pbulmer

What does a somewhat shaky premise, a well written suite of characters and some pretty solid acting give you? A pretty good show.
Fringe, which plays on Tuesday nights at 9 pm on Fox, will never be an amazing, knocks your socks off seat of your pants show. What it will be, for at least the foreseeable future is a solid show filled with actors who seem to be fairly workman like (my favorite kind) and made by a producer – JJ Abrams – who almost always had some promise in the things he’s produced (the new Star Trek not withstanding – I mean come on, how can you screw up something that badly, and I’ve only seen the casting!).
In case you were not aware the show’s premise is that science and innovation have come to a point where it is no longer institutionalized, and instead labs and secret and highly illegal and immoral experiments are going on all over the world; privately funded, privately run and accountable to no one. It’s a somewhat silly premise, when we live in an age where we’ve become keenly aware how important specialization is to science, but if you’re willing to suspend your sense of disbelief that an alumnus from the show Dawson’s Creek is actually a good solid actor, you can accept the show’s premise. Once you accept that, (and continue to accept that the show’s wonderful resident mad scientist is equally adept at high microbiology as well as high end quantum physics) the show is actually rather enjoyable.



Much of that is tied up in the lead actress, one Anna Torv, who, as with all JJ Abrams’s lead women, is strong, witty, tough as nails and makes a fairly believable woman (and I really love the fact that she’s pretty much completely socially inept – what nerd couldn’t fall in love with her?) with the added benefit that she doesn’t cry at the beginning middle and end of every damn episode (I’m looking at you Sydney Bristow). Joshua Jackson plays the son of the resident mad scientist, a genius who isn’t socially awkward, and who has a past that will definitely come back to haunt him. John Noble plays Jackson’s character’s father, Walter Bishop, who is well, mad. And awesome. Honestly the show is made by two characters, Olivia Duham (Anna Torv) and Walter Bishop. He says the most gleefully mad things, but mixes it up by being brilliant and mostly lucid. Honestly if there were one thing I would change about the characters it’s that Walter Bishop could actually be MORE insane, but that might make it rather unbelievable that Olivia would continue to work with him (yeah, yeah, I know).

The show’s not perfect. There are a lot of plot holes, and as with just about all JJ Abrams shows the overall plot line, such as it is, doesn’t hold much weight, and is frequently filled to the brim with travel problems (in the same day you travel from Boston to Northampton, to Germany to Boston to Germany to New York and all in the space of 24 hours. Uhm…yeah. The morally questionable company with an agenda, Massive Dynamic, is inexplicable, and possibly responsible for the strangest scientific coverup ever (seriously if you want to play with morally and ethically awful experiments why do it in America and not, say, China. Or North Korea. Just saying.). But overall this is a fairly enjoyable show and a good follow up to House on a Tuesday night.
So overall, B with a good shot at a B+ or an A-.

The Wrestler



I'm not convinced. It caught my eye because Aronofsky directs and I loved Pi and Requiem for a Dream was such a fantastic movie, but it seems like such a strange film for him to direct considering all of his other work. He's never been a wide audience guy, and I'm not sure he can make it work. But Mickey Rourke is a good actor (although he looks botoxed to all hell here) and the rest of the movie looks to have a solid cast. We'll see.


2012



It seems like everyone is obsessed with this date. Maybe the world is really going to end, and if it does and in 2010 the Knicks do acquire Lebron James (which I kinda doubt) they better sure as hell win a title in 2011, so I can live to see a Knick Parade in NYC. But I digress. I probably have no intention of seeing this movie - armageddon movies rarely interest me - but the visual is just so stunning that I had to give this one a nod.


Monsters vs. Aliens



I didn't expect anything out of the trailer, but it left me, oddly, with the same kind of feeling after seeing the trailer for Toy Story almost a decade ago. The humor actually looked funny. Then again, this humor is somewhat lower class, and the actual animation is a step or two below what PIxar is currently doing, but still, it looks fairly funny.


Up



It's Pixar. Enough said.


Seven Pounds



I don't know why this has caught my eye. Perhaps it's because when Will Smith doesn't play a character that is a slightly changed version of the Fresh Prince of Bell Air, he's actually a really good actor. Six Degrees of Separation was awesome in large part because of his acting job in it. Perhaps it's the title (I haven't done any research on what the seven pounds refers to). Perhaps it's the slightly schmaltzy look the movie has, but the movie looks interesting. I might wait till it comes out on video, but I might see it.


More tomorrow, now I'm going to bed.

So I'm mirroring the blog here:
verticalhold.wordpress.com

This is a little bit because I don't like the idea of livejournal much, partially because I'm not a teenage girl, and partially because a friend of mine who does a pod cast (who I will link to when it's not some godawful hour in the morning) informed me that I should keep the page there. Whichever you want to read is fine. Both will continue being updated, and probably with the same information, although I reserve the right to change it.

The first season of Heroes was inspired. Comic books and comic book tropes are laughed at in the main stream pretty much constantly. It took Neil Gaiman writing his ass off during the Sandman series to get recognized for greatness. This of course completely discounts the (somewhat less) greatness of people like Chris Claremont, Fabian Niceiza (I think I got his name right, and I’m too tired and lazy to look it up), Kevin Smith, Frank Miller etc. Maybe they’re not on the same plain. Maybe they’re not as good. But they do deserve some credit, even in the mainstream. It takes a lot of skill and talent to write a serial, more sometimes when you're working with the progress of so much history. The past is prologue, but when there's so much prologue, sometimes it's hard to tell your own story.



So when Heroes came along I, of course, being a long time comic book nerd, flocked to it. I was hooked by the third episode. There was a villain that lurked in the shadows, and you never saw his face, and what he did was horrific and fascinating (though predictable). There was the fact that Manhattan was going to explode. There was the fact that Hiro Nakamura (played brilliantly by Masi Oka, a veteran of the mostly underrated Scrubs) was endearing and captured the mainstream as well as those who understood the tropes of the comic book genre. There was the fact that it was well written, well acted and it was the first good show about a group of people with power since….well since when. Smallville became a joke (and really, always was – despite the fact that Kristen Kreuk is hot), the 4400 is, at least to me, inconsistent (also I don’t really get USA, so I’m stuck on reruns when I do see it – actually, I don’t even know if it’s still on) and really those are the only other two shows that have similar themes.



But something happened to Heroes after the first season. It still has it’s moments. While the second season was mostly pretty weak (which I’ll chalk up to the fact that with the oncoming will they/won’t they writer’s strike) the season ender was fairly strong. I hated Sylar. He doesn’t work as an ongoing through several seasons character. He was better in the shadows and once he stepped into the light, and (eventually) killed his mother, there really wasn’t much more they could have done with him that they didn’t do before. Yet, he persists. In many ways he’s reminiscent of a character Joss Whedon wrote named Spike. Remember him? The villain that just wouldn’t die, despite the fact that he should have somewhere in the fourth season? Sylar became that villain. Only he’s not as good as Spike. He’s annoying, he’s not funny, he’s boring and he doesn’t have the staying power.
When you find yourself reading, or writing, a serial you come to realize certain things. First of all, the narrative structure is almost always the same. Think about it – your favorite shows all have the same ways of telling stories, and they get repeated over and over again. While the mode of telling stories is repeated though, the story does not. That, unfortunately, hasn’t happened with Heroes. The narrative structure certainly hasn’t changed. The formula stays pretty constant – you have an episode about the future, you have an episode about the past (not necessarily in that order). There are some endearing changes – notably in the second season where Hiro goes into the past and stays there for a few long episodes that I wish didn’t take as many episodes as it did. But besides that, the season starts with hints (or in some cases, they simply show you) of impending doom, and they move on to showing you how the past is informing the present and how the future turns out if the worst comes to pass. The problem is that along with the narrative structure, the narrative hasn’t changed.
The first season there was the human nuclear bomb, the second season there was a virus that essentially wipes out much of the world’s population, in the current season, the world possibly cracks in half. It’s becoming passé. Even worse than that, the narrative structure doesn’t shift along with the narrative making it fairly obvious that things haven’t really shifted in the series. Oh, the faces might change (or in some cases become strange – Mohinder randomly turning evil, Sylar randomly turning out to be a Petrelli [seriously? They went there? That’s pretty much up there with “It’s quiet, almost too quiet, like the calm before the storm” as clichés go]). To a large extent it’s disappointing. There was a lot of promise in the current season. They had the opportunity to have fully fleshed out villains not named Sylar (who has been far too fleshed out). There was the opportunity to really question whether HRG is a hero or not (and instead they’re back to “Look what horrible things he’s willing to do to protect his daughter![It’s like 24, only Jack Coleman, while he’s awesome, doesn’t have the velvety soft whisper of Keifer Sutherland does in 24 – another character willing to do much worse things to protect his daughter [torture her fiancé? Sure!!!!]), or at least explain what the people behind those who originally built that company were going for (which right now seems to be similar to the league of Evil in Dr. Horrible).


I want to like this show. I really do. And I’ve given it more chances than just about any other show has, and I’ll continue to do it (reports that they’ve released their writers is at least comforting, as long as they can get new ones that don’t suck [Hey, get David Greenwalt back!]). I like the potential of Peter Petrelli as a character (if he ever grows a pair). I like HRG, I like Adrian Pasdar as Nathan Petrilli. I even like Zachary Quinto, despite the fact that I really want his character to die.
The first season got an A. The second season got a B, not because it deserved it, but because the first season was so damn good, it’s score got bumped a little to the second (also the resolution of Hiro’s storyline almost made the build up worth it). The third season? So far it gets a C. And hell if we were in school it would get a 0, not because it’s horrible, but because they haven’t done anything new. It’s like their plagiarizing of their own material.
Let’s hope it gets better.

So, I feel vindicated. After I wrote the review about my own worst enemy, I took a spin around the internet, and almost everyone wrote glowing reviews of Slater's performance, and the show in general. Now I read that NBC has canceled it, and I feel my review has been vindicated.
It wasn't that this show was the worst show ever. It isn't. It's that it just wasn't good, and it certainly didn't live up to its production values.

Anyway, I have a post that I'm going to do tomorrow, but I don't feel up to it tonight.

http://tv.yahoo.com/show/39086/news/urn:newsml:tv.ap.org:20081113:tv_lipstick_and_enemy__ER:82998

It’s rare that a show’s title actually does a show full justice. “Dirty Sexy Money” is one of those shows.

I rarely like soap operas. I rarely like melodramas. It’s why you don’t find me watching daytime television, it’s why you don’t find me watching shows such as “Grey’s Anatomy”, or “Private Practice” (I turn on the television five minutes early so I can catch the beginning of DSM and every single time there is a character crying at the end of “Private Practice”. Seriously, every damn time. It’s hilarious. Last time I was yelling at the screen telling the characters to cry and when they finally started doing it I sat back in a self satisfied glow. Okay, I’m mean). “Dirty Sexy Money” have three things that most other evening soap operas simply don’t have: A fantastic cast, smart writing, and (very) likeable characters in spite of they’re more horrific nature.



For those of you who are unaware the shows premise is this: Nick George (played by Peter Krause, of “Six Feet Under” and “Sports Night) is the family lawyer for the richest and most powerful family in NYC, the Darlings. Nick grew up with the Darlings because his father was their family lawyer before him, but Nick takes the job after his father dies in a plane accident that he suspects was set up by someone connected with the Darlings. And when I said the Darlings are rich, I meant it. They’re Donald Trump rich. They’re Bill Gates rich. They’re Tony Stark rich. Seriously, they’re rich. Does it sound like the show is about excess? Yes. And it is glorious.

Donald Sutherland plays Patrick “Tripp” Darling, the family’s patriarch; Jill Clayburgh plays Letitia Darling, the family’s matriarch; William Bladwin plays Patrick Jr.. Blair Underwood plays the show’s supposed villain (but who can tell sometimes?), Simon Elder. The rest of the cast rounds out with a variety of lesser known actors, but they are all very capable, and all very solid.



Does it sound complicated? It should. With most shows that are as complex as this - Heroes, 24, Lost, etc - I have a rule: you can watch the first and the last ten minutes of every show and you’ve pretty much gotten everything that’s happened. Amazingly, this is generally not the case for this show. Plot lines, sometimes ones that have been going on for an episode or more, are ended mid episode only to have something fairly major pick up in the back thirty minutes of the show. This is not a show you can just pick up and understand from mid season. But it is wonderfully addictive.

The wonderful thing about the plot lines if that the Darlings engage in coverups and intrigue as a default position. This season when Letitia Darling was accused of the murder of Nick’s father (who she’d had an affair with and indeed, one of the Darling boys is actually Nick’s brother) she used her own son to start a sexual tryst with the lead prosecutor of the trial. This was after the evidence looked like it didn’t point to her. They want to win, but they do it on their terms. Those terms are almost always predicated on the expectation of privilege.



If there was one thing I had a criticize in a negative fashion about DSM, it’s that the editing and camera work isn’t consistent. Edits will quickly go from one shot to another angle of the same person talking, back to the first shot again. It isn’t just this show of course, TV seems to have forgotten the importance of having a shot go on for more than three seconds, but with this show it frequently feels like we’re in a different take in the same scene (which we are) and it shouldn’t. It feels almost like it was edited once, then a second editor went over it and inserted shots into it that the first editor discarded and no one ever asked another person to look it over. That, however, is a fairly minor criticism.

As I said at the beginning, it’s rare that a show’s title will inform you of everything to be found within the show. “Dirty Sexy Money” delivers everything as promised.

B+

In the early part of last decade I heard two bands that have stayed with me ever since. Those two bands are REM and Counting Crows. Anyway, what many people don't know about Counting Crows is how much of an impact Adam Duritz's first band, the Himalayans had on CC. "Round Here", their first (or second?) single was actually a cover.
Anyway, I found this on Youtube and wanted to direct you towards it, especially if you like CC's version. This version is very very different.



And if you've never gotten the chance to see CC live, and you're a CC fan (or just a fan of good live performances) then you should get out to see one of their concerts. I don't know if they're touring right now, but they tour a lot when they have an album out.

While I'm in the mood to share some music I've been listening to, I wanted to also share this.



That's Micheal Stipe of REM, Natalie Merchant formerly of 10,000 Maniacs who went on with a successful solo career, and Peter Gabriel. I love all three, although Stipe is kind of a weird fit when you put the three of them together, but his voice does really well in the background with the punch of Gabriel and Merchant up front.

Anyway, just a quick look into the kind of stuff I'm listening to right now. I'll be back tomorrow with a review of NBC's "Chuck" or maybe "Fringe", I'm not sure. I review a lot of NBC shows. I need to move on to other networks....

Knight Rider
Starring: Justin Bruening, Deanna Russo, Sydney Tamiia Poitier, Yancey Arias. Bruce Davison and Val Kilmer

Have you ever heard a forty or fifty year old trying to relate to a younger generation by trying to emulate their language or its manner? Or a middle aged woman in a revealing miniskirt? The new Knight Rider plays a lot like that.



It’s hard to point to what exactly this new series got wrong simply because there’s so many things. But let’s start with the most important aspect: The Car. Now I love me a Mustang, and choosing Val Kilmer to do the voice is a great choice. In every other way it fails. It’s a car that fails precisely because of it’s excess. Instead of simply establishing what it can and cannot do in the first episode (or movie) we get a steady diet of more and more ridiculous ultratechnology as the series progresses. The car has a “nanomesh” armor to take damage and repair itself, I can deal with that. It can bring itself from a normal mode into an “attack Mode”, which is kind of similar to the ultra cheesy “Super Pursuit Mode” in the original. Then it can hack into any camera feed, network. Fine, I can deal with that. Then it can transform into a truck...wait what? Then it can transform into a van. Then it can scan and replicate 3D objects Star Trek style. If you watched the Daily Show, and you see a moment where Jon Stewart makes himself look comedically shocked, you would be able to get a glimpse into my reaction in that moment. Then, and this was the best moment, it replicated a poison’s antidote by, in just a few seconds, replicating A and B antigens. Next episode, KITT cures cancer.



Then we come to the show’s humans. Firstly, Justin Bruening who plays Mike Traceur (who, by the end of the first episode is renamed Michael Knight....who saw that coming?) looks a little someone stuck a twelve year old’s head, with an eight year old’s facial expressions on top of an adult’s body. And I could deal with that. Except the show’s idea of giving his character complexity is having him have served in the War in a capacity so top secret that even he can’t remember it. Then there’s his approach to situations. Just about every episode they ask him to infiltrate one organization or another, and every episode his approach is always the same. He finds someone and punches them, literally or figuratively, until they give him a job to do. Seriously. This character cannot do subtlety.

The rest of the show’s cast rounds out significantly better, both in acting quality and character. Deanna Russo, well, she’s not a particularly good actor, but she’s hot and she’s not completely unbelievable with the technobabble, and that’s all the character really calls for. Sydney Tamiia Poitier (yes, the daughter of THAT Sydney Poitier) is likeable enough, although she’s almost never asked to do anything other than convincingly hold a gun. Bruce Davison is, well, Bruce Davison. The man is nothing if not consistent. Yancy Cho and Paul Campbell are the resident nerds and the weakest caricatures, I mean characters. Can I request something? Can we have a moratorium on indicating that someone on a television show is a nerd who’s useless in a fight by having them mention how much they like World of Warcraft?



I have no problem with wanting to give Knight Rider a facelift, but this seems to have gone badly. There are worse shows on television, but we’re not grading on a curve. Remember those Volkswagon commercials where the German guy finds ways to destroy souped up cars? Yeah, you get an F.

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the rating system the MPAA has put in place and how we might have our priorities confused. Today I feel like my point of view has been vindicated.

http://movies.yahoo.com/feature/zackandmiri_blog.html

Now, I'm not the biggest fan of Kevin Smith. I like some of his films. I enjoyed parts of Dogma (when he wasn't using a brick to make his point). I enjoyed Chasing Amy (it's probably my favorite film of his), but ultimately I don't enjoy his work. I have no plans of seeing "Zack and Miri Make a Porno". I like Elizabeth Banks. Seth Rogan seems to always play the same character, but he seems to play it well. I have no interest in the subject matter, but that doesn't mean I want to see it banned.

What's the worst that it has? Graphic language? Simulated sex acts? "Dirty Sexy Money" had two of the characters giving each other a just off the screen blowjob, I think we as a culture in an R rated movie can handle frank and explicit discussion about sex drugs and porno.

And it's not even that that's bothering them. By all accounts the movie's content is no worse than that of other movies that are currently playing in Utah Megaplex's. The thing that's bothering them? The word porno.

Last year when in bus shelters across America carried the ads for a movie called "Captivity" I was at least marginally on the side of those groups who were worried about the ads outside of elementary schools. The ads content were probably a PG-13 for content, and they were implying the torture and murder of a young woman. I didn't think they were as bad as the hoopla, but if it were my child I might feel differently. The advertisements for "Zack and Miri" however are some of the most tame things imaginable. Even the one that was banned by the MPAA (which, you know, would be more credible if there wasn't one that looked almost exactly like it for "Good Luck Chuck").

The word Porno is a word. It exists. You're going to have to deal with it. Hell, it's not even widely considered a bad word (and by the amount of money the adult film industry makes every day, let alone year, many people consider it a very good word). If the movie posters is stick figures with the words "Zack and Miri Make a Porno", are you going to bring your kids to see it? If the movie is rated R are you going to bring your kids to see it?

And here's what makes me the most angry. For five years running every October I have to deal with looking at "Saw" posters which essentially IS porn (of a different sort, but still) and endured the "Hostel 2" posters that were of a person's guts. I said at the time "That's inappropriate", and "I think those should be banned". Not, mind you, because I'm a big fan of censorship, but because there should be some system by which you can decide what you wish to expose yourself and your kids to. These posters clearly violated this.

Now obviously this movie theater is a private business and it has the right to show whatever the hell it wants to. If it violates its code of ethics, fine. I couldn't give a rat's ass. Except right now "Saw V" is playing. There's a series that's been responsible with it's posters. There's a movie that promotes good old American Values. There's a movie that's a shining font of where we want our kids to be exposed to. The chain isn't banning "Zack and Miri" because its violating their code of ethics. Its not being shown because it's popular right now to beat up on this movie. And, to paraphrase a line Aaron Sorkin once wrote, if "Zack and Miri" was shown on every screen in every multiplex in the great conservative state of Utah, it still wouldn't do any business out there.

Banning things doesn't work. It has never worked. You know what does? The ratings system. We can figure out for our own selves what we want to go see instead of having someone tell us that this doesn't talk to our core values. If he decided that he didn't want to show it because it insulted him? Fine. But don't insult me by telling me that you're insulted by that movie and then you turn around and show "Sex Drive", or "Good Luck Chuck".

And just for the record? I personally think that this poster should have been banned:

Last year when “Charlie Wilson’s War” came out I went to see it for a variety of reasons. Aaron Sorkin wrote it (and you know how I love most of Sorkin’s writing), the excellent preview, and last but not least, learning about a piece of history, even if it’s been fictionalized and the drama amplified. I remember Aaron Sorkin saying in an interview that when he wrote the scene where Charlie Wilson and Joanne Herring were discussing the Afghanistan situation in a moment of post-coital ludicrosity he said no one would believe it, except it really happened.


(interestingly enough, I didn't realize that 2 of the 3 trailers featured here feature the same song.)

I mention this because recently Oliver Stone directed “W.” and it was released to lukewarm reviews. I haven’t seen this movie yet, and at least one the big screen, I don’t intend to. Why would I see a movie about a man who’s presidency we’ve lived through, and at least for the next two or three months we will continue to live through. What do I have to gain? If I’ve been paying attention, what drama will be there that I didn’t already know about?
I was thirteen when “Apollo 13" came out, and I saw it with my brother. There were of course historical liberties taken, and there always are in any biopic, historical pic, etc. But at the time my mother didn’t want to see it because, as she said, “I lived through it.” What she really should have said was that she was paying attention at the time, because she late went to see “Charlie Wilson’s War”. While I disagree with the kernel of her reasoning, I do believe that there is some truth to it.



The visual medium is one of the most influential in our society. We have a saying “don’t believe everything you see on TV”, except we do, otherwise marketing wouldn’t work as well as it does. Famously during the debate between Nixon and JFK everyone who heard it on the radio believed Nixon trounced JFK, but everyone who saw it on TV (and it was monumental, since it was the first presidential debate ever televised) believed JFK was the steadier, more believable one, and it was all because Nixon had been sick that week and refused make-up. We consider the visual medium in many ways sacrosanct. We have another saying “I won’t believe it until I’ve seen it.”
Don’t worry, I’m coming to a point.



Fictionalized representations should have some distance from their model. There’s problem enough when the news/documentaries get it wrong. Headline on page one, correction on the insert on page 43 below the fold in tomorrow’s paper. When the Columbine school tragedy happened, it was reported that the boys, Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris, were a part of the “Trenchcoat Mafia”. They weren’t. In fact, they were shunned by the so called mafia, and still when I talk to people about it today they are amazed to find that out. Granted, this is the news media and we set the bar higher, and we probably believe it more.



With movies, though, there is no correction, and much of the information provided will get it wrong. Here we have a movie about our current president, and it details the choices he made as both a civilian and as the president that lead us, ultimately, to this point. And we’ve seen movies about important moments and leaders in presidential history before. “13 Days”, and “All the President’s Men” spring to mind. Those movies, however, were made after the fact - after their defining moment in history, and while I’m sure it brought issues to the forefront, the consequences had all happened. Here, to at least a certain extent, this movie can shape the figure that we remember “W.” to be, even if his legacy is ultimately negative or positive. It is a snapshot of where we are and how we view him, but even more importantly, it’s how Oliver Stone and Josh Brolin view him. Like it or not, this movie will become a part of the historical narrative.
I’m ultimately a little hesitant to write this blog. I know very little about history and historical criticism. You could write a book about this topic. But if what we remember about events springs out of movies (and how many people think of Kate and Leo when someone says the word Titanic) at least in some small shape or fashion.
Maybe I just don’t see the point of making this movie now.

My Own Worst Enemy
Starring: Christian Slater, Mädchen Amick, Alfre Woodard, Omid Abtahi, Mike O'Malley

After watching two episodes today, I've decided that this show's worst enemy is the lead actor, Christian Slater.

To those of you who don't know, the concept of the show is an interesting one, at least nominally. Christian Slater plays Edward, a highly trained, morally elastic secret government agent who goes around beating the hell out of the French, the Russians, and in the second episode, the Germans. If you've seen "Alias" before, you get the picture. The twist of the show is that he works for a group called Janus, who has split him up into two people, and his cover isn't a cover at all, but a split personality named Henry, with a wife and 2 kids, a house, the works. It's not a bad concept. It's not a bad show. It's that Christian Slater isn't the right man for the job.



It's not that he's a bad actor - he's not. He's done some good TV and some good movies, including a fun few episodes on West Wing. I remember him most from a movie that probably many people haven't seen, called The Contender. But what this show calls for is what Christian Slater isn't good at. For it to be believable, we should know who is on the screen within the first couple of seconds of every scene. Are we looking at Henry? Are we looking at Edward? Sometimes it's hell if I know.

Christian Slater simply isn't bi-polar enough to play this character. His usual sarcastic/ironic persona is absolutely fine as the Nietchziean Edward. There's a good moment in the first episode where when Henry asks Edward's boss why he volunteered to be split up into two people, she responds "Edward said that sometimes you need to do something you don't want to do to prove you have free will" (or something like that). When Henry says it makes no sense she says, "It does if you know Edward." It's moments like that that can give you great flavor for a character. Yet those moments almost exclusively come from other people and not from Christian Slater.



And there are a few good moments. Henry's reactions to Edward sleeping with his wife are sometimes amusing, and I like the fact that Henry is not completely useless in high pressure situations. Likewise he's completely believable as both Edward and Henry. But there's also this lack of organic response to some of Henry's bi-polar moments. When he wakes up in the morning and his wife is next to him glowing about the kinky sex they had the night before she never questions why he has to ask about it the next morning.

Ultimately this isn't a bad show. Christian Slater certainly isn't a bad actor, but many of the devices that they use to show which character he is now simply don't work. One is supposed to be left handed, one is supposed to be right handed, yet Henry regularly does things with his off hand (because Slater is himself left handed while Henry is right). About the only thing I can use to tell whether it's Henry or Edward is that Henry regularly looks either confused, pensive or upset, while Edward is either smiling sarcastically or looking badass.

Maybe this show will get better as it goes along, with Slater's performance going from one (well, two note, spread over two characters) not to a genuinely strong exploration of two characters. And that's certainly something that a serial format could lend itself well towards. It's just that thus far we've only seen mock complexity on the show, and I'm not sold that it will get different any time soon.

Ultimately? C+

So because I'm a wuss, and I don't like watching movies with gore, you won't agree with my 10 favorite Halloween movies, which is why you should post movies which should go on this list. Here, however, are the movies I would most like to see on Halloween. Notably absent are "The Exorcist" and "Nightmare on Elm Street" neither of which I've seen. So laugh at me, but whatever - this is again why you should post your comment on what you would like to see on this list.


The Others:



I saw this movie at the behest of my sister, and despite it's relative lack of hard "scare" moments, this movie is, to me at least, really really creepy. Alejandro Amenabar systematically creates a setting which quietly grows on you, and sets you ill at ease so that when the few "scare" moments do happen, he has to do less to give you the same amount of fear as other movies do. This is definitely a suspense movie, but masterfully done.

Donnie Darko



This movie isn't horror, but any movie that begins with a six foot tall horrific bunny telling you that the world will end in twenty one days gets extra credit in my book. Equal parts science fiction, suspense, and psychological thriller, this movie manages to be funny, nostalgic (if you liked the 80's) scary, and really really tragic. It stars Jake and Maggie Gyllenhaal, as well as Mary McDonnell, Drew Barrymore and a host of others.

Cabinet of Dr. Calligari



I don't have much to say about this movie. I loved it, but it won't be many people's cup of tea because it's not a talkie and it's, of course, black and white. Still, I never want to see it remade.

Nospheratu


Again, if you like horror movies/vampire movies you should at least see this film for the history of it. Plus it's a really good film, and frightening for its time period.


Ghostbusters



Because, you konw, who you gonna call?

Nightmare before Christmas



This is the only movie that will make it on both Christmas and Halloween lists. Interestingly enough there are 2 Tim Burton movies on this list, but this is the one that he didn't direct, but I believe he produced it. Anyway, if you haven't seen it, watch it. If you don't like it....well, that's because you have bad taste :P.

Corpse Bride


I thought about other Tim Burton films I could put on this list. Sleepy Hollow topping the list, but this movie is one that I enjoyed the most. I didn't expect to like it - I've sort of fallen out of love with Tim Burton over the last few years - but over all it very well done and very entertaining. Besides, what's more Halloween then becoming engaged to a dead woman? I mean, come on, necrophilia for all!

Devil Bat


Okay. This movie is really bad. Really really bad. But it's so awesome, and if you don't believe me, watch the first 6 minutes. I mean, he electrifies what's obviously a rubber bat. It's filled with horribly badly written monologues that Lugosi delivers with such relish that you can't help but love it. Watch it, love it, thank me later.


The Ring



So when I saw this the first time I had a TV in my dorm room. It frightened me at the time, but I remember thinking "Well that was scary, but I should sleep well tonight". When I went back home, it was about 1 in the morning and I was tired as anything, but my television had built up a static charge as sometimes happens. The upshot of it was, my television was sitting there glowing at me in the dark, and if you've seen this movie that's the last thing you want to come back home to. Especially if you're a wuss like me.
There's of course a Japanese version of this (the Ring is an American remake actually) called Ringu. It's very very similar, but very very poor special effects, which is probably more budget than anything else. There are also 2 other major differences - in the Japanese version psychic power figures very heavily into it, and it is only touched upon in the American version, and 2, the girl in Japan is so much more frightening than the American version and that's only because the American version relies so heavily on special effects to make her scary. They're both still scary, but the Japanese vesion is frightening specifically because the production value is lower, but the effect at the end (which I won't give away) is so similar it ends up being just as scary, or more so.


Mirror Mask



I'm not really sure this is a Halloween movie, but with Dave McKean's visuals and Neil Gaiman's pen, you know this movie is going to be creepy and it delivers. Ultimately it's a good Niel Gaiman fantasy and it really isn't anything you wouldn't expect from the writer of Sandman, but it's worth seeing if you haven't already.

Trailers are almost half the reason I go to see films in the theater. Yes, films lose a lot in transition to the small screen, and yes it is better to see these things the way they were meant to be seen. But at the same time a good trailer can and should be a narrative unto itself. Maybe I'm just over thinking it. I do that a lot, otherwise what would my very exclusive liberal arts education have gotten me? Certainly not rolling in the dough.

Anyway, here are some trailers that have caught my eye lately.

Sunshine Cleaning


I'm not really sure why. Amy Adams I've sort of had a crush on since Charlie Wilson's War, and the story seems right up my ally, but it looks smartly written. Depending on the reviews it may be worth a shot.

The Spirit



The comic is a piece of American history. Definitely the look is what I would want for a movie version of it, but I'm still not sold that Frank Miller is a good director. He was hip deep in Sin City, and while the movie was decent, I wasn't convinced that it was as good as everyone was saying at the time. Actors that were generally very good actors played out as flat. I don't necessarily see this trailer (or the subsequent ones) as any different, but it certainly looks pretty.
Isn't that what we want out of Frank Miller?

The Watchmen



I'm probably the one person in the world who wasn't a fan of the comic - which I'm quick to say wasn't because of the comic, but because I'm far too jaded (which is kind of weird considering the comic's theme I know) to current narrative structures to really appreciate it. It's kind of like being so versed in current fantasy that you look back on LotR and say "Well that's been done before". Except at the time it hadn't, at least not so commercially. It was unfortunate that I read it at the time I did that I couldn't appreciate it more.
This trailer, by any measure though, looks awesome. It doesn't exactly look like the comic - and in some ways it would have been nice to have it filmed like a throwback to the time; the art in the comic was as much a commentary on what you can do in the medium as the writing was, even with very traditional looking 70's/80's artwork - but it looks damn pretty.

Let the Right One In (warning, trailer is rated R)



This caught my eye because I worked the Tribeca Film Festival where it showed, and it was getting both good press and good buzz (and as far as I can tell a movie really needs both to be really good). Movies like Finding Amanda got a lot of press, but I don't think ever really lived up to it. This, however, seemed to always be the second movie people mentioned if they said they had wanted to try something that they might not otherwise see, and everyone I spoke to said it was amazing. Unfortunately at the time I was either sick or working so I didn't get to see it. Still the trailer looks good.

Let me know what trailers have caught your eye!

The first season of "House M.D." floored me with how absolutely good it was. With episodes like "Babies and Bathwater", and "Three Stories" it was one of the best written, best acted, best produced, affecting and effective shows on network television. At the time Aaron Sorkin had just left "The West Wing", and I was looking for a show to fill the gap of amazing television in it's absence. I'd first seen Hugh Laurie in Jeeves and Wooster, which is hilarious British comedy if you've never seen it, but I also saw him in a film called "Peter's Friends" which he was dramatically solid and again very affecting as an actor, so I wasn't terribly surprised to find he could act on this show.



Still, I wasn't expecting much. I watched it because my sister was interested in watching it and I had nothing better to do on a Tuesday night. I was pleasantly surprised to find a very good show. The hero was darkly funny, the storylines quietly tragic but sometimes hopeful, though it had a very very formulaic tendency. A tendency that became quite frustrating as the show went on through it's first season. The minute my VCR (yes, I still used a VCR often in 2004, I might be a media junkie, but I'm a POOR media junkie :P)said 9:18, that's when something shocking and hard to watch would happen on House M.D. It's 9:18, time for the woman to vomit a river of blood. It's 9:18, time to have the woman hallucinate that there's a nest of insects that will come pouring out of her arm. You get the idea. It's no longer surprising if it's 9:18 and you're expecting it.

What began frustrating me, as early as the first season, is that I saw very little penchant for change within the show. The value of a story, any story in any medium, is how much the character or the plots grow. Tin Man gets a heart and Dorothy finds a home. Bruce Willis finds out he's dead (oh, did I ruin that for you? If you haven't seen that movie by now, then chances are you aren't seeing that movie) but also learns that there's always second chances. By the end of season one, I knew that the chances of House's character changing were slim to none. The characters around him change. Foreman realizes that he's like House with a conscience. Last season Wilson falls in love, only to lose her to a tragic accident. The characters around House change, but House stays annoyingly constant.



The difficulty with serials, of course, is that you've got to keep your audience coming back. It's why Joss Whedon could never actually kills Spike on Buffy, and then, regrettably, Angel. It's why so many conspiracy shows get canceled before they actually complete their conspiracy ("Pretender", and the lesser known "Nowhere Man"). The audience is there for House, at least partially, because they're expecting House to do more and more insensitive things, but I don't think that's a viable basis for a device of a show.

When I went to college I was uptight and, yes, a little prudish. That was eight years ago now. My basis of humor, poorly developed I know, was pretty much to start saying things that were shocking for me to say. I'm at the point now where I can no longer say surprising things without bringing in midgets and German fetish porn....no, scratch that, I'm at the point now where I would have to BE a midget in a German fetish porn to really be shocking coming from me. House's character has become the dramatic equivalent of that.

We see House do things on a progressively more shocking level, but all I've come back with is this feeling that we've been down this road before. Dramatically, this show has the one shot down pat. Episodes like the aforementioned "Babies and Bathwater", or "Acceptance" (season 2's opener) are dramatically incredible, and certainly the source material is a chock full of dramatic potential (just ask ER, although ER peaked years ago into the field of ridiculous when a doctor who already had one helicopter land on him died because - get this - a helicopter landed on him a second time). But in terms of actual character development of what I feel should be the show's most interesting character, I can think of two episodes (maybe a third) where anything interesting was really done.



"Three Stories" from the first season, was absolutely incredible (and not least because it broke the show's formula), along with the end of the second season's ender (seriously, like the last 20 seconds) and finally last season's ending arc, the relationship between Wilson and Amber.

Season 2's ending was interesting to me because House actually took a step to start getting better, which turned out to be a bum deal at the beginning of season 3. Still, it was at least interesting thematically. Last season was the most interesting to me because it provided insight into House's character through the relationship that his closest friend and former employee. You always knew that House really cared for Wilson, but this showed you just to what extent he was willing to go, this time not just for a diagnosis, but for a friend as well. While he never stopped being House (read "asshole") he was at least not the caricature that he's slowly become.

"House M.D." will never be a bad show. Not if they still keep the same staff of writers, not as long as Bryan Singer keeps producing, and not as long as Hugh Laurie and Robert Sean Leonard keep on doing the kick ass job they've been doing. But I don't think the show has anywhere to go but remain static and formulaic. Ultimately, I believe it is House's most tragic and fatal flaw, and perhaps also "House M.D."'s fatal flaw.

A PG-13 rating is a sterner warning by the Rating Board to parents to determine whether their children under age 13 should view the motion picture, as some material might not be suited for them. A PG-13 motion picture may go beyond the PG rating in theme, violence, nudity, sensuality, language, adult activities or other elements, but does not reach the restricted R category. The theme of the motion picture by itself will not result in a rating greater than PG-13, although depictions of activities related to a mature theme may result in a restricted rating for the motion picture. Any drug use will initially require at least a PG-13 rating. More than brief nudity will require at least a PG-13 rating, but such nudity in a PG-13 rated motion picture generally will not be sexually oriented. There may be depictions of violence in a PG-13 movie, but generally not both realistic and extreme or persistent violence. A motion picture’s single use of one of the harsher sexually-derived words, though only as an expletive, initially requires at least a PG-13 rating. More than one such expletive requires an R rating, as must even one of those words used in a sexual context. The Rating Board nevertheless may rate such a motion picture PG-13 if, based on a special vote by a two-thirds majority, the Raters feel that most American parents would believe that a PG-13 rating is appropriate because of the context or manner in which the words are used or because the use of those words in the motion picture is inconspicuous.
- MPAA ratings board, PG-13 rating, http://www.mpaa.org/FlmRat_Ratings.asp

When I was ten years old I saw my first R-rated film, “A Few Good Men” (which happened to also be the first thing I saw penned by Aaron Sorkin). It was before the ratings system had evolved to its current iteration which has short explanations such as “Some Violence and Crude Language”. A year before Terminator 2 came out, which was similarly Rated R, but for very different reasons, and it was precisely those reasons - graphic and persistent violence - that I was banned by my parents from seeing the film (I was nine at the time). I saw the film in it’s theatrical form for the first time ten years later in the fall of my sophomore year of college, and I was stunned; not because of the violent content, but because in just a few years (long for me, but short for the world) our ratings system had evolved significantly, and what we deemed as strong and graphic violence was no longer all that graphic or all that persistent in the eyes of the MPAA.

In fact, what was rated R ten years before had become prime time network television. Shows like “24", “Alias” or even “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” display violence that, ten years ago, would have required an R rating; actually, several network shows display violence that would require an R rating today. At the end of season 6 of “Buffy...” Willow flays another character alive, a graphic that is used similarly in “Silent Hill” where a monster pulls a woman’s skin off, and the only difference is in the level of production value, and the persistent nature of the violence in “Silent Hill”. So the question comes up, is our ratings system at all useful if what can be seen in an R-rated movie, which children cannot get into without a guardian if they’re under 18, can also be seen on the television where the rating is Y14, which says that the material is appropriate for children 14 years and older?
While the ratings system is, of course, far more useful than it was 10 years ago with the simple addition of short, and vague, explanations about what content gave the movie its rating, I’m not convinced that our priorities for giving these ratings are in the right places. There is a scene in the movie “The 6th Day” (and if you value your good taste, you should absolutely not see this film. I’m not even sure why I saw it) where a man gets his leg blown right off by some kind of futuristic heavy weapon, and it happens fairly graphically. The movie was rated PG-13, and yet if in the same scene the man had yelled, “They blew my fucking leg off!”, or simply screamed that F word, it would have been bumped up to an R. Is this really somehow worse? Appaloosa (hey look, I’ve learned to spell it!) I movie I recently had the pleasure of seeing, seemed to be rated R for a handful of F-bombs and about five seconds of Renee Zellweger’s rear end (and if a movie is going to be rated-R for someone’s rear end, can it at least someone’s rear end I enjoy seeing....okay, okay, whatever). Yet, under the Rating’s symbol we see that it’s rated for “Some Violence, Crude Language and Brief Partial Nudity”. This seems misleading, as if somehow the R was a product of all of these things, instead of the language issue. And more importantly to me, I don’t believe that this movie should be in the same ratings category of a movie such as “Hostel” (a movie I would avoid seeing), or even “LA Confidential” or “Terminator 2"(both of which I love a great deal).

A few years ago there was a documentary entitled “This Film is Not Yet Rated” which attacked the MPAA about the completely closed process of their ratings system. At the time that the film was released no one was sure who precisely is a part of the MPAA, and it isn’t clear who is a part of it now from their website. There were disparities between the way big studio films and independent films were rated, but more disturbingly, between various sexual situations (homosexual vs. hetero, male vs. female, etc.) and what kind of violence garnered what kind of rating.
Ultimately the ratings system is supposed to be a tool for movie goers (and perhaps most importantly parents) to control what it is you, or your children, are exposed to. However, given the extremely vague and seemingly arbitrary way these things are rated, a little more transparency to the process would seem to be necessary. Essentially, movies are rated out of four categories; language, violence, sexual content and the far more nebulous “adult themes”. What I would love to see is along with the ratings that are already released, I would love to see a more detailed report of the severity of the movie broken down into these four categories. As it is, an R rating for violence can mean a level of violence that I would be comfortable having young children see (the aforementioned “Appaloosa”) and a movie that I wouldn’t necessarily feel comfortable having young children see (“The Bank Job” being a good example of a movie less violent than “Hostel” but still violent enough that I wouldn’t want a ten year old seeing).

My last point about the ratings system is this. McG, who is directing "Terminator:Salvation" (although I'm not sure I'm willing to admit that the Terminator franchise exists after the second film) has stated that the movie may be rated PG-13. Not because they're skimping on the level of violence, but because what was rated R ten years ago will not garner a PG-13 rating. Yet the rules about language content or sexual content have not similarly changed, or become more relaxed, and I can find no real reason, cultural or otherwise, for this to be the case.

So as you can see this is going to be my media blog, where I'm going to review whatever the hell I feel like reviewing. Movies, television, music, porn. Okay, I won't be reviewing porn.
I'll try to update it with something every couple of days. It won't always be on current movies/music, but it will be on things that will be relevent to my daily life. I love reading comments, so comment copiously. You can make fun of me or whatever. Read the Appaloosa thingy I wrote. I'm probably going to write in a couple of days about Transformers 2. I'm tempted to see Eagle Eye just so I can see the rumored Teaser that's in front of it.

Edit: I should have started with a movie I could spell right the first time.

Appaloosa:
Directed By: Ed Harris
Starring: Ed Harris, Viggo Mortensen, Renee Zellwegger, Jeremy Irons

Appaloosa is a western in ten words or less. This turns out to be both the movie's strength, as well as its weakness.

Harris (Virgil Cole) and Mortensen (Everett Hitch) play two gunslingers/lawmen for hire who come to Appaloosa to rid them of Randall Bragg, a rancher/copper miner who lives outside the town's jurisdiction and who, in the beginning of the movie, shoots and kills Appaloosa's marshall and deputies.

Despite the way it has been marketed, Appaloosa is never a western in the spirit of Unforgiven, or 3:10 to Yuma. Instead it hearkens back to the black hat/white hat westerns, while never really reaching the level of quaintness that they enjoyed. The difference is that most of these characters (really 3 out of the 4 principles) are never played one note, which is really the responsibility of Mortensen, Harris, and Irons (who gleefully plays the movie's lead antagonist). Jeremy Irons plays a villain - sounds familiar?

Interestingly enough, the strength of this movie would easily be the weakness in just about any other movie. While complexity is hinted at in both Harris's and Mortensen's characters - at one point Harris beats a man senseless for no obvious reason, and Mortensen shows strong chops bringing a man who's a sidekick out into the forefront - these characters are their strongest when they're larger than life, and simple. They do their jobs because they're good at it, and because, at least in Cole's case, he believes in the law (as long as it's Cole who's dictating the law). Any doubts that these men have in what they do are resolved in ten words or less, and any internal conflict in maybe twenty. Similarly, the story's pace and narrative style leaves much to the imagination, and while striking at first, it never seems jolting or confusing, but it doesn't spell out every single word in the narrative flow.

Ironically the weakest character is Zellweger's. Her character is a Femme Fatale caught up in the wrong genre, and it shows. She seems out of place in the entire film, and her motives seem extremely suspect, even at the end of the film. Similarly the relationship between her and Harris's character seems unbelievable. Though his staying by her side is explained away by his sense of loyalty, it never really rings true. In many ways, it would have been easier if her character had been a whore with a heart of gold (a trope I despise), or even the converse(think Grace Kelly's character from High Noon).

In the end, what holds the movie together more than anything else is the smartness of the writing. The trailer does not disappoint - it was filled to the brim with one liners, and exchanges that were witty, and sometimes hilarious. Most importantly, the director or the writing knew where to fall quiet and simply let the actors do their very good job. There's a scene in a breakfast house between the Harris, Zellweger and Mortensen where most of it is Harris and Mortensen chuckling at each other, and I wouldn't have had it any other way.

So I would have to give this movie a B+. But I sure did enjoy it.