I have a lot to talk about in today's post, but first off I do want to make mention of President Obama's speech on health care reform last night. Personally, I thought he nailed the speech. Not only was it elegantly and passionately delivered, but it really was pretty brilliantly-structured. Obama laid out the reasons for why reform is urgent, explained the guiding principles of his plan in a clear and matter-of-fact manner, directly addressed the leading concerns about the plan - both legitimate worries and those that have come about due to misinformation spread by the opposition - and then spoke about the means by which he planned to pay for the reform. Finally, he made a plea for bipartisanship and appealed to the audience of congressmen and women, as well as those at home, by referencing the late Ted Kennedy and the "character of our country" of which, for him, healthcare was a leading measuring stick. Obama delivered his speech with conviction, with humor, and with clarity.
In stark contrast though was the jeering section of Republican congressman. Un-be-lievable. I was shocked at the constant cutaways to Republicans jeering, smirking cynically, smugly text-messaging, etc., during the President's speech. Joe Wilson's spontaneous shout of "you lie!" might have almost been funny, if not for the sad irony of the fact that Obama was forced to dedicate a significant portion of his speech to debunking lies spread by Republicans. Like David Vitter, junior senator from Louisiana - a guy who was caught in a prostitution scandal after running on a family-values platform, who is basically a disgraced politician, and yet who keeps sending out viciously-worded emails to his supporters claiming that Obama's reform is part of some evil socialist agenda. Ugh. I was watching Rep. Barney Frank of Massachussetts on TV last night, and he made some great points about the state of the Republican party - basically, the crazies are now running the show. The GOP has resorted to hurling baseless accusations at Obama for the sole purpose of undermining his presidency. It's the whole Rush Limbaugh "I want Obama to fail" policy in action. The problem is, these accusations don't hold up to scrutiny, so when you've got a smart, articulate guy like Obama in charge, such tactics ultimately fall flat. Case in point: the Republican response to Obama's address last night. The whole speech was basically moot as it raised questions that Obama had, only moments ago, *specifically* addressed. It exposed the inherent weakness of the opposition.
But I loved how Obama named names last night. He called out people like John McCain and Orin Hatch, specifically citing some of their shining moments in the senate, where they crossed party lines in the name of reform. Doing so specifically highlighted the absurdity of the current Republican position - to be contrary and stubborn just for the sake of putting up a united front of opposition. You could see the look on John McCain's face when Obama addressed him - it was clear that at that moment, McCain knew the score. I loved Obama's determination - it makes me optimistic that reform will get passed. It just makes sense, and when you have a guy like Obama speaking so plainly and in such common-sense terms, it makes it difficult to argue with him without resorting to stubborn ideological points. I think this will happen, and I think that when it does, it will be a great testament to the triumph of basic decency and common sense over idealogical extremism.
Anyways ...
TV STUFF:
- I know, I know, I forgot to mention GLEE in my Fall TV Preview from earlier in the week. Well, I have retroactively added it to that post. The quick version: I sort of get where all the rabid enthusiasm is coming from for the show, but at the same time, I won't be that impressed if it's just a weekly mashup of High School Musical and American Idol. A well-staged rendition of a Journey song alone does not make a great show. Glee needs to get funnier, so let's see if that happens. I've yet to watch last night's episode, but will report back soon.
- One other quick note: I forgot to mention that FOX's THE HUMAN TARGET is in fact a mid-season show, not a Fall-launching one. We'll see if FOX can tweak it a bit between now and then.
- I did, however, watch last night's premiere of MELROSE PLACE, the CW's latest 90's revamp. For a while there, I was sort of into it. I was curious about the murder-mystery. I was pleased with the inclusion of a Seth Cohen-esque, comic-book readin', cool-yet-geeky guy as a lead character (although, geez, could his geekiness been any more forced? "I should know better than to give you errands during your weekly comic book run." gag). But, as the hour progressed, things got increasingly craptacular. The characters were just too devoid of intrigue, and the actors too devoid of charisma, to really sell the cheesy plotlines. Especially in the post-OC, post-Gossip Girl world of young-adult drama, it's hard for me to watch a show like this that doesn't really wink at the audience, that doesn't semi-acknowledge it's own cheesiness. This lack of self-awareness made many of MP's craziest moments eye-rollingly lame. I mean, you've got OG-character Michael and his playboy son in the car, with the son bragging to his dad that Sydney, who both have slept with, claimed that the son wa better in bed. Come on! If Chuck Bass had said something like that, it likely would have been a classic moment of over-the-top fun. Here, it was played so seriously that it was unintentionally hilarious. The moment that finally killed me on the show is when the smart, tough med student decides at the drop of a hat to sleep with some sketchball millionaire for money. She goes through with the indecent proposal only moments after rejecting him in disgust. The sudden and inexplicable change of heart was an early jump-the-shark moment. So, yeah, despite the fact that the show hooked me early with its intriguing murder-mystery setup, I was quickly turned off by the braindead writing and mostly lifeless cast. Josh Schwartz, you remain the current king of the TV teen scene.
My Grade: C-
- Okay, I also want to talk for a second about yesterday's big announcement about the formation of DC ENTERTAINMENT, a new division at Warner Bros. focused on exploiting DC Comics' properties like Superman and Batman across movies, TV, videogames, and comics. Basically, the move organizes DC so that it is much more akin to how Marvel's been structured for the last couple years - as an entertainment company in which comics publishing is part of a larger organization that also directly controls those same properties in movies, TV, etc. You might remember that last week, when I wrote about the Marvel-Disney deal, I suggested that a reorganization of this kind was exactly what DC and WB needed to do to compete with the increasingly multimedia-savvy Marvel, and their new, even more multimedia-savvy parent company, Disney. For too long now, DC's properties have been completely hit and miss, and there hasn't been strong, aggressive development of potentially lucrative franchises. The fact that DC has yet to launch big-screen versions of some of its biggest characters (Wonder Woman, anyone?) speaks to the fact that there has been a real disconnect over at Warner Brothers. Still, DC has had some monster successes. The Dark Knight, anyone? There's Smallville, the recent Batman: Arkham Asylum videogame, and various animated series that have been very popular with kids. But Marvel has upped the ante of late, and DC needed this change to compete, and to better integrate its publishing business with its film and TV and digital businesses. The fun part of all this is that there are so many DC Comics characters that would make for super-cool film and TV properties - DC's library of characters rivals that of even Marvel's, especially when you remember that DC Comics also includes the prestigious Vertigo imprint (Watchmen, The Sandman, Preacher, Y: The Last Man, Swamp Thing, etc. - and how cool would it be to see some of those turned into series for the Time Warner-owned HBO?) and the Wildstorm imprint (Planetary, Ex Machina, Wild C.A.T.S.), as well as the Minx line of female-oriented graphic novels. The DC Universe proper is home to thousands of great characters and stories, even beyond Superman, Batman, The Flash, etc. There's ... The New Gods, Kamandi: The Last Boy on Earth, Hawkman, The Doom Patrol, Plastic Man, Sgt. Rock, Shazam!, Adam Strange, The Demon, Zatanna, Booster Gold, The Blackhawks, Hitman, The Phantom Stranger, Manhunter, Animal Man, and Stargirl ... just to name a few that would make for kickass movies. In any case, this is a lot of fun - the old DC vs. Marvel rivalry has just been taken to a whole other level, and it will be exciting to see it play out.
Finally, one of two movie reviews I've got on tap for this week ...
EXTRACT Review:
- You've got to give Mike Judge credit. Everything he's created for movies and TV has been a singular work of comedic vision. Some of his stuff has has gone on to hit big (Beavis & Butthead), and some has completely bombed, only to later find a degree of cult success (Office Space, Idiocracy). But the guy takes a licking and keeps on ticking, and he's back with another low-key, wryly humorous movie in EXTRACT. Like Office Space, Extract isn't flashy or too over-the-top. But like Office Space, there is a lot of memorable, ultimately hilarious humor to be found. Extract isn't quite the sublime work of comedic genius that Office Space is, but I'd still say that any fan of Judge or any supporter of good comedy owes it to themselves to check this one out.
It's funny, Extract is in some ways like Office Space, but it also seemed like Judge's most King of the Hill-esque movie yet. It shares KOTH's down-home sensibilities, its subtle humor, its stong characterization, and its undercurrent of sentimentality for the common man. The story in Extract is a bit all-over-the-place, but all the various threads kind of come together to portray a sort of slice-of-life story. The plot concerns the plight of Joel (Jason Bateman), the owner of a vanilla extract factory who is proud of what he's built from scratch, but who is also considering an offer from General Mills to buy out the plant. This dillemna is complicated when a freak accident at the plant causes an employee to suffer a pretty horrific fate involving his "family jewels," and said employee then considers bringing a lawsuit against the plant. He's being influenced by Cindy (Mila Kunis), a young con-artist who's taken a temp job at the plant in hopes of getting a piece of that lawsuit money. Where things get complicated is that Joel almost immediately falls prey to Cindy's charms. Given that he's in a sexless marriage to his rather shrill wife (played by SNL's Kristen Wiig), Joel becomes desperate to take advantage of Cindy's seeming interest in him. One night, while under the influence of various illegal substances thanks to his dealer friend Dean (Ben Affleck), Joel agrees to a radical idea: hire a male prostitute to seduce his wife, this opening the door for Joel to have an affair of his own with Cindy. As you can imagine, hilarity ensues from there.
Extract works so well because it's a funny script matched with a very talented and well-cast group of actors. Jason Bateman, for one, is in fine form here. He plays the same kind of well-meaning but put-upon type of character he's known for from Arrested Development, and few other actors are so good at playing the everyman surrounded by crazies. Ben Affleck is more enjoyable here than in anything he's been in in a long while. This movie will remind you that the guy is capable of being very funny, and he's a lot of fun here as a chronic bad influence in Joel's life. There are a couple of scenes with Affleck and Bateman econtering a very passive-aggressive stoner that are some of the funniest, laugh-out-loud hilarious moments I've seen in a movie this year.
The rest of the cast is also great. Mila Kunis has a ton of charm and pulls off the whole street-smart con-artist thing to a T. Kristen Wiig is excellent and surprisingly subdued - I think she may have some real acting chops beyond the crazy characters she is known for on SNL. JK Simmons is basically always awesome, and he is awesome yet again in this movie as Bateman's second-in-command. Dustin Milligan is a scene-stealer is the idiotic male prostitute Brad. And Judge regular David Koechner is hilarious as an annoying neighbor. There's also Gene Simmons (!) as a loudmouth lawyer, and even Judge himself makes an incognito appearance as a Hank Hill-esque factory worker. Sweet!
I also give a lot of credit to Judge's uncanny ability to capture the soul-crushing doldrums of everyday life. Few others have that ability to film everyday suburban settings and make them seem both frighteningly mundane and also epically imposing. My freshman year of college, I used a clip from Office Space in a class presentation on a favorite film scene, talking about how it was an example of how to find humor from the mundane. I am still bitter that my clueless T.A. at the time thought I was an idiot for choosing said scene, from a movie she had never heard of, and gave me a lower-than-deserved grade. Suffice it to say, I stand by Mike Judge's ability to mine both comedy and tragedy from such everyday settings and situation. Like I said, he also brings some of that KOTH-style heart to the movie, and there are a couple of moments where I got that same feeling I so often do while watching the long-running animated comedy, where you just want to smile and cheer at the story of the little guy having his moment in the sun.
Extract has a lot going for it, but it also suffers from a somewhat all-over-the-place script that never quite comes together in a satisfactory manner. The movie ends with a lot of loose ends, and a lot of the characters never quite feel properly fleshed-out, particularly Kristen Wiig's somewhat ambiguous role. We never fully get the relationship between Bateman and Wiig, and it's hard to tell if we should be rooting for them to end up together or not. We never quite get why Bateman is ready to drop everything and take up with Kunis. And we never delve too much into her character either - what's her deal, exactly? Again, Judge is more focused on assembling this sort of collage of scenes and funny moments, but it leaves you feeling a bit unsatisfied in the end.
Still, there are a lot of funny moments here, and a lot of highly-quotable exchanges that are vintage Mike Judge. To me, this is another Judge movie that deserves to find a bigger audience on DVD than it got in the theaters. And I hope that Judge continues to churn out more stuff like this - he really has a unique talent for finding hilarity in the mundane.
My Grade: B+
- Alright, that's it for now, PEACE.
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