TenFourGoodBuddy's Xanga

True Confession

Mon, 19 Nov 2007 03:51:20 GMT

I have seen approximately 3,500 Kay Jewelers commercials, and mockingly sung along with their tagline 3,498 of those times, but it never occurred to me until tonight that the tagline "every kiss begins with Kay" comes from the fact that the word "kiss" actually begins with the letter K. My SAT verbal was what again?

"Iran So Far"

Fri, 16 Nov 2007 21:04:55 GMT

NBC has finally broken down and posted Andy Samberg's love song to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, "Iran So Far." It's fantastic how far digital shorts have come from "Lazy Sunday" until now - you can tell they're pouring so much more money into them. A piano being towed on a truck throughout New York? That's cash they definitely didn't spend last year right there.

By the way, since doing this video, Fred Armisen has ended up playing Ahmadinejad at least twice more that I've seen, plus doing essentially the same character on "30 Rock" last night as a possible terrorist/eager "Amazing Race" fan. Can we all agree that the least likely person to get pigeonholed as an Iranian terrorist would have to be Fred Armisen? What a strange fall it's been.

Anyway, if you haven't seen the video yet, definitely click on the link and check it out, it's on par with the Emmy winner (!) "Dick In A Box" and features two memorable cameos. I wish SNL wouldn't include the audience reaction track during these videos, it only ruins it as a lot of the best lines get laughed over, though you can still make out this one:

They call you "Weasel"
They say your methods are medieval
You can play the Jews
I can be your Jim Caviezel

Ah... love in New York City in the summertime is so grand.

I'm awfully sick of Tila Tequila

Wed, 14 Nov 2007 05:53:40 GMT

I always thought that if I had cable, I would watch a lot of MTV. But now that I do have cable (a free connection we've gotten from somewhere, we keep waiting for it to disappear and it keeps sticking around), I always skip right by it, because it's always the same show. Does MTV ever show anything other than "Shot of Love with Tila Tequila?" Ever? Everytime I turn on the television, even at 3 in the morning, it's on. They show a lot of previews for "The Hills" during the commericial breaks but never actually seem to show an episode of the show. Isn't this show an elimination show? Each time it's on, Tila eliminates two or three more contestants, but whenever I turn on the tv, there's always about ten people still playing. Does it ever end? Has it already, and I just somehow missed it, even though I've flipped past it 3,000 times in the past week? I don't understand.

In other news, I miss late night TV. When every show goes to repeats in a week or two, I'm going to feel depressed. It's not that I can't deal with the loss, but when I turn on the TV late at night, I want to see something other than Jerry Butler and Gayle Samuels selling me "The Soul Story" collection. Just nice to have some options.

Review: Dan In Real Life (2007)

Tue, 13 Nov 2007 07:50:04 GMT

Steve Carrell has essentially become the gold standard in comedy today – even when in a truly unfortunate vehicle, he’s consistently funny and, what’s more, consistently watchable even in the most dramatic and unfunny moments (he even pulled through and carried Evan Almighty). What other leading man can that be said about in this day and age? Run down the list of Hollywood funnymen and see who doesn’t have a intolerable bomb of a film in the past three or four years. And I’m gonna be really, really nice on this list. I’m avoiding films like Along Came Polly and Tenacious D and The Pick of Destiny, who at least had some fans, and going directly to the films that everyone unequivocally hated:

1.    Will Ferrell – Kicking and Screaming, Bewitched
2.    Ben Stiller – Envy, School For Scoundrels
3.    Jack Black – Envy, Shark Tale
4.    Jim Carrey – Lemony Snicket, The Number 23
5.    Vince Vaughn – Be Cool, Blackball
6.    Owen Wilson – The Big Bounce, Around the World in 80 Days
7.    Eddie Murphy – Norbit

In the meantime, Carrell stole the show on Bruce Almighty, broke out big with The 40-Year Old Virgin, won an Emmy off of “The Office,” tugged all of our hearts, even people whose hearts were practically untuggable, in Little Miss Sunshine, showed off some excellent voice talent on Over the Hedge and those “The Ambiguously Gay Duo” SNL sketches, somehow made it through Evan Almighty, and… oh, yeah, he was in Bewitched, too, never mind. Still, that was before he was big, so it doesn’t count, since that’s the point where actors take whatever comes to them.

The point of this was that I expected Dan In Real Life to not be very good, but I went anyway figuring that Carrell would probably save it enough to be worth watching. Plus, it had Juliette Binoche as the love interest, which was enough of a pull for me to show up. My point is this: my expectations weren’t high, but they weren’t particularly low. So it was totally surprising to me how blown away I was that this movie was so good.

Let’s be honest here: you can say all you want that you like a particular actor or actress and’ll show up to see them in anything, but honestly, film is a director’s medium, far more than the average viewer realizes. When a movie’s great, it’s great because the director did a great job. Occasionally an actor overcomes mediocre work from a director and makes something a great movie, but more often it’s the other way around, and the director pulls great performances down. I didn’t know anything about Peter Hedges, the director of Dan In Real Life (hereafter called DIRL because that seems fun to type) except that he’d previously directed a film called Pieces of April, which starred Katie Holmes as a goth chick. And if that doesn’t raise all sorts of red flags on your radar, then you are not human.

But this film was more than just capably directed; it’s a textbook example of a indie film director putting his low-budget sensibilities to work. Hedges made the very specific choice to tell the whole film from Dan’s point of view, where everything that’s seen we see through his eyes (not literally, it's not a POV cam or anything weird like that). It’s a smart choice because so many of Dan’s decisions in the film are bad ones. Very bad ones.

You see, Dan In Real Life – whoops, DIRL, sorry - is the story of widower Dan Something-Or-Other, a newspaper columnist of the Dear Abby variety. He’s raising three daughters who are I would estimate about 15, 13, and 10, all of whom are going through troubled-young-girl stuff that Dan finds himself completely incapable of dealing with. The film takes place over a week-long reunion at his parent’s summer house with his entire extended family, the first day of which Dan has a meetcute downtown with Marie, a pretty French woman (Binoche, natch) to whom he almost immediately pours out his entire life story, because, frankly, that’s the sort of thing that speeds the plot along. There’s connection, they have a lovely time, she finally admits she’s seeing someone, he manages to finagle her phone number anyway, he returns to the house to find out that – BAM! – the fella Marie is dating is Dan’s younger brother, Mitch (Dane Cook). Woah woah! Will hijinks ensue? Who can tell?

The premise is absolutely a little trite, and I expected a certain degree of schmaltz when I snuck into the theatre (what? You gonna make something of it? I’m penniless these days, but I do love a good family comedy!), but the story is carried off with skillfull ease by Hedges and the pack of talented, mostly unknown, actors who showed up to play Dan’s family (particularly his daughters, who all provide a lovely counterbalance to Dan’s gradual emotional meltdown). Even Cook is adequate – in fact, more than adequate, Cook was excellent in this movie (take that Employee of the Month!).

Part of the reason that Cook is excellent is that he’s so well cast for his part – Mitch is boorish and immature and yet eminently likeable, in the exact same fashion as Cook’s on-stage persona. And since the film is told through Dan’s perspective (to get back to that point I started three paragraphs ago, this review is really poorly written, isn't it?), we see him as Dan sees him; a self-absorbed but well-meaning individual who is finally showing signs of growing up. It’s one of the many reasons that we begin to realize that Dan and Marie might not eventually end up together, even though Mitch clearly doesn’t deserve her (warning: correct use of the double negative approaching) - he also doesn’t not deserve her. He clearly believes being with Marie is making him a better man, and Dan sees it too, and so we see it and start to root for Mitch, too.

Both the drama and the comedy in the film come from the fact that Dan is not really trying to win Marie from Mitch, rather, he’s trying quite desperately not to. He wants his brother to be happy, he doesn’t want to do the wrong thing, he doesn’t want to hurt anyone, and yet he simply cannot help the fact that he’s falling quite heavily in love with Marie. His constant plotting is not to get her to fall for him but just to stop himself from letting his feelings get in the way of what he thinks is right – his every action is the emotional equivalent of pinching yourself to keep yourself awake. Yet, perhaps because he’s emotionally fragile since the death of his wife, perhaps because the constant proximity to Marie leaves him more and more vulnerable, or perhaps because he’s really in love with her, he keeps ending up acting stranger and stranger in his desperate bid to extricate himself from his own feelings.

DIRL (I got it that time) is one of those films that rises above its own seen-it-before plotlines and lets the honesty of its relationships carry it along. Every family detail in the film is perfectly fleshed out – how the whole family fits together, the traditions that stick around even after everyone’s gotten too old for them, the unbreakable ties that both familial love and romantic love give. Hedges isn’t doing anything new here, but what he is doing is family filmmaking at its best – letting each detail of the film enhance the story, interlocking each performance to balance each other out. It’s very delicately done, and Hedges deserves great praise for it.

But ultimately, it’s Carrell who really carries the day here, and it’s another victory tally for him on a streak that should last at least until Horton Hears A Who comes out. As you can imagine, I don’t have high hopes for that one. Though as we’ve seen here, sometimes a film can really surprise you.

Four Stars Out of Five.

Inflatable Jesus

Mon, 12 Nov 2007 03:52:26 GMT

As part of our Loft Christmas series, we're doing four weeks called "Stuffed," which is about avoiding the nonsense of Christmas. Which led to the decision to cover our stage with the worst collection of Christmas junk we could find. Which led to our head pastor, Andy, traveling to Garden Ridge to buy $1300 worth of pure holiday crap. Including an inflatable Jesus sitting in a bass fishing boat (with outboard motor, of course). I don't know why you'd want one on Christmas, I certainly don't know you'd want one ever, but we have one. Apparently, it's quite something. I don't have any pictures yet, though I'll definitely put one up as soon as I can. Until then, this picture will have to do:

I don't know where that is or what it is, or what it is those multi-cultural children are emerging from (my best theory is that it's a belt made of eggs, all of which are hatching emotional-dependent humanoids simultaneously), but I pulled this one picture out of a cornucopia of possible inflatable Jesus pictures available online. And if my have my way, in a couple more weeks, there'll be one more available.

More News on the WGA Strike

Mon, 12 Nov 2007 03:50:44 GMT

In general, when we hear about things like the WGA strike, we find it a bit laughable. And for right now, it certainly is - seeking a share of digital profits that don't exist yet, fighting to get story editors from reality shows classified as writers so that they can join the picket lines - and it all means that we get stuck with no late night talk shows, no SNL, and a good chance that there'll be long hiatuses on narrative shows later this season. As if the writers for "Heroes" needed help derailing the season.

I've been enjoying the nonsense this week, since it give this whole next year of television a bizarrely fun twist if this drags on a few weeks - how will each show end their season? Will some shows fall completely apart, where they start having those episodes that are so bad that you start calling friends to get them to turn on a TV right then ("Quick! 'Law & Order' just added a talking cat!"). But I got a piece of news from Peracchio that gave me a splash of reality.
My old quasi-roommate (don't ask), Greg Weidman, works for the writers of "NCIS." He's not a Guild member himself, but his boss is, so he's on vaca while all this gets wrapped up. And as of Friday, he might not have a job. And that's sad. Yet I can't stop laughing at this picture.

He's the one who's... y'know, never mind, I'll let you figure it out. Anyway, as much as I hope Greg gets to keep his job and stay out there on the street protesting throughout the break, I do hope the break continues a little longer. I love watching the panic of networks making truly outrageously bad decisions, whether in ill-conceived reality shows ("Come quick! 'Midgets Vs. Meerkats' is doing improv comedy night!") or just generally poor choices ("The cat's developed a cocaine addiction! He's screaming profanities at Sam Waterson!"). It'll be fun.

Wait two weeks from now, when when you start hearing things like "We've decided that, in order to save money, when we get back from the break, we're going to move shooting for 'Gossip Girl' from Upper East Side New York to Oklahoma City," or "'Criminal Minds' is going to be written as more of a one-man show to save cash on salaries until sweeps." You'll see the fun in it, too, I promise.

Don Shula Is An Idiot.

Mon, 12 Nov 2007 03:45:04 GMT

The general hubbub over the Patriot's ridiculously successful season just hit rock bottom. Don Shula just compared the Patriots to Barry Bonds.

Review: American Gangster (2007)

Thu, 08 Nov 2007 05:28:26 GMT

You already know I’m a Ridley Scott fan – while I was in film school in LA, I spent 4 months interning at his company during the making of A Good Year. So you’ll expect gushing during any review of a Ridley film (and yes, that’s here). But if you’ve already seen Gangster, you’ll know it’s deserved; this film is a piece of filmmaking on par with Blade Runner, Alien, Gladiator, anything he’s made, or any gangster movie we’ve ever seen (though I am not suggesting that it exceeds The Godfather, Coppola faithful. Spare me your letter of vilest hate). It both embraces convention and holds it out at arm’s length, reinventing how we see organized crime and its fallout in ways that the twenty years of network television between this film and Goodfellas has tried and utterly failed to.

The storyline is as basic as it comes: druglord Frank Lucas (Denzel Washington) floods the street with a heroin twice as potent and half as expensive as anything else available, netting himself money and power. Tenacious narcotics cop Richie Roberts (Russell Crowe) tries to sniff his way up the power chain and bring down Lucas. We’ve seen this story before (well, not personally, probably, but on the television).

Naturally, the story is in the details, and Ridley is never more on his game in that regard than he is right here. Every piece of standard Ridley filmmaking is on display here; there are combinations of every sort of inventive camerawork here that, unlike so many directors of the day, always enhances and never detracts. But it’s his eye for verisimilitude that has improved with age: every cement-block hallway and cramped office, every piece of lighting, every prop, feels completely true to the world and to the characters. No one ever gets that “hey, I’m in a period film, don’t I look cool in 70’s duds!” look on their face, which is impressive considering the supporting actors on display here aren’t usually known for their restraint (rappers T.I. and Common do stalwart work here, and Cuba Gooding, Jr. reminds us why we once thought he was Oscar material).

But the real story is the performances of the two leads, who (like Michael Mann’s Heat) essentially head up two entirely separate films and only cross paths at the very last moment – and even then, with the whole story almost completely told, the sparks of their very proximity ignite the film again. Washington deserves the real credit here, his Frank Lucas is a role as perfectly suited to him as any he’s ever done. Here, Lucas is driven, dedicated, committed to family; he betrays almost no weaknesses – he’s a businessman, through and through. The idea of good and evil seems to essentially have never occurred to him. He sees an opportunity and exploits it, and when the money starts to roll in, the first thing he does is take care of the people he brought with him. Washington plays Lucas essentially the same way he’s played every role he’s ever taken, it’s not until we’re a good hour and a half into his performance that we see that Lucas is almost soulless, a man of principles and work ethic but no heart at all.

Crowe’s portrayal of Roberts is just as complicated, a man of considerable passion and ethic who has burned every element of his life down except for his commitment to his profession and the good work that he’s doing in it. Early on we see him recover almost a million dollars in police bribes; rather than keeping the money, staying rich, and staying out of trouble at the station, he turns the cash in, fully knowing that the money will end up in the hands of the dirty cops it was going to anyway (and, of course, it does) and that he'll be ostracized for ratting (and he is). It’s a basic vignette on the sort of man Roberts is, but tellingly, it haunts Roberts the rest of the film, as the men he works with and the men he seeks to bring down react in the same unbelieving, head-shaking fashion when they hear the story. It’s as if to everyone in the film but Roberts, the law is something along the lines of a parental curfew, the sort of thing for goody-goodies who don’t know the value of a dollar. In his darker moments, it sometimes seems Roberts himself feels that.

The trailers bill the film as a pounding head-to-head combat between good and evil, but really Roberts and Lucas are cut from the same mold, separated only by a small differentiation in the direction of their moral compass. But that small difference gives them such different lives it takes the whole film for us to see how similar they are. But with a film as good as this one, it’s certainly worth waiting that long.

Four Stars Out Of Five

Welcome to the world, Emily.

Tue, 06 Nov 2007 20:00:58 GMT

As of 2:55 ET today, I am an uncle. Emily Adelaide Wyman is 6 pounds even. Congratulations to people other than me can be sent here.

Heidi was induced this morning, and so Emily arrived a good two or three weeks before her due date, proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that she did the right thing and inherited Heidi's genes rather than our side of the family's. I'm hoping that she inherits my SAT scores, my love of good filmmaking, and nothing else.

Congratulations, bro. I knew you could do it.

You too, Heidi. You helped.

Party Of Five: Season Two

Mon, 05 Nov 2007 04:55:59 GMT

More because I am an obsessive viewer of our narrative television culture than anything else, I Netflixed the first disc or two of "Party of Five," Season One, a few months back. I enjoyed it, sure, but I felt that it was still too new and uncertain for me to keep following along too closely. I decided I'd skip ahead and take out the first couple discs of the Season Two, instead, because that's when Jennifer Love Hewitt showed up for her star-making performance, and also because I had a vague sort of hope that everyone might stop pouting in the meantime.

A couple weeks ago the first of those discs arrived in the mail. I took it out and put it next to my DVD player for "when I had time." Naturally, it sat on my TV for a couple weeks, before finally I simply ran out of all other options and I put it in.

I'm now a couple episodes in, and I figured it was time - and I know you agree - for a couple random observations:

A Couple Random Observations about Party Of Five, Season Two (so far):

1. It's just a glaring plot hole - how are we to believe that Scott Wolf does not notice the desperate affection of Jennifer Love Hewitt? It's Jennifer Love Hewitt. He continues to chase girls that could generously be said to resemble a poor man's Molly Ringwald, and continues to be surprised whenever Hewitt appears at his side saying things like "are you taking anyone to the bonfire?" and "where've you been? I called your house three times last night." It's like watching a romantic comedy starring the guy from Memento.

2. The pout-o-meter is still firmly in the red. My favorite is still Scott Wolf's-pining-for-dead-
girlfriend story, which the writers ditch for the first 90% of every episode so he can be charming and flirt with the mediocre girl-of-the-week, then bring back right at the end so the show can end on a downer. Way to show off why the critics gave you that Best Drama Emmy, guys.

3. It's fun to watch Matthew Fox's career backwards. All that vein-popping intensity of "we need to band together to survive!" we see every week on "Lost?" Oh, it's all here, except he's yelling at his little sisters about detentions and breaking curfew. He's about 3 notches too heavy on "Lost" and about 47 notches to heavy here. Great fun.

4. Scott Wolf's Hair, Season One - The "Fluffy Ryan O'Neil"
Appropriateness To The Era: 8
Attractiveness: 2
Comedic Value: 6
Scott Wolf's Hair, Season Two - The "Ex-Military Man"
Appropriateness To The Era: 7
Attractiveness: 5
Comedic Value: 2

5. Matthew Fox's Hair, Season One - The "Eddie Vedder with Conditioner"
Appropriateness to the Era: 9
Attractiveness: 7
Comedic Value: 5
Matthew Fox's Hair, Season Two - The "90's Mullet"
Appropriateness to the Era: 0
Attractiveness: 0
Comedic Value: 10

I'll update you as more observations surface.

I keep meaning to do a "What To Watch This TV Season" post sometime, remind me to do so if you see me. Or, subscribe to TV Guide, which would probably be more helpful.