[Sitting Courtside at a Lakers Game]
You don't want to be typecast? Look around! There's the Joker, there's Batman, there's Spiderman. You know what they're typecast as? Rich guys!

One of the wonderful additions modern cable TV has brought is all these cable networks doing their own series. This is good on lots of levels. Cable networks make edgier and more niche fare, since they don't need to recruit the giant audiences the big networks need to feel like a success. They provide more competition which drives quality up across the board (this year's excellent TV season may be a result of that.) And the focus of today's post, they often run excellent series in the summer to get more viewership since the network big guns are taking the summer off before the fall starts.

This summer I've been watching four TV shows regularly, they are:

Rescue Me on FX. The first episode of the new season was just last week, but this show has picked up with the same excellence it showed last year. Dennis Leary plays a horribly tragic NYC firefighter who's life is a complete train wreck. And just like a train wreck I spend a lot of time watching this show while cringing, wondering how any person can be so self-destructive but keep his life from completely disintegrating. In this season's premier it's clear that total desentigration is close, but it won't quite happen, if for no other reason then there wouldn't be much to the show after that. I highly recommend visiting the first season on DVD if you didn't catch it last summer.

30 Days on FX. This is Morgan "Super-Size Me" Spurlock's show. Each episode feels very similar to Super-Size Me in it's tone, structure and seriousness. Super-Size Me was mostly a stunt, with a little bit of real documentary mixed in. I view it's value more as something that will help kick start lines of thought, then as something that should be taken as educationally serious. After two episodes of this show I feel pretty much the same about it. The gimmick is in each episode one person changes their lifestlye in some significant way for 30 days. In the first Morgan and his fiancee tried to live for 30 days on minimum wage. In the second a random guy spent 30 days on hormone therapy and supplements as part of an anti-aging regiment. In both cases they don't explore a lot of depth, and important questions aren't answered. But they are interesting, and involve significant personal struggle. Once again, they serve more as a starting place for the viewer to research and ask questions about the issue then as en educational tool to answer those questions. I'm still up in the air about it, but have found it to be worth my time.

Beauty and the Geek on the WB. This is my guilty pleasure of the summer. It's a reality TV show where they've paired alarmingly anti-social smart guys with gorgeous women who aren't so bright. This could be a disaster, if the purpose was to have these groups date or some silly things like that. Instead the idea is they form two person teams, one from each group, who compete in challenges. In the challenges the Women have to do things they may not be so good at, like answer educational questions, change tires on cars, or build rockets. While the Men have challenges like giving a good backrub, buying stylish clothes for their partners, and getting phone numbers from unknown women on the street. This works because the two groups work together, trying to teach eachother what's going on. It doesn't work because the challenges are really oriented towards the geeks. Their challenges are much more interesting, and they're the ones doing more growing. The geeks are really growing, learning how to interact with women, and gaining confidence. While the beauties are mostly just learning that geeks can be nice guys and interesting too. I don't think it helps that in most of the episodes the produces come up with a way to get the women to parade around in swimsuits. This is clearly a gender biased show, but it works as trashy reality TV. It's also a bit of a train wreck watching some of the geeks, especially Richard - who is really too geeky to function at all normally.

Entourage on HBO. For my money this is best show airing original episodes on TV this summer. It is fantastic. It's funny, smart, quick, and even feels real. The cast is great, but a special mention goes to Jeremy Piven for his laugh out loud work as Ari the super agent. If you haven't seen this or don't have HBO that's cool. Head to your local video store and rent the first season. But beware, this show isn't for youngsters, it's got lots of swearing, talk of gratuitous sex, and some nudity mixed in. What else would you expect of a show about the social life of a young Hollywood Star?

Also coming later this summer is Season Two of Battlestar Gallactica. That show is really at a cross roads. I think it's excellent, but I'm worried about the mysticism they introduced at the end of the last season.

Happy viewing!

- What's this movie about?
- Me!
- I couldn't even get your mother to watch that movie.

I had mixed expectations for Be Cool. I remember most of the reviews being pretty lukewarm, but my hairdresser really liked it (she's got great movie taste, her opinion actually goes pretty far with me.) I figured it would be a good Sunday evening kind of movie, and sure enough, it was.

This is sort of, kind of, a sequel to Get Shorty, which was an excellent movie. This one is a little more oddball. The biggest change is this movie has tons of in jokes that remind you that you're watching a movie. This is dangerous territory, it pulls the viewers out from the movie, but for a movie nerd like me I found it enjoyable. The key there is enjoyable. It still pulls me out of the movie and reminds me I'm watching a movie instead of really involved as a part of the story. This means they have no chance at being a truly great movie, but that's ok. I don't think that was ever their goal.

Their goal was to make a mostly silly, fun comedy. At that they've succeeded.

The best part about this whole thing is watch John Travolta walking around getting threatened, avoiding life threatening situations, and making business deals with a calm and collected confinence that is a bit unreal. It's actually pretty fun to watch, just for that.

He was crazy in bed, kept asking "who's your daddy? Who's your daddy?" I believe that was the most he ever asked me about myself...

Spoilers: But they're crappy movies, so who cares?

I took advantage of the low marginal cost of nextflix this weekend. First I watched Whipped which I saw a few years ago and remembered being marginally interesting. I don't really remember what caused me to put it on my queue, maybe it was watching Amanda Peet in a few movies recently. Anyway, it was on there, so I watched it again. I must admit, I didn't really watch the whole thing. I made judicious use of the skip button for the DVD player, but I watched enough of it (especially since I'd already seen it.)

This movie tried to be interesting. The idea that Amanda Peet's character is playing all the guys the whole time, solely for her own amusement, is actually kind of a fun idea. The problem is you don't get to see that part until the very end of movie, once you've suffered through the whole thing. And I think suffered really is the right adjective. The story focuses on these four guys, who are all unlikable, and mostly behave like jackasses. I guess this would be ok if it was consistently funny, but it's only occasionally funny, and that's not enough to carry it all.

I wonder if they had rearranged the whole thing, really focused on Amanda Peet's character, and just used the obnoxious guys as fodder it might actually have worked - but I doubt it.

But the movie that really takes the cake on the no marginal cost front is Starship Troopers 2. I lasted 7 minutes and 22 seconds before I hit the "skip disc" button on the remote (this is the true reason to have a DVD changer...)

They'll be no learning period with nuclear weapons. Make one mistake and you're going to destroy nations.

Watching The Fog of War is like watching a taped historical lecture. It's less of a documentary, and more of a survey course in the nature of modern international relations from Robert McNamara. He's really the only speaker, and most of the time the camera is pointed right at him, giving the viewer the impression he's talking to you. Occasionally the guy interviewing him will shout a question from the background, but that also feels like someone else in a classroom with you asking a question.

When the camera isn't on McNamara it's showing old video, stills, newspaper headlines, maps, etc. Basically like if he were narrating a presentation.

The flow is a little choppy, and the thing doesn't have a clear thesis statement of the feel of a carefully prepared and polished presentation. I believe this is intentional. It's clear the film was made by filming a lot of McNamara talking and cutting it up in a way that mostly made sense. I think McNamara had some themes he was trying to get across, but they require a little user effort to distill and make sense of all the random things they talk about.

This is ok though, because for me the biggest theme is we're really in unknown territory. Trying to do international relations in the modern world with the communication infrastructure we have and the power to easily destroy nations with nuclear weapons. This sort of negates the possibility of other major themes, the situation is so much more complex then that.

I think this is especially interesting for youngsters like me who didn't live though the cold war or the Vietnam war. Has anyone out there seen this who was around for the major events this movie covers? (Cuban missile Crisis, Bombing in WW2, and the Vietnam War.) I'd be really interested to hear your perspective on it. I found it to be fascinating to hear from someone who was a major player in a lot of these world changing events.

One of the scariest things about all this is it reminds us the humanity of it all. I know we all like to think that the people in charge of this immense power are somehow infallible. They aren't prone to prejudices and blinded by ego or their own opinions. But it's clear that it's almost exactly the opposite. The people with the ambition, talent and intelligence to rise to these levels of power are used to being right - and unless there are a lot of very strong dissenting opinions will continue to think they're right about what's going on and how to solve international problems.

This was an especially topical film given the current state of American foreign policy. The parallels between the way Vietnam is portrayed here and what's going on in Iraq today are inescapable.

Sara, I'm a guy - when do we ever do anything right on the first try?

Hitch is by no means a great movie. But it is a good movie. It's in that classic romantic comedy vain of movies that are enjorable enough to watch, but not really all that memorable.

The story really works because of Will Smith's charm. He's great at this kind of role: being suave and likable all at the same time. He also ends up in goofy and ridiculous situations a fair amount, and watching him always switch right back to the suave guy could have been really jarring, but Smith makes it work - and uses it for character development.

The one kind of unique thing about this movie is it's really kind of the classic cinderella fairy tale, except in reverse. This time it's the guy pining for the out of reach woman, and hoping for a happily ever after kind of a result. This gives it a slightly different feel.

So yeah, it's a fun time, I enjoyed it. It's the kind of movie that you can watch when you're tired, get some laughs, and eat some popcorn.

What's underneath doesn't really matter. It's what you do that defines you.

Wow. Just wow. Batman Begins is nothing short of phenomenal. Hang on for a second, you want to be prepared for what I'm about to say, since it doesn't happen often. I walked out of the theater and had no complaints, no suggestions for improvement, no problems with the movie. I complain about things for a living, trust me when I say that it's rare that I don't have any complaints about something!

I liked everything about this movie. Even the new Batmobile look, which I was worried about when I first saw still shots of it long ago, worked well here. The script was great, acting good, and the story was tight. Things just made sense and all hooked together in a good way.

But the best part was they got Batman right. The fear, the stealth, the tortured soul. The movie gets that people are afraid of what they don't know, what they can't see. Hence, when Batman is beating up on baddies we can't see him. We see the way the stealth works, we see why the bad guys would be so scared. It's brilliant.

Besides the stealth, they also gave us a real person. The Bruce Wayne of this story isn't a comic book charicature, he's a real guy, that would pass for a real character in a movie that wasn't about superheros. This is a dramatic tale in it's own right, even without all the comic books and action.

This is one of the best movies I've seen in the last year. It's certainly on the short list of best superhero movies ever made, and I'm sure I'll be visiting it again.

Notes:
1. I love that good old Ra's Al Ghul is getting some exposure. He's always been a great character. Makes me want to go watch his episodes of the excellent Animated Series.
2. This movie makes a great choice in throwing out the canon from the previous movies. Most notably, they clearly show that they're operating in a different world then the original Batman movie - which committed a cardinal sin when it killed the Joker on screen. Batman villians never die on screen, that way they can come back. If all goes well we will see the villians from this movie again in equally well made sequels.

You don't dance!
Honey, that was just part of the cover!

Mr and Mrs Smith is a totally ridiculous movie. But that's ok. See, it knows it's totally ridiculous and plays it up. Plus, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are so ridiculously good looking and charming they make it work.

Sure, there's some structure problems: The audience knows right away that these two are hitmen (I guess, hitpersons) and the first act of the movie is mostly about whether they'll figure it out. This drug a bit and sort of added to the ridiculousness.

Then there was some plot problems. For example after they figure out who each other are, they start hunting each other. This part of the movie focuses on Pitt, who is very clever in tracking down Jolie. But she's also looking for him, and for some reason can't find him even though he's staying at the house of the guy who was the best man in their wedding. Um, yeah.

But we forgive all those things. This movie isn't about that stuff. It's about Jolie's silly base of operations that staffed exclusively by mid to late 20's women with model looks, it's about fight scenes that are more about character development then action, it's about big explosions. But mostly, it's about Pitt and Jolie being more good looking and charming then any two people should ever be.

Ridiculous, but lots of fun.

Firefighter's Wife: Have you ever considered baby-sitting full time?
Chief: What do you think I do at the firehouse?

Ladder 49 is one of those movies that's stuctured with one big event in the current day that they keep breaking away from to show how the main character got there in flashbacks. This is an oft used structure, and almost always results in an overly-sentimental movie. This is no exception.

This caught me off guard a bit, and I suspect it had the same effect on others. I was expecting a bit more suspense, a bit more action. There's some of those things here, but it's mostly watching Juaquin Phoenix go from a rookie firefighter to a more senior firefighter and building a family around the whole thing. I've been told that this is a pretty realistic view of what it's like to be a firefighter and be around a firehouse.

It's a good movie. And I'll even give them credit for making a line that was laughable in the trailer work in the movie (People are always asking me how is it that firefighters run into a burning building when everyone else is running out. Courage is the answer.) Plus, this movie isn't afraid to make hard choices, which I was proud of it for. But the best part about it is it's skill in exploring the backstory and sentiment. The characters are real, their relationships are real and convincing, and we really get a sense of the firehouse comraderie. This is a movie not about exceptional people and exceptions things, it just explores people who I could imagine meeting in real life. Like I said: a different movie then the one I thought I was going to get when it started.

Cosette! You didn't tell me her name was Cosette!

Les Miserables is a really unfortunate movie and I've been trying to come to grips about why that is. They didn't make it a musical, which I think is a good choice, it allows them to add more drama and really take advantage of the film medium (plus, I'm not really a big fan of film musicals.) But I think that was their biggest problem too. The characters and plot movements in Les Mis are pretty one dimensional, which works for them in the musical world, but they don't have enough depth for film to really dig in.

And now the filmmakers are stuck. They want to make a dramatic film production of this beloved story (that is a phenomenally successful musical) but how do they do that? If they don't change the characters and plot the whole thing will seem flat. But if they do they're playing with fire changing such a beloved story.

In the end they went with the leave it the same approach and the movie does in fact feel flat. Since the characters are so one dimensional we can never really dig in. They all feel too extreme. Jean Valjean seems to holy to be real, Javert seems too evil and short sighted to be real, and when the protagonist and antagonist don't seem real it's hard to get the audience involved.

I think my high level comment about the whole thing is this. The movie just doesn't have a soul. That doesn't mean it's terrible, it's well made and well acted, it just means it's flat. Which is a shame for such a powerful story (at least it is on the stage...)

Wait, this sounds like something I'd say to get rid of some psycho girl. Am I the psycho girl?

I watched 50 First Dates again tonight. This really is a great romantic comedy. It's more on the comedy side then the romantic side, but not too far. Just a little slapstick (you gotta make it past the first 10 minutes though, after that the slapstick density goes way down.)

Sure, I could have done with less over the top Rob Schneider bits, and little less of an extreme Alexa. But I'm mostly picking nits and asking them to conform to my tastes.

The bottom line is if you avoided this one because you like neither Adam Sandler or Drew Barrymore you should take another look. They do surpisingly well together here. If you're a fan of light romantic comedies this one isn't to be missed.

My mind has an endless capacity for useless information.

Caution: Very Minor Spoilers

I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around what I think of Playing By Heart. There's lots going on, so I'll be nice and start with a quick summary: This movie is a near miss, kind of like emotional mush that isn't too bad going down but soon forgotten.

I think that "soon forgotten" thing is the root of my biggest issue. While I watched this I felt like I'd seen it before. But it wasn't very strong and usually if I've seen a movie before I really remember it. This one just felt kind of faded. I might just be remembering the trailers, or things I'd heard and read about it, or it might be that it was forgetfull enough that I really did see it a few years ago and have since forgotten. Just that I consider that a real possibility shows me how forgetful I think this movie is.

The cast is certainly great. It includes Sean Connery, Gillian Anderson, Ryan Phillipe, Jay Mohr, Angelina Jolie, Jon Stewart (doing more drama then comedy and doing a good job at it), Dennis Quaid, Anthony Edwards, Madeleine Stowe. They all did well, but only Angelina Jolie gave a really memorable performance. I think the script was the key problem.

First, there are too many characters. Look at that list of actors! They all have real characters. Not just that, but each is segmented into groups of two and the film bounces between those pairs as they do slow reveals and character development. That's too many characters to successfully develop in one movie, and consequentially I didn't really buy into any of them. They're all pretty messed up, and most of them do some big time character developments in very short periods of time. This is a movie where people appear to fall deeply in love after one date. That doesn't really jive with the way they're emotionally wounded, and I'm guessing the filmmakers would have liked to stretch some of that out a bit to make it more reasonable, but they didn't have time. This is like relationship cliff notes: all the essense, none of the journey. But the journey is where the good stuff is, that's where the truth lives.

The other key problem is we figure all of these pairs are somehow connected to eachother (they didn't just choose a random sample to show in the movie, right?) But the reveal of how they're connected doesn't happen until the very end. I guess in a better movie this would add depth to the story, and make me want to go back and watch it all again to see new meaning in the relationships and how the people grew. But they didn't do a good enough job for it to really take hold like that. I personally think it would have been a much better movie if it was all explained at the start, instead of being kept a secret. In fact, if you'd like to get my quick "I think the movie would be better knowing this before you watch it" summary send me an email, I'll hook you up. For those of you that want to just watch it and try to figure it out I'll give you a hint. It's all in the uncommon phrase "Anger Ball."

So yeah, this movie had the potential to be pretty good, but in the end wasn't all that great. I think it would have been a lot better if it was less ambitious about developing all those characters and didn't try to keep us in the dark about what's going on.

Note:
There was another quote I really liked in this movie, and it even had the special bonus of being said by Jon Stewart:
Her: I have a hard time trusting men.
Him: I'm not men. I'm not a group. I'm just me.

- So this is how a retired mass murderer acts.
- No. This is how a retired mass murderer acts when people show up uninvited.

I enjoyed The Whole Nine Yards quite a bit. It was silly, but had some good comedy and was all around a good time. So when The Whole Ten Yards was on HBO this week I watched it. Sure, I knew it wasn't going to be that good, but that's what tired Friday nights are for right?

Sure enough, it wasn't that good. It was actually kind of peculiar in the way it wasn't that good. It's clear early on that most of the characters are in on some kind of plot, but we're never really sure who's in on it or how deep it goes. This means that we're not sure if all the gags that follow are funny or not. If the characters are caught in this absurd situation and are making it up as they go along, then yeah, they're kind of funny. But if the characters are following some plan that requires absurd actions, then no, it's not funny. As a viewer I didn't know which one of those it was most of the time, which meant the whole movie just had no wind in its sails.

Without that, if we'd just know what was real and what was planned (from the character's point of view) then the movie would have been a forgettable, reasonably funny popcorn movie. Instead they got a forgettable, mostly dull popcorn movie.

HAYDEN CHRISTENSEN: How pathetic is it that the best acted scene between us is the one in which we are in separate buildings and have no lines?

Brilliance! One of my favorite websites, The Editing Room has published an abridged script for Revenge of the Sith.

I've always loved this site, and this script is one of the guy's best works. I don't think it tops The Matrix Reloaded but it's right up there with it. He nails the inconsistencies, silliness, and overall lack of attitude. The real key is he manages to hold the movie to the higher standard I talked about before just in the way it's written.

Plus, the Samuel L Jackson stuff is fantastic. If you've seen all the Star Wars movies and are at all nerdy about them this is an absolute must read!

If you don't ask the right questions, every answer feels wrong.
I was a terrible waitress, so I started writing songs.

A friend's favorite musician is Ani Difranco and she was pressing me pretty hard that I would be a fan too. I figured she was right, since we have similar tastes and I trust her not to steer me astray.

But then when I asked her which one albumn I should buy as a start she balked at picking just one. Phrases like "positives and negatives of each" started appearing. Eventually she gave me a recommendation, but it was pretty timid - so I went out and did my own research (arrogant guy that I am...)

After reading some reviews, customer recommendations, and listening to some samples I picked Out of Range, which I've been totally happy with so far. The album is a bit schizophrenic; bouncing between quick paced, busy songs and slow melodic ones. The lyrics are colorful and imaginative and only occasionally go over the top. Overall, given my affection for artists like Tracy Chapman, Jewel and Eva Cassidy it's not really a stretch for me to be a fan.

Now it just means I have more music to track down and listen to. But between rafting and commuting I get to spend lots of time in the car listening to music...

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