GREAT TELEVISION: MIAMI VICE: THE GOOD AND THE BAD

I’ve been catching up on Miami Vice recently, and was surprised to find beyond the glitzy 80s MTV playboy cops trappings that everyone remembers, was a solid, and initially an astonishingly hardboiled and uncompromising, and surprising cop drama. People lived, people died, and only pain was guaranteed.

I mean that first three seasons has some brilliant, wrenching, even jaw dropping shows. It also has a few horrendously 80s clunkers, most of them revolving around the painfully unfunny ‘comedy’ relief of its snitches, Noogie and Izzie, played by walking stereotypes. Any show that features them dominantly is “turn-off” material. In addition there were a few episodes that were just padded, moronic, and poorly written and directed.

But thankfully the weak episodes of MIAMI VICE are definitely in the minority.

Today’s review is for a season 3 episode called WALK ALONE….

I just watched season 3 episode 4 of MIAMI VICE entitled WALK ALONE. Man is that frigging good. While undeniably 80s and of its time (the clothes, the music, some of the groan inducing levity or comedy relief), it manages to transcend or transform its weaknesses into a chorus for its strengths. And its strengths are many, this is just some great, riveting, compelling yet incredibly straight forward television.

I had forgotten, or never knew, just how much crap they put Phillip Michael Thomas’ character of Tubbs through in that show. The trappings of glamour contrasting with stories about people doing their best not to fall apart. Add to that this tale of fragile love, and corrupt prison guards is buoyed by a stellar cast of young actors from Lawrence Fishburne to Ron Perlman. And James Olmos’ taciturn Castillo is the epitome of cool.

Olmos has since gained recognition for another popular show, but Castillo remains his definitive role, THE definitive role. A great episode, that is all the more great, because it shouldn’t work, this throwback to a younger, gentler prison age that seems positively civilized compared to the aberration that is the current American penal system. However, the episode does work, with grittiness rubbing shoulders with a fun, easy charm. And while today everything is about the overarching multi-part storyline, there’s a lot to be said about the brilliant self-contained story. Where you can come in on any episode, and be not lost, and more… be thoroughly entertained and treated to a complete story. A rare thing to pull off today.

The strengths of episodic television at its best. An easy A-.

Miami Vice: The Complete Series: Check Prices Here

MIAMI VICE: THE DIRECTOR’S EDITION DVD Review

MIAMI VICE THE MOVIE: THE DIRECTORS EDITION is quintessential Miami Vice. It’s everything that’s great about that mad 5 year show, that dream of Balmy Days and blood warmed nights… distilled. And to think in 2006 it received a dismal 44% rating from critics of the day (even judging just on the theatrical cut) says a lot about the sad state of critics.

The film is everything a big screen adaptation of MIAMI VICE should be. It’s a love letter to a place, it’s romance writ large. And for anyone to go into a MIAMI VICE film and complain about too much romance, or sensuality, or sentimentality is for people to be completely bereft of such necessary things in themselves. And yes it’s moody, and layered, and languid, like hot days and hotter nights.. and purposely so, it is paced for you to enjoy the view. Which is something too few of us do in this life… with anything.

And for all its languidness there’s not a wasted frame. Michael Mann coming home with this film, and showing he has lost nothing of his considerable directorial skill, and indeed has added new tricks to his bag.

All those are to the good. And the entire cast does a great job reinterpreting iconic television roles and putting their own spin on it, successfully I think. Jamie Foxx and Colin Farrell and Gong Li and Naomie Harris to name a few of this stellar ensemble cast. Particularly apt is the romance, the counterpoint of the two relationships, as these men who spend so much time with lies, struggle to keep something real.

Ultimately MIAMI VICE is about people who lie for a living, and the toll such duplicity, for whatever reason, to whatever real or imagined good, ultimately takes on them. Much like the series, the film is about people who live on the edge, and their precarious balancing act.

It’s a great film, which is no surprise coming from Michael Mann, a filmmaker who consistently has created great films. An Actors’ Director, who understands giving actors that Authenticity in order to create (check the featurette to see the gun range preparation all the actors went through— Amazing!).

MIAMI VICE: THE DIRECTORS EDITION is in summation a consummately sumptuous, beautiful and frenetic film, crafted by one of the great directors of our time. My contention? When you put Michael Mann’s body of work in perspective… it will stand the test of time with the best of this still young, century old medium, called film.

Mann is not just a director, he’s a dissector and a biographer, a stylish one to be sure, of our age; And that is clearly seen in just how mesmerizing his director commentaries, and any special features are on his DVDs. If I’m an actor, Michael Mann is the director I want to work for.

And for film fans, he remains a director to watch and be inspired by.

Pick up MIAMI VICE both the series and the movie here:

Miami Vice: The Complete Series

Miami Vice (Unrated Director’s Cut) (See all Crime Movies & TV)

FAVORITE TV SHOWS OF ALL TIME!!! Spenser for Hire, Justice League, Firefly

The RECOMMENDED READS page (look over at the column on the right of your screen) has been updated

with reviews of Cornell Woolrich’s FRIGHT, recently published by Hard Case Books after being out of print for fifty years. And also a status review of CROOKED LITTLE VEIN by Warren Ellis and published by William Morrow.

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Now onto TV stuff:

My recent exposure to what passes for good television these days, garbage like LOST, and the new BIONIC WOMAN and insert Reality TV show here, has left me for an appreciation for the great TV shows of yesteryear.

So here’s my list of great Television shows (in no particular order):

NYPD BLUE Just the first season with David Caruso. The forerunner to the rash of police procedurals currently polluting the airwaves.

HOMICIDE Love this series. Caught everything but the last season. A tremendous show.

BABYLON 5 – People may gripe these days about MJ Straczynski’s comic book work, and the complaints aren’t unwarranted. But what ever issues of the present or the future his work may contain, his past is beyond reproach. His BABYLON 5 being the most ambitious television show ever. A man’s singular vision turned into a novel, with a distinct beginning, middle, and end. It’s the kind of vision that is lacking in “make it up as you go along” shows, such as LOST.

SPENSER FOR HIRE– Love, love, love this series. It’s a crime that it’s not available on DVD.

All SPENSER FOR HIRE images are by Dave McCraken

And real quick I’m going to rant: There is some art floating around, whenever you pull up info on this series (I’m not going to reproduce it here, because it annoys me, but click here to see it or here), showing some doctored up picture of Spenser and Hawk, with Hawk being positioned so he’s like six inches shorter than Spenser.

What the f*** is that? The following pic is how Spenser and Hawk look on the show:

It may seem like a simple thing, but it really isn’t. Like anyone whose done advertising, or product placement can tell you, ads are meticulously thought out. And the fact that such an obviously out of scale picture (to anyone who has seen the show) is occurring on multiple sites, has become a defacto standard… seems and is… odd.

Odd in the same wacky way that every network station at the same time decided to call people refugees who are not, or insurgents… who are not.

America is funny that way. 🙂 . It’s this wonderful nation where people call coincidence, what can only be design.

Avery Brooks is 6’1, Robert Urich was 6’2. A negligible height difference, but the picture makes it look like Hawk is a much shorter man. However both the character Hawk and Spenser were always portrayed as the same height. About 6’3ish.

So where does this box-art come from misrepresenting Avery Brooks and the show? Where does the idea of that come from?

That’s like doing a picture of me beside Avery Brooks and having me tower over Avery, it’s just as much bs. There’s great photos of the two of them from the 60 plus episodes they did, and they are always the same height. Yet someone is going to photoshop in this obviously… flawed picture. Just coincidence? Accident? Could have just as easily been Bob Urich misrepresented as shorter?

Come’on!

Someone made a conscious choice to misrepresent the heights of the two stars. Not coincidence, not a mistake, but a choice.

But why that particular choice? Maybe someone is cockeyed? 🙂 .

I don’t like pointing out this nonsense. I don’t like the fact that there is still nonsense like this to point out, but there it is. The media has grown and continues to grow more skewed, not less, it really is very much spiraling into minstrel like days. But subtly. Unfortunately, I catch subtle.

So I’m going to call a fowl when I see a fowl.

It’s very much like when Ford Motor Company had an advertisement showing all their engineers, and they photo-shopped out all the Black engineers for European distribution. It made the national news, so feel free to look it up if you don’t believe me. Was that coincidence? That big choice, and this little one… the same choice.

And some of you make say I’m making mountains out of molehills. But when one sees as many molehills, time after time, as I have… they tend to add up… all by themselves; to a looming mountain.

Molehills, the little lies we integrate into our world and self-view, create and recreate our reality. What men like Maslow and Berger called the Social Construction of Reality.

It’s how our enemies are made, and our friends.

Social construction of reality. We learn quietly, invisibly to absorb these minor molehills without question, so by the time we should question the really serious issues, we have accepted too much… to question the steps that have brought us here.

Bigotry and using the media as a weapon, is alive and well, and it’s not going to go away because we stick our heads in the sand, it just grows when we do that.

So when I see BS, especially involving my favorite show. I call it BS. And this is a case of BS.

Here endeth the rant.

For anyone who wants a free SPENSER FOR HIRE review guide just contact me. I’ll provide them to the first 10 emailers free. It’s a great series and deserves to be remembered correctly. If for nothing else, as the series that launched a young Samuel L Jackson. (in a bit part where he gets roughed up by Hawk. Great stuff!)

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WEREWOLF– I recommend just the premiere. Beautifully done, but the later episode are cheaply done and don’t go anyplace.

SIMPSONS– I lost interest a few seasons ago, but the first few were great!

SANFORD AND SON– My favorite comedy show of all time!

DEEP SPACE NINE– Brutally sabotaged by stations like Sinclair Broadcasting on initial airing, on DVD you can reexamine this series, and it builds to a brilliant conclusion. Like Babylon 5, and unlike the other Trek shows, this series actually has a wonderful storyarc. It may even on the broad scale, be superior to Babylon 5 (which had stronger individual episodes), making it one of the greatest series ever.

FARSCAPE– This was a FANTASTIC series, unfortunately killed before it could come to it’s conclusion, but the episodes we did get are stunning. All driven by the phenomenal, and at times heart wrenching performance of Ben Browder. If DEEP SPACE NINE and BABYLON 5 are in a tie for first place, this show is solidly in 2nd place as my favorite sci-fi series.

FIREFLY– I’m not a Whedon Fan. I could take or leave his BUFFY and his ANGEL. And while not a flag waving fan of FIREFLY, I thought it was easily his best show, possibly for it’s brevity. It didn’t get a chance to out stay its welcome ala the X-FILES. And had an interesting take on tomorrow.

QUANTUM LEAP– Women love this show. And in another life, a woman turned me on to it. And I have to say she was right. It’s a great, great show, much like FARSCAPE powered by Heart Wrenching performances by star, Scott Bakula.

CHAPPELLE SHOW-This is not even just brilliant comedy, it is the most courageous examination of the American id ever aired. A fantastic two seasons.

ROBIN OF SHERWOOD– John Carpenter’s mythic redefining of the Robin Hood myth, brilliantly brought to life by two phenomenal directors, and a young, hungry, and brilliant cast. And at the same time a wonderful mirror on the 80s age that spawned it. Easily in my top 5 shows of all time.

MIAMI VICE– It’s slick MTV style is old hat now, but this was the show that did it first and best. This and CRIME STORY make a great one, two punch.

JUSTICE LEAGUE helmed by Dwayne McDuffie is one of the best cartoons ever made. And for a guy who grew up on cartoons, that’s saying a lot.