Moviefone Copyright 2011, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc. Moviefone Good old fashioned elbow grease. The Killing of John Lennon, no one asked me the inevitable follow-up question: "What is it about?" It's pretty obvious that the title gives a good indication of what the movie's plot was going to be. But what I found is a movie that starts out as a riveting trip inside the mind of a killer, but ends up being a drawn-out history lesson that needs some re-editing, for more reasons than just length.

In the movie, written and directed by veteran British filmmaker Andrew Piddington, we follow Lennon's assassin, Mark David Chapman, as he travels from Honolulu to New York, intent on killing a man who he felt was a "phony." Chapman's life in Hawaii isn't great -- while he seems happily married, he has a floozy mom and no seeming direction in his life -- and his psychosis isn't helping; in fact, it's making him withdraw from society. He becomes fascinated with desperate characters and starts to think he's the second coming of Holden Caufield of Catcher in the Rye. He reads about Lennon's wealth and determines that he needs to kill the former Beatle. The rest of the movie shows his trips to New York to stalk the former Beatle in front of his home at the Dakota, the act, and the aftermath.

Jonas Ball, in his first movie role, plays Chapman in all his massive-aviator-glasses glory, playing the calculating madman as a combination of Napoleon Dynamite and Travis Bickle. He shows Chapman to be as creepily human as the next person in most of the narrative scenes, while in scenes that are more stream-of-consciousness, he effectively conveys the internal meltdown an already unstable Chapman was experiencing.

Piddington, in the Q&A after the movie, said he studied news reports from the time period as well as depositions and other legal reports collected in the conspiracy book Who Killed John Lennon? in order to write the movie (he doesn't believe in the conspiracy, but was impressed with the book's treasure trove of information). He claims that no event made it into the screenplay that wasn't corroborated from three different sources. Indeed, the scenes leading up to and including the killing are well-done, taking the viewer inside Chapman's head and building tension toward an event that everyone knows is coming. He effectively uses home-movie flashbacks and other devices to show what Chapman's thinking at a particular time.

Unfortunately, after the killing is where the movie gets bogged down. We see Chapman give interviews, we see him tell people that he performed the murder in order to promote Catcher, we even see him get a prison exorcism. After the climax of Lennon's murder, the half-hour or so of the aftermath just feels like a long wrap-up. Also, we leave Chapman's head through much of this portion of the film, seeing him from the outside instead of the inside. It makes it feel like there's two different movies, and the product of the two of them together is about twenty minutes too long.

Another big problem with the film is some glaring anachronisms in the scenes where Chapman walks around New York. I was going to harp on this more, but Piddington acknowledged that this was an early cut of the movie; some of the street scenes, which he couldn't really do much about during filming due to budgetary reasons, seemed more glaringly anachronistic on screen than he initially thought during the editing process. It really did look like a lot of the scenes were filmed with no permits on open streets; the film takes place in 1980, yet we see modern cars and street signs throughout.

He may be able to fix some of those scenes digitally, but he's going to have to cut out some of the Times Square scenes in the movie completely; the 2007 version of Times Square Chapman stands is in no way close to the Times Square the real Chapman would have stood in twenty-seven years ago. Instead of big neon banners and Jumbotrons, he would have been standing under peep show signs and grindhouse theater marquees. There's no amount of digital manipulation he could do to fix that.

The anachronisms do take you out of the movie's reality for a bit, but the overall length is really what grinds the viewer down. I'll be curious to see if Piddington's next cut of The Killing of John Lennon is shorter with less obvious mistakes in the period setting. If it is, he'll have one of the best movies of the year. As it is, it's still a worthy viewing, just one that would be midway down your Netflix list.]]> Sat, 5 May 2007 17:51:20 EDT 47751 Before I went to my Friday screening, I decided to stop at the Tribeca/ASCAP Music Lounge. Wendy wrote about the vibe there earlier in the week, and Friday's final edition was no different. It was relaxed, social, and -- unlike most club shows I've been to in the last few years -- brightly lit and easy to get around (must be my middle age creeping in).

Anyway, I wanted to post about it to show you these grainy pictures I took with my cell phone. They're of singer-songwriter Ben Lee, who opened Friday's show, standing on top of the Canal Room's bar, leading the already large crowd in a sing-along. Lee has collaborated with fellow troubadours (and Bens) Ben Folds and Ben Kweller, and his songs have been heard on shows like Grey's Anatomy and Weeds. He had a few goofy songs in his set, like "What Would Jay-Z Do?" and a few others, and the crowd was receptive. But for his finale, he unplugged his acoustic (causing a loud pop that probably meant his amp blew a fuse), hopped on the bar, and asked the crowd to join him.

"It's 4:00 in the afternoon and you're drinking, so there's no shame in your singing along," he said.

Sure enough, when he got to the refrain of his song, "we're all in this together," just about everyone joined him. It was a rousing end to a fun set. I wanted to see more, but I had to hotfoot it downtown to see The Killing of John Lennon at Pace University. But I'm sure none of the other acts used the bar as an alternate stage. Here's another pic:



]]> Sat, 5 May 2007 16:58:15 EDT 47748 Chasing 3000, and I was rewarded for my patience.

I've never been much for family films, but as a baseball fan, this story intrigued me. Not many people outside of baseball fandom know much about Roberto Clemente, even though he was arguably among the best to ever play the game. He was a true five-tool player who not only became a legend around Pittsburgh (he played for the Pirates), but also become known as a humanitarian; a few months after getting his 3000th hit on the last day of the 1972 season, he died in a plane crash while transporting relief supplies to earthquake victims in Nicaragua. This film, directed by Greg Lanesey from an original story by Bill Mikita, pays loving tribute to Clemente via passages from his autobiography and archival footage from late in his career.

But this is mostly a story of two brothers and a road trip neither would forget. Mickey (Trevor Morgan) and Roger (Rory Culkin) are children of Pittsburgh and Clemente admirers. But halfway through the 1972 season, their mother (Lauren Holly - has she gotten to the "mom roles" stage of her career already?) moves them out to Los Angeles so Roger, who has respiratory problems brought on by muscular dystrophy, won't get sick as much. Mickey especially feels out of sorts; he's slumping on his high school baseball team and feels that he's disappearing within his own family. So, while the mother is away on a business trip he decides to drive back to Pittsburgh during the last week of the baseball season, hoping to witness Clemente's 3000th hit in person. Despite a worsening cough, Roger decides to join them.

Of course, as in most road movies, the trip doesn't go smoothly. And that's where most movies like this are made or broken: are the adventures the two people go through plausible and entertaining, and how does the relationship between the "buddies" on the trip help carry them through? This movie succeeds on both points. Yes, there are a few points along the journey that would make an adult roll their eyes -- namely the motorcycle gang with a heart of gold -- but the kids that were in the audience seemed engaged with the story, which is the movie's aim. But there is an easygoing chemistry between Morgan and Culkin that makes you really believe that they're brothers. Culkin should be especially commended for playing a physically difficult role; he effectively conveys both the emotional difficulty and stoic determination a kid who's in his condition -- Roger learns that most people with his form of MD don't graduate high school -- usually displays, just trying to live his life as normally as possible.

The movie has plenty of good performances, especially M. Emmet Walsh as nutty farmer, Tania Raymonde as a Reds-hat-wearing runaway, and Seymour Cassel as the brothers' Old World grandfather back in Pittsburgh.

Ray Liotta plays a grown-up version of Mickey in present-day segments that wrap around the story, and in the Q&A after the screening, both Lanesey and Mikita acknowledged that Liotta's interest in the project helped get the movie a bigger budget. "The money without Liotta was a lot different than the money with Liotta," said Lanesey. It allowed them to afford the license fees Major League Baseball and the MLB Players Association charged for the archival footage and imagery of Clemente. There were also over 200 special effects, so the period aspect of the movie could be preserved; they're fairly successful, as I only spotted one or two minor anachronistic details. According to Lanesey, both MLB and the Clemente family were very happy with the resulting product.

Mikita wrote the story back in 1999, based on the love he and his brother Steve, who has the same rare form of MD, had for Clemente and the Pirates. They took a similar trip from their home in Steubenville, Ohio to Pittsburgh to see Clemente play, and during the rewrite stage, the story became a cross-country trip. According to Mikita, his brother is a medical miracle, the only person with his form of MD to survive into his fifties. Jay Karnes of The Shield plays the adult version of Roger in the movie, and he called up Steve and talked to him to get an idea of how he lives now. It comes through in his brief performance; he may only be able to move a finger, but he's just happy to still be alive and see the Pirates at their new home in PNC Park (I've been there; it's my favorite ballpark in the country and deserved the lush cinematic treatment Lanesey gave it).

Chasing 3000 is one of the rare family movies that effectively engages both adults and kids. One warning for parents: there's more swearing than I expected in a movie like this. While the script takes pains to insert curse substitutes like "jagoff," the s-word seems to be liberally sprinkled through the movie. It's nothing that a ten year old (the recommended minimum age the festival has for this movie) hasn't heard before, and it gives the movie a more realistic feel. But any parent thinking there will be nothing more severe than a random "damn" or "hell" in this flick will be in for a surprise.

The entire premiere of Chasing 3000 was an enjoyable experience: a fine movie, a creative team passionate about the story, and fairly well-behaved kids. It was a good way to end a long day at Tribeca.

For more HuffPost coverage of the 2007 Tribeca Film Festival, go here.

]]> Tue, 1 May 2007 11:15:01 EDT 47358 Lovesickness (Maldeamores), directors Carlitos Ruiz Ruiz and Mariem Perez explore this illness via three stories that take place around Puerto Rico. The film debuted at Tribeca on Friday.

While the story threads of Lovesickness do not meet at any point in the film, Ruiz and Perez intersperse scenes from each story throughout the film, shifting the viewer smoothly from story to story and back again. The stories all involve love triangles of one form or another. In the best-acted and most well-formed story, 72-year-old Flora (Silvia Brito) suddenly finds she has two men competing for her love: her grouchy ex, Cirilo (Chavito Marrero), with whom she shares a house, and her charming first ex, Pellín (Miguel Ángel Álvarez), who left her 35 years ago. Pellín comes to stay with them at the house he still technically co-owns (but Cirilo is proud to say that he "owns the furniture") and all sorts of childish games break loose as the two men fight over Flora.

As with most stories involving love among the elderly, the reaction is inevitably the same as if the audience saw a basket full of puppies and kittens: "Awww, that's so adorable!" But there's some real angst and sadness within this triangle, mainly because all three participants realize that this may be the last fling any of them has. It's well-acted -- especially the uncomfortable soup slurping Cirilo and Flora do throughout the film -- funny, and really puts the viewer in the position of rooting for either gentleman to get the girl, even if that girl is old enough to be that viewer's grandmother.

The other two stories aren't as well-developed, but are entertaining. In one story, a woman named Lourdes (Theresa Hernández) inadvertently finds out on the way to her grandmother's funeral that her husband Ismael (Luis Guzmán, probably the only actor in this movie American audiences would recognize) and her cousin Tati (Ednali Figueroa) are having an affair. In the third story, Miguel (Luis Gonzaga) a lonely man henpecked by his over-attentive mother, takes an entire bus hostage so he can marry Marta (Dolores Pedro), the driver he has obsessively loved from afar.

There are elements of both stories that are enjoyable: Ismael's son Ismaelito (Fernando Tarazzo) is fun to watch as he passes judgment on his father's affair, as well as his sweet little-kid attempts to get to know his cousin better. The hostage story has the least-satisfying and least-amusing story arc, but the crushing loneliness suffered by Miguel is palpable; he sort of reminded me, both emotionally and physically, of Vince D'Onofrio's character of Private Pyle in Full Metal Jacket, and the notion that he may turn violent at any second carried me through the very thin plot.

Lovesickness is sweet and sad all at once. But if you've ever suffered through unrequited love, the stories will ring true with you, at least in some part of your psyche.

For more HuffPost coverage of the 2007 Tribeca Film Festival, go here.
]]> Tue, 1 May 2007 09:50:23 EDT 47347 West 32nd, which I saw at that the Lowes; even though much the movie takes place only a few blocks away from where I was sitting, it might as well have been half a world away.

West 32nd, which premiered on Saturday, is a slick production that was directed and co-written by Michael Kang, who has been writing about his festival experience for HuffPost. In it, John Kim (John Cho, best known as Harold from the Harold & Kumar movies), a young Korean-American lawyer who's more American than Korean, tries to make headway at his law firm by taking a pro bono capital case, defending a 14-year-old accused of murdering the manager of a Korean "salon room" club. In order to help exonerate his client, he begins to get involved in the Korean underworld that has its roots both in Queens and in the Manhattan's Koreatown, which centers around 32nd Street. Kim tries to get in the head of Mike Juhn (Jung Sun Kim), a brash but smart up-and-comer in the "business" world he inhabits.

What's interesting about the movie, besides it's effective use of both Korean and English to convey how the people in this hierarchy are upholding a lot of Korean traditions as second- and third-generation Americans, is how very little in the movie is black and white. Kim begins to fall for his client's beautiful sister Lila (Grace Park of Battlestar Galactica), affecting his judgment. He also seems to be both enamored and disgusted with the antics of Juhn and his crew; Kim wonders if he would be part of that crew -- drinking, womanizing and getting into fights -- if his parents didn't detach him from the Korean community by moving away from Queens. Juhn isn't a pure molten-evil bad guy, either; he's making his way and trying to advance in his field, just like Kim. It just so happens that Juhn's field happens to involve illegal and violent acts. Suki (Jane Kim), one of the escorts that work Juhn's club, wants to see justice done, but for reasons of love rather than hate. And even the movie's resolution defies standard Hollywood conventions, showing how people sometimes compromise themselves to get to a particular result.

In many respects, West 32nd is a traditional mystery, albeit one with a hip-hop soundtrack and a fair amount of action. It's not as much a whodunit as a "who's protecting who" kind of mystery, with misdirections and plot twists that the viewer should be able to follow without much difficulty. There are a couple of plot holes that confuse matters a little, and one hole that really might make you say "oh, come on!" when you see it. But Kang does an entertaining job of showing audience aspects of a society that New Yorkers, much less Americans, don't know much about.

For more HuffPost coverage of the 2007 Tribeca Film Festival, go here.
]]> Mon, 30 Apr 2007 11:58:02 EDT 47264 Heckler, which opened at Tribeca on Thursday. However, he did just the opposite. It's an entertaining film with good intentions, but it ends up being a self-indulgent slam at critics everywhere, lumping in the bad ones with ones that are actually good at their jobs.

Right off the bat, people who may eventually want to see this movie need to know something: If you're expecting to see 80 minutes examining the psyche of the heckler, you're going to be disappointed. Kennedy and a slew of his fellow stand-up comedians -- Joe Rogan, Harlan Williams, Roseanne Barr, Louie Anderson, George Wallace and Dave Attell are just a sampling of the folks he spoke to -- start the movie by discussing why drunken hecklers do what they do, how they disrupt a show, and how to deal with them. These interviews are inter-cut with scenes of heckling, mostly people who yell at Kennedy during his stand-up gigs, though he also inserts other famous incidents, like a Bill Hicks meltdown at a woman who had the temerity to say "you suck" during his routine. Kennedy also confronts a few sets of hecklers backstage, effectively pointing out to the audience that a) these people really do think they know more about comedy than a professional like Kennedy does and b) they don't have anything more constructive to say beyond their heckles.

But about fifteen or so minutes in to the 80-minute movie, Kennedy and director Michael Addis move from the hecklers in the audience to the hecklers in print: critics. Don't get me wrong; in this day and age, when any idiot (including me) can get on the web and take potshots at people's creations, many critics are no better than the drunks hurling insults at the guy standing in front of that brick wall in the comedy club who's just trying to make people laugh.

Like he does with the hecklers, Kennedy confronts the more vitriolic critics who not only panned some of his poorly-reviewed movies (Son of the Mask, Malibu's Most Wanted), but got extreme and personal. Predictably, he makes most of those critics, who mostly toil for obscure web sites or alt-weeklies, look like know-nothing wannabes.

There's only one critic who really deserves the treatment: Peter Grumbine of Giant magazine, who confronted Kennedy about his comedic rap CD on G4's Attack of the Show, saying the album was so bad that it was more offensive to African-Americans than slavery* and calling Kennedy a "rape baby." In a backstage confrontation, Grumbine seems to take unfettered glee in giving Kennedy his comeuppance, illustrating Kenndy's point that sometimes critics criticize for no apparent reason than they just simply dislike the person they're criticizing.

All of it was interesting and entertaining, especially some of the stories Kennedy's colleagues (and movie industry folks like director Joel Schumacher) tell about the silly heckles and criticisms they've gotten over the years. And from time to time, the interviewees do acknowledge that a) critics do help people figure out what to watch, listen to, and buy, and b) knowledgeable, constructive criticism is useful. But, at a certain point, after the umpteenth person mentions how most critics are just losers who have no business saying anything about their precious work, you start to wonder why Kennedy and Addis haven't gone back to talking about hecklers. Was there not enough material to make more than a short about those people? Or did Kennedy really want to take the opportunity to stick it to every critic who ever wrote anything bad about him?

About halfway through the movie, Heckler really becomes more about "Jamie's Revenge" than a funny examination of a part of the comedy experience that everyone from the performer to the audience hates: the drunken idiot who feels he or she needs to be a part of the show.

There are other minor flaws: seemingly spontaneous conversations between Kennedy and his opening act and other buddies sound at least moderately scripted. Also, segments where slasher-flick magnate Uwe Boll beats the crap out of critics who volunteered to box him in Montreal as well as a dancer who has had to fight through criticism are nothing but filler. There is an really good forty-five minute movie somewhere in Heckler; if Kennedy somehow was able to squelch his own anger even a little, he might have had a good eighty-minute movie.

*Grumbine wrote me to correct his quote. I originally had written that he said the album was more offensive to African-Americans than slavery.

For more HuffPost coverage of the 2007 Tribeca Film Festival, go here.

]]> Mon, 30 Apr 2007 10:57:28 EDT 47254 If you're a fan of Frank Miller, Art Spiegelman, Robert Crumb, or any other artist of "adult" graphic novels, you probably already know who Will Eisner is. But for those of us who aren't comic book fanatics, Eisner's story is still pretty fascinating, from his youth as part of a lower-class Jewish family in New York to his constant innovations in the comic arts. His story is told in Will Eisner: Portrait of a Sequential Artist, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival on Thursday.

I will admit this right now: I'm not a comic book reader. The extent of my comic book knowledge consists of enjoying Sin City two years ago and being a childhood fan of those dopey "Spidey" comics that were shown on The Electric Company. But I'm always interested in learning about a person who was influential to any art form, whether it's painting or sculpture or music or photography. And Eisner was more than just influential, as he was not only one of the first comic artists to base a periodic feature on a non-superhero and pioneered the use of comic art for industrial and corporate purposes, but he was also one of the first to use a more book-like format for his stories, even coining the now-familiar term "graphic novel."

Via a series of interviews with Eisner, who died in 2005, his wife Ann, and a number of his colleagues, a picture is painted of a man who always wanted to draw, even when he was growing up poor on the Lower East Side and other parts of New York City. But he had the wherewithal to know that comics were as much as business as an art. So, while he was in his twenties, he co-founded the Eisner & Iger, a company that had a stable of young artists crank out material for pulp magazines.

He then sold his half of the company and started drawing "The Spirit," a classic comic series that was inserted into Sunday newspapers. It was one of the first comics whose hero -- Denny Colt, a masked criminologist -- had no super powers, and it was also one of the first to explore grown-up themes and go in dark, noirish directions. Many of today's most influential comic artists, from Spiegelman to Miller and many others, cite "The Spirit" as one of their greatest influences.

Later in life, after spending his middle age drawing for military instructional manuals and other industrial and corporate publications, Eisner drew the first "graphic novel," A Contract With God and Other Tenement Stories, after the death of his teenage daughter. It, too revolutionized the form, allowing artists like Miller to think of comics as something "that can go on the shelf and stay there."

Director Andrew D. Cooke does a good job of mixing talking-head interviews -- with the likes of Jules Feiffer, who worked on "The Spirit," Spiegelman, Miller, Michael Chabon, and even the late Kurt Vonnegut, among other notables of multiple generations -- with audio tape interviews Eisner did in the eighties with the big comic artists of the early 20th century, including Milton Caniff and Harvey Kurtzman. He also gives non-comic viewers a good indication of what Eisner's work was like, from the brightly-colored, cinematic drawings of "The Spirit," to black-and-white biographical drawings that show how Eisner was able to draw characters that were cartoonish and realistic all at once.

The movie drags in a spot or two, mostly when Eisner and others are exploring why many comic artists from that time period were of Jewish heritage, but a fascinating exploration of Eisner's use of Ebony, a very stereotypical African-American character in "The Spirit," makes up for it. In this day and age of ultra-PC sensitivity, seeing a minstrelized character like Ebony in a mainstream comic is shocking. But Cooke effectively explores the from both sides; Eisner felt he was just going along with the times, while slightly younger and more liberal artists like Feiffer expressed discomfort with having to draw such a character.

The sign of any good documentary is if it makes a person who wasn't a die-hard fan of the subject or genre it's exploring want to learn more. And Portrait does just that. I definitely plan on seeing the movie version of "The Spirit" that Miller is set to direct. And, because of this, I may even read the comic first. That's saying a lot.

[Cover of "The Spirit" from WillEisner.com] ]]> Sat, 28 Apr 2007 11:00:24 EDT 47114 Jeopardy! games in a row from June to December 2004, is a pretty funny guy. In fact, he has shown he has quite a dry and somewhat cynical sense of humor, as he has been demonstrating on his blog since June.

A particularly funny piece was an open letter he wrote last week to his benefactors at the venerable game show, giving them suggestions to help improve it. For instance, he says they should take the excalmation point off the name of the show: "[T]his is a subtler time. Do you really think that, today, Best Picture Oscars would have gone to Million Dollar Baby! and Crash! ? Certainly not. Change the punctuation and suddenly they look like Blake Edwards movies." It just sounded like he was having goofy fun with the show that gave him all that fame and fortune, sort of along the lines of someone saying "I kid because I love," something he indicated at the end of the post.

But you wouldn't get that impression if you read about it at the Associated Press. "'Jeopardy' champ Ken Jennings blasts game show" was the headline that ran with the AP article, which went on to state that Jennings "has a few unkind words to say about the show." When I saw that, I went back to the blog entry, thinking I read it wrong. But I still didn't see a trace of bitterness or any sense that he was "blasting" the show. But then one of my colleagues at TV Squad posted a note about an article by New York Post entertainmet writer Michael Starr which takes quotes from Jennings' blog entry out of context, then concludes that Jennings was biting the hand that fed him. It made me wonder from where exactly the AP had gotten their story.

So I called the AP to find out. I spoke to Media Relations Manager Jack Stokes and asked if the reporter had read Jennings' blog entry in full. He told me he'd get back to me; within the hour, I got this response from entertainment editor Jesse Washington: "While Jennings' comments are obviously meant to be humorous, his jokes had more than a little bite to them. We tried to reflect that in our story, although our choice of the word 'blasts' in the headline was unfortunate. And we updated the story a few hours later with Jennings explanation of his posting."

Fair enough. But nothing in the original AP story indicated that the piece was humorous. For instance, when they mention his obviously tongue-in-cheek line about how Alex Trebek "died in that fiery truck crash a few years back and was immediately replaced with the Trebektron 4000," they presented it as if Jennings wrote it with deadly serious intentions. The only nod to the fact that it was a humor essay was given by Jennings himself, when they added his reaction from his blog.

This isn't the first time this year an entertainment figure has had the AP misrepresent him: When Howard Stern gave an interview to Entertainment Weekly a few months ago, he half-jokingly mentioned that many members of his old terrestrial radio audience were too cheap to buy Sirius to listen to him. The interview even indicated that Howard laughed when he said it. But according to the AP, Howard was "angry" with these people, even going so far as giving their report the headline "Howard Stern Lashes Out at Some Fans." To me, laughing while you crack a joke is not the definition of "lashing out." It makes no sense in the fuller context of the interview, and it gives me the impression that the AP used the more controversial reported quotes without bothering to check the context, even though the full interview containing the quote was available on-line from the second it was published.

In that case, the AP didn't issue a retraction, clarification, or correction. Nor did they do so in the case of Stephen Colbert, whom they failed to credit with popularizing the term "truthiness" when they reported on the word's selection as Word of the Year by the American Dialect Society.

So, what's going on with the AP? Are they in such a hurry to beat bloggers like us to the best news that they don't perform their journalistic duties, especially in the realm of entertainment news? Or are these just three isolated cases of misinterpretation? People trust the AP to give them the straight story, and these three incidents are worrisome to me. Despite the proliferation of instant news in the form of rumor-rife blogs and smoke-blowing pundit shows, people still want something that resembles the thoroughly reported, unvarnished facts that the wire services can bring. Believe it or not, people sometimes still want the truth and not "truthiness."]]> Wed, 26 Jul 2006 16:33:57 EDT 25868 When I heard that George Carlin and Ann Coulter were going to be appearing together on The Tonight Show Wednesday night, I got excited. Finally, I thought, there's something on TV this summer that's worth giving the HuffPost treatment! I have to admit, it's been a slow summer thus far; after the intesnse slate of season finales and the upfronts, there was little to grasp onto besides lame "reality" shows and Brangelina's baby.

But this? This was going to be a show! Coulter, the conservative screecher who seems to have built a career on controversial remarks, and Carlin, the aging hippie comic genius whose act has gotten so corrosive lately that he's now only funny half the time? It was going to be a bloodbath!

Anyone who's seen Ann Coulter in action knows why she can be explosive; she likes to say things to piss liberals off. You know, little things, like calling the the 9/11 widows "broads" who are "enjoying their husbands' deaths." She's classified liberals as hairy lesbians and thinks that they're eschewing traditional religion for the "religion of global warming." Similarly, George Carlin is not afraid to speak his mind: In the last ten years, he has told comedy audiences that religion is for idiots, the human race is killing itself off, and the government is so corrupt that it can't be trusted (like I said, he hasn't exactly been a barrel of laughs lately). He likes to riff off the colloquialisms we use every day, and it seemed like he'd be the perfect person to hone in on Coulter's rhetoric and mock it.

Plus Tonight, unlike most late-night shows, encourages interaction between guests. Even though it's not a debate show, Jay Leno has been willing in the past to have guests have it out with each other, usually in an attempt to get easy laughs. I was hoping to see the same thing from Carlin and Coulter, with Ann making a remark about liberal pigs, and George calling her a word that has to be bleeped. Even if it was just a two-shot of Carlin pointing at Ann and making a gesture saying "she's nuts", it would have been enough for me.

Alas, it was not to be. The two were extremely chummy with each other. After cracking a lame joke about "moving to the right," Carlin didn't say a word as Annie regurgitated her usual "liberals are evil" schtick.

That's how Coulter's prattle sounded to me: like it was schtick. An act. Which made me realize something: Carlin was silent because he was sitting back and appreciating Coulter's performance! Yes, Jay or NBC could have told Coulter and Carlin to not mix it up. But I tend to think that Carlin knew that Coulter was just saying what she was saying not to be evil, but to get an audience reaction. It's not that much different than what he's been doing for fifty years; it's just that he tries to get laughs and Coulter tries to get applause (or booing). So he just sat back and gave a fellow performer some room to do her stuff.

If you don't believe me, look at tapes of Coulter when she was on Politically Incorrect in the late nineties. Yes, she was conservative. Yes, she was a bit harsh in her opinions. But, back then, she really was known more for being a "hot blond conservative" than for having the extreme opinions she spews now. This "nutty Annie" act is a relatively recent wrinkle for her. I have to admit, though, that it's worked. Look at the coverage she got, for instance, after the remarks from her book about the "Jersey Girls" hit the papers. If she had just made her larger point, that Democrats trot out victims to support their agenda so people can't argue with them, without making that off-the-wall statement, do you think she'd be on every talk show known to man right now? I didn't think so.

(Not that what she did was right, of course. But everyone seeking fame has got to find their own path to it. If it costs her a piece of her conscience, that's Ann's problem, not ours.)

So Carlin knew that it wasn't the time to pick a fight. Though, right before Leno went to commercial break, the cameras did catch George rubbing his hands and blowing into them, as if to say "Jeez, she's a cold bitch." But it could have just been cold in the studio. Read into it what you will.

Either way, all I know is this: I'll never tape Leno again. Unless Lauren Graham is on. I'll always make an exception for Lauren Graham.]]> Thu, 15 Jun 2006 16:10:04 EDT 23079
Nowadays? Not so much.

How do I know this? Well, a look at the overnight ratings from Monday, when President Bush made his address about his new immigration policy, shows that people were more interested in seeing the finales of Grey's Anatomy and How I Met Your Mother than finding out about how Bush was going to stem the tide of illegal immigration. The network ratings for the night increased sharply after the 8:00 hour, which is when the country knew Bush's speech would air. It's almost as if people avoided TV like the plague until 8:30 or so, then decided to peek back in to see if the "important" shows were back on.

(Ironically, ratings on the all-news channels were up sharply from Bush's last address in December. This tells me that the people who were actually interested in what Bush had to say sought out the news networks and their extended coverage. It makes me wonder if this is the way things are going to go for future addresses.)

Indeed, when I did my TV Squad recap post of Sunday night's episode of Grey's, there were a number of commenters who were genuinely concerned that Bush's speech would delay the Monday season finale, which was scheduled to air at 9, after an Oprah special. Luckily, ABC decided to move Oprah to next Monday and just reran the Sunday Grey's, which they joined in progress after the 18-minute address. But the concern on the part of the viewers was palpable, and surprising, considering how Presidential addresses used to rivet the nation, no matter what they were pre-empting.

It makes me wonder about how we got to this point as a country, where the general viewing public is more concerned that a Presidential speech is going to screw up their TiVos than about the content of the speech itself. It could be that people in general are less concerned with politics than we in the media think they are; after 2004's "high" 64% voter turnout, this should no longer be a surprise.

But what this could be is that the Bush administration's notorious tight-lippedness, combined with a boy-who-cried-wolf-ism that rankles people on both sides of the ideological fence, is finally catching up with them. This wasn't an address about an invasion or a major natural disaster, it was about an issue that has been in the spotlight for the last couple of years, so the timing of the speech was curious. Even new press secretary Tony Snow let slip that "this is crunch time" and that Bush felt it was a good time to address this issue with the nation. But why was it a good time? Because Bush's approval ratings are at an all-time low, that's why. It's not exactly a rallying cry, is it?

It's gotten to the point that Americans are seeing every Bush speech as a vehicle for him to push an agenda rather than a concerted effort to allay the concerns of the public. Not that Bush is the first President to do this; agenda-pushing speeches are as old as politics itself. But it seems like his adminsitration does it more than most. It's hard to believe that at one time -- which now seems like aeons ago -- he was able to make speeches that caught people's attention and galvanized the country at the same time.

Maybe that's why people care more about Grey's Anatomy than a Presidential address. They figure if they're going to be bullshitted, they'd rather watch pretty people do the bullshitting.]]> Thu, 18 May 2006 15:26:47 EDT 21227 but shorts? It's an odd feeling, I'll tell you that; you go from happy to angry to bored in the span of two hours.

At least that's what I felt when I went to see the Tribeca Film Festival's Observation Deck, a series of six documentary shorts that explored a number of varied topics using a number of different styles.

First up was a Swedish short called Never Like The First Time!, directed by Jonas Odell, which uses animation to illustrate four real people's stories about the first time they had sex. Each story was animated in a different style reflective of the story; for instance, a male describing his triumphant teenaged deflowering at a party was drawn in a lighthearted manner, using colors and comedic-looking (well, for Sweden, anyway) figures, while a story about a girl being possibly raped after a night of drinking used more life-like pictures and menacing black-and-white tones. It was an enjoyable, if fairly inconsequential, short; in all four segments, the animation was remarkable, but the stories behind the animation weren't anything more interesting than the stories you'd hear if you asked your friends about their first times. In all, a good way to kick off the screening.

Next was In a Single Bound, which was the movie that I specifically went to Observation Deck to see. Directed by Ross Marroso, it's a straight-ahead documentary look at the history of Superman, from it's creation by boyhood friends Joe Shuster and Jerry Siegel in 1933. Through interviews with Superman historians like Jim Hambrick and famous comic artists like Jerry Ordway and Alex Ross, the audience learns about how Superman came to be, his transformation over the years, his depiction in just about every major medium from the last seventy years.

Marroso has his interviewees also talk a little about the problems Shuster and Siegel encountered after DC Comics marketed Superman to the hilt during the 40's, and didn't pay them a cent from those profits. The dispute over that money led DC to take both of their names off the comic. Both men fell on hard times over the next thirty-plus years, until Warner Brothers, who then owned DC, gave them benefits and a pension right before the Christopher Reeve movie came out.

But the movie doesn't really explore that dark side of Superman all that much, something that Marroso acknowledged during the post-screening Q&A. The initial cut, which was over an hour, explored the "Superman curse" which affected various people who were in the Superman movies and shows, from George Reeves' mysterious death to Chris Reeve's paralysis (he does have Noel Neil and Jack Larson from the old TV series reflect on Reeve, which is one of the best parts of the movie), but it was taken out. A little of that information would have given the doc more depth than the cursory look he gave in the finished product. Also, there's too little reflection of how Superman remained popular despite ever-changing views on what "truth, justice, and the American way" actually is. Oh, and, for some reason, the film ignores the existence of Lois & Clark, Smallville, and the new movie Superman Returns, which is set to come out this summer. An hour isn't too much to explore an American icon that's been around for 70 years, and Marroso should have stayed with that format (even if he couldn't enter it in the festival as a short...).

The audience was then taken from super heroes to true-to-life war video games. In Playing The News, fillmakers Jeff Plunkett and Jigar Mehta profiles gaming company KUMA, who creates realistic Iraq war video games based on news accounts and satellite maps of the terrain. Their war game, KUMA\WAR, is constantly being updated by the company; in fact, the movie shows that they had their module based on the 2004 battle for Fallujah created and ready for download before the city was even secured. The filmmakers try to balance the view of the creators and gamers -- along with some experts, like an MIT professor and a reporter from The Economist -- that the games give people a much better view of the Iraq war than the news media has been able to give, with the view from war reporter Phillip Robertson, who feel that no video game can capture the human element and toll involved in war.

But the scenes of the KUMA VP of product development cooly placing insurgents and I.E.D.s into the game scenario, along with two gamers playing the battle online like it's a game of Halo, just made me angry. It's bad enough that first-person shooter games like Doom have desensitized people to the acts of firing weapons and being in battle, but to reduce a real battle -- filled with real anxiety, real fear, and real suffering -- to something that can be played by two anti-social nerds on their laptops does a disservice to the real soldiers that are fighting and dying over there as we speak. And, as fair as the filmmakers tried to be, that point of view still seeped through in the final product. If that's the message they wanted to convey, they did their job.

Of the remaining three movies, the only one that gave me any kind of pause was Lea Rekow's A Long Struggle, which used a combination of frantic hidden camera footage and interviews with refugees to tell the story of the Karen, an ethnic Burmese minority who are constanly forced to flee through the jungle from the corrupt and drug-addled Burmese army. Rekow took a major risk in going into the country to film the plight of these people, and her work is both powerful and painful at the same time. The scenes of happy Burmese interspersed with shots of mangled and blooddied bodies of the Karen is especially harrowing. It is yet another reminder that no matter what's going on here, there are people in the world who have things much, MUCH worse than we do.

She Rhymes Like a Girl was a nice little music video/documentary, directed by JT Takagi, about a group of women who are trying to encourage other women to express themselves via hip-hop. It was only seven minutes, so the film didn't go into the program in-depth, but it was a nice respite from the horrors shown in the previous film.

Finally, the screening ended with Mariners and Musicians, a far-too-long film that combined the words and music of Roseanne Cash with grainy art-school shots of bridges and trees and flowers. Don't get me wrong, Cash's music is beautiful and her history -- her relationship with her father Johnny and her stepmother June Carter , not really touched on here -- is interesting. But the indecipherable, mystical ruminations that she gives here, combined with the slow and pretentious music videos, made this movie seem endless. I saw many people leave during this film and never come back. I wish I was one of them.]]> Fri, 5 May 2006 14:04:46 EDT 20439 scientist starts explaining why he believes in I.D., I listen, because, coming out of a scientist's mouth, the concept almost makes sense.

But then I think about it some more, and I usually end up coming to the same conclusion: that they're all full of crap.

That's the conclusion filmmaker Randy Olson comes to in his entertaining documentary A Flock of Dodos: The Evolution - Intelligent Design Circus, which opened at the Tribeca Film Festival on Sunday. But, considering Olson comes right out at the beginning of the movie and talks about his previous life as an evolutionary ecologist, you know where he is coming from in the debate, anyway. What Olson tries to demonstrate in his film, though, is that both sides of the evolution/I.D. debate have their issues. While the I.D. folks have really no scientific basis for their argument and are doing the public a disservice by trying to push the issue into public school cirricula, the evolutionists are communicating their message poorly, or as Olson says, they're "handicapped with their blind obsession with the truth."

Olson, who thought of the idea for the movie after reading a New Yorker article about scientists that support I.D., sought to illustrate the debate mostly through the story of the Kansas state school board's decision to teach I.D. in the public schools. Since Kansas is Olson's home state, he takes this story to heart, dragging both an old Kansas University friend and his mother -- a free-spirited 82-year-old that is affectionally dubbed Muffy Moose -- into the story. Both are there to feed Olson information and help with the interviews, as his mother does with one of the evolution supporters on the Kansas board. But he also interviews some of the more conservative members of the board, including an ardent I.D. supporter, Kathy Martin, and he seems to enjoy her company, even though he doesn't agree with her stance.

Indeed, one of the movie's strengths is that Olson treats the supporters of Intelligent Design with the utmost respect, even though, as he says it, that I.D. can't be taught as an alternate theory to Darwinism because it is "stalled out at the intuition stage." He is charmed by I.D. advocate John Calvert (a Kansas neighbor of his mom's), despite the fact that he comes away from the interview with an unchanged mind. He gently debates with leading I.D. scientists such as Michael Behe and Jack Cashell, and actually lets them make their argument, mainly that there are structures out there that are too complex to be explained by the slow progression of evolution, a theory called "irreducible complexity". Because of this, something or someone had to design these structures, according to these scientists.

But he quickly counters their arguments with those of professors who demonstrate that there is no intelligence in some biological design. Some of Olson's friends demonstrate this by showing a pet rabbit eating its own poop, something it needs to do in order to complete the digestion process. Other scientists, such Steven Case, find the I.D.ers' "gap theory" indefensible, because they're teaching people to either be anti-intellectual or challenge their faith, especially if the gaps later get filled by scientific findings.

The crux of the problem, though, is that evolutionists are eggheads who are too busy talking above people's heads to try to get the word out. This is demonstrated by a poker game Olson plays with eight men who have PhDs in evolutionary science. Many of them condescendingly put down I.D.ers, calling them ignorant, then overexplain why evolution shouldn't be questioned. Meanwhile, the I.D. contingent, backed by the deep pockets of right-wing think tanks like the Discovery Institute, have gotten their talking points down, which is why they seem to be "winning" the debate, even though their scientific evidence is sketchy at best.

Olson does a good job of taking what could potentially be dry material and livening it up with animated segments (loved the cartoon dodos... Olson even brought a few life-sized ones to the screening I went to on Monday) and lighthearted asides with his mom and two former school board members in Dover, PA, Jeff and Carol Brown. The Browns resigned from the board when it tried to introduce a two-paragraph statement about I.D. into the high school biology cirriculum, a decision that was later overturned in federal court (by a Bush appointee, no less). They have the funniest moment in the movie, which I will not spoil.

A Flock of Dodos does drag in spots, especially when Olson goes into some biographical details about his parents and also when he delves into the doings of the Discovery Institute. But it's an appealing movie that sheds some light on a debate that's sure to escalate in the next few years. Even though its point of view is firmly in the evolution camp, it gives the audience enough of the other side's view to almost make them think I.D. is plausible. Almost.]]> Tue, 2 May 2006 09:17:58 EDT 20195 "Arrested Development". Yep, they were all there, at one point or another; I even promised that I would give up pork products if it was renewed, but to no avail. I just couldn't believe that such a fantastic comedy couldn't find an audience. Of course, neither could the my fellow TV watchers, who flooded web sites and message boards -- including the one I work for, AOL's TV Squad -- with messages every time a story was posted concerning even the minutest rumor on the show's status. If Will Arnett made a sneeze that sounded like the word "Showtime", we all responded with eager anticipation.

Eventually, though, I accepted that the two-and-a-half seasons of Arrested that we did get would have to be enough. But I still couldn't understand why the show failed.

Then, a few weeks ago I did an interview with Howie Mandel, the host of "Deal or No Deal", for TV Squad, and everything came into focus.

Yes, I know. "Deal" is a game show, and a fairly simple one at that. The contestant picks a case from twenty-six cases at random, then eliminates the other cases, hoping that the values eliminated are lower than what he or she picked; between each round, a "banker" makes offers for the case depending on what values are left on the board. Despite its simplicity, "Deal" is very popular; its ratings have steadily grown to the point it regularly places in or just outside the top ten for the week (even though it's shown as many as three days a week). Its high ratings seem as inexplicable as "Arrested's" low ones, especially to fans of "quality" TV. For instance, Tim Goodman, the excellent TV critic for the San Francisco Chronicle, expressed his incredulity this way: "Despite what millions of people we'd never want to be around believe, 'Deal or No Deal' is just asinine."

So how does a game show's success explain a comedy's failure? Well, my interview didn't get a whole lot of comments for the entire first day it was posted. But then AOL was kind enough to post it on their front page, and there was a comment explosion like I had never seen before, with over 150 of them hitting my inbox in one day. Because of AOL's massive reach, the comments came from a wide swath of viewers. 72-year-olds told me how much they and their five-year-old grandkids loved the show. People from all over the country told me that they could identify with the contestants, who were all in need of the prize money but often spurned significant offers from the unseen "banker" to quit in order to go for the big score.

My moment of clarity was at hand. And it wasn't the answer to which TV critics usually jump, which is that "Deal" is simple while "Arrested" is complicated. That's just too easy to say and doesn't accurately reflect what Americans like and dislike on television. For every "American Idol" that's a monster hit despite its uncomplicated formula, there is a "Lost," with a large cast, intersecting storylines, and -- most complicating of all -- flashbacks that go over the lives of the castaways pre-crash. If it were just a matter of Mencken-esque intelligence estimation, medical procedurals like "CSI" and "House" wouldn't have made it past five episodes. It's also not a matter of the American public not liking sophisticated comedy. "My Name Is Earl" and "The Office," for instance, have become moderate hits for NBC, and the comedy in both shows can sometimes be as layered and subtle as Arrested's was.

No, I've come to the conclusion that it was "Arrested"'s theme of rich people behaving badly that led to its downfall. Even its most sympathetic character, Jason Bateman's Michael Bluth, often lied and cheated as much as the rest of his family, even though he often did it for noble reasons. The rest of the Bluths, though, acted with a sense of entitlement that likely turned off many potential fans. Even though much of their behavior came back to bite them eventually, their obliviousness at how their actions were affecting their loved ones and surrounding environment likely didn't sit well with those who sampled the show. Believe me, from Bush to Cheney to Paris to Kenneth Lay, there are plenty of dubious shenanigans being perpetrated by wealthy Americans to more than satisfy the curiosity of the 99% of the country who doesn't know how the other half lives; they turn to prime-time TV to escape this behavior.

Deal, on the other hand, carries an appealing message: anyone can step up and win a bundle. The show's contestants are from various economic strata; your cubicle neighbor could win a six-figure pot of money there as easily as a professor or doctor. Yes, the contestants often take chances when their friends, family and common sense are all telling them to stop. But this lesson of "nothing ventured, nothing gained" is still more worthy to show your kids than "rich people are spoiled jerks."

The Bluths squandered chance after chance to redeem themselves and use their wealth for anything other than self-gratification. Meanwhile, the contestants on "Deal" are just so appreciative of the chance to get a little financial security that the game holds a lot of emotional meaning to them. Americans like seeing that. After a long day of hearing about our screwed-up war in Iraq, $3.00 gas, and breathless news about Tom and Katie's therapy-bound infant, there's nothing wrong with seeing someone who deserves a break get one for a change.]]> Thu, 27 Apr 2006 17:49:29 EDT 19937