Author: Christian Sauvé

  • Neanderthal, John Darnton

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    St. Martin’s, 1996, 395 pages, C$9.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-312-96300-9

    Once upon a time, in a land much like our own…

    …there was a sub-genre of novels called “Lost Worlds”. Written around the turn of this century, these novels usually starred valiant explorers, battling exotic creatures to discover stunning secrets: A mini-ecological environment complete with dinosaurs! A Mysterious Island! A fortress guarded by the last Greek warriors! The Tenth lost tribe of Israel! A wonderful treasure!

    Needless to say, as Earth was progressively settled and explained, lost worlds began to disappear. Who can believe, now, an amazonian plateau populated with prehistoric animals?

    And yet, these novels keep their charms. Jules Verne’s The Mysterious Island is still one of my favourite books, as is Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World. There is a quaint yet hardy spirit of adventure and exploration in these stories that is terrific for younger readers and loads of fun -in small dosage- for adults.

    Neanderthal is a pure Lost World novel. As the story begins, two scientists are contacted with news of an important discovery. Their mentor is calling them back, deep in Asia. There, they find a lost race of Neanderthals. Will they be able to escape?

    Now, given that Lost World novels are fun and that Neanderthal is a Lost World novel, we might logically expect Neanderthal to be a fun book.

    If only things were that simple…

    Neanderthal falters on several fronts, perhaps the most egregious being a completely humourless approach to the material. Lost Worlds novel should be awe-inspiring and thrilling, while remaining faintly silly. Here, Pulitzer-winning New York Times correspondent Darnton plays it with a tedious seriousness, even as he brings up such whoppers as a limited form of telepathy. (For various reasons, we eventually suspect that Darnton doesn’t only play around with the concepts of lost races, telepathy and ESP, but actually believes in them, which raises a whole new lot of problems.)

    To this, we can add the usually suspects devices of the noble savages and the bloodthirsty barbarians. But whereas Doyle and Burroughs handled those with a kind of charming earnestness, Darnton’s Lost Races are more cyphers than objects of fascination.

    But all of this would have been irrelevant if Darnton had delivered a thrilling novel. And he does not. Neanderthal is a stuffy bore of a “thriller”. No suspense. Very few set-pieces. Minimal implications for worldwide peace. Lesser novels would have brought back an evil Neanderthal in civilized land where it would have gone in a murderous rampage. Well, that’s what missing from this novel; a sense of fun and of pulpish excitement. Instead, we get a three-act play with three humans and a bunch of guys in monkey suits.

    Which is rather sad, since Darnton has obviously put a lot of time in doing his research for Neanderthal. Well-integrated (and some no-so-well-integrated) expository passages at least give the impression of taking away something worthwhile from the novel (though with Darnton’s tendency to throw around “remote viewing”, we can legitimately doubt his credibility.)

    THE EXPEDITION OF THE CENTURY UNCOVERS THE FIND OF THE MILLENNIUM! promises the back-cover blurb. CREATURES THAT POSSESS POWERS MAN CAN ONLY IMAGINE, AND THAT ARE ABOUT TO CHANGE THE FACE OF CIVILISATION FOREVER! it adds. THE MUST-READ THRILLER OF THE YEAR! is exhorts. With this kind of publicity, we’d be justified in expecting a rather more exciting thriller.

    What we have, instead, is a Neanderthal that should remain extinct.

  • A Night At The Roxbury (1998)

    A Night At The Roxbury (1998)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, November 1998) Very, very silly. It was a comfort to finally meet two guys even more socially inept than I. This movie has zero scrap of even the slightest social value but does sport a rather good mid-nineties-dance soundtrack. (It was a shame that our second-run Vanier theatre has such a poor sound system, though…) It’s not as bad as the frosty critical reception suggested, but it does sport a few very amusing moments, as well as a significant hottie factor. On the other hand, the biggest flaws of the movie are the two lead actors, who are outshined by almost everyone else (most notably Canadian actor Lochlyn Munro—last seen as the highlight of Dead Man On Campus). This would have been a hilarious movie with Jim-Carrey-type actors in the lead role. Instead, A Night At The Roxbury has to settle from being barely diverting.

  • Mission: Impossible (1996)

    Mission: Impossible (1996)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Second viewing, On TV, November 1998) Pure and complete nonsense, but intentionally so. Going from set-piece to set-piece, this thriller never pauses long enough to allow viewers to realize that what they’ve just seen is not complex, but senseless. Still, it might be foolishness, but director Brian De Palma has too much experience to let it be anything but good-looking foolishness. Tom Cruise makes a convincing action hero, and the superb action sequences are simply remarkable. (Even knowing where special effects were used didn’t diminish the enjoyment one bit) Disclosure: A previous viewing had prepared me to accept the lousy script and enjoy the good bits.

  • Max Q (1998)

    Max Q (1998)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, November 1998) Inferior made-for-TV movie about a disaster aboard a space shuttle. Far from being even remotely realistic (even with a relative ignorance of actual NASA procedures, I was able to spot several mistakes), it can also “boast” of belonging to the cookie-cutter school of screenwriting, with painfully mistaken conventions of dramatic structure and characters that we’ve seen countless time before. It wasn’t a waste of time for me, since I consider a bad techno-thriller better than no techno-thriller at all, but less enthusiastic viewers might very well disagree. Max Q makes the fatal mistake of trying to emulate the superlative Apollo 13… and it’s not even close to being in the same league at the already-classic 1995 film.

  • Lat sau san taam [Hard-Boiled] (1992)

    Lat sau san taam [Hard-Boiled] (1992)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, November 1998) Unarguably one of the most amazing action movie I’ve seen. Whereas other directors will settle for a shot of a guy jumping quickly cut to an exploding car, Hard-Boiled‘s John Woo uses a slow-motion uninterrupted shot of the actor jumping out of an exploding car, debris falling over him. You can actually see pieces bouncing off the stuntmen, who definitely earned their salary in this movie. The emotional core of the movie is also there, and it’s effective. (I publicly thanks Toronto-area station CITY-TV for having the wonderful integrity to run Hard-Boiled in its full letterboxed, subtitled glory.) Despite some annoying heart-stirring manipulation (babies, anyone?) and the problems in trying to piece together a foreign-language movie, Hard-Boiled is miles ahead of your usual Hollywood summer blockbuster. An unforgettable action masterpiece. Don’t miss it.

  • Horizontal Hold: The Making and Breaking of a Network Television Pilot, Daniel Paisner

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Birch Lane Press, 1992, 206 pages, C$23.95 hc, ISBN 1-55972-148-0

    Something quite sad and remarkable happened in November 1998.

    The television series “Babylon 5” ended, after a five-year run.

    For those of you who have thus far managed to get away with a complete ignorance of “Babylon 5”, know these facts: Conceived in 1987-1988 by J. Michael Straczynski as a five-year “Science-Fiction Novel for Television” and shopped around multiple studios -who all balked at this grandiose premise-, “Babylon-5” made it on the air in 1993 (Pilot) and 1994 (series). Despite constant rumours of impending cancellation and some rather heavy sniping from the concurrent Star Trek fans and producers, “Babylon-5” finally managed to end after its planned run, producing something unique: a truly original multi-layered five-year story on television.

    But the 1993-1998 era is also littered with one-year series, half-season wonders and six-episode failures. For each “Babylon-5”, how many “The Visitor”? And for each show yanked after six episodes, how many pilots?

    Horizontal Hold tries to answer this question by showing the making of a (failed) television pilot, with all the high and low points of the process. Meanwhile, we learn how vile an institution is TV broadcasting. The story begins in 1989, when a writer at an independent production company gets the idea for a new sitcom: Why not follow, week after week, the misadventures in the life of presidential scriptwriters?

    The concept is promising and the book shows how we go from idea to pilot. It’s not a pretty process, especially seen from a writer’s point of view. Characters are modified, tailored, changed, dumbed-down… and that’s when they’re not simply eliminated from the script, which gets re-written daily. Production factors often modify the story.

    Obviously, good writing isn’t the main concern of television.

    Horizontal Hold shows exceptionally well the committee-driven nature of TV, with its endless compromises and its dependence on stupid dumb luck. Unpredictable events prove to be the ultimate demise of the pilot described in Horizontal Hold: A surprise strike undoes a first try, and the changing whims of a TV executive nail down the second attempt.

    But throughout all of this, a potentially depressing story remains quite lively, all thanks to Paisner’s writing skills. He brings a witty style that’s not only humorous in its own way (Discussing a character’s elimination right after an actor’s narrow brush with dismissal: “Bonnie Doone isn’t so lucky. Of course, she’s just a character and therefore unable to manage much of anything on her own behalf.” [P.78]) but also includes many delicious behind-the-scene anecdotes.

    Paisner rarely preaches directly about the nature of television, letting the story speaks for itself. It’s an eloquent message. Certainly, I would have been intrigued by the presidential-screenwriter concept: that it wasn’t given a fair chance is as disheartening as it is frustrating. Given the process described in Horizontal Hold, it’s a minor miracle that anything of value ever appears on our television screens.

    Horizontal Hold is a very worthwhile non-fiction account of the reality behind the cathode tube. It’s reasonably impartial, lucidly examining the possibility (among others) that the product just wasn’t good enough to make it to the small screen. But most of all, it’s a compulsively readable account of a fascinating event. Don’t be surprised if you find yourself shutting off the television to finish the book.

    But really; now that “Babylon-5” is off the air, what else are you going to watch?

  • Kids In The Hall: Brain Candy (1996)

    Kids In The Hall: Brain Candy (1996)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, November 1998) certainly isn’t for everyone. Comedy, even in the best of time, is a very subjective thing. It’s even worse when it comes to a quirky style maintained and perfected by a group of comedians. I had never watched Kids in the Hall, but still had a good time watching Brain Candy, an uneven take-off on pharmaceutical research. My sister, though, got up and left after ten minutes.

  • Vampires (1998)

    Vampires (1998)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, November 1998) A B-movie. Purely and simply. Low-budget, imaginatively filmed, violently over-the-top, touching upon ideas that mainstream cinema wouldn’t dare consider (a group of vampire slayers funded by the Vatican) in a way that only B-movie filmmakers would dare try (gratuitous nudity, violence, verbal abuse, etc…) That John Carpenter is the director is incidental. The result is fun provided that you’re willing to accept the poor dialogue, rotten pacing, disturbing sexism and lacklustre middle third. On the other hand, the film has an undeniable atmosphere, the premise is interesting and James Woods is completely delightful as protagonist Jack Crow. I have serious misgivings about the script and wouldn’t recommend the movie, but still enjoyed it.

  • The Jackal (1997)

    The Jackal (1997)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On VHS, November 1998) has a few clever moments (most of them related to Bruce Willis’ character) but had me groaning and swearing each five-ten minutes. Unfortunate, since the acting is pretty good (Richard Gere sleepwalks as usual, but he looks so darn unflappable that nobody minds. Bruce Willis, on the other hand, does a satisfying job at half-a-dozen different disguises) and the production values are reasonably high. The fault all goes back to the script, which is almost uniformly bad. Most movie clichés find their way in this film. The result is something as vapid and unmemorable as 1997’s The Shadow Conspiracy. (Remember that one? Me neither.) Not even the numerous Canada/Québec references can save this movie from rapid memory oblivion.

  • Get Shorty (1995)

    Get Shorty (1995)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, November 1998) This film is -wait for it- better than the book. This simple story of an average crook in the Hollywood fast-lane differs only slightly from the original work, but makes it work. Elmore Leonard’s undecipherable dialogue comes to life on-screen, and the result is an average movie that’s reasonably entertaining to watch. John Travolta and Rene Russo are as good as usual. Some in-jokes are precious.

  • Final Impact, Yvonne Navarro

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Bantam, 1997, 469 pages, C$7.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-553-56360-2

    In fiction, there are several ways to end the world, and several things to do once you’ve done it. Perhaps the most famous apocalyptic book of all is Stephen King’s exceptional The Stand, which combined gritty realism with supernatural elements to produce a book strong enough to forgive its rather significant shortcomings. With Final Impact, Yvonne Navarro sets herself up to be compared to King, and the results are almost as disastrous as the catastrophe itself.

    1999. Inspired by the Shumacher-Levy comet, another celestial object finds itself hurtling at Jupiter. Problem is; it misses, fragments in a myriad of smaller rocks and heads straight for Earth. Meanwhile, efforts to destroy some of the fragments are sabotaged, and the rocks hit.

    But that’s not the real story.

    From the above, we might infer a relatively competent novel firmly grounded in hard sciences and rigorously extrapolating the effects of a massive asteroid strike on Earth.

    Not so.

    You see, even during the prologue, we’re introduced to (more than) four people possessing extra-sensorial powers. (I will avoid talking about the inconsistent nature of the superpowers, as it seems to be the norm with such pseudo-SF.) Since Navarro describes herself as “a dark fantasy writer”, you can bet your fallout shelter that life isn’t an easy road for them. Indeed, in the first ten pages, a girl is abandoned by her parents and a boy looks on as his father kills his mother. And that’s only the first two protagonists.

    Scientific plausibility goes downhill as soon as the rocks hit, since the Earth stop rotating (all together now; riiiight) and some humans transform themselves in the usual gallery of fantastic creatures: vampires, werewolves, etc… This isn’t gratuitous, of course, given that Earth now has a “light side” and a “dark side”. Ooooh, deeeeep, maaaan.

    And then the novel ends.

    That’s right. Final Impact is the first volume of an unknown series of books. Nowhere is it mentioned. Some threads are still up in the air, nothing interesting has been done with the setup, character dynamics are still unresolved… and you have the gall to ask why I disliked the book?

    Even then, though, it must be said that Final Impact isn’t totally worthless. For all her dubious plotting, incompetent scientific sense and lack of marketing acumen, Yvonne Navarro has created some vivid characters in Final Impact. While they’re either too good or too evil to be classified as realistic (not to mention these pesky ESP powers), they’re well-defined. The most interesting character, Lily, is a welcome exception given that she’s morally ambiguous and as “normal” (few superpowers) as Navarro’s characters come.

    Final Impact is also surprisingly readable—warts and all. Navarro keeps the flourishes down to a minimum, and prefers to follow her characters as closely as possible. The execution mitigates the weak story.

    There’s a certain audience, I suppose, for the tired clichés sprouted off by Final Impact (Yet Another Rock-Smashing Earth, Yet Another Group of Superpowered Mutants, Yet Another Good-Versus-Evil setup, Yet Another Fantasy series…) but serious -read “jaded”- readers will want to read fresher material. Because at the end, what Final Impact offers is only a good setup for a Role-Playing Game scenario.

  • First Blood [Rambo 1] (1982)

    First Blood [Rambo 1] (1982)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On VHS, November 1998) Not an easy movie to categorize. On one hand, it’s a straight action movie where stuff blows up real good, and a lone superhero takes on hordes of enemies. On the other, the particular motor of this actionner is post-Vietnam stress: The hero isn’t completely sane, the enemies are not-so-guilty policemen, the setting is a quiet American town. It’s refreshing, for once, to see an action movie in a dark, damp and cold-looking forrestrial setting. Though the whole movie is based on an unexplainable decision (why did he turn back at the city limits?) and the final monologue shows all of Sylvester Stallone’s verbal deficiencies, the whole film has, all things considered, aged pretty well, and stands above its sequels in terms of maturity… though that’s not necessarily saying much.

  • Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas (1998)

    Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas (1998)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, November 1998) A movie about two heavy drug users on a trip (!) to Las Vegas at the beginning of the seventies. I have never touched drugs and after this movie I feel as if I don’t need to, having already experienced all that mind-altering chemicals have to offer. As one friend remarked; “Hey, you who missed the drug revolution! Here it is!” It’s constantly funny in a bizarre sort of way. I liked the contrast between the serious-as-hell narration and the zonked-out actors on-screen. It might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but don’t miss the first fifteen minutes.

    (Second viewing, On DVD, March 2009) It’s fair to say that I know a lot more about Hunter S. Thompson now than when I saw the film in theaters in 1998. I have also read the book twice in the meantime, giving me a different perspective on the film than at first. It’s now obvious that this is a lot more than the zonked-out adventures of two junkies on a Las Vegas bender: The “High water” passage is one of the keys to the work, and so is the increasingly uncomfortable disillusionment of the last act. As an adaptation of the book, it’s nothing short of wondrous, though director Terry Gilliam’s own pet obsessions sometimes derail the overall impact. Johnny Depp is often unrecognizable as Thompson, something that is also true for Benicio del Toro as the manic Doctor Gonzo/Oscar Acosta. Visually, it’s a trip, and the film does manage to wring a few new laughs out of the material. The pricey Criterion DVD edition is a must-have for Thompson fans, as it features three commentaries by the director, the producer/stars and Thompson himself. Additionally, the two-discs edition contains documentaries putting Thompson front and center, something that wasn’t readily available before Gonzo was released on DVD.

  • Fargo (1996)

    Fargo (1996)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, November 1998) My problems with this film began just before the last commercial break, when the announcer smugly declared “Stay tuned, for the conclusion of Fargo”. That’s when I knew I was going to be definitely disappointed. To put it simply: Fargo is a shaggy-dog story without a conclusion. Now, wrapping up a movie has never been one of the Coen brother’s strong points, the remainder of their movies usually making up for it (eg: The Hudsucker Proxy, The Big Lebowski). Not so here, where everything seems poised toward a conclusion that only halfway comes. No payoff for the buried money. No payoff for the ex-boyfriend. No payoff for the kid. A staggering deux-ex-machina precipitates the conclusion. Some say that the charm of Fargo comes from these real-life details. I go to movies to see a story; so I disagree. Fargo is still worthwhile, but doesn’t deserve its reputation. Yah.

  • The Exorcist (1973)

    The Exorcist (1973)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, November 1998) While overrated (incredibly too long, comatic first hour, not as shocking nor as exciting as it was in ’73), it can still aspire to being a classic. It certainly holds up better than other horror films of the period (Rosemary’s Baby, anyone?) and the gradual heightening of tension is effective. The last twenty minutes are quite good.