The tickets were free. Why else would I go to see a Bruce Springsteen tribute band? But let's start with the more important question: why does a Springsteen tribute band exist? The man is not only alive, he's still touring. He just played a bunch of shows in Jersey a couple of months ago. If you're a huge fan, wouldn't you just go see the man himself? Or just stay home listening to his records? Why on earth would you pay good money to see an impersonator when the real thing is available to you?
The tickets were free because the show was only half full. As it turns out, the answer to the above questions is that people who are eligible for Medicare are the ones who would pay good money to see a Bruce impersonator. The last time I the youngest person at a concert was when I saw the Rolling Stones when I was 15. I know that I'm getting older, and that this is music that people 15 or 20 years older than me grew up with, but there was something completely disconcerting about sitting in the middle of a sea of baldness, paunch, and bifocals at what was, at heart, a rock concert. Then again, the Stones themselves must be closing in on 70, if they aren't there already.
We only stayed for about half of the show, not because it wasn't a good approximation of Springsteen, complete with a fake Clarence Clemmons and a fake Stevie, because it was a good approximation, but because the whole experience was just too weird. It was like being in an alternate universe where the entire E Street canon existed, but all of the songs were written and performed by a guy named Lloyd Springstein.
I couldn't help, though, feeling somewhat sorry for "Bruce" and the rest of the band. I imagined them all growing up, dreaming of becoming professional musicians, dreaming of rock stardom. They all practiced and practiced, spent years sacrificing, just to spend every night of their lives pretending to be someone else. I don't know if it's a step up or down from being a professional Elvis impersonator, but either way it made me both sad and thankful that the show took place in a theater equipped with a bar.
Showing posts with label business and show. Show all posts
Showing posts with label business and show. Show all posts
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
Let's Hear It for 1987
The time has arrived to break out the shoulder pads and high-waisted jeans, pour some Chardonnay, give your dog a pretentious literary name, and settle in to an evening of thirtysomething. perhaps i should compose this post entirely in the lower-case? I won't do that, but I will express my happiness that at long last the series is being released on DVD. In the late 80s I religiously sat before the TV every Tuesday night at 10 to witness the trials and tribulations of this group of Philly yuppies.
I'm really not sure why this show spoke to me. At the time I was a decade younger than the protagonists, and an important decade at that. I had no youthful 60s idealism to lose, unless that idealism can take the form of a love of the Jackson 5. I was a poor graduate student who couldn't afford even an old Volvo and was years away from even the thought of undertaking a nightmare renovation of an Arts and Crafts home. I wasn't married, trying to be married, or fretting over the choice between raising children and having a career. In short, I had nothing in common with these characters, yet still I loved them. Perhaps there just really wasn't anything else good on TV, or perhaps it's something about Marshall Herskovitz, who 10 years earlier worked on Family, and who would go on, with Ed Zwick, to produce two of my favorite shows of the 90s, My So-Called Life and Once and Again.
What became clear after watching an assortment of the Season One episodes is that the thirtysomething I loved was later season thirtysomething. I loved it when Nancy had cancer, and Michael and Elliot worked for and battled Miles Drentell, and everyone hated Susannah. I loved it when Melissa became a character in her own right and not comic relief. I loved it when the show became more of a high-concept soap and less of a meditation on the horror of turning into one's mother or father. All of the things I loved happened later, so I will patiently await the release of the next three seasons and in the meantime contemplate Michael's obsession with suspenders and the fact that Ellyn is continually attracted to men much less good-looking than herself. Seriously, Woodman? The fug married guy she met at the pool? The comic book guy who was about one day from being fat? Oh, Ellyn.
Last week's release of this set led to all kinds of rumination on the importance of the show, how it ushered in a new era of naval-gazing and a new kind of serialized drama. But did it, really? When it went off the air in 1991, did anything of quality replace it? Those were the years of 90210 and Melrose Place. I'd venture that its greatest impact was on situation comedy rather than drama. By focusing on a group of friends who don't share a home or a workplace, by focusing in many ways on the commonplace and everyday as the stuff of plot, it paved the way for Friends and Seinfeld. The situations were played for laughs rather than bathos, but the concept of a group of urban professionals creating their own family as a shield against the alienation of urban striving, well, that was pure thirtysomething.
I'm really not sure why this show spoke to me. At the time I was a decade younger than the protagonists, and an important decade at that. I had no youthful 60s idealism to lose, unless that idealism can take the form of a love of the Jackson 5. I was a poor graduate student who couldn't afford even an old Volvo and was years away from even the thought of undertaking a nightmare renovation of an Arts and Crafts home. I wasn't married, trying to be married, or fretting over the choice between raising children and having a career. In short, I had nothing in common with these characters, yet still I loved them. Perhaps there just really wasn't anything else good on TV, or perhaps it's something about Marshall Herskovitz, who 10 years earlier worked on Family, and who would go on, with Ed Zwick, to produce two of my favorite shows of the 90s, My So-Called Life and Once and Again.
What became clear after watching an assortment of the Season One episodes is that the thirtysomething I loved was later season thirtysomething. I loved it when Nancy had cancer, and Michael and Elliot worked for and battled Miles Drentell, and everyone hated Susannah. I loved it when Melissa became a character in her own right and not comic relief. I loved it when the show became more of a high-concept soap and less of a meditation on the horror of turning into one's mother or father. All of the things I loved happened later, so I will patiently await the release of the next three seasons and in the meantime contemplate Michael's obsession with suspenders and the fact that Ellyn is continually attracted to men much less good-looking than herself. Seriously, Woodman? The fug married guy she met at the pool? The comic book guy who was about one day from being fat? Oh, Ellyn.
Last week's release of this set led to all kinds of rumination on the importance of the show, how it ushered in a new era of naval-gazing and a new kind of serialized drama. But did it, really? When it went off the air in 1991, did anything of quality replace it? Those were the years of 90210 and Melrose Place. I'd venture that its greatest impact was on situation comedy rather than drama. By focusing on a group of friends who don't share a home or a workplace, by focusing in many ways on the commonplace and everyday as the stuff of plot, it paved the way for Friends and Seinfeld. The situations were played for laughs rather than bathos, but the concept of a group of urban professionals creating their own family as a shield against the alienation of urban striving, well, that was pure thirtysomething.
Monday, August 17, 2009
How Can I Not Write about Mad Men?
...what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?
- W.B Yeats, "The Second Coming"
By 1967 Joan Didion would use Yeats' evocation of the apocalypse to anchor her reporting on the Haight during the Summer of Love, but these lines strongly came to mind when thinking about the Season 3 premier of Mad Men. Yes, the episode is literally about births, and the anxiety surrounding births: we begin with a flashback to Dick Whitman's birth, Betty and Don are awaiting the birth of their third child, the episode takes place on Dick's birthday, and the episode ends with Don and Betty telling Sally the story of her birth. Beyond the literal, though, the themes of the season hinted at in the episode are all about changes that are being born, the anxieties attendant to those changes, and how one reacts to change when one is in the middle of it.
From the first scene of the pilot episode the audience has known what the characters can't know: that the complacency and seeming hegemony of the immediate postwar years is about to explode into chaos. Everything that happens to these characters takes place on the cusp of a great cultural shift that they can't predict because they are living through it. In 2007, would any of us have predicted the events of 2008, the extent of the financial meltdown, the depth of our national anxiety, the result of the Presidential election? Although those living through a period of cultural shift might have glimmers that a change is gonna come, the nature of that change and its repercussions are fully understood only in hindsight, which is precisely what Mad Men's characters lack. They are simply adults living their lives.
It's sometime around April, 1963; the Beatles recorded their first album in March, but the British have already invaded Sterling Cooper, thanks to Duck's ambition and Roger's libido. The anxiety of the characters has a very literal cause, as we know that about a third of the staff has been let go. Beyond British control, advertising itself is changing. Harry's position as head of the TV department has clearly given him more power within the agency, since he himself points out that TV brings in 42% of their revenue. Pete and Ken are pitted against one another for a promotion; the arrival of a male British secretary who sees his role as something much more grandiose than Joan has ever imagined challenges her supremacy over the support staff; Roger and Bert seem to have a symbolic "advisory" role at the agency with no real authority.
Much of the episode focuses on Don and Sal's jaunt to Baltimore to placate London Fog. "Out of Town," as the episode title suggests, is the episode's theme. To be out of town is to have the ability to rebirth yourself, to pretend to be anything and anyone you want to be because no one knows you. Don Draper is an expert at rebirthing, at changing identities, and is quick to make up a backstory for himself and Sal for their night carousing with the stewardesses. The real birthing that takes place though is of Sal's true identity; being out of town allows him to let the bellboy kiss him and to acknowledge his true desires. It's Dick's birthday, but in this sense it's also the day Sal is birthed into a new way of conceiving of his life.
The new doesn't fully replace the old because the new is born from it. Dick Whitman lies just under the surface of Don Draper just as the Beatles lie just under the surface of Perry Como. Change isn't coming so much as it's slowly and inexorably happening all around, every minute. In the next few months of 1963 the Draper's baby will be born, TaB and ZIP codes will be introduced, JFK will call for passage of a Civil Rights Act, the SCLC's Birmingham campaign will grip the nation, MLK will be jailed and pen his famous Letter and a few months later deliver his "I Have a Dream" speech while James Meredith enrolls at Ole Miss, Kenya and Uganda will free themselves from British domination, and in a little country called Vietnam Diem will be assassinated by US-backed military coup. Joan will deal with the repercussions of her marriage, Don will try to remain committed to his family, Pete or Ken will be promoted, Peggy will try to force her secretary to respect her, all the adults living in this world will continue to live in it even as the ground underneath them keeps shifting.
How we deal with the change we live inside of is the theme of all our lives.
Slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?
- W.B Yeats, "The Second Coming"
By 1967 Joan Didion would use Yeats' evocation of the apocalypse to anchor her reporting on the Haight during the Summer of Love, but these lines strongly came to mind when thinking about the Season 3 premier of Mad Men. Yes, the episode is literally about births, and the anxiety surrounding births: we begin with a flashback to Dick Whitman's birth, Betty and Don are awaiting the birth of their third child, the episode takes place on Dick's birthday, and the episode ends with Don and Betty telling Sally the story of her birth. Beyond the literal, though, the themes of the season hinted at in the episode are all about changes that are being born, the anxieties attendant to those changes, and how one reacts to change when one is in the middle of it.
From the first scene of the pilot episode the audience has known what the characters can't know: that the complacency and seeming hegemony of the immediate postwar years is about to explode into chaos. Everything that happens to these characters takes place on the cusp of a great cultural shift that they can't predict because they are living through it. In 2007, would any of us have predicted the events of 2008, the extent of the financial meltdown, the depth of our national anxiety, the result of the Presidential election? Although those living through a period of cultural shift might have glimmers that a change is gonna come, the nature of that change and its repercussions are fully understood only in hindsight, which is precisely what Mad Men's characters lack. They are simply adults living their lives.
It's sometime around April, 1963; the Beatles recorded their first album in March, but the British have already invaded Sterling Cooper, thanks to Duck's ambition and Roger's libido. The anxiety of the characters has a very literal cause, as we know that about a third of the staff has been let go. Beyond British control, advertising itself is changing. Harry's position as head of the TV department has clearly given him more power within the agency, since he himself points out that TV brings in 42% of their revenue. Pete and Ken are pitted against one another for a promotion; the arrival of a male British secretary who sees his role as something much more grandiose than Joan has ever imagined challenges her supremacy over the support staff; Roger and Bert seem to have a symbolic "advisory" role at the agency with no real authority.
Much of the episode focuses on Don and Sal's jaunt to Baltimore to placate London Fog. "Out of Town," as the episode title suggests, is the episode's theme. To be out of town is to have the ability to rebirth yourself, to pretend to be anything and anyone you want to be because no one knows you. Don Draper is an expert at rebirthing, at changing identities, and is quick to make up a backstory for himself and Sal for their night carousing with the stewardesses. The real birthing that takes place though is of Sal's true identity; being out of town allows him to let the bellboy kiss him and to acknowledge his true desires. It's Dick's birthday, but in this sense it's also the day Sal is birthed into a new way of conceiving of his life.
The new doesn't fully replace the old because the new is born from it. Dick Whitman lies just under the surface of Don Draper just as the Beatles lie just under the surface of Perry Como. Change isn't coming so much as it's slowly and inexorably happening all around, every minute. In the next few months of 1963 the Draper's baby will be born, TaB and ZIP codes will be introduced, JFK will call for passage of a Civil Rights Act, the SCLC's Birmingham campaign will grip the nation, MLK will be jailed and pen his famous Letter and a few months later deliver his "I Have a Dream" speech while James Meredith enrolls at Ole Miss, Kenya and Uganda will free themselves from British domination, and in a little country called Vietnam Diem will be assassinated by US-backed military coup. Joan will deal with the repercussions of her marriage, Don will try to remain committed to his family, Pete or Ken will be promoted, Peggy will try to force her secretary to respect her, all the adults living in this world will continue to live in it even as the ground underneath them keeps shifting.
How we deal with the change we live inside of is the theme of all our lives.
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
8 Minus Jon Stuck with Kate
Of course I watched it. There was nothing else on last night anyway and, if someone insists on parading the train wreck that is their marriage in front of the nation, I take that as an invitation to bear witness. Watching people who hate each other hate each other will quickly get old, but for now here are the lessons I learned:
1. If you're going to recline casually on a couch with your shoes off in order to announce your separation and impending divorce, do everyone a favor: wash your feet first. I'm talking to you, Kate.
2. Marketing folks need to understand that product placement in "reality" shows can sometimes be a little too serendipitous. Here we had an episode entitled "Crooked Houses" in which the house of Gosselin finally teetered over, and an episode that was at once about the building of separate play houses for the kids and the movement into separate houses by the parents. There's also the creepy specter of a product-sponsored separation announcement. Crooked, indeed.
3. If you have eight children and ask, "Who wants a granola bar?" expect that all eight will want a granola bar. Do not ask this if you in fact only have five granola bars. And, once you have posed this question only to find that you only have five granola bars, try breaking them in half so that everyone gets some, rather than saying, "Oh well I only have five so no one gets a granola bar." In other words, learn how to count, biyatch.
4. The main fault for the demise of a marriage lies with those in the marriage. The paparazzi didn't do it.
5. "Agreeance" is in fact a word but its usage is considered obsolete, having been replaced by "agreement." If you want to appear erudite, spend some time perusing a usage dictionary.
6. Times of great stress, for example taping your reality show while simultaneously ending your marriage, call for one thing: a picnic with the kids in the middle of the yard, which your soon-to-be-ex husband must watch because he hasn't been invited.
Lessons learned. Time to move on.
1. If you're going to recline casually on a couch with your shoes off in order to announce your separation and impending divorce, do everyone a favor: wash your feet first. I'm talking to you, Kate.
2. Marketing folks need to understand that product placement in "reality" shows can sometimes be a little too serendipitous. Here we had an episode entitled "Crooked Houses" in which the house of Gosselin finally teetered over, and an episode that was at once about the building of separate play houses for the kids and the movement into separate houses by the parents. There's also the creepy specter of a product-sponsored separation announcement. Crooked, indeed.
3. If you have eight children and ask, "Who wants a granola bar?" expect that all eight will want a granola bar. Do not ask this if you in fact only have five granola bars. And, once you have posed this question only to find that you only have five granola bars, try breaking them in half so that everyone gets some, rather than saying, "Oh well I only have five so no one gets a granola bar." In other words, learn how to count, biyatch.
4. The main fault for the demise of a marriage lies with those in the marriage. The paparazzi didn't do it.
5. "Agreeance" is in fact a word but its usage is considered obsolete, having been replaced by "agreement." If you want to appear erudite, spend some time perusing a usage dictionary.
6. Times of great stress, for example taping your reality show while simultaneously ending your marriage, call for one thing: a picnic with the kids in the middle of the yard, which your soon-to-be-ex husband must watch because he hasn't been invited.
Lessons learned. Time to move on.
Monday, March 30, 2009
Plastics
The last time I watched The Graduate I was around the same age that Dustin Hoffman was during filming (29, for those of you interested in trivia). I watched it again last night at around the same age as Mrs. Robinson (mid-40s, although Anne Bancroft was only 35 during filming, and that's it for trivia). All those years ago I experienced the film as the comedy/satire it's marketed to be, but age tempered my reaction. Yes, it is, in places, a very funny film, but it's ultimately an extremely sad, if not bitter, statement about post-war American bourgeois culture.
The film was released, and set, in 1967. Benjamin Braddock has just graduated from college and returned to his ancestral Pasadena home. From the establishing shots through the first half of the film he is portrayed as isolated, alone, and adrift. He walks zombie-like through LAX, attempts to disengage from the graduation party filled with his parents' friends, in fact appears to have no friends or social circle of his own. He is cut off from his parents' generation, the scuba suit in the suburban swimming pool just a literalization of his ennui. With the exception of Elaine, no one in his life even has a first name; not even a summer of sex with Mrs. Robinson personalizes her to the point where she can be named.
The affair itself does nothing to ground Benjamin, offering as it does only sex without real human contact. When he and Mrs. Robinson finally, at Ben's insistence, spend a few minutes talking, it only serves to show how cut off all human beings are from one another in this particular plastic-worshiping culture, rather than how they might engage. Benjamin's elders have nothing to offer him, and he can't imagine finding a home in their world.
On the other hand, although critics have interpreted the film as a statement on the "generation gap," Benjamin is equally estranged from his peer group. This is evidenced not only by the fact that he appears to have no peer group, but also in his character itself. He is clean-cut, polite, obedient. His disaffections are never turned outward. Unlike his contemporaries, he does not protest, demonstrate, grow out his hair, experiment with drugs. Before Mrs. Robinson he's even a virgin. His generation's preoccuations - free speech, free love, civil rights, Vietnam - are neither mentioned nor alluded to. His generation provides him no more succor than that of his parents.
His one act of rebellion, one moment of engagement, is his single-minded pursuit of Elaine, a pursuit that borders on the monomaniacal. He and Elaine in fact hardly know each other, and the fact that he feels so connected to her speaks more about the lack of connections in his life than it does about their relationship. The film appears to end in truimph, as Elaine flees the church with Benjamin to get on that bus and escape the marriage her parents have forced her into.
Look again at that final shot, though, and you see that this is as much a moment of confusion as it is of triumph. We see them looking out the back window, laughing as they are driven away. We then cut to the other passengers, turning in their seats to stare at the couple. They are isolated, cut off from the family at the church behind them and from the adults on the bus in front of them. This echoes the opening shot of the film, where a close-up of Benjamin's face pulls away to reveal the other passengers on the plane taking him home to LA, each in separate seats, each in separate worlds. The film dissolves to black with a shot of the couple sitting, staring ahead, blank looks on their faces. They don't know what to say, they don't know what to do, they don't know where the bus is heading. They may be "free," but they are also lost.
We end exactly where we began. Benjamin has achieved his quest only to find not the holy grail but instead a long road to nowhere on a bus filled with strangers. The greatness of this film lies not in the moments of pure comedy for which it is remembered but instead in the fact that pure comedy can be found even in this vast, desolate, uniquely American wasteland.
The film was released, and set, in 1967. Benjamin Braddock has just graduated from college and returned to his ancestral Pasadena home. From the establishing shots through the first half of the film he is portrayed as isolated, alone, and adrift. He walks zombie-like through LAX, attempts to disengage from the graduation party filled with his parents' friends, in fact appears to have no friends or social circle of his own. He is cut off from his parents' generation, the scuba suit in the suburban swimming pool just a literalization of his ennui. With the exception of Elaine, no one in his life even has a first name; not even a summer of sex with Mrs. Robinson personalizes her to the point where she can be named.
The affair itself does nothing to ground Benjamin, offering as it does only sex without real human contact. When he and Mrs. Robinson finally, at Ben's insistence, spend a few minutes talking, it only serves to show how cut off all human beings are from one another in this particular plastic-worshiping culture, rather than how they might engage. Benjamin's elders have nothing to offer him, and he can't imagine finding a home in their world.
On the other hand, although critics have interpreted the film as a statement on the "generation gap," Benjamin is equally estranged from his peer group. This is evidenced not only by the fact that he appears to have no peer group, but also in his character itself. He is clean-cut, polite, obedient. His disaffections are never turned outward. Unlike his contemporaries, he does not protest, demonstrate, grow out his hair, experiment with drugs. Before Mrs. Robinson he's even a virgin. His generation's preoccuations - free speech, free love, civil rights, Vietnam - are neither mentioned nor alluded to. His generation provides him no more succor than that of his parents.
His one act of rebellion, one moment of engagement, is his single-minded pursuit of Elaine, a pursuit that borders on the monomaniacal. He and Elaine in fact hardly know each other, and the fact that he feels so connected to her speaks more about the lack of connections in his life than it does about their relationship. The film appears to end in truimph, as Elaine flees the church with Benjamin to get on that bus and escape the marriage her parents have forced her into.
Look again at that final shot, though, and you see that this is as much a moment of confusion as it is of triumph. We see them looking out the back window, laughing as they are driven away. We then cut to the other passengers, turning in their seats to stare at the couple. They are isolated, cut off from the family at the church behind them and from the adults on the bus in front of them. This echoes the opening shot of the film, where a close-up of Benjamin's face pulls away to reveal the other passengers on the plane taking him home to LA, each in separate seats, each in separate worlds. The film dissolves to black with a shot of the couple sitting, staring ahead, blank looks on their faces. They don't know what to say, they don't know what to do, they don't know where the bus is heading. They may be "free," but they are also lost.
We end exactly where we began. Benjamin has achieved his quest only to find not the holy grail but instead a long road to nowhere on a bus filled with strangers. The greatness of this film lies not in the moments of pure comedy for which it is remembered but instead in the fact that pure comedy can be found even in this vast, desolate, uniquely American wasteland.
Friday, February 20, 2009
And the Winner is...Whatever
It's Oscar time again. How do you make a fluffy extravagance relevant in the face of hardening times? Make it about triumphs over adversity. I have no doubt that will be the theme of these awards, and I also have no doubt that for some reason I really don't care about who is honored this year and who goes home empty-handed. For the first time I've actually seen all five best-picture nominees, as well as most of the other nominated films/performances, and I have to say that 2008 was a mediocre year for movies indeed. Any of the nominees for best documentary are better films than the best picture nominees, which is saying something about the state of fictional storytelling in this culture. Having said that, here are my guesses:
Best Picture and Best Director: Slumdog Millionaire and Danny Boyle. This is only fine with me in that it prevents both The Reader and Benjamin Button from winning. I thought BB was Forest Gump with makeup (and that it will win for makeup), and a gross mismanagement of a terrific short story, and that The Reader just wasn't very good. If the decision were up to me the award would go to Frost/Nixon. It's hard to adapt a play for the screen, and this was a terrific adaptation. Slumdog, though, has the momentum, is a little film that had to fight to get distributed, and is in fact about the triumph of love and intelligence over horrifying odds. Feel good, folks, feel good.
Best Actor: No one has overcome more than Mickey Rourke, so he gets the Oscar. His performance was the one interesting thing about a mediocre film, so there is that. Frank Langella should win this, but he won't.
Best Actress: Kate Winslett for her body (of work). Not for The Reader, although her performance was predictably good, but because she's overdue. Melissa Leo should take this, but she won't. Feel good, Kate's finally getting her due.
Best Supporting Actor: Heath Ledger overcomes death. The Dark Night should get cinematography, editing, and a host of other technical awards. It should have been nominated for best picture. Oh well.
Best Supporting Actress: Nate Silver thinks this will go to that woman from Benjamin Button, and he's usually right about things. However, since overcoming adversity is the theme, I'm going to predict Penelope Cruz overcoming the fact that she was nominated for a Woody Allen film. Plus, she was better.
Screenplays: I'm too lazy to double-check who's nominated. In an ideal world, Frost/Nixon for adapted, Frozen River for original. And maybe this will be the case. Frozen River is, after all, a little film that could, and screenplay is the category where little films that could get recognized. It would also be a feel good award.
Best Documentary: Man on Wire has momentum and was one of the best pictures of the year. This is a competetive category, though, and Herzog will probably get the Kate Winslet treatment. He's overdue, and it would be an award we can all feel good about.
A bunch of other awards will also be handed out, but I can't bring myself to care. My final prediction, and the one that will absolutely be true: someone will be wearing a dress so awful, so cringe-worthy, that the hours of my life spent watching the telecast will have been hours well-spent.
Best Picture and Best Director: Slumdog Millionaire and Danny Boyle. This is only fine with me in that it prevents both The Reader and Benjamin Button from winning. I thought BB was Forest Gump with makeup (and that it will win for makeup), and a gross mismanagement of a terrific short story, and that The Reader just wasn't very good. If the decision were up to me the award would go to Frost/Nixon. It's hard to adapt a play for the screen, and this was a terrific adaptation. Slumdog, though, has the momentum, is a little film that had to fight to get distributed, and is in fact about the triumph of love and intelligence over horrifying odds. Feel good, folks, feel good.
Best Actor: No one has overcome more than Mickey Rourke, so he gets the Oscar. His performance was the one interesting thing about a mediocre film, so there is that. Frank Langella should win this, but he won't.
Best Actress: Kate Winslett for her body (of work). Not for The Reader, although her performance was predictably good, but because she's overdue. Melissa Leo should take this, but she won't. Feel good, Kate's finally getting her due.
Best Supporting Actor: Heath Ledger overcomes death. The Dark Night should get cinematography, editing, and a host of other technical awards. It should have been nominated for best picture. Oh well.
Best Supporting Actress: Nate Silver thinks this will go to that woman from Benjamin Button, and he's usually right about things. However, since overcoming adversity is the theme, I'm going to predict Penelope Cruz overcoming the fact that she was nominated for a Woody Allen film. Plus, she was better.
Screenplays: I'm too lazy to double-check who's nominated. In an ideal world, Frost/Nixon for adapted, Frozen River for original. And maybe this will be the case. Frozen River is, after all, a little film that could, and screenplay is the category where little films that could get recognized. It would also be a feel good award.
Best Documentary: Man on Wire has momentum and was one of the best pictures of the year. This is a competetive category, though, and Herzog will probably get the Kate Winslet treatment. He's overdue, and it would be an award we can all feel good about.
A bunch of other awards will also be handed out, but I can't bring myself to care. My final prediction, and the one that will absolutely be true: someone will be wearing a dress so awful, so cringe-worthy, that the hours of my life spent watching the telecast will have been hours well-spent.
Monday, December 22, 2008
All I Want for Christmas
'Tis the season to give DVD box sets, and a quick perusal of Amazon demonstrates the fact that nearly each and every TV show, no matter how stupid, eventually finds its way into release. Are there really that many people interested in owning the complete According to Jim? Apparently so. Meanwhile, all sorts of really good television sits in the vaults, unreleased. Santa, I've made my list. Please release the following on DVD for me, and place the box sets in my stocking. You'll be doing the entire world a favor.
China Beach. How is it possible that this excellent show is not available on DVD? Sure, it was depressing, but isn't the Vietnam War by definition depressing? It had a great cast, including but not limited to Dana Delaney and Marge Helgenberger, and it was ahead of its time in its use of flash forwards, flash backs, intercut interviews set in the present, and all kinds of storytelling that was, at the time, unique for television. I have been baffled for years by the fact that not a single season or episode of this series is currently available.
Homefront. Remember Homefront? You should. It replaced thirtysomething Tuesdays at 10 on ABC. It had a great ensemble including Kyle Chandler and John Slattery. Sure, it was a period drama, and I'm one of the few people who likes period dramas, especially those set in mythical, midwestern American in the middle of WWII. It was really good. It only lasted two seasons. The whole series could fit on about four discs. Release it already! And while we're on the subject, another series in serious need of DVD treatment is
thirtysomething. Oh, those self-obsessed Philadelphia yuppies with their shoulder pads and their careers and their search for fulfillment. Gary looked just like Bjorn Borg, and he died! Nancy was a saint, and she had cancer! Melissa was a goof, and had a great loft! Ellen was punished for being a single career woman by hooking up with men who were way too ugly! Miles! Miles! Michael and Hope's dog was named Grendel! Seriously, who wouldn't buy this?
Sisters. Yes, it was an evening soap and yes, at times it was stupid. But come on, George Clooney was on for a while. And it starred Sela Ward and Swoozie Kurtz. This show was too fun to be locked away in a vault somewhere.
All My Children. No, I'm not crazy enought to desire each and every episode of the past 38 years released on DVD. All I want is a couple of discs that feature highlights from the 1970s, the show's golden age. I want to see some Tara. I want Donna when she's a prostitute, and the evil Billy Clyde Tuggle, who filled the void left by the evil pimp Tyrone. I want some young Erica Kane. This doesn't seem to me like too much to ask.
Life on Mars (UK series released for Region One, USA). Everyone says the original UK version is superior to the US remake. I like the remake fine, but have only seen maybe two of the original episodes on BBC America. It's out on DVD for Region 2, which of course won't work on my player. Please, people, reformat the thing so I can make unfair comparisions between the two just like everyone else.
Ed. Oh, it was somewhat dopey and sappy. A high-powered lawyer is cuckolded by his fiancee, ditches everything, and moves back to his picture-perfect hometown, where he buys a bowling alley for his law practice and pines for his high school love, who is now a high school teacher. But the performances were strong, and on cold winter nights, there's nothing like some sap to warm you up. This lasted a couple of seasons on NBC, and there's no reason in the world why it hasn't been released.
OK, Santa, get to work.
China Beach. How is it possible that this excellent show is not available on DVD? Sure, it was depressing, but isn't the Vietnam War by definition depressing? It had a great cast, including but not limited to Dana Delaney and Marge Helgenberger, and it was ahead of its time in its use of flash forwards, flash backs, intercut interviews set in the present, and all kinds of storytelling that was, at the time, unique for television. I have been baffled for years by the fact that not a single season or episode of this series is currently available.
Homefront. Remember Homefront? You should. It replaced thirtysomething Tuesdays at 10 on ABC. It had a great ensemble including Kyle Chandler and John Slattery. Sure, it was a period drama, and I'm one of the few people who likes period dramas, especially those set in mythical, midwestern American in the middle of WWII. It was really good. It only lasted two seasons. The whole series could fit on about four discs. Release it already! And while we're on the subject, another series in serious need of DVD treatment is
thirtysomething. Oh, those self-obsessed Philadelphia yuppies with their shoulder pads and their careers and their search for fulfillment. Gary looked just like Bjorn Borg, and he died! Nancy was a saint, and she had cancer! Melissa was a goof, and had a great loft! Ellen was punished for being a single career woman by hooking up with men who were way too ugly! Miles! Miles! Michael and Hope's dog was named Grendel! Seriously, who wouldn't buy this?
Sisters. Yes, it was an evening soap and yes, at times it was stupid. But come on, George Clooney was on for a while. And it starred Sela Ward and Swoozie Kurtz. This show was too fun to be locked away in a vault somewhere.
All My Children. No, I'm not crazy enought to desire each and every episode of the past 38 years released on DVD. All I want is a couple of discs that feature highlights from the 1970s, the show's golden age. I want to see some Tara. I want Donna when she's a prostitute, and the evil Billy Clyde Tuggle, who filled the void left by the evil pimp Tyrone. I want some young Erica Kane. This doesn't seem to me like too much to ask.
Life on Mars (UK series released for Region One, USA). Everyone says the original UK version is superior to the US remake. I like the remake fine, but have only seen maybe two of the original episodes on BBC America. It's out on DVD for Region 2, which of course won't work on my player. Please, people, reformat the thing so I can make unfair comparisions between the two just like everyone else.
Ed. Oh, it was somewhat dopey and sappy. A high-powered lawyer is cuckolded by his fiancee, ditches everything, and moves back to his picture-perfect hometown, where he buys a bowling alley for his law practice and pines for his high school love, who is now a high school teacher. But the performances were strong, and on cold winter nights, there's nothing like some sap to warm you up. This lasted a couple of seasons on NBC, and there's no reason in the world why it hasn't been released.
OK, Santa, get to work.
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
A Very Good Thing
I have no doubt that everyone's in need of a laugh right now, so I'm happy to report that I have discovered what is probably the most hilarious show on TV. Maybe you've read about it: Whatever, Martha, on the Fine Living Network. Actually, the Fine Living Network is itself pretty hysterical. It is, essentially, a bunch of repeats from Bravo and HGTV, one constant loop of Queer Eye and Emeril and other shows from the recent boom discussing cooking, gardening, and other points of accessible luxury none of us can any longer afford or even care about. Really, gracious entertaining feels very 2006. These days entertaining no doubt involves a 12-pack of Milwaulkee's Best and some tuna casserole, but I digress.
Whatever, Martha is Mystery Science Theater 3000 with the sci-fi B-movies replaced by old clips from the Martha Stewart Show and the robots replaced by Alexis Stewart and her friend Jennifer Koppelman Hutt. The clips play and Alexis and Jennifer snarkily comment on them. What makes the show funny, beyond the quick wit of the hosts and the ridiculous datedness of the clips, is the fact that Martha's daugher is one of those doing the snarking. Alexis isn't entirely mean, but she does enjoy making fun of her mother as much as the rest of us.
A block of shows runs weeknights from 8 to 10 PM (each show is half an hour, but be sure to record rather than watching live - there are way, way too many ads, probably 15 minutes of them in each show). One of last night's shows featured face painting with a very scary "clown" named Peanut Butter, who looked eerily reminiscent of a club kid from the Michael Alig era and who inisisted on glueing beads to the faces of Martha and some of her staffers. In another segment, Martha demonstrated how to make tools for the maintenance of your terrarium while Alexis and Jennifer mercilessly mocked not only the tools but the entire endeavor. No description does the show justice. You really must tune in and see for yourself.
Each show ends with some absolutely random and inappropriate sex and dating chatter between Alexis and Jennifer. It's amusing enough to listen to someone defend getting drunk and having sex on the first date, but to hear a exegesis on the joys of drunken first-date sex coming from the mouth of Martha Stewart's daughter is pure ironic genius.
The best part of all this? Martha herself is the executive producer, proof that she's not only a master markerter but also has a wicked self-depracating sense of humor. "Who doesn't have a bunch of 1990s video segments and B-roll lying, unused, in the basement?" I hear Martha asking. "On today's program, I'll show you how to repackage those used segments and make them look like new!"
Whatever, Martha is Mystery Science Theater 3000 with the sci-fi B-movies replaced by old clips from the Martha Stewart Show and the robots replaced by Alexis Stewart and her friend Jennifer Koppelman Hutt. The clips play and Alexis and Jennifer snarkily comment on them. What makes the show funny, beyond the quick wit of the hosts and the ridiculous datedness of the clips, is the fact that Martha's daugher is one of those doing the snarking. Alexis isn't entirely mean, but she does enjoy making fun of her mother as much as the rest of us.
A block of shows runs weeknights from 8 to 10 PM (each show is half an hour, but be sure to record rather than watching live - there are way, way too many ads, probably 15 minutes of them in each show). One of last night's shows featured face painting with a very scary "clown" named Peanut Butter, who looked eerily reminiscent of a club kid from the Michael Alig era and who inisisted on glueing beads to the faces of Martha and some of her staffers. In another segment, Martha demonstrated how to make tools for the maintenance of your terrarium while Alexis and Jennifer mercilessly mocked not only the tools but the entire endeavor. No description does the show justice. You really must tune in and see for yourself.
Each show ends with some absolutely random and inappropriate sex and dating chatter between Alexis and Jennifer. It's amusing enough to listen to someone defend getting drunk and having sex on the first date, but to hear a exegesis on the joys of drunken first-date sex coming from the mouth of Martha Stewart's daughter is pure ironic genius.
The best part of all this? Martha herself is the executive producer, proof that she's not only a master markerter but also has a wicked self-depracating sense of humor. "Who doesn't have a bunch of 1990s video segments and B-roll lying, unused, in the basement?" I hear Martha asking. "On today's program, I'll show you how to repackage those used segments and make them look like new!"
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Take Away the "H" in H.W. and What Have You Got?
I've been somewhat under the weather the past few days, but I did manage to drag myself to the theater yesterday to see Oliver Stone's W. Here's my review: don't bother seeing it. I learned absolutely nothing new about the man's character or biography, nothing new about how and why we entered Iraq. I ultimately left the theater wondering what genre of movie Stone thought he was making - it wasn't really a biopic, it wasn't a comedy, it wasn't satire - and what the point of the whole exercise might have been.
The film's themes were as follows:
W. spent his whole life trying to please his father. Beyond this one originary hurt and motivation, the man is an empty shell.
Condi Rice is a sycophant.
Rummy is an egomaniacal pedant.
Colin Powell was emasculated. And he was right.
Laura Bush likes books.
If you are a critic of the war, and if you've read the paper or watched the news for any part of the past seven years, none of this is new. Why spend the time and money to dramatize what we already know? If Stone was trying to invent a new cinematic genre, the filmed equivalent of naturalism or New Journalism, it just didn't translate. An American Tragedy, In Cold Blood, The Right Stuff, and other literary triumphs of the real worked because the authors were able to tell us more than we already knew about the story. By turning real people into characters Dreiser et al. were able to provide us access to feeling and motivation, to provide psychological as well as cultural context. W gives us caricature rather than character, and our only context is snippets from the nightly news.
The film's main dramatic conflict, and by extension the driving force of W's story, is between father and son, between the patrician and the party boy, the Episcopalian and the evangelical, the rational and the emotional. I have no doubt that the main reason W wanted to enter politics was to show that he was just as "good" as Jeb, to best his brother for his father's approval. That story would have made for excellent drama, but in this instance the conflict is drilled into us by exposition without nuance in the first hour, and the second hour is nothing more than a recapping of the first two years of our misadventure in Iraq. Yes, Iraq ties into the father/son dynamic, but because the primal war is completely dramatically subsumed by the Iraq war I ended up feeling that I'd watched half of a biopic and half of a History Channel documentary featuring bad re-enactments.
Perhaps Stone's frustration and contempt is ultimately reserved not for the first Bush administration but for the audience. We, after all, elected the guy and we, after all, are the ones who will suffer both the consequences and this movie. In the meantime, if you want to see an excellent Oliver Stone movie about an American president, rent the director's cut of Nixon.
The film's themes were as follows:
W. spent his whole life trying to please his father. Beyond this one originary hurt and motivation, the man is an empty shell.
Condi Rice is a sycophant.
Rummy is an egomaniacal pedant.
Colin Powell was emasculated. And he was right.
Laura Bush likes books.
If you are a critic of the war, and if you've read the paper or watched the news for any part of the past seven years, none of this is new. Why spend the time and money to dramatize what we already know? If Stone was trying to invent a new cinematic genre, the filmed equivalent of naturalism or New Journalism, it just didn't translate. An American Tragedy, In Cold Blood, The Right Stuff, and other literary triumphs of the real worked because the authors were able to tell us more than we already knew about the story. By turning real people into characters Dreiser et al. were able to provide us access to feeling and motivation, to provide psychological as well as cultural context. W gives us caricature rather than character, and our only context is snippets from the nightly news.
The film's main dramatic conflict, and by extension the driving force of W's story, is between father and son, between the patrician and the party boy, the Episcopalian and the evangelical, the rational and the emotional. I have no doubt that the main reason W wanted to enter politics was to show that he was just as "good" as Jeb, to best his brother for his father's approval. That story would have made for excellent drama, but in this instance the conflict is drilled into us by exposition without nuance in the first hour, and the second hour is nothing more than a recapping of the first two years of our misadventure in Iraq. Yes, Iraq ties into the father/son dynamic, but because the primal war is completely dramatically subsumed by the Iraq war I ended up feeling that I'd watched half of a biopic and half of a History Channel documentary featuring bad re-enactments.
Perhaps Stone's frustration and contempt is ultimately reserved not for the first Bush administration but for the audience. We, after all, elected the guy and we, after all, are the ones who will suffer both the consequences and this movie. In the meantime, if you want to see an excellent Oliver Stone movie about an American president, rent the director's cut of Nixon.
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Market Research
Last week, as I was in the middle of cooking something or other, the phone rang. Because I was distracted, I let the market researcher talk for a few minutes, forgetting even to ask why he was calling someone on the "Do Not Call" list. His company was doing market research on a new TV show, he explained. Would I be willing to watch a pilot and answer a few questions about it? Sure, I replied. I mean, we all know how much I love crappy TV.
I was told the DVD would arrive Monday, October 13, and that I had to watch the show Monday, October 13 for whatever reason. UPS dutifully delivered a package to my door yesterday afternoon. It contained a DVD, instructions, and two sealed surveys. I was told to open and complete the first survey before watching the pilot. I figured this would contain questions about my demographic profile and about what shows I currently watch and enjoy. I guess I'm just a naive idiot; it was a survey asking me about my brand preferences for such things as canned tuna and fabric softener.
Because the survey contained no words, just photographs of various name brands (I put a check next to the photo of my favorite brand in each category), the good news was that this took up only approximately 43 seconds of my day. Time to watch the pilot. Judging from the clothing and horrible "jokes," I'd say that this pilot was shot approximately 10 years ago. There's a reason why it was never picked up: it sucked. It sucked with an awfulness apparent even before the end of the opening teaser. I was asked a total of five questions about the show, which I answered within two minutes of pushing "play."
In order to ensure "the complete attention of the viewer" the DVD's rewind and fast forward features had been disabled. I soon discovered the real reason these features had been disabled: this pilot came complete with commercials, so many commercials that it's length was about 40 minutes, rather than the 30 minutes running time of a network situation comedy. Of course, I couldn't skip these commercials. And yes, the ads were for many of the products that had been featured in the pre-show survey.
After I was done folding laundry and brushing the cat the show was over. Time to fill out the post-viewing survey. It was the same as the pre-viewing survey. Exactly the same. I filled it out with exactly the same answers. What was the purpose of this exercise? It appears that the market research company is trying to find out how effective these commercials are. Would my preference for Downy change to a preference to Bounce after watching an ad? Did the happy family scarfing down Ortega tacos entice me to switch my allegiance from Old El Paso?
At least that's the only sense I can make of the whole thing. That, or there was no ulterior purpose and it was just a way of getting a bunch of unsuspecting Americans to forcibly watch some commercials. The market research company is calling me at 3:30 this afternoon to ask me some questions about the "pilot." I can't wait to talk to whoever is assigned the task of calling me. I have some questions of my own, after all. How much did each advertiser pay for this? Is this the most cost-effective way of marketing? What percentage of participants see through this charade? What percentage of those who see through it are angry? Aren't I on the "Do Not Call" list? Does this mean that television as a medium for delivering commercial messages as we now know them is dead? If we go entirely to product placement and "branded entertainment," what happens to the 30-second commercial? Is this what happens to it?
Bring it on, market research company. I can't wait to talk to you some more.
I was told the DVD would arrive Monday, October 13, and that I had to watch the show Monday, October 13 for whatever reason. UPS dutifully delivered a package to my door yesterday afternoon. It contained a DVD, instructions, and two sealed surveys. I was told to open and complete the first survey before watching the pilot. I figured this would contain questions about my demographic profile and about what shows I currently watch and enjoy. I guess I'm just a naive idiot; it was a survey asking me about my brand preferences for such things as canned tuna and fabric softener.
Because the survey contained no words, just photographs of various name brands (I put a check next to the photo of my favorite brand in each category), the good news was that this took up only approximately 43 seconds of my day. Time to watch the pilot. Judging from the clothing and horrible "jokes," I'd say that this pilot was shot approximately 10 years ago. There's a reason why it was never picked up: it sucked. It sucked with an awfulness apparent even before the end of the opening teaser. I was asked a total of five questions about the show, which I answered within two minutes of pushing "play."
In order to ensure "the complete attention of the viewer" the DVD's rewind and fast forward features had been disabled. I soon discovered the real reason these features had been disabled: this pilot came complete with commercials, so many commercials that it's length was about 40 minutes, rather than the 30 minutes running time of a network situation comedy. Of course, I couldn't skip these commercials. And yes, the ads were for many of the products that had been featured in the pre-show survey.
After I was done folding laundry and brushing the cat the show was over. Time to fill out the post-viewing survey. It was the same as the pre-viewing survey. Exactly the same. I filled it out with exactly the same answers. What was the purpose of this exercise? It appears that the market research company is trying to find out how effective these commercials are. Would my preference for Downy change to a preference to Bounce after watching an ad? Did the happy family scarfing down Ortega tacos entice me to switch my allegiance from Old El Paso?
At least that's the only sense I can make of the whole thing. That, or there was no ulterior purpose and it was just a way of getting a bunch of unsuspecting Americans to forcibly watch some commercials. The market research company is calling me at 3:30 this afternoon to ask me some questions about the "pilot." I can't wait to talk to whoever is assigned the task of calling me. I have some questions of my own, after all. How much did each advertiser pay for this? Is this the most cost-effective way of marketing? What percentage of participants see through this charade? What percentage of those who see through it are angry? Aren't I on the "Do Not Call" list? Does this mean that television as a medium for delivering commercial messages as we now know them is dead? If we go entirely to product placement and "branded entertainment," what happens to the 30-second commercial? Is this what happens to it?
Bring it on, market research company. I can't wait to talk to you some more.
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
Palin-polooza
I thought I'd be experiencing withdrawal today, since the conventions are over and the US Open is finished. Thank god for this internet-thingy, where all things Sarah Palin are alive and well. For a good chuckle, I highly recommend that you follow this link to the PalinDrome, a fake Palin blog written by a dedicated impersonator. Really, it's good for at least an hour of amusement.
If you're not in the mood for humor and instead desire a dose of outrage, link over to Women Against Sarah Palin to see some of the reasons women won't vote for just anyone with a pair of breasts.
Finally, I'd like to state for the record that I will not miss Matthews and Olbermann as anchors on MSNBC. I will not miss their annoying voices, I will not miss their pontificating, I will not miss the fact that they are both so in love with their own opinions that they barely allowed the actual commentators air time. It was painful, not wanting to listen to people I tend to agree with. Thank you, MSNBC, for making the election season easier on my ears.
If you're not in the mood for humor and instead desire a dose of outrage, link over to Women Against Sarah Palin to see some of the reasons women won't vote for just anyone with a pair of breasts.
Finally, I'd like to state for the record that I will not miss Matthews and Olbermann as anchors on MSNBC. I will not miss their annoying voices, I will not miss their pontificating, I will not miss the fact that they are both so in love with their own opinions that they barely allowed the actual commentators air time. It was painful, not wanting to listen to people I tend to agree with. Thank you, MSNBC, for making the election season easier on my ears.
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
High and Low
In today's movies one finds two approaches to comedy. On the one hand we have literate and witty characters whose banter surrounds dramatic events; the comedy is a product of character, not of plot. On the other hand we have comedy entirely driven by plot, either in the form of a genre spoof or through a series of untenable, wacky situations. This second approach features type rather than character; the comedy is produced through action or sight gag. One form is "high," descended from Woody Allen, the other is "low," descended from American Pie. Whether you prefer one or the other approach goes simply to taste. One doesn't work better than the other, in theory. Last night, I saw how drastically different the results could be in practice.
I started my comedy double-feature with Smart People, a film that had somehow garnered some decent reviews last spring. It stars Dennis Quaid as a widowed, depressed, misanthropic professor of Victorian literature; Sarah Jessica Parker as a wounded and neurotic doctor, Quaid's ex-student and love interest; Ellen Paige as Quaid's depressive, caustic, Republican daughter; and Thomas Haden Church as Quaid's "zany" brother. I wish someone had given me a call before this script was green-lighted. I could have easily explained that dumpy, overweight, arrogant, pompous, and depressed English professors are not the stuff of comedy but are instead the stuff of nightmare. A complete lack of social skills and of empathy is very hard to make funny. A love story about two people who can't communicate is not engaging. A daughter who reacts to her mother's death by withdrawing from life and becoming a perfectionist right-winger is not "zany." The film didn't succeed as a comedy, and didn't fare much better as drama, since the sum of Quaid's growth as a human was depicted as his ability to sit in the passenger seat of a car. I'm guessing that this was a big thing because his wife perished in an accident where she was a passenger, but this was one of several mysteries that were never explained.
I followed this with Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story. Here we had no pretense to smartness, no pondering of any of life's questions. It was simply a spoof of the rock bio-pick, and it was, in parts, hysterically funny. It would be worth watching for the Dylan impersonation alone, but when you add in an animated riff on Yellow Submarine and scenes from Dewey's 70s television variety show you end up with a complete triumph of the lowbrow. If there's a lesson in all this it's that sometimes it's better to not try so hard, sometimes it's better to aim low. Sometimes, the stupid is all the more pleasurable simply on account of being stupid.
Another high/low contrast awaits me tonight, this time centered on drama: the premier of the new 90120 followed by the premier episode of the last season of The Shield. Whether 90210 will benefit from a lack of ambitions will be the question of the night.
I started my comedy double-feature with Smart People, a film that had somehow garnered some decent reviews last spring. It stars Dennis Quaid as a widowed, depressed, misanthropic professor of Victorian literature; Sarah Jessica Parker as a wounded and neurotic doctor, Quaid's ex-student and love interest; Ellen Paige as Quaid's depressive, caustic, Republican daughter; and Thomas Haden Church as Quaid's "zany" brother. I wish someone had given me a call before this script was green-lighted. I could have easily explained that dumpy, overweight, arrogant, pompous, and depressed English professors are not the stuff of comedy but are instead the stuff of nightmare. A complete lack of social skills and of empathy is very hard to make funny. A love story about two people who can't communicate is not engaging. A daughter who reacts to her mother's death by withdrawing from life and becoming a perfectionist right-winger is not "zany." The film didn't succeed as a comedy, and didn't fare much better as drama, since the sum of Quaid's growth as a human was depicted as his ability to sit in the passenger seat of a car. I'm guessing that this was a big thing because his wife perished in an accident where she was a passenger, but this was one of several mysteries that were never explained.
I followed this with Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story. Here we had no pretense to smartness, no pondering of any of life's questions. It was simply a spoof of the rock bio-pick, and it was, in parts, hysterically funny. It would be worth watching for the Dylan impersonation alone, but when you add in an animated riff on Yellow Submarine and scenes from Dewey's 70s television variety show you end up with a complete triumph of the lowbrow. If there's a lesson in all this it's that sometimes it's better to not try so hard, sometimes it's better to aim low. Sometimes, the stupid is all the more pleasurable simply on account of being stupid.
Another high/low contrast awaits me tonight, this time centered on drama: the premier of the new 90120 followed by the premier episode of the last season of The Shield. Whether 90210 will benefit from a lack of ambitions will be the question of the night.
Monday, July 28, 2008
Here Comes the Future
If Rip Van Winkle fell asleep in 1960 and awakened in 1970, he’d be a confused man indeed. “What happened?” he’d ask himself. “Men are walking around looking like women, women are acting like men, and what’s with this loud music? Plus, everyone’s dressed like a six year-old on a play date or a circus clown. What’s with the marijuana? Doesn’t anyone drink rye whiskey anymore?”
Rip’s question would be a hard one to answer, even today, with the perspective of hindsight. Change doesn’t happen in visible moments, so how do you pin change down, understand it? We often don’t notice change until it’s already happened and we suddenly find ourselves on the wrong side of it, feeling old. Who’s young, who’s old, and the underlying dread that comes with the recognition of changes that are occurring but still too incomplete to yet understand was the theme of last night’s season two premier of Mad Men.
The unspoken but underlying tension caused by change about to happen was what made me love Mad Men in the first place. Watching season one I marveled at the attention to detail, how period specific it was, in essence feeling nostalgia for a world so recently present but so irretrievably lost. The characters, of course, didn’t know that their world was about to be lost, and the tension between what the audience knows about the 1960s and the way the characters seem to think the new decade will just be a continuation of the 1950s was central to the mood of the show.
Based on last night’s premier, this tension will be central to the plot, rather than the mood, of season two. We first see Don Draper at a physical, being told to start taking it easier; his blood pressure is high, and he’s 36, considered middle-aged at the time. Duck, Sterling Cooper’s new Client Services director, wants to go after the Martinson Coffee account. All the young people are now drinking Pepsi, and he wants to hire some young creative talent to show Martinson they can induce the young to switch over to coffee. Duck has also insisted the office buy a Xerox machine.
Upset by the news of his physical, Don has lunch at a bar, where a beatnik-type next to him is reading Frank O’Hara’s Meditations In an Emergency. Don asks if the book is good. “I don’t think you’ll like it,” the beatnik states. Don doesn’t see the need to hire young creative talent. “The young don’t know anything,” he complains. His boss insists, though, and Duck has won this battle; Don will hire new talent, talent that it’s clear he doesn’t understand, as we see when he interviews a writer and designer who come as a team, a concept alien to Don.
Things have changed on the home front as well. Don seems to be coming home every night to be with his family rather than whoring around Manhattan. His wife Betty, though, has come out of the depression of season one; we first see her in a commanding position, astride a horse, and Betty’s recognition of her power, sexual and otherwise, would seem to be foreshadowed throughout the episode. Don, on the other hand, seems emasculated, literally impotent on Valentine’s Day despite Betty’s hot lingerie, later waiting in front of the TV for his wife to get home for dinner.
Don buys and reads the Frank O’Hara book, perhaps as an attempt to keep up. The episode ends with a Don VO quoting O’Hara’s poem “Mayakovsky”: “Now I am quietly waiting for/ the catastrophe of my personality/ to seem beautiful again,/ and interesting, and modern”. What will happen to all these characters as the 1960s unfold? We’ll have to watch to see, and in fact this is the reason that we will watch.
This season will take place entirely during 1962. What the characters don’t know, but we do know, is what is still to come in this one year alone. This episode takes place on Valentine’s Day. By New Year’s Eve, the Cuban Missile Crisis will have come and gone; James Meredith and the National Guard will have integrated Ole Miss; Marilyn Monroe will have OD’d; the members of SDS will have written the Port Huron Statement; and John Glenn will have orbited the earth. Even more to the point, 87% of American homes will have a television set and CBS radio will have broadcast the final episodes of its last serials, thereby officially ending the Golden Age of Radio. The Beatles will have released their first single, “Love Me, Do.” And Andy Warhol will have had his first solo gallery show, of Campbell’s Soup paintings, at the Stable Gallery.
Frank O’Hara was a poet of immediacy, of the now. His writing was a rebellion against the academic studiousness of American Modernism. Even the title of this book, and that particular prose poem, indicates this fact; these aren’t meditations on an emergency, they are meditations in, or during, one. But Meditations In an Emergency was actually published in 1957. By the time Don Draper discovers him, O'Hara is about to be of the past himself. O’Hara was and is associated with the New York School of writers and painters, with the Abstract Expressionists that Warhol and Pop Art would succeed. He is of the 1950s. By 1966, he would be dead.
We don’t yet know what Sterling Cooper does with the Martinson Coffee account. In 1964, Andy Warhol will open the Factory and paint hundreds of plywood boxes, some replicating Brillo boxes, but some replicating Martinson Coffee. A new world not of immediacy or of its opposite, nostalgia, will be replaced by a world that ironically celebrates mechanical reproduction, and a world where the tools of mechanical reproduction can make everyone an artist, writer, musician. Warhol makes Martinson Coffee something for the young at heart in a way Sterling Cooper could never imagine.
And the Xerox machine? It’s the first in a long line of technological innovation that will lead to the decline of print media and the monopoly of the national glossy magazine. Soon, anyone will be able to put out a ‘zine. Fast forward 40 years and here we are, me writing and you reading, the means of production and consumption at our fingertips, change all around us, but we don’t truly know it yet. The future happens every day, in small increments. The pleasure of Mad Men is watching it slowly unfold.
Rip’s question would be a hard one to answer, even today, with the perspective of hindsight. Change doesn’t happen in visible moments, so how do you pin change down, understand it? We often don’t notice change until it’s already happened and we suddenly find ourselves on the wrong side of it, feeling old. Who’s young, who’s old, and the underlying dread that comes with the recognition of changes that are occurring but still too incomplete to yet understand was the theme of last night’s season two premier of Mad Men.
The unspoken but underlying tension caused by change about to happen was what made me love Mad Men in the first place. Watching season one I marveled at the attention to detail, how period specific it was, in essence feeling nostalgia for a world so recently present but so irretrievably lost. The characters, of course, didn’t know that their world was about to be lost, and the tension between what the audience knows about the 1960s and the way the characters seem to think the new decade will just be a continuation of the 1950s was central to the mood of the show.
Based on last night’s premier, this tension will be central to the plot, rather than the mood, of season two. We first see Don Draper at a physical, being told to start taking it easier; his blood pressure is high, and he’s 36, considered middle-aged at the time. Duck, Sterling Cooper’s new Client Services director, wants to go after the Martinson Coffee account. All the young people are now drinking Pepsi, and he wants to hire some young creative talent to show Martinson they can induce the young to switch over to coffee. Duck has also insisted the office buy a Xerox machine.
Upset by the news of his physical, Don has lunch at a bar, where a beatnik-type next to him is reading Frank O’Hara’s Meditations In an Emergency. Don asks if the book is good. “I don’t think you’ll like it,” the beatnik states. Don doesn’t see the need to hire young creative talent. “The young don’t know anything,” he complains. His boss insists, though, and Duck has won this battle; Don will hire new talent, talent that it’s clear he doesn’t understand, as we see when he interviews a writer and designer who come as a team, a concept alien to Don.
Things have changed on the home front as well. Don seems to be coming home every night to be with his family rather than whoring around Manhattan. His wife Betty, though, has come out of the depression of season one; we first see her in a commanding position, astride a horse, and Betty’s recognition of her power, sexual and otherwise, would seem to be foreshadowed throughout the episode. Don, on the other hand, seems emasculated, literally impotent on Valentine’s Day despite Betty’s hot lingerie, later waiting in front of the TV for his wife to get home for dinner.
Don buys and reads the Frank O’Hara book, perhaps as an attempt to keep up. The episode ends with a Don VO quoting O’Hara’s poem “Mayakovsky”: “Now I am quietly waiting for/ the catastrophe of my personality/ to seem beautiful again,/ and interesting, and modern”. What will happen to all these characters as the 1960s unfold? We’ll have to watch to see, and in fact this is the reason that we will watch.
This season will take place entirely during 1962. What the characters don’t know, but we do know, is what is still to come in this one year alone. This episode takes place on Valentine’s Day. By New Year’s Eve, the Cuban Missile Crisis will have come and gone; James Meredith and the National Guard will have integrated Ole Miss; Marilyn Monroe will have OD’d; the members of SDS will have written the Port Huron Statement; and John Glenn will have orbited the earth. Even more to the point, 87% of American homes will have a television set and CBS radio will have broadcast the final episodes of its last serials, thereby officially ending the Golden Age of Radio. The Beatles will have released their first single, “Love Me, Do.” And Andy Warhol will have had his first solo gallery show, of Campbell’s Soup paintings, at the Stable Gallery.
Frank O’Hara was a poet of immediacy, of the now. His writing was a rebellion against the academic studiousness of American Modernism. Even the title of this book, and that particular prose poem, indicates this fact; these aren’t meditations on an emergency, they are meditations in, or during, one. But Meditations In an Emergency was actually published in 1957. By the time Don Draper discovers him, O'Hara is about to be of the past himself. O’Hara was and is associated with the New York School of writers and painters, with the Abstract Expressionists that Warhol and Pop Art would succeed. He is of the 1950s. By 1966, he would be dead.
We don’t yet know what Sterling Cooper does with the Martinson Coffee account. In 1964, Andy Warhol will open the Factory and paint hundreds of plywood boxes, some replicating Brillo boxes, but some replicating Martinson Coffee. A new world not of immediacy or of its opposite, nostalgia, will be replaced by a world that ironically celebrates mechanical reproduction, and a world where the tools of mechanical reproduction can make everyone an artist, writer, musician. Warhol makes Martinson Coffee something for the young at heart in a way Sterling Cooper could never imagine.
And the Xerox machine? It’s the first in a long line of technological innovation that will lead to the decline of print media and the monopoly of the national glossy magazine. Soon, anyone will be able to put out a ‘zine. Fast forward 40 years and here we are, me writing and you reading, the means of production and consumption at our fingertips, change all around us, but we don’t truly know it yet. The future happens every day, in small increments. The pleasure of Mad Men is watching it slowly unfold.
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Jennifer Love Hewitt, We Hardly Knew Ye
Hurray! Party of Five is now available on Hulu. All of season 3 is posted; that's the season where Bailey goes to college and becomes an alcoholic, his descent into inebriation made complete when he attends Owen's third birthday party as a mean, drunken, sad, lonely clown. Julia (the fetching Neve Campbell) is still in high school and hasn't yet achieved complete solipsism. Charlie is still a rogue and hasn't yet matured through cancer. Little Owen still can't talk, and the show is better for it.
It's full of flannel and Gap henleys. It's 1997. Fiona Apple sings in the background. Without commercials each episode is only 43 minutes long. You know you want to. You've got the time - there's nothing new on TV anyway. Just watch it.
It's full of flannel and Gap henleys. It's 1997. Fiona Apple sings in the background. Without commercials each episode is only 43 minutes long. You know you want to. You've got the time - there's nothing new on TV anyway. Just watch it.
Saturday, May 31, 2008
No Men In Sight
The young go off in search of love and find only sex. The middle-aged, having found love, search for a way to still have sex. Your friends, though, are constant. As best I can tell that is the meaning of SATC, the movie. The action begins three years after the series ended, with all four of our heroines coupled-up. How they will or will not sustain coupled happiness is the plot that shakes the cosmopolitans.
I attended a crowded matinee screening. Out of the hundred or so in the audience, I believe two were men. Whether you liked or didn't like the series, whether you do or don't think the movie was necessary or is any good, what's clear is that these characters speak loudly to a large population of women, and in this case, in a theater in suburban Pennsylvania, to a large population of women whose lives don't resemble the lives depicted on-screen. The women in the audience applauded when the previews ended and the opening bars of the theme music blared. They yelled at the screen at various points in the film. They applauded again at the end. Maybe they'd all had one or five too many cosmos before going to the theater, but either way my critical opinion matters little in the face of such adoration.
Here's what I liked best about the series, and liked best about the film: the women are allowed to grow older. They struggle a bit at first, but ultimately accept and celebrate their own middle-age. The characters are pretty much exactly my age, and they act it. I'm incredibly glad that all involved understand that no one wants to watch a 43 year-old wandering around in a tu-tu. I'm incredibly glad that the movie's triumphal close was a celebration of Sam's 50th birthday. I'm incredibly glad that these women do get what they want sometimes, but not all the time, and that their journey has been to acceptance of that realistic fact.
Here's what I didn't like about the film: because it felt like two seasons of the TV show condensed into 2.5 hours, little room remained for the male characters to be anything other than plot devices. The film also felt too long. Maybe Michael Patrick King is just so used to the pacing of the half-hour show that he didn't know what to do with the feature length, but it definitely felt too long.
It can never be 1998 again; we've all moved on. Understand that, have a pink drink or two, and you'll be happy to be reunited with Carrie and company.
I attended a crowded matinee screening. Out of the hundred or so in the audience, I believe two were men. Whether you liked or didn't like the series, whether you do or don't think the movie was necessary or is any good, what's clear is that these characters speak loudly to a large population of women, and in this case, in a theater in suburban Pennsylvania, to a large population of women whose lives don't resemble the lives depicted on-screen. The women in the audience applauded when the previews ended and the opening bars of the theme music blared. They yelled at the screen at various points in the film. They applauded again at the end. Maybe they'd all had one or five too many cosmos before going to the theater, but either way my critical opinion matters little in the face of such adoration.
Here's what I liked best about the series, and liked best about the film: the women are allowed to grow older. They struggle a bit at first, but ultimately accept and celebrate their own middle-age. The characters are pretty much exactly my age, and they act it. I'm incredibly glad that all involved understand that no one wants to watch a 43 year-old wandering around in a tu-tu. I'm incredibly glad that the movie's triumphal close was a celebration of Sam's 50th birthday. I'm incredibly glad that these women do get what they want sometimes, but not all the time, and that their journey has been to acceptance of that realistic fact.
Here's what I didn't like about the film: because it felt like two seasons of the TV show condensed into 2.5 hours, little room remained for the male characters to be anything other than plot devices. The film also felt too long. Maybe Michael Patrick King is just so used to the pacing of the half-hour show that he didn't know what to do with the feature length, but it definitely felt too long.
It can never be 1998 again; we've all moved on. Understand that, have a pink drink or two, and you'll be happy to be reunited with Carrie and company.
Friday, May 30, 2008
Sex (Yay!) and the (Yay!) City (Yay!)
During its first two seasons, I wasn't a fan. It felt too frivolous, too out of touch with the reality of my life in NYC. I lived in the East Village during the entirety of the show's six-year run, and by season 3 I was a fan. After 9/11, the show became more and more serious, more and more mature, making the transition from New Economy youthful exuberance to a meditation on how to retain the romantic yearnings of youth as you, and your culture, age and change.
So yes, I've been looking forward to the movie and no, I didn't go see the showing at 12:01 this morning. I am going this afternoon, though, and after the film and a pink drink or two I'll come back and post my thoughts. Well, let me clarify: sometime before Monday I'll come back and post my thoughts. Because one never knows in advance how many pink drinks one might consume.
So yes, I've been looking forward to the movie and no, I didn't go see the showing at 12:01 this morning. I am going this afternoon, though, and after the film and a pink drink or two I'll come back and post my thoughts. Well, let me clarify: sometime before Monday I'll come back and post my thoughts. Because one never knows in advance how many pink drinks one might consume.
Monday, May 12, 2008
The Tribe Has Spoken
I've watched Survivor for each of its 16 seasons not because it's always good or entertaining but because I find it fascinating to see how people behave when put into a situation where they need to play a social game while starving. Social games are hard enough when played in the real world, fueled by pizza and cheese doodles. How well would I be able to influence people if I spent 39 days in a bikini, drenched by rain at least once a day, subsisting on clams and coconuts? I probably won't ever have the opportunity to answer that question based on experience, so I answer it vicariously by watching the show.
Last night's finale was unique in that each of the four remaining contestants had played a very good game. None of them was a goat, dragged along to the finals as dead weight who can't possibly win. I have no doubt that Parvarti, the winner, is a bitch in real life, but I have to give her props for her ability to lie, backstab, flirt, look good in a bikini, and persuade her victims to give her the win, all while consuming probably around 500 calories a day.
I often watch Survivor jealous that our lives can't function on this simple level. Don't like your boss? Convince an alliance of coworkers to vote him or her out of the office. Want to teach your rival a lesson? Send him or her over to Exile Island for a couple of days and plot against him or her the whole time. If life were like Survivor we could work our way through all our anger and resentments immediately and openly, simply by persuading others to share those resentments and act on them. We'd also all be thin, and look good in bikinis.
Of course, life isn't a game and doesn't feature a million-dollar prize at the end. Life isn't edited to fit into a 13-week season. Even so, I woke up this morning wishing I could go to tribal council tonight and vote someone off my island.
Last night's finale was unique in that each of the four remaining contestants had played a very good game. None of them was a goat, dragged along to the finals as dead weight who can't possibly win. I have no doubt that Parvarti, the winner, is a bitch in real life, but I have to give her props for her ability to lie, backstab, flirt, look good in a bikini, and persuade her victims to give her the win, all while consuming probably around 500 calories a day.
I often watch Survivor jealous that our lives can't function on this simple level. Don't like your boss? Convince an alliance of coworkers to vote him or her out of the office. Want to teach your rival a lesson? Send him or her over to Exile Island for a couple of days and plot against him or her the whole time. If life were like Survivor we could work our way through all our anger and resentments immediately and openly, simply by persuading others to share those resentments and act on them. We'd also all be thin, and look good in bikinis.
Of course, life isn't a game and doesn't feature a million-dollar prize at the end. Life isn't edited to fit into a 13-week season. Even so, I woke up this morning wishing I could go to tribal council tonight and vote someone off my island.
Friday, March 14, 2008
Hulu, Baby, Hulu
After several months of beta testing, Hulu opened to the public this week. What's Hulu? A joint venture between NBC and Fox, it's an attempt to take on the hegemony of YouTube and to do an end run around Apple TV, and it's definitely worth checking out. Hulu isn't a dowload site but instead streaming video, and its programming is free. The movies and shows do have commercials, but so far the longest commercial break I've endured has been 25 seconds, which I didn't find unreasonable. The site's features make the commercials worth bearing.
First, Hulu contains not only current programming from the Fox and NBC families, but also great classic shows from their libraries. Their ultimate plan is to offer content from any studio willing to participate, meaning that the offerings will continue to expand. Right now, you can watch the entire first two seasons of The Bob Newhart Show, full episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Chicago Hope, really just an eclectic and enjoyable assortment of classic television. You can also choose from around a hundred full-length movies, some of them even movies that you'd want to see.
Currently, you don't need to register to use the site, but I suspect that may change. Registration is free, and it has some advantages. Let's say you love The Mary Tyler Moore Show, and you've blown through all of Season One, which is all that's available this week. You can subscribe to the show, and as new episodes are posted Hulu places them in your queue, where they will be waiting for you to view at your leisure.
Hulu's player is user-friendly and while the stream isn't perfect, especially when viewed full-screen, it's good enough. If you have a newer computer you can even watch in HD. My favorite feature is that you can "pop out" the viewer from the site so that you can watch programming on part of your desktop while multitasking. There's little as satisfying as watching an episode of Nanny and the Professor while working on a municipal ordinance, after all. Hulu also makes it incredibly easy to edit a clip and either embed it on your website or blog or email it. Again, all of this is free.
If you're looking to waste some time this weekend, Hulu is a great place to start. I know I'll be spending some time with Lou Grant.
First, Hulu contains not only current programming from the Fox and NBC families, but also great classic shows from their libraries. Their ultimate plan is to offer content from any studio willing to participate, meaning that the offerings will continue to expand. Right now, you can watch the entire first two seasons of The Bob Newhart Show, full episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Chicago Hope, really just an eclectic and enjoyable assortment of classic television. You can also choose from around a hundred full-length movies, some of them even movies that you'd want to see.
Currently, you don't need to register to use the site, but I suspect that may change. Registration is free, and it has some advantages. Let's say you love The Mary Tyler Moore Show, and you've blown through all of Season One, which is all that's available this week. You can subscribe to the show, and as new episodes are posted Hulu places them in your queue, where they will be waiting for you to view at your leisure.
Hulu's player is user-friendly and while the stream isn't perfect, especially when viewed full-screen, it's good enough. If you have a newer computer you can even watch in HD. My favorite feature is that you can "pop out" the viewer from the site so that you can watch programming on part of your desktop while multitasking. There's little as satisfying as watching an episode of Nanny and the Professor while working on a municipal ordinance, after all. Hulu also makes it incredibly easy to edit a clip and either embed it on your website or blog or email it. Again, all of this is free.
If you're looking to waste some time this weekend, Hulu is a great place to start. I know I'll be spending some time with Lou Grant.
Monday, February 25, 2008
Oscar Post-Mortem
All in all, my guesses weren't as off as Friday's post would indicate, mainly because I guessed correctly in the minor categories. Tilda Swinton was fine with me, and I truly thought Julie Christie was deserving, but my life will go on even though she didn't win. I did think, however, that the evening contained one travesty, and that travesty had nothing to do with anyone's dress.
I knew the Coen brothers would take picture and director, and that was fine with me in that No Country for Old Men is truly a good film. I didn't think it was the best film of the year, though, and the travesty is that Paul Thomas Anderson got absolutely nothing for There Will Be Blood, which was the best film of the year, maybe even of the decade. Yes, it was three hours long, yes, it was depressing, yes, the score was weird. But Anderson adapted the hell out of Sinclair's novel, greatly improving upon it, and he made one of the best meditations on capitalism and moral decay that I've ever seen. Maybe his film was too topical; maybe Academy members just have short attention spans; maybe they just don't like him. Whatever. Life goes on. But if you haven't seen it, go see There Will Be Blood, so you can tell people that you've been to the actual best picture of the year.
Addendum: The night's true lesson is this: if you're going to wear a feather boa, make sure that it's a good one, or that your neck is protected. The cheap one that I had on was so itchy it felt like I was wearing my cat around my neck. And like Gretel, if Gretel were a 'ho, I left behind a trail of pink feathers.
I knew the Coen brothers would take picture and director, and that was fine with me in that No Country for Old Men is truly a good film. I didn't think it was the best film of the year, though, and the travesty is that Paul Thomas Anderson got absolutely nothing for There Will Be Blood, which was the best film of the year, maybe even of the decade. Yes, it was three hours long, yes, it was depressing, yes, the score was weird. But Anderson adapted the hell out of Sinclair's novel, greatly improving upon it, and he made one of the best meditations on capitalism and moral decay that I've ever seen. Maybe his film was too topical; maybe Academy members just have short attention spans; maybe they just don't like him. Whatever. Life goes on. But if you haven't seen it, go see There Will Be Blood, so you can tell people that you've been to the actual best picture of the year.
Addendum: The night's true lesson is this: if you're going to wear a feather boa, make sure that it's a good one, or that your neck is protected. The cheap one that I had on was so itchy it felt like I was wearing my cat around my neck. And like Gretel, if Gretel were a 'ho, I left behind a trail of pink feathers.
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