Dammit! I'm back after a GRAVITAS-filled weekend and there's lots to talk about. In honor of that fact, today's blog will be uploaded directly to your PDA in REAL TIME, baby.
Last night, countdown-clock worshippers everywhere had cause to rejoice, as after months and months of conspicuous absence ...
TWENTY BY-GOD FOUR (24~!) Returned ...!
- Yes, after an extended hiatus from the airwaves, Sunday brought not one but two solid Jack Bauer Power Hours, which comprised a special TV movie event known as 24: REDEMPTION. And let's face it: not only did Jack have some redeemin' to do, but 24 had to, to some extent, redeem itself to a fanbase that had been somewhat burnt out by a Season 6 that was not up to typical 24 standards. On the other hand, absence does tend to make the heart grow fonder, and when push comes to shove, 24 still stands as one of the great shows of the last decade. One off season isn't enough to make me substantially less excited for another round of 24-style gravitas. And all indications have pointed to Season 7 being a return to glory - there's a top-notch supporting cast around the always great Kiefer Sutherland (Jon Voight, Kurtwood Smith, the guy who played the Candyman ...), as well as the much-anticipated return of fan-favorite Tony Almeda, whose soul-patched presence instantly gives the show an extra dosage of whup-ass.
So really, last night's Redemption special was there to serve a pretty basic function - to rally the 24 base and get us revved up for an all-new season of real-time mayhem. In that regard, the movie worked like a charm. I'm now super-hyped for the actual season to begin so that we can get back to hour-by-hour installments of twists, turns, and gratuitous cries of "dammit!" The movie reestablished Bauer as the ultimate badass, planted some interesting seeds for Season 7 - establishing both a reinvigorated and pissed-off hero in Jack and a couple of scheming villains for him to square off against.
In the meantime, we got to see an interesting little experiment in playing with the conventions of 24, as we got a chance to break away from the 24-hour / 24-episode format, as well as from the usual LA setting. It was cool seeing a 24 adventure set in Africa, and it was likewise fun to see Jack operate sans all the usual technical wizardry and gadgets of his CTU backers. It was a little strange to see the show still operate in "real-time" despite being a 2-hour movie, but the familiar countdown clock is such an iconic element of 24 that it might have been even stranger if it had been absent.
As a standalone movie, Redemption could be considered pretty choppy and uneven. Whole stretches would shift from Jack's African adventures to focus in on the Washington DC side of the plot, in which President Noah Daniels from last season serves his last day in office even as a new, female prez is inaugurated. There were all kinds of little hints and teases in these DC-centric segments, as we met the new President's son and daughter-in-law, her husband, and a friend of her son's who may be on the verge of uncovering a typical 24-style shadow conspiracy within the ranks of the White House - a villainous group that seems to link Jon Voight's character, Tony Almeda (absent here but whose affiliations were hinted at in the S7 trailers), and the ruthless African rebels that Jack comes up against in Redemption. Still, while the DC stuff will ultimately come back around and tie in with the African segments of Redemption, there was still a pretty big disconnect between Jack's adventures in Africa and the DC parts, which were really more about setting up S7 than anything else. When you only have two hours for a standalone movie, you want as much Bauer-infused action as you can get, you know?
That being said, Redemption delivered plenty of vintage Jack Bauer violence. We saw Jack give an African captor the old head-scissors of doom, single-handedly take out an entire African rebel squadron, and help fend off an urban assault whilst leading a pack of kids through a village towards the US Embassy. You even had a decent turn from Robert Carlisle as an old special forces friend of Jack's, who played the part of sidekick / martyr in the good fight admirablly. Sure, his big scene was strangely similar to a trick Prison Break pulled mere weeks ago, but hey, it worked as well if not better here. My friends and I cheered, clapped, and let out cries of "daaaaaaaaamn!" as we watched Jack Bauer return to his unstoppable killing-machine ways - it was a sure sign that Jack was, in fact, back.
So yeah, as a whole, Redemption was decent when looked at as a big, super, awesome standalone 24 movie event. But when looked at as a sort of Episode 0 for 24 Season 7, well, like I said, it got the job done and then some. Because I can really only be objective on this one to a certain degree. This was TV's greatest action hero, Jack f'n Bauer, back in our living rooms kicking ass and taking names. And really, it feels like this was just the proverbial warm-up for what is to come, a prelim match leading up to the main event. After last night, all I can say is BRING. IT. ON.
My Grade: B+
- Speaking of 24's little cousin, PRISON BREAK, tonight's ep promises to be a barn-burner. But I have to say, all the talk of this being the end for PB made me wonder if we will get to see one more run for the now-legendary Monday Night Gravitas combo of Scofield and Bauer. With Terminator moving to Fridays in January, will the two most intense shows on TV partner up for one last go at sensory-overload?
- I also need to make mention of the really sad news that emerged late last week - that being that one of TV's best and most imaginative series, the great PUSHING DAISIES, is more than likely about as dead as its title implies. I can only hope that the show receives the Piemaker's patented magic touch of rejuvination, but in this new world of cutthroat, budget-constrained TV, it's not looking particularly good. If the show is in fact done for, I do hope that it at least gets a bit of narrative resolution. Especially with this season ramping up the ongoing storyarcs, it would be truly tragic if Ned and Chuck don't get the ending they deserve. I've already gone on about the merits of Pushing Daisies at length here, and I'll reserve a final tribute for when the last episode has aired. But suffice it to say, it's a scary world in which Dancing With the Stars and three CSI spinoffs can thrive while a wholly original, magical, and intelligent series is unable to find the audience it needs.
- On last week's SMALLVILLE -- well, this one came with a ton of hype and expectations. Fanboys everywhere were salivating at the prospect of an epic Clark vs. Doomsday smackdown, in what promised to be the kind of legendary hero vs. villain battle that Superman fans have demanded to see in live-action form for years and years now. And unfortunately, in this regard Smallville kind of dropped the ball. Sure, it was probably unfair to expect Smallville and its newly-slashed budget to be able to deliver a giant-sized fight straight out of the comics, but, the expecation wa there nonetheless. And what happened instead was, well, we got minimal action, more build-up than release, and what was in many respects simply a fairly typical episode of Smallville, with the focus squarely on the young adult romance and angst rather than superheroics. That said, this was actually a pretty good episode of Smallville. The build up to Chloe and Jimmy's long-awaited wedding was well done. The tension between Lois and Clark got cranked up a notch, and Erica Durance as Lois was great as always. In fact, she's been so good and developed Lois into such a fun, likable character that Lana's big return in this ep was pretty "meh." Lana has long been such a broken character that she is almost a walking punchline at this point. But, it's emblematic of this season's sharper writing that, in her appearance in this episode, Lana was probably the best-written and most likable she's been in years. The one thing I could have done without was the lame, Cloverfield-aping camcorder sequences, which just reeked of sucktitude and "hey look, we're cool and edgy just like that monster movie that the kids were talking about!" desperation.
I mean, look, the Davis Bloome / Doomsday buildup has been handled better than anyone expected, and this season overall has been a pleasant surprise - with sharper writing, better character development, and more cohesive plotting than Smallville fans have been accostumed to. But with this episode, I think we were all hoping for the show to step it up a notch and transcend the usual limitations of what Smallville has been and can be. If ever there was a time for the show to just say "screw it" and go all out to deliver a comic book style epic, this was it. And who knows, maybe that's what they are building up to, and the show is just biding its time until the season (series?) finale. But the fact remains, this wasn't really much in the way of wish-fulfillment for us longtime Smallville fans who have been waiting for the show to really kick into a new gear.
My Grade: B
- I'll just briefly mention that I thought both THE OFFICE and 30 ROCK were hilarious last week. The Office had one of my favorite episodes so far this season. I love the Toby-Michael relationship, and to me that weird dynamic has made for many of the flat-out funniest moments in the show's history. Michael's irrational hatred of Toby is one of the weirdest yet most hilarious quirks of his personality, and seeing it manifest in oddball acts of jackassery is always entertaining. As for 30 ROCK, it was great seeing Steve Martin back doing, you know, comedy. And Tracy Morgan's subplot, in which he was convinced that his little-seen children were out to kill him ("Stop patriciding me!") was gut-bustingly hilarious. While a lot may be going wrong for the Peacock, Thursday was undoubtedly an awesome night of comedy for good ol' NBC.
My Grades:
The Office: A-, 30 Rock: A-
- Anyways, I have a lot to more to talk about. I had a really fun weekend, for one. And I'd like to take a moment to give a shout-out to my adopted home here in CA, Burbank. While it at times gets a bad rap, I've always maintained that Burbank is a city on the up and up. For those of us who work in one of the nearby studios, it's a completely convenient place to live and has a number of shops, resturants, and parks nearby. Now, Burbank has never really had much in the way of nightlife, but the big B did take one small step towards coolness this weekend with the opening of its very own Barney's Beanery. I had the pleasure of visiting the new Barneys on Friday, and I have to say it's pretty darn impressive. Flat-screen TV's at every booth, a mini-arena-style setup centered around a giant-sized TV screen, etc. Sure, a pristine, new, deluxe Barneys will never have the same sleazy Sunset Strip authenticity of the original in Hollywood, but the fact that Burbank has one more cool spot to hit up after a movie is pretty sweet.
- I also had a fun night hanging out with a bunch of NBC and Paramount people on Saturday, coincidentally also in Burbank (aka the place to be in LA). It was cool to meet some of the new crop of NBC Pages and impart my great wisdom and personal success story to them. If they work hard, perhaps they too can have their own all-new, all-awesome adventures.
- Craziness! On Sunday me and the G-Man hit up the Upright Citizens Brigade theater in Hollywood to take in an improv comedy show which featured Meghan B. amongst its troupe of performers. It turns out that the UCB theater is right across the street from the Scientology celebrity center, and it turns out that at the same moments that we were enjoying improv comedy inside, across the street some maniac wielding a SWORD charged the Scientology compound, where he was subsequently SHOT to death by a perhaps-overzealous security guard. I mean, WTF, mate? Only in LA, only in LA. Check out the link below for more:
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/california/la-me-scientology24-2008nov24,0,1860441.story
- Actually though, Sunday turned out to be quite the funday. After the comedy show, we grabbed lunch at Mel's Diner, and I had a stupendous belgian waffle that really and truly hit the spot. We then went back to my place where we fired up my newest PS3 purchase, MORTAL KOMBAT vs. DC UNIVERSE, and proceeded to mash buttons for a couple of hours straight until we had played through the enitre epic story mode and led a band of DC Comic's greatest heroes and vilest villains on a cross-universe battle and saved the universe. I'll admit, at first I thought the game looked pretty lame - lacking the polish or sophistication of a Soul Caliber or Street Fighter. But after several rounds joy-buzzing suckers as The Joker of reigning down holy lightning as Captain Marvel, I was a believer in the simple joys of MK vs. DC. It may not be game-of-the-year material, but it sure was a fun way to waste a couple of hours.
- And of course, the weekend was capped off by a trip to Seth E's for pizza, drinks, and a solid two hours of TWENTY BY-GOD FOUR.
And, oh yeah, somewhere in between all of that, I met up with Abby W. and took in the pop-cult sensation that all the teen girls are talkin' about, Twilight.
Now, this has been a pretty long blog post and I don't want to overload it. So stay tuned soon to see what a 26 year old dude thinks of the goth-emo-mumblecore-vampire-romance known as Twilight.
Until then, I'm out. Here's to short weeks and Jack Bauer, dammit all.
Monday, November 24, 2008
Thursday, November 20, 2008
The Facts Are These: Keeping Up With PUSHING DAISIES, CHUCK, and FRINGE. Plus: Chinese Democracy Hype.
- If any of you rock n' rollers have yet to check it out, I definitely recommend giving Chuck Klosterman's review of Chinese Democracy, posted on the always-great Onion AV Club, a read. Funny and insightful, the article has actually gotten me pretty excited for the looong-awaited new album from Guns N' Roses.
http://www.avclub.com/content/feature/chuck_klosterman_reviews
Appetite for Destruction is one of my most-played albums of all-time - I bought the cassette tape as a kid after becoming obsessed with the GnR videos played on MTV, and it was kind of this forbidden fruit - with four grim-looking skulls on the album cover and a parenta advisory sticker, Appetite was dangerous, to be sure. But it was also just about the most rocking music I had ever heard. And from that point on, I was a GnR fan for life. I've seen them twice in concert over the last couple of years, each time with a different line-up, neither time with the original band intact. But even without Slash and co., both times I saw Axl Rose live, I went in expecting the worse and coming away, well, blown away. The sheer awesomeness of the GnR catalogue was enough to put the concerts over the top of the awesome meter, and it was clear that there was still a spark of life left in Axl and GnR - even the new material had a lot of promise. So, next week, CHINESE DEMOCRACY finally drops. Chuck Klosterman liked it. I'm cautiously optimistic. But at the least, it's great that people are once again excited about genuine, old-school rock n' roll music. AC/DC was recently a chart-topper, GnR is poised to be big once again, and kids everywhere are learning the classics via the magic of Guitar Hero and Rock Band. And hey, our new President is a fan of Dylan and The Stones. Might this be a new age of ROCK?!
TV STUFF:
- Dayum, I'm actually pretty excited / curious to see tonight's SMALLVILLE. As I said last week, Clark Kent vs. Doomsday doesn't have quite the same ring to it as does *Superman* vs. Doomsday, but tonight's much-hyped Smallville ep will be a real test for the long-running show, which has sometimes struggled to introduce truly epic villains aside from Lex Luthor. And it's rare that the show has delivered a legitimately Superman-worthy super-powered slugfest. We'll see if tonight's main event delivers the goods, but if tonight's ep is a smash, and next week's Geoff Johns-penned Legion of Superheroes-themed episode is as good as promised, then Smallville could be in the midst of one of its best-ever streaks of quality episodes.
- I also really want to point out how fun and entertaining last night's episode of PUSHING DAISIES was - I'd go so far as to say it was, potentially, this season's best installment yet. Again, it's crazy that a show that can deliver this kind of quality week in and week out is on the chopping block. It's hard to imagine many people tuning in to last night's ep and not liking what they saw, because what we got was a fantastical episode of magic, betrayal, and mystery that was a clear reminder of what makes this show work as well as it does. And man, the guest stars last night were absolutely perfect for the episode and the series in general. You had the great Fred Willard playing The Great Hermann, a stage magician who had served as a surrogate father of sorts to Ned's twin half-brothers. You had the great Kerri Kenney (of The State and Reno 911 fame) as Hermann's assistant. And you had typically-great performances from Lee Pace, Chi McBride, Kristen Chenoweth, and Anna Friel. Not to mention Stephen Root, who has been awesome in his recent guest appearances as an old and slighty-sinister friend of Chuck and Ned's respective fathers. This ep really had a great balance between the ongoing familial dramas of Ned and Chuck and a fun adventure / mystery of the week. In this case, the central mystery tied in perfectly with the ongoing storyarcs, so it really felt like a big episode that was jam-packed with plot and new revelations. Visually, the world of magic was a perfect fit for Daisies, and the sets, costumes, etc. were all top-notch. The visual creativity of this show is just unparallelled on TV, and this ep was further proof. So watch PUSHING DAISIES, tell your friends, tell your parents, grandparents, etc. Because the facts are these: this show deserves to thrive.
My Grade: A
- After a couple of weeks of Captain Awesome-level awesomeness, CHUCK got a bit formulaic this week, although a nice reveal at episode's end set up some potentially great plotlines for future episodes. I do think Jordana Brewster has been a fun addition to the cast these last couple of weeks. I do think the show sometimes overdoes it on the emo-ness (Josh Schwartz's THE OC suffered from the same problem), and the mopeyness of Sarah in this ep did get a little grating at times, as did Chuck's constant focus on his re-girlfriend, Jill even in the midst of all kinds of spy shenanigans. But on the other hand - Tony Hale (of Arrested Development fame) is flat-out hilarious, and was great in this ep. His interactions with Morgan were very funny, and I actually almost always enjoy Morgan's scenes and think he's gotten even funnier this season. Speaking of funny, Adam Baldwin letting out a choir-boy high-C note scream was friggin' classic. Likewise, the ending twist actually makes a ton of sense in the broader context of the show's mythology - I just think it was arrived at a little hamfistedly. Still, I have to bump up my grade a little if only for this episode's several shout-outs to Y: The Last Man (which from the get-go has seemed to be one of its creative influences). From mention of the Culper Ring to a big Y poster hanging over Chuck's bed, this ep was definitely feeling the Last Man love. And let's face it, the Chuck-Sarah relationship is very similar to that of Yorick-355. Now Chuck just needs a helper monkey and all will be right with the world.
My Grade: B+
- On FRINGE ... Fringe has yet to have that single, *great* episode that makes you stand up and say "well I'll be damned, this show is the real deal." But with this week's episode, I'll admit, they came pretty darn close. I think Fringe is both benefitting and hurting from the fact that John Noble is absolutely, positively ruling it this far as Dr. Walter Bishop. And this week was Noble's best performance yet on the show - bar none. While Walter had at times been relegated to comic relief in recent weeks, this time Walter was funny, scary, sad, mysterious, and tragic all in the span of an hour. To me, this ep locked-in John Noble as an Emmy favorite, because I've yet to see a better supporting actor performance on TV this season. I loved the scenes of Walter having to return to the institution where he had been confined, and try to prove his sanity to the warden and to his son and to his colleagues. His internal struggle here was absolutely riveting. And, plot-wise, the show just presented its most intriguing mystery yet. It was easy to suspect from the beginning that there was much more to Bishop than meets the eye, but this ep posited that there could in fact be *two* Walter Bishops running around. Was this a clone, a dimensional alternate, a figment of Walter's fractured psyche? Whatever the case, I'm intrigued. I also thought the central mystery here was pretty fascinating - I'm a sucker for the whole concept of some uber-equation that contains the mysteries of time and space within.
But, where this show has faltered is that it can't seem to keep its focus. I wish this ep could have stuck to the main idea of the equation and the villains' pursuit of it. Instead, that plotline was mixed in with a cool-but-random concept concerning hypnotic colored lights, the idea that people were being brainwashed into believing their dead relatives were alive (the villains' preferred method of information-extraction), etc. The show just gets too cluttered sometime with criss-crossing ideas and concepts.
Otherwise, Fringe is kicking ass when it comes to Walter Bishop, but the other two leads stil lfeel underdeveloped and lacking personality. This ep went a long way in developing Walter's relationship with his son though, I will give them that. Still, Ana Torv's character needs some kind of hook other than what's already been presented. Lance Reddick is kind of filling the Fox Mulder role of driving the action forward, but they need to make sure he isn't simply an exposition machine.
That being said, all the Walter Bishop stuff in this ep was awesome, and helped provide a sense that some of the show's lingering mysteries are about to really blow up. Greatness is definitely within reach.
My Grade: A-
- Okay, that's all for now. I'll be back tomorrow with more news and views, so cya then.
http://www.avclub.com/content/feature/chuck_klosterman_reviews
Appetite for Destruction is one of my most-played albums of all-time - I bought the cassette tape as a kid after becoming obsessed with the GnR videos played on MTV, and it was kind of this forbidden fruit - with four grim-looking skulls on the album cover and a parenta advisory sticker, Appetite was dangerous, to be sure. But it was also just about the most rocking music I had ever heard. And from that point on, I was a GnR fan for life. I've seen them twice in concert over the last couple of years, each time with a different line-up, neither time with the original band intact. But even without Slash and co., both times I saw Axl Rose live, I went in expecting the worse and coming away, well, blown away. The sheer awesomeness of the GnR catalogue was enough to put the concerts over the top of the awesome meter, and it was clear that there was still a spark of life left in Axl and GnR - even the new material had a lot of promise. So, next week, CHINESE DEMOCRACY finally drops. Chuck Klosterman liked it. I'm cautiously optimistic. But at the least, it's great that people are once again excited about genuine, old-school rock n' roll music. AC/DC was recently a chart-topper, GnR is poised to be big once again, and kids everywhere are learning the classics via the magic of Guitar Hero and Rock Band. And hey, our new President is a fan of Dylan and The Stones. Might this be a new age of ROCK?!
TV STUFF:
- Dayum, I'm actually pretty excited / curious to see tonight's SMALLVILLE. As I said last week, Clark Kent vs. Doomsday doesn't have quite the same ring to it as does *Superman* vs. Doomsday, but tonight's much-hyped Smallville ep will be a real test for the long-running show, which has sometimes struggled to introduce truly epic villains aside from Lex Luthor. And it's rare that the show has delivered a legitimately Superman-worthy super-powered slugfest. We'll see if tonight's main event delivers the goods, but if tonight's ep is a smash, and next week's Geoff Johns-penned Legion of Superheroes-themed episode is as good as promised, then Smallville could be in the midst of one of its best-ever streaks of quality episodes.
- I also really want to point out how fun and entertaining last night's episode of PUSHING DAISIES was - I'd go so far as to say it was, potentially, this season's best installment yet. Again, it's crazy that a show that can deliver this kind of quality week in and week out is on the chopping block. It's hard to imagine many people tuning in to last night's ep and not liking what they saw, because what we got was a fantastical episode of magic, betrayal, and mystery that was a clear reminder of what makes this show work as well as it does. And man, the guest stars last night were absolutely perfect for the episode and the series in general. You had the great Fred Willard playing The Great Hermann, a stage magician who had served as a surrogate father of sorts to Ned's twin half-brothers. You had the great Kerri Kenney (of The State and Reno 911 fame) as Hermann's assistant. And you had typically-great performances from Lee Pace, Chi McBride, Kristen Chenoweth, and Anna Friel. Not to mention Stephen Root, who has been awesome in his recent guest appearances as an old and slighty-sinister friend of Chuck and Ned's respective fathers. This ep really had a great balance between the ongoing familial dramas of Ned and Chuck and a fun adventure / mystery of the week. In this case, the central mystery tied in perfectly with the ongoing storyarcs, so it really felt like a big episode that was jam-packed with plot and new revelations. Visually, the world of magic was a perfect fit for Daisies, and the sets, costumes, etc. were all top-notch. The visual creativity of this show is just unparallelled on TV, and this ep was further proof. So watch PUSHING DAISIES, tell your friends, tell your parents, grandparents, etc. Because the facts are these: this show deserves to thrive.
My Grade: A
- After a couple of weeks of Captain Awesome-level awesomeness, CHUCK got a bit formulaic this week, although a nice reveal at episode's end set up some potentially great plotlines for future episodes. I do think Jordana Brewster has been a fun addition to the cast these last couple of weeks. I do think the show sometimes overdoes it on the emo-ness (Josh Schwartz's THE OC suffered from the same problem), and the mopeyness of Sarah in this ep did get a little grating at times, as did Chuck's constant focus on his re-girlfriend, Jill even in the midst of all kinds of spy shenanigans. But on the other hand - Tony Hale (of Arrested Development fame) is flat-out hilarious, and was great in this ep. His interactions with Morgan were very funny, and I actually almost always enjoy Morgan's scenes and think he's gotten even funnier this season. Speaking of funny, Adam Baldwin letting out a choir-boy high-C note scream was friggin' classic. Likewise, the ending twist actually makes a ton of sense in the broader context of the show's mythology - I just think it was arrived at a little hamfistedly. Still, I have to bump up my grade a little if only for this episode's several shout-outs to Y: The Last Man (which from the get-go has seemed to be one of its creative influences). From mention of the Culper Ring to a big Y poster hanging over Chuck's bed, this ep was definitely feeling the Last Man love. And let's face it, the Chuck-Sarah relationship is very similar to that of Yorick-355. Now Chuck just needs a helper monkey and all will be right with the world.
My Grade: B+
- On FRINGE ... Fringe has yet to have that single, *great* episode that makes you stand up and say "well I'll be damned, this show is the real deal." But with this week's episode, I'll admit, they came pretty darn close. I think Fringe is both benefitting and hurting from the fact that John Noble is absolutely, positively ruling it this far as Dr. Walter Bishop. And this week was Noble's best performance yet on the show - bar none. While Walter had at times been relegated to comic relief in recent weeks, this time Walter was funny, scary, sad, mysterious, and tragic all in the span of an hour. To me, this ep locked-in John Noble as an Emmy favorite, because I've yet to see a better supporting actor performance on TV this season. I loved the scenes of Walter having to return to the institution where he had been confined, and try to prove his sanity to the warden and to his son and to his colleagues. His internal struggle here was absolutely riveting. And, plot-wise, the show just presented its most intriguing mystery yet. It was easy to suspect from the beginning that there was much more to Bishop than meets the eye, but this ep posited that there could in fact be *two* Walter Bishops running around. Was this a clone, a dimensional alternate, a figment of Walter's fractured psyche? Whatever the case, I'm intrigued. I also thought the central mystery here was pretty fascinating - I'm a sucker for the whole concept of some uber-equation that contains the mysteries of time and space within.
But, where this show has faltered is that it can't seem to keep its focus. I wish this ep could have stuck to the main idea of the equation and the villains' pursuit of it. Instead, that plotline was mixed in with a cool-but-random concept concerning hypnotic colored lights, the idea that people were being brainwashed into believing their dead relatives were alive (the villains' preferred method of information-extraction), etc. The show just gets too cluttered sometime with criss-crossing ideas and concepts.
Otherwise, Fringe is kicking ass when it comes to Walter Bishop, but the other two leads stil lfeel underdeveloped and lacking personality. This ep went a long way in developing Walter's relationship with his son though, I will give them that. Still, Ana Torv's character needs some kind of hook other than what's already been presented. Lance Reddick is kind of filling the Fox Mulder role of driving the action forward, but they need to make sure he isn't simply an exposition machine.
That being said, all the Walter Bishop stuff in this ep was awesome, and helped provide a sense that some of the show's lingering mysteries are about to really blow up. Greatness is definitely within reach.
My Grade: A-
- Okay, that's all for now. I'll be back tomorrow with more news and views, so cya then.
Monday, November 17, 2008
Agent Double-O-Blog - QUANTUM OF SOLACE Review, Prison Break, and MORE!
The name's Baram, Danny Baram. And I like my blogs shaken, not stirred. Yes, loyal readers, I'm back from a little place called the weekend and I'm here to share epic thoughts and gravitas-filled reviews.
What can I say, I'm a tad bit excited that, in less than a week, Jack Bauer is back. Normally Jack's out of time, but it's ABOUT FLIPPIN' TIME that Jack returned to show these new kids how it's done. But I'm not going to spend too much time speculating on what is to come, because I've got plenty of reviews to throw your way.
- I thought THE SIMPSONS had a pretty fun episode overall that had a nice father-daughter story at its core. But, a couple of critical flaws kept this from being an overly memorable episode. One was that the story was just too all over the place. It felt like a regression back to the nu-Simpsons trend of taking forever to introduce the main storyline, leaving little time for it to be resolved in a satisfactory manner. After a couple of episodes that did a solid job of introducing the main plot early on in the episode, the more Family Guy-style structure of this ep was disappointing. Secondly, I just didn't think the humor worked that well here. There were two or three pretty funny jokes (Moe taking Lisa's name, Homer's back and forth with the bartender / bookie), but there were loooong stretches in this one without much if any real humor. It's too bad, because I liked the cleverness of the crossword-puzzle theme, and thought there was some good potential there. But what could have been a great episode turned out to be pretty flat.
My Grade: B
- I thought that KING OF THE HILL came back strong this week with an episode that offered up the kind of down-home social commentary that this show has always excelled at. I loved the premise of Peggy, Dale, and Mingh following hapless Bill around as part of their plan to make it big in the stock market, eyeing his every purchasing decsion after they decide that Bill's consumer habits represent those of an ordinary Joe Sixpack. Bill of course loves all the attention, but eventually cracks under the pressure of having his every move scrutinized. This one had a lot of sharp satire mixed in with a sizable dose of KOTH's usual pathos and strong characterization. Good stuff.
My Grade: A-
- As fo FAMILY GUY ... hmm ... this episode was kind of a mess, and really all over the place in terms of humor. There were one or two gags that really cracked me up - the joke where Peter accidentally burns down a hospital had me rolling (as wrong as that sounds out of context ...) - and yet, a lot of the episode seemed to fall flat. As soon as the ep became Billy Madison-lite, the episode, to me, lost a ton of momentum. I mean, look, just because you have a self-awareness or metatextual thing going where you acknowledge that a premise is absurd - that doesn't automatically make it funny. Sometimes Family Guy tries to say "hey guys, we KNOW this is stupid, and that's why it's funny!" But sometimes, there's no substitute for great joke-writing and clever set-ups. Between Peter re-doing the third grade and Brian and Frank Sinatra Jr buying their own big band club (only to have Stewie turn it into a trendy hangout), a lot of this ep felt like it was there just so the writers could dish out a couple of key jokes. Yes, the Andy Dick appearance at Stewie's club wa funny, but ultimately these stories were just kind of there, without any real arc or payoff. I'm not asking for Family Guy to be Shakespeare, but I wish it would get back to having episodes with a memorable and coherant premise, lots of great jokes, and an overall polish that was lacking in this throw-it-against-the-wall-and-see-what-sticks installment.
My Grade: B-
What can I say, I'm a tad bit excited that, in less than a week, Jack Bauer is back. Normally Jack's out of time, but it's ABOUT FLIPPIN' TIME that Jack returned to show these new kids how it's done. But I'm not going to spend too much time speculating on what is to come, because I've got plenty of reviews to throw your way.
- First of all ... PRISON BREAK ...! Last night's ep was simply off the chain. PB has always managed to kick into high gear in the episodes where a heist or breakout is actually pulled off after weeks of build-up, and last night was no exception. After a season's worth of prelims, last night we finally saw Michael and co. break into the Company's inner sanctum which held Scylla - the holy grail of computer chips that contains all of the Company's most important secrets. The actual break-in operation was in and of itself thrilling. I loved that the show had the guts to present some of these intense scenes in virtual silence - the lack of background noise or chatter made ratcheted up the intensity factor to ridiculous levels. But even as the break-in itself was exciting, the whole episode was loaded with drama thanks to the convergence of several key plot points. For one, Scofield's sickness had reached deadly levels. Deciding at the last minute to postpone hospital treatment, Michael risked his life by participating in the break-in, as any mental or physical stress spikes could be enough to trigger a deadly siezure. Luckily for him, Scofield is one cool cat under pressure. But of course, his health is not all Michael has to contend with, as Gretchen and T-Bag put their own long-simmering plan to double-cross Michael and co into effect. Setting up Agent Self, Gretchen puts him in the line of fire of the Chinese (shades of 24!). And, oh yeah, just as Scylla is finally in his grasp, Scofield sets off an alarm, alerting the Company to his presence. At episode's end, Self is surrounded, T-Bag is waiting on Scofield with murderous intent, and Michael and his crew are seemingly at the mercy of The Company. Talk about a cliffhanger. All I know is, I don't know if, since I got a DVR, have ever fast-forwarded through commercials as frantically as I did during last night's Prison Break. Last night's ep kicked my ass.
My Grade: A
- Well, people say the characters of GOSSIP GIRL are cold, callous, and self-centered, and maybe they are. But I'll be darned if last night's episode didn't come down with a big case of the warm and fuzzys. Sure, Chuck Bass was still Chuck Bass, Bart was revealed as keeping secret files on all of his extended family members, and Serena's poseur artist boyfriend continued to be annoying and sleazy ... but ... if there's one thing Josh Schwartz knows how to do, it's how to make an ensemble of outlandish character oddly endearing, and last night he did just that. I mean, it's a testament to the show that I actually found Blair Waldorff's Thanksgiving dinner to be a heartwarming affair. Good stuff.
My Grade: A -
Up next: a look at last night's ANIMATION DOMINATION lineup on FOX ...
- I thought THE SIMPSONS had a pretty fun episode overall that had a nice father-daughter story at its core. But, a couple of critical flaws kept this from being an overly memorable episode. One was that the story was just too all over the place. It felt like a regression back to the nu-Simpsons trend of taking forever to introduce the main storyline, leaving little time for it to be resolved in a satisfactory manner. After a couple of episodes that did a solid job of introducing the main plot early on in the episode, the more Family Guy-style structure of this ep was disappointing. Secondly, I just didn't think the humor worked that well here. There were two or three pretty funny jokes (Moe taking Lisa's name, Homer's back and forth with the bartender / bookie), but there were loooong stretches in this one without much if any real humor. It's too bad, because I liked the cleverness of the crossword-puzzle theme, and thought there was some good potential there. But what could have been a great episode turned out to be pretty flat.
My Grade: B
- I thought that KING OF THE HILL came back strong this week with an episode that offered up the kind of down-home social commentary that this show has always excelled at. I loved the premise of Peggy, Dale, and Mingh following hapless Bill around as part of their plan to make it big in the stock market, eyeing his every purchasing decsion after they decide that Bill's consumer habits represent those of an ordinary Joe Sixpack. Bill of course loves all the attention, but eventually cracks under the pressure of having his every move scrutinized. This one had a lot of sharp satire mixed in with a sizable dose of KOTH's usual pathos and strong characterization. Good stuff.
My Grade: A-
- As fo FAMILY GUY ... hmm ... this episode was kind of a mess, and really all over the place in terms of humor. There were one or two gags that really cracked me up - the joke where Peter accidentally burns down a hospital had me rolling (as wrong as that sounds out of context ...) - and yet, a lot of the episode seemed to fall flat. As soon as the ep became Billy Madison-lite, the episode, to me, lost a ton of momentum. I mean, look, just because you have a self-awareness or metatextual thing going where you acknowledge that a premise is absurd - that doesn't automatically make it funny. Sometimes Family Guy tries to say "hey guys, we KNOW this is stupid, and that's why it's funny!" But sometimes, there's no substitute for great joke-writing and clever set-ups. Between Peter re-doing the third grade and Brian and Frank Sinatra Jr buying their own big band club (only to have Stewie turn it into a trendy hangout), a lot of this ep felt like it was there just so the writers could dish out a couple of key jokes. Yes, the Andy Dick appearance at Stewie's club wa funny, but ultimately these stories were just kind of there, without any real arc or payoff. I'm not asking for Family Guy to be Shakespeare, but I wish it would get back to having episodes with a memorable and coherant premise, lots of great jokes, and an overall polish that was lacking in this throw-it-against-the-wall-and-see-what-sticks installment.
My Grade: B-
Alright, time for my review of the latest 007 extravaganza ...
QUANTUM OF SOLACE Review:
- Quantum of Solace is a fun action movie, but I'm not sure what argument there is to make in favor of it being great or even very good. Sure, I understand that there is a vocal minority of Ian Fleming purists out there who are happy to see a darker, grittier James Bond franchise that more closely emulates the tone of the original novels. But, aside from the faithfulness to the source material, I just don't get the appeal of a 007 movie that strips away everything that made Bond a cinematic icon. Because now, what you're left with, is a movie that's somewhat entertaining, but to me mostly feels like a wannabe Bourne movie, or just a Bond movie that's trying too hard to crib from the back-to-basics formula of Christopher Nolan's Batman films or other such franchise reboots.
Aside from all of that big-picture stuff though, a few key problems really hamper the movie's pacing and execution. One problem is the issue of continuity with the last Bond film, Casino Royale. 007 movies are not particularly known for their narrative continuity, so I don't know how many went into Quantum expecting to have needed Cliff's Notes. But so much of this movie is a direct continuation of the earlier film that it really begins to become a frustrating excercise. I could barely remember, for example who Vesper (Eva Green's character in Casino) was, how she was killed, etc, and the movie is not edited or written in such a way so as to be particularly helpful in this regard. Vesper is mentioned dozens of times here, but we don't get a single flashback or bit of exposition to help jog our memories. I'm not coming out in favor of clunky, overly-expository storytelling or anything, but if you're going to tell a serialized story, you have to consider your audience, and you have to construct a narrative that both flows organically from the established plotlines, AND also stands alone as a self-contained narrative. I don't think Quantum really stands alone as a 100% cohesive film, and that to me is to its detriment.
Other than the plotting and narrative, the overall pacing of the movie suffers from choppy editing. In the big action scenes, this means that drama and excitement is sometimes sacrificed for Bourne-style rapid-fire cutting. It means that sometimes it's hard to tell who's chasing who, who has the upper hand, etc. At the same time, the movie's choppy cuts snip out a lot of the quieter moments that made Casino Royale stand out from earlier Bond films. There are not really a lot of memorable character moments to be found here amidst the action set-pieces. Even some scenes that would seem vital to the narrative don't make the cut - I found it pretty jarring, for example, when the movie cuts right from a climactic fight scene and time-jumps right past what could have been an important story point. We hear Bond reference that the big bad has spilled some of the secrets of global conspiracy Quantum to 007, but we don't see or hear it. Odd, to be sure.
I know I've been negative thus far, but with all that being said, I think I actually enjoyed Quantum slightly more than Casino Royale. The reason being that Daniel Craig definitely seems to come into his own here as a legit action star. Even if I didn't always know quite what was going on, it was just fun watching him engage in car chases, boat chases, foot races, and aerial maneuvering. Even though some key scenes were hampered by overly-quick cuts (particularly the final battle), many others worked pretty well and had me on the edge of my seat. Plus, amidst al the chaos there were a couple of genuinely badass sequences. My favorite was a cool scene set in a high-class opera house in which Bond exposes a secret meeting of the Quantum group. The main villain, while lacking in any over-the-top, Dr. Evil-style gimmickry, is still suitably slimy and villainous. But the supporting cast, other than Judi Dench, is really pretty bland and none too memorable. I realize that the lesson of Die Another Day was to not have a supporting character who tries to overshadow 007, but still, would it kill this franchise to craft a couple of memorable, recurring side characters? They've dispensed with Q and Money-Penny, so who's there to pick up the slack?
There's no doubt - Daniel Craig has what it takes to be a great action hero - he's a talented actor and a believable badass. Still, I just can't get too excited about such a pared-down version of an icon like James Bond, who now seems to have far less personality than the Bond of old or even the Jack Bauers of the world. As it stands, Quantum of Solace is just one more action flick in an overcrowded market.
My Grade: B
- Alright, and I'm out of here. Back soon with more, Agent Baram out.
Friday, November 14, 2008
Friday TV Roundup: SMALLVILLE Hits Back, Plus: 30 Rock and Office Reviews
Not to sound like a huge geek or anything, but man, last night was a pretty epic night of quality television.
Where to begin?
- I'll start with SMALLVILLE. Let me give credit where credit is due - because, holy crap, that was one badass episode of Smallville! At first, it seemed like just another episode of the long-running series, and I winced a few times during the first several minutes, because clearly, whoever wrote the episode was making sure that every line of dialogue was EXTRA SNAPPY to the point of ridiculousness. But, things slowly but surely took a turn for the intense. Soon enough I found myself in the midst of one EPIC episode of Smallville, an episode that truly made me feel like I was watching a classic Superman comic book playing out on screen. First of all, I've talked recently how this season of Smallville has done a really nice job of maintaining continuity week to week, allowing each episode to build and build, creating a pretty cool tapestry of ongoing storyarcs. In fact, I can't remember when Smallville has ever felt this tightly-plotted before, and the newfound focus on the ongoing narrative is really helping to crank up the drama. Like many, I questioned the introduction of the Davis Bloome character, but I have to admit - the build-up to his inevitable villainous transformation has been exceptionally well-done. I also have to give the show credit for its always-great visuals. It's amazing to me that, despite reported budget cuts, Smallville continues to look this good. I loved the f/x present when Chloe was being brain-drained by Braniac, and all of the fortress f/x were also similarly well-done. On the acting front, Alison Mack deserves some credit - Chloe can sometimes be a bit overbearing as a character, but tonight you really had to feel for her and her plight. I also really liked the flashback scene to Clark and Chloe's first meeting - it really hit home how important that relationship has been to the show - in a way, you could argue that Chloe has been Smallville's heart and soul, and that flashback really served as a potent reminder of that fact. But really, the big fanboy moment came near episode's end - because as much as fans complained that Davis Bloome was a poor substitute for the monstrous villain Doomsday of comic book fame, this episode set up the emergence of the vile and horrific creature that we all love to hate. Yes, I had chills when Jor-El ominously explained the grim origins of the Kryptonian beast known as Doomsday to Clark. Now that's what I'm talking about. Now, it was tough to tell much from the preview for next week, but the small snippets hinted at a truly giant-sized nemesis for Clark next week in the form of a straight-from-the-comics Doomsday taking on Clark in an epic smackdown brawl. If next week's ep delivers on the promise of the preview - then, wow, we could be in for quite a treat. I guess the one negative here is that you get the feeling that the new team of showrunners are doing all they can to make Smallville as fun and epic as possible, but it's still clear that they are inherently hampered by the limitations of the show's premise. Having an epic Clark vs. Doomsday showdown, as cool as that is, just doesn't have quite the same awesome-factor as it would if it were *Superman*. Clark's now been talking about the idea of superheroics for so long that every episode where he's still just a plain-old guy becomes increasingly frustrating. Still, I don't want to harp on that too much, because overall this was just a great episode of a show that clearly has some renewed life and sense of purpose. Keep it up, guys.
My Grade: A-
- Okay, got to talk about THE OFFICE, as last night's ep was definitely one of my favorites of the season so far. One reason: Ed Helms. The guy has not had a ton of screentime of late, but every time he's on-camera as hapless Andy, he makes the character all the more interesting. Finally, last night the focus shifted to Andy, and the result was a lot of hilarity and some of the most memorable moments that The Office has had in a while. Everything really clicked in this ep, from Andy's awesome drunk phone call to Angela, to his budding friendship with Oscar, to Michael's excitement and eventual disillusionment with his business trip to Canada. The Jim and Pam stuff I thought was handled much better than last week - more subdued and less melodramatic. I guess my one complaint is I'm not sure if I like the path that Dwight's character has been going on. The problem is that he used to be far and away the show's funniest character - now, he's been made into such an awful person that it's a lot harder to laugh at his antics. Overall though, a really good ep of The Office.
My Grade: A-
- Finally, 30 ROCK had yet another absolutely hilarious episode that had me laughing nonstop. Every plotline seemed to fire on all cylinders. I mean, first of all, I love how this series uses its high-profile guest stars in non-gimmicky ways. Last night's appearance by Jennifer Aniston was case-in-point - she fit organically into the plot and wasn't really playing to or against type - just simply cast in a funny part that gave Alec Baldwin some truly hilarious lines. Seeing the conservative Jack Doneghy unable to resist the crazy-appeal of Aniston's character was a lot of fun. But even more awesome was the subplot involving Tracy, Kenneth, and the cast of Night Court. Yes, Night Court. Upset by the Page Program's new and spiffier uniforms which have supplanted the ol' Blue Polyester theads (gotta love NBC Page humor - awesome!), Kenneth looks to Tracy to cheer him up. Tracy asks Kenneth what would make him happy, and the answer is, of all things, a satisfying conclusion to the long-running sitcom Night Court. Random? Indeed. Hilarious? Without a doubt. Tracy got in a few choice lines of dialogue ("A Court? At night? I'm already laughing!"), and hey, Harry Anderson and Markie Post showed up! (man, Harry was looking pretty old though, I have to say ...). In the end though, this was yet another great episode of 30 Rock. Definitely a great hour of TV between this and The Office.
My Grade: A-
- Alright, bring on the weekend. It may have been a short work week but I am more than ready for some quality R &R. And I'm out.
Where to begin?
- I'll start with SMALLVILLE. Let me give credit where credit is due - because, holy crap, that was one badass episode of Smallville! At first, it seemed like just another episode of the long-running series, and I winced a few times during the first several minutes, because clearly, whoever wrote the episode was making sure that every line of dialogue was EXTRA SNAPPY to the point of ridiculousness. But, things slowly but surely took a turn for the intense. Soon enough I found myself in the midst of one EPIC episode of Smallville, an episode that truly made me feel like I was watching a classic Superman comic book playing out on screen. First of all, I've talked recently how this season of Smallville has done a really nice job of maintaining continuity week to week, allowing each episode to build and build, creating a pretty cool tapestry of ongoing storyarcs. In fact, I can't remember when Smallville has ever felt this tightly-plotted before, and the newfound focus on the ongoing narrative is really helping to crank up the drama. Like many, I questioned the introduction of the Davis Bloome character, but I have to admit - the build-up to his inevitable villainous transformation has been exceptionally well-done. I also have to give the show credit for its always-great visuals. It's amazing to me that, despite reported budget cuts, Smallville continues to look this good. I loved the f/x present when Chloe was being brain-drained by Braniac, and all of the fortress f/x were also similarly well-done. On the acting front, Alison Mack deserves some credit - Chloe can sometimes be a bit overbearing as a character, but tonight you really had to feel for her and her plight. I also really liked the flashback scene to Clark and Chloe's first meeting - it really hit home how important that relationship has been to the show - in a way, you could argue that Chloe has been Smallville's heart and soul, and that flashback really served as a potent reminder of that fact. But really, the big fanboy moment came near episode's end - because as much as fans complained that Davis Bloome was a poor substitute for the monstrous villain Doomsday of comic book fame, this episode set up the emergence of the vile and horrific creature that we all love to hate. Yes, I had chills when Jor-El ominously explained the grim origins of the Kryptonian beast known as Doomsday to Clark. Now that's what I'm talking about. Now, it was tough to tell much from the preview for next week, but the small snippets hinted at a truly giant-sized nemesis for Clark next week in the form of a straight-from-the-comics Doomsday taking on Clark in an epic smackdown brawl. If next week's ep delivers on the promise of the preview - then, wow, we could be in for quite a treat. I guess the one negative here is that you get the feeling that the new team of showrunners are doing all they can to make Smallville as fun and epic as possible, but it's still clear that they are inherently hampered by the limitations of the show's premise. Having an epic Clark vs. Doomsday showdown, as cool as that is, just doesn't have quite the same awesome-factor as it would if it were *Superman*. Clark's now been talking about the idea of superheroics for so long that every episode where he's still just a plain-old guy becomes increasingly frustrating. Still, I don't want to harp on that too much, because overall this was just a great episode of a show that clearly has some renewed life and sense of purpose. Keep it up, guys.
My Grade: A-
- Okay, got to talk about THE OFFICE, as last night's ep was definitely one of my favorites of the season so far. One reason: Ed Helms. The guy has not had a ton of screentime of late, but every time he's on-camera as hapless Andy, he makes the character all the more interesting. Finally, last night the focus shifted to Andy, and the result was a lot of hilarity and some of the most memorable moments that The Office has had in a while. Everything really clicked in this ep, from Andy's awesome drunk phone call to Angela, to his budding friendship with Oscar, to Michael's excitement and eventual disillusionment with his business trip to Canada. The Jim and Pam stuff I thought was handled much better than last week - more subdued and less melodramatic. I guess my one complaint is I'm not sure if I like the path that Dwight's character has been going on. The problem is that he used to be far and away the show's funniest character - now, he's been made into such an awful person that it's a lot harder to laugh at his antics. Overall though, a really good ep of The Office.
My Grade: A-
- Finally, 30 ROCK had yet another absolutely hilarious episode that had me laughing nonstop. Every plotline seemed to fire on all cylinders. I mean, first of all, I love how this series uses its high-profile guest stars in non-gimmicky ways. Last night's appearance by Jennifer Aniston was case-in-point - she fit organically into the plot and wasn't really playing to or against type - just simply cast in a funny part that gave Alec Baldwin some truly hilarious lines. Seeing the conservative Jack Doneghy unable to resist the crazy-appeal of Aniston's character was a lot of fun. But even more awesome was the subplot involving Tracy, Kenneth, and the cast of Night Court. Yes, Night Court. Upset by the Page Program's new and spiffier uniforms which have supplanted the ol' Blue Polyester theads (gotta love NBC Page humor - awesome!), Kenneth looks to Tracy to cheer him up. Tracy asks Kenneth what would make him happy, and the answer is, of all things, a satisfying conclusion to the long-running sitcom Night Court. Random? Indeed. Hilarious? Without a doubt. Tracy got in a few choice lines of dialogue ("A Court? At night? I'm already laughing!"), and hey, Harry Anderson and Markie Post showed up! (man, Harry was looking pretty old though, I have to say ...). In the end though, this was yet another great episode of 30 Rock. Definitely a great hour of TV between this and The Office.
My Grade: A-
- Alright, bring on the weekend. It may have been a short work week but I am more than ready for some quality R &R. And I'm out.
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
THE STATE Gone Mainstream? ROLE MODELS Review and MORE!
Man, Subways in LA have the slowest service ever. A good Subway should be a veritable sandwich-making machine, with speedy and efficient employees and patrons who know exactly what they want before they even get in line. But here in LA, each trip to Subway seems to have an incredibly high percentage of people who have apparently never been to a Subway. And the servers, though they tend to be friendly enough, take about five minutes simply to put a couple of turkey slices on a piece of bread. Where's the hustle, Hollywood?
Anyways, I do have a movie to review, but first, a quick rant:
- Has Hollywood lost it's freaking mind lately?! In the last few days alone, a wave of news stories have come out relating to new film developments, each one more cringe-worthy than the last. Will Smith's son as the next Karate Kid? All I can say is "aww HELLS no!" Same sentiment applies to a Will Smith remake of the great movie Oldboy. I have seen Oldboy, and Will Smith is no Oldboy. Steven Spielberg himself is attached to direct ... and this is sad, because Spielberg is too talented to waste his time remaking a movie that came out less than ten years ago. Give us something, oh, I don't know, ORIGINAL? Then there's Brett Ratner directing a new Conan flick? Understand the words coming out of my mouth: please lord, no. And then today ... this can't be true, can it? Ridley Scott, he of Blade Runner and Alien and Gladiator, directing a Monopoly movie? That can't be right, can it? When I saw the headline I was convinced it was an early April Fool's joke, and I'm still waiting for the punchline. If true, all I can say is Why, Ridley, Why?
Hollywood - it's been the fanboy rallying cry for years, but come on already - stop remaking stuff that doesn't need to be remade. The entire point of Oldboy, for example, is that it details a personal nightmare that is incredibly %&#'ed up. Are Spielberg and Will Smith going to preserve that? Even if they somehow did, why does that particular story need to be retold? Why not just come up with something new?
Stop the madness, I say!
- STOP THE PRESSES ...! It has just come to my attention that PRISON BREAK may soon be given the death penalty from the overlords at FOX. Here's what I think: I think that I could accept the fact that TV's most fun action-adventure show may say goodbye after four great seasons, provided that the show goes out with a huge bang and a fitting send-off. IF and only if that is the case, and we get a giant-sized finale that ties up loose ends and provides proper closure for Michael Scofield and co. - well, I could then be content with a great run coming to an end. But ... if FOX messes with storylines and cuts the show short prematurely - I will not be happy. The cast and crew of PB have created iconic characters and larger than life storylines, and they deserve a great wrap-up. I want one final Scofield vs. T-Bag smackdown, one final feat of badassery for Mahone, and an ending that creates a new status quo for our perpetually on-the-run protagonists.
Now, if it were up to me, I could certainly see relaunching the show with a new name and new premise. Scofield and Mahone as a pair of special-unit FBI or black-ops government agents? Perhaps tasked with containing a supermax prison break? Perhaps in pursuit of the increasingly dangerous Gretchen and her re-established Company? These characters are so great ... they could certainly live on past Prison Break ...
But I'll wait and see what happens. Certainly, if PB goes, then Monday nights will have a little less gravitas.
... Alright, anyways ...
ROLE MODELS Review:
- As many friends and readers of the blog are well aware, I'm a huge, huge fan of the cult-fave 90's-era sketch comedy show THE STATE. Since the premature death of that modern classic, I've closely followed the careers of many of its alumni, and looked forward to any projects that seemed to represent a revival of the random, crazy, and absurd sense of humor that characterized The State back in the day. So far, the best post-State project from the group, by far, has been Wet Hot American Summer, which was one of those movies that screamed cult comedy classic from the moment it hit theaters in 2001. To me, Wet Hot is plain and simply one of the funniest movies ever made. And yet, it's one of those movies that's pretty difficult for critics to wrap their brains around - because it's strength isn't its plot, characters, or anything that can really be objectively judged. It's just hilarious, and that's why it rocks.
Since Wet Hot, there've been a handful of major comedy projects from State members - Stella on Comedy Central, Reno 9-11, The Baxter, and last year's The Ten are the standouts. But STATE and WET HOT fans can rejoice, because while not apparent from the trailers, ROLE MODELS hits the sweet spot in terms of channelling the same kind of humor that put The State on the map. In fact, directed by David Wain and co-written by Wain and Paul Rudd, Role Models is almost a seamless merging of Wain's random sketch comedy stylings with a traditional Hollywood comedy formula.
Because, like Wet Hot, the premise of Role Models sounds pretty lame on paper. Two immature guys who get in trouble and are forced to atone by mentoring a couple of problem children. Under normal circumstances, this could be a by-the-numbers recipe for disaster. But the actual result is a random, subversive, geeky movie that followes the broad outline of a mainstream comedy, but in the details, is anything but mainstream.
I mean, the movie spends a ton of time on the in's and out's of live-action role playing, staging epic LARP battles as if they were D-Day. There's a running joke about the band KISS that is central to the movie's climax. And the lovable kid in this movie? He's a prematurely pervy, smart-mouthed ten year old who singlehandeldy uses more swear words than The Big Lebowski.
The point is that, sure, some of the movie is devoted to telling a story about immature guys being forced to accept their adulthood by caring for misguided kids, and in doing so realizing what's important in their lives. And you know what? The schmaltzy stuff is up there with the best of Hollywood comedy. As cheesy as it is, the ending makes you want to cheer in appreciation of the geek getting the girl, the underdogs winning out, and our heroes finding their happy ending.
But the second part of my point is that a lot of Role Models is simply devoted to the art of being funny for the sake of being funny. It helps that the cast is so talented. Paul Rudd and Sean William Scott are great as the leads - it's not just them alone though - the real highlight is their interactions with all the crazy characters they encounter. Rudd is great as a burnt-out guy bitter at the world, but he's even funnier when he's interacting with Christopher Mintz-Plasse (aka McLovin') - a nerdy and awkward but well meaning kid who obsesses over a medieval reenaction / live-action combat game called LAIR. Similarly, Sean William-Scott is funny and likable as usual, but his interaction with Bobb'e J. Thompson is priceless. Thompson is absolutely hilarious as an uber problem-child, and despite being a young kid, his character takes full advantage of the movie's R-rating. This is definitely NOT your typical watered-down kid character. Ronnie as played by Thompson is profane, shocking, and sometimes just plain wrong. And the funniest part is that for most of the movie, Sean William-Scott is perfectly happy to encourage the kid's behavior, to be his Obi-Wan Kenobi of behaving badly. Very funny stuff.
The supporting cast though is just loaded with talent. For one, a ton of State and Wet Hot vets appear, so you know they will bring the funny. The best might be Joe Lo Truglio, who stole the show in THE TEN. Here he plays a hilarious character who is the leader of Mintz-Plasse's LAIR tribe - basically a grown man who gets off on dressing in medieval garb and greeting people with a hearty "good morrow." Like I said, hilarious. Ken Marino and Kerri Kenney show up as McLovin's disapproving parents - I was actually surprised that they were not only funny, but actually pretty effective as semi-dramatic foils for our young here. I guess I should have remembered how well Marino can do sleazy from his stint as Vinny Ban Lowe on the late, great Veronica Mars. David Wain pops up for a small role (no signs of Michael Showalter or Michael Ian Black, however), and Wet Hot's A.D. Miles is great as a Ned Flanders-esque goody two-shoes. And hey, Elizabeth Banks is in the mix too, marking the third theatrical movie I've seen her in a the last month. But if there's one actress who deserves to be overexposed, it may be Banks. She's solid here even if it's a pretty underwritten role.
Two supporting players who really stand out though ... Jane Lynch, for one. Lynch has to be one of the overall funniest people in film today, and she doesn't get enough credit for stealing scenes in every movie she's in, from A Mighty Wind to The 40 Year Old Virgin to Talladega Nights. She's at her best and funniest here, as the former-addict who now runs the Big Brothers, Big Sisters-like organization that's at the center of the film's plot. Lynch's fearless delivery lends itself perfectly to David Wain's absurdist style. Ken Jeong is also pretty awesome in this one. He's been popping up in everything lately it seems, but as the "king" of Lair, drunk on power, he's a riot.
If Role Models has any real fatal flaw, it's just that it still kind of has that feeling of being a movie that started out as a generic paint-by-numbers comedy, that then went on to get a giant makeover from Wain and Rudd. Beneath the surface, you can sometimes see the skeleton of that original, way less cool movie showing through its shiny new paint-job. But it's a testament to the talent involved here that they made the movie wholly their own. When I saw the film at a screening, some of those with less, shall we say, out-there taste in comedy came away from the movie confused and disappointed. They had expected a nice, simple, Hollywood comedy and what they got was an off-the-wall, unabashadly geeky, David Wain style movie. As for me, the fact that beneath the predictable facade of the movie's trailers lay a kickass, subversive comedy was an awesome suprise. That the movie did so well at the box-office was similarly cool - might the cultish comedy of The State finally be going mainstream? As long as these guys get to keep churning out great comedies like this one, I'm game.
My Grade: A-
- Alright, that's all I've got for today. Rock on!
Anyways, I do have a movie to review, but first, a quick rant:
- Has Hollywood lost it's freaking mind lately?! In the last few days alone, a wave of news stories have come out relating to new film developments, each one more cringe-worthy than the last. Will Smith's son as the next Karate Kid? All I can say is "aww HELLS no!" Same sentiment applies to a Will Smith remake of the great movie Oldboy. I have seen Oldboy, and Will Smith is no Oldboy. Steven Spielberg himself is attached to direct ... and this is sad, because Spielberg is too talented to waste his time remaking a movie that came out less than ten years ago. Give us something, oh, I don't know, ORIGINAL? Then there's Brett Ratner directing a new Conan flick? Understand the words coming out of my mouth: please lord, no. And then today ... this can't be true, can it? Ridley Scott, he of Blade Runner and Alien and Gladiator, directing a Monopoly movie? That can't be right, can it? When I saw the headline I was convinced it was an early April Fool's joke, and I'm still waiting for the punchline. If true, all I can say is Why, Ridley, Why?
Hollywood - it's been the fanboy rallying cry for years, but come on already - stop remaking stuff that doesn't need to be remade. The entire point of Oldboy, for example, is that it details a personal nightmare that is incredibly %&#'ed up. Are Spielberg and Will Smith going to preserve that? Even if they somehow did, why does that particular story need to be retold? Why not just come up with something new?
Stop the madness, I say!
- STOP THE PRESSES ...! It has just come to my attention that PRISON BREAK may soon be given the death penalty from the overlords at FOX. Here's what I think: I think that I could accept the fact that TV's most fun action-adventure show may say goodbye after four great seasons, provided that the show goes out with a huge bang and a fitting send-off. IF and only if that is the case, and we get a giant-sized finale that ties up loose ends and provides proper closure for Michael Scofield and co. - well, I could then be content with a great run coming to an end. But ... if FOX messes with storylines and cuts the show short prematurely - I will not be happy. The cast and crew of PB have created iconic characters and larger than life storylines, and they deserve a great wrap-up. I want one final Scofield vs. T-Bag smackdown, one final feat of badassery for Mahone, and an ending that creates a new status quo for our perpetually on-the-run protagonists.
Now, if it were up to me, I could certainly see relaunching the show with a new name and new premise. Scofield and Mahone as a pair of special-unit FBI or black-ops government agents? Perhaps tasked with containing a supermax prison break? Perhaps in pursuit of the increasingly dangerous Gretchen and her re-established Company? These characters are so great ... they could certainly live on past Prison Break ...
But I'll wait and see what happens. Certainly, if PB goes, then Monday nights will have a little less gravitas.
... Alright, anyways ...
ROLE MODELS Review:
- As many friends and readers of the blog are well aware, I'm a huge, huge fan of the cult-fave 90's-era sketch comedy show THE STATE. Since the premature death of that modern classic, I've closely followed the careers of many of its alumni, and looked forward to any projects that seemed to represent a revival of the random, crazy, and absurd sense of humor that characterized The State back in the day. So far, the best post-State project from the group, by far, has been Wet Hot American Summer, which was one of those movies that screamed cult comedy classic from the moment it hit theaters in 2001. To me, Wet Hot is plain and simply one of the funniest movies ever made. And yet, it's one of those movies that's pretty difficult for critics to wrap their brains around - because it's strength isn't its plot, characters, or anything that can really be objectively judged. It's just hilarious, and that's why it rocks.
Since Wet Hot, there've been a handful of major comedy projects from State members - Stella on Comedy Central, Reno 9-11, The Baxter, and last year's The Ten are the standouts. But STATE and WET HOT fans can rejoice, because while not apparent from the trailers, ROLE MODELS hits the sweet spot in terms of channelling the same kind of humor that put The State on the map. In fact, directed by David Wain and co-written by Wain and Paul Rudd, Role Models is almost a seamless merging of Wain's random sketch comedy stylings with a traditional Hollywood comedy formula.
Because, like Wet Hot, the premise of Role Models sounds pretty lame on paper. Two immature guys who get in trouble and are forced to atone by mentoring a couple of problem children. Under normal circumstances, this could be a by-the-numbers recipe for disaster. But the actual result is a random, subversive, geeky movie that followes the broad outline of a mainstream comedy, but in the details, is anything but mainstream.
I mean, the movie spends a ton of time on the in's and out's of live-action role playing, staging epic LARP battles as if they were D-Day. There's a running joke about the band KISS that is central to the movie's climax. And the lovable kid in this movie? He's a prematurely pervy, smart-mouthed ten year old who singlehandeldy uses more swear words than The Big Lebowski.
The point is that, sure, some of the movie is devoted to telling a story about immature guys being forced to accept their adulthood by caring for misguided kids, and in doing so realizing what's important in their lives. And you know what? The schmaltzy stuff is up there with the best of Hollywood comedy. As cheesy as it is, the ending makes you want to cheer in appreciation of the geek getting the girl, the underdogs winning out, and our heroes finding their happy ending.
But the second part of my point is that a lot of Role Models is simply devoted to the art of being funny for the sake of being funny. It helps that the cast is so talented. Paul Rudd and Sean William Scott are great as the leads - it's not just them alone though - the real highlight is their interactions with all the crazy characters they encounter. Rudd is great as a burnt-out guy bitter at the world, but he's even funnier when he's interacting with Christopher Mintz-Plasse (aka McLovin') - a nerdy and awkward but well meaning kid who obsesses over a medieval reenaction / live-action combat game called LAIR. Similarly, Sean William-Scott is funny and likable as usual, but his interaction with Bobb'e J. Thompson is priceless. Thompson is absolutely hilarious as an uber problem-child, and despite being a young kid, his character takes full advantage of the movie's R-rating. This is definitely NOT your typical watered-down kid character. Ronnie as played by Thompson is profane, shocking, and sometimes just plain wrong. And the funniest part is that for most of the movie, Sean William-Scott is perfectly happy to encourage the kid's behavior, to be his Obi-Wan Kenobi of behaving badly. Very funny stuff.
The supporting cast though is just loaded with talent. For one, a ton of State and Wet Hot vets appear, so you know they will bring the funny. The best might be Joe Lo Truglio, who stole the show in THE TEN. Here he plays a hilarious character who is the leader of Mintz-Plasse's LAIR tribe - basically a grown man who gets off on dressing in medieval garb and greeting people with a hearty "good morrow." Like I said, hilarious. Ken Marino and Kerri Kenney show up as McLovin's disapproving parents - I was actually surprised that they were not only funny, but actually pretty effective as semi-dramatic foils for our young here. I guess I should have remembered how well Marino can do sleazy from his stint as Vinny Ban Lowe on the late, great Veronica Mars. David Wain pops up for a small role (no signs of Michael Showalter or Michael Ian Black, however), and Wet Hot's A.D. Miles is great as a Ned Flanders-esque goody two-shoes. And hey, Elizabeth Banks is in the mix too, marking the third theatrical movie I've seen her in a the last month. But if there's one actress who deserves to be overexposed, it may be Banks. She's solid here even if it's a pretty underwritten role.
Two supporting players who really stand out though ... Jane Lynch, for one. Lynch has to be one of the overall funniest people in film today, and she doesn't get enough credit for stealing scenes in every movie she's in, from A Mighty Wind to The 40 Year Old Virgin to Talladega Nights. She's at her best and funniest here, as the former-addict who now runs the Big Brothers, Big Sisters-like organization that's at the center of the film's plot. Lynch's fearless delivery lends itself perfectly to David Wain's absurdist style. Ken Jeong is also pretty awesome in this one. He's been popping up in everything lately it seems, but as the "king" of Lair, drunk on power, he's a riot.
If Role Models has any real fatal flaw, it's just that it still kind of has that feeling of being a movie that started out as a generic paint-by-numbers comedy, that then went on to get a giant makeover from Wain and Rudd. Beneath the surface, you can sometimes see the skeleton of that original, way less cool movie showing through its shiny new paint-job. But it's a testament to the talent involved here that they made the movie wholly their own. When I saw the film at a screening, some of those with less, shall we say, out-there taste in comedy came away from the movie confused and disappointed. They had expected a nice, simple, Hollywood comedy and what they got was an off-the-wall, unabashadly geeky, David Wain style movie. As for me, the fact that beneath the predictable facade of the movie's trailers lay a kickass, subversive comedy was an awesome suprise. That the movie did so well at the box-office was similarly cool - might the cultish comedy of The State finally be going mainstream? As long as these guys get to keep churning out great comedies like this one, I'm game.
My Grade: A-
- Alright, that's all I've got for today. Rock on!
Friday, October 31, 2008
Happy Halloween! The All-New, All-Scary Adventures of Danny Baram
It's close to midnight, and somethin' evil's knockin' on your door ...
HAPPY HALLOWEEN!
- Greetings boys and ghouls, and welcome to a special Halloween edition of the All-New, All-Awesome Adventures. If you haven't already, be sure to check out my entry from yesterday, where I urge Gen Y'ers to get off their kiesters and vote, and review Clint Eastwood's Changeling to boot. But, let's time-warp back to the here and now. Halloween 2008.
In honor of the occasion, I present to you:
DANNY'S ULTIMATE HALLOWEEN PLAYLIST:
- "This is Halloween" (from The Nightmare Before Christmas) - cover by Marylin Manson
- "The Monster Mash" by Bobby Pickett and the Crypt-Kickers
- "Thriller" by Michael Jackson
- "Disturbia" by Rihanna
- Theme from The Twilight Zone
- "(He's Back!) The Man Behind the Mask" by Alice Cooper
- "Feed My Frankenstein" by Alice Cooper
- Theme from The Munsters
- Theme from The Addams Family
- "God of Thunder" by Kiss
- Theme from The Outer Limits
- "Fear of the Dark" by Iron Maiden
- "Dracula's Lament" from Forgetting Sarah Marshall
- "Somebody's Watching Me" by Rockwell
- Theme from Ghostbusters
- "Bark At the Moon" by Ozzy Ozbourne
- "Living Dead Girl" by Rob Zombie
- "Enter Sandman" by Metallica
- Theme From Army of Darkness
- "Sympathy For the Devil" by the Rolling Stones
- "Fire" by Arthur Brown
- Theme from Scooby Doo
- "Little Red Riding Hood" by Sam the Sham
- "Werewolf Bar-Mitzvah" from 30 Rock
-"The Time Warp" from The Rocky Horror Picture Show
- "This Is Halloween" from The Nightmare Before Christmas (original version)
Some quick TV Reviews for ya' ...
- First off, thank the lord that 30 ROCK is back. The show that I named the best TV series of 2007 finally returned last night with an episode jam-packed with classic lines and memorable bits. Was it the best-ever episode of 30 Rock? Definitely not, but there were still enough hilarious moments to make the episode one of the funniest things I've seen on TV in a while. I mean, Will Arnett and Alec Baldwin going at it? Tracy Morgan bestowing Judah Friedlander with a pair of golden nunchucks? Comedy gold right there. I would have liked a little more of the supporting cast and a little more Tracy Jordan, but hey, this was overall a great premiere. Baldwin had the line of the night, about working the day shift at the graveyard and the graveyard shift at a Day's Inn. Awesome.
My Grade: A -
- THE OFFICE started out with a freakin' hilarious Halloween-themed opening, in which Creed, Kevin, and Dwight all dressed as the Heath Ledger JOKER. Classic. From there, things got a bit soapy with Michael and Holly and Jim and Pam. I thought the Michael / Holly stuff had some really great and funny moments though, and the addition of Daryll as a third wheel was classic. As was Michael's infinite road-trip playlist that consisted of "Life Is a Highway" over and over again. I thought the Pam bit where she meets Jim's brothers was kind of clunky. I get what they were going for - almost psychoanalyzing Jim via his brothers, but, yeah, didn't quite work for me. Dwight vs. Andy though? Pretty classic.
My Grade: B+
- In some ways, I really enjoyed the latest episode of SMALLVILLE. It had a fun script and some nice interaction between Clark, Lois, Chloe, Jimmy, and Oliver. However ... let's be real here. If this series actually followed any sort of logical character development, Clark is at the point where by next week's episode he would be Superman. There's no getting around it at this point. And normally, I would say they are doing a pretty good job of building to that big reveal. But the frustrating thing is ... they are NOT really building towards anything. Again - how can you have these kinds of plotlines with no hope of payoff? That being said, this was a well-done episode with some really cool moments. But all I know is, the last episode of this season better have SUPERMAN in it.
My Grade: B
- Alriiiiiiiiiiiiight ... Happy Halloween!!!!!!!!
HAPPY HALLOWEEN!
- Greetings boys and ghouls, and welcome to a special Halloween edition of the All-New, All-Awesome Adventures. If you haven't already, be sure to check out my entry from yesterday, where I urge Gen Y'ers to get off their kiesters and vote, and review Clint Eastwood's Changeling to boot. But, let's time-warp back to the here and now. Halloween 2008.
In honor of the occasion, I present to you:
DANNY'S ULTIMATE HALLOWEEN PLAYLIST:
- "This is Halloween" (from The Nightmare Before Christmas) - cover by Marylin Manson
- "The Monster Mash" by Bobby Pickett and the Crypt-Kickers
- "Thriller" by Michael Jackson
- "Disturbia" by Rihanna
- Theme from The Twilight Zone
- "(He's Back!) The Man Behind the Mask" by Alice Cooper
- "Feed My Frankenstein" by Alice Cooper
- Theme from The Munsters
- Theme from The Addams Family
- "God of Thunder" by Kiss
- Theme from The Outer Limits
- "Fear of the Dark" by Iron Maiden
- "Dracula's Lament" from Forgetting Sarah Marshall
- "Somebody's Watching Me" by Rockwell
- Theme from Ghostbusters
- "Bark At the Moon" by Ozzy Ozbourne
- "Living Dead Girl" by Rob Zombie
- "Enter Sandman" by Metallica
- Theme From Army of Darkness
- "Sympathy For the Devil" by the Rolling Stones
- "Fire" by Arthur Brown
- Theme from Scooby Doo
- "Little Red Riding Hood" by Sam the Sham
- "Werewolf Bar-Mitzvah" from 30 Rock
-"The Time Warp" from The Rocky Horror Picture Show
- "This Is Halloween" from The Nightmare Before Christmas (original version)
Some quick TV Reviews for ya' ...
- First off, thank the lord that 30 ROCK is back. The show that I named the best TV series of 2007 finally returned last night with an episode jam-packed with classic lines and memorable bits. Was it the best-ever episode of 30 Rock? Definitely not, but there were still enough hilarious moments to make the episode one of the funniest things I've seen on TV in a while. I mean, Will Arnett and Alec Baldwin going at it? Tracy Morgan bestowing Judah Friedlander with a pair of golden nunchucks? Comedy gold right there. I would have liked a little more of the supporting cast and a little more Tracy Jordan, but hey, this was overall a great premiere. Baldwin had the line of the night, about working the day shift at the graveyard and the graveyard shift at a Day's Inn. Awesome.
My Grade: A -
- THE OFFICE started out with a freakin' hilarious Halloween-themed opening, in which Creed, Kevin, and Dwight all dressed as the Heath Ledger JOKER. Classic. From there, things got a bit soapy with Michael and Holly and Jim and Pam. I thought the Michael / Holly stuff had some really great and funny moments though, and the addition of Daryll as a third wheel was classic. As was Michael's infinite road-trip playlist that consisted of "Life Is a Highway" over and over again. I thought the Pam bit where she meets Jim's brothers was kind of clunky. I get what they were going for - almost psychoanalyzing Jim via his brothers, but, yeah, didn't quite work for me. Dwight vs. Andy though? Pretty classic.
My Grade: B+
- In some ways, I really enjoyed the latest episode of SMALLVILLE. It had a fun script and some nice interaction between Clark, Lois, Chloe, Jimmy, and Oliver. However ... let's be real here. If this series actually followed any sort of logical character development, Clark is at the point where by next week's episode he would be Superman. There's no getting around it at this point. And normally, I would say they are doing a pretty good job of building to that big reveal. But the frustrating thing is ... they are NOT really building towards anything. Again - how can you have these kinds of plotlines with no hope of payoff? That being said, this was a well-done episode with some really cool moments. But all I know is, the last episode of this season better have SUPERMAN in it.
My Grade: B
- Alriiiiiiiiiiiiight ... Happy Halloween!!!!!!!!
Monday, October 20, 2008
Monstrous Movie Madness: Oliver Stone's W, Appaloosa, and Nick & Norah - Reviewed! Plus a Halloween HorrorThon Recap!
Wow, been a while. What can I say, I've still been recovering and catching up on things since I got back to LA last Sunday. I think I slept about 14 hours a night this past weekend as I caught up on missed sleep from the previous week. Suffice it to say, I was wiped. But ... tired as I was on Friday night, duty called. Duty being my annual HALLOWEEN HORROR MOVIE MARATHON! Yes, as is tradition, a loyal and decidedly hardcore group of couch warriors assembled to spend a long evening watching one cinematic scare-fest after another. Once again, the fabled Wall of Horrors was constructed in my apartment, and a lineup of carefully-selected creature-features was selected for the evening's viewing. This year, I had a classic ep of Ray Bradbury's Theater running as I waited for the guests to filter in, and then kicked off the event with, as is customary, a classic episode of The Simpsons: Treehouse of Horror. This being an election year, there was only one episode that seemed appropriate for the occasion - that being the Season 8 installment which includes Citizen Kang - an absolutely brilliant bit of political satire that is also freaking hilarious. Epic win. The ep also has another of my fav THOH bits, the one where Bart has a long-hidden evil twin named Hugo. That one was the inspiration for countless times where as a kid I tried to tell my brother or cousins that they had a secret evil twin. Bwahahaha ...
Anyways ... the main event kicked off at about 8 pm with the night's first movie, GREMLINS. I usually try to start things off with a lighter / funnier movie, bonus points if it's from the 80's. Gremlins fit the bill to a T. I remember Gremlins being all over the place when I was a kid - toys, movies, videogames, etc ... and I think at some point I must have seen the movie, maybe. But I had no real memory of the film, and figured the combination of comedy, horror, and 80's nostalgia was perfect for the annual Horror-thon. The movie proved to be vintage 80's weirdness - insane puppetry / fx, a weird mix of innocence and darkness that is the trademark of many an 80's fantasy film, and a lot of fun-to-make-fun-of 80's nostalgia bits, with a cast that includes luminaries of the decade such as Phoebe Cates, Judge Reinhold, and yes, Cory Feldman.
Our second film was the legendary sci-fi / horror classic, ALIEN. While the at-times slow pacing necessitated that we down a few extra cups of Diet Coke in order to get through, the movie proved as visually stunning and as well-structured as ever - with a still-impressive cast and a dynamite turn from Sigourney Weaver as the original female badass, Ellen Ripley. I think I may need to follow this one up by revisiting the sequels. Aliens by James Cameron, anyone?
Finally, we closed things out with a movie that was probably the most traditionally Halloween-appropriate film of the bunch, which is odd as there's not much that's conventional about EVIL DEAD 2. I had never seen this one before, only the original ED as well as Army of Darkness. And man, did Evil Dead 2 deliver - taking the basic premise and style of Part 1 and adding in even more visual creativity, over the top, Looney Tunes-style comedy, and an even more iconic performance from the one and only Bruce Campbell. It's one of those one-of-a-kind turns that makes you sad all over again that The Chin never became a bonafide Hollywood action star. In any case, the movie was a great capper to the evening, and it's nonstop parade of gore, humor, and classic one-liners kept my very tired eyes wide open as the night wore on. Hail to the king, baby.
So thanks again to everyone who stopped by for the Marathon. It was once again a monstrous success!
- Of course, the annual Horror-thon was not my only Halloween-related activity this weekend. I also made a trip on Saturday to see THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS in 3-D at the El Capitan theater in Hollywood, during the opening weekend of its limited theatrical engagement. As always, seeing the film at the El Capitan was just an overall great experience. The theater's gothic interior, its in-house organ player (who warms up the crowd with scary tunes from Phantom of the Opera), and the random in-costume characters walking around Hollywood Blvd all lend to the creepy atmosphere of the experience. Obviously, atmosphere is a Disney specialty, and they rarely disappoint at Halloween-time. The movie itself is, of course, a classic, and in 3-D one can really see all the painstaking detail that went into its stop-motion animation. Once again, no better way to announce "this is Halloween!" than with a showing of The Nightmare Before Christmas ...
- Finally, got a chance to see the new movie "W" on Sunday. Now, I've gotten waaaaaay behind with my movie reviews of late, so I'm going to try for 3 somwhat shorter reviews here that cover all my bases from the last few weeks. All I can say to preface my review of W is this ... if you live in LA and ever get stuck sitting in the front row of the Landmark theater ... my advice is to bail immediately! Normally, being in the front row of a theater is pretty inherently painful, but at the Landmark it's a complete joke, as the bottom of the giant screen is literally inches from your face. How they can sell these seats in good conscience is beyond me, but all I know is that, after a minute or so of eyeball-bleeding pain, I realized there was no possible way to sit through an entire movie from that unenviable vantage point. I call B.S.! Anyways, I saw W at a slightly later time, so don't worry, loyal readers - the review is below:
"W." Review:
- W, despite its problems, is a fascinating film. Carried by an amazing performance from Josh Brolin as the title character, the movie is an almost surreal look at the inner psyche and unlikely rise to power of the man who was once the black sheep of the Bush clan. To cut to the heart of the issue ... Brolin is great and really 100% inhabits the Bush character - but, so much of the rest of the film feels only partly-realized and frequently rushed. On the other hand, there are moments that touch on brilliance, moments that are memorable and thought-provoking. Regardless, there's certainly plenty of fodder here for lively post-movie conversation.
But other than Brolin's award-worthy turn, some of the scenes and characters take on the feel of an SNL sketch sans the jokes. In particular, the actors playing Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice come off as merely caricatures, with so much visible emphasis placed on mimicking their subjects, that the characters rarely feel fully-developed. And that's from an acting standpoint. From a plot standpoint, some of the more intriguing characters don't feel fully fleshed-out, and it seems like there's an overreliance on the audience's built-in knowledge of the key players. I mean, Richard Drefuss is pretty remarkable in some ways as Dick Cheney. But so much of the effectiveness comes from our preexisting notions of the Vice President. In the context of the movie, we get only the briefest glimpses of who, exactly, this fascinating character really is. Same goes for Karl Rove. In many ways, the real-life Rove might be the most interesting figure of the entire Bush administration, but as a character in W, Rove remains a bit of a mystery. Why does he stick it out with the Bushes through good times and bad? Why does he hover towards George W and not to the more seasoned Jeb? Again, W gives us glimpses, but it works more as a sidebar commentary to the headlines of the last few years than as a standalone movie. It makes you wonder how watchable it will be ten or fifteen years down the line.
Surprisingly, W earns a lot of sympathy for George W. Bush, the man, as it details his desire to exceed his father's expectations and prove his critics within his family wrong. When the movie highlights the more absurd aspects of W's personality and his role as the unlikeliest of political power-players, it tends to work pretty well as straight-up satire. There's a delightful absurdity to scenes like one where the rough-n'-tumble W leads his pack of old-boy Washington cronies on a hike while discussing strategy in Iraq. You almost wonder if W could have been a truly brilliant movie if it stuck to that more absurdist tone and really tried to be an all-out satirical look at George Bush. But the movie instead veers back and forth between satire and more sober politics, and then circles back around and to family drama and the coming-of-age story at its heart. And in some ways, the whole thing does fit together to create an interesting jigsaw puzzle of a biography. We get an interesting sense of how Bush's early experiences in politics shaped his presidency, and of how some of that family drama may have played a part in crucial decisions such as the war in Iraq.
But ... at times it fits together a little too conveniently, and at times it feels like director Oliver Stone forces Bush to be too much of a conventional leading man, not going far enough in condemning his ignorance and misjudgements. What I mean is - I think that Bush's desire to finish his father's work with Saddam Hussein WAS a factor in the decision to invade Iraq without substantial proof of WMD's, etc. But, to paint this kind of family drama as the largest reason for the War, with Bush having a real belief that he was doing good, that he was doing God's work ... to me, is to give Bush a bit too much credit for having wholly noble and legitimate intentions. In the movie, Cheney and Rumsfeld are depicted as the masterminds with neocon visions of a new American empire, and Bush is shown as someone who shares none of their Machievellian beliefs, who just wants to beat the "bad guys." In the movie, it all feels a little convenient and more like Hollywood sentimentality than real life political reality.
But really, Bush is just kind of a strange movie. As I said, it's pretty all over the place tonally. And the cast is just a very odd parade of well-known actors, some really bringing their parts to life and others sticking out like a sore thumb. Elizabeth Banks is good in her part, but it felt like such a glamorized vision of Laura Bush that it just felt a bit awkward. James Cromwell was really good as Bush Sr. ... but, it felt like James Cromwell rather than George HW Bush, with him oddly playing the part quite similarly to how he played Jack Bauer's sternly powerful father on 24. Don't get me wrong, there are some great scenes between Cromwell and Brolin ... it's just that, overall, there is this strange inconsistency in the tone of the acting performances. As I said, some feel like pure mimicry, some feel like actors playing themselves to some extent, and really it's only Brolin who is the best of both worlds - convincingly adopting W's mannerisms while also creating his own fully-realized character.
In any case, for all its faults, as I mentioned, W is a totally fascinating movie, and it's a strange yet satisfying experience to see a completely dramatized version of events that have, in real-life, proliferated the news over the last several years. To see things that happened only a few years ago already portrayed as dramatically-interpreted history ... it's kind of a rush. And Oliver Stone pushes a lot of crowd-pleasing buttons, looking for answers, as many of us were, as to the truth behind so many of the people and events that have shaped our country's recent history. It's an important and relevant and timely movie that plays well in the current political climate. But this is a movie made with the speed and recklessness of a cable news cycle - so most likely, its shelf-life will not be a long one.
My Grade: B
APPALOOSA Review:
- Here's a movie that I would definitely qualify as "underrated." Thus far, the mainstream reviews I've seen have ranged from mediocre to decent, but to me Appaloosa was one of the real pleasant surprises of the last few months at the movies. While I wouldn't quite put it in the same league as some of the modern classics of the Western genre (Unforgiven, last year's Assassination of Jesse James), I'd say that Appaloosa is a real pleasure to watch, a throwback to the more simple and straightforward Westerns of old. This means that the movie lacks some of the modern trimmings, but, it is in most ways solid as can be. If anything, it's a joy to watch a great bunch of actors - some of the best in the biz today - interact with the kind of assured confidence and ease that only a select few bring to the table.
I mean - with Ed Harris and Viggo Mortensson as the two leads, you really can't go wrong. As two travelling peacekeepers who wander the Wild West looking for trouble to clean up, the two partners have a great chemistry that evokes some of the great heroic duos of cinema. Both men are quiet badass types, but while Ed Harris is the leader of the outfit, Viggo is his ever-loyal sidekick of sorts, his right-hand man. In any case, when the two are summoned to the town of Appaloosa, hired to rid the place of a local outlaw who's been terrorizing the townsfolk, the two are tested as they haven't been before.
Part of the the problem is the outlaw himself, played with a brilliantly evil gleam in his eye by Jeremy Irons. Irons plays a somewhat new breed of outlaw - an enterprising badguy who has a sort of political platform to go along with his mischief. Irons is great here, and stands toe to toe with the other great actors in the film, giving his character an almost Shakespearean spin.
The other obstacle for Harris and Viggo is, of course, a woman - a bit of a Femme Fatale-slash-Southern Belle, played by Renee Zelwegger with the usual squinty eyes and pursed lips. Zelwegger arrives in town and quickly settles in with Harris, but it soon becomes apparent that she's willing to switch bedroom partners depending on which man can work best to her advantage.
Zelwegger's character may be the weakest part of the movie, as she sometimes feels more like a walking plot device and less like a real, fully-developed character. And at times the movie as a whole has a kind of aimless feel to it, where the plot tends to lose momentum and sort of forget where it's going. Because this is a movie where, really, it's one of those films where the highlight is just getting a chance to visit with these characters. The twists and turns of the plot are almost secondary, and it's not a movie that will wow you with visually-exciting direction or innovative style. Aesthetically, as directed by its star Ed Harris, the movie is as straightforward as can be. Mostly, the camera kind of just lingers on Harris and Viggo, and on Jeremy Irons, and on other talented supporting actors like the great Lance Henrikson, and just soaks in their badassness. The dialogue is really the highlight here. While the plot can be a bit uneven, there's nothing complicated about the dialogue. Hearing our Western vigilantes exchange sharply-worded, gravitas-infused, hard-boiled back-and-forth is simply a pleasure. I mean, Newsweek columnist George Will recently got such a kick out of it that he quoted numerous portions of the script in a recent column on the relevance of the Western. For people who like that kind of stuff, for those who wonder what happened to the John Wayne's and the Clint Eastwood's of the world, men who spoke softly and carried a big stick, so to speak, Appaloosa often exudes an old-fashioned kind of alpha-male awesomeness.
So while Appaloosa won't be the next huge Oscar hopeful (though I'd argue that both Harris and Mortensson turn in award-worthy performances ...), and it won't shake the foundations of the Western through bold new innovation, it is simply a rock-solid movie with a kickass cast that, mostly, fires on all cylinders. A movie that's all the more cool simply because they don't really make 'em like this anymore.
My Grade: B+
NICK & NORAH'S INFINITE PLAYLIST Review:
- In the wrong hands, Nick and Norah could have been utterly grating and 100% lame. But I give the movie credit - it's a smart, funny, and entertaining teen flick that does a great job of feeling current without being pandering. Trust me, I get it - the marketing of the flick instantly raised warning flags that it was a lame attempt at being Superbad-meets-Juno, yet another oh-so-precious emo comedy with too-cool-for-school teens acting out their angst with two dollar words and lots of precocious music playing in the background. Okay, sure, in some ways - that's just what Nick & Norah is, but that's really taking the glass-half-empty view. The non-cynical way of looking at it is that, wow, why didn't they have teen movies like this when I was in high school? It would have been pretty cool, in retrospect, to see Michael Cera and Kat Dennings on the big screen back in the day as shining examples of some new geek-is-cool paradigm. Instead, all I got were the blockheaded fratboys of American Pie. The implicit message seemed to be that if even Chris Klein couldn't get some action, then what chance did *you* the lowly fanboy have? Now, geeky teens everywhere are taught that even Michael Cera can be a superpimp in his own right. How plausible that is I don't know, but it's a great concept even if it's only fantasy fulfillment.
But for all the small feelings of "wow, they're really trying too hard," I have to admit that Nick & Norah has a certain feeling of authenticity. It doesn't feel like a throwback to John Hughes stereotypes, and it doesn't feel cut from the same cloth as so many Judd Apatow movies either. It really does kind of capture the feeling of wandering around the city at night, not quite sure where the evening will take you.
Michael Cera gets criticized for offering up similar performances in his various roles, but I say why stray from a good thing, when he's the master of awkward and deadpan teen comedy. Cera has the gift for awkward exhanges and mock-serious straight-man antics, and he of course has that slight sense of self-aware pseudo-hipster cool that makes him perfect for these kinds of roles. And then there's Kat Dennings, who is to quirky-cool indie-rock chicks as Cena is to the male equivalent. Dennings is really great in the movie - likable, funny, and again, authentic-seeming. I don't know how much of that is just because to some extent she's simply playing herself, but in this case it fits. As with Cera, there's that nagging feeling of "oh she's trying too hard," but look at Kat Dennings here as compared to so many lame teen movie bimbos from years past. Dennings' character is smart, multidimensional, cool but not stuck up, and hey, even Jewish and proud of it! Again, guys everywhere probably sigh and think "does a girl like this actually exist?". But give the movie credit for daring to be a bit different with its male and female leads.
And really, a lot of the movie coasts on the chemistry between them. When the movie is just coasting along and letting its characters riff - that's when it's at its strongest. Where it falters is when it tries to get gross-out laughs and be more like a typical teen comedy. To me, most of the best and funniest moments were the subtler ones. The more over-the-top humor often seemed out of place or just not all that sharp.
Really though, this is a cool little movie with two talented leads, and a unique style that elevates it way past the usual brainless and soulless teen movie fare. Not a landmark movie, but a pretty zeitgeisty one, that balances an air of corporate-derived cool with a genuine sense of rock n' roll independence - that makes you want to go out cruisin' in the big city until 6 am. Yeah, the title is cheesy as hell (what exactly is an infinite playlist?!), but the movie itself is a lot of fun, and likely destined to be a teenage fave.
My Grade: B+
- Alright - whew! Three movie reviews and change. I'll be back soon with some TV thoughts, including SNL, Prison Break, and more.
Until then, I dedicate this blog to Rudy Ray Moore, aka The Dolemite, who passed away today. Talk about one bad mutha', the world of pimp-fu has lost a founding father.
Anyways ... the main event kicked off at about 8 pm with the night's first movie, GREMLINS. I usually try to start things off with a lighter / funnier movie, bonus points if it's from the 80's. Gremlins fit the bill to a T. I remember Gremlins being all over the place when I was a kid - toys, movies, videogames, etc ... and I think at some point I must have seen the movie, maybe. But I had no real memory of the film, and figured the combination of comedy, horror, and 80's nostalgia was perfect for the annual Horror-thon. The movie proved to be vintage 80's weirdness - insane puppetry / fx, a weird mix of innocence and darkness that is the trademark of many an 80's fantasy film, and a lot of fun-to-make-fun-of 80's nostalgia bits, with a cast that includes luminaries of the decade such as Phoebe Cates, Judge Reinhold, and yes, Cory Feldman.
Our second film was the legendary sci-fi / horror classic, ALIEN. While the at-times slow pacing necessitated that we down a few extra cups of Diet Coke in order to get through, the movie proved as visually stunning and as well-structured as ever - with a still-impressive cast and a dynamite turn from Sigourney Weaver as the original female badass, Ellen Ripley. I think I may need to follow this one up by revisiting the sequels. Aliens by James Cameron, anyone?
Finally, we closed things out with a movie that was probably the most traditionally Halloween-appropriate film of the bunch, which is odd as there's not much that's conventional about EVIL DEAD 2. I had never seen this one before, only the original ED as well as Army of Darkness. And man, did Evil Dead 2 deliver - taking the basic premise and style of Part 1 and adding in even more visual creativity, over the top, Looney Tunes-style comedy, and an even more iconic performance from the one and only Bruce Campbell. It's one of those one-of-a-kind turns that makes you sad all over again that The Chin never became a bonafide Hollywood action star. In any case, the movie was a great capper to the evening, and it's nonstop parade of gore, humor, and classic one-liners kept my very tired eyes wide open as the night wore on. Hail to the king, baby.
So thanks again to everyone who stopped by for the Marathon. It was once again a monstrous success!
- Of course, the annual Horror-thon was not my only Halloween-related activity this weekend. I also made a trip on Saturday to see THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS in 3-D at the El Capitan theater in Hollywood, during the opening weekend of its limited theatrical engagement. As always, seeing the film at the El Capitan was just an overall great experience. The theater's gothic interior, its in-house organ player (who warms up the crowd with scary tunes from Phantom of the Opera), and the random in-costume characters walking around Hollywood Blvd all lend to the creepy atmosphere of the experience. Obviously, atmosphere is a Disney specialty, and they rarely disappoint at Halloween-time. The movie itself is, of course, a classic, and in 3-D one can really see all the painstaking detail that went into its stop-motion animation. Once again, no better way to announce "this is Halloween!" than with a showing of The Nightmare Before Christmas ...
- Finally, got a chance to see the new movie "W" on Sunday. Now, I've gotten waaaaaay behind with my movie reviews of late, so I'm going to try for 3 somwhat shorter reviews here that cover all my bases from the last few weeks. All I can say to preface my review of W is this ... if you live in LA and ever get stuck sitting in the front row of the Landmark theater ... my advice is to bail immediately! Normally, being in the front row of a theater is pretty inherently painful, but at the Landmark it's a complete joke, as the bottom of the giant screen is literally inches from your face. How they can sell these seats in good conscience is beyond me, but all I know is that, after a minute or so of eyeball-bleeding pain, I realized there was no possible way to sit through an entire movie from that unenviable vantage point. I call B.S.! Anyways, I saw W at a slightly later time, so don't worry, loyal readers - the review is below:
"W." Review:
- W, despite its problems, is a fascinating film. Carried by an amazing performance from Josh Brolin as the title character, the movie is an almost surreal look at the inner psyche and unlikely rise to power of the man who was once the black sheep of the Bush clan. To cut to the heart of the issue ... Brolin is great and really 100% inhabits the Bush character - but, so much of the rest of the film feels only partly-realized and frequently rushed. On the other hand, there are moments that touch on brilliance, moments that are memorable and thought-provoking. Regardless, there's certainly plenty of fodder here for lively post-movie conversation.
But other than Brolin's award-worthy turn, some of the scenes and characters take on the feel of an SNL sketch sans the jokes. In particular, the actors playing Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice come off as merely caricatures, with so much visible emphasis placed on mimicking their subjects, that the characters rarely feel fully-developed. And that's from an acting standpoint. From a plot standpoint, some of the more intriguing characters don't feel fully fleshed-out, and it seems like there's an overreliance on the audience's built-in knowledge of the key players. I mean, Richard Drefuss is pretty remarkable in some ways as Dick Cheney. But so much of the effectiveness comes from our preexisting notions of the Vice President. In the context of the movie, we get only the briefest glimpses of who, exactly, this fascinating character really is. Same goes for Karl Rove. In many ways, the real-life Rove might be the most interesting figure of the entire Bush administration, but as a character in W, Rove remains a bit of a mystery. Why does he stick it out with the Bushes through good times and bad? Why does he hover towards George W and not to the more seasoned Jeb? Again, W gives us glimpses, but it works more as a sidebar commentary to the headlines of the last few years than as a standalone movie. It makes you wonder how watchable it will be ten or fifteen years down the line.
Surprisingly, W earns a lot of sympathy for George W. Bush, the man, as it details his desire to exceed his father's expectations and prove his critics within his family wrong. When the movie highlights the more absurd aspects of W's personality and his role as the unlikeliest of political power-players, it tends to work pretty well as straight-up satire. There's a delightful absurdity to scenes like one where the rough-n'-tumble W leads his pack of old-boy Washington cronies on a hike while discussing strategy in Iraq. You almost wonder if W could have been a truly brilliant movie if it stuck to that more absurdist tone and really tried to be an all-out satirical look at George Bush. But the movie instead veers back and forth between satire and more sober politics, and then circles back around and to family drama and the coming-of-age story at its heart. And in some ways, the whole thing does fit together to create an interesting jigsaw puzzle of a biography. We get an interesting sense of how Bush's early experiences in politics shaped his presidency, and of how some of that family drama may have played a part in crucial decisions such as the war in Iraq.
But ... at times it fits together a little too conveniently, and at times it feels like director Oliver Stone forces Bush to be too much of a conventional leading man, not going far enough in condemning his ignorance and misjudgements. What I mean is - I think that Bush's desire to finish his father's work with Saddam Hussein WAS a factor in the decision to invade Iraq without substantial proof of WMD's, etc. But, to paint this kind of family drama as the largest reason for the War, with Bush having a real belief that he was doing good, that he was doing God's work ... to me, is to give Bush a bit too much credit for having wholly noble and legitimate intentions. In the movie, Cheney and Rumsfeld are depicted as the masterminds with neocon visions of a new American empire, and Bush is shown as someone who shares none of their Machievellian beliefs, who just wants to beat the "bad guys." In the movie, it all feels a little convenient and more like Hollywood sentimentality than real life political reality.
But really, Bush is just kind of a strange movie. As I said, it's pretty all over the place tonally. And the cast is just a very odd parade of well-known actors, some really bringing their parts to life and others sticking out like a sore thumb. Elizabeth Banks is good in her part, but it felt like such a glamorized vision of Laura Bush that it just felt a bit awkward. James Cromwell was really good as Bush Sr. ... but, it felt like James Cromwell rather than George HW Bush, with him oddly playing the part quite similarly to how he played Jack Bauer's sternly powerful father on 24. Don't get me wrong, there are some great scenes between Cromwell and Brolin ... it's just that, overall, there is this strange inconsistency in the tone of the acting performances. As I said, some feel like pure mimicry, some feel like actors playing themselves to some extent, and really it's only Brolin who is the best of both worlds - convincingly adopting W's mannerisms while also creating his own fully-realized character.
In any case, for all its faults, as I mentioned, W is a totally fascinating movie, and it's a strange yet satisfying experience to see a completely dramatized version of events that have, in real-life, proliferated the news over the last several years. To see things that happened only a few years ago already portrayed as dramatically-interpreted history ... it's kind of a rush. And Oliver Stone pushes a lot of crowd-pleasing buttons, looking for answers, as many of us were, as to the truth behind so many of the people and events that have shaped our country's recent history. It's an important and relevant and timely movie that plays well in the current political climate. But this is a movie made with the speed and recklessness of a cable news cycle - so most likely, its shelf-life will not be a long one.
My Grade: B
APPALOOSA Review:
- Here's a movie that I would definitely qualify as "underrated." Thus far, the mainstream reviews I've seen have ranged from mediocre to decent, but to me Appaloosa was one of the real pleasant surprises of the last few months at the movies. While I wouldn't quite put it in the same league as some of the modern classics of the Western genre (Unforgiven, last year's Assassination of Jesse James), I'd say that Appaloosa is a real pleasure to watch, a throwback to the more simple and straightforward Westerns of old. This means that the movie lacks some of the modern trimmings, but, it is in most ways solid as can be. If anything, it's a joy to watch a great bunch of actors - some of the best in the biz today - interact with the kind of assured confidence and ease that only a select few bring to the table.
I mean - with Ed Harris and Viggo Mortensson as the two leads, you really can't go wrong. As two travelling peacekeepers who wander the Wild West looking for trouble to clean up, the two partners have a great chemistry that evokes some of the great heroic duos of cinema. Both men are quiet badass types, but while Ed Harris is the leader of the outfit, Viggo is his ever-loyal sidekick of sorts, his right-hand man. In any case, when the two are summoned to the town of Appaloosa, hired to rid the place of a local outlaw who's been terrorizing the townsfolk, the two are tested as they haven't been before.
Part of the the problem is the outlaw himself, played with a brilliantly evil gleam in his eye by Jeremy Irons. Irons plays a somewhat new breed of outlaw - an enterprising badguy who has a sort of political platform to go along with his mischief. Irons is great here, and stands toe to toe with the other great actors in the film, giving his character an almost Shakespearean spin.
The other obstacle for Harris and Viggo is, of course, a woman - a bit of a Femme Fatale-slash-Southern Belle, played by Renee Zelwegger with the usual squinty eyes and pursed lips. Zelwegger arrives in town and quickly settles in with Harris, but it soon becomes apparent that she's willing to switch bedroom partners depending on which man can work best to her advantage.
Zelwegger's character may be the weakest part of the movie, as she sometimes feels more like a walking plot device and less like a real, fully-developed character. And at times the movie as a whole has a kind of aimless feel to it, where the plot tends to lose momentum and sort of forget where it's going. Because this is a movie where, really, it's one of those films where the highlight is just getting a chance to visit with these characters. The twists and turns of the plot are almost secondary, and it's not a movie that will wow you with visually-exciting direction or innovative style. Aesthetically, as directed by its star Ed Harris, the movie is as straightforward as can be. Mostly, the camera kind of just lingers on Harris and Viggo, and on Jeremy Irons, and on other talented supporting actors like the great Lance Henrikson, and just soaks in their badassness. The dialogue is really the highlight here. While the plot can be a bit uneven, there's nothing complicated about the dialogue. Hearing our Western vigilantes exchange sharply-worded, gravitas-infused, hard-boiled back-and-forth is simply a pleasure. I mean, Newsweek columnist George Will recently got such a kick out of it that he quoted numerous portions of the script in a recent column on the relevance of the Western. For people who like that kind of stuff, for those who wonder what happened to the John Wayne's and the Clint Eastwood's of the world, men who spoke softly and carried a big stick, so to speak, Appaloosa often exudes an old-fashioned kind of alpha-male awesomeness.
So while Appaloosa won't be the next huge Oscar hopeful (though I'd argue that both Harris and Mortensson turn in award-worthy performances ...), and it won't shake the foundations of the Western through bold new innovation, it is simply a rock-solid movie with a kickass cast that, mostly, fires on all cylinders. A movie that's all the more cool simply because they don't really make 'em like this anymore.
My Grade: B+
NICK & NORAH'S INFINITE PLAYLIST Review:
- In the wrong hands, Nick and Norah could have been utterly grating and 100% lame. But I give the movie credit - it's a smart, funny, and entertaining teen flick that does a great job of feeling current without being pandering. Trust me, I get it - the marketing of the flick instantly raised warning flags that it was a lame attempt at being Superbad-meets-Juno, yet another oh-so-precious emo comedy with too-cool-for-school teens acting out their angst with two dollar words and lots of precocious music playing in the background. Okay, sure, in some ways - that's just what Nick & Norah is, but that's really taking the glass-half-empty view. The non-cynical way of looking at it is that, wow, why didn't they have teen movies like this when I was in high school? It would have been pretty cool, in retrospect, to see Michael Cera and Kat Dennings on the big screen back in the day as shining examples of some new geek-is-cool paradigm. Instead, all I got were the blockheaded fratboys of American Pie. The implicit message seemed to be that if even Chris Klein couldn't get some action, then what chance did *you* the lowly fanboy have? Now, geeky teens everywhere are taught that even Michael Cera can be a superpimp in his own right. How plausible that is I don't know, but it's a great concept even if it's only fantasy fulfillment.
But for all the small feelings of "wow, they're really trying too hard," I have to admit that Nick & Norah has a certain feeling of authenticity. It doesn't feel like a throwback to John Hughes stereotypes, and it doesn't feel cut from the same cloth as so many Judd Apatow movies either. It really does kind of capture the feeling of wandering around the city at night, not quite sure where the evening will take you.
Michael Cera gets criticized for offering up similar performances in his various roles, but I say why stray from a good thing, when he's the master of awkward and deadpan teen comedy. Cera has the gift for awkward exhanges and mock-serious straight-man antics, and he of course has that slight sense of self-aware pseudo-hipster cool that makes him perfect for these kinds of roles. And then there's Kat Dennings, who is to quirky-cool indie-rock chicks as Cena is to the male equivalent. Dennings is really great in the movie - likable, funny, and again, authentic-seeming. I don't know how much of that is just because to some extent she's simply playing herself, but in this case it fits. As with Cera, there's that nagging feeling of "oh she's trying too hard," but look at Kat Dennings here as compared to so many lame teen movie bimbos from years past. Dennings' character is smart, multidimensional, cool but not stuck up, and hey, even Jewish and proud of it! Again, guys everywhere probably sigh and think "does a girl like this actually exist?". But give the movie credit for daring to be a bit different with its male and female leads.
And really, a lot of the movie coasts on the chemistry between them. When the movie is just coasting along and letting its characters riff - that's when it's at its strongest. Where it falters is when it tries to get gross-out laughs and be more like a typical teen comedy. To me, most of the best and funniest moments were the subtler ones. The more over-the-top humor often seemed out of place or just not all that sharp.
Really though, this is a cool little movie with two talented leads, and a unique style that elevates it way past the usual brainless and soulless teen movie fare. Not a landmark movie, but a pretty zeitgeisty one, that balances an air of corporate-derived cool with a genuine sense of rock n' roll independence - that makes you want to go out cruisin' in the big city until 6 am. Yeah, the title is cheesy as hell (what exactly is an infinite playlist?!), but the movie itself is a lot of fun, and likely destined to be a teenage fave.
My Grade: B+
- Alright - whew! Three movie reviews and change. I'll be back soon with some TV thoughts, including SNL, Prison Break, and more.
Until then, I dedicate this blog to Rudy Ray Moore, aka The Dolemite, who passed away today. Talk about one bad mutha', the world of pimp-fu has lost a founding father.
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