Episode Review: Miami Vice-Red Tape

I like reviewing things that I watch at 3AM. Insomnia's good for you!


Miami Vice-Red Tape- After getting tired of halfway sucking, Miami Vice went back to its roots, caught a second wind and did a handful of episodes that were close to Season 1 good. "Red Tape" was one of those episodes. This episode dealt with a bunch of cops getting blown up because someone dropped dime about their whereabouts. Lou Diamond Phillips, who played Bobby Diaz and Viggo Mortensen had the misfortune of following in the footsteps of Miami Vice's doomed cops division.

They all were on an early morning call (roosters were crowing) and wouldn't you know it. Mortensen's character was claimed early on. This didn't sit well with Tubbs. In fact he spent the whole episode with his ass up on his back, getting smart in the mouth, hollering about going back to New York. Go on then, Dammit! Tubbs as a loose cannon is always fun to watch, Philip Michael Thomas got to scream and exactly had dialogue (Tubbs was inexplicably dummied up a bit on Season 3). To modulate this torrent of emotions Sonny (Sonny?) was the voice of reason. In fact when Sonny mentioned Castillo to Tubbs and Rico offered the hilarious, "Who's Castillo?" Ooh snap!


Rico was in a dive bar wearing a nifty windbreaker when he met up with a fed up cop McIntyre, played by Scott Plank. McIntyre was bad to the bone, an unctuous sort who seemed to just find disgruntled cops and helped them to become squealers. Guess who McIntyre's old lady was? A lovely Annette Bening.  Anyoo they both were in on this scam and Tubbs was so good with his shenanigans, young Lou Diamond Philips thought ol' Tubbs was on the take.And get this? He was about to kill Tubbs for revenge. Can you get to that?


How this show proceeded was profoundly good-to-great Miami Vice. Turns out Tubbs was undercover, it was all a ruse and they were going to crack down on McIntyre and his cronies. Well not before the music played. This time it was Alan Parsons Project's "Closer to Heaven." Ooh wee, that's a tearjerker. Sonny had to race to save Tubbs from Lou Diamond Phillips and everyone was ready to kill/arrest all criminals. Tons of great scenes here and the saddest fact was that Diaz thought Tubbs was dirty, heavy sigh. And yep, he got shot/killed too.
 
Notes: For some unknown reason I watched this to chuckle but the opposite happened. Seeing that last scene made me howl like a banshee. I've been committed ever since I saw the episode again. Hi everyone!

Grade ***1/2

Glitter: A Review

You know it had to happen, I had to purchase this cinematic masterpiece. In short, this was the movie that helped to drive Mariah Carey crazy. I can see why. Mariah plays a young singer Billie Frank who was supposedly a big star in the mid '80s. Didn't believe it for a mini-second--and there's the rub. For this movie to work, you have to believe this character could have existed. Nope, not quite. The early sequences had Billie on stage with her gakked out mother. Apparently mom was an actual recording artist, a plot point that begged to be explored somewhere in the film. It wasn't. Billie was dropped off into an opranage (dictionary says "orphanage") where the kids ate porridge, played with finger paints and watched Eight is Enough, and apparently formed life long friendships. Glitter did the soap operas one better by aging her from like 7 to 20 something. Good job! Who in the heck knew what happened during those years. You care? Neither do I. This is when Carey shows up with her kind of '80s clothes, her friends including a pointless character played by Da Brat, etc.

Billie's got a skill, she can sing, her group is bought by a cartoony bad guy played by Terence Howard. Howard loses Billie and the girls to a rising producer named Dice, played by Max Beasley. Oh thrilling. Billie's career soon skyrockets, her now-boyfriend Dice gets a little pissed and drunk for no reason (A Star is Born)and the wheels are off. Billie's mad huge, making mad dollars appearing on Late Night Live, wow, LNL starring John Lovitz as "The Pathological Truth Teller."  Dice meets his end and Billie hits the stage at Madison Square Center or somewhere and sings. Groan fest....



 The Good: Not much. Actually there's about 1/3 of a good movie here, it's slightly after mid-point near the end. 20 to 25 minutes isn't really enough to watch a movie over though. Despite the drubbing this received, a lot of the new material Carey did for this like, "Lead the Way" and "Never Too Far" are actually good songs.

The Bad: Mostly everything else. According to director Vondie-Curtis Hall (Mariah's best bud) a concerted effort was to minimize clothing and sets that were "Big '80s" in favor of timelessness. Big mistake. The '80s environment and energy is  just not here. In fact most of this looks like a decade/time that just didn't exist. Not good.

Grade **1/2 Wasn't awful and oddly enough the film's acknowledged executioner Vondie Curtis Hall did some illuminating director's commentary.