Rise of the Planet of the Apes

Impressions before seeing it
Except for the last one, I enjoyed the original five films in the series. The trailer looked like this one sort of takes place between the third and fourth ones. Plus, any movie where Andy Serkis does mo-cap creature performance is usually gold.

How was it?
As it turns out, Rise is more of a series reboot. Except for a few minor things, there isn't really anything connecting it to the original series. Thematically, it's the same: intelligent apes growing increasingly aggravated at being treated like dumb, inferior animals, and the leader of the ape revolt is still named Caesar. They even threw in Heston's famous line from the first movie ("Get your stinking paws off me, you damned dirty ape!"). I didn't really like that idea for about half a second, because even though it was a callback, it also felt outdated (it is a 43 year-old line of dialogue, after all), but then they cleverly set it up so that the response to that line created the same reaction as in the first movie, and it magically worked.

The biggest difference to note is that the apes were nowhere near as humanoid here, though this is the movie where they only begin to become abnormally intelligent so there's no need for dudes in ape suits yet. But being more animal than human, I actually found them more sympathetic than the full-on sapient apes from the original films. I guess because animals have a certain innocence or naivety to them, not fully understanding that their actions might have consequences, so to oppress them for it is not right. Caesar was a good monkey; he only started doing bad things after being treated poorly, and therein lies the problem with positions of power. As spoiled humans, we sometimes like to be douchebags and provoke the less fortunate (both humans and animals), and then when they fight back we act like they're the bad guys. This is one of the biggest dick moves anyone could make, but it does happen in real life.

Recommendation
It helps your enjoyment just a little if you've already seen the others in the series, but it's not a requirement since this is not a direct sequel or prequel. However, if you're curious to see how the apes started talking and how that progression came about, this is the movie that explains it, because I don't think the old ones ever did. And it's a good piece of action-drama, which will hopefully lead to a better war than Battle for the Planet of the Apes.

THX 1138

Impressions before seeing it
I'd been curious about it for a while. Outside of Star Wars, George Lucas really hasn't directed that much in spite of being around for over 40 years, and I wanted to see what his one non-Star Wars sci-fi film was like.

How was it?
To be honest, I was kind of bored. Like the original Tron, it was probably revolutionary for its time, but becomes uninteresting in today's film era, and I've already seen Equilibrium and that movie put THX 1138's concept to much better use. I felt no sympathetic connection whatsoever to the characters. I understand that the society depicted mostly lacks emotion and personality due to the mandatory medication everyone takes, but even when certain characters went off it and began to feel again, there wasn't enough there for me to start finding them interesting. Where Equilibrium has its defectors enjoying art and music, all we really get here is THX and LUH lusting each other, with no concrete examples of why this attraction would or could exist because they still don't have very full personalities. It actually plays, surprisingly, like a Stanley Kubrick film - 2001: A Space Odyssey, to be exact, which similarly has little characterization and minimal dialogue.

But that being said, 2001 is a visual feat, and THX 1138 is not without directorial prowess. Lucas' camera work and editing produce some interesting effects that create claustrophobia, surveillance awareness, and mechanical viewpoints. It almost feels like this movie was directed by a robot - and given its characterization, perhaps written by one, too.

Recommendation
In a purely technical, directorial sense, THX 1138 is superior to any Star Wars movie, but Star Wars is way more entertaining, and Equilibrium way more effective in its execution of the "stunted emotion society" concept. I think THX 1138 is only worth watching if you are a student of film looking to observe as many types of filmmaking as you can. It's a good one for the study list, not so good for a fun night at home.

This Week in Television - Dec. 11-18, 2011

Once Upon a Time
I think it was too early to kill off Graham. Because of all the time spent on a weekly fairy tale character, there hasn't been that much time for chemistry to brew between he and Emma, and it was really only this episode that they started trying to force it down our throats that the two of them might be in love. I barely even considered them friends given how much more time Emma spends with Henry than with him.

Glee
The black and white Christmas TV special was kind of fun because it was so awfully cheesy, but I think it would have served them better to just make that the entire episode. No need for the farfetched frame narrative about how a local TV station decided to not only give some high school kids a bunch of airtime, but trust one of them to direct the special. And there's no way it cost less than $800, either. The ending when they showed up at the soup kitchen to give Sue a hand was very easily predictable, but I did like Sue's scene at the beginning when she was asking Artie, Kurt, and Blaine for help, because Sue Sylvester monologues remind me why I keep watching this mostly garbage show.

New Girl
I don't know why they always stick Winston with kids at parties, but this time he befriended one and it led to a possible job opportunity for him, so it wasn't exactly the same as his rivalry with the kid at the wedding, but if this becomes a common thing then it will get weird quickly. Kind of sad to see Paul go, but in TV land these things have to happen since guest stars can't stick around forever. The ending with the Christmas lights was a nice note to go out on, though I think people usually leave them on all night. Doesn't make sense that every house on the street would have turned them off, but for the purposes of the show it made for a nice moment.

Survivor: South Pacific
Too much religion in this episode. Do religious people not realize how extremely arrogant and self-centered it is for them to keep saying that God does things specifically for them? Or even to ask God to do things specifically for them? As if, out of the billions of people on the planet, a mighty omnipotent being would be greatly concerned about a game on a reality show. Anyway, it was stupid of Brandon to give up immunity, but since I don't like him I didn't mind seeing him pay for it.

Survivor: South Pacific (Sunday Finale)
I thought Ozzy was going to win it, but once he got voted out I figured it would be Sophie. I would have voted for Sophie too if I was on the jury; Albert has that fake used car salesman quality, and Coach disappointed me when he voted out Ozzy. I understand he was stuck between two promises, but why break one when you can leave it up to fate with a firemaking challenge, thus breaking neither? But I'm glad Sophie won, I'd been rooting for her the last few episodes. And I'm pretty sure Ozzy does have the record for most torches snuffed now: three times in one game, four times total.

Hero of the Week: Jess from New Girl, because "eating cookies and avoiding confrontation" is pretty much my strategy at parties, too.

Douchebag of the Week: Albert from Survivor, because he's sneaky and immoral, and thinks he's more charming than he is.

And that concludes our 2011 television year. See you in 2012!

The Muppets

Impressions before seeing it
I'm not necessarily a Muppets fan, but I'm not not a Muppets fan. I mean I sort of grew up with them, like most people who were around in the 90's or earlier, but I wasn't completely absorbed in them. What interested me is that Jason Segel co-wrote it with the director of Forgetting Sarah Marshall, and I subsequently heard it described as one of the greatest pieces of fan fiction ever made. Plus, just look at that poster!

How was it?
This turned out to be one of the warmest, sunniest, most loving movies I've ever seen. It was very clearly made out of much love, respect, and awe for the Muppet characters, and frankly any movie that is made out of love and not just for money is a rare thing. Segel and Adams play such cheery, wholesome characters (but not annoyingly so) that it's hard not to get caught up in their enthusiasm even if some of the actual Muppet characters (especially Kermit) are radiating undertones of sadness. This movie had me smiling a lot, occasionally from the humour but mostly out of sheer charm.

The plot was nothing close to new, but what made it work was its clever metafictional references to the Muppets franchise. New puppet Walter may play Segel's brother in the movie, but as he idolizes and then becomes a part of the Muppets, it seems that he is actually Segel's on-screen persona, as his journey reflects Segel's crafting of the script from a fan's standpoint and then joining the characters that he, too, grew up loving in the filming of this movie. The story itself muses on the dwindling popularity of the Muppets after being out of the spotlight so long (which is not entirely true, although my understanding is that the last several movies were movies starring the Muppets rather than movies about the Muppets), and Walter - again, like Segel - is the one who brings the old gang back together to put on a variety show telethon to save the franchise. All of the behind-the-scenes preparation for the big show, and especially the build-up to a duet between Kermit and Miss Piggy, reminded me of A Mighty Wind, which is not bad because I love that movie as well, and I think they share a similar sentimentality for their respective subject matter. I did think a couple of the musical numbers felt...awkward, maybe, but my taste in music is sporadic anyway so what do I know? Two bonuses: first, there are a number of fun surprise cameos, all of whom can be seen again during the end credits chipping in to the famous "Manamana" song, and second, seeing the movie in theaters treats you to a Toy Story short before the movie.

Recommendation
This is a great one to bring kids to, because it's something the whole family can enjoy and not one of those eye-rollingly bad kids movies that only children could like. But if you have any positive feelings at all toward the Muppets, it's pretty much a must-see. You're not going to find better fan service than this, and I know this is a cliche line, but The Muppets is so satisfying that it may be "the feel-good movie of the year."

Weeds - Season Three

This season of Weeds took the spirit of the previous season's finale - all conflicts crushing Nancy from all sides at once - and extended that throughout most of the season, as we see her under the thumb of scary drug dealer U-Turn and being blackmailed and threatened by several people for money she often doesn't have. But what makes Nancy so fun to watch is her ability to adapt. Somehow, she always makes it through these crazy and scary situations. Where season two improved on season one by writing better story arcs and cliffhangers, season three improved on season two by making the annoying characters less annoying. Heylia receded toward the background of the show as Nancy had less direct contact with her, and Silas was less of a rebellious, angsty, teenage douche once he started working with his mother instead of against her. As for Celia, she remains the antagonistic bitch that she is, and probably always will, but she is a very entertaining (and often funny) one, so she doesn't bother me too much.

Some other random thoughts: The Hodes' divorce, as well as Dean becoming severely injured, opened up a lot of funny stuff for Celia when she had to actually start taking care of her daughter and ex; Mary Kate Olsen is a slightly better actress than we all thought she was; I was actually looking forward to Nancy being friends with Peter's ex-wife, but I suppose that's out now; Andy starring in "foot porn" had just the right amount of weird hedonism in it to be the perfect storyline for him; Doug seemed somewhat underused this season in that he spent most of it complaining and protesting things; Shane seeing the ghost of his father (or pretending to, it's unclear which one) was really the only thing that didn't feel right to me. This show just didn't need that supernatural element, because while it does get wacky sometimes, ghosts are a whole different ballpark and that's not what Weeds is about.

Best Episode: "The Two Mrs. Scottsons", in which Isabelle and Shane become friends, Andy does foot porn, and Nancy stalks Peter's ex-wife.

Peep World

Impressions before seeing it
I never would have heard of it if the trailer hadn't shown up on one of my blu-rays, but it looked like another fun ensemble indie comedy.

How was it?
Peep World is like... well, the idiot brother of Our Idiot Brother. Nathan (Ben Schwartz, better known as Jean-Ralphio on Parks and Recreation) outs all of his siblings' secrets and flaws when he writes a book about his dysfunctional family, and they get pissed about it. Sort of the same premise as the recent Paul Rudd flick, only Nathan is not someone who does things by accident so neither we nor his family have much of a reason to forgive him.

My biggest problem with this movie is that it was too short. It doesn't even crack 80 minutes, let alone a standard 90. Now when you're making a movie about a family with four adult siblings living separate lives, plus their parents - who are divorced, so that's six different households - you either need the time to make sure all of the characters are fleshed out, or you have to write well enough to be able to do it in a shorter amount of time. I felt that Peep World failed at this. The characters were very nearly one-dimensional because there were too many of them, and the family members don't really share scenes until later in the movie, which is just lost opportunity to develop multiple characters at once. And then it leaves us with an ending that is unsatisfying because it feels rushed, forced, and unearned. The abrupt cut to black had me saying "that's it?", not necessarily because I wanted to see more, but because I should have already seen more. On top of that, it doesn't do anything new or funny comedically; its biggest joke, which the filmmakers clearly thought was way funnier than it really is, consists of a boner that won't go away. And this isn't even a raunchy, low-brow type of movie.

Recommendation
It's marginally fun just for the performances from the ensemble cast (though to me it felt like Michael C. Hall was still playing Dexter), but I can't recommend it because it is lacking in every area except the acting. I didn't completely hate it, but I was highly disappointed.

This Week in Television - Dec. 4-9, 2011

Once Upon a Time
I really liked this episode, although I have trouble not rolling my eyes when someone pulls out the "secret twin sibling" twist. But I think it may have been the absence of Henry that made this one more enjoyable. Not that I dislike him, but it gets a little tiring to have him keep speaking in fairy tale terms every week while Emma and everyone else continue to be concerned for his sanity. And I do root for real world Charming and Snow White, not because they really have much of an emotional connection, but because it pisses off the mayor/queen. Bonus points for having both Mr. Widmore and a bottle of McCutcheon's Whiskey in this episode. I will never not love Lost references.

Glee
Not only has Sam never previously been described as having "star power", but after going to the trouble of recruiting him, they didn't even give him any solos at Sectionals, making his return totally unnecessary (though the one thing in this episode I liked was Santana's list of trouty mouth insults). Mr. Schue should've been arrested and fired for giving champagne to underage students on school grounds. Unless I missed somebody clarifying that it was non-alcoholic or something, which is possible because I was busy laughing at the illegality of it, but I doubt it. And, really, another song about a cup? Why didn't they just sing Brittany's version? I'm not even going to get into how annoyingly one-dimensional Quinn has been about her baby. About 98% of this episode sucked.

New Girl
I was surprised to see Schmidt get his own story where we see him at work, because we haven't really gone away from the apartment to isolate a character yet, and for some reason I wasn't expecting it to happen. But I don't like Schmidt enough to want to watch him independently of our regular cast. But Jess and Paul awkwardly trying to have sex was funny, because Jess being weird is always funny, and Zooey Deschanel in her underwear is always awesome.

Survivor: South Pacific
Not much happened this week. Just Brandon's dad showing up to boss everyone around and Edna complaining about being on the bottom. I'm not a fan of either Brandon or Edna, so I would've been fine whichever way the vote went.

Up All Night
I liked Ava's pronunciation of "diamonds" and Reagan's reaction to the bracelet. The Christmas decorations stuff and Chris' adventures at the mall have been done before, but I guess there are only so many Christmas stories you can do.

Suburgatory
Sorry, but this episode was lame. The gay principal's little arc at the party didn't seem to go anywhere or serve much of a purpose, Zoe's exaggerated reaction at finding out Noah was married seemed like something out of a bad children's movie, and Tessa realizing she'd made a mistake in inviting Zoe seemed like something out of a bad laughtrack sitcom - at that point I actually imagined a studio audience going "ooohhh", and even in my imagination I still hate studio audiences.

Community
The music didn't really wow me (though Alison Brie's Bettie Boop impression was accurate), but I'm always down for Community making fun of Glee, like the bearded piano player who randomly shows up in the music room and the overly wholesome sweater vest-wearing teacher. And Britta's song and dance at the end, terrible in true Britta fashion, was hilarious. Sadly, this was the last episode before Community's hiatus, which may last until Spring but hopefully it will be shorter than that - ideally in the opening of a timeslot after Whitney is canceled. Please cancel Whitney, NBC.

Parks and Recreation
For me, this was the best episode of any show all week, and a very strong contender for best Parks and Recreation episode of the season. Leslie's Christmas gifts to her friends and co-workers managed to be both funny and perfect, and it was an interesting flipside look at Leslie doing pretty much her usual job, but on the other side as a regular citizen. Plus it was bursting with loads of hilarious moments, like Marshmallow Ron Swanson (including both April's explanation of it and Ron trying not to show how incredibly pleased with it he was); the guy at the PCP meeting who tried unsuccessfully to start up a "her daughter is an idiot!" chant; Leslie warning Ann not to touch her pickles at the restaurant; Dennis Feinstein's scapegoating of Eddie the accountant at Ben's interview; and to top it all off, an appearance by one of my favourite guest characters, Jean-Ralphio, whose hair seems to get bigger every time he shows up. I found myself getting a little teary-eyed by the ending, too. I'm starting to love these characters almost as much as the cast of Community.

The Office
The show has been using the Jim/Dwight pranks a little less often than they used to, but I like that they found something new to do with it by having Andy place a "no pranking" rule on them, leading to the two of them trying to frame each other. Andy is still coming off too much like Michael - "my ex is meeting my sex", for example, is totally a Michael line. It's like the writers are just continuing to use stories and/or jokes they had planned for Michael rather than write new stuff that is more suited to Andy. But I did enjoy this episode. The gift-opening montage was fun, though not as awesome as Parks and Recreation's gift-opening montage.

Hero of the Week: Leslie Knope from Parks and Recreation, for her truly uncanny gift-giving ability. It's not easy to make Ron Swanson emotional!

Douchebag of the Week: The evil queen/mayor from Once Upon a Time. Since when is the mayor of a town allowed to tell someone who they can't fall in love with?

Cyrus

Impressions before seeing it
Another indie comedy that went very quietly under the radar, but aside from the cast the reason I wanted to see it was because it made Quentin Tarantino's list of his favourite movies of 2010, intriguing because it was the only "best of 2010" list I saw it on.

How was it?
I've watched a few indie comedies in the last several weeks (there's at least one more coming), so I don't want to go into the whole "it was more dramatic than I was expecting" thing again, but there is that, and it's not a complaint.

The most notable thing, first of all, is how different a role this is for Jonah Hill. He's already almost been typecast as the loudmouthed wise-ass, but as the title character here, he is like a brooding, passive-aggressive supervillain. It's actually a layered and seamless dramatic turn. Cyrus and his mother (Tomei) have a relationship that is creepily close and makes one almost suspicious of incest, but it became apparent to me that this was necessary for the entire premise of the film and Cyrus' character to work. Cyrus is a lonely and pathetic kid. His mom is literally his only friend, so any and all love that he has to give as a human being can pretty much only go towards her (and from what I gathered, the same is just about true for her). Enter John (Reilly) to threaten all of this by dating his mom. If Cyrus were a normal guy, he might be a little peeved but anything more would feel excessive. Seeing as he is not, I can buy that he would become so antagonistic and aggressive in clinging to his only source of love in the world.

The fun of this movie is in the war between Cyrus and John. A lot of it is done in subtext, because neither one wants to alert the mother to his darker side by letting her see that they're fighting, so there are things like passive-aggressive pleasantries, backhanded comments, and hidden agendas in her presence. It reminded me of the kind of interactions you might see on Dexter towards the end of a season when his major target is on to him and they're both trying to get each other. John C. Reilly is one of my favourite actors, so throwing him up against a surprisingly good Jonah Hill in a battle of wits equals a good time for me, though I do have to say that it was kind of predictable. According to the blu-ray extras, they shot this movie in order so that the actors could improvise and change the plot if necessary, and that places a lot more value on the performances, which are what make Cyrus worth watching anyway.

Recommendation
I can't recommend it as a comedy, but as a drama the characters make it interesting. While the concept is simple, I can't really think of too many movies that use it, or at least not in the same way, so I suppose it can be called original as well.

30 Minutes or Less

Impressions before seeing it
The trailers looked like fun and I liked the people involved.

How was it?
It's a shame that this movie seemed to bomb at the box office and then sneak under the radar, because I thought it was really funny. Supposedly there were a lot of improvised jokes from the cast (the four guys in the poster plus Michael Peña), so most of the laughs just come out of the dialogue, and the action part of the movie is mostly allowed to be action rather than slapstick. I think 30 Minutes or Less gets a lot of mileage out of splitting the main four characters into two duos who play well off each other: Eisenberg with Ansari and McBride with Swardson. I already enjoy him on Parks and Recreation, but Ansari has a certain energy about him that always gives him a fun screen presence, and Eisenberg has bothered me in the past due to a history of playing characters with an air of pretense to them, but as an average pizza delivery guy he was toned down here to someone much more bearable for me. As for McBride and Swardson, they were basically just playing Kenny and Stevie from Eastbound and Down, something fans of that show shouldn't have a problem with.

I know in my last few posts I've been mentioning some things I like seeing, and another one for the list is that I enjoy characters trying to deal with a really, really big problem, and watching them trying to process what's happening and come up with a plan. So I loved the scenes with Ansari and Eisenberg freaking out over the bomb strapped to the latter's chest. McBride and Swardson's scenes were enjoyable simply because their characters are idiots and conversations between them were always funny. One complaint I have is that this movie tries to shoehorn in a small romantic subplot, but it's not fleshed out enough to genuinely raise the stakes in the climax as it was intended to do. I don't think there was actually any point where I worried for a character's life, and that's a problem. I mean I liked the characters, but mostly just because they were funny; they didn't give me enough of a reason to seriously care about them.

Recommendation
If you're sick of comedies with heart or a message then this might be one for you, because 30 Minutes or Less is just funny, entertaining fluff and nothing else. It does rely on the comedic senses of its actors though, so if you don't find any of those guys funny then there's probably nothing for you here.

Our Idiot Brother

Impressions before seeing it
The trailer was mildly amusing, but mostly I liked its cast of really cool comedic actors.

How was it?
The title of this movie (and to a certain extent, the trailer) is misleading, as it connotes a zany comedy about a bumbling fool ruining his sisters' lives when it would be more accurate to call it a dramedy about the most naive person on the planet. He does ruin his sisters' lives, but everything he does is done with such good intentions that we can't help but like him even as he strolls through the movie spilling everyone's biggest secrets. He is an idiot, but he really doesn't know any better. Besides, Our Naive Brother doesn't have the same ring to it.

Rudd has already worked with Banks, Deschanel, and Rashida Jones on other projects (playing their boyfriend in all of them), and I like to think it facilitated the screen chemistry here even though he's now playing their brother, or closer to a brother in-law in Jones's case. I believed them as a family because the love/hate dynamic was well balanced. However, I felt like the characters may have been too generic or something... They weren't boring, but they didn't jump out and command my fascination, either. They lacked pizazz.

With such a great comedic cast - which also includes Adam Scott, Steve Coogan, Kathryn Hahn, and up-and-coming comedian T.J. Miller - Our Idiot Brother pulls a Funny People with an unexpectedly distorted comedy/drama ratio. Miller's was probably the next funniest character after Rudd's, and that was only because they were both playing two versions of the same character. It may be a personal thing, but if I go into a movie thinking that it's going to be a comedy, I tend to expect a fairly high number of jokes, and as a result I'm sometimes let down by dramedies. But once in a while, they shoot up to my top three, like Little Miss Sunshine. Our Idiot Brother wasn't bad, but it's no Little Miss Sunshine.

Recommendation
I love it when a bunch of cool people are all in the same movie (has anyone ever made a "top 10 ensemble casts" list? Maybe I should get on that someday), so on some level I probably would've enjoyed this movie no matter what. If it were done with unknown actors it probably would be almost completely mundane, but it has a little humour and a little heart, and that's not too shabby.

Funny People

Impressions before seeing it
I like Judd Apatow, and I heard this one was good, but more dramatic than funny.

How was it?
What I enjoyed about Knocked Up and The 40 Year-Old Virgin was the scenes involving the guys just goofing around with each other. I think this is what Funny People lacks. I mean Ira (Rogen) has his roommates that are sort of his friends, but they kind of hate each other so we don't really see them having fun. Most of the humour in this movie comes from the actual standup comedy, which may be Apatow's excuse for having the rest of the movie be almost a drama. Well, actually, the other part I found amusing was George Simmons' (Sandler) filmography, which consists of a bunch of really bad, gimmicky family comedies that would not be the least bit funny if they were real movies, but are hilarious when used in that ironic way as movies within movies parodying real movies that are actually that bad or worse. If you look it up online, you can find fake posters for every movie on George's resume that were used for viral marketing. I imagine they're on the DVD as well, but I watched Funny People on TV so I wouldn't know.

My guess is that the role of George was written specifically for Adam Sandler, not only because he is a friend of Apatow's, but because the character basically is Adam Sandler, albeit perhaps a sadder, lonelier version of him, and a version whose career is worse because where George is nothing but low-brow comedies, Sandler at least has some respectable dramatic performances like Spanglish and Punch-Drunk Love. This gives the movie an interesting meta undertone and makes me wonder whether Sandler ever feels ashamed of his career or burdened by his fame. Anyway, while it does have its funny parts, Funny People is more dramatic than it probably should be coming from Judd Apatow, and I would say longer than it should be, but I just realized that many Apatow films hover around the two hour mark so it's not unusual, though this one verges on two and a half. There was a lot of relationship drama that took a while to get wrapped up.

Recommendation
If you're going for laughs, pick another Apatow movie. Not that it's entirely unfunny, it's just so lengthy and full of drama that after it's over, your recollection of it is that it was a drama. In fact, it might be accurate to say that it is a drama about comedy. If you have any interest in a behind the scenes look at comedy-writing or fame, though, this might be worth a look for you. I did like the movie, thanks to the talented cast, but yes, it could have been shorter and funnier.

This Week in Television - Nov. 27-Dec. 2, 2011

Once Upon a Time
Loved the Lost shout-out with Henry breaking out the Apollo bars. This episode felt a little too "Hallmark", though. Actually many of them do, now that I think about it, but this one especially.

Glee
Well, they actually did have Brittany win the school election, but I'm afraid I still can't give Glee the proper credit for accuracy, because due to Kurt's silly ballot-stuffing scandal and subsequent disqualification, they made it seem like Brittany won on a technicality. And it's funny that they used "I Kissed a Girl" (and named the episode after it) in an episode about Santana's sexuality, because that song is about fake lesbianism; it's not actually a song about loving women, so it's not entirely relevant to Santana. Sue Sylvester writing in her journal always makes for a good scene, though.

New Girl
The bell stuff wasn't the greatest source of comedy, but it gets a pass because, again, I like Winston, and because of Jess doing the robot while playing the bells, which was the real highlight of those segments (actually, probably the highlight of the whole episode). I think Nick and Schmidt play well off each other, perhaps because Nick has always been the one most vocal about Schmidt's douchiness. It was interesting to take it that much further in this episode and have them outright fighting.

Survivor: South Pacific
Funny how Coach told Cochran that one of them would win the challenge because they were doing Tai Chi (which was crazy Coach talk to begin with), and neither of them won but they both got the reward anyway. Cochran is weaselly, though. Apparently, according to an interview with Jim and Keith, Cochran was never bullied by his tribe at all and only flipped for selfish reasons. Not the first time Survivor has distorted the truth.

Community
I'm not really a fan of shows giving us flashback reveals to characters meeting as children when we've already seen their "first" meeting earlier in the series, because to me it feels like a cheap undercut; nor am I big on Shirley-heavy episodes, because she is the least funniest character on the show. But on the other hand, Shirley is also the most underused, and for equality's sake a part of me was glad to see her have something to do this week, and we did get that awesome and completely-out-of-nowhere anime sequence from the foosball story, complete with an even more random anthropomorphic cat. As Troy pointed out, the replacing a broken item story is a sitcom cliche (funnily enough, I saw a rerun of Married With Children earlier that same day where they used it), but pointing it out and then going in another direction is how you get away with it, even if building a web of ridiculous lies is probably even more common. It worked largely thanks to Annie's Christian Bale impression and nervously lengthy squeaking noise, the callback to the conspiracy episode, Troy being touched that Abed was using the grappling hook he gave him for Christmas, and of course, Abed as Batman, which I guess is official if Christian Bale's DVD message said "Abed is Batman now."

Parks and Recreation
Whereas last episode, Poehler and Scott nailed their big romantic moment, this time they only had to react to it while the courtroom stenographer objectively read all the romantic stuff aloud for them. What an ingenious way to not repeat the previous episode's scene, which was so good it needed no repeating. And some good jokes too, as always: Chris' excessive methods for keeping negativity out of his body, Ron throwing out his computer (city property) after discovering internet privacy invasion, Jerry's real name blowing his chance on the witness stand, and the stories of both the frozen "whore" who exposed her elbow and the man who blew his face up. Pawnee's violent and unjust history is always funny.

The Office
Another strong episode, I thought - in terms of humour, anyway. It seems far-fetched that Andy would be unable to pick up that Robert was going to act contrary to his own instructions while his wife was in the room. At times Robert can be hard to read, yes, but this was not one of those times. His one frantic line at the beginning of the episode was enough to explain the entirety of the subtext between he and his wife. But Dwight and Darryl at the makeshift gym was funny (those two are not a common pairing as of yet), as well as Creed inexplicably flying a remote control helicopter on the roof during work hours.

Hero of the Week: Jess from New Girl, for doing the robot...WITH BELLS!

Douchebag of the Week: The European foosball guys from Community, because they were loud and obnoxious.

Paper Man

Impressions before seeing it
I thought it was interesting when it said it was about a writer with an imaginary friend, so I grabbed it during Amazon's Black Friday sale.

How was it?
Paper Man has some weirdness to it, but not in an off-putting way. It's sort of a Lost in Translation-type story about a middle-aged man (Jeff Daniels) bonding with a young woman (Emma Stone) over their mutual outsider aimlessness. I can only name a handful of movies that are about imaginary friends, but I'm not sure if this one even qualifies for that list because I felt it was more about the budding friendship between two people with issues. Or at least that's what I cared about most while watching this. Captain Excellent (Ryan Reynolds) is there, and he occasionally helps Richard with advice and/or moral support, but I don't feel that this movie would have lost much if he had been left out.

I really like watching characters just being friends on camera - when they're likable characters, at least - and Daniels and Stone turn in strong enough performances to have the required charming chemistry, so I had a good time. However, the biggest strike against Paper Man is that I found it largely predictable. I had already figured out the film's biggest reveal fairly early (at least I assume it was supposed to be a surprise when the reveal happened), and there were other things that I expected would happen, that did. So what I will say is this: on a story level, this movie is disappointing, but on a character (and acting) level, it is satisfying, and sometimes that's good enough.

Recommendation
Worth checking out if you, too, are into friendship movies, but maybe watch Lost in Translation first, because it is a better version of this movie.

Blue Valentine

Impressions before seeing it
Kind of overlooked it during the last Oscar season, but after seeing the trailer on one of my blu-rays, in which Williams tap danced while Gosling performed on ukulele, I knew I had to see it. It was just too cute a scene.

How was it?
If I haven't stated so before, I love non-traditional romance movies. What I love about Blue Valentine as a non-traditional romance is its lack of bias. Watching it, I got the impression that it wasn't pandering to its audience, trying to make them feel one way or another. It simply shows us this relationship and these characters as is, meaning the bad parts in addition to the good parts. There are certainly some really sweet scenes where these two are lovable as hell - my favourite being a conversation on the bus where he tells her that dying "is for suckers. Don't do it," and she tells him a very dark joke, which I admittedly laughed at where he did not - but there are also cringe-worthy scenes where they're being annoying or mean, and not enjoying each other's company.

And this is the honesty of Blue Valentine. What this movie really is, is the exploration of the fragility of love, and why things go the way they do when that initial blinding infatuation wears off. We are never shown the middle of this relationship; we see flashbacks to their early days of complete happiness, and we see the way they are now: tired and just tolerating each other. Or, that is to say, she is just tolerating him. The reason we don't need to see the middle is because this relationship's biggest problem is present at both ends: he loves her a lot more than she loves him. He was the one pursuing her in the beginning, and he was the one trying to salvage what was left of it at the end. She was bordering on indifference in both cases.

Recommendation
Well, now that I've seen this, I've had to amend my list of my top 10 favourite movies of 2010, because this one belongs on there. If you're like me, and you only like romance flicks when they're done right, then you'll want to check this out. Only parts of it will leave you warm and fuzzy, but isn't that the way life is?

This Week in Television - Nov. 21-25, 2011

Last year during the short American Thanksgiving week, I supplemented the post by watching some pilots for shows I hadn't seen. I think I'll continue that this week and make it an annual tradition.

Survivor: South Pacific
Recap this week.

Up All Night
Jason Lee doing the Will Arnett voice was great because it reminded me of the classic Arnett vs. Baldwin "talking like this" contest on the first season of 30 Rock. But the rest of the episode was kind of forgettable, and the revised opening credits are stupid; they were relevant last week because they contained shots of scenes from that episode, but to continue using it in every episode that isn't that one makes no sense to me. In particular, the shot of Chris playing hockey might give the impression to newcomers that he is a professional hockey player, or even that he plays hockey regularly, when so far it has been specific only to that one episode.

Suburgatory
The only funny part of this episode was Ryan's description of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, because still referring to Jim Carrey as "Ace Ventura" nearly 20 years after the fact is even funnier than continuing to call Mark Wahlberg "Marky Mark". This show's situational humour tends to be pretty bland, the best example in this episode being Lisa's nakedness. I felt like they could have done more to make that funny, but apparently the writers felt that Lisa being naked was funny enough on its own. It also feels like they want to keep having parties in order to shoehorn Dalia's relevance to the plot into each episode. She's still a useless character; all she did this week was yell at the dog, which was another missed opportunity for jokes because instead of some sort of funny one-liners, the writers chose to go with the likes of, "Oh my god, shut up, I hate you!" To be fair, that's probably about as creative as a character like Dalia could come up with, but still, it only proves how little she adds to the show.

The Wire (Pilot Episode)
Normally I would have walked right by this show, as crime shows don't really interest me, but it seems to be widely regarded as one of the best TV series ever made, so I decided to give it a shot. My reason for shunning crime procedurals is because they tend to be formulaic, cookie-cutter, case-of-the-week type deals and that doesn't appeal to me. Being an HBO series and not a mass market network show, The Wire is different. It doesn't need to use action or murder mysteries to garner attention; in fact, it's more about the legal, bureaucratic aspect of police work, but it's not a courtroom drama, either. More of a legal thriller, only it ingeniously lets the viewer figure out why it's thrilling instead of laying it out on screen. It's not for dumb people - it's intelligent and can be dense and hard to follow if you're not concentrating (as Michael Scott once said, "Been watching The Wire recently. I don't understand a word of it.") - and it's probably also not for people who bore easily, because this whole pilot episode was mostly just a lot of talking. But I was interested in the story of Detective McNulty (Dominic West) creating a hiccup in his department when he informs a judge that a drug kingpin may have gotten as many as 10 murders overturned in court by intimidating witnesses and working the system. And it was cool to see Lance Reddick and Idris Elba in the cast, because they have intense screen presences. There was no actual "wire" used in the first episode, but there was talk of using one, and according to Wikipedia it appears that every season has a different setting. Consider me intrigued.

Deadwood (Pilot Episode)
I think Deadwood is mostly famous for its cursing (and the only word used as commonly as the f-word is "cocksucker"), but I came into it looking for some badass characters plotting against each other. There's a little bit of that, but it turns out most of the profanity is not even used in anger, it's just indicative of the crude, daily speech patterns in a town with no laws. I'm not sure yet if I like it enough to want to watch three seasons of it, but it does have a large number of familiar faces in it, and I've always had a soft spot for ensemble casts, so I might watch more at some point.

Boss (Pilot Episode)
Boss is a new series this season, one I probably would've never heard of if Alan Sepinwall hadn't reviewed it on his Hitfix blog. Right at the top of the pilot, we find out Tom Kane (Kelsey Grammer) is coming down with a disease that is like a horrible mix of Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. Then we find out he's the mayor of Chicago. The kind of mayor who is all smiles and jokes and friendly gestures in front of the cameras, but a tyrannical douchebag when there's no reporters around. Grammer was a natural choice for the role, as he has that deep, authoritative voice that can be kind of scary when he wants it to be, and even though he might be more famous for comedy, he is the kind of actor able to pull off that emotional weight when necessary. Anyway, Kane hides his newly discovered condition from as many people as possible, including his own wife and daughter, though he makes some miniscule efforts to reconnect with them after they've grown distant. As I'm going through Breaking Bad, Dexter, and Weeds, I'm realizing I find it interesting when a character has a huge secret he or she is trying to hide, so I really, really enjoyed this pilot. I'm looking forward to more, but I think I'll be waiting a while for a DVD/Blu-ray release. Hopefully not too long, though: the season one finale airs in about two weeks.

Hero of the Week: Seth Bullock (Timothy Olyphant) from Deadwood, for rescuing a survivor after Indians killed her family, and because he was born in the same town as me (Etobicoke). Represent, cocksucker!

Douchebag of the Week: Tom Kane from Boss. Boy do I love watching him, but what a dick.

Weeds - Season Two

While the first season of Weeds needed its time to set things up, season two was a welcome improvement. I liked season one, but this time around the show was both funnier and more gripping, ending almost every episode in some sort of cliffhanger.

I found Heylia to be one of the least interesting aspects of the show, so I liked this season revolving more around Nancy and Conrad branching off and growing their own marijuana supply. I don't know if she's in for the entire duration of the series, but I wouldn't mind if Heylia was gradually phased out of the show. Celia is also unlikable most of the time, and I was disappointed when she won the city council seat, but it did lead to her affair with Doug, which I somehow found very enjoyable to watch, because those two are polar opposites. Also a dick is Nancy's oldest son, Silas, not for his rebellious behaviour and disrespect for her, but more for the time he intentionally got his girlfriend pregnant in an attempt to make her stay with him in lieu of going off to college. That was an extremely slimy thing to do. But, hey, we also got Zooey Deschanel guest starring in a few episodes, and adding Zooey always improves things. For people who claim she always plays the same character, this one is a departure; Kat is crazy to the point of being a little scary, or as scary as someone like Zooey can be, anyway. Finally, the cliffhanger in the season finale was about ten times bigger than last season. All of Nancy's mistakes as a mother, wife, friend, and drug dealer came to a point at the exact same moment, and it was awesome.

The only thing I really hated about this season was all the covers of the show's theme song used each episode. Watching season one, I grew to like the original, and in my opinion it is a song that only works that one way, with its acoustic, simplistic sound. All other versions made my ears bleed.

Best Episode: The funniest one was "Mrs. Botwin's Neighborhood", in which Shane gets in trouble at school for telling everyone about his "happy ending", Silas has a falling out with his girlfriend's parents, Celia tries to force (literally) Nancy to be her friend, and Peter disposes of Nancy's competition.

MacGruber

Impressions before seeing it
SNL is hit and miss, but the MacGruber sketches were generally on the "hit" side, and the trailer for the movie looked funny as well.

How was it?
The odd thing I found about this movie is that the first 30 minutes spend so much time setting up the characters, plots, and conflicts that the whole half hour isn't funny. I mean there are some mild joke attempts, but they're half-hearted. Not only is that a huge chunk of running time for a comedy to go without laughs, but it's a big risk to start out that way; some people probably walked out early thinking it was a piece of crap.

That being said, everything after that point is, thankfully, hilarious. Will Forte's sense of humour has always been weird with a touch of creepiness (see The Brothers Solomon for the best example of that), but at least he's funny. On SNL, we only get a few seconds with the character before a bomb usually detonates the sketch, but the gist has been translated: this guy has the appearance of knowing what he's doing, but he's really just an idiot, and kind of a dick, too. It's not really a new concept, as there are tons of "cocky, bumbling idiot somehow saves the day" movies out there, but MacGruber was never actually the hero of this movie. He mostly just messes things up, leaving his sidekick, Lt. Piper (Ryan Phillipe), to correct all his mistakes. Piper is pretty much the one who gets things done. Interestingly enough, the villain of the movie is also a grey area; technically it's Kunth (Val Kilmer) because he plays antagonist to our protagonists, but his actions are later justified when it is revealed what MacGruber did to him first. I don't think the film is trying to make any statements about morality here, it's just for comedic effect, because douchebags are funny. ...Sometimes.

Recommendation
You'll enjoy it if you like Forte's brand of humour, and for fans of the SNL sketches, it does contain the imperative bomb disabling scene at its climax, so it doesn't disappoint in staying true to its roots. Just be patient for the first half hour.

This Week in Television - Nov. 13-18, 2011

Once Upon a Time
I like that this show takes old fairy tales in a new direction. Pregnant Cinderella (or any other fairy tale character) is something you'd never see, probably because then parents would have to explain to their kids how pregnancy happens. And while I like the continuing battle between Emma and the evil queen, it was a nice change to have the latter downplayed this week so that Rumpelstiltskin could be the main villain, as he has lurked in the last couple of episodes but hasn't really been in the spotlight.

Glee
In real life, Brittany would win the school election by a landslide since high school is first and foremost a popularity contest, but since the writers of Glee don't care about real life and know nothing about high school, I'm betting it will probably end up being Kurt. As for the other elections, Sue's smear campaigns against Burt were fun, but I'm not sure which part of the resulting ad outing Santana was more offensive: the idea of embarrassing someone by outing them before they're ready, or the even more conservative idea that you shouldn't vote for a high school coach who has a lesbian on their squad.

New Girl
Glad to see the douchebag jar get a mention, although an episode too late, as Schmidt's little joke was way less douchey than his behaviour last week. I found the scenes with Schmidt and Cece to be funny, or at least Schmidt's reactions to getting potatoes on his nose and Cece's hand in the pudding. The holiday turkey being ruined is kind of another cliche, but there were enough other things going on in the episode that I didn't mind, plus putting it in a clothes dryer might be a new one. I think Winston is becoming my favourite of Jess' roommates. I just enjoyed the manner in which he grew to like Paul, and his crack about referring to Black Friday as just Friday. I really liked this episode - in fact it might be my favourite so far - but the one downside is that I think Jess was, for once, the most underused character in the episode. But I suppose that's a plus for everyone who complains that she is annoying.

Survivor: South Pacific
Coach clearly is leading if he scared Cochran and Albert into voting straight. That rice bowl challenge looked like a tricky one. I imagine it probably took much longer than the editing made it seem. Ozzy is getting arrogant, but Dawn may have a shot at beating him at Redemption.

Up All Night
Except for the ending tag, it felt unnecessary to actually show Chris playing hockey, as there was no joke in it, and what little character development it provided could just have easily been established by him coming home and saying "I had a great time playing hockey," which he did do afterwards. I didn't feel that anything used in this episode made for funny stories, in fact, and Molly Shannon was another wasted guest star - she played the part well, it just wasn't a funny part.

Suburgatory
I haven't been finding Suburgatory very funny - maybe some light chuckles, but it seems it's generally not my humour - but I keep watching because I like George and Tessa, and sometimes Noah, because he's Alan Tudyk. But the other characters tend to be annoying (I know I've said that before), especially Dallas and Dalia, who have been getting more screen time. Or it feels like it, anyway. Dalia is particularly a one joke character, so it's not really a good idea to have a storyline rely so heavily on her and that one joke. That half of the episode was a bust, but I liked George's brief Misery-inspired parody.

Community
For me, the highlight of the episode was Jeff's hilarious Dean Pelton impression (and later, when the real Dean was in a tank top and ordering him to remove the bald cap, it seemed Pelton was doing a Jeff impression). As soon as I saw that the Dean wasn't even going to play himself in the school commercial, I knew it wasn't going to end well. Looks like the Troy/Britta chemistry is continuing, but this time Abed has become the first character outside of them to notice it, giving our camera the appropriate look of confusion (or was it concern?). Also props to Luis Guzman for doing the episode. I mean he kind of had to after they erected a statue of him in season one.

Parks and Recreation
Putting Andy in a school setting is a comedy goldmine, and I hope we get more of it. Well, Andy doing anything is usually a comedy goldmine, but yes. Ron telling the professor that she "would make an excellent brunette" was also hilarious because it was so completely unexpected, and such a forward thing to say to a stranger. Amy Poehler KILLED it in the final scene. You could really see the nervousness and excitement in her performance as she laid out her feelings for Ben, and the scene was all the more effective for it. Although I realized after the fact that Ben had already told Chris he wanted to be reassigned. Hopefully that will be easy to undo. Since the parks department logo was the same as the Parks and Recreation logo, I wonder if we're going to get Tom's new retro logo on the cover of the season four DVD now. For the sake of packaging continuity I wouldn't want that, but for the sake of the show referencing itself and keeping with its own continuity, I would.

The Office
Hey, one of the few times they actually made use of Gabe. It was mildly amusing when he was mistaken for an Abraham Lincoln impersonator and then just rolled with it, but then it got funny in a creepy way when he seemed to be accessing his own interior demons as a sad, lonely man. The "Battle of Schrute Farms" argument was funny when Erin was in the middle flip-flopping between believing Dwight and Oscar, and then even funnier when they discovered the truth and Oscar ended up enjoying it as a piece of gay history. Robert spending a day with the "losers" of the office was an excellent idea, though Ryan is still too annoyingly arrogant to think he belongs in that group. I think this was one of the better post-Carell episodes, except for Andy's Gettysburg tour, because pretty much every episode this season has been about him trying too hard, and it's getting old.

Fringe
I'm not sure if Peter building a new machine is a good idea, but I suppose there aren't a lot of options, and at least it will produce some kind of result. It totally kills any dramatic potential when Peter tells Lincoln "she's not my Olivia", essentially giving him permission to date her. I mean it's true, but now we won't get an angry jealousy subplot, which would've invested some emotion into this alt world where most of the characters seem kind of indifferent to each other. The invisible albino thing was interesting. One of the few "weekly case" characters who actually got a happy ending (he did die, but happily). And it was a nice touch that, after he died, the elevator was at floor 14 right before cutting to commercial, when the 14th floor seemed to have some sort of significance earlier in the episode. No idea what Nina is doing to Olivia, but since her first appearance on the show I've had difficulty trusting her, even if this one is a different iteration and is supposed to have emotional ties to Olivia. But we'll have to wait a while to find out, as this is the last Fringe episode until 2012.

Hero of the Week: Leslie from Parks and Recreation, for taking a big risk and saying "screw it."

Douchebag of the Week: Ryan from The Office, because his tiresome elitism lacks foundation.

This Week in Television - Nov. 6-11, 2011

Once Upon a Time
Interesting parallels in the Snow White/Charming stories. I like how they reversed it and had Charming in the coma in the present day. I didn't like how the bridge trolls looked, though. Too humanoid, not trolly enough.

Glee
Where did that girl even come from when the Warblers were singing "Uptown Girl"? Dalton is an all boys school, and I doubt she was a teacher. The romance between Coach Beiste and the recruiter felt rushed and forced just because they wanted to shoehorn it into this episode so it would fit with the other romance plots going on. And for someone so lonely, I don't see how Beiste would be so clueless about him and not jump into his arms after all the attention he was giving her. It felt like this episode was written before last week's, because it made almost no references to anything that happened previously except for the school musical and the Irish kid making a very brief appearance in it.

New Girl
Cece has been a fairly pointless character up to this episode, showing up only when Jess needs someone other than the guys to talk to, but like last week's naked incident, she fueled the humour by provoking reactions from everyone. What happened to the douchebag jar? Schmidt was at his douchiest here, and while maybe there is no merit in running the jar joke into the ground, I don't see how the guys would realistically discontinue it with Schmidt's behaviour failing to dwindle. I think New Girl has hit its stride, though, as the roommates are finally becoming as funny as Jess. People don't seem to be liking Winston and/or the actor playing him, but I find he has funny comedic delivery, such as when he started wearing the paper towels to protest Schmidt's kimono.

Survivor: South Pacific
I don't know if Ozzy's entire tribe was condescending toward Cochran, but most of them were, so they shouldn't be whining. I hate to say it, but Coach has become likable this season, and his tribe seems more positive and friendly.

Up All Night
It was a nice surprise seeing Jason Lee show up, though his character wasn't really funny and it was predictable that he and Ava would hook up after her comment at the beginning about wanting to find a "normal guy". But I was surprised to hear an Oprah mention in that beginning scene; I thought that, in the world of the show, Ava was the Oprah being worshipped by women all over the country. Chris and Reagan's night out was cute, and it's actually nice to see a married couple on a comedy show who are still in love and still want to sleep together, because for a long time it seemed like the trend was to make everything dysfunctional for humour's sake.

Community
This season seems to be working on a theme that isolates Jeff from the rest of the group. From the premiere we had him kicked out of Biology and going crazy because of it, then voted least desirable lab partner by everyone else, then stuck getting the pizza at Troy and Abed's place, and even his Halloween story differed slightly from everyone else's because rather than reflect his true personality, he drew from a fake persona, one that contradicts what this season has been telling us and insists that Jeff holds the group together. This week he plays hooky and everyone seems to get on fine without him while Dean Pelton tortures him with "Kiss From a Rose" (which surely was one of the Dean's many weird Jeff fantasies). Britta may be seen as the buzzkill because she doesn't really know what is cool; I think Jeff is also a buzzkill, but because he does know what's cool, and prevents others from doing things that are not cool but still fun, like singing and dancing to "Roxanne", which only happened while he was away getting the pizza. I think in the first two seasons Jeff did hold the group together, but as they've been saying more recently, the friendships have evolved, and at this point they probably don't need Jeff to hold them together anymore, which means he needs to find a new function within the group to avoid becoming obsolete. Also the shadow puppet show was fun.

Parks and Recreation
Oh man, a lot of really funny stuff in this one, from Ron's remark about sanding his toenails, to Andy stockpiling all the lions in the model UN, to April insisting on representing the moon. It made it more fun that we got to see Leslie and Ben's post break-up aggression play out over the model UN scenario, rather than just a plain old argument episode like we see all the time elsewhere. The stuff with Ron and Tom was something different too, because they don't have stories together very often - possibly not since they played internet Scrabble in season one - and it merged Tom back into the government office, where we knew he was headed. Chris was probably, again, the weakest part because Jerry's daughter hasn't been doing much for him comedy-wise since the relationship started, but it provided him with some good moments of self-reflection and a couple of decent jokes about his relationship with Ann.

The Office
Two things I found predictable in this episode: The cold opening with Andy trying to hold off a fake phonecall, because when has Erin not misunderstood something?; and when Robert brought in his band friends I knew they were just going to replace Andy, Darryl, and Kevin and they wouldn't get to jam with the boss - and additionally, that was a joke that really didn't need to last the entire episode. But Pam and Dwight is a fun combination, possibly moreso than Jim and Dwight, so I liked the storyline with them teaming up to catch Jim in a lie, though Dwight's crotch grab was like three or four times too many.

Fringe
That was a really cool episode. I don't always feel for the weekly guest stars involved in the cases because there's too little screen time to empathize with them, but I can understand Raymond's motives. I'm a big fan of time travel stuff (which is why the Peter Weller episode always stood out to me, that and it was beautifully shot in some parts), so I just loved seeing all the weird time loops happening. I'm wondering what it means that Peter was unaware he was appearing to Walter and Olivia when Walter heard him saying "Walter, help me." Just something from residual subconscious memories, or a different Peter? FUN FACT: the actors playing Raymond and Kate (Stephen Root and Romy Rosemont) in this episode are married in real life.

Hero of the Week: Troy and Abed from Community, for their shadow puppet show and "dreamatorium" (which I'll admit I thought they were going to refer to as a "holodeck" when I saw the gridlines on all the surfaces.)

Douchebag of the Week: Schmidt from New Girl. No. Just no.

Crazy Stupid Love

Impressions before seeing it
I'm a little cautious about romantic comedies, because unless they're done in a way that is not cliched and predictable, I will hate them. But I'd heard good things about this one and really liked the cast, so I wanted to see it.

How was it?
I watched Crazy Stupid Love right after A Little Help, and I thought I would like Help more, but the reverse ended up being true. This movie is a full 2 hours long where most are around 1.5, but I didn't feel that it dragged at any point because the characters had chemistry and charm, and I cared about all of them, which I think is more important in a rom-com than any other genre, because if you don't care about the characters then you don't care about their relationships either.

There are a lot of really fun scenes afoot, especially the ones where Jacob (Gosling) teaches Cal (Carell) how to be more confident and pick up women (but not how to date them), and a climactic scene where everything explodes in conflict, although that scene - in my opinion - was simultaneously also slightly problematic in terms of believability, but to avoid spoilers I'll just leave it at that. They pulled out some interesting surprise plot twists, too, which in another movie I might not have liked, but they worked to create cohesiveness here, unlike when Valentine's Day tried to do it and it felt forced for the sake of shock value. Another scene I had a problem with, and this doesn't spoil anything even though it's near the end, is when Cal's son gives a speech at his Jr. high graduation, and it didn't feel right that his graduation speech would be about love and soulmates, and then on top of that, that his dad would interrupt and come down to give his own speech and none of the teachers or principals would care that the graduation was hijacked into this random romantic tangent. It pulled me out of a movie that I was otherwise enjoying, because it felt too much like...a movie.

Recommendation
Other than those two particular scenes, I had a great time watching this one. Rom-coms have a spotty track record, but I have a system, which is basically this: if it doesn't have Julia Roberts, Renee Zellweger, Ashton Kutcher, or Mandy Moore, then you're off to a good start (nothing against them personally, I just dislike most of their career choices, in general but especially in the romance department. I think I probably like one movie from each of them, and none of those are romances). Crazy Stupid Love stars none of the above. That's all the evidence you need.

A Little Help

Impressions before seeing it
The trailer was funny, and I've been a big fan of Jenna Fischer since The Office premiered, so I was excited to see her leading an indie dramedy.

How was it?
After Laura's (Fischer) husband dies, she finds out she's practically broke, her son's not her biggest fan, and her mom and sister are trying to make life decisions for her. There's not much else to say about the plot because A Little Help is more character based, but it's basically about this woman trying to be independent and fix her miserable life (which was miserable with her husband, too, but worse now that she has all these responsibilities by herself).

One of the reasons Jenna is so good on The Office is because it gives her those dramatic and/or sweet moments to play, and she is an intelligent enough actress to pull off those tones on top of comedy. I'm surprised it took her this long to finally be playing the main character in a movie, unless you count the even more indie Lollilove, but she wrote and directed that one herself. Anyway, yes, I thought she carried the film well and hit all the right notes, is what I'm saying. Laura is a flawed woman, even dumb and childish at times, but I rooted for her because of her pitiful situation, and because most of the people in her life are condescending toward her and it seemed unfair. In addition to her mother and sister, a weaselly lawyer pesters her throughout the film about big money on a malpractice suit, trying to convince her she needs it for her son's sake but we know he just wants the giant cut he would undoubtedly receive. I think the scenes with Laura and her son are where the heart of this movie lies, and they are cute, but not quite enough to make me cry (which isn't super hard, to be honest). Still, I enjoyed it and appreciated that it was well written and acted. Funny, too.

Recommendation
Check it out if you like indie movies, and especially if you like Jenna Fischer. It is some of her best work.

This Week in Television - Oct. 30-Nov. 4, 2011

Once Upon a Time
I'm enjoying the war between Emma and the evil queen. I think I actually find it more interesting than the fantasy flashback segments, though Robert Carlyle is fun as Rumplestiltskin. Glad that Henry did show Emma the book pages this week, though he should have done it last week. I'm not sure how I feel about them showing that the evil queen does care about something, because fairy tale characters are usually black and white, but then I don't think you can get that far with a TV show featuring such two-dimensional characters, so they had to make her more complex.

Glee
I'm not really a fan of pregnancy/baby storylines, and the reason for that is because they sometimes lead to soap opera crap like Quinn trying to get back her baby that she gave up for adoption by sabotaging the foster mom. And I don't know if we were supposed to find the new Irish kid charming, but to me he was just devious in taking advantage of Brittany, and knowing Brittany she probably would have given him an actual pot of gold and not sex like he was hoping. I would like to root for Sue in her quest to take down the arts, but Kurt's dad is also cool. Dammit. Although it seems like they've been using the "Sue cut our budget!" storyline way too often.

New Girl
This episode might have worked as the pilot, because I feel it was the best so far at character development, and one of the funniest. Well, the cold opening and ending tag weren't so great, but the middle was. The "accidentally seeing a friend naked" thing is an old sitcom staple used on almost every show out there, but how it affected everyone was what created the funny moments, like Jess attempting to say "penis" and Schmidt attempting to look at one. And Lake Bell was a funny guest star with her hard to read half-sarcasm-but-possibly-not-joking shtick.

Survivor: South Pacific
I've watched every season of Survivor, and I like it, but I can't say that it has a lot of great episodes. This week's was a great episode. For one it actually surprised me in providing moments where I respected, of all people, Coach and Brandon. Coach for accurately assessing the other tribe's scheme and telling the whole thing to Cochran's face, and Brandon for finally saying something sensible, when Jim called Cochran a coward and Brandon told him "Don't talk to him like that. That's what you get for talking to people like that in the first place." Cochran's been making some good moves, but Probst will completely ignore that and push for Ozzy to win just because he loves the challenge dominators and has no respect for strategic players. It's unfortunate that Christine had to be a casualty of Ozzy's plan. She had a nice winning streak going and I was looking forward to seeing her back.

Up All Night
The "my parents are visiting but they make me uncomfortable!" storyline is another sitcom staple, and I don't think Reagan's parents were funny enough characters to warrant using it, though it worked for the sake of Reagan's back story. The big laugh I got out of this episode was actually the payoff to the Ava story about the dead sound man, when they aired the video tribute featuring one repeated photo of him and the form clearly displaying his home address and social security number.

Suburgatory
What's starting to bother me about this show is that when the suburban townsfolk aren't funny, they're annoying. I found the school charity thing to be predictable, and everyone's superficiality and ignorance just bothered me rather than make me laugh. However, this show becomes more interesting if you think of Suburbia as an allegory for the United States of America, and George and Tessa as Canadians. Ponder that, non-existent people who aren't reading this!

Community
This week's episode had a weirdness to it with the combination of Pierce's eccentric father and the air conditioning annex, though it wasn't a bad weird and was still funny. I liked the use of the astronaut making paninis and "Black Hitler" in order to make the truth unbelievable should anyone try to spoil the secret. This episode was good at making use of past episodes, with references to Troy's plumbing abilities, Hawthorne wipes, both Jeff and Pierce's daddy issues, and newer things from this season like Britta's Psych class, Inspector Space-Time, and of course the Vice Dean. More of a return to form after the last two episodes, but a solid one in terms of humour.

Parks and Recreation
It was interesting seeing how the characters reacted to a possible apocalypse, even though none of them really thought it was coming. It felt appropriate that Ron would take advantage of the Zorpies, Chris would take an interest in reincarnation, Tom and Jean-Ralphio would throw a big party, and April and Andy would work on Andy's bucket list just in case (but mostly for fun, which clearly is what Andy values most given the nature of the items on said list). The Ben and Leslie stuff was kind of heartbreaking, but made sense. Neither of them dislike their jobs enough to quit. A nice surprise seeing Lucy stop by Tom's party. Totally unexpected, and while I doubt we'll see her back as soon as the next episode, I think it was a reminder to us from the writers that she'll still be relevant in the future.

The Office
I liked the callback to Stanley's new "Shove it up your butt" catchphrase (which people on the internet thought was out of character for him and believed we'd never hear again), because they gave it a few episodes so that I forgot about it and was able to laugh when it came up this week. I don't think it is out of character for him, though. Yes, he is generally grumpy and dislikes having fun at work, but we've also seen that he enjoys insult humour. Anyway, I'm not really sure why Andy couldn't just order Dwight to stop the "doomsday device", as he is still the manager no matter how much power goes to Dwight's head. Maybe they just both knew it wouldn't work because Dwight isn't intimidated by Andy.

Fringe
Wasn't too into the "monster of the week" B story, as this is probably at least the fourth time we've had an episode about shape-shifters, but the scenes with Peter were interesting. When he told Broyles about how the new shape-shifters are almost indistinguishable from humans and could be anyone, I almost expected Broyles to accuse him of being one, but then I realized that wouldn't make sense because, not knowing Peter at the moment, they don't entirely trust him and that would be crappy camouflage for the shape-shifter. Interesting tidbit that Nina was Olivia's foster mom in this timeline. It makes that scene with Peter and Olivia meeting as children more relevant.

Hero of the Week: Andy from Parks and Recreation. His bucket list, while simple, was fun to watch. "Looks like this Siberian husky is going to be Russian...OFF TO JAIL."

Douchebag of the Week: The entire school on Suburgatory. Face brushes? Really?

Red State

Impressions before seeing it
Red State is Kevin Smith's first dramatic movie (though I consider Chasing Amy to be at least half drama), and that in itself is an interesting sell. A year or two ago, Smith mentioned in his blog that he had sent out the script for a movie called Red State, and that readers said it was terrifying and begged him to make the movie. He wisely neglected to say what it was actually about, and thus some hype began.

How was it?
Smith considers this to be a horror film, and it sort of is, just not in the traditional sense - i.e. no masked killer running around and no creepy monsters popping out. What makes Red State scary is that it brings forth the ugly truth in human belief systems. Granted, it does it in a way that may be extreme and hard to believe, but I think the intention is to play the devil's advocate and show audiences of the religious bigot variety how insane they look when exhibiting such hatred and discrimination.

Basically, it's about a religious cult that lures homosexuals and "sexual deviants" into traps so that they can lynch them in front of the daily congregation. Michael Parks plays the leader of the cult, and while he is very good in the role, I was expecting something with gravitas and didn't quite get that from the character. He wasn't scary, I just hated him for his ignorance, and the other church-goers even more so; one of the most effective parts, in my opinion, was the shots of them nodding their approval and beaming proudly as the "sinners" were tortured up front. There may only be a limited number of people who would pass judgment on someone and go so far as to lynch them in the name of God, but it is likely a much larger number who would gladly stand there and watch while others do it. That is what this movie is acknowledging, that part of humanity that is so blinded by belief and the illusion of righteousness that we use God as an excuse to do away with things we don't like. Sorry, you can claim all you want that God hates fags or whatever, but if there is a God I doubt he promotes hate.

Recommendation
Show this movie to any hardcore religious morons you might know who like to follow all those bigoted, contradictory bible rules. For everyone else, it's an interesting political action drama from a director who is known for dick and fart comedies, and that might be enough of a reason to blow your mind. Oddly enough it reminds me of Burn After Reading, only more serious and much more violent.