LIVE FROM THE COUCH / Greg Walton

RECYCLE, REGURGITATE, RESURRECT

Reconstituted classics and quasi-zombies.

Sometimes it’s best to just grieve and move on. When Matt Groening’s second TV progeny, Futurama, passed away quietly during a Vikings/Packers game on the Fox network five years ago, I mourned just like anyone else. Yet, as much potential as the show had, it only rarely hit the sitcom sweet spot like its overachieving older sibling, The Simpsons. So why bring it back for a series of 90-minute mega-episodes premiering on DVD? In two words: Family Guy.

Realizing that an unwarranted cancellation, followed by a well-promoted resurrection, could spell lingering success for Groening’s creation too, Fox is now on their second Futurama movie, The Beast with a Billion Backs (20^th Century Fox, 89 minutes). The original voice-cast brings their A-game and every character of significance makes an appearance, but the jokes are stretched like a bad facelift. Large chunks of Bender’s shiny metal ass have been grafted here and there in an attempt to preserve the show’s dignity. But it’s pretty clear Fry, Leela and Zoidberg should have been left to orbit the Earth in peace.

Then there’s Jack Black, who wore out his welcome as a movie star the weekend School of Rock opened and hasn’t found another role to fit him since. Odds were a Michel Gondry film (director of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) wouldn’t be his best bet, either. But that’s why they play the game, my friends.

Be Kind Rewind (New Line Home Entertainment, 102 minutes) is just the sort of Godard-meets-Walt Disney experiment Gondry specializes in. Working with a Hollywood wet dream set-up (Black and Mos Def accidentally erase all the videotapes in the store where the latter’s character works and have to reshoot the movies themselves), Gondry does his best to prove the auteur theory by turning the movie into an improv-amateur-art flick, satiating the suits with scenes of a low-rent Ghostbusters but keeping his camera focused on a higher purpose. Be Kind Rewind may be too sloppy for an Oscar, but it’s the biggest open-mouth kiss the movies have had in a long time.

Meanwhile, The Signal (Magnolia Home Entertainment, 103 minutes) cashes in on the apocalypse craze, borrowing the central idea of Stephen King’s Cell but managing to improve upon it with a meager budget of around 50K. Anyone caught watching the unexplained transmission (which looks like the psychedelic visualer from iTunes) goes soft in the head and starts cracking skulls. In the midst of this rage-induced rapture, directors Jacob Gentry, David Bruckner and Dan Bush divide a love-triangle into three parts, mixing mocha-black comedy with shots of straight-up horror. Call it brainwashing, but this is the best goddamn thing I’ve seen in weeks!

Straight outta the third most dangerous city in America— Saginaw, Michigan—Greg Walton writes from a basement bunker. His only window to the outside world is a sweet surround sound set-up and 65" inches of hi-def glory.