June 2007 Entries
Tonight on a very special STUDIO 60 … Jordan survives. Tom’s brother survives. Harriet and Matt get back together. It’s the series finale, folks!
Even though Aaron Sorkin likes to hit us where it hurts with the serious stuff, the man likes a happy, satisfying ending. Tonight’s episode definitely hit a couple of melodramatic (as in music swelling, people cheering) bumps, but overall, I’ll stand by my claim that this show is damn good television. Why? Mostly because of two amazingly well-written, well-acted scenes.
The first is between Jordan (Amanda Peet) and Danny (Bradley Whitford). For the past three weeks, we’ve been waiting to find out if Jordan would live or die; if Danny would lose his new daughter or not. On tonight’s episode, Danny has finally given in and decided to get Jordan to sign guardianship papers. While having an awkwardly funny argument (awkward in the good, too-nervous-to-stay-serious way) with the nurse, the doctor comes out to give him some news. The camera pulls back to the waiting room where Harriet (Sarah Paulson) says a quick prayer. I’m just waiting for the overdone moment when a person crumbles to the floor after hearing bad news, but no. Of course, now is a perfect time for a commercial.
Mark Wahlberg has tried to hit big as an action star and has failed mightily with the misguided PLANET OF THE APES remake and the plain silly FOUR BROTHERS. With SHOOTER, he finds the right combination that had previously missed the marky mark.
SHOOTER is adapted from the Stephen Hunter novel “Point of Impact.” In the film, Wahlberg plays Marine marksman Bob Lee Swagger. The opening sequence shows Swagger on a mission that will lead him to self-imposed exile. It is a covert operation in Africa that goes horribly wrong and ends with his spotter/buddy meeting a gruesome, bullet-riddled end. Once the buddy shows his pocket-sized picture of his sweetheart back home, he might as well hold up a sign that says “I’M ABOUT TO DIE!”
Three years after this, Swagger is recruited by a Col. Johnson (played generically by Danny Glover) to lend his expertise and help capture someone who has threatened to assassinate the president of the United States. Of course, Swagger is being set up as the patsy; in the ensuing escape, he stumbles over and disarms FBI agent Nick Memphis (Michael Pẽna). Separately, the two pursue the real perpetrators of the assassination attempt, and eventually their path re-cross and they team up for the last hour of the movie.
There are movies, and then there are films. Movies get made to make money, pure and simple, and other concerns — acting, writing, the numerous and myriad processes of art — are secondary to that. Films, on the other hand, are primarily intended to express a vision or tell a story of importance to the artist or artists behind the project, although they can and often do get tweaked along the way to improve their chances of making money. BLACK SNAKE MOAN, the most recent effort from writer/director Craig Brewer, is a film, and by Hollywood standards, a damn strange one.
Our story opens with the not-so-subtly-named Lazarus (Samuel L. Jackson), a former bluesman who has turned to raising vegetables and stewing over being abandoned by his wife for his brother. This would seem like a perfect time to bust out the guitar and write a couple new blues songs (or murder ballads), but Lazarus doesn’t turn to music, or God, like he once did.
On the white-trash side of town, renowned “loose woman” Rae (Christina Ricci) has drunk and doped herself into a tizzy after her beau, Ronnie (Justin Timberlake), ships off to be in the Guard. In short order, she gets used, abused, beaten and left for dead on the side of the road. Lazarus finds her and takes care of her, providing a safe place and medicine, but he quickly realizes that she needs more help than cough syrup and Band-Aids. Using his awesome blues powers in conjunction with the Bible, Laz decides some tough love, and perhaps (although he never calls it this) an exorcism, are in order. Then, he remembers the 40-pound chain he keeps in the barn…
Well, there’s no easy way to put it, and we might as well get the spoiler out of the way. Episode 3 of RESCUE ME ends tragically, as the Chief — fresh off the news that his heart is too weak to stay in the house — takes a revolver and puts a bullet through his head.
And, it’s a shame, because it’s quite the downer of an ending to an otherwise lighthearted episode. After attacking Colleen’s live-in boyfriend, Tommy decides the only way to get his daughter to come home is to take a dive against the big bad beau and get some sympathy points from her. Of course, this plan fails miserably as he gets his ass kicked, yet doesn’t get any closer to his daughter. Moral of that story: Don’t ever, under any circumstances, let your daughter’s boyfriend beat you up. It sets a bad precedent, and the last thing you want is the kid thinking he’s even more of a badass than he already does.
Meanwhile, the rest of the boys are dealing with their various sexual problems: Lou with his pervert ex-nun girlfriend, Sean with his porn-loving wife, and even Franco’s retarded soon-to-be brother-in-law went on a date with his wheelchair-bound girlfriend with the “hot ass.” (Note to self: Don’t take a chick in a wheelchair on a bowling date) Yes, it’s quite a dysfunctional house, and now it has lost its leader.
Wasn’t that Michah in the promos saying, “If you can’t stand the heat, get the hell out of the kitchen?” Well, on this episode of TOP CHEF, it appears she was forced to eat those words. Just three episodes in, Michah was the latest chef to be sent packing. While she definitely had a consistency problem — up one challenge and down the next — I think her attitude played a part in her departure as well; it’s not good to offend the American judges with comments that insinuate their palates are lacking. That said, Michah isn’t an awful chef; in fact, none of the contestants this season are. And, it was beginning to look like that could be a problem, because — let’s face it — there’s a part of all of us that loves to see other people fail. Luckily, the evil Hung we were promised early on emerged to save the day. In my view, every reality show needs a good villain. Time will tell if Hung can hold that title, or if Joey steals his thunder.
In this installment of TOP CHEF, the contestants have to fish for their own fresh seafood out of a tank and cook it up for professional chef and guest judge, Alfred Portale. Each contestant is given 30 seconds to scoop up as much as they can, and when Hung plows in like he’s digging for gold, we know the real competition has begun. Although, I felt a little bad for the poor crawfish that became his victim. Although, when it came down to it, Brian won yet again. Therefore, he had immunity in the elimination round, which had the chefs putting their own spin on traditional family favorites. One caveat: they had to make these high-fat, high-cholesterol foods in a healthier way for the Elks Club members they were serving. Note to self: look up these recipes on the TOP CHEF website.
Oh, what dizzying heights have been reached in television history! This week on FOOTBALLERS WIVES, I was offended on behalf of Indians, cancer patients, lesbians and the color pink. That’s a lot of plot!
Amber finally lost her last screw, after Bruno burnt down her “meditation room”/shrine to Conrad. The dynamic between her and Bruno was nice and tense as he tried his best to parry every one of her insane thrusts. First, she bought him a beautiful straight razor — you know, so he can get a closer shave — all while trying to get him to take a bath. It’s like the story of the Revolutionary Marat and the assassin, Charlotte Corday, only without all the French people.
Bruno takes a clever tact by insisting on doing the opposite of what Amber says. She offers him wine, probably poisoned; he intelligently opts for a beer. The showdown occurs over a lovely curry, into which Amber has dumped insecticide; he tries to get her to eat it. She is the worst poisoner of all time. Only dose the dish of your intended victim, not your own, you silly woman. Jeez. She obviously hasn’t seen THE PRINCESS BRIDE, or read “I, Claudius.”
Sticks and stones may break his bones, but kung fu kicks don’t seem to harm John McClane. He’s older, but not wiser as he takes on machine gun-toting crooks,a few black belts and an entire helicopter, in what is sure to be the action movie of the summer.
Yippee-ki-yay, uh, you people.
The latest installment in the DIE HARD franchise proves that the AARP is right. Older people can live useful and productive lives. In fact, they can even save the world. I refer, of course, to Det. John McClane (Bruce Willis). It’s been 19 years since DIE HARD, and while the old gray (bald, actually) McClane ain’t what he used to be, he still does OK. LIVE FREE OR DIE HARD lives up to the previous outings — and in many ways out-DIE HARDs them.
This time around, Thomas Gabriel (Timothy Olyphant) is a former Defense Department consultant who tried to warn officials that the nation’s computer structure is subject to cyber-attack. Did they listen? Of course not. They forced him to resign, so in retribution, he hatches a plan to run a fire sale. That is computer lingo for everything must go; he plans to shut down all the nation’s computers.
Because it’s 4th of July weekend and everyone is off on vacation, McClane is asked to bring a young computer hacker, Matt Farrell (Justin Long) to D.C., where he can be questioned by the FBI. But, when he gets to Farrell’s apartment, he’s joined by machine-gun-toting baddies who intend to eliminate the geek.
Despite the obstacles and bullets thrown in his way, McClane gets Farrell to D.C., to Gabriel’s consternation. Gabriel tells him, “You’re a Timex in a digital age.” There’s more truth to that than Gabriel suspects, because McClane really takes a lickin’ and keeps on tickin’. A lot of lickin’.
Chef Ramsay just wants you to do it (bleep)-ing right! Is that so much to ask?
He is such an appealing bully. All the swearing, all the humiliation, all the over-the-top theatrics go beyond the normal voyeuristic self-satisfaction of reality TV. He is training these wannabe chefs to be better than they are. He is placing a higher expectation on the poor humps to force them — through his shear willpower and demand for quality — to become efficient gourmet kitchen marshals. And, they still think it is just a game.
This week’s episode of HELL’S KITCHEN has one of the staples of the season: the palate test. Chef Ramsay brought the remaining hopefuls front and center for a team competition where the contestants were blindfolded and ear-plugged and made to identify three simple foods by taste and texture. A strong palate is an essential talent that will carry a lesser chef far in this show, as exampled in Season II by the nominally-gifted Virginia making it all the way to the finals. This week — surprise, surprise — the Blue team lost. They couldn’t buy a reward challenge at this point. Vinnie didn’t know what seared tuna tasted like, and Josh got all three of his samples wrong. You don’t want the fate of your team resting in the hands of the slack-jawed, vacant-staring, frosted-tipped Vinnie from Jersey. How is he supposed to know what seared tuna tastes like? He’s a chef at a Jersey night club. To him, everything must taste like Drakkar, bronzing cream and Aqua Net.
One of the many things I find fascinating about THE CLOSER’s Deputy Chief Brenda Johnson (Kyra Sedgwick) is how her face hovers just on the edge of locking her feelings away without ever quite making it. Whenever Chief Pope (J.K. Simmons) tells her something she doesn’t like, you can see the battle between forthrightness and her awareness of toe-stepping on that expressive mug of hers. People think Jim Carrey is the master of malleable features, but he could learn a thing or two from Sedgwick, who can make her face go from coquettish to froggy to hard-assed — all within the space of a few minutes.
This is all good, because it plays to THE CLOSER’s greatest strength: characters. There are shows more real, gritty, and in tune with their settings, but you’ll have to look long and hard to find any shows with more nuanced and complex characters, especially in Sedgwick’s faceted portrayal of the Georgia-belle-turned-CIA-interrogator-turned-LAPD-deputy-chief. Supporting characters rarely get short shrift on this show, and this week’s episode gives a couple of them a chance to stretch in new directions.
Can there be anything on TV as dramatic as organ transplant surgery and the lives of the professionals who spend their waking hours elbow deep in blood and guts? You might not want to rush your answer. Take a moment.
There’s something very important missing from HEARTLAND, the new TNT medical drama: drama. Yes, people, drama is missing from this drama. Those of you unfamiliar with the television industry may well ask, “Is drama really important in a medical drama?” Frankly, in my experience, drama may be the single most important ingredient in a medical drama. It is, in fact, largely what distinguishes it from, say, a medical comedy.
How can you have a drama that lacks drama? Asks the folks at TNT. Their ad slogan is “We know drama.” In this case, not so much. HEARTLAND is a show without conflict. Everything is resolved in so syrupy and sweet a manner that chocolate pales in comparison. Pales? By comparison, chocolate is an albino.
Where to begin? HEARTLAND is set in a major Pittsburgh transplant center. After a so-so debut, there appears to be hope in this second episode; it looks as though several significant moral and ethical dilemmas will be tackled.