Movies, TV & Cartoons
YOUR CALLon Tower Heist, the action caper comedy from Brett Ratner. Playing off of the Wall Street collapse and bail out, Tower Heist focuses on the residents of an exclusive New York high rise populated by the super rich. Ben Stiller plays Josh Kovacs, the building’s manager, who instructs employees in the art of ass-kissing. Josh discovers, however, that Arthur Shaw (Alan Alda), one of the building’s most prominent residents, has swindled the building workers out of their pension fund. He launches a scheme to “steal back” the money.
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Highlights
The Walking Dead returned last Sunday for the much anticipated continuation of its second season. Season 2 had gotten some criticism for being a bit slow moving in its first half, but it appears that complaint will be a thing of the past for the upcoming group of episodes.
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SKIP The Rum Diary,Johnny Depp’s second foray into the mind of gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson, from writer/director Bruce Robinson. I have always loved Hunter S. Thompson’s work - I read Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ‘72 when I was in high school and I was instantly hooked, gobbling up Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas and Hell’s Angels in succession. But the film versions of Thompson’s work have always been disappointing. 1980’s Where the Buffalo Roam was a disjointed mess, with a badly miscast Bill Murray as Thompson; 1998’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas had Depp play “Raoul Duke,” a Thompson pseudonym made famous in Garry Trudeau’s Doonesbury cartoons (where it probably should have remained). Depp seemed to capture a more realistic portrayal of Thompson, but that doesn’t mean it was fun to watch - I came to the conclusion, at that point, that Thompson’s persona and writing just don’t make for good films. This picture did nothing to dissuade me of that belief.
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Highlights
It’s unfortunate that Comedy Central decided to use the “C” word in promoting its new comedy sketch show Key & Peele. The “C” word, of course, is Chappelle, as in Dave Chappelle, as in Chappelle’s Show. Let me set the record straight up front: Key & Peele is NOT Chappelle’s Show, it is really nothing like Chappelle’s Show.
But let’s be honest, Chappelle’s Show, albeit short-lived, may just have been the funniest comedy sketch show EVER in the history of television. That’s not hyperbole, that’s a realistic assessment of the ground-breaking, taboo-shattering, side-splittingly funny Dave Chappelle vehicle that aired between 2003 and 2006.
There will probably never be another one, and I say that thinking specifically that Chris Rock, who is a funnier stand up than Dave Chappelle, did not have a funnier show, even on HBO, where they don’t bleep out the curse words.
Chappelle’s Show was one of a kind, a catchphrase and iconic character machine that briefly appeared on your TV screen and then disappeared just as quickly. This ain’t that. But this ain’t bad in its own right either.
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Highlights
So far, The Finder, Fox’s series about a private investigator with a knack (make that an obsession) for finding things, is off to a good start. The episodes are entertaining and funny. The mystery solving has been novel and interesting, but the show hasn’t really given me the sense that it knows what it wants to be yet.
The finder in The Finder is Walter Sherman (Geoff Stultz), an Iraq war vet who was wounded in combat and has been left emotionally stunted but with a nearly supernatural gift for tracking down lost items. Walter is brilliant but completely socially inappropriate, and The Finder sometimes plays out like House but with no sick people.
Surrounding Walter are his attorney, er “legal advisor” Leo (Michael Clarke Duncan), his friend with benefits and US Marshall Isabel (Mercedes Masohn) and Willa (Maddie Hasson), a juvenile delinquent Leo has taken in.
This eccentric group of characters blend well and have good chemistry - think the gang at Cheers with a private detective agency - but there’s also a closed-circle like feel to the friendship, and while Walter is definitely the oddest egg in the crate, all of these characters are quirky and strange, creating a sense that Walter’s not really that eccentric - the rest of the world is.
The performances are solid - Stultz has tons of fun with Walter’s lunacy, and Michael Clarke Duncan is vastly underrated for his ability to slip between dramatic and comedic performances so seamlessly. Masohn has a similar quality, something which would seem to be a quasi-requirement for this show.
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This film lets you know early on that it plans on being ridiculous when it introduces Olivia Wilde and lets you know that she’s Justin Timberlake’s mom. Timberlake plays Will Salas, who lives in the “ghetto” where everyone’s clock is about to run out.
The time-based society is segregated between the rich, who stockpile thousands of years, and the poor who are always about to die next week unless they can beg, borrow or steal more time.
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After only one season, Game of Thrones is one of those shows that everyone tells you should be watching. With the first season already out on DVD, fans are clamoring for any kind of glimpse into the second season and we finally have it.
Not a picture, not a "behind the scenes" look, but a real trailer for you to drool over before the season 2 premier on April 1st.
no commentsHighlights
Fox’s Alcatraz was one of the more anticipated midseason shows, and for my money, it was well worth the wait. A smooth mix of prison drama, police procedural, X Files-ish sci-fi mystery and character driven office-politics drama, Alcatraz blends its many elements expertly into a show with a foreboding atmosphere, intelligent plots, sharply drawn characters and a long-story mystery that piques your curiosity.
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Two very different films on the marquis this week, but both were really terrific in their own way. Go with either of these titles and you won’t go wrong.
SEE 50/50, the wonderful comedy based on the true life cancer survival experiences of writer Will Reiser. This fantastic film makes you laugh when you think you shouldn’t, it makes you laugh when you don’t want to laugh, it makes you laugh when you’re sure you can’t laugh, and then, just when you think you can’t stop laughing, it guides you back to reality.
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Highlights
I think there’s something wrong with me, because I absolutely LOVE Showtime’s cynical, raunchy, self-loathing black comedy House of Lies, and the word “love” really shouldn’t be used in association with a show with this much angry sex, naked greed, shameless perversion of ethics and stuff that’s just so downright WRONG.
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Sociopathic exes Dawn Olivieri & Don Cheadle
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