Review – 28 Weeks Later

With a little luck we won’t get 28 Years Later for another two or three decades. This sequel magnifies almost everything from the original. The budget is bigger. The gore is gorier. The jump-cutting is more frantic. And the lulls in the action are more boring. The one thing this isn’t is scarier. The first one had a certain indy creepiness to it. This installment is mostly just an expensive reheat of the tricks from the first go-around (with a touch of Romero’s Land of the Dead stirred in for good measure). Though I’ve certainly seen worse zombie movies, overall I thought this was somewhat uninspiring. Mildly amusing

Review – Dark Ride

So why is it that film nerds make such lousy movies? It’s clear that the guys who put this together were real cinema buffs, because the script constantly brings us mindful of movie trivia and other odds and ends that only film nerds care about. So everyone here has seen a movie or two. And yet the pacing is off, the plot twists are predictable and uninteresting, and the production suffers from a host of other amateur mistakes. Even the good parts are undone by the problems. For example, the show is set in one of those crappy carnival haunted houses, the kind you ride through in a track-traveling cart. But here some of the stuff inside is actually kinda spooky. As a more severe version of a childhood experience, it works. But then they use the same mediocre special effects when we’re actually supposed to believe that we’re looking at a real slasher victim, and at that point naturally it falls flat. Overall this gets an E for Effort but not for Execution. Mildly amusing

Since I quit watching Olbermann (part two)

Because Amy and I were loyal Olbermann viewers for some time, I feel the need to add a bit of detail to last week’s posting. We didn’t just randomly decide to quit watching his show. Indeed, in the end we made the decision because he left us with no other choice.

David Letterman used to have peculiar attacks of semi-brain-freeze. He’d get something stuck in his head, decide it was funny, and then keep repeating it over and over. This annoying tic was cleverly lampooned in a skit on Saturday Night Live in which Norm McDonald (as Letterman) repeats, “Hey, ya got any gum?” ad infinitum.

From time to time, Countdown resorted to a similar substitute for substance. There can be no doubt in the minds of loyal viewers that we share the planet with an actor who resembles the Italian prime minister, at least on a pixelated web video in which he thrusts his pelvis against a meter maid. And can a tranquilized bear be counted upon to fall out of a tree directly onto a trampoline? Apparently so.

We’ve even seen whole segments run over again lock, stock and barrel. At least part of why we’re all sick of the tranked trampoline bear is that it’s a key feature of the Animal Wing of the Countdown Hall of Fame, a segment we’ve been treated to so many times that “treat” has become more than a little ironic. I can only assume that the show’s producers do this because they have no actual news to report. Or maybe Keith just needs a coffee break in the middle of the show, and the stock footage lasts long enough for him to get in a few sips.

But the beginning of the end was a re-running of the story about the automatic weapons festival, an event that marked a new low point in Countdown’s history. The story was only two days old when viewers were treated to a second helping. This wasn’t a quick clip, either. It was a whole, long segment. It was only vaguely interesting, and by no means relevant or useful to most viewers. In other words, it wasn’t news.

However, the most serious problem with this piece was dishonesty.

One of the most hateful things about Fox News (and there are many to choose from) is the network’s reliance of a simple-minded, “us versus them” world-view. For Fox partisans the United States is divided into two groups: good Americans and pointy-headed, Democrat-voting, tree-hugging, gay-marrying, terrorist-loving liberals.

Unfortunately, this Foxgeist has an evil twin. From the opposite-yet-equally-wrong viewpoint, the “us versus them” becomes a battle between good Americans and low-brow, Republican-voting, pointy-hood-wearing, shotgun-toting, televangelist-tithing conservatives. Remove the “good American” parts, combine the two equations, and one begins to see why we’re in such a state of unrest about our national image. Living with this “liberal or conservative” false dichotomy is like being next in the “cake or death?” line just as they run out of cake.

Thus I was extremely disappointed when Countdown ran the gun story and fresh out of vocabulary to describe my reaction to the rerun. “Look at the quaint provincials!” this story seemed to say. “Don’t these NRA-cap-wearing hicks have anything better to do than blowing up old cars and shooting used appliances with machine guns? No wonder they all voted for Bush. They’re as dumb as he is.” Now that’s entertainment. Hey, let’s watch it again.

I’m a bit thick when it comes to noticing things like bias, but when it’s rubbed so liberally in my face even I take note. It left me wondering when Keith was going to balance the scales a bit. Let’s see some idiots in New York City moronically living the liberal stereotype. Shortly after the gun story ran (and then re-ran) on Countdown, the Assignment America segment on the CBS Evening News threatened viewers with the possibility of a story about commune-dwelling hippies who may actually have to get jobs now that the market for handmade hammocks is bottoming out. Tackle something like that. Reassure your viewers in the fly-over states that Countdown isn’t a big, partisan joke with us as the unfairly-stereotyped butts. If you have to do this sort of thing at all (and that’s a big if), at least spread the love around.

But no. The longer we watched the farther Olbermann slid into his new role as the Bill O’Reilly of the left wing. At first his “Special Comments” were an entertaining break from endless conversations between the host and his gang of pet pundits. But the more he did it, the more inescapable became the feeling that at any moment he was going to demand that we all go to our windows and start screaming “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore.”

And therein lies the heart of Countdown’s departure from our “to record” list. Clearly Olbermann has deluded himself into believing that he’s some kind of Edward R. Murrow for the 21st Century. And equally clearly, the network is using him as a Howard Beal for brainless liberals who need rabble-rousing mouthpieces as badly as their conservative counterparts require the likes of O’Reilly and Limbaugh.

I recognize that desire in myself. From time to time I’ve wondered what it would be like to pick up a newspaper and read a story about how three Klansmen who went missing years ago were dug out of an unmarked grave. What would it be like to learn that the racist bastards were killed by leftist locals and that nobody would ever be prosecuted for the crime?

For that reason, Olbermann had to go. Well, that and the extra 20 minutes I now have to read a book.

Review – Deja Vu

How does Denzel Washington keep ending up in these bad sci fi action movies? Wasn’t Virtuosity enough? Apparently not. To be sure, the budget is a bit bigger here and the production values are better than average. However, the plot is way dumber than most. This is another one of these time travel pictures where everything hinges on going back and changing the past. The picture holds some interest early on when it isn’t immediately clear what’s going on. Is meddling with the past is actually causing what happened rather than preventing it? Or are we once again being “treated” to that ultimate sci fi screenwriter’s canard, the parallel universe where things can come out differently than they did? Once that question’s resolved, the only remaining fun is the gun battles and the explosions. Fortunately that part of the movie is well done. Mildly amusing

Review – Pennies from Heaven

This was a risky move for Steve Martin at the height of his success, and I can see why it didn’t pay off for him. Fans of his goofy routines from Saturday Night Live and The Jerk naturally rejected this arty, not-at-all-funny production. Even those of us willing to give him a little room to branch out creatively must still recognize that this effort is far too stiff and theatrical. However, the concept is great. Martin plays a Depression-era sheet music salesman who can’t stand his go-nowhere job and his emotionally unavailable wife. He longs for a life more in tune with the frantically sunny lyrics of the era’s popular music. Martin brings this out by interrupting the straight-faced drama with fantasy musical numbers in which the actors lip-sync to the original recordings. Though the execution is weak in spots, the idea alone is actually enough to make this worth a look. Worth seeing

Since I quit watching Olbermann (part one)

Eight ways my life has changed since Amy and I took Countdown with Keith Olbermann off our Tivo list:

Suddenly I have an extra hour every evening. Well okay, more like 20 minutes. Though we originally watched the whole show, of late we’d been buzzing past most of it.

I haven’t heard Michael Musto say anything nasty about a celebrity. I actually miss Musto.

Without the Oddball segment, I’ve become ill-informed about the wacky antics of people in foreign countries and “red states.” That evens things out, because even when I did watch Oddball on a regular basis I remained uninformed about whatever wacky antics people in “blue states” might be up to.

Is John Dean still alive? I have no idea.

I no longer believe in the Bushpocalypse, the imminent demise of the W administration that Olbermann seemed quite sure was just around the corner.

On the other hand, I’ve acquired a bit more patience about the whole Bush thing. My inclination to write angry letters to politicians demanding impeachment has been replaced by a sense of “and this too shall pass.”

I’ve lost the nagging feeling that I’m watching Network without being aware of it.

And last but certainly not least, I now have no idea what Bill O’Reilly says or does. It’s pure bliss to no longer follow every misdeed of the radical right’s most meaningless factotum.

Review – The Time Machine

I loved the H.G. Wells source story when I was a kid, and I can remember feeling somewhat let down the first time I saw this movie because it didn’t conform to how I’d imagined it. However, as an adult I recognize that a movie-maker’s vision is naturally going to differ from my own imagination (which is why to this day I make a point of reading the book before seeing the movie, assuming I’m ever going to bother with the book). And youthful disappointment aside, this is a good production. George Pal’s stop-motion animation both subtracts from and adds to the picture. In spots the logic of time travel takes a back seat to the animated effect Pal wants to try. But his stuff is just so interesting to look at that it’s easy to excuse such small and occasional inconsistencies. Mildly amusing

Roh roh, Raggy! Rotten Rodcast!

One of the occasionally unpleasant parts of my job as a journalism teacher are some of the moments when a student asks me, “Do you think I can be successful at this?” That’s not an inherently awkward situation, as at least some students do in fact possess the talent to go on to illustrious careers. However, the ones I really dread are the kids who want to be sportscasters.

“Okay, here’s what you need to do,” I want to say. “Start be becoming a professional athlete. Learn to pronounce that last word with an extra syllable: ‘ath-a-lete.’ Have a career for a few years. Being a big star helps a bit but isn’t essential. Just be sure that you end up washed up, gain 50 pounds or so, and buy yourself a large collection of ugly ties that don’t go with your suits. Now you’re ready for the local news, ESPN, or any other announcer’s job that might come your way.”

Up until now, similar advice has been largely unnecessary for other journalism realms. Political commentators don’t need to have been politicians. Pundits don’t need to have done anything with their lives besides punditry. And if you want to be an entertainment journalist, it actually seems to help if you’re Ms. or Mr. Nobody-in-Particular. Just as long as you’ve got a big, toothy smile and you aren’t too fat.

But now a new danger to entertainment journalists has emerged, a threat so insidious that it could easily make the path of the sportscaster look like smooth sailing. Press junkets were never exactly the most challenging of interview opportunities, but now Entertainment Tonight has reduced them beyond absurdity. Instead of using real, live reporters, the show is now employing the M&Ms. Movie-plugging celebrities are now being interviewed by computer-animated, talking candy.

As if being an ex-jock isn’t hard enough. Now some aspiring journalists have to find a way to become imaginary pieces of chocolate.

Even more nightmarish is the notion that eventually even more high-minded news operations will tumble to the advantages offered by CGI characters. People like them, and the importance of popularity can’t be underestimated in a time when Paddy Chayevsky’s Network has gone from farce to documentary. And they’re cheap. You don’t have to provide them with health insurance or a pension plan. They don’t eat much, either.

Thus it’s only a matter of time before we see a scene like this:

VO:   This is the CBS Evening News, with the Green M&M.

GREEN:   Good evening. Tonight’s top story: more bloodshed in Iraq. Insurgents continue attacks on US and Iraqi forces in Baghdad. For the complete story, we go to our chief Iraq correspondent, computer-animated Scooby Doo. Scooby?

SCOOBY:   Rah-roh.

GREEN:   How’s the situation on the ground there? More sectarian violence?

SCOOBY:   Ruh-ruh.

GREEN:   No? Well, Scooby, we’ve got reports that several people were killed today. Is none of that happening near you somewhere?

SCOOBY:   Ruh-ruh.

GREEN:   Scooby, where are you?

SCOOBY:   Ragrad.

GREEN:   Yes, but where in Baghdad?

SCOOBY:   Reen Rone.

GREEN:   Scooby, don’t you think you should leave the Green Zone, go out into the city and get the story?

SCOOBY:   Ruh-ruh.

GREEN:   Would you do it for one Scooby Snack?

SCOOBY:   Ruh-ruh.

GREEN:   How about two Scooby Snacks?

SCOOBY:   Ruh …

And the negotiation continues.