Shenanigans on the Talking Picture Box

Two Gay Tuesday Evening Birds With One Stone: Glee and Southland

2012-02-15T11:02:00.000-08:00

Last night, Glee had a scene where The God Squad, the Christian characters of the Glee menagerie—Mercedes, Quinn, Sam, and some guy I assume is from The Glee Project, because he was introduced in a way that sort of assumed we knew and liked the performer and were damn well going to be invested in and charmed by him and his quirks—had an Official Discussion as it related to their position on gayness (“Is Gay Okay?” the whiteboard helpfully anvilled in the background of the scene).

The discussion was led by Mercedes, who regularly attends slumber parties with Kurt.

While I always assume that Glee is perpetually suffering from short-term memory loss when it comes to storylines, happenings, and character development, perhaps I do not give the show enough credit. Perhaps it intended, with this gesture, to show the hypocrisy of a group taking A Position, when the individuals within said group have pre-established friendships, benefit from the assistance of the gay community (Sam, who was homeless at some point or another, received clothes and support from Kurt), or are themselves such morally void, corrupted individuals that who gives a shit what they think (uh, Quinn, even though she actually made lucid points not growing out of a black void that began living in her soul). As for Adam Duritz Jr., who cares what he thinks as well, just on principle.

But I’m guessing that I’m right and it was just the writing team’s opportunity to breeze through dialogue writing by cutting-and-pasting previous David E. Kelley/Aaron Sorkin speechifying about what is and isn’t condemned in the Bible (MO-RAH-TORIUM! MO-RAH-TORIUM! We’ve ALL SEEN THE FWD: FWD: FWD: EMAIL ABOUT THIS; PLEASE STOP MAKING ME LISTEN TO TV CHARACTERS RECOUNT IT).

In better gay news, Dave Karofsky returned, and I guess he’s in love with Kurt, which occurred in offscreen moments/fanfics that happened after the two of them met up at Scandals (remember that whole night at Scandals, where Sebastian was that annoying pretentious high school kid we all knew who has refined tastes and maturity beyond his years and won’t let anyone forget it; wish that character has stuck around, and not the Snidely Whipgay that he is right now. Ha ha, also, Blaine perilously walked the Seems Like Date Rape Rope, remember that? Why don’t more people talk about how gross that was? I mean, that was pretty much as invasive as Karofsky’s hate-kiss, if we’re dealing with reality and not, like, Glee reality). As slapdash and oddball as the execution was, I’m not opposed at all to Kurt and Dave being friends/possibly more, if only because Chris Colfer and Max Adler are better overall scene partners. Even when things are fraught, neither is prone to go BIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIG!!!, and it’s nice to pretend like Glee is capable of that occasionally. Also, they are cute together, and I love the whole beanpole/burly thing. And Darren Criss’s scene-gobbling, open-mouth mug-o-rama is dumb.

But the scene ended with one of Glee’s typical DUM-DUM-DUMMMMMMMMMMM vaudevillian organ trills: one of Karofsky’s 32-year-old fellow West Lima students was at the Sugar Shack, conveniently, to see Karofsky tearily storming out on his admission of love. Naturally. It was like one of those scenes in a soap where you have to suspend your disbelief that the regular residents on the canvas spend days upon days missing out on totally unsubtle cues; therefore, it stands that a day player we’ve never seen and will never see again was able to either read body language in a way only a 32-year-old teenager can, superhumanly overhead the quiet conversation Kurt and Dave had, and/or runs the costume shop where Dave rented his gorilla suit and followed him to his wholly-too-elaborate plan to win Kurt’s affections. Other theories welcome. Anyway: Dave is probably going to get his ass kicked, which will, unhappily, invest me even more in this whole stupid thing because there will be bedside visits and shit, and I’m a sucker for that garbage. Just like I was a sucker for the way Dave gently placed his hand on the table, palm up, and awaited a hand-holdening that would never come.

I love Brittany and Santana. Yay for their kissing; boo for how the show, in its typical fashion, thought that by breaking the fourth wall it was actually addressing anything.

Over on Southland, the topic of gay bullying was addressed, but the message seemed more complicated and ambiguous (you know, not like Glee at all): John Cooper, who has been gay since the pilot episode on NBC—subtle enough that a lot of folks missed it, I guess, though I thought the scene last season where we was naked in bed with another naked dude was a telegraph in all caps, stop—and his partner, Jessica Tang, were called to a domestic disturbance, which involved parents reacting loudly and poorly to their son’s desire to return to school after he was unceremoniously outed (he sent nude photos to a boy he believed “liked him;” and if that isn’t frustrating, realistic teen behavior—you know, unlike some kind of gorilla-gram—then I don’t know what is). John has a quiet conversation with the teen, Mike, about the difference between not being ashamed and setting yourself up as a target for teenage idiots. Ultimately, Mike leaves for school…

…and he ends up on the roof of a building after being dragged into a school bathroom, forced into makeup and a dress, and having his ass kicked. John is quietly, firmly honest with Mike—he is gay too; it does get better; those guys are idiots—but Mike jumps anyway. After John Wellsian heroics, Mike is rescued by John’s quick thinking and the strong arms and backs of some of LAPD’s finest. Mike and John have a bedside chat—yes, John was being honest about being gay; and while John has many problems (said with such a terrific sad-sly smile), “being gay ain’t one of ‘em”—and one gets the feeling that maybe this is going to be a wonderful story of intervention and a life saved.

And Mike commits suicide a day later. Ugh.

The episode ends with Tang and Dewey and a boisterous group of cops celebrating John’s 20 years (officially—unofficially and correctly, John mentions early on, it’s actually 22) at a bar. There are stories and toasts and admissions of love (on Dewey’s part, God bless that fucking idiot). And after John gets his fill of revelry and heads out, Tang follows John to quietly let him know Mike died. John already knows and shares his pragmatic view on the situation: it’s a tragedy, yes, that another gay kid has taken his/her own life, but John feels he did his job, and any dwelling or second-guessing or overpersonalizing presents a roadblock to Doing The Job. Tang returns to the group, Dewey offers to buy a round, and John stands outside, listening to the glory, a hard-to-read non-expression on his face… and you have to wonder how many of the group toasting him and swapping stories really know all about John Cooper. Is the sacrifice he makes to Do The Job keeping his sexual orientation quiet? Is John heralded by one and all amongst his acquaintences because they believe he's "just like them?" It feels like you can hear his advice about not making yourself a target still in action 20+ years later. But maybe not. Maybe so. It all seemed very unresolved, which seems more honest to real life than you usually get out of an hour-long drama.

To 180, the show is barely concealing its delight in getting all the leads, particularly Hatosy, undressed. And I love it. I also love the continual development of the partnerships: Ben and Sammy and their good-natured tussling; John and Jessica and their whatever-it-is that makes me love them so (the beanpole/burly thing? the balance of charming, affectionate teasing and mutual respect?); and Lydia and Ruben (I can’t imagine any of her previous partners handling her preggo-nancy so deftly).

And to close: I appreciated that Sammy continues to harp on Why Marriage Is Blah Blah Blah Divorce Blah (ha ha ha Ben’s eye-rolling disinterest), yet never devolves into a total misogynist (his dry, lamed-out “Really?” to the Extra Cop’s stupid “Don’t trust anything that bleeds for seven days…” recitation was such a relief, as well as a beacon of hope for him getting laid yet).

I felt this scene in last night's Southland was missing something

2012-02-08T18:55:00.000-08:00

Long story short: Sammy Bryant accidentally shot a dog in the leg in last night's ep.

So naturally, he had to take his white tee off in order to make a tourniquet. Of course he did. Medical science being what it is and whatnot. But I feel, though the scene spoke to me as a person who likes medical science, as well as strong, stocky, well-built men who save animals in danger, like the scene was missing a few other things to appeal to me, y'know, as a woman...

There. That's better. And you're welcome, ladies.

It's sad when Will Schuester's awkward horridness isn't the worst part of an ep...

2012-02-08T08:30:00.000-08:00

I can hardly keep up with the everchanging pro/con list I have in my mind when it comes to Glee. But I'll tell you what I wrote on it with mental crayon (ha ha ha, Becky is handicapable!): Sue Sylvester's grossness has reached the point where the massive suspension of disbelief I perform to watch this show (it requires several bungee cords and a bone-lengthening surgery that is super painful) has snapped atwain.

Asking students for sperm? I mean, I get it: ha ha with the jokey jokes so we can fit as many references to spunk and jizz into a 7 PM Central time-slotted show as we can. I'm not dumb. I'm also not going to give you laughs, you desperate lame-o teenage boy. Ugh. It's not like I haven't laughed at a Jane Lynch character bringing strange either. I own 40-Year-Old Virgin, as well as every Christopher Guest but For Your Consideration on The DVD. And what made it even worse was the sharp right-hand detour into Emotional Panderville with Sue's reasons for wanting a child fathered by Will. I can't even quantify that entire episode arc as uneven or sloppy. It's willfully terrible. And in case I didn't stress how gross it was: it was super, super gross.

So congratulations, writing team! You managed to make something be more dumb-butt and awkward and stink than Will Schuester wearing the bullfighter outfit from "Take a Bow."

Also, I'm prepared to complain more about Sebastian next week, because, apparently, "he's not just targeting Blaine anymore." Oh, really? Is he targeting a school bus full of orphans from a local Catholic school? Is he devouring kittens? Is he growing a long, curly mustache and wearing a stovepipe hat and fighting with Dudley Do-Right? I hope Glee names their next villain Pantomime Jones, and it's a dude in a cape who leers into the camera like Vincent Price in his heydey.

Stupid idiot show.

Nice job on "La Isla Bonita," though. Kudos. Dicks.

ETA: So basically what the reviewer at Vulture said.

I have just one question, "Southland"...

2012-01-10T05:50:00.000-08:00

Two shirtless cops too much? Don't want to CHiPs or Starsky and Hutch out?

Look, I'll take what I can arms. I mean, arms are very arms. So. Arms.

Adventures in the Talkies: Young Adult

2011-12-30T20:51:00.000-08:00

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

2011-12-14T18:11:00.000-08:00

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

2011-12-11T19:03:00.001-08:00

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

2011-12-07T17:57:00.001-08:00

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:

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"...

2011-11-14T17:01:00.001-08:00

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 ???)

2011-11-12T08:35:00.001-08:00

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

2011-11-10T18:38:00.001-08:00

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.
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?)
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.
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?
I don't feel like watching more Friday Night Lights unless I'm with people to talk to about it immediately and stuff.
I sound sort of depressed in this post, don't I? "TV: Meh." That's not my usual position on matters.
But there it is. I guess my problem, besides not watching more Friday Night Lights, is that I'm squirreling away the OLTLs too.
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.
I tried to get to 10, guys. I really did.

Title: Boobs (Installation Art)

2011-11-06T14:01:00.000-08:00

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

2011-11-03T19:51:00.000-07:00

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

2011-10-30T13:07:00.000-07:00

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

2011-10-14T10:29:00.000-07:00

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

2011-10-09T19:09:00.000-07:00

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"

2011-10-04T20:04:00.001-07:00

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

2011-10-01T18:15:00.000-07:00

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"

2011-09-27T20:05:00.000-07:00

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

2011-09-27T06:10:00.000-07:00

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

2011-09-21T05:45:00.000-07:00

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:

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

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

2011-08-22T17:42:00.001-07:00

Classic/Crap: Sunset Boulevard/Skyline

2011-08-22T14:20:00.000-07:00

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:

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

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

How tremendously unappealing Eric Balfour is. Period.

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

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.

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

2011-08-14T17:23:00.000-07:00

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

2011-07-02T14:56:00.000-07:00

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

2011-06-19T15:20:00.000-07:00

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

2011-06-11T18:42:00.000-07:00

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Oh, I may not have a fancy degree from TV & Intellectualocity University...

2011-06-08T05:41:00.000-07:00

...but I have 10+ years in Soap Opera Studies, and while some may claim that isn't applicable to all televisual studies, here's what it has taught me: if a guy's answer to the direct question "Do you love her?" is "[stammer] [deny] [blah words] [more stammering] [conspicuous silence]," then he is in love with her.

So, other folks recap-blogging LOCI who presented this in a straightforward "Goren says Eames is like a sister, and that is clearly true, because why would anyone on a procedural show have actual hu-man emotions for another character as a result of years of established history, rather than conveniently created sexual tension readily dusted off and used as a ploy" way, I ask you: why wouldn't he admit, easily and comfortably, "Yes, I love her...like a sister?" Hmm? HMM?

You'd think some people hadn't watched scads of soaps and WB "dramas" in their youth. Honestly.

Rewatching Glee season 1/LOCI

2011-06-06T04:21:00.000-07:00

I am now writing this blog in Arial. Because I figured out that I could switch the default font from Times New Roman. Only took four months! Thanks, Clippy!

Let's tackle the last bit of the subject line first:

So basically Goren loves Eames. And I just looked up the whole Princess Bride thing about "As you wish." That's what last night's ep reduced me to: wanting to make those Tumblr Cheezburger graphics out of about a bajillion screencaps.

Paula: So she's like a sister to you. It's important to you for me to know that there aren't any romantic possibilities between the two of you, isn't it?

Goren: I don't get it! I mean, you know. What? A man can't have...a working friendship with his partner? I mean, it has to be more than that?

Paula: That's not my point. I'm wondering if you think romantic feelings for someone you admire and respect are at odds.

Goren: [no answer]

NO ANSWER. YOU ARE KILLING ME INSIDE, GOREN!

Also, please note for the record: I do not have to eat a hat. Because this all totally happened. I didn't make it up at all in my crazy brain that has loved this entire idea in a variety of made-upski stories for years.

In Glee season 1 rewatch news, Kate has now fully been exposed to her husband's shaming over this. It should make me feel bad that one of my best friends has suffered ridicule over this show, but surprisingly, I feel relieved that someone understands.

Also: it wasn't as uneven in the beginning. I've seen people mention "the Puck from season 1" or other things like that, and it's pretty much true. For example, I liked Rachel with more of that insecure, immature acting out and the Finn/Rachel romance full of volatile teen hormones and less "staaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaar-crossed lovers" bologna. They were cute then!

The one universal truth: Kurt/Chris Colfer is totally the cutest. And Terri was a terribly conceived, awfully executed character who caused no end of ridiculous storyline.

8:23 PM Katherine: Her face really does bug when she sings.

8:27 PM me: Her and Criss, I swear.

...so...do you want to go see the Glee Live! Concert movie with me in August?

8:28 PM Katherine: Sure

me: HEE HEE! GROSS!

Katherine: I know. Don't tell anybody

8:29 PM Will Mark Salling be there? Can I ogle his biceps?

me: Yes: according to Sara, he does a number with Zises (or whatever: the big girl with the glasses).

So: yes.

Katherine: Awesome Whoops. I told.

In honor of Matthew Ashford's return to DOOL (I guess)

2011-05-30T07:42:00.000-07:00

The cover of this now-defunct magazine changed my life.

It was waiting in the mailbox for me one day because, I believe, I had a letter to a character printed in an issue (it was to Cal Winters; I believe the jist of my letter was "Why are you still pining for Diana Colville [ed note.: that was Genie Francis's character before she returned to GH for the umpteenth time] when you could be pursuing Kimberly Brady?" Well, my dreams were answered, and then to get rid of or recast the character, Cal Winters turned into a stalker and a murderer).

In 1990, I was 13 years old. I was videotaping (or "VCRing") DOOL every single day at this point. The Internet was a marshmallow cloud in Al Gore's mind, so fanfiction wasn't readily accessible (I get that there were 'zines and all that; please don't educate me on the history of fanfic).

The cover of this magazine was my fanfic. It was confirmation that someday, Emilio would be a distant memory, and Jack and Jen would fill at least four days a week with their nonstop bantering. My teeny just-teenaged imagination could not fathom the adventures they would have: Jack kidnapping Jennifer from her wedding to Emilio; uncovering the mystery of Patch's first wife, Marina Toscano (played by the stunning Lynda Carter-esque Hunter Tylo), and her hidden-away sister, Isabella, and stirring the ire of Victor Kiriakis; kissing in the secret passageway in Patch and Kayla's house; going on the Cruise of Deception, which was like a multichapter fic where nothing but sex and romance happened on a deserted island!

Jack and Jen tangoed. They tangoed!

I have popped in and out of DOOL over the past 20 years (ohmygodohmygodsooldsoold): my college roommates were enamored with the stupid and horrible Marlena possession years and the subsequent Hope is Princess Gina bullshit; I had a flare-up of affection for Sami and Lucas; I returned when Stephen Nichols and Mary Beth Evans were reunited. And I'm the kind of stooge who returns every single time Matthew Ashford comes back (and dies...and is murdered...and dies again).

I'm older now and realize that Jennifer's bangs were way too big and that Matthew Ashford can come across as incredibly smarmy, but in teenage bedroom in my heart, taped to the cotton-candy pink wall, is the cover of that magazine and with it is preserved the little flush of joy I feel at the promise of two imaginary characters about to embark on romance and shenanigans.

Classic/Crap: Bad Day at Black Rock/Predators

2011-05-28T07:39:00.000-07:00

This latest attempt at a feature was born out of blahmanda's initial idea for herself that she would attempt to watch the contents of her DVR in chronological order, focusing on all the movies she recorded in good faith, saved in good faith, but is likely to keep until humans undergo their next evolutionary change (I hope our vestigal tails grow back so we can more easily reach and grab).

Then I turned my critical eye to my Netflix queue, examining what lack of attention and a tendency to clickclickclick on suggestions but not really sort them, and I mentioned to Amanda that I was considering applying her basic idea: freezing my queue as-is and trying to tackle it, poor organization and all, and blog-a-booing about it.

What she suggested a few weeks later is what we both settled on: we would Netflix one classic film (or, at the very least, one pre-1970s film) and one garbage film (of which we are both enthusiastic consumers) and watch both in a synched-up, Gchat style.

What is funnyish about this all is that I don't think it was either of our intentions to select two films that shared similarities. After all, Amanda suggested Spencer Tracy's post-Adam's Rib, pre-Guess Who's Coming to Dinner film, Bad Day at Black Rock, without, I imagine, knowing much about it beyond the general description: a WWII veteran with one good arm conspicuously but unassumingly dismounts a train one day in a dying gold mining town and stumbles into an environment of barely contained paranoia and violence.

Predators, as we all know, is about Predators. Predators live in jungle environments, look like bipedal pig-sandworms with dreadlocks (or Manny Ramirez), and hunt b-list movie stars of varying degrees of talent. But Amanda said it best: Amanda: So what are all the Predator movies? You gotcher Predator, yer Predator 2: Predator in the City, yer Alien vs. Predator, yer Predators, yer AVP: Requiem...

That's a lot considering Predators are actually not that interesting! Nevertheless, the movies did share some basic themes that made the end-of-the-road comparison last night fun:

1) The heroes are unconventional

Bad Day at Black Rock's John J. Macreedy is "handiCAPABLE!" (according to Amanda), deliberate, and unflappable in the face of increasing threats against his person and his life. He's also played by Spencer Tracy, which means he's square and blocky in that Giants of Ireland way, suggesting he's better at eating potatoes and sitting on a barstool than solving mysteries and fighting dudes half his age.

Predators's Royce is an [insert some official-sounding military nonsense to which neither Amanda nor myself paid the slightest bit of attention] and talks like Brody saw Batman Begins and The Dark Knight the day before shooting started and thought it'd be pretty cool to use a scratchy voice as a character trait. Much like Han Solo or poor man's Han Solo, Mal Reynolds, Royce has a cynical, blackened heart (unless a lady is involved), a vaguely European accent that pops up from time to time, and a beak the size of Toucan Sam's. Not exactly your average cruddy action movie white hat

The difference lies in the condition each of them are in by film's end:

Macreedy:

10:17 PM me: I love how you described him as being so rumpled and dusty; it's so true and it wasn't treated as a Columbo-like deceit or anything.

10:20 PM Amanda: I loved how the wardrobe really marked him as an outsider. The dark suit and brown hat. Never has anyone been less dressed for the desert.

Royce:

10:32 PM Amanda: Hahaha! It was definitely necessary for him to take off his shirt! [Ed note. That's sarcasm: there wasn't even the excuse of covering himself in mud to drop his temp, making it hard for Predator's Heatvision to locate him...or if that was the intent, he smeared that mud real half-heartedly]

10:33 PM me: HEE!

2) The movie is largely supported by character actors

In Black Rock, you had:

Lee Marvin ("Lee Marvin was the Ron Perlman of the fifties!" Amanda joked after I observed that he looked eerily like RPerl; I didn't recognize Lee)
Ernest Borgnine, who was effective as a gleefully malevolent, googly-eyed bully
Walter Brennan ("He really talked like that!" - Amanda again) as the town doctor, a rocking-chair philosopher who is the first to see Macreedy as the town's hope and savior
Handsome-wormy Robert Ryan as town despot Reno Smith
Long-before Throw Mama From the Train Anne Francis as the Pretty Tough and Pretty, Tough Girl
Along with lesser-known folks like Dean Jagger (IMDb tells me he was The Major General from White Christmas; awww, we'll follow the old man wherever he wants to go...unless he's bootless, incompetent, drunk, and spineless) and that kid who played the desk clerk who didn't look remotely familiar.

In Predators, you had:

Danny Trejo (surprisingly, spoiler alert, and assume spoilers from now on, the first to bite it!)
Walton Goggins as a NON-Southern degenerate who alternated between panicked and charmingly (or straight-up) disgusting
Topher Grace (mild-mannered...or is he?!?!?! Spoiler alert: he wasn't)
"Mahershabazalabshazhalikishabwbaka Ali" (the black guy who died second; "Progress!" according to Amanda)
Oleg Taktarov, star of Rollerball, I guess
Alice Braga as The Pretty Tough and Pretty, Tough Girl
Louis Ozawa Changchien as a Yakuza fellow who had a sword and was tattooed
And, covered in pineapple rings and glazed with Method, Sir Laurence Fishburne...

9:53 PM me: He's like the intense, Shakespearean Fred Sanford.

9:54 PM Amanda: HAAAA!

He is certainly making some choices.

9:55 PM me: It's like he saw Ralph Fiennes in "Spider" and thought "I'd like to do that, but in a cruddy action-monster movie."

3) There is an evil being fought

In Black Rock, that evil was xenophobia, cowardice, and a regime comprised of ignorance, small-time, bad-neighbor criminal enterprise, fearful silence, and willful blindness: Robert Ryan's Reno Smith, after conspiring to cheat a Japanese-American farmer by renting him what he considered unfarmable land, heads out with some "friends" to have "fun," only to burn the farmer's house (and the man, for a while) and shoot and murder him.

Macreedy dismounts the train to award the farmer his son's military medal for saving Macreedy's life but finds himself the rumpled, dusty symbol of what is truly right and American: freeing the townspeople from the oppression of a petty criminal turned warlord and uncovering the crimes committed so justice can be served. He does so with a single-minded, quiet will, only raising his hand once (and boy, it's awesome when he does).

In Predators, the evil was Predators. As mentioned before, alien monsters that look like worm-pigs with dreadlocks. Oh, sure, there were several kinds, as Amanda discovered when watching the credits ("Berserker Predator, Tracker Predator, Original Predator, and Falconer Predator"; collect 'em all, kids!), but, you know, basically kind of the same (and that is not a xenophobic statement).

I guess at one point, the evil Royce and Isabelle battle is Topher Grace, whose Justin-Long spastic, barely-believable doctor cover melts away at a convenient point to reveal that "[he] is what you call A Dexter" (Amanda again), who believes this planet full of pig-worms is a Paradise for serial killers. You can imagine how that goes: Royce handily stabinates him and uses his bloody, weakened body as bait to kaboom! a Predator.

Try as I might, I can't make this a haunting allegory to our past or current state of American affairs.

***

I think Amanda and I agreed on both films for the most part:

Amanda: So, overall, which movie did we enjoy more?

11:10 PM me: I'd say "Bad Day at Black Rock." Overall, I liked Spencer Tracy coolly assessing over pkew pkew shirtless Adrien Brody.

11:11 PM Amanda: I would have to agree.

me: Not to judge each film by their heroes alone or anything.

Amanda: I think that Bad Day at Black Rock, while lacking Falconer Predators, had a better script overall.

I think the things we didn't agree on were minimal at best. In Black Rock:

9:05 PM me: This one-size-fits-all, full-orchestra score is driving me a little crackers; it doesn't fit the rest of the movie.

9:09 PM Amanda: It's very fifites. It's kind of working for me. It's more forceful than the visual elements, so it adds punctuation. Nice sense of foreboding.

Except I had to turn the volume way up to hear the dialogue and now the score is too loud.

In Predators:

10:36 PM Amanda: I have seen fic for this pairing [Royce/Isabelle]. Not gonna lie: I would read it.

10:37 PM me: Oh, boy.

10:38 PM You are such a sucker for an action hero.

And we both agreed on one thing: neither of us had the time, energy, and/or interest in tackling the gender issues of either film:

11:12 PM me: And Alice Braga didn't girly-run, at least.

Amanda: Oh, boy, should we talk about how Anne Francis was the only woman in [Bad Rock] and the only character to end up dead? Or should we noooouugggghhhh

11:13 PM me: I vote latterrrrruggh.

Hee hee.

So anyway, there were some fine moments, though I have to admit that the most fun was when we got off-track:

11:18 PM Amanda: Oh, A Guy Named Joe is on TCM right now if I feel like more Spencer Tracy. I've seen it, though, and I don't know that I need to see that more than once. Although I've seen Always more than once (also unneeded).

11:20 PM me: I was thinking of retiring to try and start one of my new books; I know I'll only get a few pages in before I zonk out, but I figure it's worth the effort.

11:21 PM Amanda: I just switched to Soapnet for a minute. Did you know Kin Shriner is on Y&R?

me: (I will probably give up and turn on the movie channel...

Amanda: Reading books! There's an idea.

me: Whoa, whoa, just got the Kin Shriner alert.

No, I did NOT know that.

Has he gotten hideous plastic surgery, or is he still smugly handsome as ever?

11:22 PM Amanda: I only saw him for a second. He might have some hair tomfoolery going on.

me: Well, I always forgive Jon Lindstrom for that.

11:23 PM Amanda: Hahaha! Victoria: "You read your mom's blog, didn't you?"

11:24 PM I'm sure Lauren and Phyllis (they have real names I guess) have had toooons of work done, but they don't look horrifying like whatsherface on B&B.

When a temporary Royce/bait Original Predator formed an alliance:

10:23 PM me: This is like the one episode of TNG where they saved the young Borg and Georgi named him Hugh and then Hugh became a resistance fighter.

10:24 PM Only this is Predators.

Amanda: "I, Borg"

Was the name of that

me: I think so!

Because "Hugh" was from the li'l Borg misunderstanding the pronoun "you."

(And now I see that Amanda was telling me, not guessing at the title, like I would have. Doy.)

And we got to get our film nerd on from time to time:

Black Rock:

10:43 PM Amanda: I love mid-century socially conscious earnestness, myself.

10:44 PM Some interesting stuff in Ryan's imdb bio

10:48 PM It's interesting to watch Crossfire, which is a noir about antisemitism, while keeping in mind that the novel it was based on was about homophobia.

10:49 PM Hey, also, how about that Cinemascope?

me: I know it's a dumb cliche but they really don't make movies like that anymore.

10:50 PM That shot of the windmill made me think for a little bit if anyone did that kind of non-clunky silent atmosphere setting without being a bunch of sarcastic goofs (Coen Brothers). I couldn't think right off the top of my head.

10:52 PM Amanda: I had something about the town and "dessicated humanity" but I lost it.

10:53 PM imdb trivia: "The suit that Tracy wears throughout the film was bought by him off the rack, at his insistence." Awesome.

10:54 PM The sign behind the hotel desk is a quote from English evangelist John Wesley: "Do all the good you can, By all the means you can, In all the ways you can, In all the places you can, At all the times you can, To all the people you can, As long as ever you can."

me: Wow, I didn't even notice that once.

10:57 PM Speaking of socially conscious movies from that era and Spencer Tracy: I could watch "Inherit the Wind" again. Probably right now if I had it.

11:00 PM Amanda: Oh, yeah, I haven't seen that in years.

This also made me want to rewatch High Noon.

me: Which I have never seen. I always meant to. That and "Shane."

11:01 PM Amanda: You know, you mentioned the Coen Brothers, and I think they are the closest thing around today to the kind of suspense that was in our feature tonight.

I guess "style" is a more precise word than the mushy "kind."

Predators:

10:16 PM Amanda: Poetic.

10:17 PM With the waving grass it was almost as if Terence Malick directed that Japanese-mobster-swordfights-alien-monster scene,

10:18 PM me: HA!

"The Thin Predator Line"

So I had fun. We haven't discussed options for the next go-round, but it was thrown out there that neither of us have seen Shane.

Until then, please consider Amanda's ideas for next year's Yuletide exchange:

11:14 PM me:I have a feeling that Ernest Borgnine's character and Walton Goggins's character would have had a lot to talk about (you know, in a crossover AU).

Amanda: YULETIDE!

me: Those would be the BEST requests.

11:15 PM Amanda: Can Macreedy survive the Predator planet even though he's old and he only has one arm?

me: HEE!

Amanda: SHAME ON YOU, PREDATORS!

And PS if you think of a better name for this series than my lazy tribute to Face/Off, please feel free to suggest it in comments.

Corrections courtesy of Amanda: "Doc was the town undertaker (I
guess they called him "Doc" ironically?); you're thinking of Anne Ramsey
from TMFTT (that's what the kids call it at their TMFTT conventions
[MommaCon]). The lovely Anne Francis was Honey West, and spent the 70s
and 80s appearing in tv movies and Murders, She Wrote."

Glee 2xwhatever, "Funeral"

2011-05-18T18:10:00.000-07:00

Around 1998 or 1999--good Lord, that was over 10 years ago; argh, I'm so old!--I went to Patch Adams at the Eau Claire Budget Theatre with a few of my then-college roommates. I remember feeling my impatience and resentment growing with each passing moment of pandering and blatant emotional string-pulling. By the time the film reached the--spoiler alert, and suck it, because count yourself lucky if, by this point in your blessed and peaceful life, you have not watch the shitheap that is Patch Adams--point where Patch Adams's Girlfriend was murdered, I was furious, especially at myself as tears welled in my eyes. I was falling prey to the movie's manipulation all while totally conscious of and valiantly fighting it.

I think we even went on $1 Tuesday, which made it even more insulting. Jesus, if you can't even be passable for a dollar to a college student who had watched Titanic SIX TIMES in the theater...

The whole point of this story is that last night's Glee was the Patch Adams of Television.

I briefly considered doing some LOL screencaps and bitching about it, but my resentment reached a point where I was like, "Shit, this was basically free, man [argument about effects of marketing and advertising here]. Do you want to spend any more time thinking about how aggravating the umpteenth adjustment to Sue Sylvester's character was, all the more so because it was laziest possible way to ditch a storyline they didn't even need? Do you want to talk about how Jonathan Groff makes the corpse Orville Redenbacher look like a spring chicken? Do you want to gnash your verbal teeth over Rachel and Finn and Quinn and that particular merry-go-round of horseshit?"

No. No, I do not.

Instead, here's a picture of Kurt being cute:

To quote Kelly Kapoor: "Honestly, that show is just--it's irresponsible."

Well, it's not like he's the Crypt Keeper, but even Judd Nelson looked more like he belonged in high school

2011-05-10T19:42:00.000-07:00

It's pretty funny that this week's Glee ep referenced a John Hughes movie, since from what I recall of movie trivia, a lot of the Hughesian cast members were well clear of their teens when stepping into roles in The Breakfast Club, Pretty in Pink, and Ferris Bueller's Day Off (if I were a little less lazy, I'd look up examples, but screw that noise).

Because Johnathan Groff looks about as much like a teenager as Ian Ziering did in the first season of 90210. In fact...

...with the Charles Nelson Reilly neckerchief, he looks almost as much like a teenager as Charles Nelson Reilly.

But I guess some of the girl and guy theater nerds love him. Even if he is the Crypt Keeper's feisty young nephew.

Prom! I mostly liked "Friday" (the various shots of the cast dancing and enjoying the song cracked me up, particularly Santana and Karofsky) and the weightier Kurt and Karofsky scenes. It's nice to have someone who can keep up with Colfer, acting-wise.

Are we to the point where we can all agree they are secretly married?

2011-05-09T15:03:00.000-07:00

If one of the topics in his department-mandated therapy sessions isn't his Feeeeeeelings about Eames, I'll eat a hat.*

My favorite bit was the arm along the back of Eames's chair. I know you're in the kitchen, Goren, but that doesn't mean you're at home with your wife-partner.

*Like a little one, like the Monopoly piece. Not one of those Kentucky Derby, Lucy-Coe-married-Alan-Quartermaine numbers.

I come to bury Sweet Valley Confidential, not praise it: the last rites of this godforsaken book

2011-05-09T09:12:00.000-07:00

1) I was right: the fight at Grandmommy's--siiiiiiiiigh, the Wakefields are one of those families?--was not particularly interesting or surprising:
a) Liam the Black Irish Bartender was instantly enamored with Jessica (his excuse for not being all over Elizabeth? "Pheremones." That means dudes are animals who can sense when a female member of the human race won't put out, Elizabeth) and made a big show of being all up in her grill.
b) Todd, in a bit of emoting that made zero logical sense, flipped the fuck out and accused Jessica of running off with Liam at some point to tongue-kiss him.
c) Bruce Patman was there. Because...he's...there's...I don't know.
d) Everyone starts yelling at everyone right out of a scene from a wacky-yet-touching family Thanksgiving movie.
e) Alice Wakefield yells, "Ned, bring out the fucking cake!"

e) is the best thing because it actually reads like something a frustrated mom would do when her adult children were acting like a bunch of well-groomed monkeys who had learned language from General Hospital.

2) Then Elizabeth returns home to NYC and, in short order, takes up with Will the Angry Young Playwright as "friends with benefits."

3) Then the play opens and Will's estranged fiancee comes along with Thurston Howell and Lovey, Will's parents.

4) Then Will is in love with his estranged fiancee and Elizabeth knows that their friendship with the benefits of sex has come to a close, 24 hours after it began.

I'll take a break here, because I know you're puzzled. Me too! I was going to launch into how maybe as a girl who doesn't engage in the "friends with benefits" game, perhaps I don't understand how it works. But I think it's less that the "friends with benefits" thing is puzzling and more that every single step of this was so accelerated, like reading Ikea directions as fast as possible, only instead of building affordable Swedish crap, it's an author shouting out the elements of a romance plot. "Okay! So! First Elizabeth is mad! Then she leaves for New York! Be sure not to forget that Bruce is her best friend and looks at her adoringly! Okay! She lands in New York! Makes up with Will! He bones her! The play opens! Oh! His fiancee is there! And scene!"

Using the allen wrench, put screw into whatever like diagram A. Got it.

Yikes. Pacing would be helpful, FP. Or genuine interaction betwixt characters not dictated by the iron-clad structure of the plot. Something, Francine. Give me something.

5) Jessica shows up, sleeping up against Elizabeth's door like a wino. She has left Todd because of that fight about Liam and is ready to make amends. At first Elizabeth maintains her icy composure, but because time's a-wasting, and a reconciliation needs to happen nowrightnowthere'sonly32pageslefthurryhurryhurry, Elizabeth then changes her mind or her heart grows three sizes like the Grinch or she has a breakthrough and all her various personalities join the host personality (Sybil!) and then boom, reunited, and it feels so good.

6) Then Todd shows up, hanging out outside the apartment building.

Okay, the whole feel of that sequence was like in Sleepless in Seattle, when we all get to follow Jonah and Sam and Annie as they cross the entire country on their way to and from each other. Dotdotdotdotdot I'm here! It's like these people have never struggled to get the exact right price at Orbitz before. How do they all make travel plans so easily? Oh, that's right: loveeeeeeebarf.

7) Jessica and Todd make up in one of those cute-only-the-movies way of saying "I'm sorry" and "I love you" at the same time.

8) Then everyone is happy and going to go to Jessica and Todd's wedding wheeeeee!

9) So Elizabeth is back in Sweet Valley, and in a turn of events, it turns out Winston Egbert faked his death in order to elude the authorities, who were closing in on him as a suspect for a string of serial rape/murders, but he's alive and living in the basement of the Sweet Valley Country Club, and he kidnaps Elizabeth! Good thing the team from Criminal Minds flies out to sunny CA and, using psychology and science, they locate her just in time. Then that girl with the cat-eye glasses says something saucy and Shemar Moore's shirt falls off.

Sorry, fell down a procedural hole there.

The for-real 9) is that Bruce calls Elizabeth to his house, pours her favorite obscure wine, and tells her he's moving to New York to be with the woman he loves. Because this book is a series of moments wherein people have a-ha! moments at convenient times, Elizabeth is all, "Ohmigod, I love Josh! I mean, Bruce!" and is having a mental meltdown about losing her friendship that also has the side effect of making her a fucking ninnyhammer.

10) So Bruce basically says, "Elizabeth, you ninnyhammer, I'm in love with you! Haven't you noticed the way I've mooned after you since my character was reintroduced? No? You're a ninnyhammer? Okay!"

11) Then they Do It. And it is amazing.

Prime selections follow in bold:

"But this kiss was no silly romantic nonsense. It was real! And it was wild!" (Well, the exclamation points certainly have me convinced. How's about you?)

"It reverberated right through her whole body. Before she knew it, Elizabeth threw her arms around Bruce as if she had just returned from a million years away from the man she loved." (Yes. No silly romantic nonsense. Right.)

"At last Bruce had the love of his life in his arms, the unattainable woman he had adored for ten years, the woman he watched loving someone else. He'd known their love was wrong, but he couldn't tell her the truth because..." (Oh, God, shut it, Patman, and just fuck her already.)

"They were both overcome, out of breath."

Why does everything related to love or sex in this book make the characters sound like they are suffering from some kind of terminal disease? And not, like, in the cool way where the guy writes poetry and then dies, making a bumper sticker slogan also stand for Paul Strobe, I Love You.

"Bruce stood up and held out his hand. And as she did ten years ago in that hospital waiting room, Elizabeth slipped her hand into his. Together they walked up the steps to his bedroom.

Once there, they just held each other..."

Bo-ring.

"....Then Bruce put his hands on her shoulders and moved her back slightly, only far enough to see her completely. To make certain she was absolutely there.

Gently, he unbuttoned her silk blouse. She didn't move. He slid it down over her shoulders, deftly unhooking her bra and allowing her breasts, with their taut nipples, to be free. He just stared at her, drinking in the sight of the flesh and blood of years of longing. Still she didn't move, waiting for him to slip her skirt and th-th-thong-tha-thong-thong-thong down over her hips and reveal her total nakedness to him."

Is anyone else creeped out by the way Elizabeth is standing like a statue? I saw a totally ucky French film once, called The Piano Teacher, and in the climatic scene, the title character initiates her rape fantasy with her boyfriend by lying stock still, seemingly unwilling, while he has sex with her. It was one of the most upsetting things I've ever seen in a film. So thanks, Francine Pascal, for making me flash back on all that.

Also: of course she's wearing a silk blouse that is slid down over her shoulders. It's like I fell back into a pile of the Silhouette novels I read in my early teen years.

"With the excitement of standing in front of this man, whom she had known so long from the distance of friendship, of being completely exposed to him, it took all her willpower to keep from closing the space between them and feeling the heat of his body against hers.

But now it was her turn. Elizabeth reached out and began to unbutton Bruce's shirt. She moved her hands to his belt, unzipped his pants, and with a gentle push, allowed them to drop to the floor, exposed his smooth, almost sculpted body and his desire for her."

I was telling Kristen that the way this sex scene played out was like a literary imagining of what it was like when you were eight or nine years old and you stripped your Barbie and Ken naked and made them kiss and sort of collide into each other. You were certain that plastic naked colliding was something, but you just didn't have all the facts, and you were years away from reading Flowers in the Attic and the filthy parts of your mom's copy of Joan Collins's Sins.

This is plastic naked colliding, right down to the "smooth, almost sculpted body." His desire for her is, like, a philosophical, half-imagined concept, not an actual engorged penis. Just FYI.

"Bruce let his shirt drop from his arms, kicked his legs free of the clothes, and took his love in his arms, pressing so hard he feared he would break her, but he couldn't stop himself and she didn't break. Together, they fell to the bed.

When they made love, it was completely loving, full of such deep tenderness that the passion almost played second to the adoration."

1) Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz...what?
2) [plastic colliding, plastic colliding]

"But the passion was there, and once the love had been established, the excitement took over and spun them out into the wild reaches of the glorious.

At last Elizabeth knew the splendid, the marvelous, the amazing, the spectacular!

The over the top!"

I honestly don't even know what happened here. I feel like instead of two characters having sex, Francine is shaking a thesaurus upside-down and just letting adjectives fall onto the page.
***
To wrap this all up, I think it's important that you know the music selections for Jessica and Todd's wedding:
a) The flower girls walked down the aisle to this, apparently.
b) A "melange of Beatles' music" (which, I hope, included "Rocky Raccoon" and "Octopus's Garden")
c) Jessica (the piece de resistance) walked down the aisle in a "strapless sequined" gown to "All I Ask of You" from Phantom of the Opera.

So even though Francine made every effort to mention TwitterGiggle and Bookface and all the other bells and whistles of our technological age, Jessica and Todd still took a time machine back to 1988 to get married. Awesome.

There's a coda to the book, much like the end of American Graffiti, where you get to know what's happening with some of the tertiary characters, but it's certainly not the wild reaches of glorious, so who cares, right?

Heck, let's read it one more time:
"But the passion was there, and once the love had been established, the excitement took over and spun them out into the wild reaches of the glorious.

At last Elizabeth knew the splendid, the marvelous, the amazing, the spectacular!

The over the top!"

Good night, and good luck. May flights of angels collide your body with that of a naked Ken doll. We out.

For fans of fine wooly mustaches and/or Scott Grimes

2011-05-08T19:26:00.000-07:00

Not sure what the outcome of this ep was, but I know one thing: Scott Grimes probably got to hear several "mustache ride" jokes while wearing that thing.

"Like a heart attack, the love kind": More Sweet Valley Confidential

2011-05-05T20:49:00.000-07:00

Here is a belated list of writing tics and annoying bologna that I wish would stop within the text of Sweet Valley Confidential:

The attempts to give Jessica's dialogue some Valley Girl flair. Between the "like"s that turn up sprinkled throughout her sentences like so many poisoned Reese's Pieces on a cup of TCBY fro-yo that are not comma delimited, like God and MLA intended, and her sometimes-italicized, sometimes-not use of "so" for emphasis, I'm about ready to go blind.
The "friend" overuse continues to run rampant. Bruce and Elizabeth both refer to each other as "friend," like it's a pronoun. It is so...okay, I ran through the following adjecives; feel free to pick one: creepy, odd, off-putting, artificial, weird.

So developments that have taken place...

Bruce Patman, everyone's favorite Porsche-driving, girl-banging, arrogant prick, is, naturally, in love with Elizabeth Wakefield, his best friend. (Oh, and I'll save you the excruciating work that Kate and I put into trying to remember the name of the title where Regina snorts coke and dies: it's #40, On the Edge)
Steven Wakefield, who many of you remember for his tragic love affair with Tricia "Who Had Leukemia" Martin, married Cara Walker... and then got his gay on with Aaron Dallas, who has one blue eye and one brown eye, like a husky (awwwwwwwwwwww) (and don't worry, fans, Jessica still has her bizarro damn-the-social-mores attraction to her brother, even if he does like dudes now)
Winston Egbert, everyone's favorite third-string Jughead, morphed into a storyline from The Social Network (which I guess is a documentary or something?) and was a rich dot-com genius with no real friends because he was an asshole who was shitty to women.
Then he died.
By plunging off a balcony while drunk.
I know, right?
There were approximately 1 billion flashback sequence, until time and space folded in on itself and there was a flashback of the same anticlimactic confrontation between Jessica, Jessica's rich-not-quite-abusive husband, Elizabeth, and Todd told from both Jessica AND Elizabeth's perspectives. You know, like that Japanese movie about rape using multi-POV narrative that I still haven't seen, or an Italo Calvino novel, or...

Pretty much. Though to be fair, in Elizabeth's flashback, she includes that she roars, "inside my car, with the windows closed, I roar in pain. Like a wounded animal." So clearly hers is the better flashback, because she makes me think of a 27-year-old blonde size-4 yawping like a sea lion who has been battered by sharks.

The Bruce Patman section is--I say this confidently--easily the worst part of the book thus far. Bruce's parents die in a horrible car accident (his mother instantly, his father after six days of coma), and the grinding, flop-sweaty effort to redeem Bruce is embarrassing to experience.

"It was in those endless hours in the chill of the hospital waiting room, waiting for the miracle that didn't come, that Bruce's life changed. He let the change in [ed. note: consequently, he also let the sun shine, let the sun shine in, the sun...shine in]. It was almost overnight. When he came out of grieving, he knew he was different."

And just when you think it can't get worse, Bruce narrates falling in love with Elizabeth as she ministers to his grief:

"She comes every day [heh heh heh], and I wait for her. But it's a different wait. When I see her coming from the elevator my heart starts to speed up and I feel my breath coming in shallow gasps [dude, get that shit checked out]. Like a heart attack, the love kind."

I'll let you roll that over in your mind. Try saying it out loud. Do it. I dare you.

And if you're done either weeping from the pain, or have regained your breath after the nearly paralyzing laughter, I will direct you to the next passage where Bruce says he is "better now, able to control the physical symptoms, but the ache for her is still there, the longing and the love." So...are the physical symptoms...like, the mild heart attack you had that first time? Or...boners? Bruce, point to how you feel here:

I will now subject you to my complaining that this book's obsession with redemption or, I don't know, growth as a person, as "new" vs. "old," e.g., "old Bruce would have x"* or "old Jessica would have y." It is eerie. It's like this novel is the portrayal of the weird robotic humanoids of The Island or something. The delineation is very exact, leaves little room for the idea that someone has room for multifacetedness or, I don't know, a second dimension. You can change and adjust behaviors and personality traits and not be a robot. I think.

On a different topic, I don't even know what to do with Steven's thought that "Sometimes [he] was struck by how heterosexual his homosexuality was." What the shit does that even mean? Just because Steve can have teasing, "clever" conversations with his male lover, that's...not gay? But you still have mansex with him, right? Right, Steven? And for your information, being bantery and clever does not just belong to straight people. Jiminy Crickets, Francine Pascal, thanks for letting us know that it does get better...if you let any author other than Francine Pascal portray someone coming out of the closet and living their life with the Husky or soccer player of their choice.

And as if the Wakefield family vibe wasn't incestuous enough back in the day, when Jessica would often admire her shirtless or recently showered brother:

"A thousand times a day [Jessica] needed Elizbeth, needed to see her in a crowd and know she was hers, to touch her skin, to brush her hair, just to push up against her, so natural as not to be noticed, to pluck a piece of lint off her skirt, wipe a crumb from her chin, to be able always to enter into that private space that everyone else holds around them, inviolable."

Hey, everyone, I've got some really beautiful flowers. They're in the attic. Want to come up and see them? Have sex with each other?

So friends--if I may call you "friend," and be sure to address you as "friend" often, so you are absolutely crystal clear as to where our relationship stands, and that if the song "You've Got A Friend" ever plays over the speakers while we are at a bar, I probably put it on the TouchTunes--I closed the book just as Elizabeth was entering the country club with Liam, the Irish Bartender--that's right, the virtual stranger did accompany her to her grandmother's 80th birthday, where she is almost certain to make something of a scene with her twin sister who once bonked her sister's ex-boyfriend ohhhhhhhh I'm dizzy. I know that you, like me, look forward to the absolute lack of drama that will no doubt be generated from the fallout.

Friend.

*For example, do you know what "old Bruce" would have done? Tried to get Elizabeth Wakefield to go all the way with him, even though she clearly had a metal plate in her head or dissociative personality disorder, in #7 Dear Sister!

Boy, that was a good one.

And to keep you updated on Street Kings 2...

2011-05-03T17:59:00.000-07:00

The following Google Search led someone to my blogaboo:
Search Keywords
charlotte ross ray liotta street kings 2 nude

Sorry to disappoint you, Googler, but neither Eve Donovan nor Ray Liotta get naked in this otherwise satisfying(ish) film.

Sweet Valley Confidential II: Spoiler Alert--Everyone Continues to Not Get Laid

2011-05-03T17:39:00.000-07:00

I've progressed nearly 40 pages, and I have to tell you that on the bus this morning, as I was reading, I very nearly broke out sweating, the dialogue was so painful. My reaction was so visceral, it reminded me of Kevin Murphy's account of going to see Corky Romano in the theater with Mike Nelson ("The whole movie hurts. We're sitting on coarse-grit sandpaper.")

I mean, honestly, take this flirty (read: puzzling, poorly translated from Telenovela Spanish to English) exchange betwixt Elizabeth and former object-of-hate, Todd-almost-lookalike Will:

     "Elizabeth Show Survey! [ed. note: okay, I admit, using the magazine as Elizabeth's last name sort of made me laugh; you win this round, Sweet Valley Confidential] That sucks. I'm actually one of the the nicest, kindest guys you'll ever meet."

      "How come when I asked you to answer a couple of questions you nearly bit my head off?" [asked Elizabeth flirtily-barifly]

     "Hey, I'm an angry young playwright. What was I supposed to do?"

Question: how many Os can one stick in the word "Groan" before it becomes overindulgent overstatement? Ten? Twelve?

So their "banter" progresses and they make out a little, but naturally, Elizabeth doesn't put out. I swear she's like the polar opposite of an episode of Red Shoe Diaries (remember that little gem on Showtime? David Duchovny narrates stories where people inexplicably ended up having paint-by-numbers soft-core sex?). And shortly after the two of them have overshared (He left his fiancee and law school for The Theeeeeeeatre! His father, Thurston Howell, is disappointed! Elizabeth, as we are all WELL AWARE, was cheated on by her boyfriend AND TWIN SISTER!) and drunkenly made out, the natural progression of such an acquaintence is to call the dude and have the following phone conversation shortly after not even giving the dude a my-pants-are-a-no-fly-zone BJ:

     Even though it was ridiculously early in the relationship, Will would probably understand [why Elizabeth is calling with the terrible, terrible idea to invite a near-stranger to fly to the opposite coast with her and attend her grandmother's 80th birthday party in the hopes that it will somehow relieve the sting of seeing Cheater McGee and Cipher Todd]. Without wasting a moment in sensible thinking [yeah, why do that? That's for losers and well-written three-dimensional characters who don't act like desperate Lifetime Movie villainesses], Elizabeth looked up [Will's] number and dialed.

     "Hello," Will said. She could tell he had been sleeping off the martinis.

     "Hi, it's Elizabeth."

     That woke him. "You're coming back?" [Poor deluded sap; prepare to have that half-mast woody dashed into flaccidity, sucka!]

     "No, not today anyway, but maybe soon [said the cocktease].

   [Blah blah stuff about the play, I will spare you all, who cares]

     "Actually, I'm calling about a big favor from a new friend" [said Elizabeth]

     "Am I the new friend?" [said Will]

     [blah blah Elizabeth asks him to fly to California, creeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeepy]

     "I would really love to go with you and shove it to that sister and her lying, cheating fiance [that's right, folks, this guy is a playwright], but they would never let me leave, even for a day. [Blah blah I'm thinking about getting a restraining order] I'm really sorry, Elizabeth. Am I still your new friend?"

     "Forever."

At this juncture, I actually audibly groaned, like I was struck with appendicitis or food poisoning. Does Francine Pascal know the definition of the word "friend?" The overuse of the word reminds me of Frankenstein, seconds before he snapped a child's neck. Its awkwardness and artificiality make the dialogue read as creepy or mentally handicapped or...well, Frankenstein.

I'm waiting for the villagers of NYC to gather outside Elizabeth's apartment building with torches and pitchforks. I'd almost take the vacuous and idiotic Carrie Bradshaw approach to fun, flirty, single NYC living over this. There. I said it.

And to make matters weirder and more oddly contradictory, Elizabeth, with Will's help, ham-handedly put together a half-scheme for Elizabeth to invite Liam, the "black Irish" bartender to Sweet Valley instead. Who is even MORE of a stranger than Will, mind you. It's like the entire sequence is a setup for a PSA about the dangers of Craigslist or something. "Hey, that bartender that was giving me the sex eye seemed nice. I should ask him to accompany me on a trip. I certainly won't end up splashed on the cover of the New York Post as missing! L&O: SVU won't then rip my disappearance and subsequent corpsical discovery from the headlines!"

Like all plot progressions thus far, Liam conveniently/nonsensically is a California transplant who has been meaning to go see his Irish surgeon dad (I know, right? My reaction was the same as yours...that is, if you just RCA Dogged the screen and made a Tim Allen noise). So that worked out swimmingly. Until the murdering begins, that is. Because everything is a James Patterson novel or an SVU episode in my mind. Thanks, NBC Movie of the Week Starring Fred Savage Where He Domestically Abused, Then Murdered Candace Cameron!

And that isn't even the weirdest part:

     Additionally, what she'd taken for romantic interest on his part wasn't realy there. And that nonfeeling was mutual and comfortable.

Say what, girlfriend? I mean, I'm pretty sure it was mere pages ago that you were all:

      Elizabeth watched the bartender [blah blah hey kids buy Stolichnaya] eyes fixed on her all the while, mixing the drink by feel. Even without the alcohol, she was beginning to cheer up, though he was definitely wasting his time on her.
   "Olive?" he asked, pouring the chilled liquid into a martini glass and making the single word sound positively loving, flashing a dimple that was almost overkill.

So readers, I have determined that, much like Humbert Humbert, Elizabeth Wakefield is what the literary nerd set call an "unreliable narrator." By the time she kills her sister in a jealous rage and we all meet for book club, one of our discussion questions will be: "Was Elizabeth sane or insane? Can we trust that what she shared with us regarding her internal conflict was genuine? Also: does Elizabeth know what a friend is? Is she The Bride of Frankenstein?"

Onto another topic, I've realized why the flashback sections are so off-putting: they are written in present tense! What a jarring narrative decision, Francine. Well, also the flashbacks are stupid. That doesn't help. Did you know that Jessica was married to a possessive, borderline-abusive rich guy for four months? And lived on a yacht? And escaped, much like Julia Roberts in Sleeping with the Enemy, to a small town? Only she didn't fake her death and, one assumes, Patrick Bergin will not track her down to straighten her towels and stalk her? Yep!

I have this sense that all these various threads of sensational half-stories (or, in Elizabeth's own words, "enough family turmoil to start a new HBO series"), the introduction of various "frieeeeeend"s who are barely established, not useful for sex scenes, and awkwardly shoehorned into Elizabeth's ongoing 2.5-on-a-scale-of-10 efforts to get revenge or vent her spleen at Jessica will pan out to nothing.

Thus making me more irritated and eager to make fun of it. So good deal, I guess.

Next up: oh, my word, Jessica works for an ecologically-friendly makeup start-up. Mercy.

BookIT! (without the personal pan pizza): Sweet Valley Confidential

2011-05-02T19:23:00.000-07:00

My friend amanjo, knowing my prediliction for Sweet Valley High and Sweet Valley High-related nostalgia, was kind enough to offer me her copy of Sweet Valley Confidential. My initial enthusiasm for buying my own copy to visit my friends, the Wakefield twins, was dampened when she told me that the hardcover release was 20-some bucks (looks like Amazon is kinder). Why, back in my day, when I routinely special-ordered the latest paperback SVH and, to a lesser, not as chastely sexy and glamorous extent, Sweet Valley Twins, a title ran me $2.50! But like I said: amanjo was more impulsive and committed to the concept than I, so I inherited her gently used copy.

It arrived last week in a USPS parcel, and I took my time cracking the cover. I'm a grown-up person with a degree in literature. I've written papers about Age of Innocence and "Twelfth Night" and Things Fall Apart! How could I backpedal into something I've clearly outgrown, with all the education (not to mention the sweet, sweet love of ironic enjoyment) and the adulthood I now possess.

Pretty easily actually. The love of sweet, sweet ironic enjoyment helps a lot.

I'm only about 80 pages in thus far, but one thing is for certain: ELIZABETH WAKEFIELD IS PISSED. The world's most perfect boyfriend, Todd, has apparently cheated on her--once in body, but months in soulmate longing and clandestine meetings at a diner right out of Happy Days or Alice--with her identical twin sister, Jessica. Elizabeth lets you know she is super pissed via internal monologues that occasionally end in awkward swearing (gasp!), as well as odd past-tense passages that are like flashbacks or coma dreams or journal entries. Those also sometimes contain swearing (gasp! I mean, Elizabeth! She was perfect!). She's living a shitty existence in New York as only a character in a cruddily constructed YA novel can: working at a startup magazine dedicated to off-Broadway shows that is crumbling, yet can afford to pay her to do an in-depth piece on a play about Samuel Johnson.

Thus far, she has nearly had sex with her boss (but not really), got serious sex vibes from some amazing "black Irish" (that's a phrase Jessica Wakefield and no other English-speaking human uses, by the bye) bartender (but she didn't wanna), and is engaging in a love-hate relationship with--sigh--a playwright who happens to look almost exactly like Todd.

The teases about how much sex Elizabeth could be having but chooses not to reads like Brian Johnson of The Breakfast Club: next, she's totally going to meet a guy, but none of you will know him, because he's from Niagara Falls.

Meanwhile, Jessica is tormenting herself like Heathcliff of Wuthering Heights, only many times stupider. That is, when she's not full of righteous and indignant fury that "matronly" gossip Caroline Pearce (isn't it great, by the way, how all of the characters you knew and loved in Sweet Valley made no efforts to grow or develop or change any of their constrictive two-dimensional roles) is trying to nose out whether Elizabeth has called or forgiven Jessica('s scheming vagina) or is coming to Jessica and Todd's wedding.

Todd is a cipher, made even more of a zero than his high-school self by his cheating, which seems like it is supposed to make sense in the context of the novel, but instead comes across as though it was created in a vacuum, never really the behavior of an actual human person but of a plot point generating robot. The menfolk that litter Elizabeth's lifescape are not much better than a collection of adjectives, eye colors, and hair descriptors. If I may dust off my degree for a moment: the way the male characters are portrayed in this novel suggests, like Jane Austen, that Francine Pascal lived in a society where males and females were largely segregated and, therefore, she has little idea how men think or act and therefore tends to marginalize...okay, well, Austen tended to marginalize, so let's call what Pascal does "straight-up half-pipe fancy-skateboard-move biffs" the male voice. For example, a furious, seemingly straight playwright, when faced with the stunning, everyone-wants-to-sex-her-because-she's-byoooooootiful-but-also-has-a-headache-tonight-honey Elizabeth, finds himself thinking "...why he had been so unfriendly to this beautiful girl. He made up his mind to make her his friend."

Here are some alternate and more believable ways that sentence could have ended:
"He made up his mind to make her his fuck buddy"
"He made up his mind to maker her his concubine"
"...his latest conquest."
"...his plus-one to a hot afterparty."
"...his next teammate on his co-ed dodgeball league."
"...his girlfriend, for crying out Pete."

It's an odd experience reading this thus far. For all I'm sassing, it's almost as though I'm too embarrassed for my young self to make fun of it, because it exposes what a naive dork with poor taste I was. Dave White recently wrote in a review of a tweeny movie, Prom, "because while it’s ostensibly about high school kids, it’s not for them. Instead, it’s a children’s film about how cool it’s going to be when they get to be big and can drive a car and stay up late and go out to a huge party." And that is exactly how I imagine Sweet Valley High would read now. At the tender age of 34, that's certainly how this version of the late 20s is reading...only worse, it's like a kid's idea and execution of a nighttime soap opera like 90210: The Original: big showy fights with awkward transitions and poor use of vocabulary; lots of talk about sex but very little actual sex; the very serious use of the term "soulmate" and "beloved"; a half-baked presentation of "living an artist's life"; everyone has glamorous jobs that all could be the topic of "When I Grow Up, I Wanna Be..." homework.

But who am I kidding? My desire to make fun of all these things, and to find out if Lila Fowler and Ken Matthews really do get divorced, will win out.

Also: I really want to read another poorly executed sex scene like Jessica and Todd's one blazing night of passion, their "mouths furiously pressing, kissing, sucking, inhaling each other" as they "make love with an otherworldly passion."

Which is exactly what 10-year-old Jessie would say, come to think of it. Minus the "poorly executed" adverb-verb combo.

This may seem like hyperbole...

2011-05-01T11:17:00.000-07:00

...but sometimes I feel like my relationship with Glee is like that of a superhero(ine, whatever, eat it, Jezebel) and her #1 nemesis. Like, we started out friends and then some horrible accident befell Glee and mutated it and made it crazy and annoying and sometimes poorly written...

And somehow it knows my weakness, my Kryptonite, if you will.

It'll disappoint me by being Sue-centric or robbing a bank using a laser stolen from the government or something next week, probably.

That's right: I rented "Street Kings 2" from a Blockbuster Express just to make these caps

2011-04-25T15:35:00.000-07:00

Oh, the chalky, chalky irony.

2) The first undercover cop dude that is murdered is basically clipped as he is pedestrianizing it up (also public urinating it up, but I assume telling children not to take a whizz outside would have been a little too over-the-top).

7) "Don't play with guns." So rich.

8) "The police are your friends." Even richer.

Also: I'm assuming that behind ol' McTrademarkedCrimeDog is something about not doing drugs, which is also like rain on your wedding day and a free ride when you've already driven a criminal out to an abandoned farm and manufactured evidence so you can plant that evidence at your crime scenes.

Also, 10,000 spoons when all you need is a knife.

I complimented Dan Sullivan on his threads, but this particular suit totally makes him look all, "I'm a grown-up man in my big brother's hand-me-down suit that is a half size too big!"

I like Ray Liotta's sad-trombone expression, like he's all, "I told him not to leave the house without getting that altered and hemmed. He looks like Little Josh Baskin at the end of Big."

Dan Sullivan can pretend he wasn't transfixed during the storyline where Nick Corelli was like the Phantom of the Opera, only a former pimp in a very teal nightclub, and Miss Charlotte Ross sang "Wind Beneath My Wings" at least twice a week. But we all know the truth.

He also owned this cassingle:

How do you talk to an angel, indeed.

Tee hee.

That's all. Just...super cute.

Back in the day, when I worked for a closed-captioning company in Minneapolis, I was lucky enough to caption a terrible Ray Liotta movie where he took off his shirt and showed his giant guns. And a coworker and friend said to me, "Oh, my gosh, have you seen Corrina Corrina?" And then we made a girl date to watch it together, and Ray Liotta's character was super sad and repressed and he romanced Whoopi Goldberg, which seems like about the weirdest thing to get "Awwww" over, but it is totally "Awwwww."

Almost, almost makes a girl forget that Ray Liotta's primary strength is in making TERRIFYING FACES LIKE THIS. It's not like he's Pennywise or Jigsaw or anything: he just looks soulless and capable of disappearing you into some remote drainage ditch without a second thought. I try to imagine being on the receiving end of this completely fictional expression, and it makes me nervous.

Glad I'm not the only one (Shawn Hatosy isn't acting, and his sheen of terror sweat isn't from a spritz bottle; he's just trying to not be scared that Ray Liotta is a for-real crazy person who is going to strangle him in the midst of Method acting.)

I noticed while I was watching this scene that Dan touches/adjusts his gun, either subconsciously feeling threatened or out of habit, and Ray Liotta's reaction as Marty is subtle and great:

And then the power balance shifts as soon as The Touchening begins...

Creepy creepy creepy.

THE FLAG IS A METAPHOR FOR THE THIN BLUE LINE (or something).

Also: AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

And after Dan has executed Marty, all lights are go (which is a metaphor too) (right?)

Nah-nah-nah-nahnahnah Street Kings!

Justified 2x11, "Full Commitment"

2011-04-24T14:30:00.000-07:00

All right, it's come down to this. Only one man can stand victorious.

WHO HAS THE HIGHEST HAIR?

Tim Gutterson


Boyd Crowder

The winner gets to get laid; the loser only gets to watch a movie with his ladyfriend while in the midst of marital strife and various Raylan shenanigans.

See, wasn't that fun? Almost helps you ignore the brutal, wrenching last moments of the ep, right?

Right?

Direct-to-Video-Sequel Theatre: "Street Kings 2: Motor City"

2011-04-20T18:28:00.000-07:00

Let's see how I did in my predictions:

~~Ray Liotta is going to have retired because of the death of a family member and he'll be a total mess.~~ False: Ray Liotta was shot in the knee while ripping off high-level drug dealers and semi-retired to a life of McGruff-like mascot suit duty (though he seemed to love it) before... well, you'll see...
There will be a sequence where they are at the undercover officer's funeral~~, and Ray Liotta flinches during the honor guard salute (that was in the original).~~ Half true: after the first detective is murdered, there is an honor guard; no one flinches though, so we can't give them two (for flinching)
The conspiracy will go all the way to the top! Mostly True!!! About 30+ minutes into the film, it is revealed that the man in the hoodie methodically murdering narcotics detectives is...spoiler alert, and shut up, like you're going to see it... Ray Liotta's character, Marty Kingston!
~~Shawn Hatosy's character will ultimately be involved in the conspiracy and will totally bite it in the third act~~ (ETA: Or maybe not...after all, Chris Evans-not-Pine was an Innocent and died while helping Keanu). Good thing I gave myself an out: Shawn Hatosy's character, Det. Dan Sullivan, actually uncovers what his partner has been up to and... things get murky, but it is implied that he may actually have determined he was going to give Marty a pass, but then Marty explodes Dan's car... which actually was about to be driven to the pregnancy doctor by Dan's 7-months preggo wife. Awk-ward. So Dan naturally gets that super-determined Hatosy glower on his face and goes hunting for vengeance... which shakes out about how you would expect when a guy has killed another guy's pregnant wife (lesson of Street Kings 2: don't bank on pathetic apologies and the assumption that the younger guy is a "better" man than you, because he will stick bullets in you--more on that later--and you will be dead).

Things That Were Better In This Direct-to-Video Sequel Than the Original:

The acting: Like I said, I love Keanu, but Street Kings was not his finest hour (his finest hour: The Lake House and possibly Speed). The acting in the original ranged from Trying Real Hard to I'LL SHOW YOU OVERACTING! to What Am I Doing Here/I Am Basically House from the TV Show House to Common and The Game. I think Ray Liotta and Shawn Hatosy did a pretty good and believable job, even when the movie went off the rails in the last 15-20 minutes.
Smaller character pool: Really, it was Dan and Marty, and most of the other characters introduced either supported those characters (the captain, the smug I.A. guy, the wives) or died at the hands of Marty. Ultimately I think this helped Street Kings 2 best the original when it came to The Conspiracy. Remember in The Negotiator, when the conspiracy only involved one top guy and a handful of foot soldiers? In Street Kings, freakin' everyone, save Keanu as the mark and Chris Evans-Pine as The Innocent, was in on The Wall Full of Money.
The lack of awkward, shoehorned-in, grody racial slurs and references to rape: it's almost as though the sequel makers saw the original and were like, "Eew, that was gross; let's not do that." There was one scene at a brothel and a few scenes at strip clubs, but both sort of stood to demonstrate how yucky some of the cops were. Though the wife roles were diminished, they're not the myriad model cattle-call casted girlfriends that showed up in Street Kings. Charlotte Ross was age-appropriate and byooootiful as Ray Liotta's wife, and the actress playing Dan's wife was pretty but not in the way ladies in a rap video are "pretty." No one was threatened with rape, and objectification and gratuitous sex and nudity was kept to a tasteful minimum. Feminism at work, sort of!
Instead of a lot of splatter violence, there were a few sequences of genuine suspense: in particular, the scene where Marty meets up with Dan late at the office, and you know Marty's gut instinct is telling him that Dan is on to him, and Dan is lying just credibly enough to make his way out of the office, but Marty goes with him, and is totally giving him the Ray Liotta is Crazy and Keeps a Copy of that Unlawful Entry Script Around look that makes me want to wet my pants in fear... pretty impressive, direct-to-video sequel; pretty impressive.

You know, I think "serviceable" seems like one of those backhanded compliments like "workhorse" and "adequate," but really: how much should one or does one expect from a direct-to-video sequel? But this wasn't a terrible or even mediocre movie! It was actually serviceable.

Kind of disappointing, really.

Back to the two main actors: I can't stress how thoroughly creepy Ray Liotta is in that one scene. I caught him in Turbulence one fine Saturday afternoon, and he can do a different, much louder and hammier kind of creepy, but in this, he was following along the spooky Goodfellas "good guy gone way wrong" path, and it was skin-crawly. And he took a page from the William H. Macy in Fargo book and just went balls-out pathetic in his final scene, which is pretty gutsy.

Hatosy wore a variety of very nice suits, vests, and tie clips. It looked like he lifted all that stuff from the set of Public Enemies (a film I have yet to see...uh, probably won't ever see, more like). He did a fine job with the heavy lifting as well as the smaller moments, like acting drunk (a lot of actors super biff that) and seeming mildly annoyed with his wife for her hospitality to his new partner. His best scene was probably the confrontation with the pillar of the community/prostitute frequenting badass cop where he walks the fine line between deference and doing his job and knowing the whole thing stinks to high heaven but is sort of intimidated by the badassness. I also liked the scene where he finds cash money in a crime scene ceiling, and there's a very ambiguous moment where you are unsure whether or not his character planned to pocket it. Hear that, Original Street Kings? Ambiguous character moments.

Also, he made that thinky valley with his forehead a lot. Never Botox, Hatosy. You'd break my heart.

Example from Southland

The one moment that I found unintentionally funny (as opposed to the 42 times something in Street Kings was unintentionally funny) was the confrontation scene between Dan and Marty. Marty is holding a gun on Dan as he drives him to his death, presumably--when will murderers in movies learn to just drive themselves; unwilling chauffeurs are the number one cause of movie car accidents--and a furious, grieving Dan threatens to track down Marty's wife and "stick a bullet in her." I wasn't sure if it was a goofed line that was left in for a "natural" feel (that...doesn't seem likely, since Dan and Marty had a getting-to-know-you convo early in the movie where I'm pretty sure Liotta and Hatosy did a little improv/loosey-goosey delivery to make it more natural) or if it was an intentional line like the William H Macy* line in Boogie Nights about his wife in the driveway with an ass in her cock. If the latter was the case, it sort of fell flat, which was pretty weird in a climatic chase-crash-OMG scene.

Anyway, I'll hold out high hope for the direct-to-sequel to Sniper starring Billy Zane. Street Kings 2, even with your promising Cadillac font in the beginning credits, you were not disappointing enough.

*That's two semi-related William H. Macy references; you all owe me a delicious ice cream sundae.

Sorry, Boyd's Hair; you take a back seat to this Google search string

2011-04-19T17:11:00.001-07:00

Dear Justified-loving stranger: You are my favorite out of all the Justified-loving strangers:

Search Keywords

boyd ava justified kiss tongue

justified 2x05 cottonmouth

I'm watching/fast-forwarding "Street Kings"

2011-04-17T07:24:00.000-07:00

It aired on USA yesterday, and even without the swearing, I feel as though I'm following the storyline.

Things I remembered about Street Kings:

Keanu barfing first thing in the morning because he's an alllllllcoholic.
Forest Whitaker overacting.
The wall full of money.

Things I did not remember about Street Kings:

Jay Mohr's hilarious mustache.
The stilted dialogue surrounding the hilariously overcomplicated conspiracy.
Keanu saying racist stuff. Ugh.
The gross amounts of splatter shootings. Blech.
The thoroughly unnecessary, absolutely disgusting rape talk and threats from the conspiracy puppets. It's jarring and not at all what I'd expect from dudes who were just, spoiler alert, protecting their ill-gotten "cookie jar" of pilfered money.

Okay, based on this formula and on the following description of Street Kings 2: Motor City (which, by the way, was advertised as coming out on Tuesday, so get on the damn stick, Netflix and/or Redbox!)...

Ray Liotta stars in this tale of two Detroit detectives who team up to investigate the killing of an undercover officer -- a task that leads to evidence of shady goings-on in their own unit, and that has each sleuth eying the other warily.

...I predict the following things for Street Kings 2: Motor City:

Ray Liotta is going to have retired because of the death of a family member and he'll be a total mess.
There will be a sequence where they are at the undercover officer's funeral, and Ray Liotta flinches during the honor guard salute (that was in the original).
The conspiracy will go all the way to the top!
Shawn Hatosy's character will ultimately be involved in the conspiracy and will totally bite it in the third act (ETA: Or maybe not...after all, Chris Evans-not-Pine was an Innocent and died while helping Keanu).

Street Kings 2: Motor City! I'm probably going to have to buy it! (Just kidding.)

ETA For no particular reason, I was investigating the price of Street Kings 2 at Amazon and...

Frequently Bought Together

Don't get cute with me, Redbox

2011-04-16T07:05:00.001-07:00

Justified 2x10, "Debts and Accounts"

2011-04-15T11:22:00.000-07:00

The episode opened with the two maternal titans of the show's universe sitting down across from one another in a homey family-style cafe. Cash money was on the table within seconds, and Helen Givens began the delicate political process of appealing to history, grief, love, and strength to keep the peace in her corner of Kentucky. By episode's end, the wheels were in motion by the spurned son, Dickie, to create another clusterfuck. It's like a sort of gender-reversed "King Lear."

I found it interesting how quickly Mags dissolved her connection with Dickie, almost as though her affection--such as it was--for Coover was what kept Dickie within the fold. Whether Mags blames Dickie for Coover's demise or whether it is truly a decision borne out of months of thought, as Brother Corrupt Sheriff implies, is murky. Either way, the dissolution of the Bennett family connection was brutal and carried with it immediate, predictable fallout.

Boyd using stupid people to his own means generally doesn't work out well for the stupid person.

The Raylan and Loretta reunion was unexpected, and I thought it really spoke to both characters well: Raylan did not do the regular-adult thing and correct Loretta when she expressed relief at Coover's death and her empty apathy regarding her father's passing, and he did not sell her fairy tales about her life in foster care. And Loretta's facade barely cracked but showed the many conflicting and strong emotions she was feeling, even as an Art-dubbed "tough cookie."

While that pseudo-family transaction went well, the other opening scene between Art and Raylan...wasn't so super-dupe. Art's amused-irritated paternal patience seems to have run out, and his blunt hand-waving dismissal of Raylan as a person and a professional seemed to have very little impact on Raylan, other than inspiring him to his usual petulant-12-year-old deliquent face. It's not a mentor-mentee relationship, per se, but it's had elements of a different kind of personal and professional foster care--the good-hearted Christian sarcasm generator case worker and his perpetually-in-trouble killing machine of a ward--and to see it so seemingly irreparable is pretty heartbreaking, at least to me.

I liked the way the ep showed Raylan and Boyd, Winona and Ava all at a sort of parallel crossroads with their hearts, and it was cool how the show implied that all four continue to walk that very thin line between domestic and wild, criminal and lawman(or woman): while Raylan and Winona were chased through an office building and shot at, Winona discovering that "running away together" had more implications than she realized at the beginning, though Raylan's heart seemed to remain true; meanwhile, in a quieter, no less heavy scene, after returning to his empire-building, Boyd took station outside Ava's house, wistfully watching and pining for her, as she had been doing for him earlier in the ep... only to find that she was not in the house, but out ~~wandering the moors~~ "looking at the stars."

And then, and pardon me while I abandon all pretentions to treat this show with the dignity and respect it clearly deserves as a well-written and powerful show about the bonds and dangers of family and history, the differences between loyalty and criminality, BOYD AND AVA KISSED OMG OMG OMG OMG.

It was pretty awesome, and I'll spare us all embarrassment by not describing the vapors induced by seeing the subtle flicker of tongue during the kiss before Boyd and Ava melted into a hug. (Oh, my gosh, and the previews for next episode where they turn towards the camera in an implication of breaking a heated embrace like they are auditioning for the opening credits of General Hospital or something? Awesome.)

In conclusion: Mags Bennett. Titans. Um. Other...smart stuff.

ETA: Never mind...

The best thing I have seen turn up in my Google search terms thus far

2011-04-14T19:34:00.001-07:00

Search Keywords

boyds hair justified

The Street King(s) and I

2011-04-13T20:08:00.000-07:00

Recently in my LJ, I've been bugging people about how angry I am that Street Kings 2: Motor City does not have a release date posted yet on Netflix. Severals may be asking yourselves, "What's the big deal with Street Kings? I barely remember that movie. Didn't it star The Game?"

I get you. Me too. I barely remember it either, but it hasn't stopped me from putting a sepia filter on The Way We Were when Street Kings was first rolling out trailers back in Ought Seven. A time of anticipation, a time of crapola, a time of loving Keanu.

Here are things I remember about learning about and preparing for the original Street Kings back in 2008:

**It initially started with the delight and anticipation I feel any time Keanu Reeves is going to play "against type." I've never really been sure what I think his "type" is, but I know what it is not, and that is "British" or "drunk cop." He's tried it a few times and it never seems to pan out the way he wants it to. No one works more at acting (at least according to the interview I read with Shia LeBeouf back when he was still a sprightly up-and-comer and was costarring in Constantine with Keanu) and he tries so hard. So, so hard. He wants to be the guy who brings drunk cops and Shakespearean villains to life, but he is far, far better at pretending to love Sandra Bullock or being an alien, a male prostitute, and/or a robot.

(That's a rom com I'd see: Sandra Bullock as a divorced career gal, and Keanu Reeves as the android she buys for household chores. She learns to love life; he learns to love. There'd be a scene where he is walking her dog. Probably a song by Kelly Clarkson somewhere. Them cooking together.

This is just what Hollywood experts called a "treatment" (probably).)

Anyway: yay for Keanu trying and failing.

**The next thing I remember is that the cast list of Street Kings was the most random assortment of people ever. It was like someone put the contents of IMDb in a Bingo tumbler and cast whoever was extracted. Forest Whitaker! Dr. House! Keanu, of course! Jay Mohr! Chris in the Morning! Some rappers*!

*I very specifically remember delighting in the way the narrator in the ads intoned "AND THE GAME."

**Because I own Narc and The Negotiator, it's not like I can pretend I don't like middling-to-good movies full of character actors about cops and corruption and conspiracies and whatnot. And Street Kings definitely promised to have all those things. Maybe not the "-to-good" part of "middling-to-good," but enough of the other stuff that I'd start out watching it to make fun of it and would grow to love it (kind of like Sandra Bullock and her android Keanu Rosie the Maid Robot).

**As with most things I get excited about mocking, I shared it with one or two friends, which turned into a barrage of hilarious e-mails, and we eventually built actual plans around seeing Street Kings, thus making it a social event.

FAST FORWARD TO TODAY:
I don't actually remember a lot about the movie Street Kings. I remember that Hugh Laurie was IA, so he was sort of the red herring "that guy's a dick, but he won't turn out to be the main bad guy" guy. The rappers seemed to acquit themselves fine. Forest Whitaker, master of subtlety, sprayed spittle on every available surface as the Pragmatically Assholish Mentor Figure or Maybe Partner (and guess who turns out to be the puppet master of the conspiracy, at least to my recollection, which is cloudy). Jay Mohr and Chris in the Morning were...there. Doing stuff. Probably cracking wise and spinning songs by Hothouse Flowers.

So imagine my delight when star of Narc and costar of my very favorite show of the moment, Southland, are going to star in the direct-to-video sequel of this movie I got all ratcheted up about and about which I barely remember anything! SO excited! Let the countdown to Street Kings 2: Motor City begin!

Special bonus: blahmanda dug up the theme song I wrote on behalf of some of the characters:
♫ STREET KINGS
BEIN' CORRUPT AND KILLIN' LOTS OF PEOPLE
STREET KINGS
GRITTY AND THIEVIN'
WALL FULL OF MONEY
STARRING COMMON AND THE GAME ♫

Justified 2x09, "Brother's Keeper"

2011-04-09T17:50:00.000-07:00

I didn't know exactly how to tackle the latest Justified ep, because so much happened, both with the storyline and with specific character relationships. But I do want to address this:

Shoulder to shoulder. Boy, I bet Harlan County doesn't even know what it's in for. Especially when Ava is wearing red shoes.

Justified 2x08, "The Spoil"

2011-03-31T13:23:00.000-07:00

After a filler ep last week, this week's ep wasted no time in getting the avalanche rolling downhill: Art knows Raylan and Winona were up to something (you can tell by his snarkiness combined with his Disappointed Dad face); the Bennetts and Black Pike Coal are not-so-quietly struggling for control of the land surrounding the mountain; and Aunt Helen, knowledgeable of what the meaning is behind the land struggle, gives Raylan the rest of the stolen front money to get him the heck out of the county.

If I didn't know this was based on an Elmore Leonard story, I'd guess Robert B Parker had a hand in it by the way Carol, the Black Pike exec, and Raylan interacted: she's an eloquent, tough, unsubtle single gal, and he's the muscle hired to protect her, though he spends most of his time resisting her verbal advances when he's not drinking with her at the end of a long day. Raylan, like Spenser, is a one-gal guy, but if we were comparing the gals, I think Susan is overall a more together, mature individual. Don't know if she's hotter--Susan is a goddess based on Spenser's descriptions--but Carol's pretty damn hot with her long flame-colored hair and her pretty intense bazooms. I'm not a fan of the way she went about displaying the bazooms--people who feel free to strut about displaying their underthings may be "very comfortable" with their bodies, but mostly I think they are "very comfortable" trying to get people to notice their round, voluptuous "comforts" (ladies) or [eeh-nnnnnnnngh-pointing-at-that-area] (menfolk).

Mags Bennett moments of note: tapping Coover with a shovel to get him to stop pounding on Raylan, of course, and most definitely her friendly neighbor proselytizing at the town hall meeting. What a tremendous performance, and I loved the touch of her singling out the gentleman who sold to Black Pike earlier in the ep. It was a chilling reminder that the show has been very, very good at insulating Mags from the dirty work: you never see her giving the orders to sic Charlie (my guess: some kind of sharp-toothed rodent, like in The Big Lebowski--"Hey, nice marmot") on folks, but knowing her relationship of command-and-control with her boys, you have to infer she's behind it.

I'm afraid for Loretta. Her bravado and resourcefulness seem to almost shrink in comparison to scenes like Coover's violent attack or Mags's grand scheme. She looked like a prop in that town hall meeting, which, you know, basically everyone is between the machinations of the coal company and the Bennetts. But her most of all, since she's smack in the middle of the Bennetts' web.

And finally, Boyd and Ava: who would have thought, back in season 1, that having the opinion "You know, Ava's sexy and feisty, but I think she may be a little too crazy for Raylan" would work itself out this way, with Boyd and Ava moving from antagonists who routinely threatened the other's life to pseudo-domestic partners and partners-in-crime. Frankly, I find Ava exactly the kind of partner that Boyd needs. She talks; he listens. When he needs care or support, she gives it; in return, he has begun speaking of the things "we" need, as though he and Ava are a unit.

And she's still wicked fast with that shotgun. I knew she'd be there to chase off the Bennetts.

I loved the callback to Boyd's sermon from the pulpit in season 1 with his bravura performance at the town hall meeting. And I love that once again, he's the smartest guy in the room. Raylan's no dummy, but I think with his discombobulation over Winona's dumb decisions and Art's obvious awareness of the dumbness, he's not exactly on his game (thus the ass-beating he received from Coover) (well, that and the hangover).

It's going to be interesting to see where all this leads, but it's obvious bodies will fall in the last four episodes.

Netflix Queue Revue

2011-03-27T17:28:00.000-07:00

So it's fancy, like a theatrical production, instead of a "review," which is boring and not fancy.

Because let's be honest: my Netflix queue is full of fancy things. Movies, to be specific. Those are the things that are on a Netflix queue. And it's not as though I don't like fancy movies. I have taste in the Finer Things, cinema-wise. But I also:

am lazy
am slow to watch my Netflix selections if I'm not in one of my crazy phases of watching a TV series or stalking/"appreciating" an actor/actress
enjoy cartoons, middling rom coms, and the occasional terrible direct-to-video sequel

I was Twittering with blahmanda last night about some of our commonly shared Netflix afflictions--though, in a bit of irony, I finally deleted Affliction, a That's a Small, Gritty, Character-Driven Indie Film Full of Grizzled Actors I Should Watch Someday, from my queue back in Ought Nine--and in addition to being LOL, it made me really take a look at some of my gobbed-up queue with a critical eye.

Join me, if you will, for an examination of some of my Netflix queue...

Documentaries I Am Totally Going To Watch Because I'm An Involved Citizen of America or The World
The Fog of War (#59)
Into the Arms of Strangers (#89)
The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill (#112)
Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room (#121)
Deliver Us from Evil (#159)

I Put Everything About Gay Culture on my Queue Because Netflix Tells Me To (or I Liked Brokeback Mountain, Opposite of Sex, Jeffrey, and Mad Hot Ballroom, So Certain Assumptions Get Made):
Kinky Boots (#16)
The Dying Gaul (#19 - I hear Peter Sarsgaard and Campbell Scott make out!)
Beautiful Thing (#24)
Trembling Before G-d (#33 - also belongs in aforementioned Documentary subcategory)
Unzipped (#37 - sorta...though a documentary, I don't think it'll make me a better citizen)
Wilde (#53)
Priest (#54)
Normal (#55)
The Cockettes (#56 - boy, I was on a tear at some point)
Milk (#202)

Not A Girl, Not Yet A Woman (that's a metaphor for how they're not really new releases anymore)
The Departed (#9)
Michael Clayton (#10)
The Prestige (#13)
The Dancer Upstairs (#58)
Syriana (#130)
Notes on a Scandal (#139)
Dreamgirls (#143 - does anyone mind if I just skip this? Sweet!)
The Assassination of Jesse James by the... (#171)
Charlie Wilson's War (#176)
Burn After Reading (#187)
The Hurt Locker (#203)
Inglourious Basterds (#204)

Yep, Still Haven't Seen 'Em
The Taking of Pelham 1-2-3 the original (#30)
Dog Day Afternoon (#34)
Harold and Maude (#36)
The Manchurian Candidate the original (#47)
My Beautiful Laundrette (#73)
Dark City (#77)
The Exorcist (#87)
Sunset Boulevard (#134)
The Women (#181)
The Spanish Prisoner (#190)

Probably Going to End Up Watching These Some Saturday Afternoon on USA or FX
Salt (#7)
Shoot 'Em Up (#170)
Strange Wilderness (#177)
I Am Legend (#178 - normally blah, but Duse said it was good)
The X-Files: I Want to Believe (#181)
The Blind Side (#208)
Predators (#212 - look, just tell me if Topher Grace is a bad guy; then I'll move it up in the queue accordingly)

There are, of course, other categories: Every Joseph Gordon Leavitt Indie Film From the Early 2000s; Even Though I Heard You Sucked, I'm Still Going To Maybe Watch You, e.g. Time Traveler's Wife; MST3K Eps I Haven't Watched For Some Reason...

Also, I've had the first disc of Lark Rise to Candleford for over a month now with almost no intention of watching it, but I still have yet to send it back. Nevertheless, it'll probably never beat the six month record held by The Lives of Others. Sorry, Germany! I promise to watch the next movie you make that everyone talks about (that should get me five or six years cushion...)

I tell you what I'm really excited about: Street Kings 2 (Release Date Unknown, but Google Machine tells me it'll drop April 19). I plan on doing a full-scale review.

Thursday Night Stories: P&R Edition

2011-03-26T07:14:00.000-07:00

While The Office made me weepy, 30 Rock was my favorite kind of 30 Rock (Jack Donaghy is revealed to be as awkward and unprepared and pathetic as the rest of the TGS cast and staff), and Community was okay, but not my favorite, the ep of the night, for me, was Parks and Recreation:

Before

After

I love how he improvised spelling the rest of April's name--I believe by either wilting the grass with fire or spray paint?--after losing many of the rose petals (presumably while fighting a squirrel...)

I know it's the Internet Nerd thing to make statements full of overexaggerated sound and fury, signifying nothing, but Chris Pratt's physical comedy skills are up there with (pick one: John Ritter, if that's your bag; Mr. Bean, if that's your bag; some other comparison, if that's your bag) and I don't understand why he's not a bigger deal and getting nominated for awards. When he took a tumble down the hillside, then spun in circles shouting, "What was that? What was THAT?" I laughed so, so, so, so hard. Genius.

Plus his relationship with April is genuinely cute. He is always so good at Being in Love.

Another person good at that: Adam Scott

I was convinced, when Ben made the mistake of not bringing a tent, that this was the ep where Leslie and Ben would hook up. They had two perfect fanfic opportunities: camping and a (nightmarish) b&b. But why would you make moves on your lady love when you have Tom making you soft-serve ice cream cones...

I loved this episode because it combined the two things I love most about P&R: Leslie Knope as the glue of the department and Leslie and Ann's friendship. Leslie and Ann took turns supporting each other--Leslie by inviting Ann to come camping to get away from Chris, which didn't exactly work; and Ann by telling Leslie how smart and talented and creative Leslie is--and though Ron and Ben had their moments too, I think the Ann-and-Leslie connection is my favorite because it...is.

Other stuff I enjoyed:
1) The spectrum of reactions to Mrs. Krimp's 6:15 AM breakfast announcement

From l to r: Disapproval, Confusion, Delight

2) Jerry's love of all things wholesome

Only Jerry would enjoy German muffins and "Ode to Joy" on the harpsichord

3) Rob Lowe's egoless willingness to look foolish

4) Leslie's super cute pigtails

5) Ron: "We have nothing else to eat; Jerry scared the fish away with his loud, personal stories."

I loved the progression of Ron's whittling too.

So! Parks and Recreation! What did I forgot? Probably loads of stuff (Tom: "If that is a coyote, someone needs to pick me up off the ground immediately;" the headline "Harvest Best-ival" in the background of one of Leslie's talking heads; Donna reading Your Erogenous Zones and drinking Jim Beam at the B&B).

Justified 2x07, "Save the Love"

2011-03-24T04:57:00.000-07:00

I guess there was bound to be one episode that wasn't all that great. Beyond Art knowing shenanigans had been up and Boyd getting a new suit for the now-all-too-familiar racket of being pulled into a criminal enterprise, this mini-arc of Winona stealing a bunch of money and her and Raylan Yakety Sax'ing their way through a veritable convenience-of-storytelling gauntlet of near-misses and delays was a-nnoying.

So much so that I'm not going to dl a video file to make a screencap of Boyd in his suit.

Detroit 1-8-7 season (series?) finale

2011-03-21T18:55:00.000-07:00

I hope it comes back for another season. They could move it to a different day, even. Like Mondays, when I don't have anything to watch.

For how much of a cliche and a letdown the big reveal of Fitch's dark past was, I thought the finale did a great job of closing one door and opening another (no spoilers, K! no spoilers!) for Fitch.

Also: damn it. They were totally moving in the direction of Mahajan and that sassy-yet-vulnerable ME with the gorgeous red hair, weren't they? DON'T CANCEL IT, ABC!

Justified 2x06, "Blaze of Glory"

2011-03-17T16:53:00.000-07:00

Let me get this out of my system first:
Take me now! But know the truth!
I'm going out!
In a blaze of glory!
Lord, I never drew first but I drew first blood
I'm no one's son
Call me Young Guns II!!!

To start off this post, I have to say I thought all day about ndnickerson's funny Tweet about Boyd's hair. But what bothered me was if the scale was based solely on Boyd's hair, or if it was a more general scale based on wildness and height of hair of film and tv characters. The scale I came up with was:

Note: some objects may be fuzzier than they appear.

I like the feeling that we're in the part of the chess game where the pawns are moving back and forth on the board before the onslaught of rook-to-whatever-I-didn't-really-pay-attention-to-the-chess-in-Chess begins. Boyd and Ava appear in the beginning, the Bennetts don't appear at all, and we're left with Raylan and Winona continuing their personal drama--and am I a dummy, or are they hinting Winona may be pregnant?--and an interesting b-story for Art and the old-timer convict.

I love Art's dialogue for the "chase" (of the convict who was oxygen tank-less, not shown) was basically "Shit," "Ass-hole," and "Was that necessary?" I love spending time with Art. He's a good boss and mentor to Raylan--knows when to respect Raylan's skills and when to call him on his hotheaded, petulant bullshit--and the rest of the team. He's a pragmatic, patient, smart man, and for once, I actually bought the scene where he magically shows up at the right time and the right place to catch the fleeing convict.

Speaking of Mister Raylan Givens and his hotheaded ways, sometimes I forget how good Tim Olypants looks when he's full of barely controlled rage. It was hard to miss while watching Deadwood, because Seth Bullock's default setting was "barely controlled rage." But last night, when that idiot bank robber was talking gross sass about Winona, and Raylan gave him one of these:

And this:

Yeah, that's the stuff.

(The conclusion of that picture story: Raylan socked that guy, then kicked him in the mug while he was down.)

So a good standard, biding-our-time-until-the-Harlan-implosion stuff starts rolling.

Roll credits:

I always forget Alan Ruck is in Young Guns II! And who is Brad Whitford? Surely not Emmy Award-winning Josh Lyman portrayer Bradley Whitford.

Detroit 1-8-7 1x17, "Motor City Blues"

2011-03-16T17:30:00.000-07:00

Spoiler alerts (so Miss Low Fat Dressing, you best avoid this post if you are still (a) behind)!

It's strange to think about how nuts I started off my relationship with Detroit 1-8-7. I was loooooooony for it when the season began. But due to events the show could not control--Southland being on the same day and time, and Southland slowly diverting the flow of loony to its reservoir of cuckoo tv feelings--and events the show could control (adding the blonde FBI agent, who has a name I refuse to learn; heading in the direction of Law & Order with its structure and mix-and-match cases), I find myself liking the show, but not looking forward to it like when I first began the season.

Last night's ep had examples of what I continue to enjoy, as well as things I wish they'd knock off.

What I Enjoy:

The Longford/Mahajan partnership: I liked Vik's concern about Jesse's back, I continue to like the writing for them and how well it balances bickering and ball-busting with comfortable dude friendship. The end scene made me misty-eyed.
Fitch's craaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaazy eyes: Imperioli busted out some choice looks last night.
The Lieutenant: even though I thought the opening on Det. Handsome's tribute poster was--okay, I was going to say "lazy," but it really wasn't, and I've been brain-fighting myself all day over whether Southland's similar-yet-very-different arc spoiled me or wore me out or what--something bleh, I think Aisha Hinds does a lot with the fairly static place in the show she is given.
The Fitch/Sanchez stuff: it seemed a little too soon, but at the same time, the show has dropped enough hints that Sanchez has always been drawn to Fitch, so...I'm easy, really. Even if the actress playing her isn't always on fire, I like the two of them.
The use of music: the opening song, which Google Machine tells me is Gnarls Barkley's "Who's Gonna Save My Soul?" was great; I thought "Falling" was an oddball choice, but I still love the song.

What I Wish They'd Knock Off

Acknowledging that Fitch is crazy: they went way over-the-top having Fitch's son Bobby imitate all his quirks, down to his interrogation style, e.g. being right about someone.
Setting up love triangles: forget it, Show, you will not make me buy FBI Agent Network Notes as a love interest, so drop it. Drop it right now.
The cruddy paint-by-numbers cases: they've gotten more and more retread-y as the season progressed.

Alicia Coppola has done so much in her career, and yet I always recognize her as "that pretty brunette from Another World!"

As far as the Death of Det. Handsome goes, good night, sweet prince. You were handsome and stubbly and said your lines. I was never too invested in you, and it appears the show wasn't either. You die so that Fitch and Sanchez may live (though odds of a second season ain't looking so hot).

But despite all I've said, the pros, the cons, the references to Another World...

This was clearly the very best episode of television ever.

(Yes, I dl'ed a whole video file to make three screencaps; perhaps there is a crick of loony running through me after all.)

Glee 2x16, "Original Song"

2011-03-15T18:49:00.000-07:00

I'm going to try to be positive and say positive things. It's an exercise and a test, and let's see if I can do it.

There was some follow-through with the Brittany/Santana subplot, which was very unexpected and, of course, both heart-wrenching and funny. I am trying to set reasonable expectations for this arc, but it's hard not to want more of the two of them.
Every goofy f'ing face Mark Salling made throughout the episode. He nearly blew his lip-synching of "Big Ass Heart" in order to do some of the dorkiest shit he's ever committed to film (and I'm including last episode's head-jiggle during "Afternoon Delight"). That plus his emoting during Kurt and Blaine's duet made him the true MVP of the episode.
The original songs were decent! I was expecting a noise hemorrhage of cliché and cringe-inducing mediocrity, and that didn't happen. I actually enjoyed "Loser Like Me" and believed talented kids may have put the number together.
Mercedes and the whole group clearly had fun singing "Hell to the No."

There. I feel like I accomplished something.

But even if cute boys are making out, and one of those cute boys is Kurt Hummel, I still do not understand the appeal of Blaine. If they would let him be not flawless and perfect and immaculate for one moment, maybe. But his cover boy for Nonthreatening Boys bit is so bland. And if someone can explain to me what he saw in Kurt's performance that hasn't already been present and in front of him this whole time (and cram a sock in the "sometimes you are just like, hey, wow, there you are, soulmate" business), I'll...not relent and continue to complain. So really no one wins. Boo. Boo!!!

They really, really should have let Kathy Griffin write her own lines. That shit was weak-ass. Weak-ass. I could write better political satire/fun-poking, and I barely give a shit.

And I wish after Sue "hilariously" punched the lady announcer, they had done an homage to the greatest tv-to-movie adaptation ever filmed and done a Dragnet coda, followed by a MaMo rap.

Break until April! Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

Justified 2x05, "Cottonmouth" (in just a few brief screencaps)

2011-03-10T16:02:00.000-08:00

Greater than or equal to...

You decide.

I don't know what it is about his glasses, but nearly every shot of him makes me laugh like I'm a performer in The Mikado.

That did not make me laugh like a G&S schoolgirl. Something about Boyd in this ep made me so sad, even as I admired how very much smarter than everyone else he was. When he sat across from Ava and said, "Because it's what I do. It's who I am... as hard as I've been trying to pretend otherwise. Everybody else seems to know that but me," my heart broke, even though I knew he'd just murdered four men in pretty cold blood (well, they were planning to kill him AND another innocent man played by ELLSWORTH, no less, and if you can save Ellsworth from getting shot twice in this lifetime...).

Hey, speaking of things that did not make me laugh like a G&S schoolgirl:

Tough Love: Parenting Via Ball-Peen Hammer Beatings by Mags Bennett.

Eat it, Dr. Spock.

Southland 3x10, "Graduation Day"

2011-03-09T17:19:00.000-08:00

John and Ben:
In the interest of disclosing embarrassing stuff up front: I cried during last night's episode, and not, like, cool perfect-double-tears-like-Demi-Moore-in-Ghost crying, but more like making-high-pitched-Stan Laurel-noises crying.*

I wish my usually reliable video source had posted so I could make screencaps--a million millions screencaps of Ben and John, particularly of Ben looking over across the rooftops to John. But I can't...
ETA Thanks, TNT promotional department:

...so I'll just say that even though I am a seasoned tv veteran and know in my logical "This is how TV shows work" way that Ben and John will be partners again in the fourth season that will totally happen very, very soon, part of my 8th-grade soap-opera watching past self is wringing my hands and worrying while loving the drama, the conflict, and the gentleness of their resolution. I never want them to be split up; as much as I love Sammy, I think we're all supposed to know that his bluster is simply a shadow of John Cooper.

Cudlitz rocked it, especially in that closing scene when the camera mercilessly closed in on John and he listed all the medications he'd been taking, then replied to the narcotics question with "I'm a cop." He's never sounded more unsure of that ever in the history of the show, and it was shattering. What a hard tieback to John's angry disbelief at Dewey's admissions of being on the job bombed out of his mind on liquor. I feel like this storyline couldn't have resolved better or more realistically for the two characters. I believed Ben's fury (I like how much of the dialogue as Ben began shouting down John was repeated from the last episode, like how a lot of people sound when they've rehearsed speeches over and over in their head) and I believed the collapse of John's bravado and his (Stan Laurel Stan Laurel don't be Stan Laurel) "Thank you" to his boot, the man who likely saved his life and his job.

*Said crying started when Ben and John pulled up in front of the hospital, and John matter-of-factly asked Ben to bring him a change of clothes in a few days after the withdrawal had subsided.

Lydia and Josie:
I suppose I should think of it as a sort of reflection of Russell's betrayal of Lydia--how lies of omission can sometimes be the hardest to dig yourself out of and how easy it is to explain away selfish behavior--but it's hard to do since pretty much everyone in the mess is guilty of something: Josie was overreacting as only a mother can (calling Lydia a child molester while they were investigating a child molester case was a nice bit of irony); Roderigo was showing his immaturity by refusing to tell his mother, then being a big ol' boner, horndogging all over Lydia in bed while she was trying to take Josie's phone call (as charming as the character is otherwise, I found that pretty gross); and Lydia, not exactly stepping up and taking control of the situation, which you think she'd know better.

Anyway, I will be interested to see where it all goes in the fourth season (which is totally, totally going to happen REALLY soon). It feels like they're leaving the door open to have Josie remain Lydia's partner With Issues, or potentially partner Lydia off with Sammy (who kept one foot in the detective door, but in Gangs, so maybe I'm wishfully thinking).

Dewey and Chickie:
I thought the little bit with Dewey and the drug-addicted prostitute was surprisingly touching. C. Thomas Howell is pretty for-real. I love how he can continue to be the obnoxious loudmouth and transition into little moments like the last scene at the park bench and not make it seem like it's out of character.

I hope that Chickie and the thing about Metro isn't the show's way of potentially writing her out. I like Chickie a lot. I'd actually be a little disappointed if the show returned for its fourth season, starting tomorrow, and she and Dewey weren't still partners.

I also liked Chickie's high-five with Ben. Mostly because super, super cute.

Sammy:
Speaking of a million, million screencaps...his expression of trepidation in the delivery room and the way that changed to vulnerable, gentle wonder and love capped by the hesitant kiss on Nathanial's forehead was amazing. Some forum poster over at TWoP--I KNOW I KNOW--said something about being unimpressed by Hatosy, and I had a mild metaphoric nosebleed for a moment or two.

Anyway, I liked how everything wrapped with Nate's (alleged? but really, he did it, right? go back and watch it) killer, how Sammy vacillated between a desire for the guy to stay alive and the uncontrollable fury of wanting him dead. And it was interesting to see him step into John Cooper's shoes; again, I think the show was going for the point that those really aren't Sammy's shoes at all, no matter how much his heart really wants to be back "out there."

And now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to write a bunch of fictional nonsense about how Sammy and Lydia met up at the hospital and stuff.

In closing: Southland season 4! Get ready, because it's happening in five minutes hooray!

(I will probably post a million screencaps.)

I'd rather say fun things about "Raising Hope" than complain about Blaine...

2011-03-08T19:14:00.000-08:00

If you had told me, when I was plotting my HBO Drama Series Insane Character Face-off brackets, that Vern Schillinger and Francis Wolcott would have a smackdown in a mattress store largely comprised of bouncing...well, sir, I would have called you a liar.

This episode of Raising Hope had it all: Richard Marx music, a Josh Groban joke, Paul F. Tompkins, caricatures, Mary Lynn Rajskub, and the universal truth that people doing funny Muppet voices like Yoda or Gollum are only entertaining and awesome to the person doing them (or, if you like someone doing those voices, you are in a cult). I love this show and its many shenanigans.

Its lead-in, Glee, was okay, I suppose. Uneven, as always. The tender love story of Brittany and Santana was surprising in both its depth and honesty. I've always loved Naya as Santana, but this is the ep that made me convinced she's one of the best things about the show. I'm confident she will not be Cordelia Chased (that is, impregnated by a demon, stripped of her bitchy vulnerability, unable to ever truly express her love for Angel...because Angel is a girl who believes that a stork nested in a tree outside her window, and Joss Whedon hardly ever does anything bad to lesbians).

Joss Whedon is the creator and lead writer of Glee, right?

Kurt and Burt were great, as always, but I'm sad that the set-up to that fantastic scene was a teenage boy, who we, the audience, are supposed to like and root for, lecturing a grown-up person on how to raise his child. Look, Show, I'm trying here. The Internet has spoken, and at least 80% of them are bonkers mcgee over both Darren Criss and his Dapper Dan'ed creation, so I know he's sticking around. He's cute enough. Maybe I'm missing something. Maybe he's not the character for me. He was kind enough to show his pelvis hollows in Out magazine (what I usually call "pudding valleys," but I won't, because gross and cover your shame, Darren Criss). But Show, you don't make it easy for me when Blaine is a know-it-all asshole to Kurt about sexy faces (as though the goony, asinine mugging he does is delicious) and then gets Dawson Leery Condescension Syndrome and swans around dispensing world-weary wisdom to Burt Hummel.

I don't want Kurt's first boyfriend to be a prick. Is what I'm saying, I guess. And I don't want him to be a lame-o. So shape up, Show. Stop making Blaine a lame-o prick.

Oh, and by the way, I think baby penguins and Kurt Hummels/Chris Colfers are sultry in their own adoraaaaaaaaable way.

The storyline with Emma, Carl, and Will is excruciating. And they need to figure out something for Jane Lynch to do that is not what she has been doing lately, which is annoying me. I don't want to be annoyed by Jane Lynch.

"Landslide" was my favorite cover, though bonus points to "Afternoon Delight" for its excellent use of Mark Salling's hilariousness.

Justified, 2x04 "For Blood or Money"

2011-03-03T13:31:00.000-08:00


"I call this little number 'The Oxy Bus Cleanup Breakdown!'"

Who knew a hoedown could be such a dramatic and tense dance? The opening scene did more table-setting for what will probably be a big ol' mess by season's end: Mags Bennett's idiot boys and their criminal tomfoolery have brought out both curiosity and suspicion in Raylan. Though he enters the scene quietly enough, with his mix of charm and polite manners...

Aww, he brought a pie and a smile (and a bunch of veiled accusations)!

...it ends in a tense exchange between Raylan and Mags, uncovering bad blood, truth, and lies. Before Mags's returns to her former position of hospitality--her offers of food and drink come with equal parts maternal warmth and insidious intention--it's clear that Raylan won't be backing down and Mags has something brewing that she is eager to protect.

It was good to see Loretta, if only briefly, and know she's still safe. I imagine her loyalty to Raylan will be a pivot point as the season progresses.

Boyd and Ava continue their equally tense dance of domesticity and whatever-the-heck-else is going on between the two of them:


Come into my parlor (or my front porch) said the spider to the fly... (though which one is which is up for debate)

I particularly liked the scene on the porch, how it was a combination of comfortable small talk and getting-to-know-you, all with the added bonus of the reminder that Boyd and Ava are both fairly dangerous individuals.

This episode seemed particularly Elmore Leonardy. I'll be really honest: I would have enthusiastically watched a Flex spinoff in a minute. That's really what The Wire was missing: a not-remotely-reformed drug-dealer cum self-taught magician with a muscle car and a flair for marketing (really, why would you want to add a "the Amazing" tag to Flex? Genius).

But the biggest surprise of the night, besides the fact that Chief Art Mullen has a wife we have yet to meet:

I'm pretty sure that next to Mags Bennett, she's likely the most awe-inspiring woman ever (but in a much better, non-poisoning way)

...is that resident sharpshooter and Iraq War veteran Tim has, apparently, the total hots for his Marshal cohort, Rachel.

I suddenly feel compelled to revisit every single episode to look for clues for this. Even during my first viewing of this ep, I missed how vigilant Tim is about looking at Rachel. In the Billy the Kidverse pizza joint, while Raylan's gaze is locked, for the most part, on Clinton, Tim's eyes never stray from Rachel. But seriously, when they cut to that shot in the third panel, it was like getting hit with a ton of bricks imprinted with bluebirds and sparkly hearts. His expression as Rachel talks about her family is like the Southern gun-toting dude version of Mr. Darcy restraining himself from comforting Elizabeth in the '95 P&P.

I feel like a dummy. I always catch stuff like this early. Where was I?

This one is for my pal KF, if she's reading. She loves when a group of individuals become a makeshift family. Chief Art as papa, of course, and his kidlets (I love how Timothy Olyphant characters in these makeshift families are invariably the prodigal son with a temperament problem--Deadwood lives on still).

Southland 3x09, "Failure Drill"

2011-03-02T18:56:00.000-08:00

John and Ben:

The saddest, most disappointed apostrophe eyes of them all.

"John, you have a problem."

Ben finally says the words, but it takes John riding around an entire day with his throwback Oakleys on, uncharacteristically sluggish, barely stirring from the car (you know, except the one time where he smashes in an elderly man's passenger window) to get it done. I thought Ben McKenzie did a great (and cute, of course) job of showing the teakettle-whistle build-up of Ben's frustration.

The camera work in this scene was boss; I love how between Ben addressing John as "Sir" and the angle of the shot, it made John look like he'd been pulled over for a traffic stop

I read a few commentaries/recaps here and there at the beginning of the series that mentioned that John's addiction to painkillers felt like a go-nowhere storyline. The more I thought about it last night, the more I disagree. I think Southland has succeeded the way a lot of tv dramas don't in showing the seesaw effect of addiction, particularly in an individual like John, who is stubborn and self-reliant and smart and should "know better" but fails and fails and rights himself, then fails again. Sometimes it's a bumpy ride to rock bottom, and after seeing tonight's episode, where John basically ends the day as he would any other--well, this time with silence instead of his standard in-your-face bit of lecture and wisdom--I admire the show for sticking to what other (lazy asses) may see as a mundane or repetitive path. I think this has been a deliberate choice, one that defines itself against Dewey's spectacular flame-out from season 2: sometimes the worst collapse is slow and quiet and agonizing:

I also like how this arc has shown Ben building strength and confidence not just as a police officer, but as a person. He tried speaking to John as a friend and an equal and when that failed, he pulled out that booming command-and-control voice. He worked it too.

Lydia/Ochoa:

So gorgeous, and so funny when she's on the spot and being charmed

I was totally loving the Lydia/Ochoa storyline. I thought it was great how it started with Lydia's flirting with the gun range guy, how the attraction was sort of an everyday exchange with that little spark of something more, and I liked how Lydia and Ochoa went through their day--with the back-biting and snarking about "Tweedledee and Tweedledum"; the fairly straightforward murder case with the heartstring-tugging kids; the gun range guy asking Lydia out; Lydia and Ochoa wrapping up and heading back to follow up on the employment leads and Lydia shyly admitting she has a date to her partner (and Ochoa's hilarious--and iiiiiironic--delight); the "failure drill" coming back around in the workplace massacre...

...and then it turns out handsome, charming guy is Ochoa's son? Boo! BOO! I wish that hadn't happened. It was promising how Lydia shut it down and how he was still persistently charming but not in a "we're going to be in the sack by the next ep" way. But still: can't Lydia date someone nice and charming without it having a huge TVish complicating factor? I was really looking forward to her having a fun office romance, and now it's all dramatical.

I'll mimic the show and transition from Lydia to...

Sammy:
Not a whole lot on Sammy's end this ep--looks like they're saving that for the finale, what with the reappearance of the hole-digging tattooed guy (who I SWEAR is the guilty party when I did a mini-rewatch)--but I liked what we got to see. Mostly I think his new high-and-tight haircut is super adorable. And I like the way he wears his shield:

It was interesting how the camera floated over to Sammy's temporary partner as the pastor expressed his concern that he hadn't seen Sammy recently. After being so up close and personal with Sammy's process, it was almost like the show was giving Sammy a little breathing room. By the time we rejoined Sammy and the pastor, it was clear that the genuine and straightforward concern was almost a little too much for him (you can see the glint of moisture in his eyes when he looks at the floor):

I have to admit I'm a little amused by how dialed back pregnancy/the writers have made Tammi. Beyond her showing up at the scene when Sammy is about to make an arrest in the church incident, she's not the getting-high, acting-out idiot I grew to hate so much by the end of season 2.* Nice and promising to see Sammy with the paint and the swingset and the awkward-but-ultimately-uneventful interaction with Tammi's live-in lover. He's trying.

*This does not mean I want them to get back together. Please, please, please no.

A Justified mini-post (2x03, "I of the Storm")

2011-02-27T12:34:00.000-08:00

They've threatened each other's lives (repeatedly), so of course they're roommates, and of course when Ava looks at Boyd like this...

...he readily follows through and obeys.

(It's just too, too bad I can't capture my favorite moment of the ep, but as great as Art's expressions are as he gives Raylan a hard time, it doesn't fully capture the greatness of the tone in his voice--the paternal snap when he asks if it's Rachel that Raylan is sneaking around with, the silky teasing about how if it was him, he'd remember; and the giddy schadenfreude when he realizes it's Winona.)

The Office, 7x17, "Todd Packer"

2011-02-26T07:16:00.000-08:00

I want you all to know this is a safe place where we can talk about how great The Office is and how excited we are that next season, the ensemble is going to surprise everyone and continue to be just as funny and awesome as ever.

Which pair made you laugh more: Andy and Pam (I loved all the callbacks to Andy's anger-management problems and his tender heart, and of course the two people most easily pushed over would have a delightful momentary power struggle before joining forces..."Pretty sneaky, sis" = awwwwwwwwwwwwwww) or Dwight and Jim?

"Have a butterbeer on us"

I really can't decide. All-around great.

I always wondered about the best way to break my computer:


"Maybe because I hate your broke ass!"

Also, Mindy Kaling looked very, very pretty (not to sound all creepy a la The Faculty) in this ep:

I loved the way that Kelly just appeared over her cubicle wall during the Holly v staff confrontation.

I also loved the teeny moment of Oscar coming over, arms crossed, to stand behind Kevin during Todd Packer's "apology." He's always looking out for his very big little bro:

I think as they transition Michael Scott into being more and more Steve Carell-y (read: nice and very good at vulnerable, empathy-inducing love), I find myself okay with waving good-bye and welcoming a more ensembley mix-and-match show to my Thursday Stories.

Southland 3x08, "Fixing a Hole": Picture Edition

2011-02-24T20:49:00.000-08:00

I think that next to Mad Men, Southland has some of the most beautiful, thoughtfully composed shots on tv.

Ben and John, divided:

They have almost symmetrical expressions, and the leg provides a sort of jagged, broken-picture effect. So cool.

And then it pans to this:

The kid's cowlick is even perfect. I think for someone just tuning in, it is so brief, you wouldn't notice. But if you've followed Ben's arc and back story, it's a subtle callback to that 10-year-old kid who had his teeth knocked out and learned to shoot at the Beverly Hills Gun Club still frozen in time, trapped in a moment of abuse.

Then there's Sammy, in and out of the light:

Darkness...

Heading into the light

Realization at sunrise...

Dip back into darkness...

I love the positioning of the stop signs and the fact that Sammy has been engulfed...


Leaving darkness behind (sorry, those of you still waiting for a further breakdown)

But enough of the serious stuff:

So charming it's nearly debilitating

A profile in ~~biceps~~ courage.

And because he deserves it: Shawn Hatosy's shifting expressions...

It was the smile that killed me (how it just wavered and crashed after a moment or two)

Southland 3x08, "Fixing a Hole"

2011-02-23T18:55:00.000-08:00

I was hoping my usual trusty source for video from which to make accompanying screencaps would have uploaded by now, but it hasn't, so I will just have to make pictures with words, which is not as picture-ful as actual pictures, no matter what the picture-to-words conversion ratio is these days.

Particularly when we're talking about how cute Ben Sherman is in the opening scene.

But Southland isn't just about Ben Sherman being cute. Though the overarching theme of the episode was about "fixing a hole" (John's dependence on painkillers; Sammy's trauma-induced spiral into vengeance), I feel like the continuing theme of partnership--what accountability you accept for another person, how you love and respect them, or don't, or the crazy combination--was a pivotal part of the ep as well. In the episode's first non-flashback scene, as Ben is flirting (so, so cutely) with the waitress, he corrects her when she refers to John as Ben's partner; by the end of the episode, Ben risks his job and his future to follow John around the most unsavory parts of LA on John's hunch because, as Chickie tells him, "Rank doesn't matter if you're dead; you got to be able to trust the guy watching your back... no matter who it is." Ben's respect is so precarious now, and I like that the moments at the end don't mean the contention, the challenging of John's authority was truly resolved. But I also really dug how naturally Ben said he was coming along with John. It seemed like that is ultimately what may (oh, I hope) save the two of them and cement their partnership.

The Ben and John case was affecting without being overly manipulative (SVU, I am looking at you), and when Ben and John reached "the cave," I felt like someone socked me in the gut. It was about as graphic and unflinching as a depiction of what a sexual predator's awfulness must look like as I've seen . And, of course, it included horrifying clown faces. In the aftermath, when John (not even remotely making eye contact with Ben) talks about his father and the helplessness a child or children feel with a sexual predator, I pretty much cried. Kudos, show: from creepy clown faces and a naked hanging man to one of the most honest, emotional moments John and Ben have ever had, and none of it felt like it was whiplash-inducing.

I also really liked the moment Dewey and John had in the locker room: I love how it transitioned from the usual Dewey bluster and bullshit into something very true and caring, out of Dewey's recognition of a fellow addict. And I like that Dewey being who Dewey is made it easier for John to angrily dismiss him.

Lydia and Josie's case seemed to be more about their growing connection as partners than about the case itself (which was okay, and I liked the arc and all, but I have to save all my cyberoxygen for talking about Sammy): the sarcastic-but-easy way they bickered about splitting expenses, how they walked arm-in-arm with their witness to the nice dinner. The more I thought about it, that seems like a big, big step for Lydia in the wake of Russell's confession/slimy weasel words. Lydia's partner was Russell for so long, even through all her transitional partners during his convalescence, even during the early days of her partnership with Josie. He was the one she was backing up; he was the one from whom she was expecting support and protection. I think it's just a testament to Lydia's strength and ability to persevere and be a professional.

But then again, I'm in love with Lydia a lot of the time.

I was so relieved when the detective working on Nate's murder said the word "trauma" to Sammy, as in "you, Sammy Bryant, suffered a very severe trauma." Even if he wasn't listening and was simply biding his time to gather the suspect's personal information, I feel like perhaps that planted a seed. But probably not, with all the methodical planning and the shovel. It was a continuation of the Sammy that's been half-present since Nate's murder: one moment flipping pancakes and calmly reasoning with a bank rep, the next eating potato chips and letting his mind organize premeditated murder. The partner theme came into play as Sammy's plan came to a head. He spoke so much of who Nate was and what was lost that it seemed as though Sammy almost believed he himself had no other choice than to exact revenge. That's what partners do, right? If you can't have someone's back, then you get that back on the way out.

I've said it before, but something about Shawn Hatosy, especially when he's this type of character, e.g. generally good guy, inspires me to really, really care about him. He doesn't telegraph vulnerability, necessarily, but... maybe it's the dimples (those always get me) or his freckles or how his eyes can be bright and laughing and then very, very, very dark. I don't know, I feel particularly attached to/wrapped up in Sammy. It seems like his heart and his head aren't always on the same game plan (or sometimes his head isn't involved at all in initial planning and sort of traipses in about 45 minutes late and is all, "Oh, whoops, Heart joined forces with PTSD and now we're in the middle of the desert and we're going to shoot a guy!" or "Heart, I told you to let me consult with me before proposing to Tammi; I don't want to say I told you so, but...") but that his tenacity and loyalty and passion make him a pretty good detective and made him a good partner and friend to Nate. When the suspect cried up to Sammy about his job, his baby on the way, we didn't get a big cathartic moment of Sammy realizing that he has a job and a baby to think about, but the truth was there: Nate had those things, but he's gone, and Sammy has to start thinking about and protecting himself and his family as best he can.

Other junk: while the "WATCH YOUR CHILDREN" sign in the John-in-the-park scene was a little front-and-center ding-dong anvilly, I liked the foreshadowing of Sammy approaching the suspect as he was down in the oil-changing pit, I liked how "There's Something On Your Mind" wove in and out of Sammy's last scenes, starting foreboding and spooky and ending on Mariella and Sammy's goodbye, lonely and sad but more loving, and I really liked the sunrise shot of Sammy stopping near an isolated memorial, holding still for a moment as his body caught up with what he'd been doing and planning, and it's just the glare of the sun and the still grave--really, really beautiful.

(Oh, and I know Kristen and I had a big convo about how the show didn't really commit last ep as to whether or not Sammy and Mariella were sleeping together, but... that morning scene seemed awwwwwfully something. Oh, well. She's moving. Room to develop actual adult relationship that is not with Tammi.)

I'm sure I've missed a lot, but I feel like I've written much more, and more gushingly, than I have about anything in a long time. Just really all-around awesome.

And Ben is so cute.

Glee, "Blame It On The Alcohol"

2011-02-22T18:20:00.000-08:00

Ugh, so much lesson! So much lesson at the end of the episode! So much fuzzy logic beforehand!

Here are things I liked about the episode:

When Puck put on Lauren's glasses
When Matthew Morrison acted drunk like he's a human who has never been drunk before, but who can blame him when the writers actually wrote "LOUD NOISES!" dialogues into the hangover talk, like this is a cartoon, only it's way more annoying than a cartoon.
Human League's "Don't You Want Me?" It is awesome, and Lea Michele and Darren Criss sounded very '80s together.
When Kurt was a brat; I think Chris Colfer is exceptional at making his brattiness very real.
Everything Principal Figgins did.
Beiste was great.

Here is what I didn't like about the ep:

It hurt me. Way down deep inside.
Lessons! So many lessons! Bisexuality is real, but sometimes it's not! Alcohol is super fun and funny except when it isn't except when it is my mother my sister my mother my sister!
The cut-rate one-camera sitcom reveal that Will drunk-dialed Sue.
Everything Sue did or said; boy, did I really hate everything Sue did or said.
I don't know that I didn't like Blaine; I just find Kurt and Blaine's great love story not so great or engaging or interesting. I was more concerned with Kurt and Burt and their brief tiff than I was in any one scene wherein Kurt and Blaine had drama.

I'm so glad we have a two-week break. I need a breather from all the drawn-out groaning I did during this ep.