Fever Pitch

Grade: F

I’m not going to say this is the worst movie ever because I’m sure there are some medical school educational films from the 1950’s that focus on the close-up effect of syphilis on reproductive organs. But until those show up on my Netflix queue, this is the worst movie I’ve ever seen.

Romantic comedies have to be at least two things: romantic and funny. This is neither. There is absolutely no chemistry between Jimmy Fallon and Drew Barrymore. Perhaps because of that, the movie is edited to leave out nearly all important parts of the romance. We do not see their first kiss. We do not see the romantic date leading up to their first time. We do not even see a single good date between them. We don’t get your standard “meet cute” scene that romantic comedies typically have. Maybe they were trying to be different. If so, it worked, but not in a good way. Instead, the only way we know the romance is progressing is because we keep coming into their lives when they’re more comfortable with each other. There are a number of words that can describe this technique. I’ll just call it boring.

Romantic comedies are also supposed to be funny. This is painfully unfunny. When Barrymore’s character says to Fallon, “You know, you’re funny” you actually cringe. Cringe because it’s such a bad line (they’ve been dating like 6 months at this point), and cringe because Fallon isn’t funny. He swallows the delivery of every joke he has (and I’m being very forgiving by saying he actually has jokes in the script), and he doesn’t even exhibit that manic energy that sometimes made him humorous on Saturday Night Live. There is no funny in this movie. I haven’t seen such a cringe-inducing line since Star Wars Episode 2, when Darth Teenie gave that line about his home desert being rough, but Natalie Portman’s skin being all smooth. Creepy shivers all around.

Above and beyond this not being funny or romantic, it’s also completely unrealistic from the movie’s point of view. Movies don’t have to be totally realistic, of course. But they need to be consistent to their own vision. So when Barrymore’s dad first sees Fallon on ESPN making an ass of himself, and even comments that he’s an ass, then when the parents first meet Fallon we should get to see that fallout. But we don’t.

And the casting here is absolutely the worst ever. Fallon isn’t cute, funny, or even likable. Barrymore is supposed to be a driven career woman who’s good with numbers but not with relationships. Instead, like in every movie she’s in, she’s Drew Barrymore. She smiles, shows some dimples and acts confused. It worked in 50 First Dates because she plays someone with brain damage, kind of like how Keanu Reeves worked in The Matrix because he played a mindless idiot who doesn’t realize what he can do. Here, Barrymore doesn’t pull off any aspect of her character. When she tries to explain her job to some kids in the opening scene, you almost feel her own frustration just having to say the word “numbers.” Painful.

Infernal Affairs

Grade: A-

The Real Face/Off.

The only reason this movie drops a couple notches is because it loses a bit for Western audiences. Billed as the breakthrough Hong Kong flick, Infernal Affairs really is a fantastic cop drama that reminds me of a realistic version of Face/Off. A gang sends a number of young hoodlums into the police academy to infiltrate the cops, while the police send an undercover cadet to infiltrate the gang. Years later, the still-warring cops and gang find out each has a mole in their midst, and the tense drama between the groups and the individuals, who wonder who they’ve become, is fantastic.

Face/Off had a lot of the same elements, but was done in a completely over the top way. Infernal Affairs is more subtle, much more nuanced. The tension and internal conflict of the main characters is apparent, and incredibly well realized. Unfortunately, some of the more subtle touches that probably connect with Eastern audiences miss their mark here in the West, but we’ll see if Scorsese’s remake fixes that problem or just makes it worse by going full-blown cliche.

Sahara

Grade: B+

The best thing to happen to sand since castles.

Sahara is one of those over the top, fun action comedies. It’s the kind where the main characters run away from the bad guys at full speed, jumping over the edge of a cliff before looking for the protrusion that inevitably shows up for them to grab and save themselves from falling into a boiling pit of plague-infested lava. It’s mindless fun, and it doesn’t pretend to be anything else.

It’s no Indiana Jones, and it’s not the next generation of Indiana Jones. It’s a slightly dumber version of Indiana Jones. I know Indiana Jones, and you, Sahara, are no Indiana Jones. There. I’ve said Indiana Jones enough now.

The only thing that drags Sahara a bit is the length. Should have been chopped by about 25 minutes.

Why mice shouldn’t use cell phones

A study from the University of Newcastle a week or so ago revealed that exposure to cellphone radiation damaged DNA in the sperm of mice. Seriously. This is what I’ve been telling people for years–mice shouldn’t use cell phones. Not only does it make their voices even squeakier, but they keep trying to talk through their crotch.

Sin City

Grade: B

You can finally read a graphic novel without all that annoying page turning.

Sin City is a comic book brought to the screen. Not like Superman or Spider-Man (see the hyphen, TWuG, Jimmy?) where a few images from the comic are used, but basically it’s just the story re-envisioned for the screen. No, Sin City is literally the comic brought to the screen. Frame for frame, shot for shot. And while it succeeds technically, for a comic reader like myself, I’m left a bit cold. Yes, it was done well, and it works, but the end product is completely unoriginal. It’s new, it’s innovative, but it’s unoriginal. Like if a sculptor sets out to make a lifesize version of the David out of a giant redwood–that’d be new, too, but unoriginal.

As a movie, it works technically. It looks like the cinematographer from Schindler’s List met up with the special effects crew from Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. The script is equal parts Pulp Fiction and every other down-on-their-luck anti-hero movie you’ve seen the past ten years. They come together well, and it works as a movie.

But it’s completely unoriginal. This is probably felt best by comic readers, who know that when you read the comic panels your mind puts together the action between the panels. Rodriguez made explicit what the comic reader has implicitly constructed ever since Miller’s books were first published, and while that may be new to the non-comic readers out there, it’s a bit like re-telling the story of Moby Dick to your best friend. If they haven’t heard the story before, they might think you put together quite the epic tale of consuming passions and tragic destinies–but it’s not an original story. It may be an original retelling, if that’s not an oxymoron.

So while I enjoyed watching the movie, I was left a bit cold. I actually prefer to see comics reinvented as movies, like the outstanding Spider-Man (I once again dedicate the preceding hyphen to TWuG and Jimmy Impossible) flicks, rather than see shot for shot adaptations. Movies have their own strengths as an artistic expression, and restricting yourself to the panel of a comic puts artificial limits on the movie. What ends up happening is 80% of the dialogue is voiceover, since most of Miller’s books are internal monologues written through captions. Not very movie-like, and if everyone wasn’t told this is based on a comic book, I think the movie would have been heavily criticized for it. As it stands, Sin City gets away with a lot because of the comic book origins.

That said, the stories that were chosen were a good pick. A bit long, but not too bad. And the casting is phenomenal, with nearly everyone turning in great performances even on the briefer roles. I just hope this doesn’t encourage more adaptations of other comic properties to go down the same path.

Weather alerts

If that severe weather alert is so dang important, why do they turn it off when the commercials start?

Spanglish

Grade: A+

After hearing mild buzz about Spanglish, I wasn’t expecting the world but at least to be entertained. I was shocked to find a movie with a geniune heart, real drama, and subtle but laugh out loud humor. A fantastic movie that is worlds better than Sideways. It’s always strange to see how movies start generating buzz, like a snowball of self-congratulatory praise. It’s the biz, I’m sure, but it’s just a shame that movies like Spanglish get lost under the flotsam like Million Dollar Baby and the half-dozen or so biopics that everyone focused on this past year. Spanglish is a fantastic flick, and even better than that it has characters that feel real and you don’t have to be ashamed to like. Top honors.

Why Lost sucks

I know there’s a lovefest going on for Lost. It’s a shame. Because Lost sucks. Admitting it is the first step. Realizing why is the second.

There are two reasons why Lost sucks. First, open-ended TV mysteries suck. By definition. Yes, they start off interesting, and the good ones keep their energy going for a while with some interesting twists and turns. Like X-Files. But the only way they can keep the series going is by keeping the mystery alive. Meaning no resolution. Meaning no ending. At best you can wrap up one storyline and open a new one. It’s tiresome, and it’s intellectually dishonest. It’s just a cheap way to keep a series alive until there’s nothing left and not enough viewers to warrant renewal. At that point, you wrap it up with a confusing finale, or a dissatisfying one–or both. But that means everything that Lost fans are watching now is just worthless storytelling–because it will be abandoned at a moment’s notice or made irrelevant in the end.

And that’s the upside.

The second reason why Lost sucks is because it’s fallen victim to a distrubing and growing trend in TV dramas–the creation of artificial tension. Alias does this a lot too, not surprising since they’re both created by J.J. Abrams. Artificial tension is when you start an episode with some climactic event, stop at the moment of highest tension, then spend the majority of the episode recounting how everyone got to that point. That’s artificial tension–when the writer can’t create an interesting enough story to keep you involved from start to end, so they start at the most interesting moment and hope you’ll be interested to revisit the boring stuff that got you there.

Lost is just all artificial tension. Each episode gives you some interesting tidbits, but then half or more is flashback of otherwise dull, uninteresting material. The true test is if you watched the show in chronological order, would you turn it off. In Lost’s case, the answer is a resounding Hell yeah!

Yes, it’s the hot show. Yes, I watch it because it’s the hot show and I want to know what the hot show is doing. But the backlash is going to hurt, especially next year when viewers will tire of having this perpetual mystery. So the network will tell the producers to wrap up this storyline, and the writers will wrap up everything in an episode or two only to introduce a new, higher level mystery. Which they’ll keep until viewers get tired, which won’t last as long as the first time. Then they’ll retool again, and again, and again, each time the mystery cycle growing shorter and shorter. Just look at Alias over the years and you’ll see Lost’s future staring you right in the face.

Bottom line: Lost sucks, and a lot of people are going to be very bitter when they finally realize it. Me? I’m bitter now, as one friend recently told me. But that’s okay, because I know where I am and I’ll gladly ease the pain for all future Lost fans who realize the truth.

When you’re ready to join me, I’m here with open arms. Then we can start bitching about Desperate Housewives together.

I’m afraid of Staples

I saw an ad today that if I go into Staples they’ll give me a free copy of my tax return. How the hell did they get my tax return in the first place?

Carnivale

Kiss of death for Carnivale? I like it.

It’s a curse. I only like the HBO series that suck. Sopranos? So plain-os. Deadwood? Dead asleep. Entourage? Onsnoozebutton.

But I liked Carnivale, which means it was doomed from the beginning. It surprised me, since I wasn’t blown away by the first season. But the second season got better and better. Something intriguing about a mystic battle between good and evil during the Great Depression. Enough vagueness in the episodes to keep it going, but enough specifics so there was actualy progression. Certainly more so than other open-ended TV mysteries like X-Files or Lost.

So when I finally watched the season 2 finale on the TiVo, it seemed pretty obvious the show was ending. Sure, they threw in a hail mary to leave an opening if they got renewed, but there’s really no chance of that. Again, because I liked it.

This isn’t to say I have some kind of superpower to affect the cancellation of HBO series, but if Showtime was smart they’d pay me to like HBO programming.