April 29th, 2009 admin
Starring: Amy Poehler, Rashida Jones, Aziz Ansari, Aubrey Plaza, Paul Schneider, Nick Offerman, Chris Pratt
Created By: Greg Daniels & Michael Schur
Network: NBC
Original Air Date: 04/09/09 -
Not far into the pilot for Parks and Recreations, NBC’s latest attempt to kick start a winning sitcom idea, right after “mid-level bureaucrat” Leslie Knope (played by Amy Poehler – typically oblivious) has accosted a child in a sandpit with a pointlessly vague questionnaire and she turns to address the camera you get the odd realization you’ve seen this show somewhere before. About five minutes before most likely, seeing as NBC premiered the show right after a new episode of The Office, and right before a second new episode of The Office, to all but guarantee a captive audience.
Yes, by the end of the first self-pat on the back it’s clear that the only thing separating Leslie Knope and Michael Scott is a different set of genitalia. Beyond that they are the exact same character and this is the exact same show, right down to it’s deliberately Podunk setting (Pawnee, Iowa in for Scranton, Pennsylvania). So instead of selling paper we’re pushing it and the mock documentary camera crew (whose presence is never explained) is trailing the department’s every move. Knope’s first order of business is to mine the tragedy of a local woman’s lay-about husband falling into a pit and breaking both his legs into the spearhead of a works project that will catapult her to the halls of power.
Click here to read the full review at Uinterview.com.
Posted in American Television, Reviews | No Comments »
April 28th, 2009 admin
2008
Starring: Mark Redfield, Michael Hagan, Jennifer Rouse, Kelly Potchak, Richard Cutting
Director: Wayne Shipley
Runtime: 98 Minutes
Distributor: One-Eyed Horse Productions
Rating: PG-13
There have been westerns almost as long as the medium of cinema has existed. The first ever-narrative film, Edward Porter’s 1903 twelve-minute milestone The Great Train Robbery was a western. In terms of sheer cinematic proliferation, the western simply stands unmatched and there is a very good and very simple reason – they’re bloody cheap. A couple of guys, a couple of horses and some wide-open space and you’ve essentially got yourself a western. But just because you can do something doesn’t necessarily mean you should nor that there is value in doing that thing.
With that in mind we arrive at Come Hell or High Water, writer-director Wayne Shipley’s DV, no-budget, horse opera where, at first glance, a Maryland amateur dramatics society comes together to chart the vast outreaches of incomprehensible thespian inadequacy. Coming across like some bizarre hybrid between a civil war reenactment, a wild west show and left over footage from one of those Gunslinger RPG arcade games you find at Dave & Busters, Come Hell or High Water might best be used to coax information out of suspects at Guantanamo Bay – but only the hardcore inmates mind you, the ones who didn’t bat an eye at water boarding.
Mark Redfield (whose credits include such fare as The Curse of the Screaming Dead and Chainsaw Sally) stars as Missouri freight nogul Justin Gatewood. After five years in Leavenworth for attempting the murder of the man he holds responsible for his brother’s death during the Civil War (he hit the sheriff instead), Gatewood is pardoned by the governor (who values his tax revenue) and returns to his ranch with a mind to finish what he started.
Click here to read the full review at JustPressPlay.net.
Posted in Feature Films, Reviews, Western | No Comments »
April 27th, 2009 admin
Check Out What’s new in theaters with my weekly column at IFC.com.
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April 27th, 2009 admin
2009
Starring: Michael Caine, Anne-Marie Duff, Bill Milner, David Morrissey
Director: John Crowley
Runtime: 95 Minutes
Distributor: Optimum Releasing
Rating: PG-13
One thing that’s abundantly clear in the modern studio system is that Hollywood really just can’t get a handle on age. While commanding, intelligent roles for old women are tantamount to rocking horse shit, the issue of aging men is typified in one of three main varieties; the cantankerous coot (Secondhand Lions), the stoically masculine (Gran Torino), or the sprightly sage (the likes of Alan Arkin in Little Miss Sunshine). Rarely does Hollywood directly address the realities of old age and the ravages of senility, preferring instead to maintain a kind of reverential distance with the elderly that’s warm and comfortable. Unsurprising then that this semi-autobiographical tale from writer Peter Harness about a senile old magician and a death-obsessed ‘tween comes courtesy of Britain, a country whose film industry was founded on no frills, kitchen-sink miserablism.
From Boy A director John Crowley comes this ‘80s-set, sweet and sentimental coming-of-age story that despite strict adherence to formula – the innocent and the embittered both teach each other something – never shies away from the tragic nature of its subject matter. Sir Michael Caine in a typically giving performance carries the film in the role of retired magician Clarence, once The Amazing Clarence, now a bitter, Fagan-esque character struggling with the onset of dementia. Forcibly pushed into a makeshift rest home run by Anne-Marie Duff’s (Mrs. James McAvoy) overworked mum and her skirt chasing husband (David Morissey), Clarence is relentlessly pestered by young Edward (Bill Milner), who processes the constant flow of death into amateur ghost-hunting antics. Having stolen his bedroom, Edward dislikes Clarence from the off. He in turn, devastated by the loss of his wife (a sad tale slowly revealed), finds Edward’s morbid antics distasteful and the pair strike up a mutual disdain, the slow erosion of which is the crux of the tale.
Click here to read the full review at Uinterview.com.
Posted in Drama, Feature Films, Reviews | No Comments »
April 24th, 2009 admin
Starring: Dennis Leary, Mike Lombardi, Steven Pasquale, Andrea Roth, Daniel Sunjata, John Scurti, Callie Thorne, Tatum O’Neal, Lenny Clarke,
Creator: Dennis Leary & Peter Tolan
Network: FX
Original Air Date: 04/07/2009 -
Firefighter dramedy Rescue Me (FX, Tuesdays, 10pm), without doubt the finest soap opera for men on the tube, is the perfect vehicle for Denis Leary. It allows him to showcase his magnificent acting talent as well as his skill as a comedian and writer, along with his partner, Peter Tolan. It also allows Leary to vent his frustrations at a political elite that abandoned these men and discarded them as soon as they were no longer a politically expedient photo opportunity. Leary is not a happy bunny, and wasted no opportunity to throw this disgrace in everybody’s face. Transferring his trademark stage persona into a weekly network television show, Leary tackles a serious subject that is very dear to his heart. A long time supporter of the work Firemen do, Leary established The Leary Firefighters Foundation after his cousin and five others were killed in a warehouse fire in 1999. Since then the foundation has helped to raise over $10 million to provide equipment and training facilities to help these brave men and women.
Best known to most for his gloriously over-the-top stand up, which is built around angry rants about the life of the typical American male, and labeled unfairly by others as a poor man’s Bill Hicks, Denis Leary is the perfect antithesis for our age of political correctness gone mad. Leary is an angry man, whose Irish American upbringing has gifted him great insight into what makes men tick. Rescue me is an absolute wonder; a last bastion of male-centric sanctuary in a television universe dominated by Desperate Housewives, female-marketed reality shows, and a zillion ‘fat guy married to hot chick who catches him in a lie every single week’ domestic sitcoms.
Click here to read the full review at Uinterview.com.
Posted in American Television, Reviews | No Comments »
April 23rd, 2009 admin
2009
Starring: Steve “Lips” Kudlow, Robb Reiner
Director: Sacha Gervasi
Runtime: 90 Minutes
Distributor: VH1
Rating: NR
It is widely regarded in the annals of movie lore that when legendary rock’n’roll guitarist Eddie Van Halen first saw This is Spinal Tap, Rob Reiner’s mother of all rock mockumentaries, he didn’t get it. Having gotten lost backstage himself numerous times and been witness to band meeting’s chaired by groupies, he wondered in all honesty just what the joke was. As Nigel Tufnel famously espoused: “It’s a fine line between clever and stupid.” Van Halen, having lived inside the insular bubble that is professional musicianship, knew that it was an even finer line between truth and fiction and that truth often times really is stranger.
First time director Sacha Gervasi (Anvil’s roadie for a time in the eighties) chronicles the legendary Canadian mettlers, led by long time best friends Steve “Lips” Kudlow and drummer Robb Reiner, during an ill-fated European tour in preparation for their thirteenth studio album. Given some decidedly Tap-ish antics (playing guitar with a dildo), a disastrous tour managed by a fan, and irony out the wazoo (the drummer’s name really is Robb Reiner – two b’s), comparisons to Tap’s calculated piss taking were inevitable. But having witnessed the band’s hilarious, heart-wrenching and utterly mesmorising tale of never-say-die persistence, we have to declare that dismissing these guys as merely over-the-hill crazies does them and their indomitable spirit a great disservice.
Click here to read the full review at Uinterview.com.
Posted in Documentary, Feature Films, Reviews | No Comments »
April 22nd, 2009 admin
2007
Starring: Josh Brolin, Javier Bardem, Kelly Macdonald, Tommy Lee Jones, Woody Harrelson
Director: Joel & Ethan Coen
Runtime: 122 Minutes
Distributor: Mirimax
Rating: R
No Country for Old Men, the Coen brothers’ undisputed career masterpiece evokes the feeling that everything they’ve achieved prior to this has simply been larks. They were biding their time, practicing, waiting for just the right cosmic alignment of mood and material to unleash their true potential upon an unsuspecting audience lulled into a false sense of quirky security by the likes of Intolerable Cruelty and The Ladykillers.
For sure this is the Coen Bros of old and No Country feels like a distilled amalgamation of their classic work, sharpened and pointed into a needle of sheer cinematic genius. It has the cold, stark simplicity of Blood Simple, the dark cynicism of Miller’s Crossing, and the incompressible humor of Fargo (we defy you to identify anyone else that can craft a sidesplitting throwaway exchange about welding).
An adaptation of Pulitzer Prize winning author Cormac McCarthy’s bleak 1980 set crime thriller, it’s essentially a chase whereby opportunistic hunter Llewelyn Moss (Brolin) stumbles across the bloody aftermath of a drug deal gone bad in the middle of the desert and attempts to make off with a suitcase full of money. Equal parts western and noir, peppered with dark Coen comedy, No Country is a shockingly violent portrait of a swiftly changing time laced with heady meditations on the moral bankruptcy of man.
Click here to read the full review at JustPressPlay.net.
Posted in Drama, Feature Films, Reviews | No Comments »
April 13th, 2009 admin
Check out what’s new in theaters with my weekly column at IFC.com.
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April 13th, 2009 admin
2009
Starring: Seth Rogen, Ray Liotta, Anna Farris, Jesse Plemons, Michael Pena
Director: Jody Hill
Runtime: 86 Minutes
Distributor: Warner Bros.
Rating: R
It’s somewhat tough to describe the tingle of anticipation we felt as we entered this screening of Observe and Report having hungrily consumed the online buzz surrounding it. “Quite unlike anything you’ve ever seen,” said one source. “A dark and delirious blend of comedy and violence,” said another. Imagine how we felt then after about twenty minutes as we slowly realized that what we were witnessing was not the birth of comedy not as we know it, but the death of writer/director Jody Hill’s big studio career.
You can certainly see what Hill was aiming at. After all, in the post-Will Ferrell era the idea of another comedy centered around an inept egotist with a massively inflated and yet entirely unjustified sense of self-worth might strike you as so far, so formula. But as Hill demonstrated with his breakout debut The Foot Fist Way, he has a propensity to push the envelope, displaying a penchant for offering up brutality as belly laughs. Danny McBride playing a martial arts instructor who can’t control his temper can get away with that because he’s clearly a harmless buffoon who, when challenged, will cower. Seth Rogen playing a bullish bi-polar case who is off his meds simply cannot.
Angry and given to fits of paranoid delusion, head of mall security Ronnie Barnhardt is the lord and master of all he surveys; even if that translates to shoplifters, old people power-walking and fatties congregating around the ice cream fountain. When a serial flasher invades his domain, Ronnie seizes his chance to show off his law enforcement skills to Detective Harrison (a decidedly unimpressed Ray Liotta) and make-up counter girl of his dreams Brandi (Anna Faris showing why she is one of comedy’s brightest stars). Mustering his troops in the form of sycophantic lieutenant Dennis (Michael Pena) and gun nuts John and Matt (the Yuan twins) Ronnie sets about restoring order with an iron fist (typically aimed at someone’s face). And that’s the problem.
Click here to read the full review at Uinterview.com.
Posted in Comedy/Romance, Feature Films, Reviews | No Comments »
April 10th, 2009 admin
Starring: Matt Lanter, Ashley Eckstein, James Arnold Taylor, Dee Bradley Baker, Tom Kane, Ian Abercrombie
Created By: George Lucas
Network: Cartoon Network
Original Air Date: 10/03/2008 –
Amidst his busy schedule of raping the collective childhoods of millions, “improving” [read: pissing on] the original Star Wars trilogy and mooching about Skywalker Ranch subsisting on a diet of puppy dogs, mashed up hundred dollar bills, and the tears of children, ol’ George has managed to find time to shit out yet another digital sleeping pill.
Set between episodes II & III, this animated series of The Clone Wars serves as an extended footnote on the second prequel, offering up detailed accounts of battles waged and victories won. The good news is that the mad, deluded control freak has at least agreed to stay away from the script this time (though you can hardly tell), and considering he couldn’t direct traffic it’s probably a good idea that he’s let that go, too. Still, if you’re hoping for something dark and deep to take that saccharine pain away you’re out of luck because supervising director Dave Filoni has simply taken a bad idea to the level of terrible.
Click here to read the full review at JustPressPlay.net.
Posted in American Television, Reviews | No Comments »
