The Girl Next Door (2004) [Unrated Version] – DVD

August 8, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Romance

**/**** Image B+ Sound B+ Extras B+
starring Emile Hirsch, Elisha Cuthbert, Timothy Olyphant, James Remar
 screenplay by Stuart Blumberg and David T. Wagner & Brent Goldberg
directed by Luke Greenfield

Girlnextdoorcap

by Walter Chaw Though it reminds a great deal of Paul Brickman's Risky Business, The Girl Next Door reminds all the more that there's really only one Paul Brickman, and while this picture sustains the sleazy wish-fulfillment of Risky Business for a good long run, it can't replicate the same kind of insouciant rebellion. The exercise feels forced in a way that Risky Business doesn't, the earlier film's ease owing mostly to Brickman but also to another of Tangerine Dream's definitive Eighties scores and, perhaps, the bestial liquid chemistry between Tom Cruise and Rebecca De Mornay–a chemistry that's never quite replicated by a very fine Emile Hirsch and the very fine Elisha Cuthbert. Without the reckless air of youth on the verge, The Girl Next Door starts to feel like calculated imitation, becoming affected and, eventually, what a teenage sex comedy can't be: restrained. Its bark is worse than its bite, and in the end, only its premise is subversive.

Burden of Dreams: FFC Interviews Tadanobu Asano

August 8, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Interviews, Japan

TasanointerviewtitleTadanobu Asano, the pride of Japanese cult cinema, on his latest performances

August 8, 2004|A lot of people are calling Tadanobu Asano Japan's Brad Pitt; I'm more comfortable comparing him to Johnny Depp. He's a beautiful guy, no question, but he's also fond of quirky film choices that work against his matinee-idol good looks. If he couldn't act, it'd be career suicide, but in the course of a little over ten years, Asano has fashioned a body of work that alternates between disturbed and disturbing. It says a lot about the Japanese audience that he has found fame and fortune playing sociopathic murderers and suicidal urban manqué.

Collateral (2004)

August 5, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Directors: Michael Mann, Drama, Theatrical, Thriller

***½/****
starring Tom Cruise, Jamie Foxx, Jada Pinkett Smith, Mark Ruffalo
screenplay by Stuart Beattie
directed by Michael Mann

Collateralby Walter Chaw To hear Michael Mann tell it, you'd think he'd found a new way to film Los Angeles, the most-filmed city in the world. To watch Collateral is to discover that he has. I wish that there were some meat to Collateral, because even without it, it's hands-down this year's most gorgeously-directed film. If there was ever any question to Michael Mann's genius after Manhunter, The Last of the Mohicans, or Heat, it must be laid to rest now–he's pushing Spielberg in terms of visual gift, trumping him in terms of maturity (and courage, of course), and he's moving into an upper echelon of cinematic directors (Stanley Kubrick, for example) who, when they're on, produce tapestries so pure that you feel as though if you tapped them they'd ring like crystal.

Wizards (1977) – DVD

August 4, 2004Posted in1970s, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, DVD, Fantasy, Sci-Fi

**½/**** Image B+ Sound A- Extras A-
written and directed by Ralph Bakshi

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover I like Ralph Bakshi movies. I wish I didn’t, because they’re shrill and vulgar and slightly immature, and not even examples of brilliant cartooning. But they’ve got a working-class desperation to them that most American movies are too posh and moneyed to accurately capture. Hollywood filmmakers typically see poverty as an occasion for condescension from above; Bakshi sees it at ground level–consider the generations of failure that littered American Pop, or the chaotic skid-row scramble that defined Heavy Traffic. Thus I find myself in the unenviable position of guardedly praising his 1977 Wizards, which in the hands of any other director would have been merely a sleazy Tolkien-meets-Heavy-Metal fantasy riff. This is not to say that it isn’t a sleazy Tolkien-meets-Heavy-Metal fantasy riff, but it’s one with moments that resonate beyond simplistic sex and violence and wipe the goofy grin off of the normally flighty and gossamer-draped genre.

Johnson Family Vacation (2004) – DVD

August 3, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, DVD, Road Movie

½*/**** Image A Sound A- Extras C+
starring Cedric the Entertainer, Bow Wow, Vanessa Williams, Shannon Elizabeth
screenplay by Todd R. Jones & Earl Richey Jones
directed by Christopher Erskin

by Bill Chambers Big fan of National Lampoon's Vacation that I am, I was actually intrigued by the prospect of its central characters undergoing a racial inversion. On their trip to a mecca of family fun known as Wally World, the Caucasian Griswolds left their suburban cocoon only to discover how socially ill-equipped they were for the rest of an increasingly stratified America–an apologue in the vein of The Wizard of Oz that's more than un-PC: it's anthropological; a black retread hewed to its line has the potential to be far more applicable to the African-American experience than, say, The Wiz. Unfortunately, while National Lampoon's Vacation was scripted by John Hughes, the Reagan era's premier commentator on class relations, the creators of something called "C-Bear and Jamal" wrote Johnson Family Vacation. Maybe their lack of pedigree is irrelevant, but so is the film, which we can only generously call a pale imitation of National Lampoon's Vacation. After the opening credits, I wished the movie had had the wit to rib its derivative genesis with a parody of National Lampoon's Vacation's signature song ("Ease on Down the Holiday Road"–isn't it obvious?). By the end of the movie, I wished it had wit.

Decoys (2004) – DVD

August 3, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Canada, DVD, Horror, Sci-Fi

**/**** Image B+ Sound B Extras C-
starring Corey Sevier, Stefanie Von Pfetten, Meghan Ory, Kim Poirier
screenplay by Matt Hastings & Tom Berry
directed by Matt Hastings

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Faithful watchers of Canadian film held their collective breath when it was announced recently that the major funding bodies would no longer be supporting arthouse fare. Instead of nurturing the next Atom Egoyan, the country would shepherd in Hollywood-esque fare like Foolproof (ironically co-produced by Atom Egoyan), hoping for an increase in ticket sales and perhaps a rejoinder to those critics who attack our cinema for being a ruthless killjoy. The question remained: would a simple shift in mode rid us of the tag of funbusters? In the case of the recent, terrible Decoys, the answer is: not bloody likely. Despite its dedicated efforts at reproducing American-style mindlessness, it rings all of the Canadian bells about sexual disgust, aversion to pleasure, and fear of decisive action that have bedevilled our country's cinema from the very beginning. That it's awful on its own terms is beside the point: it's how it's awful that's most instructive.

New York Minute (2004) [Widescreen Edition] – DVD

August 2, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Crime, DVD, Romance, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/**** Image A Sound A- Extras D+
starring Mary-Kate Olsen, Ashley Olsen, Eugene Levy, Andy Richter
screenplay by Emily Fox and Adam Cooper & Bill Collage
directed by Dennie Gordon

Newyorkminutedvdcapby Walter Chaw At some point in New York Minute, a Chihuahua gives Andy Richter (playing an Asian man, natch) a golden shower in the backseat of a limousine, saving one of the Olsen twins from the intimidation and possibly torture of Richter's distaff Fu Manchu archetype mother, Mama Bang (Alannah Ong). (Mama Bang later threatens that Chihuahua with a pair of chopsticks. Because chinks eat dogs–get it?) At another point in the picture, director Dennie Gordon, a woman who should be ashamed of herself, films the seventeen-at-the-time-of-shooting twins in sexy-commercial slow-motion; they're wearing towels after having showers in a cute guy's hotel room, and when said guy (Jared Padalecki) walks in on them, he asks, "Hey, is today my birthday?"

Wave 2: FFC Interviews Stacy Peralta & Greg Noll

August 1, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Documentary, Interviews

RidinggiantsinterviewtitleAugust 1, 2004|The first time I met Stacy Peralta, it was little more than a month after September 11, 2001. He had come into town for the Denver International Film Festival (which I was covering for the first time for FFC), and I felt daunted by both the mood of the festival and by Peralta's status as a living legend amongst a small, rabid group of extreme-sports enthusiasts. Peralta was there to accompany his first documentary, the much-praised Dogtown & Z-Boys, the success of which led to a few still-kicking projects, including a feature film adaptation of Dogtown directed by Thirteen's Catherine Hardwicke. First appearances spoke volumes: Self-effacing and modest, he was genuinely concerned about what had happened in New York and at the Pentagon. He was able to put his work into perspective in regards to not only life and death calamity, of course, but also in regards to more experienced filmmakers–artists he admires in a medium to which he's still relatively new. The next time I meet Stacy Peralta, it's in the crowded lobby of Denver's Mayan Theater, where he and surf-legend Greg Noll are preparing to do a Q&A with an audience that's just seen Peralta's newest documentary, Riding Giants. The crowd is raucous, Noll is nervous, and Peralta? He's cool as the other side of the pillow in trademark ballcap, sporting a sincere look upon shaking my hand and remembering the conversation that we had almost three years ago now. I sat down with Mr. Peralta and Mr. Noll ("Greg, please, just 'Greg'") the following morning to chat about riding big waves and the siren's call of filmmaking for skate brats and surf hounds. Both men are the real deal, having stuck their irons in hotter coals than junkets and promotional screenings, emerging with the grace to deal with attention and inane questions. They're in the moment, as Buddhists would remark, riding the quiet part of the wave.

Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle (2004)

July 30, 2004Posted in2000s, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, Comedy, Germany, Theatrical

***/****
starring John Cho, Kal Penn, Neil Patrick Harris, Anthony Anderson
screenplay by Jon Hurwitz & Hayden Schlossberg
directed by Danny Leiner

Haroldkumargotowhitecastleby Walter Chaw Danny Leiner's Dude, Where's My Car isn't as bad as you'd think and his Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle is probably a good deal better than you have any right to expect. It begins as any number of gross-out frat-boy comedies do, with a white guy picking on a quiet Asian dude–and then it makes the interesting decision to stay with the quiet Asian dude (Korean actor John Cho (Harold)) and his roommate, East Indian Kumar (Kal Penn), as they embark on a quest to kill marijuana munchies at the revered White Castle hamburger chain. It's about, as Harold says at one point, the feeling of a man getting what he really wants. A simple enough statement (certainly a simple enough basis for a picture–some would say too simple), but it speaks volumes of our culture that it's so unusual that Harold and Kumar are not only not merely racial shorthand caricatures, but also just young men.

The Manchurian Candidate (2004)

July 30, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Directors: Jonathan Demme, Drama, Mystery, Sci-Fi, Theatrical, Thriller

***/****
starring Denzel Washington, Meryl Streep, Liev Schreiber, Kimberly Elise
screenplay by Daniel Pyne and Dean Georgaris, based on the novel by Richard Condon
directed by Jonathan Demme

by Walter Chaw Jonathan Demme’s The Manchurian Candidate is arguably more of a retelling of William Cameron Menzies’s Invaders from Mars (1953) than it is of John Frankenheimer’s incomparable 1962 original. Like Menzies’s science-fiction B-movie classic, the premise of Demme’s updating is that some alien force (Earthling mad scientist in this instance instead of Martian) has implanted a small device in certain respected members of our society in order to manipulate them into harming our surprisingly fragile good old American value system. Also like Invaders from Mars, the whole film moves with the logic of a fever dream, all intense close-ups, hallucinatory visions, and suggestions of going underground.

Riding Giants (2004) + Metallica: Some Kind of Monster (2004)

July 29, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Documentary, France, Music, Sports, Theatrical

RIDING GIANTS
**/****
directed by Stacy Peralta

METALLICA: SOME KIND OF MONSTER
**/****
directed by Joe Berlinger & Bruce Sinofsky

by Walter Chaw Skateboard legend Stacy Peralta's follow-up to his highly-regarded Dogtown & Z-Boys is the big wave surfing documentary Riding Giants. Equal parts ecstatic archival sports video and hagiography of the pioneers of the deep water (a new meaning for "swells"), its strengths are the same as those for Dogtown: a great soundtrack, and a sense of kinetic energy that manages to confer, at least in fits and starts, the breathlessness of the subject to an enraptured audience. But it lacks the background sociology of Peralta's prior work, failing for the most part to explain how the surf culture came to be even as it offers a survey history of the entire pastime. The film is strong on the usual suspects and the dazzling locations–and weak on the kind of lawlessness and maniacal urge to rebel that created something like an extreme beach Woodstock almost twenty years before our collective cultural dam broke. Just mentioning the Beat Poets is not enough.

Wyatt Earp (1994) [Two-Disc Special Edition] – DVD

July 27, 2004Posted in1990s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Biopic, Drama, DVD, Western

**½/**** Image A+ Sound A+ Extras D
starring Kevin Costner, Dennis Quaid, Gene Hackman, Jeff Fahey
screenplay by Dan Gordon and Lawrence Kasdan
directed by Lawrence Kasdan

by Walter Chaw It seemed like a good idea at the time: Kevin Costner–still a hot commodity just four years removed from Dances with Wolves, fresh from what might be the most important film of his career (A Perfect World), and not yet stigmatized by Waterworld–reteaming with his Silverado director Lawrence Kasdan, then one of the best genre writers in Hollywood, for a biopic of the famous lawman Wyatt Earp. Unfortunately, Wyatt Earp flopped like Kurt Rambis in the paint. It was too long, too prosaic, and in what appears in retrospect to be a pathological lack of pretense, too pretentious by half. It was the first real nail in Costner's career coffin–a product of his having way too much power and way too little savvy in a cynical America that had outgrown his kind of aw-shucks long about Gary Cooper. Costner's still shouting, but it's hard to hear him from all the way back there in 1940.

The Tarzan Collection – DVD + Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes (1984) – DVDs

July 26, 2004Posted in1930s, 1940s, 1980s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Drama, DVD, UK

TARZAN THE APE MAN (1932)
***/**** Image B- Sound B+
starring Johnny Weissmuller, Neil Hamilton, C. Aubrey Smith, Maureen O’Sullivan
adaptation by Cyril Hume; dialogue by Ivor Novello
based on characters created by Edgar Rice Burroughs
directed by W.S. Van Dyke

Tarzancoltheapemancapby Bill Chambers As with most “origin” Tarzan films, Tarzan himself is an off-screen promise for the first third of Tarzan the Ape Man, though his famous yodel (which the studio maintains was artificially created) portends his appearance about ten minutes before he actually materializes. Likewise, as with most origin Tarzans, this one has become something of a viewing formality: The basics of Tarzan are pop-culture fundamentals passed down through the generations as if by osmosis, and so any film that aims to tell the story from scratch is bound to seem a little sluggish. It’s remarkable, then, that Tarzan the Ape Man, in addition to exhibiting a surprising immunity to the ravages of time, is also mostly spared the contempt born of familiarity. Cutie-pie Maureen O’Sullivan essays the talkies’ first Jane, who joins her father James’s (C. Aubrey Smith) expedition in Africa and immediately casts a spell on dad’s right-hand man, Harry Holt (Neil Hamilton). Once they begin their treacherous journey across the Mutia escarpment, beyond which allegedly lies an elephant graveyard that James and co. plan to raid for its ivory, Jane meets her true intended, the monosyllabic, acrobatic Tarzan (Johnny Weissmuller). Though Tarzan more or less abducts Jane, their compatibility is such that she refutes her father’s claim that Tarzan belongs to the jungle when she’s reunited with the caravan. “Not now. He belongs to me,” she pouts.

The Belly of an Architect (1990) – DVD

July 26, 2004Posted in1990s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Drama, DVD, UK

***/**** Image B+ Sound A-
starring Brian Dennehy, Chloe Webb, Lambert Wilson
written and directed by Peter Greenaway

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Living as I do in Toronto’s rapidly-gentrifying Queen West gallery district, I am often subjected to graffiti and other detritus romantically asserting the social necessity of art and aesthetics–as if a fresh coat of paint and some nicely-arranged furniture will somehow go towards solving the homeless problem. I find this hilarious, because despite the left-wing cast that the artistic community has acquired, it can all too easily turn into the plaything of the rich, as has happened with local hotspot the Drake Hotel, a former transient lodge transformed into a posh art venue and nightclub for pretentious scenesters. Peter Greenaway’s The Belly of an Architect simultaneously addresses and embodies the creative hubris that overlooks this fact, whipsawing between annoyance at its corpulent hero’s placement of aesthetic considerations above all human interactions and wistfully lamenting the fact that such considerations often add up to nothing. If the results are imperfect, they’ll at least give the art-minded a certain amount of pause.

Garage Days (2002) – DVD

July 25, 2004Posted in2000s, Australia, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Music

*½/**** Image A- Sound A- Extras C+
starring Kick Gurry, Maya Stange, Pia Miranda, Russell Dykstra
screenplay by Dave Warner & Alex Proyas and Michael Udesky
directed by Alex Proyas

by Walter Chaw A film done better just last year with Michael Winterbottom’s 24 Hour Party People, the brilliant Alex Proyas’s third film is a relatively innocuous, mostly-failed rags-to-rags garage-band opera that finds its speed in its usage of stock crowd footage from an old INXS concert. Garage Days is, as you might assume, a period piece of sorts, but period only in the sense that a Baz Luhrman film is a period film (Baz is even referenced, in the picture’s best moment, in an LSD hallucination set to Rick James at his sleaziest)–ostensibly taking place on the Manchester-esque mean streets of Sydney sometime in the last twenty years, though unmistakably a product of the self-reverential school of the post-modern visual boom-factory. The style the substance, Garage Days is all cover and no book and the sort of picture that seems like a lot of fun without actually being all that much fun: Trainspotting with amplifiers.

Hail Maria: FFC Interviews Joshua Marston & Catalina Sandino Moreno

July 24, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Interviews

MariafullofgraceinterviewtitlerevJuly 25, 2004|”Hi there, you’re Joshua Marston?”

“Yes. I am.”

Such was my introduction to indie flavour-of-the-second Joshua Marston, writer-director of Maria Full of Grace: a full head of curly hair, and an ego the size of a brick shithouse. He turned away from me in the balconied hallway of Denver’s historic Brown Palace Hotel after confirming his identity–ignoring my hand outstretched–to chat with someone else he’d alienated, then realized that he had to talk to me as part of his publicity duties for his first shot at feature filmmaking. It’s a tough business: you fly in, you spend the night, you fly out, and in between you talk to about two dozen faceless, mostly nameless ink-stained wretches who generally ask you the same questions. It’s one thing to do it in New York and L.A., it’s another altogether to muster the strength to do it in a backwater like Denver. Thing of it is that people don’t always stay where they are at the moment–and that Denver isn’t all that dusty a horse-town as it used to be.

The Bourne Supremacy (2004)

July 22, 2004Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Germany, Mystery, Theatrical, Thriller

***½/****
starring Matt Damon, Franka Potente, Brian Cox, Julia Stiles
screenplay by Tony Gilroy, based on the novel by Robert Ludlum
directed by Paul Greengrass

Bournesupremacyby Walter Chaw The Bourne Identity was directed by Doug Liman, an unusually gifted indie punk blessed with a screenplay by Tony Gilroy that touched on a lot of the same existential hallmarks as Blade Runner. Stripped of embellishment, The Bourne Identity is almost a textbook on movement and gesture, as purely cinematic an action film as any to come down the pike since the heyday of the ’70s British gangster genre. The Bourne Supremacy, taking up the story of a broken assassin two years later, has lost Liman, retained Gilroy, and gained Brit helmer Paul Greengrass, the man behind the brilliant pseudo-documentary Bloody Sunday. The picture’s a different beast from its predecessor–more, like Bloody Sunday, like a chronicle of a forgotten catastrophe than a post-modern thriller. And it’s delirious and whip-smart.

Agent Cody Banks 2: Destination London (2004) [Special Edition]; The Cheetah Girls (2003); Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen (2004) – DVDs

July 21, 2004Posted in2000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Canada, Comedy, Disney, Drama, DVD, Family, Germany, Music, Musical, Romance, Sci-Fi, UK

AGENT CODY BANKS 2: DESTINATION LONDON
*½/**** Image A- Sound A- Extras C-
starring Frankie Muniz, Anthony Anderson, Cynthia Stevenson, Daniel Roebuck
screenplay by Don Rhymer
directed by Kevin Allen

THE CHEETAH GIRLS
*/**** Image C Sound B Extras C-
starring Raven, Adrienne Bailon, Kiely Williams, Sabrina Bryan
screenplay by Alison Taylor, based on the series of books by Deborah Gregory
directed by Oz Scott

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Here’s how it works. The entertainment machine churns out low-quality wish-fulfillment fantasies for ‘tweens and teenagers, then print and web outlets assign grown men and women to review them. Yes, the logic behind this weird symbiosis is elusive, as few teenagers are savvy enough to read reviews and few adult reviewers (beyond the occasional junket flunky) are possibly going to recommend them to anyone else. But somebody somewhere must benefit from this arrangement, because I have two such discs staring me in the face right now: one is the Frankie Muniz vehicle Agent Cody Banks 2, the other is a Disney Channel TV movie called The Cheetah Girls. Both are fantasies of juvenile mastery, both are scrubbed clean and chaste, both seem to have been dashed off in an afternoon by drunken hacks, and I guarantee you that both will make anyone over the age of fifteen want to poke their eyes out with a metal spike. But that’s just me. I’m 31.

No Small Affair (1984) – DVD

July 20, 2004Posted in1980s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Music, Romance

*½/**** Image B- Sound A-
starring Demi Moore, Jon Cryer, George Wendt, Peter Frechette
screenplay by Charles Bolt and Terence Mulcahy
directed by Jerry Schatzberg

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover It's hard to remember from the vantage point of today that Jerry Schatzberg used to be somebody. Maybe not so hard for the French (he did, after all, serve on this year's Cannes jury), but definitely for North Americans, who are wont to forget that Schatzberg won the Cannes Jury Prize for Scarecrow and gave Al Pacino a pre-Godfather role in The Panic in Needle Park. But by 1984, the same hard times that hit most other directors who came to prominence in the 1970s had apparently befallen Schatzberg as well, to the point that he was reduced to teensploitation nonsense like No Small Affair. To be fair, the film isn't the pasty aesthetic blight that was the norm for '80s teen efforts, but it is the same soup of shaggy-dog romantics and coy sexual intrigue as a million other films of its stripe. That it doesn't condescend to its material makes its failure all the more rueful, like watching Eric Rohmer attempt The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes with deluded gusto.

Dawson’s Creek: The Complete Third Season (1999-2000) – DVD

July 19, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Coming of Age, Drama, DVD, Teen, Television

Image B Sound B+ Extras B
"Like a Virgin", "Homecoming", "None of the Above", "Home Movies", "Indian Summer", "Secrets & Lies", "Escape from Witch Island", "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner", "Four to Tango", "First Encounters of the Close Kind", "Barefoot at Capefest," "A Weekend in the Country", "Northern Lights", "The Valentine's Day Massacre", "Crime and Punishment", "To Green, With Love", "Cinderella Story", "Neverland", "Stolen Kisses", "The Longest Day", "Show Me Love", "The Anti-Prom", "True Love"

by Bill Chambers SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. With zeitgeist lightning-rod Kevin Williamson having jumped ship at the end of the second year, the training wheels were off for season three of "Dawson's Creek", and the show immediately drove, arms flailing, into a tree, an analogy that draws itself when a slaphappy Dawson (James Van Der Beek) crashes a speedboat in the premiere. However ironic my appreciation of the show might ultimately be, its third season starts out appreciably terrible. Falsely equating Williamson's liberal mindset with titillation, a mostly-new writing staff (there was something of an unrelated mass exodus when Williamson left, with head scribe Mike White answering the beacon of "Freaks and Geeks" and others taking similar advantage of the teen boom) resorted to Aaron Spelling licentiousness–even wallflower Joey (Katie Holmes) doffs her clothes in the season opener. It's her attempt to win back Dawson after ostracizing him at the close of the previous season, and more absurdly than that, it backfires.