Umbrella Academy review

I know, I know. It looks like I'm not writing much 'cause I'm not blogging much. But I'm writing a lot, I swear.

Like my new review of Gerard Way's Umbrella Academy: Apocalypse Suite at Pop Critics.

This is all a long-winded way of saying, there are a lot of very bad comics out there and celebrity “writers” are some of the worst offenders.

So when it was first announced that My Chemical Romance frontman Gerard Way was coming out with a book of his own, it was ignored by the comics cognoscenti. Just another rock star (literally) wanking off (not literally). It would get published, his screaming fans would buy it, and it would get tossed in the bin a few days later to be forgotten forever.

Follow the link to read the rest.

Forgetting Sarah Marshall

Quick thoughts:

• Mila Kunis. When the hell did she become gorgeous and sweet instead of vapid and annoying? Crap. I want to date Meg Griffin now.
  
• If someone can convince Steve Whitmire to stop doing his shitty Kermit voice, the next Muppet movie is going to rock*.

Saw Forgetting Sarah Marshall this afternoon and was really impressed with the confidence of Jason Segal's screenplay and performance. Well, it's not like I was surprised at all by his performance; I know he's fearless. I just didn't know he'd be that sure and confident in his first screenplay out of the gate.

This was the best movie out of the Apatow factory since 40 Year Old Virgin, no exaggeration. Funny, sweet, and honest from the first frame to the last. Segal wrote several of the songs in the film as well, and that bodes really well for his upcoming Muppet flick. I'm not sure he's got a "Rainbow Connection" in him, but competent, singable songs would be good enough for me. Also? I think he's going to find a way to move Count Count to the big screen. I just sense it.

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*Seriously. Go to any open mike night and odds are you can find a half-dozen comics who do better Kermits (and Ernies, etc.) than Whitmire. Either he needs to call it a day, or Brian and Lisa Henson need to shelve their old man's characters.

"Shoot first, translate later."

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I've been meaning to watch this movie forever, but I kept putting off ordering from Amazon. However, thanks to our friends at the AMPTP, I figured the easiest way to keep up the boycott of American DVDs was to Buy Canadian™. So it worked out all around.

Alex Epstein co-wrote the screenplay, and I was really looking forward to seeing how his works translate to the screen (because I do NOT have a bootleg copy of Charlie Jade downloaded from a torrent and have never seen Naked Josh.) I've learned a lot from his blog and books; here was a chance to see his craft(y) in action.

So Sunday afternoon I'm finishing up an upgrade of my desktop OS. I come out to the family room and TheWife's got a schmaltzy, feel-good holiday movie running on the Disney Channel. Turns out, it really was schmaltz: Full-Court Miracle. Really bad movie. But...TheWife likes her bad movies and when I sat down, it was two seconds before my buddy Dan Willmott's all-too brief scene. So I was invested. Damn you, Dan!

Suffice it to say, the oil in the backup generator lasted longer than expected and the little Maccabees had time to pull off their miraculous comeback against the crosstown Warriors. Yes. It was a Hanukkah miracle. Oy.

Okay. Enough schmaltz. I needed to cleanse my palette with a pair of mismatched buddies, some vulgarity, brief nudity, and lots of blood. Woohoo! Bon Cop Bad Cop into the DVD player!

First, my one and only complaint. While I can't discount the possibility that my tuner or speaker setup is to blame, for I do have this problem to a lesser extent with other discs, the audio mix on this disc sucked. Music and FX so loud they rattled the windows with the volume turned up appropriately for dialog. And no, I don't stand on my porch screaming at the kids to turn down their music. This mix was bad.

Okay, now on to the good.

And boy howdy was it good. The movie's much, much funnier than I expected. On a continuum from 48 Hours to Beverly Hills Cop I was expecting this to fall to closer to Nolte and Murphy. Instead, it shocked me and landed a lot closer to Reinhold and Murphy. And that's a good thing.

Any movie that can give me a dead body torn in half by a couple of bickering cops in the first 15 minutes is going to be high on my list. Higher still when they bicker in two languages!!! Unfortunately my French is as rusty as something or another made of iron that's been allowed to oxidize for a really long time, so I was compelled to leave on the English subtitles^*, but the bilingualism is so central, so important to the movie that I was happy to be awash in the competing tongues.

One of my favorite scenes has our heroes - uptight Ontario detective Martin Ward (Colm Feore) and rogue Quebecois detective David Bouchard (Patrick Huard, who also wrote the story) discussing the forms, uses, and conjugation of a French word (I'll need to watch again to catch it and confirm, but it was one of the more colorful 'fuck's, I believe) all while beating a suspect to get him to fit in the trunk of Bouchard's car. Y'all should know how I feel: any linguistic humor is gold. Coupled with Stooge-level physical abuse like here, and I'm in heaven.

As this is a Canadian production, you know there has to be maple syrup, mounties, and hockey. It's a legal requirement. At least it is to get any government funding. That's what Epstein and Jim Henshaw and Dennis McGrath seem to imply, anyway. So it was with no small sense of mirth that syrup was poured on french toast, the buddies were only thrown together in order to keep the RCMP from taking over the initial murder (complex jurisdiction, what with the victim being impaled on a road sign between the provinces,) and the murders are all about hockey. Maybe I read too much into those things, but it felt like a thumb in Ontario's eye.

Get the movie. Seriously. Click above, buy a copy, and laugh your ass off. Assuming you find blood, bullets, and bilingual barbs amusing.

Oh yeah. Why did I bring up the bad holiday basketball movie when I started this review? Because it too was a Canadian production. So Martin Ward's teen-age son was also one of the mini-Maccabees. Such tonally (and quality-wise) different movies back to back, sharing an actor (albeit in two small roles) boned my funny tickler.

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^* There are three ways to watch the movie on the DVD: with English subtitles; with French subtitles; and with no subtitles.

quarterlife: Episode 1 thoughts

Herskovitz and Zwick's quarterlife has premiered. I first have to say that I've never been a huge fan of their work. I like My So-called Life well enough, but never got into thirtysomething or much of their other work. I like to keep my more petulant, whiny side bottled up (the better to unload it in big splashes on TheWife,) so seeing a lot of that on screen rarely appeals to me. It's not that I don't recognize the quality of the material, it's that I wish the characters would just grow up.

So I went into quarterlife with certain expectations. I expect to be annoyed by the characters, but drawn in by the writing.

Sure enough, episode one lived up to my expectations. It's well-written, has a clever meta-narrative aspect - when you consider that quarterlife, the website, is very much the site Dylan (Bitsie Tulloch) blogs on in the show. So you go to quarterlife (the site) to watch quarterlife (the show) in which the lead blogs on quarterlife (the site-within-show). The performances were solid, the production qualities were broadcast-ready, and the direction was excellent.

I just wish I didn't hate the characters.

There's also one *very* played out trope. Dylan, who wants to be a writer and is hiply sloppy, works as an editorial associate at a magazine called "Women's Attitude". She has a little Barbie Doll co-worker named Britney. Guess what happens when Dylan tells her about her new, hip, alternative idea.

I say watch. Excluding the cliché plot thread at the magazine, this is pretty interesting and innovative stuff. It'll help a lot if you're not old and crusty like me. But even I found the first episode view-worthy and will probably watch a few more. Maybe I'll even grow to like these characters (or mail them Prozac.)

PHX: Where dreams go to die

We went to the "theater" last night. A small theater group really stretching to the utmost of their meager abilities.

Space 55 Theatre Ensemble is dedicated to producing new, unpublished and rarely seen works. We are committed to concentrating on the process of improvisation through ensemble, creation of new work, and the ongoing investigation of the process of creating theatre. We aim to develop a new "writer’s theatre" in Phoenix by nurturing new playwrights and continuing the crosspollination of artists from different genres. It is extremely important to us to build new audiences for the modern stage by creating a comfortable, affordable and open atmosphere in order to make the theatre experience accessible to all.^*

Used to be I thought just people came to PHX to die. Now I know it's art and hope and dreams.

What the fuck? They're "nurturing new playwrights"? Let me tell you about the absolute SHIT that is the PHX "art" scene.

First off, there was nowhere to park. This is neither the fault of this little theater, nor directly related to their suckitude, but I bring it up to comment on the overall "art" scene in PHX. It was First Friday. Which in this town means a lot of posers smoking clove cigarettes, hemp clothing impregnated with patchouli, and people hawking bad art. No matter. We're going to see an interesting show so we can put up with that, right?

The show in question sounds promising: a "10 Minute Play Showcase, a one-of-a-kind theatrical event for the Valley. That’s six new plays, each ten minutes in duration, written by Phoenix-based playwrights". I expect there will be some chaff in the mix, but surely at least one lovely kernel.

The first piece is high-school existentialism at its most base. See, there's a dead guy talking to the man who helped him off himself. The dead guy's angry. The dead guy's seen everything, knows everything. He's seen God's grave. He's taken notes. The only thing truly notable was the crappy blocking. The aide-de-kill is upstage almost the entire piece forcing dead-guy to turn his head too much.

Then there's the promise of some humor...a message is projected and read aloud. Two-weeks after the deadline for submissions had passed, somebody sent a message to the theater's MySpace page suggesting 10 minutes of...a purple dragon, a man comes in, no one talks, and maybe there's a cat. I wish I could do it justice. My description might be more lucid than the very short idea sent in and that's the problem. Imagine what I wrote, but slowed down and dragged out by excessive pot use. So the theater's going to have some fun with this and do four variations on the theme. Here comes part the first: doesn't live up to the setup.

I hate to pick too hard on the next piece which felt very personal, so we'll leave it at saying I'm sure someone gave a shit about the story of the schizophrenic mother with breast cancer and her daughter (who might have inherited the disease) becoming a mother herself at 27. Someone really might have cared. Not the theater-goers, but someone.

Purple dragon variation #2. Makes the first look like genius. In this one, they eschew any attempt at comedy and go for drama. Yah. It doesn't fuckin' work.

Now, the meat of the evening. This is the play people will be talking about for years to come. This is the play Hollywood will be turning into a movie soon, I guarantee that. As long at the WGA strikes, this play is gold. "How to Count to 1000". Two men - the playwright Bob Fisher, who puts the ham in a Hormel factory farm, and his co-star - settle on stage. They clean up a bit, bring out two chairs and a Coleman, and...

Y'all know the story about Helena Modjeska, the Polish-born actress? At dinners, she'd sometimes do short dramatic scenes in Polish. Her performances were heart-wrenching. One time, it is said, she recited the Polish alphabet. Brought the crowd to tears. It is most likely apocryphal, but believable due to her immense talent.

Bob Fisher is not immensely talented. Yet he and his unfortunate co-star spent 10 minutes strutting, pouting, yelling, and weeping their way in fits and starts from one to 1000. "Time constraints" thrust upon them by the stage manager required them to break out of their strict incremental performance and there were a few out-of-sequence values. All part of the brilliant play Bob wrote. Remember above, the description of Space 55? It's a "writer's theater". (I was going to leave it be, but...it's only a theater for one writer? It's not a writers' theater?)

Hollywood should take heed of Bob's masterful plan. When the scripts have all dried up, I expect to see phonebooks read by Charlie Sheen and Jon Cryer, encyclopedias by the cast of The Office, and take-out menus printed on late-night cue cards (actually, that might be funnier than Leno's monologue.)

Another purple dragon variation that *could* have been mildly amusing. A large girl in a purple dress is the "dragon". She readjusts her ample bosom. A silly English ka-nig-it with drawn broadsword enters. There is a protracted battle. Music rises. They tango. And if it had been that fast or if the fight had been choreographed it would have amused.

Our final "real" play. "Salt". It seemed pretty decent, but you'll have to remember what came before. Having a Capri Sun straw shoved in my eye would have seemed decent in comparison. Some talking heads. A passionate, sad wail about the death of dreams and the conformity of life. Whatevs.

The final purple dragon variation was a bit of interpretive "dance". I'm no fan of dance, but I don't think that's why I disliked this. This looked a bit more like Madonna voguing in slow-motion.

This was a bad, bad night at the "theater". Then I got home. And heard some really good news for an acquaintance. Good news for her which indicated bad news for me. So here in the desert I stay, my hopes and dreams slowly dessicating in the sun. Fuck. I couldn't even be a PHX playwright. I try to use actual words to actually entertain. I don't write juvenile pastiches of Beckett or sequences of numbers. I have no hope, here.

But that's okay. I can remain a software engineer, right? I mean, when you think high-tech Mecca, you think PHX, right?

Fuck. I'm going to see if someone will help me kill myself so I can piss on God's grave.

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^* Huh. Didn't notice the first time. They use the British-English spelling of "theatre". So not only are they untalented clods who'd better spend their time painting desert sunsets and making kitschy cactus souvenirs, they're über-pretentious.

Review: Raising Sand

There's an adlink above, FeedReader. And yes, that's right. I'm a goddamn moneychanger. I'm going to review my blog-buddy's pop's album and try to make a buck. Actually, it'd be about 8¢.

Amazon was a bit slow getting this CD out to me, especially on a week where I had like two or three other orders show up lickety split (thank you, Amazon Prime.) It finally showed up today, and after making a small effort at catching up with the last two weeks' worth of TV - "my cousin Tim fixes NBA games" - reading a few of last week's comics, and writing three whopping lines of a short play I'm working on for a friend, I finally popped in the disc. I'm not disappointed.

I'm still on the first listen, but I've already been struck by a few things: Allison Krauss has a jazz singer's knack for sliding around her notes perfectly; Robert Plant's voice sounds sweeter than it should for a rock star rapidly closing in on three score years; and Beckylooo's pop can do more with a ¿mandolin? and muted bongos than most producers can with a wall of dead starlets.

I'm no damn good at reviewing music, so there's no way I can do this disc any justice. I can sing okay, know a smattering of theory, and can slowly pick my way around a piano and bass. Very slowly. I haven't the patience or drive to study harder and my appreciation of music suffers for it. Really hurt the couple times I've read GEB (practically a requirement for any serious software engineer) because I get Gödel and Escher, but Bach is just pretty music to me. I never have heard the super-clever recursions and patterns in him. I just don't have a critical enough ear and I'm not an active enough listener.

Okay, that's enough of me whingeing about my inadequacies. Let me try to say something substantive.

Because of the spareness of the arrangements and the subdued way in which the instruments are woven through the songs, I actually can pick out some of the more interesting musical statements. When Krauss and Plant harmonize, their subtle timing imperfections enhance rather than detract from the songs. T Bone Burnett is generally gentle with the board, rarely doing much (that my ear can pick up) to the natural qualities of the instruments, but when he does - applying a heavy dose of reverb to the Everly Brothers' "Gone, Gone, Gone (Done Moved On)" for example - it serves to remind me I'm listening to a rock song instead of folk.

I'm skimming through the disc a second time now, trying to pick a favorite song (I can't; they're all good) and note some exceptional passages. The aforementioned version of "Gone Gone Gone" is a good place to start. Then again, so is the amazing cover of Plant's "Please Read the Letter". It's one of the few places I hear Robert Plant: Rock God singing. "Your Long Journey" could almost make me believe in a higher power, the same way the best gospel and choir music can. It's as simple as a song can be, but heartrending, nonetheless. "Trampled Rose" is a Krauss solo song that feels like...a spaghetti western. I could point to the features of the song that make it feel that way to me, but it wouldn't make sense. Just go listen to it.

You're back, good. Did you notice how Krauss made her voice sound like a violin throughout that song? Damn, that's control.

Alright. I'm done. You've got a link to listen to the album; you've got a link to buy the album. What are you waiting for?

Unspoiled after all these years

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Alright. I'm not actually suggesting you go out and buy the above collection. First of all, no amount of arm-twisting, cajoling, or bribery could ever make me believe Jayne Mansfield was anything but a very slight clone of the great Marilyn. Everyone wanted a blonde bombshell, but instead of finding one with a unique, original mien, the studios found poor mimics.

Despite Ms. Mansfield's shortcomings (not the least of which - inflicting Mariska Hargitay upon an unsuspecting world with an able assist from hubby Mickey) there is one movie of hers I've always loved. Loved despite her. Loved, because it stars one of the greatest, funniest, most talented comic actors to ever grace a screen, large or small. Sadly, that movie is still not available for individual sale (though it can be rented from Netflix, as I did.)

I love Tony Randall.

It's been probably 20 years since I've seen Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? I was pretty sure my memory of the film was not too colored by the years, but it was time to find out.

I moved Lover Boy to the top of my queue. It shipped the other day, but we had the final disc of Freaks and Geeks to finish, plus the second episodes of the new TV season to deal with. Tonight, after a very long week we popped it in.

Memory served me well.

The movie's dated in some ways, notably the odd trans-Atlantic accent of Betsy Drake's Jenny Wells and...well nothing else, really. Sure the movie is an artifact of its time and place, but its takes on fame, success, and love are as contemporary as the matching outfits of Rita Marlowe's poodle, Shamroy. Since it's a full-size French poodle, it's MUCH larger than today's stars like; however, it's otherwise treated the same as any modern purse rat dog.

There is one fundamental problem with the movie: watching it one can only fantasize about how Marilyn would have elevated the film beyond very good into transcendental. The original George Axelrod play was optioned by Fox (and then completely discarded and replaced with Frank Tashlin's screenplay) specifically to get Mansfield, but I can dream. Mansfield just didn't have charisma. Much like her daughter Mariska who sits at home polishing Lauren Graham's Emmy, momma Jayne was an inferior performer.

Fortunately, this movie is all Randall and he is transcendent. If your only exposure to Tony Randall is his excellent work on The Odd Couple, you owe it to yourself to see some of his earlier film work. Try Rock Hunter, or 7 Faces of Dr. Lao, or watch him play the sidekick in one of the Hudson/Day comedies.

30 Rock

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Last weekend, you'll recall, was Doog-arific. Fun, but awfully dated. This weekend we went a bit more modern with NOT-Studio 60.

Tina Fey's greatest strength as a writer is finding room for her actors to breathe. The first season is a great showcase of that talent. Each new episode gets a little more chaotic and a little more improvisational in feel as the great performers surrounding Fey get to stretch out. Alec Baldwin is the obvious standout, but Jack McBrayer's Kenneth is a revelation. And let's not forget Tracy Morgan's ¿fictionalized? version of himself - Tracy Jordan.

It's a tough call whether I'm more anxious for 30 Rock or HIMYM to return, but based on how steeply this show went from so-so funny to can't-miss hilarious, it might be the gang in Rockefeller Center.

I've not yet tried out any of the commentary, but the extra features are decent. Kenneth's late-night interviews, McBrayer and Lonny Ross walking around the Silvercup Studios with a camcorder, and Judah Friedlander being...himself. Fun stuff. Definitely worth owning, as I'll watch these again and again.

Doogie Does my DVD

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Rough weekend. First there was the lack of productivity, then the shitty construction (see below, for my racist comments about that), then the dreaded Three Red Lights on the XBox's Ring O' Light.

Since it's our DVD player as well as my sometime gaming console, it needed to be replaced quickly. I was just not confident enough in the weekend's tennis offerings to go without a backup plan. So we ran out to Best Buy and picked up an Elite. While there, wifey-poo found the perfect (and way cheap on sale) DVDs for the weekend - the above season 1 of Doogie Howser, M.D.

I remember it being better. NPH rocks, even as a kid, but the show doesn't hold up that well. First off, it doesn't bring the funny. It was one of the first single-camera, half-hour dramedies and it shows a bit of the awkwardness of a new art form whose legs aren't quite strong enough to support its new frame. Worse than the shortage of humor is the heavy-handed moralizing in Doogie's "youseetimmy" journal entries that close each episode.

We're most of the way through this first season (whether we buy the remaining three is open to discussion) and Doogie's already learned so much. Those valuable life lesson - so neatly summarized in two or three pithy sentences that reek of co-creator David E. Kelley's touch - are so easily spoofed because they are so facile. Take those away and the episodes are actually stronger. With them, the previous 22 minutes come off as little more than a live-action Davey and Goliath.

To its credit, there's no laughtrack. There's also Vinnie - the redoubtable Max Casella. Vinnie brings the funny. And thank goodness for that. The show would drown in its own treacle if not for the lifesaver that is Vinnie. He especially makes up for wet-blanket Wanda. Ugh.

Should you watch Doogie Howser? I can't possibly answer that. Before this weekend I'd have recommended it heartily based on my fond recollections. After making it through episode 23 of 26...um, well...it's still NPH. It's hard to go wrong there. Besides, the first season's pretty damn cheap. If you're the right age and have fond memories of Doogie, give it a shot. At worst, you just appreciate NPH more on HIMYM or in Harold and Kumar.

Supershort read: I Love You, Beth Cooper

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I was looking for a quick read the other day and saw this sitting on one of the sky-high piles of books to read on my nightstand. The wife had enjoyed it, the reviews were decent, and it wasn't going to take more than a few hours. Four hours later (after some interludes in which I had to actually help with an upholstery project I said I would do) I turned the final page. My life was permanently changed.

Nah. It's not earth-shattering. But it was funny, light, and compelling. All the while I was mentally casting the characters for the movie soon coming from the tortured psyche of Chris Columbus. (You remember in Multiplicity when they cloned the clone of Michael Keaton? That's how John Hughes made Chris Columbus.) In fact, it's clear from reading the book that Larry Doyle - former writer for The Simpsons, Beavis and Butthead, Daria, and more - had been shopping his screenplay around town for awhile until he got so frustrated he figured he'd prose-ify it.

Haha! Joke's on the clowns who passed before. This slight book garnered enough attention and sales to warrant more money than if they'd just bought his screenplay the first time around.

If you have a soft spot for sweet-hearted teen comedies like Can't Hardly Wait, Ten Things I Hate About You, or the classics like Sixteen Candles, you'll enjoy this book. If you find their empty calories vapid and charmless, avoid this like the plague.

Lost Tales, Found on Doorstep!

Had a crap day today. Spent most of it trying to get GWT working with a Sourceforge library that adds access to the map api. Yeah. That didn't work so well. Wouldn't build when I finally managed to get everything stitched together, and my initial assumption was yet another Mac problem. So I decided to confirm on Solaris. Right. Except GWT is built on SWT, and I decided I didn't want to work around that, too. So GWT is out.

So it was with great joy I found B5 waiting for me on my doorstep. It's been far too long since I got to enjoy these characters and these stories. Unfortunately, all I got was Sheridan¹ and Lochley. Man, how pissed is JMS at Claudia Christian that he couldn't have called her back home. Lochley. Ugh.

The efx looked good, though there was one chroma scene where the cgi guys didn't put enough depth of field into the background and it looked like an old-style rear-projection shot. Also, the exteriors were a little too video-gamy for my tastes. I'm impressed with what JMS accomplished with a small budget, but I've been spoiled by BSG: I want battle-scarred dull steel space vessels, not floating, spinning kaleidoscopes.

Clearly a lot of the budget savings on The Lost Tales were on cast. This was the definition of spartan². Seven, no eight, on-screen speaking roles and a couple of OS lines. And one of the on-screen speakers had one line. Much more like a two-act play that was filmed (with some efx) than an episode of the finest SF show ever created. There weren't even enough extras to make the station feel like its old, bustling self.

JMS used this disc as an opportunity to work on his directing skills (I guess he already had his guild card from Sleeping in Light). I hope he's picked up some good tricks to bring to bear on the next disc. And I want my damn Garibaldi story!

So, it was worth the $15 bucks. It was worth the time to watch - the low-key memorial to Andreas Katsulas and Richard Biggs would have been worth the price and time alone to me - and I recommend it to any fans. If I were to compare it to its siblings, I'd say it was better than Crusade, better than Legend of the Rangers, but worse than about 60 of the original flavor episodes.

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¹ Not to imply there's ever anything unfortunate about watching Scarecrow work. He's always a joy.
² Okay, sure. It's not the definition of Spartan. There were no Greek warriors anywhere in sight, and not once did someone get kicked in the chest by a scantily-clad dude in a beard. Also, there were chairs. A special point was made about chairs. No throw pillows, but chairs.