Esoterica Archives - Page 12 of 17

Eraserhead (1977) – DVD

June 29, 2006****/****, 1970s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Directors: David Lynch, DVD, Esoterica, FFC Must-Own

****/**** Image A Sound A Extras A
starring Jack Nance, Charlotte Stewart, Allen Joseph, Jeanne Bates
written and directed by David Lynch

by Walter Chaw David Lynch makes documentaries of the human subconscious. He captures–in a deadpan, almost scientifically-objective way–the processes through which we assimilate and interpret machine-fed data, replicating in that sense the sort of Pop aesthetic of Warhol's ilk without the snarky sense of milk-fed superiority. Take the cultural cues in his work: the Rockwellian Americana he essays in Blue Velvet; the Bauhaus by way of Antoni Gaudi of Dune; or the late-Hitchcock identity puzzles he rejiggers in Lost Highway and Mulholland Drive–both commonly seen as satires of what they represent but more accurately described, perhaps, as simple, uncommented-upon representations of what a lower layer of consciousness might consider to be unadorned gospel. Call the best moments of his best films Expressionism of the Id. (Mulholland Drive could be Vertigo shot by Hitch's bile and libido, unchained and unembarrassed.) Lynch's pictures are the very opposite of pretentious: they're unguarded images projected directly from a place of null intentionality. If the aim of art is to touch the sublime, to strum the thread of the collective unconscious that binds us each to each, as it were, then Lynch becomes a figure like Rainer Maria Rilke or William Blake or Beethoven–or in filmic terms, like Luis Buñuel or Carl Theodor Dreyer or moments of Sergio Leone.

The Short Films of David Lynch + Dumbland (2002) – DVDs

June 29, 20061960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Directors: David Lynch, DVD, Esoterica, Short Films

THE SHORT FILMS OF DAVID LYNCH
Image A Sound A Extras B-

DUMBLAND
Image B Sound A-

by Bill Chambers One is tempted to appropriate Jean-Luc Godard's oft-misquoted "The cinema is Nicholas Ray" in discussing the origins of David Lynch, whose blossoming sophistication unwittingly paralleled that of film itself. From the magic lantern-style innovation of his sculpture installation Six Men Getting Sick to the fixed camera placements of The Alphabet to the rudimentary narrative of The Grandmother (whose heavy's freakishly accentuated jawline transforms his countenance into that of a snarling villain in the "Perils of Pauline" mode) to, finally, the total aesthetic compromise of the shot-on-video The Amputee, the first few entries contained on "The Short Films of David Lynch" imply that there is only one destiny for the medium, whether its evolution is spread out over a century or concentrated in the time it takes for an artist to develop a conscience. If most film students go through a similar rite of passage, there's often an attendant, ineffable impatience with primitive techniques in undergrad films that's absent in Lynch's early work.

Drawing Restraint 9 (2006)

May 12, 2006Authors: Walter Chaw, Documentary, Esoterica, Japan, Theatrical

**½/****
starring Matthew Barney, Björk, Shigeru Akahori, Koji Maki
written and directed by Matthew Barney

by Walter Chaw Where Matthew Barney's Drawing Restraint 9 falls short of his brilliant, seminal Cremaster series is in its decision to focus on the exploitation of natural resources from whaling through to oil–as filtered through the prism of Japanese industry (using Shinto as the primary test)–rather than on, as in Cremaster, the process and scope of myth-making from the Celts to the Masons to Gary Gilmore. The focus is too discrete for the far-reaching archetypes Barney's disquieting, biomechanical surrealism suggests (he's somewhere at the fulcrum between Salvador Dali and David Cronenberg)–the attempt to articulate the perversity of man's exploitation of their natural resources seems a little like what it is: an artist too good and too provocative to waste his time on something that sells so trite.

Quintet (1979) [Robert Altman Collection] – DVD

April 27, 20061970s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Directors: Robert Altman, Drama, DVD, Esoterica, Mystery, Sci-Fi

**/**** Image A- Sound A- Extras B-
starring Paul Newman, Bibi Andersson, Fernando Rey, Vittorio Gassman
screenplay by Frank Barhydt & Robert Altman and Patricia Resnick
directed by Robert Altman

by Bill Chambers Set during another Ice Age (in a featurette on the DVD, co-writer/director Robert Altman makes the even loopier suggestion that the action takes place on another planet, perhaps to either demonstrate what little use he has for prologue or account for a total absence of people of colour), Quintet stars Paul Newman–never particularly well-matched with the iconoclasts–as Essex, a seal hunter trekking across the frozen tundra with pregnant wife Vivia (Brigitte Fossey) in search of his brother Francha (Tom Hill), who lives in candlelit ruins that now constitute a metropolis. Francha greets Essex by inviting him to play Quintet, a glyphic board game that has developed a religious following in these joyless times (some of Quintet's adjudicators have even adopted the names of patron saints, and they all wear makeshift Tudor caps), and when Essex goes off to fetch firewood, Altman pulls a Psycho and kills off every member of his party. It turns out that latter-day Louis XIV Grigor (Fernando Rey) has turned this dystopia into a human Quintet board by orchestrating the deaths of losing players. For largely nebulous reasons, Essex assumes the identity of Francha's assassin and joins a high-stakes tournie; Grigor sees through this ruse but decides to humour him, if only because to do otherwise would be unsportsmanlike.

They Shoot Movies, Don’t They? …The Making of Mirage (2000) – DVD

March 6, 20062000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Drama, DVD, Esoterica, Pseudo-Documentary

***/**** Image B Sound B+ Extras C-
directed by Frank Gallagher

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover BIG-TIME SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. There's a deception driving They Shoot Movies, Don't They? …The Making of Mirage that almost invalidates its considerable power. I can't actually write an in-depth review without telling you that this doc-doppelgänger is, in fact, fiction–a detail conveniently omitted from the keepcase and promotional materials so as to drive home its point while you take it all at face value. I was furious once the commentary finally cemented that "subject" Tom Paulson wasn't real and that his rise and fall never actually took place–but although I question the ethics of that sin of omission, there's no denying that the film is totally convincing as the genuine article. Director Frank Gallagher and his collaborators have clearly lived at the foot of the Hollywood mountain long enough to note the kind of desperation that destroys perspective and inflates egos, and they're painfully accurate in showing how an obsession with success can be a sure path to destruction.

Repo Man (1984) [Collector’s Edition] – DVD

February 6, 20061980s, Action, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, Crime, DVD, Esoterica, Sci-Fi, Thriller

***/**** Image A Sound A- Extras B+
starring Harry Dean Stanton, Emilio Estevez, Tracey Walter, Olivia Barash
written and directed by Alex Cox

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. The question I ask after a screening of Repo Man is this: is it punk? And if it isn't punk, what is it? Those used to the anarcho-communitarian (i.e., "nice") ideals adopted by punk's intelligentsia would have no truck with the mentality of this film, whose hero, Otto Maddox (Emilio Estevez), is in it for cheap thrills and hasn't got an ideal in his head. Indeed, once he gets sucked into the more "intense" world of car repossessor Bud (Harry Dean Stanton) and thus gainful employment, he distances himself from his punk friends–as represented by the three mohawk'd chumps whose idea of "doing crimes" is "let's order sushi and not pay!" But the repo gig leads to another dead end, as Bud turns out to be a blowhard full of idiot rules and his compatriots prove more unstable than Otto's old friends. There is no future to Otto's dreaming–just the cul-de-sac of punk's dark flipside: nihilism.

The Alan Clarke Collection – DVD

January 24, 20061970s, 1980s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Blue Underground, Crime, Documentary, Drama, DVD, Esoterica, Prison, Television, UK

SCUM (BBC VERSION) (1977) ***½/**** starring Ray Winstone, Phil Daniels, David Threfall screenplay by Roy Minton directed by Alan Clarke SCUM (THEATRICAL VERSION) (1979) ***½/**** starring Ray Winstone, Phil Daniels, Mick Ford screenplay by Roy Minton directed by Alan Clarke MADE IN BRITAIN (1982) ***½/**** starring Tim Roth, Eric Richard, Terry Richards screenplay by David Leland directed by Alan Clarke THE FIRM (1989) ***/**** starring Gary Oldman, Lesley Manville, Phillip Davis screenplay by Al Hunter directed by Alan Clarke ELEPHANT (1989) ***½/**** screenplay by Bernard MacLaverty directed by Alan Clarke DIRECTOR: ALAN CLARKE (1991) **/**** directed by Corin Campbell-Hill by…

The PianoTuner of EarthQuakes (2006); Mutual Appreciation (2006); Unknown (2006)

January 19, 20062000s, Animation, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Drama, Esoterica, Family, Fantasy, France, Germany, Music, Mystery, Romance, Theatrical, Thriller, UK

THE PIANOTUNER OF EARTHQUAKES
*½/****
starring Amira Casar, Gottfried John, Assumpta Serna, César Saracho
screenplay by Alan Passes and The Quay Brothers
directed by The Quay Brothers

MUTUAL APPRECIATION
***½/****
starring Justin Rice, Rachel Clift, Andrew Bujalski, Seung-Min Lee
written and directed by Andrew Bujalski

UNKNOWN
½*/****
starring Jim Caviezel, Greg Kinnear, Bridget Moynahan, Joe Pantoliano
screenplay by Matthew Waynee
directed by Simon Brand

by Walter Chaw The Quay Brothers, Stephen and Timothy, are marvellous animators, having shepherded stop-motion and a disquieting biomechanical ethic into a series of notably discomfiting shorts, more than one of which pays tribute to their hero/mentor Jan Svankmajer. I met their 1995 transition to live-action features (Institute Benjamenta) with equal parts excitement, curiosity, and trepidation–I believed they'd be a little like either fellow animator-turned-director Tim Burton or those masters of a form who overreach by switching to a different medium, à la Michael Jordan. The truth is somewhere in-between, as the Quays have retained a bit of their glacial patience and a marked affection for created environments but have miscalculated the extent to which our fascination with animate clockworks translates into a commensurate fascination with people sitting around, staring at a wall. The former inspires existential thoughts on the nature of sentience; the latter generally inspires boredom. No question in my mind that something's lurking in the Quays' underneath, but it's important to mark that fine line distinguishing fascination from obtuseness for the sake of itself. Exploring the waking/dreamlife divide is interesting–but it's neither original nor terribly useful when the main tactic seems to be to conjure up pomposity-inspired sleepiness.

DIFF ’05: Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story

November 11, 20052000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DIFF/SDFF, Esoterica, Film Festivals, UK

***/****starring Steve Coogan, Rob Brydon, Gillian Anderson, Keeley Hawesscreenplay by Martin Hardy, based on the novel The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Esq. by Laurence Sternedirected by Michael Winterbottom by Walter Chaw This whole idea of post-modern meta-movies just doesn't thrill me the way it used to. Nonetheless, Brit maverick Michael Winterbottom's once around on the Adaptation. wheel is buoyed by a game cast and an actual purpose: rather than the impossibility of a blocked writer trying to adapt a bad novel, find here a post-modern film about a novel that predicted, in a way, post-modernism itself. Winterbottom addresses…

Oliver Twist (2005) + Kings & Queen (2004)

October 5, 20052000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Czech Republic, Drama, Esoterica, France, Romance, Theatrical, UK

OLIVER TWIST
**/****
starring Ben Kingsley, Barney Clark, Leanne Rowe, Mark Strong
screenplay by Ronald Harwood, based on the novel by Charles Dickens
directed by Roman Polanski

Rois et reine
***½/****
starring Emmanuelle Devos, Mathieu Amalric, Catherine Deneuve, Maurice Garrel
screenplay by Roger Bohbot, Arnaud Desplechin
directed by Arnaud Desplechin

by Walter Chaw Roman Polanski is an architectural director. By that I mean he moves his camera in careful, constructed motions, and the characters he places within these movements are best when they seem restrained by them, oppressed by the presence of the director in a way similar to Hitchcock’s protagonists. Indeed, Polanski at his best (Repulsion, Knife in the Water, The Tenant, Rosemary’s Baby, Macbeth, Chinatown) makes films that Hitchcock might have made: alight with social revulsion, weighted by claustrophobic set-pieces, and thick with subtext. But Polanski at his worst (Bitter Moon, The Ninth Gate, Frantic, Pirates, Tess) betrays a tendency towards the frenetic–an unbecoming manic energy that leans towards the childish instead of what I think is the intended demoniacal. Polanski close to the vest is Polanski at his best, and when midway through something tending towards mediocre like The Pianist, he erected a literal wall within which to restrain his antihero (tellingly, the best Polanski protagonists are acted-upon)–that architectural boundary allowing the director to regain his footing, if only for the last part of the film.

TIFF ’05: Dear Wendy

September 26, 20052000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Crime, Denmark, Drama, Esoterica, Film Festivals, France, Germany, Romance, TIFF, UK

*½/****starring Jamie Bell, Bill Pullman, Michael Angarano, Danso Gordonscreenplay by Lars von Trierdirected by Thomas Vinterberg by Bill Chambers It's a classic catch-22: Dear Wendy reveals that Jamie Bell was born to play Billy the Kid, but it probably also squanders his chances of doing so. As Dick, the orphaned son of a miner, Bell dons Michael J. Fox's effeminate cowboy duds from Back to the Future Part III and transforms the town's social lepers into a gang of gun fetishists known collectively as the Dandies; director Thomas Vinterberg and screenwriter Lars von Trier give us the gay burlesque version…

TIFF ’05: Mary

September 14, 20052000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Drama, Esoterica, Thriller, TIFF

**/****starring Juliette Binoche, Forest Whitaker, Matthew Modine, Marion Cotillardscreenplay by Simone Lageoles, Abel Ferrara, Mario Isabelladirected by Abel Ferrara by Bill Chambers There are really three-tiers to Abel Ferrara's output, as indicated by his choice of avatar. Arguably the most commercial, at least until New Rose Hotel, his Christopher Walken movies have also been the director's most meticulously crafted, while his Harvey Keitel movies resonate as Ferrara's most personal, with Dangerous Game probably the closest he's ever come to a roman à clef. Then there is Matthew Modine, star of The Blackout and now Mary--relatively minor films seemingly motivated by…

Mac and Me (1988) – DVD

May 30, 20051980s, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Coming of Age, Drama, DVD, Esoterica, Family, Satire, Sci-Fi, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/**** Image D Sound D
starring Christine Ebersole, Jonathan Ward, Katrina Caspary, Lauren Stanley
screenplay by Stewart Raffill and Steve Feke
directed by Stewart Raffill

by Walter Chaw One of the most woeful and dispiriting films ever made, Stewart Raffill's Mac and Me qualifies as a hate crime. It's a feature-length commercial for McDonald's, Coca-Cola, Skittles, and Sears masquerading as a rip-off of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial ("MAC" = "Mysterious Alien Creature") that, what with Alan Silvestri's awful score, indicates that it's also ripping off Back to the Future during a key scene in which our wheelchair-bound hero, Eric (Jade Calegory), grabs the fender of a passing car and hitches his way to relative safety. Chips it might earn for casting an actual disabled kid in the role are cashed in when it's revealed that Eric's wrinkled-flesh puppet alien pal can only be sustained on this island earth by a combination of Coke and Skittles. It's enough to put you off not only junk food, but movies altogether. There's a place in Hell reserved for the clowns who peddle stuff like this (Ronald McDonald makes a cameo in the picture, and an even longer one in the trailer)–the movie is so venal and grasping in its conception, so astonishingly inept in its execution, that upon death, Raffill and writing partner Steve Feke should have this piece of crap projected onto their caskets to counter the pain of their passing. I'm serious. Mac and Me lowers the conversation for everyone, to the extent that it's almost a satire of greed and corporate malfeasance. Show it in a double-bill with Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room for an example of what corporations think they can get away with–and what they do.

Layer Cake (2004); 3-Iron (2004); Palindromes (2005)

May 12, 2005****/****, 2000s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Crime, Drama, Esoterica, Japan, Romance, South Korea, Theatrical, Thriller, UK

LAYER CAKE
***/****
starring Daniel Craig, Colm Meaney, Kenneth Cranham, Michael Gambon
screenplay by J.J. Connolly, based on his novel
directed by Matthew Vaughn

3-IRON
****/****
starring Lee Seung-yeon, Jae Hee
written and directed by Kim Ki-duk

PALINDROMES
***½/****
starring Ellen Barkin, Stephen Adly Guirgis, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Richard Masur
written and directed by Todd Solondz

by Walter Chaw Producer Matthew Vaughn makes his directorial debut with the Brit underground gangster flick Layer Cake, and he does it with a sexy, cool savoir-faire that runs slick and smooth. It's softer than Jonathan Glazer's fabulously decadent Sexy Beast (most of that due, no doubt, to there being no baddie the equivalent of Ben Kingsley's Don Logan in Vaughn's film) and more coherent than Paul McGuigan's Gangster No. 1, but it slips snug into the same conversation. Now that Guy Ritchie's been gobbled whole by his very own vagina dentate, it stands to reason that Vaughn, Ritchie's producer on Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch, would seek to fill the void left in the only U.K. pop genre with any sort of international currency all by his own self. Yet the product of Vaughn's hand isn't so much an imitation as it is a refinement: not better necessarily, but calmer–closer to the lounge lizard James Bond of the 1960s than to the feisty punk Michael Caine heisters from roughly the same period, though Layer Cake is infused, of course, with a healthy dose of nastiness and post-modern irony.

The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004) [The Criterion Collection – Special Edition Two-Disc Set] – DVD

May 9, 20052000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Directors: Wes Anderson, Drama, DVD, Esoterica, The Criterion Collection

***½/**** Image A Sound A+ Extras A+
starring Bill Murray, Owen Wilson, Cate Blanchett, Anjelica Huston
screenplay by Wes Anderson & Noah Baumbach
directed by Wes Anderson

by Walter Chaw His idiosyncrasies are by now familiar, but it still takes more than one viewing to assimilate Wes Anderson’s quirk with the undercurrent of wisdom and emotionality that makes it sing. The excavation of the relationships between brothers that ultimately explains the longevity of his light debut Bottle Rocket, the exploration of loneliness and the connection between mentors and boys that buoys Rushmore, and, most affectingly, the rough bond between fathers and sons in The Royal Tenenbaums edify Anderson’s work like the unexpected pockets of tenderness in the Coen Brothers’ early stuff, or those flashes of intricacy that transform John Cassavetes’s vérité chuff into masterworks. With The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, Anderson goes back to what’s familiar in his studiedly unfamiliar way: to mentors and boys, to fathers and sons, and to brothers incidentally if not in fact–casting them all adrift in a hermetic universe that is as influenced by Sixties lounge kitsch as it is by post-modern dissociative cool. And in retracing his steps, he manages to recreate a lot of the same surprising humanity of his first three films, but I do wonder about The Life Aquatic‘s lasting resonance.

Japón (2002) – DVD

April 28, 20052000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Drama, DVD, Esoterica, Mexico, Spain

***/**** Image B+ Sound A Extras B
starring Alejandro Ferretis, Magdalena Flores, Yolanda Villa, Martin Serranos
written and directed by Carlos Reygadas

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover You are hereby warned: there's a sense in which Japón is long-winded, ponderous, and full of dead spots that go on forever. But there's also a sense that without those dead spots, the shining nuggets of value wouldn't mean nearly as much. It's not a story, it's a landscape, there to be explored as opposed to shuttled through in a hurry; if you lose your interest one moment, something will come along to pique it again. Though the keepcase of Japón's DVD release approvingly links it to that other natural wonder, Andrei Tarkovsky, the film is more carnal and less religious than his work: director Carlos Reygadas isn't into the music of the spheres so much as the beauty of the land and sweat trickling down your body. You get distracted, but don't worry: you'll be back.

p.s. (2004) + Birth (2004)|Birth (2004) – DVD

April 10, 2005****/****, 2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Esoterica, FFC Must-Own, France, Germany, Mystery, Romance, Theatrical, Thriller, UK

p.s.
**½/****
starring Laura Linney, Topher Grace, Gabriel Byrne, Marcia Gay Harden
screenplay by Helen Schulman and Dylan Kidd, based on the novel by Helen Schulman
directed by Dylan Kidd

BIRTH
****/**** Image A Sound A
starring Nicole Kidman, Cameron Bright, Danny Huston, Lauren Bacall
screenplay by Jean-Claude Carrière, Milo Addica, Jonathan Glazer
directed by Jonathan Glazer

by Walter Chaw Second chances, erasing memories, manipulating perception–films this year like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Code 46, The Forgotten, The Manchurian Candidate, The Village, The Butterfly Effect, Before Sunset, 50 First Dates, The Final Cut, and so on suggest a collective desire to wash the slate clean, put on blinkers, and regain a little of that sweet, blithe ignorance of the day before yesterday. It's never as easy as all that, of course, since things have a tendency of coming back–and when an artifact of the past intrudes on the present it carries with it (along with all those memories of green) an aggressive payload of unexpected reactions. You can never go home again, nor can home ever return to you. Nevertheless, it tries to in a pair of films, two sophomore efforts, as it happens: Dylan Kidd's p.s. and Jonathan Glazer's Birth. Curiously, just the idea of the first film after a triumphant debut is tangled with the desire to recapture a little of the magic of the past.

Venus in Furs (1969) – DVD

April 7, 20051960s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Blue Underground, DVD, Esoterica, Italy, Thriller, UK, West Germany

Paroxismus
**/**** Image A Sound A Extras A-
starring James Darren, Barbara McNair, Maria Rohm, Klaus Kinski
screenplay by Jess Franco & Malvin Wald
directed by Jess Franco

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Masterpiece is such a relative term. The keepcase for Venus in Furs (a.k.a. Paroxismus) anoints this rough jewel in Jess Franco's crown as "the one fans and critics alike call his masterpiece," but all this means is that next to some of the other films in Franco's dissipated oeuvre, Venus in Furs is comparatively competent, hangs together decently, and won't cause the intense eye-rolling of something like the same year's The Girl from Rio. But though it's slick and watchable, it's still a conceptual mess, combining a blithe pretentiousness with a total inability to suggest cause and effect–not to mention Franco's usual sophomoric sexuality. Or does being propositioned by Dean Martin while on acid count as a masterpiece?

What the Bleep Do We Know!? (2004) – DVD

March 30, 20052000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, Documentary, Drama, DVD, Esoterica, Mystery, Sci-Fi

What the #$*! Do We (K)now!?
*/**** Image B+ Sound A Extras D
starring Marlee Matlin, Elaine Hendrix, Robert Bailey Jr., John Ross Bowie
screenplay by William Arntz, Betsy Chasse and Matthew Hoffman
directed by William Arntz, Betsy Chasse and Mark Vicente

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Watching a bunch of young actresses knock themselves out with their Method masochism, Pauline Kael astutely noted how they “tried to find the motivation [where] actresses of an earlier generation would have merely provided it.” Little did she know that you could extend the exercise to philosophy: in its dogged attempt to confer genius on commonplace ideas, What the Bleep Do We Know!? proves that Method metaphysics is eminently possible. What the film doesn’t do is give us any point of view outside our own noggins, oversimplifying human experience as much as it mystifies it and dressing up self-involvement as enlightenment. It’s a movie that can’t let you see the man behind the curtain, lest you discover that he’s actually Dr. Phil.

Carnivàle: The Complete First Season (2003) – DVD

March 22, 20052000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, DVD, Esoterica, Fantasy, Television

Image A Sound A Extras C
"Milfay," "After the Ball Is Over," "Tipton," "Black Blizzard," "Babylon," "Pick a Number," "The River," "Lonnigan, Texas," "Insomnia," "Hot and Bothered," "The Day of the Dead," "The Day That Was the Day"

by Walter Chaw It's the Depression in Dust Bowl United States, and Ben (Nick Stahl) really needs a bath: His mother's just died (but not before hissing at him to keep his distance, Mr. Antichrist) and he's in the act of burying her when a traveling carnival happens along to spirit him away before the local constabulary can. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy threatens briefly to break out as a bulldozer shows up to raze Ben's ramshackle homestead, but hey diddley hee, the roustie's life for me, says Ben. In a way, comparisons of HBO's handsomely-mounted "Carnivàle" to Douglas Adams's brilliant stuff is apt as Ben, like Adams's everyman Arthur, is orphaned from his home, set adrift in an absurd universe in the company of freaks, and burdened with the responsibility for the salvation of all mankind. A parallel story, joined to Ben's by a couple of early dream sequences, involves preacher-man Brother Crowe (Clancy Brown) navigating some tricky incestual straits with spinster sister Iris (Amy Madigan) in the midst of trying to establish a mission for the dislocated Okies flooding the Golden State–a purpose at odds with a Church hierarchy represented by kindly Father Balthus (Ralph Waite). In almost no time (well, actually, just barely in time for the end of the first season), the opening narration provided by Management liaison Samson (Michael J. Anderson) telling of one avatar for good and one for evil born into each generation comes into focus with Ben on one side and Brother Crowe on the other. No prize for guessing who's who.