Greatest American Hero - % % %

I have been watching this on Me TV and I have to say, it's as good as I remember. It's cute and fun and I really still like Robert Culp. Is this where I know Connie Sellecca? Or is it just Lifetime movies? But I digress.

The best thing is getting to hear and sing along with the theme song. I could sing it all day, and I ordinarily loathe light 70s/80s music. Oh, except for the Family Ties theme song. That's great, too.

Believe it or not, I'm walking on air. I never thought I could feel so free ee ee!
Flying away on a wing and a prayer. Who could it be?

Believe it or not, it's just me!

John Adams - % % % % %

I wish it were possible to see history in this fashion through other eyes. I'd love to see Thomas Jefferson or John Jay similar biography-series like this.

It's wonderful to see such an intimate portrait of historical figures who appeared to me, thus far, as figures in paintings, like greek statues or paintings of aristocrats. I love hearing the theoretical accents of people of Revolutionary America and their changing fashions and cadences. I trust that the series has been thoroughly researched and I can thus draw conclusions about the lives of early Americans. Like that they didn't have much stuff at all. What cluttered lives we live. Even the rich people in Europe had vacant homes, in order to impress one with the enormity of their spaces, I assume.


Laura Linney is great. But I must say that Abigail Adams appears to be the most perfect, wise, and sensitive person ever created. Aside from feeling unstable due to the prolonged absence of her husband, she never seems to falter from being an intellectual and poetic ideal. It's a bit much. Paul Giamatti somehow erases his Italian ancestry and appears an uptight, New England stoic. I really enjoy the increasing cantankerous crankiness present in the character.

Thus far, the supporting characters have been fascinating, especially Thomas Jefferson (Stephen Dillane), Sam Adams (Danny Huston), King George (Tom Hollander) and Tom Wilkinson as Benjamin Franklin. I like the inclusion of Adams' children's lives, although they seem to be narrow depictions of dutiful, eldest son, rebellious middle child and attentive mother-modeled daughter. But they complement the depiction of the founding father's character and life-narrative.

There are way too many canted angles and the regular, highly-mixed sound of insects buzzing becomes repetitive. It's useful to illustrate the different standards of cleanliness and the rugged nature of lives of the time, as well as to illustrate the increasing madness of Adams' fevered state while in the Netherlands, but it is too loud. It gets repetitive and annoyingly noticeable as the series progresses.

I've only seen the first five episodes, so there will surely be more to follow on this series.

So HBO executives and Tom Hanks, super producer, make more of these. Thank you Tom Hanks for providing better entertainment as a producer than as an actor. It's true... Band of Brothers, John Adams, From the Earth to the Moon etc... I therefore forgive him for Polar Express, a beloved childrens book ruined by creepy CGI and a mediocre, boring plot.

Back when people took their nation's politics seriously.

stuff I've dug up while being bed ridden due to repeated bad news this past week

Animal Camouflage: bugs that look like leaves; then vertebrates that look like leaves, like frogs, fish, gecko, ... cool

Cassette Coin Purse

Booklet on the history of numbers

Quantum of Solace - % % % - And why I hate movie theaters

I could barely comprehend what was going on in the opening chase scene from the new James Bond film. I was in the fourth row from the back and I still could not see the whole screen. It was so loud I couldn't distinguish sounds within the onslaught.

If I had watched this in my home, the volume would have been more moderate. I would have watched it on a large screen tv or projected on a 15 foot screen and sat at such a distance that the screen would only have taken up two thirds of my vision rather than 150% of it. I also would have been able to eat and drink and whatever in comfortable folding chairs or lounging on a couch.

Instead I lost two years of my hearing and feel traumatized.

I do feel a great loss at the closure of so many theaters and the hard times the industry is experiencing. But bringing in "live recordings" of operas and self-help symposiums is not the way to revitalize the theater industry. But what do I know. I thought those Japanese game shows were the lowest echelon of programming possible, but then I watched a trailer for "Mama's Boys". Clearly reality competition dating shows are lower. And those game shows are joyous and a great use of the temporary nature of tv.

As for the film, it was ok. While it attempted a meditation on revenge which felt weak and a second thought, the action scenes that make up the core of the film were exciting once the initial chase scene ended. The next chase was on foot and I could catch snipits of the architecture and space they were rushing through. But man, it was hard work. How can I be frightened that James Bond is going to crash into the bad guy if I can't comprehend that the rope he's hanging from is attached to a seesawing beam that rotates around the room? With no establishing shot, nor one that lasts more than two seconds, I imagined the plausible hypothesis for what I was seeing and conjecture for what the director might want me to think. Garrgh! Frustrating.

I haven't seen Casino Royale, so maybe the revenge plot might have been more compelling to others.

I did like the main plot about an evil multinational organization buying up all the water in the planet and blackmailing developing countries into paying their extreme prices, all under the cover of an environmental organization preserving untouched lands. And Mathieu Almalric is a wonderful bad guy. Why are his eyes so black? They are pools of ink and when he scrunches his face, he transforms into the countenance of demonic possession.

I liked the characterization of the female foil, Camille (Olga Kurylenko). She was tough but with a real justified fear of fire. And another woman gets crude oiled in parallel to the golding in Goldfinger. Really great visual.

I also liked that there were less fashionable but still beautiful locations like Bolivia, Port au Prince etc... and not just Europe and Japan. Or is it that those locations in the global south are now fashionable?

But the fight sequences involved lots of jumping, which reminded even my 69 year old father of the Bourne films. And this from the man who thought, after overhearing a gossipy conversation between my mother and I, that Julia Roberts was a friend of hers from college.

Although I respect the darker, less self-referential direction that the franchise is pursuing, I have never gotten the charm of Daniel Craig. When I first saw him in Tomb Raider, I was confused as to why anyone would cast such a gnarled face opposite Angelina Jolie. Yes, he has clear blue eyes and a certain British charm, and no, one needn't be pristine in order to be attractive, least of all men. But, I don't quite get his "magnetism".

And directed by Marc Forster of Finding Neverland fame? I'm surprised.

Paul Haggis? ack. The screenwriting kiss of weak emotional assumptions of underlying shmaltzy goo. crap.

Why do all the Bond villians have sidekicks with hideous haircuts?

Judi Densch gives my favorite performance of her time in the series, in a role actually written to take advantage of her skill. And I love that the relationship between Bond and M is more closely detailed.

Wiat I just realized that I did see Casino Royale. Ouch. That's a bad sign for the plots of the current phase of the series. Sorry to the writers, but it's true. I had no recollection of the previous film.

There are loads of ridiculous assertions in the film, particularly the action sequences. Bond jumps on a Haitian fishman's shack/boat and can out run inflatable, modern, boats with top of the line engines? Security in these inflatables are using guns and never shoot and deflate their crafts? Bond is so tired by the end of the film that a businessman (Almalric) can almost kick his ass into a firey pit through hand to hand and then axe to hand combat?

I'm just going to steal this next point from Pajiba.com - Ted Boynton: "The Daniel Craig iteration of Bond may not realistically portray espionage, but this depiction has the stones to grapple with the philosophical dilemma of using ultra-competent covert operatives to accomplish what legitimate diplomacy and lawful police work cannot." And this film makes the point, repeatedly, that there are not good and bad guys in international relations, but rather governmental/military entities who serve the economic interests of their tax paying corporations (the corporatocracy).

Dark Knight - % % % %

I wasn't sure how they were going to pull off changing the actress playing the love interest (a big improvement), and plotting two super villains, but Christopher Nolan achieved it admirably. Not perfectly, but admirably.

To the film's advantage, it was shot in Chicago and utilized some of the best downtown locations since the Untouchables. Chicago actor, Ron Dean, plays a corrupt cop, and I'm always happy to see him outside of my regular viewings of the Fugitive. Although I found the integration of Chicago and "Gotham" (aka NYC) a bit odd at times, like the intersection of 25th and Cicero? Wha? But the use of the odd half streets/alleys off of Jackson, the gorgeous LaSalle, footed by the stock exchange, El covered Lake Street, Lower Wacker Drive and a host of other fab locations made me exclaim numerous times that "every movie should use x location!" or "Why aren't more movies shot in Chicago?", and my personal favorite, "New York is so ugly in comparison."
This includes the scariest parking garage ramp I've ever had the horror of driving down. (Rush Hospital off of Ashland)

I previously used "admirably" instead of "perfectly" because, while the parallels between the two villains' agendas work on paper, in the film, they felt glossed over and forced. I had little emotional investment in Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart), Rachel (Maggie Gyllenhaal) - his fiance & Batman's love interest, or even the moral highground of Lucien Fox, played by Morgan Freeman. And when an audience isn't engaged by Morgan Freeman's moral highground, you've just got too much going on, damn it!

But, wow! Heath Ledger is unrecognizable. With his hunched back, sunken eyes, early 20th century accent, and grimacing laughter, he creates the only truly terrifying Joker. This Joker could kill Robin with a lead pipe. This is the Joker of the Dark Knight. Wonderful. His performance declares the great tragedy of his loss to the art of film. He clearly had an extraordinary range and talent. And he's totally gonna get an Oscar.

His performance reminds me why the Tim Burton Batman franchise just didn't hold up. I usually blame Michael Keaton and the penguins with striped rockets on their backs. But really, with the exception of Danny Devito's astounding Penguin, the earlier Batman franchise was too goofy and cartoony. The Batman comics of the last 25 years have been so terrifying and gruesome, so bleak and corrupted, that the Burton Batman feels absurdly operatic in comparison. Operas have their own wonderful quality, but one would be hard pressed to claim that they are emblematic of a contemporary reality.

The use of the Jackson and LaSalle St. Chicago locations, which hearken back to the Untouchables and obviously much earlier films of the depression, link our currently bleak and destitute times with that era. Serendipitously, the Dark Knight coincides with the worst economic situation since the depression and I think we are all looking to that time to brace ourselves and prepare our minds for what is to come.

The special effects were all great and the Bat-Mobile has never been badder. But for the characters, the film depends upon the audience having seen the earlier Batman Begins in order to feel or understand anything about Rachel or Lucien, or even Bruce Wayne for that matter. The corruption of two cops holds little punch other than an intellectual scorn for failed officers. The death of Rachel involves a twist that distracts from any emotion the audience might feel at her loss. Although I do love the characterization and performance of Harvey Dent's descent into madness and villainy and the progress of Commissioner Gordon into a commissioner.

So it could have been better. But it could have been soooooo much worse. And I did really enjoy it, was shouting at the screen and loved the adventure.

There Goes My Baby (1994) - % %

Anticipating, and dreading being right, are some of the most mediocre emotions elicited while watching movies. Boredom and nausea are obviously far worse. Aside from some "sweet" performances from Rick Schroeder, Dermott Mulroney and Kelli Williams, and the one compelling performance of Noah Wiley, I experienced boredom and disappointing expectations throughout the film. And then there were the false notes. Like a 1950s burger joint being torn down and turned into a strip mall. It's just too convenient for a "1960s nostalgia" movie.

For example, each character represents an archetype. The smart black kid from Watts with a scholarship to Princeton who grows up to be a US Senator; the hippie chick who gets knocked up and valiantly hides the pregnancy from the free-wheeling drifter father, only to move to San Francisco; the noble civil rights enthusiast quoting Bob Dylan who becomes a protester and then a University professor; the shy girl who narrates it all because she grew up to be a writer. And of course someone dies in Vietnam. Vomit. the school teachers are all a-mur-ican patriot fascists. Most of the parents too.

The one interesting item, that it all occurs on the opening night of the Watts riots, gets lost after the first half of the film. What could have been an interesting story about a wealthy white kid and his family's black servant's son, who grew up like brothers, and ventured into Watts during the riots to retrieve and protect the latter's grandmother, just goes back to the basics in the middle and focuses on the fears of an enlistee and the pregnant hippie. There's an anti-war protester who gets killed while in custody. It devolves into a riot on the front lawn of the high-school. Noah Wiley pours gasoline onto the school's statue, turning the civil war era soldier into a flaming totem, while Dermot Mulroney fist fights the principal. Not as funny as you might expect. And not as compelling as the filmmaker hoped. Blah.

I only finished it to hear the obligatory voice-over epilogue of where each character ended up. Total cliches. Bleck. Except that the hippie named her baby Pirate. Ha!

Of course they have to sell the movie with shirtless teen boys.

I think that the new "This" channel 26.4 is going to lead to similar reviews in the future. There's something pleasant and indulgent about trash on a Saturday afternoon.

30 Rock - % % % % % - rox

Few series hold up to successive viewing - cough - 24 - cough cough. But 30 Rock amazed me. I never stopped laughing out loud or being charmed by the characters' foibles. I did realize that Josh has disappeared and Pete is totally underutilized (props to my Second City alumna!)



Man, I love Tina Fey! I love her self-deprecating humor. I buy her compulsive consumption of crap much more than itty bitty bony arms Deborah Messing. Yeah right she eats a whole box of Crispy Cremes. My ass. Only if she barfs them all up immediately afterward. But Tina Fey, maybe. And drinking wine while walking on her treadmill and drunk dialing her hopeful condo-board, priceless. I would totally do that. Oh, drunken yoga is a much worse idea than you'd imagine. Glurb.

Alec Baldwin becomes a little one note, but it's such a great note that I want to hear it all night long.

The show is rando, but in a charming way - thanks in large part to Tracey Jordan. His interpretation of fame and pop culture madness is brilliant. A few parts mocking racism, a few parts mocking insanity/sanity, and a whole lot of cutey baby eyes for forgiveness.

Kenneth has changed over the years and I like the chances they're taking on mocking his hillbilly Christian background. "Hillbilly milk"! marvelous.

Even Jena is a great send-up of actors, and musical theater actors at that. As a reformed thespian, I did sing the songs of Grease, Fiddler on the Roof, and many more painful musicals in the halls of my high school. Sorry everyone. I also apologize to the citizens of Paris for the Little Mermaid medley. It wasn't my idea! I didn't even know the words for most of those songs!

I'm stunned by how many times an episode I explode with a vociferous "HA! ha!" Or flop on my side laughing.

thank you Netflix. You can't know how you've changed my otherwise crappy week. Instead of feeling like you can't really trust people, I'm titillated by our foibles and forgiving for our sweet flaws.