Monday, October 29, 2007 Rant Archive
The conceit of FIVE DAYS is, as its title suggests, that in five successive weeks we watch one day in an investigation that takes place well over two months in real time: days one, three, 28, 33 and finally day 79 when the case is closed. But we’re not watching the investigation so much as we voyeurs into the lives of the people around it – the families, the investigators, the media, the hangers-on.
It isn’t until 33 days after her disappearance that the body of Leanne Wellings (Christine Tremarco) shows up floating in a lake. Before that, Leanne’s mother Barbara Poole (Penelope Wilton) told a reporter” “All we do is wait. We wait while life goes by without us.” And it is difficult not to feel her pain and suffering.
Afterwards, her father says: “You never think you’ll wind up looking forward to be sure she’s dead.” And it is difficult not to sympathize and understand.
People’s lives are rarely summed up so simply and so well. It is to the credit of FIVE DAYS’ sole screenwriter, Gwyneth Hughes, that dialogue and emotions of so charged a subject come across so realistically. The hope and despair of waiting and the toll it takes on those left behind is unbearable and comes through.
An eyesore of a sculpture on Bob and Lee's front lawn took center stage on Sunday's episode of DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES. You see, not only did the sculpture look like the inner workings of a garbage disposal but it also served as a remarkably noisy fountain. A fountain Bob and Lee - gotta love 'em - decided to turn on at six in the morning. Naturally, the post-modern art piece upsets the residents of Wisteria Lane and not 15 minutes goes by before Bree, Susan, Gaby, McCluskey and Katherine are plotting to get rid of it. As Bree put it, "Of all the gay men in the world, we have to get the two without taste!"
Of course, all of this sculpture nonsense is just setup for a showdown between Lynette and Katherine when they both announce they are running for president of the homeowner's association. Lynette's platform would be freedom of expression, or something, and Katherine's would be, you know, the opposite. Lynette's motivation to run for the position is the treehouse her kids play in. It is the one place where there is no talk of cancer or being sick and Lynette wants to make sure some homeowner's code against having treehouses doesn't jeopardize that.
Every now and then, DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES delivers a rough episode. These are not bad episodes so much as they are uneven in tone and content. On a show famous for its flawless aesthetic and clever way of telling stories that all fit a single overarching theme, episodes like these stick out like a sore thumb. And let me tell you, Sunday's offering - about pests - was definitely one of these episodes.
That’s not to say a lot didn’t happen, though. First off, we were introduced to Bob and Lee, Wisteria’s brand new gay neighbors. While introducing herself, Susan makes so many faux pas it’s almost unbelievable. She tells Lee that she “gets” the whole gay thing because “I watch a lot of cable.” I loved watching Lee become so turned off by Susan’s demeanor and repeated attempts at making them like her. How refreshing that someone finally let her know that her “adorable klutz” shtick is, in fact, not adorable. Even though I can already see the new couple fleeing town by midseason, I hope Bob and Lee stick around for a little while as the voices of reason on Wisteria Lane.
The older the case is on this entertaining show, the better I like it. Tonight we get taken back to 2002, when a math genius – who was tragically taken advantage of by his own brother – is shot and killed. Thank god for the cold case team; if not for them, the brutal death of a 14-year-old kid would go unresolved. But as always, it isn’t smooth sailing. Getting witnesses to talk after so much time and finding new evidence that will lead them in the right direction gets harder and harder the further back in time they have to go. While 2002 might not be the middle ages, it is still light years away from where we are now; let’s face it, with the rate the world runs at today, five years is equivalent to at least ten. That being said, this crack team always manages to get the job done.
The tragic part of tonight’s story is the fact that the victim’s own family seemed to sell him down the river and take advantage of his incredible abilities. Being a math whiz means the kid could have accomplished all kinds of things, had he lived long enough to realize his potential. Unfortunately, thanks to his brother, the biggest thing he ended up accomplishing was counting cards and opening safes for a local gang. This may also have something to do with his untimely death, or at least it gives Lilly (Kathryn Morris) and her team a place in which to start their new investigation. But as we all know, their first lead is just that, the first step on their journey to finding justice.
SAW IV hacked away the competition this week, easily taking top spot at the
box office. The fourth offering in the SAW-saga grossed approx $32.1 million from 3,183 locations, less than its predecessor’s $33.6 million debut last year, but better than SAW II’s $31.7 million debut in 2005.
“‘SAW’ fans have proven their loyalty to the franchise once again…” Lionsgate prexy of distribution Steve Rothenberg said.
SAW IV marked the highest first-week gross for the fall 2007 season, outpacing
THE GAME PLAN, which debuted with a gross of $22.9 million. The impressive debut of SAW IV should push worldwide box office revenue for the SAW franchise just across the $500 million mark. Exit polls showed that 90% of the people of the SAW IV audience had seen the other chapters in the series, and, even more surprising, the genders turned out in even numbers; 52% of the viewing audience were women (!?) and 48% were male.
The success of SAW IV proved for a second week in a row (after 30 DAYS OF NIGHT’S
solid debut last week) that the horror genre still has life in it yet to snuff out—certainly life to slowly bleed across multiple installments, a la the slasher films of the 1980’s like
FRIDAY THE 13th, or A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET. Without spoiling SAW IV’s signature “twists,” suffice to say that the careful watcher will recognize that the film is actually an extended trailer for SAW V, VI, VII and however many more installments studios Lionsgate and Twisted Pictures can crank out before the films stop being a Halloween tradition and audiences move on to get their flesh-fix elsewhere.
If you followed the first season of DEXTER, you know from the finale that what Dexter has convinced himself of is that his need to kill is incurable (a very strong possibility), the rules set down by his adoptive father for how he should do his killing make the action justifiable (debatable) and that if he were known for his heroic action he would receive adulation from the world around him that would fill his hollow emotional self (doubtful). This season Dexter is challenging some of this thinking and is in recovery. Of sorts. It is a risky move for a sophomore season but we can thank the writers for taking this path to at least assure us we don’t get a repackaging of season one, or worse, a show that loses perspective of the fun it has with murder. Sister Debra says to Dex, “If Dad taught us one thing, it was the value of human life.” To which Dexter replies in voice over, “We had different homework assignments.”
Tonight Dexter opens up to his seductress/sponsor Lila and tells her how his mother was butchered with a chainsaw in front of him and he sat in her blood for two days. She urges Dexter to find the men responsible and confront them. Through his work connections, Dexter learns that only one of the three men involved are alive and out of prison. He also learns his mother was a snitch to his adoptive father. Later it is revealed they might have been intimate. This fuels an emotion in Dexter we haven’t seen thus far: rage.
Here’s a massively helpful hint I learned while watching BROTHERHOOD today, MIXING A RAW EGG WITH SOME WHISKEY CAN KILL YOUR MONSTER HANGOVER. Thanks guys! I wish more television would give helpful life hints for the lowlifes and party animals of this great country. Thank god for Brotherhood, thinking of the other guy & taking care of its own kind. Just like tradition says it should.
Dear Michael (Jason Issacs), how do I love thee—probably in an infinite amount of ways. Michael gets stuck trying to find this guy that stole a ton of money from Freddie Cork. The guy takes off and no one can seem to find him. Declan (Ethan Embry) actually runs into the guy while he’s visiting his daughter at school, but doesn’t have the heart to call Freddie. He tells the guy to skip the state and hide for good because he is not totally soulless yet.
That doesn’t matter cause Freddie and Michael are hot on his trail. Michael goes through the guys house destroying it to see if the money is hidden in there. When nothing turns up Michel decides that maybe he should try buying the house. His girlfriend Mona (Francine Mona Bouska) tells him she’s possibly pregnant so he gets all paternal. On the way back from visiting the house as a potential buyer he flips out at a gas station during one of this seizure/episodes and sprays gasoline everywhere. Mona tells him he has to get a checkup or she’s finished, even though she’s preggo. Michael agrees & makes an appointment with his doctor saying they can put him on meds to help control the seizures. Then he gets a call from Freddie. Freddie has captured the guy regardless of Declan’s warning and Michael says he’ll beat the money out of him if he can get a 10% cut of it. I guess he’s thinking ahead now that there’s a baby on the way.
Larry David’s not a racist, he just acts like one. Retelling the story of another guy using the N-word starts the chain of events that make up this week’s CURB hilarity.
Larry recites the comment, which is overheard by a black doctor, who is so enraged that he accidentally shaves Jeff’s (Jeff Garlin) head in a botched surgery, which leads to Jeff losing a deal with Ben Stiller because he’s bald, which leads to Jeff suing the hospital, leading to Larry having to testify by reciting the story in front of a room with black people in it, which he can’t do. Cut to closing credits.
It’s classic CURB by-the-numbers as something Larry says is misconstrued by pretty much the entire world and a snowball effect takes place in which pretty much the entire world starts hating Larry. But hey, it’s still funny, so go with it.
The big story line for this season has become Larry’s love life – especially after last week’s too-close-to-reality bombshell when Cheryl (Cheryl Hines) left Larry. The twist gained a lot of publicity, as it closely parallels David’s real life after he broke up with his wife last year. So does that mean everything on the show about LD is true? Does he really get an erection after only five seconds of close contact (referred to as the “5 Mississippi Rule”)? That got him in trouble with Auntie Rae this week, and also played a part in his date with a doctor.
I love horror movies. Always will. But I realize that originality is hard to come by in the genre. As such, I applauded the first SAW movie when it hit theaters for being different, while recognizing then that the plot of the film was basically just a half-assed set-up for the sadistic, visceral (and admittedly cool) moments that populate the franchise. Anyways, who would go see a SAW movie looking for a serious crime drama? It seemed that Lionsgate understood that when they chose to make a very different film for the sequel, trapping a bunch of strangers in a house and offing them one by one. And though I preferred the first one, I respected the choice to make the “tests” the center-piece of SAW in a more genuine way. But at some point, this pulpy “torture porn” series started taking itself way too seriously. SAW III broke all its own rules while simultaneously beating us over the head with Jigsaw’s mantra: cherish your life. And, like all the films, the fourth installment picks up right on the heels of the previous film.
SAW IV is abysmal. That’s the best way I can put it without cussing. It’s the worst yet. And I know that it won the weekend and plenty of people will disagree with me, but the movie really sucks. Allow me to recount the first five minutes of the SAW IV. Trust me, there are no spoilers because the film is thematically identical to the previous three movies. Oh right – except now the villains are dead. So the film opens with the autopsy of Jigsaw AKA John (played here by a nude Tobin Bell). Yes, if you ever asked yourself, “Hm, I wonder what that raspy guy from SAW’s penis looks like,” well then you’re in for a treat.
I’ll never say that too much gore is a bad thing, but as the coroner delves through Jigsaw’s innards, the scene is blandly gratuitous. Eventually he gets to the killer’s stomach and makes a startling discovery. By flashback, we learn that before Jigsaw died he covered one of his signature tapes in wax and swallowed it. That’s the kind of storytelling that defines the entire film. See, the SAW films are purposefully riddled with plot holes because they don’t know how many sequels the future holds, effectively gimping every story in the interest of producing a future hobbled story. And even as this film ties off some loose ends that I didn’t know existed, it’s obvious that the writers are completely unaware of the future of the franchise. I wish that was their only problem.