peaks its sister city. This is brought to the fore in a grisly second episode rape and murder, which becomes the show’s pivot point. It ultimately pits patriarch Danny Brogan (British TV veteran David Morrissey) against Bernard Wintersgill, a kind of sadistic Inspector Morse charged with getting his man—or at least cuffing and thrashing him. Evil becomes personified and feeds on fear while the lighting turns greenish-yellow and seemingly proper adults do funny dances or masturbate with the shades open.

No one does absurdism and ribald sex quite like the English. When dramatic, straight-laced characters turn daft or horny, while still retaining their proper British accent, the results can be chilling.

Especially disturbing is Harry Treadway’s performance as Mark, the cross-dressing youngster. Mark is Edwardian but the Edward in question is Edward Scissorhands. With the same autistic focus, androgyny and shock of thick black hair—but perpetually wearing rubber gloves instead of blades—he’s a dress-up partner for Jezebel and an irresistible taboo for Jez’s mum, Brenda. As played by the inspired Melanie Hill, lust ebbs and flows through Brenda’s matronly body resulting in the dirtiest performance by a mature woman since Isabella Rossellini scarred moviegoers for life in Lynch’s Blue Velvet.
- Stan Friedman   June 13, 2007

Brando

NYPress.com

LARGER THAN LIFE
The enormous talent and waistline of Brando

When you think of Marlon Brando, the names Cloris Leachman and Ed Begley Jr. probably don’t come rushing to mind. But in Mimi Freedman’s fascinating and wide-ranging documentary, Brando, the two actors are the unlikely bookends of the star’s adult life. Freedman shows it to be an adulthood that began with waves of extreme physicality and sexual prowess and ended with layers of fat, familial devastation and an absurd plan to power his home with a pool full of electric eels.

With repeated airings on TCM, the film reveals how Brando’s Midwest upbringing by an abusive father and alcoholic mother created within him an Oedipal complex as large and wide as the Hollywood Hills. A devastating clip from an Edward R. Murrow interview shows papa Brando saying that he’s not at all proud of his son’s acting, but is otherwise proud of him as a man. Marlon’s eyes fill with contempt. Meanwhile, his caring nanny’s dark skin tone, it’s conjectured, led him on the path to marry a Mexican starlet and later a Tahitian beauty.

But, before he put himself out to stud, the wild one bedded, then ignored, as many actresses as he could manage. More than one interviewee suggests the only reason Brando acted at all was to collect women. Angie Dickinson goes atwitter in remembrance, but Leachman declares she was wooed early on but had the sense not to succumb. Instead, she married George Englund, a great friend of Brando and the film’s best source for what went on in Brando’s brain; how his womanizing was about striking back at his mother, how his search for a great director was really a search for a better father and how none ever would compare to Elia Kazan and their relationship during A Streetcar Named Desire. Bernardo Bertolucci, on the other hand, proclaims that he made Brando dig too deep for the explicit scenes in Last Tango in Paris, turning Brando even further away from his craft. In his last two decades he would grow obese, deal with his son’s killing of his daughter’s boyfriend (and the daughter’s subsequent suicide) and form a friendship with Begley whom he would talk with for hours on every conceivable topic, except acting.
- Stan Friedman   May 30, 2007

The Henry Rollins Show

NYPress.com
TV SINNER
‘The Henry Rollins Show’ takes 30 minutes to heat

There’s a weird aura around Henry Rollins, the kind that comes with being an ex-punk rocker who winds up hosting the most mainstream form of entertainment, a celebrity talk show. At age 46, he’s graying yet oh so intense, uses the expression “right on” without a hint of irony and is as plugged into The Mars Volta as is Joan Jett. His entrancing, at times frustrating, second season of weekly shows continues through June 1. IFC airs the series on Fridays at 11 p.m. as if to target stoned freshmen and former club kids now stuck at home with their children. It’s a fitting demographic for a show that blends the basement meanderings of Wayne’s World with the extended jams of “Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert.”
Each episode begins with a segment called “Teeing Off,” wherein Rollins performs a liberal rant as if he’s main stage at the Nuyorican on Obvious Observation Night: “Our dot com presence has turned us into the peeper and the peepee.” Then he and his guest settle into some comfy chairs for a little chat. Unpolished and as earnest as can be, and with no studio audience to worry about, Rollins manages to keep Ben Stiller from being overly jokey and gets sincere conversations out of both Steve Buscemi (May 25) and William Shatner (June 1). Focusing in on Shatner’s pre “Star Trek” work, he strikes gold with the actor’s memories of an early Roger Corman film.

But, because one bombastic declamation is never enough, the interview segment is followed by another opinionated monologue. Sometimes it’s a cartoon version of Rollins amid slick animation. Other times Janeane Garofalo shows up on tape rambling on about the Internet or her dogs.

The best is saved for last as each week’s musical guest performs an unedited number. A bare-chested Iggy Pop is totally spellbinding leading his revived group, The Stooges, in a song from their new album. The Mars Volta rocks out for a full 13 minutes. And Peeping Tom tears up the joint with a human beatbox number. In your face, “American Idol.”

- Stan Friedman   May 16, 2007