Sunshine Cleaning (2008)

If you are looking to boost your indie cred, Sunshine Cleaning isn't a bad little movie. It stars Amy Adams and Emily Blunt as two down-on-their-luck sisters who start a crime scene cleaning business. Alan Arkin boosts the supporting cast as their get-rich-quick scheming father. It's not dissimilar to his role in Little Miss Sunshine, but it sucks less.

You probably won't get any life-shattering revelations from watching this movie, but it's a nice alternative to stuff blowing up without drowning you in overworked melodrama.

Making Mr. Right (1987)

  When I hear the name John Malkovich, I don't necessarily leap to rom-com immediately after. I think of Being John Malkovich, Dangerous Liaisons, hell, even Con Air. But a farcical romance about a PR shill who falls in love with an android?

Yet this movie exists. I found it the other day while I was channel-surfing through all the movie networks. I don't know from what bowels of celluloid this particular nugget was unearthed but I can only hope it is returned there posthaste.

It's bad. Like trainwreck bad. I missed the first half hour, which is generally crucial for setting up the plot, but as an 80's romantic comedy, it was pretty easy to pick up. Aforementioned PR shill is supposed to give an approachable air to an android designed to man a 7 year space mission. She takes him out into the real world, hijinks ensue, and he charms her with his naivety. Fairly standard robot plot that I could pick on further but what's the point? It was an 80's film. That's like kicking a retarded puppy.

And it's sooooo 80's. If you cut it, it would bleed Aquanet and silver lamé. For video proof, click HERE.

Okay, so the first John Malkovich, the one that seems normal, that's the misanthropic scientist who created the android. The actual bizarro John Malkovich shows up a couple of minutes later.

You have a choice here, blog readers. You can do nothing or, and this is the correct choice if you're wondering, you can rise up and kill this awful abomination. After all, there can be only one. Is it going to be:

Or is it going to be

"Put the bunny back in the box."

Choose wisely, reader. Choose. Wisely.

Legion (2010)

So, I saw Legion on Sunday. It was good. Not The Prophecy good, but what is, really? It's not fair to judge this movie by the Christopher Walken/Viggo Mortensen standard.

It's a good movie. The possessed are creepy looking, the action scenes are cool, and let's face it: angels wings + tattoos = HOT.

You know who didn't enjoy the movie? The five-year-old sitting next to me. Denizens of the internet, hear my words and take them to heart: DON'T TAKE YOUR TODDLER TO SEE THIS MOVIE.

Let me emphasize that for the hard of thinking.

DON'T TAKE YOUR TODDLER TO SEE THIS RATED R MOVIE.

Are we all clear now? On the same page? Okay.

I'm sure everybody out there who has been to a movie sometime in their life has had the experience ruined by some irresponsible parent dragging their screaming crotchfruit someplace they had no business being. And it goes the other way, too. Don't complain about the little brats parroting every line back to the screen if you go see a film geared toward them, like The Incredibles or A Series of Unfortunate Events. You have entered their world, and God have mercy on your soul.

But a Rated R movie shown after 5 p.m. shouldn't have a single stroller in it. I don't care how "brilliant" little Mackenzie is, or how many Baby Genius tapes little Bailey has chewed on, they will not understand what is going on and, depending on age, will be terrified by what is being shown on screen. At one point, the kid next to me had his head buried in his dad's lap and was whimpering. That kid is probably going to wet himself if he ever hears the ice cream truck again.

No matter how "progressive" a parent you like to think yourself to be, it is not a good idea to expose your progeny to fanged demon-grannies who drop the c-bomb in public. You probably wouldn't let your actual grandmother around your child if she talked like that, not to mention spider-crawled up the ceiling and terrorized a diner.

Bottom line: If you take a child under 14 to see Legion, you are a bad parent. Everyone else, you'll probably like it. It's a good movie.

Blood: The Last Vampire (2009)

  This movie didn't suck nearly as much as I thought it would. I confess, when I Netflixed it, I thought I was getting a cool anime about vampires. Then I checked out RottenTomatoes and found that, no, I was getting a live-action movie based on a cool anime about vampires. I was chagrined to say the least.

I decided to watch it anyway because, well, it was at my house already and fuck it, you know? I have to say, I was pleasantly surprised. By which I mean, I didn't want to scratch out my eyes.

I really only have one complaint: the animation makes this movie seem 10 years older than it actually is. (Yes, I could complain about the wooden/sub-par acting or the Empire Strikes Back on estrogen storyline but that's just being mean. These elements are no worse than Underworld.)

It's ironic that the animation would be bad in a movie based on an anime. But the creatures look like something Ray Harryhausen would make out of modeling clay and chicken wire. No disrespect to the Harryhousen, if this movie were made back in 1970 it would have been a masterpiece. But it was completed in 2009. 2009, people! In a post-Matrix world, there is no excuse for flying blood that looks like Jell-O.

Other than that one tiny thing, I quite enjoyed the movie. The fight scenes are nicely done, seeing as they were supervised by Cory Yuen, the same guy who gave us The Transporter, Kiss of the Dragon, and Hero. The soundtrack is good, full of upbeat Vietnam-era songs (did I mention that the movie is set in 1970 at an Air Force base in Japan? No? Well, it is.) The main character is a katana-wielding, half-vampire teenaged girl wearing braided pigtails and a sailor suit.... Yeah, okay, that last part is a little weird but it's based on anime so I suppose we're lucky that the costume is extremely modest. No Sailor Moon panty-shots, which I for one, appreciate.

I wouldn't buy it, but it's worth a rental if you like the genre and want to see something a little newer and fresher than Rise of the Lycans.

Dead Man's Shoes (2004)

This is a fucking incredible film. From opening credits to the last frame, it is utterly gripping. I loved it so much I wanted to kill every last person who texted me while I was trying to watch it. I almost turned off my goddamn phone and I never turn off my phone.

It's labeled a horror film but I'm hesitant to call it that for the same reason I'm hesitant to label it foreign. It's British. That's not really foreign, though if you had trouble understanding the dialogue in Snatch you may want to throw on the subtitles anyway. Anyway, for me a horror film embodies the question "What if?" It makes you question the noise you heard in another room or whether that creepy old lady at the bank is actually a vengeance-mongering curse-leveling gypsy or just senile.

Okay, weird side note: I was halfway through the previous sentence and rocking out to Smash Mouth on my iTunes when there actually was a strange noise in the other room. It wasn't a lamia, though, it was just the UPS guy with my new duvet cover.

Back to the point, Dead Man's Shoes has no "What if?" factor for me. I do not have a frisson of delicious fear that some gun-wielding maniac in a WWII-era gas mask is going to hunt me down. This is because I don't make a point of tormenting the mentally disabled. If you do, then maybe you would consider this a horror movie and rightly so, you despicable jerk.

So, no, I wouldn't call this a horror film. A morality film, maybe. A film about the enduring force of familial love, definitely. It will certainly make you wish you spent more time with perhaps the more vulnerable members of your own clan. Most Netflix movies I am content to view once and return. This one I plan to add to my collection. It is THAT good.

Man Bites Dog (1992)

Or, in French, C'est arrive pres de chez vous with all the required funny accent marks.

  Sooo, it's a French film, which you've gathered from the title.

Done in a sparse black and white mockumentary style.

I like French films. I like black and white, and mockumentaries too.

The basic plot is a film crew following an unrepentant serial killer around.

Well and good. I liked Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon a lot. If you haven't seen it, and you like classic slasher films, I suggest you check it out. Very entertaining.

This one is funny in parts. The serial killer, Benoit, likes to start the month by knocking off a postman so he can search out pensioners living alone. He likes killing the elderly because they tend to keep their money in cash and on hand. He has a mathematical formula for sinking dead bodies in canals or quarries that includes midgets. He is racist in a way that would drop your granddad's jaw.

He is also a psychopath.

We've gotten used to our psychos having a charming, quirky turn that allows us to root for them regardless of the blood on their hands, a la Dexter. This movie very quickly reminded me that monsters are monsters for a reason. By turns friendly and sharply insulting, Benoit erodes the self-esteem of everyone around him. His closest "friends" cringe like abused dogs in fear of causing him offense. Nobody quite knows what he will do at any given moment, including the audience, which is subtly disturbing.

Much more in-your-face disturbing is how he subverts the camera crew from Neutral Observers to Active Participants. There is one scene that seems stolen directly from A Clockwork Orange only without the MGM soundtrack. I wished Stanley Kubrick would have his face eaten by rabid muskrats for ruining, ruining, Singin in the Rain for me. I could not see Gene Kelly without shuddering for months.

So, yeah, Man Bites Dog. Not for the faint of heart but if you're already darkly deviant, well worth the subtitles.

Darkman (1990)

Sam Raimi has directed a number of movies. If I were a journalist or interested in the least little bit of research, I could tell you how many but I'm not. (All right, all right, 18 films he directed. What am I, IMDB.com?)

I can tell you which movies he's done that I love. Evil Dead, Evil Dead II, Army of Darkness. Love love love. He also did the Spiderman movies, but we're not going to dwell on those because I was not a fan. Vent your hatred about that in the comments.

Darkman is a stellar B-movie. Despite the A-list casting of Liam Neeson and Frances McDormand, there is no mistaking this for anything but a B-movie. The scene where Neeson freaks out on a carny pretty much seals the deal. That fact shouldn't put you off seeing it, however, because Raimi excels at directing B-movies. He handles it with a wry humor that elevates what would otherwise be complete dreck.

Now don't think I'm going all warm and fuzzy for it, though. It is definitely a candidate for the WTF Files, rivaled only by Chan-wook Park's vengeance trilogy and the 1966 Batman movie.

On a side note, there is a drinking game that goes with Batman: The Movie but you shouldn't play unless your liver is a professional. Don't try this at home, kids! Simply, every time something in the movie makes your brain hurt you take a drink. To this day, I have no idea what happens past the 30 minute mark.

Back to Darkman. The story works as a superhero origin tale on the surface. Brilliant scientist mutilated in a lab explosion by gangsters, thought to be dead, comes back to kill the bad guys and get the girl. Pretty straightforward. But that's where it starts to come off the rails like that mine cart in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Suddenly, you're careening off the walls from 'Improbable' to 'Definitely Would Have Caused Death'.

There's some Weird Science type shenanigans where he feeds pictures into a computer to make replicas of other people's faces he can wear as disguises. When he is just a humble scientist (with the uber-comic book name of Peyton Westlake) he discovers his skin compound is only stable in the darkness, under direct light it can only hold its shape for 99 minutes before melting. Post-explosion and having taken the moniker Darkman, you would think that he would use his inexhaustible supply of perfect masks and penchant for mimicry to wreak nocturnal havoc among the criminals that messed up his face and stole his woman from him instead of trying to cram all his vengeance into hour and a half intervals.

You would think. And you would be wrong.

So Darkman runs around in the daylight capping gangstas and re-wooing his lady love, Julie. He has to put the rush on everything, though, because he only has 99 minutes until he goes back to looking like the love child of The Phantom of the Opera and The Elephant Man. He fears that seeing his messed-up grill will turn his sweetie's stomach and he's probably on the money, considering that he wasn't cold in the grave before she started dating her boss. In fact, she's really only giving him a second chance because she feels guilty that her finding evidence of her boss' graft (yes, the boss she starts sleeping with after her boyfriend is declared dead) is what got him blown the fuck up to begin with.

Don't even get me started on the burn unit doctor he gets when he's found floating in the river after being barbecued past recognition. Who did she do her residency under? Dr. Mengele? She brags to a bunch of Scrubs-esque interns that severing the nerves in her John Doe's brain stem allows him to recover from the 40% third-degree burns covering him without feeling any pain, even jabbing him with a needle to make her point. "Hello, Hippocratic Oath? Yeah, you can take the day off. We won't be needing you. What? No, Human Experimentation is going to fill in."

I could spend hours talking about what doesn't make sense in this movie. But, you know what? I'm going to buy it anyway. It's fun and, as any three-year-old can tell you, fun doesn't have to make sense. That's why it's fun. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go make popcorn and watch Darkman again.

The Dirty Dozen (1967)

 Do you know the difference between a good movie and a great movie?

A good movie is one that makes you feel what the characters are going through when you watch it and leaves you with a sense that your time has not been in vain.

A great movie makes you feel what the characters are going through even if the movie is 43 years old.

The Dirty Dozen is a great movie.

I'm not usually one to watch Army movies and especially not war movies. I figure if I had to live through a real one I shouldn't have to waste precious moments of my life watching a fake one on TV. But something about this movie grabbed me right from the beginning. Nothing like a hanging to really make you pay attention. Maybe it was the jaded, slightly disgusted look on Lee Marvin's face. It's the look that says he'd seen far too much for far too long. Yet he persists. He latches on to the new assignment and gives it every ounce of enthusiasm, even though he is expected on all sides to fail miserably. After all, who would think that a bunch of lifers could put aside their inherent selfishness and come together as a team?

The men themselves are shrouded in mystery. We are told very little about their sentencing, or background, only the bits that move the story along. Wadislaw speaks German, Franco is a malcontent, Maggot is appropriately named. You don't need a complicated exposition for these guys because the story isn't about them as individuals. They are the Dirty Dozen. Men whose previous circumstances have caused their lives to be forfeit. Some of them unfairly, like Posey who killed a man with one punch of a sledgehammer-sized fist, and at least one of them who probably deserved much more than a simple hanging: Maggot.

Seriously, Telly Savalas was about the creepiest mo'fo I have seen in a while. He's just so believable as a giggling rapist doing "the Lord's vengeance." The giggling is what really sets it over the edge. Everything else would be pretty manageable if it weren't for the maniacal cackle that makes your skin crawl.

I'm going to stop dwelling on that before my eye starts twitching.

Anyway, the movie stands up as a classic and if you haven't seen it, you should. No discussion. But do yourselves a favor, and don't watch Telly Savalas in the dark.

Silent Hill (2006)

My roomie bought Silent Hill last night and we watched it today. Ah, nothing like snuggling under the covers in the dark, watching a scary movie with your best girl.
Yeah, except the movie sucked. It was so dumb! For starters, the whole damn movie was shot in the dark, with only occasional glimpses of something orangey. That's a real word. Shut up. I know it's supposed to be for ambiance or whatever, but it was really annoying, like being at a rave where they only have orange glo-sticks. After a minute, you just want to punch somebody in the face and get the hell out of there.
Back to the movie. Half the characters had no friggin' point. Why was the lady cop there? Because she was in the video game. Okay, that's nice, but she SERVES NO PURPOSE in the movie. Yeah, and if the stupid "apocalyptic fire" or whatever the hell it was happened 30 years ago, why didn't the dude cop age? Cause this movie sucks, that's why! And it had the most trite, anti-climactic ending I've ever seen.
Silent Hill, you get the Stewie Award for extreme suckage. You know the Family Guy episode where Stewie gets on a plane and flies to California just so he can slap Will Farrell in the face and scream, "NOT FUNNY!" Yeah, that's the Stewie Award. Silent Hill isn't even Craptastic, just Crap. Like I would expect monkeys at the zoo to fling copies of the DVD at the bars of their cage. What's that smell? Oh, you accidentally stepped in Silent Hill out in the yard. Yeah, make sure you take your shoes off so you don't track Silent Hill all over the carpets.

Pathfinder (2007)

I haven't reviewed a movie I thought truly sucked since I've started writing this blog, so I'm reaching back for a couple of older ones I had written on MySpace back in 2007 when MySpace was relevant. Enjoy my vitriolic hate.

Okay, so I love movies. I love all kinds of movies, even craptastic movies that make everyone else want a brain enema to forget. I like foreign films with bizarre plots (The Bride with White Hair), I like films with mindless violence (The Big Hit), I like films with subject matter that is hard to watch (Requiem for a Dream). Hell, I even like movies starring J.Lo! It is hard to find something that sucks enough that I can't make fun of it.
I did not like Pathfinder.
For those who have never heard of it, it is a Karl Urban movie about a kid left behind during a Viking raid on the North American coast 600 years or so before Columbus. Kind of a stupid premise, considering that the Vikings wouldn't have taken a ten-year-old on a long sea voyage from Iceland anyhow. But I'm willing to forgive.
The story was one that has been told about a billion times in some form or another. Boy grows up, caught between the world he was born into and the world he finds himself in. Like Tarzan. Actually, exactly like Tarzan. Okay, now imagine the apes are just Iroquois in fur coats and the humans are all psychopathic homicidal maniacs. Oh, and Jane is a monkey. Wait. She's on the Native American side, which in the Tarzan analogy makes her the ape side. I don't want to get some angry letter from AIM about a stupid blog or have people get confused and think it's some kind of interspecies erotica. Fucko.
Here's another problem with the movie. No one has a name. There are no names used in the entire film and YOU DON'T EVEN NOTICE. I have a problem with that. If I am watching a movie and I can't be bothered to care what a character's name is, there is something wrong. So since I don't know what the names were supposed to be, I will go with Tarzan and Jane.
So, Tarzan learns that after twenty years, his people are coming back to rape and pillage some more. So he and Jane and his mute Indian sidekick (we'll call him Cheetah) decide that they don't need to take shit from some horned-hat-wearing honkies and they want to kick some ass and take some names (but there were no names!!!). Unfortunately, they prove to kind of suck at ass-kicking and Jane's dad has to come in. Still, some Vikings die just from the sheer novelty.
Tarzan's friends decide, unbeknownst to him, to go help him...and run headlong into a trap he had devised for the Vikings. I couldn't help it. I thought it was hysterical. So there's Bri and I, two pint-sized sexpots out on a night on the town, laughing maniacally at people on spikes. They weren't even DESERVING people on spikes. They were supposed to be characters we were sympathetic towards. Not us. No. We have no souls. Or at least that's what the other two people in the theater thought, I'm sure.
But all of this is plot stuff. I could forgive a bad plot and relatively bad acting. Now we come to the crux of the matter. The one really important thing that will elevate a movie from crap to craptastic: the sex scene.
IT DOESN'T HAVE ONE!!!!
I am a liberated, educated, break-through-the-glass-ceiling feminist kind of gal. When I am yelling "Show us yer tits!" at the screen, there is a problem. Some gratuitous nudity on the part of Moon Bloodgood would have been mucho appreciated and I also wouldn't have minded seeing Karl Urban's naked ass. Or even some topless Indian women running from a randy Viking before taking a battleaxe to the face. I'm not picky! No nudity, whatsoever.
Oh! And that reminds me. Costuming decisions. They gave Karl a loincloth and some chaps to run around in. They tease you with flashes of half a buttcheek just to let you know he's bare-balling it. I will have to check with my Canadian friend but I'm pretty sure that real Indians would put pants on, and not try free-wheeling during a Nova Scotian winter. What's the Ojibwa word for frozen nutsack? Anybody?
So, to recap: there's no sex, no real gore, no nudity, and bad dialogue. Characters were one-dimensional, predictable, and not really likeable. On a scale of one to ten, I'd give this one a 3 and that's only because it was still better than Silent Hill.

27 Dresses (2007)

  I decided to rent a movie from iTunes the other day. Mostly just because it's there, but I also wanted to see how a movie would look playing on my computer. So I picked a movie I refused to see in theaters and I didn't want to waste gas going out to rent. I chose 27 Dresses.
Rom-coms aren't really my thing but this was a test case so in case it sucked I could write it off as an experiment. Watching the movie, I was aware of two facts:

1) James Marsden is hotter than the nuclear core at Three Mile Island. I swear, every role he picks I just want to tie him down on a surgical table and do things to him that would make a rational person faint.

Ahem...

2) Romantic comedies are a lot like macaroni and cheese. They're the visual equivalent to comfort food. Let's face it, you don't watch it for the plot. If you can't figure out the end of the movie from watching the trailer, you should probably be living in a greenhouse with all the other plant life. You watch because it's comforting. You know it's not good for you and if you keep at it, you'll end up with an ass the size of Rhode Island, but every once in a while you get a craving too strong to ignore.

For what it is, 27 Dresses is decent. Better than Kraft but probably not a gourmet confection of Gruyere and shaved truffles. I'd say stick with the rental, though, because one serving is just enough.

Avatar (2009)

***WARNING: SPOILERS BELOW***

So if you want to be surprised by the ending like you were with Titanic just stop reading now.

I love sci-fi. I love special effects. I love grand, sweeping vistas and proud, noble races of aliens. I did not love Avatar.

I am not a huge James Cameron fan (the last movie of his that I loved was True Lies) but I don't necessarily hate him behind a camera either. His work on Titanic was a monumental undertaking that I recognize as an artistic achievement. Likewise, the world of Pandora is breath-takingly vivid so that you can practically feel the mist of the waterfalls off the floating mountains.

I don't hate CGI. Sure, I think it can be overused but I've seen enough anime to not be bothered by it when it's integral to the story. And it's pretty integral when half your cast is 8 ft tall, blue kitty people who ride dragons. Dragons! I was so excited to see those damn things because all I could think was "We now have the technology and the know-how to do a Dragonriders of Pern movie." How badass would that be? Hell, Avatar is practically there already. If they had only made the Na'vi (blue kitty people) turn out to be humans that got stuck there and evolved to adapt to their environment.

I digress.

I didn't even hate the story. Sure it's a trite Pocahontas love story that hasn't improved with age, and yes, the whole thing is an allegory for white people's guilt over colonization but I can get over both of those things.

What I hated, and I mean hated, about this movie was the ending.

***AGAIN, SPOILERS AHEAD***You should really stop now***

The ending sucked.

Don't get me wrong. I like a sappy, underdog wins the day kind of movie just as much as the next guy... Okay, that's an overstatement. I understand the need for a sappy, underdog wins the day kind of movie every once in a while. Before my cousin jumps in with a "That's because you have no soul!" comment, let me explain:

I have read hundreds of books, seen thousands of movies. So have you. I know the archetypes, the tropes, the cliches. So do you. There have been entire movies dedicated to making fun of these oh-so-common story elements (Scream, Murder by Death, Last Action Hero). The themes and characters are universal which, in some cases, are good. They allow people to identify with what they see on screen.

However, Avatar reaches all the way back to Greek theater for a Deus Ex Machina, the Hail Mary of the cinema world. What's that? Haven't read your Oedipus Rex lately? Back in the day, when a playwright wanted to make an uplifting tale to warm the cockles of the public heart but accidentally painted his main character into the corner of Certain Death, he would employ a Deus Ex Machina ending. Literally, the hand of whatever god was setting appropriate would reach down and spare the lucky mortal. You could get away with this in Ancient Greece where Cynics were just a minor sect.

Here's what should have happened: The Na'vi are grossly outnumbered and outgunned. Though initially successful with their brave last stand to defend their holy shrine, they are simply outmatched. They die by the hundreds, cut down by swaths of bullets. The industrialists watching the firefight through video feeds are disgusted with themselves for causing this genocide and call everything off. The Marines in their mech-suits tromp back to the ship and everyone goes back to Earth feeling like they'll never get their souls clean again.

Instead, this is what happened: The tree goddess turns every last living thing on the planet against the Marines, providing support for the Na'vi to turn the battle around and force the outworlders off their homeland.

Nuff said.

Sherlock Holmes (2009)

  This was a very fun movie. A very fun bastardization-of-classic-literature kind of movie.

Like a bastard, the movie bore several key resemblances to its very embarrassed parent. Robert Downey Jr.'s Sherlock is a drug-using, bare-knuckled fighting, lightning quick smartass. Everything that the original Holmes was in the books, except for the smartass part. He was British so it tended more toward dry witticisms referencing even more classical literature. Irene Adler was his female counterpart, a beautiful thief and blackmailer. Rachel McAdams plays her with an adorable insouciant vulnerability, handily dispatching a pair of thugs with a blackjack and knife, yet still somehow managing to be caught and trussed up like a Christmas goose so she could be rescued by the hero. Literary Irene Adler would sniff haughtily through her pert nose if anyone so much as suggested such a predicament.

Dr. Watson is probably the most likely to avoid a screenwriting paternity suit. Gone is the jovial rotund sidekick who blinks sheepishly in amazement at his cohort's leaps of deduction. Jude Law's Watson is more akin to Danny Glover's Murtaugh in Lethal Weapon. He rolls his eyes, sighs with forbearance, and grits his teeth when Holmes starts to enjoy his own cleverness a bit too much. He wants to put away his magnifying glass, settle down with the lovely Mary, and get back to his medical practice. If he could just get over the thrill of the chase!

Despite the burgeoning bro-mance at the heart of the film, it is not given overmuch to character development. Why would it need to when there are so many things in London to blow up? Action flows like cheap gin through Whitechapel with chases, immolations, and explosions. Witty quips abound. The good guys are very good and the bad guys are very bad so you always know who to root for. Lord Blackwood (Mark Strong) in particular exudes a scuzziness that's really only enhanced by his penchant for dark sorcery. The production is sleek and modern, one might even say glossy. Is it high art? Probably not, but the original stories were printed as magazine serials. So maybe the apple doesn't fall far from the tree.