Sunday, October 21, 2007 Rant Archive
Breaking up is hard to do, especially when you’re a jackass like Larry David. This week, Cheryl (Cheryl Hines) decides she’s had enough and leaves Larry after he hangs up on her during an emergency phone call from her plane that was going down. Well, the plane never did go down, and you can’t blame him. The TiVo guy (Kevin Hefferman) was fixing the cable, and we all know how hard it is to get those guys to show up.
Anyway, the ensuing break-up forces all the friends to choose sides – and you know nobody’s gonna choose Larry. On top of that, Cheryl’s now dating the underwear manufacturer sitting next to her on the plane (he created the flyless underwear , aka the “No Fly Zone”). Ouch.
And to add insult to injury (or vice versa), Larry’s balls get caught in his underwear, meaning he has to wear the damn No Fly Zone drawers, messes up a chance to hook up with Xena Warrior Princess (the Lucy Lawless), and causes Leon to give him the nickname “Long Balls Larry.” The episode ends with Larry on the couch, icing his balls, and watching the TiVo malfunction during the Lakers game. Yeah, it’s bad times being LD these days.
Miami is in the middle of its worst heat wave ever. All eighteen victims of the Bay Harbor Butcher have been identified. Pervy forensic expert Vince Masuka has made a big, BIG break in the case. And worst of all, Rita’s mother is coming for a visit.
The world of South Florida is wrapping its hands around Dexter’s throat and he is gasping for breath.
But just when the show could take the turn into simple genre-based cops and robbers/cat and mouse stuff, morality gets a turn at the wheel. The central issue always is that we love Dexter. You have to in order to enjoy the show. And the seduction of that love is that Dexter only kills those that kill or, as superstar special agent Frank Lundy put it last week, “The only justification for killing is to save the life of an innocent.” That’s how Dexter justifies what he does and that’s how we justify liking him for it. But of course it is a hollow argument. Dexter kills because he needs to and because he loves it. It is the thing he must do in order to be his most excellent self imaginable. And that isn’t justification, that’s self indulgence.
Despite being the title character, Dexter is not alone in the moral minefield. Srg. Doakes has to face his demons. Lt. Maria Laguerta must make critical decisions about her career. Officer Batista lies to a widow to get the truth. Debra Morgan tries to take back her sexual power by banging a near stranger (I’m not trying to be rude or indelicate; there really was a lot of banging around in the scene).
They all come to moral crises and few emerge unscathed. Doakes tracks down a murder suspect who had similar special ops training to his own. The man admits to killing his wife. Doakes confronts him on boat aptly named “SS FUBAR” and in this corrupted soldier he sees a future that might have been him. And Doakes has to kill him. For many reasons.
RENDITION is an exciting suspenseful thriller, a morality play on a roller coaster that sadly leaves the tracks just before the ride is over.
It centers on what is known as “extraordinary rendition,” a policy that began during the Clinton administration – that is, Bill Clinton – but stepped up after 9/11. It allows American authorities to kidnap foreign nationals suspected of terrorist activities, move them overseas to a place where it’s torture that means never having to say you’re sorry.
The chances are you’ve read about this in the newspaper or watched a story about it on TV; but actually witnessing it happen -- even in a movie -- is so claustrophobic, so frightening, you’ll elbow the people in the seats next to you searching for more room to breathe.
Anwar El-Ibrahimi (Omar Metwally) is a highly-regarded, Egyptian-born, American-educated biochemist. He is married to the all-American girl, his college sweetheart, Isabella. They have a young boy and she is nine-months pregnant with their second. Returning from a conference in South Africa where he was a featured speaker, Anwar changes planes in, ironically, the nation’s capital. Suddenly, he’s whisked off to the side, a sack is placed over his head and he’s taken to a CIA location. His bags are removed from the luggage and his name from the computer; he has in effect disappeared.
Ultimately, on the authority of the head of the CIA’s counter-terrorism unit, Corrinne Whitman (Meryl Streep), he’s sent to a country in North Africa, where he is brutally interrogated by Abasi Fawal (Igal Naor). There had just been a suicide bomb plot there. Fawal was the target. And the CIA traced a call from the cell of the terrorist who claimed credit for the bomb to Anwar’s phone. Fawal wants answers.
At this point vampire films are kind of like fruitcake at Christmas: every year we seem to get another one, and rarely do we like what is being offered. Along the wide spectrum of vampire flicks, I would place 30 DAYS OF NIGHT somewhere in the middle. The film offers a unique and creative premise is wonderfully put together, the acting is acceptable, yet there are definitely some glaring plot holes which drag it down to B-movie level.
Based on the groundbreaking 2002 comic book miniseries of the same name, 30 DAYS OF NIGHT is set in the small Alaskan town of Barrow, “the northernmost city in the known U.S.” Every year the sun sets on Barrow for thirty days, pitting residents against the dark, the cold and the tedious strain of isolation. It also makes the town the perfect buffet for a clan of ravenous vampires, who descended on Barrow the moment the sun sinks beneath the horizon, massacring the townspeople and feeding on their blood.
Surviving the initial wave of slaughter, town sheriff Eben Oleson (Josh Hartnett) and his estranged wife Stella (Melissa George), manage to keep their wits long enough to gather what surviving town members they can, taking refuge in an abandoned attic to await the return of sunlight. Of course panic and stupidity soon take over and members of the group start getting picked off, often in brutal ways, as the merciless vampires try to weed them out of hiding.
Technically speaking, 30 DAYS OF NIGHT looks like a highly polished version of its B-movie subject matter. Director David Slade peppers the film with some of the more artistic shots and striking imagery that distinguished the comics, without trying to transfer that medium to the screen frame by frame—a wise choice. Screenwriters Stuart Beattie, Brian Nelson and Steve Niles, (one of the co-writers of the comics,) anchor the script in the tone of the source material’s bleak, hanging-by-a-thread sense of desperation. The vampires play their parts accordingly, mixing their roles with equal parts feral menace, kid-in-a-candy-store glee, and shocking moments of ferocity when dispatching their victims. There is nothing romanticized about these monsters: they are superior predators, stalking prey on the ideal killing ground.
From the very beginning of his career, Ben Affleck appeared destined for Big Things. He had everything: good looks, ability and smarts. But Hollywood works its magic in mysterious ways.
After a while, it seemed as though every one of Affleck’s positive accomplishments was accompanied by something that tarnished his reputation. Consider his very public relationships with Gwyneth Paltrow and of course JLo. Certainly he can date anyone he wants, but both these associations reeked of Paris Hilton rather than someone serious about his craft.
While a dirt-hungry media may be blamed for the brouhaha surrounding those affairs, he has no one but himself to blame for GIGLI and JERSEY GIRL. After watching those two, I don’t think any one can be blamed for wondering if the Academy Award he shared for co-writing the screenplay of GOOD WILL HUNTING was a fluke.
It turns out that the Cassandras were premature. GONE BABY GONE, Affleck’s debut as a feature film director, shows a remarkable level of sophistication on many levels. He tackled a difficult and potentially controversial subject, missing children. He wrote a screenplay based on a Dennis Lehane book and managed to make the transition from printed page to screen while maintaining the book’s nourish qualities. But most of all he made an engrossing, suspenseful film that grabs you from the first frame.
The distinct honor of ‘
first cancelled show of the ’07 season’ has been given to the CW’s ONLINE NATION, which made it all of four weeks before getting the axe.
Don’t have the faintest idea what ONLINE NATION is (ahem, WAS) all about? Neither did I. Probably why it’s no longer with us.
Apparently the show, (which aired Sundays at 7:30 pm,) was VH1’s WEB JUNK without the professional comedians to, you know, make it watchable. Going the not-so-smart route the show purposely collected the web’s most irreverent and annoying video clips and blogs, assuming that viewers would somehow be entertained to watch them. Genius.
For its last outing ONLINE NATION drew fewer than 580,000 viewers according to Excite news—that’s less than a two-star youtube video draws on a BAD day. Of course some of the show’s (former) hosts are trying to make the whole debacle into a joke: Rhett McLaughlin and Lincoln Neal went so far as to feature a graphic of a tombstone reading “R.I.P. Online Nation” on their website. The pair also launched several online video sketches mocking the show’s demise, including Neal making a faux phone call to his mother in tears, and a call to a home improvement store asking of they had “any openings in the lawn and garden department.”
As I watched the shenanigans of the lovable moppets on GREY’S ANATOMY tonight, I kept thinking about MAD MEN. In MAD MEN, no one ever says what they mean, thinks what they say, or finishes a meaningful conversation. On GREY’S ANATOMY everyone always has the last word, even when they don’t. See that? What I just did? Pure GREY’S. What does it all mean? Well, one is a great show, and one gets huge ratings. Obviously GREY’S is the latter.
GREY’S ANATOMY is the most emotionally manipulative show on television. Forgive me if I’ve said it before, but nothing happens week to week to prove me wrong. When it first started it was an undeniably sexy show about strangers getting to know each other, intimately. Now everyone is so far into everyone else’s business that it was shocking that no one even suspected why Dr. Torres might want to kick Dr. Steven’s ass. Not that she did kick her ass. As usual, Izzy turned Dr. Torres’s simple request that they meet to talk about a private matter into a full-on schoolyard brawl. Torres was right that Izzy should be ashamed. Her reaction to Torres was as childish as they come.
The show tries hard to plumb the depths of human emotion, but it fails. It is hard to take serious things, like adultery, serious when the show doesn’t take serious things seriously. Got that? GREY’S, like a young doctor, tries to do too much. Is the old intern, Norman- played by the marvelous Edward Hermann- supposed to be funny? Why exactly? I’m embarrassed for the writers and Mr. Hermann. He could be doing better things with his time, and acting skills, then trying to say “‘sup” like a twenty five year old. And I don’t know how the whole subplot about literally losing a patient he and Meredith wrongly told was going to die proves that Meredith is immature. But the writers seem content that just by saying so it does.
Last night was the season finale of MAD MEN. This is significant for a couple of reasons. Firstly, there is no better show on T.V. right now. I was a hater at first, but I was soon won over by the amazing writing. Secondly, it put AMC on the map as a channel capable of deciding to make a very adult drama at a moment when most of the network shows are about grown babies. Not that I don’t enjoy grown babies, it’s just that watching adults behave like adults is refreshing and interesting. Even when some of those adults act like children.
Tonight the show took an interesting turn, especially for a finale. Don has to pitch an idea to Kodak about a slide projector that has a wheel on top. If you are older then 25 you know what it looks like; some teacher in school at some point was probably always grappling with one. Anyway, Don’s big idea is to use nostalgia to sell it, not technology, which is what the client had initially mentioned. At the presentation he uses happy pictures of himself and Betty to illustrate his point. He talks about nostalgia, defining it and telling the clients that it is more then memory. Nostalgia is deeper; it’s a twinge in the heart, that pulls you back.
This speech is excellent. The room is riveted, and so was this viewer. One of the account managers had to leave the room; he is having marital problems and living at the office. The nostalgia was too much for him. But what is also interesting about this speech is that MAD MEN is a show rooted in nostalgia, and that sets about tearing that nostalgia apart. We, even those of us born after the fact, mythologize the early sixties as a heavenly time, full of hope, security, and wealth. After 9/11 doesn’t communism seem like a quaint threat? Vietnam and the Cultural Revolution burned the whole thing down, but in certain ways, we are nostalgic for that too. Rebellion is still somewhat signified by long hair. (If the show lasts long enough to get to that, I can’t wait to see what they do with it!)