Fun with Netflix
Some thoughts on what I've been watching and reading lately.
* I read "Sharpe's Eagle" by Bernard Cornwell.
I found the descriptions of battle enlightening; the TV series was just too low-budget to really get in depth with the military tactics. (I guess it's hard enough trying to portray the huge battles of the Napoleonic wars when you've only got about 30 extras, without getting into the differences between lines and squares, and how best for infantry to stand up to cavalry...)
However, I found the novel disappointing overall. The characters were really cardboard cliches; this wasn't true of the TV series (at least for the main characters) because they were portrayed by skilled actors who brought depth and complexity to the roles. No such luck with the book.
Also, I think fanfiction has spoiled me for mediocre writing. Every time Cornwell wrote "the black-haired Rifleman" or "the Irish Sergeant" I wanted to tear out my hair. Good fic writers could never get away with that! Cornwell also repeatedly descends into the "tell" instead of "show" method of storytelling; don't tell me that Sharpe and Harper really care about each other deep down, show it to me! It was also a pain to get used to the punctuation; I know the British aren't as fond of commas as we Americans, but I kept having to re-read sentences where a comma really would've helped clarify the meaning.
That said, it was an interesting read, and I enjoyed comparing it to the TV series. But I don't expect to read any more of them.
* I watched a bunch Robert Downey, Jr. movies. This weekend: "U.S. Marshals," "Air America," and "Home for the Holidays." Last weekend: "The Pick-Up Artist," "Two Girls and a Guy," and "Heart and Souls."
"U.S. Marshals" is one of the most cynically transparent Hollywood attempts at cashing in on something popular that I've ever seen. They basically just ripped off the plot of the "Fugitive," while removing every single bit of humanity or wit that may have existed in the original. The DVD is even loaded with an inane documentary and ads for other movies about U.S. marshals by the same studio, and the director's commentary is thoroughly half-assed; you have to keep skipping ahead because he's silent throughout most of the film.
Robert Downey, Jr. can't really save this one, but he's still enjoyable to watch. (When isn't he adorable to watch? [That's a rhetorical question; he's always adorable.]) He plays a villain, which is interesting because on the surface he doesn't seem the villain type. I suspect he gets cast as a villain more often than you might think because underneath his sort of "Like me! I'm adorable!" schtick, there's something dark and needy, and there's also kind of the arrogance of someone who believes he's the smartest person in the room (and often is).
The movie, sadly, doesn't do much with this; his character is never developed or explored at all. He does his best, showing the charm and smarm of a man who thinks he's getting away with murder. Of course, the plot is entirely predictable; I was boggled by the director's comments that "We tried to keep it ambiguous as to whether the villain was Robert Downey, Jr or Wesley Snipes." Like, duh. It's The Fugitive 2, you know it isn't Snipes, and Downey's character is the "over-educated" cliche who invades the group of "common-sense" heroes. Of course he's the villain.
I was also disturbed by the film's casual attitude toward violence and police brutality, but I suppose that's par for the course in this type of stupid action movie. Still, it was a ridiculous contradiction given the subject matter; they're trying to have it both ways, winning audience sympathy both for a falsely-accused fugitive and for a cop who exhibits casual brutality toward those he's chasing.
I'll give it a tiny bit of kudos for the slightly-more-interesting-than-usual casting; they had a cast of mixed races and genders (including at least two competent women on the law enforcement side) and a French actress playing Snipes' love interest who brought a bit of depth to a role that would normally be a complete cardboard cut-out.
* "Air America." Okay, I realize that on no planet is "Air America" considered a decent film, but I can't help it. I like this movie. It's like comfort food; one of those things that cheers me up when I run into one of its endless appearances in syndication.
Yes, it's a comedy that's not very funny. Yes, it's a stream of war-movie cliches with nothing new to add. Yes, it's got Mel Gibson doing that horrid pontificating "touching" shit that he always pulls ("Before you tell us to keep quiet, can we please have a moment of silence?" *shudders at the cheese*).
However. It's got lots of plane crashes and stuff blowing up (in my opinion, Robert Downey, Jr. films generally suffer from a dearth of explosions), Robert Downey, Jr. gets the most screen time, and he and Gibson actually have excellent chemistry. I enjoy watching them together. My opinion of Mel Gibson is at about the same level as Trey Parker and Matt Stone's in "The Passion of the Jew," and yet I still enjoy watching him and Downey together.
I can't explain it. It's a bad movie. But I'll probably watch it again next time it's on TBS.
* "Home for the Holidays." I have to qualify that this is really not my kind of movie; not only does nothing explode, but there's barely even any fighting in it! So for years I've been neglecting to watch it despite its having come highly recommended from a number of reliable sources.
Well, I admit it: I was wrong. This is actually a very good movie, and I'm glad I watched it.
The film is about a single mother who lives in the city heading to her parents' house for Thanksgiving. The relatives all gather and pay lip service to family togetherness--then all their brewing internal issues come spewing out.
I was expecting one of those saccharine "Yeah, we may be screwed up, but deep down we're glad we have each other" conclusions. It was a bit of that, but mostly it refused to descend into easy answers, and instead let the complexity of the situation speak for itself: the modern American notion of family is screwed up. People live thousands of miles from each other, their lives take vastly different paths, and yet they feel obligated to pretend a sense of closeness to people they often don't like and can't understand.
The film does a good job of portraying a variety of representations of family relationships: an annoying brother and mature sister who really do love each other, a pair of sisters who pretty much can't stand each other, a mother who loves her son but refuses to acknowledge a major part of him, a father who longs for a simpler world. It also does an exceptional job of constructing three-dimensional characters who consistently excel beyond the level of cliche. Even the unbelievably irritating, bigoted, conservative sister was given a level of depth and dignity.
The film did have an irritating tacked-on romance; on one level, this worked because it didn't dominate the story and it represented the idea of taking chances. But on the other hand, why does "taking chances" have to be represented as your typical Hollywood het romance?
The core relationship of the film was really between the between the sister, Claudia (Holly Hunter) and her brother, Tommy (Robert Downey Jr). The actors had great chemistry together, and I loved to see a film focusing on a sibling relationship instead of a romance. They were the outsiders of the family (perhaps this is why I relate!) and each provided the support the other needed to get through the holiday.
I loved Robert Downey, Jr.'s character. He's the one who doesn't fit in at all, and instead of moping about it and trying to change himself to win his family's approval, he's created a life for himself elsewhere. He's the only character who needs a plot device to bring him back into the fold; he comes to support his sister. Downey is also hilarious in the part; the character uses humor as a shield, making incessant jokes and annoying the hell out of everyone, to great effect.
Jodie Foster's DVD commentary is wonderful. She said that Tommy had basically been disappointed by his biological family and so had created a real family elsewhere, and that he was the bravest one because he'd chosen to do what was right for himself despite the disapproval and lack of understanding exhibited by his biological family.
There is such a wonderful scene where he calls his partner and you see this glimpse that tells you all you need to know--that he's found a place where he is loved and accepted for who he is. Yet it's still so painful to face the lack of acceptance from his biological family--the look on his face when he speaks to his partner and drops the mask of "everything's a joke, nothing can touch me" so that you can see how much he hurts underneath--it's just marvelous, and proof that Robert Downey, Jr. is an absolute genius of an actor. The emotion isn't overdone; it's just perfect. (There's a similar moment in Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang when his character actually breaks down, and it's just so absurdly funny and so utterly heart-wrenching at the same time. I think I rewound and watched it 10 times because it was so perfectly done.)
So, yes, rent the movie. (Preferably around Thanksgiving.) And don't forget to listen to Foster's excellent DVD commentary, which really should be a model for all DVD commentaries: the perfect mix of honest analysis of the story, anecdotes about the production, and sincere personal revelations.
* And then the weekend before, I watched "The Pick-Up Artist" and "Two Girls and a Guy." I'm going to discuss these together, because they've got the same writer/director and one is basically a more grown-up remake of the other.
These are both bad movies. "The Pick-Up Artist" is the strangest melding of 80s romantic comedy and mafia caper that I've ever seen. There was one part in particular, where Downey is off flirting with Molly Ringwald right after bringing her father to a casino filled with bunches of thugs to whom he owes money. I couldn't possibly focus on the romance while thinking "Dude, those guys could be beating the crap out of her dad right now!" There was no sense of urgency, and the pacing was really weird.
I actually liked Molly Ringwald's character, though (what happened to her? When I saw her in "The Stand" she couldn't act at all, but here she was decent.) Her character was more complex than your usual "dream girl" type heroine; she was a competent and intelligent young woman who'd been betrayed one too many times and wasn't interested in opening up romantically to a guy. Even to a hottie like young Robert Downey, Jr. (here billed as "Robert Downey" and with an adorable gap in his teeth that I really wish he'd kept).
Of course, she had to fail so that Downey could swoop in, save her dad, and woo her away. Typical. And also, how in the world did he manage to mistake Dennis Hopper for her boyfriend instead of her father? The film really had so many elements that just didn't make sense, as if the script had been half written and then they just decided to film it without finishing.
It does have quite an interesting cast, though; nearly every little role was recognizable from somewhere (that chick from SNL, that guy from The Sopranos, Vanessa Williams, Dennis Hopper, the pizza guy from "Do the Right Thing," etc.)
"Two Girls and a Guy" basically tries to re-do "The Pick-Up Artist"; Downey is, once again, a man who manipulates women in order to get what he wants from them. This film doesn't pull its punches, though; unlike the cuddly 80s version, here we see how nasty his behavior is and how much pain it causes to those who suffer from it.
The director pretty much sums up what's wrong with this movie in his commentary, though; he claims that anyone who doesn't sympathize with Downey's character is a "bad person" who he "wouldn't want to know" (paraphrased). The fuck? Clearly this director has never been on the receiving end of the lies and manipulations of someone who claims to love you. The film never acknowledges that this isn't a victimless crime. It's not the lack of monogamy that's the problem (the film presents a compelling argument that monogamy isn't right for everyone), it's the lying. I don't care how much he's really hurting inside; it's not okay for him to hurt other people.
But whatever. The film is mostly an excuse for girl-on-girl hoyay (that they're too cowardly to act on) and for an admittedly hot sex scene between Downey and Heather Graham. Despite his claims to have loved them both equally, the girl who admits to being bisexual is immediately sidelined. (This would be more offensive is she wasn't one of the worst actors I've ever seen in my life. Her name is Natasha Gregson Wagner; avoid her at all costs. She's nearly as bad as that kid in "The Phantom Menace.")
The film makes some pretense to exploring how "we're all really alone and struggling to be loved," but it just comes across as one of those inanely-pretentious off-off-off-Broadway plays written by first-time playwrights, full of lines meant to sound deep but that ultimately mean nothing.
Heather Graham is fairly good in her part, and, as always, Downey is enjoyable. It's interesting how often finds an excuse to sing in his movies (I know, he's got a CD out), and he's an engaging performer. (His best scene involves a mirror and his mouth opening very widely). He makes the character a bit sympathetic, but I just couldn't get past how badly it was written.
* And finally, "Heart and Souls," which I actually have on a VHS tape from when I was a little kid. I remember seeing this in the theater and crying throughout the entire thing; no matter how often I'd watch it at home, I ended up crying on each repeat viewing. (With the kid being abandoned, and the people trying to resolve their tragic lives, and there never being enough time, blah blah blah.) I was curious to see if it would still affect my older and more cynical self, and to my relief I found myself rolling my eyes instead of tearing up.
This is another bad movie, ridden with cliches and utterly transparent emotional manipulation. However, Downey is a true redeeming virtue in this one, and is the reason why I still have the video tape after all these years. His character gets possessed by the spirits of four very different ghosts who've been stalking him since childhood (the utter violation of this is never acknowledged within the text! Because he's a business man "cut off from his emotions" it's acceptable for them to take over his body and use it for their own ends, thoroughly fucking up his life in the process?!).
Anyway, but the point of this very offensive nonsense is that Downey gets a chance for some great acting. He gets possessed by a tough mom (Alfre Woodard), a sweet romantic young woman (Kyra Sedgwick), a shy wanna-be opera singer (Charles Grodin), and a 50s-style petty-crook-with-a-heart-of-gold (Tom Sizemore). Downey is so good at impersonating these people that you almost forget that it's the same person behind all these roles; his actual character has very little screentime compared to his-character-possessed-by-each-ghost. Also, he sings a lot.
So, yeah, very bad movie, but worth watching for his performance. Which is true of most of these, actually, except probably "U.S. Marshals" and "Two Girls and a Guy," which are pretty much irredeemable.
Now, why aren't "Chaplin" and "Ally McBeal" available on Netflix!?
* I read "Sharpe's Eagle" by Bernard Cornwell.
I found the descriptions of battle enlightening; the TV series was just too low-budget to really get in depth with the military tactics. (I guess it's hard enough trying to portray the huge battles of the Napoleonic wars when you've only got about 30 extras, without getting into the differences between lines and squares, and how best for infantry to stand up to cavalry...)
However, I found the novel disappointing overall. The characters were really cardboard cliches; this wasn't true of the TV series (at least for the main characters) because they were portrayed by skilled actors who brought depth and complexity to the roles. No such luck with the book.
Also, I think fanfiction has spoiled me for mediocre writing. Every time Cornwell wrote "the black-haired Rifleman" or "the Irish Sergeant" I wanted to tear out my hair. Good fic writers could never get away with that! Cornwell also repeatedly descends into the "tell" instead of "show" method of storytelling; don't tell me that Sharpe and Harper really care about each other deep down, show it to me! It was also a pain to get used to the punctuation; I know the British aren't as fond of commas as we Americans, but I kept having to re-read sentences where a comma really would've helped clarify the meaning.
That said, it was an interesting read, and I enjoyed comparing it to the TV series. But I don't expect to read any more of them.
* I watched a bunch Robert Downey, Jr. movies. This weekend: "U.S. Marshals," "Air America," and "Home for the Holidays." Last weekend: "The Pick-Up Artist," "Two Girls and a Guy," and "Heart and Souls."
"U.S. Marshals" is one of the most cynically transparent Hollywood attempts at cashing in on something popular that I've ever seen. They basically just ripped off the plot of the "Fugitive," while removing every single bit of humanity or wit that may have existed in the original. The DVD is even loaded with an inane documentary and ads for other movies about U.S. marshals by the same studio, and the director's commentary is thoroughly half-assed; you have to keep skipping ahead because he's silent throughout most of the film.
Robert Downey, Jr. can't really save this one, but he's still enjoyable to watch. (When isn't he adorable to watch? [That's a rhetorical question; he's always adorable.]) He plays a villain, which is interesting because on the surface he doesn't seem the villain type. I suspect he gets cast as a villain more often than you might think because underneath his sort of "Like me! I'm adorable!" schtick, there's something dark and needy, and there's also kind of the arrogance of someone who believes he's the smartest person in the room (and often is).
The movie, sadly, doesn't do much with this; his character is never developed or explored at all. He does his best, showing the charm and smarm of a man who thinks he's getting away with murder. Of course, the plot is entirely predictable; I was boggled by the director's comments that "We tried to keep it ambiguous as to whether the villain was Robert Downey, Jr or Wesley Snipes." Like, duh. It's The Fugitive 2, you know it isn't Snipes, and Downey's character is the "over-educated" cliche who invades the group of "common-sense" heroes. Of course he's the villain.
I was also disturbed by the film's casual attitude toward violence and police brutality, but I suppose that's par for the course in this type of stupid action movie. Still, it was a ridiculous contradiction given the subject matter; they're trying to have it both ways, winning audience sympathy both for a falsely-accused fugitive and for a cop who exhibits casual brutality toward those he's chasing.
I'll give it a tiny bit of kudos for the slightly-more-interesting-than-usual casting; they had a cast of mixed races and genders (including at least two competent women on the law enforcement side) and a French actress playing Snipes' love interest who brought a bit of depth to a role that would normally be a complete cardboard cut-out.
* "Air America." Okay, I realize that on no planet is "Air America" considered a decent film, but I can't help it. I like this movie. It's like comfort food; one of those things that cheers me up when I run into one of its endless appearances in syndication.
Yes, it's a comedy that's not very funny. Yes, it's a stream of war-movie cliches with nothing new to add. Yes, it's got Mel Gibson doing that horrid pontificating "touching" shit that he always pulls ("Before you tell us to keep quiet, can we please have a moment of silence?" *shudders at the cheese*).
However. It's got lots of plane crashes and stuff blowing up (in my opinion, Robert Downey, Jr. films generally suffer from a dearth of explosions), Robert Downey, Jr. gets the most screen time, and he and Gibson actually have excellent chemistry. I enjoy watching them together. My opinion of Mel Gibson is at about the same level as Trey Parker and Matt Stone's in "The Passion of the Jew," and yet I still enjoy watching him and Downey together.
I can't explain it. It's a bad movie. But I'll probably watch it again next time it's on TBS.
* "Home for the Holidays." I have to qualify that this is really not my kind of movie; not only does nothing explode, but there's barely even any fighting in it! So for years I've been neglecting to watch it despite its having come highly recommended from a number of reliable sources.
Well, I admit it: I was wrong. This is actually a very good movie, and I'm glad I watched it.
The film is about a single mother who lives in the city heading to her parents' house for Thanksgiving. The relatives all gather and pay lip service to family togetherness--then all their brewing internal issues come spewing out.
I was expecting one of those saccharine "Yeah, we may be screwed up, but deep down we're glad we have each other" conclusions. It was a bit of that, but mostly it refused to descend into easy answers, and instead let the complexity of the situation speak for itself: the modern American notion of family is screwed up. People live thousands of miles from each other, their lives take vastly different paths, and yet they feel obligated to pretend a sense of closeness to people they often don't like and can't understand.
The film does a good job of portraying a variety of representations of family relationships: an annoying brother and mature sister who really do love each other, a pair of sisters who pretty much can't stand each other, a mother who loves her son but refuses to acknowledge a major part of him, a father who longs for a simpler world. It also does an exceptional job of constructing three-dimensional characters who consistently excel beyond the level of cliche. Even the unbelievably irritating, bigoted, conservative sister was given a level of depth and dignity.
The film did have an irritating tacked-on romance; on one level, this worked because it didn't dominate the story and it represented the idea of taking chances. But on the other hand, why does "taking chances" have to be represented as your typical Hollywood het romance?
The core relationship of the film was really between the between the sister, Claudia (Holly Hunter) and her brother, Tommy (Robert Downey Jr). The actors had great chemistry together, and I loved to see a film focusing on a sibling relationship instead of a romance. They were the outsiders of the family (perhaps this is why I relate!) and each provided the support the other needed to get through the holiday.
I loved Robert Downey, Jr.'s character. He's the one who doesn't fit in at all, and instead of moping about it and trying to change himself to win his family's approval, he's created a life for himself elsewhere. He's the only character who needs a plot device to bring him back into the fold; he comes to support his sister. Downey is also hilarious in the part; the character uses humor as a shield, making incessant jokes and annoying the hell out of everyone, to great effect.
Jodie Foster's DVD commentary is wonderful. She said that Tommy had basically been disappointed by his biological family and so had created a real family elsewhere, and that he was the bravest one because he'd chosen to do what was right for himself despite the disapproval and lack of understanding exhibited by his biological family.
There is such a wonderful scene where he calls his partner and you see this glimpse that tells you all you need to know--that he's found a place where he is loved and accepted for who he is. Yet it's still so painful to face the lack of acceptance from his biological family--the look on his face when he speaks to his partner and drops the mask of "everything's a joke, nothing can touch me" so that you can see how much he hurts underneath--it's just marvelous, and proof that Robert Downey, Jr. is an absolute genius of an actor. The emotion isn't overdone; it's just perfect. (There's a similar moment in Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang when his character actually breaks down, and it's just so absurdly funny and so utterly heart-wrenching at the same time. I think I rewound and watched it 10 times because it was so perfectly done.)
So, yes, rent the movie. (Preferably around Thanksgiving.) And don't forget to listen to Foster's excellent DVD commentary, which really should be a model for all DVD commentaries: the perfect mix of honest analysis of the story, anecdotes about the production, and sincere personal revelations.
* And then the weekend before, I watched "The Pick-Up Artist" and "Two Girls and a Guy." I'm going to discuss these together, because they've got the same writer/director and one is basically a more grown-up remake of the other.
These are both bad movies. "The Pick-Up Artist" is the strangest melding of 80s romantic comedy and mafia caper that I've ever seen. There was one part in particular, where Downey is off flirting with Molly Ringwald right after bringing her father to a casino filled with bunches of thugs to whom he owes money. I couldn't possibly focus on the romance while thinking "Dude, those guys could be beating the crap out of her dad right now!" There was no sense of urgency, and the pacing was really weird.
I actually liked Molly Ringwald's character, though (what happened to her? When I saw her in "The Stand" she couldn't act at all, but here she was decent.) Her character was more complex than your usual "dream girl" type heroine; she was a competent and intelligent young woman who'd been betrayed one too many times and wasn't interested in opening up romantically to a guy. Even to a hottie like young Robert Downey, Jr. (here billed as "Robert Downey" and with an adorable gap in his teeth that I really wish he'd kept).
Of course, she had to fail so that Downey could swoop in, save her dad, and woo her away. Typical. And also, how in the world did he manage to mistake Dennis Hopper for her boyfriend instead of her father? The film really had so many elements that just didn't make sense, as if the script had been half written and then they just decided to film it without finishing.
It does have quite an interesting cast, though; nearly every little role was recognizable from somewhere (that chick from SNL, that guy from The Sopranos, Vanessa Williams, Dennis Hopper, the pizza guy from "Do the Right Thing," etc.)
"Two Girls and a Guy" basically tries to re-do "The Pick-Up Artist"; Downey is, once again, a man who manipulates women in order to get what he wants from them. This film doesn't pull its punches, though; unlike the cuddly 80s version, here we see how nasty his behavior is and how much pain it causes to those who suffer from it.
The director pretty much sums up what's wrong with this movie in his commentary, though; he claims that anyone who doesn't sympathize with Downey's character is a "bad person" who he "wouldn't want to know" (paraphrased). The fuck? Clearly this director has never been on the receiving end of the lies and manipulations of someone who claims to love you. The film never acknowledges that this isn't a victimless crime. It's not the lack of monogamy that's the problem (the film presents a compelling argument that monogamy isn't right for everyone), it's the lying. I don't care how much he's really hurting inside; it's not okay for him to hurt other people.
But whatever. The film is mostly an excuse for girl-on-girl hoyay (that they're too cowardly to act on) and for an admittedly hot sex scene between Downey and Heather Graham. Despite his claims to have loved them both equally, the girl who admits to being bisexual is immediately sidelined. (This would be more offensive is she wasn't one of the worst actors I've ever seen in my life. Her name is Natasha Gregson Wagner; avoid her at all costs. She's nearly as bad as that kid in "The Phantom Menace.")
The film makes some pretense to exploring how "we're all really alone and struggling to be loved," but it just comes across as one of those inanely-pretentious off-off-off-Broadway plays written by first-time playwrights, full of lines meant to sound deep but that ultimately mean nothing.
Heather Graham is fairly good in her part, and, as always, Downey is enjoyable. It's interesting how often finds an excuse to sing in his movies (I know, he's got a CD out), and he's an engaging performer. (His best scene involves a mirror and his mouth opening very widely). He makes the character a bit sympathetic, but I just couldn't get past how badly it was written.
* And finally, "Heart and Souls," which I actually have on a VHS tape from when I was a little kid. I remember seeing this in the theater and crying throughout the entire thing; no matter how often I'd watch it at home, I ended up crying on each repeat viewing. (With the kid being abandoned, and the people trying to resolve their tragic lives, and there never being enough time, blah blah blah.) I was curious to see if it would still affect my older and more cynical self, and to my relief I found myself rolling my eyes instead of tearing up.
This is another bad movie, ridden with cliches and utterly transparent emotional manipulation. However, Downey is a true redeeming virtue in this one, and is the reason why I still have the video tape after all these years. His character gets possessed by the spirits of four very different ghosts who've been stalking him since childhood (the utter violation of this is never acknowledged within the text! Because he's a business man "cut off from his emotions" it's acceptable for them to take over his body and use it for their own ends, thoroughly fucking up his life in the process?!).
Anyway, but the point of this very offensive nonsense is that Downey gets a chance for some great acting. He gets possessed by a tough mom (Alfre Woodard), a sweet romantic young woman (Kyra Sedgwick), a shy wanna-be opera singer (Charles Grodin), and a 50s-style petty-crook-with-a-heart-of-gold (Tom Sizemore). Downey is so good at impersonating these people that you almost forget that it's the same person behind all these roles; his actual character has very little screentime compared to his-character-possessed-by-each-ghost. Also, he sings a lot.
So, yeah, very bad movie, but worth watching for his performance. Which is true of most of these, actually, except probably "U.S. Marshals" and "Two Girls and a Guy," which are pretty much irredeemable.
Now, why aren't "Chaplin" and "Ally McBeal" available on Netflix!?