Squid Flicks: Help!

Title: Help!

Director: Richard Lester

Original Release: July 29, 1965

My Overall Rating: 4 stars out of 5

via Wikipedia

Ringo has come into possession of a mysterious ring.  The original owners, members of an Indian-ish cult, are prepared to chase him and the rest of The Beatles all over the world - London, Austria, Bahamas - in order to get it back.  Along the way, the boys sing a lot of really good songs.

Way back in my early teens, I watched Help! before A Hard Day's Night.  It appealed to me primarily because I was more familiar with the music.  The soundtrack was one of the three Beatles albums in my parents' record cabinet (see story here).  I suppose it was also a naïve bias for color over black-and-white.  I remember being particularly charmed by John's pit bed in the London apartment.  I wanted one just like it.  Someone - probably my sister - pointed out that it would only be more difficult to get out of bed in the morning.

Now, it's easy to see A Hard Day's Night as the stronger of the two.  Help!'s story is better and I still prefer the music.  But The Beatles' effortless charm in the first feels more forced and scripted in the second.  The band members have since admitted they were often stoned out of their minds during the filming of Help! which was surely part of the problem.

Make no mistake though, the music is amazing.  The title track is an under-appreciated masterpiece (see here) and "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away" is the first hint of a more Dylan-esque aesthetic creeping into the band's music.  The album - especially the UK version which includes several songs not in the film, including "Yesterday" - is The Beatles' cusp offering.  The last strains of '50s-style rock 'n' roll were giving way to something less frenetic and more introspective.

The movie experience brought one particularly important long-term development to The Beatles.  The filming of Help! provided George Harrison's first exposure to Indian music.  The story itself is undeniably racist and that is a well-deserved knock against it.  But George genuinely fell in love with the sitar.  He wasted little time tracking down master Ravi Shankar to teach him.  Just a few months later, Harrison played the instrument on Rubber Soul's "Norwegian Wood."  Raga rock was born.

Come to think of it, the movies worked out pretty well for George especially.  He met his first wife in the first one: Pattie Boyd, rock music's greatest muse.  In the second, he discovered a fascination with India that would shape his life for years afterward.

********

Last week's movie post inspired one of the longest and most gratifying comment threads this blog has seen in quite a long while.  Let's keep it going, folks!

NyQuilDriver proposed They Might Be Giants as a challenger to Beatle supremacy.  I welcome the choice.  I loooove TMBG (see here).  No band is more emblematic of my own college years in the early '90s.  

I can't deny they hold up surprisingly well with the parameters as I have set them.  TMBG are incredibly prolific: 740ish songs.  While that is spread out over four decades, they have maintained a consistent level of quality over the years.  NQD introduced me to some of their more recent material which is still really good.  Dare I say, some of it is stronger than some of their better-known early work.

My conclusion: They Might Be Giants is not in The Beatles' league.  And yet, they clearly deserve a lot more love than they get.  Indeed, the entire genre of geek rock is worthy of greater respect - Weird Al, especially.  Let's start the Hall of Fame campaign now, folks!

Star Trek: Future's End

Episode: "Future's End"

Series: Star Trek: Voyager

Season 3, Episode 8

Original Air Date: November 6, 1996

via Memory Alpha

Voyager encounters Captain Braxton, a time traveler from the 29th century.  In fact, Braxton, formerly of the Starfleet Temporal Integrity Commission, is trying to destroy the ship in order to avoid the role it is to play in a temporal explosion in his own time.  Man, it's like he's never read a Greek tragedy...

Anyway, both Voyager and Braxton's ship get pulled into the gravitational field from which Braxton came.  It throws them all the way to Earth.  Great news, right?  Except that it's Earth in 1996.  

Star Trek returning to "present day" is well-tread territory for the franchise.  Prior to "Future's End," it had been done in TOS's "Assignment: Earth" and Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home.  There are other stories involving Earth's past but to this point these were the only ones that pinpointed the current time of production.  There is something funny about watching our heroes navigate the, for them, inconveniences of the 20th century.  How handy that because of his hobbies, Tom Paris already knows how to drive a car.

Our villain is Henry Starling.  In 1967, Starling discovered Braxton's crashed ship and has been mining its technology to build his own corporate empire ever since.  The story asserts that this chance encounter accelerated Earth's computer advances at a much greater rate than should have been.  In their effort to set the timeline right, our heroes have to mess with Starling's plans.  He's none too happy about it.

Part 2 in two weeks...

Acting Notes

via Wikipedia

Ed Begley Jr. played Henry Starling.  Begley was born in Los Angeles, September 16, 1949.  His father, Ed Begley Sr., was an Oscar-winning actor himself.  He attended Los Angeles Valley College.

Ed Jr.'s resume is lengthy with literally hundreds of professional credits.  Films include An Officer and a Gentleman, The Accidental Tourist and Batman Forever.  His portrayal of Dr. Victor Ehlrich on St. Elsewhere earned him six consecutive Emmy nominations.  Recurring television credits include Better Call Saul, Young Sheldon and Arrested Development.

Ed Begley, Jr. is the most outspoken environmentalist in Hollywood.  In particular, he is closely associated with electric vehicles.  He and his wife Rachelle Carlson co-hosted a green living show called Living with Ed for three years.

Squid Flicks: A Hard Day's Night

Title: A Hard Day's Night

Director: Richard Lester

Original Release: July 6, 1964

My Overall Rating: 4 stars out of 5

via Wikipedia

Especially as I get older, I try to take closer notice of the things that bring me joy.  Time with family and good friends?  Check.  Science fiction?  Check, and especially Trek these days, obviously.  Sports?  I do obsess over baseball - yes, even in the off season.  Music?  That almost goes without saying.  And I can't deny, nearly 40 years after I first fell in love with them, that it's still The Fab Four above all others.  The Beatles are and have always been the very embodiment of joy - for me and for literally millions of other people over multiple generations.

So, you don't think the Beatles are the greatest band ever?  Okay.  Let's play a game.  You pick your challenger, any popular music act in history.  (I willingly concede that classical and jazz are higher leagues.)  Not only that, but you get to decide on the best eight years of that act's run.  Ready?

What are the 10 best songs from your act's 8 best years.  I would offer The Beatles' 10 best.  For demonstration purposes, my personal favorites off the top of my head...

• Here, There and Everywhere
• In My Life
• Tomorrow Never Knows
• Help!
• Something
• While My Guitar Gently Weeps
• Yesterday
• Let It Be
• Here Comes the Sun
• I Am the Walrus

At this point, your group might look pretty good.  Numerous acts could put together a solid 10 from their peak years.  

How about the best 20?  Harder now, isn't it?    Bear in mind, for my boys, this couldn't even yet cover all of the Billboard #1s, and those aren't even necessarily The Beatles' best songs.  In fact, they're not.  Still like your list better?  Fine.

(I'll happily keep listing songs for anyone who will take me up on this challenge.)

Best 50.  You're scraping now or at least you will be soon.  For me, we haven't even gotten to proper hidden gems territory yet.

Best 100.  Wait, 100?!!!  Most other bands don't even have 100 songs over 8 years!  Fine.  Of course, you're making my argument for me.  I'll give you another 8 years if you want.  Hell, I'll give you your band's full run if that's what it takes to dredge up 100 decent songs.  I'm still winning.

But what about those covers?  "Twist and Shout" doesn't count!  Fine, but then they don't for your band either.  In fact, if anyone other than a band member even has a writing credit, that song is out.  See ya, Elton John.  Elvis has definitely left the building.

Best 200.  You see my point, I hope.  The longer the list gets, the more ridiculous comparisons become.  The second tier, third tier, fourth tier Beatles songs are more often than not genuinely masterful.  Even the best bands had to pad their albums with fluff.  The Beatles' fluff is still dazzling.  And the first tier is massive.

The final tally for The Beatles was 213 songs released between October 1962 and May 1970.  Folks, they did it all in eight years.  There is no comparison with anyone else.

For the record, if you picked Stevie Wonder, I'd be nervous.  I'd still win but I'd be nervous.

Still not convinced?  I could offer the Third Best Beatle argument.  George Harrison had a better, more interesting and more influential career than the third best member of your band, no contest.  Was he helped by the fact he was a Beatle?  Of course.  So were John and Paul, I assure you.  And your guy had advantages by association, too.  George still made more of his opportunities.

Or the Liverpool argument.  If you're neither British nor a football (soccer) fan, the most likely reason you've even heard of Liverpool, a city of half a million people, is The Beatles.  The band and its history are vital elements of Liverpool's tourist industry.  Few other musicians can stake that sort of claim to a major city.  Maybe Mozart in Salzburg or Elvis in Memphis.  End of list.

100 years from now, new generations will still be discovering The Beatles.  The joy will endure, perhaps even grow.  There will still be kids falling in love with them as I did.  Like me, once they get past the big hits, they'll experience the same delight in finding songs like "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away" or "For No One" or "The Inner Light."  I didn't even properly appreciate that last one myself until, I don't know, my late 40s.  Never made it onto an album - not even in the US where practically all of them made it onto LPs.  Was only ever a B-side to "Lady Madonna."  Yet it's possibly the best of George's India songs.  And a Star Trek episode is named for it - one of the best Star Trek episodes!

Your band does not have a song like "The Inner Light."

No joke, I could go on like this for pages and pages.  Perhaps I will someday.  For now, I should get back to the movie...

I had the house to myself this past weekend - just me and the cats.  I am about as introverted as a person can be so, as much as I love my family, time to myself is vital to my well-being.  What better way to make the most of it than with Beatles movies?

In 1964, it was all just beginning.  A Hard Day's Night is technically a mockumentary but the constantly being mobbed in public was real.  And so was the personal charm.  The Beatles were definitely not professional actors.  They were just walking about being themselves.  The playfulness you see on screen was effortless.  John's comic timing in the "You look just like him" scene is impeccable.  He said himself, everyone in Liverpool's a comedian.  Seeing that in action is magical.

A Hard Day's Night is no fluff piece, either.  Sure, it was thrown together quickly to capitalize on the mania but Lester took the job seriously.  Numerous filmmakers claim it as an inspiration.

And, of course, the most enduring stars are the songs themselves...

• Two singles went to #1: "Can't Buy Me Love," one of the best-selling 45s of the 1960s, and "A Hard Day's Night," my choice as the very best of their pre-1965 catalog.  
• "I Should Have Known Better" would probably have been a #1 if it hadn't been a B-side.  Oh, the list of Beatles B-sides...  That would trounce your band's list soundly.
• The lovely "If I Fell" was one of Lennon/McCartney's "early attempts at a ballad," in John's words.  They figured out that particular trick quickly.  The following year, they'd crank out "Yesterday" and "In My Life" among other timeless masterpieces.
• Leading the charge for the previously released material is "She Loves You," so easily dismissed upon first listening as a dippy bubblegum hit and boy did it sell.  In the UK, it's the band's all-time #1.  The more you listen, the more you appreciate the musical genius behind the goofy lyrics.
• Naturally, the soundtrack album topped the charts, too.

Through it all, joy - pure, unadulterated joy.  

Thank you for reading.

Star Trek: Trials and Tribble-ations

Episode: "Trials and Tribble-ations"

Series: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine

Season 5, Episode 6

Original Air Date: November 4, 1996

via Wikipedia

Our heroes go back in time to Kirk's Enterprise in order to prevent an attempted assassination on old James T.  Captain Sisko, Dax, Bashir and O'Brien all don the old uniforms and wander about a set we all know and love.  Meanwhile, Odo and Worf hang out at a space station bar to learn what they can about the scheme.

For the nostalgia nerds - and I proudly count myself as one - there is no more satisfying episode than "Trials and Tribbile-ations."  Using Zemekis-style special effects, the DS9 characters were edited seamlessly into the action from TOS's classic "The Trouble with Tribbles."  Kirk's and Spock's first appearance is a genuine wow moment for audience and characters alike.  O'Brien being interrogated with Scotty and the others after a bar brawl is serious fun as are the revelations from Dax regarding a sexual past with Doctor McCoy.  Overall, the story's awfully goofy - even compared to the original.  But the bells and whistles more than make up for any narrative shortcomings.  

Without a doubt, it's one of DS9's best.

LEGO

One of the gift sets included with our Enterprise-D order was a Hot Chocolate Stand...

The completed set

Obviously, there are Star Trek possibilities here...

Alaskan Will Riker takes Deanna Troi for a ski date on the holodeck.  The Child offered an explanation for the mis-colored hands: yellow gloves.

Worf is invited and, of course, he shows up in full uniform.

Poor Wesley is upset he wasn't invited, too.

Acting Notes

DS9 appearance via Memory Alpha 

Charlie Brill played the role of Arne Darvin - a Klingon spy disguised as a human - in both the TOS and DS9 eras.  Darvin is, in fact, the catalyst for sending Sisko and friends back in time to begin with.  Brill was born in Brooklyn, January 13, 1938.  In an astonishing coincidence, he and his wife Mitzi McCall happened to be dining in the same restaurant as show runner Ira Steven Behr and a couple of writers when the latter group were discussing the casting of the episode.

Original series appearance via Memory Alpha

In addition to being married, Brill and McCall were a long-running comedy team, appearing on such programs as The Ed Sullivan Show and Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In.  They were on Sullivan the same night the Beatles made their world-altering debut in 1964.  The two were also on the long-running crime drama series Silk Stalkings.  In all, they were married for 64 years until her death in 2024.

Brill's films include The Beast of Budapest, Blackbeard's Ghost and The Amazing Dobermans.

Squid Flicks: Wake Up Dead Man

Title: Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery

Director: Rian Johnson

Original Release: September 6, 2025

My Overall Rating: 4 stars out of 5

via Wikipedia

Super sleuth Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) is back.  A priest of a small town Upstate New York parish (Josh Brolin) has been murdered and his newly arrived assistant pastor (Josh O'Connor) is the prime suspect.  Meanwhile, the massive inheritance - preserved in a single precious gem - has gone missing.  Blanc is on the case.

I haven't written about the Knives Out series yet, of which Wake Up Dead Man is the third in the series, all written and directed by Rian Johnson and starring Daniel Craig.  The franchise is based on classic mystery and mystery-comedy films.  The original installment, released in 2019, was a massive hit: $312.9 million at the box office, nearly eight times its production budget.  Netflix bought the exclusive rights to two sequels for $400 million.

All three movies are loads of fun.  The original is probably my favorite and, for me, this third one is an improvement on the second, Glass Onion.  Craig's James Bond charm transfers easily to Blanc.  Wake Up Dead Man boasts a wonderful supporting cast, combining established A-listers like Brolin and Glenn Close with talented but less famous actors like Cailee Spaeny and Daryl McCormack.  O'Connor holds his own with the bigger names.  I particularly appreciated Mila Kunis in a notably unsexy role as the local chief of police.  

The church itself was stunning.  Exteriors were shot at the Church of the Holy Innocents in High Beach, Epping Forest, England.  I was a little disappointed to learn that the interior, the real treat, was a soundstage built for the movie.  It's easy to spot the Moby Dick homage: a pulpit built to look like a ship.  

Johnson and Craig have each said they'll keep making Knives Out movies as long as they're both still involved.  We're definitely up for more at our house.

Star Trek: Sacred Ground

Episode: "Sacred Ground"

Series: Star Trek: Voyager

Season 3, Episode 7

Original Air Date: October 30, 1996

via Memory Alpha

Granted shore leave on the Nechani homeworld, a few of the crew indulge in a guided tour of religious sites.  Curious Kes wanders into a cavern where she gets too close to what sure looks like a glowing sacred shrine.  It zaps her.  She is dying.  She and Neelix are beamed directly to sick bay on Voyager.  While the Doctor searches for medical solutions, Janeway and Company press the Nechani for answers.  The Nechani are plenty friendly and apologetic but unfortunately, they don't know how to help Kes either.  Perhaps the monks can help...

"Sacred Ground" starts off on the wrong foot for me.  Sadly, this sort of thing happens in the real world all the time: well-meaning but stupid travelers wander somewhere they're not supposed to, experience terrible mishap, then demand the locals fix it.  Let's not mince words, either.  It's typically white travelers treating the non-white world as their playground, shocked when they have to pay the price for ignoring very sensible warnings from the locals.  At best, it's obnoxious.  At worst, it's colonialist.  As such, I have little sympathy for the Voyager crew in their initial reaction to the predicament.  Sorry, but Kes should have known better.  Her stupidity or, more kindly, naïveté is not the Nechani's fault.

Fortunately, I felt better by the time the real point of the story became clear.  "Sacred Ground" is all about getting over yourself and accepting the fact that not all understanding comes from rational thought.  The episode gets mixed reviews, some saying it's among Voyager's worst.  Others are more charitable.  Despite my early annoyance, I'm inclined towards the latter.

At first, Janeway is all confidence and swagger: no problem, I'll knock out whatever silly tasks they have for me right after I finish my ninth cup of coffee.  But when doing that doesn't get her what she wants, she has to reconsider her own approach.  She must accept that science can't solve everything.  The answer she seeks is in the spiritual world.  She must take a leap of faith.

Yes, there's ultimately a scientific answer but that's not the deeper message here.  I'll admit to being science-first myself but we all know there are plenty of questions in the universe that have yet to be answered by empirical evidence and never will be.  Furthermore, humility often offers a path forward which the arrogant never find.

One more thing: frequent visitors may have noticed that I am always on the look out for connections between Star Trek and Star Wars.  Janeway's initial encounter with her guide was quite similar to Luke's introduction to Yoda, even involving fussing over a light fixture.  Of course, the trope of mistaking a sage - or even God - for an annoying commoner predates both franchises by thousands of years.  Grimm's fairy tales, for instance, offer numerous examples.  

Worth noting, Janeway's default attitude towards someone she did not at first consider worthy of her time did little to endear me to the story in its early stages.

LEGO

Our family Christmas present this year was LEGO's new USS Enterprise NCC 1701-D set along with the free accompanying Shuttlecraft set.  The big set is 3600 pieces and it took us several days.  In total, the two sets include ten NextGen characters - eleven if you count Data's cat, Spot.

Riker's trombone marks the first time the instrument has been included in any LEGO set.

The Enterprise-D crew

Data and Spot

The completed project

Ensign Ro and her shuttlecraft

An away mission to a planet with giant birds

Acting Notes

via Memory Alpha

Becky Ann Baker played the role of Janeway's guide.  Baker was born in Fort Knox, Kentucky, February 17, 1953.  She graduated from Western Kentucky University.

For the more fortunate of my generation at least, Becky Ann Baker is probably best remembered as Jean Weir, mother to Lindsay and Sam, on Freaks and Geeks.  I say fortunate because despite only running for 18 episodes, F&G is considered by quite a lot of us to be one of the best shows in the history of television.  Seriously, do yourself a favor and go watch it now.  Imagine John Hughes movies, only better.  In the United States, it's available on several streaming services, including kanopy which you may be able to access for free through your local library.  Binge it all.  You'll thank me later.

Fortunately, several of the people involved, including producer Judd Apatow and actors Linda Cardellini, James Franco, Seth Rogan and Jason Segel went on to great success after the show was cancelled.  Getting back to Baker...

After F&G, Baker had a recurring role on Girls (also produced by Apatow) which earned her an Emmy nomination.  Guest appearances include L.A. Law, Frasier and Sex and the City.  Films include In & Out, Nights in Rodanthe and Hope Springs.

Squid Flicks: Citizen Kane

Title: Citizen Kane

Director: Orson Welles

Original Release: May 1, 1941

My Overall Rating: 4 stars out of 5

via Wikipedia

Charles Foster Kane builds a newspaper empire, ultimately becoming one of the richest and most influential men in the world.  Then his life falls apart.  Truthfully, any plot synopsis falls short of conveying the sheer immensity of Citizen Kane.  Is it the greatest film ever made?  That's certainly a worthy debate though it comes as close to critical consensus as any.  I've only given it a 4, not because I deny its brilliance but because there are other movies I enjoy a lot more.  

Kane was Welles's first film after he'd taken the theatre world by storm.  He was given as close to total creative control as a major studio has ever given a first-time director, before or since.  He made the most of the opportunity.  He was only 25 years old.

I'd love to take a class on Kane.  It doesn't take long to recognize its uniqueness.  Other films simply don't look like this.  Cinematographer Gregg Toland literally invented camera shots, even carving new lenses.  It would be fun to go through shot by shot with someone who has studied it lovingly for years.  Kane is the Hamlet of film in that once you start looking for homages, you see them everywhere.  All the huge wooden crates in the mansion at the end of the movie... can't help thinking of the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark.  

Amazingly, Kane flopped in its original release.  The story hit too close to home for William Randolph Hearst, one of several real-life inspirations for the protagonist.  Hearst forbade his newspapers from advertising or even mentioning the movie.  The impact on ticket sales was no joke.  Even so, quite a lot of critics fell in love with it and the movie was re-released in 1956 with much greater success.  It probably didn't hurt that Hearst had passed away in 1951.