Check the Fien Print

HitFix Is Live!

2008-12-23T13:49:00.001-08:00

I meant to have this post up yesterday but... exhaustion prevented it. Or something to that effect.

I posted a couple weeks ago with the basics about HitFix and have been mentioning it ever since. If you don't remember the background, read this handy Variety story...

In any case, HitFix is now live! You can check it out at HitFix.com. As it says in the upper left corner, we're live, but we're still in beta, so we know about various bugs and we're working to fix everything as fast as possible.

But what's there, we're mighty proud of. I'm especially happy with the logo for my HitFix blog, which I think is mighty snazzy. So go check out the site and lemme know what you think.

A couple recent posts to get you started:

My review of "Gran Torino"
My review of "Frost/Nixon"
And some thoughts on current state of The CW

SAG nominations don't go out on a 'Wire'

2008-12-19T09:23:00.000-08:00

SAG TV 2009 nomination analysis

[For those of you looking, the launch of HitFix has obviously been very slightly delayed. I'm not going to make a promise to you about a specific date, but we're gonna have the site up as soon as we're ready to be proud of it. We very nearly are. VERY. Does "early next week" count as a promise? HitFix is coming. It looks and works better every day.

This blog post will obviously be at HitFix.com when the site goes live....]

Thursday morning's SAG Awards nominations marked the end of an era. It's an epoch I've dubbed The Era of Mainstream Award Shows Ignoring Possibly the Best Series in TV History. By my calculations, the 2009 SAG Awards are the last kudosfest able to ignore "The Wire." The Emmys had their last chance to ignore "The Wire" in September and mostly succeeded admirably. The Golden Globes had their last chance to ignore "The Wire" last week and succeeded admirably.

Continued, as we say, after the bump...

Click through...

That's why I have to take this last chance to roll my eyes at SAG and ponder what it means that the Actors think that "House" is a better dramatic ensemble than "The Wire." You'd think actors would be able to tell the difference between a true ensemble and a remarkable (and SAG-nominated) star turn buttressed by a couple decent supporting performances. "House" is "The Hugh Laurie Show: Also Featuring Lisa Edelstein, Omar Epps and Robert Sean Leonard." It isn't an ensemble.

But who am I kidding? The SAG membership had never honored "The Wire" before and, like the Golden Globes, they weren't about to start now.

So maybe Thursday actually marks the end of another era: The Era of TV Critics Whining About the Lack of Award Nominations For 'The Wire.'

I'm sure you're all relieved.

In general, the SAG TV nods are about as boring and middle-of-the-road as you'd expect.

On the drama side, the nominations are nearly identical to last year's. "The Sopranos" dropped off the rolls because the series ended and "Damages" didn't air a new episode in 2007, so it wasn't eligible. The only series or actor to lose a nomination while still being eligible was "Grey's Anatomy."

Given that little bit of extra wiggle room, the SAG voters replaced James Gandolfini with William Shatner, a former nominee in the comedy category. And with the space left by Edie Falco and Glenn Close, SAG nominated former nominee Mariska Hargitay and Elisabeth Moss, from "Mad Men."

The entrenchment in the SAG comedy is, in general, both laughable and a reflection, I guess, on the state of TV comedy. Four of the five actor and actress nominees are repeats of last year's nominees, while Piven, Carell, Shalhoub and Baldwin have been nominated three straight years. And on the series side, "Desperate Housewives," "The Office," "Weeds," "30 Rock" and "Entourage" have all been nominated at least twice in the last three years.

The only nominated actor never to have received an individual SAG nomination previously was the well-deserving Moss. Moss, David Duchovny and Tracey Ullman were the only actors without prior SAG nods for their current roles, though both Duchovny and Ullman had multiple past nods.

That's nothing if not monotonous.

It's not like there weren't alternatives. The Emmys and Golden Globes both found multiple places for HBO's "In Treatment." Bryan Cranston was a worthy Emmy winner for "Breaking Bad," SAG voters only had time for one AMC show (admittedly the one I prefer). Neil Patrick Harris has now received Emmy and Globe nominations for "How I Met Your Mother" and, as comedy supporting players go, he's far more deserving than Jeremy "The Thermometer" Piven. No awards group has yet to discover Jim Parsons of "Big Bang Theory," but he'll eventually get his due as one of TV's funniest men.

Once SAG left "Pushing Daisies" out last year, I guess it didn't have much hope this year, but that doesn't mean it wouldn't have been fresher than what they picked. If the Emmys could think outside of the box and honor Amy Poehler for "Saturday Night Live," why are is SAG so rigid? "Lost" has been off of SAG's radar for a couple years now, but it remains a truer ensemble than "House" and the failure to recognize that show's fourth season bounce-back is a pity.

Heck, as awful as I think HBO's "True Blood" is, nominating Anna Paquin would have given some new blood to the SAG Awards.

This is why, when the SAG Awards air on TNT and TBS on Sunday, Jan. 25, I'll be watching the movie categories with interest and using the TV categories for bathroom and burrito breaks.

Fien Print Neologism: Ducking the Shoe

2008-12-17T20:33:00.000-08:00

[This post, like the past few, will be following me over to my new online home at HitFix.com... Keep an eye out, kids, because HitFix is launching on Friday. Or at least we're hoping it will be! To whet your appetite, go check out Drew McWeeny talking HitFix on G4's "Attack of the Show." ]

Because the English language is a living breathing creature, it's necessary to come up with new words and parts of speech...

New Phrase: Ducking the Shoe (or Duck the Shoe)

Part of Speech: Either a verb or a gerundive of some sort

Definition: Escaping even the most minor of punishments for extended errors or catastrophic misdeeds.

Used in a Sentence: Despite dwindling ratings at NBC, Jeff Zucker and Ben Silverman have been ducking the shoe for years.

Origin and Linguistic Evolution: Last week, a certain president of a Western Superpower with rather dramatically low approval ratings in his native land had a shoe whipped at him by a reporter from a country he supposedly liberated. Said lame duck president successfully evaded said shoe, just as he also evaded an electoral challenge four years earlier, an ill-ingested preztel and any sort of censure from the legal bodies in his home nation. This blog isn't a place to get political, so I won't. Y'all know about the shoe.

In any case, as jokes about the incident were spreading the Internet like pregnancies in an Eastern Massachusetts high school, Alan Sepinwall and I determined that "Ducking the Shoe" needed to become a catch phrase. The venerable "Jumping the Shark" became so meaninglessly mainstreamed that nobody using it knows what they're referring to anymore, while its media-annointed replacement, "Nuking the Fridge," fell flat when people realized that using the expression would force us all to remember sitting through "Indiana Jones and the Quest for Profit."

Hence... "Ducking the Shoe," the perfect phrase for a moment in history where avoiding accountability isn't just a way of life, it's an art form which, if handled properly, can cause the government to provide you with billions of dollars in compensation for your ineptitude. Ducking the Shoe isn't an insult, so much as a reflection on the renewable resilience of the American Spirit. At our finest, we're a nation of shoe duckers. What, you'd rather be hit by the shoe? Go back to CANADA.

I spent several days running "Ducking the Shoe" into the ground on Twitter, attempting to work the phrase into the vernacular.

Examples:

The "Heroes" fall finale stunk, but don't expect any heads to role, as it was written by the already scapegoated Jeph Loeb. Tim Kring, meanwhile, continues to duck the shoe.

Sacramento Kings coach Reggie Theus was unable to duck the shoe and was fired for his team's slow start. Golden State Warriors coach Don Nelson, though, is ducking the shoe due to the mistaken impression that when Montae Ellis returns from injury, the team will cease to stink.

For an example of the myriad possible uses of the phrase, check out Medialoper's 2008 Ducking the Shoe Awards.

Medialoper's very thorough list inspired me to codify Ducking the Shoe in blog-post form. Take the phrase. Work it around in your mouth a little bit and hear how it sounds. Lace it up and walk around the store for a while to see if it fits. Sprinkle it on your food to taste -- It's fat-free!

It's not too late for 2008 to go down at The Year of Ducking the Shoe.

TV Review: NBC's "Momma's Boys"

2008-12-16T20:05:00.000-08:00

[Targeted launch date for HitFix.com is now Friday, Dec. 19. Mark your calendars. Tell your friends. Etc. This review is being posted in The Fien Print blog at HitFix, but since it won't be live until Friday, might as well give it a place to live until then...]

NBC's reality show "Momma's Boys" is being dumped into a mid-December wasteland of repeats and holiday specials. Clearly the network is hoping the tiresomely generic series will score big with viewers who can't distinguish between "previous unaired" and "actually original."

The rest of the review after the bump...

Click through...

Produced by Ryan Seacrest, but bearing much more of the mark of fellow producer Andrew Glassman ("Average Joe"), "Momma's Boys" is a dating show with only the tiniest of twists. Three perfectly amiable himbos -- real estate broker Rob, firefighter Michael and college hockey player JoJo -- are cloistered in a luxury abode on the Santa Barbara coast, where they have to vie for the affections of 32 single women, whose occupations range from doctor to Penthouse Pet (Pet of the Year, no less!). I guess the sheer volume of the hormones could probably be construed as a variation on the theme, though that does less to amp up the tension than to confirm any ongoing suspicions that the women who apply for reality dating shows all look mighty similar.

No, the twist is that the three men are all self-described "Momma's Boys." So Michael may have abs of steel, but he still lives with his mother Lorraine, who also still makes his bed. And Rob's mom Esther describes herself as a stereotypical Jewish mother, an assessment she repeatedly reaffirms with every iteration of the Native Tongue she picked up from a book titled "How to Emasculate Your Son with Yiddish." Lorraine and Esther are clingy and there's something plenty Oedipal about the way they kiss and caress their boys, but they're absolute angels compared to JoJo's mother.

Every good reality show needs a villain and Khalood Bojanowski may be the only reason to tune in to "Momma's Boys." Immediately, without any sign of shame of self-consciousness, she declares that her JoJo can't be with a Jewish girl, a black girl, a child of divorced parents or a tall girl. Without prompting, she notes that she isn't prejudiced, because she has black friends. Khalood also makes the point that she doesn't want any woman going after JoJo for his money, which got an audible guffaw out of me, since JoJo is the show's only bachelor without a career. She's straight out of Central Casting.

Here's the thing: There are plenty of mothers out there whose feelings about embracing difference are identical to those espoused by Khalood, but they know better than to tell it to the camera. They'd be insidious and underhanded and wicked. In short, they'd be subtle. The "Momma's Boys" casting directors, though, went the opposite way. JoJo's mother is such a caricature that she can be easily dismissed, though her absence of guile is nearly refreshing. She and her version of segregation are so virulent that even the perky blonde girls in the house are repulsed when they watch Khalood's hate-spewing sizzle reel.

Because of the way "Momma's Boys" is edited, the premiere episode offers almost no insight into the eponymous boys, nor into the impact their mothers are going to have on this social experiment. Michael, Rob and JoJo are blandly unapologetic about their co-dependent core relationships and outside interests are minimal. All three seem young, callow and generally unworthy of the cream of the dating crop.

An opening voiceover explains that some of the women were selected as dreams-come-true for the mothers, while others were picked as nightmares. But I have a hard time imagining Michael, Rob or JoJo successfully winning the hearts of the more worthy candidates, like assertive Vita, a critical care nurse in the military, or grad student Callie, much less Megan, who looks like Kirsten Dunst, cares for animals and is oddly eager to pick up after the boozing girls. They're more instantly attracted to women like Cara, a singer with the voice of a manatee, whose greatest aspiration is a closet for her lingerie. And while the girls look down their nose at the former Playboy model (back in the Stone Age of 1999) and the Pet hides in shame, you get the sense that the men won't be nearly so offended.

"Momma's Boys" couldn't possibly be entertaining or believable as a vehicle for finding romance, but it may deliver perverse pleasures as we watch the various minority women -- and the cast is admirably diverse -- try to win JoJo's heart just to spite his mother. Ultimately, we suspect that Khalood is going to learn an important lesson about embracing difference, though a nervous breakdown would make for better TV.

2009 Golden Globe Nominations: 10 Thoughts on the TV Nods

2008-12-11T11:21:00.000-08:00

[Note: With HitFix still revving up for launch, I don't have an immediately place for this sort of rambling analysis. This post will migrate over to my HitFix blog as soon as it becomes active and available.]

My Ten Thoughts about the 2009 Golden Globe nominations in TV after the bump.

Click through...

I just didn't have the time to commit to "In Treatment." Sorry, HBO, but you didn't send me screeners. The Globe voters had no such problems.

There's a tendency to over-sentimentalize the last seasons of shows at award season, to given exiting series a couple token nominations and wins. In that regard, you almost have to respect the HFP for their ongoing ignoring of "The Wire." This was its last chance at Globes recognition and, once again, TV's best drama was whitewashed. Also snubbed for its final episodes was "The Shield." I'd have thought Michael Chiklis a three-time nominee and former winner, might have snuck back in, but nope.

The Globes don't get sentimental. Just because they loved you when you were young and your breasts were perky doesn't mean they'll still recognize you in the street two or three years later. Remember back when "24" and "Lost" and "Heroes" and "Grey's Anatomy" and "Desperate Housewives" were Golden Globe favorites? Seems so long ago. The latest show to wane in the eyes of the HFP is "Pushing Daisies," which had a trio of nods last year and none now.

At least the love for "Mad Men" didn't fade. In addition to having the chance to repeat for drama series and star Jon Hamm, "Mad Men" added a well-deserved nomination for January Jones. Yes, I'd have liked to see Christina Hendricks and Elisabeth Moss pop up in the supporting category, too.

Once upon a time, being picked as the lead actress in a J.J. Abrams series was a guaranteed invite to Golden Globes night. Keri Russell and Jennifer Garner both won Globes for the first seasons of "Felicity" and "Alias," while Evangeline Lilly was nominated for the initial season of "Lost." The streak is broken with Anna Torv, not that anybody was really surprised to see her missing for "Fringe."

Tom Wilkinson's role in "Recount" was unquestionably a supporting role. I know he got the same lead nomination at the Emmys, but that doesn't make it right. On the other hand, I don't get the confusion over Kevin Connelly's lead actor in a comedy nod. Are we confused at the nomination entirely? Yeah, I'm right there with you. It isn't that Connelly's bad, but he hasn't exactly been especially good this season, nor has E been especially central to the "Entourage" storylines. But if the confusion is about his being the lead, the guy's been top-billed on the show since it began.

I'm going to ignore the series nomination for "True Blood." The Globes do silly things and if they can't distinguish between "so bad it's funny" and "good," that's their predictable prerogative. Oh and if I'm putting money on any single potential winner come January, it's Anna Paquin for lead actress in a drama. She's an iron-clad lock. That's just how the Globes go.

Still more proof of how poorly the networks developed last season post strike. Am I missing something or was there not a single nomination for any new network show in any category? That's telling. There weren't really that many options, I guess, though a nod for Simon Baker for "The Mentalist" wouldn't have been even slightly surprising.

I've had a while to digest it, but the nod for Kiefer Sutherland in "24: Redemption" still makes me laugh.

Good for Neil Patrick Harris. Globe rules make the TV supporting categories a tough field to break, but even as "How I Met Your Mother" goes up and down, Harris is always a hoot.

2009 Golden Globe Nominations: 10 Thoughts on the Movie Nods

2008-12-11T11:14:00.000-08:00

Because the Globes oddly choose to split up best picture into drama and comedy, but consolidate original and adapted screenplay and director into single categories, it's rare to see extensive lining up. But this year, "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," "Frost/Nixon," "The Reader," "Slumdog Millionaire" and "Revolutionary Road" are up for best picture and those are the films up for best director and best screenplay as well, with the exception of "Rev Road" scribe Justin Haythe, replaced by John Patrick Shanley, adapting his own play for "Doubt." That's a weird lack of variation. I'm surprised not to see, say, Woody Allen sneak in with a script nomination for the apparently much-loved "Vicky Cristina Barcelona," or Mike Leigh for "Happy-Go-Lucky" or Jenny Lumet for "Rachel at the Wedding."

Got "Milk"? No. One of the major players in the early critics awards, the Gus Van Sant biopic received a lone nomination, for Sean Penn. I'd expect the Academy to be more welcoming to the film's politics, so I wouldn't read too much into its overall absence.

The gambit to position "W" as a comedy appears not to have worked, with even Josh Brolin getting shut out. The HFP has proven to be interestingly and atypically immune to Josh Brolin's charms, snubbing him last year for "No Country For Old Men" and also for "Milk" this year.

Speaking of snubs, "The Dark Knight" deserved more than its lone nomination for Heath Ledger. I said many a moon ago that if "The Dark Knight" reached $500 million, it would get a best picture Oscar nod and I still think that. Funny factoid, though: "The Dark Knight" composers Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard, disqualified and requalified for Oscar contention, were both nominated for Globes, but separately for "Frost/Nixon" and "Defiance."

The nominations for "In Bruges" are both a pleasant surprise -- the movie was one of the quirky joys of the spring, despite lacking any sort of real emotional impact -- but they may be more interesting for what didn't make the cut in their place. "In Bruges" taking a best picture comedy nod meant no room for "Tropic Thunder," "Pineapple Express" or something like "Hamlet 2," while Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson's exclusions meant that the Globes somehow weren't able to honor George Clooney for "Burn After Reading."

Clooney, a seven-time nominee and two-time winner, was one of several Globe favorites left scratching their heads. Sarah Jessica Parker won four Globes for "Sex and the City" and even got a nomination for "Family Stone," but despite the blockbuster status for "Sex and the City: The IMAX Experience," she was ignored. Scarlett Johnasson got four nominations in a two-year period, including oddball nods for "Girl with a Pearl Earring" and "A Love Song for Bobby Long," but the lead actress nomination for "Vicky Cristina Barcelona" went to Rebecca Hall. And would a nomination for Jim Carrey for "Yes Man" have been ridiculous? Sure, but the HFP gave Carrey nominations for "The Mask," "Liar Liar" and "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" and gave him wins for "The Truman Show" and "Man on the Moon."

And Carrey missed out in a year when the Globes were loving the quirky and broad comedies. James Franco was absolutely a hoot in "Pineapple Express," as were Tom Cruise and Robert Downey Jr. in "Tropic Thunder." The myriad nods for "Burn After Reading" are mostly a sign of "No Country For Old Men" afterglow. Oh and add Brad Pitt from "Burn" to that list of Globe favorites who got left out, though he has his "Benjamin Button" nomination to keep him warm.

Interesting sign of the times: Clint Eastwood gets two nominations and they're both for music, the score of "The Changeling" and the title song from "Gran Torino." But neither film got a best picture nod, nor did Eastwood get a directing nomination for either film. He also didn't get a lead actor nomination for "Gran Torino," which is a pretty big surprise.

Congratulations to Miley Cyrus, now a Golden Globe nominated songwriter. Meanwhile, "Rock Me Sexy Jesus" got screwed in that category.

Interesting to see a film as clearly loved as "Benjamin Button" and yet to have the always nominated Cate Blanchett left out.

A Personal and Professional Update

2008-11-28T20:16:00.000-08:00

While I probably should be writing my reviews of "Slumdog Millionaire" and "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," I interrupt this semi-fallow blog not-quite-in-progress for a wee bit of a personal announcement...

As some of you already know, Friday (Nov. 28) was my last day at Zap2it.com.

I started at Zap2it in February of 2003 and will remain friends and allies with my former colleagues from Zap2it. I think we've made a pretty great site.

Beginning Monday, Dec. 1, I'll be starting a new gig as Executive Editor (putting it in caps makes me feel special) and All Around TV Guy at a new online entertainment site called HitFix.com.

After six years at Zap2it, it was time for a change, but I wouldn't have made the change for just for any startup or just for any group of people and I believe that HitFix has all of the components necessary to become a destination site for entertainment news and information and analysis. We also have plenty of special features that will set HitFix apart, but part of the joy of getting hype in motion is that you don't want to burn out the buzz too fast! Stay tuned!

We're aiming for a soft-launch of Dec. 15, so join me in knocking on wood. After that point, much of the content that's usually been posted in *this* blog and posted in the myriad Zap2it blogs will become a part of HitFix. That will include reviews, industry commentary and, heaven help me, "American Idol" recaps.

As I said, the HitFix editorial team is a stellar group, including MSN Movies guru Gregory Ellwood, Ain't It Cool legend Drew McWeeny and music insider Melinda Newman. And we have some damned smart people working on the tech, design and business end of things. We're going to be smart, funny, well-informed and timely.

I'm excited and I look forward to sharing more information soon...

[I also look forward to eventually writing those late movie reviews. Knock on wood there as well.]

MovieWatch: "Quantum of Solace"

2008-11-15T11:36:00.001-08:00

"Quantum of Solace"
Director: Marc Forster
Fien Print Rating (Out of 100): 68
In a Nutshell: [Yup. I've been a bad blogger. I have a half-finished review of "Changeling," a couple stray paragraphs of a review of "Synecdoche, NY," an a chunk of writing on "Waltz with Bashir" that I may still get to use at some point. I've also funneled a few things into various Zap2it blogs. And, probably much more than I should, I've left potentially fertile ideas go half-baked on my Zap2it Twitter feed (http://twitter.com/Zap2itDaniel). My apologies. I have other excuses as well, but I may get into those later.]

A thought (or maybe a meditation): When "The Bourne Identity" came out in 2002, an impressive number of the positive reviews shared a similar sentiment, one that said that this was a James Bond movie done right. Interesting how many reviews of "Quantum of Solace" already seem to be complaining that the new James Bond movie isn't a James Bond movie at all, but a Jason Bourne movie. But if a Bourne movie was a good Bond movie, when did a Bond movie being a Bourne movie necessarily become a bad thing?

Full review after the bump...

Click through...

I'm not going to try to argue that "Quantum of Solace" *isn't* more Bourne than Bond, at least if your idea of Bond is limited the Pierce Brosnan and Roger Moore versions of the Ian Fleming Franchise. The things that many people love in Bond movies are absolutely absent in "Quantum of Solace."

This version of James Bond isn't spectacularly suave like Sean Connery or witty like Roger Moore. He doesn't have the endless string of gadgets and gizmos that the Brosnan Bond had instead of a personality. The movie's over-the-top, but it isn't cartoonish or outlandish. The villain is malicious and power-hungry, but he isn't colorful or terrifying and he doesn't have any bizarre sidekicks.

And you know what? I'm not going to get too annoyed with certain Bond fans turning on "Quantum of Solace" because it isn't popcorn-y fun in the way that the franchise generally has been.

Daniel Craig's first jaunt as 007, "Casino Royale," is viewed through rose-colored glasses for three reasons: The first is that it followed in the aftermath of the Brosnan films, which started off so-so with "GoldenEye" and eventually became unbearable. The second is that thanks to its endless loops on pay cable and DVD, you can tune in for the awesome sequences an ignore that the movie is a minimum of a half-hour too long. And the third is that Daniel Craig is the epitome of Ian Fleming's Bond and should be revered, at least a little.

But the overrating of "Casino Royale" (a film that I admit was No. 10 on my Top 10 for 2006), both at the time and in retrospect, has led to an underrating of "Quantum of Solace."

"Quantum of Solace" isn't a Bond movie with a mission so much an personal agenda. Yeah, there's the baddie (Mathieu Amalric's Dominic Greene) with an agenda involving world domination (something about water and oil in Bolivia), but his master plans are decidedly secondary. Yeah, it'd be bad if Dominic Greene and his company started taking over the governments in various countries, but there's no imminent threat that requires the attention of James Bond. No, Bond is out for revenge, or at the very least, answers. I'm not sure if he's upset that a woman he loved died at the end of the last movie, or if he's pissed off that he was duped and misled at the end of the last movie. Either way, he needs clarification before he can move forward.

Throughout his nearly two-dozen movies, James Bond has often been fooled by double-agents, often witnessed the death of women he'd bedded and often had friends killed in the line of duty. As a rule, the character has been able to get closure by the end of the movie, starting essentially fresh the next time. "Quantum of Solace" is such a pure sequel that it makes almost no sense without memory of the events of "Casino Royale," so while it may not actually be the first Bond movie to follow directly after the events of a previous movie as some have suggested, it's the first Bond movie to be this totally dependent on what came before.

This is really the most Bond franchise has let Bond deal with 007 deal with the consequences of what came before, which makes Bond even more of the "blunt instrument" Fleming (and M) described him as. The character is driven and resolute and he doesn't have time for gags or caring how his martinis are prepared.

This is tailored well toward Craig's strengths, which emphasize the coarseness of Bond's personality. As one character observes, he's efficient and Craig's physical performance amplifies that aspect of the character. His fighting style is brutal, he's quick to kill and if he wants to have sex with the first attractive girl who shows interest, he doesn't need to play games.

Forster is similarly efficient as a director. Much has been made of how the "Kite Runner" and "Monster's Ball" director were somehow an atypical choice for the franchise, as if Michael Apted and Roger Spottiswoode were action veterans when the helmed (badly) "The World Is Not Enough" and "Tomorrow Never Dies."

Only adding to those Bourne comparison, Forster is clearly trying to channel Paul Greengrass, with the hard, jarring cuts and intentional sense of disorientation in which action scenes. He isn't a natural at it, lacking Greengrass' ability to confuse while also maintaining a certain measure of visual continuity. Forster and editors Matt Chesse and Richard Pearson often lose track of their characters and render the more tightly cut action scenes just a mish-mash of stuntmen and Steadicams.

The film's most memorable set piece is actually its least violent, with Bond infiltrating an Austrian production of "Tosca" to uncover pieces of a vast conspiracy. The sequence is mostly a marvel of cross-cutting and sound design. I also liked the early chase scene across the roofs of Sienna, as well as a fine speed boat sequence. There isn't anything quite on the level of the parkour opening of "Casino Royale" or that film's Venice climax, but Martin Campbell simply a better action director than Forster and so it goes. The ending "Quantum of Solace" is plenty explosive, but it feels abrupt.

It feels abrupt because the script by Neal Purvis & Robert Wade, with occasional nuance from Paul Haggis, has been stripped to its bare bones. There are only a few quiet and expositional scenes, which you'd expect Forster's indie pedigree would have helped him in. But the quiet scenes are very stagnant, sometimes inappropriately so.

Part of the problem with the quieter scenes is with the Bond girls, I guess. Olga Kurylenko most certainly looks the part, but I was distracted by the fact that she only has a single expression (pouty) and she seemed to be playing the part (half-Latina/half-Russian) in brown-face. Kurylenko's character, like Bond's, has a revenge mission and, as such, she probably had a clearer arc than many/most Bond Girls usually do, but she's resolutely unfun and she and Craig aren't really supposed to have any chemistry. Gemma Arterton is sadly unused as an agent with the unlikely name of Strawberry Fields. She instantly lit up the movie.

The real Bond Girl in "Quantum of Solace" is Judi Dench's M. Dench had really only a cameo in "Casino Royale," but she's quite important to this new movie. You won't ever hear me complain about too much Judi Dench.

Amalric has all the right stuff to be a great Bond villain, but the script doesn't give him much depth. Of course, he's positively over-used compared to Jeffrey Wright, whose Felix Leiter continues to wait for the chance to actually be a viable character.

As I've been writing this review, I've slowly been lowing my rating with each thing I've thought of that didn't quite work. I think my Bottom Line is going to be that I like what "Quantum of Solace" is in context. It raises the stakes for the James Bond franchise, not the global stakes, but the personal stakes. It shows that Bond is a character capable of change and evolution, rather than that well-dressed British guy who pops up in a movie every two or three years. The execution? It's a bit spottier, outside of Craig, who is absolutely my favorite Bond at this point. Forster and cinematographer Robert Schaefer handle all of the location shooting well and the movie has more visual depth than Campbell's colorful-yet-flat "Casino Royale." But is it memorable? Is it awesome? Dunno...

Sigh. These always get long, don't they?

MovieWatch: "W [red period]"

2008-10-28T15:12:00.001-07:00

"W [red period]"
Director: Oliver Stone
Fien Print Rating (Out of 100): 43
In a Nutshell: [Apologies for the long time between posts. I was unexpectedly called out of town for family matters and getting back into the writing swing of things these past few days has been a struggle.]

Oh Oliver Stone, you gloriously tricky bastard!

News comes out that you're making a George W. Bush biopic and everybody assumes it will be a leftist hatchet job. You [or your people, or your people's people] leak the script to said movie and everybody becomes *convinced* that it will be a leftist hatchet job. You release a trailer that's so bizarre and confusing that everybody decides your movie will actually be an unintentionally hilarious leftist hatchet job.

Then the movie comes out and it *isn't* a leftist hatchet job and it *isn't* really all that unintentionally funny.

Thus, thanks to the wonders of the ol' bait-n-switch, some critics, confused that "W [red period]" wasn't the thing they feared it might be, were fooled into thinking it's actually a good movie.

Full review after the bump, of course.

Click through...

I know people who still insist that "Natural Born Killers" and "Any Given Sunday" are great movies. I don't necessarily trust those people, but I know them. To my mind, though, with the exception of "Wall Street," Stone's contemporary movies have never been as good as his period pieces. He's a master of history revision, nor clear-eyed contemporary vision. When he views a world that's within a decade of our current one, he's prone to either being blandly literal ("World Trade Center") or over-the-top literal ("Any Given Sunday") or just plain over-the-top ("Natural Born Killers"). Sometimes he just can't see the angle.

With "W [red period]," Stone is in "amalgamator" mode, convinced that be sheer display of enough pseudo-facts, a pattern or truth will immerge. And when the pattern fails to immerge, Stone does little more than graft on the most simplistic of Freudian analysis. George W. Bush is a spoiled rich kid with a so-so IQ and daddy issues? I'm shocked. SHOCKED. The flaw with being smack-dab in the middle of the Bush Junior Administration -- other, of course, than the reality of being smack-dab in the middle of the Bush Junior Administration -- is that Stone doesn't have access to anything more than what's commonly available. And even what's commonly available is only in moderate supply. So it isn't like he can look at the Kennedy Assassination and say, "You've heard one story, but here's the story of an obscure New Orleans DA..." He's working with the exact same materials that are available to everybody and every section of the movie that feels believable is already part of the publicly acknowledged mythology, or at least the publicly acknowledged mythology for anybody who gives a damn about an Oliver Stone biography of George W. Bush.

Stanley Weiser's script is all about squishing in pieces of research, no matter how irrelevant or out-of-context it might be. Some historical obsessives will be confused by the order of events or meetings that may or may not have taken place, but Weiser had anecdotes he wanted to work in, chronology be darned. There are three or four famous Bush malapropisms that have been wedged into circumstances where they didn't occur, with Weiser taking the license that since they occurred at some point, it's acceptable to resequence them or to shuffle them around.

In that department, the thing I want to pick on is the scene with W. and George Bush Senior that's supposedly set in 1990. Daddy Bush tells W that he's proud of his role as owner of the Texas Rangers and W says something like "Even though I traded Sammy Sosa?" Well, yes. George W. Bush has frequently said his biggest regret as owner of the Rangers was trading Sosa. The problem: In 1990, Sosa hit .233 with an OBP of .282 for the Chicago White Sox. He followed that up by hitting .203 the following season and .260 in his first injury-shortened year for the Cubs in 1992. It wasn't until 1993 that Sosa hit 33 home runs and Bush might have had some legit misgivings about trading him. Weiser's theory is that since Bush *has* said he regretted trading Sosa, it doesn't matter *when* he said it or *why* he said it. I can't help but feel that he probably did this with *dozens* of quotes and incidents and facts that may have been even more significant than the Sosa thing. I'm just pointing out the shoddy historicizing that I noticed.

Stone's point of view is that since he can footnote his movie, it's therefore true, which is comically disingenuous.

So the factoids are fused around what Stone decides is the key moment in Bush Junior's presidency, the decision to invade Iraq. Again, this has been chronicled in a half-dozen books and several TV movies and Stone doesn't have an iota of extra factual information to add. So it's all just reheated leftovers glazed with that "I want my dad to LOVE me!" subtext and served as a fresh meal.

As such, "W [red period]" gives what could absolutely be described as a charitable portrait of our currently president. "Yes," the movie seems to say, "George W. Bush is a bit slow. And no, he didn't necessarily have the qualifications to be president. But he did the best he could." The movie portrays Bush as trying to do well by his father and trying to do well by his country and maybe he would have done a great job if not for the evil people in his administration, particularly Dick Cheney (Richard Dreyfuss) and Karl Rove (Toby Jones). Bushie was an innocent victim, which still makes him more complicit than Gen. Colin Powell (Jeffrey Wright), who Stone treats at an absolute hero, the one wise and noble man in the Administration. Powell's polar opposite is Thandie Newton's Condoleezza Rice, who seems to have been an utter blithering idiot, if you trust Oliver Stone.

I've glanced at a few reviews that try splitting the huge cast into the "Great" performances and the "Thandie Newton" performances and I've even heard one or two people trying to say that Newton captured Rice perfectly. Everybody is uniform in their praise of Josh Brolin who does, indeed, capture the cadences and mannerisms of our president, even if his performance mostly consists of furrowing his brow to express constant confusion.

So I'm fine with Brolin, but I'll say what nobody else is saying: EVERYBODY else in the movie is awful, with the possible exception of James Cromwell, who doesn't make any effort at all to look, sound or move like George Bush Senior. That prevents him from embarrassing himself.

The rest of the cast seems to think that they're all guest starring on "Saturday Night Live" and doing a prolonged skit. Stone cast these people, but the makeup department probably has to take some criticism for just how shoddy and uncomfortable Powell, Dreyfuss, Rob Corddry, Scott Glenn and Ioan Gruffudd look. All of the contemporary political scenes play like animatronic exhibitions at some Hall of Presidents or other.

Overall the movie looks cheap and hastily made, which it was. The production decision is far sub-"West Wing," poorly lit, poorly decorated and mighty inauthentic.

With a movie like this, you yearn for either enlightenment or vindication, either to have your opinions reshuffled or powerfully confirmed. "W [red period]" does none of those things, preferring to fictionalize a factual figure in the dullest way it can.

10 Baseball Postseason Thoughts for 10/14/08

2008-10-14T11:35:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure I have anything to say about last night's scripted television, but I probably have some thoughts on the baseball I've been watching for seemingly 12 hours a night all month.

Ten of them, in fact... Cuz it's a round number.

1) Some folks in Red Sox Nation are getting antsy about going down 2-1 to the Devil Rays. I say, "Bring it on!" If a very superficial gloss of recent history has taught me anything, it's that the Red Sox are incapable of *making* the World Series, much less winning it, without making a miraculous comeback from 3-games-to-1 down. The last time the Red Sox even made the World Series without overcoming a 3-1 deficit was, of course, 1975. And the last time they *won* a World Series without doing it was 1918. You may have heard about that one. In 1986, the Sox came from 3-1 down against the Angels. In 2004, of course, they came back from 3-0 down (and therefore also 3-1 down) against the Yankees. And last year the Sox won the World Series after digging out of a 3-1 hole against the Indians. So it's all part of the plan, Nation!

The rest of my thoughts after the bump...

Click through...

2) That being said, I'd have felt better about Game 2 if I hadn't spent five hours and 15 minutes only to have Tito Francona decide to throw the game in the 11th by bringing in Mike Timlin. Timlin, who has been an asset for the Sox for so long, appears to only be on the post-season roster as some sort of bizarro baseball Jack Kevorkian, a reliever Tito can call on if he wants to just go home already. There should really just be a White Flag Surrender mechanism in baseball. It would have a lower salary than Mike Timlin.

3) I had to look this one up. The Designated Hitter rule is, of course, 6.10 in your baseball rule book and the most important part just says, "A hitter may be designated to bat for the starting pitcher and all subsequent pitchers in any game without otherwise affecting the status of the pitcher(s) in the game." The essence there is that the Designated Hitter can only be a hitter designated to bat for the pitcher. It cannot be a hitter designated to bat for some other position player, while still allowing the pitcher to bat for himself. I only raise the issue because I'm certain the Red Sox have pitchers who, at this point, could outhit Jason Varitek. Let nobody ever take away from Varitek's leadership or handling of the pitching staff. But he hasn't put together good at-bats all season and watching him swing just makes me unhappy. He's a human rally killer.

4) Speaking of designated hitters, how quickly does Ryan Howard get to leave the Phillies, go to the American League, become a DH and balloon to 350 pounds? It's just unfair to make him play first base, to make him move at all. He's an absolute butcher in the first and any sportswriter who gives him MVP votes over Albert Pujols should be disenfranchised.

5) Now that the great 2008 Anna Paquin Nudity Watch is finally over, is there any legitimate reason to be watching "True Blood" any more? I admired how the episode's director treated the Oscar winner's baubles like the shark in "Jaws." "Ooooh! Side boob!" "Oooh! Long shot!" "Oooh! Was that a nipple?" "Money Shot!!!!" But now that that's out of the way, is anybody captivated by the season's main mystery? Didn't think so. Is anybody amazed that the casting directors couldn't come up with anybody better than the show's three male leads? Ryan Kwaten and Sam Trammell are oddly weak and Stephen Moyer's accent and brooding just make me giggle. If the first season of "Dexter" was a blueprint for how to effectively stretch the plot of a thin novel over a full TV season, "True Blood" is a blueprint on how not to do it. What? You thought I wasn't gonna work a little TV into this post?
6) FOX doesn't have to worry about a full month of baseball coverage anymore, but you know the execs are slitting their wrists over the idea of giving over any time at all to a Phillies-Rays World Series. Obviously Red Sox-Dodgers is the TV dream, but Red Sox-Phillies you can market as well. But Phillies-Rays would be a series where FOX would pray for a sweep just to work in some repeats of "Fringe" or "House" with those extra days.

7) So sue me, I'd cheer for Manny. Whether it's this season or next season, I hope that whenever Manny next appears in Boston, I hope that fans cheer him. And I hope they keep cheering for him even after that first at-bat as opposed to the Johnny Damon treatment, where he got a standing-ovation his first time up and has been booed mercilessly (and deservedly) ever since. Yeah, Manny quit on his teammates and all that nonsense, but what did the fans expect? And Jason Bay has been a stud. Also, at least for the rest of this postseason, Red Sox fans are paying Manny's salary. Sortta.

8) Jamie Moyer is old. How old is he? Jamie Moyer is so old that in hi-def, he looks just like Abe Vigoda. I kind of want Jamie Moyer to pitch til he's 50 and get to 300 wins just to watch Cooperstown explode. Did you know that in major league history, only four pitchers have allowed more home runs than Jamie Moyer and all four are in the Hall of Fame? With 246 wins, Jamie Moyer has more wins than Amos Rusie, Juan Marichal, Herb Pennock, Mordecai Brown, Clark Griffith, Waite Hoyt, Whitey Ford, Jim Bunning, Catfish Hunter and Don Drysdale (among other Hall of Fame pitchers).
9) If I were starting a franchise tomorrow, I'm not sure I can think of 10 players I'd rather use as my cornerstone than Evan Longoria. He's a great fielder, a clutch hitter and a relatively articulate dude in interviews. If I were the Red Sox, I'd be pitching around him for the rest of the series.

10) Tim Wakefield was 0-2 against the Rays with a 5.87 ERA this season. The Red Sox didn't score on Andy Sonnanstine in 13 innings this season. See "Thought #1."

Start Making Sense: Thoughts on "My Own Worst Enemy" and "Life on Mars"

2008-10-13T12:27:00.000-07:00

When the phrase "suspension of disbelieve" is tossed around, folks often exclude the first part of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's literary term, that being the "willing" part of "willing suspension of disbelief."

*Any* tv show, movie or book can ask its audience to suspend disbelief, but that doesn't mean we're gonna. And we're fickle, too. Like in the first season of "Friday Night Lights," there were cliches and contrivances aplenty, but because I was so wrapped up in the show, I almost never got into the sort of obsessive nit-picking that I usually get into. I didn't want to ruin the moment. Then when the show went off the rails, suddenly all of those affectations began to annoy me. Was the second season of "Friday Night Lights" less realistic -- Killer Landry aside -- than the first? Or was it just a case in which I felt as if my willingness to suspend disbelief had been corrupted and, with that contract in violation, I refused to play along any more? The latter I think. Many more people have experienced the same feelings with "Lost" in its second season or with "Heroes" in its second and third seasons. If the spell gets broken for a single second, it's something really hard to re-cast. Credit "Lost" for having mostly succeeded. Pity "Heroes" for not standing a chance.

Anyway, these thoughts came to my mind while thinking over the freshman dramas "Life on Mars" and "My Own Worst Enemy," two shows that ask an awful lot of their viewers.

My early read on "Mars," which premiered on ABC last Thursday, and "Enemy," which premieres on Monday (Oct. 13) on NBC, after the bump...

Click through...

Do you view the original British "Life on Mars" as sacred? I don't. Sorry. Lots of people love it, but I tuned out after two episodes. I have the first season on DVD and I'll give it another shot someday, maybe.

In any case, I'm not beholden to a John Simm/Philip Glenister version of "Life on Mars." If you want to whine because Harvey Keitel isn't beefy enough to play Gene Hunt, you aren't going to find any sympathy here. He's playing a different character and I'm not going to follow you down some lame compare/contrast road.

I didn't love the version of "Life on Mars" that aired on Thursday, but it annoyed me a lot less than "Grey's Anatomy" did and for that alone I'll watch a second or third episode.

"Life on Mars" worked for me because it jumped into its loopy premise -- cop gets hit by a car in 2008 and wakes up in 1973 -- and didn't bother to let go or rationalize long enough to make me less willing to suspend my disbelief.

Mostly, it seemed like a lot of people I respect were having a tremendous time and that was all that mattered to me. Jason O'Mara -- who is to ABC what Simon Baker is to CBS -- is a hammy, hammy actor, but I like watching him gesticulate and bulge his eyes and shout. I almost never believe a think he says, but he's lively. To play off of O'Mara, Keitel and Michael Imperioli have been asked to go as hammy as they possibly can as well. The show is made by a group of young writer-producers and my feeling is that they watched "Dog Day Afternoon" and "Serpico," identified all of the freakiest, most SEVENTIES stereotypes from the periphery of those films and just decided that that was what everybody was like in 1973. Then, pilot director Gary Fleder and his production crew decided to make everything in the show's design look as dirty and yellowed and RETRO and NOSTALGIC as they possibly could. There isn't a subtle bone in the body of "Life on Mars." Every line of dialogue is chock-full of dramatic irony, every costume or musical choice. The show is self-conscious and over-the-top in all of the ways I originally feared that "Mad Men" was going to go after watching only the pilot, but just as "Mad Men" was smart to go understated and classy, "Life on Mars" would be wise to keep going tawdry and superficial.

The minute "Life on Mars" does anything realistic, it will cease to entertain me and begin to perplex me, because I'll be forced to wonder what's happening with O'Mara's Sam Tyler and then, even more dangerously, I'll be forced to decide whether or not I care.

Without contemplating it too deeply, I have no idea how Sam Tyler got back to 1973. And I don't know why I need to know or why I want to. I don't exactly get the mechanics of how Dorothy Gale landed in Oz, but I'd prefer a lack of explanation. And don't give me that "She was just knocked out in the twister and she hallucinated everything." I don't get any pleasure out of that assessment. I may, in fact, quit watching "Life on Mars" before the episode that explains everything.

"Life on Mars" will presumably have a series culminating episode that answers everything. That isn't going to be the case with "My Own Worst Enemy," a show that cripples itself by explaining exactly enough to make it infuriating.

"My Own Worst Enemy" airs as part of a Willing Suspension of Disbelief Monday on NBC.

On "Chuck" at 8 p.m. we're asked to believe that a man could download an entire supercomputer of intelligence into his brain and just be used indefinitely as a government intelligence asset. For now show currently on TV am I so willingly suspending my disbelieve.

"Heroes" has lost me at 9 p.m. I no longer understand why Peter Petrelli's powers work the way they do, nor why the only threats take place in the future, nor why all of the characters no seem to be siblings, cousins or half-siblings. At the end of the first season, Tim Kring and company proved that no matter what paths their show is taking, they probably won't be satisfying in the end, a failure of destination that has made even the journey unappealing. That I'm going to keep watching "Heroes" isn't really a compliment. I still watch "One Tree Hill."

But anyway...

"My Own Worst Enemy" was created by Jason Smilovic, whose characters -- see "Kidnapped," "Lucky Number Slevin" and several seconds of "Bionic Woman" -- are nothing if not chatty. Smilovic is smart and clever, but to say he's prone to over-writing would be an understatement, which means that he's half the perfect person to do a show like "My Own Worst Enemy" and half exactly the wrong person.

On one hand, "My Own Worst Enemy" is trippy and confusing fun. Christian Slater plays cold-blooded government agent Edward Albright as well as milquetoast-y management consultant Henry Spivey. It's a bit disappointing that an opening scene doesn't allow Edward to bludgeon a Russian spy with a prominently labeled first edition of Stevenson's "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," because those character names aren't accidental. Henry and Edward occupy the same body in which appears to be a relatively awkward timeshare.

Edward knows about Henry, but Henry doesn't know about Edward and it all has to do with an elaborate government program fronted by Alfre Woodard.

So Edward goes around the world screwing sexy Russian spies and killing them and then, with the flick of a switch, he becomes Henry, a man with a spotty memory for some business trip in Middle America. But when Edward starts becoming Henry at unplanned intervals and Henry starts popping up where Edward used to be... Well... Everything gets complicated.

There are many reasons to construct a secret identity for a spy or a superhero. And there's something intriguing and engaging about the idea of an ordinary man who doesn't know he's also a body count accumulating spy. And certainly "My Own Worst Enemy" has high enough production values and muscular action scenes, courtesy of "Heroes" pilot helmer David Semel. It's an attractive, hi-def-friendly cast that includes Madchen Amick, Saffron Burrows and Taylor Lautner, with Mike O'Malley around for comic relief and Woodard around for effortless authority. [Lautner, who plays Slater's son, can be expected to mysteriously vanish at the end of the first season after "Twilight" makes him a tween star and his agent decides he's too big to be playing 8th fiddle on a third tier network.]

Everybody talks like a Smilovic character -- he isn't so great with differentiated voices -- and it's a good time.

But Smilovic's characters talk too much and too much effort is made to lay a foundation for how Edward/Henry came to be at this crossroad. And with every new piece of information I was given, my reaction went from "why?" to "Why?!?" to "WHy?!?!" to "WHY?!?!!?!?"

I can think of no circumstances under which it Edward/Henry makes sense as the end result of a project. He isn't efficient or cost-effective or practical on any level. That fact that a research *could* "manifest a divergent identity" of this nature, doesn't explain why they *would* or why it would be a nearly-20-year program or why it would be at all logical to do it with an agent as clearly gifted as Edward. The "less is more" approach taken on "Life on Mars" absolutely would have benefited "My Own Worst Enemy." They more they say, the more they fiddle with gadgets or delve into Edward's psychological make-up, the less I believe. Woodard is a commanding enough actress that she can blather almost anything and get away with it, but even she can't sell the background of this story.

The show's star, the long-absent Slater, is good but not great. The difference between Edward and Henry is mostly defined by degrees of squinting and the tilt of Slater's eyebrows. Edward is basically the Jack Nicholson impression that Slater started to try to downplay around 15 years ago, while Henry is the meek Everyman Slater's been trying to play repeatedly in a variety of straight-to-video indies over the year. They aren't clearly enough delineated to prevent occasional slippage between characters and there were more than a few times that I lost track of how Slater was supposed to be and whether he was playing one personality pretending to be the other personality, or whether he just forgot to relax his brow. As such things go, what Slater's doing here isn't in the same ballpark as what James Nesbitt did in the BBC's recent "Jekyll." I'm not sure it's on the same level as Timothy Hutton's split personality in "The Dark Half."

Yet I'm engaged enough to watch again, probably to stick with "My Own Worst Enemy" as long as NBC is. Monday nights are hell, but the 10 p.m. hour is light for me. But don't expect my willingness to suspend disbelief to last forever. It may quickly become too difficult to be worthwhile.

MovieWatch: "Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist"

2008-10-12T11:02:00.000-07:00

"Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist"
Director: Peter Sollett
Fien Print Rating (Out of 100): 69
In a Nutshell: Although it's a movie about high school kids and it features stars of several successful high school movies, "Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist" is a teen romantic comedy that isn't really intended for teens. It stars actors who look like 20-something hipsters reading dialogue that sounds like it was written by 20-something (or 30-something) hipsters. The movie is sweetly innocent, but not in a way that speaks to or reflects genuine innocence so much as a nostalgic yearning for an innocence gone by. It's principle sentiment is "John Hughes Meets 'After Hours,'" so I guess I'm saying it's a movie about the young at heart made by and for people who may not be so young themselves?

There's nothing wrong with that, but I have reason to believe, based on the audience reaction around me, that "Nick and Norah" is a movie that doesn't play so well to the audience it's been targeted at and yet may not have been properly targeted to reach the audience that would actually find it to be a pleasant relief.

More thoughts after the bump, as I balance sports on television with a review I should have written a week ago...

Click through...

"Nick & Norah" barely cost anything to make (it looks low-budget, but not "cheap"), but Sony spent a lot of money marketing the movie, a lot of money trying to sell audiences on the idea that it's "Juno" reincarnated, an idea that would only be perpetuated by the presence of star Michael Cera and, unless I miss my guess, the title font (which Mandate, which produced both films, may have copyrighted).

I'm much more tickled, though, by the idea that somebody in the Sony marketing department said, "Hey, this is a movie with a Jewish undercurrent... Let's release smack in the middle of the Days of Awe!" I just have to believe that *somebody* at Sony was smart enough to know that for a tiny audience, a movie that discusses Tikun Olam would play spectacularly well wedged between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. In fact, how was that not a targeted piece of marketing? If that movie where Kirk Cameron finds Jesus, quits downloading porn and fights fires can be pushed directly through churches around the country, why didn't my rabbi tell me on Rosh Hashanah that I should see "Nick & Norah" and be prepared to discuss it over rumbling stomachs at Yom Kippur? It would have been an opportunity!

Using Tikun Olam as a framework for a teen romantic comedy is a little bit reductive. The literal translation of the Hebrew phrase means repairing or perfecting the world and there's a higher ideal to its call to do mitzvot (good deeds) than just hooking a pair of kids up on a Friday night. But like Kat Dennings' Norah, I've always been drawn to the idea of Tikun Olam and I'm happy with the idea that a couple dozen people may walk out of the movie and Google the phrase. It's Jewish in origin and it's a bedrock of our faith, but the idea of repairing the world and doing your part to put together the pieces can be totally secular.

It's about healing. And if healing comes via love or via charity or via reviewing movies on a barely read blog... Well, maybe the first two are more important. But if I saved you from going to see "Blindness," well I'll feel like I've done my piece.

"Nick & Norah" is about healing as well. On the obvious level, it's about healing the heart of Michael Cera's Nick, broken by Alexis Dziena, an actress who seems desperately in need of a wildly bitchy six-episode arc on "Gossip Girl."

But it may be even more about a kind of urban healing.

NY Mage's Vulture has a good list of the best "One Crazy Night" movies of all time, a list appropriately topped by the coke-fueled urban nightmare of Martin Scorsese's "After Hours." But what "After Hours" was to Gotham in the mid-80s, "Nick & Norah" probably is to 2008's New York City, post-Guiliani, but also post-9/11. It's a kinder, softer, less scary city. If "Cloverfield" was about young people moving through New York City in a reenactment of 9/11 chaos and hysteria, "Nick & Norah" is a corrective, a story of young people moving through New York City and rediscovering its pleasures. And yes, I guess that makes Where's Fuzzy the equivalent of the Cloverfield monster, an analogy I'm totally comfortable with. If "Cloverfield" was about the city as a dangerous and potentially tragic place, "Nick & Norah" is all about safety. If "Cloverfield" was about destroying NYC landmarks and exploring paranoia, the NYC of "Nick & Norah" is all Gray's Papaya, trendy nightclubs and cute holiday-themed drag show. It's NYC where a cute drunk teen (Ari Gaynor's Caroline) can stagger around for hours without the risk of mugging or rape and where the homeless people and taxi-cab assholes are all played by familiar castmembers from "Saturday Night Live."

It's not actually a *real* version of New York City, but who cares? It's accompanied by a Mark Mothersbaugh-esque score from Mark Mothersbaugh, so you know it's not supposed to be literal or anything.

Director Peter Sollett did a much more clearer-eyed love song to New York City on his feature debut "Raising Victor Vargas," a film that's about as perfect as the indie youth romance genre gets. Sollett's presence here is actually why I loved "Nick & Norah" to the top of my movie-going pile where otherwise it probably wouldn't have necessarily seemed like a "Dan" kinda movie.

I may be dwelling a bit on the "Love song to New York" aspect of the movie because Nick and Norah don't actually have all that much chemistry. Playing the latest variation on the Michael Cera Arrested Adolescent, Cera offers few new shadings, though he has a unique ability to deadpan and disarm the clunkiest pieces of Lorene Scarfaria's dialogue. There are things that Nick is forced to say that no actor could have pulled off in earnest and that Cera gets away with. Even moreso than his characters in "Juno" and "Superbad," though, there are questions as to what this guy is doing that makes him so darned irresistible to women who look like Dziena and Dennings.

I love that somebody has given Dennings the chance to carry a movie, because she's incredibly appealing. But she's of a type that doesn't usually get to play the romantic lead. I'd think of her as a curvier version of Lizzy Caplan, which is to say that she says everything with a bit of a sneer or an eye-roll, with a beyond-her-years resignation. Just as Caplan has been ghettoized as the snarky sister or friend on TV dramedies, Dennings could have gone down the same road. Heck, she could still end up going down that road, which wouldn't be such a bad thing. "Nick & Norah" is her show.

Comparisons to "Juno" aside, "Nick & Norah" is actually an odd blending of the Judd Apatow and Hayden Schlossberg/Jon Hurwitz ("Harold & Kumar") universes. It just makes sense that Apatovian veterans like Dennings, Cera, Kevin Corrigan and Jay Baruchel would be sharing the screen with folks like John Cho and Eddie Kaye Thomas. It's a predictable, but well-populated supporting universe.

A last issue involves the supposedly infinite playlist of the movie's title. "Nick & Norah" has a ton of songs on the soundtrack and characters are frequently talking music, either about their own bands or real bands. But is this one of those situations where you say "Well music is really like another character in the movie"? I'm less sure. While there were things on the soundtrack that I liked, I haven't rushed onto iTunes and downloaded everything from the artists featured or mentioned in the movie. I kinda think that's one of the things a movie like this ought to do.

And now, I must go back to yelling at the little sport-playing men on my TV...

MovieWatch: "Body of Lies"

2008-10-11T10:21:00.001-07:00

"Body of Lies"
Director: Ridley Scott
Fien Print Rating (Out of 100): 63
In a Nutshell: [I feel like I've already over-blogged today. I mean, if I get this posted by the end of the evening, that'll be three posts in one day. Who do I think I am, Sepinwall? Even if it doesn't get posted til tomorrow, it'll still be excessively prolific. And I still won't have done my week-old review on "Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist." Oh well. What I'm saying is that this may be a short review.]

"Body of Lies," which I saw because you're supposed to see Ridley Scott movies on the big screen just in case they're any good, isn't a bad movie. What it is is a movie with no imperative reason for existing. It's a movie that Ridley Scott made between other projects he wanted to do more simply because the script and cast were in place. It wasn't a movie Scott made because he had a story he needed to tell. It wasn't a movie he made because he had a desperate desire to work in a new genre or a new part of the world. It was just something to do. And that lack of urgency is tangible in the movie.

There are great directors who can still make great movies even with a lack of personal urgency. Scorsese's done it. Spielberg's done it. It's just not Scott's M.O.

Heck, Ridley's brother Tony has made a whole career out of simulating urgency that didn't otherwise exist, out of forcing so much visual frenzy onto a movie that you only sometimes notice that there wasn't a darned thing for the movie to hang its hat upon. OK, actually you often notice that there's no steak, only sizzle in Tony Scott's movies, but at his best, he distracts you.

So I guess that with "Body of Lies," Ridley Scott has actually made a pretty decent Tony Scott film. Of course, Tony Scott made his version of the same movie in 2001 when it was called "Spy Game."

Full review, as short as I can make it, after the bump.

Click through...

Produced before 9/11, but released just two months later, "Spy Game" took on a depth it never actually had as pundits rushed to speculate on whether or not mainstream audiences were ready for that sort of international geopolitical thriller. In the seven years to follow, the genre has become a cottage industry, but pundits still aren't sure if the box office is there. So while "Body of Lies" has a level of intellectual depth that "Spy Game" certainly didn't possess, the new film comes on the heels of "The Kingdom" and "Syriana" and "Rendition" and a dozen other films that similarly use our contemporary political climate as either the surface or substance for more traditional films.

And not only has Tony Scott made this movie before, but Ridley has as well, albeit spaced out over two films. "Body of Lies" is a more commercially friendly combination of 2001's "Black Hawk Down" and 2005's "Kingdom of Heaven" (the extended and far superior director's cut, at least), an examination of white interventionism in post-colonial territories where we fail to understand the language, the culture and the terrain. Like those two films, "Body of Lies" is shot in Morocco, which has become the Scott family's official surrogate for nearly every dusty country in the world.

Although he's working with a new cinematographer in Alexander Witt, Scott makes sure that "Body of Lies" looks like a Scott Free Production. It's consistently well-composed and thanks to Pietro Scalia, tightly edited. It doesn't really have a single trademark set-piece and several traditional suspense scenes are underplayed to the point that no real tension develops. It's like "Body of Lies" is trying to make it clear that it's a notch above the genre and therefore has higher things on its mind than just being exciting.

William Monahan's screenplay has a very good sense of the way tough men talk to each other and, as such, it has a good sense of how spies interact. It's not quite on the level of "The Departed" probably because of the source material. Or maybe not. I haven't read David Ignatius' novel, so I can't say how effectively the well-written bluster and posturing of the spy game play against what is a very run-of-the-mill story of Middle East intrigue. Yes, the talk of terrorist attacks in Western countries and the war in Iraq give the story some finger-on-the-pulse currency, but discovering that American on-the-ground intelligence isn't being helped by the suits in Washington isn't much of a revelation and that's just about the best "Body of Lies" can do for an observation. I mean, it was Professor Harold Hill who taught me that you've got to know the territory and the lessons haven't changed that much whether you're starting a brass band or attempting to find common ground with Jordanian thug.

"Body of Lies" is the latest entry in a genre I'd like to dub Leonardo DiCaprio Grows A Beard And a Conscience, in which the baby-faced superstar uses his scraggly facial hair (I should talk) as a sign of his growing maturity, but also his conflicted nature. Facial hair not only allows DiCaprio to avoid getting carded, but it also gives his face angles and builds concern into his visage. The scars also help, since DiCaprio's character takes the sort of beating usually reserved for the film noir hero whose nose is constantly being stuck in the wrong place. His character here is supposed to be young, so he isn't inappropriate and his physicality and speech give some indication of why this is a men other men would follow. One line of dialogue suggests that the character is supposed to be from North Carolina, but DiCaprio's Southern accent is a mess and the scenes I enjoyed most were the ones where he didn't seem to be doing an accent at all.

DiCaprio's character is saddled with a contrived and problematic relationship with a Persia nurse, played by Golshifteh Farahani. Not only is the developing relationship implausible in context, but it also sets into motion a climactic series of events in which nearly every character basically loses every iota of common sense we respected in them previously. Farahani, a newcomer, makes a strong impression, but how can she hope to get Hollywood work in a industry in which the same Middle Eastern actors are relentlessly recycled constantly, but the lead Middle Eastern character in this particular movie is played by Mark Strong, a British actor whose ancestry is Italian. Strong is perfectly fine as the threatening Jordanian Hani, though his performance could best be described as "Andy Garcia by way of Amman."

As a companion to the Leonardo DiCaprio Grows A Beard And A Conscience genre, "Body of Lies" also joins the Russell Crowe Grows A Gut and a Conscience (Often With a Southern Accent) genre. Crowe doesn't have all that much to do here, but he fleshes out with meager character with an accent, the added girth and a buzz-cut. I'd say Crowe is doing what he thinks actors are supposed to do, which is mix it up, be willing to blend into the background and doing good support in other A-listers' vehicles. It's admirable enough, I guess.

Only a few hours after walking out of the theater, "Body of Lies" has already begun to blend in with the other Middle Eastern thrillers of recent years. Other than its stars and its director's pedigree, it doesn't have much to help it stand out.

MovieWatch: "The Express"

2008-10-10T13:48:00.000-07:00

"The Express"
Director: Gary Fleder
Fien Print Rating (Out of 100): 35
In a Nutshell: The story of Ernie "The Elmira Express" Davis is the stuff that a great underdog sports movie is made of. Perhaps, though, Ernie Davis was actually the stuff that too many great underdog sports movies are made of.

With screenwriter Charles Leavitt incapable of deciding the story he wants to tell, director Gary Fleder is unable to put the proper emotional emphasis on a single foot of celluloid. As a result, I sat in the theater constantly frustrated by all of the things I knew should be powerful or exciting that the filmmakers were botching.

Full review of "The Express" after the bump...

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[This review is going to treat Ernie Davis' life as fact, meaning that certain things about his life aren't really surprises or shouldn't be. Or shouldn't need to be. What I'm saying is that there are spoilers, but they're biographical spoilers. So deal with it?]

Working from Robert Gallagher's autobiography, Leavitt had to make choices regarding how he wanted to focus on Davis' life for the purposes of a two-hour film.

Is it the story of the first black Heisman trophy winner?

Is it the 1959 Cotton Bowl between Syracuse and Texas in which the nation's racial wounds were exposed?

Is it the story of the athlete who had to follow Jim freakin' Brown at Syracuse, but rather than getting lost in the great man's shadow, found his own greatness?

Is it the story of a craggy white coach and a black running back learning to coexist?

Is it the story of a transitional moment in college football, focusing on one team's divided locker room in which players of both races learned to coexist?

Is it just a biopic about a great athlete, his upbringing, his achievements and his loves?

Is it the story of an athlete who died young?

The problem facing Leavitt would have been that in more than half of those cases, the resulting movie might be awesome, but it wouldn't be a theatrical release. It would be an ESPN Original Movie, which is in no way an insult. These days ESPN is producing many of the finest sports dramatizations going. Huzzah, ESPN!

But Leavitt obviously wanted it to be a movie. Well, no studio in this town is going to bankroll a movie about a football player nobody in the 18-49 demo is old enough to remember and starring a young African-American actor, regardless of hypothetical star power (and more specifically an actor as capable, but unproven as leading man Rob Brown). That means that the craggy coach/black player movie has to come into play because studios *will* still bankroll a sports movie starring Dennis Quaid.

But Leavitt can't commit to that relationship because, unless he missed things, the relationship between Quaid's Ben Schwartzwalder and Davis wasn't really all that compelling. Schwartzwalder was a bit of a racist, it appears, but he wanted to win, so he was willing to recruit even outspoken black athletes. As presented in the movie, Schwartzwalder learned a little bit about race, but not very much, while Davis appears not to have gained a thing from his coach, despite the ad campaign suggesting that this is one of those stories of an inspirational authority figure. Schwartzwalder has no scenes on his own, no family scenes to develop character and, as a result, Quaid gets no deeper than "gruff" and "dutifully impressed." But that's how the studio is selling the movie, because that's what the studio bought.

Structurally, the entire movie is a mess. It begins with a few shots from that 1959 title game and flashes back, but the game takes place two-thirds of the way through the movie with only general emotional payoff. We get early scenes of Darrin Dewitt Henson's James Brown complaining about the racism of Heisman voters and we see Davis staring at a collection of Heisman winners, but then the Heisman isn't mentioned again until he suddenly wins it, after a season that we didn't see for a single second. Charles S. Sudden is totally wasted as Davis' grandfather, there's some throw-away scene of Davis' political awakening and he gets a girlfriend because main characters in movies need girlfriends. But Leavitt won't tell us if Ernie Davis was actually political, he won't explore why no black man had ever won the Heisman and he never decides if the 1959 Cotton Bowl was a genuinely important moment for America and college football, or if it was just a decent and exciting contest.

So what is Gary Fleder to do? He keeps teasing these emotional moments as if they're going to have payoffs and then either skips the build-up or skips the payoff. I honestly wonder if the fault is with Fleder and Leavitt, if the editing by Padraic McKinley and William Steinkamp just never found the story, or if the studio tried taking over post-production and reshaped it into the amorphous series of cliches because that would be easier to market. Whoever blundered the story blundered the movie, because in isolation, none of the components of "The Express" are necessarily as bad as the whole.

Fleder stages the football decently and cinematographer Kramer Morgenthau distributes a number of very pretty images, mostly scenes of gridiron combat. After "Varsity Blues" and "Hardball" and "Kicking & Screaming" and "Gracie" and "Invincible" and "Miracle" Mark Isham delivers the sort of inspiration score he could and sometimes does do in his sleep.

As experienced as Isham is with the underdog sports genre, the actors are also old pros.

As is often the lot for young black actors in Hollywood -- check out the early careers of folks like Omar Epps and Derek Luke and Wesley Snipes -- Brown is making a sports transition, after doing basketball in "Finding Forrester" ("Who's the man now, dawg!") and "Coach Carter." Get him a baseball movie -- he could totally play Jackie Robinson in ESPN's biopic -- and he should be ready to join a TV medical ensemble any day. He's a good actor and he has nothing to do in "The Express" other than seem athletic. The movie has no interest in telling us what kind of PERSON Ernie Davis actually was.

Quaid has done cycling ("Breaking Away"), track ("Our Winning Season"), baseball ("The Rookie") and a trio of football movies now. He's got a pretty solid sports movie brand and he just pinches his face and bellows enthusiastically. He just isn't given the "gruff coach" opportunities that Kurt Russell got in "Miracle."

The assortment of superior supporting actors lost in the shuffle start with Dutton and include Clancy Brown, Aujanue Ellis and Omar Benson Miller. At 30, Miller probably figures he's getting too old to be a college athlete on screen, but he's every bit as plausibly 20 as fellow players Evan Jones and Geoff Stults, which is to say "not at all." Miller, Jones and Stults are all remnants of a "Remember the Titans"-style version of the movie and they all lost screentime to Quaid.

"The Express" could have been several different movies, all of which fit with well-established pieces of the underdog sports movie genre. Because it decides be maybe a little bit of each, it doesn't do any of them well.

Notes on Bob Dylan, Ray Guy and the Nobel Prize

2008-10-10T11:27:00.000-07:00

While I was atoning for one or two of my sins on Thursday (Oct. 9), some random Swedish people announced the winner of the Nobel Prize for literature. I didn't expect to win, so I wasn't disappointed. Ever since my former semi-neighbor Eudora Welty passed away, I haven't expected anybody I know or pseudo-know to win, so I wasn't disappointed.

And I can't really feel embarrassed that I don't really the work of the man who *did* win, Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio. It sounds like he's an interesting enough guy and I'm sure he's a superior writer.

But I was listening to NPR on Wednesday and one of the anchors was telling people not to expect an American to win, going through the odds from some betting house that said that Phillip Roth and Joyce Carol Oates had the best chances. And the newsreader noted that way down the odds list was Bob Dylan at something like 50:1 and the anchor closed with a snort and said something akin to "We don't know why he's on the list at all."

What now? Snobbery is a built-in expectation when you listen to NPR, but that's ridiculous. Why *shouldn't* Bob Dylan win the Nobel Prize for literature?

My thoughts here after the bump, along with a REALLY strained analogy or two...

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I think we get tripped up on the word "literature," as if it means only one things and not a many-faceted thing. Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio has apparently written like 30 books, which makes his literary output easy to see. Books are literature. I get that. But the Nobel Prize has also gone to playwrights and poets over the years. Literature isn't restricted to a single discipline and if your basic poet or playwright is engaged in a literary pursuit, why isn't your basic songwriter?

Last week, the Swedish Academy's permanent secretary Horace Engdahl blew his nose at the whole of contemporary American literature, calling it "too isolated, too insular." He accused American authors not translating enough and not participating in "the big dialogue of literature."

Part of the problem, of course, is what whenever we mope and whine about the fact that no American has been Nobelized since Toni Morrison's painfully premature win in 1993, the same Lions of Literature are perpetually mentioned, from Roth to Updike to Don DeLillo. If these are truly the names that the Swedish Academy keeps bringing up every year at Nobel time, maybe they are the ones whose concepts of American literature are actually too isolated and insular. American literature isn't necessarily just white men and Joyce Carol Oates writing the same sort of novels and short stories they've been writing since the '50s. Why, pray tell, are Updike & Roth & Oates the vanguard of American literature, but Bob Dylan is thrown out there as a joke, as a dark horse, as an absurd concept? Why is Harold Pinter a plausible Nobel candidate, but Woody Allen or Stephen Sondheim aren't?

With Bob Dylan, the question is how far you're allowed to stretch your appreciation. Call Bob Dylan America's Greatest Living Songwriter, and you can easily get away with it, without too many arguments. Call Bob Dylan the most important songwriter of the past 50 years and while you might get alternatives thrown out there, few people would call you irrational. But why would it be unfair to call Dylan America's Greatest Living Poet? Why would the intellectual police shut you down for saying he's the country's most important poet of the past 50 years? Is it because he's actually grown rich off of his poetry? Because people of all ages are familiar with it, can quote it, can sing along? Is it because Pulitzer's are "legitimate" awards and Grammys are "illegitimate"?

Is Bob Dylan "too isolated, too insular"? How many artists in how many countries have recorded Bob Dylan songs? How many artists in how many countries have inspired Bob Dylan's songs? He's hardly isolated or insular. And if the Nobel committee likes going all political, how many revolutions and protests have used Dylan as their soundtrack. Is Dario Fo a Nobel Prize winner and Bob Dylan isn't simply because one speaks a foreign language? Because one needs the validation of a Nobel prize and the other doesn't?

Were Bob Dylan to win a Nobel Prize, it would effectively end the dream for Roth and Updike and DeLillo, just as Morrison's win meant that Eudora Welty would never get another shot. The Nobel committee likes to spread its wealth amongst a variety of obscure European writers, so Americans only get a chance every decade or so.

But why shouldn't the Nobel committee acknowledge that there's more to literature in the 21st Century than novelists, the occasional poet and the occasional playwright? It's well-past time for a songwriter or a screenwriter to make the cut.

And Bob Dylan doesn't open floodgates or set a dangerous precedent. He's a unique case, with his nearly 50-year poetic output. Giving Bob Dylan a Nobel Prize doesn't mean you have to then give one to Rob Thomas of Matchbox 20 just because he wrote "Smooth."

I mentioned my ridiculous analogy and here it goes:

Bob Dylan is to the Nobel Prize as Ray Guy is to the NFL Hall of Fame.

If you ask 100 football experts who the greatest punter in NFL history was, odds are than 100 of them would say Ray Guy. He was a first round draft pick (as a freakin' PUNTER), he made 7 Pro Bowls, played in 207 consecutive games, made the NFL's 75th Anniversary team and the award for college's best punter is named after him. Now as long as punters are legitimate parts of NFL teams, as long as teams spend hundreds of thousands of dollars (sometimes MILLIONS) on them, as long as they're eligible to collect NFL pensions after their careers, could somebody please explain to me how somebody who is the greatest in history at his given position is not in his sport's Hall of Fame? There are wide receivers in the NFL who weren't even the best players on their own teams. There's some nattering that if you open the door for Ray Guy, you open the door for any great punter. Nope. You open the door for the GREATEST punter, because whether you like it or not, he played football. At his position, he could have done no more.

That's why you give Bob Dylan a Nobel Prize for literature. Because what he has produced over 50 years is literature and at his position he could do no more and nobody has ever done better.

And if the NFL Hall of Fame lets in Ray Guy and some guy now punting becomes so obviously the best at what he does that he enters into the Hall of Fame discussion, you trust that voters can tell the difference between good and great and greatest.

It's like what has happened with the Baseball Hall of Fame and relief pitchers. When Hoyt Wilhelm made it in 1985, it was a remarkable thing. When Rollie Fingers made it, it was as much for his moustache as for his saves. Now you add Dennis Eckersley and Bruce Sutter and Goose Gossage and suddenly the Hall of Fame is full of relievers. But we trust that voters know what a Hall of Famer looks like and that there's a reason why Mariano Rivera and Trevor Hoffman probably *will* be Hall of Famers and Lee Smith and Jeff Reardon won't.

Anyway, all I'm saying is that the NFL Hall of Fame wouldn't lose anything from inducting Ray Guy and the Nobel Prize committee would do well by actually giving Bob Dylan serious consideration.

The end.

MovieWatch: "Blindness"

2008-10-03T19:16:00.001-07:00

"Blindness"
Director: Fernando Meirelles
Fien Print Rating (Out of 100): 38
In a Nutshell: In college I took a sociology class titled "Deviance and Social Control." If they still teach it at Penn, I strongly recommend it. But anyway, one of the things that came up in that class was the old cliche that "In the country of the blind, the one-eyed man is king." Our professor didn't buy into that at all, making it clear that the one-eyed man would, essentially, become the ultimate outsider as the blind developed their own coping mechanisms, their own way of life outside of the sighted world. He point? In the land of the blind, it would suck to be a one-eyed man.

That idea is carried through in the new theatrical release "Blindness," Fernando Meirelles' rather dismal adaptation of Jose Saramago well-regarded novel.

"Blindness" is being marketed with imagery that would seem to imply that it's a cross between "Children of Men," "28 Days Later" and "The Miracle Worker." It's a misleading ad campaign, but it's actually brilliant. People are much more likely to see "Blindness" thinking it's some sort of badass zombie flick or political thriller than if they knew the truth of the matter, which is that it's a thuddingly obvious allegory spiked with moments of pretentious artiness and very little actual soul.

A full review after bump...

Click through...

I place the majority of the blame for "Blindness" at the feet of Meirelles. It isn't that he's an untalented filmmaker. "City of God" was a bracing success and biggest flaws in "The Constant Gardner" were from a surplus of ambition, rather than failures of execution.

For the purposes of "Blindness," though, Meirelles was just a woefully incompatible directing choice. He's a rabble-rouser, a mobilizer, an aggressive advocate. But when your story is allegory, you don't want agitprop and Meirelles' tendency is to spell things out over and over again until they hit home. He's just not the man to do a movie where the characters have names like "Doctor" and "Doctor's Wife."

I mean, I get it. Blindness is a metaphor. Or, rather, it's used as a symbolic catalyst for a general breakdown of society, for all of the disorientation and miscommunication of modern life. And there's absolutely no question that this is a sort of look at civilization in its collapse that works better on the page, where readers can decide exactly how literally they want to interpret both the loss of sight and its results, where readers can decide what, exactly, they want every crumbling aspect of humanity to represent.

The minute things become visualized, the minute a camera gives perspective and a screenwriter (Canadian hyphenate Don McKellar) begins putting words in people's mouths, all subjectivity of interpretation is lost. The meaning is set in stone. And all you're left with is a lecture.

Truly, "Blindness" is made by a very smart filmmaker who seems convinced that moviegoers are very stupid.

And, I hate to say this, the people who most enjoy "Blindness" are likely to be those who are convinced that they're getting something out of it that nobody else is seeing, unaware (or uninterested in seeing) that the intellectual process of finding meaning has been done for them. It's my understanding that the version of the film that screened at Cannes took the over-articulation of meaning one-step further by providing a voice-over courtesy of Danny Glover's character, who was, quite literally, a one-eyed man before blindness left him a sightless one-eyed man, which is just a metaphor on top of a metaphor, I'm sure.

[This, by the way, is why I'm not so sure that I disagree with the blindness advocacy groups protesting the movie. If it actually *played* as subtle allegory as opposed to over-obvious truth, maybe they wouldn't take it so personally.]

In the book, Saramago describes the blindness as being a sea of milky white light. Working with cinematographer Cesar Charlone, Meirelles delivers a visual style that alternates between a sort of washed out alienation and an over-saturated blur. There's little clear rhyme or reason to when Meirelles utilizes his Blind Eye and when he just wants to make the film's generic and claustrophobic locations look like Hell on Earth. He's certainly less-committed to his point-of-view than Julian Schnabel and Janusz Kaminski were on "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly." Even on that overrated film, the filmmakers were inconsistent in their commitment to the subjective point of view, but they look positively determined compared to the "Blindness" team. I wonder if the editing process diluted some sort of delineated plan on Meirelles' part, because in the final cut, the aesthetic choices feel arbitrary. Many of Meirelles' choices also pushed a Holocaust/Concentration Camp vibe that left me uncomfortable.

As for the actors, the best you can say is that they're all on-board. Their characters are obviously experiences great amounts of misery and I really felt a bit sorry for all of the stars, especially since not a single one of the performers is able to transcend that awkward feeling that comes from watching every person on the screen ACTING in all-caps. They stumble, they shout and they cry. It's a pity they don't spend more of their time getting drunk, because under those circumstances, it might have been like watching an ensemble in which everybody is trying to play Al Pacino's role in "Scent of a Woman."

The "discomfort" the actors are playing appears to be the substitution for character details that prevents us from thinking that everybody is mighty one-dimensional. They aren't one-dimension, you see, because they're all bumping into things in different ways! Because they're just constructs rather than people, we don't understand *why* they're bumping into things in different ways, but we aren't supposed to care about that any more than we're supposed to worry about the fact that very little that Julianne Moore's character does makes sense for the entire movie. She's just another symbol doing the symbolic bidding of the writer and director.

The less savory characters are at least more fruitful for the actors. While Moore plays "sighted and hungry" and Mark Ruffalo plays "blind and hungry," Gael Garcia Bernal and Maury Chaykin get to do "blind and unscrupulous." It's not appealing, but it's interesting. Meanwhile, without his voiceover, there's absolutely no reason for Glover to still be in the movie.

Anyway, I kinda wanted to have this review up a couple days ago. Better to post it now. I think I made my basic points.

Gotta choose a movie to see this weekend...

Monday TV: Good Luck, "Chuck"

2008-09-29T16:38:00.000-07:00

Monday nights confuse and disturb my DVR.

Poor DVR.

It doesn't understand how it's supposed to record four shows in the 8 p.m. hour, how it's supposed to use its two tuners to get "Chuck" on NBC, "How I Met Your Mother" (and, to a much lesser degree of urgency, "Big Bang Theory) on CBS, "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles" on FOX and "Gossip Girl" on The CW. It doesn't know to appreciate the fact that I only watch "Dancing with the Stars" in the office and only because it provides sometimes appealing lunchtime entertainment. And it doesn't even learn to appreciate that relatively calm, cool and collected 9 p.m. hour in which I'd normally only request NBC's "Heroes," FOX's "Prison Break" and The CW's "One Tree Hill" from it.

The fact is that while there's a logjam on Monday nights, a situation made worse by my decision not to watch "Mad Men" until the show becomes available in HD OnDemand, I don't actually love a lot of those shows.

In fact, in a twist, the Monday show that I've already moved to the top of my DVR priority list (and would, in a critical capacity, recommend highest), is "Chuck." I learned long ago that rooting for my favorite low-rated NBC shows to become hits -- think "Friday Night Lights" or "30 Rock" -- was a lost cause. But "Chuck" is a show so instantly accessible to so many different types of audiences that it ought to have room to grow.

More on Monday night TV and a review-y-thing of this Monday's (Sept. 29) "Chuck" after the bump...

Click through...

As he was writing his "Chuck" review, Sepinwall enlisted my assistance in brainstorming other shows that have made this sort of jump in quality in their second seasons. I played along, but I'm not sure if it's necessarily a fair point to be made about "Chuck."

With the exception of "Chuck Versus the Marlin," an episode written in the waning *seconds* before the start of the writers strike, "Chuck" was already finding its voice in the second half of its first season. "Chuck Versus the Nemesis," "Chuck and the Crown Vic" and "Chuck Versus the Undercover Lover" all suggested a show that was quickly beginning to find the right tonal blend of comedy, action and budding romance, while the two episodes before that featured Rachel Bilson, which automatically suggests at least a certain measure of pint-sized genius. The statement that "Chuck" has made a creative leap in its second season ignores the very real possibility that by the time it reached its truncated conclusion last year, "Chuck" was already well on its way to becoming one of TV's most entertaining shows.

Getting into issues of quote-unquote "quality" would force me to try comparing "Chuck" to "Mad Men" or "Dexter" or "House," which wouldn't seem beneficial, but how about this: The day I got my screener for the first three episodes of "Chuck," I watched all three hours in one evening. It wasn't like I had an urgency to watch the episodes, but I was having fun.

Series co-creator Josh Schwartz had to suffer through more than a few [dozen] "sophomore slumps" stories in the press after "The O.C." went through... well... a sophomore slump. The same stories will not be written about "Chuck."

Titled "Chuck Versus the First Date," Monday's "Chuck" premiere is designed to be instantly accessible either to viewers who have forgotten where we left things more than nine months ago or to viewers who never knew the show existed in the first place. In a pre-credit sequence, Zachary Levi's Chuck rehashes the basic premise to guest-star-of-the-week Michael Clarke Duncan in a way that's both blatantly expositional and yet vastly quickly and less clunky than the way, say, "Fringe" has now restated its premise in its first two episodes since the pilot. After dispatching with reminding us that Chuck has a computer in his head, the show is off to the races.

The premiere is funny. Case in point, Chuck's "primal scene" shower moment with Ellie and Awesome. Case in point, Chuck interviewing potential assistant manager candidates. Case in point, a cage fighting scene in which Schwartz manages to pay homage to both "Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome" and to Ryan Atwood's enraged underground brawling from the fourth season of "The O.C."

And the premiere is exciting. I'm not sure I believe that Duncan and Yvonne Strahovski could actually brawl, but it was fun to watch. You had Levi getting thrown around like a ragdoll and Adam Baldwin's Casey driving through the wall of a restaurant.

And the premiere is satisfyingly romantic. "Chuck" teased us for only 13 episodes of will-they/won't-they flirting between Chuck and Sarah before at least getting them go out on a date, a scene that Levi and Strahovski played with both sweetness and humor. I was particularly pleased to see hints of levity from Strahovski, whose smile is too beautiful to be as underused as it was last season.

And the premiere was potentially profitable for NBC. Much has been made about Ben Silverman's various ways of trying to make profit from lower-rated shows and one way might be to build an episode around an extended ad for "Call of Duty." I'm not a fan of the prolonged product plug, but at least the "Chuck" scribes found a way to make the commercial a viable cog in the plot, rather than just a brand name they kept mentioning.

The show's greatest remaining weakness is tied to its greatest strength.

"Chuck" has a winning core cast, but it also has an expanded universe of golden supporting players. The next extended opening credits (among TV's best) now include BuyMore denizens like Scott Kinsky, Julia Ling, Vik Sahay and Mark Christopher Lawrence.

And the premiere gives all of them showcases, especially Sahay's Lester and Krinsky's Jeff, whose characters expose new details as part of the BuyMore interview process. Ling, Ryan McPartlin and Sarah Lancaster also have stand-out moments in the premiere.

But the integrating of each part of Chuck's world is still a little bit clunky. BuyMore is presented as an albatross around Chuck's neck, but he barely seems to really work there anymore and when he does, he's apparently able to get off of his shifts at a moment's notice without anybody inquiring. Chuck's number of day missions seems to be increasing and Morgan hasn't bothered asking lately why Chuck's absences are so frequent. And even thematically, it's often hard to get an exact read on what the BuyMore plotlines have to do with the espionage plotlines.

Similarly, the Awesome/Ellie story rarely meshes with either Chuck's spy stuff or the BuyMore stuff.

Eventually people will have to start learning at least some aspect of Chuck's secret life and then there'll be the whole thing of "Who knows what and what will we do with them then?" And I don't require that people learn too much too soon. That's one of the places "Alias" fell on its face. But the episodes and arcs that I most enjoy are when Ellie/Awesome or Morgan get to participate in Chuck's spy life without knowing it. There are bits of that in each of the three episodes to start the season.

As good as the premiere is, the next two episodes are every bit as good, with a fine use of guest stars (next week's episode makes tremendous use of both Melinda Clarke and John Larroquette) and a continued consistency of tone.

On a side note before I vanish to go celebrate Rosh Hashanah (Shana tova u'metukah, y'all): Monday night is also the premiere of "Life," which NBC hopes will enjoy a little extra post-"Heroes" bump. If "Chuck" is a show that has continued its momentum from the end of last season, "Life" has not been so lucky. The premiere weighed down by the eccentricities that nearly sunk early parts of last season, with Damian Lewis' Charlie nattering about fruit and confusing new technology as other character look at him with confusion. The show has never been able to figure out how to use any of its supporting characters, so while Donal Logue makes a good first impression, I'd be worried that he'll suffer the same fate as Adam Arkin, Robin Weigert and Brooke Langton.

R.I.P. Paul Newman, 1925-2008

2008-09-29T11:49:00.001-07:00

[This post was, of course, started on Saturday. Then things got busy... Better to post it now, even if somewhat truncated...]

If you go through Paul Newman's credits, there are certainly examples of roles in which he tried out accents. There are examples of him playing parts where he experimented with facial hair. A couple times, one of Hollywood's most lauded and conspicuous philanthropists went wildly against type and played characters who you'd consider to be villains.

When listing the great actors of the past 50 years, Newman's always there, but isn't he somewhat overshadowed by the Pacinos, the Brandos and the De Niros? The tendency is to over-rate the actor who appears to be working the hardest and to sell short the actor whose efforts seem most effort-less.

Paul Newman gets sold short for having been so pretty for so long and never being one of those actors who said, "I have to play ugly to get my Oscar." He gets penalized, I guess, for never making people go, "I can't believe that was Paul Newman in that role!" There's even a tendency to call Paul Newman "Eternally Cool" or "A True Movie Star," which are both sweet sentiments, but they're also both minimizing.

As much as he was adored, Paul Newman was taken for granted, or at least his greatness as an actor was.

A glance at my favorite Newman performances after the bump...

Click through...

"Road to Perdition" -- We've seen aging crimebosses before on the big screen. Newman's John Rooney is one of my favorites, because of just how much Newman does with so very little by way of character. His entire relationship with both his real son (played by before-he-was-Bond Daniel Craig) and his surrogate son (Tom Hanks) is spelled out with almost no dialogue. Although he won an Emmy for hamming it up marvelously in "Empire Falls," this is Newman's last near-great performance.

"Nobody's Fool" -- This, then, would be Newman's last *great* performance and one of those instances where the movie wouldn't exist at all without Newman. I mean, we're talking a Hallmark Channel movie with anybody else in the lead role. But for Newman, it was absolutely a career capper, the idea of what would have happened to one of Newman's classic '60s rebels if his life just petered out into chilly small-town obscurity (rather than the one-last-chance-at-glory version of what happened to Eddie Felson in "The Color of Money").

"The Verdict" -- The year before, Newman had received his first acting Oscar nomination in 14 years for "Absence of Malice," which may be one of my least favorite of his films. I'm not sure that I love "The Verdict" very much as a movie either. Both David Mamet's script and Sidney Lumet's direction are too damn "serious" for me, or two drenched in the trappings of seriousness. But if the alcoholic lawyer deciding to take one last chance at recovering his soul has become a big and small screen archetype in the 25 years since, it's because of Newman's awesomeness in the role. Newman sells the movie's earnestness.

"Slapshot" -- This is one of those classic examples of of much an actor can get away with if he's charming enough. It's not that Newman is the only actor who could have played Reg Dunlap. Dozens of actors could have. But the tendency would have been to try to soften the utter wreck of a character in order to make him sympathetic and winning. Newman doesn't play down to the audience at all. He's slick and unappealing and Newman makes us love and support him for those reasons and not for anything else.

"Hud" - "Hud" is actually my favorite Newman performance. By far. And, like "Slapshot," it's another example of a Newman character who you aren't supposed to like, but who you do anyway. The tendency in Hollywood is for a writer to write an unsympathetic leading character and for a studio to say, "We like the script, but make the character a bit softer." And the writers do and the films suffer, because giving a misanthrope a cute dog or a adorable child sidekick or a redeeming love interest cheapens that fact that some people just aren't heroic or just aren't appealing in conventional ways. Hiring Paul Newman was like a trick. He was like a way of making audiences like (or at least willingly follow) characters they'd otherwise hate. Characters you'd root to see fail in 99.9% of circumstances. And Newman never cheated. He just played the roles properly. "Hud," incidentally, would probably go on my list of the 10 most underappreciated American films. It just doesn't get thrown into the discussion of classics nearly enough...

"The Hustler," "Cool Hand Luke," "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" and "The Sting" -- Duh.

Debriefing from the 2008 Emmys

2008-09-22T17:19:00.000-07:00

[Yeah, I know. It's already a bit late in the game for Emmy analysis, but Nikki Finke has been promising *her* analysis for around 20 hours and she didn't blog or tweet on every second of the show and also review it last night.]

It's instinctive to want to complain about the Emmys, especially since the telecast is being general acknowledged as one of the worst broadcasts in recent award show history. And the Emmy show was, indeed, uncontestably awful, horribly paced, bloated to the extreme and full of easily mockable moments.

But the awards themselves? Well, if you happen to believe that "Mad Men" was probably last year's best television drama and that "30 Rock" was among the top three TV comedies, how can you possibly complain? Or how much?

I'll give it my shot after the bump...

Click through...

I'm all for elitism. Don't get me wrong. It's my bread-and-butter, my MO, my metier.

But the elitism evidenced by this year's Emmys is a double-edged sword. On one hand, it is absolutely the TV Academy's right and, heck, responsibility to say "These are the best shows out there, regardless of whether they're watched by 25 million people or 600,000." I have no problems with the Academy standing up and announcing, "If you want a list of the most popular shows on TV, watch the People's Choice awards. We're different and better."

That being said, the Emmys then need to acknowledge that elitism isn't really all that popular and that it has the potential to breed public apathy when taken to the sort of extreme Sunday's awards went to. As stupid as it was for the Emmy telecast to make the new reality host category more important than best actor or actress in a drama series, more people watch Jeff Probst each week on "Survivor" than have ever seen episodes of "Damages," "Mad Men," "Breaking Bad," "30 Rock," "John Adams," "Recount," "Cranford" or "Entourage" put together. That was a moment for any mainstream viewers still watching to go, "Oh. That's a show I'm actually aware of." But that came after nearly three hours during which "The Amazing Race" won for reality series, "Samantha Who?" got a supporting win for Jean Smart and "House" won for directing. Those would have been the only even marginally mainstream shows getting recognition for the majority of the show and even they got recognition only in marginal ways. Greg Yaitanes is a very fine TV director and very deserving of this sort of breakout honor, but outside of the Yaitanes family he isn't a household name.

The result of this is going to be inevitably decreasing TV ratings.

But, perhaps more dangerously, the fewer people who watch and engage with the Emmys, the less retroactive influence the awards get to have. It's just a fact of life. Winning Emmys did absolutely nothing to increase the viewership of "Arrested Development" or "The Office" or, previously, "30 Rock." And winning a second consecutive Emmy for outstanding comedy series isn't going to suddenly make "30 Rock" into a hit now. Emmys wouldn't have been any sort of salvation for "The Wire" and they wouldn't have keeping Landry from killing on "Friday Night Lights."

So "Mad Men" won outstanding drama. Whee! What really happened is that it won two awards in the last half-hour of a show that nobody was paying attention to anymore. It deserved its awards (and probably more), but it also deserved the hundreds of rave reviews written by the nation's TV critics, as well as the TCA Award for program of the year. It also deserved the $25 million that AMC poured into promoting it. But at the end of the day, if you thought about how many people watch "Do Not Disturb" than "Mad Men," you'd probably think about slitting your wrists.

So you just have to accept that the Emmys are a useless promotional tool. Utterly without an iota of value. So, under those circumstances, the best the TV Academy can do is put on a good show and give the awards to things *I* think deserve 'em. The obviously failed on the former.

As for the latter...

What did I like?

Well, I loved Barry Sonnenfeld winning for comedy series directing for the "Pushing Daisies" "Pie-lette." Was it completely fair that he won? Ha! One guy in the category was working on an hour-long show with two to three to four times the budget of the others and whimsical possibilities the others lacked. But I loved that there "Pie-lette," which was many times better (and infinitely more twee) than any pilot the networks got around to making for this fall.

I loved Zeljko Ivanek's win for "Damages." For a decade, he's been one of the most valuable character actors going, playing a half-dozen different nationalities and playing roles of all manner of moral bankruptcy. He's done it on the big and small screen and on stage. His win is just what's supposed to happen if you're a talented actor who doesn't happen to look like Eddie Cibrian or Benjamin Bratt: You work and you work and you work and you work and finally, when the time is right, somebody pats you on the shoulder and gives you something shiny as a reward. Winning an Emmy won't suddenly make Zeljko Ivanek a star, but it may cause 50 additional people to learn his name and that's nice.

I was pleased to see "The Colbert Report" win for writing for a variety, music or comedy program. "The Daily Show" may have kept its stranglehold on the series category, but "The Colbert Report" has been the generally funnier show for the past couple years. There's always, I guess, been the perception that "The Colbert Report" was only about Stephen Colbert, but this was a nice recognition for the rest of the gang. It's a pity that Colbert and Stewart's prune bit was so bad.

I was relieved that the Emmy voters didn't punish Alec Baldwin and just gave him an Emmy for generally being one of the most effective comic actors on TV. Even if he hadn't had the shrink scene from last year's "30 Rock" premiere, he'd have deserved to win just on principle, for a body of work. Similarly, one of these days Hugh Laurie and Steve Carell are really going to have to win. This wasn't a mandatory year for either of them, but eventually it will be.

And, as I've said before, I'm totally in favor of the series wins for "30 Rock" and "Mad Men."

What did I hate...

Jeremy Piven was completely deserving of his first Emmy for "Entourage." That he's now up to three can only be a sign of laziness on the part of the voters. Yes, we know. He's *just* like all of your agents. But he's been doing the same thing without variation for two or three seasons now. When oh when will somebody just give Neil Patrick Harris his flippin' Emmy?

Speaking of laziness, does anybody remember who won on "The Amazing Race" last season? I'm not sure I do. How about any specifically memorable moments? The funny thing is that "Survivor" actually put together a pair of really great seasons last year, seasons full of blindsides and shocks, but nobody notices. As it stands, though, I know that I enjoy "Top Chef" a good deal more than "The Amazing Race" these days. And that many other people like "Project Runway" and that stupid thing where the celebrities dance. Giving another show a chance wouldn't be a disgrace, Emmy voters.

I actually don't hate Bryan Cranston's win at all. I just would have given outstanding actor in a drama series to Jon Hamm instead. Cranston's role on "Breaking Bad" is bigger and showier and Emmy voters routinely and reliably hosed Cranston on "Malcolm in the Middle." But I'd have just gone with Hamm.

OK. I've got a lot of Monday TV to watch now.

MovieWatch Mini: "The Wrestler"

2008-09-21T15:35:00.000-07:00

"The Wrestler"
Director: Darren Aronofsky
Fien Print Rating (Out of 100): Pending
In a Nutshell: ["The Wrestler" isn't coming out until the end of December and even though I really enjoyed the movie, I dunno how much Fox Searchlight would want me posting a full review, no matter how much I liked it. And I liked it *a lot*. But this really will be just a "nutshell."]

"The Wrestler" will be pushed for heavy Oscar consideration and the buzz is building thanks to festival screenings in Venice and Toronto, but it's really a very small movie and it may not be capable of sustaining an extreme amount of hype, the sort of hype that will almost certainly grow. I'd advise keeping expectations moderate once the hype explodes, but I advised the same thing on "Juno" last year and it mostly held up to the hype, backlash-be-damned.

Assuming Mickey Rourke doesn't do something hugely embarrassing between now and award season (obviously a distinct possibility), he'll be a lock for an Oscar nomination. I'd call the performance Brando-esque in its combination of emotional vulnerability and physical intensity, but not the young Brando. I'm thinking more the "Last Tango in Paris" Brando. The relief of seeing that the young Rourke's Method-y potential wasn't entirely wasted through the Lost '90s is palpable in nearly every scene.

And Marisa Tomei is every bit as worthy of awards attention, plus I think you can guarantee that she'll win her second consecutive annual commendation for Mr. Skin for cinematic nudity. Let's just say she isn't one of those stupid Natalie Portman-esque movie strippers who practically wear a parka on the poll. It baffles me that people still mention Tomei on lists of odd or undeserving Oscar winners. She's more than proven her worth as an actress and she's more than proven that her gifts go far beyond one-note comedy. She keeps getting better.

Since I've only really enjoyed one Aronofsky movie without reservations ("Requiem for a Dream"), I was impressed at how restrained and smart his direction is here. Robert D. Siegel's script is mostly strong and understated, but when it stumbles into more conventional Movie Moment territory, Aronofsky's touch is uncharacteristically humane and gentle.

I'll have more to say come December, but I just wanted to whet a few appetites. This one will most likely be heading for my yearly Top 10.

On second thought: "Fringe," "Privileged" and "90210"

2008-09-17T14:41:00.000-07:00

You often hear people discuss the advantages of high definition television to the overall viewership. Heck, I do it all the time. But outside of porn, you rarely hear people complain about the parts of viewership that it absolutely destroys

I started thinking about this last week when the shoddy makeup work on "One Tree Hill" made me get far more chuckles out of the sight of an abused woman than I normally would. It came up again during Tuesday (Sept. 16) night's "90210," when I fell into a giggle-loop watching Dixon and Silver drive through some of the worst-matched green screen shots of Beverly Hills I've ever seen. I was six when I saw "Return of the Jedi" and I remember the poorly lit outline around the Sarlacc, effects work so bad that it even confused Young Dan. That was still better than Dixon and Silver sitting in a stunt car. I'm not saying I wouldn't have noticed in low-def, but it might have hurt me less...

Follow through after the bump for some thoughts on the second episodes of "Fringe" and "Privileged," plus the third episode of "9021-Ohmigod Eat a Sandwich."

Click through...

I guess some spoilers will follow. They inevitably do.

"Fringe": Sepinwall has done a good job covering my biggest problem with the second episode, namely the clunky restating of all of the facts in evidence from the pilot. I mean, you take a 90-minute pilot to establish the premise. That's a lot. Why then spend the first 5 minutes of the episode having several characters remind us who the other characters are, plus actual flashbacks. And then you have poor Joshua Jackson, whose character is so unnecessary to the action that half of his dialogue is only there to justify his existence. Every week we're going to discover a few additional random pieces of information he gleaned during his less-than-successful career as a rebellious untutored genius.

They're required to infiltrate an organization of mimes?

"My limited stint at NYU Theater School did teach me something."

They're required to research rare religious texts?

"My limited stint at Biola did teach me something."

They have to design a new comfortable lab space?

"My limited stint at RISD did teach me something."

I'm not saying this is going to annoy me at some point. But it will.

Also, I know they're on different networks, but I would love to see an episode in which Walter Bishop (from "Fringe") and Charlie Crews (from "Life") sit around and eat fruit, marvel at modern technology and accidentally solve a crime at the end. That'd be quirky fun!

As a procedural, the second episode of "Fringe" was proficient. It was a little creepy, a little weird and by around 45 minute mark, I'd forgotten what the main case was and I ceased to care how it was solved. But that even happens to me on "House."

The less encouraging part was that the second episode did nothing to warm me to any of the main characters.

If it's possible, Anna Torv's American accent was worse in the second episode and the character has been given so little personality that even a far more experienced and familiar actress wouldn't make it work. I do think that she's pretty and occasionally conveys intelligence in a winning way, but she's falling short due to the writing more than anything.

Jackson's character is, as I've said, superfluous. He's there to allow for the "X-Files"-esque romantic tension -- currently lacking -- but the comparison does "Fringe" no favors. If the show were just a young female FBI agent trying to work with an insane older genius, that might be vaguely original. Then she could just have an occasional flirtation with Kirk Acevedo's character, who's almost certain to be killed off by midseason.

The show also has an odd lack of respect for the intellect of the viewers. The scene that most irked me saw Walter opening the old garage where he was storing his car. First he said the combination out loud, which was a bit silly, but it's been made clear that he can't tell the difference between his external voice and his internal voice. But then we had to have Pacey explain to us that the combination was the first six digits of pi.

I iz not az dumb az they thinkz I iz.

"Fringe" got the requisite boost from "House" and now looks ready to, at the very least, last a season. And I guess I'll keep watching, but they'd better do something cool soon. Oh, who am I kidding. I'll just watch to see people scooping out eyeballs from a corpse.

"Privileged": As with "Fringe" in the premise-restating department, "Privileged" is probably going to have to set aside two minutes each week for Joanna Garcia's Megan to explain why it is that, despite her Yale degree, she's working as the least effective tutor in the world.

Exposition aside, not much happened in the second episode of "Privileged." It was, in fact, so action un-packed that the episode climaxed in Megan getting the job that she'd already gotten in the pilot. It was so action un-packed that the entire episode seemed to take place over the course of 15 or 16 hours.

Perhaps, as I just observed to my Zap2it colleague Rick, "Exposition is the new Action."

To which he observed, regarding the first episode of NBC's new-ish "Knight Rider," "In that case then, this is one Action-packed show."

Awesome.

I still thought the second episode was clever enough, though Rina Mimoun's pop culture lexicon is odd, unless you figure most 24-year-old girls are prone to "Laverne and Shirley" and Sister Sledge references.

Garcia is still amazingly appealing and I'm liking the Danica McKellar vibe that Lucy Hale is giving off. It's Winnie Cooper, without the love for math. I also swear that I saw Michael Cassidy display a little personality in one scene. However, when I went back to my notes, I couldn't figure out where.

Last thing: One of the brats referred to Megan with "It's like watching Mary Poppins on crystal meth."

Kids, crystal meth has become too easy a punchline. It's time to step back and think of which drugs are funny and which drugs apparently lead to you either get AIDS or becoming Jodie Sweetin (and not the new-and-improved version).

I've heard that I might lose me to meth. And that wouldn't be funny at all, would it?

"90210": Honestly, the only way the identity of Kelly's baby-daddy was going to excite me was if it was Steve or David, somebody where your reaction would be, "Ummm... EW!" But Dylan is too predictable and just forces us to either wait for Luke Perry to get off his high horse or for the show to get cancelled, whichever comes first.

Did anybody else find their stomach twisting every time AnnaLynne McCord's Naomi squealed "I'm freakin' out!" during Tuesday's episode? And does anybody understand why the writers have given McCord all of the emotional heavy-lifting fr the season's first three episodes? Some actresses look comfortable and graceful crying. She looks uncomfortable and constipated. She also looks 15 years older. Meanwhile, she gets gets to be happy and flirty, she's much better as an actor and she looks much prettier.

And did anybody else have a weird stomach twisting moment at the revelation that Ethan has a brother who's an actor playing an autistic dude? Because that was arbitrary. How often do you think we'll ever see him again? That was nearly bad as the plaid shorts Ethan's wearing in two different scenes on two different days.

Where was Navid at this week? And why are all of the boys such ciphers? Before he just became an off-screen sperm provider, Dylan McKay was freakin' DANGEROUS! He drank, he caroused, he surfed. Girls wanted to do him and men wanted to be him! And he was like that from his first episode. The new men are Jonas Brothers pure, even if they're getting blown by random gals in the front seats of their cars. I can see why some teenage girls might think they're cute, but none of them are cool. Can you imagine what Michael from "The Wire" would make of Tristan? He'd jack his car, pistol-whip him and leave him by the side of the road. Now *Michael* is the sort of bad boy who would stir things up at West Beverly.

And as for the relationship between Dixon and Silver... I'm there. Good for them. I hope they get it on. But aren't the producers pussy-footing around that relationship just a bit? I don't wanna imply that we still have fears about interracial relationships on TV in 2008, but... well... I mean, Ethan and Naomi are hot-and-cold, but you *know* they're doin' it. And Annie practically handed Ty her virginity in a red tin last night. I mean, she called it "snickerdoodles," but we all know what she meant. But Silver and Dixon are stuck making moon-eyes at each other? Come on! Surely Nat has some romantic advice for Dixon.

Lastly, it was good to have Tabitha back, but it was only a reminder that Jessica Walter is on a different show. Oooh! How about she drop by "Fringe" as Walter Bishop's girlfriend from the asylum. They were together for 17 years and now she escapes to share crazy with him? Sounds good to me.

And that's that with that...

MovieWatch: "Burn After Reading"

2008-09-14T18:46:00.000-07:00

"Burn After Reading"
Director: The Brothers Coen
Fien Print Rating (Out of 100): 68
In a Nutshell: Next year will mark the 25th anniversary of "Blood Simple." The Brothers Coen will have been making movies for 25 years. They didn't used to be prolific, but they're started turning out movies with increasing speed. Two movies in the '80s. Five movies in the '90s. They're already at six (plus a segment of "Paris, je t'aime") this decade.

But it's interesting. I have no idea what Joel and Ethan Coen think about ANYTHING. I don't know their politics. I don't know much of their spiritual ideology. Oh, I know what intrigues them and what makes them laugh. I know their cinematic influences and their formal amusements. But I wonder how many filmmakers of their stature have worked for so long and managed to give up so little of themselves.

Well, the general critical consensus has been to criticize "Burn After Reading" for being a trifle, a substance-free follow-up to what may be The Brothers' finest film, last year's "No Country For Old Men." That's a big odd to me, because I can launch a fairly coherent argument stating that "Burn After Reading" is the Coens' most political and dogmatic film to date. I have more trouble making an argument that it's as funny as they seem to think it is.

That argument follows after the bump.

Click through...

The Coen Brothers have never played by the rules that critics wanted when it comes to scale. They've won Oscars for "Fargo" and "No Country For Old Men," movies that arguably had lower aesthetic aspirations than, say, "O Brother Where Art Thou," "Barton Fink" and "The Hudsucker Proxy" and probably had lesser intellectual aspirations than "Miller's Crossing." They've never felt beholder to follow up movies in the ways critics wanted either, hence the confusion over "The Big Lebowski," which seemed like a trifle after "Fargo," but wasn't properly credited as a brilliantly daffy trifle. So when "No Country" rescued the Coens from the near-irrelevance of 2004's "The Ladykillers," the tendency was to assume that having reached the mountain top, the Coens were going to keep gunning for Oscars at every turn.

So yeah, I guess "Burn After Reading" seems a bit silly.

Let me recontextualize it for you.

Last night, I watched "Rendition." Before "Burn After Reading," I saw trailers for "Body of Lies" and "The International" ("OH NO, THE WORLD BANK IS GONNA KILL ME!!!!"). So "Rendition" and "Body of Lies" and "The International" are three movies about our post-9/11 New World Order, about globalism, intelligence gathering and about retaining footing in the modern world.

Those are the things that "Burn After Reading" is about as well, but in a very different way.

The world of "Burn After Reading" is a world in which any absurd and paranoid overreaction can be justified and in which we accept subpar intelligence gathering as a matter of course. It's a world in which we know we have enemies and we know our secrets would have meaning to *somebody* but we don't know who those enemies are, how to find them or how to stop them. In a world in which all too often, those keeping watch over us are able to be relieved at a disaster that averted itself, rather than taking an active hand in avoiding the disaster.

Put a different way, it's a movie about the challenges of intelligence gathering in a world where there's very little intelligence to be found.

"No Country For Old Men" found its heart in Tommy Lee Jones' character, a venerable sheriff unclear how to be good in a world where evil was capable of thriving unchecked. His essential resignation was the movie's powerful tragedy, though his resignation to devote himself to staying alive for his wife was a sign of hope.

The main characters in "Burn After Reading" face a similar confusion. John Malkovich and George Clooney play men who aren't exactly sure what their purposes are in the modern world. So they drink. So they philander. So they neglect their wives. So they putter in their basements, plotting either memoirs or an intricate homemade invention that I wouldn't day spoil. They're like Tommy Lee Jones in "No Country" only utterly useless, which makes them the perfect pairing for characters played by Brad Pitt and Frances McDormand, employees at a gym geared towards personal transformation who aspire to transform their own lives. Their understanding of espionage and blackmail and the intrigue of political thrillers is rooted in a few movies they may have seen a decade earlier, back when Malkovitch and Clooney's characters may have been relevant.

So it's easy to find a logic through which one might believe that Joel and Ethan Coen are poking fun at the CIA and FBI under the Bush Doctrine, even as they're also simply sending up spy movies in general.

Oh and it's yet another Coen Brothers movie about dilettantes in over their heads, zany characters who find themselves in a movie that doesn't match their instinctive personal genres.

See? There. To hell with the critics trying to say that "Burn After Reading" is a film that lacks substance and intellect, that it's a brainless afterthought.

Kinda had to bend over backwards to do it, but that's what this is all about.

But honestly, I was thinking my way through the movie's theme during the moments where I wasn't laughing nearly as much as I wanted to be.

Most of the things I found funny were familiar.

The Coens and Clooney have had a successful partnership, but there may be a certain dead-end quality to it at this point. I watched Clooney's fixation with floors and jogging in this movie and could only link those not-quite-relevant quirks to his love of teeth in "Intolerable Cruelty" and his hair in "O Brother." There's a sadness and purposelessness to Clooney's Harry Pfarrer that gives the character some gravity. He's not sympathetic or fully human, but none of the people in "Burn After Reading" really are. [That doesn't bother me, by the way. I've never been a "I need sympathetic characters" guy.]

Malkovich is in hyper "Being John Malkovich" mode, in which just about every word he utters is at least slightly funny, particularly when he gets to swear. I think Malkovich's character probably could have sustained an interesting movie. Ditto with Clooney's. In fact, the movie is a collection of character that I liked spending time with, but never got to know like I wanted to.

Pitt is always a hoot when he plays characters with a reduced number of brain-cells, as in "True Romance" or "Johnny Suede" or even, to some degree, "The Mexican." It's a performance of funny mannerisms and off-beat line readings, but it's still less affected than McDormand's, which may have been allowed to go just a notch or two too far, at least in the scenes where she's paired with Richard Jenkins, who is excellent, but muted.

And by the end of the movie, was I supposed to forget that Tilda Swinton was even around? Now for me, with my oft-professed dislike for Tilda Swinton, that wasn't necessarily a bad thing, but she was the major character who's rendered irrelevant by the end.

Anyway, my favorite scenes were the ones between David Rasche and J.K. Simmons, particularly the tonally flawless conclusion.

Have the Coens had a falling out with Steve Buscemi and Jon Polito? Just wondering. I miss them.

Since the aspiration of "Burn After Reading" was a mixture of banality and zaniness, maybe I just didn't think the mix was exactly right? Maybe at 96 minutes, it was just too brief to build to a crescendo? Or maybe I did need some stakes to make the payoffs funnier? Maybe that's why I laugh more at "Fargo" than I did at "Burn After Reading"? Or maybe I just didn't want the laugh-lines pushed on me as hard as "Burn" does in certain points?

Anyway, I'll keep thinking about this one, I guess. And maybe it'll work its way a bit more into my heart after watching it again on DVD? Dunno. It goes in the "liked it, wanted to like it more" category.

Now, I think I'm going to choose between new episodes of "Dexter" and old episodes of "Sports Night" for my Sunday TV viewing.

Decent Options: "Privileged" and "Fringe" premiere

2008-09-09T19:05:00.000-07:00

Thanks to last night's FOX Eco-Casino party, which now has my apartment well-stocked with enviro-friendly lightbulbs, and my "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles" set visit today, I'm behind on my TV viewing for the week. I haven't watched "Mad Men," "Weeds," "Skinz," "One Tree Hill," "Weeds" or "Prison Break." I'm so far behind on "Big Brother" that I've quit entirely and started deleting the episodes piling up on my DVR, a decision that became a lot easier when I tried to think if I would possibly be rooting for anybody to win and came to the conclusion that I'm not.

Fortunately, I saw FOX's "Fringe" a while back. I was more enthusiastic after my first viewing during the summer, perhaps because I enjoy seeing things early, or maybe because seeing TV on the big screen -- a screening room on the FOX lot -- is ideal. Dunno. It's also possible that after reading the script and watching the pilot twice, I've burnt out a bit. My bottom line, as discussed in my Zap2it review, is that expectations are a problem after FOX's Summer of Unceasing Promotion. "Fringe" isn't "Lost" or "Alias" or "The X-Files." But that doesn't make it bad.

The night's other new show is The CW's "Privileged," a dramedy that I don't love, but that I feel a certain amount of warmth towards. A full review is after the bump.

Click through...

"Privileged" isn't quite "Gilmore Girls." Actually, it isn't anywhere near "Gilmore Girls." But it mines a similar vein of chick lit semi-empowerment wherein cute young women attempt to inspire cute younger women to be strong and smart and perky, while also aspiring to a level of level of beauty and class held by an older woman. The generational estrocentricity would normally be unsteady footing for male viewers, but as with "Gilmore Girls," I have reason to hope that there will be enough eye candy and sparkling dialogue to keep us involved.

There are two key elements to "Privileged" to give cause for optimism.

The first is producer/showrunner Rina Mimoun. Now I didn't like the last season of "Gilmore Girls" either. But Mimoun's work on "Pushing Daisies" and particularly "Everwood" gives me a general hope that as long as she's involved, the writing on "Privileged" will continue to have just a little sparkle, or enough sparkle to keep me watching. The show is a little instantly dated in its popular culture references and its grasp on more literary references -- particularly a clunky pilot parallel with "The Great Gatsby" -- isn't graceful. In fact, I'd have an easier time telling you the things that don't work with the script of "Privileged" than the things that do. I know that's not very critic-y, but I know that the overall sensibility of the show is effective, but I also know that any writer who uses the the word "vajayjay" should be shot.

But with "Privileged" that sensibility means a lot. The pilot has to establish the premise and the premise is kinda silly and more-than-kinda contrived. But we have to take the journey, set things up and we can move on next week and I look forward to it, because I have some confidence in Mimoun.

I may have even more confidence in star Joanna Garcia. She wasn't reason enough for me to watch "Reba." And she wasn't reason enough for me to watch more than two episodes of "Welcome to the Captain." But she's given off a Small Screen Amy Adams vibe, combining wide-eyed enthusiasm, chipper resourcefulness and an awful lot of cuteness. I think her problem may be that she's a sitcom star in an age that doesn't create very many good sitcoms and that often squanders the leading roles in the bad ones on un-funny actresses. It's always good to see a Christina Applegate land in something as solid as "Samantha Who," for example, but Garcia has generally been placed in less sturdy vehicles. Even here, she plays just a smidge too much to the camera, pushes her laugh-lines just a bit too hard. But I think that's the result of going to an hour-long hybrid format after too many network sitcoms. If "Privileged" is likeable, it's in good part because Garcia is likeable.

There are other fine pieces to the supporting cast. TV's favorite younger sister Lucy Hale and Ashley Newbrough make for the rare TV siblings you utterly buy as kin. It's also great to see Anne Archer
working a solid role, since I've always thought she deserved a more substantial career. The men are less well-defined. Several are pretty, young and interchangeable, while one is gay, which at least means he isn't going to be a potential love interest for the main character.

Anyway. Brain fried. Time to post this, watch "90210" and pass out.

HBO's "True Blood" and "Entourage" Revel in Childish Things

2008-09-07T13:40:00.000-07:00

I'm not prone to beginning blog posts with quotes from the New Testament, but in reflecting on HBO's Sunday night lineup, I kept coming back to...

"When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things."

Now obviously this quote from first Corinthians doesn't have a DARNED thing to do with me. I watch TV for a living and at my most mature, I'm fairly infantile.

But what I *do* know is that two subjects that used to excite and entertain me a heck of a lot more than they do now are the glamorous lives of Hollywood stars and the sex lives of vampires.

Follow through after the bump to see how that impacts my initial opinions on the premieres of "True Blood" and "Entourage"...

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I'm not sure I was ever a devotee of supermarket tabloids dedicated to celebrity gossip and tawdry rumor-mongering, but I was a pretty big fan of the first two-and-a-half seasons of HBO's "Entourage." Things started getting messy when the second half of the third season was followed within two weeks by the fourth season and suddenly the show ceased to be funny at all. Yes, "Entourage" got a ridiculously undeserved outstanding comedy series Emmy nomination for that dreadful period, but not only had the series' characters become one-note and unrecognizable, but the events of excess that made up their lives had become uninteresting, or even boring. Either I'd seen enough A-list debauchery that it was no longer amusing, or else Doug Ellin and company had lost control. It's not like I was going to stop watching, but my four episodes the new season of "Entourage" sat next to my TV for nearly two weeks before I got around to feeling like watching them, which never would have happened two years ago.

Just as I never would stop watching "Entourage," it's hard for me to protest that I'm sick of the sex lives of vampires when entirely too much of my summer reading time was dedicated to four books of the "Twilight" series and the first part of Charlaine Harris' Southern Vampire Mysteries, which are the basis for "True Blood." At a certain point, I lost track of which vampires were afraid of the sun, which vampires just sparkled, which mortal girls were having raucous sex with their vampire girls and which vampires had intimacy issues.

My problem is that I was absolutely a vampire obsessed child, a huge fan of "Dracula," "Salem's Lot" and the more foundational vampire texts by Polidori and Le Fanu. I loved me some vampires, but not in the way that teenage girls and middle-aged housewives love them some vampires. I loved vampires because they were really freakin' scary and because they drank blood and they were really hard to kill. The fact that they were immortal and that being immortal makes you really broody and soulful and complicated really didn't register on my appreciative radar. And the fact that Dracula kept a trio of sexy vampire women in his basement seemed *hot* but it didn't seem romantic in any real way. Even when I later became a "Buffy" and "Angel" fan, I mostly liked the demons, the dialogue and Sarah Michelle Gellar, but I never got invested in Buffy-Angel 'shipping. I've always hated Anne Rice's purple prose and when "Moonlight" premiered and it became clear that the show was going to be nothing but trenchcoats, yearning glances and forbidden love, I mostly tuned it out.

With that as context, how are HBO's Sunday premieres of "Entourage" and "True Blood"?

"Entourage": The show's producers have to figure out which things are funny for Adrien Grenier's Vincent Chase and, more importantly, for how long. Success, it turns out, was only funny for a little over a season and artistic hubris, the kind that accompanied the production of "Medellin," was funny for even less time. But Vince's failure and eventual comeback? That may be fruitful comic territory, as the premiere begins with Richard Roeper tearing "Medellin" to shreds, which is hopefully another joke, the idea that anybody anywhere would actually get invested in Richard Roeper's opinion about a movie. Seeing the character respond to the absence of success is good for a few chuckles and over the next three episodes watching him figure out the realities of his career status, also funny.

What "Entourage" hasn't actually done yet, and why you shouldn't believe all of those "'Entourage' Is Back!" stories, is recovered the identity of any of the supporting characters. If Jerry Ferrara's Turtle ever had any individual characteristics, he's mostly lost them, while Kevin Connolly's Eric has yet to find viable storylines in his new arc as a struggling manager. Jeremy Piven's Ari Gold has been a one-note character for the better part of three seasons and I ceased to find the character funny a long time ago, but Emmy voters and frat boys still seem to love the shtick, so who am I to complain. The worst victim of the show's nebulous direction is Kevin Dillon's Johnny Drama, who was my favorite character back in the day. It turns out, though, that Drama finding success hasn't been as funny or as believable as the show's creative team seems to think. And, oddly, through four episodes the show hasn't made any profitable use out of what would seem to be its most fertile territory: At some point Johnny was the successful brother, while Vince was just the young pup without a career, but then the roles were reversed for a long time. We've had almost no inkling of the re-reversed sibling dynamic, of what happens to this entourage when they face the fact that they may be Johnny and not Vince's posse. That's a big miss, if you ask me.

One of the things about "Entourage" is that it often rises and falls on how much you enjoy its self-mocking Hollywood cameos. In the premiere, Roeper and NBC-Universal's Prom King Ben Silverman pop up and disappointingly, aren't funny.

Since the premiere is mostly dedicated to bringing Vince back to Los Angeles, subsequent episodes feel a bit more plot-y, in a good way. In those episodes, the Johnny Drama plots become increasingly more annoying, but other storylines find their footing.

"True Blood" I think that if you view "True Blood" as drama, you're going to be sorely disappointed, even if you just accept that it's a soap opera in which one major subplot involves people who suck blood (not that "Dark Shadows" didn't get there first).

At press tour and subsequently, Alan Ball tried to emphasize that vampirism in "True Blood" isn't a metaphor for homosexuality or, really, for any number of other things that it could be a metaphor for. He's telling the truth, actually, which is part of why "True Blood" comes across as so very empty and silly. It isn't even like vampires could be standing in for any outsider in our midst. One of the changes Ball and company make from the book is advancing the idea of vampire civil rights, but their commitment to the absurd idea is minimal at best. For the most part, vampires do, indeed, seem to be more violent and more dangerous than normal parts of society and therefore the idea that they're entitled to equal protection under the law is really silly.

But really, the show itself is pretty silly, despite being played utterly straight. Painfully straight. Ball's sense of ironic black comedy, evident in the best parts of "Six Feet Under" and "American Beauty" is entirely absent in "True Blood" and I'm pretty confident that the only times I laughed were unintentional.

"True Blood" is pretty pure camp, funny only for over over-the-top and miscalculated every second of it is. The vampire effects are silly. The Southern Gothic trappings are caricatured and silly. The sex scenes are bizarre and silly. The Southern accents -- all seemingly lifted from my high school production of "To Kill a Mockingbird" -- are beyond silly. The show is filmed in a mixture of Louisiana locations and Los Angeles sets and you probably won't be able to tell the difference, which makes the Southern settings silly. And what makes it even sillier is how familiar every second feels. The preponderance of vampire cliches and Southern Gothic cliches leave no room for anything fresh.

You know what would be a fresh and awesome portrayal of a vampire? One who's neither brooding nor sadistic. A vampire who's made piece with his lifestyle and just lives life, occasionally enjoying a good book or a DVD or a sporting event for entertainment. As vamp-y Bill Compton, Stephen Moyer doesn't go down any original paths. He furrows his brow, speaks with a bad accent and that's enough for Anna Paquin's Sookie to fall for him. And, I suspect, it will be enough for myriad female viewers to fall for him. The book did a marginally better job of conveying his appeal, but in the show, Sookie falls for the vampire because that's what girls do.

Paquin survives the early episodes with more of her dignity intact than anybody else. Her accent isn't exactly right, but it's consistent and sometimes that's enough, especially if my choices are the twangs provided by the British Moyer and Ryan Kwanten, an Aussie. [Are there no Southern actors in Hollywood? None that HBO could find.] The little girl from "The Piano" has been maturing into a sexy young lady for some time, though she remains the most clothed member of the cast. WTF, Alan Ball?

But as I said, I think there are ways to enjoy "True Blood." The most obvious way is to be one of those people who gets weak-in-the-knees by ANY story about vampire-on-mortal lovin'. That will probably be the show's biggest audience anyway. But there's a better way that involves oodles of alcohol and a well conceived drinking game. Close-up of Spanish moss? DRINK! Kinky vamp sex? DRINK! Unintentional giggle at cheesy vamp make-up? DRINK and giggle some more. Etc.

I'll certainly be watching. So much for putting away my childish things.

Riding with FX's "Sons of Anarchy"

2008-09-03T17:00:00.000-07:00

Last night built up, with growing enthusiasm, to the premiere of The CW's "90210," which ended up -- with an audience of just under 5 million -- either being the most watched scripted program in CW history or the least watched installment over "Beverly Hills, 90210" ever. The CW would like you to concentrate on the former and ignore the fact that despite the endless promotion and pimpage, "90210" failed to outdraw a successful episode of "America's Next Top Model," much less show that The CW is ready to compete with TNT. Fair nuf.

In any case, tonight's options are a bit less exciting. In the interest of equal time, I'll watch Sarah Palin's speech from the RNC, but that's only because I've already seen "Bones" (great use of London and lots of effective comedy) and "ANTM" (almost unwatchably bad this cycle).

And because I've seen FX's "Sons of Anarchy." While there are many reasons to like the FX bike gang drama, I suspect it will probably join the ranks of FX series that I watch in the initial batch of screeners and subsequently am unable to keep track of, either because I forget when they're on or I forget that they're on at all. Actually, USA shows have started to fall into that category as well. I like them well enough. But not well enough to become devoted. It's amazing I can still keep up with "Mad Men," actually.

So anyway, an actual review of "Sons of Anarchy" is after the bump...

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On the list of things I've learned from television in recent seasons...

#127. Inside every crime syndicate lurks a dysfunctional family (literal or figurative).
#234. Inside every dysfunctional family lurks a crime syndicate (literal or figurative).

If you've established these parameters watching shows from "The Sopranos" to "The Riches" to "Breaking Bad" to "The Black Donnellys" to "Skin" ("His father is the district attorney!!!") to "Brotherhood" to "Cane," then "Sons of Anarchy" will probably seem at least vaguely familiar.

Granted that the milieu is mostly fresh. "Sons of Anarchy" follows the adventures of the eponymous biker gang, a group of ruffians who bike, brawl, drink, laugh and love. They also move guns and are perfectly at ease with killing off their competition, should that be required. They're scruffy, tattooed and largely amoral, but they love each other, at least when they aren't conspiring against each other or experiencing existential crises about their place in the world.

Adding to the sense that this gang of outlaws is as thoughtful as they are rowdy is series creator Kurt Sutter's conviction that these characters are Shakespearean, or at least conform to mighty basic Shakespearean archetypes. Our hero is Jax (Charlie Hunnam) son of the deceased creator of the Sons of Anarchy. While going through his dead dad's stuff, he uncovers a memoir containing his father's regrets about the direction of the club, regrets that dovetail nicely with Jax's own concerns about his mother's (Katey Sagal) marriage to the gang's co-founder (Ron Perlman). The memoir may not exactly be the Ghost of Hamlet's Father and Jax's junkie pregnant ex-wife (Drea DeMatteo) may not exactly be Ophelia and Sagal's character is more Lady Macbeth than Gertrude and the closest to a direct reference to the Bard is to "Henry the 4th," but most viewers will get the point. OK. That's optimistic. Most viewers probably couldn't pick out a "Hamlet" reference if they smelled something rotten in Denmark lurking under the cushions of their couch. But it's there.

And I'm always happy with a little Shakespearean free association. Setting "Hamlet" against the backdrop of a West Coast biker gang isn't close to the trickiest transposition I've seen attempted.

But I kept being distracted by so many things.

Hunnam had what ought to have been a star-making turn in "Green Street Hooligans," a very similar "outlaws-as-family" conceit. I didn't love the movie, which was formulaic and hackneyed, but Hunnam's gave a statement performance, on a level with Malcolm McDowell in "A Clockwork Orange" in terms of making a sociopath look both welcoming and terrifying. From "Undeclared" to "Cold Mountain" to "Children of Men," Hunnam has frequently been excellent and as long as he keeps his mouth shut in "Sons of Anarchy," he's a fine lead here. But Hollywood casting directors seem to think that no role is so American that it can't be played by a Brit with a bad accent and Newcastle-born Hunnam's accent is horrible and the effort to flatten out his speech drains the life from many a monologue. It's not that he isn't a good enough actor to play opposite Perlman and Sagal -- both threatening and excellent here -- but this is the wrong context.

Even if Hunnam's accent weren't enough of a bother, I kept drifting back to the idea that the show wants us to root for and revel in the attempts by a mostly white biker gang to keep the Mexicans and blacks out of their pure community. The Sons of Anarchy aren't without the occasional hint of ethnicity, but it's unqualified ethnicity or pointlessly quirky ethnicity, like Mark Boone Junior as the club's treasure, a Jew with an odd musical hobby. As with the mobsters in "The Sopranos" or the prisoners on "Oz," Sutter never lets viewers forget that we're empathizing with criminals, but the SoA's adversaries are so grotesque -- right down to Mitch Pileggi, as an unlikely Neo-Nazi -- that the deck is stacked.

The supporting cast of "Sons of Anarchy" is stuffed with actors who interest me or are doing interesting work. In addition to the ever-welcome Boone, I was glad to see Dayton Callie, Johnny Lewis, Maggie Siff, Kim Coates and Sprague Grayden getting work, even if everybody in the cast seems a bit too proud to be playing inked-and-scuzzy.

I'm interested in the subculture depicted in "Sons of Anarchy," even if I wonder if the biking subculture might still have been interesting is a less extreme format. Having seen two episodes, I'm curious to watch more and probably will if they show up in my mail, but will I program my DVR for it? Probably not...

The CW's "90210" Premieres: Is it a Peach or the Pits?

2008-09-02T23:21:00.001-07:00

The summer between my senior year in high school and college, I worked at a pizza place -- Boston's Favorite Pizza, Papa Gino's -- and did mostly night shifts, because that's what my friends were doing. That left me with my days free and since my summer reading was just a Tom Stoppard play, I discovered that FX aired two episodes of "Beverly Hills, 90210" each afternoon. The episodes were from different seasons, but they were at least in sequence, so I caught up on the first six seasons in weird epicycles, watching, say, Season One and Season Four in tandem and filling in blanks in fabulously non-linear ways.

As marvelously and deliciously trashy as it was, it would be wrong to forget that the original "Beverly Hills, 90210" was still over-earnest, ridiculously square, soapy trash. So it'll be interesting to see how rose-tinted critics' glasses are when it comes to "BH90210v.2.0." Will they complain that the acting on the new show doesn't equal the RSC standards set by a young Brian Austin Green and Luke Perry? Will they lament the occasionally preachy tone? Heck, will I fall into those traps?

We'll see after the bump, eh?

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While Kansas may be the new Minnesota, the new "90210" posits a notion of global teen identity that's both liberating, but also restricting. Annie (Shenae Grimes) and Dixon (Tristan Wilds) Wilson may be moving to Beverly Hills from the Midwest, but thanks to 300 channels of television and the Internet and endless teen movies -- pop culture references abound -- it's impossible for them to be as shell-shocked as Brenda and Brandon Walsh were on their first day at West Beverly High. Yeah, the Walshs were probably exposed to popular culture as well, but perhaps 15 years ago there was less of a tyranny of mainstreamed images, less obsession with Hollywood's celebrity scene. Because Brenda and Brandon were just lame on Day One and Annie and Dixon were only a little uncomfortable.

I guess that part of what I missed in "90210" (henceforth contrasted with "BH 90210," referring to the original) was the effective usage of the fish-out-of-water storytelling. They assimilate rapidly and it's pretty much off to the races with flirtations, scandals and ethical conundrums. It took a full season before Brandon ceased to be wide-eyed at the day-to-day operation in West Bev, but Annie and Dixon are only impressed by extremes. A potential beau flies her to San Francisco for dinner! His new Persian friend's father is a porn king! Etc. That's a bit disappointing.

But the new series remains true to something more important about the original: Brandon and Brenda were the only kids in West Beverly who had a moral compass. Yes, Brandon suffered from excessive personal morality, but even if he ever lapsed, Jim and Cindy were always around to help them and to help all of their friends. The Jim and Cindy proxies, Rob Estes' Harry and Lori Loughlin's Debbie have a similarly loving and honest and trusting relationship. Jim and Cindy never wavered for a second and I kind of hope that Debbie and Harry don't have to go through a soapy roller coaster. They will, of course, but I'd value them more as still points in the tumultuous Beverly Hills universe.

The plot lines of the first two episodes also follow the basic "BH 90210" formula. Annie sneaks out to a party! A prank-gone-bad threatens Dixon's place on the lacrosse team! 16-going-on-36-year-old Naomi (AnnaLynne McCord) cheats on an essay! The core stories were refreshingly quaint. Of course, there were also SUV blow-jobs, cybersex, the aforementioned porn set and plenty of texting misadventures. It's old, but it's new. It's a little "BH 90210," but it's a lot of "Gossip Girl," too. And a lot of "The O.C." It just isn't as clever as "The O.C." and it will probably hesitate to go as trashy as "Gossip Girl."

I was interested in the way the pastels that abounded in the original were cleanly replaced by bright primary colors. Very bright. Very colorful. Very flashy, where the original was a bit more gauzy and filtered, at least initially.

As a fan of the original, I was a sucker for the many in-jokes in the new version, including school anchorwoman Hannah Zuckerman-Vasquez ("What is that girl, like 30?") and appearances by Nat, Kelly and particularly Brenda. None of the in-joke nods to the original have been particularly well-integrated, though, which causes some concern. Yeah, Kelly is Erinn Silver's (Jessica Stroup) sister, but why did it look like she shot her scenes in isolation from most of the rest of the class? Probably because she did. And if they're trying to set up a retro love triangle with Kelly, Brenda and Young Teacher Ryan (Ryan Eggold), I'm on board, but don't be surprised if I start preferring to tune out the kids. There's a risk they're running in balancing the young and old audiences and I wonder if they can possibly please both.

By playing in broad strokes, the pilot for the original series did a rather amazing job of establishing nearly every character in ways that laid the template for everything that would follow. That template was so great that the new pilot could make a joke about Kellie Taylor having been easy and the ripple goes all the way back. I'm not saying it was Shakespeare or played as such, but it was very proficient blueprinting.

I feel like Gabe Sachs and Jeff Judah were making a calculated effort to keep the new characters from having obvious touchstones to the characters from the original, other than the transplanted siblings at the core. McCord's Naomi has a bit of Kelly Taylor to her, but just because Dustin Milligan's Ethan surfs doesn't mean he'll be confused with Dylan McKay any time soon.

We should all be glad that we didn't have to get the genre's seemingly mandatory Lunchroom Tour sketch of the high school hierarchy, but the two episodes left me unsure of West Beverly's social structure and how any of these characters tie together.

The acting from the young stars is...

Can I just leave it at that?

Grimes actually looks like she's doing a Shannen Doherty impression, right down to certain vocal tics and mannerisms, while Wilds is playing everything so enthusiastically that he can't have any goal more central than erasing memories of Michael from "The Wire." But most of the young viewers in the "90210" core demo aren't aware that "The Wire" ever existed and for those who watched "The Wire," it will probably take three or four "90210" seasons to forget about Michael. So he's screwed.

The women are all perilously skinny, which wasn't the case in the original, no matter how many of them were battling eating disorders on or off screen. Stroup is far skinnier than she was in were flirty and winning guest spot on "Reaper" and Grimes looks smaller than she was on "Degrassi" and when they stand side-by-side, it's a bit scary. They're beautiful, but they're not healthy. McCord is a smidge better, though she looks a decade older than her supposed classmates. The only young actress I didn't immediately want to feed is Jessica Lowndes, playing the drugged out actress who has "Scott Scalon" written all over her, in terms of potentially tragic fates.

The men? All forgettable and interchangeable except for Michael Steger's Navid [Having at least one Persian character adds realism and the background extras looked diverse.] Is he the show's David Silver? Bring on Babyface!

There will be much discussion, I guess, as to whether Jessica Walter's Tabitha is awesome or dreadful. Can we have it both ways? Yes, I love "Arrested Development," too. Yes, I thought Lucille Bluth was fabulous. Yes, Walter is capable of nailing an inappropriate one-liner like nobody else. But she isn't on the same show as anybody else and as much as I might prefer to watch that show that Walter is on, it's distracting in this one.

Yikes. This has gone on for too long and it's past my bedtime and I've already posted twice today. Best to cut it short [Too late.]. The bottom line is that "90210" will have to choose what it is, whether it's nostalgia for the Gen X-and-old-Y-ers, whether it's a CW-style fresh teen soap, whether it's a smart-and-meta guilty pleasure. I'm not sure if it can be all of those things and I'm not sure if currently it's *any* of them, but I'll probably stick with it for a long time. That's what I do.

MovieWatch: "Vicky Cristina Barcelona"

2008-09-02T19:48:00.001-07:00

"Vicky Cristina Barcelona"
Director: Woody Allen
Fien Print Rating (Out of 100): 68
In a Nutshell: I may be over-rating "Vicky Cristina Barcelona" a smidge because I subjected myself to "Cassandra's Dream" via Netflix last weekend and just about anything Woody Allen would have done as a follow-up would have been a blessed relief.

But Allen's entire career at this point is being graded on the curve. After "Anything Else" and "Hollywood Ending" and the professional nadir that was "The Curse of the Jade Scorpion," Allen got to the point where his name was under-played in the ads for "Melinda and Melinda" and, particularly, "Match Point." But "Match Point" was such a hit that Allen's name was front-and-center in the advertising for "Scoop," which tanked. It was less visible on "Cassandra's Dream" and missing from most promotion for "Vicky Cristina Barcelona." This latest film, now, has performed well enough that Allen's name can be resurrected for next year's "Whatever Works." But after three Oscars and dozens of nominations, Allen's commercial status can apparently only be judged on a film-by-film basis these days. I find that a bit sad.

Anyway, a full review of "Vicky Cristina Barcelona" after the bump...

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After three films of questionable inspiration in London, particularly the uber-generic "Cassandra's Dream," Allen's back on familiar footing with "Vicky Cristina Barcelona," which comes across as a cute, albeit less-than-substantial meditation on men, women, love, relationships, art and cultural differences.

It's very much a Woody Allen Film. Again, this is a relief in light of "Cassandra's Dream," where the director's thematic concerns with class mobility and the mistakes we make to move up in the world were evident, but his voice was missing. "Vicky Cristina Barcelona" is a return to that sort of pleasant Allen standard where the characters all mimic the writer-director's hyper-articulate stammer, whether they're narrating the film or speaking in Spanish. This isn't a straight-forward comedy, though, and this isn't Allen in Borscht Belt one-liner territory, so Rebecca Hall's obvious Woody-inspired inflections seem less annoying than, say, watching Kenneth Branagh stumble through being Woody in "Celebrity."

In terms of narrative, the film is pretty thin: Two American girls spend the summer in Barcelona, experience three months of upheaval and leave either surprisingly changed or surprisingly unchanged. And Allen falls victim to the most predictable type of reductive Europhilia, coming dangerously close to caricaturing the Spanish characters as unbearably lusty and spirited and the American characters as unbearably desiccated and over-intellectual. Even Scarlett Johansson's character, a self-proclaimed bohemian, is impossibly uptight, both before and after she meets Javier Bardem's Juan Antonio, the artist to end all artists. Allen is just a bit too smart to buy into the stereotyping trap and there's a self-awareness to both his caricatured Spanish characters and the impact the American temperament has on their lives. The question of whether the vernal clash of cultures improves anybody's life is very much still open in the end.

It isn't profound stuff, nor are Allen's observations about Spanish culture, though I think we're supposed to be seeing Barcelona through the callow and predictable eyes of the two Americans and not the way the city would ever be seen by a true insider. This isn't a Pedro Almodovar film.

This isn't a Pedro Almodovar film, though its best performances come from Almodovar veterans Bardem and Penelope Cruz.

As the unapologetic Lothario, Bardem showcases an ever-improving comfort with English dialogue as he spars and parries with the two leading ladies. He's coasting on confidence and charm, though, until Cruz shows up and absolutely galvanizes the movie.

Though the movie features a scene from Hitchcock's "Shadow of a Doubt," Cruz' character made me think of a different Joseph Cotton movie, "The Third Man." Maria Elena is very much the Harry Lime of "Vicky Cristina Barcelona." The characters spend nearly an hour constantly discussing her and then when she shows up, stunningly gorgeous and unbearably twitchy and manic depressive, it gets new life. The three or four years she spent giving unconvincing performances in English language films have succeeded in making Cruz a constant revelation, even though she's proved herself plenty of times in her native tongue.

If "Vicky Cristina Barcelona" is so much better for its proximity to "Cassandra's Dream" and "Scoop," how much better is Cruz's performance for its proximity to Scarlett Johansson?

I wonder if rather than being hailed as Allen's latest muse, Johansson should be somewhat insulted by the circumstances she appears to inspire. In "Match Point," she was a properly lusty temptation, but in "Scoop" and now "Vicky Cristina Barcelona," Allen has subsequently made her a callow and directionless tourist in both England and Spain, the American blank slate overwhelmed by even the slightest hints of foreign culture. Add in her work in "Lost in Translation," and it's tempting to wonder what other countries could baffle and entrance Johansson, while she's still young. Who knows what utterly unaffected, dead-eyed wonderment she could find in Italy or the Galapagos or just about any place in Africa? If this is her niche, I guess she'd better just keep rocking it.

As for Hall, I just like her. She decently conveys intelligence and she looks like a cross between old Girl Next Door Kate Beckinsale and new Ridiculously Hot But Somehow Artificial But Still Cool Kate Beckinsale.

Anyway, "Vicky Cristina Barcelona" is nicely shot by Javier Aguirresarobe, another Almodovar veteran, who fits plenty of Gaudi into the frame without ever making it seem like he was looking for a freelance gig as a postcard photographer. I still wish that when I did my European gallivanting I'd spent time in Barcelona and Madrid. That was a mistake.

Television Returns: Breaking down the "Gossip Girl," "Prison Break" and "OTH" Premieres

2008-09-02T17:41:00.000-07:00

Yes, I know. I've been a bad blogger. There's only so many times I can apologize. Heck, even my blog posted a comment over the summer complaining about being neglected.

But Monday (Sept. 1) night unofficially started the new television season! Nielsen doesn't think so, but to heck with them and their comically outmoded audience sampling system. If the girls are gossiping, the men are prison breaking and the hills have only a single tree once again, then my TV season has most certainly begun!

As as of the moment of posting, we're only six hours from what The CW tells me will be the most important event of the fall. More important that USC-Ohio State? More important than the Emmys? More important than Yom Kippur? More important than the election? Yes. Apparently. But more on the premiere of "90210" tomorrow, of course, since The CW wants to make me suffer.

Anywho... Thoughts on the premieres of "Prison Break," "Gossip Girl" and "One Tree Hill" after the bump...

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[Spoilers coming, obviously. Duh.]

Gossip Girl: Absence appears to have made the hearts grow ever-so-slightly fonder for "Gossip Girl," which was up 35% over its first-season average viewership and delivered its best ever 18-49 ratings.

To mind? Not the best of series premieres. The juiciest subplot involved Nate and the Cougar, but is anybody else just about ready to put a moratorium on the Cougar subplot? I mean, remember how freaked out Brandon Walsh was to be gettin' it on with Lucinda Nicholson? She was the older woman even though Dina Meyer is exactly one year older than Jason Pristley and, thanks to the absurdity of "Starship Troopers," has played a high school student more recently. "The O.C." did fine Cougar work and fine Cougar work will be done again, but when "Gossip Girl" and "One Tree Hill" are rockin' equally bland Cougar storylines on the same night, it's both boring and it makes one wonder who, exactly, The CW is programming for.

But what else were we supposed to be loving? Blair making Chuck jealous? The writers know darned well that even though the fans pretend they want Chuck and Blair together, the idea of Chuck in love, much less Chuck in a committed relationship, is good for three or four episodes, tops. Chuck exploring his sexuality and acquiring a monkey? Endlessly hilarious, if what I've heard about the books is true. So bring on the monkey.

And away with Jenny Humphrey. Jenny failing to become a Queen Bee? Entertaining. Jenny's quest to become a fashion designer? Well, Donna Martin and Brooke Davis beat her to it. I think Donna didn't succeed in fashion until college and Brooke waited until after high school, so I guess "Gossip Girl" has to push the edge of the envelope. But to what end?

There's a problem on "Gossip Girl" with letting the kids be kids, albeit rich, snobby, vaguely evil kids. Chuck Bass owning a burlesque club didn't didn't really go anywhere. Jenny as a fashion designer isn't going to go anywhere. And Dan Humphrey pushing his way to the edge of teen literary superstardom (or even getting his foot in the door) for a series of confessional stories about teen love is every bit as sad as Lucas Scott's literary career.

I know at least one occasional reader won't be pleased as the "Gossip Girl"/ "One Tree Hill" comparisons, so I'm gonna stop here.

Prison Break: Sproing! That's the sound of the meat thermometer on "Prison Break" indicating that this turkey may be just about done. In its premiere, "Prison Break" averaged just under 6.5 million viewers. Last season's average was over 8 million. Yes, it won its demo, but once "Heroes" returns "Two and a Half Men" returns and the fall starts in earnest, I'd expect the audience to dwindle to nothing.

For a show that has needed to reboot itself each season, this year's reboot was even more of a sham than usual. Sara's resurrection? Lame. Michael's tattoo removal? Lame. The fact that a government agent would actually see a value in reuniting Michael with his psychotic brother, a pussy-whipped petty thief (Sorry, Sucre), a junkie ex-G-man and a sadistic disgraced prison guard? Sorry, but at its best, "Prison Break" strains credulity in a way that makes you go, "Oh my goodness, that's so wrong, but so right." T-Bag going cannibal? Exactly right. The assembly of the Injustice League to steal a MacGuffin? Anemic at best.

And will be ever see Sofia and LJ ever again? I kinda hope not. They were useless for a full season last year and I'd be better to just move on. And it would have been better to move beyond Sara as well, though I did like how damaged she appears to be. Take what you can get. The only reason I'll keep watching is my suspicion that Gretchen is going to want to get a ton of revent and that's bound to be hot.

One Tree Hill: Again, on the so-bad-it's-good front, the return of Crazy Nanny Carrie (the lovely Torrey Devitto) as Kathy Bates from "Misery" was at least hilariously tawdry, though she probably should have been wearing some sort of naughty nurse fetish gear. As it is, we know she'll only be able to torture Dan for a couple episodes before he turns the table and eats her pancreas. Dan is just too evil to keep down and no curvy temptress is gonna stop him.

What else? Well, Lucas made the only choice he could. Getting him back together with Brooke would have been too arbitrary, while fans detested Lindsay. Better to give the 'shippers what they want and back away slowly. Peyton and Lucas are now safely the least interesting characters on the show, so it'll be interesting to see how things get screwed up for them.

And we assume that Daphne Zuniga ordered Brooke's beating, right? I hope she gets revenge Gretchen-style.

And if Mouth really left, who would be sad? Really?

So anyway, that's last night's TV...

I wanna write a "Vicky Cristina Barcelona" review. And a "Sons of Anarchy" review. And I want to prep for "90210." But really, I just wanted to make it clear that with the fall season starting again, I'm ready to get back on the blogging pony.

Yee-haw.

Dan in Las Vegas: Part III [Belated] -- Cravings at The Mirage

2008-08-21T19:07:00.000-07:00

[It's a teensy bit odd that I should have found it easier to be semi-blog-productive while I was in Las Vegas -- albeit relishing the chance to hide out from the 110-degree temperatures in my subpar, but at least vaguely air-conditioned hovel [errr... "hotel"] room -- but I've been back from Vegas for nearly a week now and I've been hesitant to type up the last two buffet reviews from my visit to The Desert. Fortunately, buffets aren't exactly timely, as writing subjects go.

And, as a side note, I strongly recommend the mid-week Vegas experience. It's a little bit quieter, a little bit less chaotic and a little bit cheaper than what happens over the weekend. In addition, my drive back to Los Angeles on Friday after took maybe 4:15, another remarkably smooth, traffic-free jaunt.]

Anyway, my second dinner buffet experience in Las Vegas was... Cravings at The Mirage.

The full review, complete with a couple pretty pictures, is after the bump.

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Buffet: Cravings at The Mirage
Price: $24.95
The Line: At 6:30 in the evening on a Thursday, there was absolutely no line to speak of. It took maybe five minutes to pay and get seated. Exiting nearly 90 minutes later -- What? I like to relish my buffet experience! -- a small line had formed, but I'd guess it didn't represent more than maybe 15 minutes of waiting. Given that The Mirage's outpost of California Pizza Kitchen had a formidable line, I'm not sure what to make of it.
Ambiance: Since I started my trip with The Buffet at The Bellagio, it's hard for me not to just compare everything else to that experience on a one-to-one basis. In that respect, Cravings is a much more self-consciously "designed" space. The undulating lights, smooth wooden chairs and clear, amber Lucite tables are all meant to be relaxing and bright and welcoming. The entire space is a rather marked contrast to the darkened interior of the Mirage. All of the smallest details follow the concept, including the ceramic salt-and-pepper shakers, the curved, square plates and even the silverware. I'm not sure how the rather grotesque carpeting fits with the aesthetic, nor the orange, red and brown napkins. But I guess the goal is comfort, however discordant, which isn't bad since Cravings feels much larger than the space taken up by The Buffet and certainly less cramped. An amazing series of stations wrap all the way around the outside, each clearly marked by a light blue or greenish sign explaining either the main food group or the superficial ethnic incarnation. It's easy to target your destination from across a room and head straight there, but I confess that I got disoriented and lost going back to my seat after my first serving.

The Food: Every station I went to at Cravings was a mixed bag, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. I found lots of great things to eat, but also some less inspired entries.

At the sushi station, I wasn't inspired by the variety. The California rolls with crab were fine, but the shrimp was oddly subpar given that perfectly fine shrimp were available in the cold seafood line next to the crab legs. But the salmon rolls featured fish that was both fatty and flavorful. That may have been a freak occurrence, though, since on subsequent trips through the line, the salmon looked drier and poorly cut, as if an entirely different sushi chef with a lower quality of fish had come on duty right at the start of the dinner rush. Color me confused.

Also on the confusion front, I mentioned that the sushi-cut shrimp wasn't very good -- rubbery and tasteless -- but the best item at the well-stocked dim-sum station was a moist shrimp shu mai. Even though they were freshly poured into the heating pan, pork pot stickers were dry and even a liberal dosing of soy sauce did nothing to bring them back. A wide selection of steamed buns looked promising, but they were confusingly labeled and even three requested attempts to land a BBQ pork bun left me with only seafood. Is anything in all the world more disappointing than biting into a piping hot bao and getting the wrong filling? Yes. Many things are far more disappointing. But that still sucks. The dim sum station also offered roast duck which, as those who know me know, is always a favorite. Unfortunately, the duck was pre-prepared in a drawer under the grill and the skim was less crispy than greasy. There. That's one thing that's at least as disappointing as mislabeled bao. But it's close.

Sticking with the Asian theme, the prepared dishes were superior to what was offered at The Buffet at Bellagio. The Singapore noodles had a good curried flavor and bountiful shrimp (clearly the sushi station just got last dibs on the cockroaches of the sea). I also got a kick out of the crunchy pork-filled wontons, though they were mostly fried dough and that's a recipe for buffet defeat, so I steered clear of seconds.

I dodged several sections entirely. The Spanish-inflected station was a bit of a disaster, with burnt (or maybe "caramelized" if I'm being generous) plantains fighting for reheating space with some watery fajita chicken. No spell coming off the food suggested anything Cuban, Mexican or even Texan. I wasn't engaged by any of the different kinds of soup, though there were seven or eight different varieties, ranging from a bouillabaisse to chicken rice congee. Based on looks, I think I'd have gone with the congee first. It seemed different. The deli station would be fine, though I dunno who gets deli at a buffet, while a BBQ spread didn't do anything for me.

Having skipped the prime rib at the Bellagio, I got a hunk at Cravings. I say "hunk," because the carving wasn't really impressive. At least the meat was properly cooked and except for the tooth-defying ring of gristle, it was decent. Mostly, it tasted like horseradish. End of the day? Prime rib would never make my list of my five or 10 favorite cuts of beef, so I may not be the best person to judge.

I preferred the quality of the crab at Cravings to that at The Bellagio, though when I went by a second time, the legs all looked thinner, with less easily accessible flesh. But the pizza at Cravings was a reminder of how excellent the pizza at The Buffet was, because even though it was baked on-site in visible ovens, my pepperoni slice was basically salty and greasy.

The clear dessert standout at Cravings is the gelato station, which generated a decent line. I'd describe the options as "eclectic," but not especially enticing. You don't see rum babas (with an assortment of sauce options), green tea roulade or papaya soup (an orange sludge in tall shot glasses) just anywhere. I was also impressed with the reduced sugar options, though none -- from a chocolate cake, to a white cake -- actually spoke to me. Strangely, the best dessert I had was a macaroon. Thanks to Passover-based associations, I shy away from macaroons, but these were the right combination of crunchy-chewy on the outside and airy and soft inside.

Bottom Line: If we're just talking food, Cravings isn't as good at Bellagio's The Buffet. But it has many things going for it. The price is lower, the wait is shorter and the space is more open and therefore quieter and less claustrophobic. Both buffets are clear steps above what you get at the cheaper, cut-rate buffets up and down the strip. Next trip? I wanna get to Planet Hollywood and The Rio and to Harrahs. I heard good things about all of them.

One more buffet review to go. Perhaps tomorrow?

Dan in Las Vegas: Part II -- The Buffet at The Bellagio

2008-08-14T11:40:00.001-07:00

Originally, a central part of my intent in coming to Vegas was to go absolutely buffet mad and to go to at least four different buffets, write up reviews and even take digital pictures.

After gorging myself at The Buffet at The Bellagio, widely considered one of the very finest buffets available in Vegas and therefore in El Mundo, I may have decided to cut back my goals, just a wee bit. Two buffet dinners and a buffet breakfast on Friday? *Much* more plausible. Perhaps not as in-depth as I might have liked, but I'll be back.

I planned by first buffet based around Travel Channel's "All You Can Eat Paradise," which featured The Buffet at The Bellagio.

The basics...

Price: $27.95
The Line: At 6:30 on a Wednesday night, the wait was a little under 40 minutes. It looked like it would have been even longer if I had requeued at 8:45 when I left.
Service: Soda and water are included with the price and there's a full bar. The usual assortment of staff whisk in and out making sure that plates are never left and that drinks are only occasionally empty.
Ambiance: Very basic and almost entirely unthemed. Nice Asian-meets-Art-n-Crafts lamps hang over the line area, but the interior of the buffet is semi-classy and utilitarian.

What about the food? After the bump, of course... After the bump. Including pictures!

Click through...

The Food: The human blueberry -- short, round, azure shirt, azure shorts -- in front of me in line assured me that although other buffets in the city may be more expensive -- the Wynn is apparently $40-ish, with longer lines -- none are better.

Highlights: It's amazing how many things at The Buffet seem fresh. The main seafood station is, for many, an obvious standout with large shrimp, smoked salmon and giant crab legs. To my mind, the crab legs were too salty. I like mine crab legs natural and sweet. But folks were loading their plates. They know how to win at buffets. I preferred some of the smaller things at the station, including a shrimp-and-scallop ceviche, which had the sweetness I wanted from the crab legs, thanks in large part to the presence of mango.

While obviously you don't win at a buffet by loading up on carbs -- EVERYBODY knows that -- The Bellagio takes great pride in their assortment of fresh baked breads -- at least five kinds that I counted, constantly being replenished. Bread is usually a trick, an afterthought, at buffets. This bread was good. The pizza was even better. They have a brick over out back and at least six different kinds of pizza were constantly recirculating including basics like cheese and pepperoni, a lurid green pesto and rock shrimp, and the BBQ chicken w/bacon pizza I had. The crush was good enough that I could have had more. Oh well. Only so much tummy.

Plus, if you're at a buffet in Vegas, you have to hit the carving stations. The Buffet at The Bellagio has freshly carved lamb, perfectly pink prime rib, gyro trimmings (with fresh pita) and Chicken Wellington (I'd have preferred beef). For me, though, the best item was the duck leg in peanut sauce, which was amazingly moist for mass-produced poultry.

There were entirely too many things I didn't try at the main stations, because the desserts looked too good. What other buffet do you know that has four entirely different types of bread pudding? I sampled key lime pie, lemon meringue, carrot cake and the miniature ramekins of crème brulee without ever realizing that I hadn't gotten anything with chocolate. That's impressive.

Lowlights: This is just a little detail, but if you're priding yourself on chilled seafood and sushi, what sane place surrounds those stations only with hot plates? I don't want to get back to my table to find out that my salmon roll has been cooked through.

The Buffet prides itself on the freshly prepared foods, which is why the carving station and the pizzas are always turning over and staying in ideal condition. Somehow that didn't work out for the Generic Asian Station. Even if they were being regularly replenished, the dim sum-style steamed pork buns were always dried out and oddly crunchy. The Singapore noodles were also dried out and I couldn't really get a distinct flavor from there. Nothing else at the station looked worth grabbing.

The fish at the sushi station was of fine quality, though a bit limited. Ahi and salmon. Period. Plus ahi and salmon poke. The rice with the various rolls had obviously been pre-formed in cannels, making it dense and chewy.

The salad bar is a meager afterthought. Then again, once you're playing $30 for a buffet -- and even vegetarians could find a decent number of tofu and vegetabular items -- you probably shouldn't be loading up on leaves and dressing.

Bottom Line: If it weren't for my desire to branch out and see the world, I could absolutely return to The Buffet at the Bellagio. There were many things I didn't get to that seemed appetizing. Meanwhile, The Buffet becomes gourmet on Friday and Saturday nights with the promise of Kobe-style beef. My previous recent buffet experiences in Las Vegas had been at the Tropicana and the Excalibur and the quality of the food at the Bellagio is noticeably higher.

P.S. I have several options for tonight's dinner buffet, but if anybody has any suggestions they wanna share... go for it. Just do it fast.

Dan in Las Vegas: Part I -- Overview

2008-08-14T11:28:00.000-07:00

So anyway, I took a week off from Zap2it to recharge my batteries. Actually, I had a bunch of goals, but the need to watch live-but-not-really coverage of the Olympics put a kibosh on much of that. But yeah, the goal was battery recharging. Somehow, in my warped version of "recharging," I decided it might be fun to drive off into the desert for a couple days. And in my warped version of "recharging," "drive off into the desert" became a couple days in Vegas.

Given that I'm typing this at 12:15 a.m. because I needed to cool off from The Strip (it's still around 85 degrees out), but I still intend to go back to some casino or another tonight... Not so much with the recharging.

But I probably won't post this until whenever I get out of bed tomorrow morning and maybe that'll be close to noonish, which would almost be recharging, except that I fear how warm my hotel room could get...

A few general and introductory thoughts after the bump, should you care... I'm not sure I've had enough to drink for them to be amusing.

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Travel Time: Last time I drove to Vegas, for my buddy Ezra's Bachelor Party, I was actually a passenger and the trip out took roughly seven hours, perhaps a smidge more. This time, door-to-door, I did the trip in 4:05, which includes a stop in Primm to get an energy drink. That's how long trips to Vegas should take, at least if you aren't flying.

You Get What You Pay For: My room at the Tropicana cost only $40 a night. Bless mid-week, August rates. Then again, my room is practically on the strip, I can't modify the temperature, the sofa has no springs and the bed is sortta caving in on itself. I opted to save $10 bucks a night rather than bumping up to The Tower at the Tropicana, which I know to be less skuzzy, albeit only slightly. The Tropicana has a smidge of that Old Vegas charm, but the fact that Sammy Davis Jr. got laid on my coach doesn't necessarily inspire the requisite nostalgic shivers, at least not out of me. All will be forgiven, though, if I can have a huge alcoholic beverage by the pool while reading the fourth book in the "Twilight" series. Ugh. Totally shouldn't have admitted that, right?

Americans Don't Go to Vegas Mid-Week: I've decided that *every* person in Vegas on a Wednesday night is Hungarian. Why Hungarian? Because listening in on conversations is like the hospital interrogation in "The Usual Suspects." Almost none of what I'm hearing makes sense, but I swear everybody keeps saying "Kaiser Soze!"

God Bless The Tackiness: Has the fountain at the Bellagio always used "God Bless the USA" as one of its swaying tunes? If so, I hadn't realized previously. If not, you haven't lived till you've heard jingoistic patriotism synchronized to a fountain in front of an Italian-themed casino next to an Ancient Roman-themed casino across the street from a Paris-themed casino.

I'm Gonna Get Pneumonia: As I may have mentioned, it's hot out here. Damn hot. Hotter than that, even. Tomorrow's forecast is for highs of 107, which is why God never intended for a resort community to be set up in the middle of the Nevada desert. Darned Jewish mobsters! Seriously, the draw of Vegas to people like Bugsy Siegel must have been some sort of vestigial "40 years in the desert" thing. Or maybe people just aren't supposed to go to Las Vegas for battery recharging in the middle of August. I can accept that as a possibility. In any case, though, between the sweltering heat outside and the hermetic air-conditioning inside, I should be ready to return to work next week with a cold. Unless I spend all of my time gambling at the Trop or at...

The Hooters Casino: Because I opted for the El Cheaper accommodations, my hotel room is actually closer to the Hooters Casino than to the Tropicana floor. So tonight, after walking from one end of The Strip to the other, losing about $5 bucks per casino, I ended up, at least for an hour, in the Hooters Casino, which is EVERYTHING you would imagine it to be. Yeah, it's a little sad and desperate (even by Vegas standards), but I walked into the Casino with $31 in my pocket and after that hour, I walked out with $31.50. HUZZAH!

Anywho... Time to go play some more slots. Tomorrow will be all Blackjack. Blackjack and battery recharging. But since The Tropicana appears not to believe in The Internet (neither cords in the room, nor WiFi anywhere), I won't post this until tomorrow. At that time I'll also hopefully post a review of The Buffet at The Bellagio...

MovieWatch: "Tropic Thunder"

2008-08-12T21:06:00.000-07:00

"Tropic Thunder"
Director: Ben Stiller
Fien Print Rating (Out of 100): 64
In a Nutshell: When critics are raving that "'Tropic Thunder' is the best comedy of the year!!!!" what are the really saying? Are they saying that Ben Stiller's Hollywood-action-satire is a fantastic comedy or are the complaining that the year's comedic pickings have been so slow and so unimpressive that *this* is what we've resorted to calling the year's best comedy?

If it's the latter, I can't necessarily disagree. I mean, I preferred "Pineapple Express," but that's sort of a personal preference and I'd acknowledge that I probably laughed out loud many more times at "Tropic Thunder." But, if I'm being completely honest, I've been so starved for big screen laughs that I found prolonged moments of pleasure watching the remarkable Anna Faris strut her stuff in the decidedly less-than-remarkable "The House Bunny."

But that doesn't mean that I'm not already getting the strong sense that "Tropic Thunder" is on the verge of being the most overrated, overhyped comedy in some time. But that's not a blurb they'd put on a poster.

The full review -- none of that stinkin' capsule review stuff -- is after the bump...

Click through...

Don't get me wrong. I'm not prepared to resent "Tropic Thunder" until the hype builds just a bit more. It's nice to see that more than 15 years after the premature cancellation of "The Ben Stiller Show," Ben Stiller has been able to go back to that sketch comedy well. Because "Tropic Thunder" is basically just a 100 minute version of a "Ben Stiller Show" action movie parody skit, expanded with a few fake trailers, a fake commercial and an awful lot of filler. And that filler was obviously so plentiful that the trailers and commercials are full of scenes and dialogue that aren't in the movie. "Tropic Thunder" is probably going to have a heck of a DVD.

The capable cast of stars are going through a series of bits and many of the -- heck, most of them -- are tremendously funny. The movie sets itself up perfectly with spot-on parody trailers for three movies featuring the stars of movie-within-a-movie "Tropic Thunder." Ben Stiller is the action guy, whose franchise has suffered from diminishing returns in its seventh installment. Jack Black is the low-brow comic promoting a makeup-heavy fart-driven comedy and Robert Downey Jr. is basically Russell Crowe, a temperamental Aussie Actor gunning for Oscar recognition in a movie about forbidden love.

All three actors, plus rapper-turned-actor Alpa Chino (Brandon T. Jackson) and young-star-on-the-rise Kevin Sandusky (Jay Baruchel) find themselves in a tropical jungle shooting a Vietnam movie.

What kind of movie is "Tropic Thunder" (the movie within the movie)? I'm not really sure. It's based on a best-selling war memoir by a crazed no-handed veteran (Nick Nolte, flawless cast), but it's being directed by an incompetent dolt (an amusing Steve Coogan) and micromanaged by Tom Cruise's bald, fat studio chief. As director and co-writer, Ben Stiller never commits to the aspirations of the meta-"Tropic Thunder." Are they making a bad movie? Are they making a movie they know is a bad movie? Do they think they're making a good movie, but it's a bad movie? The reverse? I have no idea. Because the movie-within-a-movie lacks focus, "Tropic Thunder" begins to lack focus when the movie becomes real for the actors. Stiller and fellow screenwriters Justin Therous and Etan Cohen are so invested in mocking the generic action movie that you want the overall picture to be a bit more self-aware when it becomes a generic action movie in and of itself.

"Tropic Thunder" absolutely has Hollywood's number, capturing the superficiality of the entertainment industry and its stars, poking fun at the illusions produced by the dream factory. "Tropic Thunder" has its pulse on Hollywood in a way that few fictional productions have, assuming you somehow haven't watched "Action," "Gross Pointe," "The Larry Sanders Show," "Singing in the Rain," "Network," "My Favorite Year" or several dozen industry satires. Hollywood likes laughing at itself, seemingly content that audiences outside of New York and Los Angeles don't actually give a shit about the behind-the-scenes machinations at the sausage plant.

Because of a well-crafted trailer and a group of A-list stars, "Tropic Thunder" is likely to be more successful than many of its inside baseball predecessors. The movie's been marketed broadly, so broadly that some audiences might not even know what they're laughing at. Is it enough to find it funny that Downey is playing a character playing a black character? For some viewers, it will be. Is it enough to find it funny to watch Jack Black twitch his way through drug withdrawal? For some viewers it will be. And Ben Stiller going native? Funny. Ben Stiller playing a mentally handicapped character? Well, for some viewers, that'll just be funny all on its own. Those are the viewers, incidentally, who advocates for the mentally handicapped are concerned about.

How much to most moviegoers actually care about the hilarity of an agent freaking out that his most important contract rider wasn't being fulfilled? How many viewers will be able to spot the eight or 10 different suits/producers/agents Cruise seems to be channeling? And as smart and self-aware as it is for Downey to lecture Stiller on how if you want an Oscar, you never go "full retard," how many casual viewers will be going through their favorite disabled Oscar-winners and how many will just be giggling at the use of the word "retard"? I'm not sure.

My biggest complaint with "Tropic Thunder" -- so sue me -- is that I wanted it to actually MEAN something. I wanted it to be more than witty, glib, meta-Hollywood snarkiness. I understand that I shouldn't be in any position to question or devalue a movie for going no deeper than meta-Hollywood snarkiness. I'm supposed to love and respect snarkiness in all of its forms.

But at the end of the movie, after the giggles had passed, I stopped and wondered: What does "Tropic Thunder" actually say about Hollywood other than that movies are full of artifice and actors are ego-driven jerks (who can actually be humans if you watch them under duress for long enough)? What does it actually say about Hollywood's artifice? What does it say about the people who construct the fiction? What does it say about the audience who consumes the fiction? What does it say about war? What does it say about Hollywood's construction of war? Given that the movie-within-a-movie is basically a parody of a half-dozen war movies that were made 10 or 15 or 20 years ago, what does it say about contemporary Hollywood? It doesn't say ANYTHING.

At every point, "Tropic Thunder" settles for finding laughs on the surface and turns away from making any sort of more challenging statement.

Take the Robert Downey Jr. character. Here's a guy who's in black-face for almost the entire movie. Is it racist? Heck no, because the joke is on the character and the absurdness and the superficiality of his gesture. But is there any sort of meaningful commentary on Hollywood's overall treatment of race? For all intents and purposes, the black character Downey's character is playing is a shameful stereotype and would be whether he was played by a white guy or Denzel Washington. But Brandon T. Jackson's Alpa Chino is only upset about the black-face and not in an interesting way, just in a "You're not black" way. Downey's character and the black-face could have been a gateway for all sorts of exploration of the functioning of an industry that would rather employ an Aussie actor in black-face than a strong black man. But no. Nothing. I might, in fact, have liked a plausible explanation for why Downey's character would have wanted this role in the first place other than the opportunity to play black.

And what about Stiller's "Simple Jack." Should it be taken as an affront on the mentally challenged? Heck no. The joke is completely at the expense of a brain-dead actor who sees this sort of broad and embarrassing characterization as his path to Oscar glory. But he doesn't get his Oscar and the movie fails. His decision is mocked and negatively sanctioned at every turn and the only people who are fans of "Simple Jack" are the isolated drug cartel who don't have access to any other movies. But as apt as Downey's lengthy speech about going "full retard" may be, it's just a rehashing of a joke that award-spotters -- they're a cottage industry out here -- have been making for years. There isn't a bold statement or a perceptive commentary being made.

You know who *should* probably be offended? Asians. The film's drug pushing villains are just out-of-nowhere caricatures. I think there was a way to actually handle the characters within the realm of parody. If, for example, the adversaries were mountain men who thought for some reason that they were still at war with the United States, then you could say that they were meant to mock the way Hollywood productions have traditionally treated the Vietnamese characters in Vietnam movies. I guess we're supposed to think they're even broader versions of the sort of Asian baddies Rambo or Chuck Norris used to dispatch, but again, it's a commentary on a genre that's been out-of-fashion for 15 years.

With the main actors, there's a certain familiarity from two of the three leads, which takes away from the pleasure. While obviously Ben Stiller has probably been considered too short and too Semitic to be an action lead, but he's played the blustery Alpha Male enough times that there are few surprises to how he plays Tugg Speedman. Similarly, Jack Black does the sort of even more uncomfortably intense Chris Farley thing that he does in his less subtle roles. I happen to like Black more when he underplays, but that doesn't mean that viewers won't love his character here. In fact, viewers will probably be content with the familiarity that both Stiller and Black bring to the table.

But I almost never found myself watching Black and Stiller. Forget the silly people suggesting he might be up for an Oscar for this performance. Downey is just having a lark here, as he -- an occasionally over-mannered actor himself at times -- has to imagine the way an Australian would imagine an African-American would look and sound. There are several scenes where I swear Downey breaks character and seems to giggle at what he's getting away with, but he's so good that you can't decide if he's breaking character as Downey or as Kirk Lazarus.

The other person who will be generating buzz out of the movie is Tom Cruise, whose part will eventually become central to the ad campaign, or at least as much of the part as they can show. I've seen several of the more zealous over-praisers try claiming that Cruise is unrecognizable. That's ridiculous. You never forget you're watching the former biggest movie star in the world in a bald-cap and a fat suit. What's important for Cruise is that you forget that the media has been training you to dislike and even fear Tom Cruise in recent years. He's in on the movie's joke and his engagement is infectious. Cruise's role is being presented as a cameo, but it's a pretty full-fledged supporting role. He's a contributor.

The movie I guess I wanted "Tropic Thunder" to be is Richard Rush's
"The Stunt Man," a satire of Hollywood so bitter and black that it still feels ahead of its time. For some reason, "The Stunt Man" is a relatively lost classic, but I'd urge readers to check out the DVD. "The Stunt Man" is funny. It's inside baseball. It's got one of Peter O'Toole's very best performances. And it has a lot to say about the movies, things that are still true, things that are more current than anything in "Tropic Thunder."

My Second Look at "The Dark Knight"

2008-08-09T13:37:00.001-07:00

In a Zap2it story yesterday, I wrote about the strong first day for "Pineapple Express" and the likelihood that the three week reign atop the box office for "The Dark Knight" was probably over. I may have been incorrect, as Christopher Nolan's film may have moved into the lead on Friday (there's some disagreement) and will probably make $25+ million again this weekend.

I contributed to that total, plunking down money for the first time to see "The Dark Knight" for a second time (I think that makes sense). I don't usually see movies twice in theaters. On DVD, sure. But I'm not sure I've seen a movie twice in the theaters since "Brick" and "Brokeback Mountain."

I've already given "The Dark Knight" the 2000-word treatment with the basic conclusion that it was the year's best film to date and probably the best comic book movie ever.

Some thoughts on a second viewing are after the bump... Since this isn't a review, I'm going to treat those comments like they're being written for somebody who has seen the movie, so there will be spoilers galore.

Click through...

So anyway, my thoughts upon revisitation...

It Is What I Thought It Was: I gave "The Dark Knight" an "86" on the Fien Print scale and then had to justify my overall scoring system to at least one commenter. Having rewatched the movie, I'm convinced that my numerical score was *exactly* right. By my scoring system, "The Dark Knight" got what it deserved. Watched for the very purpose of magnifying strengths and weaknesses, "The Dark Knight" is still far-and-away the year's best movie and I'll remove any hesitation I might have had: It's the best comic book movie ever made. Period. End scene.

Heath Ledger May Be Better Than I'd Thought: While there has been moderate backlash very slowly building against "The Dark Knight," beyond one infantile op-ed in the Los Angeles Times suggesting that given him an Oscar nomination would celebrate his lifestyle and send a bad message, nobody has backlashed on Heath Ledger. The performance was actually better than I remembered, with several key scenes standing out even better than before. I love Joker's inferiority complex at his first meeting with the crimelords, specifically when they attempt to minimize him and call him a freak. I could probably watch the Central Booking interrogation scenes on a loop, for his interactions with both Gary Oldman and Batman. And then the whole sequence in the nurse's uniform, culminating in his disappointment and hilarious confusion at the hospital only half-exploding, is both chilling and comedically brilliant. Mentioning those three scenes leaves out Joker's interaction with Bruce Wayne's fund raising friends, his semi-suicidal standoff with the BatCycle and the brilliant throwaway shot of Joker sticking his head out the window of the car escaping central booking.

The Plot Is Tighter Than I Thought: I have at least one friend who has accused me of overhyping the movie in the weeks before its release, leading to disappointment on his part. His main complaint was that the movie's plot is pretty loose and it's mostly just three interlocking character arcs without much of a narrative. I don't think that's true if you assume that The Joker's comment about just being a mad dog chasing a car is as much of a lie as his two, nearly three, different explanations for his scars. I think you have to assume that although the Joker is disappointed in the results of the two barges, everything else in the movie, even when it appears to be a failure for him, is a total success. He obviously wanted Rachel to die, not Dent. He obviously wanted the hospital destroyed more than he wanted the one Wayne Industries worker killed. His whole dalliance with the Mob was just a way to stir up that hornet's nest around Dent, the man poking his hand around the stinging insects. He wanted Dent brought down and Batman brought down to his level, the playing field in Gotham City totally equalized. In that light, with the Joker as a puppetmaster, every aspect of the plot actually builds very consciously. My major concern is that it builds to a third movie that we'll never see, because it builds to a third movie that features The Joker and requires some level of resolution beyond The Joker dangling from a building. I suspect that a third movie could include a computer generated shot of The Joker sitting in Arkham Asylum, but given just how easily escapable Arkham Asylum has always proven to be, it's doubtful that we'd be satisfied with that resolution.

Who Says the Action Scenes Aren't Coherent? One common complaint among the movie's few naysayers is that Christopher Nolan isn't an action director. I can't necessarily argue with that, but I also saw a couple complaints that the action sequences are incoherent, poorly edited together. I'm not sure there. I was never spatially confused for a second rewatching the movie. But no, the movie doesn't live in its action scenes, so much as its set-pieces. There isn't an ultra-memorable fight scene, but there are several memorable extended set-pieces that include action. Again... no real complaints on that front.

Three Things That Don't Fully Work For Me: The movie becomes ultra complex in its second half and some of the twists and turns aren't necessarily as effective as they ought to be.

The Mole in Gordon's Unit: Ramirez is immediately suspect and I hadn't remembered that there are at least two lines of planted dialogue mentioning her ailing mother in the hospital. The logic of her betrayal still falls flat for me, particularly after the confusing scene with Berg, the other cop who has a relative in the hospital. It's unnecessary complication to expect that this random officer would be willing to off Reese, much less that he'd be able to find himself in the car with the guy. So he ends up being both a red herring and yet not a red herring. All it does is makes me scratch my head.

The Two Barges: I get the point of the two barges, both in terms of what the Joker is hoping to do and how the choices on the barges play out dramatically. It still doesn't fully work for me. The sequence takes too long to develop and then the way it develops plays just for simple irony. The upstanding citizens are conflicted, become animals and then chicken out. The convicts are already animals, seem prepared to validate their positions as animals and then the one cross-eyed tattooed convict throws the detonator out the window. Other than irony -- morals where none are expected and immorality where morality would be expected -- is there a reason why the characters make the choices they make? If we had previously met the cross-eyed prisoner in some meaningful way and there was a backstory for his choice, it might play better. Ditto with the civilian who's finally unable to turn the key. Instead? It just doesn't play as well as it should.

Harvey Dent's Fall: There is at least one line of dialogue early in the movie in which the mayor explains to Harvey that his ability to prosecute the mobsters hangs entirely on his moral rectitude and that any indictments he gets might rise or fall on his remaining pure. This over-literalizes the idea that Gotham City has its Dark Knight, but also needs its White Knight. I think I might have liked to see just a little bit more on what Dent means to the city versus what Batman means and why it's so essential that Batman takes the fall to prevent the sullying of Dent's image. As it stands, the blood on Dent's hands isn't quite dark enough for me. He killed a couple crooked cops and the driver for a mob boss? That's not so bad. He goes that extra step too far putting Gordon's family in jeopardy, but I don't see why a selective truth wasn't an alternative. What I'm saying is that Dent's fall is far, but not far enough for it to send Batman off into exile.

Oscars? Ledger's nomination seems like a foregone conclusion. Again, I'm not going to predict a win with four months of movies still to come, but he's the frontrunner. Figure the movie for a slew of technical nominations -- editing, cinematography, two sound editing categories, etc. It's my opinion, one I've shared with several people, that if "The Dark Knight" passes $500 million at the domestic box office, it will also get a best picture nomination. We would have to have a hell of a high-quality autumn and winter for it not to deserve that honor. Meanwhile, "The Dark Knight" continues to hold down the status as the best movie of all-time, according to IMDB users. That's a little crazy. But we *are* talking about IMDB users here.

Moviewatch 4-Pack: "Pineapple Express," "The Wackness," "American Teen," "Hellboy II"

2008-08-08T11:43:00.000-07:00

When I first set up the format for my movie reviews, the "In a Nutshell" part of the review actually meant "In a Nutshell," since I was usually writing first quick reactions to movies I'd seen in press screenings and I didn't want to say too much, lest it be construed as an actual, formal, embargo-breaking review. Then, when my concentration moved back to TV, I started to use "In a Nutshell" to stand for "In 2000 Words or So," which is a pretty massive nutshell.

Since I've been frustrated by the backlog of blog reviews I haven't written, though, today I've decided to temporarily return to the nutshell, to the sort of capsule reviews I used to do back when I freelanced for LA Weekly.

So in any case, after the bump, you'll find reviews of "Pineapple Express," "American Teen," "The Wackness" and "Hellboy II: The Golden Army." None of the reviews is longer than 250 words, so they are, indeed, my reactions in a nutshell.

Click through...

"Pineapple Express"
Director: David Gordon Green
Fien Print Rating: 71
In a Nutshell: For a movie about a pair of stoners, "Pineapple Express" has mighty big aspirations. Well, no. Not "big" aspirations, but "varied." Yeah. That's the ticket. To my mind, the number of things "Pineapple Express" works as outweighs exactly how well, exactly, it does those things. So I liked the pothead aspect of the comedy, particularly James Franco's deliriously committed turn as a low-aspiration dealer. I liked the Judd Apatovian bromance, with Seth Rogen going against type as the straight-man and letting Franco control the comedy in every scene (with a healthy assist from Danny McBride, whose comedy style is like a less desperate Will Ferrell). I liked the obvious admiration for a particular breed of '80s action-comedy, with indie director David Gordon Green showing himself surprisingly capable or orchestrating a rousing car chase. I liked the utterly berserker warehouse climax, the culmination of a triangulated pursuit that occasionally reached Midnight Run-levels of enjoyment. And I liked that even with all of those genre elements in play, Green still gave several key sequences an unformed, unstructured low-budget feel. All that being said, I probably laughed less at "Pineapple Express" than at, say, "Superbad" or "Knocked Up." And I found the main characters and their relationships to be less likeable and appealing than large parts of "Forgetting Sarah Marshall." It's very much a "the whole is not equal to the sum of its parts" movie, but I found it more overall satisfying than, say, "Tropic Thunder" [review pending].

"American Teen"
Director: Nanette Burstein
Fien Print Rating: 58
In a Nutshell: A lot of critics are saying that "American Teen" is more realistic than MTV tripe like "The Hills," which is a bunch of bunk. The word they *mean* to use is "attainable," I think, because "American Teen" is every bit as over-edited, seemingly staged and generally contrived as "The Real Laguna Beach," but since it focuses on middle class white kids instead of rich white kids, critics feel more easily able to relate. Either way, Nanette Burstein's film achieves the somewhat unusual goal of proving that an unscripted movie about teens can be every bit as packed with cliches as a scripted high school movie, making the exact same general points -- high school is a cruel time, kids grow up too fast and our easy encapsulations of stereotypes aren't so useful all -- that John Hughes made over and over again 20 years ago. In the moment, "American Teen" is undeniably compelling, but its over-arced stories and all-too-carefully selected and manipulated characters become increasingly annoying the more you think about them. Burstein lacks the subtlety to leave anything open for debate or interpretation and most viewers will come out feeling exactly the same about every character. The director's goal is universality, but in the process of stripping the high school and the community of Warsaw, Indiana of anything that might be distinctive, Burstein achieves "generic" status instead. Burstein obviously would have preferred to make "Hannah Bailey, An American Girl," which might have been a better movie.

"The Wackness"
Director: Jonathan Levine
Fien Print Rating: 69
In a Nutshell: "The Wackness" won an Audience Award at Sundance, but Sony Pictures Classics has had a tough time convincing audiences at sea level to care. The sad thing is that "The Wackness" isn't some carefully pedigreed art film, it's a very simple, very pleasing coming-of-age story with a vaguely articulated period setting (New York City, 1994), a stoner's sense of humor and a kick-ass classic hip-hop soundtrack. All lazy eyes and slurred speech, Josh Peck is an oddly embraceable lead. He's like the more socially awkward brother of Leo Fitzpatrick's Telly from "Kids," with the key difference being that writer-director Jonathan Levine isn't going for some sort of grand cautionary tale with "The Wackness." This is really just the story of a directionless teen looking to sell pot and lose his virginity over one long-hot-summer, not some "Won't somebody please think of the children!" screed. Replacing anything high-minded with a "Let's get high, listen to Biggie and have awkward sex" ethos makes room enjoy the simpler pleasures like the burnt-out cinematography that seems to capture the heat radiating of the concrete, Ben Kingsley's gung-ho performance as a burnt-out shrink with a dreadful New York accent, Olivia Thirlby's undeniable energy as the young female lead and the sheer weirdness of seeing Mary-Kate Olsen as a hippie. Thinking back on the movie, I found myself a bit interested/concerned/irked by the way it erases any concept of diversity in New York City, but then Craig Mack's "Flava in Ya Ear" came on the soundtrack and I was distracted.

"Hellboy II: The Golden Army"
Director: Guillermo del Toro
Fien Print Rating: 61
In a Nutshell: Say this for Guillermo del Toro: The guy throws himself equally into every movie he makes, whether it's a historically rich prestige fairy tale or a comic book sequel. I just wonder what it says about del Toro's growth as a filmmaker that he was so easily able to switch aspirational tracks from "Pan's Labyrinth," my favorite movie of the past five years, to "Hellboy II: The Golden Army." Able to dispatch with the "normal" character (Rupert Evans' Myers) who made parts of the original movie so dull, del Toro is able to plunge back into the "Hellboy" universe with a surplus of visual ingenuity and a paucity of narrative momentum. Del Toro never lacks for memorable sequences: The nasty critters attacking the auction house, the teeming clandestine demon market, the marauding plant spirit and the winged healing seer are as memorable a quartet of creations as you'll see at the movie this year. But it's also hard to imagine any attempted franchise film overcoming a villain as tepid as Luke Goss' Prince Nuada, whose unengaging attempts to take over the Earth lead to the summer's latest CGI-on-CGI climactic battle, as Hellboy goes to war with an army made less of gold than of pixels. The movie's ethos of great ideas that serve no real purpose is embodied by the Seth MacFarlane-voiced Johann Krauss, a Germanic cloud of vapor that seems awesomely innovative at first, but eventually evaporates meaninglessly into the ether.

Man oh Manny that's a Trade

2008-07-31T15:26:00.000-07:00

[Last year at the trading deadline, I made it clear to anybody who would listen that the Red Sox had no use at all for Eric Gagne, but that the trade might not be a disaster because at least it kept Gagne away from the Yankees. That didn't exactly end up being the case. Really, putting Gagne on the Yankees would have been awesome for the Red Sox, but it wouldn't have made a difference because, heck, the Sox won the World Series. So today, at the trading deadline, the Red Sox traded Manny Ramirez and, well, I just wanna rant... As always, if you don't like the baseball postings, just skip by and there'll be something movie related in a day or two...]

What's the value for the best pure hitter of his generation and the best clutch hitter of the past 40 years?

Follow through after the bump for the answer...

Click through...

Turns out the answer to that question is: Manny Ramirez = Jason Bay - (Craig Hansen + Brandon Moss + $7 million)

The math of Thursday's (July 31) Red Sox fire sale just baffles me a little. Manny Ramirez's value appears to be so much less than a guy with a lower batting average, on-base percentage and slugging percentage that the Red Sox had to throw in two major league caliber players to sweeten the deal. Now, to be fair, Brandon Moss and Craig Hansen aren't *good* major league players, but they're on the 40-man roster and Hansen was, at one time, supposed to be the closer of the future for the Red Sox. But meanwhile, because Manny's value was apparently so low, not only did they have to throw two major league players into the pot, but they then had to add $7 million, or the value of Manny's remaining salary for the season.

And it's not like the Sox gave the $7 million to a small market team trying to make ends meet. No, they gave the money to the Dodgers, a team in baseball's second largest market, a franchise that's already apparently flush enough that they're going to pay the fat, bloated corpse of Andruw Jones $18 million to sit on the bench for the next two years. But now they're picking up $7 million from the Sox, just for fun. Gravy, as it were.

So after Thursday's trades, what can we say?

Well, the Dodgers obviously got better. They gave up a minor league pitcher and a third base prospect (already behind Casey Blake and Blake DeWitt on the depth chart) in exchange for the aforementioned best hitter of his generation. They didn't have to give up Matt Kemp or Andre Ethier or Jon Broxton and Chad Billingsley, any of whom could have been considered an acceptable price to pay to get back in the postseason picture and to regain some of the local spotlight from the California Angels. Should Manny help put the Dodgers into the postseason, and given the weakness of the NL West it sure seems plausible, the Dodgers will be able to reap the benefits of a player with 353 lifetime postseason at-bats, 24 postseason home runs and one World Series MVP award. In addition, if Manny leaves as a free agent in the off-season, that's two additional first round draft picks for the Dodgers. Plus, he's FREE, because the Sox are paying.

And the Pirates? Well, they're already a last-place team, but only barely, so they can't get any worse. They gave up a player they wanted to jettison anyway, making room for minor league outfield prospects who come with a lower price tag. Hansen and Moss can probably play right away and maybe Hansen's just gonna need a change of environment. And in Andy LaRoche, not only do they get a solid young third base prospect, but they unite the guy with brother Adam. VIVA LAROCHES! So they aren't a better team, but they aren't worse.

That leaves the Red Sox.

The deal makes sense to me in only one circumstance. If Tito Francona walked into Theo Epstein's office last night after the Angels finished sweeping the Sox and said, "This isn't worth it. I can't do this anymore and the team frankly agrees with me. We can't play with Manny for another day." If the manager demanded the trade, then it had to get made. If Francona decided, "I managed to hold this guy together long enough to get two World Series rings,but that's all I've got," then it was the right move. But it's hard to imagine it making the Red Sox better.

Bay's gonna have to learn to play the Green Monster, something Manny did very well despite his other defensive liabilities. He's also going to have to discover how to handle the Boston crowds and the Boston media, because heaven help him if his Red Sox career launches with a couple 0-5 games. Then, if the Red Sox managed to bounce back from their currently malaise, Bay's gonna have to show that he's been repressing an inner clutch hitter for all of those years he was shrouded in Pittsburgh. Jason Bay is a good baseball player. Don't get me wrong. But in his entirely big league career, he's never played a single INNING that meant anything, that had any pressure or urgency other than basic personal statistics. If it turns out that Jason Bay has The Eye of the Tiger, then Theo Epstein's gonna look like a genius. If Jason Bay runs hard, gets his uniform dirty and makes use of Fenway's peculiar dimensions, the Sox fans will love him. Golly, they've even learned how to love J.D. Drew this season.

But he's going to have to make up for the intangible threat that Ramirez provided just by standing in the on-deck circle. He's going to have to make up for the swagger Ramirez brought to the team. He's going to have to prove that last year's .418 slugging percentage was a fluke. And he's going to have to make up for the fact that an already scattershot bullpen has just become thinner. I'm not sure how he'll pull off that last one.

Meanwhile here's the key thing I want to say: I'm not blaming Manny here. Not at all. Over the years, I mocked Manny over and over again for his defense, for failing to run out ground balls, for failing to even trot on home runs. But for a decade, the Red Sox enabled the guy and joked about Manny being Manny. His behavior was never censored or restricted and, probably as a direct result, he got two World Series titles for Boston, something unthinkable five years ago. If the Red Sox finally get sick of the behavior, well, they were the enablers in the first place. Whenever Manny returns to Boston, I hope he's treated with respect in perpetuity, rather than earning the "Cheer the first time up, then boos forever" treatment that Johnny Damon has received (and richly deserved). Unless Manny signs with the Yankees in the off-season, in which case...

But still... Thanks for the memories, Manny!

It will just be interesting to see if Manny is as toxic as the Red Sox seem to have believed him to be. Looking over the roster in the last week, Epstein was obviously able to skip over the flailing bullpen, to ignored that the franchise's beloved and iconic catcher/captain is swinging the bat like a pitcher. He looked at the lackluster play and said, "If we get rid of Manny, everything will improve." The hitting, the starting pitching, the defense? All related to Manny's open signs of apathy or even antipathy. If

Epstein's correct, that's some brilliant maneuvering. As it stands now? I'm on the record as being unconvinced.

But I'd be happy to owe Jason Bay a big ol' apology in three months.

The "Princess and the Frog" trailer is some shameful s***

2008-07-30T21:49:00.000-07:00

Disney's already had some problems with civil rights activists about the upcoming 2-D animated musical "The Princess and the Frog." Turns out the advocates weren't just happy with Disney finally getting around to creating an African-American princess for the very first time. They also wanted the storyline to be, um, less offensive. Oh the nerve! A chronicle of the drama is here. But it seems that oodles of changes have already been made.

Well, the trailer's out and if it's not too late, perhaps they want to go back to the drawing board once more.

I'm only going to talk about two things...

1) The f***ing firefly. Sorry. We're talking about a kids movie here, so I shouldn't be swearing. But that's reflective of how visceral my reaction was to the last 10 seconds of the trailer. After 50 seconds of a pretty princess with at least vaguely racially specific features -- i.e. she isn't just Bella, Ariel or Amy Adams from "Enchanted" painted dark -- not smooching a frog, out of nowhere comes this jive-talking, toothless bug speaking with the thickest bayou accent imaginable. And I have to say that my instant reaction was "Oh my God, this is going to be like 'Song of the South' and this movie will have to be buried forever." My immediate read was that Disney was milking every imaginable stereotype of uneducated -- but inevitably WISE!!!! -- aged black masculinity imaginable. Give that fly a corncob pipe and a pimp walk and he could be Scarlett O'Hara's man-servant or one of the crows from "Dumbo." I mostly forgive the "Dumbo" stereotyping in that quaint "They didn't know any better, but at least they were trying" way. I went back and watched a second time and even though the firefly still looks like he's the sort of caricature of a cracked out bum Dave Chappelle might have parodied, I'm now figuring he's meant to just be Cajun, which may be just as inappropriate. Moreso, actually, because obviously Disney's people are cautious about offending African-American groups, but I'm skeptical the Cajuns have as strong a lobby. The character is [apparently] voiced by Jim Cummings, who is deservedly a huge star in the voiceover world. All respect to Jim Cummings. But Jim Cummings is also a white guy. Wikipedia tells me he spent extensive time in New Orleans, but again... I dunno if that makes it better. In fact, I'm pretty sure it doesn't. The problem here is the character and the direction, though, and not Cummings, who's just doing what he's being paid to do... We've just reached a point at which Disney should know better, particularly on a film on which they're so clearly trying to be progressive.

2) If I'm telling a story about the African-American 1920s New Orleans and I want somebody to do the score and songs, you know who I'm NOT going to? Randy Newman. Yes, nobody does cornball Americana like Randy Newman, but might this have been a good time to, you know, hire a musician actually FROM New Orleans? I seem to recall New Orleans having a tradition with indigenous -- i.e. not written by a nice rich guy from Los Angeles -- music. Or was I misinformed? Even if you were bound and determined to have the story of a black girl in New Orleans musically transcribed by a white dude, couldn't you have at least hired Harry Connick, Jr.? He's at least born and raised and somewhat trained in New Orleans. He's middlebrow and mainstream, but I've seen his commercials for the city post-Katrina. I buy him singing the song of New Orleans. He wouldn't be my top choice. But still..

Am I being hyper-sensitive? Maybe?

And I over-reacting just to get a blog post up since I haven't posted anything in a couple weeks? Possibly...

MovieWatch: "The Dark Knight"

2008-07-13T14:10:00.000-07:00

"The Dark Knight"
Director: Christopher Nolan
Fien Print Rating (Out of 100): 86
In a Nutshell: [I begin this posting with a polite apology for my absence of bloggage over the past week. I have, however, Twittered nearly 150 times at my Zap2it-affiliated Press Tour Twitter feed (Follow that feed now), which will continue to be glutted over the next two weeks by Press Tour and Comic-Con. Anywho... On to the review...]

Regular readers of this blog don't need the reminder that the Fien Print ratings scale is absurd. Friends have certainly mocked me for the proliferation of ratings in the mid-60s that have filled the summer months so far.

My response? I wasn't going to over-praise a mediocrity like "Iron Man" or "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" just to expand my ratings limits.

The reality is that Christopher Nolan's "The Dark Knight" is more than 20 mythical ratings points better than those two movies I listed or, for that matter, better than any other movie I've seen so far this year. The risk with a movie this good is overhyping it to the degree that people come out saying, "I was expecting cinema and all I got was a comic book movie."

So I'll say that I'm prepared to call "The Dark Knight" the finest comic book movie ever made and I would expect with some confidence to find it in my overall Top Five at the end of the year.

Quite simply: While "The Dark Knight" isn't without flaws, it is what you hope it will be.

But enough puffery. A review of measured substance after the bump...

Click through...

[There certainly will be spoilers here. That's unavoidable. They won't detailed spoilers and I sure as heck won't give away any of the most major plotpoints. But the fresher you want to be when you see the movie, the more you want to hold off on reading this review until after you've seen the movie. That, I guess, makes it less of a "review" and more of, as I've said before, an evaluative essay on the movie. So be it.]

The problem with Nolan's "Batman Begins," a movie that I quite enjoyed at the time, was that it seemed to go on forever. There was a lengthy origin story, followed by a loose series of short films in which Batman battled the Gotham mob, then Scarecrow, then Ra's Al Ghul. Within each of those movies, I found much to praise, but with no thematic or narrative throughline joining them, "Batman Begins" couldn't sustain itself for 140 minutes, at least not for repeat viewings.

So Nolan and co-writing brother Jonathan solved the problem.

"The Dark Knight" runs even longer than "Batman Begins," but its duration is justified by the fact that from the first to last scene, there's an arc unfolding, an arc that follows in the storied tradition of middle installments of cinematic trilogies. In Chapter One, we meet our hero and are awed by his superhuman status. In Chapter Two, we discover the limits of our hero and face his relative humanity.

Nolan make movies with a common undercurrent. Whether we're looking at "Memento" or "Insomnia" or "The Dark Knight" or "The Prestige," his heroes are men whose obsessions straddle the barrier between noble/productive and disturbing and self-consuming.

In "The Dark Knight," there are two sides to the coin. Newly introduced Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart) is driven by a legal and ethical imperative. He's determined to clean Gotham up by any legitimate means necessary. He's absolutely selfless in his quest, but he's limited by his status as a public figure and by rules and regulations that don't apply to Gotham's criminals. Batman (Christian Bale) is driven by a moral imperative. He's a vigilante and thus cares only about good versus evil. And thanks to his wealth and his assortment of awesome toys, he has no limitations. Except for his moral code, which places restricts the amount of wrong he's prepared to do right.

The "Dark Knight" script follows what happens to these two very good men when they face a man who has no limitations whatsoever. Heath Ledger's Joker is pure and malevolent id. He doesn't care about money or power, only chaos. He has none of the motivations or pathologies that Dent or Batman understand and none of the fears or weaknesses that they're accustomed to battling. If "Batman Begins" burdened Bruce Wayne/Batman with excessive origin and backstory, Joker has been gifted by the opposite. The Joker's purple suits and face-paint are what they are -- his sartorial choices go unexplained, as do his clown fetish and reluctance to wash his hair -- and the explanation for the gruesome scars that make his hideous smile are used as protean punchlines. We don't see his lair. We don't get to know his henchmen. He doesn't waste time brooding. He doesn't become romantically devoted to Vicky Vale. As much baggage as The Joker is doubtlessly packing on a psychological level, he doesn't burden the movie with it.

And that's the core of the movie. And it's a solid one. How do you do good if you live in a world where it's easier to do evil and where even the best of intentions and ideals inspire more wickedness than virtue?

To turn things over, as I love to do, to Yeats, "The best lack all conviction, while the worst/ Are full of passionate intensity."

I have to confess that I only fully appreciated the marvelous complexity that Nolan achieves in addressing this conundrum after watching the infantile lack of pragmatism in "Wanted." Because no, Nolan doesn't perfectly face the dueling journeys for Dent and Bruce Wayne and there certainly are times that you wish for more of the Joker and less internal struggle for the heroes. But much of that is caused by the excellence of Ledger's final completed screen role.

Those who are less enamored of "The Dark Knight" -- people who, in advance, make me sad -- will ask a very cynical question: Would Ledger's performance here be getting this same attention if he hadn't died this January? I wondered the same thing, albeit not in print, about Adrienne Shelly when "Waitress" came out to rave reviews. My cynicism was wrong there and the Ledger doubters will also be wrong.

Keep in mind that Jack Nicholson received a Golden Globe nomination for his performance as The Joker in the Tim Burton "Batman" and that he was at least somewhat in the Oscar discussion that year. It's just a showy roll. And Young Daniel was a huge fan of the Nicholson performance and even today I can reflect on it with much pleasure. The gist of the performance was that The Joker was a fun-house mirror version of Batman. As The Joker reflected, looking a the local newspaper, "Winged Freak Terrorizes [Gotham City]... Wait'll they get a load of me!"

But that quote meant one thing: That The Joker was *weirder* than Batman.

In "The Dark Knight," Ledger's Joker, looking at Batman, matter-of-factly observes, "You complete me!" The meaning is completely different. Batman's over-reasoned sense of order is just the other side of the coin to Joker's over-reasoned sense of anarchy.

And Ledger is quite awesome, giving a performance that's both mannered and actorly and completely off-the-rails in its sense of improvisation.

Want my comparison? Ledger's performance is like John Coltrane's "My Favorite Things." In the background there's a recognizable actor and an oft-played character and you can see occasional hints of previous Ledger performances and even of previous Joker interpretations. But those moments, as well-delivered as the are, are rare compared to the moments where he's just jamming by himself, doing whatever insane thing he and Nolan concocted together.

There are the hunched shoulders, the raw and flat and accent-free voice, the licking of the lips, the way he rarely seems to be looking straight-on at anybody (and when he does, it becomes even scarier). Those are all things that were carefully delivered and prepared. But Ledger's every line reading feels like it's coming from another planet. That mixture of calculation and free-wheeling is what Ledger's Joker is all about. Ledger is scary, frequently funny and impossible to take your eyes off of. The movie's energy flags when he's absent, but that's unavoidable.

And that doesn't mean that the film's other performances are lacking. Bale is still at his best when contrasting Bruce Wayne's actual agita with his playboy front, though there's much less of the latter persona in this movie. I'm still waiting, though, on a scripted explanation for the gravel-voiced rumble he affects as Batman.

Eckhart has less time to develop Harvey Dent's arc and even if he did, it would have been upstaged by Ledger at every turn. He's fine. And his make-up/effects in the last act are icky-awesome.

The other major new addition to the cast is Maggie Gyllenhaal, replacing Katie Holmes as Rachel Dawes. The character doesn't have a whole heap to do in the movie, but for what's required of her, Gyllenhaal is better suited than Holmes would have been.

The star-studded supporting cast is again superb. I want to, once again, single out Gary Oldman as Not-Yet-Commissioner Gordon. It's predictable for Morgan Freeman and Michael Caine to successfully embody decency and rectitude, but I remain genuinely amazed by how Nolan has steered the always grandiose Oldman into a performance this understated. He's gone two movies in this franchise without an iota of ham.

Two weeks ago, before this Press Tour onslaught began, I went back and rewatched "Insomnia," the only one of Nolan's post-"Following" movies I can't get completely behind. I just wanted to see if I'm missing something. I wasn't. It's still a movie of moments that doesn't add up, but on a second viewing I'm ready to put the blame for "Insomnia" completely Al Pacino, or rather Nolan's inability to direct Pacino into anything other than a Pacino performance.

Anyway... "Insomnia" aside, Nolan need prove nothing else to me and as good as "Memento" and "The Prestige" were, "The Dark Knight" is his pinnacle. If you look at the actors and at their performances and at the writing that guides them, you could argue that "The Dark Knight" is an intimate character drama.

But it's really a $200 million -- give or take -- summer blockbuster and there's absolutely no precedent for a director working on this scale to concentrate so equally and successfully on both the nuances of performance and absolute spectacle. That's a pretty big statement, I know.

Ledger *will* get his awards recognition -- be it inevitable nominations or even actual wins -- come the end-of-the-year and Nolan will deserve the same kind of honor, but the below-the-line talent will hopefully be remembered as well. Wally Pfister got Oscar nods for "Batman Begins" and "The Prestige" and he should expect another here. His use of Chicago in creating Gotham City is excellent, as the city is both recognizable for what it really is, but also pleasantly alien. Pfister shoots Chicago the way Chicago's mayor and City Council wish the city actually were. And in "Dark Knight," he does the same for Hong Kong in the movie's best Ledger-free sequence.

I can't emphasize this enough, kids: SEE "THE DARK KNIGHT" IN IMAX. SERIOUSLY!!!

Nolan and Pfister shot establishing shots and core action sequences in 65mm for the purpose of IMAX presentation and the IMAX-ready material is breathtaking from the movie's very first frame. Literally breathtaking. And there more than a half-dozen additional shots in the movie that produced a similar reaction, where my mouth was absolutely agape at the amount of information and clarity being delivered. There are occasional moments where the IMAX screen produced a sensory overload, but it's not overload in a Michael Bay way, which is a tribute to how Nolan shot the action scenes and how Lee Smith (the former Cubs closer?!?!?) edited them. The action scenes are taut and muscular and rely on expert stunt work and second unit photography rather than computer effects and post-"Matrix" whizbang. These are John Frankheimer/Don Siegel/John Sturges action scenes, paced out by a score featuring as much heroic bombast as Hans Zimmer can muster.

There. That's more than 2000 words to say that "The Dark Knight" is a superb movie, the year's best to date.

I probably should have just said that and saved us all some time!

[Finally, as I like to say, if you haven't read "Uncharted," go do that!!!!]

Fourth of July Reflections: Splattering food and shattering bats

2008-07-04T11:46:00.000-07:00

Happy 4th of July, dear readers.

I've gotta say that there are certain things for which high definition television was clearly designed. Those things include:

1) "So You Think You Can Dance." Where the graceful, athletic and generally smoking hot dancers only look more graceful, more athletic and more smoking hot on my 42" TV.

2) Boxing. Because you haven't lived til you've seen the sweat flying off a boxer's face in high definition, nor can you appreciate pugilism's brutality until you've watched a highly trained cut-man struggle to close a glistening gash in a tight close-up.

3) "Gossip Girl." There are lots of scripted shows that inexplicably improve in high definition, including "Eli Stone," a show I probably would have stopped watching entirely if not for high def. But the opulence of "Gossip Girl" is just made for hi-def, though millions of iTunes using teenyboppers disagree.

There are also, though, certain things for which high definition television was clearly not designed. Those things include:

1)Porn. Duh.

2)Competitive eating.

More thoughts on that, plus quick thoughts maple bats in baseball, after the bump.

Click though...

I've decided to impose a five hot dog Eat-Off for any moment of dispute in my own life.

That's how Friday morning's Nathan's Famous International Hot Dog Eating contest ended. For 10 minutes, Kobayashi and Joey Chestnut slummed franks down their gullets and, after the elapsed time was concluded, both master masticators had devoured 59 frankfurters. But they don't believe in ties at this event, thus a lifetime of training had to be distilled to a simple task: Which man was capable of ramming a handful of five squished, water-damped wieners down their throats fastest.

In the Eat-Off, the judges ruled that Chestnut had won, but I'm looking at my TV and I'm seeing gigantic hunks of unswallowed, beverage-bloated bun adhered to Chestnut's sweat-covered face. I don't necessarily want to see these details, but my TV gives me no choice. Yes, I could have watched on ESPN's low-def channel, but if Lot's wife taught me anything, it's that you should never look back. Actually, that's what Satchel Paige taught me. Same difference in the long-run. My point? How could Chestnut possibly have been ruled the winner with half of a hot dog still oozing down his jowel? For his part, Kobayashi was slower, but clean. In my mind, he's the true champion, even if that makes me look like a half-hearted patriot.

It was a disappointing end to a back-and-forth showdown that nearly rivaled last year's war, even if the announcer whipped out the priceless bon mot, "The passion is raw, but the hot dog is cooked," simultaneously evoking both the Fine Young Cannibals and Claude Levi-Strauss.

And really, this whole thing was just an excuse for me to link to last year's blog post on the competition.

And speaking of food flying everywhere -- Sepinwall says I could have done a small blog post just on this, but I view my blog more as a collection of essays than just short snippets ... subscribe to my Twitter Feed for the snippets -- what's up with maple bats in baseball?

I was watching the Sox-Rays the other night and in the course of nine innings, there were at least three or four shattered maple bats, including one that soared into the stands. Orel Hershiser, whose announcing work I find simultaneously annoying and informative, tells me that younger players like that the weight balance in maple bats are closer to the feel of the aluminum bats they used in high school and college, but they aren't structurally viable.

It's getting to the point where every game features one or more situation in which a pitcher or infielder or umpire dodges a shard of sharp splintered wood. It used to be that a broken bat was a sign of making poor contact with a specific kind of pitch, but now bats just break. And eventually something horrifying is going to happen. Last month ump Brian O'Nora had to go to the hospital to have a cut treated after a bat cut his face. He was OK, but eventually something worse will happen.

Baseball responds oddly in these circumstances. In all of my time watching the game, I've seen at least a dozen pitchers get hit in the head by batted balls, but I'd never seen a first or third base coach get hit by a foul ball. Last summer, though, Mike Coolbaugh, a minor league coach was tragically killed by a line drive. Statistically speaking, it was a totally isolated incident, but now you'll notice that major league first and third base coaches have to wear batting helmets like they're John Olerud (one of the greatest pure hitters of my lifetime, but not a Hall of Famer, if you're curious).

Why do I get the feeling that Major League Baseball isn't going to act on these shattering maple bats until a shard seriously injures a player or a fan? To me, this is a no-brainer. If baseball players survived just fine for 100 years with bats made of different woods that were more structurally sound and didn't shatter with nearly the same regularity, why not go back to that? I'm not sure how a baseball team is going to avoid a franchise crushing lawsuit when the first fan loses an ear or an eye or worse. Is that what it's going to take to make the change?

Now back to my pre-Press Tour screeners...

MovieWatch: "Wanted"

2008-06-29T10:17:00.000-07:00

"Wanted"
Director: Timur Bekmambetov
Fien Print Rating (Out of 100): 35
In a Nutshell: In reviewing Timur Bekmambetov's "Night Watch" back in early 2006, I wrote: "I don't remember an iota of the plot, a single memorable performance or anything emotional or thematic from the movie, but I'm not surprised that every studio wants a piece of director Timur Bekmambetov. He's worth watching."

Somehow, I think I meant that as a compliment, though after seeing "Wanted," Bekmambetov's studio breakout feature, I'm tempted to wonder why. The reality is that "Wanted" delivers *exactly* what I could logically have expected. It's loud, brash, audaciously cool and even more audaciously stupid. And I'm not talking stupid in a "Excuse me, I studied physics in high school and I'm aware that bullets, cars and trains can't do the things they do in this movie." No. Not at all.

Also of "Night Watch," I wrote, "For all of the film's aesthetic spunk, though, the ethical quandaries of this universe -- issues of fate, free will and human nature -- are as banal as anything that bogged down the last two 'Matrix' movies."

"Wanted" is actually even worse. It's "Fight Club" for people who didn't realize that "Fight Club" was a satire. It's "Fight Club" for people who prefer not to think, not to actually deal with any sort of commentary on modern society. Oh, and it should be noted that the needlessly reductive ideology of "Fight Club" frustrates the heck out of me, but I watch for David Fincher's brilliant handling of the material.

Anyway, the rant is gonna continue after the bump. For the record, my starting Fien Print rating on this one is a "40," but I have a feeling I'm going to talk myself down to something lower before I'm done.

Click through...

Stylized ultra-violence is all the rage these days and "Wanted" is no better than a more financially successful version of "Smokin' Aces" or "Shoot 'Em Up," two films in which the only goal was raising the stakes on the chaos, embracing the cartoonish anarchy. Now "Smokin' Aces" is a dreadful movie. And "Shoot 'Em Up" is a shockingly boring movie. Both movies at least have the sense to know they're not *about* a damn thing. They're not nihilistic, they're just nothing. With its dime-store ethics, "Wanted" is nearly dangerous in its degree of cluelessness.

James McAvoy, sporting an admirably acceptable American accent, is Wesley, a lifeless, passive, washed out cubicle monkey. He isn't a man at all until he discovers that his recently killed father was an assassin and he's genetically predisposed to be a killing machine himself.

What follows is a loveable saga of white male empowerment through violence. Now don't get me wrong, I also someday hope to undergo a process of remasculinization that includes punching somebody, killing somebody or, if we go back to the genre classic "Falling Down," bustin' up some minorities. I mean, for fuck sake, it's the reason millions of men nationwide are addicted to "Grand Theft Auto." The thing that "GTA" players don't seem to understand is that vicarious thrills will only help you regain your masculinity for so long. Eventually, you're going to have to go out there and get your hands dirty.

"Fight Club" at least had a sociological and anthropological explanation for why Edward Norton's character lost his mojo and, in the context of that initial explanation, his "What Would Tyler Durden Do?" lifestyle change makes some sense. Of course, with "Fight Club," the twist-ish ending to the movie makes a very clear value judgment on all of the choices that were made beforehand and recasts the entire movie through a new prism.

With "Wanted"? No dice. Wesley learns that he's a killer-by-birth, the heir to a guild of assassins (currently in negotiations with the AMPTP, one can only assume) following the instruction of the Loom of Fate, retaining balance in the universe by killing people the fates of determined need to be killed to keep humanity from filling our world with garbage and abandoning the planet in the hands of soon-to-be-semi-sentient clean-up robots with musical fetishes. Wait. Went too far there.

Anyway, the Assassins are compelling because the head guy is played by Morgan Freeman and we all know Morgan Freeman wouldn't be associated with anything even vaguely shady. Or something. Or maybe the Assassins are compelling because the combination of Angelina Jolie and guns is frightfully hot.

So when Wesley's character hears that their motto is "Kill one, save a thousand," he jumps right on board. Even when he hears that a Magical Loom is spitting out the killing instructions, it makes perfect sense to him. And even by the end of the movie, the "Kill one, save a thousand" message is never contested. Ick.

"Wanted" is based on a comic by Mark Millar and J.G. Jones, but it's really only based on the comic to a limited degree. In the comic, the society of assassins is really a group of supervillains killing off superheros. There's time travel, interdimensional jaunts and creatures made out of feces. In short, there was no way the narrative was *ever* going to make it to the big screen.

Nor was the morality. As I said, in the book, Wesley joins a cabal of highly skilled evildoers who view people as cattle. His training includes raping and killing hundreds of people, which he learns to do without blinking an eye.

Again, there was no way that shit was ever going to make it to the big screen.

But screenwriters Michael Brandt, Derek Haas and Chris Morgan want to have it both ways. They actually seem to want us to *like* Wesley, which Millar and Jones never wanted. In the process of trying to make us like Wesley -- a process helped by James McAvoy's perfectly fine performance -- they also just nod and condone the actions of the assassins' guild, as if there were some reasonable system of values in which it could be acceptable (the ending also comfortably condones the "kill one, save a thousand" message). In the book, the deaths of countless civilians can be ignored, because it's explained away as the action of these supervillains. In the movie, a train goes off the rails over some gorge or other and hundreds of civilians are almost certainly killed and the movie explicitly tries to distract the viewers from the carnage. I mean, Wesley's walking through a crowded train waving his gun, but when the train goes off the tracks -- it's in the trailer, I'm not spoiling anything -- suddenly all those people are never seen again. Save one Wesley, kill a thousand civilians? That's a fair ratio, right?

And why, if I might ask, does Wesley's pistol so totally replace his penis? One of the key signs that he's neutered in the beginning is that his bored girlfriend is having sex with Bright Abbott (or a character played by Chris Pratt). So he gets his manliness back with the gunfiring and all that stuff, but his libido? That never returns. He has Angelina Jolie wandering around him naked and she can do that because she knows that even if Wesley's comfortable killing, he's just a glorified castrati. At least in the book, Wesley gets to have sex with Jolie's character.

Message of the comic: Because you are complacent, you're allowing the villains to rule the world.

Message of the movie: It's not that killing is necessarily "right" or "good," but it's sure cool!

I think there may, incidentally, have been efforts at making "Wanted" into a "Fight Club"-style satire, but Bekmambetov's comic touch is lacking. I didn't laugh once at "Wanted," so even if the problem is just my sense of humor, that's a pretty big disconnect.

Some critics of "Wanted" are going to say that it's the victim of visual overkill. I'd say there's a difference between overkill and stylistic redundancy.

Assassins with the ability to make bullets bend at will? Well, that's stupid, but it's stupid *cool*. I dug it the first couple times it was demonstrated. I dug it when Wesley does it for the first time, bending a bullet around The Lovely Angelina. But after it's happened three, four, five, six times after that? It actually isn't cool anymore, because it apparently becomes something that anybody can do in any social circumstance with complete and total control over the bullets in question. By the end of the movie, what was initially special, is dull.

Two bullets smashing into each other in mid-air? Well, that's stupid, but it's stupid *cool*. And the first time it happened, I was all "WOOT!!!" Then, in the course of 10 minutes, it happens an additional three times. And just like that, the edge is off.

There are two or three other stylistic tics that Bekmambetov successfully drains the cool right out of. In "Night Watch," I was impressed by how rarely he repeated himself. In "Wanted," he can't seem to stop. And the speed with which his tricks wear out their welcome is amazing! I mean, It wasn't until half-way through the second "Matrix" movie that I began to doubt the Wachowskis had anything new to offer and two-thirds of the way through before I become offended.

Oh Good God this is long.

Point made, I guess. Or maybe "point stated for the record."

[OK... Last word... Total spoilers here. Vague, but total. The last scene of the movie is what screenwriters would call a "callback" to the first scene of the movie. The problem? The opening scene is set up as one thing and debunked without any alternative explanation being provided. What I'm saying is that it's a callback to the death of a man who's never identified and whose demise doesn't make a lick of different to the movie. It's a callback to NOTHING. I'd also emphasize that, unless I'm misremembering, it's a callback to a method of killing that Wesley shouldn't have had any knowledge of. He wasn't there and the killing method wouldn't have been in his father's records anywhere. And it isn't the first callback to that scene, since the breaking through glass with mosaic effect from the opening scene is also echoed. Again... A callback to NOTHING. That's just bad writing.]

[Finally, as I like to say, if you haven't read "Uncharted," go do that!!!!]

MovieWatch: "Wall*E"

2008-06-28T09:47:00.000-07:00

"Wall-E"
Director: Andrew Stanton
Fien Print Rating (Out of 100): 79
In a Nutshell: [After nearly six months of general cinematic disappointment and forcing myself out to see stuff like "Jumper" and "The Happening" just to keep my muscles flexing, I've had a couple really good days for movies. "The Pineapple Express," which I saw on Wednesday, is my favorite comedy of the year to date. And "The Dark Knight" is my favorite film overall. So what did that mean for my impressions of "Wall*E"?]

Two quick reactions from "Wall*E" that I wanna share.

#1: The closing credits -- an AWESOME survey of the history of art -- begin rolling and a kid next to me, probably three or four looks at his parents and says, "That was too long!"

#2: A group of college-ish kids are just gabbing up a storm about how they liked the movie and they're swapping the various visual references they caught -- "Blade Runner," "2001," "Toy Story" -- and how much they liked it. One finally says, "Yeah, but it was slow at the beginning and then it picked up." And his friends agreed.

I'm not necessarily sure I have commentary on either of those reactions. Or if I want to commit to either POV. Nor do I know how typical they're going to be. At 103 minutes, "Wall*E" isn't really a long movie by Pixar standards, but I'm not in any position to explain to a pre-schooler that 103 minutes isn't too long. Nor did I want to sit down and explain to the college students that the first 45 minutes of "Wall*E" were probably the most purely and magically cinematic I've seen at the movies in several years and that when "the pace picks up," that's when the movie becomes bland and conventional, to my mind.

More thoughts after the bump...

Click through...

For 45 minutes, without an iota of dialogue -- barring an obtrusive, expositional training video featuring a live-action Fred Willard, I mean -- "Wall*E" is a perfect silent movie. Our hero is an expressive walking trash compactor who -- like Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity -- far outlived his expected shelf life. Accompanied only by a disturbingly cute cockroach, he scuttles amidst the detritus of a human modernity, ineffectually cleaning up the mess the vacated people left of the planet. The Pixar team -- led by director Andrew Stanton -- give Wall*E an entirely original Earth to play around in, one that doesn't mimic any sort of post-apocalyptic wasteland cinema has previously offered. The key of "Wall*E" is that it isn't post-apocalyptic at all. When Earth ceased to be inhabitable, humanity made a half-hearted attempt to clean things up, but mostly abandoned the planet to cleaner-bots.

The real star is Ben Burtt, a legend of sound design. Not only does he sort of give Wall*E his limited voice, but the robot's every move is emotive and the landscape is aurally alive around him. Accompanied by the character's equally expressive eyes and limbs, it's no wonder that by the time Eve, an exploratory probe sent from humanity's interstellar outpost, arrives, audiences are in love with the main character. From there, we're even rooting for him to romance, even though part of us recognizes that what we're rooting for is for Number Five from "Short Circuit" to have sex with a flying iPod.

One of the essential tropes of silent comedy is a wonderment with new technology. In the works of Chaplin and Keaton and Lloyd, plots were frequently generated by the new gizmo of the moment, be it the car, the automated assembly line or, in several cases, the movie camera. Decades later, Jacques Tati would mine similar territory, as the writer-director-star's mostly wordless main characters would engage with the modern world as if it were something entirely unfamiliar. So many of those vintage silent or near-silent films can be boiled down to the theme: In a new world, there's always room for an old-fashioned man, while certain virtues -- that'd be "love," mostly -- never go out of style.

I really dig the alternative spin that "Wall*E" puts on that formula. Our hero lives in a bizarre world where it's been the technological present for nearly 700 years, where no advancements have been made at all, because nobody's been around to make them. With that stagnation in place, Wall*E's fascination isn't with the technology of the 21st or 22nd Century, whatever the peak of human engineering happened to be. He's nostalgic for a time before he existed. He looks at his peers as spare parts for when he has a malfunction, but he marvels at older equipment. If a Lloyd or Chaplin would find himself done in by something sleek and new, Wall*E is flummoxed by sporks and Rubix Cubes. He listens to old music and classical musicals and when he watches "Hello Dolly!" it's on a VHS cassette. Wall*E isn't exactly a Luddite, but he has a retro-appreciation. And he -- like Chaplin, Lloyd and Keaton -- is a romantic.

I think it all has to do with two different versions of filmic storytelling separated by 80 or 90 years and conveying a similar message: The silent film greats used the developing medium of cinema to say, "Look, no matter how advanced things get, the core virtues of storytelling and romance aren't suddenly going to change." It's a view of the world that's both progressive and yet conservative. The Pixar ethos has always been the same. It says, "Yes, we're using computers and we're making animation look more and more like real life, but don't be freaked out! We aren't abandoning character and heart in the process."

That may be the most intelligent thing I have to say about the movie, so you may wanna quit now.

Anyway, on Earth "Wall*E" has a charm and a sweetness that's entirely irresistible. Up in space, on the massive Axiom spaceship, "Wall*E" loses some of its charm. Suddenly, "Wall*E" is often a supporting character in his own story, as the Pixar team can't resist the need to introduce humans and conversation into the story. The people, having been raised for many generations in zero-gravity, are fat blobs who travel on hover-chairs and eschew their actual surroundings for virtual reality.

It took me a bit of thought to figure out why the human segment of "Wall*E" doesn't work narratively and here's the best I can come up with: Wall*E is the hero of the story. He's our hero. He's EVE's hero. He's the hero to the motley "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" gang of malfunctioning robots he accidentally rescues. But the humans on the Axiom don't recognize that he's *their* hero. And, in reality, he isn't. Eve has a directive. Wall*E will do anything to help Eve. But Eve doesn't care about the people on the ship. So Wall*E doesn't care about the people on the ship. So why should *we* care about the people on the ship. What's the opposite of collateral damage? Where simply by virtue of being near something positive, uninvolved civilians benefit? Collateral Improvement? That's what the people on the Axiom get. They get a savior they didn't ask for and didn't want and a savior who doesn't have any interest in saving them.

As I think about it, Wall*E's lack of interest in the humans is interesting. As I said before, he loves him some "Hello Dolly!" but when he gets aboard the axiom, he makes no connection between the floating tubs of jelly he meets and the dancing, singing stars of his favorite movie. Why doesn't he? Why does the story not refocus around Wall*E helping humanity rediscover its musical energy? I wonder.

The political message in "Wall*E" is simultaneously laid on thick and unconvincing. Yes, it's about rolling up your sleeves and doing your part to clean up the world, but is it REALLY? Wall*E cleans up the world because that's what he's programmed to do and he picked up the green seedling because it's something different that he's never seen before. It's both simple and primal and it has nothing to do with what's right or wrong, ethically, so I highly doubt that children are going to come away having gotten that as a message. And there's absolutely zero chance that they will internalize the message about rampant consumerism and waste. As they put on their Wall*E shirts and eat their Wall*E snacks from their Wall*E lunchboxes, what are the odds that they'll pick up on a message about how it's wrong to bow to every trend pushed on you by marketers? I'm much more certain that "Ratatouille" will spawn a generation of wee foodies than that "Wall*E" is going to yield millions of little independent-minded Green Party voters.

My complaints about "Wall*E" are quibbles. They're the reason I only really, really liked it, rather than necessarily loving it. "Wall*E" does nothing to tarnish the Pixar image, nor to make one wonder what it is that Pixar is doing that no other animation company seems to understand. And it isn't just the storytelling, which has always been Pixar's trump card. Surely by this point some other company should have poached enough Pixar animators or hired enough art school hot shots to catch up on an artistic level, but "Wall*E" is in a different aesthetic league from "Kung Fu Panda," for example. And it's not a small gulf.

On to the next movie!

[Finally, as I like to say, if you haven't read "Uncharted," go do that!!!!]

MovieWatch: "Hancock"

2008-06-27T12:52:00.000-07:00

"Hancock"
Director: Peter Berg
Fien Print Rating (Out of 100): 62
In a Nutshell: [I've got a problem here. I just saw "The Dark Knight" last night and it's superior enough that I feel uninspired in my attempts to justify the things I liked about the sloppy, mal-edited mess that is "Hancock." But it's too soon to review "The Dark Knight" (it's gonna top 80 on the silly and arbitrary Fien Print ratings scale), so I've gotta do what I've gotta do. Let's say I liked "Hancock" in the moment, but it hasn't gotten better.]

So you hear about a cool new concept for a comic book and you rush out and buy the first issue. You're intrigued by the premise and the set-up, but then you realize that you're a 31-year-old man and 31-year-old men don't buy comic books. Several months later, you decide that it's completely acceptable for a 31-year-old man to buy comic books and you try to catch up on the comic book series you enjoyed so much, but you missed two issues and the store only has the fourth issue, the conclusion of the first story arc. Well, it started well and ended well. You can't help but feel like you'd have understood it more if you'd read the two middle issues. But whatever.

That never happens to me. I only read comics after some friend or another tells me I'm supposed to and I only read trade paperbacks, so the arcs are all together, nicely bound start-to-finish.

But I can imagine what it would feel like.

And I imagine it would feel an awful lot like "Hancock."

Going back to the comic book analogy, I may need to add some modifications. I'm also now going to need you to imagine that between the first issue and the fourth, there were a number of creative changes, some big and some little. Maybe just the inker changed. But maybe a new artist came on board and suddenly the characters started looking completely different. And finally, by the end, there was a new writer and artist and inker and everything. And through it all, you keep saying, "Yeah, but there are things I'm liking here..."

Yeah. That's "Hancock."

Full review after the bump...

Click through...

[This review contains a lot of rambling but, as I glance over it, almost no spoilers at all.]

The story of the pre-production on "Hancock" (formerly titled "Tonight, He Comes") is the stuff of industry legend. There was a script by Vincent Ngo. Over the course of a decade, it was rewritten by Vince Gilligan and polished by everyone from John August to Akiva Goldsman as one director (Jonathan Mostow) after another (Michael Mann) circles and chimed in on the project before it was finally helmed by Peter Berg. There was reportedly a longer, R-rated take on the movie that was tested and discarded because if you've got a Will Smith movie and it's coming out at the 4th of July, it has to be short and it can't be R-rated.

So "Hancock" will hit theaters at 92 minutes and PG-13 and I don't think either one of those things was a good idea for the creative integrity of the movie. But if "Hancock" makes $150 million over the long 4th of July weekend, I doubt anybody is going to be crying about soiled creative integrity.

At its core -- whoever was responsible for that core, I can't speculate -- "Hancock" has a really good premise. Smith plays Hancock, a misanthropic alcoholic superhero with anger-management issues and deep insecurities. Because he hates himself, he can't help but screw up his attempts at altruism. In order to become a true and beloved superhero, he has to learn to love himself. Enter an kind-hearted PR man (an oxymoron never really explained, but well-played by Jason Bateman), who understands that strategies to improve Hancock's image.

Comic fans won't necessarily think this premise is all that fresh. The funny books are full of reluctant superheroes, full of aspiring do-gooders who are treated as freaks by a general population incapable of dealing with anybody outside of the norm. That is, in fact, one of the major themes of "The Dark Knight."

Smith has no objections to playing Hancock as initially unsympathetic. It's almost impossible not to like Smith as an actor because he doesn't play by that Brad Pitt "I might look like I'm a movie star, but I'm really a character actor" rule where every other performance has to have funny hair or a weird accent. And he also isn't like Tom Hanks in that way that Tom Hanks went from frothy comic actor to Multiple Oscar Winner Tom Hanks by pounding his way through a series of aggressively award-baiting movies until we figured out that he was SERIOUS. Smith is happy to be a star and he's happy to give audiences exactly what they want out of him, but in the corner of his better performances, you sense that he's pushing himself. "I Am Legend" was a Will Smith action movie with zombie-vampire-CG-albinos, but my favorite scenes where the ones where he conveyed the stir-crazy confusion of a man without social contact for 1000 days. He wasn't over-the-top nutty. But he was still nutty.

I feel the same way about his performance here, where he initially plays Hancock's unkempt side for laughs, but actually performs things much more subtly as we see Hancock beginning to care and beginning to believe in himself. The movie gets darker as it progresses and Smith gets better, albeit less funny. I don't doubt, though, that audiences are going to prefer the funny, lewd Hancock to the more emotional material. And I don't doubt that the studio pushed the final cut in a direction that emphasized Will Smith cracking wise.

I think there were probably drafts of the "Hancock" script that made it into a full-fledged deconstruction of the comic book genre, taking apart the expectations society places on its heroes and finding the tragic-comic value in a man with the ability to save the world, but not the inclination. Instead, the movie verges on being a parody or satire on the genre, which makes it a broader, less intelligent and less satisfying thing. The closer the movie goes to broad, crowd-pleasing comedy the worse it gets. Hancock threatening to insert one character's head into another character's ass? Vaguely funny. Hancock actually doing the deed? Much less funny, even with the soundtrack from "Sanford and Son" inexplicably playing in the background.

I'd bet those moments will have audiences hooting and whooping in the aisles -- heck, there were even applause at the press screening -- but they make it harder to take anything that comes afterward seriously. And "Hancock" requires you to take it seriously, since the last act takes at least a stab at explaining the movie's overall mythology. But the reveals about Hancock's true identity feel truncated and ill-formed. They suddenly require that you accept the gravity of the characters and their situation, a gravity that's been downplayed by every previous editing decision.

But they kinda had to play up the broad comedy, since the final movie lacks in several things that usually push narratives forward. There's no love story. There's no single threatening villain (though I bet there was a version of the script, film worthy of the talents of Eddie Marsan as the semi-baddie). I believe on your basic Dramatic Conflict flow chart, "Hancock" goes down as "Man versus Self," which isn't a very popcorn movie notion, so it's been downplayed in the final cut.

While I get the feeling that the studio bulldozed Berg in the editing room, he was a fortuitous choice for the movie, as a director who's proven capable with comedy, drama and action, occasionally blending several genre elements in the same film. I think Berg's versatility is the reason why nearly every individual scene of "Hancock" plays pretty well in isolation. The funny parts *do* get laughs. The action parts *are* exciting. And thanks largely to Smith, Bateman and Charlize Theron, I can't say that I didn't care about the characters, at least bit.

Aesthetically, Berg has Michael Mann's jittery intimacy down pat -- everything's in close-up and everything's hand-held. The thing he doesn't have is the thing that -- occasionally at least -- elevates Mann, which is a compositional confidence that helps pull everything together and sell the movies as a whole.

In the end, I'm a lot split on "Hancock." I enjoyed the movie in the moment, couldn't refute a single claim from colleagues about its failings and then felt the desire to stick up for the poor little guy after both industry trade papers rushed out with harsh pans.

I can't defend "Hancock" as an overall picture. It wants to be many things, but doesn't quite succeed at being any of them. I *think* it wants to say things about the nature of heroism and altruism in the 21st Century, but ultimately it kinda doesn't.

Seeing "Hancock" on Monday, I already knew I was seeing "The Dark Knight" on Thursday. It was a light snack before the big meal. There's no reason why it shouldn't be the same for general moviegoers. And maybe the best argument I can make for seeing the film is that perhaps if it's a huge success, that will allow Berg to release a 110 minute, unrated director's cut. That's the cut I want to see.

[I also wanna add that this is one of those instances where I'm pretty sure my score for the movie is too high. My point? "Hancock" isn't as bad as some people are saying it is. Nothing more...]

WTF, EW? Notes on the Best 100 movies of the past 25 years

2008-06-23T14:25:00.000-07:00

Another day, another list. Actually, another day another 30 or 40 lists, courtesy of the desperate-to-stay-in-business folks at Entertainment Weekly.

In this week's issue, the magazine lists 1000 random things. It's a good way to get page-views on the website and to stir up debate on the Internet. And, like every other good lap-dog, I'll take the bait. Mmmm... Bait... WORMY.

Before we go any further, here is the list of EW's 100 New Classics, or "the 100 best films from 1983 to 2008." It actually has 102 moves on it, because despite having 100 potential positions, the cowards at EW still insisted on lumping the entire "Lord of the Rings" trilogy into one movie. They didn't do the same for "Spider-Man" or the "Bourne" movies. Weenies. But that sort of refusal to make an actual choice is part of why the list stinks anyway.

One of my favorite expressions is "neither fish nor fowl" and the EW Top 100 list is neither fish nor fowl. It is, indeed, so nebulous and bland a list as to actually defeat its very purpose. Yes, EW wants the list to stir up discussion, but it's such a meaningless assemblage of movie names that there's almost no cause to argue. I don't get the impression the EW editorial staff knew what they were listing, so how can one reasonably say their list is wrong?

But I like to complain... Follow through after the bump for that complaining.

Click through...

With the EW list, the first and biggest problem is one of terminology. Are these the 100 films of the greatest cinematic merit of the past 25 years? Are they the films that were the most influential of the past 25 years? Are they the films that had the biggest impact on the overall popular culture? Are they the films that hold up best in a retrospective glance back over the past 25 years? Are they 100 films you need to have seen to claim more than two decades worth of cinematic literacy? The list seems to go back and forth and loses all meaning.

Look smack dab in the middle to see the split personality at work. At No. 46, you find "Children of Men," a movie that perhaps deserves higher placement on cinematic merit, but didn't necessarily impact the popular culture. Two places later, though, you find Brian DePalma's "Scarface," an atrocious movie on qualitative levels, but a piece of obvious lasting influence, particularly in the hip-hip community. And then, smack in the middle at No. 47, you get "Men in Black," a movie of negligible cinematic merit -- after a fun beginning it snoozes for nearly an hour -- no cultural impact and no meaningful place at all in the cinematic landscape. "Men in Black" -- a bit like "Beverly Hills Cop," which inexplicably sits at No. 61, 10 spots ahead of "Unforgiven" -- is nothing more than a successful popcorn movie. But there it is between the masterful ("Children of Men") and the influential ("Scarface") making you wonder what the standard of measurement was that brought them together.

The list is populist and inoffensive in the way you'd expect an Entertainment Weekly list to be and, as a result, it ends up making saying nothing. Why do a list like this at all if you're going to pussy out at the end.

The top movie of the last 25 years? "Pulp Fiction." Yawn. Leaving aside that in my book, "Pulp Fiction" goes behind both "Reservoir Dogs" and "Jackie Brown" (both excluded here) in Quentin Tarantino's body of work. But magazines have been calling "Pulp Fiction" the best film of the year, the decade, the century since the week after it opened. It's a movie that has been recognized and honored and celebrated to the point that recognizing it and honoring it and celebrating it accomplished nothing other than a reaction of, "Well duh." It produces exactly the sort of indifference that compilers of a list like this *ought* to want to avoid.

If you're making a list like this, you want to go out on a ledge and thumb your nose at the world as you declare...

"The Best Movie of the Past 25 Years Is 'Do the Right Thing.'" Then you can write a feature on how Spike Lee's critique of race relations in America is every bit as relevant today as 19 years ago, particularly as an African-American man is in a race for the White House. You talk about the integration of rap into mainstream cinema and the use of the commercial and music video aesthetic in Spike Lee's work. Some people disagree, but darnit... You said it.

Or you declare...

"The Best Movie of the Past 25 Years Is 'Three Kings.'" Then you can write a feature on how David O. Russell's movie is the smartest film about the first Iraq war and how it's an even smarter critique of our current failings in the Middle East. Then you say how even if you ignore the politics, it's still a smart, funny action movie and those don't get made nearly enough.

Hell, you declare...

"The Best Movie of the Past 25 Years Is 'Toy Story.'" I can't defend this one, but EW has it in the Top 5. So stand by it. Put your name on the DVD box. Own the position.

Entertainment Weekly can't own the position of calling "Pulp Fiction" the best movie of the past 25 years. It's a subjective decision and they've been scooped on it 1000 times over. They're just another voice in the chorus and if that makes the EW editorial staff happy, good for them. They listed 100 movies and said nothing.

But again... the terminology is meaningless.

Best movie from 1983 to 2008?

By my count, the list includes exactly five films in a language that isn't English. Better they should have made this a list of just the 100 best English language films of the past 25 years, because otherwise the editorial staff of EW is saying that in the past 25 years, no French or Italian or Japanese or Indian or Finnish or Russian filmmaker has made a SINGLE movie the equal of "Napoleon Dynamite." Is that really what this magazine wants to say? And the token foreign language choices are a bit silly anyway. If you're working with a 25 year period and you have one Pedro Almodovar movie to pick and you only choose the sanitized simplicity of "All About My Mother," that's a sign that you didn't really like Pedro Almodovar anyway.

And, by my count, the list includes exactly two nonfiction films. I won't get into putting "Crumb" higher on the list than "Hoop Dreams," though "Hoop Dreams" would have made my Top 10. But maybe they should have called the list the "100 best narrative, English-language films of the past 25 years." Because otherwise you're saying that Errol Morris hasn't made a movie better than "Napoleon Dynamite" in 25 years. Given the mainstream sensibilities at EW, I'm amazed that there isn't a token Michael Moore movie on the list, much less "An Inconvenient Truth" or "March of the Penguins." But I guess that if you're making room for "Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery," it's hard to open things up for another couple documentaries. But since the list isn't called "100 movies that made us giggle and that were turned into popular t-shirts," I guess I expect more.

I'm amazed by the number of genuinely important or influential filmmakers who somehow didn't make the cute. So we include "Napoleon Dynamite" but not "Clerks" or "Chasing Amy"? You can't slip in something by Jim Jarmusch? No "Sweet Hereafter" or "Exotica" for Atom Egoyan? And no nod to David Cronenberg by putting "The Fly" at No. 100? No room for Michael Mann? And unless this has suddenly become 1996 all over again, putting "Natural Born Killers" as Oliver Stone's lone slot can't really be justified.

Since I can and would happily make the argument that "Three Kings" could have topped a list of this kind, I'm disappointed that it isn't actually here at all. And "Groundhog Day" should have been in the Top 20. If "Casino Royale," a solid action movie that runs at least 35 minutes too long, belongs there...

Strange. I think they're better movies than "Napoleon Dynamite."

25 other movies I might have included on the list: "Babe," "Quiz Show," "Pan's Labyrinth," "Election," "Before Sunset," "Hard-Boiled," "Shawshank Redemption," "The Usual Suspects," "Gremlins," "Something Wild," "Midnight Run," "The Untouchables," "True Romance," "The Return of the Jedi," "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom," "A.I.: Artificial Intelligence," "Se7en," "Almost Famous," "City of Lost Children," "Bullets Over Broadway," "Big Night," "The Ice Storm," "Election" and "Wonder Boys."

I wrote that list in roughly a minute without giving any real thought. None of them are snotty, intellectual films. They'd all fit with the EW populist brand. They're just better movies than "Beverly Hills Cop." With your usual AFI list, I'd say I might want to replace 15 or 20 choices with my own favorites. With this EW list, I'd ditch half of the choices and start again.

I could also play all sorts of other games replacing and swapping films by various directors, but if those are the Paul Thomas Anderson or Coen Brothers movies EW wants, it's their list. If they think putting "Napoleon Dynamite" on a list like this makes them seem "cool" or "edgy" or "hip," I hope they gave a good long look at "My Big Fat Greek Wedding."

MovieWatch: "The Happening"

2008-06-21T15:51:00.000-07:00

"The Happening"
Director: M. Night Shyamalan
Fien Print Rating (Out of 100): 15
In a Nutshell: Yesterday afternoon was hot and the smell of tar was seeping insidiously into my apartment, making my head swim and my stomach spin. I'd like to blame those factors for my decision to go out and see "The Happening," but I know that I probably would have gone even if my apartment had been cool and clean and I hadn't had an expiring coupon in my wallet for a free popcorn.

I mean, I've given up on Shyamalan. He's a hack. "The Sixth Sense" was just something flukish that happened -- and a movie that I didn't really like all that much, even at the time -- and "Unbreakable" was just an statistically anomalous deviation from the norm. After "Signs" and "The Village" and "Lady in the Water," it's clear that those three movies represent Shyamalan's expected level of output, not anything that came before and that expecting anything better at this point is just folly. Even the things that he once did well -- twist endings, moody atmospherics, acceptable cast performances -- are no longer in evidence.

And yet you keep wondering when he'll hit bottom. Or at least I do. And the amazing thing is that as bad as "The Village" and "Lady in the Water" were, "The Happening" is even worse. It's Ed Wood bad. Shyamalan has said in interviews that all he aspired to do with "The Happening" was make the best B-movie viewers had ever seen. But what does it mean that he made an awful B-movie?

There's more review after the bump.

Click through...

[OK. There's not much to spoil about the movie, since there are no surprises or twists. I am, however, going to give away most worthwhile details about the movie, so if you really want to someday see this movie without being spoiled, I'm afraid I'll urge you to stop reading now.]

[No, really. Spoilers.]

So yeah. Shyamalan is calling this his B-movie, but why did he make somebody foot a $60 million budget for the production? And where did that money go? I know Mark Wahlberg is a star, but even if he made $15 million, there's still $45 million floating around on a relatively ugly movie -- despite Tak Fujimoto behind the camera -- that includes almost no special effects or production design. If I were an auditor, I'd want to investigate how Shyamalan required $60 million for this, while Danny Boyle made "28 Days Later for $8 million. It's mighty profligate.

"The Happening" is Stephen King's "Cell" meets John Wyndham's "Day of the Triffids." That is to say that the movie's underlying message has something to do with humans failing to properly communicate in a modern age, but at the end of the day, it's about the terror that comes when the plants start to attack.

Yes. The fucking plants.

But these aren't active and aggressive killer plants like in "Triffids" or "Little Shop of Horror." These are lazy and nefarious plants that prefer to release chemicals to have us kill ourselves.

Step up, plants. If you ever want to control the world, you're going to have to get your little green hands dirty.

But I digress. Because the plants aren't actually walking through the streets whacking people with their poisoned tentacles, "The Happening" boils down to two types of scenes, one in which people who don't care about kill themselves and the other in which Shyamalan sticks the camera in Mark Wahlberg's nostril and asks him to express confusion and disbelief.

Now that we're forever required to call him "Oscar nominee Marky Mark," I don't begrudge Wahlberg for feeling that this is the right time to expand his comfortable limits. We know he can play the brash guy, the smart-ass guy, the guy from the streets. When Wahlberg is at his best, it's easy to figure why he works: He looks like a hard-edged tough, like a Marine, like a soldier, like a gangster. But his voice is soft and surprisingly high, it's a disarming counterpoint to the way he looks. But I think you can probably look through Wahlberg's performances and determine that the softer he has to play overall, the worse he is. He's not an Everyman. That's what his character in "The Happening" requires and Wahlberg is too far against type. Asking this man to play a passive intellectual, to play a near-cuckolded husband, to attempt to think on-screen is just a waste. But Shyamalan's ego is too big to realize. This is a man who got Bruce Willis to play soft, who made Paul Giamatti into a romantic lead, who got Mel Gibson to play Jewish! That last part isn't true. But still, Shyamalan puts Wahlberg in close-up and tries to show his inner tumult and gets nothing back in return. I can't begin to say how much better "The Happening" would have been with an Ed Norton or a Sam Rockwell or a Ryan Gosling in the lead. Hell, you make "The Happening" a Ryan Gosling vehicle and I bet it rises to the level of mediocre in an instant.

With Wahlberg, you aren't sure if you're suppose to laugh at his confusion. It's also hard to know how to react to Zoey Deschanel, whose indie-quirky mannerisms are at odds with the sort of wooden-nonresponsive performances Shyamalan prefers. While a dozen (or more) actors could have played Wahlberg's part, I'm not sure which actress could have retained dignity in Deschanel's role, so I sympathized with her on that level. Meanwhile, this was the first time I ever watched a Zoey Deschanel performance and though, "Boy, she looks like her sister Emily!" What can I say? I like me some "Bones."

There was a strange realization that I had maybe 40 minutes into the movie: Some of what Shyamalan is trying to do in "The Happening" is *intentionally* funny. Wait. No. That's putting it the wrong way, because it implies that what's happening on screen *is* funny and with intent. No, what I mean to say is that Shyamalan isn't intending for certain things in "The Happening" to be taken seriously. Frank Collison as the wacky hot dog-loving nursery owner? That's supposed to be a silly, over-the-top B-movie archetype, the crazed Cassandra figure. Jeremy Strong as the hyper-nervous military figure? That's supposed to be a silly, over-the-top B-movie archetype, the bumbling soldier.

Thinking back over Shyamalan's body of work, though, I can't think of any time he's every been effectively funny. Levity isn't a tone he understands. He's like Ah-nold's Terminator at the end of "T-2," valiantly committing career suicide in an effort to try comedy, saying, "I know now why you laugh, but it is something I can never do." The key to selling those moments or characters as comic is in contrast, but are those two aforementioned characters any more one-dimensional and intentionally silly than Spencer Breslin and Robert Bailey Jr. suddenly popping up as teen sidekicks engaging in really awkward conversations? And why are those over-the-top characters supposed to be funny, but we're supposed to be jarred and intrigued and maybe scared when Betty Buckley pops up as the reclusive Mrs. Jones? Poor Betty Buckly.

Shyamalan still has a potent eye at times, but he lacks confidence in his imagery. The bodies falling from the sky or hanging from trees make for a potent visual. But they should be chilling and not necessarily scary, per se. Shyamalan uses the soundtrack, both the over-amplified foley work and James Newton Howard's score, to try to make viewers jump.

Why does he need to do that? "The Happening" isn't even vaguely scary. The entire second half of the movie boils down to characters fleeing from the breeze. Oh no! The ferns are gonna get me! But Shyamalan keeps pushing for those scares, keeps setting up his shots as if something terrifying will be there around the next corner, but every one of those loaded Hitchcockian angles is a cheat that he never intends to pay off. Because he can't. He can't change the fact that... again... it's just the wind and a bush.

The glory of the 1950s creature features that Shyamalan would have done well to better emulate is that as absurd as it might have been for an ant to become gigantic and terrorize a town, you just needed to say the word "nuclear accident" and viewers were on board. On one hand, Shyamalan wants to drive home a point that nature is hard to explain and we still don't understand why the birds and the bees and the flowers and the trees operate the way they do. And he tosses out chemical spills and terrorism and nuclear accidents as convenient scapegoats that, in this case, fail to provide adequate explanations. It's an environmental thriller, but after the first act, he doesn't blame global warming or climate change or anything like that, so the asinine critics calling this a horror movie that only Al Gore could love are reading in explanations that Shyamalan purposely avoids. If, however, the culprit is impossible to comprehend... STOP TRYING TO MAKE US BELIEVE IT COULD HAPPEN. Characters keep providing botanical evidence and real world precedent, telling stories that seem really out of place in context, but the more that somebody tries telling me that something like this really could happen, the more I stop and go "Not like this, it couldn't." Because Shyamalan can't decide if he wants to make nature unknowable or if he wants to anthropomorphize it to the point at which plants have strategies, motivations and desires. And once you're anthropomorphizing the plants to that degree, they might as well sing and dance.

And in the place of a twist ending, Shyamalan substitutes two talking heads on a television screaming at each other about the events of the movie, again trying to explain how unexplainable everything is. As I look back at my Zap2it review for "Lady in the Water," I complain about the exact same thing. Shyamalan's movie's all have a thematic undercurrent about belief and faith, but the filmmaker refuses to trust that his audiences will fully believe in him.

The more you say, the less things are still spooky.

But Shyamalan can't resist blabbing. For a script with so little actual dialogue, at least 80 percent of it is superfluous. How many times must Wahlberg say, "Oh my god!" How many times, in the midst of a horrifying global event, must Deschanel's character lean over and say, "I'm scared." We know! Or Deschanel's standing in a parking lot. She and Wahlberg are looking for a car. Deschanel says, "There's a car," at the exact second that a car pulls up directly next to her in the lot.

There are times where it really seems like Shyamalan doesn't get the English language. Like John Leguizamo's character is saying where his unseen wife is heading and he says something like, "She's going to New Jersey, to the town of Princeton." "To the town of Princeton." As if long-term residents of Philly needed clarification that Princeton is a town. In New Jersey. It's strange that the addition of one or two extra words in a sentence would irk me so, but Shyamalan's characters do that all the time and it's just not the way people talk.

And groups don't behave the way Shyamalan seems to think. In at least three moments of chaos, every time one person talks, the rest of the group is silent. Then, when one person declares, "Let's go," the group bolts out the door in unison. He has no understanding of group-think or mob-mentality or the ways that people under stress respond to this sort of communal horror.

The only *good* part of that shortcoming is that Shyalaman never lets "The Happening" become a 9/11 parable. The Evil Plants aren't stand-ins for The Terrorists. It's almost appealingly naive and post-ironic how Shyamalan uses bodies falling from the top of a building as an visual with no referentiality to the people jumping from the World Trade Center. The image has become iconic, but Shyamalan is stubborn enough to ignore it.

OK. I'm at the point where I could either ramble on, or I could go to the gym.

I've given this movie more time than it deserves already...

[Finally, as I like to say, if you haven't read "Uncharted," go do that!!!!]

Is Curt Schilling a Hall of Famer?

2008-06-20T13:51:00.000-07:00

Readers of this blog know that I'm a Red Sox homer. And people who have been to baseball games with me in recent years know that I'm prone to wearing my official MLB Curt Schilling jersey. Just for fun. And the most exciting game I've ever been to was Curt Schilling's near-no-hitter last June.

I mean, I love Curt Schilling despite the fact that I often really really really wish he'd, um, shut up.

So today, with Schilling discussing his pending surgery and potential retirement with just about anybody who would listen -- If you wanna do an interview, Curt, I'm game -- I took pause.

If Schilling never throws another pitch, he retires with 216 wins, 3116 Ks and a lifetime 3.46 ERA. More than that, he retires as The Guy With The Bloody Sock, a postseason warrior who will never need to buy another drink in New England as long as he lives. He's got three World Series rings. He'll go out with a reputation as a Big Game Stud.

But does he belong in the Hall of Fame?

Follow through after the bump for some rambling. And if you don't care, a movie-related post'll probably be up tonight or tomorrow...

Click through...

I started watching baseball in the early-to-mid-80s and when I think of the Big Game pitchers of my youth, the hurlers whose baseball cards I stockpiled, none of them are in the Hall.

I think of Dave Stewart (168-129, 3.95 ERA), of Bret Saberhagen (167-117, 3:34 ERA), of Orel Hershiser (204-150, 3.48 ERA) of David Cone (194-126, 3.46 ERA). None of those guys are going to the Hall. Want me to try a ridiculous comparison as I think back to the big-time pitchers of my youth? Try Dave Stieb, with his 176 wins and only 137 losses despite playing the first half of his career on some of the worst teams in baseball history. Stieb's lifetime ERA? 3.44. He was a seven-time All-Star (Toronto was short on options in those early years) and was in the Cy Young Top 10 four times, same as Schilling. And nobody in their right mind took Dave Stieb seriously as a Hall of Famer. But growing up? He was a favorite of mine.

The guy I really think of most, though, is Jack Morris. I've argued Morris' case before and, in this context, I'll do it again. A record of 254-186 and a difficult-to-question status as the best pitcher of the '80s, which I acknowledge is an arbitrary distinction. His ERA of 3.90 was high and his strikeouts (2478) were low. He was in the Top 5 in Cy Young voting five times, which is one more than Schilling.

In the postseason, he'll always have the 10-inning CG-SHO Game 7 win from 1991. That's about as defining a single performance as you could possible get. But he also won a world series in 1984 with the Tigers and another in 1992 with the Blue Jays. Granted that he had NOTHING to do with that 1992 title, as he lost three games in that postseason, but he won two games in each of his prior World Series and threw three complete games. He was a horse. He was THE horse.

Want another comparison who seems valid to me and isn't in the Hall? How about a Mickey Lolich, whose stat line reads 217-191, 2832 Ks, 3.44 ERA, 195 CG, 41 SHO. Remarkably similar to Schilling's on several levels. And Lolich had his best individual seasons after the pitching mound was lowered post-1968. When he retired, no lefty in baseball history had more Ks.

But if we let the bloody sock and the co-Series MVP make Schilling a Hall of Famer, surely Lolich's 1968 World Series should carried equal weight? He won three games, completing all of them. And facing off against the greatest single-season pitcher the game has ever seen, he beat Bob Gibson in Game 7. Lolich was in the Hall discussion, but he never REALLY threatened induction.

Baseball Reference's most similar pitchers to Schilling? Kevin Brown, Bob Welch, Hershiser and Mike Mussina. Obviously "similarity" doesn't take intangibles into account, but still...

But who, from the current generation of starting pitchers, is going to make the Hall of Fame?

The Three Braves are locks. Maddux, Glavine and Smoltz should retire after this season and they should all go into Cooperstown together, albeit with the tacit acknowledgment that if Smoltz hadn't done the closer thing for three-and-a-half seasons, he wouldn't have saved his arm for those last three seasons as a starter and his Hall status would be cloudier. And perhaps there should be some tacit acknowledgement that the Braves REALLY ought to have won more than one World Series with a starting rotation led by three first-ballot Hall of Fame pitchers.

Who else?

Randy Johnson's easy. Pedro Martinez is easy, though his window-of-dominance was nearly Koufax-esque in its brevity.

Since I've been outspoken in my support of the Hall of Fame candidacies of Mark McGwire and Barry Bonds, I can't be a hypocrite on Roger Clemens. He'd get my vote.

But who else?

Mussina? That 260-148 record is utterly insane, but the lack of World Series titles and 20-win seasons is pretty crazy, too. Mussina has been a very good pitcher for 15 years. But do you realize that he hasn't had an ERA under 3.00 for a season since his first full season in the bigs? If he sticks around for two or three years, he'll probably get near-ish to 300 wins and he'll probably pass 3000 Ks. But was Mike Mussina a better pitcher than Tommy John? Or Bert Blyleven? Or Jim Kaat? Just asking... Was he a better pitcher than Schilling?

Things are going to get even worse after that. Look at the great pitchers in their low 30s... Tim Hudson's hit a wall. Roy Oswalt may have hit a wall. Roy Halladay's a horse, but he gets hurt every year. There's a very plausible reality that the career statistical measures for pitchers are going to have to be dramatically realigned after Mussina retires. Johan Santana has been the best starting pitcher in baseball for six years, but he finds himself at 29 with only 100 career wins.

My point? If you look back by the standards of baseball history, Schilling really is *not* a Hall of Famer. Or other people need to get in first for me to be satisfied. But looking forward, if Schilling isn't the standard by which you judge a Hall of Fame pitcher, pitchers may never be inducted ever again.

WTF, AFI? Notes on 10 AFI Top 10s

2008-06-18T12:31:00.000-07:00

It's a pretty pointless thing that movie bloggers do whenever the AFI launches its latest Top 100 list. We rant and rave as if any Top 100 list other than our own would have satisfied us. And, if I'm being honest, I probably wouldn't like my own Top 100 list very much either, depending on what side of the bed I happened to wake up on.

Thankfully, the AFI's new list-o-rama is typically contestable, as its broken things down to 10 individual Top 10 lists in a variety of genres. One could certainly get plenty irked by the choice of genres, but they categorization within each genre and then by the actual selections. Then there are all of the usual AFI problems about lamentably absent older films, lamentably absent recent films and the weird definitions of what constitutes an "American" film anyway.

Some of the genres I'm maybe 80% or 90% happy with. Then there are the two genres in which my favorite films didn't even make the Top 10. And then there's the genre that never should have been included at all.

I've already copied down each of the Top 10 lists for my straight-forward Zap2it news story, so I'm not going to do that again here. But after the bump, I'll do a quick assortment of complaints for each genre. It's what I do.

Click through...

Animation: I'm just going to say it: "Snow White" is overrated. Wildly. It's a movie with maybe two or three memorable sequences elevated by its "FIRST!!!!" status. But the AFI voters have always thumbed their noses at plenty of other "FIRST!!!" movies, things like "Birth of a Nation." I guess I'm fine with "Snow White" making the Top 10 in general, but it's in the top spot by default. Then again, I'm problematic because I happen to truly believe that "Dumbo" is the true and unrecognized peak of Disney animation and it would have received my top vote. I'd have given my top Pixar slot to "The Incredibles," which also didn't make the list. Plus I'm part of the group that figures "Toy Story 2" is a better movie than the first "Toy Story." So sue me. Would I have pulled "Shrek" and "The Lion King" to make room for "Iron Giant" and maybe "An American Tail"? Very possibly.

Romantic Comedy: The best romantic comedy ever made, if you ask me, is Billy Wilder's "The Apartment." It's not here so that AFI voters could vote for freakin' "Sleepless in Seattle." To my mind, that's inexcusable. I'd also advocate extremely strongly for "Bringing Up Baby," for something Rock Hudson/Doris Day-y ("Pillow Talk"?) and for "Say Anything." There also has to be something better than "Roman Holiday" out there, y'all. There has to be. But AFI voters love that dinky movie. I'm trying to think of other viable alternatives to "Sleepless in Seattle." Something with Julia Roberts, maybe? "Notting Hill"? Is "Sherlock Jr" a romantic comedy? I think it probably is and an addition silent film would help the list.

Western: This is perhaps my favorite of the AFI categories just because I have no problems keeping #s 1-9. I might do a little shuffling here or there, but I'm OK with them. "Cat Ballou" is just silly here. That does, however, leave just one position to be filled by something like "Rio Bravo," "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance," "The Outlaw Josey Wales," "My Darling Clementine" or even "The Last Picture Show," which was categorized here by the AFI. Then you get into issues of why, exactly, "The Third Man" or "Lawrence of Arabia" are fair game and "The Good, The Bad and the Ugly" isn't. I'd pick "Liberty Valance" for my #10 slot.

Sports: I know that it makes people like Billy Crystal get weak in the knees as the weep over their childhood Bronx memories, but "The Pride of the Yankees" is a bad movie. Not a so-so movie or a mediocre movie. It's BAD. Everything else in that Top 10 is lessened because of it, which is too bad, because eight of the 10 (assuming you happen to agree that "Jerry Maguire" is a sports movie) are perfectly satisfying. I'd pull "Yankees" and "National Velvet." That would then give me room for "Slapshot" or "Karate Kid" or "The Natural" or "Tin Cup" or "Miracle" or "The Rookie" or "Friday Night Lights" or, if we need an older movie, Harold Lloyd's "The Freshman."

Mystery: Even if I disagree with some of the ordering and some of the selections, this is a good list of 10 movies. VERY good. I'd put "Chinatown" over "Vertigo," but I won't hate you if you prefer the Hitchcock. I would also move "The Third Man" up to three and "North by Northwest" to four. I wouldn't cry over losing "Laura" entirely, nor "The Usual Suspects," though I really appreciate both movies. I'd also question how, exactly, "Blue Velvet" comes to be a mystery. But I'll leave it there. But you have to get the Coen Brothers onto one of these lists somewhere and Mystery would be the right home for "Blood Simple" or "Fargo" or even "The Big Lebowski." I also wouldn't quibble with something out of left field here, like Brian DePalma's "Blow Out." This could also be the home for something like "L.A. Confidential." Is "Touch of Evil" a mystery? It ought to be. Oooh and since "Citizen Kane" didn't make the cut anywhere else, how about putting it up here?

Fantasy: I really can't deal with the weird assortment of movies in this category. I have no way of comparing "Groundhog Day" to "King Kong" to "Miracle on 34th Street" to "Lord of the Rings." And I don't know how the voters did either. Perhaps this was the category, though, where a superhero movie could have made the cut? The Donner "Superman" maybe? Is this where "Babe" should have been? If so, that's Top 5 for me. Based on the other films that appeared to be on the ballot, I could have found room for one or two out of "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?," "Purple Rose of Cairo" and maybe "Brazil."

Sci-Fi: Look, I just don't like "2001." Sorry. It maybe comes in at No. 10 on my ballot as a nod to convention. In fact? Pull it entirely. And pull "The Day the Earth Stood Still," which isn't a bad movie but still... I'd also replace the original "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" with the '70s Phillip Kaufman version, but that's just me. I'd also pull "A New Hope" with "Empire Strikes Back." But given two fresh spots, what would I add? The David Cronenberg version of "The Fly," for sure. Since the ballot included "The Invisible Man" and the list needs a bit more seasoning, I'd add that too. But I'd accept arguments for "The Matrix," Planet of the Apes" and, in particular, "Children of Men."

Gangster: I put "Godfather II" over "Godfather I" every time, but so it goes. The real abomination here, obviously, is the Pacino "Scarface," which goes far below "The Untouchables" on my list of 1980s DePalma gangster movies. That's gone from my list. I'm also not a huge fan of "The Public Enemy." And I'd put "Reservoir Dogs" in ahead of "Pulp Fiction." So again, that leaves me with two new spaces to fill. The first slot goes to "Miller's Crossing" and the second to "Touch of Evil," which was categorized here by the AFI. Strangely, the AFI also had "Some Like It Hot" in the Gangster genre. So be it. It still doesn't make my list.

Courtroom Drama: Why was *this* the genre AFI decided to do? Why not war movies? Prison movies? Movies about movies? Or so many others... Because this is a totally mediocre Top 10, compiled mostly of serviceable and boxy filmed plays with minimal cinematic merit. "In Cold Blood" may actually be the best of the flat lot and, if memory serves, it doesn't spend much time in the courtroom at all. But when you're stuck with "Kramer vs. Kramer" at No. 3, you've just got to go back to the drawing board. And the choices people didn't vote for weren't much better. This is just dismal.

Epic: First off, y'all, enough with the revisionist hatin' on "Gone With the Wind." If the category is "epic," it comes in right behind "Lawrence of Arabia" in my book. I don't think either of the Heston movies are good enough to deserve a place on this list and I don't think either of the Spielberg movies are really "epics" per se. The standard appears to have been "Long movies set in the past." Of the movies on the ballot that didn't make the cut, I'd have voted for "Apocalypse Now" and anything affiliated with David Lean, which means "The Bridge on the River Kwai" and "Doctor Zhivago."

[Finally, as I like to say, if you haven't read "Uncharted," go do that!!!!]

Airplane MovieWatch: "Spiderwick Chronicles" and "Fool's Gold"

2008-06-17T13:49:00.000-07:00

The way I reckon it, you never want to actually get a *good* movie on an airplane. You don't want to have to think about the movie or to get so involved that when the woman next to you has to go to the bathroom three times in 90 minutes you want to throttle her because she's interrupting your dime-sized cinematic experience.

You want movies like "The Spiderwick Chronicles" or "Fool's Gold," movies that are either innocuously pleasant or so brain-deadly awful that they'll kill time without excessive investment. But not as brain-deadly awful as "Rush Hour 3." Even bored on an airplane, I couldn't make it through more than 30 minutes of that one.

Side note before I talk briefly 'bout the two movies that got me to Chicago and back: Is there a revolt coming against the airlines? Like a bloody, pitchfork-waving revolt? The number of levels on which air-travel keeps declining is stunning and the number of levels on which it's about to start sucking -- $15 first bags, $2 cans of Coke -- keeps growing. I know that the price of gas is crippling, but there can't be any excuse for the levels of fraud and rudeness that accompany even a basic four-hour direct flight. And none of the airlines is innocent. Except maybe for JetBlue. I've only flown JetBlue once and it was a really good flight.

Anyway, some quick thoughts on "The Spiderwick Chronicles" and "Fool's Gold" after the bump...

Click through, if you care...

"The Spiderwick Chronicles"
Director: Mark Waters
Fien Print Rating: 66
In a Nutshell: Very rarely original, but completely satisfying as an effects-heavy movie for kids, "Spiderwick Chronicles" wasn't a movie I had much interest in paying $10 bucks to see in the theaters, but it exceeded most of my expectations. You can't go wrong with Mary-Louise Parker, even though I didn't exactly understand how she and Andrew McCarthy produced three children with European accents (or two children and one duplicate).

But wait. What the heck was Nick Nolte even doing in this movie? I mean, Roberto Benigni stole his Oscar and that was it? He just lost it? I take that back. I just said the other day that I liked his over-the-top performance in "Hulk." Nevermind.

I couldn't tell on the tiny screen how the effects were, but they didn't aspire to much more than intimate, low-scale cuteness or scariness, so I didn't have much to complain about there.

And the writing was much sharper than I'd have guessed. Do I credit John Sayles for adding enough color that the relationship between the kids and newly single mom felt fresh and believable? I think so.

As a director, Mark Waters is a proficient journeyman, a categorization I don't figure as an insult. He adds little and screws up little.

"Fool's Gold"
Director: Andy Tennant
Fien Print Rating: 23
In a Nutshell: I contrast Waters with Tennant, whose filmmaking touch is leaden. One of my very first posts on this blog was, if memory serves, a meditation on just some of the awfulness of "Hitch." And "Fool's Gold" is worse than "Hitch."

It's one thing to wonder how one director after another has worked to drain Kate Hudson of the appeal that seemed so natural in "Almost Famous." It's another thing that directors keep taking chances on Matthew McConaughey when the actor decided at least a decade ago that he won't do anything other than coast on his abs and charm, utterly ditching the potential he showed in "Dazed and Confused" and "Lone Star" and "A Time to Kill."

As bad as that is, "Fool's Gold" has what may go down as the worst written and directed scene I've seen at the movies in years. For those who have seen it, it's the sequence where Hudson and McConaughey sit down with Donald Sutherland's wealthy benefactor and explain the story of the treasure they're seeking. It's at least five minutes and possibly ten of pure, horribly scripted exposition about Spanish history or some nonsense during which none of the characters even move. The camera just cuts from one medium shot to another as the actors read paragraphs of dialogue that mean NOTHING. If you're a writer, why do you need more than "There was a Spanish galleon that went down with millions of jewels. Nobody's seen it since" to set off your plot? The decision to insert little "National Treasure"-style historical clues and graverobbing only showcases how thin the movie's storytelling and action are.

Two good things about the movie:

At the very end, Hudson and McConaughey crash into the water in a seaplane. Now since this is a romantic comedy, they aren't going to die or really be in any jeopardy at all, so we know they're going to be fine. But since this was an airplane edit, there was a fade to black after the characters realize they don't know how to fly. Then two seconds of black and a cut to the characters swimming in the water relieved. That censoring was silly enough to amuse me.

And also silly enough? The performance by Alexis Dziena as the spoiled socialite daughter of Sutherland's character. It's a wooden subplot that provides yet more filler (three credited writers couldn't come up with anything better), but Dziena is bizarrely alive and funny despite not having a single funny line to say or action to perform. It's like she was just allowed to do whatever she wanted and rather than doing the latest in an endless line of Paris Hilton impressions, she did something weirder and less explainable.

Anyway, that's all...

I'm still trying to formulate an opinion on "Kung Fu Panda" that goes deeper than "I wish the whole movie had been animated in the style of the opening dream sequence." I'll let you know if I get there.

MovieWatch: "The Incredible Hulk"

2008-06-11T15:51:00.000-07:00

"The Incredible Hulk"
Director: Louis Leterrier
Fien Print Rating (Out of 100): 59
In a Nutshell: Summer movies are supposed to be visceral things, they're supposed to be pleasing and accessible in the least complex way possible. This summer's movies, though, have been all about the management of expectations. You expect "Iron Man" to be another awful comic book movie? You come out overjoyed! You expect "Iron Man" to be the masterpiece a strange cadre of critics have dubbed it? You come out disappointed. You lower your expectations for "Indiana Jones and the Quest for Profit"? It comes out satisfying. You rewatch Spielberg's first two Indy movies and suddenly you're underwhelmed again.

"The Incredible Hulk" is yet another movie where viewer response will be completely conditional based on what they're expecting going in. Did you hate the Ang Lee "Hulk" because it was excessively pretentious and too rich in Freudian undertones? Have you read about star Edward Norton's original plan to distance himself from the final cut? Were you bored and annoyed by the original trailers Universal put out? If you fall into one of those three groups, you're probably going to enjoy "The Incredible Hulk" as the effects laden summer romp it intends to be.

But what if you actually liked the Ang Lee "Hulk"? What if you were in the crowd at New York Comic-Con and saw the rapturous response from fanboys? What if you've read Harry Knowles or Peter Bart's orgasmic reviews? Expect to come away disappointed.

So this'll just be one of those reviews where I try figuring out where I stand and acknowledge that, as always, your results will vary. Follow through after the bump for a full review.

Click through...

The first thing to note is that, darnit, I dug the Ang Lee "Hulk." Right up until the Hulk versus Giant Electrical Id climax, I actually think it's a pretty great spin on the comic book movie, full of complex ideas and actual motivated characters. I loved Nick Nolte's ridiculously hammy performance and was interested by what Eric Bana brought to the table. Editor Tim Squyres and cinematographer Frederick Elmes brought unexpected technical mastery to the property.

But enough about that. I went into "The Incredible Hulk" expecting a disaster and was pleased to discover that it wasn't a disaster.

I'm not a huge Louis Leterrier fan, but I thought both "Transporter" movies were very acceptable they-are-what-they-are action B-movies and "Unleashed" actually hinted at something more. And it's to Leterrier's credit that the opening act of "The Incredible Hulk" plays as well as it does. Set in an overcrowded residential neighborhood in the Brazilian hills, the opening scenes start off CG-free, but they do a good job of establishing Norton's Bruce Banner in exile, a man trying to learn to control his anger issues, while also trying to learn Portuguese. These scenes represent an excellent and semi-organic use of a location I'm not sure I've seen in this type of movie, more reminiscent of a Bourne-style set piece than anything else. The Brazil sequence ends with the first arrival of The Hulk and, from there, the movie is downhill. Maybe, really, it's even downhill from the opening credits, which do away with a belabored origin story with quick-cutting flair.

That doesn't mean that it stinks, or anything, but is one of those cinematic instances where probably a savvier filmmaker would have been more successful in working around the limitations of his CG. There have been plenty of jokes about how odd it is that the new Hulk appears to be even less convincing than the Ang Lee version five years back. I don't think that's exactly true. The problem is that as decent as the effects are, they're not quite good enough to stand up to intense and prolonged scrutiny, so the less we see of the Hulk, or the more Leterrier uses editing to space out the creature's performance, the better it is. But the more I'm forced to stare at him, the more I wonder at just how little connection there is between the Hulk's face and Norton's, for example. Ang Lee's Hulk looked interestingly like Bana, enough so that we could understand how the one could become the other. Hulk looks like Hulk and Norton looks like Norton. But at least Hulk stays the same size for the entire movie, which will make some geeks happy.

And the movie goes from using Hulk sparingly to the end where Leterrier just becomes the latest director to go down that "Oh well, let's just let the two CG critters battle it out" path. And let me just say that the final battle between CG Hulk and CG Abomination is actually much better than the climax of "Iron Man," if only because it's louder, more chaotic and louder. Seriously, did I mention it's loud? That's pretty much the defining characteristic of that last showdown.

While Norton has publicly taken full credit for the script, it's Zak Penn who gets the sole credit onscreen. He's trimmed most of the subtext that made Lee so very giddy. Lee's take on Banner's repressed anger was all about contemporary masculinity and Oedipal pressures. Penn's is just about a guy who sometimes gets angry in socially destructive ways. It's about as thin a pull as you could possibly imagine. Even the scene of Banner talking to lady-love Betty's (Liv Tyler) new shrink boyfriend (Ty Burrell) has been cut because it was too probing and psychologically relevant. To heck with that.

The only undercurrent in the movie has something to do with the merging of biotech and military entities. William Hurt's General Ross wants to use science to create super-soldiers, but nobody gets dark enough to make any sort of Halliburton/Black Water resonances come into play.

While Norton is a better actor than Bana, his version of Banner isn't as interesting. In fact, I'd have hoped for more from Norton, an actor who has always gravitated toward showy roles that expose the duality of the human condition. He's already had three or four roles where he essentially was playing two different people and it's disappointing that Norton keeps the Hulk entirely out of his interpretation of Banner. Or maybe it's unexpected, like Norton knew we'd expect that sort of ACTING, so he subverts that by retreating entirely inside himself.

William Hurt also proves a mighty internalized Gen. Ross, much less wily than Sam Elliott's Ross in the Lee film, but probably a more believably bad father. I wonder if I could accept William Hurt playing somebody's awesome father. The thing is, I completely believe that Hurt has a "Big Lebowski"-style awesome comic character in him, perhaps as the WASP-y father or father-in-law in a Wes Anderson or Noah Baumbach movie? Just a suggestion?

While I may not have raved about the eventual computer incarnation of The Abomination, Tim Roth's Emil Blonsky is a truly interesting character, decently embodied by Roth who, like Hurt, is pretty much capable of doing this kind of role in his sleep. Although Penn's (or Norton's) script delves only superficially into the effect of this sort of near-infinite power on a meek and scientific man, we get a much more interesting source of how a career soldier like Blonsky might respond.

Might I suggest that Blonsky's character is Barry Bonds-esque? He's basically this brilliant fighting machine who's had to watch his body go through the inevitable attrition, even though his intellectual processes have become more honed. Given the opportunity to put his ever-sharpened mind into the body of a younger and more powerful man thanks to an unproven and probably dangerous procedure, he doesn't hesitate. All Blonsky's ever been is a soldier and faced with the Hulk, who wields unwanted strength with only brute intelligence, he takes the opportunity without hesitation. Roth's diminutive stature only plays into the character, especially when he's standing next to Hurt, a very very very tall man. Roth made such a substantial character out of so little that I lost interest when the man vanished into pixels.

Wait. Does that make Bruce Banner into a Mark McGwire figure? I'm gonna say he's probably Brady Anderson-esque. How's that for a clumsy metaphor? It works! I swear!

Another weird acting note: What's up with Martin Starr appearing in two shots? Was he loitering around the set? And, more interestingly, how did Michael K. Williams end up appearing in exactly one shot, for less than two seconds of screentime? For that dozen "Wire" fans who watch the movie, that'll prove a weird distraction, though if reach for popcorn at the wrong time or blink, you won't even know he was there. Conversely, Stan Lee's extended cameos in Marvel pictures have begun to annoy me. Yes, I know. Stan Lee is a God. Don't think I don't know that. But his appearances get the same knowing chuckle from the same four or five hardcore fans in every movie and they ultimately add nothing. Haven't we reached the point at which we can play around with the nature of Lee's cameos? Hitchcock, after all, had fun with how he was used in movies. Sometimes he'd appear right in the middle of the screen and practically wink at the audience, but other times he'd be in the background and the camera would barely catch him. I'm more tolerant of Lou Ferrigno's much-longer-than-it-needs-to-be cameo, because, well, Lou Ferrigno probably needs the money.

[Spoiler-ish: Universal has made the somewhat explicable, somewhat perplexing decision to play up Robert Downey Jr's appearance as Tony Stark, making it the lead image in the latest trailer. Yes, this helps a movie that needs buzz capitalize on the buzz remaining around the year's biggest hit. It also opens the door for disappointment when viewers discover that Stark has *almost* nothing to do with the movie and the character of Iron Man has even less. If you ask me, Downey's appearance should have been allowed to spread as a little Easter Egg like Sam Jackson's visit at the end of "Iron Man." If you hear something is coming, but you don't know for sure, whatever you get is a treat. If you know for certain that the treat is coming, but it's such a small mouthful that the flavor doesn't even linger, you experience disappointment. Disappointment leads to bad word-of-mouth. The *last* thing a Hulk-based movie needs is bad word of mouth, even if the movie itself isn't so bad at all. So don't expect much Tony Stark. And don't expect *any* of Sam Jackson's Nick Fury, except for a quick name check.]

[And lastly, if you haven't read "Uncharted," go do that!!!!

Or, for an alternative spin on things, my bud Andrew "Call Me Drew" Melbourne has reversed the equation and written a theme song for "Lost" in the flavor [albeit not necessarily rhyme or rhythm] of "Gilligan's Island."]

'Uncharted': It's 'Gilligan's Island' Meets 'Lost'

2008-06-02T11:09:00.000-07:00

I didn't blog on the finale for "Lost," though I fall very much into the "That was a good episode of TV, but it didn't change my life or anything" category.

For whatever reason, though, it got me thinking and got my creative juices flowing in really odd ways.

This is the result.

I wasn't exactly sure what to do with it, but as Sepinwall pointed out, if you write something, might as well put it up on the blog.

Well, it's 22 pages and I don't know if anybody feels like reading 22 pages on this blog (neatly embedded, I should add)... Let's just say that the subject line gives only a hint of what to expect.

If you follow through after the bump, I'll transport you to the world of... "Uncharted."

Click through...

And, before you continue, if the embedded version is too small (and it sure looks too small to me), you can click straight over to the Scribd version of the script here.

And forgive any typos. This was written fast...

[There's also appears to be a little "full-screen-y" button that'll make the doc blow up all "full-screen-y." Go figure.]

Uncharted - Upload a doc

Take Me to the Pilots '08: FOX's 'Fringe'

2008-05-30T14:53:00.000-07:00

[Herein I remind you, faithful readers, that these aren't reviews of the pilots in question. If they were, they'd be much longer and much more divided into paragraphs. In fact, I've pretty much decided that "paragraphs" would be the clearest distinction I'd give between a review and first impressions. Just as the pilots themselves are just a wee bit unformed, these first impressions are also just a wee bit unformed. That's not the same as being a wee bit uniformed, which would involve funny sailor suits, I suspect. OK. Enough of that. Not. A. Review.

I'm not sure when TV critics are likely to get the next wave of screeners this summer. CBS sent out what it had. I covered that. NBC and ABC are still casting and tinkering and in pre-production and whatnot. The CW is shooting the "90210" pilot, but it's hard to imagine them rushing together a rough edit just to tease critics, at least not until we're a bit closer to Press Tour. So it may be a while before the next "Take Me to the Pilots" update.

Nice of FOX, at least, to screen a rough version of the "Fringe" pilot for available scribes yesterday. FOX publicists wanted to emphasize its roughness, though it was complete enough that the effects work looked polished and the location identifying titles, a snazzy trademark for the series, are in place. FOX is banking pretty highly on "Fringe," which will launch with an ambitious two-hour pilot and will then reap the rewards of a "House" lead-in. Put simply, I think they can be confident that "Fringe" will open. Where it goes from there? Who knows? But I sure preferred the "Fringe" pilot to either of the CBS drama pilots, which isn't really a good blurb, is it?

More impressions after the bump...

Click through...

Show: "Fringe" (FOX Drama)
The Pitch: "X-Files" meets "Altered States" meets "The Odd Couple"!
Quick Response: I read an early version of the script and semi-reviewed it for Zap2it just before the upfronts. The draft I read was 114 pages, a bit rough and felt *really* long for a TV pilot. The produced version is a more respectable 90-ish minutes. The pilot moves relatively well -- thanks largely to director Alex Graves, who's about as good as it gets when it comes to setting the style and tone for a series in short order -- but I'm not exactly sure that all of the right choices were made in the trimming of the script. The set-up exposition is nearly untouched, establishing FBI Agent Olivia Dunham (Anna Torv) and the mysterious and slightly gross happenings on an international flight into Boston. It's intentionally semi-generic stuff, creepy and icky, but familiar and almost devoid of humor. The story kicks into gear in its body with the introduction of an institutionalized mad scientist (John Noble) and his estranged genius son (Joshua Jackson). That's the meat of the show, the relationship between the father and son with the young FBI agent as buffer, that's where the dark comedy builds. If the "X-Files" procedural aspects aren't unique, this main dynamic is and all three actors are solid. Noble is spectacularly twitchy and endearing as the more-than-eccentric father and Jackson is effectively scruffy and incredulous as his kid. To my mind, Torv was the wild card due to her unproven track record and since I couldn't get a real sense of her personality from the early clips. While her American accent comes and goes -- it limits the expressiveness of her line-readings in a way that domestic audiences have come to expect from the seemingly neverending slew of foreign actors who do the exact same regionless, flat "American" accent -- Torv won me over really fast (albeit may not as instantly as previous Abrams discoveries Keri Russell, Jennifer Garner and Evangeline Lilly). Odds are you've never seen her before (unless you're a fan of Aussie TV), but you'll feel like you recognize Torv, which caused me to spend a while playing the "Recognizable Actress Mash-Up" game to decide which titillating union would best produce an Anna Torv. I'm going with Poppy Montgomery plus Kiele Sanchez, but others' results may vary (I feel confident with the Poppy Montgomery part, but replacing Sanchez with Kate Hudson or maybe Laura Prepon might make sense). She's beautiful, but she doesn't look like a 21-year-old model masquerading as a law enforcement official. She has a smidge of weathering, which I mean as a total compliment. As long as Torv, Jackson and Noble continue to play well off of each other, "Fringe" should work, though cutting to Lance Reddick, as a stern and possibly shady Homeland Security bigwig, is always a safe alternative. Much of the fat from the script has been trimmed from the last act, which now feels a bit too scattered for my tastes. In less than 15 minutes there's one major unexplained character reversal, the introduction of an Evil Corporate Conspiracy (wouldn't be Abrams without one) and the laid foundation for the week-to-week series. Each of those elements feels rushed and, looking back over the script, each of those elements -- all crucial moving forward -- could be propped up with an additional line or two of excised dialogue. If that material was actually shot and if the pilot is as unfinished as FOX publicists tried to suggest, I'd love to see five minutes trimmed from the set-up and padded onto the end. If you haven't seen the pilot -- and you presumably haven't -- that's probably a bit vague, eh? My apologies. This isn't a review, after all. Otherwise... High production values, good location work, nice set direction, Michael Giacchino-esque score (either because it was actually Michael Giacchino or because they were using temp score from "Alias" or "Lost"), some snazzy and gross makeup and practical effects, plus a cow... "Fringe" looks good... I would caution FOX, though, on over-exposure. I already feel like I've seen the same extended ad too many times... [POST SCRIPT: There are two other changes from the script I read that made me pause. One: The Potentially Evil Corporate Entity at the story's center has gone from "Prometheus" to "Massive Dynamics." The old name was obviously better, but I'm guessing it didn't clear, since somebody must have named their corporation after the fire-stealer at some point. I wonder how far down the clearance list "Massive Dynamics" was. I wouldn't be surprised to see that change. Another change, a small one, is that in an early scene Jackson's character is in Iraq negotiating with two shady businessmen who try talking behind their backs. As it is now, he informs them, after they've talked, that he speaks Farsi. This seeming cultural inaccuracy annoyed several people at the screening I was at. In the original script, though, he tells them he speaks Arabic, which makes more sense. Why was this change made, I wonder...]
Desire to Watch Again: High.

MovieWatch: "The Visitor"

2008-05-29T19:04:00.000-07:00

"The Visitor"
Director: Thomas McCarthy
Fien Print Rating (Out of 100): 70
In a Nutshell: I know it's early, but I'm not feelin' the summer of 2008 just yet, at least movie-wise. Looking back at the big blockbusters -- or presumptive blockbusters -- I've seen and reviewed, none have held up particularly well in my mind. It's only been a month, but I don't remember anything from "Iron Man" that I hadn't already seen in the Comic-Con clip reel last summer. I remember plenty from "Speed Racer," but while its visual audacity was occasionally admirable, I remember it more as a over-long sensory overload without any narratively redeeming features. And as for "Indiana Jones and the Quest for Profit," I was caught at exactly the right moment in terms of expectations, where my hopes were just low enough and it was lucky enough not to be worse than I'd feared, but I no longer recall which things I liked exactly, only the CG ants.

So that's why it's important to pay heed to the merits of Thomas McCarthy's "The Visitor," even though it's about as tiny and understated a film as you're likely to see this summer. Yes, the movie is limited in scale and emotionally muted, but the impact of the gentle storytelling and Richard Jenkins' performance transcend the special effects that drive everything at your local multiplex.

A full review will pop up after the break, assuming I ever finish it. But if this is appearing at all, I've probably made it.

So click through...

There's a pretty simple rule in Hollywood: If you make a well-regarded, moderately successful indie movie that critics describe as "quirky" or "sensitive," your next project has to be a lame romantic comedy starring either Ashley Judd or Kate Hudson as a successful single woman who's been too busy to find a man.

Interesting, then, that McCarthy decided to follow "The Station Agent" -- a "quirky" and "sensitive" little short story of a movie -- with "The Visitor," which is in many ways even more unassuming and which is certainly burdened with even less star wattage.

McCarthy is a character actor himself, so he appreciates the kindness of a writer or director tailoring a leading role for a performer who would otherwise only get a line or two in a bigger production. McCarthy has had a good year in that respect, having gone from "You know, that guy who was on that episode of that show" to "The dude who was making up the stories on 'The Wire.'" So just as he saw Peter Dinklage as being capable of more than just "Hey look, it's that sarcastic dwarf" roles, he gets infinite credit for knowing that Jenkins could carry the right sort of movie.

Jenkins has had an odd career in general. He's probably best known as the deceased father from "Six Feet Under," but he's also gone into broad comedy in a couple Farrelly Brothers movies and, memorably, in David O. Russell's "Flirting With Disaster." On a scale of employability, he probably sees scripts after Bill Murray has rejected them, but before James Rebhorn gets a crack. Does that seem about right?

In "The Visitor," he plays an absolutely archetype. Walter Vale the desiccated intellectual who gets shaken from his complacent routine by an outsider. In this case, the outsiders are Tarek (Haaz Sleiman) and Zainab (Danai Jekesai Gurira), to illegal immigrants who end up occupying his uninhabited New York City apartment during his long absence. Jenkins' character is, academically speaking, an expert on immerging third world economies, but he gets a practical lesson courtesy of his new friends, who hail from Syria and Senegal. Things get darker and he learns a lesson in post-9/11 American immigration issues and the new realities of the American Dream and what happens to the huddled masses when she show up in Manhattan just yearning to breathe free. He also has new feelings stirred up by Tarek's mother Mouna (the excellent Hiam Abbass).

While those lessons and realities and other thematic undercurrents play out in "The Visitor," McCarthy excels at tiptoeing. Yes, Tarek rekindles Walter's inner spirit by teaching him to play the African drums, even introducing him to a Central Park drum circle, but because of how casually McCarthy and particularly Jenkins play it, you don't get that exploitative feeling that usually comes from movies in which the White Man and the Magical Ethnic Other are played as binary opposites. McCarthy absolutely meanders around the outside of that short of exploitation. This could have been a movie where Walter is a husk of a man, eats a shwarma, pounds a tribal beat on his drum and is suddenly able to stand up to the Evil Dean, impress his students with his newfound hipness and bed his inquisitive young TA. Instead, Walter's disconnect from the world is far greater than that and the movie is a starting point, not a conclusion.

McCarthy shies from major character transformations and from major statements, which was part of the pleasure of "The Station Agent" as well. It never became manipulative. As one character finds himself in a detention facility -- McCarthy is, again, interested in how the anonymous correction center blends into the run-down neighborhood -- Walter is given one moment of magnificent catharsis, but no more. Jenkins' performance, which will be too subtle for Oscar voters later this year, but seems perfect for an Independent Spirit Award nomination, is about noticing the little details.

"The Visitor" is a softer version of Jim Jarmusch's "Broken Flowers," with Jenkins standing in for Murray and Sleiman giving him a Fela Kuti CD instead of Jeffrey Wright and a Mulatu Astatke mix. If McCarthy avoids charges of exploitation by staying on the outside, Jarmusch has always gone exactly the opposite way, approaching the immigrant experience and the blending of cultures with an anthropologist's eye and a wickedly sardonic sense of humor.

If I'm being honest, I prefer the Jarmusch approach, in which language, music and general internationality are things to be marveled at an enjoyed. For Jarmusch, people are all the same in their eccentricities. For McCarthy, our similarities are simpler than that. As was also the case in "The Station Agent," he's still at a point where he finds it interesting that seemingly different people might have core values in common. I guess I'd like for him to dig deeper, but his perspective is simple, sweet and emotionally satisfying, however limited it is.

So bottom line: "The Visitor" isn't an antidote for the summer blockbuster, but it's a refreshing sorbet and its flavors may linger long after the frontal assault of the bigger films passes on.