Category: Reviews (Page 89 of 120)

Heroes 2.10 – BANZAI!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

November 26, 2007 /

Ups and downs, ups and downs: that’s “Heroes: Season 2” in a nutshell. While this week’s episode wasn’t bad, it definitely didn’t consistently reach the heights of last week’s.

It started off looking like the “Heroes” equivalent of “Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle,” with Peter and Adam on a road trip to see the elusive Victoria. Peter’s initial scenes with Victoria had a rather sentimental tone, but they certainly turned dark once Adam came on the scene; I’d actually hoped she’d live through the episode, but no such luck…and no real surprise, either. God love the youngest Petrelli son, but he’s so freaking naive that I just wanted to knock him upside his head; with both Victoria and Hiro assuring him that Adam’s shady, you’d think he’d at least consider the possibility that it might be true, but nooooooo…!

The Bennett family saga was really only interesting whenever it didn’t involve Claire. Hot or not, I’m sorry, but Hayden Panetierre just isn’t doing anything for me as an actress in her supposedly dramatic scenes – that cliche-ridden “but this hurts more than any of that” speech made me groan out loud – and sharing scenes with Kristen Bell only emphasizes Panetierre’s shortcomings. I mean, I want Elle to win! In fact, as much as I love Jack Coleman as HRG, I love Steven Tobolowsky more, and each passing week finds me progressively more interested in watching a show starring the father-daughter characters of Bob and Elle. Spin-off, anyone…?

Nikki and Micah reunited, but for better or worse, Nikki didn’t really get to do a whole lot this episode. It was way more Micah-heavy, focusing on the theft of his backpack, which contained comic books and – more importantly – the medal D.L. received for saving a woman from a burning building. Yes, it gave Monica another chance to work on her abilities, but if it hadn’t been for her being kidnapped at the end, it would’ve been relatively ho-hum, and as it is, it feels completely superfluous to everything else going on in the show right now. (Must be the connection to Nikki.)

We did, at least, get a few minutes with the Hiro-Ando team, though it was less time than Ando would’ve preferred…and, I’m guessing, less time than most viewers would’ve liked, too. It’s magic when those guys share the screen; I miss their camaraderie, and seeing them interact made me realized just how little fun this season has had in it compared to the last. Still, Hiro’s trip into the past was cool (though I couldn’t help but think that they could’ve used George Takei to play Hiro’s dad in the flashbacks, too, so little has he changed over the years), and, of course, the last scene of the episode was awesome.

The Maya / Alejandro / Sylar triangle is now one man short, making for the most enjoyable sequences of the entire episode. Zachary Quinto is just so perfectly slimy as Sylar; it’s almost a shame that he’s embarking on a side career as the new Spock, as he could play villains for the rest of his life and always have a steady paycheck. Alejandro’s death was pretty harsh…though not as harsh, perhaps, as Sylar getting his groove back with Maya while her brother’s dead body lay only a half-closed door away. That’s just low, man. In fact, about the only thing lower would be to sneak into Mohinder’s house and threaten Molly’s life…

Okay, so here’s my question: where the hell’s Matt Parkman?

Actors, Actresses, External Entertainment, External TV, Heroes, Reviews, TV, TV Action, TV Dramas, TV Sci-Fi

Doc of the Day: “Fired!”

November 20, 2007 /

As a DVD, “Fired!” may be one of the funniest viewing experiences of the year. As an actual movie, however, it isn’t nearly as successful…but, wait, I’m getting ahead of myself a bit.

The story behind “Fired!” began when actress Annabelle Gurwitch was…you guessed it…fired. Fired by Woody Allen, to be precise, when he was in the process of prepping the cast for a play he was putting together and declared that Gurwitch looked “retarded” when she followed a particular stage direction. Having already told tons of her friends and family members that she was going to working with Allen, Gurwitch was decidedly wounded by this act, but instead of wallowing in her depression, she ended up in conversation with various folks who sympathetically shared their own stories of being fired. She soon realized that, as a performer, there was something that could be done with this material, and, voila, the “Fired!” stage show was born, where various performers would get up on stage and read the tales of various people’s experiences.

This documentary sprang forth from that show, but, unfortunately, it’s lost something in the translation. This is mostly because the flick trumpets appearances from Tim Allen, David Cross, Andy Dick, Jeff Garlin, Bob Odenkirk, Jeffrey Ross, Harry Shearer, Sarah Silverman, Ben Stein, Fred Willard, Illeana Douglas, and Anne Meara, then ends up feeling like it’s far more about Gurwitch herself. And, of course, it is about Gurwitch. Unfortunately, most of the other contributors just have funnier stories, which means we spent as much time waiting for them to come back as we do appreciating Gurwitch’s own humorous experiences as she struggles to find her way back from the abyss. Also, directors Chris Bradley and Kyle La Brache make the decision to chop up several of the stories being told at a performance of the stage show and come back to them periodically throughout the film for more of each story, which proves reeeeeeeally annoying.

So if I’ve got these complaints, why am I calling “Fired!” one of the funniest DVDs of 2007?

Well, like I said, the stories from the various contributors are pretty damned funny. Jeff Garlin talks about losing a stand-up gig because he couldn’t compete with the magician who opened for him, Fred Willard sits in a hot tub (with Harry Shearer loitering just outside the waterline) and recalls how he was dropped from a sitcom because he was honest and admitted that he wasn’t the guy who played Herb Tarlek on “WKRP in Cincinnati,” and Illeana Douglas concedes that she was once fired from a job as a coat check girl despite her years of experience in placing coats on hangers and then taking them off again. Andy Dick revisits the world of fast food and finds that he still can’t hack the pace, while Bob Odenkirk provides Gurwitch with a great it’s-not-you-it’s-us speech to show how you can be let down easy in situations like that.

Better still, however, are the outtakes from the film. David Cross talks about getting fired from a hardware store, numerous telemarketing jobs, and the Paul Simon Presidential campaign, but the best bit comes when he discusses how he was let go from a mail-room job in a law firm by a guy who was the perfect combination of Mr. Smithers and Mr. Burns. (“He said, ‘Just get out,’ and I said, ‘But I haven’t had a chance to take a dump in your desk yet!’ And, then, that was it; I knew I had no chance of coming back. ‘Oh, c’mon, guy, lighten up! That was a joke! Seriously, can I just work through the summer?'”) Paul Feig, co-creator of “Freaks and Geeks,” tells an awesome story about his experiences as a teenage Ronald McDonald, comedienne Hillary Carlip tells a dy-no-mite story about getting dumped from her gig as Jimmie “J.J.” Walker’s juggling instructor, Dana Gould talks about being let go from the Fred Savage sitcom, “Working,” Harry Shearer explains how he got fired from several radio stations, once for playing a Mel Torme record on an all-rock station (calling the experience “the sincerest form of ‘don’t do that again'”), and…oh, hell, pretty much every single story in the outtake section is hilarious.

Great concept, less than perfect execution, but given that your sides will hurt by the time you’re finished with the DVD, I guess the best description of “Fired!” is to call it an eventual success.

Actors, Actresses, Doc of the Day, Documentaries, External Entertainment, External Movie DVDs, External Movies, External TV, Movie DVDs, Movies, Reviews

Heroes 2.9 – Aren’t You The Guy Who Hit Me In The Eye?

November 19, 2007 /

Let’s just lay it on the line right here, baby: this was the best episode of the season to date…and then some.

Claire’s such a teenager, particularly the way she totally shrugged off her father’s highly valid point that her troubles didn’t really begin in earnest until she and Flyboy pulled their stunt with the head cheerleader, but, really, her melodramatic speech to her winged beau could only have been uttered by someone in their teens. After their encounter, you knew he was going to have a tête-à-tête with HRG; I appreciated the throwaway line from Flyboy about how he didn’t have super strength and wasn’t going to be able to hold HRG for long, along with the incredibly crappy way they landed, which also rang true.

(Sidebar: Right before Claire got snaked by Bob, I discovered just how much of a music geek I am. I’m sitting there, watching a squadron of high school cheerleaders doing a routine, and yet the thing that was first and foremost on my mind was, “Damn, that song they’re doing cheering to is catchy! Who sings that?” How embarrassing.)

I actually rather liked Flyboy this episode…which is definitely a change, since my opinion of him has pretty much ranged from indifference to annoyance…but the scene with him swooping in and knocking the hell out of Elle was pretty awesome, and his delivery of the line, “Hi, Mrs. Butler, it’s…good to, uh, see you again,” was perfect. For that matter, I also liked that small conversation between him and HRG about cars.

So Elle’s Bob’s daughter? No shock there…and no electrical-powers pun intended, either. “He’s adorable! Can I keep him?” God, I love Kristen Bell. Way to work that straw, baby.

HRG once again came through as a guy who, for as dark as his soul might be, really and truly does love his daughter. I loved the way he growled, “No-one’s taking my little girl,” though it ended up being superseded as my favorite line of the episode at the precise moment he looked into the camera and sneered, “Stings like a bitch, doesn’t it?” Hey, it’s nothing compared to taking a bullet in the eye from Mohinder Surersh! Whether you figured HRG was gonna get a transfusion from Claire or not (as I must admit that I did), it didn’t change the sunset beauty of how that whole death sequence played out; Bob’s expression was more pained than I would’ve expected, but the look on Mohinder’s face was just right. Just because you know you’re doing the right thing doesn’t mean it’s easy to live with the repercussions…especially when, in this case, the guy you’ve just killed is now back from the dead and has rarely been known to keep a cool head when it comes to extracting revenge.

Hiro going back in time to try and save his dad? Not too surprising. I mean, really, has anything ever happened that Hiro didn’t try to go back and fix? For such a sci-fi nerd, he really doesn’t seem to grasp how much trouble he’s potentially causing by mucking with the space-time continuum so often. George Takei seemed like he was about a hairsbreadth away from telling Hiro, “With great power comes great responsibility,” on several different occasions, but it was still a nice moment in the end, when Hiro asked his pops to tell Mom “hi.” It also wasn’t terribly surprising to find that Adam had been Mr. Nakamura’s killer, but maybe we were just supposed to appreciate Hiro’s shock at the revelation.

So after all the mental issues Molly’s suffered through over the past few episodes, what does Matt do? Test his newly enhanced mental abilities by forcing her to eat cereal. Once he used them to make his boss change his mind, I realized that, yeah, this might explain why he was so dark in that alternate future we saw back in Season 1. I was a little surprised that he actually got a fair amount of answers out of Mama Petrelli (along with that great line, “Our generation mortgaged our souls to protect yours!”), but I’m as curious as I’m sure everyone else is to find out who this mystery woman from the picture is…though by episode’s end, we did at least know that her name was Victoria Pratt. That was a very subtle thing at the end, with the post-it quietly but noticeably now on the photo above her face, but it means that Matt crossed the line, and all bets are off.

Actors, Actresses, External Entertainment, External TV, Heroes, Reviews, TV, TV Action, TV Dramas, TV Sci-Fi

Doc of the Day: “Brown is the New Green: George Lopez and the American Dream”

November 19, 2007 /

Y’know, I don’t think I’ve ever seen an entire episode of “The George Lopez Show,” but after having watched this documentary, I think I’m gonna have to check it out; I don’t have any idea whether it’ll actually be funny or not, but just listening to the guy’s comments in “Brown is the New Green: George Lopez and the American Dream” makes me predisposed to liking him. (Mind you, I was already pretty much in that camp after I heard that he’d gotten into a physical altercation with Carlos Mencia over Mencia purportedly stealing some of his material, but, still, this really sealed the deal for me.)

“Brown is the New Green” focuses on Latinos as they’re perceived on the small screen, and while it probably won’t come as any surprise that they haven’t always had the best representatives on the American airwaves – for awhile, their big three were Jose Jiminez, Speedy Gonzales, and The Frito Bandito – it’s heartening to realize that they’re finally getting their due. Now, if you’re one of those folks who gets pissed off every time they reach a voicemail menu that says, “For English, press 1,” I’m sure you’re already seething mad at the mere thought of what this documentary discusses; in fact, some of you may have stopped reading altogether while you work out a diatribe for the comments section about how giving Latinos airtime to trumpet their culture is akin to setting Old Glory afire and watching her burn.

Well, hang onto your hat, muchacho, because you may be surprised to find that a lot of Latinos aren’t so remarkably different from John Smith, Average American.

For instance, when George Lopez was casting his TV show, many actors came in to audition and, when doing so, they’d put on a heavy Spanish accent. “George would say, ‘Brother, cool down, you don’t need to do that,'” said producer Bruce Helford, “and they’d say, ‘Oh, cool, thank you,’ and then they’d do it in perfect English, with no accent at all!” Lopez himself reveals that, while building the sets for his series, the network complained that the kitchen didn’t look like a Mexican kitchen. “They said, ‘There’s nothing here that indicates that a Mexican family lives here. There’s not a tortilla maker.’ I said, ‘My tortilla maker was my grandmother!'”

For the most part, the so-called “Latino audience” is something which, more often than not, the entertainment industry views as an advertising demographic rather than a group of individuals who are looking for their own brand of entertainment. There’s an ongoing battle between trying to portray real Latino life versus what producers think middle America can handle; one guy mentions how, from his experience, the average Latino family doesn’t always have a father present, but TV can’t hang with the idea of a fatherless family scenario, while Lopez speaks about how absolutely no-one in his family was supportive of his attempts to build an American TV career. The most interesting interview, at least for me, wasn’t with Lopez but, rather, with Bill Dana, the comedian who portrayed Jose Jimenez. He was hugely popular for many years, but he wasn’t actually Latino, and as the tide of public opinion turned, the popularity waned dramatically…like, to the point where, when he announced that he was retiring the character, he was stunned at the resulting cheers.

“Brown is the New Green” is another fine PBS production, providing an interesting, educational, and – ultimately – depressing look at how little love the Latino community gets on television. Sure, it’s nice that “Ugly Betty” is a success, but you can’t really call that a step forward when, in virtually the same breath, ABC canceled “The George Lopez Show” in favor of “Cavemen.” Still, when the doc ends with the revelation that Lopez earned $5 million from the show’s final season, $15 million from the series’ syndication deal, and $9 million from his stand-up shows that year, at least you can’t say that his chapter of the story hasn’t had a happy ending.

Actors, Actresses, Doc of the Day, Documentaries, External Entertainment, External Movie DVDs, External Movies, External TV, Movie DVDs, Movies, Reviews, TV, TV Comedies, TV Dramas, TV DVDs

Doc of the Day: “Married in America 2”

November 18, 2007 /

Upfront admission: I’ve never seen the first “Married in America” film. Good thing, then, that director Michael Apted has taken it into account that some of those who might happen upon this sequel to his 2002 documentary might need to play a bit of catch-up.

In 2001, Apted – the British director who made a name for himself as a documentarian with the series of “Up” films – ventured forth to America, selected ten couples who were on the cusp of marriage and filmed the days leading up to their nuptials as well as the ceremonies themselves, asking them questions about their relationships, their feelings about marriage, and what they anticipate the future will hold for them. In 2006, he returned to the couples to see how things had been going since the last time he’d come ’round…and, no surprise here, things are decidedly different in most cases.

When selecting couples, Apted pointedly tried to highlight as many different social, economic, and cultural angles as possible, so as to cover the gamut of marital stories, and he certainly succeeded on that front; there’s a lesbian couple, a multiracial couple (the husband is African-American, the wife is white), a multicultural couple (the wife is Filipino, the husband is Jewish), a pair who’d each already been married several times before, a couple of yuppies, a couple from Alabama where the husband’s a Marine and the wife’s a Southern belle, a duo from NYC who were married immediately prior to 9/11, and so forth and so on. As a result, each story is different from the one which precedes it…and, yet, ultimately, it’s all about marriage, so you can’t help but find similarities as well. It’s a bit sad to see that Betty and Reggie are still living with Betty’s mom, with the house they’d planned to renovate for themselves still sitting a shambles, but they seem happy, so, hey, more power to them. Less happy with each other, however, are Carol & Chuck and Nadine & Frank; the latter are trying to keep it together for the sake of family, but the former only barely keep any ties with each other these days.

There’s no question that, whether you’ve seen the first film or not, “Married in America 2” is often an interesting viewing experience. Personally, however, I found myself occasionally indifferent to the goings-on…and, ultimately, I think it’s for the same reason that I got so bored with “Tell Me You Love Me” even though it was full of realistic-looking sex: I’m married. I am one of these people; I don’t need to watch their stories on television when I’m already living their lives. Yes, it’s interesting to see where they are five years after their marriage, but I watch TV and movies for escapism, and seeing how five years of marriage has brought a couple a house, a child, and a fair amount of bills is, to say the least, not much of an escape at all.

Doc of the Day, Documentaries, External Entertainment, External Movie DVDs, External Movies, Movie DVDs, Movies, Reviews

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