In these doldrums of summer, one really notices how slim and shallow the network’s offerings are; in the blush of publicity they’re great at making it appear something’s happening when nothing really is, but eventually one realizes it’s just new iterations of the same old tired soaps, game shows, overwrought “dramas”, and hacky sitcoms. Howard TV is something perhaps only Stern (or Oprah, his counterpart for the non-Y-chromosome segment of the population) could pull off, in that it’s essentially an entire channel devoted to the universe of Stern, his radio show, and the various characters that orbit within its gravity. Between the four-day-a-week Howard Stern morning radio show itself, the followup Wrap-Up Show, the behind-the-scenes activities of the Stern staffers, the ongoing circus that follows the show’s Wack Pack of hangers-on, and material drawn from the vault of videotapes originally shot during the time Stern was on the E! channel, there’s a near-constant flow of new, high-quality programming on Howard TV — I’d estimate there’s at least an average of around five hours of new content added per week.
The real downfall of Howard TV lies in its limited distribution. Thus far the material produced for On Demand remains solely available there, which is all well and good if you happen to be on one of the cable systems that carries In Demand Networks, but if not, well, you’re pretty much SOL. Especially now that Howard TV is branching out into producing more original programming (such as its two bowling shows and the Miss Howard Stern reality show), the service is perfect for Itunes video sales: it’s easy to imagine Stern fans loading up their ipods with the latest Howard TV content each morning for the subway ride into work, and the fact that this or another similar revenue stream isn’t being capitalized upon is ludicrous. It’s the problem Howard has (so far more-or-less successfully) been combating since leaving terrestrial radio for satellite: sure, the show is great, but do people know? If a person has neither satellite radio nor In Demand-enabled cable television (nor the proclivity towards filesharing), then chances are they don’t. But if they could get a taste of what’s going on at Sirius and Howard TV on Itunes, it could lead them into purchasing more, perhaps regularly, and maybe even signing up for a satellite radio subscription — you know, once all the Sirius/XM merger issues are settled. Without this additional avenue for revenue or exposure, the Stern circus will likely stay out sight and out of mind of most who don’t already number themselves among the converted.
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I wasn’t too sure what to expect from this direct-to-DVD offering going in, as the stated intentions of the project seemed somewhat at cross purposes, combining influences and creative forces from many different areas — comics, animation, and film — in such a way that ‘too many cooks’ syndrome could easily have been a fatal flaw. Ostensibly, Batman: Gotham Knight bridges the gap between Batman Begins and The Dark Knight and is thus set in that continuity, but with scripts contributed by comics writers and then handed over to a variety of Japanese animators to render as they saw fit I was worried the end product would be disjointed beyond comprehension. Fortunately, while the individual episodes stand alone there is enough of a throughline connecting them to keep the viewing experience fairly cohesive despite the fact that Bruce Wayne looks like a teenage Asian boy in one episode and a 30 year old Caucasian man in the next. Over the property’s 70 year history the Batman has stood up to hundreds of differing interpretations, so none of the liberties taken here were too disturbing, though a few of the stylistic choices do beggar explanation, and the welcome presence of Kevin Conroy as the voice of the Dark Knight throughout was an absolute comfort. While not completely satisfying as a piece unto itself, many of Gotham Knight‘s segments are pleasantly successful and overall the work is of a piece with the dark tone of Nolan’s movies. This isn’t a must-buy by any means, and nowhere near the quality of DC’s recent awesome animated offering The New Frontier, but it’s a worthwhile attempt to try something different with Batman and company and a good way for viewers to get themselves good and hyped for the impending premiere of The Dark Knight itself.
This new documentary covering the brief history of the incredibly influential Joy Division should really come in a two-pack with Control, the fictionalized treatment of the same material, as the two films contain a strikingly small amount of overlap. Control, based on Ian Curtis’ widow’s book Touching From A Distance, covers the internal stresses brought about in the perfect storm created by Ian’s marriage, work, sickness, and ambitions, while Joy Division (really, couldn’t we just have snagged another JD song for the title to make it less confusing and more search-optimizable?) fleshes out the story with a surprising amount of actual performance footage of the band and lengthy interviews with the surviving band members and hangers-on, including Curtis’ former mistress — probably accounting for Deborah Curtis being represented here only by quotes taken from Touching From A Distance. Still, it hardly matters, knowing that side of the story is aptly covered in Control. Director Grant Gee (Radiohead’s Meeting People Is Easy) even makes many similar stylistic choices as Anton Corbijn did in Control — no shortage of black-and-white images of crumbling industrial Manchester here, kids! While it’s a shame producer Martin Hannett was unavailable for comment due to premature decease, Tony Wilson’s lively presence here belies the rapidity with which his own mortality was approaching, and sleeve designer Peter Saville lightens up the proceedings markedly with his self-effacing, amusing commentary. While one might wish for a slightly more complete film to tell the entire story, it’s somehow fitting that the Joy Division story is split between the two incomplete halves of Control and Joy Division, and it’s hard to imagine anyone who enjoyed one not also appreciating the other.
Also newly issued to coincide with the recent spurt of interest in the band is the new compilation The Best of Joy Division. In the wake of the multiple rounds of collections of the band’s work that have come out over the past 25+ years there’s obviously not much new here (this is a band that only put out two actual albums during their existence, after all), but it’s a pretty unassailable 14-track selection and a good starter for anyone not already familiar with the band’s work — although it really could have been sequenced by simply putting Unknown Pleasures, Closer, and Substance into a CD changer and pressing ‘shuffle.’ The UK edition does come with a bonus disc collecting the band’s complete recordings for the BBC, including both of their Peel Sessions, but if you’ve already got everything on disc one and don’t feel the need to buy it again for the nice package you could simply get the single-disc collection The Complete BBC Recordings instead, as the contents are identical.
The Onion Movie (2008): I’d heard rumors of The Onion being involved in a movie project several years ago, which never sounded like a great idea considering the wit of the average Onion article tends to begin and end with the headline — rare is the extended Onion piece which doesn’t swiftly beat a good joke into the ground, so how could they possible fill 90 minutes? It was hardly surprising when the project was shelved, which is part of why it’s so surprising to see it finally arrive unheralded in direct-to-DVD form. Some of the gags betray the film’s long gestation period, most notably some horribly dated bits riffing on once-virginal Britney Spears making sexually explicit music aimed at the pre-teen market — though it should be noted that these jokes would have been well past their sell-by date even in 2003, when this was reportedly shot (it’s really not good when even Mad TV beats you to the gag). A few aspects of the final project do come off somewhat unfinished, but for the most part The Onion Movie holds up far better than anyone would have any reason to expect, with many genuinely laugh-out-loud funny moments. The attempts at weaving some sort of coherent throughline into the movie via a thin plot about corporate influence on the news are dead weight (take the time during these segments to go to the bathroom or fix a snack without bothering to press pause; unless you’ve seen Network at least twice, you won’t care at all) and every instance in which a joke is repeated via a callback is one reuse of material too many, but the short-attention-span crowd should find The Onion Movie contains a high enough ratio of hits to misses to be worthwhile. If nothing else, it’s all worth it for the batter-dipped kitties.