Monthly Archive for May, 2010

Television Obituaries

Published on May 16, 2010 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments

People are just canceling the hell out of television series right now. Some of it is new programming that never got on its feet, others are old salts just now seeing their final days. Some are going out with dignity, some in disgrace. I thought I’d take a few seconds and rummage through the canceled programming this season and discuss what I think. I intend to rate each one on the following dimensions: timing, cause, and creativity.

Canceled Shows:

24

Timing: Almost perfect. If ending a show was an art form, this would be a masterpiece. If they had gone out any sooner they’d have missed the boat on more success, but if they’d delayed another season the show would have gone into decline. I don’t know who on the staff sensed that this ride was over, but their intuition was dead-on.

Cause: Nobody ends a lucrative program just because, there were other things going on. I imagine the biggest factor was Kiefer Sutherland. The intense schedule he’s maintained on that program for the last eight years has taken a toll on his career and his personal life, and I can’t imagine he isn’t sick of it. Being locked in a show like that means you just don’t have the time to make moves in the rest of the industry, and it seems likely that Kiefer wants to get moving on other prospects before he gets too old. Fairly wise, although all things being equal, he’d have been better served by walking out a few years ago when the show was still fresh enough for his visibility to be high.

Creativity: Pretty well exhausted. I don’t think there’s anything else they could put Jack Bauer through. Plus which, the writing team has admitted they’ve had one or two “meh” seasons. At some point, even the soap opera bafoonery of “24″ can’t sustain one guy having this many bad days.

Heroes

Timing: Not bad, not great. Ending it earlier would have been somewhat preemptive, and you don’t want to pull a “Jericho” and abandon ship before the fans are ready to let go. All the same, I’m pretty sure the writing was on the wall by 3rd season, and letting “Heroes” end as a martyr before its time might have helped it shake off that “Lost” inferiority complex it’s been living with for years.

Cause: Steadily dropping numbers, which have refused to lie no matter how bad anyone wanted them to since second season. There was a grisly death awaiting this show within another few seasons, so thank God they jumped before that happened. Even the most die hard of fans would have eventually felt like they were watching that scene from “Taxi Driver” where De Niro calls Cybil Shepard.

Creativity: The show is dead, and has been for years. They kept bringing messiahs into the writing room who were going to save the thing, but no dice. Flat characters, tepid story lines, and no clear artistic vision. For once, a show fails because it simply isn’t good enough.

Scrubs

Timing: So horrible there aren’t words for it. This show is like that on-again off-again relationship you keep getting stuck in no matter how bad it is for you. They put it down once, then they brought it back sans any reason to watch it ever, and now they’re killing it again. As tactless and humiliating as possible. Nice.

Cause: Probably because if it doesn’t die now it’s going to start moaning and eating brains. Seriously. Let the poor thing go.

Creativity: I’m pretty sure the writing room is full of penguins who watch a lot of “Frasier.”

Better off Ted

Timing: What the hell is “Better off Ted?”

Cause: The fact that no one knows what “Better off Ted” is.

Creativity: Seriously, is it…is it about a guy named Ted? Who is he better off than? I don’t follow.

FlashForward

Timing: Good in a Pyrrhic sort of way. With all the hype they put around this thing, you’d think they would let it run out a little longer just on principle. I guess the negative cost on such a high-gloss, single-camera program doesn’t leave any room for pride.

Cause: The people voted it out, and it’s gone. I honestly think this thing would have found its audience with a little patience, because the core of the show was solid, but the money wasn’t waiting around to find out. If you ask me, people stopped watching because they assumed everyone else was, and they took the existence of it for granted. In time, that would have corrected out and made for a nicely profitable show. Too bad. Also, the tumultuous writer’s room and revolving cast of showrunners did not help.

Creativity: There was still so much to do. Yeah, the writing went back and forth in quality, and no they never had the class of “Lost,” but the basic concept was extraordinary and they got great stuff from it. I loved Joseph Fiennes’ massive note board, with each piece coming together from disparate elements. I was really looking forward to seeing that play out. It was getting creepy how many actors they absconded with from “Lost,” though.

Number 15

Published on May 14, 2010 in Uncategorized. 1 Comment

“Swingers” (1996, Directed by Doug Liman)

There’s an old saying: “write what you know.” Those words changed Jon Favreau’s life. He was an out-of-work actor scraping together a living in Hollywood, missing his home back East, and trying to recover from the end of a long relationship. He had a boisterous friend named Vince Vaughn who was constantly trying to bring out his inner party animal, and a more introspective one named Ron Livingston who sat patiently and listened to his sob stories. At some point, Jon decided that was enough to start a screenplay. The rest, as they say, is history.

“Swingers” is somewhat neglected now, but its importance has actually not diminished. It was arbitrarily responsible for arousing interest in big band music, a revival which lasted only a few short months, and when the fad died most people put the film down along with it. But in truth, “Swingers’” legacy extends far beyond Big Bad Voodoo Daddy. It was an important part of the indie revival of the early 90s, where a sudden wellspring of talent began flowing from festival circuits and low-budget auteur pieces. The intensely naturalistic tone of the film was also cutting edge, making other comedies look scripted and phony by comparison. And it was extremely funny, switching nicely between punch lines and more gradual humor that develops the more times you see it. Last but not least, it began the careers of four men who would come to be key players in Hollywood: Doug Liman, Jon Favreau, Ron Livingston and Vince Vaughn. All of them went on to lucrative careers, and all of them owe it to the magic of “Swingers.”

The story is simple: Mike is an out of work actor in Los Angeles, struggling to get over the long-term girlfriend he left back East. We follow him through a series of parties and social encounters in Los Angeles—many of which he is dragged to by his loud-mouthed friend Trent—and along the way life, sex, and all manner of relationships are examined. It’s not intended as an intellectual piece, but the writing is so realistic that profound ideas surface automatically.

Because mot of the key actors are playing parts based on themselves, the performances are all effortless. Favreau’s Mike is pathetic but lovable, a hard balance to hit. Vince Vaughn steals the show as Trent, who is a blueprint for almost every successful role he’s played since. And Ron Livingston checks in with his trademark affable charm as Rob, a wise and compassionate friend whose level-headed insight will prove invaluable at a key moment. These are the actors who anchor the piece, and the fact that we never question their authenticity is central to why “Swingers” works.

“Swingers” makes an interesting philosophical point about being male, as well as gender relations. Trent represents an attitude that is very common in the modern dating world: he treats himself as a predator, and the women he desires are his prey. He isn’t misogynistic, but the opposite sex never registers as anything more than a potential trophy to him. His answer to insecurity is to bathe it in machismo, he goes into every situation guns blazing. If you’re not having fun, you just need to snap out of it. If that girl over there doesn’t like you, you’re just not coming at her strong enough. Such beliefs are very easy for men to have, since they feed on testosterone and anxiety. On the other hand, we have Mike, who is crippled by anxiety. He approaches women almost as if he’s looking for hand-outs, fears rejection to a chronic level, and constantly talks himself out of having any fun. The agony of “Swingers” is experiencing it through Mike’s shoes: when he approaches a woman, she barely notices him. Then we watch Trent swagger his way into the same situation and somehow come out the other end with a phone number. It seems impossible, like the universe is just stacked against Mike and there’s no hope. This, too, is a common feeling among men.

What’s interesting is how “Swingers” plays with these two positions, examining their virtues and vices. Like any good story, the answer is not as simple as one being right or the other wrong. By the end of the movie, Mike learns that he does need to be more confident, that Trent is right to want him to put himself out there more. We want Mike to take Trent’s advice, and we’re excited when he finally does. But the last scene keeps things from being too simple. We see Trent, hungover and disheveled, try and make a pass at a woman in a restaurant, only to be openly humiliated by misinterpreting what was going on. Mike witnesses the whole incident, and the last thing we see before the credits is Mike smiling knowingly at his friend. We have never seen Trent be rejected before, nor have we seen him appear so poorly put together, but now that Mike has found his confidence, he can see the reality right in front of him. Trent is not a god. He cannot simply have any woman he wants, and things do not always go his way. Sometimes, he gets rejected too.

But let’s not get away from the fact that “Swingers” is hilarious. Every scene is tightly wound for maximum comedic impact, and a variety of styles are successfully implemented: the slow-burn awkwardness of Mike and Trent’s Vegas double date, the gut-wrenching answering machine scene (I can’t even think about it), even the bizarre and almost surreal “bear and bunny” pep talk that Trent and Sue give Mike at the Dresden. There’s also fine moments of real drama: the parking lot confrontation where Sue pulls a gun is chillingly effective, and Rob’s rallying speech (a kind of modern St. Crispen’s Day thing, if you will) is subtle, sweet and compelling. There’s never a corny moment in “Swingers,” everything plays at just the right level. Quite an accomplishment for a first-time writer.

It’s a shame that “Swingers” feels a little lost, it doesn’t deserve to be. You don’t often get comedies—or movies in general, come to think of it—executed with this much panache. Each scene is effective and fluid, the story is satisfying but subtle, and the jokes and the drama both work. Writing what you know may not be as sexy as setting your movie on some far-off planet, but if it gets results like these, I’d recommend we all do it more often.

“Iron Man 2″ Did Not Suck

Published on May 10, 2010 in Uncategorized. 2 Comments

It wasn’t great, either, but my prediction was at least part-way wrong. The first half of the film was actually idiosyncratic and strong, right up until a brilliant sequence at Tony Stark’s birthday party which I have to admit I didn’t think anyone would have the guts to actually put in a summer blockbuster. Kudos. Then along comes a deus ex machina wearing an eye patch, introducing a plot element that lets us escape from the deeper issues the story almost sunk its teeth into and turning everything into a standard, meaningless physical conflict. Favreau seems to have a weakness with climaxes, he’s made them feel arbitrary and unsatisfying twice in a row now. As the director of a superhero flick, he has to get some sensational action in there to roll into the credits. I get that, and I don’t hold it against him. But since he knows it has to happen, you would think he could find a way for it to be more natural, and for it to address the deeper issues lurking behind the story. Are we seriously going to have a narcissistic egomaniac protagonist learn anything about himself by saving the day the same exact way Superman would? Shouldn’t the disasters in the end be of his own making? Isn’t that what’s more natural to this series of events?

There’s also a serious problem with threat. I dig making Tony Stark his own worst enemy, but that only works if he’s a formidable adversary for himself, and Stark isn’t unhinged enough to sustain that. Nor could he be, because how could you sell Happy Meals with that? His new bad guys are also too incompetent to really frighten us, we know how they’re going to be beaten before they do. I only feared for Tony at two parts of the movie: the first was during the excellent sequence at the race track, and the second was in his confrontation at his birthday party, which I refuse to spoil for those of you who haven’t seen it. In those moments, there was a real sense of something closing in on him, of consequences leading from his actions. The rest of the movie had too much air in it, it was just Tony goofing off in a massive playground. Yeah some killer robots showed up and stuff, but is that the best they had? Wouldn’t people like Tony’s enemies have some vague awareness that killer robots had failed to do the trick in the past? I refuse to believe men as intelligent as Mickey Rourke and Sam Rockwell should be relegated to playing baffoons who display this level of maniacal incompetence. What about framing him? What about destabilizing his company, or abducting Pepper Potts, or pretending to be his best friend and sowing discontent in his personal life? What “Iron Man 2″ desperately lacked was a quality villain, an antagonist who was worthy of our hero. Not to reference “The Dark Knight” compulsively, but that was one of the film’s pillars of strength: everyone sitting in that theater was afraid of the Joker, and no one was certain Batman could actually take him down.

And come to think of it, why is Sam Rockwell’s Justin Hammer such a moron anyway? I get that jealousy is a strong motivator, but only if the dude has the smarts necessary to marshal it into something destructive. He doesn’t. He’s not as smart as Tony, he’s not as good looking (no offense Rockwell, they made you look dorky on purpose), he’s not as smooth, his company isn’t as successful, and he’s nowhere near as good an engineer. So why am I afraid of this guy? Shouldn’t a villain be, oh I don’t know, a worthy adversary? I’m fine with him having an inferiority complex, but that needs to lead him somewhere that makes him a serious opponent instead of depositing him on our laps for us to pity in the third act. Rourke’s Ivan Vanko is closer, but his master plan seems to have been to er…wear a big suit and…uh…attack Tony Stark in open public. Vanko knows computers and can hack anything, so why not go into Tony’s network and turn his machines against him or something? Or make one of the suits attack Pepper, or Rhodey, or somebody. I’m just spit-balling here.

There’ a flip side, though, and a reason why I stand by my assertion that “Iron Man 2″ does not suck: the charm is still there. Against all odds, Gwenyth Paltrow and Robert Downey Jr. keep oozing chemistry; in my book, they’re one of the best on-screen couples around. Everything about them is so wonderfully old-school, their courtship is a battle of wits. Pepper is a strong woman whom Stark loves for her mind and her soul as well as her body, and the producers should be proud of themselves for the positive messages they’re sending to young girls everywhere. Movies like this say, “You can be successful and hard-working and not compromise your femininity, and you don’t need to walk around topless to get attention from the opposite sex.” Now if only HBO, Showtime, and everyone else on the planet would stop repeating “Have sex with as many people as possible,” but I digress.

Also, I kind of owe an apology to Scarlett Johansson. Not because her character was good, she was utterly useless, but because it was in no way ScarJo’s fault. The writers gave her an inconsequential part to play with no discernible arc, no personality (besides “bada**,” which doesn’t count as a personality), and no substantial effect on anything. My theory is simple: all of her good dialogue got siphoned off to Samuel L Jackson’s Nick Fury once he joined the cast late in the game. This was a mistake, because we spent more time with Johansson’s Natalie Rushman, and Fury’s life-altering advice would have had more meaning to us coming from her instead. Nonetheless, Scarlett minimized the damage by playing this superfluous sexpot with cool confidence, and looking pretty stunning in every outfit they put her in. And also, she (and her team of stunt doubles) handled the action scenes incredibly well.

I should make special mention of that, actually. When Natalie goes Biblical on some security guards late in the movie, the results are phenomenal. I’m something of an action scene connoisseur, you can’t trick me with flashy editing, and I’m telling you that the hallway fight I’m referring to is one of the more creative and jaw-dropping offerings I’ve seen in the past few years. I especially admired how unusual and exotic her fighting style was, and how the editing was relatively spacious so I could get a good look at the conflict as it happened. Shooting moves this intricate must have been a beast, but they pulled it off. Favreau now has a truly excellent hand-to-hand fight scene to his credit. Congratulations, man. Heavy props also to the choreography team and the stunt men and women who made it happen.

From what I understand, Terrence Howard was replaced because his performance wasn’t good and he was difficult to work with. Maybe that isn’t true, but that’s what I’ve heard. Perhaps Don Cheadle was a nicer guy on set, but somehow he doesn’t bring the rain here. He’s a great actor, but there was a chemistry with Howard that just isn’t sparking this time around. Even if Howard’s performance had to be edited around to make it good, the result was still positive; here, it’s just kind of neutral. Maybe the problem was the material: the script kind of took all that relationship building from the first one for granted, and perhaps if it had spent more time reminding us of how these two guys feel about one another, it’d have been better. I’m not certain it’s Cheadle’s fault, or that he wouldn’t have been just as good or better than Howard in the original, I’m just saying we needed more.

All in all, there’s enough to like about “Iron Man 2″ to give it a pass. I’m a little disappointed that they didn’t really go for it with a “Dark Knight” style sequel where the tone gets darker, the story takes bigger risks, and the characters are more complex. What they did do is kind of a wash: good enough to enjoy, and original enough to embrace on its own terms, but I suspect it falls apart on repeat viewings. Not that I’m going to find out, because I can’t imagine why I’d need to see it again.

Let’s Be Real Here

Published on May 1, 2010 in Uncategorized. 2 Comments

Last night I saw “A Nightmare on Elm Street,” the remake. Horrible. Abject misery. You seriously can’t make a horror film much worse than this. Some of you may know I’m actually not a huge fan of the original, either; like so much of Wes Craven’s work, it’s an interesting idea that never finds meaningful characters (I hear a few of the sequels are better). Still, seeing this new crock of nonsense that Platinum Dunes served up makes me go easy on the old bird. After all, they had an original idea, there are some very inventive sequences, and they had enough eye for talent to cast Johnny Depp and Robert Englund. And Freddy was scary, he was instantly iconic and deeply troubling. It was far from a perfect movie, and in my opinion not a classic, but a respectable horror film at least.

This new version is just a disaster. They handed the directorial reins to Samuel Bayer, a very talented music video director who needs to stick with his day job. Bayer has a great deal of fun with the visual effects, and some of the things he pulls off are obviously the work of a steady hand, but I wonder if he so much as looked at his actors while they were on set, because they’re all lost. Directing is, among many other things, about managing tone, and the tone is a train wreck in “Elm Street.” Sappy music drops in when the moment is already corny without it, the actors over-emote even in the close ups, and the pacing allows no time to build suspense. Also, there has to be some kind of award for the worst dialog I’ve heard in a movie in quite some time. Say what you will about Dunes’ re-dos of “Friday the 13th” and “Texas Chainsaw Massacre,” at least they troubled to put words in their characters’ mouths. “They’re just dreams, they’re not real” one character tells another. The second looks back at the first meaningfully, then retorts, “These dreams, they’re real.” What’s weird about that passage in the movie is that the characters emphasize the words “dream” and “real” almost identically, and they occur in roughly the same places in the sentence, making it sound like they’re parroting each other back and forth without realizing it. It’s not just me, either, I saw this thing at the Chinese Theater and the entire audience laughed out loud. They also laughed at a passage where one of the lead characters tries to bargain with a pharmacist for a refill of medication, although I doubt they could have explained why. I can. The problem was editing: this kid should start out calm and get angrier as the pharmacist refuses him, but instead his close-ups jump emotionally all over the place, and there’s no sign of him thinking or switching tactics. They must not have shot enough coverage, and they had to dig into whatever they had.

Devil his due, though, the one good idea they had was “micronaps.” I have no idea if it’s a real thing, but the movie claims that extreme sleep deprivation leads to the brain dreaming awake in 1-2 second spurts that increase in frequency. There’s a particularly cool sequence that utilizes this in a grocery store, and for that one moment, Platinum Dunes had hired the right director for the job. Bayer also acquitted himself well with the re-imagining of the body-bag sequence from the original. Sam was on solid ground as long as there were visual effects going on and no one was speaking. Change either of those, and the man was lost.

Also, let me comment on something that pisses me off. If you’re making a horror film, do not make the opening shot a scare; most times, you shouldn’t even make the opening scene frightening. Both the original “Elm Street” and this remake begin on Freddy already hunting someone, and this is a horrible mistake. Things are always scarier with context. If we don’t know the characters yet, we’re too detached to root for them, and if we don’t have a tangible sense of the world they’re living in, we can’t perceive their attacker the way they do. Even if you’ve seen a thousand horror films, each one creates a slightly different universe to exist in, and it’s so imperative that we be bathed in that atmosphere before you try to scare us. Monsters are twice as effective if they’re inserted into an established, believable world. More than that, though, it’s just basic human nature: dynamics dramatically increase emotional returns.  The guitar solo in “Stairway to Heaven” is that much sweeter because it follows a slow, gentle build.

The point is, don’t see “A Nightmare on Elm Street.” I went in your stead, I tasted this poison for you so you don’t have to swallow it. Go watch “The Descent” or “Drag Me To Hell.”