In my varied retail career, I worked in three different record stores during three different and distinct musical eras — New Wave, Grunge and Hair Bands — so I had a feel for what Rock of Ages was going to be about, especially since much of the promotion leading up to the movie focused on Tom Cruise as ruined rocker Stacee Jaxx. Not being at all familiar with the Broadway musical on which the movie is based, I was actually surprised to find the story focused more on two other characters looking for love in the pursuit of rock and roll glory … although I guess I should have figured that out since Julianne Hough and Diego Boneta actually received top billing (and, if I remember correctly, there was quite a brouhaha around the lavishly appointed CliqueClack offices about that billing).

Sitting down to watch the movie for the first time on Blu-ray, I found myself mightily confused by what the movie was supposed to be. Was it a look at the destructive power of rock and roll on a person’s soul, was it a bubble gum love story, or was it just a big screen version of Glee recast with movie stars? It’s really hard to say.

Reading up on the Broadway version of Rock of Ages, I’ve discovered that while the show and the movie do share a similar storyline, a lot of things have been changed for the movie, particularly the subplot about the gentrification of the Sunset Strip, home to The Bourbon Room, the notorious rock and roll club where Stacee Jaxx and his band Arsenal are scheduled to perform their final show before Jaxx goes solo. The show involves a father and son team of developers from Germany, while the movie brings in publicity hungry Patricia Whitmore, wife of the mayor, who needs to score some points with voters and moneyed interests, as well as impress her circle of church ladies by focusing on the destruction of The Bourbon as a way to “clean up” the Strip.

A lot of the movie is pretty over-the-top, but Catherine Zeta-Jones pretty much chews up the scenery whenever she’s on screen (and she really doesn’t get a lot of face time), and has one of the film’s more hilariously choreographed numbers as she and her friends high kick, gyrate and pelvic thrust their way through “Hit Me With Your Best Shot” … in the aisle and pews of the church. I really could not believe my eyes. (And speaking of loopy, I could not believe the gay love story that came out of nowhere. I won’t ruin it for those who haven’t seen it, but is that in the actual show?) Unfortunately, Bryan Cranston as her husband is wasted in a subplot that shows him as a philandering conservative that goes nowhere and has no effect on the outcome of Patricia’s story arc. Mary J. Blige also suffers the same fate as the owner of The Venus Club, showing up to help Sherrie after her break-up, and then just pops up every now and again to sing a line or two of a song, edited in with the rest of the cast.

Hough and Boneta, as Drew, almost seem to be in a completely different movie … or movies … channeling their performances and story from other musicals like Grease, Xanadu, and Moulin Rouge. In fact, Boneta almost reminds me a bit of Michael Beck in Xanadu, but at least he can sing (and I assume everyone is doing their own singing, although Russell Brand is a bit suspect). Hough, though, brings a sweet innocence to the role and I couldn’t help thinking that she should have played the Christina Aguilara role in Burlesque instead of just being one of the dancers with a small subplot. Of course, the real star of the show is Tom Cruise and he totally immerses himself in this Axl Rose-ish rock star teetering on the edge of destruction role. Even when the script calls for him to be a bit campy, Cruise is still magnetic (and in the best shape of his life) and you really can’t take your eyes off of him (or his huge torso tattoo). And he’s got a terrific voice to boot! I can take Cruise or leave him, but he’s simply mesmerizing as Stacee Jaxx.

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I remember the first time I saw the Pac-Man video game. I was in a pizza parlor with my mother, father and brother. At one point I had to use the facilities, and there by the cigarette machines (yes, kids — there were not only machines where you could buy cigarettes with quarters without having to present ID, you could go sit back at your table and actually smoke them) was this strange arcade game I’d never seen before: Pac-Man. I gazed in wonder at the strange goings-on on-screen, unable to comprehend the game’s purpose or goal. A yellow disc … eats dots, while multi-colored … hosts try to hit the disc so it blows up or flattens or whatever it is? Too. Cool.

“There’s this game back there and it’s called something-Man and it’s cool and there’s ghosts and stuff and you eat dots or something and it’s sooo cool and can I have a dollar so I can go play it pleeeease!?’ Or so it went something like that, when I got back to my table. Four quarters later, I was addicted.

Though it was — and still is — difficult to explain the premise of Pac-Man exactly, it’s even more difficult to explain the premise of that game as a television show. In fact, it’s impossible to the point that I’m amazed it lived on beyond one season. But, here it is, the second season on DVD, and I volunteered to review it. What was I thinking?

First of all, when I raised my hand to review this DVD set, I mistakenly thought it’d be for the entire series. I haven’t watched this series since it first debuted in the early ’80s, so when only the second season showed up in the mail, I was at a bit of a loss. I’ve abused the hell out of my brain in the years since that day in the pizza parlor, so how am I supposed to compare this second season to a first season I have nary a recollection of? Well, I can’t, to it’ll just have to stand on its own.

In case you have no freaking idea what I’m talking about, the Pac-Man video game — and I know you can’t possible not know about that — was so popular in the early-’80s that some capitalizing minds at Hanna-Barbera decided to further Pac-Man-ize the minds of America’s youth by making a Saturday-morning cartoon about this odd game. In this show, Pac-Man has a family — Ms. “Pepper” Pac-Man, Baby Pac, and a couple of Pac pets (Chomp Chomp and Sour Puss) — and goes about life running away from Inky, Blinky, Pinky, Clyde and … Sue. Yes, they added Sue to the ghostly gang, so they had a female among them — why they didn’t just make Pinky a female character, I don’t know. So Pac-Man lives in Pac-Land with other Pac people, yet somehow this guy got to be THE Pac-MAN of the land. I guess that’s why the ghosts — called “ghost monsters” on the show, led by what appears to be a human called “Mezmaron” — are after this one Pac person over the rest.

In the second season, a couple of new characters are introduced: Super Pac, and Pac-Man’s nephew, P.J.. Super Pac makes a little sense, since there was later a Super Pac-Man arcade game created, but I don’t get P.J..

The sad truth of the matter is that, while this show was clearly popular enough in the early-’80s to warrant a second season, it does not at all hold up today. I’ve got a seven-year-old son, and I’m almost certain he’d have no interest at all in this series, nor would he understand at all what the heck is going on. Power pellets? What? Y’know, it’s not all bad that I didn’t get a copy of this show’s entire series. Now I know that I just don’t care to have any of it.

If you’re simply a child of the ’80s and up for a trip down nostalgia lane, you can pick up both seasons of Pac-Man now. You’ll likely want to keep it to yourself, though.

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If you’re a fan of movie musicals and secret agent flicks, have I got a pair of doozies for you! The folks at the Warner Archive Collection have dug deep into the vault to bring some (rightfully?) forgotten films from the 1960s back to glorious life through their Manufacture on Demand DVD program. The Liquidator stars Rod Taylor as kind of a James Bond knock-off, and The Cool Ones is a 60s rock-and-roll musical that seems to be anything but rock-and-roll. Neither film was a success upon their initial theatrical releases, but one of them fares much better today as an entertaining curio than the other.

The Liquidator (1966) is the lesser of the two titles. Aussie Rod Taylor stars as a US soldier who accidentally saves Colonel Mostyn (Trevor Howard) of British Intelligence from an attack in Paris during World War II. Twenty-some years later, a spy scandal rocks Britain so Mostyn and his superior (Wilfred Hyde White) come up with a plan to eliminate the known double agents … in an unofficial capacity. Mostyn remembers his savior, Boysie Oakes, tracks him down in a small country cafe, and offers him a well-paying government job that comes with a swinging bachelor pad. Oakes accepts the offer and the training that comes with it, but is appalled when he learns he is on the payroll as an assassin. Not having the stomach to actually kill people, but not wanting to give up his new digs and all the “birds” that come with it, Boysie hires a real killer to do his dirty work while he tries to put the moves on Mostyn’s assistant, Iris (Jill St. John), something that is strictly forbidden in the employee handbook. Boysie and Iris slip away to the Cote d’Azur, but get entangled in some other confusing caper that totally derails the entire movie with its confusing who is double-crossing whom plot.

The Liquidator was obviously an attempt by MGM to launch another spy movie franchise, particularly as this came about around the time Sean Connery was making his (first) exit from the Bond franchise. Like the Bond films, The Liquidator is also based on a series of books featuring the Boysie Oakes character, but the books nor the film ever reached the same kind of popularity as the Bond novels and films. One of the biggest problems with the film is its star, Rod Taylor. Oakes is supposed to be British, Taylor is Australian, but by that time he’d been working in American films using an American accent, so he insisted on changing the character to an American soldier so he didn’t have to revert to his natural accent (while Jill St. John adopts a Brit accent). This probably did not sit well with the British fans of the books. Another problem is that the film gets pretty convoluted (although it apparently follows the first novel very closely) once Boysie and Iris head to France and more spies than you can shake a stick at are introduced into the story, talking about some major mission that never becomes clear until the last 15 minutes or so of the movie. There was one surprising reveal of a double agent working in the midst of British Intelligence, but at that point it seemed rather nonsensical, and only made the rest of the film even more baffling. In the end, Boysie Oakes is no James Bond, and a legal dispute over the novels and film rights scuttled any further films. If nothing else, the movie is worth a look for some of the surprisingly risque humor and Oakes’ smashing residence. Warner’s DVD looks and sounds just fine, but like most Archive releases this is a bare-bones affair with only a trailer (which gives away most of the movie’s major deaths) as an extra.

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