Conan O'Brien Can't Stop

Conan O'Brien Can't Stop (2011)


Director: Rodman Flender

Synopsis
a camera follows conan on his tour.

MOster
I don't think this was a good documentary.  I was interested in it much more for my hatred of Jay Leno than my adoration for Conan, so I was skewed from the start.  But this spent too much time, as the Woman says, "following Conan on his tour;" and not nearly enough time discussing the content of the tour or any of the meat of what happened, gag order or no.  For that matter, they didn't show enough of the show for it to be interesting or entertaining.

Don't ask me about this one in three months. I won't remember it at all.


The Woman
i wouldn't say that i am a fan. i think he got ripped off, and i think it's awesome that he can be honest and say yes. i am pissed off about this shitty thing that happened to me. man, did i get fucked over. he seems to be really awesome towards his fans. i was only mildly paying attention to this as i had just completed a year long project and was figuring out the logistics of setting said project up.

You Can Count On Me

You Can Count On Me (2000)


Writer: Kenneth Lonergan
Director: Kenneth Lonergan
Starring: Laura Linney, Mark Ruffalo, Matthew Broderick

Synopsis
The brother comes into town for a few days and shakes things up a little.
 

The Woman
shme, meh, meh. i guess this was good? i didn't not like it, but every character in it was pretty unlovable. that always gives me pause. i have to be able to connect with someone. even if it's a hatred of wanting a horrible death thrown down upon unlovable characters. at least that's something. i was pretty indifferent to these people. i wouldn't say this was worth going out of your way to watch. there you go.

MOster
Oh, look. It's *that* movie.

The Muppets

The Muppets (2011)


Writer: Jason Segel, Nicholas Stoller
Director: James Bobin
Starring: Jason Segel, Amy Adams, Walter, Kermit, and the rest of the Muppets

Synopsis
Jason Segel's brother is a muppet (but he doesn't quite know it).  On a trip to Los Angeles, they learn that a rich oil baron is buying the Muppet Theater with sinister intent.  They proceed to find Kermit and get the band back together to raise the funds necessary to buy the theater back.



The Woman
this was the kid's first movie theater experience so i enjoyed watching him watching this. it was a good homage to an old school muppet movie. mostly, i think, it had the feel of "the muppets take manhattan" with the focus on the humans and kermit rather than the muppets themselves. there were some great jokes and i laughed plenty out loud. on the other side, there was some short comings as well. i think there was a little too much focus on the two different plots. i think it would have been better if they chose to stick to one and let the other be a small side plot. and by that i mean walter's story of finding himself and accepting his muppetness should have remained in the background. the preschooler in our group started to waiver around the hour ten mark so the last bits of the movie i only half paid attention to in between shushing my child and sitting him down and telling him he ate all of the bathtub sized popcorn. the ending was a little wishy washy for me also, but all in all i had a great time and i'm glad we followed through and saw this in the movies. definitely the best of the contemporary muppet movies. no adaptations. an actual original muppet story.

as a side note i think it was an interesting plot move to have the rights to the muppets become an issue since i believe brian henson and disney argued over the same thing in recent history...notice no henson or oz associated in the credits...

MOster
One of the few actually funny jokes from Austin Powers was even prescient: How much should they have made the contract worth?  $10M seems like a pretty low number these days, but much more than that would have been equally implausible.  Other than that there's not too much to say about the plotting itself.  From a critical perspective it took a bit too long to get that point, musical numbers notwithstanding. From a critical standpoint, the premise of the movie needed to be set 20 years or so in the future.  From a critical standpoint, blah blah blah.  This is another one of those "this is a movie" movies.  Who cares? 


It's a fucking Muppet movie, and not a terrible one at that.  The all-Muppet scenes were generally better than those where they had to interact with people, but only because they're more in their element.  The "Muppet Show" type bits were definitely the best part, and I do wish we had gotten to see more of those.  Because seriously, Gonzo + schtickless Jack Black=awesome.

There were some other great social commentary jokes ("Punch Teacher" runs for 120 minutes, of course) and some cute cameos (though I honestly feel like there could/should have been many more despite the woman's disagreement).  The movie was funny and jerked enough tears and was generally quite satisfying.  It's a Muppet movie.  We are exactly the target demographic of this movie.  If you are as well, then you will dig it.  If you're not, then I don't know who you are.

Leila made me watch all of "Buffy" and now I'm going to talk about it.

Buffy the Fucking Vampire Slayer
A Joss Whedon Animal, with many other contributors
Starring Sarah Michelle, Flute-Masturbator, Obligatory British Stuffypants, blah blah blah for 500 words right here

Whatever format this will turn out to be
This shares a fair amount with Harry Potter in that it's about the super-special dork from high school who has a mentor and a cadre of essential friends and parents who just don't understand.  Wait... I just described practically every story about a kid in school; and I also decided that I don't want this to be eleven thousand words of drivel.  If you're expecting something akin to my Twilight stuff, you'd best tune away now.

I was reluctant to begin this exercise.  I'm the on the space end of the SF spectrum, not the sorcery side.  I am a proud roll player, as differentiated from a role player.  I just don't have time to take this stuff so seriously.  But I sat through it, because it bought me a few decibels.  I didn't write down any notes during this experience, so I'm not going to be very specific and I'm probably going to get some things wrong.  Please correct me. I will enjoy the waves of your fervor as they crash gracelessly against the cliff of my indifference.

Two introductory paragraphs later, we begin the first season.  One forgives most series their first season, as it takes time to develop ground rules and give voices to a myriad of characters.  I have no problem extending that clemency here.  Nothing made me hate the show or the concept or anything like that.  Even while friendships developed and bitchinesses were reconciled, the show found time to develop itself as a classic procedural.  In the majority of episodes in the first six seasons, I could set my watch by when things happened.  90% of the time the solution to the week's problem made itself apparent during minute 33. Extend that out to the level of the season, and episodes 22 and 23 were dedicated to defeating an enemy who was fully analyzed somewhere between the end of episode 19 and the middle of episode 21.  So what?  Law and Order had a similarly rigid format and that lasted over 20 years.

This show was a train, chugging along the track of that formula; and in fact the first season was above average in execution here.  With the exception of the last, the seasonal arc stories were all mostly irrelevant. The factor most responsible for making the show interesting or annoying is the secondary characters. Seasons 4 and 5 were dragged to the ground by the twin foils of The Government and Angel (who I think appeared before season 4 and who regularly showed up to either deus-ex-machina the proceedings or just annoy them to a halt). And both of those items made me groan when I saw the appropriate actors' names in the credits. There was plenty of fun here as well, with people like Anya and (to a lesser extent) Xander around to be unintentionally funny and unfunny, respectively.  Season 6 had those three fucking kids; and it was the most ill-conceived of them all. I do not accept that it took Buffy, especially with Willow the techie let alone Willow the witch so long to figure that stuff out; but I do appreciate how those characters had done in earlier seasons some things to sow the seeds for their later development.

(This is a good spot for a brief discussion of the growth of Buffy herself. While it might be marked by which idiot she chose to fuck that's not really the point.  She went from schoolgirl stupidity (pre-Angel) to stupid neediness and pretend maturity (Angel) to slightly-greater maturity (army guy whose name doesn't even register with me) to raw sex followed by the comprehension of codependency which is a mature relationship (Spike).  Each of those phases is mirrored in the way she behaves and how she fights.  So good job on that one.)

There were some ambitious ideas at play through most of the show.  A school blowing up in the face of real world events, especially 15 years ago, was pretty ballsy.  There were the "concept" episodes, like the musical one (shmeh) and the silence one and the addition arc (OK).  Joss never shied away from aspects of sexuality which could very well have cost him some sponsors.  I'm not just talking about the frank depiction of lesbians. There was plenty of intersection between humans, demons, vampires, and werewolves as well.  And people's various addictions, the high water mark of which is Willow's bender, influenced their actions in believable ways which were only over the top when necessary (which, I suppose, undercuts the notion of 'over the top,' but...)

It's that ambition which drove a generally very good seventh season.  With tighter serialization and much higher stakes, the show became interesting to watch for both the large plot AND the interplay of the characters.  While the way it was presented had the side-effect of undermining the stakes of most of the earlier "big bads," the change in tone drew me in on a cerebral level which I hadn't experienced in this show.  The idea that people all over the world were dying made the notion of Buffy as protector much more believable, and the other elements of multi-stage bosses and mystical weapons provided a narrative (for more good than ill) much more like a good video or role-playing game.

All of that's a shame in light of the truly weak two-part-but-not-really series finale.  Aside from the fact that nobody needed reminding that Angel was still around, the whole thing kind of ended with a thud where the involvement of Buffy and all the potentials was just a side point in getting pure ol' Spike to act as a lens for the light of the sun--see the proto-Meyers middle school poetry and fake irony?--be destroyed while laying waste to all the super-vampires.  Technical issues aside, the last shot of the remaining crew members standing in front of the crater that is Sunnydale was unnecessary and more than a little silly.

I had held out against this for years, and the four or five month exercise of watching all 150-odd episodes has left me with little actual improvement other than the chance to get oblique references made by friends who I hardly see anymore.  Sure, I was entertained, but I wasn't moved in the way I had been told for a (fuck!) almost half my life that I would be.

Page Eight

Masterpiece Contemporary Presents: Page Eight
Written by David Hare
Directed by David Hare
Starring Bill Nighy, Rachel Weiss, Michael Gambon, Judy Davis

Synopsis
An aging intelligence analyst falls afoul of the government when his boss lets him in on some secrets.

MOster
This was a positive, if uneven, experience.  Acting kind of sloped downward through the cast list; but since we spend the vast majority of the time with Bill Nighy, of whom I have not yet found my fill-line, that's pretty well OK.  Special recognition must be given to an utterly wooden performance by Ralph Finnes as a Bush-esque Prime Minister; but everybody else was fine and I almost stopped hearing Dumbledore when Gambon was speaking.  Direction and production were right at the level I've grown to expect from British TV materials.

The problem here is the story.  Two hours was the wrong length for this much material.  I looked around (a little) to see if it was based on a book or something, and I found no evidence of that.  The story between the leads was the strongest, and I think it was a good choice to have the implications of the intelligence be political rather than "the world's going to explode if we don't uncover this sinister plot."  But everything else was underdeveloped.  There wasn't enough history with his daughter or his ex-wife, nor was there enough discussion of how everybody fell out of favor with the government.  Nor was there, nor was there, nor was there.  We were expected to take too much as a given.

It's kind of like a mediocre finale to a good TV series.  But still, you could do a lot worse.

The Trip (2010)

The Trip (2010)

Directed by Michael Winterbottom

Starring Steve Coogan, Rob Brydon

Synopsis
a mocumentary of rob brydon and steve coogan on a road trip together where they discus things over food.


MOster
I'm not entirely sure how to write about this one.  It's billed as a "mocumentary," and I guess it is; but it's not mocumenting the food.  It's much more of that Gervais-style awkwardness improv between two good friends as they travel through rural England and eat at nice restaurants.  There's really not much to critique here.  The material was funniest when it was (or appeared to be) at its least rehearsed.  There was plenty of joy in watching them both do impressions, but Brydon is really quite good.

Some hay was made of the apparent differences between Brydon's and Coogan's (characters') lives, with the former perfectly happy to be somewhere in the middle class and have a nice home and a nice family while the latter wants to keep reaching for stars which he's unlikely to grab.  This part was fine, but not funny; and the point of a movie like this is to be funny.

If you're as anglophiliac as we are then you'll find some entertainment here; but you won't need to wear a back brace afterwards.


The Woman
i fell asleep during this...a couple times. it's the annual toastyness under the blanket syndrome. it occurs every year in the late fall. it has nothing to do with what i'm watching. i actually really wanted to watch this. unfortunately this was a little slow and the toastyness just won. i enjoyed what i saw though. i think it's interesting that the alan partridge character shares a lot in common with most steve coogan portrayals. i also feel that rob brydon, in all the panel shows that moster watches, seems to be a little curmudgeonly compared to the lightheartedness of the other comedians, but is the big silly side of the spectrum in this, making steve coogan seem even more of a stick in the mud. that's about all i can say about this one.

Take Me Home Tonight

Take Me Home Tonight (2011)

Writer: does it matter?
Director: Michael Dowse
Starring: Topher Grace, Ana Farris, Dan Fogler, and Teresa Palmer

Synopsis
a guy finds out his high school crush is in town and they go to a party and he steals a car and they find out they have a lot in common and it's a crazy party and his partner in loserness snorts some coke and whoa look at him, he's high on coke and hijinks and hijinks and a fight and a destined relationship begins.
The Woman
maybe it's because we've been watching all this super heavy and deep stuff that i crave the shallow and hit the 'watch' button. sigh. i like brainless, but apparently not this time, not this brainless. this was pretty bad. i've seen this done in a million different coming of age teen dramas. the only difference in this one was that it was the crazy transition of life after college and not the slight transition of high school to college. i don't want to even say this had potential. it was a flaming wreck of unoriginal regurgitational vomit from inception. or is that an oxymoron?

topher grace had this whole nerdy thing down pretty pat in the days of yore. now it just comes off as kind of douchey arrogance vibe.

don't bother watching this. watch one of the other 9 trillion coming of age movies you have about a group of youngsters going to the last hoorah party where they all go for all the goals they've shied from in the past and it leads to crazy hijinks and the best night of their short, vapid, little lives.