Snippets

Quick thoughts on virtually everything that's been crossing my mind, in passing:

- I know very little about politics, and I've done no reading at all about this subject, but this is what I took home from the State of the Union: President Bush has been elected to a second term, and therefore cannot be elected to any more terms past this one. The mid-terms have come and gone, there was a clear sweep leftward, and now he's got two years remaining. His approval rating is down to basically the First Lady, Condi, and sometimes my dad. We have entered a period of time where there's almost no disadvantage to almost any action he takes. And if you'll excuse an overworked phrasing: there's nothing left to lose.

As far as I could tell, the big news from the President's speech was his continued plea for patience in Iraq, and a call for more troops. This was followed by an expected yet quite extended Democratic trashing of these ideas, which every network gleefully carried. So, why go for it? Why not just give little mention of the Iraq conflict, focus more on energy and bipartisan cooperation, and try to boost his poll numbers so as to be able to more of a political help come election time?

I think the President knows that there's a good chance that the next president will be a junior senator from New York or Illinois, and that the likely Republican candidate will be McCain, who's likely going to run as The Republican Democrats Can Vote For. He knows he doesn't need to be popular his last two years.

I think he's trying win this thing - this whole thing, this whole "War On Terror" - all by himself, before anyone else shows up and messes with it. I think he's trying to win it all while he feels there's still a shot to do so. And honestly, he might be right.

- American Idol has launched a number of struggling shows from being on the bubble to being certified hits: The O.C, House, etc. Well, we've finally determined a program that its ratings can't save: The State of the Union on Fox. Heck, more people watched the thing on NBC, and NBC's barely ahead of the Golf Channel these days.

- By the way, has anyone else noticed how well NBC's been handling their low ratings? They're playing their hand beautifully. They make a big fuss about the loss of budget and how everyone's tightening their belts, and are constantly releasing information that makes it sound like a lot of their shows are on the edge, and might get canceled at any minute. While they're doing this, all of their struggling shows are playing the "we're an underdog show on an underdog network" card - making fun of NBC during their shows, doing lots of interviews on Conan and Leno where they talk about working on a tight budget and being worried about being axed at any minute.

It's a smart move because each of these moves rallies their fan base from being casual watchers to being vocal defenders of the show. And it's no coincidence that the shows using these techniques (Studio 60, 30 Rock, The Office, My Name Is Earl, SNL, and even NBC Nightly News) have climbed from becoming bubble shows to People Choice Award winners and iTunes bestsellers.

(Okay, so SNL was never really on the bubble. But it's still following suit and so it counts)

Here comes the Lightning Round.

Alright, here's, I dunno, maybe half a dozen blazing-fast reviews of both things I've been thrilled by and things I've been duped on:

Smokin' Aces: Yeah, I was duped. But who wouldn't've been? A cast that featured literally a dozen name actors (Ben Affleck, Ray Liotta, Jeremy Piven, Jason Bateman, heck, even Matthew Fox), some of whom have about 45 seconds of screen time, some of whom die almost immediately, and some of whom appear and disappear without any real logic to their movements. It's one of those rampantly violent non-stop action movies that slips from crudely enjoyable to "what the hell is going on?" territory almost immediately. That being said, it dances the number it came for better than most low-IQ a-bunch-of-Russian-guys-with-guns-and-explosives-shoot-at-American-guys-with-guns-and-explosives movies. I could break it down for you and mention all the highlights (Alicia Keys and Ryan Reynolds, for instance) amid the lowlights, but instead I'll just quote Stephen Hunter of the Washington Post, who puts it better than anyone: "All in all, another thoroughly enjoyable step on the road to damnation."

By the way, don't think you couldn't fill up a Blockbuster rack with that movie genre I made up back there. I could get it half full just with Ray Liotta movies.

The West Wing: I'm on Season Three now, and the honeymoon is over, it's starting to scrabble a little to make politics still seem interesting. But those first two seasons are absolutely stunning. It's a completely different kind of show from anything else ever to be on television. Except, of course, for Studio 60 or Sports Night.

Freaks and Geeks and Undeclared: I'm cobbling these two together because they're pretty much the same show, since all the writers and actors just switched over to Undeclared after Freaks and Geeks went under. Freaks is the better show, and if you haven't seen it, sit down sometime and watch the first five or six episodes. It takes a little while to get addicted, but it's some of the smartest, most on-the-money writing ever about high school.

You know, if Freaks was released to TV next fall with the same cast and crew, it would be a guaranteed hit. Think about it: it would star two ER vets (Linda Cardellini and Busy Phillips), a bona fide movie star (James Franco), fully recognizable best-friend types (How I Met Your Mother's Jason Segel, plus Seth Rogen from You, Me, and Dupree and The 40-Year Old Virgin), plus consistent appearances from Lizzy Caplan (The Class and Mean Girls), Ben Foster (X-Men 3), and Joanna Garcia (Reba). It's a shame everyone had to wait to get famous until after the show was over.

Plus, the writing/directing crew featured Judd Apatow (producer of Anchorman, the 40-Year Old Virgin, Talledega Nights), Paul Feig (director for Arrested Development, The Office), Mike White (writer of School of Rock, Orange County), Ken Kwapis (director of About A Boy, Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants - which we've covered before), and Jake Kasdan (director of Orange County).

Tell me that's not a dream team today.

Sexual Life: Speaking of Ken Kwapis, I checked this one out because he wrote and directed it and it featured a lot of my favorite actors. It was awful, I mean, it was terribly, terribly boring. I guess I should've figured that from the title - since I could tell that it wasn't going to be a raunchfest from the reviews, I thought that it would be a fun comedy where everyone jokes about sex while hijinks ensue. Instead, the structure of it was this: one person talks about fidelity and commitment with their significant other, and then goes out and sleeps with someone else. That person then talks about fidelity and commitment with their significant other, who then goes out and sleeps with someone else. This cycle continues until (woah woah!) the story comes full circle. It's like the world's slowest slap in the face.

"It's a comedy of manners!" reads the Netflix description.

Yeah, it's not.

Sabrina: I don't know why it took me so long to finally watch this. Featuring William Holden, Humphrey Bogart, and Audrey Hepburn and written and directed by Billy Wilder. It was, unsurprisingly, fantastic. I'm not a classic movie guy, because I'm not convinced that just because something is old and beloved doesn't mean it was ever any good, but I've got to say that it's awfully appealing anyway. And it doesn't have that "we're projecting this image of the highway or the ocean on a sheet behind them" look that most movies of the 1950's that feature driving or sailing have. Even though I'm sure they were projecting the highway and the ocean behind them whenever they featured driving and sailing, it's just you can't really tell. The bottom line is that it just shows an attention to detail other films of the day lacked.

Wait, film projection? What the hell am I talking about? Sabrina features three of the finest actors of our century, and is written and directed by possibly the greatest writer/director of all time. That might have something to do with it's greatness.

Geez, it's been a long time since I've posted. Next time'll be quicker, I guarantee it.

Credit where credit is due

Every now and then I find some random tidbit about an upcoming movie so fascinating that I have to share what I've heard. This is sort of like that, except that - I actually haven't heard anything about this movie, I just find the premise of it fantastic.

Not the actual premise of the movie. The premise of the casting. I've never seen such gutsy casting choices for any film since I started noticing this sort of thing. Which I'll admit is only a few years ago, but I think my viewpoint here still holds up:

The flick is Factory Girl, an adaptation of a novel about Edie Sedgwick, the girl who Andy Warhol turned from an unknown Holly Golighty-type actress into a massive star in the art world. Here's the cast:

Sienna Miller is playing Edie. If you scope the tabloids, you might be saying to yourself "isn't she that girl that Jude Law cheated on with the nanny, and so she ended their engagment, but then she took him back, and then ended their relationship again a few months later." Yes. That's her.

Now, you might be saying "I didn't know she was an actress - oh, wait, hasn't she been in some small, low-budget independent films?" Correct again, reader. But what you might have missed is that while Miller was in these films, she was never actually required to do any acting. For example, for her role as the love interest in Layer Cake, the gritty English film that launched Daniel Craig from a nobody to the next Bond, she was required to appear in four scenes. In one of these scenes she seduces and almost sleeps with Craig. In one scene she actually opens her mouth and delivers some dialogue. This is not the same scene as the previous scene. I also think she delivers what dialogue she has into a cell phone, in order to keep her from messing up any of the other actors.

There's nothing wrong with just being the pretty face in a movie, and judging from her frequent appearances in FHM's "100 Hottest Females" (where all rising actresses make their mark), everyone feels she's qualified for the job. But I take issue when the early buzz on the movie is that Miller is being considered a "serious Oscar contender" for her performance, because of her willingness to "bare all in certain sex scenes." I'd like to point out to any Academy readers that Hellen Mirren and Meryl Streep will also likely be nominated, for more traditional reasons. Keep that in mind.

Next up is Andy Warhol, played by Guy Pearce. Pearce is that excellent actor who broke out as Memento's forgetful protagonist in 2000, and has yet to have received a single good role since. That's got to sting a little. I bet very few people come up to Pearce and tell him "I loved you in The Time Machine."

Actually, maybe they do. LA is weird like that.

Also, there's Chuck Wein, played by Saturday Night Live alum Jimmy Fallon, whose star shone brightly for a few months following his retirement from SNL. Then both Taxi and Fever Pitch tanked commercially, and Fallon appeared to be poised to dry up and disappear. Just like Norm McDonald. Just like Chris Kattan. Just like dozens of other SNL players who've flamed out in the same way. Heck, it seems he's back on SNL every other week to cameo in some sketch or another, like those college grads who just can't seem to break away.

Now, most people either adore or despise Fallon, and I unabashedly fall into the former category, though with reservations about his complete inability to make it through any scene without starting to giggle and look at the camera (though I admit that, too, is part of his charm). But I've just got a tough time seeing him in this sort of artsy, Oscar-grubbing movie. Though apparently Wein originally met Sedgwick because he was the sort of guy who'd graduated from Cambridge a few years earlier, but was still bumming around town. Touché, casting.

Finally, the stunner. Bob Dylan. Played by Hayden Christensen. Yes, that Hayden Christensen. Our beloved Anakin Skywalker is playing Bob Dylan.

I'm not even going to comment on it. Just think about it. Isn't that weird?

I'm sure some of you are curious by now, so here's a link to the trailer. Trust me, check it out. You'll be amazed. Hayden Christensen. It's really him.

Put a chicken on top of it.

Today we purchased a small candle holder at Marshall's to use in an interview set we were doing. The candle holder resembled an oil rig, or perhaps the Eiffel Tower, but it was very clearly, a candle holder. To make this matter even clearer, we also purchased a candle.

Here's a shot of the candle holder:

And here's a shot of the candle holder in action:

I give you these two images because I want you to understand why it struck me as funny when the checkout lady, a matronly woman in her forties, rang up the candle, grabbed the candle holder, looked at me, and said 'what the heck's this?'

'It's a candle holder. It's for the candle.'
'It looks like an oil rig.'
'Yeah, it does, that's why we like it. We also thought it looked a little like the Eiffel Tower.'
'Or an oil rig.'
'Yeah. Or an oil rig.'

The lady checked it through, handed it back to me, looked me in the eye, and said, 'It's a Texas thing. Put a chicken on top of it.'

I really, really, really don't know what that means.

TV News

I don't watch a lot of television these days now that I've got my DVD player, but there are one or two shows a week that I'll go out of my way to catch if I can. "The Office" is, obviously, one (and there'll be more on that later). I'll usually try to catch the CBS Monday comedy block, too, if I'm around. And I watch SNL as often as I can.

Now I'm there with you on all the complaints: SNL is dead, the writings a mess these days, it's gotten way too topical, there's no real stars on the show anymore. But the truth is we were saying those things five years ago, too, when Will Ferrell, Jimmy Fallon, Chris Kattan, Tracy Morgan, etc., were still on the show. We said it five years before that, too, and five years before that. No one ever compares to the comics who "were just there." We're gonna be saying that five years from now about Andy Samberg.

To get back on topic, despite SNL's deficiencies, it's fun to see what happens with its various hosts. It's a hit-and-miss game. Take this season: some people are pretty good serious actors and don't do that well in sketch comedy (Matthew Fox). Some people are pretty good comedic actors and don't do that well in sketch comedy (Hugh Laurie). Some people aren't particularly great actors but know how to sell a sketch for a laugh (Alec Baldwin, who is changing my opinion on him more each day). And then, last night, there was Justin Timberlake.

I gotta be honest, I don't really like JT or find him to be a tremendous musical genius. But he just might have been the best host on SNL this whole season. Plus, both of his songs were pretty rocking. True story.

Getting back to "The Office," I watched the big Christmas episode on Thursday and became convinced that it was directed by Paul Feig, because there was a clear throwback to his cult classic "Freaks and Geeks," and I knew that he directed "The Office" from time to time. Then I remembered that it was Harold Ramis (Groundhog Day) directing the episode, since they'd been hyping that fact for a while now. Then I kicked myself for being so geeky that I was paying attention to the direction of a TV show while simultaneously being so inept that I couldn't get my geek facts right. Swing and a miss.

I finished off the night with watching the special extra episodes that the British version of "The Office" put out two years after the end of the show. I had no idea that these episodes existed.

I'll refer you back to this post, where I break down the differences between the two shows (and I stand by that post). But let me tell you this quick story (and beware spoilers if you haven't seen the British show and would like to at some point), which sways me more towards the British show: when the final episode plays, right at the end of the hour - or 43 minutes in during a DVD version - Tim and Dawn have still failed to get together, and she rides off in a taxi cab with her fiance to leave the country again. And as the taillights of the car fade off into the distance, you think that it's really going to end like that. Even though the episode keeps going, you don't think that she'll ever be coming back so that the two leads will ever get together. And when she does come back in, it's a complete surprise.

Listen: Only the British version of "The Office" could ever have pulled that off. The viewer really, truly thinks that the creators were fully willing to leave them apart forever. In the history of television, that was the only comedy with the balls to be able to really pull something like that off. And I include the American version in that statement.

If that doesn't appease those very vocal critics about my unwillingness to rate the British version over the American one, then I give up.