Tag: Denis Leary (Page 2 of 3)

Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs

October 22, 2009 /

Easily the best of the “Ice Age” movies to date, though there is still room for improvement. The main characters of Manny (Ray Romano), Diego (Denis Leary) and Sid (John Leguizamo) are still bland as waffles, as are “Ice Age 2: The Meltdown” returning characters Ellie (Queen Latifah), Crash (Seann William Scott) and Eddie (Josh Peck). But the “Ice Age” gang gains one huge upgrade in the form of Buck (Simon Pegg) a daredevil weasel who also happens to be completely nuts, which of course wins Buck the instant affections of Crash and Eddie. They even worked dinosaurs into the mix without jumping the shark – they live in a secret world beneath the ground – though it did cause me to wonder how the other animals knew what they were, since they had never seen one before and presumably do not have history books. There is a hilarious tribute to ’90s action movies where Buck tries to save Manny and Diego from a meat-eating plant, and must choose between cutting the red root and the blue root. The Scrat subplot is still the best part of the movie, and is ramped up by a new love interest, the eyelash-batting Scratte. But the A-story is slowly but surely holding its own.

We cannot vouch for the 3D aspect of the movie, but considering the number of thrilling first-person chase sequences contained here, it appears they were quite generous with it. They were also quite generous with the extras, including every Scrat short film and a deluge of featurettes on drawing characters and coming up with the designs for Scratte and the dinosaurs. Why Fox decided not to screen this for us is a mystery, as the movie is quite good.

Click to buy “Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs”

Movie Comedies, Movie DVD Quicktakes, Movie DVDs, Video

Great Actors: Callie Thorne

May 7, 2009 /

A couple of years ago, when I wrote a post entitled “Bad Actors: Tina DiJoseph,” which was dedicated to the “Medium” actress who plays Lynn DiNovi, a few readers (mostly her friends and family) said I was “negative” and “cruel,” but I just call ’em like I see ’em.

And when I watched this week’s episode of “Rescue Me,” I saw one of the best performances I’ve seen in a long time. I’ve admired Callie Thorne’s work on the show since the start, and now that her (wonderfully nutty) character, Sheila, is no longer dating and/or sleeping with Tommy Gavin, she hasn’t gotten as much screen time over the past couple of seasons, and the show has suffered because of it. (Don’t get me wrong — this season has been great, but there was a stretch there when I was wondering if the creators had a plan to wrap things up.)

Anyway, on this week’s episode, appropriately titled “Sheila,” Thorne is a tour de force. Her first scene is with her son, Damien (played by Michael Zegen), and the two are having lunch in a restaurant discussing Damien’s decision to become a fireman instead of finishing his studies at NYU. Sheila is understandably concerned and frustrated with this decision, and she hides those emotions for a while under the guise of “new Sheila.” But when Damien insists that Tommy guide him through the academy (instead of Mike the Probie), she flips out and goes on a minute-long rant about how spoiled and ungrateful he is.

Later on, she’s at the firehouse and runs into Tommy. She starts off by not speaking to him (because she’s angry about his failure to tell her about the news footage that proved that her husband died in the second tower, not the first), but with Tommy being Tommy the two start to argue. She goes off on him for being a closed-off prick and punctuates the scene by kneeing him in the balls.

Finally — and this scene is really the kicker — Sheila does an interview for a French journalist about what was going through her mind on 9/11. The revelation that her husband died in the second tower almost has a calming effect on her, and she dives into a four-minute monologue that is as touching, emotional and well-acted as any four minutes that I’ve seen in a long time.

For the first few seasons, I was rooting for Tommy and Sheila to end up together, mainly because I wanted to see her character find happiness, but now I hope she finds it somewhere else. It’s clear that Tommy just isn’t loyal or dependable enough for her, and her story arc this season has been about her exploration into why she is (or was?) so obsessed with him. Yes, Sheila has her flaws — after all, she drugged and (pretty much) raped Tommy and almost killed him in the house fire — but, hey, she just has a lot of love to give, right?

Unfortunately, the episode isn’t up on Hulu yet, but it’s an Emmy worthy performance, so catch it if you can.

Actors, Actresses, External Entertainment, External TV, Rescue Me, TV, TV Action, TV Comedies, TV Dramas

The ultimate Oscar acceptance speech, by Denis Leary

February 20, 2009 /

Variety has the best acceptance speech…ever…as written by “Rescue Me” star Denis Leary. (Keep in mind this is from the POV of an actress, not an actor.)

Okay. First of all — I’d like to thank God for just taking time out of His busy schedule curing cancer and feeding the hungry and solving the crisis in Darfur with George Clooney and helping so many different wide receivers and quarterbacks to throw and catch footballs and instead making sure that I got singled out of such a wonderful group of actors like Meryl and Mary-Louise and Cate Blanchett and Angelina and Marcia Gay and Kate Winslet and just – all the Kates and the Kevins and the two name and the three name people I feel so honored just to be up here while they are all down there and I’d like to just thank the Academy and the people who hated me and treated me like such dirt and who made me stab them in the back just to get here and now you can suck it and Botox! I almost forgot Botox! And Restylin and Cosmoderm and Prestocheek and Instatit and all the other animal agents I’ve had injected into my face and stuff. Oh my god my agents — I almost forgot the entire squad of agents and managers and hangers-on whose asses I have kissed and coddled for so many long B and C movie years now and also — it would be so bad not to thank my team of surgeons who have stretched and sculpted and pulled and pressure-pointed every aspect of my face, neck and armfat until I look so young and ripe and yet somehow still able to move my forehead and eyebrows just enough to frown and laugh and look focused which is a huge part of why I just won this!

And that’s just about a third of it…

External Entertainment, External Movies, Humor, Movies, Rescue Me

Bullz-Eye’s TCA 2009 Winter Press Tour Recap

January 23, 2009 /

Wait, didn’t I just go to one of these press tours…?

Actually, that was back in July, when the networks were busy pimping their new fall schedules; this time, they were presenting us with an idea of what we can expect to see on our favorite broadcast and cable channels from now until they premiere their next fall schedule.

Going out to L.A. in January was a new thing for me, though. It was my first winter tour since becoming a member of the Television Critics Association in 2007 – last year’s was canceled due to the writers’ strike – and, if the rumblings throughout the ballrooms at the Universal Hilton were any indication, it may well prove to be my last January tour. I’m hopeful that this presumption turns out to be inaccurate, but given the current economic climate and an increasing tendency for newspapers and publications to only send their TV critics out for one tour per year, there’s every reason to suspect that the networks will join suit and only be willing to pamper those critics once per year.

Sorry, did I say “pamper”? Of course, I meant, “Treat with the utmost respect.”

It feels a bit odd to be doing a wrap-up of my experiences at the tour before I’ve even had a chance to write up all of the panels I attended while I was out there, but, hey, when you get a good spot on the calendar, you make it work however you can. So still keep your eyes open for my ongoing pieces on the various shows you can expect to find on the broadcast networks during the next few months, but in the meantime, here’s a look at some of the best and worst bits from the January ’09 tour as a whole.

Most enjoyable panel by a cable network: “Rescue Me,” FX.

I’ve been a big Denis Leary fan every since No Cure for Cancer, so I knew the guy was inevitably going to go off on a profanity-filled rant before the end of the panel. What I didn’t expect, however, was that Peter Tolan – who co-created the show with Leary – would start the proceedings by telling Leary to watch his mouth, adding, “If you were going to say ‘cunt,’ don’t.”

From there, the two of them seemingly battled each other in an attempt to offer up the most memorable line. Leary complained about his salary. (“I had a crazy idea of getting paid, like, $250,000 an episode. They put limits on that, let me tell you. That’s Kiefer Sutherland money right there.”) Then Tolan claimed that he was at fault for the show’s fourth-season slump, blaming it on a drug problem and that “I was heavy into a kazillion hookers that year.” Then Leary bitched about how Michael J. Fox was going to guest on “Rescue Me” and get the Emmy that Leary himself has yet to earn. (“Five fucking episodes, he comes in. God damn, $700 million from ‘Spin City.’ He never asked me to do the show. He’s going to walk away with the fucking Emmy. That son of a bitch.”) Then Tolan started mocking Hugh Laurie’s American accent by talking about how he could do a British accent. (“Aye, pip, pip, mate, aye! ‘Allo, Mary Poppins!”) And…well, as you can see, there was really no contest: this may well have been the greatest panel ever.

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Actors, Actresses, Celebrities, External Entertainment, External TV, Lost, News, Reality TV, Rescue Me, TCA Blog 2009, TCA Press Tour, The Office, TV, TV Action, TV Comedies, TV Dramas, TV Sci-Fi

My Most Memorable Interviews of 2008

December 30, 2008 /

I recently went back and counted up how many interviews I’ve done for Bullz-Eye since I first came aboard the site, and I was astounded to find that – counting both one-on-one conversations as well as teleconferences – the number tops 200. Wow. Anyone who thinks that I don’t work hard for my money, I say to you that the figures speak for themselves. Looking back at the list of folks with whom I’ve chatted during the course of the past year, I find myself thinking the same thing I think every day of every year: it might’ve sucked to do all of that unpaid freelance writing for all those years, but it was totally fucking worth it. And with that bold statement, allow me to present a list of the interviews from 2008 that still remain fresh in my mind…for a variety of reasons.

* Best-received interview of the year:

Tom Smothers. I’m used to hearing from my friends when I do an interview that they enjoy, but I heard from several complete strangers that really loved the conversation Tom and I had about everything from the censorship of “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour” to the night John Lennon and Harry Nilsson were thrown out of the Brothers’ show at the Troubadour.

“Harry comes in with John Lennon. Well, he told John Lennon, ‘Tom likes hecklers. It helps him. It gets him through his show.’ And every time there was a silence, they were hollering out things like, ‘God fucks pigs!’ I mean, it was really filthy! Blows were thrown, and it just got wild. The next day, I got flowers and all kinds of apologies from Lennon and from Harry Nilsson.”

* Most politically-incorrect interview of the year:

Tony Clifton, the former alter ego of Andy Kaufman that’s now being performed by Bob Zmuda. To say that Clifton works a little blue is the understatement of the century, but it’s more than just dirty jokes; his whole act is one where he unabashedly says things that he knows will piss people off…and if you don’t know it’s an act, then it’s really gonna piss you off.

“Some people say that, with the repertoire I’ve got and with the rapport between the band and me, a few people have quoted it as being like Buddy Rich. I call ‘em like I see ‘em, just like Buddy. But Buddy was coked up most of the time, and I don’t do that. I prefer the Jack Daniel’s. I’m fucked up most of the time during the show. I have fun with the band. I call ‘em niggers. And I got a few Japs in there, I call ‘em Nips. I got everything mixed up in that band, like I say. I call ‘em the way I see ‘em. Listen, lemme tell ya this: you know why I get away with it? ‘Cause I got black people in my family. Yeah. And I’ve got the rope to prove it. Look, the blackies are good. They’re good for the sports and for the music. See, the Jews are good at making the money…or at taking the money from you.”

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Actors, Actresses, Celebrities, External Entertainment, External Movies, External TV, Interviews, Movies, TV, Year in Review

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