NBC and the State of Network TV

Big news over the weekend. Fans of "Community" will be happy to hear that ousted showrunner Dan Harmon will be returning former season five, possibly along with another former writer, Chris McKenna. This is an unprecedented move. Showrunners generally never return to the shows they've left, especially when they've been fired the way that Harmon was. However, nothing is normal at NBC these days. "Community" is one of only two comedies that they renewed this year, along with "Parks and Recreation," because even though its ratings are low, it reliably brings in the most prized demographic of younger viewers, the ones who have been abandoning network television in droves lately. It's likely the same reason why they renewed the low-rated "Hannibal" for a second season last week, a very, very late decision that happened well after the big upfront presentations of next year's lineup. At the moment, neither "Community" or "Hannibal" are technically on the NBC schedule, which underscores how unusual both decisions are.

Even though this is good news for me, because I like "Community" and "Hannibal," there's no way that any other broadcast network would have brought them back. The shows have only survived because of how dire the situation is at NBC, and has been for so long. The ups and downs of the networks are usually out of the public eye, of interest to business analysts mostly. However, the epic decline of NBC from the highest rated network for much of the 90s and early 2000s to a fourth place also-ran that is losing ground to cable broadcasts and Univision, has become common knowledge. Some blame specific executives, the mishandling of established hits, and bungled launches of new shows. There have been a string of high-profile bombs over the last ten years, including the particularly damaging decision to put Jay Leno in the 10PM hour during the 2009-2010 season. The once prized Thursday night comedy lineup lost "30 Rock" and "The Office" this year, leaving the much beloved but little watched "Parks and Recreation" to anchor the night. Three new Thursday comedies will be launched in the fall to try and fill the gaps, a risky move considering NBC's recent track record with sitcoms. However, the network doesn't have many options at the moment.

The success and failure of the networks tends to be cyclical. ABC went through similar third place woes in the 70s, and CBS had a bad slump in the 80s. FOX, of course, started out at the bottom in 1986. Usually networks are more interesting when they're in trouble. The programming gets more experimental and innovative. Programmers take risks that they wouldn't otherwise. Right now, NBC is the network I tend to watch the most because its programming is more ambitious and daring than what you find in the rest of the mainstream. If history is any indicator, eventually one of these experiments is going to work, and NBC will be able to dig itself out of the ratings hole. However, network television is currently in a particularly unstable period, with viewing numbers down across the board, and increasing audience defections to cable television and the internet. As the recent battles over retransmission fees have revealed, network revenues are shrinking, and it may not be financially feasible for some of the major players to continue if the ratings continue to drop. There's a growing possibility that NBC could be sunk for good.

This past season was particularly dramatic. NBC had several shows that seemed to connect early on: "Revolution," "Smash," and "Go On." However, all of them suffered severe declines and "Smash" and "Go On" ended up cancelled. Their biggest hit, "The Voice," hasn't been able to function as an effective lead-in for the programs scheduled after it. "Do No Harm," the heavily hyped medical drama that was supposed to fill the 10PM Thursday night slot occupied for so many years by "ER," posted historically low premiere ratings in February, and was quickly axed after only two episodes. It was the latest in a long line of promising NBC dramas that bombed in the same time slot. Nearly all of the network's early gains were erased by the time May finales rolled around, and NBC finished in 4th place. The NBC execs are faced with starting over yet again, building on a schedule that's in even worse shape than last year.

However, the situation may not be as dire as it looks. It's important to remember that NBC is still getting the viewers that the advertisers want. This season it was a respectable third in the 18-49 demographic, and tied for second with CBS in the 18-34 demographic. And if they've been losing viewers, other networks have been losing more. It was FOX came out with the biggest losses, down a staggering 22% of total viewers from last year, while the other networks saw single digit drops. Whatever forces are causing the declines of network television, it's FOX that's currently feeling the brunt of the impact. However, it's pretty clear all that nearly all the major broadcast networks in the rut now, and if NBCs fortunes have been bad, the same is true of everyone else. NBC may not need to increase viewership at all to get ahead, but just hold the line.

We'll see what happens next. Stay tuned.
---

Read More

Trailers! Trailers! The Blindsided Edition

I can't believe this. I thought I was being smart waiting for the "Ender's Game" trailer to debut before I wrote up my latest trailer post. But now I'm behind again, because we've had a flood of other major trailers released since. Usually I would space these trailer posts much further apart, but screw it. I want to talk about some of these now, especially since there are a couple of awards contenders in the mix. And I'll toss in a few for the upcoming summer indie pictures I left out previously. Here we go. All links below lead to Trailer Addict.

The Butler - A star-studded cast, an inspirational true story, and a director who has never dealt with this kind of obvious Oscar-bait prestige material before. Oh boy. This is either going to be a must-see event film or it's going to be a disaster. There's sure to be controversy with some of the casting choices, including Robin Williams as Eisenhower, John Cusack as Nixon, and Jane Fonda as Nancy Reagan. However, "The Butler" may hit that sweet spot and become a feel-good crowd-pleaser the same way that "42" did this earlier this year.

Inside Llewyn Davis - There was an earlier trailer released back in January, but this international one gives us a better look at what the Coen brothers have been up to with their latest film, about the journey of a 1960s folk singer named Llewyn Davis, played by up-and-comer Oscar Isaac. The movie is already getting some buzz for its soundtrack, which features contributions by T Bone Burnett, Justin Timberlake, Mumford & Sons, and others. It will be in competition at Cannes this month, but we won't be seeing it in theaters until late December.

Captain Phillips - Directed by Paul Greengrass of "United 93" and two of the "Bourne" films, this is one of the action films I've been looking forward to the most this year. With this kind of true-life material, using the 2009 hijacking of the Maersk Alabama by Somali pirates, plus the involvement of Academy favorite Tom Hanks, this could have become a typically schmaltzy Hollywood dramatization very easily. However, Greengrass's stark style and penchant for realism, as evidenced in this promo, should keep his take lean and mean.

Gravity - This is the by far the best trailer I've seen all year. It presents the film's premise very quickly and very well: two astronauts played by Sandra Bullock and George Clooney fall victim to a terrible accident that turns a spacewalk into a terrifying, desperate struggle to avoid being lost to the endless void of outer space. The special effects look great, and the thrills are already palpable. The final shot is one of those great little jolts of nightmare fuel that makes me suspect this is going to be a far more visceral film than I was expecting.

The World's End - I'm not thrilled with this honestly, because the trailer seems to reveal that the apocalypse involved here is some kind of monster invasion, which makes it look a little too much like "Shaun of the Dead." Sure, seeing Simon Pegg and Nick Frost running around and fighting creepers again is sure to be fun, especially since they have Martin Freeman along for the ride, but I was hoping for their take on a different genre, like their buddy cop antics in "Hot Fuzz." Oh well. To early to say much more about this one yet.

August: Osage County - I've been warned that this trailer is misleading. "August: Osage County" looks like a "Steel Magnolia" style women's picture here, the better to draw in Meryl Streep and Julia Roberts fans, I'm guessing. However the story is actually very dark, based on a play by Tracy Letts, whose last script was for "Killer Joe." I wouldn't have minded so much if the trailer as an accurate reflection of the film, because the cast is so high-powered, and we really don't get enough solid character dramas like this anymore.

Fruitvale Station - A big indie contender that came out of the Sundance Film Festival this year, this is a dramatization of the final hours of Oscar Grant, played by Michael B. Williams, before his shooting death by the police at the Fruitvale BART Station in 2009. The trailer plays up the final acts of violence, as expected, but it's the glimpses of Williams' and Octavia Spencer's performances that are the most intriguing. I hope this one lives up to the hype, though I can also see where it might fall short. Keeping my fingers crossed.

Before Midnight - Celine and Jesse are back again in the third chapter of the "Before" series directed by Richard Linklater. Now our fateful lovers have finally gotten together, had a couple of kids, and are approaching middle age together, but it seems that their relationship issues haven't gone away. This time the action is set on a picturesque Greek island, but it looks like it's following the same structure of the last two movies: more long conversations about life and love with two familiar characters it's very nice to see again.

Only God Forgives - This trailer debuted a while ago, but it definitely deserves a mention. It's saying one thing loud and clear: if you liked Ryan Gosling and Nicholas Winding Refn's last movie, "Drive," you're probably going to like this one too. Lots of atmosphere, lots of violence, and a welcome appearance by Kristin Scott Thomas, who we don't see enough of anymore. Apparently the plot involves the murky world of organized crime and boxing matches in Thailand, but all you really need to know is that it's a movie that is just oozing cool.
---

Read More

Undead "Community" Shambles On

Well, this is an outcome I never would have predicted at the start of this season. "Community" has been renewed for a fifth season after a bumpy and delayed fourth season. Meanwhile, NBC has reveamped nearly its entire comedy lineup, cancelling the once promising freshman shows "Go On" and "The New Normal." While "Community" had some good episodes this year, and I've been a lot more forgiving than many other fans, I'm not sure that I'm happy about it getting yet another reprieve. Since creator Dan Harmon was ousted from the show, "Community" just hasn't been the same.

Let's start with the positives of this season first. I liked the "Freaky Friday" and Sophie B. Hawkins Dance episodes. I'm willing to go to bat for the secret origins, Inspector Spacetime convention, and even the puppet episodes. However, everything else, including last night's season finale have all been pretty meh. It's not that they didn't have good ideas or that they weren't ambitious, but the execution just wasn't what it should have been. Jeff consistently being a more positive and altruistic person? Britta and Troy getting together? Chang returning to Greendale as Kevin, faking a case of Chang-nesia? Fine in theory, but the writers didn't seem to have any idea where to go with them. Jeff 's insirational speeches just got blander and less cynical, Chang had a last-minute change of heart that cut short his evil plotting, and the best thing about Britta and Troy's relationship was their break-up and return to the status quo.

I tried to be patient at first, but at the weeks went by, it became clear that the new guys weren't coming close to matching the quality Harmon and the old crew had achieved. The friendships at the center of the show were too frequently mushy, and sentiment was leaned on very heavily to force resolutions that didn't feel earned. There was plenty of meta commentary, but the subversive edge was almost totally gone. In-jokes got overused and the gimmicks were more obvious. Last night, for instance, brought the return of the Darkest Timeline characters from "Remedial Chaos Theory," more paintball battles, a new spin on "Troy and Abed in the Morning," and even a few nods to the dictator Chang, but the reasoning for bringing all these elements back didn't hold water. It was just fanservice, where in the past the show wouldn't done this without also seizing the opportunity to comment on the nature of fanservice, or to at least be more clever about how it was deployed. Existing weaknesses were also amplified. If the Harmon-era writers didn't know what to do with Pierce, the Guarascio and Port-led writers didn't even seem to try. This wasn't helped by Chevy Chase's obvious absence from several episodes after he quit the show.

I've read predictions from a few other critics that the show is transitioning to a safer, blander, and more generic version of itself, but I suspect that further changes are going to be more radical. Jeff Winger has finally graduated from Greendale after four seasons, fulfilling the show's original premise. Sure, he's grown and changed enough that he'll stick around to have more hijinks with his friends in the future, possibly as a new teacher, but the Study Group will be no more. It's going to be a rough transition when the state of the characters isn't as well-defined as it should be. Most of the character development from the first three seasons was preserved in the fourth, but attempts to advance from there have been shaky at best. There's been a notable lack of depth to this year's stories, possibly because the writers were more concerned about preserving the show's existing chemistry than pushing forward. However, they're at a point where they have to embrace the change fully, or they're just going to flounder.

There's every reason to be hopeful that the writing will improve and the show will regain more footing next year. I don't know what the fifth season is going to look like, but there are still some talented writers on the roster, and plenty you could do with a cast this talented. Chevy Chase being gone certainly won't hurt. However, I think it's telling that a rumor that Dan Harmon might be approached to return to run "Community" got more positive response than the renewal announcement. Considering all the bad blood and the politics, this is a highly unlikely prospect. However, it's clear that "Community" fans still very attached to the show and they're still sticking around in large enough numbers for NBC to keep it around for a little longer. I'll still be watching, though not with nearly as much enthusiasm. The goal of reaching six seasons and a movie isn't as appealing as it once was.
---

Read More

"Guilt Trip" and Guilty Pleasure

Some people's guilty pleasure movies are mindless action spectaculars, idiot comedies, or fluffy romances. I indulge in all of these occasionally. My go-to guilty pleasure movies are usually kids' films, especially cartoons. However, I realized that there is another little subgenre of films that I also tend to enjoy even if they're terrible – feel-good family bonding movies, like "The Guilt Trip."

"The Guilt Trip" is a mediocre movie at best. Seth Rogen and Barbara Streisand play a mother and son pair who go on a road trip across America together, which forces them to go through various contrived trials and tribulations in order to become more appreciative of each other in the end. Rogen is Andy Brewster, an inventor who is trying to pitch a new , environmentally friendly cleaning product to several potential buyers, and has set up meetings all over the country. Before setting out on the trip, he visits his long widowed mother Joyce, played by Streisand. One thing leads to another, and Andy invites his mother to come along, in order to secretly set up a meeting between her and an old flame who lives on the opposite coast. Yeah, I mentioned the contrivances, right?

The thing is, I like Barbara Streisand, even when she's predictably chatting her son's ear off and calling him every ten minutes in order to check up on him. She's still a tremendously funny performer, and impossible to dismiss. Here's she's mostly just playing her usual screen persona with some maternal exaggerations, but it's nice to see her again, and I can't help thinking she could have really brought some spark to some of the roles I've been seeing Diane Keaton and Diane Lane in lately. I can't remember the last time I saw Streisand in a screen role this substantial, and that's a shame. Even though this is really slight material, she commits to it fully. And on the other side we've got Seth Rogen, who I've been slowly coming around to lately, and it's good to see him playing a good guy, who cares about his mother, and puts up with her demands to a heroic degree. He brings a good-natured snarkiness to the table, and the best scenes are of him and Streisand in the car, just talking and ad libbing. The credits sequence features a bunch of alternate takes with different jokes.

Watching "The Guilt Trip," which is so predictable that I was ticking off the plot points and the twists through the whole last third, I discovered that the movie was nonetheless doing a fantastic job of appealing to my yen for a certain kind of feel-good movies. They can be formulaic, but they can't feel too schmaltzy. They can be aimed at the older crowd, but not solely at the older crowd. They can require a lot of suspension of disbelief as long as they have a good sense of humor, which "The Guilt Trip" mostly does. But when I go back through the movie, what really appeals to me is that Rogen and Streisand manage to present us with a warm, funny, functional parent-child relationship. Movies about family ties are usually about the problematic ones, about the angry, bitter, destructive ones. This makes for great drama, but tends to leave the viewer feeling like hell.

Family is one of my big anchors in life, and I admit that I tend to romanticize happy families. I think this is why I respond so strongly to movies like "The Descendants" and "Win Win," and "Juno." These are stories that put the family unit under strain, but in the end they endure. And they show family relationships the way I tend to view mine as I've gotten older – a little awkward, a little bumpy, and full of compromises. The Brewsters may have drifted apart in "The Guilt Trip," requiring various wacky adventures and misunderstandings to get them back on the same page, but it's clear from the outset that these two care about each other. And seeing them affirm that put a big stupid grin on my face, even as I was wincing through the ancient jokes, and the way-too-obvious reveal about what happened to Joyce's lost love, and the slam-dunk pitch that finally gets Andy his big sale.

"The Guilt Trip" is meant more for older moms than their adult children, because the story definitely skews toward more mature tastes and viewpoints. Joyce is the one who has a love interest, and who always seems to have the upper hand. Still, the balance is pretty good. I was definitely sympathizing with Seth Rogen's character the whole way through, and there was just enough ribald humor that his usual fanbase should find the movie tolerable to sit through – but not so ribald that they can't watch it with their mothers.
---

Read More

Trailers! Trailers! The Catching-Up Edition

It's the first week of May, and we've already got several full trailers for some of the big November movies in circulation. I haven't done a trailer post in a while, so we'll be talking about these, plus some of the notable later summer films where the first trailers were only released in the last few months. We've got a lot of ground to cover, so let's get started. As usual, all links below lead to Trailer Addict.

Thor: The Dark World - Of all the individual Marvel movies, I'd put "Thor" near the bottom of the list. I like the character, but his appearances on screen have felt the most slapdash and lacking in substance. I expect the filmmakers know this, which is why they make sure to show us part of a scene that likely happens a good ways into the second act: Thor seeking help from Loki, who is easily the most memorable villain in Marvel's film universe so far. We don't see anything of the film's actual villains, or really much of the threat they pose, but Loki's involvement is enough.

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire - I've already been spoiled regarding a lot of what happens in this movie, so I was impressed with how well this trailer kept some of the biggest plot points under wraps, at least for now. I wouldn't be surprised if future trailers go on to reveal more. However, this one nicely sets up the rising tensions between Katniss and the Capitol, giving a lot of screen time to Donald Sutherland, who plays the major antagonist President Snow. And the sight of Philip Seymour Hoffman getting in on the fun makes me indescribably happy.

R.I.P.D. - The trailer spends most of its time setting up the concept of Ryan Reynolds and Jeff Bridges as part of an undead police force, but what it's really doing is selling you on a certain mood and tone. This is going to be a supernatural action movie with a lot of CGI effects, but it's also going to be a broad comedy. I can definitely see why people are suggesting that this is going to be "MIB" with the undead. Even the poster looks pretty similar. But will "R.I.P.D." be any good? I can't tell from what we've seen so far, but I do like everybody involved here.

2 Guns - Here's Denzel Washington and Mark Wahlberg playing a pair of cops, who are both working undercover at cross purposes, get betrayed, and have to join forces to win the day. Pretty standard buddy movie setup. So you sell the movie the way you always do. Car chases! Gun battles! One liners! The big question is whether Washington and Wahlberg are going to work well together onscreen, and I think the clips make a decent case for it. The banter flows, and the antagonism feels genuine. It's not very original, but who sees a movie like this for originality?

RED 2 - The retirees are back for more mayhem, and this time they're joined by new villains Catherine Zeta-Jones and Lee Byung-hun. However, the highlight of this installment is almost certainly going to be Anthony Hopkins, who is acting a great deal sillier than I've seen him on the screen in some time. Will he and John Malkovitch have a ham-off at some point? I can only hope. Otherwise, you have your typical spies and renegades story and most of the cast of the previous film back for more fun - including Helen Mirren and all her dangerous toys.

The Wolverine - The problems of "The Wolverine" trailer are twofold. On the one hand, it's relying way too much on previously established imagery from the "X-men" franchise. And on the other hand, the new material looks pretty weak. The bulk of this movie will be set in Japan, but the visuals are generic, the action and effects look underwhelming, and the whole thing is just so much smaller scale than anything else in the franchise. These are major problems that the marketing for "X-men: First Class" had too, and I hope "The Wolverine" is similarly better than its ads.

Elysium - Director Neil Blomkamp is back, and he's brought more "Halo"- like visuals and some big stars for his latest science-fiction film. Matt Damon and Jodie Foster star in the tale of a dystopian future society where an extreme split has developed between the haves and the have-nots. I'm expecting more social commentary, more crazy action scenes, and more deeply flawed characters. And I'm intrigued that the story appears to have many similarities to the manga "Battle Angel Alita," the one James Cameron's been trying to turn into a film for a decade now.

Ender's Game - And here's the movie that I'm the most curious about, out of everything else listed here. How do you turn Orson Scott Card's science-fiction classic into a Hollywood effects extravaganza? From the new trailer I recognize the characters and the concepts, but how faithful is this adaptation going to be? The trailer is provocative, but it's hardly very informative, more concerned with making sure we see every award-winning actor who will appear in the film than introducing us to Ender Wiggins or his universe. The glimpses of Battle School and the Formics are encouraging though.

Turbo - I know, I know, but the little snails are frickin' adorable!
---

Read More

My Top Ten Favorite Shakespeare Movies

Happy Shakespeare's birthday everyone. In honor of the Bard, I'm writing up a list of my top ten movies adapted from his plays. I'm going to be very loose about that term, and throw in a title or two that aren't direct adaptations, but heavily influenced by his work. And to keep things interesting, I'm limiting myself to only picking one movie per play.

Romeo + Juliet (1996) - Let's get this out of the way first. Yes, I really enjoy Baz Luhrmann's modern-day take on "Romeo and Juliet," and it's my favorite of the film adaptations by far. There are some famously iffy choices, but I just love the MTV imagery and the cast - Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes as our young lovers, Pete Postlethwait as the priest, John Leguizamo as Tybalt Prince of Cats, and Harold Perrineau as Mercutio.

Titus (1999) - Julie Taymor's blood-soaked version of "Titus Andronicus" with Anthony Hopkins and Jessica Lange is similarly a flawed piece of work, but good grief, the creative staging and the symbolism-heavy visuals make it a hard one to forget. You never saw a more raw and venal approach to Shakespeare, where all the major players are really terrible, bloodthirsty people. The highlight of the film for me is Harry Lennix as the fascinating manipulator, Aaron.

The Taming of the Shrew (1967) - Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton are one of the most famous screen couples of all time. Franco Zeffirelli's "The Taming of the Shrew" is a wonderful example of their best work together. Burton is charming and robust, while Taylor is a joyfully over-the-top harridan. Around their performances, Zeffirelli builds a film that is wonderfully funny and effervescent and a little bit bawdy in all the right places.

Throne of Blood (1957) - There have been many adaptations of Shakespeare's "Macbeth," but nothing quite like what Akira Kurosawa and his favorite leading man, Toshiro Mifune managed to achieve with "Throne of Blood." The action is moved to feudal Japan, the kings and knights replaced with daimyo and samurai. And then there's the substitute method of execution, which leads to one of the greatest cinematic death scenes of all time.

Hamlet (1996) - I really love the 1948 version with Laurence Olivier, but how can you say no to Kenneth Branagh's version? It's the full play done over four hours on a grandiose set, populated by a star-studded cast of actors. (Billy Crystal as the Gravedigger!) Ironically it's Branagh himself as Hamlet who I find the least convincing, but everything else in the picture more than makes up for it. He's much better as Henry V, but "Hamlet" is definitely his best film.

Shakespeare in Love (1998) - I'm going to count this one for "Twelfth Night," because though the characters are performing "Romeo and Juliet," the events that transpire are what give Shakespeare the plot for the later play "Twelfth Night." It's easy to run out of superlatives talking about this movie, so let's just say the Tom Stoppard script, fantastic cast lead by Gwyneth Paltrow, and ridiculously gorgeous production design deserve nothing but praise.

Caesar Must Die (2012) - From Italy's Taviani brothers comes a look at the efforts of a prison theater program, where the inmates are preparing for a performance of "Julius Caesar." We follow their rehearsals, their discussions of the material, occasionally incorporating bits of their own lives and backgrounds, and finally parts of the final performance. Real convicts played their own roles in the film, adding an extra layer of authenticity to the proceedings.

Chimes at Midnight (1967) - Orson Welles' history of the character of Falstaff is based on parts of multiple Shakespeare plays: "Richard II," "Henry IV Part 1," "Henry IV Part 2," "Henry V," and bits of "The Merry Wives of Windsor." The jovial, tragic old drunk is one of Welles' greatest later performances, and the film lives up to it, particularly the major battle sequences. So it's a real shame that the film remains underseen after decades stuck in legal limbo.

Richard III (1955) - This is my favorite of the Olivier Shakespeare adaptations, largely for Olivier's performance as one of Shakespeare's most vile and entertaining villains, King Richard III. That nose! That hair! That voice! It's no wonder the film is credited with popularizing both the play and the character, and Olivier set the bar for every Richard that followed. And nobody, not even Ian McKellan in the excellent 1995 version, has matched him yet.

Ran (1986) - Not just one of my favorite Shakespeare adaptations, but one of my favorite films, period. Kurosawa's Sengoku-era adaptation of "King Lear" was his final epic, capturing the horror of war and the pain of a family torn apart by pride and greed. The use of color and the spectacular cinematography and the Noh play symbolism are just breathtaking. The names and places may be unfamiliar, but the tragedy is unquestionably Shakesperean.
---

Read More

"A Beautiful Day" Years in the Making

Remember "Rejected"? Don Hertzfeld's surreally violent cartoon was nominated for the Oscar for Best Animated Short back in the year 2000, and has become an influential cult favorite. It's striking not just for its inventive visuals and unusual level of blood and guts (inflicted primarily on minimalist pen doodles), but its particular existential and philosophical bent. In "Rejected," the discarding of the animator's rejected drawings is depicted as a horrific apocalypse, dooming his terrified creations to an unspeakable void.

This level of cheerful nihilism was only possible because Hertzfeld is one of those rare independent filmmakers working in animation who is essentially a one-man studio. By doing nearly everything himself, he retains a high degree of creative control, which ensures his work retains his mature, challenging voice and point of view I encountered more of his darkly funny shorts over the years, like "Billy's Balloon," where balloons become sentient and turn on their owners, and "The Meaning of Life," which charts a twisted version of human history. Then in 2006, he produced something quite different.

"Everything Will be OK" is the seventeen-minute story of a man named Bill, depicted as a stick figure wearing a little rectangle of a hat, who is losing his mind. Bill is meant to be a real world person, though a highly abstracted version of one, who goes to work every day, keeps in contact with an ex-girlfriend, and has relatives who worry about him. He watches a lot of TV and likes ice cream sandwiches. At first his journey involves a series of absurd little episodes and funny observations on daily life - an everyday conversation gone awry because neither participants remember who the other person is, inappropriate fantasies, and the boredom and emptiness of the daily routine. But then Bill starts forgetting more and more, and his condition goes from annoying to frightening, and it becomes clear that something is very wrong with Bill.

"Everything Will be OK" was followed by two other Bill shorts, "I Am So Proud of You" and "It's Such a Beautiful Day," completed in 2008 and 2011 respectively. Last year, Hertzfeld edited all three shorts together into a feature film, running a little over an hour in length, also titled "It's Such a Beautiful Day." The latter installments delve deeper into mental illness, dysfunctional families, and finally the very nature of life and death and human existence. Though it retains the same sense of humor and penchant for the gruesome as Hertzfeld's shorts, the approach is much more serious and even-handed, to reflect the more ambitious material. The result is such a weird and wonderful film, incredibly personal and very touching. What makes it all the more astonishing is that despite the occasional use of live-action film elements and some special effects, "It's Such a Beautiful Day" is primarily comprised of simple stick figure drawings and Hertzfeld's narration.

Yet the animation is so evocative, and the storytelling with these simple tools is so strong and so compelling. It's easy to relate to Bill, who comes off as a real, sympathetic person suffering from some terrible unnamed mental ailment, constantly questioning the nature of his existence. Because he has no defining visuals characteristics beyond his hat, he is instantly a universal figure, and you automatically feel for him as he struggles against delusions and disorientation. The hand-drawn animation also allows a closer degree of shared experience with Bill's tenuous state of mind, visualizing it in ways that live action film and other, more complicated kinds of animation would be unable to match. And you realize how little it takes - a few simple ink lines on paper, really - to evoke such powerful reactions.

Their's something tremendously heartening about the existence of a film like "It's Such a Beautiful Day." Theatrical and-drawn animation is supposed to be dead in the U.S., economically unfeasible and out of fashion (Disney Animation announced a new round of layoffs last week). And yet here's Don Hertzfeld, toiling away with his doodles and stick-figures, who has created a film of real emotional depth and insight on the human experience, and has managed to support himself through his work. Hertzfeld self-distributed "It's Such a Beautiful Day," currently offering it for $2 online downloads through Veoh and other platforms.

I've always been a big fan of animation, but over the last few years I've found the output of the big studios creatively wanting. Sure, last year's "Wreck-It -Ralph" and "Madagascar 3" were a lot of fun, and you can't deny the creators of "Brave" and "Paranorman" had some serious artistic chops. However, when it comes to advancing the art of animation, "It's Such a Beautiful Day" leaves them all behind in the dust. This is the first animated film in years I can justify saving a spot for on my annual "Best of" list.
---

Read More

Let's Check in With "Archer"

So the newest season of FX's "Archer" has been rolling along nicely. The adults-only animated spy spoof is currently in its fourth season, and has picked up two new recurring characters. First there's Ron Cadillac (Ron Leibman), Malory's new husband, and Rodney (Andrew Donnelly), the ISIS armory's new clerk. Also, Ray is now a cyborg with robot legs, Cyril is dating Lana again, and Pam seems to be on the verge of becoming a new ISIS field agent. Barry and Katya have been making multiple appearances throughout this run of episodes, clearly being set up to for a big showdown a few episodes from now. And Sterling Archer? Though he occasionally shows tiny signs of growth, he's still the immature, emotionally stunted, spycraft savant man-child that we all know and love. And the show is full of just as much blood and guts and perversion and hilarity as ever.

However, the success of "Archer" has afforded it a few perks. The limited animation has been getting more animated, tackling more ambitious visuals, including several action scenes and better looking CGI vehicles. The guest star roster has also gotten more high-powered. Burt Reynolds famously stopped by last season, and this year an entire episode parodied reality television cooking shows with the help of Anthony Bourdain playing a pompous version of himself. For me, the biggest improvement is that at this point in the show's run, the shock value of the content has largely worn off, but the writers and the cast have become so comfortable in this universe that they can do more character-focused pieces and introduce characters that might not have worked in earlier seasons. Ron Cadillac is a good example, a charming older gent whose courtship of Malory happened off screen, and who has been played fairly straight so far. Cadillac displays no extreme behavior, and gives no reason for Archer to hate or suspect him, except we know that Archer's relationship with his mother has always been pretty warped, and Malory's love life has been colorful, to say the least. The old ultraviolence is still in play, but the writers don't need to go there as often.

I'm pretty settled on Pam and Cheryl being my favorite characters in the show, because the two of them are so horrible in such an entertaining way. Cheryl being a masochist and an airhead wouldn't fly anywhere else on television, but she's so cheerfully self-assured about it, and her inanity is taken to such wonderful extremes. It's one thing if the bimbo is just around to be saved by the show's heroes over and over again. It's quite another if her incompetence keeps making bad situations worse, and she just finds it hilarious. Pam is even more of a jerk because she's the smarter of the two, and she should know better, but on the other hand, everyone in ISIS is pretty awful in their own special way, so her apathy actually comes off as pretty reasonable most of the time. Also, I love that she's the biggest girl in the room, and she enjoys it. We've seen that Pam's very sexually active and more than capable of handling herself in a fight. Compared to these two, the rest of ISIS's roster of corporate drones can't compete.

I have to say that as far as late-night cartoon action spoofs go, I still prefer "Venture Bros.," which is finally returning to Cartoon Network's Adult Swim in a few more weeks. "Venture" has a bigger universe, a more well-developed mythology, and more complex character relationships, so it tends to be more resonant underneath all the pop-culture references. "Archer," even though it can consistently get big laughs out of me, is much more shallow and disposable. It's still very committed to a very particular level of humor, and has only recently started poking around into deeper, more emotionally interesting places. The Lana/Archer/Ray love triangle has been heating up again, and Archer's had a few moments of real self-examination this year. Then again, getting in too deep could easily spoil that great satirical tone that "Archer" has developed, and it's still among the better comedies on television right now.

FX has already renewed "Archer" for a fifth season, and its success has contributed to the continued expansion of late night animation offerings. FOX Network, which is in the same corporate family tree as FX, is about to launch a Saturday night expansion of its "Animation Domination" programming block to compete with Cartoon Network's Adult Swim in July. These late-night cartoons for grown-ups are no longer a rarity, but they still don't get as much respect as they should. So it's nice to see "Archer" thriving and kicking ass in the ratings. I fully understand why some are still skeptical of these shows, but they can no longer be ignored, and they're not going away any time soon.
---

Read More

Movie Trendspotting 2013

The invasion of alien invasion movies has just about puttered out. Fairy tale movies have become passé overnight, since "Jack the Giant Slayer" underperformed at the box office. Zombies are still good performers, but the inundation of them is starting to get a little embarrassing. So what else has Hollywood got for us? Looking at the lists of upcoming releases, I've come up with some possible common themes that could turn into trends depending on the success of the movies they feature in.

Mecha - That's human-piloted, often humanoid, combat machines and giant robots, for those of you who don't spend much time in the anime world. Mecha have been a staple of science fiction stories for a long time, and the best remembered one in film is probably Ripley's badass exosuit from "Aliens." They were also recently used by the baddies for the climactic finale of "Avatar." However, in the animated world the mecha are far more massive and elaborate, and can effectively turn a single operator into an army, and an army into a much bigger army. We'll be seeing lots of this brand of mecha in action in Guillermo del Toro's "Pacific Rim" this summer, where the human race will use them to fight giant monsters. And on that note, giant monsters may also be staging a comeback. A new "Godzilla" is on the schedule for next year.

Westerns - We had a good run of modernized westerns like "Maverick," "The Legend of Zorro," and the ill-fated "Wild Wild West" in the 90s, then abruptly nothing. Recent flops like "Cowboys and Aliens" and "Jonah Hex" haven't been very encouraging for those who want to see a comeback of the genre, but then we had "True Grit" and "Django Unchained," which are a good reminder of how much fun westerns can be if they're handled with the right attitude. Traditionally this had been a very versatile and hardy genre, going all the way back to the earliest days of film. And even though they've been declared dead more times than I can count, the western has always popped back up again. Disney's going to make another attempt at launching the next big action franchise with "The Lone Ranger" this summer, and if they can pull this off, maybe cowboys and Indians will be the next pirates.

Silicon Valley - This spring we're getting "Jobs," a Steve Jobs biopic starring Ashton Kutcher. And then a few months later comes "The Internship," a comedy featuring Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn getting internships at Google, which is notable for having been allowed to use actual Google facilities for the production. There have been plenty of films about tech start-ups and the internet revolution, notably "The Social Network," but it looks like Hollywood is starting to mine the real-world tech companies and their culture for material in a big way. No surprise, since Google and Apple and Microsoft and all the rest have become more and more influential in recent years and have had a huge impact on the popular culture. This can also be seen as the logical next phase for another trend we've been seeing in recent years - the rise of the geek hero.

Buddy Chick Flicks - We have established that a single actress no longer has enough marquee value to sell a major comedic film, so our rom-com queens have been increasingly lumped into big ensemble pictures, or double billed with a male co-stars of equal stature. One alternative I'm hoping gets more play is the buddy chick flick, which uses multiple headlining actresses, puts female friendship front and center instead of a romance, and emphasizes comedy. These can be way more guy-friendly than your standard rom-com, and tend to have better material too. So far it worked for "Bridesmaids," it worked for "Pitch Perfect," and if all goes well it'll work for "The Heat," which stars Sandra Bullock and Melissa McCarthy as a mismatched set of female cops who have to learn to work together to solve a big case.

90s Reboots - This is pretty much inevitable now that we're hitting the bottom of the barrel for 80s properties to remake. We're down to the likes of "Robocop" and "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles," which both look like major disasters in the making. Meanwhile, the 90s kids are starting to reach that age where they're old enough to be nostalgic for the media of their youths. Television has already been there and done that. The CW's reboot of 90s staple "Beverly Hills, 90210" is already ending after a successful five season run. In the film world, I think the most likely property to start with is "Jurassic Park." The 3D conversion of the original 1993 film will be opening in a few weeks, and has been hotly anticipated by fans. A third "Jurassic Park" sequel has apparently garnered enough momentum to snag a 2014 release date, but I suspect it's really going to be a stealth reboot.
---

Read More

Jon Stewart, Director?

It was announced yesterday that Jon Stewart, current host of "The Daily Show," is planning to direct his first feature film, "Rosewater." It will dramatize the arrest and detention of reporter Maziar Bahari by Iranian authorities in 2009 after Bahari participated in a "Daily Show" sketch. This means that Stewart will be taking some time off from the "Daily Show," about twelve weeks over the summer. British correspondent John Oliver will be filling in for him as host.

First gut reaction is, good for Stewart. An actor making the jump to directing is nothing new, but Jon Stewart is part of the late night comedy crowd, where these kind of extracurricular projects are much rarer. Having chosen subject matter that is clearly near and dear to his heart, I hope his directorial debut turns out well. "Rosewater" sounds like it has a lot of potential as a feature, and Stewart has been such an insightful and valuable voice in the political sphere, I'd love to see if that can translate to this kind of straight dramatic project. And it's always exciting to see any artist breaking out of whatever little box they've been pigeonholed in. Sure, Jon Stewart has worn many hats during his career and reinvented himself a few times already, but after over a decade at "The Daily Show," maybe it's time for him to remind us that late night satire isn't all he can do.

Of course the second gut reaction is the panic. Oh god, oh god, what if this movie is successful and he wants to do more of them? What if he's really successful and decides to quit "The Daily Show" entirely to become the next Terrence Malick? Can "The Daily Show" survive without him? I concluded in a previous post that the media landscape would be much poorer if Jon Stewart even decided to become a real political pundit or politician, because we would lose his vital outsider perspective. No one else has ever come close to replicating what he does, though former "Daily Show" correspondent Stephen Colbert found his own absurdist angle on political commentary with "The Colbert Report." "The Daily Show" without Jon Stewart is difficult to get my head around, and getting through future election brouhaha and political scandals without the "The Daily Show" is not an appealing thought.

Then again, "The Daily Show" should be able to go on without Stewart, and maybe it's time they started looking into a succession plan, and get the audience used to another guy behind the fake news anchor's desk. I mean, "The Daily Show" existed prior to John Stewart, originally hosted by Craig Kilborn, who set up a lot of the show's format that we often take for granted. I like John Oliver a lot, and even though I wouldn't choose him as a permanent replacement, the prospect of three months of a John Oliver hosted "Daily Show" during the off season sounds okay. I'd still watch, the same way I did when Colbert occasionally filled in for Stewart, before he left for his own show. In fact there have been several correspondents and contributors over the years who could have fit the bill, like Steve Carrell, Ed Helms, John Hodgman, Lewis Black, and Larry Wilmore. Samantha Bee and Jason Jones together would make a fantastic hosting team.

You know, I think a summer break is going to be a good thing for everybody. Stewart can go expand his horizons and stretch some creative muscles, and we'll see how Oliver handles himself as a host. And if he doesn't work out, then they can give someone else a shot the next time Stewart wants to make a movie or write a book or just take a long vacation. Stewart has indicated many times in interviews over the years that he's deeply invested in his work at "The Daily Show," so the chances of him running off to make prestige pics without his house in order is very unlikely. So, I can stop panicking and start wondering about Jon Stewart's filmmaking chops. Was Paul Thomas Anderson's recent appearance on the show so Stewart could grill him for advice?

And finally, of course, there's the Hollywood angle. How is everyone going to react to Jon Stewart, director? Well, considering the kind of small budget, small-scale, and at least partially foreign-language drama that he's making, he's probably not going to make too big of a splash unless his film is exceptionally good (or exceptionally bad, but let's try to stay optimistic). I'm not so sure marketing "Rosewood" based on his name would be all that helpful either, since Stewart's reputation is as a funnyman first. Oh, it'll certainly attract attention, but I highly doubt that most of Stewart's regular "Daily Show" audience would turn out to see it. "Rosewood" will most likely end up being another little specialty release, or picked up by one of the premium cable channels.

And that's perfectly fine for someone just testing the waters and is not giving up his day job. Not yet, anyway.
---

Read More

My Top Ten Favorite "Seinfeld" Episodes

This list comes with the caveat that I first saw most of the episodes long ago, at an age when various concepts and social mores related to sexuality were totally lost on me. I prefer the later seasons to the earlier ones, the more conceptually creative episodes to the more character based ones. And my favorite character for all time is George Costanza, who ties with Homer Simpson as the best encapsulation of all the inadequacies of the 90s man. Episodes are listed chronologically. And here we go.

"The Chinese Restaurant" - Try as I might, I can't remember any episodes that aired before this one, which came near the end of the show's second season. It's surely one of the most iconic, with Jerry, Elaine, and George spending the entire length of the episode waiting for a table at a Chinese restaurant, a perfect representation of the "Seinfeld" mantra to be "a show about nothing." They would use this existential template again in future episodes, including a few others on this list. Finally, note that the infuriating maître d' is played by James Hong (of course).

"The Parking Garage" - Has many similarities to "The Chinese Restaurant," but differs in some important respects. First, it takes pace over a much longer stretch of time, and secondly there's no exit. The gang spends the episode stuck in a parking garage, searching for their elusive car. They have several pressing reasons to leave quickly, which seem fairly trivial in retrospect, but are all-important in the moment. And of course there's the ending, which subsequent interviews have revealed only happened by accident. It's such a wonderful little slice of surrealist purgatory.

"The Contest" - Yes, it's the masturbation episode. I'm pretty sure I didn't understand what was going on the first time I saw this, except that it involved sex somehow, but the character interactions and how the story plays out completely sold it for me. "The Contest" is remembered now as a boundary pusher, even though its indelicate subject matter was never mentioned explicitly and it's probably funnier for only using euphemisms, including the priceless "master of my domain." Oh, and this was the first episode to feature Estelle Harris as Geroge's mother, one of the show's best creations.

"The Outing" - I may have been behind the curve on some matters, but I did know what being gay was, and that it was a very touchy subject back in the early 90s. So "Seinfeld" wading into the fray, being politically correct to the point of absurdity with every repetition of "not that there's anything wrong with that," came across loud and clear. It's a great reflection of the attitudes of the day, and such a typically absurd "Seinfeld" situation. If Jerry could have just let things go or if George hadn't tried to spin the situation to his advantage, things never would have escalated to the level that they it did.

"The Dinner Party" - George's coat. The cinnamon babka. The double parker. The vomit streak. I don't know why this episode is the one I remember the best, but I can't look at a black and white cookie and not think about race relations. This is yet another offspring of "The Chinese Restaurant" that finds the cast trapped by social customs and crummy customer service when they stop by a bakery and liquor store to pick up something to bring to a dinner party. Unfortunately they don't take a number before getting in the bakery line, and nobody wants to break a $100 bill. And it just gets worse from there.

"The Marine Biologist" - I vividly remember a girl at school describing this episode to me in great detail, and I'm a little surprised it wasn't from an earlier season. The episode has three separate stories. George passes himself off as a marine biologist to a potential love interest, Kramer tries to take up golfing, and Jerry and Elaine get mixed up in a drive-by battery. What follows is a series of unlikely coincidences, culminating in George regaling the others with the tale of how he saved a beached whale in one of the show's best monologues. "The sea was angry that day my friends!"

"The Pledge Drive" - The one I always seem to miss in reruns. This has my favorite silly subplot, based on one simple idea taken to extremes. Elaine sees her boss eating a candy bar with a knife and fork, and she unwittingly helps to spread the practice all over the city. This is also the one with a man who is a "high talker," who is mistaken multiple times throughout the episode for a woman. I always forget about the pledge drive of the title, which Jerry is working, but it's the odd little tangents that make this one so memorable – like George's paranoia that he's subtly being flipped off by strangers.

"The Pothole" - Poor Elaine. She just wanted Chinese takeout, and thought she'd come up with an ingenious idea – pretend to be living in an empty janitor's closet in a part of town that the restaurant would deliver to. She ends up having to pretend she's a janitor. Meanwhile George loses a keychain down a pothole, Kramer's working on a road crew, and Jerry's girlfriend puts him in a potentially unhygienic situation. It's four variations on the same theme: sometimes you have to get down and dirty in order to get what you want. Or in Jerry's case, give up what you want to stay clean.

"The Package" – Here's a story that you couldn't do in the post-digital age. George thinks a clerk at the photo store is flirting with him, by putting a revealing photo in with his order, so he decides to return the favor. This results in a hysterical set of escalating visual gags with a great punchline. Meanwhile, Elaine discovers she has been labeled a problem patient and can't get her rash treated. And I think I'll leave you to discover how a mystery package with no return address, a mail fraud scheme, and Uncle Leo getting his eyebrows burned off fit into all this. And this is the best use of Newman ever.

"The Strike" – Some claim that "Seinfeld" lost steam in its final seasons. However, there is at least one undisputed classic to have emerged from its final run of episodes. "The Strike" reveals Kramer is the striking employee of a bagel shop, introduces the concept of the "two-faced" woman who looks beautiful or horrible depending on the circumstances, and a little holiday invented by Frank Costanza known as Festivus. For the rest of us. Of all the concepts that the show introduced to us, Festivus is my favorite, a holiday for airing of grievances, feats of strength, and above all, family.

Honorable Mentions: "The Junior Mint," "The Airport," "The Visa," "The Implant," "The Mango," "The Hamptons," "The Opposite," "The Race," "The Fusili Jerry," "The Hot Tub," "The Soup Nazi," "The Checks," and "The Muffin Tops."
---

Read More

Regarding "Psychopaths"

"Seven Psychopaths" looks so good on paper. A struggling screenwriter named Marty (Colin Farrell), is trying to write a screenplay based only on a title, "Seven Psychopaths." However, he's distracted by the schemes of his pal Billy (Sam Rockwell), who kidnaps dogs to return them for the reward money. Billy's partner in dognapping is Hans (Christopher Walken), whose wife Myra (Linda Bright Clay) is in the hospital for cancer treatments. One day Billy and Hans grab the wrong dog, a little Shih Tzu named Bonny who belongs to the gangster Charlie Costello (Woody Harrelson). Other characters in the mix include a mysterious "Jack of Diamonds" killer who targets members of organized crime, Costello's lovely girlfriend Angela (Olga Kurylenko), a gentleman named Zachariah (Tom Waits), who used to be one half of a Bonnie-and-Clyde serial killer team, and a Vietnamese soldier (Long Nguyen) out for revenge.

"Psychopaths" is the brain child of Irish writer and director Martin McDonagh, who was also responsible for "In Bruges." I’ve been a fan of his for a long time, and I can see what he was going for here. This is a dark, dark satire of the action movie genre with a lot of self-referential, self-critical meta humor, that also takes a genuine stab at addressing several different forms and expressions and treatments of violence. McDonagh's script is frequently clever, has a wonderful puzzle-box structure, and is occasionally very touching. However, it's also wildly inconsistent, has too much going on, and it's hard to feel any sympathy for a pair of lead characters who spend so much time psychoanalyzing themselves through their screenplay, but feel like hastily thrown-together constructs, made of convenient tropes. I had a lot of trouble with Sam Rockwell's Billy, whose arc goes through a bunch of twisted convolutions that just didn't hold together. I could buy a lot of the wild coincidences and moments of action movie logic that the story depends on, but the twists involving Billy weren't properly set up and come off as pretty contrived.

Then again, you could argue that this is the point. "Seven Psychopath" presents itself as a deliberate critique on all the common fallacies of action movies, from the over-the-top badass combatants to the awful female characters (Abbie Cornish briefly appears as Marty's girlfriend) to increasingly outlandish confrontations. McDonagh doesn't push too far, saving the most ridiculous final standoff scenario for a proposed ending to the screenplay that Billy breathlessly describes to Marty with lots of kablooey sound effects. Then again, maybe the movie would have worked a bit better if he had. "Seven Psychopath" never gets as deliriously dark and biting as it could, because McDonagh does want you to care about the characters to some extent, and to consider his take on screen violence with some seriousness. He takes great pains to make sure that some of the deaths have real emotional impact, and shows that the act of killing can have unforeseen consequences. He also presents some thoughtful examples of positive violence to contrast with the usual senseless, negative variety. Some of this works to great effect. Some of it doesn't.

The film is at its best when taken scene by scene, piece by piece. There are some great performances here, particularly from Woody Harrelson and Christopher Walken, who gets one of the few really multilayered, memorable parts. Here is an oddball elderly man who has had a rough past, but dearly loves his ailing wife and has had time to reflect on the nature of his misdeeds. His attitude toward violence is the most informed one, and Walken is wonderful in the role, walking that thin line between kookiness and enlightenment. Harrelson's emotional mobster is broader, but he summons such wonderful humor and menace. Some of the film's best scenes involve his tense face-offs with other characters. Then there's Tom Waits, who shows up with a rabbit in his arms and a story to tell. He doesn't seem to be operating quite in the same universe as anyone else, but he makes such an impression that I wished we could have been watching a movie set in whatever universe his character was inhabiting.

There is a lot to get out of "Seven Psychopaths." Too much, maybe. Ultimately, I think McDonagh bit off a little more than he could chew. The ideas all have a lot of potential, but the execution needs work. There were tonal shifts and big reveals and stories within stories that I could see being very effective if they were handled right. McDonagh's not quite at the level to make something this complicated work the way he wants it to. There were a couple of big moments that fell completely flat for me, and a couple of obvious bits of symbolism and character parallels that didn't add up to much of anything. I really enjoy McDonagh as a writer, but his screenplays have been very hit-or-miss so far. And as a director, I think he needs to work a little harder.
---

Read More

My Most Anticipated Films of 2013, Part I

I went back and forth about whether or not to write these posts this year, but I figured that they do have some value, the same way that my "Least Anticipated" lists do. I like going back at the end of the year and seeing what met expectations and what didn't. And it's always good to take a good, hard look at where my movie-watching priorities are, and what's going into the decision making process when picking and choosing among new titles. The big question I suppose you're asking right now is, why wait until the beginning of March? Why didn't you write these lists two months ago when everyone else did? Well, because January and February are crap for new releases. Sure, I'll probably rent "Warm Bodies" and "Side Effects," but these aren't priorities. Also, the full year's release schedule still isn't close to being finalized - there was another round of date swapping just yesterday, but now everything through the summer is pretty much set, and it's after Sundance, so at least we've got a better picture of what's coming down the pipe.

I'm going to split these up into two posts, one for the big mainstream blockbusters, and one for the more highbrow pictures. Ten entries apiece. Here we go!

"Iron Man 3" and "Star Trek Into Darkness" - So much of my anticipation for these two sequels is pure hype and I know it. "Iron Man 2" was a disappointment, and there's no guarantee that "Iron Man 3" won't be more of the same. However, Shane Black is directing this time and he's got an awfully good track record, going all the way back to "Lethal Weapon." As for the new "Star Trek," there is the distinct possibility that the baddie that Benedict Cumberbatch is playing is actually Khan. Do I really need any other reason to be excited?

"Man of Steel" - I'm rooting for DC to finally get a Superman reboot right. They've got a lot of factors on their side, but a lot of others against them too. Their biggest liability is director Zack Snyder, whose films have been on a definite downward trajectory as of late. However, the cast looks solid, Christopher Nolan is heavily involved, and the trailers suggest that the filmmakers have a good angle on the origin story. The performance of "Man of Steel" is going to decide the fate of "Justice League," so this is a big one, one way or another.

"This is the End" and "The World's End" - The idea of spoofing the apocalypse appeals to me a lot after so many years of self-serious doom and gloom disaster epics. This year we're getting them in two different flavors. First, Seth Rogen, Jonah Hill, James Franco, and their cohorts will be playing themselves getting into celebrity-cameo-studded hijinks during the end times in Los Angeles. Then in the fall, Edgar Wright will reteam with Simon Pegg and Nick Frost for "The World's End," described as a pub crawl that coincides with a global apocalypse.

"Pacific Rim" - Guillermo Del Toro's back! And he's brought what looks an awful lot like a Japanese kaiju monster movie with him, involving giant mecha suits. Visions of "Godzilla" and "Neon Genesis Evangelion" are dancing through my head after that teaser trailer. There are a lot of potentially interesting science fiction coming out this year, and I'm hoping that this one in particular will do well enough to raise some interest in other thematically related projects. And that it'll give Del Toro enough clout to finally make the projects he actually wants to make.

"Elysium" - Neill Blomkamp's follow-up to "District 9" will star Matt Damon and Jodie Foster in a science-fiction story we don't know very many details about, and hopefully it will stay that way. The preview images that have been released so far suggest another gritty, dystopian world and more pointed social commentary, but beyond that it's hard to say. I've also skimmed a plot synopsis that makes it sound a bit like "Battle Angel Alita," and if that turns out to be true then James Cameron has only himself to blame for dragging his feet on that project.

"Ender's Game" - Another possible disaster in the making. The novel is one of those science-fiction holy cows that was on every nerd's wish list to be turned into a feature film for several decades, and the potential for dashed hopes and major disappointment is considerable. There's already been some griping about how the child soldiers, lead by Asa Butterfield and Hailee Steinfeld, have been aged up significantly to lessen the shock of the combat. However, "Ender's Game" tells one hell of a story, and maybe - just maybe - they'll actually get it right.

"Frozen" - It's not shaping up to be a very good year for animated films, and the current slate is mostly dominated by spinoffs and sequels (I'm looking at you, PIXAR). The one feature I'm interested in is "Frozen," Disney's "Snow Queen" project that has been in development for decades. They're going to be following the template of "Tangled" and from what I've seen of the marketing materials so far, "Frozen" is going to be a major departure from the original fairy tale. That doesn't mean it can't still be a lot of fun, though, if all those changes work out.

"The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug" - Oh yes. I may not have been thrilled with how "An Unexpected Journey" turned out, but I have been waiting to see the dragon Smaug on the big screen for as long as I can remember, as least as far back as when the original "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy was in production and Peter Jackson first teased the possibility of doing a "Hobbit" movie. Also, most of the big action set pieces of "The Hobbit" will take place in "Desolation," which hopefully means less of the padding and the call-backs that made "Journey" such a slog.
---

Read More

The Next Movies Becoming TV Shows

It's pilot season in Hollywood, and we're about to get a new crop of television shows based on movies. This is a trend that has been around for decades, and has yielded plenty of classics. Some movie premises worked better as television shows, like "MASH" and "Buffy the Vampire Slayer." So I'm going to take a look at five of the movie-based series, currently in development, that may be coming soon to a small screen near you. I'm leaving out "Marvel's S.H.I.E.L.D.," which is really a spin-off of the Marvel films, and will only be featuring one or two of the minor characters, existing very much on the sidelines of the ongoing movie franchise.

"Beverly Hills Cop" (CBS) - The 80s action comedy series is becoming an hour-long police procedural. Brandon T. Jackson of "Tropic Thunder" fame will star as Axel Foley's son Aaron, a young police officer following his dad's footsteps. "The Shield" creator Shawn Ryan is on board as producer, and Barry Sonnenfeld is directing the pilot. No word yet on whether Axel himself will be stopping by the Beverley Hills Police Department to check up on his son. Interviews suggest that the tone of the show will stay light, but it won't be an out-and-out comedy. The original film series was heavily dependent on the charisma of Eddie Murphy, and new version without him might not work. However, between 80s nostalgia and the public's love of police procedurals, I can certainly see why the studios decided that a reboot deserved a shot.

"Bad Teacher" (CBS) - Remember the 2011 summer comedy starring Cameron Diaz? It did all right at the box office, but not well enough that anyone is clamoring for a sequel. However, CBS thought the premise has potential as a half-hour comedy, and is in the process of transmogrifying it into sitcom form. Ari Graynor will replace Cameron Diaz, and the new cast also includes David Alan Grier and Ryan Hansen. The raunch and the foul language of the movie is going to have to be toned way, way down for television audiences, to the point where I doubt the series will bear much resemblance to the film. Still, the concept of an immature, irresponsible female teacher looking for love should have plenty of legs. Television is generally friendlier to female-led comedies than the movies are, so the TV "Bad Teacher" may actually have a better shot there.

"About A Boy" (NBC) - A decade ago, "About a Boy" was a decent sized hit, but I have no idea what prompted writer-executive producer Jason Katims to decide that now was the time to revisit the property and convert it into half-hour sitcom form. Still, this is the guy who resurrected "Friday Night Lights" and "Parenthood" as critically acclaimed television series, so I'm not inclined to question his instincts. FOX actually tried to turn "About a Boy" into a series way back in 2003 with a different creative team, but nothing came of it. This time, they’ve gotten as far as a pilot directed by John Favreau. No word on casting yet, but considering the scarcity of Hugh Grant over the past few years, and the rate that major movie stars have been doing television projects, I don’t think it’s outside the realm of possibility that he’d consider returning to the role.

"The Joneses" (Bravo) - This David Duchovny and Demi Moore indie was released in theaters in 2010, but hardly anyone saw it. That's a shame, because the idea at its core was a fascinating one. The main characters are employees of an advertising agency who are hired to live together as a fake family, push products to their neighbors, and encourage them to keep up with the Joneses (Get it?). Bravo has ordered a pilot as part of its first foray into scripted programming, after ABC took a shot at development. Considering how the movie ended, the television series will likely be a total reboot. Since so few people saw the original "Joneses," it should escape being called a retread. However, I'm not sure about Bravo's claim that it will speak "to the Bravo brand of great aspirational female-driven upscale worlds.” My irony alarm is going off.

"Zombieland" (Amazon) - And finally, Amazon is hot to catch up with Netflix in the production of its own content. It has ordered a half-hour comedy pilot based on 2009's "Zombieland." A sequel never quite came together though there was a lot of interest in one, and the possibility of a television adaptation has been lobbed around Hollywood for a while. Amazon finally took the initiative. The film's original writers have scripted the pilot, and three of the four leads have been recast so far. The zombie craze is still going strong this year, so I expect this one to have a high chance of success. On the other hand, Amazon's distribution system isn't quite where Netflix's is at the moment, and I'm not sure if they have the subscriber base to support a show like this. There are a lot of different factors that could affect this one, so stay tuned.

Happy watching!
---

Read More

"21 and Over" is Two Movies in One

The upcoming "21 and Over" is being advertised in the U.S. as a typical raunchy comedy, about a straight-arrow Chinese-American college student, Jeff Chang (Justin Chon), whose two best friends Casey (Skylar Astin) and Miller (Miles Teller) take him out for a wild night on the town to celebrate his 21st birthday. You wouldn't guess that the movie had been partially funded by a group of Chinese companies, or that "21 and Over" is going to be getting a coveted theatrical release in China. However, Chinese audiences are going to be getting a different version of the movie, where Jeff is now a Chinese foreign exchange student who comes to the U.S., falls in the with wrong crowd, and learns the dangers of Western excess and hedonism before going home to China a wiser man. Additional scenes were shot in the city of Linyi to create the Chinese bookend sequences.

I can't help finding the whole situation incredibly funny. I've been increasingly worried at the prospect of Chinese funding having a bad influence on American filmmakers, but in this case the compromise that has been worked out is ingenious. The Chinese and American versions of "21 and Over" will largely be the same, but framed in such a way to reflect both cultures, and each version can be taken as a commentary on the values and mores of the other version. So what started out as a frat-humor laugh-fest from the guys who brought you "The Hangover" has inadvertently turned into a two-way meta funhouse mirror of a project with all sorts of interesting new dimensions to ponder over. Of course, there's the significant possibility that both versions are going to be terrible, as these kinds of movies too often are, but "21 and Over" will still be one of the most interesting examples of what Chinese/American filmmaking partnerships have produced.

There have been multiple versions of the same film made for different audiences before - it's actually quite commonplace in China because of their tighter restrictions on content. Hong Kong films like "Infernal Affairs" often have had to shoot different endings, showing that the bad guy was punished in the end, in order to appease conservative mainland censors. Most Hollywood films are edited for content, sometimes severely. "Cloud Atlas" recently lost a third of its running time and an entirely storyline involving a homosexual romance. However, I don't think I've ever seen a situation where the different versions of a film were so diametrically opposed to each other as in "21 and Over." The American version celebrates exactly the same behavior that the Chinese version is condemning. You're meant to root for American Jeff to keep partying and hope that Chinese Jeff can escape further corruption as they go through the same situations.

The idea of Western filmmakers going along with the Chinese companies' demands for aggressively pro-China content and stern criticism of the west never sat well with me. In this case, however, the target of that stern criticism is just drunken frat boy antics, which seems like such a fundamentally silly idea that I find it difficult to take it seriously at all. I expect the Chinese version is going to end up looking like one of those cheesy old TV movie-of-the-week melodramas, that played on the fears of Middle America by demonizing recreational drugs and the Internet. The motives of the Chinese producers are so transparent and so ridiculous, it's easy to see why the "21 and Over" filmmakers had no qualms about taking the money. Even if there's not a single joke in the Chinese version, there's a good chance it's going to deliver some laughs

I expect that this won't be the last time we see something like this happening, as Hollywood becomes more and more comfortable working with the Chinese. Maybe next time this kind of multiple version movie will be conceived on purpose. An action movie with an American star and a Chinese star could be billed with either lead as the headliner, depending on which country the movie was playing in. Marketing narratives do often have an effect on the viewing experience. There also are some slightly scary implications to this as well, the way one piece of media is being manipulated to convey two entirely different messages. If they can do this with a harmless comedy, they might try the same tactics with something more serious later on.

But for now, it'll be interesting to see how the two versions perform and what the reaction to them will be. And I can already see one net positive here. We've got a rare mainstream release starring an Asian American actor, Justin Chon, currently best known for appearing in the "Twilight" movies. Making two versions of “21 and Over” for two different hemispheres wouldn’t be possible without him.

This a very weird and unexpected road to more onscreen diversity, but I’ll take it.
---

Read More

The New "Community" Status Quo

So it's been three weeks and three new episodes since "Community" finally returned to our screens, and I think that's enough to start drawing some conclusions. The show has lost its creator and primary creative force, Dan Harmon, and a good chunk of its writing staff. However, the replacement folks have elected not to overhaul the show, but pretend that nothing has changed. So far, they're doing a pretty good job of maintaining the style and the tone of the first three seasons of "Community," but there's clearly something different about season four. I don't think this is necessarily a bad difference, but there is a difference.

On the surface, things look the same. We've still got lots of in-jokes and meta humor. Last night's episode made ample use of "Inspector Spacetime," the "Doctor Who" spoof that Troy and Abed are fans of. Efforts have been made to preserve the character development. Britta's still the worst therapist in training ever, she and Troy have gotten together romantically, Pierce is still prone to bouts of evil behavior, and Jeff is working on being nicer, more altruistic Jeff. Shirley still never gets enough time or attention. However, there's something not quite right about Annie, and the Dean and Chang have only had minor appearances so far in spite of fairly hefty roles last season. And dare I even mention Starburns, Leonard, Magnitude, Vicky, Garrett, and Fat Neil? Where is everybody?

That said, the new episodes are fine. The premiere seemed a little frantic, pushing the zany, meta, reference humor a little too hard, but I really liked the Halloween episode, better than last year's, even. Last night's "Inspector Spacetime" convention episode had some weak spots, but it's not like "Community" didn't have its weaker episodes, especially back in the first season. I think the real difference is the change in attitude. When we left the show at the end of season three, it was going strong with a full head of steam. I didn't like the third season as much as the second. I thought that some of the developments were a little too unlikely, and some of the meta humor was getting self-indulgent. However, there was a boldness and a confidence about even the weakest half-hours such that I never questioned the commitment of the writers to their ideas. It's that confidence that helped them pull off some of the big highlights of that season, including the pillow and blanket fort war, and the video game episode.

The new episodes by contrast are tentative, made by people who are afraid of making a wrong move, of not giving the audience what they expect from "Community." The trouble with that attitude is that "Community" has built its reputation on giving the audience what it doesn't expect. The new episodes have made a good effort at providing the kind of crazy concepts that we've seen on the show in the past. However, the nerdy convention and the enrollment "Hunger Games" and the haunted house all feel kind of familiar, and they're clearly a step back from the more experimental, boundary-pushing stuff that was going on by the end of the third season. I often wanted "Community" to reign in the weirder shenanigans a bit and get back to community college life, but this feels like the show regressing rather than toning things down.

The other big issue is that the so much of "Community" is based on the character interactions and relationships that have been built up over the last three seasons, and suddenly some of those relationships aren’t quite where we left them. Annie was maturing nicely and seemed to have put her crush on Jeff behind her, and now she's indulging in secret fantasies about him. Meanwhile, Jeff's softening up a little too fast, and the Troy and Britta relationship seems to have skipped a few steps ahead. Again, this is not necessarily a bad thing in the long run, but it's different, and it's going to take some adjusting to. Fortunately the Troy and Abed bromance still seems to be in good shape, and Jeff and Britta's banterful antagonism is right about where it should be. Given time, I'm sure I'll adjust to the rest.

But are we going to get that time? I'm certainly going to keep watching "Community," but in this form it's not quite as satisfying as it used to be, and the fanbase may get restless. The competition certainly isn't letting up either. Big Bang" isn't the most consistent show, but when it hits, like it did last night, it hits pretty hard. I've juggled these two sitcoms for years, trying to decide which to give priority to. "Community" usually came out on top, but after its recent setbacks, the race is getting much, much closer.
---

Read More

The Mick Travis... Trilogy?

Cinema history is full of trilogies, from the "Godfather" trilogy and the "Star Wars" trilogy, to the more erudite obscurities like Satyajit Ray's "Apu" trilogy" and Krzysztof Kieślowski's Colors trilogy. Part of the ongoing fascination with them and other series of films is that it's difficult to maintain a high level of quality through multiple pictures. I recently finished a British film trilogy that has been described as almost one of the greats, the three films that Lindsay Anderson made starting in 1968, which were all written by David Sherwin and starred Malcolm McDowell as Michael "Mick" Travis: "If...," (1968) "O Lucky Man!" (1973) and "Britannia Hospital" (1982). Two are great films, considered British counter-culture classics, and the last, unfortunately, is a dud.

In "If..." Travis is a rebellious schoolboy caught in the sadistic world of a tyrannical educational institution. After being subjected to various indignities, he and his fellow troublemakers end up leading a violent insurrection against the staff and faculty. "O Lucky Man!" is a sprawling tale where Travis, who begins the film as a traveling coffee salesman, journeys all over Britain and has encounters with people from all walks of life. However, as he moves in and out of different social circles and runs afoul of oppressive institutions and authorities, he becomes more and more disillusioned. "Britannia Hospital" is a much broader spoof than either of the others, about a British hospital preparing for a visit from the Queen. However, they have to contend with protesters out front, striking workers, and a mad scientist conducting strange experiments behind the scenes. Travis appears this time as a reporter, trying to film an expose on the hospital's inner workings.

But should the Mick Travis trilogy really be considered a trilogy? Or have they just been lumped together for categorical convenience? Mick Travis has been called an everyman character, and he changes with every appearance to suit the needs of each film's story. There's no evidence that any of the films share continuity otherwise, aside from a few other recurring characters and the involvement of many of the same actors. All three films are dark satires with fanciful elements, but they don't quite match up thematically or stylistically. "If..." is a very personal memoir of the screenwriter's school-going experiences, that takes a detour into surrealism, like a darker, more cynical version of "Zero for Conduct." "O Lucky Man" has been compared to Voltaire's "Candide," a far more ambitious and allegorical narrative, interspersed with musical numbers written and performed by rock musician Alan Price.

"Britannia Hospital" is the easiest to split off. "If..." and "O Lucky Man!" placed Travis at the center of their stories, documenting his abuse by the education system and the larger forces of society respectively. In "Britannia Hospital" he has a prominent role, but he's also part of a larger ensemble, and his thread of the plot doesn't have much of an effect on how events play out ultimately. Far more time is spent with a group of hapless hospital administrators who are trying to contain the growing chaos, so it's hard to think of it as a Mick Travis movie. Moreover, the first two films were largely concerned about portraying social ills and injustice. These elements appear in "Britannia Hospital," highlighting class divisions, bureaucracy, the media, and so forth, but they're largely subsumed in the absurdity of the farce. Or maybe the weakness of the message was just a reflection of the weakness of "Britannia Hospital" as a movie.

After watching "O Lucky Man!" and "Britannia" back to back, I find myself extremely unsatisfied with how we left Mick Travis if we are to consider the three movies as one whole work. And the more I read about the character and Linsday Anderson's unrealized plans for another follow-up film, this time a direct sequel to "If...," the less I feel like accepting "Britannia Hospital" as the last word. "Britannia" seems to have sealed Travis's fate, but it's also a movie with mad scientists and giant brains quoting Shakespeare, and I don't think a little resurrection would be too much to ask in that universe. Anderson passed away some time ago, but McDowell's still around and working steadily, so why shouldn't there be another Mick Travis film, this time about Travis confronting life in Britain as a senior citizen?

Then again, the story of Mick Travis already has an ending. "O Lucky Man!" had a perfectly satisfying conclusion to his adventures, which showed Travis coming to terms with his place in the world. Just because it didn't come as the capper to the third film Travis appeared in doesn't make it any less effective. It's fun to speculate, but I don' think there was ever a need for a third Mick Travis film at all, and there's definitely no need for another attempt at one now. The first two movies stand alone perfectly well, and I think may be better not to treat any of the Mick Travis films as related at all.
---

Read More

Will Kimmel Win the Late Night Wars?

Warning: contains language.

I was rooting for Conan O'Brien. He was supposed to be the late night talk show host of my generation, the guy who had built a beloved late night show from the ground up and kept it going for sixteen years in the slot following Jay Leno's "Tonight Show." "Late Night With Conan O'Brien" was the only one of these programs I watched regularly, the only one I sacrificed sleep for. Sure, Jon Stewart came along eventually and I always greatly respected Craig Ferguson's monologues, but Conan was my guy. And then of course, the "Tonight Show" transition fiasco happened and Conan ended up in the basic cable wastelands of TBS. The most promising of the younger late night comics was all but persona non grata, and prospects for the future looked grim.

Three years later, Jay Leno and David Letterman haven't gotten any younger, and there are once again signs of potential transition. However, this time the old timers aren't getting replaced. They're getting a new challenger. After years of indecision, ABC finally shifted "Nightline" to the post-midnight timeslot, and moved "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" up to 11:35 PM, in direct competition with Leno and Letterman. "Kimmel" is celebrating its tenth anniversary this week, and is another late night show that started out at the bottom and gradually built up a strong following over time. Letterman and Leno still attract the lion's share of the audience, but Kimmel has been doing better and better numbers with the most prized demographic, the 18-49 year-olds.

Last night Kimmel topped all his competitors in a heavily promoted episode where Matt Damon took over the show, renamed it "Jimmy Kimmel Sucks," and spent the hour interviewing a passel of high profile celebrities. It was the latest chapter in the ongoing fake feud between the comic and the actor that began with the running joke of Kimmel ending episodes with "Our apologies to Matt Damon, we ran out of time." After Damon actually appeared on the show in 2006, matters escalated quickly. Prior to this, the high point of the feud had been the Emmy-winning "I'm Fucking Matt Damon" video, featuring Damon and Sarah Silverman, the retaliatory "I'm Fucking Ben Affleck" video, with Kimmel and Ben Affleck, and follow-ups where even Jennifer Garner got roped into the fun. I've never been a regular Kimmel viewer, but I know the videos. It seems like everybody does.

It's fascinating to look at how "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" has worked its way to this position over the years. I never thought much of Kimmel from his days on "The Man Show," and when ABC announced that they were putting him on late night, I expected he'd be about as successful as Carson Daly, which is to say, not very. However, "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" has been solid when I've watched the show, and ABC has done a great job of integrating it with its other programming. "Dancing With the Stars" contestants are expected to stop by after they've been voted off. They hosted a cast reunion and aired alternate endings after the series finale of "Lost." And then there are the Kimmel post-Oscar specials, which have all but replaced the Barbara Walters interviews. And Kimmel's recent appearances at the White House Correspondents' Dinner and as host of the last Emmy awards. While I still don't like him nearly as much as Conan or Stewart or some of the others, it's clear that Kimmel has grown into the role of host, and I can see the appeal.

It's far too early to say yet where Kimmel will end up in the pecking order in the long run, but his prospects are good. "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" was very competitive with Jimmy Fallon and Craig Ferguson's shows in the post-midnight timeslot, and if those hosts end up succeeding Leno and Letterman, Kimmel has a significant head start building an audience at 11:35 PM. Of course, the networks could opt for different successors - Jon Stewart has been a favorite potential candidate for a long time. Arsenio Hall is coming back this year, perhaps to wreak unholy revenge upon David Letterman. Conan might muster up a turnaround and claw his way back into the conversation. And lest we forget, Chevy Chase is currently unemployed.

Unfortunately, age and technology have conspired to keep me on the sidelines. I've aged out of the late night audience, now valuing my sleep more than my need to be entertained during the midnight hour. I watch new episodes of "The Daily Show" the next morning, and the occasional clips of whatever made headlines on the other late night shows. So I watched the Matt Damon hosted episode of "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" online, around twelve hours after it actually aired. I don't think I've actually seen any late night talk show live since the Letterman-Oprah détente. And I know I'm not the only one, as there have been consistent reports that late night audiences are shrinking, as the competition grows and the internet has taken its bite.

Best of luck, Mr. Kimmel.
---

Read More

"Silver Linings" Has Some Shine

"Silver Linings Playbook" comes with an unfortunate amount of baggage. It's currently the subject of an overzealous Harvey Weinstein marketing campaign, and has been nominated for more Oscars than it probably should have been. I worry people are going to go into it expecting something more profound than the movie has to offer. At its core, "Silver Linings Playbook" is a perfectly solid, enjoyable romantic comedy, where the main characters happen to have some severe emotional and psychological issues to work out. There are some good performances to enjoy, and the script has fun knocking down the usual flimsy rom-com clichés.

Bradley Cooper stars as Pat Solitano, who we meet as he is being discharged from a mental health facility. He has bipolar disorder, and had to be institutionalized for eight months after a violent incident. Pat goes to live with his parents, Pat Sr. and Dolores (Robert DeNiro, Jacki Weaver), since his wife Nikki has left him, sold their house, and gotten a restraining order against him. Pat struggles in recovery, fixated on reuniting with Nikki and repairing his marriage. However, he also becomes involved with Tiffany (Jennifer Lawrence), a recently widowed young dance enthusiast, who is working through her own assortment of emotional problems. Thanks to her influence and support, Pat is able to confront some of his demons.

Now I understand why people are rallying around the movie, because it does have some nice surprises and admirable impulses. I've complained before that our best directors should be stretching more and tackling material outside their comfort zones, and David O'Russell making any kind of romantic comedy certainly fits the bill. This is the sort of unconventional approach to conventional material that should be encouraged and rewarded. Also, Jennifer Lawrence does deliver a hell of a performance as the delightfully screwed-up Tiffany, and Bradley Cooper and Robert DeNiro commit to their roles in a way that we don't see too often from either of them. O'Russell may have a reputation for being difficult, but he sure provokes some good work out of his actors.

Romantic comedies have been in such a sorry state these past few years, it's become a rare pleasure to find one that is actually about believable relationships, and has well-rounded characters you can feel some sympathy for. That's why it's so tempting to want to overlook the film's flaws. First and foremost, the treatment of mental illness isn't the best, and I think it's fair to say that O'Russell fudged more than a few things for dramatic effect. Pat's bad episodes are marked by a lot of screaming and yelling and dysfunctional family fun that get the intensity of his emotional state across, but avoid any darker, cavernous depths. The raucous fight scenes often feel too close to O'Russell's previous film, "The Fighter," to be entirely a coincidence. However, you never feel for a moment that he's not taking these characters and their problems absolutely seriously.

Then there are the various plot complications that didn't really work for me, like the set-up for the third act. As good as "Silver Linings Playbook" is about avoiding some of the typical rom-com pitfalls, it happily embraces plenty of other contrivances. And I mean really, really obvious use of formula that I was surprised O'Russell would resort to. Then there are the minor characters. You may have noticed Chris Tucker in the trailers as Danny, a friend of Pat's from the institution. He's moderately engaging in the few scenes he has, but O'Russell can't seem to work out what to do with him. Same thing goes with Ronnie Maxwell (John Ortiz) and his wife Veronica (Julia Stiles), who are introduced to help bring Pat and Tiffany together, and then have a sort-of peripheral, half-assed subplot that feels like a last minute afterthought.

None of these issues bothered me enough to affect my basic enjoyment of the film, and I do happily recommend it if you're in the mood for something romantic and heartfelt with some edge to it. However, sorting out my reactions after the movie, I concluded that there was nothing I really found noteworthy or special about it. Directors like Thomas McCarthy and Jason Reitman and Alexander Payne have all made far better films that cover similar territory. I can't really work up any sort of justification for "Silver Linings Playbook" being on the receiving end of a whopping eight Academy Award nominations. Best Film Editing? No. Best Supporting Actress? I like Jacki Weaver, but her role as the Solitano matriarch is slight at best. Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Director for David O'Russell? I think he's more deserving here than he was for "The Fighter," but it's still a real stretch.

I wish I'd seen "Silver Linings Playbook" earlier in the season, because as I careful as I was trying to be, I think the hype did effect the way I watched the film to some degree. Still, I truly did enjoy it, even if I can't root for it. And I'd love to see David O'Russell take another shot at a romantic comedy.
---

Read More

The Top Ten Episodes of "Cowboy Bebop"

2013 marks the fifteenth anniversary of the landmark anime series "Cowboy Bebop." I don't think it's the best anime series ever made, and perhaps it was never the most popular or influential, but it's the show that made a definite mark on the industry and the culture, particularly in the U.S., where it helped to popularize anime for the internet generation. I'm such an old school anime fan, I finished watching the series on rented VHS tapes back in the early 2000s, but I suspect most people came across "Bebop" on one of its late night airings on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim block.

As always, picks are unranked but ordered by airdate, and I will totally cheat and count two-parters as single entries. There are moderate spoilers ahead:

Asteroid Blues – The show's first episode introduced bounty hunter "cowboys" Spike Spiegel and Jet Black of the beat up spaceship Bebop. There was already some controversy when it first aired in Japan, due to the violent content. However, it also quickly established the mood and tone of the show, which was very adult, very action-oriented, and very, very cool.

The Ballad of Fallen Angels – At its heart, "Cowboy Bebop" is noir, and this was the episode that would make that clear as it set up the series' biggest story arc: Spike Spiegel's past in organized crime and the lost love he gave up everything for. Most remember "Angels" for the tour de force action scenes, wonderful use of music, and the introduction of the series' central villain, Vicious.

Jamming With Edward – Many "Bebop" fans were skeptical about the final member of the Bebop crew who joins up in this episode, the hacker kid Radical Edward. Fortunately Ed is a feral little nutter who works by her own peculiar logic, and is neither too precious nor too strange. Instead, she lends a good amount of comic energy to the stories where she appears. And yes, Ed is a girl.

Toys in the Attic – Many "Bebop" episodes paid homage to different film genres. This was the show's spoof on "Alien," where an unknown creature stalks the crew aboard the Bebop. Lots of horror movie clichés get turned on their heads, and we're treated to the sight of Spike trying to light a cigarette with a flame thrower as he tries to steady is nerves before facing the monster.

Mushroom Samba – The one where Edward takes the lead for once, chasing down bounties on a desert planet that is one giant blaxploitation genre homage, while the rest of the crew gets high on mushrooms. This is one of the weirdest, most out of bounds, and most side-splittingly "Bebop" outings, a playful comic romp that thoroughly indulges the show's sillier side.

Speak Like a Child – I really admire "Bebop" for creating a leading lady like Faye Valentine with such a strong personality and equally formidable flaws, but it wasn't until they started delving into her past that I realized there was much more to her. Faye's tragic backstory would unfold over several episodes, but this was the gutpuncher, the one where we finally learned what was at stake.

Wild Horses – After the space shuttle Columbia disaster happened, this episode about Spike visiting an old spaceship mechanic friend, was pulled from the Adult Swim rotation for a while. Some of the scenes in the episode may still resemble actual events a little too closely for comfort, but I find the ending scenes more poignant than ever. And in its own way, it's a fitting tribute.

Pierrot Le Fou – Spike is targeted by an assassin with telekinetic powers, and spends most of this installment in a thrilling cat-and-mouse chase with his pursuer through a futuristic theme park. "Bebop" was highly regarded for its animation, particularly the action sequences, and "Pierrot le Fou" features some of the best. The assassin is also one of the series' most formidable and creepy antagonists.

Hard Luck Woman – I always liked the lead up to the show's finale a little better than the finale itself, because it's all about the show acknowledging change. Faye and Edward both look for answers about their pasts, answers that inevitably led them away from the Bebop. As much fun as they had playing bounty hunters, it couldn't go on forever, and sadly, neither could the show.

The Real Folk Blues – The ending two-parter has all the things you expect from a big finish, including lots of action, lots of emotion, and decisive conclusions to all the outstanding conflicts that the series had been building up over twenty-six episodes. But what makes this ending so memorable is that it wasn't afraid of finality, taking Spike Spiegel's story to the only place it could logically go. And sending him off with style.

See you Space Cowboy!
---

Read More