Film – Page 8 – Ash Clifton, Writer

What I’m Watching – “Inspector Morse”

I recently got a BritBox subscription, and I’ve been nerding-out. Mainly, I’m rewatching the original Inspector Morse series that aired on Mystery! back in the 80s and 90s. I’ve loved the show since I first saw it back in college. Morse is a genuinely interesting and conflicted character, and John Thaw played him brilliantly.

Morse is smart and righteous, but also very funny. Emphasis on funny. I remember the first episode I ever saw, back when I was in college, when I was channel surfing one late night. My dad happened to be awake at the same time, and we watched an episode titled The Wolvercote Tongue, in which the world-weary Morse tries to solve the mysterious murder of an American tourist. There is one especially good, laugh-out-loud moment, and both my father and I cracked up. It’s one of my fondest memories. Ever since that moment, I was hooked.

I also love the show’s setting of Oxford (the town and the university). I keep hoping to go there someday. I’m sure they’ve got the murder-rate down by now.

Why I am Nostalgic for Big-Brained Aliens

All this spring, my son Connor and I have been watching of the original Star Trek on Netflix. Connor likes the original shows almost as much as The Next Generation, and even I find myself getting caught up in some of the more classic episodes like Space Seed (the one with Khan). I also really like the pilot, The Cage. That’s the episode where Jeffrey Hunter is Captain Pike, trapped on a planet run by bubble-headed alien telepaths who throw him in a zoo with the luscious Susan Oliver. (Poor bastard.)

As we watched this particular episode—Connor for the first time, me for the bazillionth—it occurred to me that the Big-Brained Alien is one science fiction trope that has pretty much disappeared. As far as I can tell, it has gone the way of the jet-pack and the glass-tube elevator. This dearth of chrome-domed alien baddies is just another indication, I suppose, of how much things have changed. Back when I was a kid, every extra-terrestrial was guaranteed to have a skull like a beach ball. Even the wise, Christ-like alien Klatuu from Robert Wise’s The Day the Earth Stood Still had a big head (although this was probably no one’s fault—Michael Rennie just had a big damned head!).

Remember those aliens who want to invite all of humanity over for dinner in the classic Twilight episode, To Serve Man? Huge heads. Or the killer vegetable alien in The Thing. Huge freaking head.

As to how this visual cliché came about in the first place, I can only assume it was because of Anthropology class. Specifically, all those anthropology classes that educated, middle-class kids started taking in college during the Cold War. For the first time, ordinary people began to learn about human evolution, and how the human brain has tripled in size during the last two million years. The implication was obvious. Bigger brains means bigger intellect. To extrapolate this trend into the future led to the obvious conclusion: beings of the future will have enormous brains.

In other words, the original Big Brained Alien is…us.

Suddenly, I Want to Move to a Bare Little Island in the North Atlantic

I’m only ten years late to the party, but I’ve just started watching the BBC series Shetland. Based on the mystery novels by Ann Cleeves (which I guess I’ll have to read now), the stories are smart, suspenseful, and engrossing. The acting is also first-rate. But what really makes the show stand out is its setting—the barren, brooding, rugged landscape of the Shetland Islands, which, as I learned from Wikipedia, is the UK’s northernmost territory.

Like a lot of American Southerners who’ve spent their lives in hot places, I’ve always longed to move to a cooler land. As a kid, I loved watching British TV mysteries, partly because the atmosphere looked so soothing in the rainy cities and wind-swept towns where such shows are often filmed.

Yeah, I know—try telling a Brit that they should be grateful for their weather. But I was envious. Being one of those bookish, introverted people who has too much stimulation going on inside the brain, I always felt like I would be happier in a region where there isn’t so much stimulation outside. Where the sun isn’t so strong, the heat so oppressive.

Hm. Maybe I should move to Vermont.

15 Hollywood Archetypes

Well, another summer is about to begin, and, once again, I don’t plan on seeing any of the summer “blockbusters” that are coming out. I just can’t work up much enthusiasm for the big summer debut. The problem is that now, in my 50s, I have seen so many movies that I recognize the same characters over and over in an endlessly repeating loop. Don’t believe me? Check out the list below…

The Dark Prince

Brooding, sexy, and smart, the Dark prince is often caught up in a hopeless battle against a larger system that is both impersonal and oppressive. These guys don’t smile a lot.

Famous Examples:

Errol Flynn
Robert Redford
Nicholas Cage
Leonardo Dicaprio
Matthew McConaughey

The Vixen (with a Brain)

This archetype is reserved for actresses whose sex appeal is so strong that it blasts off the screen like a blowtorch. But the magic comes when the viewer realizes that there is much more to these women than just a pretty face. Often portrayed as a scarlet woman or a femme fatale, this archetype always has a troubled past and is unable to sustain a genuine relationship.