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Dancing with the Stars 9.16 — Round Eight

November 10, 2009 /

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We are down to five couples, producing a lopsided quarterfinal. One of these couples will be exiled from the ballroom tomorrow night. I’m not positive what route the elimination process takes from that point on, but I hope it’s respectful towards my patience. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t care who won this thing, but I don’t want to find out in 2010. I admire those who have watched every episode this season. What were the producers thinking when they decided to start with 16 celebrities? It’s far too much dancing, most of which is an eyesore. Still, you guys stay strong, knowing a mildly interesting celebrity such as Aaron Carter or Joanna Krupa will win something called the “mirrorball.” Obviously, we don’t consider their “star power” at this point. We just want to see a fun performance. Considering those that remain, I think the judges and America nearly got it right.

Each couple will perform two dances tonight because, well, there’s a hefty time slot to fill. It is more of a challenge, however, to master multiple dances in one week, so the better contestants should prevail.

I wish there was a Laker game on, but hey, it’s “Dancing with the Stars!”

Dance #1

Mya with Dmitry Chaplin (quick step)

I knew Len Goodman would come around. He couldn’t continue giving Mya mediocre scores all season. She really deserved his score of 10. Since Mya kicked off the show, it will be interesting to see if the other couples can match her and Dmitry’s performance.

Aaron Carter with Karina Smirnoff (fox trot)

I’ve been impressed by Aaron over the past two weeks. I really didn’t think he would make it this far. Considering Donny loses steam, voters stop pimping Kelly, and Joanna commits a horrible mistake, Aaron should find himself in the finals. Karina is battling a fever, but I couldn’t tell. This fox trot wasn’t perfect, but I think the judges will show this team some pity later in the night.

Joanna Krupa with Derek Hough (quick step)

This dance was just a bunch of running. It looked like a slightly choreographed cartoon of two kids chasing each other around a schoolyard. Joanna needs to nail her next routine if she wants to make the semifinals. The audience should also note that these dances are much longer, leaving more room to screw up.

Kelly Osbourne with Louis Van Amstel (fox trot)

It’s funny. I needed somebody to root for early in the season, so I picked Kelly. However, I’ve been silently wishing for her elimination for a while now. Her performances are consistently the weakest and I’m wondering why America is keeping her alive in this competition. What is it? Do you like that she keeps claiming she’s become a “lady” on this show? Please.

Donny Osmond with Kym Johnson (Vienese waltz)

Donny and Mya are the only celebrities who are very good with dances at various tempos. I rarely catch Donny making a mistake. If the show’s schedule doesn’t tire him out, he might be able to surpass Aaron and make it to the finals.

Dance #2

Hopefully this makes sense. The couples will now perform era-specific Latin dances. As you’ll see, Mya got the 70s, so Dmitry had to choreograph a samba with influences from that decade. I would have no clue where to start.

Mya with Dmitry Chaplin (70s samba)

Look at Mya’s back. How does it bend like that? Her whole body is a coil. Kelly and Joanna don’t have that kind of flexibility. Compare Mya to Karina and you’ll notice the similarity in the way each uses their back. The girl is nearly performing at the same level as the female pros.

Aaron Carter with Karina Smirnoff (90s samba)

They were very sharp. Somehow, Aaron manages to improve every week. He may not have the natural ability, but it’s obvious that he really listens to his teacher. He must put in countless hours of practice.

Joanna Krupa with Derek Hough (futuristic paso doble)

Props to Derek for constructing such a challenging dance. I don’t know how he did it. Sure, those dorky metallic outfits were a bit distracting, but their performance really seemed like a “paso doble from the future.” The song selection was spot on as well. I’m not sure what song the band played, but it sounded like a mishmash of Devo and Sterolab. Joanna is back in this thing.

Kelly Osbourne with Louis Van Amstel (60s jive)

Kelly is lucky she got the 60s. She is a talented dancer, but she doesn’t have the ability to pull off what Joanna and Derek just accomplished. Nevertheless, she found her comfort zone with this jive. The faster-paced routines prevent her anxiety from causing too much damage.

Donny Osmond with Kym Johnson (80s paso doble)

Donny was visibly fatigued. He might not have the energy to tackle two dances in one week. He wasn’t fluid or charismatic. Instead, he labored through many of the steps.

Who do you guys think is the next to go home?

Reality TV, TV, TV Reality

Monday night at the movies

November 10, 2009 /

* We’ve been pretty enthusiastic here about both trailers for “The Wolfman.” Still, there’s been some disconcerting news about the promising looking remake of the 1941 Universal monster classic. Composer Danny Elfman, who has a terrific way with slightly over-the-top genre material going back to his earliest work with Tim Burton on “Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure,” has left the project due to “scheduling conflicts.” Word that a score has actually been composed makes it seem even a bit odder. It’s true that there’s a lot more to scoring a film than composing the music, but there is more than one way to deal with that short of dumping a largely finished score if all there really is is a time problem, I’d guess.

More worrisome is Elfman’s replacement, Paul Haslinger, whose resume includes the rock scores for two of the “Underworld” films Paul W.S. Anderson’s “Death Race.” To be fair, Haslinger was a member of synth group Tangerine Dream from 1986 to 1992 and participated in the scores to films like “Near Dark.” However, I’m usually of the opinion that a period picture requires a period sound and the vague Euro-synth of the “Underworld” music does not inspire me. Hopefully, he’ll go for more of an orchestral sound.

Even more worrisome still, Renn Brown over at CHUD makes a strong case that this is a generally troubled production. At the same time, movie history is filled with troubled productions that turned out great and fun-to-make films that turned out to be horrible-to-watch. We’ll see when we see.

* New York film critic David Ansen will be artistic director of the Los Angeles Film Festival (LAFF), writes Anne Thompson.

* Alex Ben Block declares Peter Jackson producer of the year. His methods and approach sound almost Pixar-like in his openness to collaboration. It’s a complicated method: hire good people and listen to them.

* Apparently, Jackson lost all a bunch of weight a few years back simply by swearing off junk food while maintaining a punishing work scheduled during the making of “King Kong,” and he’s kept it off since. Good for him. Judging from the picture in today’s Variety, however, Winona Ryder might consider a regime that includes the occasional milkshake and order of chili cheese fries. Okay, none of our business and, in any case,  the role she is “circling” in Darren Aronofsky’s all-star oddball thriller, “Black Swan,” calls for her to play a veteran dancer, but, my god, those protuberant cheek bones. Part of me just wants her to mainline my mom’s brisket or something.

As for the movie itself, what I’m hearing reminds of just a little bit of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s “The Red Shoes,” and not just because of the ballet setting. There’s also the underlying psychoses.

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Actresses, External Entertainment, External Movies, Horror Movies, Movie Comedies, Movie Dramas, Movies, News, Sci-Fi Movies

Curb Your Enthusiasm 7.8 — Officer Krupke

November 9, 2009 /

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They are really turning Jeff into a jerk. In the season premiere, Jeff slept with a mental patient named Bam Bam, played by Catherine O’Hara. Jeff has also alluded to other instances of cheating, indicating that he has probably been unhappy in his marriage with Susie for quite some time. “Officer Krupke” begins with Susie finding another woman’s panties in Jeff’s glove compartment. Understandably, she freaks out. “Curb” has toyed with this divorce angle for all of Season 7. I’m not sure whether Larry David is just using Jeff’s infidelity to create one-off story lines or if he plans to take his marital problems to a different level. I could see Jeff, Larry, and Leon all living together in Season 8 (if we even get another season). Also, this scene with Susie is one of the rare occasions when Larry isn’t on camera. As I’ve stated before, he is typically in every scene from an episode.

Larry is pants shopping at Banana Republic. Sounds boring, but these are the types of situations that Larry David weaves into comedy gold. While he’s trying on a new pair of slacks, the fire alarm goes off and everybody has to exit the building. Outside, he strikes up a conversation with a police officer with the last name of Krupke. Larry asks him if he’s ever seen “West Side Story,” as there’s a character with the same name. Larry sings a snippet from one of the songs: “Oh, Officer Krupke/What are we to do?/Gee, Officer Krupke/Krup you.” This Officer Krupke isn’t familiar.

Larry doesn’t want to wait two hours until the building is safe, so he makes his way to Jeff’s place. He’s still wearing the new slacks — which he never bought — and the tags dangling from the sides. Jeff runs out to stop Larry and inform him about the panties situation. Jeff has a completely ridiculous plan. He’s told Susie that those were Larry panties, saying that Larry finds them very comfortable. Larry is obviously stunned, but he’s willing to help out his idiotic manager and friend.

Inside the house, Larry greets Virginia and Dennis, some mutual friends. As they chat, Susie eyes Larry’s backside, trying to spot any peculiar movements. Larry doesn’t want to listen to the story of how Virginia and Dennis met, so he takes a walk down the block. He stops at a children’s lemonade stand a buys a glass. After reprimanding the children for the awful-tasting beverage, the kids yell at him to leave. He returns to the Greenes’ house where Susie blatantly inspects his crotch region. The mother of one of the children shows up and scolds Larry.

We cut to Cheryl waiting to audition for the role of George’s ex-wife in the “Seinfeld” reunion. Virginia enters the room and Cheryl is surprised to see one of her friends. Virginia is auditioning for the part as well. Despite the awkwardness, they agree to meet for lunch after they both have read for the part.

Turns out, Cheryl David is a pretty good actress. Jerry Seinfeld, Mark the casting director, and Larry (obviously) are all impressed. Unfortunately, Virginia is even better. After some dissent from Larry, they agree to give Virginia the part.

Larry returns to Banana Republic to both retrieve his pants that he left in store during the fire and pay for ones that he’s currently wearing. The salesman that helped Larry earlier informs Larry that the pants are missing. Larry thinks that, since the store lost his pants, he should be able to keep the pair for free that he was going to buy. I think that’s a fair exchange. The salesman doesn’t. Larry has had enough. He trudges through the exit as his pants beep loudly.

Cheryl is conveniently sitting outside of Banana Republic. Larry lets her know that the show is going with Virginia. Cheryl is disheartened, but happy for her friend. She tells Larry about her lunch with Virginia and Dennis. After a few glasses of wine, Dennis asked Cheryl if she would like to participate in a threesome with him and Virginia. We never find out her answer, but Larry still takes offense at the mere proposal. He marches down to Dennis’ office and accomplishes nothing.

Back at the Greenes’ place, Jeff and Larry discuss the panties situation. Jeff wants Larry to stop making so many effeminate movements because it’s just making Susie even more suspicious. He also tells Larry that Virginia hurt her neck and can’t do the part. Therefore, Cheryl has it. Larry is excited, but wants to find out how Virginia was injured. Was she in a car accident or did she go down on Cheryl in a threesome? Larry and Jeff go to check Virginia’s car. It’s undamaged.

Larry meets Cheryl for lunch to deliver the news. Obviously, she wants to know why Virginia backed out. Larry poses the idea to Cheryl that Virginia hurt her neck while going down on her. Repulsed, she leaves. Larry then gets a frantic call from Jeff. Susie is going to divorce him and he needs Larry’s help.

On his way over to rescue his friend, Larry drives by the the lemonade stand. He’s signing that song from “West Side Story.” Right when he passes by the kids and their mother he belts, “Gee, Officer Krupke, Krup you!”

At the Greenes’ house, Susie confirms that Virginia hurt neck in a car accident — she was driving Dennis’ car. Officer Krupke shows up, responding to a call from the mother by the lemonade stand. She said Larry cursed at them. While Larry is defending himself, Officer Krupke notices the security tag on Larry’s pants. (Apparently, he’s been wearing the same pants the entire episode.) Krupke doesn’t buy into Larry’s idea of a fair exchange, so he wants the pants. Larry, sensing an opportunity to get Jeff out of deep water, removes his pants in front of everyone. Guess what he has on underneath?

Susie: Oh my God. Jesus Christ. Who are you?
Larry: I’m Larry David. I happen to enjoy wearing women’s panties.

Ha! Perfect!

But why, oh why, did they include that final scene? Jeff is at Larry’s door and he’s in a neck brace. He needs Larry to tell Susie he was in a car accident. Too much?

I hope this evolves into a bigger story arc for Jeff and Susie. If not, all this time focusing on Jeff’s infidelity was kind of a waste.

Curb Your Enthusiasm, TV, TV Comedies

“A Christmas Carol” wins the weekend, but “Precious” gets the early Xmas cheer

November 8, 2009 /

Not quite Jim Carrey in Robert Zemeckis and Disney’s new CGI “A Christmas Carol” was pretty much destined to take the weekend, and it did with an estimated tally of $31 million. However, Nikki Finke noted that the film was expected to make, she says, at least $4 million more. I am inclined to think that the word that this version of Dicken’s holiday classic might be too scary for very young viewers might have given this entry a bit of a winter chill.

Variety, however, added insult to injury and the #1 movie found itself a subhead on its opening weekend. The trade paper of record instead led with the record-breaking per-screen average of the first new Oscar contender of the winter season, Lions Gate’s “Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire” which only placed 13th on the Box Office Mojo charts with an estimate of $1.8 million — but did so with an truly awe-inspiring per-screen average of $100,000 on 18 screens in L.A., New York, Chicago, and Atlanta. For comparison, the week’s second highest per-screen average went to “La Danse: The Paris Opera Ballet,” a new dance documentary by cinema vérité legend Frederick Wiseman with $14,000 on a single screen. This is obviously a ridiculously good start for a dysfunctionality-driven drama with some markedly uncommercial aspects to it. I also have to wonder if the theaters it was playing in were somewhat larger than the usual arthouse venues.

The association of “Precious” with after-the-fact executive producers Oprah Winfrey and Tyler Perry, who both literally bought into the film after seeing it but will be reportedly donating whatever money they make on the film to charity, obviously paid off here with largely African-American audiences. There’s little reason, however, to expect that the film won’t “cross over” with all ethnicities thanks to Oscar buzz and mostly great reviews. Still, I’d also argue that more traditional art-house style numbers later in its run are a real possibility. It is worth noting that the nine theaters it’s playing in the L.A. area are demographically fascinating, straddling predominantly black areas and the liberal, indie-friendly west side of town and have me resisting the urge to give you a history of Los Angeles ethnic politics. Somebody knows what they’re doing.

precious

Holding up the #2 spot is, not surprisingly, the Michael Jackson documentary, “This Is It,” which has ridden good worth-of-mouth to drop less than 40% and earn an estimated $14 million on its second weekend. Doing perhaps a bit better than expected, given that stars — at least stars with an average age north of 40 — no longer seem to have much impact at the box-office, the name-laden satirical comedy, “The Men Who Stare at Goats,” managed an estimated $13.3 million in the #3 spot. Considering the $25 million budget, pretty modest for a film with four fairly major actors, and the “meh”-to-sub-“meh” reviews for a movie that should be critical cat-nip, that’s really not bad at all. Being the only new comedy in some time probably helped.

Nipping at the goat-starers’ heels was “The Fourth Kind,” which engages in some “based on a true story” quasi-mock-doc shenanigans. Though I made sport of it last time, there really is a sucker born every minute and enough of them had $10.00 handy this weekend for the science fiction flick to net an estimated $12.5 million. Somewhere, the ghost of William Castle is smiling.

The weekend’s other new release was one-time “Donnie Darko” whiz kid Richard Kelly’s dark science fiction tale, “The Box.” Not too surprisingly, the “Twilight Zone”-like tale fell short of “Paranormal Activity” — hanging in very nicely with an estimated $8.6 million and sure to cross the $100 million mark shortly — and came in at sixth place with an estimate of roughly $7.9 million.

Documentaries, External Entertainment, External Movies, Horror Movies, Movie Comedies, Movie Dramas, Movies, News, Sci-Fi Movies

Lifelike Yogi

November 7, 2009 /

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Sometimes a news story falls through the cracks and, since I don’t have Lewis Black working for me, they just kind of stay there until someone points them out. In this case, the fine cinephile blogger Peter Nellhaus of the well-named Coffee, Coffee and More Coffee alerted me via Facebook that I’d missed this item on the possible casting of Anna Faris, Dan Aykroyd, and Justin Timberlake for an upcoming CGI/live-action adaptation of the really not all that classic Hanna-Barbera cartoon adventures of Yogi Bear. (Any fond childhood memories I had left were quickly erased by actually trying to watch one.)

Admittedly, this idea for a film kind of sets my teeth on edge, but at the same time, that’s how I reacted when I heard they were doing a new “Battlestar Galactica” TV show. The first was so horrible, why revive it? “To make it really good this time” turned out to be the answer. Ideas are just ideas, the execution is where it’s at, and this could be brilliant for all any of us know, though the immutable laws of the entertainment universe — and a seemingly less than inspired choice for the director — indicates that it has at least a 90% chance of stinking. I have to say that the idea of Justin Timberlake doing the voice of Boo-Boo does kind of make me smile, however.

Only time will truly tell, but I’m using this opportunity to present an ancient video for “Life Like Yogi,” the anthem of the long defunct, highly ironic Hanna-Barbara obsessed punk bank, Stukas Over Bedrock — a group whose mid-Wilshire home I used to sometimes hang out at a long, long ago — led by my esteemed fellow cinephile John P. Garry III. A real walk down Punksville’s memory lane.

Ursine bonus videos after the flip.

*****

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