Top 10 Obscure Films (pt. 2)

Loads of films are obscure for a very good reason. Browse through Netflix and you’ll find an endless supply, most of which have names like Alien Terror Train and star some poor motherfucker like James Van Der Beek. Death metal screeches on the soundtrack as James battles CGI aliens that look like they were created on a Lite Brite, and...is it any wonder my boyfriend and I just watch Top Gear over and over?

Anyway. Some films don’t deserve to be obscure. I once made a list in order to draw attention to lesser-known cinema of real quality. Time to add to the museum! Try out the following films; each one’s a modest little gem.

DANG-BLASTED’S TOP 10 AWESOME MOVIES YOU MAY NOT KNOW EXIST (pt. 2)

  
Delicatessen (1991)
The whole world fell in love with Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Amélie in 2001, but a full decade earlier, he was fine-turning his unique brand of clockwork whimsy, and wasn’t afraid to weird people out. Delicatessen is a film in which every aspect -- characters, setting, plot -- seems to function as a piece in a twisted game of Mousetrap. Set in some vague, post-apocalyptic hinterland, the film concerns the inhabitants of a ramshackle boarding house, most of whom have resorted to murdering and eating new tenants. But they’re French, so they’re at least somewhat polite about it. Jeunet’s invaluable collaborator, Dominique Pinon, plays the latest victim-to-be, who turns the tables on les cannibales in a mix of pitch-black comedy and Terry Gilliam-style surrealism. It’s a hoot. It’s far from Jeunet’s best work (that’d be A Very Long Engagement, with Amélie as a close second), but as a debut, it could hardly be juicier.

Dirty Pretty Things (2002)
Let’s do a test. I’m going to give you a list of names: Chiwetel Ejiofor, Audrey Tautou, Sophie Okonedo, Benedict Wong, Zlatko Buric, Sergi López. If you recognize at least two of these people, there’s hope for you yet. If you just went, “All those guys are in a film together? Hot damn!” then you’re one of the tribe. This global cast of awesome character actors join forces to play London immigrants who discover a sinister, gruesome conspiracy within the hotel where some of them work. (Hint: Human organs come into play.) Stick “traditional” actors in this scenario and it might be a good thriller...but when it stars refugees, vagabonds, the forgotten and ignored, it gains a fascinating resonance. I love when a film’s genre is merely an excuse to dive into a deeper issue. This grim little caper has a lot to say. Tautou leaves behind her adorable pixie schtick (see Amélie, above), and as for Ejiofor, well...long before 12 Years a Slave, some of us knew how great a career he had coming. Just saying.

Dog Soldiers (2002)
Dog Soldiers is the sickest, dirtiest, grungiest, and meanest werewolf movie I’ve ever seen. All of which is intended as high praise. Right now we’re enjoying a high-minded horror trend with films like The Babadook and It Follows, but let us not forget that good horror doesn’t need underlying themes and symbolism. It doesn’t need to be discussed in film studies classes. Dog Soldiers is about a squad of British troops training in Scotland, who find themselves utterly besieged by vicious lycanthropes. That is all the plot we need or expect. Director Neil Marshall would later make The Descent, a truly great horror movie, and Dog Soldiers was his gore-drenched warmup routine. The werewolves -- bodybuilders with fake wolf heads -- look and feel so much realer than any CGI could accomplish; I stuck them on my Top 10 Movie Monsters list so long ago, and they haven’t gotten any less awesome. Wanna see Liam “Davos Seaworth” Cunningham turn into a hairy, fangy murder machine? Of course you do. All horror buffs should have this in their archive.

Fast, Cheap & Out of Control (1997)
The best documentaries conduct their images like an orchestra, each new movement composed of an intricate array of different elements. Director Errol Morris is a helluva conductor. He’s made plenty of films, but I’m always mesmerized by this one, which stars four men: a lion tamer, a topiary gardener, a robot scientist, and a mole-rat expert. What’s a mole-rat expert? Only he can say for sure. Morris doesn’t just intercut these eccentric dudes’ testimonials, he interweaves and overlaps them until they become a single story: the endless struggle of humankind to tame chaos. These four guys are compelled to take something that doesn’t make sense -- a shrub shaped like a giraffe, a rodent that lives like an insect -- and construct their own little microcosm, their garden or circus ring or museum exhibit, where they may impose order. That sort of insecure god-play is what drives our species, for better or for worse, and Morris’s collage of stock footage, Super 8 mm, old Clyde Beatty serials, and tipsy circus music demonstrates his own controlled chaos. Fast, Cheap & Out of Control is a universal, provocative theme disguised as a documentary.

Help! (1965)
I fucking adore this movie. It is so stupid, so ridiculous, so lacking in brain cells, and I’ve loved it since childhood. Yes, it stars the Beatles at the height of their fame. Someone decided it’d be cute to stick the Fab Four in a James Bond spoof, and cobbled together a plot in which Ringo gets a sacred Hindu ring stuck on his finger, and is chased across the globe by a sacrificial cult and a mad scientist. John, Paul, and George just kinda tag along, pausing now and then for musical numbers (they do “Ticket to Ride” on skis!), and once I reached adulthood, I came to appreciate how utterly, cripplingly stoned all four Beatles were during the entire shoot. You can smell the roiling waves of Mary Jane seeping from every cranny of the film. And that makes it even more endearing. Rife with kooky humor and unfocused one-liners (“Hey, it’s a thingy! A fiendish thingy!”), not to mention timeless pop music, Help! is all I really need to appreciate the glorious stupidity of the 1960s. Pure fun.

Ma Vie en Rose (1997)
Next up, two films that examine the innocence of children in a hard world -- and do so with great poise. Ma Vie en Rose translates to “My Life in Pink,” and it’s a sorta sweet, sorta cynical tale about a young French boy named Ludovic who believes he’s a girl. That’s it. Too young to be gay or trans, to wear any sort of political or social label, he simply knows, with cute tenacity, that he’s a girl trapped in a boy’s body, and that one day the universe will correct this oversight. We watch, wincing somewhat, as the adults in little Ludovic’s world react with all the offended bluster and close-minded bafflement you’d expect. If that sounds too depressing, don’t worry. The film uses the visual language of a sitcom -- cozy suburbs, 50s colors -- to paint its hero(ine)’s dilemma with comedic love. When Ludovic schemes to marry the boy next door (his father’s boss’s son...cue laugh track), we chuckle and then feel melancholy. But it’s not a hurtful film. It inspires thought.

Mysterious Skin (2004)
This one is hard to watch. Very hard. But its sheer power deserves notice. Based on the equally unflinching novel by Scott Heim, it stares straight into the abyss of pedophilia -- not by draping it in horror-movie slime, but by unpacking the psychology of its victims. Thus, when two young Kansas boys are sexually preyed upon by their Little League coach, one of them thinks he likes it and grows up to be a gay hooker, while the other is so traumatized that his brain flips an emergency kill switch and he becomes convinced he was abducted by aliens. The boys turn into damaged young men, as the film moves from the dreamy expanse of the Midwest to New York City during the AIDS crisis. Yeah, Joseph Gordon-Levitt (who plays the gay one) is quite fine, but the story’s “sexy” elements are like a wound. You may not find a better argument against sexual abuse; it doesn’t rant and rave, but merely follows the abused down their quiet, broken path. We all know someone on that road.

Rivers and Tides (2001)
Now for a gentler film...one which relaxes the viewer with zen. Art is subjective, and the worst kind (in my opinion) feels it has to make some sort of wannabe-profound statement, some political or social claptrap that only makes sense in the artist’s ego. However, Scottish artist Andy Goldsworthy merely...creates. This dreamy documentary shows off the man and his work. He wanders the wilderness -- forests and beaches, placid rivers and snowy mountaintops -- and crafts amazing sculptures with the materials he finds at hand. Stones become a mystical dolmen; ice turns serpentine; trees are woven and leaves are blended like paint, all from Goldsworthy’s patient and skillful fingers. The “message” of his art is that beauty is all around us and nothing feels more beautiful than to create, even if your creation vanishes within the hour. The movie drifts along, showing us all manner of visual poetry, and as I watched it, I felt the pleasant urge to make something myself. So I wove a potholder. My fingers pulled and teased the loops of fabric, and I felt a little of the pleasure Andy Goldsworthy must feel. Try it sometime.

Sita Sings the Blues (2008)
For the best animated film you’ve never seen, we can thank Nina Paley, who made Sita Sings the Blues after her husband moved to India and dumped her. Heartbroken, Paley found a spiritual sister in Sita, heroine of the Hindu epic, The Ramayana, who was similarly done wrong by her man. From this ancient tale, Paley creates a kaleidoscopic visual marvel, utilizing five or six different animation styles, each of which has more character than ten thousand Minion sequels. Sita’s ordeals take the form of Bollywood musical numbers, paired with old recordings by Jazz Age crooner Annette Hanshaw, intercut with droll nitpicking from a trio of shadow puppets and snippets of Paley’s personal ordeal. It’s all a big revenge fantasy, but it’s beyond entertaining. Paley seems to have been inspired by everything from Monty Python to “End of Ze World,” and the result is that the animation itself becomes an endless source of deadpan comedy. Sita Sings the Blues laughs at genre. It’s gorgeous to look at, it’s educational, it’s feminist. It’s on YouTube. Watch it. That’s all!

So Dear to My Heart (1949)
Let’s end on the warmest, coziest note. Disney’s Song of the South, with its archaic racial attitudes, is considered an embarrassment. However, at around the same time, they made So Dear to My Heart, a guileless buried gem. It’s about a young Indiana boy (Bobby Driscoll) who adopts a black lamb and raises it with aspirations of winning blue ribbons. G-rated tribulations and life lessons follow, as our hero receives guidance from a conspiratorial uncle (Burl Ives) and a pragmatic granny (Beulah Bondi) whose role is to say no, then immediately relent. The plot is punctuated by delightful, impressionistic animated sequences -- an example of Walt Disney’s boundless need to experiment with the medium. Is it sentimental? Pious? Simplistic? Yes to all three, and don’t you feel like we need that more and more these days? So Dear to My Heart gives me the warm fuzzies, and not just because of Burl Ives, whose singing voice could have ended wars. It represents an innocence that no longer exists (more so if you consider what happened to Driscoll), and that kind of nostalgia should never become obscure. I’ll keep fighting the good fight. Help me out and spread these films around.

Swallows and Amazons

I don’t tend to wax political on this blog. It’s for movies and video games and being nerdy. However, I can be a bit topical now and then. For instance, while recapping American Horror Story: Hotel, I had the opportunity to make some bitter comments about the state of America’s youth. To whit: I believe we coddle and shelter our children far too much, leaving them A) hideously ill-prepared for the real world, and B) toxified with entitlement, with the belief that life will be a series of blue ribbons just for existing. It makes me very angry. But y’know what’s better than anger? Antidotes. Today, I’m not here to rant and rave. I’m here to examine children’s entertainment...not as it is today, but as it once was. Let’s visit a place where kids are allowed to fly free, yet still held accountable. A place where adventure means ADVENTURE and not a heavily chaperoned Easter egg hunt where Daddy finds all the eggs for you. Let’s talk about Swallows and Amazons.

I feel like a ton of people have at least heard of this book series. Swallows and Amazons was written by Arthur Ransome in the 1930s and ’40s, and read to me by my parents when I was a tyke. Lately, I’ve been revisiting the series and have just finished the fourth book. Imagine my amazement when I abruptly discovered that they just made a freakin’ Swallows and Amazons movie and it’ll be released this very month. What a coincidence, because rereading them, I feel like they represent a very good, very important mindset in regards to children. They were written for kids and represent a world of adventures and discoveries that lacks any Harry Potter-style trappings. Most of the books contain nothing that couldn’t plausibly happen in real life. There’s no fantasy or magic. An antagonist here and there, but no real villains. The young heroes have some scrapes but are never in actual danger. And they succeed, not because they’re the Chosen One or the son of Zeus or whatever, but because they are smart, resourceful, learned, brave, and commonsensical. And, most of all, because they are allowed to be kids.

The first book, Swallows and Amazons, takes place during the summer holidays in Britain’s lake district. The Walker siblings are chilling by a gorgeous lake, praising heaven that jet skis haven’t been invented yet, when they find a little sailboat, the Swallow, and make it their own. John Walker is the stalwart (if insecure) eldest. Susan is the mother figure, cook, and voice of reason. Titty (yes, Titty; stop snickering, assholes) is the dreamer and schemer whose imagination fuels the others. And Roger is the hyperactive little brother who can’t wait to show you his airplane impression, his loose tooth, and the fact that he’s maybe possibly almost able to swim. Aboard the Swallow, the four kids quickly brand themselves explorers. Their mother (a badass Australian) and father (an absent military man) give their blessings, and the “Swallows” are soon camping on their very own island. Turns out they’re sharing space with Nancy and Peggy Blackett, aka the Amazons, a pair of local sisters who cheerfully despise all things feminine and would rather be pirates. Then there’s the Amazons’ uncle, known as Captain Flint (and based on Ransome himself), who owns a houseboat, a parrot, and a lifetime of cool stories. There’s buried treasure too. There’s everything a child could dream of.

The Swallows and Amazons books are clearly set during a particular period, yet have a timelessness; the kids don’t really seem to age, and Ransome is always vague on what year it is. What’s important is that the books fall between the World Wars, a period when England had realized just how bad things could get, and responded with appropriate brio. Kids didn’t need to be pampered; they could be handed adult responsibilities early. They could be trusted and encouraged. Throughout the twelve books in the series, the Swallows and the Amazons experience one awesome holiday after another. They shipwreck and climb mountains, dig mines and build igloos and accidentally sail across the North Sea. In the fourth book, Winter Holiday, they’re joined by two new friends, Dick and Dorothea Callum, who represent the nerd demographic; they’re bookish and ditzy and their extensive knowledge of astrology proves mighty useful. Ransome clearly wanted his young heroes to be every child, every boy and girl with a spirit. He wanted all kids to read his books and go, Wow, I could do that! I should do that!

This, I think, is what we need more of. I’m not saying kids shouldn’t happily hope for a letter from Hogwarts. But if they go out and explore, build, create, and imagine, they’ll have their very own Hogwarts, Narnia, Terabithia, you name it. The kids in the Swallows and Amazons books make their own world and inhabit it with only minimal chaperoning. Oh, they’re always under the benevolent eye of adults, but never in a stifling way. The character of Captain Flint is crucial; he pops up to mentor the kids and occasionally save their bacon, but he’s still an honorary kid himself. Two of the books, Peter Duck and Missee Lee, feature less plausible stories, with actual danger and high-seas swashbuckling and evil characters (some racism, too...but we must forgive this as a product of its time). We’re meant to believe the Swallows and Amazons themselves “wrote” these two books, an act of metafiction that allows them even more imaginative freedom as characters. Their world is just as cool as Harry Potter’s, but nobody dies and everything is always perfectly fine in the end. That’s what’s great: Ransome isn’t arguing that we should just let kids do whatever they want...but he does insist that they be handed the keys to their own kingdom.

I was thinking the books would make a great movie, but I wondered if it’d ever come to pass in this day and age. Some modern kids would, alas, certainly find Swallows and Amazons boring compared with the usual stuff they read. And Hollywood producers would likely feel the same way. “How can this be a movie? Nothing happens in it!” Stories aren’t allowed to take their time any more. The new movie’s made by the Brits, which is good, but still feels it has to shoehorn in some “cinematic” elements. We have the Swallows, the Amazons, the sailboats, the island. But now Captain Flint is an ex-spy being chased by bad guys, or something, and certain parts of the trailer look like a throwback to the 1990s when most kids’ movies were riffing on Home Alone and/or Free Willy. Also, Captain Flint has gone from a big fat guy in his late middle age to the modestly hunky Rafe Spall. And Titty is now named “Tatty,” for obvious reasons. I guess I’ll reserve judgement, because this is better than nothing, and it does capture the right sort of time and place. I wish they could have preserved the innocence of the book and avoided having adult villains, but concessions must be made.

After all, the movie might lead more kids to the books. And if they can get past the books’ lack of “modern” story elements, they may find themselves inspired. Every one of the young heroes is a fine role model for some age demographic or other. And let’s talk about gender! Not only are there more girl characters than boys (a major rarity in kids’ books with coed casts!), but none of the girls are any weaker or less capable than the boys; they may have flaws (Peggy’s afraid of thunder), but nothing ever stems from gender stereotypes. Susan is the most “girly” girl character, but she’s not portrayed as a wet blanket, a nag, or a scaredy-cat. She can tie nautical knots with the best of them, and then make wholesome rice pudding and afternoon tea. The highly tomboyish Nancy and Peggy, the quixotic Titty, and the scholarly Dorothea likewise avoid typecasting. When combined with the boy characters, this group of pals form a perfect cross-section of childhood, leaving no one out, sharing that unique sense of daring and discovery.

I’ve seen what kids are like when they explore. I’ve watched kids build shelters from tree branches, or take apart computers, or turn over rocks to reveal gross, slimy glory. I’ve been a kid like that. And, yeah, I also see kids lost in iPhones and banality, their parents too listless to nurture their minds, or too paranoid to allow their progeny off a short leash. A lot of what you see in the Swallows and Amazons series has gone dormant. But not extinct. You can’t kill a particular mindset. It’s still there, waiting to emerge from its cocoon. The notion that kids’ lives need a little more wonder, a lot more hands-on discovery and practical application of skills. Teach a kid to cook. Or to identify constellations. Hell, teach a kid to program their own computer game. It’s one step away from the death of the imagination, and one step closer to a group of young friends sailing their own little boats, camping on an island, never out of sight of their parents, but free just the same. If you like, take out the boats and the lake and substitute your own preferred adventure.

The Swallows and Amazons series won’t solve any societal problems on its own. But it might help. It could ignite a spark in the right child’s mind, or (just as crucial) the right parent’s mind. So when I say “A great series of books for all ages,” that is what I mean. When my parents read it to me, we all gained something from it. Now, lacking kids of my own, I pass on the spark to you, reader. Begin Swallows and Amazons and note what happens. How you surprise yourself. Then read it to a child, or give it to a child to read, and watch their face.

There. See it?

Independence Day: Resurgence

I wasn’t going to review this, but then my dad said he was looking forward to it. Looking forward, presumably, to me waxing poetic about a film in which evil aliens give Planet Earth a good spanking for a couple hours before we spank back at the last minute. A film not unlike 1996’s original Independence Day, which crystallized the “disaster porn” genre and established director Roland Emmerich as its playful hack emperor. It wasn’t the first time the world got destroyed on film, but it was probably the first time modern special effects created a sense of real shock and awe as cities crumbled and Nothing Would Ever Be the Same. Twenty years later, we’ve seen plenty of ID4’s spiritual children, several helmed by Emmerich. And now a sequel. Independence Day: Resurgence would be the worst title in years if Terminator: Genisys didn’t have the category locked forever. Since I have such a nostalgic fondness for ID4, am I gonna be down on its successor?

I mean, I know it got awful reviews. And I pity anyone going into this expecting a “good” movie. Can it overcome sheer, waste-of-time wretchedness and at least be entertainingly goofy and fun? Well, I think I did, more or less. It takes itself far, far less seriously than the first one. It kinda has to, because modern blockbusters are different. ID4 was most effective when it was building dread: portents, everyday life about to be upended, the feeling that something unspeakable was creeping up on our planet. In the 2010s, ain’t nobody got time for that. Resurgence briskly uncorks an alt-history where we recovered from the first alien attack, assimilated their advanced technology, and became a better species as a result. We have solar system outposts, a planetary defense system, tons of neat gadgets. This leads to the same dilemma I had with Pacific Rim: I’m more interested in the backstory than the current situation. I want to know more about the nuts and bolts. Hell, one of the film’s throwaway ideas -- Congolese guerillas fought a bitter ground war with alien troops in ’96 -- would make a damn compelling film all on its own. But Resurgence whips through its establishing scenes with hardly a glance. The new Star Wars had the same problem: too much momentum, not enough worldbuilding.

At least Resurgence loves to show off. The film contains wall-to-wall special effects and they all look absolutely groovy. There’s a decent variation from all the dark brown, tractor-tire surfaces we got last time. For instance, a misty wormhole opens near the moon and snorts up a large, cryptic alien sphere. The Clinton-esque President Lanford (Sela Ward) errs on the side of caution and has us blast the sphere with moon lasers, despite speculation from Prof. David Levinson (Jeff Goldblum, yay!) that these ain’t the same aliens as before. Very soon, who should show up but the same aliens as before, in a far huger ship. It’s big enough to straddle the Atlantic Ocean, and does, and let me just say that what befalls the White House this time around made me giggle unreasonably. The new ship has its own gravity field, which vacuums up Singapore and Dubai, then drops them on London. I love how Emmerich constantly strives to outdo himself in city-destruction mayhem -- though here, it’s kind of token. A ship that big should damage Earth irreparably, yet once it arrives, it just kinda sits there, preparing to extract the planet’s molten core and thereby providing the obligatory Ticking Doomsday Clock.

The relative passivity of the aliens allows for another battle, that of the old salts from the first film vs. the sexy young commandos who are onboard to appeal to kids. The old salts win. Goldblum is easily the best player here, delivering every moment with a sly wink. Bill Pullman, Vivica H. Fox, Brent Spiner, and others slip right back into their old roles. The new kids suffer, I’m afraid, because of how thinly they’re all defined. Jake is a cocky pilot. Patricia is engaged to Jake. Patricia is buddies with Dylan. Jake and Dylan are on the outs due to past baggage. That’s about all we get. Oh, and Patricia (Maika Monroe) is the daughter of traumatized ex-president Whitmore (Pullman), and Dylan (Jessie Usher) is the son of the late Steven Hiller (Will Smith, killed off between films due to his high price tag). As for Jake (Liam Hemsworth), he’s supposed to be the main hero and is reasonably bland, but I found him a lot more bearable than in the Hunger Games movies, so that’s something. All these dudes and dudettes form humanity’s last hope -- so we’re fine, because Jeff Goldblum can do anything.

I needn’t bother describing much more of the plot. You probably remember the first film well enough. Having had twenty years to prepare for the second wave of aliens, we are, of course, utterly unprepared, and soon enough, it all comes down to frantic, makeshift plans concocted in dim strategy rooms. There’s time for the usual random subplots, the shittiest of which involves Judd Hirsch and a carload of whiny teens. There are slots for offbeat supporting characters, like DeObia Oparei as a badass African warlord and Charlotte Gainsbourg (no, seriously) as an eccentric linguist who apparently exists because someone asked, “What if there was a second Jeff Goldblum but he was a French lady?” There’s way more room for Dr. Okun (Spiner), who didn’t die in the first film after all and has been retconned into a gay superhero. Some characters perish, but none of the deaths are especially surprising and only one took me by surprise with its sadness (and it’s not at all who you’d expect). The final act seems to be taking a familiar route: pilots infiltrate the alien ship and somebody has to sacrifice themselves à la Randy Quaid. But then the climax goes in an unexpected direction. And it was pretty cool! If only for injecting some novelty.

After helping define the modern blockbuster, Independence Day now looks derivative of all the movies it spawned. I could have used a real dose of character development (poor Vivica H. Fox is onscreen for about two minutes, and her fictional son, Jessie Usher, is almost insultingly boring) -- and, yeah, I wanted more disaster porn. I’m way too into that stuff. Resurgence wasn’t really a disaster movie like ID4. It was a science fiction action something-or-other with a lot of discordant ideas and performances. Only Jeff Goldblum and Brent Spiner hit the perfect balance of doom-laden gravitas and tongue-in-cheek jollity. The question is, did this film even need to exist? I mean, everything has to be a franchise now. Resurgence introduces those two words that make movie scholars scream in anguish -- Expanded Universe -- and teases at least one more sequel. Does the studio care about this property beyond forcibly squeezing forth more revenue? I have no idea, but at least some of the actors care. And I think Roland Emmerich cares; I think he had a whole lot of fun returning to that which gained him his unique reputation. Me, I got what I wanted: a stupid summer movie that was a blast to watch.

Also, I’m relieved that Colorado hasn’t been attacked by those aliens yet. We don’t really have any famous, signature buildings or bridges, you see. To quote Dr. Levinson, “They like to get the landmarks.” Yes, they do. I like to watch.

To Squee Or Not to Squee: Sandman Overture

I slept and dreamt of Cautious Enthusiasm....

Sandman Overture begins with a carnivorous plant having a bad dream. It ends with two siblings abruptly forgetting what they were talking about. Believe me, I am understating the fuck out of this...but, then, understatement is one of the things Neil Gaiman does best. He’s a titan of fantasy literature, and there are many reasons why he’s so good at it, including his knack for dry British restraint. He can describe a cosmic battle between godlike beings with the same inflection you’d use to speak to the vicar at Mrs. Cumberfarthing’s tea social. All the while, his imagination is running at the speed of light. Look at American Gods, or Coraline. Better yet, look at The Sandman.

For it was Sandman that put Neil Gaiman on the map, and helped usher in a wave of adult-oriented comics under DC’s Vertigo imprint. Sandman is 75 issues of storytelling magic. And now, years and years later, Gaiman has returned to give us Sandman Overture, a prequel miniseries that’s now available as a single graphic novel. And that’s so, so awesome, and a little nerve-wracking, because in order to write about it, I somehow have to summarize Sandman. Can’t be done. I lose. So let’s be as brief as possible. Sandman is a comic about many, many things, but at its center are the Endless: seven siblings who aren’t mortals or gods, but personifications of certain aspects of our psyche. The Endless have been around since everything began. If one dies, a replacement is found to assume not only their duties, but their very persona. The names of the Endless are Destiny, Death, Dream, Destruction, Desire, Despair, and Delirium. Dream is the important one. He’s the tall, gaunt, raven-haired guy in the ragged cloak, also known as Morpheus...or The Sandman. At the very beginning of the original comic, Dream was returning to his realm after fighting a battle, the details of which we were never told. Weakened and distracted, he was captured by a bunch of dopey occultists. What manner of sturm und drang could leave such a powerful being so vulnerable?

Sandman Overture has the answers, although I was concerned that Gaiman couldn’t easily slip back into his old storytelling voice. He was a relatively young man when he began Sandman, and the early issues of the comic read more like pulp horror than epic fantasy; even the art style was reminiscent of Tales from the Crypt. Gaiman has come so far, and as an author, I know how shitty one’s older work can seem. I really shouldn’t have worried. Gaiman isn’t going for pulp horror. Why was Dream so bruised and battered when first we met him? Short answer: he was saving the universe. Long answer: don’t even ask me to summarize everything Gaiman crams into six issues. Basically, Dream learns that one aspect of himself -- an alternate Dream from a far-distant world -- has suffered permadeath, which is supposed to be impossible. He sets out to investigate, and discovers...badness. Cosmic unrest, which leads to cosmic war. Much of Sandman Overture is sort of science fiction, which is like saying that Mozart sort of wrote melodies. Sandman Overture is epic, operatic, mind-bending, and utterly glorious. It’s one of Gaiman’s greatest Sandman tales. Better late than never!

There are a couple of ways to make a lousy prequel. There’s the Star Wars thing where you fuck up your own continuity. Then there’s the “Who cares?” route where the prequel does not contain a single piece of new information. Sandman Overture avoids these traps admirably. Nothing in it contradicts Sandman, and more so, it sheds a new light on, well, everything. I plan to revisit Sandman with the knowledge that Dream is, from start to finish, numbingly tired. All too aware of his own mortality. His flaws. At one point, faced with a crowd of alternate-world Dreams, he asks, “Am I always like this?...Self-satisfied. Irritating.” Indeed, Dream always was unapproachable. We didn’t get inside his head enough. This new tale humanizes Dream to a surprising extent and, again, implies that his ordeal renders him a tired, jaded shell of his former self. Yeah, it’s a top-notch prequel. Its one (minor) sin is that Gaiman can’t resist bringing back a lot of the Sandman supporting cast for cameos, some of which contribute nothing to the story. (Hey, it’s the Corinthian! So what!) But he’s able to flesh out a few folks (Dream’s feline version, who only appeared once in Sandman, plays a huge role here) and introduce some intriguing newcomers. We meet the Endless’ parents, and I won’t spoil who or what they are, but they slot perfectly into the mythos.

Okay, let’s talk about the artwork, because holy shit. The comic is drawn by J.H. Williams III and colored by Dave Stewart, and they are an absolute dream team, no pun intended. Once it got past the pulp horror phase, Sandman featured a constantly shifting series of artists and a wide variety of styles, depending on the story arc of the moment. Sandman Overture sticks to one art style, but it’s...well, to call it “psychedelic” is a start, but not enough. It blazes across each page in great, grandiose whorls. Its eye-popping colors are a proud Fuck You to any grim, gritty aesthetic. At times it utilizes clear lines, and at other times the edges soften like watercolor. The layout of the panels and even the speech bubbles become part of the madness. I could compare it to Dr. Strange, or perhaps to The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen once Alan Moore went completely insane. But it’s in a league of its own, perfect for visualizing such an epic tale. Anchored, of course, by that dry Neil Gaiman understatement. Certain double-page spreads contain so much goddamn detail that you could pore over them for an hour or more. This massive a story, coupled with such boundless artwork, would form the climax of many comics.

Here, though, it’s an overture. What’s an overture? An introduction that foreshadows what is to come. Yes, Sandman Overture answers some leftover questions from the original Sandman comic. The motives of certain characters. The placement of a key object or two. Old fans can appreciate each easter egg, while newcomers shouldn’t be scared off. But everyone will be a little lost, because Sandman never was straightforward. Reading it, you must understand that the Endless exist outside of regular time and space. They aren’t entirely linear, and although they appear tangible, they’ll always be misty around the edges. You can’t take them at face value. Who or what is Dream? Why, he’s dreams. All of them. And he’s a person, yes, and a figment of our imagination. He’s real, but he’s not. There’s only one of him, and there are a trillion trillion of him. He’s beyond human thought, but he’s also deeply human at heart. Sandman Overture hints that maybe, after many years, Neil Gaiman has come to understand Dream a little better. Enough to rewind the clock and tell a story that remixes the entire Sandman universe. That’s pretty damn impressive. And I hope Gaiman never leaves this Dream behind.

VERDICT: Endless squee!

A Dang-Blasted Theory: Disney's Talking Animal Universe

A Dang-Blasted Theory: Disney’s Talking Animal Universe

I don’t often hit upon really good fan theories. When I do, it’s best to scribble them down before they dissolve into a puddle of mental stroganoff.

Zootopia was great. I loved it. Definitely my favorite Disney animated feature in quite some time. It was funny, smart, driven by characters and dialogue rather than farts and slang, and had some surprisingly pointed stuff to say about our own society. You can unpack this colorful romp about talking animals, deconstruct its themes of social equality and prejudice, argue whether or not it succeeds in having a coherent message. (For a film decrying racism, it sure does lean heavily on obvious animal-based stereotypes.) I’m not really gonna do that here, because I had a whimsical notion that led me to formulate a theory, not only about Zootopia, but about a ton of other Disney movies.

My whimsical notion was this: Nick Wilde, the jaded, charismatic fox who serves as Zootopia’s secondary hero, is the descendant of Robin Hood -- the jaded, charismatic fox who starred in Disney’s 1973 adaptation. They’re both lawless knaves with their hearts in the right place. They even look very similar, which I’m positive was deliberate. Once I realized that Robin begat Nick, my brain formed the next logical conclusion: Robin Hood and Zootopia take place in the same universe, at different historic periods. A world devoid of humans, where animals function as fully sentient beings with their own society. And then I began wondering if the same could be said of other Disney movies too. A ton of them involve talking animals. But many have humans too, so that doesn’t work. Or DOES it...?

I believe it works, and I’ll explain why. My theory encompasses all Disney animated films that involve talking animals but not magic or fantasy elements. So, for instance, Cinderella may feature those cute mice, but it’s also got magic, so it’s off the table. Science fiction is also not allowed (piss off, Chicken Little). Films that mix live action and animation don’t count (goodbye, Song of the South...you awkwardly racist little thing, you). I’m gonna ignore TV cartoons, and I’m excluding Pixar, which already has its own awesome fan theory. This leaves all the films that ostensibly take place in the “real world.” These films, in chronological order, are...deep breath...Dumbo, Bambi, Lady and the Tramp, 101 Dalmatians, The Jungle Book, The Aristocats, Robin Hood, The Rescuers, The Fox and the Hound, The Great Mouse Detective, Oliver and Company, The Rescuers Down Under, The Lion King, Tarzan, Dinosaur, Home on the Range, and Zootopia. Crappy-ass sequels also count, if you really care.

Put together, these films show us a kind of alternate universe -- let’s simply call it the Talking Animal Universe, or TAU. For whatever reason, animals are sentient here. They coexist with humans, sometimes peacefully, sometimes not. Communication between humans and animals is rare; they might not be speaking the same language. Wild animals generally consider humans to be dangerous and frightening (see: Bambi), while domesticated animals are content to serve humans as pets in return for security, food, etc. Children, as is often the case, are better at communicating than adults, as seen with Mowgli from The Jungle Book and the imperiled kids from the Rescuers movies. Hell, Tarzan is raised by apes from infancy. However, to most adults, animals are just...animals. For better or for worse. Keep them and love them, hunt them and eat them. Whatever. Humans may willfully blind themselves to animals’ sentiency, because acknowledging they can think and feel would force us to face how we’ve treated them.

DISCLAIMER: I am not an animal rights activist. I eat meat. I approve of zoos. I don’t like seeing chimps in science labs but I’m okay with mice being used to cure cancer. I hate the fur industry and I also think PETA is evil and disgusting. It’s called being moderate. Moving on!

From the list above, I want to single out four movies in particular: Dinosaur, The Lion King, Robin Hood, and Zootopia. I put them in that particular order on purpose. What distinguishes them from the others? They are the only films on the list with absolutely no human presence. Dinosaur, that CGI romp from Disney’s experimental phase, is (apparently) set long before mankind. The Lion King seems to exist far from human influence. Robin Hood and Zootopia are supposed to take place in a made-up world where humans never happened. That’s if you take these films at face value. But I believe they’re part of the TAU, and they reveal what ultimately happened to the human race.

So. At some point in our alt-verse, humans realize and/or admit that animals are sentient. Our awakening probably springs from advances in technology and social awareness. As the TAU enters the new millennium, as we stop treating animals cruelly by nature, as political correctness rears its head, we see: our pets can think like us and speak their own language. The wild animals we hunt have minds and souls. What do we, the human race, do with this knowledge? How can we atone for centuries of killing and exploiting sentient creatures? And, from a scientific standpoint, we’re curious. How did animals evolve sentiency, and what might they have accomplished if humans hadn’t been there, blocking the way?

We create a massive experiment that also serves as an apology. We designate a small continent, clear it of all human life, allow it to return to nature. Working together with the animals, we seed this mini-Pangea with life. We rewind all the way back to the first complex beasts, the first vertebrates. We accelerate their evolution so we can watch them develop. Having created this human-free paradise, we sit back to see what happens. The result? Dinosaur. The beginnings of a world where sentient animals evolve without humans and don’t even know humans exist, because we, on the outside, keep them in a bubble. Then, at some point, we destroy ourselves. Human society crumbles. It goes up in flames. Dinosaur shows this: its inciting incident occurs when fire rains from the sky, forcing Aladar and his lemur family to find a new home. Meteors? No. Human satellites, crashing down from space, signaling the Big Death for our species.

(Note: I said I wasn’t going to allow films that mixed live action and animation. But since Dinosaur uses live action as a scenic backdrop only, I give it a pass.)

With humans gone from the TAU, the animals on that isolated continent can go on peacefully evolving with no idea that humans ever existed. Next stop: The Lion King, in which we see the beginnings of true society. Predators still hunt and eat prey, but they rationalize it. All part of the Circle of Life, Simba. I’ll use my anthropology degree here and mention that primitive cultures generally begin with Animism (the belief that everything is alive) before progressing to organized religion. From its early stages, this animal civilization keeps right on evolving. Predators figure out that they don’t need to eat prey at all. How can this be? Well, perhaps humans altered predator DNA to allow them to subsist on some other food source. It just took them awhile to realize this on their own. By the time we reach Robin Hood, animals have learned to walk upright, wear clothes, build towns and castles. Just as humans did. Their evolution mirrors ours. Finally, Zootopia, an ultra-modern culture where animals use smartphones and live in harmony with only the occasional racial hiccup. Our experiment succeeded beautifully; we’re just too extinct to appreciate it.

One big issue is that Zootopia only contains mammals. What about the sentient reptiles, birds, saurians, and even insects we saw in all the other movies?  I can imagine some explanations. Sentient bugs might never have been introduced to the experiment. The saurians would have evolved into birds and/or reptiles, and then...perhaps disease killed everything but the mammals. Perhaps Robin Hood took place right before some horrible Black Plague scenario. Alas for Lady Kluck! Or maybe all the birds moved elsewhere in the world and that explains DuckTales. Did I just blow your mind?

You gotta admit, it all works pretty well. Zootopia glosses over what the predators eat, so why not imagine they were genetically altered by long-dead human scientists. Also, we never see a hyena in Zootopia, and I imagine that after being so thoroughly shat upon in The Lion King, the hyenas would want nothing more to do with anybody, ever. But why does Zootopia include foxes, lions, koalas, otters, camels, moose, jaguars, snow leopards, polar bears, gazelles -- a mishmash of species from all over the world? Because we, the humans, planted the DNA for all those species to develop together on a single landmass. They lived in their preferred temperate zones until all of it, from desert to tundra, smashed together into one metropolis.

And that is my theory. It links Disney’s talking-animal films together and demonstrates how, in a sense, they all culminated in Zootopia. The beasts inherited the earth, and good for them! I can’t wait till Zootopia 2 comes along and we can perhaps gain more insight on whether or not Nick and Judy have romantic feelings for each other, and what sort of weird DNA-based shenanigans could lead to sexytimes between a fox and a rabbit. Y’know?

To Squee Or Not to Squee: Mr. Holmes

I deduce it’s time for Cautious Enthusiasm.

A very old man, recently abroad in Japan, returns to his private estate in the English countryside. The man is Sherlock Holmes. He is played by Sir Ian McKellen, and it’s hard to imagine a more delicious-sounding actor/character combination. But hold your saliva. This movie is going to be a bit different. When we think of Sherlock Holmes, we think of fireworks. Dazzling, snappy detection. Robert Downey Jr. punching thugs or Benedict Cumberbatch flicking clues around like a superhero savant. Mr. Holmes is too meditative for all that. In the movie’s world, Holmes is real and Arthur Conan Doyle isn’t; the entire literary canon was written by Dr. Watson. There was no deerstalker hat, no violin. 221B Baker Street was a ruse to mislead the tourists. People ask Holmes to do “the thing” where he eyeballs someone and deduces everything about them. He can do it, but (as he rather hurtfully demonstrates at one point) it’s not much fun to be put under a lens. This Holmes is a quiet, sad, wry old man. And full of fear.

The last time Sir Ian starred under director Bill Condon, they made Gods and Monsters, about the last days of gay horror director James Whale. I didn’t really like it. It was too melancholy, too much a dirge. I feared Mr. Holmes would be more of the same, would take all the fun out of a legendarily entertaining character. Luckily, for all its pathos, this is still a Sherlock Holmes movie. We expect clues, and we get them: a scattering of plaster, a box inscribed in Japanese, dead bees. We expect mysteries. The elderly Holmes has returned to his cottage, his apiary where he tends his bees. His Irish housekeeper, Mrs. Munro (Laura Linney), has a young son, Roger (Milo Parker), who regards the old detective with keen fascination. Holmes has a secret: his titanic brain is slipping into senile dementia -- for him, a fate worse than death. A mystery he can’t solve. As he develops a bond with Roger and they try to figure out why the bees are dying, two flashback stories are woven in. One is Holmes’ final case, involving a woman (Hattie Morahan) who uses a glass harmonica to speak to her miscarried children. The other sees Holmes in Japan, seeking the prickly ash, a plant which may cure his senility.

We have the building blocks of a good, meaty Holmes adventure: exotic locales, hints of the supernatural, hidden motives. What the movie does so well is show how the world of Holmes is slipping away. Holmes, the real man, is afraid his memories aren’t real -- or, perhaps, are becoming confused with the sensational penny dreadfuls Watson wrote about him. He fears that when he’s gone, the fictional Holmes will be all that remains. Lurking behind the entire story is the fallout from World War II, an event which broke our species. The boy, Roger Munro, lost his father and his innocence. The Japanese lost too much to quantify. Paranormal séances and brilliant detectives became trite playroom toys of the past. Holmes can feel himself, and what he represented, disappearing. But he’s still too brilliant, with too godly an ego, to give up, and that’s why Mr. Holmes is so much more pleasurable to watch than Gods and Monsters. Because why should Sherlock Motherfucking Holmes go down without a fight?

The film is beautiful -- in its portrayal of the time period, in its intercutting of mysteries as more revelations occur, in its acting. Sir Ian is just as Sherlockian as we’d want him to be, with that undercurrent of sadness he does so well. Milo Parker is outstanding as a boy whose impish face can reflect delighted curiosity or deep hurt, a child of war who learned about hardship before he had the facts of life. During the film, tension develops between Holmes and Mrs. Munro, who is far from comfortable when her son starts spending all his time with the detective and snottily correcting her grammar. Laura Linney transcends the “disapproving matron” stereotype. She fears Holmes, whose brain is so far beyond hers, and fears her son, who already has the gaze of a jaded adult man. Every major character in the film, including the woman from Holmes’ fateful final case and the Japanese man (Hiroyuki Sanada) who helped find the prickly ash, fears something. Some unsolved mystery. The film is about coming to understand that mere clues aren’t everything. Except when they are. If that doesn’t make sense, well, that’s life, first and last of all mysteries.

The idea of an elderly Sherlock Holmes has inspired many; I can think of Michael Chabon’s The Final Solution and Neil Gaiman’s “The Case of Death and Honey,” and Mr. Holmes itself was based on A Slight Trick of the Mind by Mitch Cullen. The story came to Condon, a director with an oddball filmography that includes historical dramas, horror, Disney, even Twilight movies. (The idea, I’d guess, was to elevate the material; all it did was prove that not even a pedigree director can salvage Twilight.) Both Mr. Holmes and Gods and Monsters star Ian McKellen as an elderly and lonely man, famous in his prime, raging against his mortality. But Mr. Holmes, by incorporating the crafty puzzles of a Sherlockian mystery or two, succeeds far better as a eulogy. It’s about bitterness, yes, and heartbreak, and hurtful consequences. But it’s also about how to celebrate a life lived, rather than letting it rot. It’s about what can rise from the ashes, and if you’ve seen Mr. Holmes, you’ll know the significance of that statement. I recommend you see Mr. Holmes if you have not already. It’s wonderful.

VERDICT: Squee!

Top 10 Cutthroat Kitchen Fails

Cutthroat Kitchen has turned out to be one of those “just one more episode” shows where I could easily waste the entire day on it if I didn’t have the self-control of a saint (yeah, right). It’s a fun show, a tongue-in-cheek show, a show full of delicious and not-so-delicious culinary experiments. Lastly, it’s a show where I often have cause to yell at the screen. “Really? REALLY? You IDIOT!”

For those who don’t know, Cutthroat Kitchen is a reality competition in which chefs must prepare dishes within a time limit, under the watchful scowl of host Alton Brown. Each chef gets $25,000 in cash, which they can spend auction-style to sabotage their opponents in cruel and funny ways. The winner only keeps what money they haven’t bid away. This leads to some epic kitchen smackdowns and desperate, improvisational cooking. You just know that with this kind of pressure, people are bound to screw up. Sometimes, their whoopsies are worthy of the facepalmiest of facepalms. And I’ve been cataloguing them for you! Here are...

DANG-BLASTED’S TOP TEN BIGGEST ACTS OF STUPIDITY ON CUTTHROAT KITCHEN

  
10. BBQ, Where Are You?
(S1E13, “S’more Sabotage”)
The time limit is everything. As a professional chef, you better be capable of whipping off a quality dish in a brief period. That’s how restaurants operate and it’s how Cutthroat Kitchen operates. When faced with making a barbecue platter, Chef Rocco was delighted. He knows barbecue like nobody else! He’s gonna blow the judge away with a succulent selection of meats! And believe me, his little buffet looked absolutely amazing. Did it taste amazing? Probably, but we’ll never know, because when the clock hit zero, Chef Rocco had abso-fucking-lutely none of his food plated. And guess what? The judge can only go by what you present them on a plate! Them’s the rules! Luckily for Chef Rocco, they showed mercy and sampled his bean salad, which was technically in a dish...and delicious enough to keep him from elimination in that round. But the rest of his elaborate BBQ platter went in the garbage, as did my respect for a guy who’s so smitten with his own brilliance that he ignores the ticking clock.

9. Maybe You Should Stop Strokin’ Off
(S4E5, “Welcome to the Jungle”)
Don’t laugh too hard at the misfortunes of others. This ep came down to a grudge match between Chef Tom and Chef Matt, and during the second round (beef stroganoff), Tom hit Matt with a seemingly innocuous sabotage that turned his life into a living hell: he had to switch between different-sized pots while cooking. Poor Chef Matt...first he failed to boil water in a huge pot, then he kept spilling and losing his ingredients from a tiny pot. He was clearly miserable, convinced he was doomed...and while his opponents were busy chortling at his ordeal, they both fucked up. Chef Tom dumped parmesan on his dish at the last minute, ruining his flavors, and Chef Jessica undercooked her pasta and overwhelmed her meat in cognac -- after bragging about said cognac for the entire round. Oh, man, the looked of shocked relief on Chef Matt’s face when Chef Jessica was eliminated. I’ve never been happier to see someone survive a round. Karma.

8. Exclusively a Dumbass
(Various Episodes)
One recurring sabotage on Cutthroat Kitchen is when a chef gains an exclusive advantage. They might be the only chef in the kitchen who can cook a certain way, or they might swap their opponents’ choice ingredients for shitty alternatives. That sort of leg-up is not to be pissed away. However, I’ve noticed that again and again, the chef with the “advantage” will utterly blow it. Chefs have big egos by necessity, so the demons of hubris can strike hard. A chef has the exclusive right to use salt...and their final dish is under-seasoned. While making pea soup, only one chef wound up with good, fresh peas...and his soup was badly textured and pea-deficient. It’s kind of funny to see the look on the face of an eliminated chef who thought they had the high ground, but then you see the other chefs biting their tongues in outrage. You spent all that money to prop yourself up, then kicked away the crutch and hung yourself? YOU INCOMPETENT OAF OF A CLOD!

7. Don’t Be a Maverick
(S3E11, “Well, Hot Clam”)
I dunno where Chef Maverick got his name from -- hell, maybe he was born with it -- but it did him no favors, and neither did his doofus behavior in the first round. During the auction, Chef Maverick proved ready to blow all his money from the start (smart chefs save their moolah for when it really matters) and even tried to bid more than he actually had. Did he spend wisely? Well, when granted the power to assign heat sources, he bizarrely gave the best option, a barbecue grill, to someone else, and awarded himself a crappy little countertop grill because “I use these all the time!” So “skilled” was he that he finished his sliders and coleslaw ten minutes early, then aimlessly wandered around the kitchen, getting on everyone’s nerves, while his dish cooled and congealed. The final straw? Chef Maverick was eliminated for having overdone meat and a dry bun. How can you finish too early and still overcook? Meet the ditziest Maverick since Sarah Palin.

6. Self-Sabotage, Take Three
(S4E12, Chili’d to the Bone)
We’ve seen how chefs can be their own worst enemy. This was demonstrated in an episode where in all three rounds, the losing chef tasted defeat as a result of their own fuck-up. Taken in a row, they created a glorious parade of derp moments. First round: Chef TJ forgets to get cheese for her chili cheese dog. Buh-bye! Second round: Chef Nick sabotages the others with shitty pasta, but randomly opts to make Alfredo sauce without any milk or butter. Arrivederci! And in the final round, Chef Aaron, who was doing so well, deflects all sabotages. Problem is, they’re making Crêpe Suzette and Chef Aaron has no everloving clue how to craft proper crêpes. He does his best. He makes some very pretty...pancakes. Bonsoir! The winner, Chef Todd, did do a great job of rolling with the punches, but all he really needed was to sit back and let every one of his opponents shoot themselves in the foot.

5. Zoned Out
(S6E3, “In It to Twin It”)
Strategy is important, especially when faced with merciless Italian twins. In this twin-themed ep, Chef Sammy, along with brothers Nick and Nate, were forced to share a kitchen separated into three zones: prep, cooking, and equipment. One chef per zone. They could switch between zones, but only under mutual agreement. Chef Sammy began in the equipment zone, which would have been an advantage had he actually grabbed what he needed right away. Nope. With tragic foolishness, he returned to the equipment zone partway through the round and became trapped there: Nick and Nate could simply swap between prep and cooking while Sammy looked on, helpless, his time ticking away. And when Sammy finally escaped, what did he do? He forgot a fucking spatula. And back to the equipment zone he went to be trapped a second time. Dear lord, man! Do you not learn from your mistakes? I guess the other twin got all the foresight.

4. All and/or Nothing
(S6E13, “Alton and the Chocolate Factory”)
Chef Jackie from New Jersey could not be called endearing, what with her shrill voice and aggressive, trying-too-hard-to-be-witty schtick. However, her dishes were consistently delicious (if sloppy) and that propelled her to the final round. She was as type-A as they come, but her need to throw her weight around led to a ridiculous maneuver and a Cutthroat Kitchen first: she willingly spent all her money. In one single bid. Know how a pit bull will bite a stranger’s hand and then immediately look guilty? Chef Jackie’s horror came too late. She was headed for a purely symbolic victory, and, worse, her opponent didn’t even get the nastiest sabotage of the round. He merely had to stick chocolates in boxes for five minutes while Chef Jackie was elbow-deep in melted chocolate, clawing for various weird ingredients. She still pulled off a delicious dessert, but she didn’t win. Did she even want to at that point? Lose your cool on TV and you’ll lose every dollar, lose the match...lose at life.

3. The Black Egg of Doom
(S3E5, “Chain of Tools”)
Okay, so, there’s taking risks, and then there’s going out of your way to wreck a perfectly good dish. The challenge was cobb salad, and the sabotage was, Chef Nikos had to swap out three good ingredients for unpleasant substitutes. He could choose what he swapped, though...and he chose a fucking tactical nuke. Know what a century egg is? It’s an egg that has been buried and allowed to ferment for weeks, months, possibly years. You open its shell to reveal a black, slimy horror that gives off the fumes of Hades and...well, to call it an “acquired taste” is a fucking laugh. Keep in mind, Chef Nikos could easily have passed over this abomination and taken harmless Cheez Whiz instead. Nope! He opened that century egg and plunked it down whole on his salad like Smaug the dragon lurking atop his leafy green hoard. I’m pretty sure they skillfully edited out judge Antonia Lofaso’s projectile vomiting after she sampled Chef Nikos’ Cthulhu-approved terror plate. Farewell to her taste buds, farewell to Chef Nikos. Suicide by sulfur.

2. Letting Her Have It
(S2E12, “It’s Not Delivery”)
My boyfriend insists this is the stupidest thing he’s seen on the show, and while I don’t quite agree, I can understand the sheer hands-in-the-air retardation of Chef Athena’s final blunder. We’re in the third round, Chef Athena vs. Chef Rina. Athena has $19,300 remaining. Rina has bid her ass off and only has $3,000. So it should be a cinch for Chef Athena, right? She can hit Chef Rina with all the sabotages and still walk away with tons of cash! Only......she doesn’t. She fucking doesn’t. For reasons known only to Chef Athena, she allows Chef Rina to purchase the final sabotage, requiring Athena to salvage the tortillas from frozen enchiladas in order to make her fajitas. “I just let her have it,” Athena says with a shrug. WHYYYYYY??!! You had EVERY SINGLE advantage! So guess what? Chef Athena is eliminated and Chef Rina “wins” with a measly $1,400, which was, at the time, the lowest-ever Cutthroat Kitchen prize. I hope Chef Athena went home to a chorus of outrage from everyone she knew.

1. White Chocolate Lobster
(S1E3, “Porkchops and Sabotages”)
I refuse to not put this at number one. It looms huge in my mind, a monolith of stupidity. Meet Chef Taylor. Chef Taylor is young. A hotshot. He likes to push fine dining to the extreme and think outside the box. So the chefs are doing macaroni and cheese, and Chef Taylor gets hit with a great sabotage: he has to prepare dessert mac-n-cheese. And I was honestly rooting for him as he mixed mascarpone and white chocolate to create something that looked really, really yummy. A few minutes left on the clock and Chef Taylor’s golden...and then he utters the words of doom. “It’s missing something.” What does he toss in at the last second? Mother. Fucking. LOBSTER. I was stunned speechless. So was everybody on the show. LOBSTER? Judge Simon Majumdar looked at the plate in utter dread, and probably decided to boot Chef Taylor before he even tasted it. LOBSTER? If this is what Chef Taylor serves at his restaurant, stick its address on my GPS so I can maintain a fifty-mile radius. This was John Carpenter’s The Thing in a porcelain bowl. I do not like lobster, but I understand its culinary appeal...WHEN IT’S NOT INSIDE A FUCKING WHITE CHOCOLATE DESSERT! JESUS BARFED!

And that is the stupidest thing I have ever seen happen on Cutthroat Kitchen. And now do you see why this show is so great?