NetflixWatch: "Alpha Dog"

"Alpha Dog"
Director: Nick Cassavetes
Fien Print Rating (Out of 100): 47

In the last 15 minutes of "Alpha Dog," the character played by Sharon Stone pops up in an entirely comical fat suit. The purpose of her, um, "shocking" appearance is to illustrate how the unfortunate events of the movie have changed this particular woman, but all I could do was marvel at how despite having let herself go to seed and gained 50-to-100 pounds, Stone's character had continued to get her teeth whitened and her nails done. The movie had already pretty well lost me by there, but I spent the last 10 minutes laughing at Fatty Sharon Stone, which couldn't possibly have been Nick Cassavetes' intention was.

Unfortunately, Cassavetes' general intentions are much too obvious -- He's making just the latest in an endless line of "The kids aren't alright" dramas, following in the footsteps of previous superior films like "River's Edge." There have been so many recent films in this genre -- think "Kids," "Elephant," "Thirteen," "Bully," "Chumscrubber" and "Mean Creak" -- that the fact that "Alpha Dog" is "based on a true story" becomes meaningless. Do I give "Alpha Dog" a qualitative bonus for factual accuracy, even though most of its plotpoints were covered identically and previously in movies both equally semi-true ("Bully") and fictional ("Chumscrubber")?

I don't, because if I did, I'd probably then get frustrated by how many moments in "Alpha Dog" feel so patently false, from the aforementioned fat suit to Ben Foster's mind-bogglingly hilarious kung-fu party showdown to the tawdry and exploitative swimming pool threesome to the badly green screened backdrop in a key final scene. "Alpha Dog" is much too artificial and screenwriter-contrived for a movie that wants to boast about its veracity and its unblinking depiction of youth culture. I'm also not sure if Cassavetes' goal is to indict faulty parenting or hip-hop culture for corrupting America's misdirected youth, but he probably couldn't tell you either. It's one thing for Cassavetes to say, as he has on many occasions, that he doesn't want to be pigeon-holed as just one specific kind of filmmaker, but all of the schizophrenic flitting he's done between "She's So Lovely" and "John Q" and "The Notebook" and this comes through in a lack of consistent vision.

The movie is a mis-edited muddle in large part because the camera can't find anybody it wants to settle on. That's not the same as Cassavetes offering viewers a character to identify with, though, because Anton Yelchin's Zack is supposed to be that character (and he isn't bad). But none of the ostensible leads -- Emile Hirsch or Justin Timberlake or Fernando Vargas or Shawn Hatosy -- has the necessary charisma to carry the picture. The movie's energy level rises or wanes based on Foster's screentime, as he makes every over-the-top twitch and spasm watchable. The women are reduced to dull caricatures, barely defined by their relationships to the various men. In lieu of a character, Olivia Wilde provides a little gratuitous nudity, as if it were something she needed to do to advance her career, never looking back. And eventually somebody will figure out a proper use for Amanda Seyfried, who probably should be a TV star by this point, at the very least.

I'd advise viewers to skip "Alpha Dog" and check out one of those earlier teens-gone-wild films, or just wait for the next one to come along.

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NBC Upfronts: Quick Thoughts

Network TV wisdom says that you've got to keep going with what works until it stops working. In NBC's case, almost nothing worked this past season, so it's no surprise that the network is hoping to use "Heroes" as something of a blueprint for everything to follow.

That means four new dramas, three of which contain elements of sci-fi or the conventionally unexplainable. Does NBC actually expect "Chuck," "The Bionic Woman" and "Journeyman" to all deliver "Heroes"-type numbers? Probably not. But they're all potentially repurposeable on NBC's corporate sibling the SciFi channel, so they may not need to be hits in the same way we've previously judged success. That, in fact, may be NBC's new motto: "NBC: Since we were losing, we've decided to change the rules of the game."

Anything that brings "Friday Night Lights" and "30 Rock" back is fine by me.

A quick night-by-night review and a glance at the pilots NBC didn't pick up is after the bump, so click on through:

MONDAYS: "Deal or No Deal," "Heroes," "Journeyman." Stable up to 10 p.m., which has become one of three or four Hours of Death on NBC's schedule. Can "Journeyman" succeed where "Studio 60" (R.I.P.), "The Black Donnellys" and "The Real Wedding Crashers" failed? Well, it has Kevin McKidd, who was my third choice for James Bond (after Clive Owen and Daniel Craig), plus the lovely Moon Bloodgood. We'll see.

TUESDAYS: "The Biggest Loser," "Chuck," "Law & Order: SVU." Here's the NBC we all know and love, delivering an evening with absolutely no flow. Well done. I've read the script for "Chuck," which is clever and fun and is going for an audience that has nothing to do with the one supplied by "The Biggest Loser" and very little to do with the one that tunes in to "Law & Order: SVU."

WEDNESDAYS: "Deal or No Deal," "Bionic Woman," "Life." The reboot of "Bionic Woman" became a bit more interesting when Jason Smilovic ("Kidnapped") signed on to bring his brand of sub-Mamet chatter to the the sci-fi remake. I think I could also really warm to leading lady Michelle Ryan. As for "Life," despite a cast pepper by folks I respect -- Damian Lewis, Melissa Sagemiller, Robin Weigert -- I don't have my finger on how it transcends being merely a procedural.

THURSDAYS: "My Name Is Earl," "30 Rock," "The Office," "Scrubs," "E.R." I love "30 Rock" and "The Office." I like "My Name Is Earl" and "Scrubs." But NBC is working backwards. Thursday night always used to be the network's one sure thing, but now the more important advertising evening of the week is being dedicated to shows that guarantee a third place finish at best and likely fourth place if FOX does anything sensible.

FRIDAYS: "Game Show Blob," "Las Vegas," "Friday Night Lights." Depending on how you look at it, this is either the place NBC is sending "FNL" to die, or it's a relatively smart move for a show that they don't expect to suddenly become a massive hit anyway. It's an intuitive time slot (to quote my father, "FNL on FN! Shocking.") and it's a time period with a respectable 18-49 audience. It probably won't have huge audience overlap with anything on any other network. That being said, will the people who watch the show be watching real football on Friday nights instead? Well, since NBC's mantra has always been "The show isn't about football," it makes total sense. Plus, the 10 p.m. slot allows for more time at the Landing Strip, greater exploration of quad sex and a more likely bikini carwash subplot. Huzzah. [Sepinwall notes that Sepinwall deserves credit for the bikini carwash subplot idea. I agree. I'd only mention that he said it as a joke, while I'm TOTALLY serious.]

SATURDAYS: Put fingers in ears and start singing "La, la, la, la."

SUNDAYS: Football in the fall, then "Dateline," "Law & Order," "Medium" and "Lipstick Jungle." You train men to tune in for football and then when football's over, you turn the night over to women. It's a strategy that only occasionally worked on Mondays for ABC. "Medium," already struggling this season, will get crushed by "Desperate Housewives" and whatever CBS programs. That, in turn, will leave "Lipstick Jungle" to get crushed without a lead-in. Good times.

INTERESTING PILOTS (BASED ON PLOT AND CAST, NOT ANYTHING I'VE SEEN) THAT DIDN'T GET PICKED UP: The Spike Lee-directed "M.O.N.Y.," starring Bobby Cannavale, whose pilot track record is fairly dismal. The alien comedy "Area 52" had Paul Rubens as an alien, so I was sold. There was lots of great buzz on "Fort Pitt," produced by Peter Tolan and Dennis Leary (among others), but that apparently waned. The comedy "Business Class" had Mark Valley and Krista Allen (I'm there!), but also Horatio Sanz (Buh-bye).

And check out our more exhaustive upfronts coverage over at Zap2it.

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MovieWatch: "28 Weeks Later"

"28 Weeks Later"
Director: Juan Carlos Fresnadillo
Fien Print Rating (Out of 100): 66
In a Nutshell: First order of business, before I start talking about this movie at all, the young stars of "28 Weeks Later" are named Mackintosh Muggleton and Imogen Poots. Are those the two greatest British names ever or what? Don't you just want to send Mackintosh and Imogen into battle with Lord Voldemort like tomorrow? I do.

There have been some slightly hyperbolic reviews arguing that Fresnadillo has made a better movie than Danny Boyle's original, which helped introduce the concept of speedy zombies to the world and therefore apparently reinvigorated the genre. I don't buy that. There's no question that "28 Weeks Later" is a nicely compressed rush of a movie, a quarterhorse, if you will. It sprints out of the gate, allows for a brief character establishing lull and then zooms for the rest of its duration in seemingly no time at all. Fresnadillo has the advantage of being able to work with Boyle's initial template, which refined the conventions of the horror film for the digital age, generating terror through jittery hand-held camerawork, strategically used blaring music and even more strategic spells of unexpected silence. He also has the advantage of the very carefully established universe that Boyle and writer Alex Garland created. Fresnadillo and his co-writer Rowan Joffe are at their best when they're refining that universe, establishing the rules of a post-plague London in which the United States military has been entrusted with keeping security in a country to which they feel no emotional attachments. Does that sound familiar? It probably should. The allegory in "28 Weeks Later" may not go deep enough for my tastes, but one thing is made abundantly clear: The United States shouldn't be an occupying force on foreign soil or else bad things will happen.

The movie's flaw for me, unfortunately, is the incredible laziness of its plot mechanics, which are so clumsy as to force me to discuss logic in a genre where clearly that isn't the ideal state of affairs. If you're a writer, you're sitting in a room and you're saying things like "What could we do to make Rage [that plague thing] return to London?" and you go "Well, the kids could somehow sneak across the bridge, avoiding the watchful eyes of the US military and contribute to bringing it back..." and then somebody would say "Well yeah, that could work, but it's a pretty stupid thing to set up... Let's leave it there until we come up with something better." And then nobody did. The movie is just full of things that make no sense, even with the low level of logic required to operate in a Romero-inspired universe. And every time somebody would take a narrative shortcut that didn't make any sense, it would crush the movie for me for a couple minutes.

What else did I like? Robert Carlyle does very fine work as the plausibly cowardly father at the film's center and Poots and Mackintosh are better than your typical expectations for children in the genre. I was also impressed with how effortlessly authoritative and likeable Jeremy Renner was, given that he has no actual character in this movie (American soldier-with-conscience) and that his career arc has included studio bad guys ("SWAT"), serial killers ("Dahmer") and other unsavory types.

I loved the use of London's fin de siecle architecture as a representation of modernist hubris -- billions spent on bridges, domes and buildings that less than a decade later would stand as a mocking memory of 20th century humanity's wastefulness for what remains of 21st century humanity. Honestly, I go see these movies for the images of evacuated London. Zombies or no zombies, I love that city.

Oh and there's one spectacular horizontal wipe in which the encroaching zombies literally push Stringer Bell... er... Idris Elba's face off the screen. It may be the most appropriate and effective use of the editing wipe I've seen since I don't know when.

Once again, before departing: Mackintosh Muggleton and Imogen Poots. Tee-hee.

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TubeWatch: ABC's "Traveler"

There's a rule of thumb when it comes to drama pilots: If David Nutter is directing your opening hour, your show's going to get picked up. His list of opening hours includes "Without a Trace," "Smallville" and "Roswell." That's on the positive side of the ledger. But -- and this actually *isn't* an insult -- Nutter's gifts obviously lie more with flash than with substance. His pilots are so slick and so professional that he also fooled networks into picking up "Tarzan" and "Dr. Vegas" and "Fearless," shows that probably never would have gotten a second look with a less proficient person at the helm. ABC obviously picked up "Traveler" on the strength of the Nutter-directed pilot, grabbing it for a midseason slot. After a slew of heavily serialized dramas tanked this fall, somebody at ABC probably took a look at "Traveler" and had second thoughts. First its episode order was reduced and then the show was shunted off to a summer home where it's unlikely to cause too much trouble.

True to Nutter's track record, "Traveler" -- getting a friendly one-night sampling post-"Grey's Anatomy" before vanishing for three weeks -- has ample sizzle. Shot on location in New York, the show zips along with high production values across the board. This isn't a cheap show, by any means. My Zap2it colleague Rick saw clips from the show at upfronts last spring and came away properly impressed. Then he saw the pilot and, as he says simply, it "isn't a very good show."

I'd go one step more. "Traveler" is a laughably bad show, though laughter is the best medicine and over burritos with a couple co-workers, guessing the plot twists and character contrivances was a fun game. It would have been more fun if my guesses hadn't been right every single time. "Traveler" is horribly written. The characters are identified in long bursts of expositional dialogue, including awkward getting-to-know-you scenes in which the central males declare their grad school concentrations, their family histories and their baseball rooting affiliation. Hardly a line sounds organic, as these people only talk in declarative sentences revealing exactly what they're thinking and, often, doing (I particularly loved the conversations about the road trip that this main trio is taking, in which they explain the exact symbolic purpose of the trip at least two or three times). That over-articulated dialogue extends to the script's desire to over-explain the implausibilities of its second half -- if you think something isn't believable, somebody will comment that it isn't believable and then explain why it could be possible, which actually makes everything even *less* realistic, rather than more.

The show is written as if the "innocent man caught up in extreme circumstances" story core weren't a staple of big and small screen storytelling. Thanks to everything from "The Fugitive" to a half-dozen Hitchcock films, this is a genre in which not everything needs to be freakin' over-explained. Set up your scenario and run with it!

As Rick observes in his review, there's a disconnect between the bland, interchangeably earnest and pretty white men at the center of the story -- Matthew Bomer, Aaron Stanford and Logan Marshall-Green -- and the more interested and talented character actors (favorites like William Sadler, Viola Davis and Steven Culp) on the fringes. I would much rather be able to root for Davis and Culp to take down the spoiled, snot-nosed punks, but they're currently just generic adversaries for the main eye-candy.

For my money, the only reason to watch the "Traveler" pilot is for the wonderfully unlikely sequence in which Davis -- a magnificent dramatic actress not usually known for her physical prowess -- engages in an on-foot chase through the streets of New York City, including a rooftop pursuit. That's some funny shit.

Sadly, I'd be lying if I claimed I weren't going to tune in for the second episode. I'm a sad man.

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"American Idol" 05/08 -- It's Hard to Sing Like Barry Gibb

On Tuesday (May 8) night, this season's American Idol contestants prepare to honor the fact that although the Bee-Gees released 20 albums in their acclaimed career, we mostly think of them as being those guys who composed walking music for a young John Travolta. I threw my Saturday Night Fever soundtrack on in the gym, so I'm ready for tonight's show.

The performances:

Singer: Melinda Doolittle
Song: "Love You Inside and Out"
My Take: The fact that the song was, as Barry Gibb points out, written for a falsetto, inherently means that the vocals are more about touch and less about power. As a result, it brings out a different, more 70s-appropriate tone to Melinda's voice. The question is whether, at this point in the competition, people want to see how diverse and flexible Melinda can be (because this is like nothing she's sung before) or if they just want her to show off how big she can sing. This is a song choice that Blake -- who isn't expected to deliver stand-out vocals -- could pull off better than any of the three women. Somewhat unfairly, he's competing with himself tonight, while Jordin, Melinda and LaKisha are going to be compared to each other.
Mizaru, Kikazaru and Simon Say: It was solid for Randy, but he isn't convinced she's in it to win it. Paula's at a loss to critique her, except to say that Melinda didn't make her go "Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa." Simon expected incredible, but he says it was more of a backing vocal performance.

Singer: Blake Lewis
Song: "You Should Be Dancing"
My Take: Is Blake becoming Crispin Glover before our eyes? If Glover had competed on American Idol in 1985, this is the performance he would have given. The performance is fun (funny?) and quirky (freakish?), but it's much more notable for the beatboxing than for the wafer-thin falsetto, which lacks any of the utterly searing passion that Barry Gibb's voice had. I wasn't impressed with Blake's upper register when he tried it our earlier this season and I'm still not. You just know that Clive Davis is terrified about the kind of album he'd have to record with this guy.
Mizaru, Kikazaru and Simon Say: You know what's really interesting for Randy is that the song didn't need the beatboxing. Randy is just being honest and keeping it real in saying that it made the song corny. Paula thought the song was shaky and that the beatboxing made the performance. Simon thought it was absolutely terrible and he gets booed by the crowd before finishing his comments.

Singer:LaKisha Jones
Song: "Stayin' Alive"
My Take: Guess what? I love the music of the Bee-Gees, but this is just a horrid theme for these particular contestants, particularly at this phase of the show. Blake's falsetto stinks and the women are being forced to readapt songs that don't fit their voices in any way. This is how we're going to find our Top Three? Really? LaKisha mostly barks the first verse of the song, which has been rearranged so that it has almost no melody at all. It becomes a bit more vocally dynamic in its second half, but not much (at least not if people wanted the tune to be recognizable) and there's a vaguely crazed look in her eyes. How is it possible that I preferred the all-star lip-synch from Idol Give Back? I miss Hugh Laurie's eye-brows and Helen Mirren's gravitas.
Mizaru, Kikazaru and Simon Say: Randy wonders where the melody went. Paula thinks that LaKisha wrecked the tempo of the song and harshed her buzz. "Well, LaKisha, no kiss tonight," says Simon, before panning the performance.

Singer: Jordin Sparks
Song: "To Love Somebody"
My Take: Barry Gibb has a hard time imagining anybody else singing his songs, so this is a tough night for him as well. This is, simply put, the evening's first good song choice, a track that had already been previously arranged for and established by non-Gibb singers. I still don't endorse the wobble on Jordin's higher notes, but most of the song has been pitched perfectly for her. I already sense that tonight will be graded on a curve and Jordin looks and sounds good. It's a strong bounce-back after last week, too.
Mizaru, Kikazaru and Simon Say: Randy says it was the best vocal so far, which would be hard to argue with. Unlike Melinda, Jordin's in it to win it. Paula clarifies that it was night's best vocal. Simon agrees and says we're back in the competition.

For my recap of the second half of this week's show (it got better, but not much... Head on over to Zap2it.

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NetflixWatch: "Because I Said So"

"Because I Said So"
Director: Michael Lehmann
Fien Print Rating (Out of 100): 24
In a Nutshell: If "Because I Said So" ends up being not quite the worst chick flick ever made, it's certainly not for want of trying. That I watched this DVD to review for work doesn't make my 100 minutes any less wasted. The script by Karen Leigh Hopkins and Jessie Nelson recycles a relentless string of genre cliches and Lehmann directs without an ounce of style. As a result, you're left with a movie in which actresses with as much natural charisma as Mandy Moore, Piper Perabo and Lauren Graham are routinely upstaged by elaborate wedding cakes and in which the only way Diane Keaton can avoid befalling the same fate is plunging face-first into said cakes.

"Because I Said So" comes out only a couple years after Diane Keaton earned an Oscar nomination for "Something's Got to Give," a movie that maintained an equal balance between revering and humiliating the "Annie Hall" legend. All reverence is gone in "Because I Said So," a movie that takes pleasure only in making her look ridiculous, regardless of the situation and regardless of the necessity. It's not just that the entire movie is predicated on a stupid thing Keaton's character does and that said complications would be eliminated if anybody in the movie were capable of a human and honest conversation, but it's the extent to which Keaton's character is presented as the most extreme of ancient fuddy-duddies. She can't handle her cell phone or her remote control and even though she has a computer hooked up to the Internet, she keeps landing on adult websites with loud sound effects. Even if part of the film's theme is that it's never too late to try to fall in love, Lehmann choreographs and shoots the budding romance between Keaton's character and her daughter's boyfriend's dad (Stephen Collins) like a nature channel documentary about sheep who have sex with horses.

In a romantic dilemma the writers present as if it's never been seen before, Mandy Moore's character (so clumsy! so incapable in love!) has to choose between -- get this! -- the soulful artist guy (Gabriel Macht) who's perfect for her and the rich, professional guy (Tom Everett Scott) who her mother wants her to be with. Even if we hadn't seen the exact same choice play out in dozens upon dozens of movies, it's made obvious by the end of their first date, a problem that the writers can't get around. Moore's character's inability to make the decision quickly, much less after sleeping with both men for some length of time, caused me to lose any sympathy (or empathy) for her. When you're rooting for a romantic-comedy to end unhappily, that's not a good sign and I'd bet that 99.8% of all men will view the characters the same way.

Last thought: Poor Lauren Graham. I completely salute her decision to move on from "Gilmore Girls," but the idea that films like this and roles like this fifth banana part might be all that's waiting for her out in the world makes me sad. I look on the landscape at roles for women of Graham's age and it's hard to see what her career path is supposed to be. Perhaps an indie film path in which she becomes a slightly softer Parker Posey? Otherwise, I feel like she's just going to be going for the same parts as Bonnie Hunt or Elizabeth Perkins, the barb-tongued sister, ex-girlfriend or long-suffering wife. Male screenwriters aren't good enough to write female roles more interesting than that and if "Because I Said So" is the best she can hope for from distaff scribes... Ugh.

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NetflixWatch: "Smokin' Aces"

"Smokin' Aces"
Director: Joe Carnahan
Fien Print Rating (out of 100): 25
In a Nutshell: Just as I was at a total loss to explain the career leap that Joe Carnahan took between the 5th generation Tarantino knock-off "Blood, Guts, Bullets and High Octane" to the moody and mature "Narc," it's equally hard to figure the regression between "Narc" and Carnhan's long-delayed third feature "Smokin' Aces."

I'm going to blame Tom Cruise, though I'm not sure why. Perhaps if Carnahan hadn't dropped out of "Mission: Impossible III," he wouldn't have had to waste a movie restretching his creative muscles, which is a kind way of describing "Smokin' Aces." Since Carnahan is attached to a couple projects I'd really like to be good (James Ellroy's "White Jazz," in particular), I'll hope he's ready to get back to business with this out of his system.

There are certain films from this recent 10th or 11th wave of Tarantino knock-offs where I may not have liked them, but I could respect the audacity of their visions. I put Wayne Kramer's "Running Scared" and Tony Scott's "Domino" in this class. As much as I hated it, I'd almost even suggest that there aesthetically interesting things about "Crank." "Smokin' Aces" isn't in that group. It's just a bad movie, a loud, disjointed wreck of a movie that commits the most obvious of cardinal sins for this genre -- it makes mayhem and violence monotonous.

There's around 15 minutes of fun carnage around 2/3rds of the way into the movie. That's followed by a thuddingly stupid 20 minute denouement, which mostly consists of Andy Garcia giving a lengthy monologue that's supposed to be surprising and twisty, but since the reversals and revelations all involve characters I never cared about in the first place, I didn't shockingly start to care.

There are five or 10 or more different films at work here with enough different A-and-B list actors as you could ever possibly want. Very few of them give actual performances (Jeremy Piven does, as does Taraji Henson), but you can see why most of them would sign on. For some it was a chance to pick up a paycheck for wearing funny wigs or fake facial hair without having to actually act (Matthew Fox and Ben Affleck fit in this category). For some it was a chance to spend a day or two playing against type without having to commit to a part for anything longer (put Ryan Reynolds and Jason Bateman here). For some it was a chance to dip their toes in different professional waters knowing that if they screwed up, they'd hardly be noticed (Alicia Keys and Common, who prove no worse or better than most of the "trained" thespians). Heck, some scene to have walked onto the set from a totally different movie, acted a scene or two and vanished (Garcia and Ray Liotta ought to have better things to do with their time). Mostly, everybody probably suspected that worst case scenario, the movie would be cut to bits in post-production so completely that they were being paid to be barely visible blurs.

Word to future filmmakers: If your movie is supposed to end with Ryan Reynolds having a five-minute emotional epiphany, you've already lost the war.

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About that "Grey's Anatomy" spin-off

As everybody knows, "Grey's Anatomy" went into spin-off mode on Thursday (May 3) night, wedging the back-door pilot for "The Dr. Addison Montgomery Show" (tentatively titled "Private Practice," more amusingly titled in some circles "Montgomery's Ward") into an otherwise subpar "Grey's Anatomy" episode (the killing off of one guest star seemed almost inexcusably rushed).

Since ABC is almost certain to find a home for "Montgomery's Ward" somewhere in its fall schedule, it's worth glancing at what, exactly, the show appears to be.

In short: More of the same, only sunnier. If "Grey's Anatomy" is fundamentally about young doctors trying to balance their professional aspirations with their personal desires, "Montgomery's Ward" pushes the same agenda only to a slightly older age group (kudos to ABC, I guess, for aiming to raise its average viewership age). The characters here -- played by one recognizable TV veteran after another -- are already professionally successful in every way. But wouldn't you know it? Their personal lives are all in shambles. The women are great doctors, but they're in trouble as wives, mothers or girlfriends. The men are great doctors, but they aren't so good with their wives and girlfriends. Part of what keeps "Grey's" from getting too soapy is that the weekly cases are part of a work-based learning curve. I get the feeling that "Montgomery's Ward" wouldn't have as much learning, so more time could be spent on wacky clients and on a daisy chain of hook-ups. Whee.

The writers tried to make sure that you'd know you weren't watching a totally identical show by tossing in meta jokes about elevator fetishes and "Mc"-everything, but doesn't "Grey's Anatomy" already do that to itself?

I know myself too well to pretend that I won't watch, at least at first. I will. The cavalcade of familiar faces is nice and there's little doubt in my mind that Kate Walsh can carry her own show. She's equally capable with comedy and drama, she's easy on the eyes and we all know she can sell Shonda Rhimes and company's cutesy dialogue.

How much more of Shonda's mewlingly self-absorbed characters do viewers crave?

Lest this post get too long and take over the entire screen, more specific comments on the spin-off continue after the bump...



1)Taye Diggs is an attractive man and, if his work in "Rent" is to be trusted, not an untalented man. One thing that Taye Diggs isn't, however, is a TV star. He wasn't a star in "Kevin Hill" and he wasn't a star in "Daybreak" and he's not going to be a TV star here, even if some early ratings indicate that he is. Nothing is compelling about him and he seems to have a maximum of three facial expressions.

2)I don't know if Tim Daly has more than three facial expressions and he's gotten to the point where he delivers every single line (on-screen and off) with the exact same tone of withering scorn. That being said, whatever Diggs doesn't have, Daly certainly has. But that incredibly watchable quality Daly has, it hasn't prompted anybody to watch "Eyes" or "The Nine," both better shows that "Private Practice" will likely turn out to be. Rather than transplanting Addison to Santa Monica, is there any chance we can move Daly's character up to Seattle? He would have very little patience for the soapy doings at Seattle Grace and he'd probably be funny.

3) I'm fundamentally opposed to any show that thinks it's clever by having a slightly withdrawn and socially awkward shrink character named Violet. GET IT?!?!? SHRINKING VIOLET? Ugh. But I like Amy Brenneman just fine.

4)I also like Paul Adelstein, better known as Evil Agent Kellerman from "Prison Break." Now he'll be known as "that guy on the 'Grey's Anatomy' spin-off who likes picking up skanky young women on the Internet." But to those of us who follow such things, he'll always be the guy who was supposed to play Dr. Burke on "Grey's Anatomy." So I spent a good part of the two hours wondering how all of our lives would be different in Isaiah Washington had never been on "Grey's."

5) Actually, there are too many people in "Montgomery's Ward" who I already like. There's almost no potential for discovery. While there were many of the "Grey's" leads were recognizable (P-Demps, Katherine Heigl, Sandra Oh), the show was built around a leading lady who very few people knew and several of its other breakouts (your T.R. Knights and Chandra Wilsons) were similarly obscure. The reason why it was a breakout cast was because they had somewhere to break out from. The cast of "Montgomery's Ward" is already out and that's no fun. Shonda and company, though, must feel like they've found their Ellen Pompeo in...

6) PIZ?!?!?!? Chris Lowell is a perfectly likeable seeming guy and since nobody watches "Veronica Mars" and nobody watched "life as we know it" he's an unknown to most "Grey's Anatomy" viewers. But I'm just not prepared to buy Stosh Piznarski: Super Stud, no matter how diligently he seems to have been performing his abdominal crunches. As my co-worked Hanh observed this morning, it's obvious that if Piz wanted to hook up with Veronica, he should have just whipped off his shirt and flexed in the season's first episode.

7) The cast was so glutted with recognizable faces on Thursday that it was finally painfully meta. All of the stars of "Mongomery's Ward" were guest-starring on "Grey's Anatomy," but the guest stars on "Mongomery's Ward" included former "Everwood" regular Stephanie Niznik, former "Alias" baddie David Anders and was that "Joan of Arcadia" regular Becky Wahlstrom? Too much!

8) What vintage "L.A. Law" repeat did they steal all of those Los Angeles establishing shots from? Did they not have a big enough budget to do better second unit work? Did they think that viewers wouldn't recognize that the show had a slightly different (i.e. warmer) color scheme? Did they think that a few weird shots of Tim Daly and Taye Diggs walking a dog on the cliffs overlooking the beach wouldn't sell the new locations?

9)I was comfortable with the idea that Addison is vaguely insane and that she was actually hearing voices in the elevator. The revelation that it was just Tilly the Security Guard didn't improve matters.

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Go Figure -- "American Idol" Gets the Right Final Four

If the American People were a beacon of generosity last Wednesday, helping raise Idol Gives Back to $70 million in donations, they looked like paragons of common sense this week. With not one, but two chances to get the "American Idol" vote wrong (and two weeks worth of votes to make predictions all the more complicated, America just got it right this week. No controversy. No nothing. Chris Richardson and Phil Stacey were the two weakest contestants on the show and thus they were eliminated.

What's the fun in that? While I did, indeed, correctly pick Phil and Chris as being this week's bootees, I kidded to Sepinwall this afternoon that Melinda and Jordin would probably be shocking losers. After all, Jordin butchered her song on Jon Bon Jovi Night and people who hate music find Melinda to be boring. Instead, they stayed. And LaKisha stayed, which is especially remarkable. She was *really* bad on Songs of Inspiration night and I'd bet her voting totals weren't good either, which means that she gained ground on Jon Bon Jovi Night, which is a true miracle. Two white guys with allegedly country chops couldn't handle Bon Jovi, but the big-boned (and big-skinned and muscled and fatted) belter survived? Go figure. So much for those silly conspiracy theorists on Internet message boards who accused the producers of scheduling this week's theme to benefit the white men.

We're down to the Top 4 now and guess what? It's close to what most people would have predicted or hoped for after the Top 24 began (making the best of this season's mostly lame lot). Yes, Chris Sligh and Stephanie Edwards and even Gina Glocksen were eliminated a couple weeks ahead of expectations. And yes, Haley Scarnato's Legs and Sanjaya Malakar's Hair did a bit better than some people would have hoped.

The men this season stunk and guess what? They're all gone save one. Not for a second do I fully buy Blake Lewis' alleged brilliance as an arranger, nor do I completely understand his teenybopper appeal, but as an overall entertainer, he was the best the male side of the competition had to offer. Next year the judges will try harder to stack the deck for the men. You can count on plenty of Ace Young and Brandon Rogers-looking men making it to Hollywood next year.

And for the women? Melinda has the best voice. By miles. Even if she's occasionally been boring or robotic or excessively humble at times, she hasn't missed a note in months. The producers want Jordin to win and she's the girl you could see releasing a popular album. She's pretty, bubbly, unobnoxiously humble. She can also sing, though without anywhere near Melinda's polish. And LaKisha? Well, it's odd to have her around still (she and Stephanie *both* had Shocking Premature 6th or 7th place exits written all over them). Although "Idol" has done better than "Top Model" with plus-sized competitors, husky or flat-out-fat men have been more acceptable than ample women. I don't know what LaKisha had that Mandisa didn't except for less competition. Good for LaKisha. She's gone next week.

I already made this joke over on my Zap2it recap, but a true subversive genius would try to interpret next week's Boogie Night as Music of "Boogie Nights." If Blake does "The Touch," even *I* would vote for him.

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"American Idol" 05/01: The Musical Legacy of Bon Jovi

After spending three hours last week earning roughly $70 million for charity, "American Ido" is sufficiently over its altruism that Ryan Seacrest can start Tuesday (May 1) night's show by referring to the judges as "our three needy children."

The Top Six are "celebrating the music of Bon Jovi," which seems too restrictive to me. Couldn't we have just dedicated a night to '80s Hair Metal? Let's face it, RATT is never going to have a full night to itself and if you think anybody's ever going to sing "Cherry Pie" for another theme, you're fooling yourself. But fine, let's pay tribute to "Moonlight and Valentino" star and Arena Football League icon Jon Bon Jovi.

The night's performances:

Singer: Phil Stacey
Song: "Blaze of Glory"
My Take: Phil says he's been practicing this Young Guns hit in the mirror for 15 years and what he delivers is exactly the kind of enthusiastic shtick you do in the mirror. He has to launch his performance walking by one girl with a "Jordin!" sign and another clutching a picture of Blake. There's too much business to Phil's performance -- he's strutting, point at the camera, bumping fists with Randy. Until he gets onto the stage, he's most drowned out by the band and unnecessarily backing vocals. I'd have taken a "less is more" approach with both the arrangement and performance. Once he's center stage, Phil becomes more animated and passionate, saluting to his wife and her uniformed escort.
Goneril, Regan and Simon Say: Randy's happy for Phil for many reasons, not the least of which being that he helped record the song. He says it's Phil's best besides Country Night. Paula raves that Phil was living his inner kid and that it was the season's best opening. Simon thought it was OK, earning audience boos. He criticizes Phil for overacting and says he hasn't done enough to last. Phil salutes both the judges and viewers at home.

Singer: Jordin Sparks
Song: "Livin' on a Prayer"
My Take: How sweet was it of Ryan to walk up to Gina Glocksen in the audience, commenting about how missing this rockin' week must be killing her? And how sad is it that the visit with the season's lone semi-rocker comes seconds before newly crowned favorite Jordin has her first total flop in weeks? Workin' the big Rock Video Girl hair, Jordin's song isn't a good pick for her voice. As warned in the pre-song clips, the track is simply too low for Jordin and she mumbles through the verses. Also, whoever choreographed her to be penned in-between two anonymous guitarists should be fired. She looks and feels contained, but not in a fun cage-dancing way. Finally at the end Jordin steps away from the guitarists and it isn't surprising that suddenly she sounds better.
Goneril, Regan and Simon Say: Randy thought the verses were rough. Jordin can only nod and smile. This is one of those awful situations where she must have known she was dead before hitting the stage. Paula thinks Jordin's problem was that she had to workshop it with a hot guy. Simon invites the boos by saying Jordin's look was "like something out of The Addams Family" and finally declares that the vocals were shrieky and terrible. Ryan makes a Munsters joke. Dude, they're totally different shows.

Singer:LaKisha Jones
Song: "This Ain't a Love Song"
My Take: If Jordin has become this week's poster girl for poor song selection, LaKisha comes off as an utter genius, particularly since no singer worried me as much this week. It's another song that starts a bit too low, but it becomes bluesy and soulful almost immediately. Finally it's the perfect medium for the misapplied belting she's done the past two weeks and after seemingly losing that inner fire, there's a spark in LaKisha's eyes tonight. I'm not sure I endorse the deep knee bends in those tight black pants, but after two so-so opening performances, the night can finally begin.
Goneril, Regan and Simon Say: Randy thought she was pitchy at first, but that by the end she "blew it out da box." Paula suggest LaKisha gave everybody a little somethin'-somethin'. Simon goes so far as to suggest he could actually kiss her. And, true to her word, he does. It's either a cute moment or a woefully inappropriate moment (i.e. How queasy would we get if Paula asks Blake to make out with her?).

For my full recap and my opinions on the night's two best performances, head on over to Zap2it.

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MovieWatch: "Fracture"

"Fracture"
Director: Greg Hoblit
Fien Print Rating: Dunno. 70 for the first 2/3rds and then 30 for the rest? I refuse to do the math.
In a Nutshell: As my moviegoing companion observed when we left "Fracture," the problem with a movie where everybody raves about the twists and turns is that you sit through the duration attempting to anticipate the wackiest way the movie could reverse itself. In the case of "Fracture," director Greg Hoblit weaves a tense puzzle for at least 90 minutes before the script by Daniel Pyne and Glenn Gers lets the entire movie down with an ending the pretty much betrays the tone of the rest of the movie.

"Fracture" is an endearingly dated movie, a cat-and-mouse thriller with no interest in "CSI"-style technology or actual legal machinations. Beautifully shot on Los Angeles locations by Kramer Morgenthau, "Fracture" could have been produced in the early '90s with Tom Cruise and Gene Hackman in the leads or in the late '60s with Paul Newman and, I dunno, Laurence Olivier in the leads and not a word of the script would have needed to change. The point of the piece is watching the two actors go head to head and Ryan Gosling and Anthony Hopkins have an immense amount of fun elevating the material. Hopkins stretches only slightly beyond his Hannibal Lectre persona, but it's been a while since he displayed this kind of scenery-chewing villainy, while Gosling adds a twitchy Method-y flair to a character who might have been painfully flat in the hypothetical Tom Cruise version.

As a director, Hoblit's gifts have always been very closely tied to the quality his scripts. When the script is good, he can make good movies ("Primal Fear" and to a lesser degree "Frequency"). When the script is bad ("Fallen") or dull ("Hart's War"), he doesn't elevate it. Here, he throws around every visual trick in the book -- haunting and implausible reflections, off-beat lighting, surveillance style camera angles, fluid and lengthy shots in party and courtroom scenes -- and he's able to provide distractions from the story's gaps. I suppose there's a much longer cut of the movie in which Rosamund Pike's character and her relationship with the central hotshot attorney makes sense (Thanksgiving dinner?!?!?). And the legal twist at the end was both painfully obvious (in that I figured it was the direction things would go in the most predictable way possible) and, as I did a bit of research on the Internet, entirely invalid in any court of law in the United States, as probably a screenwriter could have researched in the same way I did.

Oh and does anybody have an exact sense of what accent Anthony Hopkins is doing here? It occasionally sounds Irish, sometimes American and sometimes just like Hopkins' normal speaking tone. I was distracted by the wide array of different voices in the movie. Gosling is doing Oklahoma-by-way-of-Atlanta. Pike is doing erratic generic American, ditto with Embeth Davidtz. And I don't know what Fiona Shaw is up to.

As a rule, though, I try to endorse films that can find room in their ensembles for so many character actors I like, including David Strathairn, Bob Gunton, Xander Berkeley and Cliff Curtis.

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MovieWatch: "Spider-Man 3"

"Spider-Man 3"
Director: Sam Raimi
Fien Print Rating (Out of 100): 59
In a Nutshell: Most folks seem to be on cell phone plans with roll-over minutes these days, but I miss the days back before roll-over, those days when you'd get random calls out of the blue from high school or college friends who'd pretty much come out and say "Yeah, I had a few extra minutes this month, so I thought I'd call you." I mean, if they didn't use the minutes, that time was just wasted and they'd never get it back, so they scraped the bottom of their address book barrel just to make sure that Ma Bell didn't win.

That there is a convoluted way of leading to this observation: Sam Raimi directs "Spider-Man 3" like the franchise's cell phone plan doesn't include roll-over minutes. Raimi, who always insisted that he was done after three movies, seems to sense the franchise's expiration date as he throws new characters and villains up on the screen with an abandon that's initially exhilarating, but eventually becomes reckless. There's an audience out there that will probably be quite satisfied by the very real thrills that Raimi lays out -- they're saying that this is the most expensive movie ever made (until they say the same darned thing about "Pirates of the Caribbean 3") and it's pretty much up on the screen (and probably in what I imagine to be copious deleted scenes for the DVD). The special effects are tremendous and two or three of the set pieces easily outstrip anything from those first two blockbuster films.

There's a bigger audience, I suspect, that will be able to see through how flimsy Raimi's narrative house-of-cards really is. The movie has three main villains, two main love triangles and yet Raimi still tries to find the time for Kirsten Dunst to get two different musical numbers. While juggling all of those big action beats and the inevitable heroic duality emotionalism, Raimi makes an effort to tie up every emotional loose thread from the first movie (it's a bit like the second movie didn't happen). It all feels like he knew (hoped?) he wouldn't have to do this again a fourth time. If he'd known that he had one more "Spider-Man" in him, perhaps there'd have been time to do justice to everything. There will be inevitable damning comparisons to the similarly over-extended "Batman Forever." Let's not go overboard. Raimi is too good a filmmaker for that to happen, but he also should have been too good to think this uneven film was a good capper to his franchise.

[I've been *really* vague so far, eh? I haven't spoiled anything. After the jump, I'll go into a bit more details on what worked and didn't work for me. I still won't be spoiling much, but some...]


Still with me? Good.

What Works: Although the digital construction of Sandman makes the character look a *bit* too much like he's made of Dippin' Dots, the character's birth -- forming from a huge pile of sand -- is a gorgeous moment, complimented by Christopher Young's fine score. I also liked the character that Raimi finds in Thomas Hayden Church's face so much that I wished the movie was actually about Flint Marko/Sandman, rather than making him into only the villain of the movie's middle act. I approved of Topher Grace's work as Eddie Brock, seemingly Peter Parker's less fortunate double. I wished that Eddie had been introduced as a character in the movie, had his resentment of Peter set up, but then left the arrival of Venom for a fourth movie in which that character could have been the main villain, rather than an obstacle for the third act. To be fair, I liked the movie's first act as much as anything in the franchise. New Goblin and Sandman should have been sufficient adversaries to carry an entire film on their own. Interestingly, despite all of the bad guys, the most harrowing scene in the piece doesn't feature any of the big villains. It's just Spidey trying to save occupants of a skyscraper from an out-of-control construction crane.

What Fails: I've been to enough comic conventions to know two things: Venom is a character loved and despised in equal measure, while everybody who remembers her loved Gwen Stacy. Comic purists aren't likely to be happy with the way either character is treated here, with Gwen getting truly stiffed. If you didn't know how important Gwen was to the Spidey mythology, you'd think she was just a random character who pops in and out of this sequel and never makes an impression. It's not Bryce Dallas Howard's fault and it's great to see that freed from the responsibility of being M. Night Shyamalan's anemic, ultra-serious alter ego, she's absolutely radiant. But she's wasted. Also wasted? James Cromwell, Bill Nunn, Dylan Baker, Theresa Russell and Elizabeth Banks. By pure force of personality J.K. Simmons is memorable. Good for him. Oh and Rosemary Harris' Aunt May is so badly tied into the rest of the movie that I wanted to nap whenever she arrived.

On a side note, the best part of my "Spider-Man 3" experience was actually the Diddy Riese ice cream sandwich I grabbed across the street from the Westwood theater that housed the screening. There was a 35 minute line to recover cell phones after the movie, so I went across the street and grabbed a scoop of peanut butter ice cream between two white chocolate chip cookies. Yum. The price is up to $1.25. It's about the best deal in the world.

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The Day No Pigs Would Die on "Idol"

For the second time in "Idol" history and the first time since the not-so-glory year of Corey Clark, it was an elimination night without an elimination.

It was obvious from pretty early on that there wouldn't be any way to spend two hours urging people at home to donate money to crying African orphans and then make a smooth segue into "Oh yeah and Chris, the time has come to make you an 'American Idol' orphan." So they just said that this week's vote total -- more than 70 million -- will be combined with next week's totals and two people will be eliminated. Now that will be an "Idol" first.

I can't figure out who benefits from this non-elimination. If you trust DialIdol (Heck, they got last week's results right, ending a season-long slump), Chris Richardson was going home, though it was within the margin of error. Out of 70 million votes, though, it's possible that Chris' distance behind the fifth place finisher could possibly have been a lot of votes, particularly if next week's tally goes closer to 38 million. So I think we can safely guess that Chris has a lot of work to do, or at least his fans do.

On the other hand, Jordin can probably phone in her performance next week. After the most excessively overpraised performance in recent memory (Yes, I liked her a lot, but Randy's "Best 'Idol' vocal in the show's history" comment was hyperbolic to an annoying extreme) Jordin was the only person outside of the margin of error last week according to DialIdol. She was the dominant first place performer, if you trust their stats. Since all she has to avoid doing is finishing fifth or sixth cumulatively, she can probably afford to take a nap next Tuesday night. Randy will probably be amazed at how well she was able to nap for a 17-year-old.

You can check out my full minute-by-minute recap of Wednesday's Idol Gives Back over at Zap2it, including my explanation for how I overcame my guilt over making fun of the show's unquestionable altruism. A hint: It involved making a donation.

Overall, the show probably could have been worse. Kelly Clarkson and Annie Lennox gave the best of the performances, while Carrie Underwood's lip-synching filmed package was the worst. My favorite moments were the bit featuring The Simpsons and the "Stayin' Alive" Ford commercial, which reaffirmed the utter brilliance of Hugh Laurie and Helen Mirren. Without a doubt, the lowlight was Celine Dion's performance with Zombie Elvis, which was every bit as awful as that would sound. The show was oppressively manipulative and there were certainly too many shots of malnourished children and crying children and children dying of AIDS. On the other hand, through the show's East Coast airing, the Idol Gives Back project had collected more than $30 million. That's a figure that's impossible to undersell. Assuming that the money makes it where it's supposed to go, this was a good thing for "Idol" to do and they should feel proud.

Oh and if you want to see something really disgusting, check out the website for a group called "Special Guests." They're already up in arms because several of the organizations likely to receive money from Idol Gives Back include teaching women about reproductive health on their agendas (we're talking "fringe" organizations like UNICEF). They've now decided that "Idol" supports pro-choice groups and therefore is evil. I'm still searching the group's site to find where they've given tens of millions of dollars to poverty relief of any kind. I'll let you know if you find it.

And now, back to watching my DVDs of "Beverly Hills, 90210: Season Two." I think that things are about to get good for that Scott kid!

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"American Idol" 04/24 -- The Top Six and the Invisible Bono

Tuesday (April 24) night's American Idol is glutted with infomercials, nods to the show's benevolent corporate sponsors and unnerving footage of Simon acting caring, but as the start of the Idol Gives Back event, I'm inclined to just let it be.

For the past few weeks, American Idol has been averaging between 30 and 40 million, but how great would it be to see this week's show pull in 50 million votes or more to make Rupert Murdoch shell out that whole $5 million he's offering?

Vote early and often based on these performances:

Singer: Chris Richardson
Song: "Change the World"
My Take: Even Eric Clapton uses a head-y voice on this song, so I personally wouldn't have recommended it to Chris, especially after last week's debate about the merits of nasal singing as a stylistic choice. He's not as bad as I feared. Yes, it's a bit twee and it's amazing that nobody has taught the kid about singing from his diaphragm (the change when he stands up versus his constricted sitting voice is shocking), but there's a sweetness to it. He's not great either, as I'm struck by how much of the song's power comes entirely from the sincerity Clapton brings to the original. Chris has turned down the smarm, but tonight will probably be a night of performances where all of the work has gone into looking serious, rather than any deep personal connections.
Linc, Julie and Simon Say: Randy implies that Chris is in it to win it. Paula raves about Chris' journey (from awful the past couple weeks to so-so this week?) and says this is really exciting. After last week's eyeroll fiasco (for which he was in no way responsible), it'll be a while before Simon feels comfortable criticizing Chris. Simon claims to have thought it was sexier and more soulful than usual. I somehow missed the sexiness in his "Save the World" message.

Singer: Melinda Doolittle
Song: "There Will Come a Day"
My Take: Another relatively contemporary song for Melinda and a second straight week choosing a country artist. Just close your eyes and listen to how Melinda is modulating her voice to sing with the backing chorus and the band, rather than trying to compete or getting lost. Her polish is outrageous and you'd be hard-pressed to find more than a half-dozen current charting artists who can complete with how much she can do so effortlessly. The fact that we rarely see Melinda struggle will be her downfall eventually. Idol viewers love a journey, while Melinda couldn't have burst from Simon's head any more fully formed.
Linc, Julie and Simon Say: Randy urges Melinda and viewers at home to check it out. He finds her so dope and then he notes correctly that Melinda is here. Who am I to argue. Paula's struck by how magical Melinda is. Simon goes back to the old "vocal masterclass" well, saying that Melinda made it her own completely.

Singer: Blake Lewis
Song: "Imagine"
My Take: Am I asking too much if I inquire as to whether there were any available inspirational songs that get more specific than these (admittedly classic) ultra-broad Miss America-style anthems? Everybody's going about their evening's work with the same eyes-wide, jaw-slack expression as if that's the only way of displaying feeling. Melinda did a bit better, but Blake puts me to sleep. He couldn't add less to this rendition. There isn't even a hint of Blake. Just as Chris was Ersatz Clapton, this is barely Ersatz Lennon.
Linc, Julie and Simon Say: It was only OK for Randy. Paula, though, thinks this is the first time they've seen Blake's sensitive side. That's bunk. Simon says it was flat, but praises Blake for singing with sincerity. Tonight's following that old Conrad Birdie classic "You've Gotta Be Sincere" (which was meant as a cynical reflection on pop music, but they're taking it at face value here).

Head over to Zap2it for the rest of my recap, to find out what I thought of LaKisha, Phil and Jordin...

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NetflixWatch: "13 Tzameti"

"13 Tzameti"
Director: Gela Babluani
Fien Print Rating (Out of 100): 38
In a Nutshell: One of the toasts of the 2006 Sundance Film Festival (it won the juried World Cinema prize), "13 Tzameti" never got much of a theatrical release and after finally catching up with it, I can tell why. It's a movie for audiences who like their French films gritty, their story-telling padded and their irony simplistic. In short, it's the perfect movie for uninquisitive geeks and, apparently, IMDB messageboard posters (Yes, I understand that there's a wee bit of overlap there).

"13 Tzameti" is Gela Babluani's feature directing debut, but although its running time is only 90 minutes, the film could be cut to 17 minutes tomorrow without losing a bit of character dimension, plot complexity or overall nuance. At either length, it's a one-sick-joke movie: Poor people (immigrants, in particular) in France are so desperate that they'd engage in death games to free their families from debt, while the rich are so desensitized to their plight and so callous that they'd treat those death games like modern gladiatorial combat or reality TV, as a spectator sport or another way to make money. That's pretty shocking stuff if you haven't seen "Battle Royale," or "They Shoot Horses, Don't They?" or "Running Man" or "10th Victim" or "Series 7" or any of the literally dozens of films, books and TV shows that have mined very similar territory with a more complicated social compass. "13 Tzameti" is like "La Haine" with more plot contrivance, less filmmaking savvy and less intelligence. So actually it's nothing like "La Haine" except that it's in artsy black-and-white.

[I'm gonna go into a little more depth after the jump for people who have seen the movie or don't care about having anything spoiled.]



There's an undeniable tension to "13 Tzameti," though it's caused by two things, the tension and Babluani's noticeable amateurism as a filmmaker. Russian Roulette is tense stuff, duh. If people are pointing guns at each other, yelling and then firing, that's going to generate a certain amount of audience concern, even if it's impossible to care about any of the characters (the leading man, George Babluani, is without craft or affect as an actor, which I found distancing rather than intriguing). Nothing the director does enhances that tension, quite the opposite. The movie is clumsily directed, with black-and-white photography serving as an artificial proxy for real moodiness.

That there are no characters isn't worth criticizing. The generic anonymity of the piece is supposed to be part of its charm. At that point, then, why isn't the ostensible hero killed 45 minutes in? That would be the truly subversive approach, to go full-on "Psycho" and relieve the audience of the cardboard cut-out they've been tolerating for the first act and just go on to alternative players in the game, maybe find an interesting one.

And as for the ending [which I'm gonna spoil here...], it's dark in the most predictable of ways and in a way that has no connection to the rest of the film. The "widowed" brother shoots him? Yawn. I guess that saved Babluani the trouble of thinking about a better ending. A *truly* nihilistic and bleak ending would have had the brother sitting down next to our "hero" on the train, pointing the gun at him and saying "There's another game starting tomorrow. Are you ready to play again... Brother?"

Mostly, I just keep being struck over and over again by how brilliant a film "They Shoot Horses, Don't They?" is. In the "People pushed to virtual suicide for the entertainment of the masses" genre, it's still tops...

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Sanjaya, Buehrle, 'Gilmore Girls' and More

Sure, I'm shocked that the unsinkable Sanjaya Malakar has been sunk, but at this exact second I'm even more surprised that Mark Buehrle just pitched a no-hitter for the White Sox.

How strange is that? Well, Buehrle has lead the American League in hits allowed for the past two consecutive seasons and finished second the two years before that. I'll let the Elias Sports Bureau tell me how impressive an achievement that was. It's here that I'd quickly like to salute MLB for selling the Extra Innings baseball package to OnDemand and allowing me to watch both my Red Sox games as well as the last three or four innings of no-hitters by Mark Buehrle when I happen to notice such things are in progress.

But anyway, Sanjaya... Sepinwall put it best with his e-mail subject line reading "Time to put the VFTW people on suicide watch, methinks." All season long the "Idol" producers have been telling reporters that VoteFortheWorst adherents don't amount to a hill of beans, nor do those pathetic Howard Stern fans doing his bidding. Sanjaya Malakar did basically exactly as well as John Stevens and Scott Savol. He worse than Jasmine Trias and Nikki McKibbin and R.J. Helton, but better than a bit better than Kevin Covais. Bad people make it through every single year and they make it a certain distance every single year and anybody implying that Sanjaya was any different or more damning to the show's credibility than previous untalented people is just lazy.

[This post is getting long, so follow the click through link, because after the bump, I talk about why I'm gonna miss Sanjaya, why "Gilmore Girls" should end and why I'm seem to responsible for everything going wrong with America.]



Not enough people are going to stand up for Sanjaya, so I will. As a singer, he was laughable. As an entertainer, he was embarrassing. But as a laughable and embarrassing performer, he was entertaining. That's more than I can say for Phil Stacey and, since I'm pretty much sick of his shtick at this point, that's more than I can say for Chris Richardson. It's almost more than I can say for LaKisha Jones, who at this point would be better served by being semi-shockingly eliminated this week, rather than delivering two or three more subpar performances and no longer being lamented. Thus, as I said over on my Zap2it recap, I'd have almost preferred to keep Sanjaya around for two or three more weeks, though only if I were given a contractual obligation that he wouldn't actually win. I wanted to hear him do an inspirational song next week. I wanted to see him work with guest mentor Grand Wizard Theodore on Old Skool Hip Hop Night. Phil won't be nearly as funny and nor with Chris or LaKisha.

But I guess there's something to getting out while you're ahead (this is a bad transition, because Sanjaya was never really ahead)... That's something I urge Lauren Graham and Alexis Bledel to think about before they commit to another season of "Gilmore Girls."

I was watching Tuesday night's episode and it felt like a Stepford version of the show I used to love. The dialogue was fast and the pop culture references flew, but it was never even vaguely clever. It relied heavily on life-in-transition symbolism (I GET WHAT THE MAZE STOOD FOR, DO YOU THINK WE'RE ALL BRAIN DAMAGED?!?!?), but it never had a second of heart. At a Zap2it lunch yesterday, though, we all agreed that as long as the "Gilmore Girls" is on the air, we aren't going to quit on it. We're going to keep watching until the bitter end. But why must we get bitter? Yes, I feel bad for Alexis and Lauren, because neither one will ever get a part this good again. That's not an insult to either of their skills, but it's the truth. The problem is that what they're currently working with isn't the same material they were working with two or three seasons ago. It isn't any good at all. If Lauren Graham has the choice between "Gilmore Girls" of this caliber and collecting a paycheck as the sassy hot wife or girlfriend, I can understand why she'd want to go for the money. I wouldn't blame her for a second.

Anyway, I know that was a weirdly grafted on post-script, but what's the point of blogging if you can't make weird transitions.

Want another? House and Cuddy? I don't know if I want that to happen. Cameron and Chase? I don't need that to happen either. Maybe I'm not a good "House" 'shipper, but I'm content with simmering House/Cameron tension any and all consummated passions between anybody on the show move us into "Grey's Anatomy" territory and I already watch that once a week. Don't need it twice. Oh and last night's case? Bad idea. I'm not in favor of spending an episode watching children in pain and torment if the only payoff is a cheap joke about penis enhancement.

Do I have anything else? Well, if Felix Hernandez is actually seriously injured, several of my fantasy baseball teams are going to have a fire sale this weekend, because I'm done.

Oh and the "highlight" of my day: A commenter on my Zap2it "Idol" recap from Tuesday accused me of being partially responsible for the Virginia Tech shootings, saying that I'm part of a culture that values snark and mean-spiritedness over peace, love and understanding.

Ouch.

With that...

Good night and good luck...

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"American Idol" 04/17 -- The Top Seven and the Corpse McBride

What were the odds of Tax Day and Country Night coinciding? All I needed to make Tuesday (April 17) complete was a dentist appointment. Throw in the fact that American Idol got rid of one of its more viable country performers last week (Good bye to Haley Scarnato and Haley Scarnato's legs).

A nod of respect, quickly, to Idol for beginning Tuesday's performance episode with a recognition of those impacted by the Virgina Tech tragedy.

Now, on to the performances:

Singer: Phil Stacey
Song: "Where the Blacktop Ends"
My Take: Phil was already in danger and getting stuck with the opening slot on Monday may only contribute to his downfall. This genre isn't ill-suited to Phil's voice and though the song offers no real challenge, he handles it without the strain that we heard last week. Accused of being too serious (read: threatening and creepy-looking) in past weeks, Phil has a light touch and plays to the crowd, and on Country Night, anything that doesn't cause me pain is a win. The judges rave, but within seconds of his finish, I've forgotten everything about Phil tonight, which is bad news for show-openers.
Manny, Moe and Simon Say: Randy says that it was hot and that Phil could have a career in country music. Paula agrees that this is a good genre for him. "Well it's only taken 10 weeks, Phil," says Simon, who agrees that the song and style were all quite respectable.

Singer: Jordin Sparks
Song: "Broken Wing"
My Take: Guest mentor Martina McBride tells Jordin to just stand in place and sing, which is pretty dull advice, if you ask me. Does that mean I can't blame Jordin for coming across like a stone pillar (in an unflattering high waisted dress) tonight? It's not an accident, though. Jordin begins slow and expressionless and opens up as she goes, building to an expression of freedom and relief by the end. I'm just going to assume that that's the narrative of the song as well, in which case, nicely played. Jordin also sounds like a studio recording artist, delivering pure notes and clear diction, even throwing in a bit of a twang. She's impressive without being showy.
Manny, Moe and Simon Say: Randy thinks it was a difficult song to sing, but that she was da bomb. Paula loved how Jordin told the story. Simon announces that for the first time, he thinks she can win. He's a little late to the program here. I believe we can all agree that Jordin is pretty much the favorite at this point.

Singer: Sanjaya Malakar
Song: "Let's Give 'Em Something To Talk About"
My Take: It's Country Night, so Sanjaya is rocking a funny bandana. It's a funny song choice, because when I like of Bonnie Raitt covers, Sanjaya immediately comes to mind. It's every bit as funny as we've come to expect from Sanjaya. He wanders through the crowd, plays around with background singers and even tries a few woefully anemic runs. He mostly isn't painful to listen to, just thin, negligible and utterly without vocal personality. He makes me a bit nervous, but that may just be carry-over from watching Dice-K try to work out of a bases-loaded jam.
Manny, Moe and Simon Say: Randy, insisting that he merely aspires to keep it real, and calls it bland and boring. Paula notes that Sanjaya thrives on adversity, which is meant as neither a compliment nor an insult. Simon calls it "utterly horrendous," comparing it to the season's worst auditions. Simon also warns that the joke is pretty much up. Will America take heed?

Singer: LaKisha Jones
Song: "Jesus Take the Wheel"
My Take: It's one of those rare instances of an Idol contender singing a song written for an Idol winner. I give LaKisha credit for not cheating the theme and for wearing a dress that makes her look good without scaring me with her cleavage. Maybe she should have tried to cheat the theme a little more, because LaKisha's voice is bigger than Carrie Underwood's and she never lets us forget it, oversinging the heck out of the song that's really less about wailing than touch. Maybe she felt it too much? The runs and bellowing are showy, but they detract from the overall performance.
Manny, Moe and Simon Say: Randy asks her to check it out and repeats her name a number of times. He notes pitch problems and says it wasn't his favorite vocal. The crowd disagrees with Randy, but Paula agrees and calls her for shouting. "It's like eating a hamburger for breakfast, you know it doesn't go together," Simon says and warns that LaKisha's losing momentum.

For the rest of the recap, including the evening's best non-Jordin performance and worst non-Sanjaya performance, head over to my Zap2it recap...

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MovieWatch: "The Hoax"

"The Hoax"
Director: Lasse Hallstrom
Fien Print Rating (Out of 100): 68
In a Nutshell: If former Red Sox first baseman Dave Stapleton is remembered, it's for two things: In Game Six of the 1986 World Series, John McNamara opted not to bring Stapleton in as a defensive replacement in the 9th inning to allow Bill Buckner to celebrate the Series win. Oops. Stapleton's other claim to fame is that he's the only major leaguer in history to play at least seven seasons with his batting average dropping each successive season. Why do I mention that? Because since 1993, Lasse Hallstrom's feature film credits have been "What's Eating Gilbert Grape," "The Cider House Rules," "Chocolat," "The Shipping News," "An Unfinished Life" and "Casanova," a nearly Stapletonian rate of career decline. [Encyclopedic film fans will recognize that I left out "Something to Talk About," which came between "Grape" and "Cider House" in chronology, but not quality and therefore I'm pretending it never happened.]

Lasse Hallstrom's Stapleton-esque regression thankfully comes to an end with his new film "The Hoax," a smart, solidly constructed historical dramedy featuring one of the two or three best performances of Richard Gere's career ("Internal Affairs" is tops in my book, if anybody cares) and an award-worthy turn by Alfred Molina. The thing Hallstrom can't help is that he's following some great films. Jonathan Demme already made the definitive Howard Hughes semi-hoax movie ("Melvin & Howard") and Orson Welles already made the definitive Clifford Irving movie ("F for Fake") and this terrain is all too similar to George Clooney and Charlie Kaufman's "Confessions of a Dangerous Mind." So while I respected what a study and straight-forward job Hallstrom did here, I kept thinking that with a director possessed of more daring, "The Hoax" could have been a late-year Oscar contender instead of a mid-spring orphan.

The film requires a sense of bittersweet, loopy whimsy that Hallstrom absolutely used to possess (perhaps going back to "My Life as a Dog"), but the moment "The Hoax" requires Hallstrom to be his most nimble is when he starts taking everything too seriously. In its first half, "The Hoax" rides on Clifford Irving (Gere) and Dick Susskind's (Molina) giddy amazement that they're in the process of pulling off a hoax of outrageous proportions. Irving's rise as a fast-talking snake oil salesman who can't believe everything he's getting away with is the most likeable Gere has ever been. In the second half, as Irving's grasp on reality begins to slip, Gere stays compelling (though I'm still not sure whether or not he's trying a New York accent), but Hallstrom's touch becomes leaden and annoyingly literal. Hallstrom allows for no ambiguity whatsoever in the facts of the case or of Irving's character, which is the dull way out. It was here that I wanted Kaufman's version of the story (though William Wheeler's script is admirable).

"The Hoax" features the supporting cast of every NYC indie ever made, including Hope Davis (excellent), Stanley Tucci (distractingly unbald), Marcia Gay Harden (sporting the latest in a string of BROAD accents) and Julie Delpy (beautifully under-clothed, but annoyingly under-used).

Is it just me, or is 2007 already starting off as a far better year for movies than 2006? Or is this just an evil tease before the Summer of Sequels begins?

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NetflixWatch: "A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints"

"A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints"
Director: Dito Montiel
Fien Print Rating (Out of 100): 65
In a Nutshell: Dito Montiel isn't a trained filmmaker, nor is he a polished storyteller, which proves to be both a boon and a disadvantage to his first film, "A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints," based on his own memoir. On some level the film can be easily slotted into the coming-of-age-in-NYC genre, but it manages not to feel entirely like a rehash of "Mean Streets" largely because Montiel doesn't come out of that tradition. My understanding is that the book is about Montiel's life in music, an aspect almost completely elided from the movie, which is a series of memories, only slightly connected, from the year leading up to the writer-director's departure from his friends and family in Queens. Because Montiel isn't a conventional storyteller, the movie isn't exactly about what it's structured to be about -- the events that force young Dito's (Shia TheBeef) exit from Queens and make it hard for old Dito's (Robert Downey Jr.) return are underplayed. There are two tragedies mentioned early in the movie that don't spark any emotional reaction when they occur, but this isn't a "The Way My First Interactions With Death Changed Me" memoir. It's more "Glimpses From a Life Left Behind," and Montiel is just experimental enough to use his new medium to capture the scattershot memories of youth -- Dialogue plays out of synch, key scenes seem to be edited out, important relationships are just accepted, but not explained. The movie doesn't have the feel of reality -- it's too aesthetically contrived for that -- but it has the tone of reality.

The present tense part of the story is frustrating and distracting, an unnecessary framing device that implies more of a straight-forward narrative arc than the movie delivers. As flawlessly twitchy as Robert Downey Jr. may be, there isn't a shred of Shia TheBeef's version of the character in the modern Dito. Rosario Dawson pops up for two scenes, preaches a little, but doesn't contribute much. And Chazz Palminteri and Diane Wiest, wonderful in the 1986 flashbacks, are burdened by shoddy old age makeup in the present. Then, as ridiculous as the Shia-to-Downey aging process may have been, the idea that Channing Tatum aged into the film's Final Act "Look Who We Dug Up" guest star was really more than I could take and I laughed out loud at the absurdity of it.

While Steven Spielberg may be convinced that TheBeef is a star (and the early box office for "Disturbia" implies that he may be right), I have a sense that "A Guide For Recognizing Your Saints" will probably be best remembered for the early performance by Channing Tatum. Having only seen him previously in "Step Up," I don't know that he's an actor, but he's one thing that TheBeef isn't -- he's a big screen presence, dynamic and impossible to take your eyes off of at times.

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'Idol' Results 04/11: America Finds a Cure for Haley-tosis

OK. This really upsets me. Last season, everybody was all cutesy in saying that fans of Katherine McPhee had caught the McPheever (or McPhever). Why did it take me until this week to realize that fans of Haley Scarnato has developed a bad case of Haley-tosis? If only I'd realized this a month or two ago, there could have been guys in the audience with signs reading "Kiss me -- I have Haley-tosis." But nooo... Now I have this pointless brainwave and it's too late.

Above, you'll notice a picture of Haley Scarnato's short-shorts. I cut the picture for my Zap2it "Idol" recap, which covers the events leading up to Haley's departure from this season's "American Idol." I use the short-shorts image to represent Haley. The English major in me calls it synecdoche, but the comics reader in me compares it to the way Garry Trudeau has let feathers and waffles stand in for reason presidents.

Is it a coincidence or irony that in this week, when the "Idol" contestants were mentored by that paragon of style-over-substance Jennifer Lopez, the contestant who went home was the most aesthetically pleasing?

Sigh.

I have very little to say about this, though faithful readers know that I've been a devoted Haley booster all season. It's not that I think Haley can sing, but it isn't like she *can't* sing. She just made the correct decision when we reached the Top 12 that her only chance of survival was based on marketing her attractiveness over her talent.

Haley was never going to win and I didn't want her to win, but as long as we still have Phil and Sanjaya, I'd just like to state a preference for Haley. Is that so wrong? It would have been semi-ironic for Sanjaya to go home after giving his best performance of the competition, but I wish I knew what's keeping Phil around. He also isn't horrible or anything, but he main hook is that he's the slightly creepy, bald family man. Is that what teenage girls today are looking for?

And next week is Country Week, which is going to be just awful for fading leaders Melinda and LaKisha, but probably would have been "great" for Haley.

Oh well. I doubt the pain here will stay with me for very long.

And can we just say now that Jordin and Blake are heading for the Finals? You can sense it. It's in the air.

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