Welcome to hell week! Or, more correctly, hell's two weeks! Yes, it's that time, my friends, when I must go away and earn my keep. So I'm going to try and leave you with at least a few things before I go deep undercover starting NEXT Sunday night, not to resurface until the following week. It's a dirty job, but somebody has to do it.
Fond memories of London: the Millennium Bridge, 2006.
To see more of my photos, Friday or otherwise, click here!
Dear Mr. Zucker,
I know I've disparaged you and your network in the past. I will probably continue to do so in the future. I'm sorry, but NBC was the home, once, of such great shows: Seinfeld, Frasier, Supertrain. The list is almost endless. But somewhere the bloom was scraped off the rose with a trowel. I still love 30 Rock and The Office, although your Amy Poehler series, Parks and Recreation, was exceedingly lame, and a horrible waste of both Ms. Poehler and the sublime Rashida Jones. But I digress.
I'm writing for a specific reason. No matter what you do with your fall schedule--and I guess there's no turning back from your wretched decision to put Jay Leno on 5 nights a week at 10:00pm--can you please change your promos in between shows? You know what I mean: the annoying announcer who cracks wise while the NBC tones play. He says such pithy, "witty" things like, "Hey, what's 10 rocks times 3? 30 ROCK! Coming up next!"
As I believe Harrison Ford once said to George Lucas: "You can write this shit, but you sure as hell can't say it."
Anything on network television that causes any viewer to either hit the fast forward button on their DVR or change the channel on their remote is a bad thing. I'm sure by now, with a few years in the TV "biz" under your belt, you've come to realize this is true. This announcer guy? Well, let's just say I've gone through seven TVs in the past year. All with busted picture tubes. From throwing things. Because of your announcer.
Each fall, leaves tumble from the trees, as nature begins the process of renewing itself. But on television networks, fall is the time of not only renewal, but creation. While I'm sure any number of your new shows will fall off the NBC "tree" in record time, let's start anew with a whole new look to go with those brand new shows--old favorites and new failures alike--and a whole new pun-free announcer.
Sincerely,
-Gary.
PS-I was just kidding about rerunning the Michael Jackson Memorial each night. But it made you think, didn't it?
CBS News just reported that over 31 million people watched the Michael Jackson Memorial on television...
Which prompted NBC Universal President and CEO Jeff Zucker to cancel the network's entire fall line-up of shows and instead rerun the Michael Jackson Memorial each night from 8:00–11:00.
Sorry, Jay.
Elizabeth Taylor is TWITTER-ing!
And here I thought that was what Richard Burton did to her in her trailer while filming Cleopatra.
Two movies with such disparate themes as Fanboys and Bride Wars end up--upon viewing--to have one crucial thing in common: They both suck.
Seriously. Ever wonder why Fanboys languished on the Weinstein Brothers' shelf for close to two years? It sucks. The story of a group of rabid Star Wars fans who take their sick buddy cross country to try and steal a peek at the yet-to-be-released Episode I: The Phantom Menace has absolutely nothing going for it, not even the often-winsome Kristin Bell as the sole fangirl. The premise is all wrong: Anyone who's actually seen Phantom Menace knows it's not worthy of any such holy quest. But it's the script that bogs this movie down, down, down. Don't even bother.
I will fully admit that I can channel my feminine side and enjoy a good chick flick every now and again, especially one that features hot actresses with guns, guns, and more guns. With a title like Bride Wars, I expected the very hot Anne Hathaway to show off some of the action chops she displayed in Get Smart, and with that W-A-R-S in the title, perhaps even bigger guns, like bazookas and flame throwers. I knew the plot: two childhood friends have their dream weddings scheduled for the same day at the Plaza Hotel. I thought for sure this would involve all-out mayhem, action-galore, as the two battled it out in the Plaza, perhaps ending with the hotel being totally destroyed.
What a disappointment when I found out there were no guns involved. Not even one.
Oh, there's a little tussle at the end between Hathaway and co-star Kate Hudson (who, quite frankly, looks a bit too long in the tooth to be Anne's childhood friend and definitely plays the villain in this piece), but no shootin', no cussin', no "fire in the hole!" This film would have been so much better with guns. It should be a Hollywood law that any movie that has the word "wars" in it should have guns. Lots and lots of guns.
For a film that boasts two of the world's top-grossing box office stars—Johnny Depp and Christian Bale—knee-deep in a story steeped in American mythology—the great gangsters of the Depression—Public Enemies sure is kind of blah. Directed by Michael Mann, you'd think this would be like... well, gangbusters. But except for a few bravura scenes (especially the shoot-out at Little Bohemia), the movie is choppy, a little too long, and severely disjointed.
Adapted from the excellent history book of the same name by author Bryan Burrough, Mann and company pare down the cast of characters to the Melvin Purvis (Bale) vs. John Dillinger (Depp) storyline. (Burrough's book was a fairly-comprehensive history of the life and times of numerous Depression era bad guys, including Bonnie and Clyde, Pretty Boy Floyd, Baby Face Nelson, Alvin Karpis, and Ma Barker and her brood.) Both Bale and Depp are excellent, as is Marion Cotillard as Billie Frenchette, Dillinger's soulmate. Billy Crudup makes for an appropriately conceited and fussy J. Edgar Hoover, and everyone else pretty much looks like they stepped out of a Walker Evans photo, as does the entire film, albeit in color. But while Mann does a great job of recreating the physical era, he fails at recreating the hero worship and excitement that surrounded the bad guys in a time when everyone was broke and looking for a Robin Hood. Even with an actor as charismatic and watchable as Depp, it's hard to get excited about anything in this movie.
Dillinger and company were hardened criminals, not worthy of any kind of worship, but they sure are a lot more fun than the Bernie Madoffs and AIG bigwigs of the world. Too bad Public Enemies doesn't make better use of that fun.
...well, I blew off all the fingers of my right hand.
And then I had this bottle rocket and I tried to light it left-handed, and well...that didn't work out so well, either. But hey...Fourth of July only comes once a year, right?
So basically I can't really type very well. Not that I ever could. I've always been a bit of a pecker.
So to speak.
Hope your Fourth of July was fun-filled, patriotic and less accident and double entendre prone.
Blogging with fingers will return tomorrow.
Fond memories of London: the Millennium Bridge, 2006.
To see more of my photos, Friday or otherwise, click here!
I just watched the new TCM/Warner Home Video documentary, 1939, a look at the watershed year of Hollywood studio film production. Before the war, before the government carved up the studio theaters, before television, 1939 represented the zenith of the movie industry.
If you look at it only from the standpoint of just two classic films that have stood the test of time, growing ever more popular over the last 70 years, 1939 is an incredible year. Those two films are The Wizard of Oz and Gone With the Wind. But when you add in just some of the other amazing movies to debut that year, the list is astonishing: Gunga Din, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Stagecoach, Dark Victory, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Goodbye Mr. Chips, Young Mr. Lincoln, Of Mice and Men, Son of Frankenstein, The Women, Ninotchka, Only Angels Have Wings, just to name a dozen more. It was the year the studio system triumphed with an incredible output of films.
The documentary is a wonderful look back at that blessed year, narrated by Kenneth Branagh. It explores the output of each studio, taking us around a map of Hollywood, starting with MGM and ending with United Artists. Each look at the individual studios' films that year includes a brief history of the studio itself. Included is commentary by a whole bunch of film critics, authors, and scholars, including my favorite, Thomas Schatz, who wrote what I consider THE book on the Hollywood studio system, The Genius of the System (sadly out of print at this point). The occasional archival talk with a director (Frank Capra and Howard Hawks, to name two) or star (Maureen O'Hara, looking not very much different from her starring role in Hunchback, 70 years ago!) is also included. This is another in an excellent series of documentaries from TCM and WHV, and one that I hope will show up in a boxed set of 1939 films at some point, even if they are all only Warner Bros. films.
In fact, TCM seems to have the rights to the excellent series of documentaries that critic and author Richard Schickel made back in the 1970s, and which first aired on PBS, The Men Who Made the Movies. They popped up last month when TCM was showcasing great directors each day. I wish they'd release a DVD set of them, and while they're at it, can someone find the exquisite Kenneth Brownlow documentary series, Hollywood, about the silent film era, and get that out on DVD, too, please? Pretty please?
1939 shows again on TCM on July 10 at 8:45am (5:45 PDT) and July 31 at 10:45 am (7:45 am PDT). It's part of the cable network's month-long salute to 1939, with "39 from 1939" running each Thursday evening. I know I'll be DVR-ing a lot of these (already set to record to Ninotchka tonight!), and enjoying every minute of them.
