What I'm Watching

The Tree of Life

2012-02-12T06:50:00.002-05:00

Impressions before seeing it
From what I'd heard, it was either going to be a beautiful epic or a pretentious piece of nonsense. Superficially, it was the title that intrigued me.

How was it?
The beginning and end of The Tree of Life are hard to swallow, because they fall into the "pretentious piece of nonsense" category. Especially the beginning, because to me it felt like a full 30-40 minutes before the movie actually began. The sequences are assembled in a way that are meant to be poetic even though it's too early in the film for them to really have any meaning, we get some snippets introducing the characters but not giving us any clues as to their personalities, and then we get a straight 15-minute self-indulgent sequence of nothing but nature shots and special effects (including, for some reason, dinosaurs) set to operatic music. In the film's defense, they are among the most beautiful shots in the movie, but otherwise I saw no reason to include them. I think 15 minutes is a fairly long chunk of time to make your audience sit and watch while absolutely nothing happens, and putting those 15 minutes at the beginning of the movie when nobody has any clue what is coming afterwards, and very little clue as to what they saw before it, is a real test of one's patience. I was thinking to myself that if the rest of the movie is like this, I didn't know if I could handle it for nearly two more hours. And I've sat through Last Year at Marienbad more than once.

But eventually that stuff ended, and there actually is a movie in the middle of the artsy crap. From my views of the family snippets at the beginning, I was worried this movie would actually have no humanity in it due to too much focus on the poetic, but, again, after the drawn out opening sequences we finally get character development. I was going to add "and a story", but it's mostly the former: a family with three boys in the 1950's, mainly from the point of view of the oldest son. We're just seeing moments in their daily lives, and rather than following a significant plot we're just tracking character progress as the oldest son deals with parental issues (a strict father and passive mother) and begins a rebellious phase. I don't know how to make it more interesting than that, but it actually is interesting and the performances very solid. So I did like this middle part of the movie, and it could have easily been its own movie without those big unnecessary chunks of cinematographic flaunting at the beginning and end. And for Sean Penn fans, don't waste your time. His total screen time is probably under 10 minutes in a 140-minute film, and he hardly even says anything. As you can see, being the industry that it is, they still put his name on the poster.

Recommendation
The Tree of Life will probably pick up the cinematography Oscar, and perhaps other technical ones, and I'd say well deserved, but not if it wins Best Picture. The family scenes in the middle are very good, and if Malick had kept it to that I would've like the film a lot more, but all of the stuff around the edges feels like a blatant attempt to instill an abundance of meaning and beauty in what is just a simple family story. If you're going to watch it, I'd say skip ahead about a half hour, then turn it off when you see Sean Penn. Not Penn's fault, that's just when the content goes back to being less than relevant.

This Week in Television - Feb. 6-11, 2012

2012-02-12T06:38:00.002-05:00

Smash
Well, it's a lot less flawed than Glee, but then practically everything is. It seems Katharine McPhee is actually a capable actress, so she was a good choice for the lead role (or maybe not lead, because Debra Messing got just as much screen time, if not more). Ivy - the blonde antagonist - was instantly annoying to me, because she is the type of performer who always goes too big in order to show off. There actually can be such a thing as too much talent, and when you go over the top it ruins a role. While I find Broadway music to be bland, I do appreciate that the music was more seamless and didn't feel like song after song was being crammed down my throat, as is sometimes the case with Glee. My one little nitpick - and it's not just Smash that did this, but a lot of movies and shows do - is the representation of Youtube (or whatever resembles Youtube when copyright is an issue). They always do it as if anything you put on Youtube automatically gets millions of views just because it's on the internet. Unless you have a famous channel with tons of followers, the chances of someone stumbling on your video and then sharing it enough to make it a hit - and in a short amount of time, no less - are about the same as stumbling on a raisin in the sand while walking along the beach. And I doubt that assistant's mother is an internet superstar. But anyway, in spite of an abrupt ending (maybe I'm just too used to cliffhangers) I didn't mind the pilot, so I'm going to keep watching.

Glee
How do they expect us to care about the Sam/Mercedes relationship when 90% of it happened off camera? I don't even care about Finn and Rachel, and they're all over this show. And if Mercedes likes Sam so much, why has she not broken up with her boyfriend? I know we see that kind of behaviour all the time in adults, because sometimes certain circumstances keep you from leaving a person you're not satisfied with, but that does not apply to high school students, because there are no circumstances where it would. I don't think artificial insemination is a fitting storyline for Sue, and I hate that this new coach is still around because she's just an unfunny version of Sue Sylvester. As much as I enjoy Sue, we don't need two of her, especially if one isn't funny. And Santana was right: Mr. Schue's Latino Elvis remix was awful and offensive.

New Girl
Though it may have been a bit of a stretch, I laughed at Jess charming the angry driver with the gun, and Nick and Jess playing chicken with the landlord threesome (is "Underpants Captain" a real thing? ...Never mind, I don't want to know.) The joke about the guards thinking Schmidt was raping his boss in the parking garage didn't quite work, because the view on the monitors just looked like exactly what it was: two people making out. She wasn't struggling, he wasn't restraining her, and they were both standing up. The ending with the Japanese conference call was even worse because it was so predictable and an overused joke. But I really liked the Jess/Nick/Landlord portion of the episode, that stuff was fun.

30 Rock
I like Mary Steenburgen, but I think it was obvious she and Jack were going to develop feelings for each other as soon as she showed up. Their scenes together weren't hilarious, but they had chemistry - probably actually more than Alec Baldwin has with Elizabeth Banks. As a character, Lutz works best when he is the butt of a small, quick joke. When a story is centered around him, like in this episode and the one with everyone catering to him for security in the event of an imaginary apocalypse, it's just more uncomfortable than funny. I don't get the Ikea observational humour because it's not something I've experienced or heard about, but the flashbacks to Liz's bad Valentine's days were fun.

The Office
I liked this one because it seems like it's been a really, really long time since we actually saw anybody working. Dwight trying to put together a team and fighting with Andy about who he's allowed to bring was fun, and it was a nice touch when the final team, whom he despised, surprised him by taking the project seriously and actually contributing good ideas. The way they pulled out those setups at the end, though (Erin claiming she won't return, Cathy hinting that she's going to make a move on Jim), it made this feel like the second last episode of a season.

Up All Night
I know this was a Valentine's episode and all, but I don't think it's necessary to end almost every episode with Chris and Reagan realizing how much they love each other. The show is about a married couple raising their new baby. We know they're not about to get divorced anytime soon, because their marriage is part of the show's premise. I like their characters and it's nice that they're in love and all that, but it doesn't have to be a romantic comedy. It's allowed to be just a comedy that is sometimes romantic. You have to ration those sweet moments or your show just gets too mushy.

Fringe
For characters who are way smarter than I am, they should have figured out before me that two universes were blending together. They did not, but I guess the writers had to drag it out a little for dramatic purposes. It was a cool episode, though, and the ending with Olivia raises some interesting questions. For instance, if Peter's Olivia is blending into this one, does that mean both will be destroyed? If not, will he even want to go home if he has Olivia back? Or are other things/people going to follow suit?

Saturday Night Live
I don't always watch SNL, and I never write about it, but I'll make an exception because this week it was hosted by my future wife Zooey Deschanel. Now there are times when some of the hosts (probably more often the female ones) get stuck playing the straight man while the cast has all the fun playing their wacky recurring characters, but I was glad to see them allowing Zooey to be funny, because she does have that comedic talent. I don't understand the appeal of those "Les Jeunes de Paris" sketches. I've seen them do it a few times, and I get the references to French culture and French cinema, I just don't see how it is potent as a comedy sketch. Abby Elliot's Zooey impression was fairly good, as was Zooey's Mary Kate Olsen impression, and Taran Killam's Michael Cera impression had the perfect enunciation, but was about three octaves too high. I'm not sure if the squeaky voice was a joke or if for some reason he just can't do it any lower. Bill Hader's Clint Eastwood is also great, but most of his impressions are. I was excited by the return of the technology humping sketch, because it was my favourite part of the last Emma Stone episode. It wasn't as good as the first time, but I enjoy that it can be so filthy while also remaining completely G-rated. The crab sketch was, like the content of it, a predictable build-up to pretty much nothing, and while I liked the fast-talking 1940's sketch, its ending felt weird and abrupt - or, in other words, non-existent. But overall it was a decent episode; I've seen far worse. And we even got a surprise cameo from Nicolas Cage!

Hero of the Week: Zooey Deschanel on Saturday Night Live, for not being the unfunny one in ANY of the sketches.

Douchebag of the Week: Coach Roz from Glee, because there's only one Sue Sylvester.

Curb Your Enthusiasm - Season Seven

2012-02-08T01:16:00.003-05:00

I was excited to see this season, because this is the one with the much anticipated Seinfeld reunion. However - and this is only good news in retrospect after watching the entire season - it sort of takes a back seat to the regular Curb shenanigans. It wouldn't be entirely accurate to call it "The Seinfeld Season", because the reunion stuff is only present for about half of the episodes, and the reunion itself is seen in maybe two of them. But that is the very nature of the concept; Larry wanted a unique way to do a Seinfeld reunion without it being exploitative and lame like other reunion shows are, and so while it is a running storyline throughout the season, it's not the focus of it.

To me, season five has been the funniest season so far, but this one comes very close. While I am a Seinfeld fan, I thought all of the non-Seinfeld segments were funnier than any of the Seinfeld ones, but I can't say it wasn't cool seeing the characters back again. No reference was made to their time in prison, but the new scenes were perhaps meant to serve as more of a finale replacement, even though they do take place many years later. The original finale served as a better ending to the series, though, because the Curb one just felt like a regular episode done in modern day, and not an ending at all. Anyway, apart from that, this season was more of Larry's mistakes, misunderstandings, and offenses, which is always comedy gold. I don't recall it in previous seasons, but they seem to have started an arc where Jeff is regularly cheating on Susie. It makes me like him less, but then it is Susie. And I wasn't really a fan of the scene with Larry trying to convince Michael Richards to do the reunion while Michael is distracted by nude artistic photos on the restaurant walls, because it didn't seem to really go anywhere other than later having Michael be slightly surprised that a reunion is happening. It was an anticlimactic payoff. But it was fantastic to see Phillip Baker Hall return as Larry's doctor, Catherine O'Hara as Marty Funkhouser's crazy sister, and a really pointless but funny cameo by Ben Affleck in a role that would have been played by an extra, because all he did was walk by.

Best Episode: I think the first two episodes were among the funniest ("Funkhouser's Crazy Sister" and "Vehicular Fellatio"), and I really enjoyed "The Black Swan" for its crazy murder cover-up story, but I'd say overall the most satisfying was probably "Officer Krupke", in which Larry has his pants stolen, offends some kids who make bad lemonade, covers for Jeff with a silly lie, suspects Cheryl of participating in a threesome without him, and encounters a cop named after a character in a musical. Also, Ben Affleck walks by.

Weeds - Season Four

2012-02-08T00:04:00.003-05:00

After compelling second and third seasons, season four receded back to the quality of season one. This wasn't necessarily due to poor writing; it was more to do with the direction they chose to take the story. Having Nancy and her family skip town and go into hiding in a nice little beach town by the Mexican border just didn't offer much in the way of excitement, tension, danger, plot twists, or cliffhangers. In general it was still entertaining and funny, and they managed to keep most of the characters in the show (except for Conrad and Heylia, but I don't particularly miss them), but it feels like a let-down when the last two seasons were hitting their stride with constant cliffhangers. It may also be that Nancy's new boss, Guillermo, is not as intimidating as U-Turn was last season, and her relationship with Mayor/Kingpin Esteban didn't have the same sense of underlying danger as her secret marriage to the DEA agent in season two. I think the season picked up slightly after Albert Brooks's character left, because until then it focused too heavily on the Botwin family.

But there were still fun moments to enjoy. Nancy uncovering the secret tunnel under the maternity store (blurting "What the F?", which somehow was funnier than actually swearing) was a landmark moment, and Doug and Andy starting an immigrant-smuggling business was great because those two doofuses work well together comedically. And I was a fan of the title sequences this season (no more awful theme song covers!), from the classic one in the premiere shown one last time - but with everything in Agrestic now on fire - to the new format, which is to write the title on a significant object from the episode and have something in the image morph into a marijuana leaf. I'm a nerd for that kind of thing, so I actually looked forward to those titles each episode.

Best Episode: "No Man is Pudding", in which Celia comes to stay and the Botwins have a family dinner where everybody looks less than healthy, Andy realizes how poorly the illegal immigrants are treated, and Guillermo gives Nancy a seemingly boring and average job with more to it below the surface (literally).

This Week in Television - Jan. 29-Feb. 3, 2012

2012-02-05T21:15:00.002-05:00

Once Upon a Time
I don't know how we were supposed to sympathize with the genie when he seemed to only love the queen for her looks. I felt worse for the king because he was nice enough to free him and it got him stabbed in the back. I saw Emma's failure coming; it was too easy (and, in the series, too soon) for that to be able to stop the mayor. I'm wondering if this mysterious writer guy was the original author of the fairy tale book and has come to finish it or something.

Glee
Rather than go on another rant, perhaps I should just say this: Worst. Episode. Ever. And that's saying a lot when it comes to Glee.

New Girl
I thought Julia was a more fun person in her scenes with Nick last episode, but this week there weren't any signs of that as her being mean was a driving force behind the story. It didn't quite feel consistent, but I did laugh at the bathroom-crying jokes. Winston's storyline was a little dull, but at least it was a bit of character development for him. Schmidt's parts weren't so much a storyline as one very simple joke, which worked best at the end when Nick revealed how little he washes things.

30 Rock
I don't think anyone will disagree that the best line in this episode was "It's the ultimate game... Jack Donaghy playing with himself... It's a Jack-off." I thought Liz using Jack's negotiation tactics against him was an awesomely fun episode idea, and it didn't disappoint. However, Tracy and Jenna at the bar mitzvah didn't work as well for me. It just felt like one joke gone on too long, and a potential platform for character growth that probably won't actually result in any growth from either of them. And I was actually kind of looking forward to the possibility of Kenneth having a different job at NBC, just to change things up, but I guess that was a cop-out, too.

Parks and Recreation
I almost thought this episode was a rerun when it opened with "Galentine's Day", which a season 2 episode also did, but then Leslie mentioned that April was married and my confusion became delight at the show's continuity. Sometimes when The Office does a certain event like that, we never see it again even if it's supposed to be happening regularly. Chris DJing the party with sad music was predictable, but it was interesting seeing him in a depressed state because it's so contrary to what we're used to from him. Ron, Andy, and Ben as the clue-hunting team was awesome; especially Ron's transition from hating riddles (or at least pretending to) to outright loving them and having so much of a blast that he requests a clue hunt from Leslie for his birthday. I kind of hope we get to see that now. Ann and Tom was a pretty big surprise; I know they were using the idea of Ann and Chris reuniting as a red herring, but because it seemed apparent so early in the episode I thought it was just going to be a very predictable plot point. I like being surprised, so that was an interesting twist, and while it was unclear whether that relationship will continue (it ended with Ann remarking that it was a mistake, but that could be interpreted as a joke), it might be fun if it does. Also very interesting that we've had two episodes in a row where April shows compassion for someone who annoys her. Something's going on there!

The Office
I think the whole jury duty thing was a little over the top, and the web of lies became excrutiating rather than funny. The better part of the episode was actually Angela's baby, with Kevin gleefully calling it "Little Kevin" and Oscar being so amused at her being involved in two shams at once (the gay senator husband and the non-premature baby) that he didn't know which thread to follow first.

Up All Night
It's always fun to see Dennis Duffy from 30 Rock, but once again this show still has trouble making their guest stars funny. The brotherly competitiveness is nothing remotely new to television, and I think I've clarified by now that extended jokes lasting the whole episode are a big drag unless it's a really, really funny joke. This show is only bringing the occasional laugh now, but when it's not funny, it's not excruciatingly unfunny, so I still find it watchable because I enjoy Arnett and Applegate. But I do wish it were funnier than it is.

Fringe
I can't believe it took them four seasons for Astrid to be so heavily featured in an episode, but I'm glad that episode now exists. It was oddly fascinating seeing Alt-Astrid as something of a semi-autistic, semi-childlike savant with no apparent dark side to her, and Jasika Nicole killed that performance. But the scenes with Walter and Fauxlivia felt off. He has no reason to despise her in this timeline if she couldn't have seduced and deceived a non-existent Peter. With two death prediction cases in a row, I thought they were going to come back to Olivia's impending death, but instead they showed us a piece of Observer technology and revealed an Observer's name. I'll take it.

Hero of the Week: Jack from 30 Rock, for both winning and losing the "Jack-off" with grace.

Douchebag of the Week: No one really stood out, but I guess I'll say Dwight from The Office. His glee over the possibility of getting Jim fired was a little annoying.

50/50

2012-02-02T07:06:00.003-05:00

Impressions before seeing it
I like Seth and Joseph, and it looked like one of those nice feel good comedies.

How was it?
I don't know how well it goes over when people refer to this as a "cancer comedy", because it's a delicate subject for some. If this movie took it too seriously, it might be considered too morbid, and if it didn't take it seriously enough, it might be considered insensitive. Much like the title, it appropriately balances that tone somewhere in the middle. It doesn't make fun of cancer - in fact I think it illustrates well how downright scary it is when your chances don't look good - and it's not a film about being optimistic in spite of it. Nor does it blatantly try to shoehorn jokes in just to spread funniness around an unfunny subject. It's just here to paint a picture of what someone might go through, and the funny situations that, strangely, do arise from having cancer. For the most part, it's not a laugh out loud comedy, but more the kind that makes you smile because you believe it. Ultimately, I think what really makes this worth watching is the chemistry between the characters. Rogen and Levitt made for fun BFFs (though I often find Rogen fun to watch anyway), and Levitt's scenes with Anna Kendrick, who plays his quirky, inexperienced therapist, had even more charm to them. Anjelica Huston was a tad annoying as the overprotective mother, but it was an entirely truthful character.

Recommendation
For anyone who went through a cancer struggle, 50/50 might feel too close to home for them, which could be good or bad depending on your attitude. But personally I think the movie's tone is perfect for its subject matter, and it's very enjoyable and heartfelt without having too much emotion at either end of the spectrum. How it didn't get a Best Picture nomination at the Oscars this year (they only picked 9, it's not like they didn't have room for one more!), or at the very least Best Screenplay, is beyond me.

This Week in Television - Jan. 22-27, 2012

2012-01-28T10:39:00.002-05:00

Once Upon a Time
Man, the whole bit with two characters bumping into each other and dropping their stuff is such a cliche. It feels like a really lazy way to either reveal something about a character, or to make two characters meet and/or fall in love. Funny that there was an eighth dwarf called Stealthy, and that he was killed when he made the mistake of not being stealthy. But after this episode I think I'm finally on board with the Mary Margaret and David relationship.

30 Rock
This episode was full of win. Devon vs. Jack, which always wins; Kelsey Grammer, Jenna, and Kenneth's elaborate cover-up plan that played like a parody of an accidental murder movie; Kathy Geiss in a box... Hilarious stuff. I also found it funny that after watching Tracy's offensive stand-up routine and being disgusted by it, Jack later told one of Tracy's jokes to Devon.

Parks and Recreation
Tom whining about his finger and bowling between his legs like a five year-old was really funny stuff. I'm not sure whether it was supposed to be a joke that almost every ball rolled in the episode produced a strike, but it was amusing that it happened so frequently. I love that this show can do things like have a shot that is just Ron beaming over the bowling alley restaurant's menu (hot dogs, hamburgers, nothing else) and it works as a joke. April was awesome for giving the movie tickets to Chris, but there are too many candidates for Hero of the Week this week for her to win it.

30 Rock
Not as good as the 8:00 episode, but that was a very hard one to follow anyway. The Martin Luther King Day trailer was funny, but would have been funnier if SNL hadn't already done basically the same joke using The Apocolypse as its holiday. 30 Rock also sort of already did the thing with characters realizing they need each other, but that was Jack and Liz, and it was interesting seeing them demonstrate why Liz and Jenna, and Jack and Kenneth need each other as well. I actually had been wondering about Jenna and Liz, because they were supposed to be best friends but the show doesn't really go there all that often and at times it does seem like they have no reason to be friends.

Fringe
The precog who draws predictions has been done, but we have't really seen the human side of it before and the effects it can have on a person, so I liked that part of it. Some of the earlier scenes with the girl's family felt really generic and blandly written, though. But I like that they tied it into the continuing story of Olivia worrying over her own impending death - and that is something we, too, need to worry about because I don't think the Observer was referring solely to this version of Olivia.

Hero of the Week: Liz from 30 Rock, for her speech to the press about idiots that reflected a lot of the things wrong with our culture. Unfortunately, people who watch 30 Rock are not idiots so it was just preaching to the choir.

Douchebag of the Week: That guy from Parks and Recreation who called Leslie her "second least favourite word for a woman," because Leslie is awesome and you don't call her that, ever.

Land of the Lost

2012-01-27T20:03:00.002-05:00

Impressions before seeing it
It looked like it could be fun for all of its crazy fantasy and sci-fi elements.

How was it?
The only thing this movie really has going for it is its concept, which I know is based on an old TV show, meaning they didn't bring anything good to the table for the film adaptation. I really like the idea of a strange world where past, present, and future all exist simultaneously, and seeing that world was fun, but mostly Land of the Lost was just disappointing. All of the special effects, first of all, were so crude that nothing blended seamlessly. You could tell every time when something was CG or green screen, which constantly pulls you out of the movie. However, the biggest mistake made here is a very heavy reliance on Will Ferrell. It seems to me that the writers didn't put much effort into the script and just let Ferrell do his thing, thinking this would make the movie a hilarious smash hit because Will Ferrell is popular. Don't get me wrong, he can be really funny in some movies, but other times he comes off as trying too hard to be wacky. This was the latter. I only found one part funny, and that was when Rick (Ferrell) and Will (Danny McBride) find a large, vibrating crystal that gives your voice an auto-tune effect if you touch it while talking, so they start singing Cher's "Believe". Still a cheap joke, but I laughed. Oh, and one last thing: this is one of those sexist comedies where the female character (Anna Friel) has to be the smart one who isn't allowed to be funny. We should be past that by now.

Recommendation
I think this goes in the same pile as Year One; that is to say, the kind of movie where they pretty much write around an actor's persona and expect that to carry the film. It's less funny than Year One, but slightly less forgettable thanks to a better concept. If you're really into fantasy and sci-fi like I am, it might be worth watching once if you don't have to pay anything to see it, but you won't be missing much if you never do.

This Week in Television - Jan. 15-20, 2012

2012-01-22T20:52:00.002-05:00

Once Upon a Time
Oh, Hansel, you dope. How many times did they tell you not to eat anything in the witch's house? Decent episode, though. The orphan storyline finally got Emma to admit how much she cares about Henry, but the ending was more interesting.

Napoleon Dynamite
I'm a fan of the movie, but I'm not sure what to make of these first two episodes of the new animated series because it doesn't really resemble the film. It's more like the director wanted to make an animated series and, as an excuse to garner some initial attention ratings, used the characters and settings from his most successful project. The humour is not the same as in the movie - it's more like season five of Futurama, as in mildly amusing but never laugh out loud hilarious and probably would have been funnier about 15 years ago. The cartoon medium completely changes the tone into something more blatantly wacky and fast paced, and I understand that it's just how animation works, but that's not what the movie was. The movie was more lethargic and quiet, full of moments with Napoleon silently gawking at things because he wasn't a big conversationalist. He does a lot more talking in the cartoon because Jon Heder needs something to do. However, that is this show's biggest strength: all of the actors from the movie came back to do the voices. Given how strange and unique all of those voices are, it would have been way too noticeable had the roles been recast. But there's still one thing to nitpick there, and that is Uncle Rico. It's still the same actor playing him, but he's either completely forgotten the role since doing the movie or they asked him to exaggerate the southern accent so the character would sound more...cartoony. It definitely threw me off because he didn't sound like Uncle Rico, but all of the other voices were perfect. Also, this show doesn't seem to be canon with the film, as Lafawnduh is nowhere in sight even though Kip married her in the movie. I don't think I'll bother to keep watching.

Glee
I can imagine how many fangirls squealed when Finn proposed to Rachel, but I was laughing at what a terrible gimmick it is. And being that their characters are only about 17-18, it makes me think even less of them for even thinking about marriage that young. Though Rachel didn't respond yet, but supposedly they kind of stole that ending from one of the Twilight movies, which is the least surprising thing ever. I don't like how they used that musical number with the girls in black dresses singing about their loved ones to try and imply that those relationships are as meaningful as the adult one between Mr. Schue and Emma, when we know they'll probably all be dating different people by next season. And then they took it even further by having them come to tears while singing it, and then even further by having Mercedes remark afterward how beautiful and moving it was. Nope. I'm somewhat easily moved, and that had zero effect on me. I also found it offensive when they had Becky's voiceover voiced by Helen Mirren, as if they were trying to make a sarcastic joke by making her inner voice classy and intelligent. And offense #3: all of the stuff about Emma's OCD - which was already exaggerated - and how the general opinion was that she is unable to function as a normal human being and for some reason it means she shouldn't get married, except that Mr. Schue is a hero and he'll be there to rescue her. Yes, Glee, that's exactly what OCD is like, thanks. When Artie wheeled himself into the pool during Mr. Schue's ridiculous over the top proposal (the walking on water was definitely too much; it doesn't say "I love you", it says "I'm so awesome I'm doing something Christlike, wanna marry me? Yeah, course you do."), I was like "Well, he's dead," and then he magically reappeared on an inflatable chair. But seriously, how did he get over there? Because doggy paddling doesn't work for humans when your legs are dead weight. And apparently Mr. Schue has literally no friends whatsoever outside of the high school, because that's the only reason I can think of why a grown man would choose Finn to be the best man at his wedding (but really it's because they want an excuse to have the glee club perform a song during the inevitable wedding episode). This was one of the kitschiest Glee episodes ever, but I laughed at a couple of the one-liners in this episode, such as Sue calling Coach Beiste "Michael Chiklis in a wig" and Becky telling Artie that her mom says she has "get down syndrome".

New Girl
Sometimes it feels like this show is too Schmidt-centric, but that may be because of his large personality. Surprisingly, this episode had a character who was even douchier than Schmidt, and got what he deserved from Lizzy Caplan; I was puzzled when Nick was horrified by it, because I'm all for douchebags getting beat up. Does that make me a bad person? And why did they send that white dude if Jess asked for an Asian stripper? I like how offended Nick was by Schmidt's toolish hat and tanktop outfit. I wouldn't want to be associated with someone wearing that, either. The douchebag jar is fun, but if it was meant to deter Schmidt from acting the way he does, it doesn't seem to be working. There's gotta be like a thousand dollars in there by now.

30 Rock
There we go. Much better than last week's episode. Tracy's offensive comments on the show were a lot less offensive than what he said in real life (I believe it was something to the effect of "if I had a gay son, I'd shoot myself"), but I think this episode poking fun at it was a fair punishment and was handled well. It sort of managed to chastize and condescend to Tracy while also apologizing to the public and reminding everyone that Tracy's not the kind of dude who would mean it, it was just a bad joke in bad taste. Basically, it hit all the bases while still being funny so as not to waste our time getting caught up in the show's own politics. Kenneth and Jenna's simple lightbulb-changing plot escalated quickly and became funny (those two are often funnier playing off each other than on their own), and the ending when they called Kelsey Grammer was one of those moments where you know it's going to be him because he was in the beginning of the episode, and then when it's him you just go "Yesss!" I loved the tag with his James Bond-like theme song - probably the highlight of the episode. Well, that and the pie chart about TGS's viewers, because every time Jack pulls out a pie chart, the segments on it represent hilarious things.

Parks and Recreation
You know, out of all of NBC's Thursday night comedies, Parks and Recreation is the one that is the most consistently funny. Another solid, hilarious episode this week. Loved Ben, Jerry, and Tom trying to do sinister voiceover voices, every single thing Andy said and did (especially his extremely wide hammering attempt), Chris thwarting Ron's automatic door-closer by slipping in before the shut-out, and Leslie's campaign commercial with the very long list of things she supports. Also, I've always found attack ads funny because they're so dramatic in their accusations, so it was fun to see it here, and cute to see how little Leslie has changed since she was 10 years old.

The Office
This was probably the first episode of the whole season where Andy felt like Andy and not Michael. Maybe because they were outside of the office for a reason not driven by him, so for the writers this episode didn't need a Michael in it. It wasn't one of the funnier episodes, though. I can't recall any jokes that stood out, though the cold opening with Dwight and Stanley "turning the tables" on Jim for free meatballs was such a weird and unexpected ending to that prank that it was kind of funny for that reason.

Up All Night
Megan Mullally has been appearing on almost every comedy show out there, and lately it's been fun to see her, but so far Up All Night hasn't really been putting their guest stars to great use. But I do like the subject of idea stealing, whether coincidental or otherwise, because that sort of thing does happen in the entertainment industry; usually with two very similar movies coming out around the same time, or a few instances I've pointed out on this blog where some TV shows make the same joke in the same week. I don't suspect plagiarism when that happens, but it's fascinating when two seperate people can have the same idea at the same time, and I can imagine how it might make them feel, not being able to prove or disprove intent. But this episode didn't go down that road anyway, as sneakiness is more interesting than coincidence. I'm not sure if I agree with "emotional cheating" being a real thing, though. I understand it, but the only thing that makes it emotional cheating is gender. No one ever calls it that when a dude is having a night out with a male friend.

Fringe
This week's episode had some very cool scenes. Notably the one where Peter was freaking out Jones in the interrogation room, however short-lived that may have been once Jones' contacts came to his rescue. And it was cool to see both sides finally working together, and Walter reuniting with Walternate's wife, although the problem is that all of that theoretically goes away when Peter returns to his timeline. We're into Lost season 6 territory right now, where we're not sure if and why this world we're seeing is going to be relevant, and that makes viewers cautious about getting invested.

Hero of the Week: Julia (Lizzy Caplan) from New Girl, for taking down the douche and generally being a cool date.

Douchebag of the Week: Schmidt's friend Benjamin from New Girl. As he played Todd on Community earlier this season, I think he might be the first actor to win Douchebag for two different roles.

Contagion

2012-01-22T20:14:00.003-05:00

Impressions before seeing it
I made a list of films from 2011 that I want to see before I break out a top 10 list (still have about 12 left on it), and this one was not on there because I'm not big on deadly virus movies, but then I realized the cast was too awesome not to watch it.

How was it?
Contagion is a deadly virus movie, yes, but the story is told more from the point of view of the doctors and scientists trying to cure it. To me, that was much more interesting than watching people die in mass numbers while lamenting that humanity is doomed. Here, they really are just numbers, letting us know how rapidly the thing has spread and nothing more. Curiously, the movie begins on day 2 of the epidemic, not day 1, because the cause is a mystery. But to be honest I wasn't that interested in the cause, and was underwhelmed when the movie ended with the reveal of day 1. What I liked was the scrambling of the doctors, not just in finding a cure, but in dealing with a frightened and desperate public and how to handle the situation with regards to media coverage. I felt like this was a more realistic portrayal of events for a deadly virus movie - the disease was nothing crazy, just one of those things that starts as a flu and then begins shutting down your respiratory system and heart, like the real life SARS. That makes it scary, because these things can and already have happened, but the best solution is to avoid going out in public and washing your hands when you do. The people in the movie who caught the disease did not do those things.

Recommendation
It's probably best to never, ever see this movie if you are a hardcore hypochondriac, but for everyone else it is a fascinating look at a potential scenario, albeit a grim one. And, again, the cast was pretty great; in addition to the six award calibre actors on the poster, you also get Bryan Cranston, John Hawkes, Elliott Gould, Demetri Martin, and Enrico Colantoni. I love a good cast, so that alone makes this worth it.

Moneyball

2012-01-21T07:05:00.002-05:00

Impressions before seeing it
If I were to rank everything in life based on how much I care about it, sports would be near the very bottom, just ahead of Nazis and reality shows. However, I do enjoy the occasional sports movie and I love a good underdog story. Moneyball looked interesting in that it had that behind the scenes aspect of competitive professional sports.

How was it?
What I like about this movie is the challenging of the system. Billy Beane (Pitt) asks, if there is a better way, why is everyone so against it? There is sometimes a certain stubbornness when it comes to rule systems, even when those systems are flawed, and throughout history the ones who challenge the norm and dare to stand up are the ones who encounter the toughest opposition. Only afterward, when the rest of the world finally comes around, are they praised for it. As it applies to baseball, Billy's recruitment team is looking at all the wrong reasons when drafting. "His girlfriend's a six at best," one of them says about a player, as if that has anything whatsoever to do with one's baseball career. Billy's strategy is to draft guys who, no matter what, can make it onto first base. You don't necessarily need good batters or runners, you just need guys to make it around the bases because that's how you ultimately score points.

I ended up loving this movie, so I can imagine how much more ecstatic baseball fans would be over it. I think it does a good job of building excitement and inspiration - again, I hate sports but I was floored - and even a bit of sentiment. Jonah Hill's Peter is such a baseball nerd, he's always showing Billy videos of obscure players and rare moments in the game, and some of them have a certain charm, and maybe even magic, that almost made me want to get into baseball. Almost. But even almost is a big deal.

Recommendation
You really don't have to be into sports/baseball to like this movie. You don't even see any baseball being played until the last 30-40 minutes. It's more about the inner workings of the game and the drafting process than the actual playing of the game, and more appealingly, it is a highly entertaining underdog story that almost anyone can find joy in. Go for it!

This Week in Television - Jan. 8-13, 2012

2012-01-15T09:36:00.002-05:00

Once Upon a Time
Rumplestiltskin's reason for turning evil was a little Star Wars-like, but it did set up a nice juxtaposition in showing that Emma made the decision he could not: to sacrifice the greater good and keep your integrity intact for the sake of your child. I found it predictable that David's wife supported the Mayor's sherriff candidate. The set-up was too obvious when he and Mary Margaret were posting posters next to each other.

30 Rock
I'm really glad 30 Rock is back because it helps soften the disappointment of Community's hiatus, but this episode wasn't really the strong start I was hoping for. It seemed like an episode that belongs in season four, 30 Rock's weakest season. I think my favourite joke of the episode was probably when Kenneth said Aroused Dog Heaven is the same place as Women's Hell. America's Kidz Got Singing was another of those things that is a terrible idea for a show, but still sadly in the realm of something somebody would actually do, and even sadder, it would probably be a monster hit. Happy Liz isn't really as fun to watch as miserable Liz.

Parks and Recreation
The scene on the ice rink with everyone shuffling along, falling and almost falling, panicking about the three-legged dog, and the stopping and restarting of the "Get on Your Feet" song were all very simple elements, but damn if it wasn't a hilarious scene anyway. The music especially is what made it - I kept forgetting about the song, thinking it was done, and then it would start up again and make me laugh. One slight criticism about Ben's claymation video: that is a lot less than three weeks' worth of animation, unless he's including all of the preparation and model building in that three weeks, or is just so inexperienced that he really is that slow with it.

The Office
I laughed at "The Einsteins" getting the Albert Einstein question wrong. The thing about trivia is that you don't have to be smart to do well, and you don't have to be dumb to do poorly. It is a random mix of common knowledge and obscure facts, and so it is possible for a gang of idiots to win if the right collection of questions comes up. I like that they had them losing the championship in the tag, just to quell concerns over plausibility and to show that it really was a fluke. When Gabe said that Robert has him "toilet" people for him all the time, I saw the ending to that segment coming (or I suppose the middle of it, because I didn't exactly predict Dwight going to Robert's home and watching him wrestle a physical trainer). But I wonder if Robert's promise to consider Dwight if a position opens up will result in anything.

Up All Night
I actually thought this episode was going to be Jason Lee's exit from the show, because it looked like Ava was overly interested in Missy's boyfriend, and Missy running off combined with Ava and Kevin hitting a rough patch would typically equal Ava leaving him for Missy's boyfriend. I'm glad it didn't turn out to be that predictable. I liked the stuff with Reagan and Chris listing each other's flaws and then erasing them, because I think that's what a relationship should be. Anyone and everyone you know is going to have things about them you hate if you know them long enough and well enough, but rather than force them to change, it's better to accept that the things you love about them are just more important.

Fringe
It might dilute the show somewhat, having four universes now instead of the initial two. I guess we have to be subjected to how different they are so that we, too, feel Peter's longing for the original universe we know. But I'm interested, now, in the idea of the universes working together. And if that Observer dies (if he can die?), I'm assuming there is no alternate version of him anywhere because those guys are outside the laws of time and space. Man, that ending was three cool reveals at once. It almost felt like a season premiere, but it sort of was, too; a mid-season premiere.

Hero of the Week: Ben from Parks and Recreation, because calzones and claymation are both awesome, even if everyone else seems to think they're not.

Douchebag of the Week: Ryan from The Office, for abandoning trivia just because he couldn't go a couple of hours without texting on his phone.

Before the Devil Knows You're Dead

2012-01-12T00:24:00.002-05:00

Impressions before seeing it
The concept sounded cool (two brothers rob their own parents' jewellery store) and my buddy Corey told me a while ago that it was really good.

How was it?
Technically, the climax of this movie (the actual robbery scene) is near the beginning. But that's okay, because this film is non-linear anyway. We get the robbery early on, and then we spend the rest of the movie watching both the build-up to and aftermath of this disastrous event. I think it works better that way, because it's not about the robbery, it's about the consequences of the robbery, and it would actually have been underwhelming if they had shown the results first and then revealed the robbery at the end. Now with the biggest scene so early, how do they keep it interesting? By only giving us part of the story in every scene. This is achieved through multiple viewpoints sort of in the style of Go, where we follow characters at different points and piece the story together when their paths cross. It's not as hard to follow as it might sound.

The talented A-list cast also helps make this stand out. Hawke seems to always play characters who are shady, or at least sneaky, but he's actually the lesser of two evils here because Hoffman plays the colder of the two brothers. Their relationship, nor their relationships with their parents, never struck me as anything resembling warm or loving, which may cause viewers to have trouble caring, but it also makes the robbery more believable and fuels a lot of the dramatic tension. And Tomei's character is sleeping around, so the only relationship in this movie that has any heart to it is the one between the mother and father, and you'll see why that's crucial if you watch the movie. This is not a feel-good movie by any means, but it's a very well done, well acted warning about the dangers of doing the wrong thing. The title is part of a full quote, "May you be in heaven a full half-hour before the devil knows you're dead," and my opinion is that this refers to Andy (Hoffman). The opening scene is the only time we ever really see him happy - his half-hour in heaven - and then after the robbery his wrongdoings begin to catch up with him, as if the devil has noticed and is in pursuit.

Recommendation
Unless you're for some reason opposed to non-linear cinema, there isn't really any reason not to see Before the Devil Knows You're Dead. I personally love non-linear stories because they're a breath of fresh air. Be prepared for a bit of heaviness, and watch this.

Fifty Pills

2012-01-07T08:44:00.003-05:00

Impressions before seeing it
I thought the concept had potential (pipsqueak has 24 hours to sell 50 pills of ecstasy to pay his college tuition), but to be honest the trailer didn't do it any favours. Gave it a shot because it was in a bargain bin for a mere three dollars.

How was it?
This is somewhat irrelevant, but the poster above is used for the DVD cover as well, and what bothers me about it is that they apparently didn't even have the budget to take promotional photos for packaging, because most of those poorly photoshopped figures were clearly taken directly from screencaps from the movie. It looks tacky, but it does demonstrate that we're dealing with a tacky movie.

There are a small number of things to enjoy about this movie, but I'll get to that in a moment. I think from the beginning, it betrays itself with a lack of consistency. I'm referring to a convention wherein Darren (Pucci) directly addresses the camera rather than use voiceover, but then once everything that needed to be explained was explained, he just stopped doing it. The movie was slightly better for it because I found it annoying, but I think if you're going to have a character talk to the camera and it's not a quick meta joke, they should be doing it through the entire movie, like Wayne's World. It's too weird and incongruent to do it for the first few minutes and then go back to ignoring the camera like a regular movie. I also want to say that this movie was made about six years ago but it screams 1990's. I think it's the sub-par acting and writing that makes it feel outdated, combined with some teen sex humour that hasn't been funny since the first American Pie movie. I'm talking "parents walking in on son masturbating" type stuff, followed up with "parents are mistakenly convinced son is gay." Yup, real comedy gold here. Did I mention this movie also includes a dominatrix character? Because for some reason, every single teen sex comedy movie has to have a dominatrix in it. And this isn't even a teen sex comedy. That's what bothers me most about those things being in the movie: they're completely irrelevant to the main storyline, and skew Fifty Pills toward a different genre when it would have worked better as either a straight drama or a quirky indie comedy that didn't need to dip into the well of immature jokes.

Because - and now we're into the positive stuff - there were things I genuinely found funny. Mainly, those things were Michael Pena (who I suspect might have improvised a lot of his lines and that's why he was so funny) and, surprisingly, Eddie Kaye Thomas as a wacky dude obsessed with Diff'rent Strokes who is very enthusiastic and talkative when high on ecstasy. More recent comedy work from Pena makes him less of a surprise, but I think when Eddie Kaye Thomas is one of the highlights of your movie, it's either a bad sign for the movie or a brilliant effort from Eddie. Sorry, Eddie, I believe in the former.

Recommendation
I can't generally recommend this because it's mostly poorly made, but I'm adding a fine print which says that if you find it on TV for free, take a look just to get some laughs out of Pena and Thomas. Jane Lynch is in it too, but her talents are wasted here.

Curb Your Enthusiasm - Season Six

2012-01-07T07:56:00.002-05:00

The sixth season of Curb Your Enthusiasm has Larry taking in a black family (also literally named the Blacks) who were left homeless after a hurricane. As Susie Essman puts it on the DVD's special features, "There's just something about putting Larry with black people that is always funny." (not an exact quote, but close enough.) I didn't directly think about it until she said it, but I'd have to agree. I don't want to sound like I'm stereotyping, but Larry David is pretty much the opposite of a black person in every way, and putting two opposites together is a tried and true foundation for comedy. The season's other, smaller arc involves Larry and Cheryl separating, which opens up a lot of doors for us to see his attempts at dating. We know by now that Larry is not romantic, nor is he selfless, so once again we get comedy by way of opposites. Not to say that he's entirely horrible at it, though. He was effective in using humour to at least obtain dates in the first place.

The season didn't entirely start off strong, if only because the first episode was kind of predictable, and I think I would have to say that season five was funnier overall (it's been too long now since I've watched one to four), but I mean if you're already a fan of Curb Your Enthusiasm, you're going to keep enjoying every season because it's more or less consistent in bringing more of the same old Larry David without getting tiring or unfunny. The fact that season five may have been funnier does not reflect poorly on season six, because it was still a funny batch of episodes, and Larry's ability to call people on their BS every single time will never not be fun to watch.

Best Episode: "The Freak Book", in which a book of deformed people causes Larry to disrupt several parties and gatherings, and Larry finds himself doing some work as a limo driver.

The Wire - Season One

2012-01-05T23:13:00.003-05:00

When I watched the pilot back in November, my impression was that The Wire focused more on the bureaucratic aspect of police work. While that's not untrue, I would like to add that it is about depicting the truth in the long, difficult process of collecting evidence to prove guilt. It's a crime show, but not a crime mystery. The cops know from the first episode that Avon Barksdale is running a drug ring and ordering hits on those who cross him, but the entire run of the season follows the tedious procedures and laws they must follow in collecting hard proof so they can legally make arrests. This is something that isn't frequently seen in cop dramas, probably because it can be boring and viewers would rather see them cut to shoot-outs and doors being busted down. The Wire does have those moments, too, but again it gives us the entire truth instead of just the action-packed parts. Barksdale is very careful in his operation, not leaving his name anywhere and forcing his gang to use pagers and payphones to avoid call tracing. There is even a special dialing code they use to further scramble caller identities. My guess, though, is this sort of thing was Stringer's (Avon's second-in-command) idea, because he is the smart, crafty one. Subsequently, this leads to the police resorting to tapping the pagers and payphones, though only after proving to their superiors that all other investigative methods failed, and even then, being public payphones, they have to stake out cops to watch the phones because they're only allowed to listen/record when a suspect is using them. Proper procedure, see.

Now take that concept of the entire truth and stretch it even further: we also get an equal amount of time with Barksdale and the members of his drug operation, providing insight into their procedures, too, and even allowing us to sympathize with some of them. Most of them are cold enough that they're willing to kill someone at the drop of a hat, and do, but some have noticeable consciences, notably Wallace and D'Angelo, Avon's nephew. D'Angelo and McNulty both reflect, at times, on the needless violence that occurs in the drug business. Nobody selling something other than drugs gets killed over it, they say, so why the animosity? My answer to that question is because nobody else sells things that are biologically addictive, or bring in extremely high tax-free revenue.

One memorable scene I loved involved detectives McNulty and Bunk going back to investigate an old crime scene and finding overlooked evidence as they recreate how the murder happened; all of the dialogue in that scene consists of variations of the F-word, which somehow just seems believable on top of being funny. Another thing I mentioned in November was that this show can be hard to follow if you're not concentrating (a very large of number of supporting characters with varying roles in the police, legal, and drug systems can be hard to keep track of), but if you can figure out what's going on, it is rewarding. I can't necessarily differentiate between episodes most of the time, but I like watching.

Best Episode: "Cleaning Up", in which Avon and Stringer get nervous about the security of their business, the detectives install a hidden camera in Avon's club, someone is killed by his own, two someones are arrested and someone else is not arrested. There, spoiler free.

4-Way Feature: Blood Simple, Bridesmaids, Cedar Rapids, and RED

2012-01-03T07:27:00.002-05:00

Apologies for cramming four movies that have nothing to do with each other into one post, but I currently have a lot to watch and only a little to say about each of these four, so this saves me a lot of time.

Blood Simple
This is the Coen Brothers' first movie and is sometimes seen as a modern film noir. Appropriate, because it's probably about as dark as No Country For Old Men in terms of its lack of humour, which is otherwise present in most Coen movies. I think it started off a little slowly, but got really cool toward the end. Oddly enough, it also reminded me of Alien in the way that Frances McDormand began the movie as an average supporting female and then ended up being the heroine of the story.

Bridesmaids
I really like the idea of an all-female ensemble comedy, but I don't think this one is necessarily a step forward for feminism, if only because it still contains all of the standard "chick flick" elements (and the movie is a little longer for it). However, you could consider it a transitional film, as it is a "chick flick" that men can still enjoy for the humour. Now we just need a female ensemble comedy that falls somewhere in the middle, as in not a sappy romance and not an objectifying "hot women for male audiences" movie. Overall, I think the humour in Bridesmaids is probably more for women, and a lot of the drama and romance held it back, but I had a few laughs and it was generally fun.

Cedar Rapids
Ed Helms plays a highly innocent man-child stepping out of his comfort zone on a business trip. I wondered how corrupted he would be by the big city, and he was, but this movie is not as mean as it looked like it was going to be, and I liked that. It seems to set John C. Reilly up as a potential villain in the first half, because his character is so sleazy, but then he just suddenly becomes a trustworthy friend (I would have liked him either way, because he's played by John C. Reilly). Most importantly, a lot of this movie is just Tim (Helms) becoming friends with the other insurance salesmen he meets, and having a good time with them. I don't have to tell you by now that I'm always cool with that. Bonus points for having an actor who was on The Wire make references to The Wire.

RED
It's somewhat unusual seeing so many award-caliber actors in a comic book action blockbuster, but then the premise is that it's an unusual group because they're all old and retired. This movie looked like it might be fun, but I found it only marginally so. The story didn't much interest me, and I didn't even find the action sequences very exciting or intense until close to the end. This is the reason I don't really watch a high number of action blockbusters; once in a while there's a good one, but you can only see so many explosions and gunfights before they become bland. I like that there's an action movie starring more than five people over 50, and I don't mind that this movie has enough humour to not take itself too seriously, but the story and action (and the movie overall) could have been better. However, I imagine that fault probably lies more with the source material. The fault in this being nominated for a Golden Globe lies with the academy of voters wanting the awesome cast to show up to the event.

Rise of the Planet of the Apes

2011-12-24T19:34:00.002-05:00

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

2011-12-20T22:43:00.003-05:00

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

2011-12-19T20:35:00.003-05:00

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

2011-12-16T08:36:00.003-05:00

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

2011-12-16T07:10:00.003-05:00

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

2011-12-16T06:20:00.002-05:00

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

2011-12-09T19:08:00.003-05:00

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

2011-12-09T09:06:00.002-05:00

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

2011-12-09T08:09:00.003-05:00

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

2011-12-07T07:13:00.002-05:00

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

2011-12-04T07:52:00.002-05:00

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

2011-12-02T19:21:00.002-05:00

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

2011-12-02T06:07:00.002-05:00

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

2011-11-28T01:31:00.003-05:00

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

2011-11-26T08:54:00.002-05:00

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

2011-11-25T22:58:00.002-05:00

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

2011-11-25T21:44:00.002-05:00

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

2011-11-19T10:43:00.002-05:00

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

2011-11-12T06:55:00.002-05:00

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

2011-11-06T05:39:00.002-05:00

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

2011-11-06T03:56:00.003-05:00

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

2011-11-06T03:38:00.002-05:00

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

2011-11-04T21:11:00.003-04:00

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.

This Week in Television - Oct. 23-28, 2011

2011-10-30T05:42:00.002-04:00

Once Upon a Time
Hmm, I'll need more time to figure out whether I like this show, but after the pilot I'm leaning toward the positive. It does have too much of a glossy look, as TV shows with high budget special effects sometimes do, and I felt that some of the moments fell flat. For example, when the evil queen barged in on Snow White and Prince Charming's wedding, I didn't get the proper sense of intimidation from her because that was a scene that would have normally happened at the end of another story, where they would have already established how scary she is. But to amend that thought, the character worked a little better later in the episode when we had more time to watch her being evil. One moment I really liked was the way Emma rested her chin on the counter while watching the birthday candle on her little cupcake, because I did get the sense of loneliness from that, and it had a childlike quality that made her seem even more vulnerable. One thing that bothered me: if Emma is having difficulty believing that she is inside Henry's fairy tale book, why wouldn't he just open it up and show her? Ultimately she ended up staying in town anyway, but I think it was for his sake, not because she believed him.

Wilfred
CityTV was doing a special preview of FX shows this week, so I checked out Wilfred, about a depressed suicidal man who inexplicably sees his neighbour's dog as an Australian man in a dog suit. I found it interesting the way Wilfred (the dog) was portrayed, because he embodies both human and dog qualities. He talks (to our protagonist, anyway), eats human food, and smokes, but he also chases motorcycles, pees outdoors, digs in the yard, has an incredible sense of smell, and jumps on strangers; one of the funniest scenes had him motorboating a waitress and then humping her leg, which of course would be sexual harassment if he were really human, but Wilfred gets away with it - gleefully - because he's a dog. I enjoyed the pilot because it was so unique and felt different from most things on television, but it felt more like a movie than a TV show episode. By the end of the episode, Wilfred had already helped Ryan to learn to enjoy his life more and make his own decisions, so it feels like there is no need for more episodes. That being said, I want to keep watching if I am able to (I'm not sure yet if FX Canada is automatically going to show up in one of my satellite packages, as new channels sometimes do, or if it will be part of a package I don't have. Hopefully the former, because Louie is on FX too and I dig that show.)

Survivor: South Pacific
I knew Coach's team was going to win when they started praying. Not because I believed God would help them, but because I believed the show would love to make it look like God helped them. I wouldn't have pegged Coach for an Adam Sandler fan, though they could have also told him to say that to promote the movie. Ozzy made an extremely bold move, but from their visits to witness the Redemption Island duels, they should know that Christine is not a fan of Coach and is likely to side with them, so there is no reason for them to want to beat her. If not for that, it might have almost been a smart move.

Suburgatory
That was a good idea for a Halloween episode, though it may have been a little far-fetched for Lisa and Malik to think Tessa was possessed, as they are among the more sane characters on this show. But I enjoyed watching George delight in all of his Halloween antics.

Community
Another cool episode. I like how everyone's stories reflected their personalities: Britta's being lazy on the details and highlighting chauvenism, as well as failing to make her look smarter than she is by having her read a book titled "Warren Piece"; Abed's being very robotic and facts-based; Annie's being classy and romantic before showing a dark and disturbing side; Troy's being the most childlike and imaginative; Pierce's self-aggrandizing image of himself 30 years younger, beating up the guys and having orgies with the girls; Shirley's being religious and judgmental of everyone (including a bit that proves she clearly doesn't know how marijuana is used); and Jeff's story showing that maybe all of his "Winger speeches" and their ability to bring the group together have gone to his head. As for the ending, Abed being the most sane person in the group makes sense when you think about it, because even though he's technically the only one with a mental disorder, it also pretty much makes him incapable of rage and homicidal thoughts.

Parks and Recreation
The subplot with Chris and Jerry's daughter didn't really work this time around because it was the exact same joke, only this time happening right in front of Jerry. The one funny thing that came of it was April turning Jerry's Mr. Potato Head smile upside down. But I liked seeing Ron and Ann working together, and more over-the-top craziness from Entertainment 720. But I guess Tom will be trudging back to his government job now that the company has tanked.

The Office
It almost seemed like they were recycling the storyline from the garden party episode, but with Erin trying to impress the bosses with her party instead of Andy. Being a Halloween episode disguised it somewhat, though. Robert learning everyone's fears and then incorporating them into a scary story was fun, and so was Dwight bonding with Robert's son over Starcraft (or Starcraft 2, by the looks of the monitors, although - nerdy observation - realistically, Dunder Mifflin probably wouldn't have computers in the office that are capable of running such a recent game.) I'm not sure I believe that Kelly and Toby would team up for matching costumes, because it seems like such a random pairing and there has never been any indication that they are friends, but I do believe that weird, lonely Gabe would invite himself in on the action.

Hero of the Week: Prince Charming from Once Upon a Time, because sword fighting while holding a baby in one arm is both funny and gutsy.

Douchebag of the Week: Gabe from The Office, because that video (and his laugh when he thought of it) he made was just weird, gross, and creepy.

HALLOWEEN BONUS - Best Costumes: Tessa from Suburgatory as Zombie Amelia Earheart (in a flashback), Dwight from The Office as Kerrigan from Starcraft, Creed from The Office as Osama bin Laden, and Erin from The Office as Wendy from Wendy's.

This Week in Television - Oct. 17-21, 2011

2011-10-22T10:21:00.002-04:00

Short week this week, but Halloween episodes next week!

Survivor: South Pacific
Ozzy was being overly emotional and childish. Right now it looks like Coach has a better chance of winning the game than he does. As for Brandon, allow me to quote a Mr. John Locke: "Crazy people don't know their going crazy. They think they're getting saner."

Up All Night
Cool to see a flashback episode, though I didn't laugh at it much. Hopefully this show is not already becoming less funny as it goes on. I don't feel that they really did anything new with either the "bad haircut" or "birthing is painful and gross!" jokes. Both have already been done to death in other shows and movies, so if you're going to do them, do them in a new way.

Suburgatory
The story was a good one, but again I didn't really find it that funny. Dallas and Dalia were just more annoying than anything else, and the Shirley Temple dolls, while fine for Sheila's character development, didn't really make for a funny concept. If anything it just made me pity her for seeming so sad and lonely without them.

Hero of the Week: Nobody stood out, but I suppose I'll say George from Suburgatory, for standing up to Dallas and calling his daughter's bluff on the doll-stealing claim.

Douchebag of the Week: Dallas from Suburgatory, because you don't come into someone else's house and then tell them how to run it.

Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist

2011-10-20T08:56:00.002-04:00

Impressions before seeing it
I was intrigued by the previews, because I really like both indie movies and "hangin' out" movies, and this appeared to be both. I think I almost bought it from a bargain bin once or twice, but wasn't quite sure whether I would like it enough because I still didn't know much about it. My dilemma was solved when it came on TV.

How was it?
It's a good thing Cera and Dennings were likable here, because I found their friends (pretty much every other character in the movie) a little annoying. It's a matter of personal taste, I know, but Nick and Norah seemed to be the only people with any intellect or character. Not that the others were poorly written/acted, I just found myself not caring for them.

The movie follows these two and their friends around New York for a night, searching for a secret show by their favourite band, "Where's Fluffy?", while falling for each other, trying to move on from their exes - who keep trying to reel them back in - and also looking for Norah's drunken friend who got lost. It's clearly a romance, but even more clearly it's a movie about searching, pursuing, and finding. I suppose all of the hunting around the city is meant to be a metaphor for love, for trying to find the right person. Which doesn't always work, even if you think you've found the one at first, like the deception of the "Where's Fluffy?" concert turning out to be a band everyone hates called "Are You Randy?" (perhaps a commentary in itself, hinting that we might mistake physical/sexual attraction for love). Nick and Norah bond through their love of music, but their search for "Where's Fluffy?" only ends once they've made love in her dad's recording studio. Coincidence? I think not. "Are you sad that we missed it?" she asks him after they decide to leave together. "We didn't miss it," he replies. "This is it."

Recommendation
It's a cute little romance. As I said, I only liked the two main characters, but they had good chemistry and were fun to watch. If that's all you need in a movie, then take a look at this one. Similar (and, admittedly, better) movies: Lost in Translation, Dazed and Confused, Once.

Weeds - Season One

2011-10-19T05:07:00.003-04:00

After watching this in close proximity to Suburgatory, I've decided that Suburgatory is Weeds without the weeds. Both have illustrated the weird, sterilized, conformism of suburbia, and they even share an actress in common - Allie Grant, who plays a plain-looking daughter in both. But I think Suburgatory plays up the quirkiness more for comedic effect, while Weeds uses it dramatically, even darkly, to show us how troubled, depressed, and bored these characters are with their lives. I mean it is considered a comedy, and it has its funny moments, but for me it played as if it should be a one-hour drama rather than a half-hour comedy, and most of the humour came more from the characters than their environment and its influence on them.

You could also say that Weeds is a lighter and faster version of Breaking Bad (a lot of the things that happened in one season of Weeds took 2 or 3 seasons to play out on Breaking Bad), with the parental figure dealing drugs to support their family, but trying to keep it a secret and thus becoming somewhat distant from them due to all of the unexplained absences. Even the drug itself is lighter, as weed is less dangerous than crystal meth. But maybe I should stop comparing it to other shows and just talk about it directly.

Nancy Botwin is likable because she's strong, smart, and adapts even when she makes mistakes, making her a capable heroine for the story. It's interesting watching her conduct business, because she is not who you'd expect to deal drugs, and therefore she doesn't always do things the same way that some shady thug might. Her sons and brother-in-law are douchey at times, as is her friend Celia, though by the end of the season I understood Celia better and am almost starting to like her. Kevin Nealon is also fun as Nancy's goofy accountant and pot customer.

I enjoyed the season, but I'm not sure if I can identify why. It's entertaining, but not addictive, and it's occasionally funny, but not super hilarious; it's weird, as suburban settings should be, and it has drive but not a lot of thick tension - though Mary-Louise Parker's performance alone almost brings it up to where it should be. I'm not saying this as a complaint, my feeling is just that a lot about this show seems...mild. Maybe it is a lack of cliffhangers, though they pulled out a nice one at the end of the finale. But it's only the first season, which for most shows is just an establishing season until things pick up steam, so I'll report back after I've watched season two.

Best Episode: "The Punishment Lighter", in which a college security guard confiscates Nancy's weed, Nancy confronts a competitor, and Celia loses and then regains her spot as head of the PTA in a loopholed power move.

This Week in Television - Oct. 10-14, 2011

2011-10-16T20:08:00.006-04:00

Tuesday night FOX programming is on hiatus until November.

Survivor: South Pacific
I didn't even get most of what Stacey was saying at the duel, but every season has that crazy person who rambles. I got what Cochran was saying about Ozzy's arrogant laziness even before he said it, and I think it was a good move to take out his ally. Coach's enthusiasm about finding the idol - and the claim that even his parents call him Coach - was just plain funny.

Up All Night
Probably the weakest episode so far, but I did enjoy the slight creepiness of the peek-a-boos at the beginning, and Reagan destroying the stroller with "Kayla's mom". Might have been a little too much exposition from Ava's assistant in the limo, though.

Suburgatory
To me, this episode felt a little cartoony in a Glee sort of way. However, Suburgatory has at least established that the whole suburban town is kooky, so they can do something unrealistic - like students waiting in the bathroom to save Tessa the best stall - and have it sort of make sense within the world of the show. But yeah, I liked last week's episode better. Kimantha is a funny name though, because it's so awful. Please, nobody name their daughter Kimantha.

Community
Wow, that was tons of fun. I know it's still early, but this episode is the one to beat for best episode of the season. It was genius how everything just fit together so well, like things being hinted at in one timeline and then revealed in another - especially the "Troy gets the pizzas" timeline, where everything - the boulder, Annie's gun, Britta's smoking, Jeff hitting his head, the creepy troll - worked together to create a crazy disaster comedy, and when Troy returned to observe the chaos I was reminded of the third room in Four Rooms. It also makes it true to character when many of the same things continue to happen in most timelines, like Britta's pizza dance and Pierce's bragging about banging Eartha Kitt in an airplane bathroom. And, like last week, I knew there were seven characters and a die with only six sides, so someone was going to have to point out that Jeff technically wasn't eligible to get the pizzas. The "dark timeline" in the tag was really funny, and I'm pretty sure the show Troy and Abed were watching in their pajamas was "Inspector Space-Time".

Parks and Recreation
Ron's Pawnee Rangers club would have been more successful if it were for adults. Or soldiers. Kids (and Andy) need fun too much. The "treat yo'self" day was funny, and made for an interesting group in Ben, Tom, and Donna. As with April and Andy, and then Tom and Jean-Ralphio, it is a proven successful formula to have level-headed Ben reacting to the craziness of others. The Batman costume making Ben's face look oddly fat only added to the humour of him crying in it. Chris' behaviour regarding Jerry's daughter was douchy, but funny because it's Jerry. Had it been anyone else, I might have considered naming Chris douchebag of the week.

The Office
The best part about Jim's fake garden party book is that the author's name was "James Trickington". Hilarious that Robert would be interested in hippo steaks and giraffe burgers, and that Dwight still thinks Jim and Pam's daughter is named Peepee. Andy created too much awkwardness though, and not in the same way that Michael would, because Michael was usually hilarious in doing so. Andy was just painful to watch here. Nice to see the return of both Mose Schrute and Kevin's toupee. And Darryl was totally right about Rosebud.

Fringe
This week's episode was really cool. I guess we'll have to wait on exactly how Peter was doing that funky warp thing, but I had already guessed it was him from the opening scene, so I was not surprised when he appeared at the end of the episode. I also knew Olivia wasn't going to send Walter back to the asylum. Actually this episode was predictable now that I think about it, but I still really enjoyed it anyway. Interesting to note that in this Peter-free timeline, Olivia has not met any other Cortexiphan patients. And is it just me, or did Peter's reaction to Olivia at the end of the episode seem a little distant and underwhelming? I mean he did smile, but for someone he's supposed to be in love with, hasn't seen in a while, and would have been worried that he might never see her again, all she gets is a smile and a greeting that doesn't have much emotion behind it? Maybe he doesn't remember anything from when he was stuck in between reality and nothingness (or wherever he was), and to him no time has passed at all since he disappeared?

Hero of the Week: Britta from Community, because "Roxanne" is a good song.

Douchebag of the Week: Andy from The Office. Don't try so hard, dude.

Submarine

2011-10-11T23:09:00.003-04:00

Impressions before seeing it
I never actually saw any footage from this at all before watching, but I was interested because it was getting some good reviews and was written/directed by Richard Ayoade, who plays Moss on The IT Crowd.

How was it?
I am a sucker for the indie movies that are shot and told in an interesting way. I'm not sure if Submarine qualifies as indie or if it's just more low-key because it's British, but it has that indie feel and that's a big plus because it had me charmed immediately.

The main character, Oliver, is noticing that his parents' relationship is failing just as he himself is landing his first girlfriend at school, and the movie follows his attempts to keep both relationships alive (he's not really a good boyfriend). That synopsis sounds pretty bland, but it's all in the execution. In a style somewhat similar to two of my favourite movies, Amelie and Mary and Max, it makes use of the little details like a character's likes and dislikes, and the quirky things they do to occupy themselves. I can't really explain why in words, but I will never get tired of that technique. It's maybe a little reminiscent of The Squid and the Whale as well, but more in terms of content than style.

I saw a lot of myself in Oliver, as he is quiet, introverted, awkward, and at times seems aloof, but his narration proves otherwise. He also does things I would never do, so he's not exactly like me, but I identified all the same. A high school student, he is in that crucial in-between stage where he is beginning to make adult decisions but still has the maturity and imagination of a child; Submarine is Oliver's journey to being less selfish. As he works on the two relationships, he is only applying selflessness to one of them, and only after saving his parents' marriage can he concentrate on being a better boyfriend. Maybe he's just not good at multi-tasking.

Recommendation
I really, really loved it. It kept me smiling (and occasionally laughing), and if you're a fan of the indie style then I highly recommend it.

This Week in Television - Oct. 3-7, 2011

2011-10-10T07:58:00.002-04:00

The Playboy Club
Well, The Playboy Club was canceled this week. I don't know why this one got the axe and Charlie's Angels is still going, because I caught a few minutes of the latter and it was awful in a way that should have been left in an earlier TV era. Different networks, though. Speaking of different networks, it looks like CityTV will air the remaining episodes in Canada, and Bravo may or may not be choosing to continue the series, so we're not done just yet. Anyway, last week's was probably the best episode of these first three. It feels like they're not sure what pace to go at regarding the murder thing, as they spent the first two episodes with it lurking in the background, then this week they almost blew everything wide open, and then they put it back down to just the mob boss' son being pretty much the only person left who is suspicious of Maureen. And it may have been overkill to add a third woman for Nick, putting him in a crazy love quadrangle - even if the third woman is a closet lesbian. We get it, he's a womanizer, that doesn't mean he has to have 50 regular girlfriends.

Glee
This episode was all about everyone worrying that they're not good enough, and then recycling the show's old "be happy with yourself and like who you are" theme. In other words, another after school special episode. It was funny when Mike's father suggested he was on drugs, and then we got the scenes of Mike dancing and hallucinating his father and Tina, and I was like "maybe he's on drugs after all!" Then I hoped his backup dancers in the audition were also hallucinated, because I didn't buy that he would bring them, or need them. McKinley must be a top of the line Catholic high school, because the production values on every single thing they do there are way too high for high school students. And Sue's very brief cameo in the bleachers during Brittany's performance seemed unnecessary and a lazy excuse to squeeze Jane Lynch into the episode because they didn't have anything else for her to do. Might as well have just left her out entirely, it wouldn't have made a difference to anything whatsoever in the episode. I'm glad Mr. Schue kicked Mercedes out of the glee club, because she's been spoiled since day one and no one has ever really acknowledged it. I mean what she said about Rachel might be true, and Rachel is also full of herself, but not really in an aggressive way that is destructive to others like Mercedes. P.S. Coach Beiste stuffing her face with spaghetti was kind of funny but didn't do any favours for her, or spaghetti.

New Girl
I think the storyline with Schmidt aiming too high in his conquests could have been used later on in the series as a way for him to realize that maybe he can get better women if he stops being a douche and trying so hard. Instead it just kind of resulted in him pitying himself for going home with Natasha Lyonne and having no apparent epiphanies about it, but I did enjoy the scene in the bathroom with Jess cutting off her underwear and being misinterpreted by Katie Cassidy as crazy and threatening. However, it's going to get old soon if every episode ends with the guys joining Jess in making fools of themselves.

Survivor: South Pacific
Good job at the challenge, Dawn. She was the underdog but somehow she won it. Stacey probably shouldn't have been voted out, but it was funny when Coach tried to hug her and she refused. Why is everyone always so arrogant about Redemption Island? Unless you're the very last person voted out, you don't just have to win one challenge to get back in the game, you have to win a bunch in a row without losing. What part of that sounds easy?

Up All Night
Nothing against Maya Rudolph, but I don't find her character as funny or interesting as Reagan and Chris, and Nick Cannon is even more useless, but then I've never seen him make a valuable contribution to anything. But I really enjoyed the stuff with the A-Team van and them thinking the Native guy turned into a bird. I'm liking this show, but I would like it more without the Ava B-stories.

Suburgatory
Missed the premiere last week because it screwed up when I tried to tape it, so I'm coming in on episode 2. I liked the bright, sterile atmosphere and quirky suburban lifestyle this show seems to be developing. I don't know if ALL of the humour is my thing, but I did get a big laugh out of Ryan saying he would want to have dinner with a dead Scarlett Johansson. I'm not entirely sure yet if I like this show, but I'll keep watching for now.

Community
I enjoy episodes like this, that are about the group dealing with their own politics. Interesting to note that Pierce already rose in popularity after being at the bottom a short time ago, although the rankings were based on who everyone would want to be partners with for class projects, not necessarily who everyone likes best. But I knew the group had 7 characters, so as soon as they campaigned the teacher to let them pick their own partners, someone was going to get left out. Chang's film noir story was hilarious, if only because he was acting so insane and I am amused by things that make no sense. The biology teacher's speech about Legos was true, too. Can you even buy a set of just plain Lego bricks anymore?

Parks and Recreation
I recall the "patriotic person secretly not born in the town they love" story being used for Hank on King of the Hill, but since that show was more hit and miss and the stakes are higher for Leslie, I think it worked better here. Also, it's awesome that this episode was about Leslie's book, because for those who don't know, it is a real book. It's sitting in my room right now. According to multiple forewords, Leslie wrote the entire thing from memory and finished it in a 55-hour marathon without sleep and hopped up on energy drinks. Anyway, another very fun episode - loved the stuff with drunk Joan, Andy being Burt Macklin again (which never gets old), Tom spraying himself with cologne (he just kept spraying and spraying!), and Ann trying to figure out how to get the two most antisocial people she knows to talk to her.

The Office
This wasn't one of the funnier episodes because it spent a lot of time on Darryl being depressed and didn't have Robert California, who I feel is a more entertaining Michael Scott void-filler than Andy. I found some laughs in the little things, though, like the applicant who ate Stanley's lunch, and Oscar's delivery of the line about the guy who "got fixated on his calves, and his triceps went to hell".

Fringe
I thought Peter wasn't supposed to exist, but I guess it was just adult Peter that got erased, as both child Peters kicked the bucket in this new timeline. The psychic link made the spore thing more interesting, because spores by themselves would have been boring, and Walter spending time with the lonely kid worked as a transition to finally moving towards finding Peter as he acknowledges the hole in his life. Maybe he'll build some crazy machine that will allow Peter to stabilize long enough to convey the message he's been trying to send.

Hero of the Week: Ann from Parks and Recreation, for finally figuring out how to get Ron and April's attention (not an easy thing to do).

Douchebag of the Week: Todd from Community. No offense, Todd.

This Week in Television - Sept. 26-30, 2011

2011-10-01T06:24:00.003-04:00

The Playboy Club
I thought this was a better episode than the pilot, mainly because they dropped Hugh Hefner's narration and weren't blatantly trying to show off how progressive Playboy was. Nick Dalton isn't really an interesting character so far, but the animosity between Carol-Lynne and Maureen can probably drive the show for quite a while. And I don't think using the key in the photo shoot was a good idea - apparently they have unique identifiers on them, so someone will probably see the photos and recognize whose key it is, getting Maureen in big trouble. Putting it in the "vanishing cream" afterwards was hilariously eye-rolling, but I would've just flushed it down the toilet. I'm betting there will be a scene where one of the other bunnies goes, "Can I use some of your vanishing cream?" and then finds it in there.

Glee
Well, that was fast. It's only episode two and we're already on to a boring, drama-filled episode. Does anyone actually beat anyone up for "lunch money", or does that only happen on TV? Because I know Glee loves to pull out the high school cliches and stereotypes. And as soon as Blaine auditioned, I saw it coming that the judges would want him to be Tony. Even Sue and Brittany weren't that great in this episode; the only good part was Kurt's dad, because he makes good fatherly speeches.

New Girl
Because of his reactions to Jess, I found Winston funnier than Coach, though there wasn't much to develop his character in this episode. Still don't like Schmidt, but without the douchebag jar he was, ironically, a little bit less of a douchebag. I wasn't really a fan of the gag with the guys putting on the pretty hats either, but I hope it served its purpose in getting Jess to finally move on from her ex-boyfriend. Confronting it in this episode was fine, but I don't think she needs to dwell on it for the entire season/series (and speaking of that, FOX actually gave it a full season extension!).

Survivor: South Pacific
Yeah, so Brandon is crazy, and it doesn't help that he's constantly trying to play the Christian card in his talking heads in a lame attempt to make the audience at home think he's a good guy. And it's not a good sign if even Coach recognizes how crazy you are.

Up All Night
I enjoyed seeing Wills Arnett and Forte together again in some expectedly weird but funny scenes (though not as weird as Forte usually is), and Christina Applegate's willingness to put vanity aside and do a scene where she wears baggy clothes, gobbles food messily and spills it on herself, and then gets it stuck in her teeth. It's when actresses refuse to do those kinds of things that people start to claim women aren't funny. Oh, and I don't know how intentional this was, but in the old Youtube video of Ava and B-Ro fighting, the way Reagan's hair was, Applegate totally looked like Kelly Bundy again.

Community
I like Pierce being his old racist self again, he's funnier that way. Enjoyed the model UN stuff for Annie's exaggerated tantrum, Jeff and Pierce having an immature argument through their countries, and Abed's obsession with the two parallel Earths. Britta is one of the less funnier characters, but it's nice to see her get to go crazy once in a while, and pairing her with Chang for the B-story was an interesting idea, though it didn't seem like the episode for Britta to have her own storyline because I would've thought she'd be applying her self-righteous activism to fictionally improve the world at the model UN. Then again, I don't think she protests things with the intention of actually accomplishing anything.

The Office
Yeah, Andy definitely felt like a Michael Scott in this episode, so much so that if they had done this episode with Michael instead, it probably would have turned out exactly the same, although whether Michael would have gone through with the tattoo is debatable, because he can be cowardly. I suppose the real difference in dynamic is that, according to this episode and last week's, the office started out generally loving Andy, while it took several seasons for everyone to finally love Michael. With the exception of Dwight of course, but Dwight almost never shares his co-workers' opinions on anything. Anyway, I knew the tattoo was going to be something nice when Pam switched it at the last second, but the Nard dog was perfect.

Parks and Recreation
Anything involving Ron and his ex-wives is always classic. Interesting that Tammy 2 turns him into a crazy, sinful demon while Tammy 1 turns him into a meek little church boy. The drinking contest was great just for everyone's reaction to the horrible liquor, and for Ron's odd way of shoulder-chugging. Ben at Entertainment 720 was similar to last season's episode where he helped April and Andy with their living conditions, but I suppose this is the opposite because April and Andy were just appallingly poor and messy, while Tom and Jean-Ralphio are very particular about everything but prone to ridiculous overspending. And anyway both were hilarious and in line with the characters, so it's all good.

Fringe
Except for the short Walter segments, this episode felt like they were just killing time and taking advantage of the main characters being able to cross between universes whenever they want. But it wasn't a bad episode, I thought the idea of a psychologist studying himself without knowing it was interesting, and the conversation between the two alternates nicely paralleled the one between the two Olivias in its suggestion that it may have come down to just one moment/decision that ultimately made their lives different. Would it be awesome or hackneyed if Peter ended up being in a surprise third universe? ...Where Olivia has BLACK hair!

Hero of the Week: Tom and Jean-Ralphio from Parks and Recreation. Even though 99% of the Entertainment 720 headquarters is highly unnecessary, it's also 99% hilarious.

Douchebag of the Week: Tammy 1 from Parks and Recreation, because I was as horrified as Leslie was at what she turned Ron Swanson into.

In Bruges

2011-10-01T05:50:00.002-04:00

Impressions before seeing it
Heard it was supposed to be funny, and I remember them liking it on Ebert & Roeper. Saw it was coming on TV and thought "why not?"

How was it?
In Bruges is the story of two hit men who just finished a job and are told to hide out in Bruges, Belgium while they wait for further instructions. The trailer makes it look like more of an action thriller than it is (it doesn't really become one until about the last 20 minutes); it's more about these two characters cooped up in this foreign town, one of them enjoying its charm and history (Gleeson), and one of them hating that it's so small and boring (Farrell). A lot of the movie is just them trying to keep busy and encountering characters while waiting for that important call, until we get the flashback of how the hit went.

Some of it was genuinely funny, though I did feel that Colin Farrell was sometimes being too hammy during the comedic scenes - however, it may be that I've just never been a fan of his because his screen presence bothers me for some reason. I will say that he handled the dramatic scenes much better, especially when trying to hold back sobs. The most enjoyable performance in this movie instead goes to Ralph Fiennes, as a really funny villain with a Cockney accent who still manages to be scary and intimidating even while you're laughing at him.

Recommendation
It's a fun movie. The non-action half of the movie is easy to get through because the two lead characters are kind of an odd couple and play off each other very well thanks to some smart writing, and this is one of those rare mixtures of comedy and drama where both seem to work well without getting in each other's way. Definitely worth a watch. Even if you don't like Colin Farrell.

This Week in Television - Sept. 19-23, 2011

2011-09-26T05:29:00.003-04:00

The Playboy Club
The pilot was entertaining enough that I'll continue to give this show a chance, but it did feel like an hour-long brag-o-mercial about how Playboy was so revolutionary for empowering women, blacks, and homosexuals. Clearly there is some embellishment from Hef as he imparts this to us in his narration. Eddie Cibrian sounds way too much like Jon Hamm to avoid Mad Men comparisons, but I thought Amber Heard was good (or she just entranced me with her beauty?) and I find murder cover-up stories interesting. It will probably get canceled as everyone inevitably boycotts it for not being as good as Mad Men, so I guess I'll stick with it until then.

Glee
Well, the premiere wasn't too bad but it's likely downhill from here. At the end of last season I expressed concerns that it would be lame for Sue to be nice to the glee club, and I'm happy to see that she hates them again. Very happy. I also kind of liked the idea of Rachel and Kurt being humbled by people who are better than them, because their egos have always been too big. Zizes leaving the glee club was a good idea, because judging by her one and only solo song, she was never able to sing, and not in the same way that the actress playing Sugar in this episode was obviously trying to sound bad. Quinn's "reinvention" felt like typical high school soap crap, but then that's normal for Glee. At least this episode didn't heavily focus on the student romances.

New Girl
As reflected in the promos, Zooey Deschanel was really the only funny part of the show, but that's fine with me. I mean the other characters are clearly trying, but with comedy being so male-oriented I think it's perfectly fine to have a funny woman and three unfunny guys. And I think every household (or group of friends) should have a douchebag jar.

Survivor: South Pacific
I didn't see any evidence that Mikayla is as Brandon described, but then it's only episode two and there hasn't been much coverage of Mikayla. So far Coach is keeping the samurai and dragonslayer talk to a minimum, which makes him less funny but more respectable. Not holding my breath, though.

Up All Night
I liked this episode's depiction of stressing out over wanting people to like you. Sometimes we forget that you don't really need to try in order for someone who is already accepting to like you. Also I enjoyed Chris using "being ironic" as an excuse to have bad taste.

Community
Biology, eh? I'm interested to see what they'll do with that. The Pierce thing was wrapped up more quickly than I thought it would be, but I think a little role reversal with Jeff becoming Pierce was the way to do it, and I'm sure it will continue to pop up here and there throughout the season. The 2001 sequence was awesome, as well as "Cougarton Abbey" and "Inspector Space-Time". And it was cool to see Jim Rash added to the opening credits; I guess we get more Dean this year!

The Office
Really enjoyed the barrage of reveals at the beginning. Andy as manager feels like he's just a milder version of Michael Scott, though I guess the biggest difference is that he's less likely to be obliviously offending people. I don't know if this will be permanent, but I got a laugh out of the new opening credits, where Ed Helms mimics Steve Carell's statue-straightening at the end but accidentally knocks it off the desk. They had a lot on their shoulders, figuring out how to reformat the dynamic with Carell gone, but I think using Andy was the smoothest transition, as he is the most similar to Michael, and Robert California's odd genius provides opportunity for everyone to react to it in ways we haven't seen. At first I thought he was just using the list to mess with everyone, but it did have a point and his "winners, prove me right, losers, prove me wrong" speech was actually very fair. Don't know if I liked the subplot with Pam crying at everything, because crying isn't always that funny unless you're Troy on Community, but the payoff in the tag was kind of cute.

Parks and Recreation
Poor Ann and her penis-filled inbox. Perd Hapley's generic, non-committal interview with Leslie was hilarious. I saw it coming that Ben knew Leslie was running and they had to break up, because it's just the logical solution. But maybe if she wins then they can date again, since they wouldn't be working in the same department anymore. And it's always fun seeing "Woodsman Ron", though I think it was partly an excuse to have him in a beard to disguise the fact that his mustache hadn't completely grown back after Nick Offerman shaved it during the break (it looked weird in the opening scenes).

Fringe
So it looks like it wasn't just Walter crossing over that set everything in motion, but also saving Peter, because it sounds like the observers were implying that he was supposed to die in both universes. I guess that was already apparent a long time ago. But given what we've seen mirrors do on this show, it's almost like the visions of Peter in reflective surfaces are showing that he's over in the other universe. It's also looking like Olivia and Lincoln might hook up, which would be a setup for Peter returning and finding them together, turning the tables after the Peter/Fauxlivia relationship while Olivia was away. Which is a worse excuse, "I thought she was you" or "I forgot you existed"?

Hero of the Week: I think the first hero award of the season goes to Andy Bernard from The Office, for sticking up for his co-workers and impressing Robert California. Go get 'em, Nard Dog!

Douchebag of the Week: And our first douchebag is Schmidt from New Girl. He already has a jar proclaiming him as such, but also he did bother me.

Louie - Season One

2011-09-20T09:31:00.003-04:00

Louie is not quite the show I was expecting it to be, but at the same time it is. Coming from comedian Louis C.K. it is of course a comedy, but I would actually classify it as a dramedy. More accurately I would say that Louie is a show not trying to be anything except honest. Louis's stand-up material is exactly that, so it's appropriate that his TV series would reflect as much, but it's surprising - in a good way - when an episode goes to a serious place. And again, it's not trying to make you cry or anything when it breaks out the drama, it's merely reflecting reality and presenting Louis's real views on touchy subjects like homosexuality, bullying, health, religion, awkward dating, and loneliness. Louie himself isn't really even a funny character much of the time; he is an average schlub reacting to the weirdness of other people with confusion, righteousness, and a sort of dispirited acceptance. Louie is not so much a sitcom as an essay on life, and in my opinion that is its best and most unique asset.

That being said, it does have its share of funny moments. Not nearly as many as other comedy series, but enough. Like Seinfeld, there are some interstitials of Louis performing stand-up comedy, and Louis plays a version of himself (who, according to the show's title, spells his name differently) getting into situations that are probably based on real life most of the time. Unlike Seinfeld, there is barely a supporting cast. Louie has two daughters, a brother, some other comedian friends, and the mother of his daughter's playmate that he befriended, but these characters are all semi-regulars and not permanent castmembers. It might seem like that wouldn't work, but it does. Ricky Gervais also makes more than one appearance as Louie's doctor who likes to mess with him and make fun of him constantly. But even funnier is Louie's therapist, who clearly has no idea what he's doing and quietly says the weirdest and most inappropriate things, never failing to make me laugh out loud. As a testament to the show, I have to say this: I don't usually "marathon" a TV show, because I don't always have the attention span for it and I like to make it last, so for a lot of shows I end up doing only one episode a day, but when watching Louie I went through two or three at a time. This show is different things at different times, but it's always entertaining and true, and I really, really like watching it.

Best Episode: Every episode contains something to love, but I guess I'll go with "Heckler/Cop Movie", where Louie deals with a heckler while on stage, and then plays a cop (badly) in a movie directed by Matthew Broderick. Honourable mentions: "So Old/Playdate", with Louie's hilarious therapist, and "Night Out", a nice, effective ending to the season.

Hanna

2011-09-20T08:41:00.002-04:00

Impressions before seeing it
It looked like a cool assassination thriller, and my buddy Corey said it was good.

How was it?
To be honest, Hanna isn't really that original of a film on paper. It's kind of a mix of story elements we've already seen elsewhere. For example, Hanna and her father, their relationship and their lives, are similar to that of Hit Girl and Big Daddy in Kick-Ass; Hanna has been training to be a killer and a survivalist her whole life, living in isolation and not taking the time to have a normal childhood and enjoy things the way normal children do. But parts of this movie are devoted to giving Hanna those moments, when she finally goes out into the world seeking her target, and along the way discovers wonderful things like music and friendship.

I am okay with derivative parts because all of them go together to make an enjoyable experience (i.e. the whole is greater than the sum of its parts). Even though I don't think Hanna actually traveled around the world, it has that worldly, Bourne Identity feel to it because of its exotic European locales and espionage intrigue. And it has a No Country for Old Men feel because of the way Hanna and Marissa (Cate Blanchett) pursue each other without actually meeting while the tension builds for their ultimate face-off. Those are two great movies, so it's not a bad thing to be reminded of them. But as I was saying before, Hanna stops to make a friend on her journey, and that is important not only for her as a character and person, but for us as the audience to know that we are following someone human and not just a killing machine, even if initially being a victim gives her a sympathetic angle. We need to know she's capable of love and joy, that she's still a young girl, or else we're just watching a robotic murderer, and some viewers would have a problem with that. I have to give kudos to Saoirse Ronan, who is not even 18 yet and already becoming a character actress. I've seen her in three movies now, and if I recall correctly she did a different accent in each one, none of them her native Irish. I'm going to call it right now: this girl will win an Oscar someday.

Recommendation
Hanna is a very cool and slick piece of intelligent action. You'll probably have a good time if you liked the other movies I mentioned, The Bourne Identity (and its sequels) probably being the most similar. I liked it.

This Week in Television - Sept. 12-16, 2011

2011-09-16T18:35:00.001-04:00

Survivor: South Pacific
Coach and Ozzy is kind of a mismatched pair to come back. It should have either been two players who know each other and have a grudge, like Rob and Russell last season, or Coach vs. Phillip in a battle of the crazies. Kind of annoying that, in Survivor's true exploitative, Russell-loving fashion, they have to put "RUSSELL HANTZ'S NEPHEW" next to Brandon's name instead of his occupation, because they still have to mention Russell as much as possible. And while Cochran is a dweeb, I will support him because so am I.

Up All Night
Overlooked this one when I was listing the new shows I might watch this season, and since there's not much else on this week I decided to check it out. I liked it, it has a similar sense of humour to the other NBC comedies, though they should've put it in their Thursday block instead of Whitney, which looks terrible and doesn't fit with the others at all because it's a laughtrack show. But anyway, I like Will Arnett and Christina Applegate, and they have good chemistry and both get to be funny. That's always a plus since wives tend to be "the straight character", but then this show was created by a woman, so the stereotypes of both "the unfunny woman" and "the stay-at-home mom" have been nicely subverted/modernized (the father stays home all day while she is the career woman). Maya Rudolph is also fun as an obvious Oprah/Ellen hybrid. Bottom line is that it was funny enough to have future potential, and in my opinon is a better alternative to what I've seen from Raising Hope, last year's other breakout dysfunctional baby-raising sitcom.

This Season in Television - 2010-2011 (Part 2)

2011-09-11T20:26:00.003-04:00

I meant to include this in part one, but I didn't get the chance and it would've made that post super long anyway. Since the new TV season will be starting up soon, I think this is a good time to go back and name my favourite episodes of last season. (Note: Survivor is not included, because it's a reality show and all of the episodes are too similar for any of them to ever stand out.)

The Cape
Probably the pilot episode, because it's the only one I didn't really have any problems with.

V
"Mother's Day", the series finale bloodbath that was actually kind of fun and fulfilled my wish to kill off the worst character on television. Yay!

Glee
Glee is pretty much always flawed, but I watch the show for the comedy of Sue and Brittany, and "A Very Glee Christmas" was an enjoyable enough episode that heavily featured both of them doing what they do best.

Running Wilde
"Into the Wilde" was probably the funniest of the series, but "It's a Trade-Off" was the most entertaining, where Steve and Emmy trade lives for a while and begin to take on each other's mannerisms.

Community
This is the most difficult show to choose a favourite episode for, because it's all over the map and does a lot of awesome things in different ways. "Cooperative Calligraphy" (the "bottle episode") might have been the most memorable because it was purely character and nothing else, and still stands out as one of my favourites. But there are multiple runners-up that gave us great genre parodies: "Basic Rocket Science", "Epidemiology", "Conspiracy Theories and Interior Design", "Abed's Uncontrollable Christmas", "Advanced Dungeons and Dragons", "Intermediate Documentary Filmmaking", "Paradigms of Human Memory", and "A Fistful of Paintballs". Told you it was hard.

The Office
"Goodbye Michael" was a perfectly wonderful send-off for a beloved character, and is a close second, but it doesn't quite match the epic "Threat Level Midnight", which was quite possibly the most hilarious and entertaining episode of the entire series, let alone the season. People should start doing the Scarn dance at parties and weddings.

Parks and Recreation
Every episode was solid this season, so this is also difficult. Stand-outs include "Flu Season", "Harvest Festival", "Fancy Party", "Soulmates", "Eagleton", and "Li'l Sebastian". If I was forced to choose one... I guess I'd say "Harvest Festival". It had such a big, climactic feel to it and featured a few of the recurring supporting characters, making it very true to the show's own nature because it had everything that is Parks and Recreation.

30 Rock
Whenever I think back on season 5, the episode that always seems to come to mind first is "Brooklyn Without Limits", guest-starring John Slattery as a crazy congressman. It's also kind of hard to choose a favourite for 30 Rock, but for yet another different reason, which is that for me the jokes are often more memorable than the storylines, so really I would just be choosing my favourite joke(s). And Congressman Steve Austin was one of my favourite jokes, but it was an ongoing one that lasted most of the episode. Runner-up jokes include the Mel Gibson montage at the telethon in "Operation Righteous Cowboy Lightning" and Jack and Liz's cold opening in "Double-Edged Sword".

Fringe
To be honest, I don't think I really found season 3 to be all that memorable. I mean I can easily say that my favourite season 2 episode is the one with Peter Weller, but there isn't a lot that stands out this time around. Maybe "Os", because I liked the idea of using a floating agent plus weighted boots to allow crippled people to walk (or at least stand up). And it was the first instance of Anna Torv doing her amusing Leonard Nemoy impression.

TV returns this week, and the full schedule is up and running next week! See you back here for "This Week in Television"!

Dexter - Season Five

2011-09-05T03:24:00.002-04:00

Season five starts out kind of slow (I don't even think he kills anyone in the first two episodes), but picks up steam once Lumen (Julia Stiles) enters Dexter's life. Every season has one big villain that he doesn't catch until the end, and it's not Lumen but she is the catalyst and his partner in crime. What bothered me about that was that Dexter's voiceovers kept talking like it was his first time working with a partner. What about Miguel in season three? I know he turned out to be the villain, but still, they did tackle some team kills together before turning on each other. I would've thought it would make him more wary of trying it again. But Stiles was really good in the role, and is probably a lock for the Emmy. Peter Weller, the second of the season's three big guest stars, was also fun to watch as a kooky agent spying on Dexter.

The later half of the season really cranks up the tension, as Dexter feels pressure from about four or five different sources all trying to nail him in some way. I might even say it was more exciting than season four, and I didn't think that would be possible. Jordan Chase (Jonny Lee Miller, big guest star #3) is no Trinity Killer, but whereas Trinity was the main attraction last season, Jordan is only one cog in a large, fascinating machine.

Well, one not-so-fascinating aspect: all of the B stories featuring Batista and LaGuerta's relationship. I used to like Batista until he married her, which was probably the worst decision anyone's made since Deb dated Rudy in season one. I don't know if the writers thought "Hey, Batista's a nice guy, let's pair him up with LaGuerta for some nice tender moments," but if it was another attempt to make her more likable, it sorely backfired. I only end up hating her more every season, and it makes me dislike Batista for loving her. Why do they play the sappy music every time BaGuerta (that's my new couple name for them) embraces? Does anyone actually care about this relationship? I know I don't. But yeah, ignoring that aspect it was an enjoyable season, built like a roller coaster with a slow climb at the beginning that becomes a screaming descent in the second half.

Best Episode: The last two were especially exciting, but I'd have to give the edge to the finale, "The Big One." Not only was it a solid, entertaining resolution, but I also thought it was brilliant and touching how Deb and Dexter did each other HUGE favours without Deb being fully aware of either one. Though with Dexter being closer than ever to getting caught, it was almost disappointing when everything went back to normal at the end. Dexter could go on forever if they keep resetting every season, but it's not the kind of show that needs to. Not that I wouldn't stick with it until the end either way.

Four Rooms

2011-09-02T22:56:00.003-04:00

Impressions before seeing it
I'd seen parts of it before over the years, but never the whole thing. I always thought the concept was kind of cool.

How was it?
Four Rooms is four short films, each taking place in a different room in the same hotel on the same night and connected by the bellboy (Tim Roth) performing his duties in each of them. Also, it's New Year's Eve and the bellboy is the only employee in the building.

The first room involves a group of women practicing witchcraft, attempting to revive an ancient goddess in the hot tub. Turns out they need the bellboy's sperm to finish the deal, but he doesn't want to be unprofessional by boning on the job. This one was weird and cartoony, and I don't think there has ever been a witchcraft story anywhere that interested me, so this was my least favourite.

The second room involves a husband and wife doing some bizarre and borderline sadistic roleplaying where she is gagged and bound to a chair, and he is crazy and wields a gun toward anyone who enters - which of course happens to be the bellboy. I didn't really "get" the roleplaying aspect, but the scene did manage to create tension and be entertaining, so it was better than the first one.

The third room involves a husband and wife who go out and leave their two kids unattended, asking the bellboy to check in every once in a while. "Don't misbehave!" the father warns them, as they proceed to do pretty much everything a kid shouldn't do and dragging the bellboy into the middle of it. This one, directed by Robert Rodriguez, was a funny and crazy "disaster comedy". Very enjoyable.

The final room, in the penthouse, involves a famous director (played by Quentin Tarantino, who also directed the segment) and his friends wanting to reenact a scene from the Alfred Hitchcock TV series. In short, they want to pay the bellboy a large tip to potentially cut off someone's finger. This one was my favourite, being a Tarantino fan, because it just has his recognizable dialogue and nuances. He knows how to write people hanging around doing nothing and still make it interesting. It's mostly one long (in terms of the whole short) setup for a really funny payoff at the end. A lot of critics apparently say the third room was the best one, but I would say they are already arranged in order from worst to best.

Recommendation
So to summarize, this is a fun movie with a unique concept, and Tim Roth plays the bellboy with a sort of lively but nervous energy, almost like he's strung out on drugs, that makes his participation welcome. The first two segments are too weird even for my taste, but it's worth sticking it out for the last two, and for the amusing interstitial between the last two that I neglected to mention above. Four Rooms bombed at the box office, just as Grindhouse did, which is a shame because both were experimental cult hits from Tarantino and Rodriguez. These guys should be better rewarded for their originality.

Eastbound and Down - Season Two

2011-09-01T20:37:00.003-04:00

After the events of season one, season two has Kenny Powers taking some time out in Mexico. He refers to it as a "spiritual journey", but really he was just too embarrassed to go back home, so he went the other way. I said in my season one post that his character didn't have any redeeming qualities, but now I think he in fact has two: his love for April, and his perseverance in pursuing both her and his baseball career. He's still sort of a jerk, but at least he cares about something.

I think I probably found season one funnier overall, but this season still had its share of hilarious moments. Having a whole new setting and almost a whole new cast, it almost felt like a spin-off series rather than a new season, so it's understandable if it feels somewhat different, though it's still told from Kenny's point of view so the tone is the same. Stevie also ends up tagging along, and he can be annoyingly needy at times (I suspect he has Dependent Personality Disorder), but he is also incredibly loyal and that's worthy of some respect, and his naivete does provide the occasional laugh. It was interesting seeing these two in the Mexican setting, Kenny being an uncultured redneck and Stevie having the innocence of a mentally challenged person, but I have to admit I was kind of relieved when they returned home at the end of the season. No need to keep drawing it out - everything Kenny did in Mexico was basically a substitute for everything he did in the United States, so he had to go back to the real thing eventually. And the next season is going to be the last one, so he's got about 6-7 episodes to tie everything up. Good luck, Flama Blanca.

Best Episode: I think I would have to go with "Chapter 11", where Kenny stays with his father (Don Johnson) in Mexico and considers living there permanently. That one was probably the funniest for me.

Super

2011-08-21T11:19:00.002-04:00

Impressions before seeing it
At first glance it sounds like Super is ripping off Kick-Ass, but then I started hearing that this movie was even more twisted and violent than anything Hit Girl accomplished, and it interested me.

How was it?
Ultimately, I think Super is darker, grittier, and more honest (i.e. grounded) than Kick-Ass. Frank/The Crimson Bolt (Rainn Wilson) doesn't have any powers, of course, but he also has no special fighting skills and no fancy expensive weapons or equipment; just a big, heavy wrench (and, later, some guns and home-made pipe bombs). It's also apparent that he may have a bit of a screw loose, which one would probably have to have in order to attempt the things he does. Some of the things he attacks people for are not even crimes, they just bother him on a personal level. And when I say "attacks", I mean he bashes their skulls in with his wrench, so yes it is shockingly violent. Ellen Page as his sidekick Boltie is even crazier than he is, enjoying the brutal beatings and laughing maniacally at her victims. If you can't laugh at violence then this is definitely not the movie for you, because it goes to those places.

But that's what makes it so great. It's twisted, weird, violent, dark, and sad, but also engaging and funny, and somehow all of it works together to create an honest reality, because life sometimes is all of those things at once. This character is far from perfect - without the superhero thing, he's actually kind of a boring loser; at the beginning of the movie he states that he has only experienced two perfect moments in his life, and that makes his journey all the more marvelous. Super is, I suppose, not a superhero movie. It's about an ordinary guy working up the courage to do one extraordinary thing in order to give his life meaning. As crazy as he might be, that's inspiring. Also, Nathan Fillion plays a cheesy Christian superhero on TV. So much win.

Recommendation
You'll probably like it if you liked Kick-Ass, but at the same time they are two very different experiences so it won't feel like either one is ripping off the other if you watch both. A dark and crazy sense of humour also helps, but I think you can also enjoy this one for the drama; it has its touching moments, too.

Year One

2011-08-20T08:37:00.002-04:00

Impressions before seeing it
I heard it was basically a bomb, but I like the cast and crew so I thought I'd give it the benefit of the doubt.

How was it?
I don't think Year One is terrible, I just think it's forgettable. Jack Black and Michael Cera had previously established themselves as capable comedic actors, but this movie just ended up being a star vehicle for their on-screen personae. We know too well that Black almost always plays the lazy, bumbling idiot and Cera almost always plays the awkward, cowardly loser, so basically Year One attempts to write itself by basing a lot of the humour on these typecasts, placing the characters in an era where having these qualities made it very hard to fit in and be successful. I did find some of it to be funny, because I personally don't mind seeing Black and Cera play the same characters all the time - they're good at it - but it may have been overkill to make them both leads in the same movie. Too much unoriginality at once. A shame, because it should have been better given that it was written by Harold Ramis and two former writers from The Office.

Recommendation
If you really like Black and Cera, then I suppose it might be worth watching once for a few laughs, but it's really not a movie that needs to be watched twice. The jokes are not hilariously everlasting and the story/adventure is not entirely exciting, so once again the most appropriate word for this movie is "forgettable."

Midnight in Paris

2011-08-20T07:28:00.002-04:00

Impressions before seeing it
The poster with the van Gogh sky caught my eye, and then I discovered it was a time travel movie by Woody Allen. Sounds like an awesome combination to me!

How was it?
Like many (or all?) of Woody Allen's protagonists, Gil (Owen Wilson) has a certain dissatisfaction about him, like he's looking for happiness but doesn't know where to begin. Then on a trip to Paris with his fiancee, he discovers that every night at midnight a car comes down the street and inexplicably drives him into the 1920's, which is perfect for him because in earlier scenes he was seen expressing love for 1920's Paris. Over a few magical nights, he meets a number of world renowned authors and artists from that time, and an enchanting French woman (Marion Cotillard), and learns a lot of important lessons from them. But to be clear, it's more of a feel-good dramedy than a preachy melodrama.

I always enjoy time travel movies, and I think an American tourist going back in time in another country is a new angle. I don't know how historically accurate it was to have all of these famous artists in one place at the same time in the '20's, but it made Gil's trips more interesting and it was fun to see them played by recognizable actors. As an aspiring writer, Gil encounters literary legends like Ernest Hemingway and Gertrude Stein with the same wide-eyed enthusiasm that we would if we saw a famous actor at the grocery store, and I think seeing the time period through his excitement helps modern audiences connect more easily to what may be lost on them. Also, the group Gil is traveling with in modern day is a little on the rich and pretentious side, making the earlier time period more appealing by comparison. As the movie goes on, they just seem to get increasingly insufferable, and his friends in the '20's more lively and human. It is this change of atmosphere and company that helps him decide what he wants his life to be.

Recommendation
There is humour and charm to be found here, and if you have an affinity for historical figures of the creative variety then that's a nice bonus, too. I only knew of them from various art and English classes, but I'm glad I did because it added that extra layer of enjoyment. It's not a necessary prerequisite for liking Midnight in Paris, though, but being a Woody Allen fan may help somewhat. I know I had fun.

Your Highness

2011-08-10T08:31:00.002-04:00

Impressions before seeing it
The trailer was awesome. A fantasy comedy with swearing and a good cast? Hells yeah!

How was it?
The most surprising part is that there weren't as many jokes as I expected. Or, rather, the majority of them were already shown in the trailer, making it look like more of a comedy than it is. I mean it is funny, but it's also a legitimate fantasy movie. On the blu-ray featurette, Zooey Deschanel aptly described it as "a dirty Princess Bride", which I think sums up the tone of the movie. If you removed Thadeous (McBride) from the movie, it pretty much would be a straight up fantasy. Most of the comedy comes from the premise that Thadeous is a lazy, cowardly, screw-up going on an adventure that requires the opposites of those qualities.

I remember Danny McBride saying that he and his buddies (i.e. the team behind Eastbound & Down) made this movie as a tribute to the fantasy movies they grew up watching. I don't know how much of Your Highness includes direct references, but it does have a scene that I hope is a nod to the great wagon chase scene in Willow, because it's fairly similar, and there is a labyrinth but that may or may not have anything to do with the movie Labyrinth. The sets and creatures and special effects all looked great, and as a fantasy nerd I loved taking it all in.
The American castmembers tried on some classy British accents and I think they were all decent enough not to take me out of the experience, and even though everyone except McBride was playing it straight, they had their funny moments too. Not enough Zooey Deschanel in the movie though, but that is a personal bias.

Recommendation
Ultimately, this movie was a flop at the box office and isn't very well liked, and if you look to it only for laughs then it can be disappointing (less so if you haven't seen the trailer or any clips). It took me about 20 or 30 minutes to really get into it, and then I started to enjoy it for the fantasy adventure that it is. And I do still love the idea of a fantasy movie with swearing. I hope to see more of that.

Childrens Hospital - Seasons One and Two

2011-08-10T07:12:00.004-04:00

Childrens Hospital (no apostrophe, because although it is a hospital for children, it's also named after a man named Arthur Childrens) began as a short web series but moved to television on Adult Swim for season two and expanded its episode length from 5 minutes to 11. I'm glad they've released the first two seasons on the same DVD set, because it would have been kind of a rip-off to have a dinky little set of 5-minute episodes by itself.

Anyway, this show is, to put it simply, extremely silly and extremely fun. At various points it parodies all of the famous doctor shows plaguing our TV networks, using such devices as the female doctors doing voiceovers every episode that pretend to be whimsical by tossing out metaphors about life and love (Grey's Anatomy); investigating a patient's house to help diagnose their condition (House); a doctor who heals using only the power of laughter (Patch Adams); that same doctor getting his own spin-off series (Private Practice); and the doctors constantly sleeping with each other and exchanging lovers (general soap opera crap from all of them). The story continuity is somewhat loose between episodes (especially with the relationships, as I mentioned. Nobody is a solid couple.), and this is reflected by the "previously on..." gags at the start of every episode, which consist of mostly unseen footage and sometimes a little bit of actual recap. Even the first episode has one. All of these things create the wonderful, wacky atmosphere of this show, which never gets serious unless its part of a joke. Speaking of the jokes, your sense of humour needs to be a little dark and twisted to enjoy some of the laughs, and mine is so I loved every minute of it. I also have to credit this show's unique ability to break the fourth wall by installing a fifth one. A fictional back story has been created for the series, stating that it has been on the air for 16 seasons, and all of the actors on the show are played by fictional actor alter egos, some of whom have accents or don't even speak English. Part of Childrens Hospital's whole gimmick is that it knows it's a show, and that's part of the show, because medical dramas tend to be revered and when satirizing them I think some self commentary on its own status is a necessary element.

Best Episode: A tie between two of the more self-referential episodes from season two: "End of the Middle", executed like an episode of a news show that takes a fictional behind the scenes look at Childrens Hospital after the show is canceled (also fictional); and "The Sultan's Finger: Live", which pretends to be a live episode and is full of fake mishaps and actors "breaking character". Brilliant.

Cowboys & Aliens

2011-08-06T10:28:00.004-04:00

Impressions before seeing it
I really liked how the trailer was set up: it started off looking like a plain old Western movie and then aliens attacked in a "Whoa, this is crazy" moment. I was interested, but a concept like that can either be really cool or really stupid.

How was it?
The last time Western was mashed up with sci-fi, we got Firefly, though that was quite a different experience so there's no need to make this a post comparing the two. Maybe the way to say it is that Firefly is more sci-fi than Western, and Cowboys & Aliens is more Western than sci-fi, and we'll leave it at that.

The reason I say it's more Western than sci-fi is because I came to the conclusion mid-viewing that this movie basically is a Western with the cowboys fighting aliens instead of Indians. It's a simple substitution, so I would hesitate to even call it sci-fi at all if not for aliens and space ships being regarded as sci-fi subject matter. I was constantly spotting common Western elements, like the violent, arrogant drunk causing trouble in town, and the enemy kidnapping loved ones so that a band of cowboys has to track them and rescue the victims, and the film's overall mindless simplicity for the sake of pure entertainment. Well, maybe it was a little more complicated than the average John Wayne movie, but not by too much. The cast was enjoyable - notably Harrison Ford as the type of grouch he's known for playing, and Paul Dano as the arrogant yet spineless prick he's not known for playing - and the action sequences were fun. There wasn't a lot of time spent on these 1800's cowboys marveling at the strange technology and creatures, which probably would have gotten in the way of the story's progress, but I liked that they never actually used the word "alien", not being familiar with science fiction in that period, instead referring to them as demons because they're Christians and it's the type of thing they would think. Almost surprising, though, to think that before this movie no one has really thought of fantasizing history and having aliens attack other time periods. It always occurs in present day. They could have just as easily done Knights & Aliens, though I suppose Westerns are more of a blockbuster genre than medieval period epics, and if it were medieval then people might mistake it for a sci-fi/fantasy mash-up, which would be less of a stark genre contrast.

I do have to say that, except for the concept itself, Cowboys & Aliens felt a little contrived. It felt like they borrowed a lot and did what was typical rather than what was unexpected. Olivia Wilde's character was the spike in the punch bowl, adding something different and unpredictable as far as her back story goes, but that spike almost ruined the party for me. I think it added an extra element that needlessly complicated things and slightly derailed the focus from the cowboys and the aliens. But hey, Daniel Craig's crazy alien bracelet was cool.

Recommendation
If you just go in thinking of it as a mindless action movie, you'll probably have fun. Just don't expect it to be groundbreaking or mindblowing. I liked it for what it was, but was slightly disappointed for what it could have been.

Wonderfalls - The Complete Series

2011-08-02T18:46:00.003-04:00

This show was probably doomed from the start, as it both aired on FOX and was created by Bryan Fuller, who has by now achieved a hat trick in creating original TV series that are canceled too soon (Dead Like Me, Wonderfalls, and Pushing Daisies). The other two, not being on FOX, at least lasted two seasons. Only four episodes of Wonderfalls were aired (a full season was produced), so being the lesser known of the three I'll explain what it is.

The series follows Jaye Tyler, a Niagara Falls gift shop employee who begins to worry for her sanity when animal figurines and other novelties with faces on them begin talking to her. They tell her to do things to set off chains of events that ultimately end up helping others, which is all fine and dandy except Jaye is a misanthrope and doesn't like helping people. However, she gets forced into it anyway because if she ignores them then bad things start to happen as punishment. The animals' instructions are often vague, so Jaye tends to misinterpret them at first, but by the end of every episode she realizes the message and completes her mission.

Caroline Dhavernas, who plays Jaye, is a very expressive actress here, sometimes taking it near cartoonish levels, but the show is part comedy and given the fantastic nature as well, that style of acting was appropriate. She made the character fascinating and fun, and carried the series well. Somehow I really got on board with the show's romantic storyline between Jaye and a bartender named Eric (played by Tyron Leitso, who is kind of a poor man's Matthew Fox). I think Eric might have been a little bland in another show, but I ended up liking him for his chemistry with Jaye. Maybe it was because he was as intrigued by her quirkiness as I was. Or maybe seeing someone like Jaye actually care deeply for him when she usually hates most people is what heightened the appeal of their relationship. Either way, I rooted for them to get together, only to be intermittently punched in the heart between moments of warmth. Also of note was Jaye's sister Sharon, 35 (inside joke from the show).

This show was an awful lot of fun to watch, and it's unfortunate that it didn't last longer, but I'm not overly upset; the ending wrapped everything up so that it felt like a series finale instead of a season finale. Wonderfalls as a one season series is fine as is, though that's no excuse for FOX to have pulled the old "let's move the show to a different night and then not promote the new night so we can cancel it" trick.

Best episode: "Lying Pig" was effectively heartbreaking, and "Cocktail Bunny" and "Caged Bird" contained some good tension and action sequences. I think I'll go with "Caged Bird", the series finale in which a wanted criminal locks down the gift shop and takes Jaye hostage along with her sister and co-workers.

Alice

2011-07-31T22:02:00.004-04:00

Impressions before seeing it
I think I stumbled on this movie while browsing around blu-ray.com, and then when I checked out the trailer I was delighted to see a lot of stop-motion animation with a slightly creepy edge to it.

How was it?
My problem with Tim Burton's version of Alice in Wonderland is that he didn't care about the original story (I don't think he ever does when doing adaptations/remakes). Not only does Czech director Jan Svankmajer care about Lewis Carroll's book, but judging by his film he understands it. Alice doesn't contain much logic or any moral lessons, and there are creepy, sinister, slightly adult undertones running through it, and that is what the book is. Watching this movie just made me dislike Tim Burton's version more because it did a much better job in 1988 than Burton did in 2010 with a way bigger budget, cast, and special effects.

The reason Svankmajer's adaptation is so brilliant is not just because it maintains the tone and spirit of the book, but because it actually managed to make the story fresh and unique. I've read the book and seen other movie adaptations, but watching this I was never bored and never knew what was coming next. The word "Wonderland" is noticeably absent from the title, and that's because in this version, Alice doesn't visit a strange, magical land. Instead, she is cranking her imagination/dreams up to 11 on a boring afternoon around the house. This is cleverly indicated by the sets, characters, and props, all made from things found around the house, and at certain points in the movie you can tell when Alice has wandered into, say, the garden shed or the pantry. Also omni-present is the same wooden desk with the drawer handle that always pops off; Alice may have an imagination, but it's limited to what she can find in the house. All of the creatures come to life in stop-motion animation, including Alice herself at times: whenever she shrinks, she becomes the doll used at the beginning of the movie to represent herself. I'm a big fan of stop-motion so I loved that aspect. Some of it was funny in a weirdly charming way, and some of it was a tad disturbing, but not alarmingly so - and, again, that's what makes it faithful to the book. And it didn't even have the fan favourite Cheshire cat, but many other characters and scenes are present.

Recommendation
I had more fun watching this than I thought I would (I was a little worried it might be too weird even for me), and can say it is the best adaptation of Alice in Wonderland I've ever seen. Or at least the most unique one. Fans should check it out, because this movie needs to be more well known.

The Ben Stiller Show

2011-07-23T19:31:00.004-04:00

The Ben Stiller Show was a short-lived sketch comedy show that aired on FOX in the early 90's, a time when FOX only had 1 or 2 hits and was not as big a network as it is now. However, they still canceled this show. Some things never change.

The unique thing about this show is that it was not filmed live, which was rare at the time because probably 98% of all comedy shows had a live audience or laughtrack. This allowed for better production values because of the freedom to shoot on location, and for sketches that were movie parodies, they actually looked like movies because they didn't have that live look.
To bring up its flaws, some of the humour was outdated and stale, and some of the sketches went on far too long. Also, the format of the show included interstitials featuring Ben talking to cast members and guest stars between sketches, and those were often unfunny and the worst part of the show. But there are some funny sketches peppered throughout the series (see below). The writing staff consisted of some brilliant comedic minds, including Stiller, Judd Apatow, Bob Odenkirk, David Cross, and Dino Stamatopoulos, who you might know as Star-Burns on Community. It may be an uneven series, but it's an interesting look at weird 90's humour and some talented people who were mostly still at the beginning of their careers. Andy Dick actually did some solid character acting and accurate celebrity impressions, and Stiller had some great ones too, often donning prosthetic noses and chins to help him look more like whoever he was doing. Judd Apatow even got in there for a surprisingly good Jay Leno impression. It was clear toward the last couple of episodes (and confirmed on the commentaries) that everyone was starting to run out of steam at episode 13, but it would have been interesting to see this show go on longer, and perhaps even change the format to remove the dragging interstitials.

Best sketches: I'm not going to choose a best episode for this one, since they're just a mix of clips anyway. Instead I will simply point out my favourite sketches from the series.

-Melrose Heights 90210-2402 - A parody of prime time teen high school soaps where Stiller plays two characters who are exactly the same except for different sideburns, and Odenkirk plays a student who dresses in gay S&M leather but somehow nobody knows he's gay.
-Advantage Agassi - A trailer for an action movie starring tennis star Andre Agassi (Stiller) as the racket-wielding action hero.
-Information 411 - A parody of Rescue 911 (remember that show?) hosted by Adam West that documents stories of people needing to call the information hotline in times of crisis.
-Bomb Squad - A sketch starring Andy Dick as a guy trying to diffuse a time bomb, but constantly stopping to do other time consuming things as the clock ticks for a seemingly endless interval, poking fun at movies where the bomb should have gone off but had to wait for exposition or character drama.
-Die Hard 12: Die Hungry - A trailer for a Die Hard sequel where John McClane (Stiller doing a hilariously exaggerated Bruce Willis impression) is fighting bad guys in a grocery store and cracking food related jokes.
-Woody Allen's Bride of Frankenstein - A weird but clever sketch idea that is basically what it sounds like: a Woody Allen movie where the characters are Halloween monsters. Andy Dick plays the Woody Allen role (a mummy with Woody's big glasses) quite well.

Gran Torino

2011-07-22T06:48:00.003-04:00

Impressions before seeing it
Heard it was good, and that some people found the violence controversial or something when it was released. Which doesn't bother me, it only makes me curious.

How was it?
Much of Gran Torino is Clint Eastwood doing what he does best: being a hard, angry badass. So if you're an Eastwood fan, you might enjoy it just for that. For everyone else, I will attempt to explain the appeal. Walt (Eastwood's character) is kind of like a scarier and angrier version of Carl Fredricksen from Pixar's Up. Having just lost his wife, who he deeply loved, he retreats into misanthropy, racism, and horrible memories of his time in the Vietnam War. And like Carl (yes, I'm still going with this comparison), Walt slowly begins to come out of his shell and enjoy people again when he befriends the Hmong brother and sister who live next door. But of course it's not a cuddly friendship movie like Up. The Hmongs are regularly harassed by gangs and thugs, and that's where Walt steps in to defend them using his geriatric Dirty Harry-ness.

Walt's character could have easily been unlikable, what with his grumpy, blunt manner, but he wasn't because I felt that a lot of his contempt was justified. I especially understood the disdain he felt for his own family, as they never seemed to care for him or know anything about him, and were always trying to get something from him, acting like he was the rude one when he refused. The people he thought to be scumbags and morons were scumbags and morons, and that makes us like Walt more.

This paragraph is about to spoil the ending, so skip it if you haven't seen the movie.
I don't know what the specific complaints were regarding the violence, but Gran Torino is really not that graphic. In fact a lot of it is just a looming threat of violence rather than actual bloodshed. Even the ending appears to be setting us up for a massacre (both because the story led us there and because it's Clint Eastwood seeking revenge), but it twists in another direction. In writing, they say the ending should be inevitable but not predictable, and that's what it accomplished. Walt's sins have weighed down on him his whole life, and he made the decision to deliver justice without sinning further. He confesses to a priest and then, perhaps for his own principles since he is not religious, absolves himself completely by giving his life for the same race of people he brutally slaughtered in the war, conveniently landing in the classic Jesus Christ pose as he is gunned down. I don't know if people thought of this as a cop out, as they were probably waiting the entire movie to see Clint Eastwood shoot someone, but that was, depressingly enough, the happiest possible ending to this story. I think Gran Torino is a movie about not always taking the easy way out or the easy choice, because sometimes you have to take the hard choice when it's the right choice.

Recommendation
I really enjoyed it. It has the look and feel of Eastwood's other recent directorial efforts, and there is no gratuitous violence like I somehow thought there would be. Not sure what else to say and this post is getting long. It was just good.

Stand By Me

2011-07-18T06:22:00.003-04:00

Impressions before seeing it
After briefly namedropping it in my post on Super 8, this conveniently came on TV and I decided to watch it since it has become one of those classics that everybody knows.

How was it?
"I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was 12. Jesus, does anyone?"

That's the closing line from the movie, and I think it sums it up nicely. Stand By Me is a road trip movie - albeit one without a vehicle, or a road - and like all good road trip movies, it explores the bond formed during the big journey. I think what that closing line, and the movie, uncovers is the strength of childhood friendships. The characters were already friends at the beginning of the movie, yes, but 12 years old is the perfect age for an adventure because you're young enough to have no responsibilities, and just old enough to be developing some adequate maturity, intelligence, and life experience, yet again still young enough that you're not too old to just have some silly fun along the way. The boys do fight and argue on plenty of occasions, as anyone will when forced to spend too much time together, but the significant thing to note is that they each have their scene in the film where they break down, they reach their emotional breaking point, and the others are right there to help them out of it. I don't feel that this would have happened if someone broke down at the beginning of the movie. It feels like they were still kids at that point, and this journey to see a dead body is their first real activity as adults. That kind of experience (and the sobering effect of seeing a real dead body up close) tends to bring people closer together, and I think it created a loyalty that probably wasn't there before they departed. It is also interesting to note that everyone in the movie who is older than the four main boys is essentially a douchebag - with the exception of Gordie's older brother (John Cusack), though he is dead and only seen in flashbacks, so he doesn't really count. I think this was a deliberate choice to accentuate the friendships and favour youth for nostalgia's sake, though it could also be seen as Gordie's potentially biased interpretations of these people and/or adulthood in general.

You could even say that this movie is Lord of the Rings with a cast of kids. You have your group walking a long distance with a set destination and end goal in mind, and a group of villains traveling to the same place with a more sinister version of that goal in mind, and a confrontation when they get there. Or maybe I'm just comparing them because they're both movies about walking.

Recommendation
I am always fond of movies where a group of kids are going on an adventure that is bigger than them, and as a result they have to act more mature than they are. I would put Stand By Me with Super 8 and The Goonies and The Sandlot (not an adventure movie per se, but it is about a group of kids working together on a specific goal) as a movie in that category that fascinates me. Doesn't hurt that it's a road trip movie, either.

The Adjustment Bureau

2011-07-04T23:43:00.002-04:00

Impressions before seeing it
The trailers reminded me a lot of Dark City, what with the men in fedoras freezing time and making changes to the world. I liked Dark City, but I didn't think this was necessarily going to be a ripoff because it focused more on romance.

How was it?
The important thing to note is that Matt Damon and Emily Blunt had good chemistry going on. When a movie heavily relies on the viewer caring about a relationship, as this one does, it has to be done right or else literally the entire movie crumbles into a dustpile of failure. Fortunately, not only are the two leads talented enough to pull it off, but their scenes together were charming and made enough of an impact that it was easy for me to root for them. Perhaps there are viewers who didn't fall for it, I don't know. It's a matter of taste.

I also enjoyed the sci-fi/fantasy elements involving the men in fedoras and their mysterious powers. It wasn't as similar to Dark City as I might have thought, but there's a little in there, as well as elements of the observers from Fringe, and even Monsters Inc., in a way. But it was more or less original (still based on a Phillip K. Dick story, I know) and interesting. We have seen the "man vs. fate" story before, but I think "love vs. fate" is a little less common - and I'm not counting romantic comedies, those don't tend to use fate as an overarching bully. This movie is a romance, but more of a romance for guys.

Recommendation
It's a good one to watch if fate is something that has always fascinated you, but again it's also enjoyable for Damon and Blunt's chemistry. The ending was predictable, but the journey was fun so overall I liked it.

Breaking Bad - Season Three

2011-07-04T22:33:00.003-04:00

I've been waiting a long time, but finally here we are at the third season of the most flawless show on television. Season two (and season one, for that matter) didn't really end on too much of a cliffhanger, but this show is so addicting that it didn't need to in order for me to keep watching. But boy did they kick it up a notch in round three.

This season we had several episodes that opened with flashbacks, which ingeniously served to not only remind us of key elements from the first two seasons, but to give us a hint of character back story/development that would play a role in the rest of the episode. Some were fun, like the reveal of what Jesse did with Walt's life savings in the pilot, and some were very dark, like when the old man nearly drowned the kid to provoke his brother into saving him. The one with Danny Trejo's second appearance nicely raised the stakes by showing that the assassin brothers took him down.

But yeah, it seemed like everything was bigger and badder this year. Walt goes "pro" by cooking in a large, sterile lab, Saul and Skylar become much more involved as it takes more work to cover Walt's criminal lifestyle, Hank comes within inches of discovering his brother in-law, and everything culminates in full blown conflict with the drug bosses. The wonderful irony of all this is that at the beginning of the season, Walt was attempting to get out of the business, but by the finale he's in deeper than ever. Walter White is one of the most fascinating characters on television, and also one of the most badass. Clearly you don't want to mess with him. But what always amazes me most is the performances of both Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul. These are the kind of intense, seamless performances that make you forget you're watching actors because they're just so believable as their characters. It may get a little tiring for Cranston to win the Emmy every year (though he's not eligible this year since the show has been on hiatus that long), but damn if he doesn't deserve it every time. Fun fact from a DVD extra (awesomely titled "Pizza of Destiny"): when Walt threw the pizza on the roof, he did it perfectly on the first take. Is there anything Cranston is not good at?

Best episode: Up until the finale I would have said "Fly", a "bottle episode" of sorts where Walt and Jesse lock themselves in the lab until they can catch an annoying fly, but it was then outshined by the finale episode, "Full Measure", in which Walt and Jesse plan a murder in an attempt to ensure their safety from the bosses who turned against them. I love tension, and that episode was full of it. The only thing I hate about this show is that I'll probably have to wait another whole year for the season four DVD. But it will be worth it.

Futurama - Volume 5

2011-06-23T07:36:00.002-04:00

Like Family Guy before it, Futurama is a show that didn't really need to come back. It wasn't serialized, it didn't end with some agonizing cliffhanger, it had probably been gone long enough for fans to get over the loss, and for me personally, the four straight-to-video movies were a satisfying enough return that I would have been okay without a new season. But on the other hand, it also didn't need to be canceled and I always enjoy FOX's mistakes being rubbed in their faces, so here we are.

I'm not sure if the writers got rusty during the hiatus or if it's predominantly a new writing staff, but I have to say I was disappointed with the humour. Maybe they're just getting older and their tastes have changed, because the show is now similar to current episodes of The Simpsons in that it tries more frequently to either take the characters seriously or rely on the tired stereotypes of their personalities. Even an episode involving Leela stranded on a planet with Zapp Brannigan - which should have been gold because Zapp is such a ridiculous character - went in the wrong direction and failed to be funny, and footage of the show within a show, "The Scary Door", had a much funnier intro than its actual content. In most cases I probably got one small laugh per episode, if that.

However, I still found this season watchable because they did have some cool and interesting science fiction story ideas, which was part of the show's original appeal anyway. And there is some obvious fan service present in the show's attempts to bring out nearly every minor character seen in Futurama's first run, but as a fan it's kind of hard not to smile with nostalgia when Hedonism Bot saunters into the room. I wouldn't recommend checking out this set for the comedic value, but if you just really enjoy science fiction then I'd say think about it.

Best Episode: The one I probably laughed the most at (but again, small laughs) was "The Futurama Holiday Spectacular", in which we get three short stories about Xmas, Kwanzaa, and Robanukah. But I think my favourite overall was "The Late Philip J. Fry", where Fry, Bender, and The Professor take a long journey through the future in a one-way time machine. That one was memorably cool, if not funny.

Super 8

2011-06-20T08:44:00.002-04:00

Impressions before seeing it
Like Cloverfield before it, Super 8 kept its trailers mysterious so that they didn't really betray what it was about. Mystery = interest, and it was getting good reviews, so high expectations.

How was it?
This was one of those movies that I was already liking in the first five minutes. It reminded me of The Goonies (and, I assume, Stand by Me, though I still haven't seen that one) because it was kids bordering on childhood and adulthood in a serious situation. These kinds of movies come with that wonderful sense of nostalgia for what it was like to be a kid and still feel like what you were doing was as important as what the grownups do. Even if it does take place in 1979, before I was born.

To explain it briefly, six kids are filming a movie when a crazy train crash happens right next to them. What they find spilling out of the cars, and the repercussions of the accident, lead to a lot of trouble and weird stuff happening.

With Spielberg producing, it's probably no coincidence that Super 8 feels like a Frankenstein of Spielberg films: there are elements of E.T., Close Encounters of the Third Kind, War of the Worlds, and maybe even a little Jurassic Park. And let's not forget that he also produced The Goonies, which I mentioned above. To some that may make J.J. Abrams look like a hack for writing this, but it's better to borrow a little from each than to take a lot from just one. Anyway, I'd say this film is just as much mystery as it is sci-fi. We see a lot of weird things going on without an explanation for them, and we don't get a good look at the crazy alien monster until late in the movie. But as fun as all of the special effects and action and weird occurrences were, I just liked watching the kids be kids. Amidst all the chaos, Super 8 is really just six kids trying to make a movie, and since I am fascinated by filmmaking, that was fine with me. As a bonus, you even get to see their finished short film in its entirety during the end credits.

Recommendation
I can see this one making my top 10 of 2011 list, unless 10 more really awesome movies come out in the next 6 months. Highly enjoyable, and all those child actors actually held up really well in the acting department. I'm going to go with the typical movie blurb line and say "If you only see one movie this summer, see Super 8!"

My Top 10 Movies of 2010

2011-06-15T02:56:00.007-04:00

I know people usually do these in December or January, but I needed time to see the potential candidates. I probably saw less than 20 films from 2010 so this wasn't that hard, but here were my favourites...

UPDATE Nov. 28 2011: Machete has been bumped in favour of a much more deserving film (see #6).

10. The Town
After Gone Baby Gone, Ben Affleck brings us an even more high tensioned and action packed crime drama. There are way too many heist movies and "one last job" movies out there, but rather than being a crappy blockbuster made purely for the cash, The Town plays more like a Scorsese film.

9. Toy Story 3
Pixar builds on what they established in the first two movies to bring us a slightly darker, more mature, and sweeter ending to the story of the toys we grew up loving. Is there anyone who can keep their eyes dry during the hand-holding scene?

8. 127 Hours
A guy stuck in a canyon for a whole movie can be really boring if done wrong, and even though you know going in that he's going to cut his arm off and escape, 127 Hours is still a gripping look at raw survival. Well played by James Franco with some interesting but highly effective directing choices from Danny Boyle.

7. Scott Pilgrim vs. The World
A movie for nerds who love video games and/or comics, it's this hyperreal and wildly entertaining ride with all kinds of cool special effects and references thrown in. If Sin City was the closest a movie can get to a comic book, Scott Pilgrim is the closest a movie can get to a comic book video game.

6. Blue Valentine
Charming but tragic, and most of all, honest, this is the kind of romance movie they should be making more often. It's not idealized or polished, it's just real, and Michelle Williams and Ryan Gosling played it perfectly with just the right amount of chemistry.

5. Kick-Ass
It might have been this movie that started that wave of "superhero with no super powers" stories (and there are more coming), but none of them were as good as Kick-Ass. Funny, a good story, and some great action sequences, it's just very cool all around.

4. Hot Tub Time Machine
Time travel movies are always fun, and what makes this one a blast is all the hommages to other time travel movies and 80's movies. Not all of it necessarily makes sense, but who cares? It's one of the funniest and most entertaining movies of 2010.

Art School Confidential

2011-06-08T05:15:00.002-04:00

Impressions before seeing it
I just wanted to see this movie for its title. Not a lot of movies about art school.

How was it?
Art School Confidential is like a painting: at first you only see the image on the surface, but if you watch the whole movie you will be surprised by a deeper meaning. It does start off like a typical college comedy and starts setting up romantic potential, preparing you for that kind of movie, but then it takes a more serious turn and pulls out some insightful commentary on things like success, creativity, and fame. Some of the more interesting scenes, for me, were the ones in the classroom when the art students were critiquing each others artwork. The main character, Jerome (Max Minghella), is a talented artist but the other students either ignore his work or bash it because, as good as he is at realism, his work is also "inside the box". On the other hand, everyone praises the work of Jonah (Matt Keeslar) for its simplicity and lack of adherence to any rules or conventions of artistic design - "It's like he's never seen another painting before", one student says in awe. In a subplot, one of Jerome's roommates (Ethan Suplee) is attempting to make a movie about the campus strangler but keeps getting stuck, so the beatnik girl suggests that he stop trying to make it like every other movie.

So what is art, then? Is this movie saying that art is not allowed to be conventional? Jerome knows he has talent and spends much of the movie frustrated that nobody else is acknowledging it (something I'm sure every artist goes through at some point), but does that mean that everybody else is wrong? I think it goes back to the old saying, "beauty is in the eye of the beholder", and that is why they had Jerome fall in love with the art model (Sophia Myles). She poses nude for the class, but he draws her portrait from the shoulders up, suggesting a more intimate and respectful portrayal of beauty that she doesn't fully understand until the end of the movie. All of the budding artists at the art school have a certain pretentiousness stemming from their own preconceived notions of what art should be, but Jerome seems to be the only one who understands that real life is art, too, and that's why his style is realism. I also kind of liked the sad but true implications that fame and popularity do not necessarily have anything whatsoever to do with talent (Lord knows Paris Hilton is a perfect example of that), but I suppose the ending is a happy one. Jerome did say that he wanted to be a famous artist, but he didn't say that he wanted his art to be famous, or even good.

Recommendation
I think it's a must see for anyone with an interest in art and the art business, because it has more to say about those things than one might think. Don't expect a raunchy college sex comedy like Van Wilder, because this isn't that. The reviews were mixed on this movie, but I really liked it thanks to my interest in art and creativity, and I found that the storylines did ultimately fit together, even if others didn't think so.

This Season in Television - 2010-2011

2011-06-02T20:59:00.004-04:00

Today is the second anniversary of the blog, so thanks to everyone who stopped by (i.e. no one) over the last two years.

To celebrate, here's a special season-ending post recounting some of the highlights of the TV shows I watched this year.

Best New Show: I didn't stick with any of the new shows I watched this season, but then all of them are now canceled so I couldn't anyway. Running Wilde was the best of the bunch because the others can all be considered lame, and while I don't consider Wilde awesome (nowhere near as brilliant as Arrested Development), it had some funny moments.

Worst New Show: My Generation, canceled after two episodes I believe, which tells you a lot. I only watched one, which tells you even more. The concept was kind of interesting on paper, but they blew it.

Best Comeback: After a slightly sub-par season last year, 30 Rock came back with a lot of hilarious episodes, to everyone's relief.

Worst Comeback: The series finale of V had some good moments, but it was one of those shows where too many characters are acting like morons every episode. Glee is also frequently flawed, but at least that show has Sue Sylvester, and I would rather watch her than Tyler Evans any day.

Most Creative: No contest, the answer is Community. It's one of the most creative shows on television right now, and this season we got a WIDE assortment of experimentation in genre and style. It's like nothing else on TV right now, and I am totally ready for another season of parodies, pop culture references, and ridiculous fun.

Least Creative: No Ordinary Family, a show so bland that it did literally nothing new whatsoever and tried to disguise that fact with cool superpower effects. However, the cool superpowers are what kept me watching for a few episodes (ditto for The Cape's nerd factor), and why My Generation got "Worst New Show" instead.

Best Finale Cliffhanger: Cliffhangers are usually better suited to dramas, but I have more comedies on my schedule, and Fringe was more "WTF" than cliffhanger, so this one goes to Parks and Recreation, which actually kind of pulled out multiple cliffhangers for each of its characters.

Hero of the season: Michael Scott from The Office, who won the hero award more times than anyone else this season (4, to be exact). I've always enjoyed his antics, but as he finally made his exit this year, we saw Michael grow into someone who is wiser, more mature, and more likable than he ever was in the old days, and he made us miss him. Runners up: Pam from The Office and Andy from Parks and Recreation, who each scored 2 hero awards this season and had some touching moments of their own.

Douchebag of the season: Yes, folks, it's Tyler Evans from V. Most of the characters on that show are often stupid and/or bland, but Tyler outshines them all and, if I'm not mistaken, was considered the worst character on television by everyone who ever watched. He was a whiny, angsty, ignorant tool who was only ever motivated by daddy issues and wanting to jump Lisa's bones (okay, can't blame him for that one), and I was complaining about him almost every week even though he only made douchebag twice. Runners up: No one is as horrible as Tyler Evans.

BONUS SNEAK PREVIEW! After watching some trailers for upcoming shows, I have decided which ones I may be interested in next season. Here they are, in order of how excited I am to see them (most to least):

This Week in Television - May 23-27, 2011

2011-05-27T20:49:00.001-04:00

Glee
That was one of the laziest and most sloppily written episodes of television I've ever seen. It seemed even campier than usual for Glee, especially in the opening scenes. I felt like the characters were almost parodying themselves and/or delivering their lines as if they were in a live play. And why were the girls having a pillow fight in their hotel room? Was that scene written by 12 year-old boys? Additionally, it's too much of a movie staple to have feathers flying during a pillow fight. I don't think they stuff pillows with feathers anymore, and anyway you would have to be hitting really hard to burst them open. But for a finale, where was all the tension and the cliffhangers? And remember at the end of the last episode when Quinn hinted that she had "plans for New York"? The payoff for that was awesome--Oh wait, there was no payoff because she was in the background doing nothing for the whole episode. Seriously, the writers made it look like she had some evil plan to get Finn back and then they turned it into...Quinn cutting her hair. FAIL. I do think Brittany's "My Cup" was a better song than Rachel's "My Headband", though.

Across the Universe

2011-05-23T07:06:00.002-04:00

Impressions before seeing it
When I first saw the trailer a few years ago, I thought it looked campy. When I watched the trailer again more recently, I had a different outlook and really liked how the visuals and movement in the shots went with the music, and I became more interested.

How was it?
I know this movie has a bit of a cult following, and I suppose I can see why, but on most levels it just didn't do it for me personally. I like The Beatles, but - and this is also one of Glee's many flaws - I usually hate hearing covers of familiar songs because they're never as good as the originals. And that's just the music.

There is a story running through the many Beatles songs but I didn't really find it compelling, and the characters spent so much time singing and dancing to songs that weren't personal to them due to being well-established Beatles songs that I didn't feel like I knew them very well, and thus I couldn't connect with them during what were supposed to be the emotionally moving scenes. In fact, the integration of the songs with the story felt forced to me, hitting the audience over the head by naming all of the characters after names found in Beatles songs and turning some lyrics into lines of dialogue and/or actions for some of the songs that weren't sung. I actually found myself rolling my eyes when a character climbed in through a window and introduced herself as Prudence, followed up by Jude saying "She came in through the bathroom window." I don't know, maybe some people find that clever or cool, but to me it just feels hackneyed and lacks subtlety. And I can't put my finger on it, but I really didn't like Jim Sturgess as Jude. His onscreen presence bothered me enough that I disliked the character when I could have at least been indifferent to him. On the plus side, this movie does have some weirdly unique visuals that I enjoyed seeing on Blu-ray. Maybe worth one viewing for that, but I don't know if I'll be coming back for a second look.

Recommendation
I can't say I recommend it because there were just too many things I didn't like, though maybe I'll change my mind again in a few years. If you're looking for a musical that is truly awesome, I would suggest Once, 8 Femmes, or Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog.

This Week in Television - May 15-20, 2011

2011-05-21T09:06:00.002-04:00

Survivor: Redemption Island (Sunday Finale)
That was actually fairly predictable and had no surprises. Most of the jury didn't even have questions for the final three, there were just a lot of angry comments. But I say this every season and I'll keep saying it: three people in the finals is pointless, because one of them always gets 0 votes. Every single time. And I knew this time it would be Natalie, because coattail riders don't get votes unless the jury has literally no respect for the others. Rob may have blindsided everyone, but he's no Russell. I thought the reunion show was actually more surprising because it contained things I wouldn't have expected, like Russell shaking Rob's hand, Grant still being pissed at Rob, and Phillip apparently being a real federal agent.

Glee
Glee rarely has any emotional effect on me, but for me the heart of the show has always been Sue and her sister. NOT the kids and their fickle romances, or even Mr. Schue and Emma, but I suppose they might be a very, very distant second. So I found this episode to be touching, until Finn broke up with Quinn again, and then I went back to not caring. And I don't like the idea - scratch that, I hate the idea - that Sue is going to respect Mr. Schue and stop trying to take down the glee club. I hope that's only temporary, because if her sister is dead then Sue is only at her best as the evil supervillain.

The Office
All of the guest stars were an obvious ploy to keep people interested without Steve Carell around, but I didn't mind much because I enjoyed all of the interviews with those strange applicants. I think my favourite was James Spader, somehow bordering between creepy and awesome and reminding me of a smarter, more aware version of Dwight. But I also really liked the build up to "The Finger Lakes Guy" being Jim Carrey, and I would like to see Will Arnett guest star on Community, because then he will have appeared on all four of the great NBC comedies. I don't think things are looking good for inside candidates Dwight, Andy, Darryl, and Kelly, and the network probably wants one of those movie star outsiders who can bring ratings, so maybe one of those actors can clear their schedules to return permanently in the fall. I'm hoping for Spader, Carrey, or Arnett, but Creed as manager was a hilarious substitute while we wait over the summer.

Parks and Recreation
These last two episodes of the season were brilliant. First, everyone dealing with Chris' changes to the department made for an interesting and funny storyline, and I'm getting on board with the Leslie/Ben relationship, so I didn't mind watching them get sloppy with their secrecy, which became an even bigger ripple effect in the second episode as it nearly destroyed the horse funeral. That one was especially brilliant with all of the developments that popped up without the episode feeling crowded: Li'l Sebastian dying, Tom possibly leaving for Jean-Ralphio's company, Leslie possibly running for Mayor and having to break up with Ben if she does, Chris possibly wanting to date Ann again, April becoming Andy's band manager, and the appearance of Ron's mysterious OTHER ex-wife Tammy, who is apparently so evil that even the hardcore Tammy we already know is scared to death of her. That is a lot to pack into a half hour, but they did it and it was amazing. The whole season has been strong, actually. Well played, Parks and Rec. Well played.

Hero of the Week: James Spader on The Office. Explanation not needed.

Douchebag of the Week: Angela from The Office, who already got it once for the same reason: too much boasting about her senator boyfriend. This week also adds her condescending remarks to Pam. Get off your high horse, little woman!

Glee's season finale is next week, but otherwise this pretty much concludes the television season. Keep an eye on the blog this summer, as I will be doing some special posts. We have the blog's second anniversary next month, I'll be doing a post on my favourite movies of 2010 (late, I know), I'll be watching some TV shows on DVD, and there will be a post about this entire TV season where I hand out plenty of pointless awards, including hero and douchebag OF THE SEASON!