This Week in Television - Mar. 25-30, 2012

Once Upon a Time
It was interesting that they gave a reason behind the Mad Hatter making all those hats, but like Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland I don't think it's within the spirit of the original setting to apply logic to any of the characters or events from Carroll's work. I like that Emma is starting to believe in the fairy tales, because it takes the show in a new direction. Maybe that mysterious "writer" who came to town intended to make Emma believe so that she could break the curse and then, if he really is a writer, he intends to write the fairy tale book about Emma saving Storybrooke.

New Girl
While funny, I think this episode was somewhat forgettable, but the best part for me was Winston's reaction to Schmidt and Cece. Way to be funny again, Winston. Not really buying the chemistry between Jess and Russell as a romantic couple. Friends, maybe, but I think there is too much difference in both age and lifestyle for it not to be a little weird. But as I said last week, I support the prolonging of a Jess/Nick hookup.

Survivor: One World
Sometimes the players get rid of "threats" way too early, and sometimes they don't get rid of them at all even when there's a perfect opportunity. Why is everybody worrying about the jury when there isn't even a jury yet? If you're going to vote out a threat when there's 12 people left, you vote for someone who is good at challenges, not Jonas. But Tarzan trying to convince everyone that it was dirt in his underpants and not poop was funny.

Community
I can't put my finger on it, but something about the storylines in this episode didn't quite feel like Community. Maybe it was because there were three seperate sub-groups and not enough time with the whole cast together. I don't know. It felt off. But the Britta/Subway romance was funny, which also led to Pierce hilariously drinking a dangerously unhealthy amount of ink. I don't think I enjoyed the fort-building as much, because Troy and Abed are so great to watch as friends that I actually feel a sense of melancholic disharmony watching them fight. Maybe that's what nagged me about this one.

30 Rock
I love Jack's "shower principle." It's completely true: the mind creates good ideas to entertain itself when the body is busy with mundane activities. Or at least mine does. I like the idea that a journal can be a cheat sheet for a predictable, repetitive lifestyle, although it suggests that Liz's solutions are just temporary fixes and not preventative measures. While Liz drew comparisons between Hazel and Kenneth because they're both weird pages, Hazel actually acted more like Jenna in this episode: psychotically selfish.

Up All Night
Surprisingly, I found something funny in this episode, and that was Julian's sleaziness ("Is this the 'ladies I'd like to do it with' convention?"). I wish they would use him more, but he is a sparse tertiary character.

Awake
When they throw out these episodes that hint someone knows about Mike's double life, it makes the show more interesting than just a police procedural with a cool twist, so I'm all for it. If this Gemini knows about the dual worlds, then it's possible that either he is himself experiencing the same thing, or, because I believe the green world is a dream, he is the part of Mike's subconscious that secretly wants to know which world is real, the part that Mike has to fight if he wants things to remain the way they are. I kind of want Mike to go to Oregon just to see what that would be like.

Fringe
It's almost ingeniously lazy to reuse a case from a previous season but be able to tweak it because of the new rules of this season. I really liked the idea of Walter saving up gifts for Peter; it provided some nice moments. In fact, I think I enjoy Walter and Peter's father/son relationship more than the Peter/Olivia romance. Lincoln tasting the smoothie antidote was also a highlight due to how funny it was. Poor sap is into Olivia in every universe but he's stuck in the friend zone. It's his own fault for not liking peanut butter.

Hero of the Week: Walter from Fringe, for caring enough to get his dead son some beer and porn.

Douchebag of the Week: Vice Dean Laybourne from Community, for disturbing the Troy/Abed friendship. THEIR HANDSHAKE INVOLVES HEART PATTING!

Carnage

Impressions before seeing it
Never saw a single frame of preview footage. I was just excited about the cast, and the prospect of the concept, because good actors yelling at each other is fun.

How was it?
So these two couples have a meeting to smooth things over after their sons got in a fight at school. They start off friendly and polite, but eventually they begin to offend each other, then piss each other off, and the event escalates into unrelated anger tangents and everyone ganging up on each other in different combinations. I cannot imagine a better thing to do with four talented actors. This was even more fun than Attack the Block, and that's saying a lot.

Carnage is based on a French play, which shows because the whole movie takes place on one set and is very dialogue driven, but the script and performances completely sold it. As you might imagine, it gets funny when these civilized adults, even while acknowledging themselves as such, get out of control and begin behaving childishly. It's fantastic. The ending felt somewhat abrupt, but it had to be in order for the final shot to put the parental meeting into perspective. I like that basically the entire message of the movie is summed up in those last frames. That's filmmaking efficiency.

Recommendation
This is one for the people who like watching actors act. In a film like this, that's all there is to rely on. Check it out; it's immensely entertaining.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

Impressions before seeing it
It looked like an interesting intelligence thriller along the lines of Masterpiece Theatre's Page Eight, which I really enjoyed but didn't end up writing about on this blog. And Gary Oldman is always great.

How was it?
Unfortunately, I have to admit that I found this movie difficult to follow. I can save some face because I was at least 30% distracted by the food I was eating while watching it, but it's more than that. I would liken it to The Wire in that the cast is somewhat big and it doesn't do the best job of putting names to faces so that you know who the hell people are talking about. It was too complex, subtle, and smart for me to get into. I know I often complain when viewer intelligence is insulted, but this is at the other end of the spectrum, assuming the viewer is smart enough to catch everything and thus making me feel like a huge moron. Maybe I'm overreacting and I'll get it if I watch it again without distractions, but sometimes I'm just stupid. At least the acting was good.

Recommendation
It's not a bad movie, you probably just have to be smarter than I am to enjoy it. For a more accessible intelligence thriller, I'd recommend Page Eight instead.

Melancholia

Impressions before seeing it
Lars von Trier has made some unique (if morbid) films, and a wedding before doomsday sounded interesting. To me, pre-apocalyptic is a richer concept than post-apocalyptic, and the latter is done more often than the former.

How was it?
In some ways, I feel like Melancholia is the film that The Tree of Life should have been, or wanted to be. The indulgent artiness is kept to a much more tolerable minimum and is actually relevant, and all of the handheld footage documenting the characters' lives has more of a narrative to it. It's not trying to be poetic and elusive, it just lets us feel for these people as they struggle with whether or not they're about to come to a cataclysmic end.

And they most definitely are. That's not a spoiler, because we see it happening in the film's opening montage. There's a reason von Trier wanted us to know that at the beginning of the movie, but that reason actually is a spoiler so I won't go there except to say that I loved the implied reveal of it. I really enjoyed this movie in spite of it being anti-climactically climactic. What I mean is, unlike a film like Don McKellar's Last Night, which is more centered on people trying to prepare for the end by doing everything they've always wanted to do, Melancholia is mostly about sulking over the possibility that it will happen. There's not a whole lot of rushing around to cross off bucket lists, which is interesting in its own concept and that's why Last Night exists, but I think the inaction here represents the mediocrity of daily life and the laziness of human spirit, even in the face of oblivion. I'm not saying that's what everyone would do in that situation, and I don't think von Trier is either, but it may be a somewhat more grounded approach to the event than McKellar's film (which is not a bad movie, if I recall.) And for anyone who claims that Kirsten Dunst can't act, this movie should shut them up.

Recommendation
Personally I think this movie should have been nominated at the Oscars over The Tree of Life, but because of an unfortunate comment made by Lars von Trier in an interview, the media jumped all over a chance for negative press and the Academy shunned the entire movie. Not really fair to everyone else who worked on it. Anyway, I think it's a fascinating film, and if you find it too depressing then couple it with Last Night, the more positive version of this movie.

This Week in Television - Mar. 18-23, 2012

Once Upon a Time
I can buy that David remembered a fragment from the fairy tale world - I knew it would happen as soon as he stepped into the psychiatrist's office - but how would he not mention the part where Mary Margaret had long hair and was wearing medieval adventurer gear? If he wasn't supposed to have remembered what she looked like at the time, then they didn't do a good enough job illustrating how hazy the memory was. I also noticed that this episode was heavy with catchphrase-type lines (though Kitsis and Horowitz, the creators, did write TRON: Legacy, so it's not surprising), and seemed like it was attempting to fit in nearly all of the show's established characters. But they are finally building toward something, and for that I thought this was ultimately one of the series' stronger episodes.

New Girl
The storyline with Winston and his lady friend worked better with Schmidt added in, and I think I much prefer it when Schmidt is a more self-aware douchebag, voluntarily stuffing cash into the douchebag jar even when no one is around. That is a funnier, more likable (and tolerable) version of the character. Nick is becoming more and more a pathetic bum with every episode, but again I think it's a funny direction to take the character, so no complaints. I'm proud of this show's progress, as I recall in the pilot when Jess was the only character I found funny, and now we have a more well-rounded cast. I am wary of the show's hints that Jess will end up with Nick (this week her description of the guys she dates sounded like him), because I think romances on comedies work better with guest stars than between castmembers. So it's good that this cool rich guy showed up, at least for now.

Survivor: One World
Evil Colton gets taken out by karma! Awesome. Now if only the same thing would happen to Alicia. She and Colton were just being unnecessarily mean to Kristina. They're not good people. And Jeff seems to be catching the fever, as he has now taken his biased commentary one step further to outright insulting poor challenge performers. To be fair, he was mostly insulting Alicia, who deserves no sympathy due to her behaviour, but knowing Probst I'm sure it had less to do with who she is and more to do with her performance in the challenge, so he's still a dick.

Community
With all of the crazy impersonators running around in addition to the unusual amount of graphics and special effects, this episode was weird, but in a good way. It was still funny - Dean Pelton's reaction to Jeff in aviator glasses was priceless - but it also went to some serious character places, such as Troy and Abed having to confront the problem of excessive escapism, and Jeff struggling with his ego. If they continue those quirky peeks into Jeff's internal organs, we might one day get a Jeff Winger Operation game that includes a slot machine heart and ego apple.

30 Rock
For the record, I know who Krang is and would love to see a sketch about him. But I would settle for characters just repeatedly using "Krang" in sentences. I was surprised that they would pull Kenneth out of his new job so soon after spending the last few episodes lining it up so the character had something fresh to do. Maybe the writers just said "it would be funny if Kenneth was a janitor, but he would never quit his page job and we already fired him, so how do we get him there?" and the promotion story was born. But it does leave room for potential parallels to when Jack worked his way back to the top from the bottom.

30 Rock
Like the last time they aired double 30 Rocks, one of the episodes was clearly more awesome, and that was this one. Billy Baldwin playing an actor playing Jack Donaghy in a TV movie? Nice touch. (I imagine Billy is the brother Alec is closest to, but I don't know why I imagine that.) Weird Al Yankovic parodying Jenna's song, and then reverse-parodying her when she tries to outsmart him by writing one that's already silly? Genius. Kenneth's admission that he lies to himself every day and is close to breaking point, in what is the most depressing Kenneth moment in the entire series? ...Disturbing. In Canada they cut off the ending tag where Weird Al sings the theme song, but thanks to Youtube I was able to enjoy the extra meta joke about 30 Rock's ratings and fans.

Up All Night
It was kind of obvious Chris was going to do all the things Reagan told him not to do when he got on air, and then they just went to the old "working with spouse = bad" storyline. This show just doesn't have much imagination comedically - or often even dramatically - and with the way the writing has been, it probably would have worked better as a laughtrack sitcom. And when I say "better", I still mean lame, but the live format is more appropriate for unimaginative humour.

Awake
Apparently this episode was aired out of order, which shows because Rex is still distant and angry when he was supposed to have grown closer to his dad last week. But it was interesting that they used the dual realities this week to explore someone's life going in two opposite directions, even if one of them isn't real.

Fringe
The love potion thing was an interesting concept, but they didn't explain what happened to that dude's face. I know the deformity was likely his motivation for wanting to create a love potion, but seeing as this is Fringe, I was expecting some kind of horror story behind it. But I can't say I was moved by Peter and Olivia's reunion; they've been apart so long now, I can't even remember if I ever "shipped" them.

Hero of the Week: Weird Al Yankovic on 30 Rock. I may have mostly outgrown his music, but he's still Weird Al.

Douchebag of the Week: Alicia from Survivor, because it horrifies me that she is actually a special ed teacher. What does she teach them, gym?

4-Way Feature: The Descendants, The Adventures of Tintin, Immortals, and Attack the Block

Trying to cross things off my "want to see" list from last year so that I can break out a Top 10 of 2011 list, so here's another time-saving 4-way post with four of those films. More coming soon.

The Descendants
I love that the Dean from Community won an Oscar for co-writing this, although I wouldn't even come close to calling it a comedy in spite of it being advertised as such. It's not that it failed to be funny, it's that it rarely tried, and where it did it was incredibly dry humour, which isn't really my taste anyway. But never mind that, because I really liked it as a family drama. My favourite scenes were the ones involving Matt (Clooney) and his oldest daughter Alexandra (Shailene Woodley, who is a talented up-and-comer if this performance is any indication of future work from her) investigating the man with whom their wife/mother was having an affair. They played those scenes with just the right amount of curiosity, nervousness, smugness, and anger, and had great chemistry together. I was less interested in the Hawaiian land subplot, but they managed to tie it back in to the family, and it ultimately ended up working as a demonstration of character growth.

The Adventures of Tintin
While watching Tintin, I thought two things: 1) This might be the best looking animated movie I've ever seen, and 2) This is like if Wallace and Gromit starred in Indiana Jones. Truly, the action and adventure are nearly non-stop, and like Gromit, Snowy is potentially smarter than his master except for the fact that he can't speak. It's fun to watch, but I think the one thing holding the movie back is that Tintin as a character isn't that interesting. He doesn't have much of a personality, he's just there to drive the action along and, I suppose, make everyone else in the movie seem cooler by comparison. I was only vaguely aware of the existence of Tintin growing up, so I never got into it and therefore can't say how accurate anything is, but my guess is that Tintin's dog was always more fascinating than he is. But yes, not a bad little adventure flick at all.

Immortals
I'm a fan of the director's other films The Fall and The Cell, so I was looking forward to Immortals. The Greek mythology isn't very accurate, or so I'm told, but if it's all fiction anyway then part of me thinks it doesn't matter. They probably would have been better off inventing new characters, though, instead of using the names from mythology and changing everything else. Anyway, this one's probably closer to 300 than the two films I mentioned above, although it does look fantastic because Tarsem is a director who knows how to construct beautiful visuals. But if it can be possible, I think Immortals is entertaining without being engrossing. I mean the action and story are adequate, but during the climactic scenes I wasn't on the edge of my seat dying to see what happened next. It didn't have the...charisma to pull me in, but I didn't dislike it.

Attack the Block
When I saw the trailer, I thought it looked kind of cool, but at the same time I wasn't exactly sure what to expect. It turned out to be loads and loads of fun. It may seem like a comedy because Nick Frost is in it, but it's more of an action/horror/sci-fi with a few throw-away one-liners, which I didn't particularly find hilarious but it didn't get in the way of my enjoyment. Attack the Block can be likened to a more adult version of The Goonies or Super 8, as it follows a gang of teens and kids who stumble onto something bigger than they can handle, leading to one wild night of action and adventure. But there is an interesting aspect of redemption thrown in, too; when the movie opens, they're assaulting and robbing a woman, but then aliens attack, and the gang members become the heroes by saving that same woman's life, and suddenly we find ourselves liking these guys. They may be thugs, but they still know we're all part of the human race.

This Week in Television - Mar. 11-16, 2012

Once Upon a Time
Interesting twist. I wasn't expecting that Ruby would be Little Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Wolf, but mostly because this show, while altering the original fairy tales, hasn't been huge on reversal plot twists. Not really that interested in what happened to David's wife, though.

New Girl
There was a lot of focus on Schmidt playing bongos, and it wasn't a funny gag, but I like that they at least used this episode to establish him as the one who keeps the place clean. It was understandable that Jess might try to change him, but if the state of the apartment is that horrible without him, then they need Schmidt to be the way he is. The stuff with Nick owing Winston money was funnier, but kind of made Nick look like a douche.

Survivor: One World
The promo spoiled the twist again, so I was nowhere near as shocked as Survivor wanted me to be because I knew a tribe switch was coming. Tribal council was funny, with Tarzan having trouble with names and Leif complimenting Monica, they made it look like Colton's vote was going to be screwed. I would've loved it if that happened. But I'm hoping that Kim and Chelsea can use their new idol to mess up Colton and/or his idol, once the merge happens.

Community
It's so nice to finally have Community back. That hiatus was, in a way, worse than a summer break, because during a hiatus it's off the air when it doesn't need to be. I think it was smart of them to use "Season One Pierce", i.e. the more lovable, senile old goofball, because as fans we want to be happy to see the characters back, and it would be a little grating if they slapped us in the face with "Bully Pierce". And of course a lot of great gags, including the racist camera, the callback to Jim Belushi's mediocrity, Troy and Abed trying to act normal, and the contents of Jeff's slot machine heart (I think I saw Alicia Witt in there). While I love the more creative episodes, like the multiple timeline one earlier this season, this was the perfect one to return with, because it was just some warm, joyous time spent with the characters we love being themselves - even Troy and Abed, because their peculiar attempts to be different people were still indicative of who they are.

30 Rock
I enjoy watching characters play games, so seeing Jack Donaghy get stomped at a roleplaying tabletop game and then figure out how to get back on top was awesome. It's also funny every time Dennis tries to win Liz back, but luckily Liz has learned not to get sucked into his vortex of destructive failure. Also, there were Hulk hands.

The Office
As much as I liked Andy and Erin together in the past, I wasn't feeling their chemistry in this episode. And I'm not really enjoying the character of Nellie, and not because she seems to have stolen Andy's job. More because her comedy seems forced, as if the writers think that the more Catherine Tate keeps talking, the funnier she'll get. Unfortunately, there is news that James Spader's leaving, which means Tate's probably sticking around. Robert California wasn't as awesome this season as he was in his job interview in last season's finale, but he was at least interesting. I don't know how many guest star bosses they intend to have, or when the series will finally wrap up, but here's my idea for an ending: Ricky Gervais finally gets the manager position, makes a "that's what she said" joke in his first five minutes on the job, and then cut to a talking head of Jim, who says, "Aaaaaand we're back where we started."

Up All Night
I don't like this new boss dude at all, and his presence in the episode somehow made it feel like a Canadian sitcom (meaning very dry). But I didn't see it coming when Ava's "little sister" back-stabbed her to get in with the cool girls, so I appreciated the surprise. Ava's attempts to insult them were clearly lame, but I thought the girls would just walk away unaffected and Ava would shout some more unfunny insults at them or something. Bonus: Will Arnett said "I've made a huge mistake" in this episode.

Awake
It seems to me that the red world (where his wife survived) is the real one, and the green world is the dream, because in this episode and last week's he used the red world to gain information for the green world. Information that it would have been very unlikely for him to know subconsciously. It's more reasonable that he would seek out knowledge in real life and then use it in the dream, because the other way around implies that he basically has psychic abilities, and I don't think this is that kind of show. But it's only episode three, so who knows.

Hero of the Week: Jack Donaghy from 30 Rock, for turning a barren desert into a field of glass.

Douchebag of the Week: Nellie from The Office. I'd rather she went away.