Monday, July 30, 2007 Rant Archive
SAVING GRACE is a winner and a perfect complement for THE CLOSER, the show it follows, about a strong (albeit far straighter) female cop. TNT’s motto is “We know drama.” They also know scheduling.
TNT has a great one-two punch on Monday nights in THE CLOSER’s Kyra Sedgwick (at 9 p.m.) and SAVING GRACE’s Holly Hunter (at 10 p.m.), two strong women as far apart temperamentally as Hillary Clinton and Ann Coulter. Deputy Chief Brenda Johnson (Sedgwick) is an angel whose biggest sin is the stash of chocolate she leaves hidden in her desk. Grace Hanadarko (Hunter) desperately needs an angel, and anything sweet is entirely out of character. It is the kind of ratings-building combination that likely leaves broadcast network executives green with envy.
Grace is a troubled Oklahoma City police detective who is street smart and personally stupid. If there’s a bad decision to be made in her life, she’ll do it, whether it’s sleeping with fellow (and married) cops to paying far too much attention to her close friend Jack Daniels. She’s on a dangerous downward spiral when she’s intercepted by a last chance angel, a tobacco-chewing vision named Earl (Leon Rippy).(What a choice for a name. The last Earl I knew was a wife beater dispatched by the Dixie Chicks.)
NO RESERVATIONS is a perfect summer date movie. For one thing, it’s mindless—and I mean that in the best sense of the word. You won’t need a roadmap to figure out how to get to the end of this picture. But that’s never the point of these chick flicks. What’s important here is the scenery en route to the destination – the destination of course being happily ever after. And the scenery here is, appropriately, picturesque.
Master chef Kate Armstrong (Catherine Zeta-Jones) is talented, insecure and very uptight. She’s in charge of the kitchen in a high-tone Greenwich Village restaurant, and hasn’t had a relationship in three years.
Kate’s well ordered life is thrown for a loop when her sister, coming to visit, is involved in a fatal automobile accident. She is survived only by her elementary school age daughter, Zoë (Abigail Breslin). Armstrong takes the young girl in, but doesn’t know how to fit Zoë into her rigidly regimented existence.
These guys are bad mutha-uckas!
Boy, it sure is a sad statement on society when people still get judged by the color of their skin. Bret and Jemaine feel the brunt of this racism when Sanjay, the Indian fruit stand guy, won’t sell them an apple and a banana because of their nationality.
Of course, he thinks they’re Australians (the little buggers). But, as we all know, they’re New Zealanders. And they really want a piece of fruit.
So the boys concoct a plan to get back at the racist fruit man that falls somewhere between framing him for murder and thinking bad thoughts about him. The next best thing? The only way to get back at someone in America: Flip him the bird.
Well, it takes some time to learn the maneuver (for those who don’t know, it doesn’t not involve flapping your hands like wings).
It’s perhaps fitting that even reviews of THE SIMPSONS MOVIE are played out. Admittedly, it’s difficult to devise a fresh angle for a movie review when the handful of catch-phrases have been eviscerated by a deluge of reviews more about the longevity of the material than the film itself. After all, as the longest running animated series on television, THE SIMPSONS needs no introduction.
Matt Groening’s cartoon has influenced pop culture for nearly two decades, but his legacy today shows the signs of age. I have to say, I grew up on THE SIMPSONS and I was a huge fan for basically my entire childhood. But when things got stale, I was one of many fans who deserted the show. By the end of the ‘90s, the family that once had personified new-kid FOX’s edgy persona had been outdone by the likes of SOUTH PARK and FAMILY GUY. It’s probably about time Groening hangs up his spurs.
The film opens with a dimly-lit theater filled with Springfield residents. Homer shuffles to his seat amid the jeers of those seated behind him before asking the audience (real and animated) why we have chosen to pay to see something that we could have watched for free on TV. He makes a great point. After 17 years, bringing America’s favorite family to the silver screen was a surprise. Sure, there was a market for it, but shouldn’t theatrical adaptations have a purpose?