Adventures in the Talkies: Young Adult

It's nice to write a bunch of words about something that was definitely not a TNT Mystery Movie (glowing praise, right? Turn that into a blurb for the poster. "Definitely Not A TNT Mystery Movie!" --Pete Travers, Rolling Stone).

I went to Young Adult today. I've been wanting to go since it was released a few weeks ago. Then, 1+ weeks ago, a coworker saw it. She gave it one of those reviews that makes me want to obstinately argue despite having no basis to do so: "I don't know. It was kind of upsetting. And the ending doesn't resolve anything. And Charlize Theron's character is very unlikable."

And technically, upon seeing the movie, I can say all of those things are generally true. If it has a positive message, it's one about epiphanies resulting in small changes or baby steps, but not revolutionary "Why, today is Christmas Day, sir!" type 180-degree turns. The ending is, I believe, meant to reflect that and imply that Mavis will have to work long and hard to achieve happiness or peace or a clean apartment. And I'm guessing my coworker, like the person who exclaim-whispered "Disgusting," was "upset[ting]" by the sex scene at the end of the film--side note: Exclaim Whisperer is the reason I'm skittish about book clubs, as a rule.

And yes, it was hard to like Mavis but--and I realize what an earnest flake I sound like saying this--that's probably because Mavis doesn't like herself. In addition to being bitter, in a very specific way only former hot-shit high school popular kids are, she is a depressive, disturbed alcoholic who is the kind of pet owner that makes me grind my back molars (you know, in real life...). And since I didn't see Monster back in the day (2003), I'm new to the revelation that Charlize Theron is an amazing actress who can draw you in, even when her character is at the height of detachment from reality or at her most embarrassingly mean or unhinged.

Because I have my fingers on the pulse of today's music, I've taken to listening to Adele recently (mostly because she has been featured on Glee and because she has several live tracks on the KGSR and Cities Sampler I own), and her song "Someone Like You" makes me think of Young Adult, mostly because "Someone Like You" is the fairly normal, romanticized-a-little version of meeting a lost love and exposing the wishes and dreams you wear on your sleeve, and Young Adult is the messier, crazier, sadder version that is unflinching in exposing how pathetic those dreams and feelings are, because they come hand-in-hand with shoddy lies told to yourself and others with a horrid lack of self-awareness.

I loved the detail of this movie the same way I loved the detail of Juno: the small-town Minnesota touches like formal flannel and Corningware casserole dishes and the way a mother keeps a wedding picture hanging for reasons that sound nice and sweet but explain bits and pieces of Mavis's misery (if every action has an equal and opposite reaction, then passive-aggressive mothering likely results in some really bitchy, unvarnished expression-type kids). And speaking of Minnesota, it was really cool to see the Minneapolis skyline portrayed as something picturesque and worthy of being in a movie. I've never seen the Grain Belt sign look better.

I also loved the opening sequence of Mavis fleeing from a night of sex with a very nice guy she didn't seem all that into, digging out a Memorex mix tape her high school flame Buddy made her. As the credits rolled over the archaic mechanics of the tape playing, the pins and reels moving, spinning and grinding as Mavis rewinds the same track again and again and again, the grooves and scratches on the tape both immobile and fragile, it sets the whole tone: nostalgia externalized, tenuous, loud, and repetitive.

And despite what Exclaim Whisperer blurted, the more I think about the scene between Mavis and Matt (played by Patton Oswalt, and if Big Fan is more emotionally excruciating than this, I'm not sure if I can take it), the more beautiful I find it. Mavis, wine-splashed and destroyed from the scene at Buddy and Beth's house, where it's revealed that Mavis miscarried Buddy's baby in her very early 20s, strips out of her dress, standing awkwardly semi-dressd in her bra cups and pantyhose, plaintively requesting Matt's shirt. He removes it, equally awkward about his appearance. They embrace, comfort turning into a straightforward segue into sex. Their post-sex chat about Mavis's perceptions of Buddy and when she was at her best was so bittersweet that my chest does that pre-cry tightening thing just at the thought of it.

This film also makes me want to sit down and talk to Diablo Cody about her own experience with young mothers, her own mother, and motherhood. I feel like Beth and Jennifer Garner's character, Vanessa, are such similar characters, and she seems to have a great deal of affection for...well, lots of things about it, e.g., pregnancy, the women friends, the single-mindedness. But she also seems to include loss in both portraits, whether it was Juno's or Mavis's. Interesting. Makes a girl want to write a thesis.

In short, I liked it. I like thinking about it like I'm Cameron Frye looking at "A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte," seeing all the dots in the picture and thnking about the dots in my soul. What can I say? It got me when one of Mavis's tiny breakthroughs involved realizing that her dumbly happy dog loved her unconditionally and deserved hugs and kisses and walkies (maybe).

I was running late due to a decision to get off the bus too early (mistake) and an attempt to wait out teenage incompetence to get a popcorn (another, different kind of mistake), so I only saw two previews:
1) The Vow: if you jokers think you can curl Rachel McAdams hair into waves and put her in a variety of pretty dresses and have her pine and cry and love, thus playing on my attachment to The Notebook, well, then, you...win, and I probably will see it, if not in the theater, then eventually, because she looks so good in love. Though Channing Tatum? Really, Hollywood, with that guy? I specifically requested not to see Thunder Down Under in my rom-coms, thank you?

2) Titanic is coming out in 3-D. I was very recently tickled by a terrible trailer for Ghost Rider 2, but I think the delight I felt watching the advertisement for this absolutely uncalled-for re-re-re-release was almost greater. Yes, all, come and marvel as new technology allows us to see the old couple's shuddering last embrace IN 3-D! Hear Celine Dion's powerful swelling weirdo enunciations IN 3-D! Experience Billy Zane's hamboning and Moe Howard hairpiece IN 3-D! Feel yourself soaring at the bow of the ship IN 3-D! Which will make the inevitable hypothermia scene where Rose cracks Jack's blue fingers from her plank-raft all the more crushing IN 3-D!

Okay, Cameron, be honest: you just want to fling bodies at us in the she's-going-down! scene, right?

Airport Novel Theatre: "Good Morning, Killer" on TNT

Initially when I saw the title to this latest chapter in "I left this book at our beach rental" (TM blahmanda) adaptations, all I could think about was the song from Hair:

I should stress that I like to think about the music from Hair as little as possible. My friend Kate and I watched the film adaptation when I was in the midst of a crush on Dr. Andy Brown aka Treat Williams, and it was, in my humble opinion, the worst. I was clearly the absolutely wrong audience as an individual who likes musical theatre big and old-fashioned and cheesy or, like, Les Mis.

Although I very much like the version from the X-Files/Simpsons crossover:

Then blahmanda called it Good Morning Comma Killer... which made me think of a much more enjoyable song:

But this post isn't meant to be about songs or Treat Williams or hilarious things blahmanda says (actually, that's not a bad idea...). This is about Good Morning, Killer. Like the TNT Mystery Movies before it, it was not very good. But it found unique ways to be subpar. Kudos, TNT Mystery Movies!

Catherine Bell, an actress I am not familiar with as I have somehow managed to live my tv-watching life without catching more than 3 minutes of JAG, plays FBI Agent Ana Gray. Ana Gray is no-nonsense and tough, much like Carla Gugino's character, Carla Gugino, in Hide. However, we see more of Ana's vulnerable side as she bonds with victims and is alone in a parking lot in an excerpt from a horror movie and having weird power issues in her sexytimes with Cole Hauser.

Cole Hauser. A name I should recognize, I suppose, because he was on ER for a while. But I draw a blank every time that guy shows up in something. And for some weirdo reason, I always wonder, when I see his name, "Was he the super-hot guy from Terminator and The Abyss?" Answer: no. That is Michael Biehn. Michael Biehn is older, not blond, and looks completely different. So...not sure where that comes from.

Anyway, Cole Hauser plays Detective Andrew, whom Ana's partner sarcastically refers to as The Santa Monica Cowboy. Ana and Andrew are Doing It. But I guess they haven't defined their relationship, according to a scene where, spoiler alert, it is implied that Andrew is Doing It with some other lady. Also, Ana and Andrew have sexytime problems where maybe they sometimes have "rough sex" (as defined by the premiere source for sex information, Silent Witness, this is when you do a lady from behind...though it did not seem like there was choking involved) and that it isn't a great idea because Ana has head problems from the horrors of her job...maybe. I don't know. I'm not 100% confident in my interpretation.

Here's where the movie is bad (and I know I haven't even gotten to the main crime part of the movie, but honestly: do you care?): it presents characters and information with a degree of trust in the audience to draw conclusions/be intelligent, but it does so in such a vague, incomplete way that it just makes things more confusing. I mean, let's be honest: as much as I complain about how paint-by-numbers these adaptations are, they're based on serial novels. There's going to be a degree of exposition and repetition. Since the movie didn't use its big-kid exposition, I'm still not sure why Ana had intimacy issues, or if Andrew was truly cheating or just being uncommunicative, or if I was supposed to assume they were still together despite their discussion or... et cetera.

The same thing happens with Ana and her relationship with her partner, Mike Donato, played by Titus Welliver. Holy buckets, Titus Welliver. Anyway, it's revealed 2/3 of the way through the movie that maybe Mike and Ana were also Doing It at some point in the past, either while he was married or separated or all of the above or none of the above or et cetera. And I guess my (somewhat off-topic) question there would be: if you were Doing It with Titus Welliver, how did you ever stop, Ana Gray? Were I in your no-nonsense yet vulnerable shoes, I would be waiting at home for Titus Welliver every single day in my most alluring pajama pants. I mean, even when he was wearing a jean jacket, which men should never do unless they are gay cowboy Ennis Del Mar or truck-drivin', orangutan-buddyin' Clint Eastwood, I was thinking, "Boy, I sure like Titus Welliver, and he makes me feel like a natural woman, even though he is still wearing a jean jacket."

I cannot stress how much I would like to make out+more with Titus Welliver, in a hypothetical world. I like him a whole lot. Especially when he carries a gun, as he did in this movie.

Soooooooo to get back to ripping on the movie: my complaint about the lackadaisical attention to detail or character development extends to the crime at the center of this movie too: we have a bunch of FBI agents and cops and profilers--many of whom are introduced for three scenes, then disappear, adding to the "This is like real life! We trust you, audience!" slapdash feel--but we're never given any insight into why the dude they're chasing does what he does. We know he's former military. We know he chokes girls and rapes them and that the girls have a very specific look (youngish, brunette, white). But didn't Silence of the Lambs teach every maker of a suspense movie about a sociopath that we need the scene where the agent displays the understanding of what makes the sociopath tick? That does not happen at any point. In fact, the movie introduces a bunch of detail dots that are never connected. What's with his attachment to his sister? Are we supposed to draw gross conclusions from that or empathize? What was with the weird relationship with his girlfriend and her daughter? That was never really resolved, was it? Why does he say "You'll never forget me?" I don't accept the answer that it is a message for the world. That is stupid. Why did he decide to go camping for a while? Was it because he had returned the girl? Why does he make his victims call their mothers? Was he abused by his mom? Is he simply a sadist? What was with the use of "ritual" about 40 times in the last 30 minutes of the movie?

So many questions.

Also, because I am your grandmother, I am going to complain that it was really super graphic and upsetting. Did we need to see so many of those creepy rape photos? I mean, I got the idea after the first two or three. There was a montage at the end, intended, I suppose, to let us know that Ana Gray was being overwhelmed with horrors while trying to think on her feet and save a girl from being raped. But...I'm not going to write a letter or anything, but yuck. And why was the post-return examination of the victim scene so fucking long? It made me squirmy, not in a The Accused way, where I felt upset by the clinical and detached treatment of the victim in a claustrophobic, real-life way, but in a "This is weird and not very well structured or acted" way.

The movie ends with Ana and the victim she bonded with (and I apologize for completely glossing over the oddly developed storyline where we hang out with the victim's parents who fight and are weirdly uncooperative, but that turns out to be nothing) swimming. Water is a metaphor for baptism and rebirth. FYI. In case you didn't take a 300-level lit course. You're welcome.

In conclusion, Titus Welliver makes my heart palpitate, even when his flirting is supposed to be unprofessional and in bad taste. I like him and wish he were the lead in a tv show where he was stoic and near-mute and carried a gun, like Timothy Olyphant.

Also: don't ever, ever, ever, ever, ever trust semi-professional photographers. They are probably rapists.

Next TNT Mystery Movie stars Kathy Najimy. I sense wackiness ahead.

Airport Novel Theatre: "Silent Witness" on TNT

Ugh. That's the main thought I have about this latest edition of TNT Mystery Movie aka Airport Novel Theatre. I wrote nearly three paragraphs about Dermot Mulroney and my high school semi-crush on that half-man, half-marble statue and then concluded, "You know what? In many ways, Dermot Mulroney is the actor equivalent of an airport novel: he's rather dense and a fine way to pass the time using your eyes, but in the end, he lacks substance beyond the heft of his bajillion abs muscles--for real, it looks like he pasted, like, four Ryan Reynolds's's to his tum-tum--and the gloss of his hair, which may or may not be a metaphor for 'slick' writing, so I'm going to spare everyone my thoughts because fantastic hair and alluring lip scar aside, he, like this movie, really isn't worth the effort."

I don't recall reading any Richard North Patterson novels, but I imagine I must have, somewhere in between the waiting for a new Grisham or Crichton or Patterson or King or Koontz back in my youth. I imagine this adaptation was a fair representation, even with my faulty memory. The film was a veritable dead zone littered with lurid details and tell-don't-show exposition. Weigh in, Readers of North Patterson, with an actual memory of how one of his books went. I bet that's not too far off.

Here's the cast of characters:
1) Dermot Mulroney as the big-shot defense lawyer who scooted from his small town not longer after being cleared of the murder of his high school sweetheart, who he deflowers, then finds defiled and totally dead, in flashbacks.

2) Michael Cudlitz as the best friend who stayed behind in the small town, became a teacher and a track coach, had some sex with one of his students, and is charged when she is found at the bottom of a cliff.

3) Anne Heche as Michael Cudlitz's wife. Yep, I'm with you: I immediately assumed she was guilty too. But mostly she spends her scenes being a befuddling mix of sexy and crazy ("In other words," said blahmanda in e-mail, "she was Anne Heche").

4) "Judd Hirsch as Fyvush Finkel" (blahmanda again). Whew, for those of you who saw Independence Day and thought, "Boy, Jeff Goldblum and Judd Hirsch sure are meshugener and...well...Maaaaaaaaaaatzo ball soup," this performance will make that all seem subtle by comparison (at one point, he says, "Soooooo... was he giving her the blintz?" as a way of asking if Cudlitz was having sex with a teenage girl; deeeelightful). This character also has a drinking problem that is established in an unsubtle sequence of close-up shots of him pouring an assortment of alcoholic beverages at 10:00 in the morning, which is not ever really referred to again. I think he was the Jewish version of the character that Donald Sutherland played in A Time To Kill (which was based on a book, I suppose...), but they never really got around to giving him a subplot beyond his assortment of jewel-toned ties and hankies.

5) Hispanic Guy from Third Watch as the Hispanic guy who is being discriminated against, I guess, and works for the parks department and maybe was also having sex with this teenage girl who is now dead.

6) Lady DA Who Is Very Law&Ordery

7) A Heap of One Scene Types Playing Experts and Parents and Friends and Whatnot

Most of the movie takes place during the trial. There's a little bit at the beginning of the movie to establish Dermot's character and get him back to his hometown, and there's a wretched ending after the trial is concluded. But for the most part, we, the viewers, are on jury duty. It has a weird sense of time to it, overall. It's not that it feels especially long and drawn-out, but stretches and stretches of minutes go on, and you realize nothing is being said except expositiony words.

[Some kind of feminist reading of how the teenage girl is oversexualized and underdeveloped and also killed in a horrific fashion goes here.]

And let us indeed talk about sex, ba-by. Only let's not. Let's not talk about sex the way it is talked about in this adaptation and probably the book too, in this awkward, haunting gap between clinical coldness and the exploitative use of sexual assault and statutory rape as semi-titillation tools. At one point, Lady DA says, "She was entered from behind while being choked. Rough sex, it's called."

I think that says it all, doesn't it? I mean, first of all, what? I don't want to split hairs, but I think that rough sex covers a lot more ground than just that one thing. And second, something about "entered from behind" is so gross. It's repeated multiple times, and I started to shudder when a character would dust it off. Something about the way it is said sort of implies that that is almost hand-in-hand with rape...since we find out when Michael Cudlitz is revealed to be the killer of both the teenage girl as well as the teenage girl in the past, and that's how he sex-rapes both of them.

Ugh. Like I said: ugh.

So anyway, spoiler alert, Michael Cudlitz is guilty, like I said, which should be a relief since he's "a gross creepy liar the whole time, just like he seemed," (blahmanda) but it's just rife with more yuck, since the film has to have a confrontation scene betwixt Dermot and Cudlitz and throw in one of those nifty guilty-party-has-a-gun-and-oh-he's-going-to-murdalate-the-hero-but-instead-he-does-some-confusing-wordplay-and-commits-suicide-and-Dermot-Mulroney-goes-batshit-recording-the-ADR-and-sounds-like-Mrs-Bennet moments.

So I guess I'd give this 2 out of 4 Hudson News receipts. It was like a book I bought for a flight in a last-minute rush only to disappointedly discover that it is even worse than the jacket blurb makes it sound, so then I read the Southwest in-flight magazine and SkyMall for the duration of my flight.

Airport Novel Theatre: "Hide" on TNT

I caught a glimpse of her face, framed with raven locks, her lovely hazel eyes widened in...maybe surprise or terror or...feelings.

And I knew I had to run to her ample bosom. O Carla Gugino! I swear I am not gay for you but probably I sort of am!

That would be the beginning of the poem and then it would go on from there.

So it turns out TNT is making some NBC Mystery Movies based on books. Last night's tremendous achievement of cinema was called Hide, and was based on a book by Lisa Gardner, who, I imagine, has written about as many books as your Tess Gerritsens or your Sandra Browns. If I may be such a literary snob--and I give myself permission, a-thank you--they are the kind of books you either grow away from, when you realize romance and/or suspense can be found in better written tomes that aren't produced in some sort of Mad Libsian (Libyan?) formatting; or they are the kind of books a person reads for the rest of her/his life, because the formulaic plotting, "shocking" endings, and stagnant characters are soothing (I guess, if you also find the occasional densely lavish description of sexual assault or torture soothing). Or, I suppose, if I want to break up the either/or: these are the kinds of books you buy in an airport bookstore because you forgot the copy of The Corrections you bought and have already read your three crappy magazines.

I will state here that I refuse to learn the characters' names because I like calling them by their actor names and/or plot devices. Here is the story:

Carla Gugino is a [tough] and [no-nonsense] detective who likes to [have sex] and [drink] and [takes the job too seriously]. But she [also cares!], damn it!, as evidenced by her relationship with Gay Police Guy, whose mother is dying, and she's always like, "Go see your mother" and "Do you need time off? But I'm not going to ask you again 'cause I'm TUFF!" So she's three-dimensional, as you can see. The guy she most likes to [have sex] with is Kevin Alejandro, who died on Southland only to live again on, um, True Blood or Showtime Presents Some Kind of Drama About Sexy Disease. Kevin recently became a detective, but does not have a desk, which is not as funny as when that happened to Veronica Corningstone in Anchorman.

The not-desk-having is pointed out to him once or twice by Zack Attack Morris from Bayside High. Zack Attack is an instructor at Police Academy. He is [soulful] and [caring], as evidenced by the fact that he wants to home-cook pasta sauce for Carla Gugino before he buries his face in her ample mounds, if you get my drift (boobs). Kevin Alejandro is also [soulful] and [caring] because he has blue eyes and wants to [talk about relationships] when he's not waving Carla Gugino's panties around in her office (literally).

Love triangle! Sort of! When they're not solving the elaborately expositioned crime that is so f'ing ridiculous that at one point I considered drawing a conspiracy chart a la The Wire to try and track all the goofery.

But I gave up because Carla Gugino took off her shirt. She was wearing a black bra.

So here's my word-chart attempt:

1. Some CW extras are at the olllllllld abandoned mental hospital, and Vampire Diaries Call-Back Who Didn't Get a Role falls through a creaky trapdoor and discovers:

           a) Old baby dolls with cracks in their faces (every serial killer is handed several of these when he turns 16)
           b) Bottles hanging from strings (serial killers like wind chimes?)
           c)Skeletons in giant Ziploc freezer bags full of viscous fluid

2. Carla Gugino and Her Sensitive Menfolk investigate and make the observation that this crime is just like that one crime that one time where a kidnap victim was rescued and her attacker was put to death a few years ago.
3. Also there is a locket on one of the skele-bags that has a full name engraved on it.
4. It turns out the full name belongs to a girl who is alive!
5. Who eerily resembles the girl who was kidnapped and rescued in the crime I just mentioned in 2.
6. Turns out that alive girl gave the locket to her best friend, who was the girl who was in one of the skele-bags.
7. The alive girl has also had a bazillion names because her dad made her move a bunch when she was younger and also her mom committed suicide.
8. The alive girl is VERY JUMPY LIKE SOMEONE IS STALKING HER. Her best friend is the delivery man. She makes quilts.
9. Some Friendly Exposition Guy Who Formerly Worked or Volunteered At The Mental Hospital shows up and is Friendly and Helpful, so clearly he will end up being involved in the murders in some way.
10. Carla Gugino asks that her taskforce of Sensitive Menfolk run background checks and junk on the mental hospital patients and staff...including Friendly Exposition Guy.
11. The Victim of The One Kidnap Crime asks to meet with Alive Girl, and then is super mean and snippy to her, because the implication is that she was a stand-in for Alive Girl, which Alive Girl won't admit to, no way.
12. Some parents of a former mental patient are brought in and talk about how their son's au pair (not nanny, which becomes a running joke that is not remotely funny, not that it's delivered in a way that would suggest it's meant to be funny anyway) had The Sex with their son when he was 12, which made him Not Quite Right, because after that he killed squirrels and then raped his younger sister(?). And it turns out in order to get their son to voluntarily commit himself to the hospital, they promised to give him a skillion dollars when he turned 28, which is a random age for access to a trust, but what do I know?
13. Random characters begin revealing that Alive Girl's dad was super paranoid, always suspecting someone of stalking his daughter, which is why he moved her around a lot.
14. And then some more exposition reveals that Alive Girl's dad had a brother who was a super creep who was stalking the dad's wife, which is why she committed suicide maybe, and then the brother was a pedophile I guess, and he was REALLY obsessed with Alive Girl, and then Alive Girl's babysitter was shot in the park, and...things. He also mutilated neighborhood pets. That's always a good detail because we all know from Silence of the Lambs that serial killers start there.
15. I forgot to mention that Friendly Guy told a story about a nurse at the mental hospital being murdered on the grounds, and the killer was never found!, in a ghost-story setup that seemed like something Quentin Tarantino would spin off into a grindhouse trailer starring Darryl Hannah and Rutger Hauer. That part never has resolution. Unless I missed it, which is possible, because by Hour 2, I was dicking around on Facebook.
16. So then the killer calls Carla Gugino and asks for the Alive Girl's necklace back and asks her to meet him at the Old Haunted Carnival Mental Institution Scooby Dooby Doo.
17. And she does, and then a dog attacks her, and Zack Attack shoots the dog, which is, unsurprisingly, the most upsetting part of the movie.*
18. And then Carla Gugino realizes, gasp!, it was all a plot to get them away from Alive Girl!
19a. And it turns out, gasp!, Friendly Exposition Guy is the super-rich guy who was sexed by his nanny--I mean, his au pair, ha ha boo--and he shows up at Alive Girl's house with a switchblade, and tells Alive Girl that he didn't kill those girls in the skele-bags but he admired the work, and that he mostly killed hookers, in a prequel book I'm glad I'll never ever read, and Alive Girl looks SO much like his au pair that he just has to have her.
19b. Also Friendly Exposition Guy is played by the dude who played Brennan on Burn Notice, who was one of those villains who was super super super evil and all-knowing but had a secret daughter somewhere that sort of made him a little vulnerable and then Tim Matheson killed him in a triple cross. I didn't really care for Brennan. The last Burn Notice villain I really liked was smooth, classy, gay Gilroy. They've all been annoying Sylars since then (look, Heroes remains useful if only for that particular term) (that only I use probably).
20. So Friendly Exposition Guy Who Was Secretly The Super-Rich Sister Rapist Who I Guess Killed Hookers is about to rape and mutilate Alive Girl when, ta da!, her friend The Delivery Man shows up and kills him!
21. And it turns out that The Delivery Man was secretly her Uncle! Who was obsessed with her and stalking her all the while! And I guess he's making an exception to his pedophile rule because HE wants to rape and rape and rape her forever all the days of their lives!
22. And then someone shoots Delivery Man. Um, maybe Carla Gugino. Or possibly Kevin Alejandro. I don't remember.
23. Oh, and Kevin Alejandro developed feelings for Alive Girl, and vice versa, so they were going to go on a date, which was okay, because he and Carla Gugino are still buddies (with sexual tension), and Zack Attack brought her a home-cooked meal, so she's probably going to bonk him.

THE END

So in conclusion, this movie was stupid and was like a mash-up of nine SVU endings and the dialogue was wooden, especially the attempt to give Carla Gugino a catchphrase of sorts ("Nothing is random," except, apparently, the six ducks and dives the storyline took to get to a resolution). The sexytimes were blurry and showery, which was probably for the best since, if they were in clear crisp focus like the forced scenes to establish Carla and Kevin's bed-buddy relationship, it would have likely been terrible and uncomfortable anyway.

I loved it! Four out of four Hudson News receipts! I would definitely recommend this if you're flying from Chicago to Cleveland and need a way to nod off just after the flight attendant brings around the 100-calorie pack of Lorna Doones.

Also, I like it when murdering hookers is given an enormous handwave. That's classy storytelling.

*This also, unfortunately, gave rise to my favorite moment in the whole stupid movie: after Zack Attack shoots the dog, which has been mauling Carla Gugino, he runs over and gives her this little hug. I feel like it was sort of ad-libbed, only Mark Paul Gosselaar wasn't quite confident enough in the decision, and it came off sort of perfunctory and awkward. It was the BEST.

Hey, heads up, "Burn Notice"...

Burn Notice

In the episode, “Damned if You Do,” a character mistakes Michael for the enemy, only to later find out that he is not. Has that ever happened to you?

· · Reshare · 12670211 · 9 hours ago · 

While I appreciate--oh so genuinely--your efforts to engage me on some kind of personal level in the tv show Burn Notice, about a former CIA operative who kinda sorta does what The A-Team used to do in the '80s, with his girlfriend, a former IRA participant and current explosives-and-gun nut, and Bruce Campbell, I'm afraid that I'd really prefer it if you'd just continue to blow things up, go pkew! pkew! with guns, and try to dig yourself out from under the massive pile of conspiracy you've heaped on yourself.

Thanks! Love the Facebook Fan Page!


Jessie


PS I have asked you nicely many times: please make Cody Bell take off his shirt.


PPS The next villain is going to be Doctor Octopus, isn't it?

This Week on "One Life To Live" (the good, bad, indifferent, and ???)

Good:

• The return of the non-dog version of David Vickers, handsome in a full-length cashmere coat, a newly acquired(?) distinguished patch of white in his hair, and his amazing ability to ruthlessly jab me in the funny bone. I agree with Tina (uh, as she was looking for Princess David Vickers, her dog): come back, David Vickers, you naughty girl!
• Austin Peck as Rick. He's taken the stupidest tertiary character and has made him a constant surprise of verbal and nonverbal comedic delights. I mean, if you have to spend time with all those Fords and Starr's vapid songstress storyline, you might as well do it with Austin Peck doing his imitation of Dani, talking about unicorns and boy bands. (Side note: the song "One Life to Live" and Rick's threats about eliminating it...boy, I shouldn't laugh at that sort of thing and encourage fourth-wall breaking bologna, but I can't help myself).
• Byooooooooooootiful Téa Delgado who is sweeping around in her byooooooootiful cardigans, crying and being preggo...byoooooooooootifully. AND she's still the most bad-ass, smart character on the show, working to get Clint temporary release to be a part of Natalie's gross sham of a wedding.
• Equally byooootiful Blair, gettin' some in her sexy leather skirt (I mean, let's ignore the implication that Tomas Delgado is a two-pump chump). I wish someone would layer my hair like hers. Her layers are rad. And she's a good friend to Tea and had the best showdown with David Vickers (cashmere version, not dog version).
• Todd Todd Todd Todd Todd Todd Todd Todd Todd (with the exception of his stupid ghost-brainwash mother hanging around; I wish Todd would go on medication, if only to rid us from hamtime). 
• Sam and his "magic wand." HAHAHAHAHA x 1,000,000. That kid is the best, pee hands aside.
• Jessica: I've decided I'm going to root for her, even though her wardrobe continues to be ridiculous and she insists on bonding with that dingle Ford Ford. Because at least she's being sincere and isn't rolling her eyes and being a big ol' bitch, Natalie, you big ol' bitch.
• Viki and Clint inching closer to a reunion. Tee hee!

Bad:

• Though the show has temporarily put the breaks on the Gigi as Stacey with Gigi's Face But It's Really Gigi storyline, but has somehow allowed for Rex to continue his dippy frowny-face routine.
• Natalie and (I still love you, Tanner Scofield!) John McBain and Brody: I get that this is something soaps like to do, but it'd be nice if I could root for one person in the midst of this never-ending paternity/wedding mess. But Natalie is awful, John is an impotent mopeus, and Brody...well, I think I'd like Brody better if he were full-on, balls-out evil, rather than this doorstop-wedging incompetent evil that he is.
• Roxy: normally her hamtime doesn't super irritate me. But shut up, squawkbox. God almighty. If she said "Johnny" or "Natty" one more time this week, I would have reached through the screen and knocked her garish centerpiece/hat off her wig.
• Lack of more Tina and Cord post-reunion. Boooooooooo!
• No Cutter either. Boooooooooo the sequel!

Indifferent:

• Shaun and Vivian's relationship drama. Maybe have them on more than once a lunar cycle, and I'd feel more invested.
• Tomas Delgado Investigates. Can't that dude just paint some more or something?

???

•  This whole business with Jack and Neela. As fond as I am of these romances of convenience on soaps, the way this is playing out concurrently with Jack's poorly executed arson is ??? Also: Jack's "attraction" to Neela being communicated via stuttering and accidental gallantry kind of makes sense for the character, I guess, but it doesn't make it any more painfully crapful to watch. Seriously, this is all like a super-awful teen adaptation Mississipi Masala (from what I vaguely recall of the video box I saw a few times at Mr. Movies before I elected to rent something sans Denzel Washington).
• While the paternity of Liam shenanigans have gone on for what seems like a Sisyphean eternity, so help me, if Princess David Vickers runs up the aisle of the church with the paternity test in her mouth, I may have to reassess my constant irritation and complaining about the storyline.

TV Listo

1. Watching Once Upon A Time. Not sure why. Several people over at the LiveGurnal think it's lovely and involving and exciting. I am a killjoy and think none of those things. I mostly spend the show wincing at the dialogue and the delivery of said dialogue.
2. Burn Notice has begun again. It is pretty okay. I'm sorry to be one of these people, but at this juncture, this would be a far better show if it were about everyone but Michael. Also, I predict that next season's villain is going to be Sylar, and he will be invincible. The End. (Heroes is still topical, right?)
3. I have not watched the last two episodes of Glee. Kinda thought I was going to be done with the show, but then I saw a clip of Mercedes and Santana doing an Adele mashup, so I'm hosed and probably going to catch up eventually.
4. I've been watching Psych again. It's fine, I guess. I thought the whole "Shawn is gay hahahaha!" joke last week was puzzling. Is that a thing that show does now? Make slightly homophobic funnies?
5. I don't feel like watching more Friday Night Lights unless I'm with people to talk to about it immediately and stuff.
6. I sound sort of depressed in this post, don't I? "TV: Meh." That's not my usual position on matters.
7. But there it is. I guess my problem, besides not watching more Friday Night Lights, is that I'm squirreling away the OLTLs too.
8. I read a Georgette Heyer. Title April Lady. It was a cool concept--the two lovebirds are already married and have to discover that they love each other--but it got a little too A Flea in Her Ear at the end. Lots of running in and out of doors and misunderstandings and drunken shenanigans.
9. I tried to get to 10, guys. I really did.

Title: Boobs (Installation Art)

As a part of a generous 2011 City of Chicago grant, "Boobs" was created as part of an art commune project known as Lane Tech. A piece known both for its playful use of a gritty, urban medium, as well as a direct and forceful, rather than sublimated, sense of sexuality, "Boobs" recalls the satirical works of Banksy and the vibrantly Rabelaisesque wordplay of Charles Bukowski, all while remaining confidently original.

"Boobs" will be on display at the northeast corner of Addison and Western from now until the first solid snowfall.

(Ha ha ha..."'Boobs' will be on display")

In the VIP

1. One of the best Communitys of the season, in my opinion, but I'm a sucker for Troy-centric stories (yeah, yeah, and old Southern gentlemen with ivory toupees). But I think it behooves me, in honor of Jerry Minor's guest turn, to share one of those rare things that just gets me laughing and laughing so hard that I can't stop (and then eventually I do stop, but boy, do I hurt):

 2. Also good-funny yet very touching and thoughtful: Parks and Recreation. I can't bear much more of Adam Scott and Amy Poehler looking longingly at each other, though. That hurts my insides in a different way than being up in the club, rollin' on dubs. And sweet relief, Rob Lowe's hair is back to normal. In closing, I hope Donna and Jean-Ralphio make some webisodes real soon.
3. I didn't watch The Office because our DVR has short-term memory loss and deleted our series record. Good news, though: I think our DVR is close to solving the mystery of who killed his wife (spoiler alert: probably Joe Pantaliano...or him).
4. I got a real case of Decemberists exhaustion thanks to my Shuffle's ob-session with playing tracks from Hazards of Love, particularly the Prelude that begins with 40+ seconds of silence. I recently saw them on Austin City Limits, and I have fallen in love with "Rise To Me."
5. I'm also really liking Ryan Adams' Ashes and Fire. "Lucky Now" is beautiful.
6. I like mopey music. Also, I'm about a year late on the stuff from The King Is Dead. Better than the time I was all "Oh, Mumford and Sons are super good!" three years after everyone was talking about them.
7. I am reading a Georgette Heyer novel since 3 hours ago. It's futile for me to pretend I keep up a regular reading habit. Anyway, the title is April Lady, and it's about a married couple who are in love but due to Regency-era blah-de-blah, neither of them know it. I'm only 30 pages in, but I kind of get a kick out of the whole premise. And I really, really wish BBC would film some adaptations of these books. Richard Armitage needs work, and I need to see Richard Armitage work.
8. I am still watching One Life to Live. Nothing is finer in this whole wide daytime world than when supercouples begin the road towards each other (again) (some more). Tina and Cord's literal roll in the hay was effing delightful (pun...sort of intended?), and Todd's Sherman-like march to Blair is about as amazing as daytime monologuing gets. Minus his dead mother flashbacks or hallucinations or ghost-chats or whatever. But I'm not a fan of that unless it's two dads and one of the dads is played by Joseph Campanella.
9. Is it cool if I skip this week's ep of Glee? I heard that Brittany and Santana make some progress, but I need to know how great/cute it is and if I'm allowed to fast-forward through any of the "comedy" with Sue.
10. I'm looking forward to reviews of Tower Heist. Not in a Love Guru way, exactly. I think it looks like a fun way to pass time, and I half-considered going this weekend. But early reviews have not been promising. So if it's going to go that way, I'd like it to go big.

The TV I Have Watched This Week

And most of this tv-watching has been done in the last 24+ hours:

1) Season 2 Onion News Network (you know, the thus far portion)
2) One Life To Live (I don't think I can say it any more succinctly...) for the week
3) Thursday NBC Lineup Minus Whitney (very, very funny, particularly Spader's insane post-"What am I up to?" ghost story on The Office, Joel McHale's illiteracy performance on Community, and every thing ever on Parks and Recreation, minus...is it just me, or is this latest subplot with Chris Traeger and Jerry's daughter kind of bleh?)
4) latest ep of Happy Endings (because blahmanda told me to, and it was in no way a letdown)
5) latest ep of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia (... you know, I've had mixed feelings regarding this show for a while, but I think I'm reaching a max capac on my shrillness-avoidance flinching)
6) latest ep of Psych (I want someone to offer a rational, non-"Because it's Psych, and it's a USA show, and it's silly!" explanation as to why Juliet O'Hara is dating Shawn Spencer; I really mean it)
7) Ep 2x02 of An Idiot Abroad with Karl Pilkington, which really had a humdinger of an ending. Not every day you get to hear Karl insultingly and nonsensically try to argue the virtues of a Chinese dwarf village with Warwick Davis over a cell phone.
8) Most of a Doctor Who episode featuring Simon Callow as Charles Dickens and Gwen from Torchwood as a psychic chambermaid.

I guess it's a little weird that I feel like I'm not watching that much TV overall. I should probably revisit my definition of "much TV."

Adventures in the Talkies: Drive

There will come a time in the life of every girl--either a true girl of age 12-18, or a girl at heart--when she, pursuing the love of a movie star crush, will see a movie that fills her heart with regret and her head full of horrible, horrible images.

(I have wracked my brain attempting trying to think of a good example, but all I can come up with is seeing Tommy Lee Jones in Cobb, and that wasn't exactly what I'm going for. It's too bad Kirk Cameron didn't make some arthouse grodo film like Natural Born Killers... damn it, Tommy Lee Jones! Why are you my every example today?)

Anyway, the point is: Kate and I went to Drive a few days ago. We went because not long ago, we saw Crazy, Stupid Love, and tee hee Ryan Gosling... 

I thought I had done enough "reading up" on the film. Yay, Ryan Gosling is going to be psychotic! I saw that in Murder by Numbers, and that movie was good-time fun! There will also be driving and Albert Brooks!

All of those things are true, I suppose. There is Ryan Gosling, whose Charles Bronsonesque character clearly isn't what you'd call normal in the first 30+ minutes of the film, but when he goes into psychotic mode, it's not "ha ha ha witty young buck who licks Sandra Bullock" psychotic. It's more like "AHHHHHHHHHHHH!" watching through fingers, did-he-just-stomp-that-man's-head-into-mush psychotic. You know: not the enjoyable kind of psychotic.

But maybe it's just me. I've gotten more and more squeamish as I've aged. I used to watch Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street and the several sequels to Psycho (but never Hellraiser, because that Pinhead freaks my shit out), but somewhere along the way, I lost my ability to tolerate gore. And this kind of gore, presented after a setup of ambient music, sun-spackled courting, and I-should-have-known-it-was-eerie stretches of silence just had a brutal, horrifying feel that I couldn't shake even an hour or so after I'd left the theater.

I did like what they did with light. In one scene, Driver is practically encased in shadow while the rest of the scene has natural light, and it was a visual tipoff that our lead character was a moral black hole. And the slo-mo scene before the head-stomping (eesh) in the elevator was breathtaking. Carey Mulligan should demand to be lit like the Lady of the Lake in every movie. But anytime I find myself saying something admiring about the art of the film, I immediately want to follow it with "brrrrrrrrr." So...brrrrrrrrrrrr.

Albert Brooks was incredible. He has that edge he showed in Out of Sight, only of a less wormy, more terrifying variety. I wouldn't go so far as to call his character or performance "genial," and I don't think Brooks was going for "hey, despite all the horrible shit I've done and am about to do, I'm a swell guy," but he was funny and seems to genuinely like Sheldon and, to some extent, Driver. But his affection, particularly for Sheldon was hardly comforting when he was--spoiler alert--opening up his arm with a razor blade.

Brrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

I don't know. I guess Drive is one of those movies, like Requiem for a Dream, where I can say, "I saw that. It was...well-made." And I'll likely never, ever, ever, ever see it again.

Adventures in the Talkies: 50/50

I had a brief moment at the box office where I almost chose to attend The Lion King in 3-D over 50/50. But then I remembered that a single woman in her mid 30s at a 2:00 pm show would be super creepy, and also something about how I saw The Lion King in 2-D when it was first released and damn it, two dimensions was just fine, what is with the kids today. So I attended 50/50 as planned.

I liked it, overall. It was, as advertised, a comedy(ish) about battling cancer, and while the guy-buddy aspect was great, I think the part I liked most was the equally important development of Adam, Joseph Gordon-Leavitt's character, and his relationship with his mother, Diane, played by Anjelica Huston.

There's an early scene in the movie where Diane and Adam's father (who is suffering from Alzheimer's) are coming over to Adam's home for dinner--and to find out that Adam has cancer--and in the ten seconds where Diane is coming up the stairs, she notices chipping paint on the rail and, without missing a beat, offer-demands to call the landlord on Adam's behalf to have it dealt with. Diane's critical eye--the cool way she says "I don't like her" after a nurse leaves the room--and steam-train caretaking nature inform both Adam's reluctance and annoyance at including his mother in his sickness, as well as Adam's own assumption of caretaking duties in his own relationships. I loved Adam's subtle nonverbal reaction when Kyle, Seth Rogen's character, shouts, "Why do you always get involved with selfish bitches?" because as funny and ultimately supportive as Kyle is, he's just another selfish bitch in Adam's life.

Also, semi-related, I think Anjelica Huston is amazing in how she balanced the humor and tears, and her performance reminded me of the scene in The Royal Tenenbaums where Royal tells Etheline he's dying. I have many favorite scenes in TRT, but that is one of my for-real favorites:

I think Joseph Gordon-Leavitt made interesting choices. It seems like it'd be very easy to go broad with the material--young man, working in local public radio, with crass friend and self-absorbed girlfriend, is diagnosed with cancer. But he kept it low-key, building a believable character who was non-demonstrative without seeming cold, angry and frightened without destroying sets and mowing scenery, and charming when he smiled, but not in that 1,000-watt Julia Roberts kind of way.

And Philip Baker Hall was in a sliver of a part as a profanity-inclined elderly gent who becomes Adam's chemo buddy. I think profanity-inclined seniors are always a positive addition to any film.

For pre-film trailers, I saw:
1) Man on a Ledge - just a note to the fine folks who make trailers: don't lead into a heist film setup by showing us Kyra Sedgwick as a hungry reporter and Edward Burns as another reporter (or maybe a cop?) who is also hungry, but also concurrently whiny and aggressively smug. By the time you got to giant diamonds and Ed Harris and Titus Welliver as a uniform and Elizabeth Banks as the negotiator and raining money and another heist to get the diamond that wasn't heisted in the first place, I had long tuned out.

Also, Sam Worthington... that guy's a thing, right? With the ladies and the gay men?

2) Premium Rush - I'm going to quote the talk-to-the-screen lady behind me: oh, I'm going to see me that movie!

Bicycling and fighting crime! Not since Quicksilver, I tell you!

3) Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows - I believe my feelings about this film are best expressed in spastic, barely contained and coherent interpretive dance...

I don't know why I'm so goofy-psyched about this sequel. I enjoyed the first film and all, but any time I see the trailer, the Ritchie-tastic sequence of the shell popping out of the rifle, Jared Harris talking that beautiful Lane Pryce talk as Moriarity, the promise of Stephen Fry as Mycroft, Robert Downey Jr in garish makeup talking sass... next to The Muppets, there's not a holiday-timeframe film I'm more dedicated to seeing immediately on opening day.

And speaking of Christmas releases, can we talk for a second about Mission Impossible: Ghost in the Machine? I resent being tricked into yet another Mission Impossible. I saw MI2 in the theater about a decade ago--let me check IMDb, yep, 11 years ago--and I can't tell you how fucking terrible and annoying it was to be stuck with the sensation that I was lovingly applying extra layers to Tom Cruise's massive ego for 2+ hours. I may have see MI3, but I refuse to remember anything about it, because I'm still so pissed about MI2. Ugh, so stupid. Do you remember that scene where he and Thandie Newton are making longing eye contact in the middle of a slowed-down whirly chase scene that went on for about five minutes too long? Of course you do, because it encapsulated all that was aggravating and overblown-ina-bad-way about the film. I think the original movie was replaced in my heart long ago by the Bourne series. I can get my explosions and car chases and labyrinthine conspiracies without being beset by Cruise's desperate need to be in my face consistently and thoroughly.

And yet... while he's just as beady-eyed and effortfully "bad" "ass" in the Ghost Dad trailer, I'm kinda feeling the whole giant tower, jumping-and-running-and-punching-Jeremy Renner thing. Like, if Duse wants to go see something dumb and loud the day after Christmas, I could be talked into it.

What is that? Does Cruise have some kind of voodoo powers?

Glee 3x03, "Asian F"

Mmmyeah, I...I don't agree.

Also: really with the continuing Coach Beiste eating food jokes? And the ginger supremacists?

Damn it, if I hadn't seen those spoilers for the upcoming November episodes...

Adventures in the Talkies: What's Your Number?/Moneyball

Back when my friend Duse and I went to movies every single weekend of our late high school career, we resented the presence of non-serious moviegoers. Duse called the middle-aged to early senior, female-going matinee crowd "biddies."  They not only talked through Coming Attractions, they talked through the entire film, one party usually filling the air with inane questions like "Why did he/she do that?" After spending weeks, sometimes months planning to see a film, Duse and I were puzzled as we watched people walk up to the box office and ask what several of the titles were about! Or, worse yet, people clearly making arbitrary choices about what to see!

Now that I am much...much older, I'm beginning to see how that can come to pass. I was at work on Friday, with plans to see Moneyball at 7:15, and I thought to myself, "Why not see one of the matinees to kill some time?" (you know, rather than sit at work and goof off on a Friday Internet dead zone...)

My options, for films that would fit in that time slot and provide me with the opportunity to reasonably make it to the screen showing Moneyball early enough to not get stuck with crappy seats, were the excellent-looking 50/50...and the movie I selected, What's Your Number? I don't know that I selected it arbitrarily, but I have to admit I went into that film very much with a "Shrug! Need to waste some time!" attitude.

It did not disappoint. It indeed helped me waste my time.

Dave White gave the film a pounding for having gross semi-misogynistic overtones, and while that's valid, I suppose, I was much more disappointed in how lazy and sloppy it was in developing the characters ("Hey, guys, 30 minutes into the movie, we'll reveal she's an artist in such a casual and off-hand way, some viewers might not even realize that's going to play into her cobbled-together self-discovery!") and how the supposedly funny parts--the visits to all the exes, who were portrayed by very funny actors like Mr. Anna Faris and Thomas Lennon and Andy Samberg and Aziz Ansari's voice and Martin Freeman--barely elicted chuckles. I believe I laughed harder at Fozzie Bear's "What? I can't hear you! I have a banana in my ear!" in the AMC "Don't talk and text" ad than at any point in the movie.

It wasn't a bad concept--a girl who had lots of fun/couldn't find The One finds The One in a fellow fun-haver/slut--but ugh, it sucked. I don't know. It actually did the whole "I can sneak us into a major sporting venue" thing. I couldn't believe it. I sort of assumed, based on the premise, that the film was more self-aware than that. But there they were, playing strip HORSE where the Boston Celtics shoot hoops.

I thought Anna Faris was pretty funny in Just Friends, but...she didn't bowl me over in this. She's not terrible or anything, but I think she was part of the reason those ex visits fell so flat. She seemed torn between approaching the film as a gross-out, screwball I-slipped-and-fell-into-some-butterscotch-pudding event and in being Kate Hudson Katherine Heigl Anne Hathaway and being a rom com girl. And yay for women's empowerment, but limiting the aforementioned funny guys to 45 seconds really weakened the film's ability to generate belly laughs.

I guess the upside is that I think I can finally tell Chris Evans and Chris Pine apart. Chris Evans is much handsomer. Or at least taller.

Then I saw Moneyball. Moneyball was very, very, very good. Arftul and thoughtful and well-acted and engaging and interesting and layered and great.

Glee 3x02, "I Am Unicorn"

What a patchwork quilt...if a patchwork quilt were made 50% from lovely squares of fabric and 50% from used coffee filters and ham chunks.

Kurt and Burt scene? Great.

Kurt and Brittany scenes? Great.

Brittany and Santana scene? Great.

On the other hand:
Sue's continuing awkwardly scripted, thoroughly stupid crusade against the arts? Dumbo.

The return of Shelby? Sort of emotionally resonant, I guess, but also poorly thought out and clearly not intended to be a long-haul kind of arc, when really, an open adoption and its impact on both the adoptive mother and the teens could be an entire series on its own.


Rachel and Finn? Look, they're clearly not my thing anymore, and this exploration of Finn's crappy dancing as a metaphor for his divergent life path from Rachel is, indeed, crappy--in an unintentional sort of way. I guess if the show seemed more aware that teenagers always believe they are meant to be together forever and that they usually face pragmatic change like "You're a dumbo who can't dance, and I'm going to be a bright shining star" with glazed-over insistence that someone isn't a dumbo...but the show wants to have its grown-up cake while frosting it with teen 4EVAH Finnelberry or what-the-fuck-ever Funfetti. Look, show, you're not My So-Called Life (which I only half-watched) or Freaks and Geeks. Commit to being an overidealized, larger-than-life view on teen life and love because that's where you've got some muscle. You left behind "dark exploration of the disappointing journey from child to adult" about 2+ seasons ago.

Kurt being too gay for musical theatreeeeeee leads? Excuse me, have the writers ever, ever, ever, ever, ever been to a Broadway show? And if this is the way they intend to inject conflict into Kurt and Blaine's relationship... I suppose could trust a show less to handle the layers and intricacies of a matter such as this, but Jeezy Creezy, I don't know how that's emotionally possible.

Speaking of Blaine...

"'There are so many other characters on the show that I'm actually more excited to see, though. Blaine has had his time in the sun and I think it's time to focus on other people - there are so many other stories to be told that I'm curious in as a fan."
--Darren Criss in a recent Marie Claire UK interview

Yes, let us see how that's going for our darling, modest, "perfect" non-lead:

A continuing education on life, based on soaps

Do you know what I have discovered recently? That newspaper magnates are superb at lurking and growing beards. Todd Manning and Jack Deveraux should teach a course at the Soap Opera School of Life Skills Annex about hanging around in bushes, snidely commenting on their loved ones' choices, and having distinct Grizzly Adams facial hair whilst doing so. One assumes the Grizzly Adams facial hair is the only reason some random extra doesn't blurt "Hey, isn't that..." Well, that and the writing that keeps these captains of media unrecognized, even when they're only 15% hidden in any given scene.

And by the way, I'm returning to DOOL after probably five or six years, so forgive me if I absolutely refuse to learn some of these characters' names. For example, Stefano had someone hanging around him in Monday's ep. I can only assume it is one of his MILLION children. I believe he's the British one, so his name is, I think, EJ. But I'm going to call him Tall-y. Because he's real tall.

Other things on DOOL:
1) Judi Evans's hair is super cute.
2) ...there's something redeeming about Daniel, right? Because holy shit, he and Jennifer were nauseating throughout that episode. What are you two, 13 years old?
3) Maggie and Victor...who'd have thunk it.

Glee, 3x01

Rather than complain about all the things I found same-old same-old stupid in last night's season premiere of Glee, I will instead focus on a few positive things:

1. I liked Kurt's '80s throwback neon-and-pastel plaid suit.
2. Mark Salling mugged it up big time during "We Got the Beat."
3. ...

Two positive things! Two! AH-AH-AH!

I found it awful that Vulture made a pretty sharp list of things the show could do to improve itself, and instead, it stuck to what it has done wrong for ages: focus on an issue to the point of suffocating the audience, e.g., Glee is about supporting arts education! CHOKE ON IT!; introduce new, forgettable characters like Sugar and Mercedes's Boyfriend That Is Not Sam; and make Sue as ridiculous and pointless as ever as she runs for office.

Also, while I appreciate that sometimes, various factions of viewers want something, I'll tell you this from a fairly dispassionate perspective: Harry Shum Jr. and Jenna Ushkowitz should stick to dancing and/or singing. The less "acting" those two do, the better. Not every second-string character is meant to shine. Not everyone is Naya Rivera.

Fun with Search Terms

Classic/Crap: Sunset Boulevard/Skyline

me: On one hand, it'd be fun to get a blog entry related to Skyline up; but like you said...pretty tough to beef up the "Sunset Blvd" part.

Other than pointing out that both films had characters involved in the movie industry.

Amanda: Maybe we could examine how Skyline would have played out differently in the days of the studio system, or...uh...what if Norma Desmond destroyed LA and harvested brains?

me: HEE HEE HEE!

Poor Joe Gillis...could have escaped his fate if he'd only thought to hide behind some cupboards.

Yes, it's harder than it was in the first round, where our crap movie actually had points of interest and competent performers (though I am still puzzled by what Adrien Brody was doing with that voice) and the classic movie we watched wasn't such a classic. An understandable classic, most definitely, but still... as Amanda pointed out right as we began, " Let's watch this movie that we have heretofore experienced only as familiar pop culture reference points!"

There were stretches of time during our Gchat where we sat in relative Gsilence during Sunset Boulevard (and thank you, Nathan Lane, for saying it Sunset Booooolevard in the movie version of Jeffrey--now I want to do that every single time). I don't know what Amanda was thinking, but I spent several stretches of the movie feeling a sort of dread I haven't felt since No Country for Old Men. During their New Year's Eve kiss, where Joe Gillis finally sinks full-on into rent-boy-ishness, Norma doesn't so much embrace him as entwine him like she is a poisonous plant that subsists on life force. [I was thinking, "This is a really good movie. No wonder people have been talking about what a good movie this is for fifty years. Probably going to be hard to find something new to say about how good this movie is." --Amanda]

Some folks talk about the relative unlikeability of the characters on Mad Men, how they are sad and pathetic and unhappy and empty. To them, I say: watch Sunset Boulevard and measure Joe Gillis and Norma Desmond on that same scale. I bet you feel a lot more generous towards Roger Sterling.

The one thing Sunset Boooooolevard and Skyline had in common is that both set their story in the world of Hollywood and filmmaking. Of course, Sunset existed in a specific period of time when "talkies" were established but the remnants of silent films were still standing, whether in star (Norma) or director (Cecil B DeMille, who cameos as himself) form, and that history, along with Amanda's observation that "[Nowadays] Celebrities don't fade into obscurity so much as they fade into ironic t-shirt based nostalgia" makes the storytelling very specific, but relatable, not necessarily through yards of exposition, but via the characters and how they behave towards each other and talk about "the business."

In Skyline, Donald Faison's character is a...producer? Director? Hard to tell, because he yells movie words into a phone in a manner that suggests that either the screenwriter hesitates to let us into the fantastic world of moviemaking, or the screenwriter is some 10-year-old child that has been thrust into the role of screenwriter and is taking a childish guess at what moviemaking entails ("A man tells other people what to do real loud and then movies happen!"). In place of a sense of specificity, we're given...what's the mathematical equivalent of less-than-cliche? Is there a symbol in Microsoft Word for that. I never thought I'd see the day when Entourage feels like a more accurate representation of Hollywood than...something. Including a hand-drawn picture with stick figures that I made illustrating a plotline of Entourage.

Sunset is a classic from 1950; Skyline was made in 2010, yet retains many of the qualities of some of the terrible sci-fi films from the 1950s that were featured on MST3K. Amanda actually name-checked The Unearthly, and I think that's apt, as both had the same leaden lack of urgency in their pacing, the same one-set-fits-all feel, the same Godot-like rehashing of one or two arguments. The only thing Skyline had over The Unearthly was millions and millions of dollars of special effects that left us with this amazing feat of migs and megs of memories:

At one point, Amanda said, "Maybe it's not aliens. Maybe the city of Los Angeles has gained sentience, and is rising up to cleanse itself of douchebags." And if the movie had shown an ounce of that style of sense of humor and self-awareness, the fact that their menacing aliens were Itty Bitty Book Lights or Skynet Wacky Wallwalkers probably wouldn't have mattered so much.

And let us speak a minute about Eric Balfour. Who gave that guy a leading role? I mean, honestly...

That guy? Are we sure Mr. Sexy Plumber's Butt isn't an alien himself? He has such a weird head with way too much face on it! Norma Desmond once said, "We didn't need dialogue. We had faces!" Skyline apparently didn't feel the need for either of these things.

In the end, Sunset Boulevard ends with Joe Gillis cruelly demolishing his chances of lasting romance with Betty Schaefer, then attempting to flee Norma's prison to (supposedly) return to Ohio to work at a small-town paper. The movie starts to ends where it began: Joe is floating dead in Norma's pool. But since Norma is a star, the movie truly ends as she closes in on her imagined closeup, the picture blurring until she disappears as well. A tragic ending, flawlessly presented with only a few now-oft-quoted words and intelligent use of filmmaking technique.

Skyline ends...Well, it just sort of ends. As Amanda so adeptly put it, "Whatshisname Dumbtattoo is finally ready to be a responsible family man, and then gets his brain put into an alien cyborg body." That's...pretty much it. No one ever gets to the boat that is referenced as salvation.

me: What happened to the boat plan? Is that shot just because they don't have cars?
Amanda: I guess they were really not committed to that boat plan.
Or...the production could not afford a boat.

I think another option is that the boat was a conveniently created reason for the characters to have any kind of escape plan that didn't look like what they did for most of the film: hide behind cupboards and run around aimlessly like the maldeveloped idiots that they were.

Soon, How Did This Get Made? will have a podcast regarding Skyline, and I imagine they will cover the other details I neglected, like:

1. How tremendously unappealing Donald Faison's character was, which is so weird, because Donald Faison is fantastic and funny and charismatic.


2. How chintzy the special effects are, especially for the people/company credited with Avatar.


3. How tremendously unappealing Eric Balfour is. Period.


4. Los Angeles: is this the best they could do? Really?


5. Hey, it's That Guy! (that blog doesn't exist anymore, right?) from Oz and Dexter. Boy, he's sure great until his character has his brain removed.


6. Death of a Dog: just goes to show what a lazy sack of crap with no emotional depth this movie is/has/was/forever will be.

Amanda's light bulb as we continued to discuss the film and writing a blog entry: Billy Wilder (or maybe it was his partner, Charles Brackett) wrote, in the sardonic, 'I may be dead but I'm still jaded' voice of frustrated artist/struggling hack Joe Gillis as he sat down to read Norma Desmond's undoubtedly loony script for her comeback film, Salome, "Sometimes it's interesting to see just how bad bad writing can be."

If he had seen Skyline, he might have followed that with, "And sometimes it's not."

Adventures in The Talkies: Crazy Stupid Love

First of all, Kate and I went to the movie at the Lake Theater in Oak Park, which became my new favorite theater. They have $6 matinees, cherry Icees, and free refills on everything... which you don't need, because their large beverage is basically a five-gallon pickle bucket.

We saw trailers for 30 Minutes or Less (the trailer makes me laugh really, really hard, but Dave White's review, where he likens it to public school pizza, makes me a little hesitant to spend even $6 on it), the MTV Presents remake of Footloose (which I think Kate and I enjoyed equally as fodder for a 2+ minute opportunity to show off our wittiness and disgust), and Contagion (Kate loves, loves apocalypse-type and/or virus-type films; I like them too, and it's the first Soderbergh film that has appealed to me in a while; plus, look at the cast! Geez, it's everyone!).

Then Crazy Stupid Love. It was basically the movie I wanted Larry Crowne to be: genial, mushy, predictable but aware of its predictableness enough to tap its nose at the audience, and charming, charming, charming. Everyone was charming. Steve Carell was sad-sacky charming. Julianne Moore was slighty nervous, slightly emotional charming, Emma Stone was just flat-out amazing charming. Ryan Gosling was...

How can one man have washboard abs, aggressively masculine energy, and beep people's noses? It's like he was made in a lab! And not, like, Data, where he's all programmed without emotions. He's programmed with nothing but emotions. There is a scene he shares with Steve Carell at a bar towards the end of the movie, and it could have been such a hacky, trite emotional climax scene, but the way Gosling delivers, I felt him being disappointed and upset and fed-up and loving. And he basically says nothing in the last three or four minutes of the scene but clipped, unfinished sentences and exasperated sputters.

Ryan Gosling is the best. And if people are starting to get tired of him being in movies, I want people to know that I put up with a time where I couldn't escape Tom Cruise if I tried, so America owes me oversaturation on a performer that I like.

He is handsome.

Anyway, I don't know that there's a lot to say about the movie that I didn't encapsulate in my initial reaction (genial! mushy! very, very funny!). Even things I normally pick on in other movies--wiser-than-their-years kids; biiiiiiig music cues--engaged me and made me laugh and happy and sad, squinchy, trying-not-to-cry eyes. And best of all, unlike Larry Crowne, the redheaded female(s) were as charming and delightful as possible, and the movie did not try to teach me any lessons about America. I have friends for that, Rom-Com Movies (and sometimes Michael Moore) .

In conclusion, Ryan Gosling is so terrific, and if you thought The Notebook looked too maudlin, Lars and the Real Girl looked too indie-darling, and Blue Valentine and Half Nelson looked like they were specially designed Dysons that vacuumed hope and joy instead of crumbs and cat hair, this is your opportunity to enjoy a Ryan Gosling performance.*

*Though if you haven't watched Murder by Numbers 22 times on Oxygen, I am sort of disappointed in you. He rocks that red leather jacket.

Adventures in The Talkies: Bridesmaids and Larry Crowne

Bridesmaids: everyone in the world has now seen Bridesmaids. I saw it in a theater this morning with four people. I'm sure part of the reason that there were four people is because it was 10 AM, but the other part is definitely because we were the last four people to see it.

I really, really, really, really, really, really enjoyed it. It was funny and bittersweet and the one makeout scene between Kristen Wiig and Chris O'Dowd (who, by the way, is super, super cute...really, phenomenally cute and I wish he were in more stuff and not just that Romola Garanimals miniseries I've been meaning to watch) was hot and Jon Hamm and Wendy McClendon-Covey and Ellie Kemper and hooray. I forgive Kristen Wiig for Gilly (so long as she is never ever Gilly ever again).

Then I bought a second breakfast of popped-corn and water (it's like I was journeying to Mordor!) and saw Larry Crowne. I was prepared to like it--I read Dave White's review and thought, "That sounds like everything I ever like in a Tom Hanks movie!"--but it turned out that by the time it was wrapping up, I felt impatient and annoyed and almost like walking out.

I don't think it's just my short attention span talking. There were things I really liked, of course, and Tom Hanks most of all. Sometimes I claim that Bruce Willis was my first crush, but I'm pretty sure it was Tom (Chekov from the original Star Trek clearly, clearly does not count). I can't remember what I saw first, but it seems like it must have been either Splash or Big. Probably not Dragnet: The Movie, which I shouldn't still love as much as I do, I suppose. But I love him, and I'll always love him. I love him particularly when he's corny-ass about America and music and more America, like in Forrest Gump or Saving Private Ryan or even You've Got Mail (big corporate Joe Fox!). But despite the Tom Petty-rich soundtrack, the shots of every race and age and religion sitting on a living room set outside, interacting just like a family, I felt like the movie didn't come together thematically. Or maybe it was just that it didn't engage me. I'd like to blame it on Julia Roberts. After all, she was off-putting and not likeable in a way that suggested she was trying to be unlikable-but-likable and took the corner too hard. But that wasn't all of it.

It's weird. I'm a pretty easy target. I'm a sap. I love when a movie is about how we're all different and we can do it together, even when corporations threaten the very core of who we are, when banks trick us into buying homes we cannot afford, when purple mountain's majesty above the fruited whatnot. But it felt or sounded the way I imagine a novel adaptation screenplay would sound and feel if I wrote it, with my rudimentary understanding of Steinbeck and Russo and...I don't know, name another author who writes about everywhere America and how one lone man fights and triumphs in ordinary, extraordinary ways. You know? Like PAN TO A DOZEN OR SO SCOOTERS THAT, AS ANXIETYGRRL TEXTED ME IN A TOTALLY APT GUESS, STAND FOR OUR FREEDOMS. See, guys if we take both CONVERSATION and ECONOMICS, then together, we can...

...purple mountain's majesty. Fruited. Boo.

Tom Hanks is still great at physical comedy, and he has the same goofy abandon and lack of shame he did when he was in Big. It's not like I hated it. I'm disappointed. I really wanted to be suckered and delighted, and I think I thought too hard and too much about it instead of just laughing at Wilmer Valderrama being a suspicious dinkus.

Ironic, isn't it, that I end on a suspicious dinkus note? I can't claim that it was sloppy or that it didn't do what it set out to do.  Maybe I was not in the mood to love America...this 4th of July weekend.

Ugh.

By the way, my favorite trailer was easily the one for One Day, which is not based on the Barenaked Ladies smash single, but instead on some quality paperback I will probably never read. Insufferable almost-parody-quality voice-over narrator exposition? Check. Anne Hathaway being coltishly independent yet cloyingly cute? Check. Britain? Check. Mom dying of cancer? Check. Some irritating overwrought connnnnnncept to keep the lovers apart? Check. I haven't been this annoyed with a trailer since The Romantics (that's right, you all may have forgotten that Katie Holmes is still trying, but I haven't...I haven't...sometimes at night, I can still hear the screaming...the green mile is so long...)

Adventures in The Talkies: Super 8

On the advice of my good friend Duse, I went to see Super 8 this afternoon. Actually, I intended to see the screening of the New York Philharmonic's staging of Stephen Sondheim's Company, but apparently I am not the only one in Chicago who enjoys musical theater, because that shit was sold out.

But Super 8 was as good as Duse said, and it reminded me of the second time I saw ET (not the first, because at age 5, I announced to the entire theater that ET looked like poop): how much I believed in the kids in the story and the way they talked to (mostly teased) each other and liked how their families seemed for-real and their town seemed like my town and how terrifying the government and military seems.

I liked the score and the group of friends and Elle Fanning as the accessibly pretty girl and that Michael Hitchcock turned up on the county sheriff's team and...well, I don't know that I liked how Ron Eldard seemed like he wandered into a time machine from his Sleepers performance, but it's nice that he's still working. I also liked that the costume department put Kyle Chandler in a white tee shirt. Kudos to you fine people.

Anyway: fun times. No one sang "Ladies Who Lunch" or "Being Alive," but you can't have it all.

But the most important part of this experience was seeing the trailers before this film. I usually assume that the trailers are specifically handpicked to appeal to the individuals seeing the main feature. If that is the case, then I, the moviegoer, will be chomping at the bit to see:
1) Horrible Bosses, which looks like something I'll probably watch on Comedy Central two or three years from now on a Saturday afternoon.
2) Rise of the Planet of the Apes: you know, I don't even know how to approach this. I saw the Burton remake of Planet of the Apes in the theater, what, 15 years ago? I didn't think that was all that good, but it wasn't necessarily terrible or anything. But this trailer...I don't know what it was about it, but I had to quell waves and waves of laughter that threatened to overcome me throughout the trailer. I swear I wasn't doing my usual MST3K lite riffy thinking either. Just something about the many menacing shots of Andy Serkis in that CGI gorilla suit, and then the huge atomic monkey bomb and the line of silent monkeys like a simian version of The Birds... so weird and How Did This Get Made? looking.
3) Transformers: Dark Side of the Moon Laser Floyd Show: those robots look like tinsel balls. I have never understood, in an aesthetic sense, how and why people enjoy looking at those tinsel-bots. Also: blah blah conspiracy...why do they, and the Pirates franchise, have these weirdo elaborate plots? Pkew! Pkew! Kaboom! Bee-boo-bah-boo-beep robots! See, not so fucking hard, right? Why does Neil Armstrong have to be there? When my brothers and I played Optimus Prime GI Joe He-Man Fun Time Hour, we never included elaborate retellings of modern history.
4) Captain America: okay, they got me with this one. I was lukewarm initially--Captain America never tripped my trigger back in my cartoon-watching days--but the trailer actually made it seem very cool.
5) The Zookeeper: Jesus, Kevin James.
6) and most importantly, Real Steel: I e-mailed blahmanda my approximation of my internal reaction through the course of the trailer...

15 seconds: "What? Another The Fighter? Already?"
25 seconds: "Robots?"
26 seconds:"Robots?"
30 seconds: "This is a joke trailer right?"
35 seconds to rest of trailer: "Please let the title of this movie be Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots: The Game: The Movie."

No lie and/or exaggeration: when the title credits flew onto the screen, I busted out laughing. I couldn't help it.

The mission statement and values of the Archive of Transformative Baloney

What We Baloney

Crafted with care, thoughtfulness, and artistic blah-de-blah by jesshelga and blahmanda.

The Archive of Transformative Baloney is a metaphoric storage shed built by The Organization of Madeup-ski Characters Making Out, which was established by  two nerds who believe that fanfiction, fanvideos, and—ew—even fanart, I guess—are fun ways to make the fictional characters that other folks created  suck face or, let’s be honest, Do It. But not in a grody, overdetailed way, and not in a way that “embraces kinks” or forces two canonical straight guys to penetrate each other’s bunholes in a way that sounds painful, frankly. Like, a linear, in-character extension of the playacting we see on the moving picture box or in the cinemas. Sometimes books, if that’s your thing.

Our baloney has a lot of restrictions. We have a waiver requiring your signature on the next page.

We believe that this practice should come with a healthy dose of self-effacing awareness and, sometimes, shame. Because as stated above: made-up shenanigans about fictional characters we didn’t create we are writing about to have them make the sexytimes. We don’t find it empowering or artistic. Usually, we are embarrassed to admit it. We have one or two folks we trust we talk to about fanfic recs in hushed tones, and we most certainly do not talk about it over dinner with our parents.

The Organization of Madeup-ski Characters Making Out (or TOoMCMO, if you like acronyms. Acronyms! So official!) is historically rooted in baloney. Sometimes it has the first name O-S-C-A-R. Sometimes it’s the kind of baloney that is well-meaning and fun and well-written (for something that is about people making out). But believe me: 100% beef baloney.

Also, we are chicks, but not the kind of chicks who have written a thesis paper on “Diving the Wreck.” The kind of chicks who don’t sound awkward calling ourselves “chicks.” We’re smart and sassy, but usually uninterested in engaging in the kind of baloney that ends in earnest, humorless lectures about rape culture.

Anyway, enjoy these stories full of kissing and sometimes adventures and mostly vanilla, non-detailed sex. What is with that anyway? Where women who wrote papers on “Diving the Wreck” like to write about guys shouting “Oh, yeah, fuck my asshole!” And don’t even get me started on trying to reappropriate the “P” word. You know the one I mean. That’s gross, and most of the time, that is only said by porn stars who are told to say that after they’ve done a couple rails of coke.

And for Christ's sake, if you're an adult with a shred of dignity, be a little embarrassed about it. 

Sincerely, 
The Board of Directors Emeritus Honorary Comptrollers, Esquire

The Values Inherent in Our Baloney

1. We value diversity in a reasonable number of combinations. We value all fans, except the dummies, freaks, jerks, and weirdos. We value hanging out, and liking different kinds of stuff, and not being all uptight if we get ragged on about some of it, while seeking to avoid getting offended by things unless they are really fucking terrible.

2. We value baloney, and we don't care if dudes or ladies write these made-up stories. My guess is that a majority of the time, ladies like to write stories about making out. But in the end, we value the kissing and the pkew pkew and the maybe they're married in this one? over the fact that ladies wrote it. Lots of dudes turn up in these made-up baloney stories, after all. We wouldn't want to marginalize their voice in the course of celebrating our baloney, would we? We don't want JM Coetzee to feel compelled to write a story about our baloney storage shed from a dude's point of view, do we? I didn't think so.

3. We value originality, in that we value individuals who can express themselves in the course of talking about fandom or tv or comics or Wagner operas without constant use of whatever term-of-the-moment is hot right now, e.g. IDEK or WHAT IS THIS I DON'T EVEN. 

If you quote Firefly more than once a month at this point in the course of expressing delight or disappointment, you shut your mouth. Your baloney has no place here. Devalued. Although we said we valued diversity in #1: learn to speak American or go back to your country of Cutesyfangirlonia.

4. We value the creative process behind baloney, but… you know, be reasonable. If we get the sense that you routinely skip work, weddings, pet feedings, funerals, and other important day-to-day functions and life events in the name of creating baloney… I don’t know, man. We aren’t a not-for-profit founded to provide intervention services, but you may want to look into a hotline. The people at Gamblers Anonymous seem nice.

5. We value making fun of others. It’s not personal, unless it’s one of the rare cases where it is. More than baloney, we value bagging on folks, riffing, and general Dorothy Parker-styled verbal japery and witticisms. Actually, that’s almost as enjoyable as reading and creating baloney.

6. If you have any questions about our mission, or would like to participate in a volunteer capacity, you have probably misunderstood and should maybe re-read all that baloney above.