Knee-jerk review: Fox's "The Mob Doctor"

1. Are they kidding with that title?  It's just begging to be mocked.  How can you not say it in a deep, booming Phil Hartman voice?

2. Yes, she's a brilliant surgeon who fights insensitive bureaucracy, performs cutting-edge surgery, and has the gritty no-nonsense backbone of a girl born on the wrong side of the tracks... who happens to be played by a cute blonde thirtysomething actress.

3. Nothing much is subtle here.  It's all way over the top, rife with coincidence and contrivance, and relayed to the audience in big flashing letters.  Case in point: why be cagey and crafty in complaining about your boss when you can just make a big scene that humiliates him in a way that insures he'll become a mortal enemy?

4. The last 20 minutes or so did have our complete attention.  It's one thing to suture bullet holes for dimwitted button men, but another to commit a premeditated in-surgery execution of a federal witness.  Isn't that right, Mob Doctor?  Rule one of being a Mob Doctor: don't make the mob angry.

5. We get it.  It's "The Sopranos" meets "Grey's Anatomy."  Don't think that's not how it got pitched to Fox.  And we admit it is compelling in a cheesy sort of way.

6. And this show was apparently based on a book.  What?  It's true.  Really.

7. East Dillon QB1 Matt Saracen's not old enough to be a doctor, people.  But there he is, delivering a lot of the episode's best lines.

8. Zeljko Ivanek is one of those actors we'd watch read a deli menu.  You thought we were going to say "phone book," didn't you?

9. Though the pilot ends on a note of intrigue, we probably won't be back.

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Knee-jerk review: "Raiders of the Lost Ark" in IMAX

1. "Snakes.  Why did it have to be snakes?"

2. Remember when Paramount was a Gulf +Western company?

3. We don't recall the pacing and editing being this fast and this lean.  There's no time wasted anywhere.  It's one set piece and one sequence after another, bang bang bang.  Maybe we have a different memory because of so many airings on television, which slices and dices everything for the commercials and stalls the momentum.

4. People (including us) had big problems with the silly alien element of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.  But look at this ending.  Angels and demons and melting faces and laser beams of holy wrath.  That's pretty out there, too.  Ditto the guy who gets his beating heart ripped out in Temple of Doom and the 1000-year-old knight guarding a magic cup in The Last Crusade.

5. Whatever happened to Paul Freeman?

6. It may be one of the best lines ever.  "It's not the years, honey.  It's the mileage."  Gold.

7. The story may hold up, but this is still an old movie.  The special effects and the process shots all look surprisingly grainy and shaky.  But we appreciate that Spielberg hasn't pulled a Lucas and gone back to polish it all up.

8. When we were younger, the dialogue scenes between the action scenes were the boring parts.  But as we get older, it's clear that this is where the real story lies.  Most notable are the lines dropped throughout that fill in Indiana and Marion's troubled backstory.  Just how young was Marion when Indiana fooled around with her?  Eek.

9. We also never really appreciated until now how much of a skeptic Indiana is when we first meet him. He doesn't believe in the supernatural.  Even as he's telling the Army intelligence officers about the Ark's Biblical power, he's barely able to keep from rolling his eyes.  He's Dana Scully.  And then at the end of the movie, he gets it.  It's all real.  These aren't just objects for a museum.  These things have power.  "Close your eyes, Marion!"

10. We're older now than Harrison Ford was when he made this movie.

11. "Throw me the whip!"

12. Raiders of the Lost Ark is 31 years old.  That's as old as Sunset Boulevard and All About Eve (both released in 1950) was in 1981 when Raiders was released.  Something to think about.

13. "We are... we are not thirsty."

14. Somehow we saw a behind-the-scenes featurette on how they painstakingly choreographed and filmed the Nepal bar fight, shot by shot, set-up by set-up.  This was a huge influence on sharpening our obsession with movies and Hollywood.

15. We may finally understand the appeal of Karen Allen.  She's not conventionally attractive, but there's a zesty, sexy spunk to her.  Marion really is Indiana's equal.  A hard drinker and a hard fighter.

16. "They're digging in the wrong place."

17. Can you really fling a grown man through a truck windshield with one hand?

18. This movie wouldn't work as well as it does without John Williams' score.  Yes, we bought the soundtrack.  On LP.

19. Check out the way Spielberg shoots Ford when the workers are opening the lid to the Well of Souls.  Lightning behind him, eyes wild, sweaty face.  Indiana looks like a crazy person, presumably to underscore his obsession.

20. "Bad dates."
21. How many bullwhips were sold in the 1980s because of this movie?  Just curious.

22. They also hit pretty hard that film-school cliche of the villain being a mirror image of the hero.  First Belloq says it explicity in the cafe.  "I am a shadowy reflection of you."  And then later, in case you didn't get it, in that bazooka scene (even though Indiana initially says he only wants Marion) Indiana realizes he's just as interested in opening the Ark as Belloq.  

23. If you're a film buff, you better know the difference between real IMAX and fake IMAX.  We saw Raiders in fake IMAX because believe it or not, in all of Los Angeles there are only two real IMAX theaters and neither was showing it.

24. We'll never think of this movie as Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark.  Sorry, George Lucas.

25. We noticed for the first time that Dr. Jones' female students are all making dreamy goo-goo eyes at him. It's not just the girl with "love you" written on her eyelids. 

26. One of Hollywood's most memorable film deaths is surely the bald Nazi who gets shredded by the plane propellor.  Sprrratt.
27. Speaking of which, as epic and memorable as the truck chase is, the better sequence is probably the one that precedes it with the flying wing.  Everything that can go wrong does go wrong as the danger and the violence escalate.

28. We still probably could have done without the monkey.

29. Applause moments during our screening: the Paramount logo, Indiana first stepping into the sunlight when he bullwhips the double-crosser in the jungle, Indiana smirking at Marion in the bar and saying "Trust me," and the end credits.

30. "Top.  Men."
31. At this point is there anyone who hasn't heard the story behind the scene when Indiana just pulls a gun and shoots the big Arab dude with the scimitar?

32. Dear Raiders of the Lost Ark, thank you for existing.  Sincerely, the Cheese Fry.

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We watched "Saturday Night Live" so you didn't have to

If you're like us, you have an on-again, off-again relationship with NBC's "Saturday Night Live," a show that's more cultural tradition than entertainment series.  At this point we wonder if NBC would ever cancel it.  It'd be like canceling "The Today Show."  This coming season will be the show's 38th.

In middle school and high school, the show was a pretty big deal for us.  We'd watch with our friends so we'd have something to talk about on Mondays, so we'd feel cool and hip.  But then once we got our driver's license, we sometimes had better things to do on Saturday night with our 11th grade friends.  This continued in college, though there were those Saturday night keg parties with the show playing in a dark corner.  We'd take a look.  But as we grew older, got a job, found a serious significant other, starting paying bills, there were many other things to do than keep track of the rotating cast and newest catch-phrases on "SNL."

Earlier this summer, while staying home to take care of Littlest Fry for a month, we had the opportunity to watch several episodes of "Saturday Night Live" back to back, clearing out hours of shows stacked up in our DVR.  We saw a lot of hosts, some surprisingly game (Mick Jagger, Daniel Radcliffe), some predictably mediocre (Lindsay Lohan), some predictably strong (Jimmy Fallon, Will Ferrell).

Here's what we learned.

1. Bill Hader is a genius.  And Stefon is perhaps his best creation, even if part of the appeal comes from watching him crack up.  He cannot get through these segments without losing it.  And we cannot get enough of him losing it in these segments.



2. It's easy to mock "SNL" when it seems lazy and lame, which it often is.  Sketches go nowhere, no one seems able to even try to learn lines, and every bit seems to be a variation of a tired TV talk show parody.  Some of this is surely a function of the demands of creating 90 minutes of content every week.  But some of it surely also complacency.  Even so, when the show is good, it's very very good:

"Almost Pizza" commercial


"The Californians"


"Disney Housewives"


3. Our favorite bit remains "Weekend Update."  It's often where the strongest, clearest jokes live, perhaps because they don't have to be stretched out into five minute sketches.  And while Seth Meyers seems at times to be polarizing, we like him.  So it was something of a let-down when Amy Poehler, Tina Fey, and Jimmy Fallon came back to the "Weekend Update" set for a joke-off to see which "Update" team could offer the best gag.  A strong idea.  But disappointing in execution.  Maybe you can't go home again.

4. It was a sweet dance send-off for genius Kristin Wiig on her last show, but we will not miss the strange recurring bit she shared with Fred Armisen in which they were a singing duo and she never knew the words.  It was funny for about 90 seconds.  And then it wasn't.  They mostly seemed to be amusing each other rather than the audience.

5. Keenan Thompson is funny, people.  And it's even more funny that he refuses to modulate in voice in any way from sketch to sketch.  No matter who he's playing, the dude sounds exactly the same.  (But we have had enough of the Scared Straight sketches and the awkward riffs on prison rape.)

6. We just don't get Fred Armisen.  He's funny sometimes, we suppose, but mostly he seems very smug and condescending.  He's his own best fan.

7. Taran Killam would seem to be the next break-out cast member.  He nails everything, doesn't he?

8. Abby Elliott will not be missed.  We never understood the reason for Elliott's presence on the cast.  And frankly, seeing her name in the credits often irritated us, especially when the more-talented Jenny Slate was axed last season.  All Elliott really offered was a dead-on Zooey Deschanel impersonation.  Though good, that's hardly a qualification for steady comedic employment. 

9. Jay Pharoah could be the next Abby Elliott if he's not careful.  If Elliott's a one-trick pony, Pharoah's so far maybe a three-trick pony.  He can nail Denzel and Jay-Z, but so what?  Is there anything more in the tank?

10. If there's no Andy Samberg, what will become of the "SNL Digital Short"?

11. The most artistic part of the show is surely the beautifully composed bumper photos of the guest host that run between segments.  The photographer is Mary Ellen Matthews and she's a genius.

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The Cheese Fry gets organized

For those dozen or so Cheese Fry regulars out there who want a better way to sift through our voluminous and invaluable content, we've started adding searchable tags to each post.  Now if you want to access all of our "Knee-jerk reviews" you can do so.

Look for these tags, which Blogger calls "labels," at the bottom of each post.

You're welcome.

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Knee-jerk review: "The Dark Knight Rises"

1. We thought for sure we'd be among the last to see this movie.  But no, there were a few other losers in the theater like us.
2. It was hard to sit through the opening few minutes without thinking of the Aurora, Colorado shooting victims.  Those images were the last those people would ever see.  It's easy to imagine the horrific chaos of gunfire and screams playing out against such a loud, raucous movie.  We also noted a new AMC trailer that talked about what to do in an emergency.  We don't think they're referring to a fire.
3. As for the film itself, it's kind of a mess.
4. We had the same sort of reaction to The Dark Knight, though that was a far superior movie.  The Dark Knight was essentially two movies crammed into one.  You had the Joker's story and then you had Harvey Dent/Two-Face's story.  Had they been integrated better, it might have worked.  Instead, you got 2 hours of the Joker and then suddenly the Two-Face twist crammed into the final rushed half hour.
5. This new movie is even worse, stuffed full full of characters and subplots and backstabs.  This is the kind of film where just about every character has a sad backstory that they reveal in a melodramatic monologue, sometimes with a flashback as well.   It's just too, too much.  
6. Good luck keeping everything straight as to who's working for who and why.  The whole Daggett subplot seems so completely needless.  You really just have to go with it.
7. It's frustrating because Christopher Nolan has such grand ambitions and always infuses his big-budget movies with big themes and compelling subtexts.  But it gets lost in all of the confusion.
8. One friend told us he suspects this is a case of no one at Warner Bros. daring to tell Nolan no given the huge success of The Dark Knight and Inception.  Nolan did this one the way he wanted, right or wrong.  
9. We loved the discussion about how being unafraid of death is a weakness, not a strength.  Those who want to live will fight harder and longer and smarter.  A genius concept that we hadn't ever considered.
10. Bane is no Joker.  And his voice sounds like a dime-store parody of Sean Connery's brogue.  And poor Tom Hardy having to act without using his face.
11. Despite the film being soggy for so long (sorry, auteurs, but no movie should be 2 hours and 45 minutes), the epilogue sequence is a complete knockout.  Very satisfying.
12. Who knew Joseph Gordon-Levitt could be such a bad ass?  Wow.  We cannot wait for Looper.
13. We saw that betrayal coming from a mile away.  And just step back a moment and think about all of the steps that were required to get that nuclear bomb into the bad guys' hands.  How convoluted.
14. The idea of fomenting a 99% revolution against the 1% upper class is a good one, but again, it's just one of many ideas stirred into the movie.  None of them get fully cooked really.
15. Some truly arresting visuals, like the army of cops charging at the army of crooks.  As liberal as one might view the anti-wealthy bent of the movie, there are also some very right-leaning perspectives on the value of law-and-order ruthlessness and the importance of the police.
16. Anne Hathaway.  Sigh.
17. So not only does Bruce Wayne pull on that suit, but he also takes the time to put blackout makeup around his eyes.
18. Gary Oldman, action hero.  Who doesn't love that?
19. Of all the people in Gotham City, just one beat cop has figured out who Batman really is?  Really?
20. Selina Kyle is totally playing the Han Solo role here.
21. Blowing up the stadium is exciting visually, but more and more we find the killing of innocents to lack the sort of raw entertainment appeal it used to have for us.
22. We know they did work to make Bane more intelligible.  But we didn't couldn't understand a lot of what he said.
23. Credit the filmmakers for making a sequel that actually requires knowledge of the previous two films.  This trilogy is indeed one long story.  So bonus points for that.  If you didn't see Batman Begins, you'll likely be lost trying to understand all this fuss about the League of Shadows.
24. Great line from Bane about the stock market.  Some flunky tells him there's no money there to steal.  He says, "No?  Then why are all of you here?"
25. Overall, a missed opportunity.

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BFI's "Greatest Films" we never saw

The British Film Institute - via the cineaste journal Sight and Sound - recently updated their rather stodgy list of cinema's top 50 movies of all time.  To us, it's the sort of screening list we saw in film school.  Lots of "medicine" movies, many of them either quite old or quite foreign (because, you know, American and recent equals mainstream crap), that may not taste good but are supposed to be good for you.

Sure, we've seen Vertigo (the new number 1), Citizen Kane (the old number 1), and Some Like It Hot (ranked at a criminally low 42).  But there's a lot we haven't seen.  And some we've never even heard of.

Here are the movies we would be trying to make an effort to see, if only we didn't have two small children, a full-time job, and a underdeveloped sense of film snobbery that tends to prefer any movie not spoken in English.

Tokyo Story
La Regle du jeu
Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans
The Searchers - We really would like to see this one.  It's on our list.
Man with a Movie Camera
The Passion of Joan of Arc
8 1/2
L'Atalante
Late Spring
Au hasard Balthazar
Seven Samurai - We wouldn't mind seeing this.
Persona
Mirror
L'avventura
Le Mepris
Ordet
In the Mood for Love - Heard lots of good things.  On our list.
Rashomon
Andre Rublev
Stalker
Shoah
Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce 1080 Bruxelles - Is this really a movie?
Satantango
The 400 Blows
La Dolce Vita
Journey to Italy
Pather Panchali - Huh?
Gertrud
Pierrot le Fou - Now you're just messing with us.
Play Time
Close Up
The Battle of Algiers - Heard good things about it, wouldn't mind seeing it.
Histoires du Cinema

That's a whole lot of Dreyer, Tarkovsky, and Godard, filmmakers all who lean towards the tedious, the esoteric, and the dull.  No thanks.  We'll take Dazed and Confused, Pulp Fiction, and Goldfinger.

The shorter list may be the "Greatest Films" we have seen:

Vertigo
Citizen Kane
2001: A Space Odyssey
Battleship Potemkin
Breathless
Apocalypse Now
Singing' in the Rain
The Godfather
Mulholland Drive
The Godfather Part II
Taxi Driver
The Bicycle Thieves
The General
Metropolis
Psycho
Some Like It Hot
City Lights
Ugetsu monogatari - Thank you, film school.
La Jetee

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Knee-jerk review: "Opening Ceremonies of XXX Summer Olympics"

1. Of the two, we prefer the Beijing opening in 2008.  Even with its vaguely threatening show of socialist uniformity and conviction.
2. Danny Boyle looks like the weird high school chemistry teacher you made fun of behind his back.  But the guy has talent.  Trainspotting's overrated, though.  Sorry, film geeks.  Slumdog Millionaire is the masterpiece.
3. On one hand those glowing blankets that kids had are very space-ace cool.  We kind of want one.  But on the other hand, how can you go to sleep with your blanket glowing right in your face?
The forging of the giant Olympic ring?  And then how it floats up and joins the other four rings?  Genius.  Drama.  Goose-bumps.
4. Enough, Ryan Seacrest.  Enough.  Please.
5. We begrudgingly give respect to the James Bond-Queen Elizabeth II gag.  If only because it seemed like something so impossible to pull off given the stature of Her Majesty and what would imagine would be her refusal to do such a thing.  But we hated the animated Churchill statue.  Too Disney.
6. What's the deal with the enormous Ferris wheel with the round glass bubbles?  How scary must that be to ride?
7. Can someone tell us definitively: is David Beckham really a good soccer player or not?
8. Beware the army of the flying Mary Poppinses.  We think that was a line in Shakespeare somewhere.
9. Sorry, NBC.  Not only did we fast-forward as much as possible through the unending parade of nations, but we fell asleep through most of the part we had to watch in real-time.
10. For us, the Rowan Atkinson bit just didn't fit with the import and pageantry of the Olympics.
All of the filmed bits made the ceremony feel a bit like the Oscars.  Maybe it was how Atkinson morphed himself into Chariots of Fire.  That hasn't been funny since Billy Crystal did it in, like, 2002.
11. And by the way, for the record we're still irritated that Chariots of Fire, a movie no one we know has ever seen, beat Raiders of the Lost Ark for Best Picture.
12. NBC ran a montage of past Summer Olympic posters.  Los Angeles 1984 didn't make the cut.  
13. Love that the torchbearer ran into the stadium through a line of the construction workers who helped build it.
14. At some point, doesn't someone at Ralph Lauren ask the guy sitting in the cubicle next to him, "Hey, shouldn't we have these American Olympic uniforms, like, made in the U.S.A.?"
15. Is it us, or did the pastoral cottage setting of the initial set-up seem like it ought to have a few Hobbits running around?
16. We respect Muhammed Ali, but we're not sure why he suddenly popped up to touch the Olympic flag.
17. Paul McCartney may look now strangely like an old woman, but there's nothing dated about "Hey Jude."  All of those thousands of people singing the "na na na" chorus was beautiful.
18. We're not ashamed to admit we always get a little emotional when the big stadium cauldron finally gets lit.  The moment here was a great one as many small urns slowly caught fire one by one then raised up into one single giant flame.

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Knee-jerk review: "Ted"

1. This movie reminds us that the best thing about the 1980 flop Flash Gordon is Queen's catchy, over the top theme song.  It's pretty much downhill from there.
2. If you like "The Family Guy," you'll like this.
3. We do.  And we did.
4. This what they call a "hard R."  You'd probably have to go back to something like Superbad or The Hangover to find a movie this profane and this filthy.  It crosses the line several times.  And we mostly mean that as a compliment. 
5. Seth MacFarlane may be something of a comic genius.  We really don't understand people who hate "The Family Guy."  It's offensive at times, yes, but joke-for-joke there's few TV comedies so frantic and rapid fire.
6. We sometimes feel like we're getting a little too old for bathroom humor.  But then this movie goes and presents two of the funniest fart gags we've ever seen.  We could not stop laughing.  It's like were 10 again.
7. Not crazy about the contrived action-thriller third act.  It doesn't really fit the rest of the movie but we suppose the studio insisted.
8. Also not crazy about the lowlifes who wheeled in a toddler in a stroller to watch this movie.  When Ted was threatened at the climax, the toddler started crying.  Way to parent, people.  Our country is so screwed.
9. Even the narration by Sir Patrick Stewart is profane.  Yes, it's funny to hear Captain Picard's Shakespearean diction used for bad words.
10. Cameo by Lance Armstrong's testicle.  Yeah, it's that kind of movie.
11. They kind of wasted Joel McHale.  We've been a fan ever since we first saw him in those old Burger King spots.
12. Where's Tom Skerritt been?
13. It may not work with most audiences, but the movie's obsession with 1980s pop culture will resonate quite nicely with Generation Xers.
14. We like Mila Kunis, but we're not sure if we love her.  She just kinda is, don't you think?
15. Mark Walhberg on the other hand.  Gold.
16. Hilarious movie.

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Knee-jerk review: "Savages"

1. Overheard leaving the theater: "Man, that movie sucked."
2. We disagree, but admit he might have a point.
3. For a movie too long by 30 minutes, it feels rather skimpy and unmemorable.  A nice diversion, but not exactly necessary.
4. Benicio Del Toro must surely be the least vain actor working today.  He never, ever looks good in his movies and doesn't seem to care.
5. If you're looking for a movie that deals in extreme torture and decapitation, this is the one for you.  In other words, it doesn't shy away from the more gruesome, icky elements of Mexican drug cartels.
6. And while it's not often that a movie shows this kind of graphic pelvis-grinding sex (in not one, but two scenes), we're not at all surprised that ambitious starlet Blake Lively chose to stay fully clothed.
7. Who wouldn't want John Travolta strutting around their movie?  Love him.
8. Once you have kids, glib and off-handed threats to children in movies no longer just ha-ha-ha wash over you.  They come off more like a sucker punch to the gut.  They're not funny or entertaining.
9. We were surprised how sympathetic and layered the two villains (Del Toro and Salma Hayek) were portrayed.  As ruthless as they may be, there is a reason and a logic and a purpose to why they do what they do.  Well done.
10. Much has been made of the "trick" ending, but we liked it okay.
11. You really shouldn't focus on the Blake Lively character.  She's the narrator, but her spoiled, petulant, rich-girl stoner lacks sympathy.  We don't understand why the two heroes are so into her, other than that it makes for a sexy threesome "free love" gimmick for the story.  Even her name ("O") is girly annoying.
12. The far more compelling story is the way this violent misadventure completely changes the hippie peacenik character played by Aaron Johnson.  This is a guy who goes to Africa to build water wells.  But when he tangles with the cartel that kidnaps his girlfriend, he soon finds himself participating in a torture murder.
13. Part of us fantasized that the rescue of Blake Lively would be so horrific for all parties involved (what they had to do to get her, what she had to endure as she waited) that by the time the heroes saved her, they'd all be so changed and scarred and soulless that their threesome romance would prove broken and they'd wind up going their separate ways.
14. No one would have guessed this is an Oliver Stone movie if his name wasn't on the the credits.  The Cheese Fry in 1995 got on a local newscast giving a pro-Oliver Stone soundbite while sitting in the audience of a Stone retrospective.  We're sure whatever we had to say was insightful and cleverly-worded.
15. We're rooting for Taylor Kitsch, who may be taking an unfair share of the blame for John Carter and Battleship underperforming.
16. We'll give is a solid C.

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Jury duty cast of characters

The Cheese Fry recently waded into the deep end of the criminal justice system shark tank, spending a day and a half suffering through the tedium that is jury duty.  We weren't picked - the defense attorney excused us for what were surely some fiendishly devious reasons - but we certainly saw our fill of interesting people:

* The retiree sitting the jury selection room at 8am who had nothing to read.  He simply sat there and stared into space like a mental patient.  What's he going to do all day?  How is he going to pass the time?
* The frazzled single mother dragging along her three kids to the jury room.  She got a postponement apparently.  Extra credit that her middle son, who looked to be about 14, was wearing a top hat.
* The woman who admitted that her brother was sentenced to three years in prison and, when asked if the system treated him fairly, agreed that it did.  Some brother he must be.
* The deputy sheriff with the ridiculously huge beer gut.  Who's he going to stop?  If he can reach you, okay, you're probably going down.  But if there's any kind of footrace, we advise betting against him.
* The haggard, humorless, unflappable jury manager who ran through her orientation speech for what was surely the 9000th time.  She has seen it all and is not amused by your foolishness.  She even admitted that she's not seeing us.  She's just running through the script in her head.
* The disheveled guy who came to the jury assembly lugging a half-empty gallon jug of orange juice, from which he repeatedly swigged.  What's his story?  He battling scurvy or was there a sale at the corner market?
* The scruffy dude wandering past with the big spiderwebs tattooed on his elbows.  Why?
* The little old Asian lady and the middle-aged Mexican fellow who pretended to not speak English as a way to get out of jury service.  We are skeptical, albeit impressed at their ability to stick to their me-no-speaka character.
* The shlubby and shabby defense attorney who seemed unable to pull that necktie tight to his collar or keep his shirt smooth and pressed.  Contrasted to the button-down defense attorney who looked like she just stepped out of the pages of Cosmopolitan Counselor.
* The two middle-aged women who somehow found each other and proceeded to develop an annoying suburban comedy act of giggly commentary on anything and everything.  No one else found it as amusing as them, including even the elderly man with the hand palsy who somehow got recruited to serve as their McMahon-style sidekick.  He deserved better.
* The two slightly trashy twentysomething women visiting the courthouse in what could only be described as micro-shorts.  So much for the dignity of the court.
* The very elderly woman with painfully skinny arms and legs trying in vain to look young by tying a scarf around her neck.
* The jackass oaf who slouched and mumbled to the judge that he simply could not believe the testimony of law enforcement because of his own multiple bad encounters with police, which of course involved an assertion of his 3rd and 4th amendment Constitutional rights.  He needed video evidence to convict, of course. One of those. The dialogue between him and judge over the definition of the term "hearsay" was comedy gold.  You can't make this stuff up. What a maroon.  He was excused.
* The bald deputy sheriff standing around the hallway with sunglasses perched on his forehead like it was a banker's visor.  If that's not bad enough, he then carefully adjusted it several times so it would sit properly.  Did we mention he was inside?
* The angry, loudmouthed retiree dressed like a bag lady who apparently missed all of the jury orientation and so simply showed up late, walked to the jury manager, waved her paperwork, and shouted "What do I do with this?"
* The soft-spoken woman who explained it's God's place to judge, not hers.
* The Israeli woman utterly incapable of entertaining the idea that people charged with a crime are not automatically guilty.  She couldn't even imagine a hypothetical situation in which she or her kids were wrongly accused.  In her country, you see, it's only the wise judges who render verdicts, not "the common man."  She was excused, obviously.
* The android-like court reporter who seemed to attain some kind of weird Zen state where she simply stared into space as her fingers moved.

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Knee-jerk review: "Prometheus"

1. Not exactly "knee-jerk."  We've been mulling this over for a week now, trying to figure it out.  Trying to understand how we feel about it.
2. We went in with high hopes, but must admit the film was a letdown.  It falls a bit flat overall.
3. There are some great elements.  It just doesn't gel together.
4. When you have to spend several hours scouring the internet message boards to try and understand key sequences, that's probably a bad sign.
5. Ambiguity is okay.  We like ambiguity.  What we don't like is confusion and vagaries and sloppy, lazy execution, which is what we have here.  
6. Some dots just need connecting, Sir Ridley.
7. Charlize Theron is ridiculously attractive.  It's almost criminal.
8. That weird opening sequence by the waterfall.  That's earth, people.  We didn't get it.  But we have an inside source that confirms it to be so.
9. That's a pretty big leap in logic, captain, when you suddenly understand what your crew is dealing with.  How'd you figure that out?  Other than the screenwriter telling you.
10. Cool red laser mapping robot thingys.
11. Yes yes, Michael Fassbender is excellent as the android David.  But Lawrence of Arabia?  Seriously?
12. Some very interesting subtext parallels involving parents and children, whether it's aliens who maybe created mankind or an android and his (its?) scientist creator or just ordinary human parents and children.
13. Very cool sandstorm bit.
14. If you believe what the message boards suggest, there's some really out-there theories about why the alien race suddenly decided to destroy earth.  It involves a certain someone who met a grisly end 2000 years ago.  Yeah, that guy.  Crazy.
15. A lot of grumbling out there about the open, sequel-friendly ending.  But we liked it.  It was satisfying.
16. But the boyfriend scientist (played by Logan Marshall-Green)?  What an annoying drip.
17. You just don't see a lot of flamethrowers these days, do you?
18. The arrival on the alien planet is spooky and ethereal, just what you would expect if you were someone setting foot for the first time on a strange new world.
19. Bonus points for not playing the self-destruct-sequence card.
20. How exactly the black goo works remains unclear.  Your guess is as good as ours... or anybody else's.
21. For the record, Aliens is the best of the bunch for obvious reasons.  One of the most exciting action movies ever made, a master class in script structure and editing.  Alien is a close second, a game changer that innovated a blend of science fiction and horror.  A slow, long burn.  Some people hate Alien Resurrection, but we liked it.  What we didn't like was Alien 3, if only because it so callously killed off two of the survivors of Aliens.  We cannot forgive that.  This one falls right behind Alien, though we know the producers keep trying to tell us "it's not technically a prequel." Whatever.  It's a prequel!  It's an Alien movie!
22. Worth a look, but be prepared for frustration.

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Knee-jerk review: "Safety Not Guaranteed"

1. It premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. And that's really all you need to know. Indie sensibility, quirky tone, low budget, dry humor, lots of charm.
2. In a word, cute.
3. Simple premise, which always helps. Man places classified ad seeking a time travel partner. Is he crazy or does he really have a time machine? That's the question our heroine faces as she starts to fall for him.
4. By the end of the movie, we were definitely rooting for the want-ad placer to really have invented a time machine. We didn't want him to be crazy.
5. As fans of the Fox sitcom New Girl, we are big fans of actor Jake Johnson. He's always interesting, often hilarious.
6. The two leads - Mark Duplass and Aubrey Plaza - aren't necessarily unattractive, but there's also not the typical sleekly good-looking actors you usually see in movies. They're a bit off kilter. Which is nice.
7. "Stormtroopers are blue collar."
8. In a way, we were more interested in the high-school-girlfriend B-story, not the time-travel A-story. Either way, we appreciate how both plotlines explore in different ways the same theme of going back and fixing old mistakes. That's something we can all appreciate.
9. Zither scene is a quirky Sundance-style touch. Who plays a zither? Characters in Sundance movies. 10. The film is based on a supposedly fake want ad place in something called the "Backwoods Home Magazine" in 1997, though it also apparently appeared in The Copenhagen Times. Weird.
11. It's true. Like Johnson's character says, you are only 21 once. And it's completely wasted on 21-year-olds. Which can lead to drinking and smoking and crying on go-carts, as is portrayed here.
12. The two cackling women sitting down the aisle from us certainly loved it.
13. Like we said. Cute.

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Office place neuroses

These are the kinds of problems we have at work.

* We have a co-worker who doesn't know our name.  He thinks our name is Jeff, which is incorrect.  It's not like we work with this person on a daily basis.  His cubicle is a few doors down from ours.  It's more like a work acquaintance.  We could see him every day or a week or more could go by before we see him next.  The problem is that we've let the mistake go on for so long that it now seems impossible to correct.  The first time he called us "Jeff," we shrugged it off.  He must have gotten confused and misspoke, right?  He was preoccupied that day.  But no.  A few weeks later it happened again.  We again said nothing.  If it's just a "Hey, Jeff" as he's briskly walking past, it seems odd to stop him in his tracks to explain his mistake.  By the time our brain registers that he did it again, he's already getting on the elevator or closing the bathroom stall door.  Weeks will go by where he doesn't call us any name at all.  So that lulls us into thinking he's been set straight somehow.  But then he'll drop the "Jeff" again.  Now, all these many months later, how could we possibly correct him without seeming incredibly weird to have let it go on so long?  Wouldn't any normal, sane person have corrected him immediately and nipped this strange problem in the bud?

* When does a man use an umbrella?  This is something they don't teach you in school.  It's a tricky line to walk.  If you extend an umbrella in drizzly, misting precipitation, you look like a precocious dandy.  You just don't look cool.  Real men don't care if they're spritzed by a little dampness: "Why is that guy using his umbrella?"  But where's the cutoff?  At what point does the rain get real enough and heavy enough to force an umbrella extension?  We need some kind of umbrella-to-rain differential equation.  Because if you're walking around in the pouring gale-force rain carrying an umbrella in your hand, well then you just look ridiculous: "Why isn't that guy using his umbrella?"

* What are the protocols for greeting a coworker in a long hallway where both of you are approaching from more than 20 feet?  Do you shout "hello" and wave as soon as you see them?  Or do you wait until you're closer for a cool-cat head nod or friendly smile?  And if you do wait, what do you do with yourself?  He sees you, you see him.  Then what?  Do you keep staring at the other person like a mental patient waiting for him to come in range, do you refer to the blank pages you're carrying as if you must commit them to memory, do you try and look elsewhere to kill time until the other person gets closer?  Our workplace is full of these sorts of long encounter traps.  We hate it.

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176,248 miles

That's the mileage of our 1994 Subaru Impreza when we finally said goodbye to it a couple of months ago.  Flags flew at half mast, black crepe paper hung, dogs wailed at the moon. What cost $13,000 in the fall of 1994 depreciated to the point that it was worth maybe $300 if you squinted just right and said a silent prayer.

But the Subaru mostly got us where we needed to go and only in the last two or three years was it truly embarrassing to drive, due mostly to that weird ghetto sunlight oxidation disease that fades the paint in ugly splotches.  You can always tell who doesn't have a garage by driving around and seeing which old car has those faded stains.

Faced with the prospect of a swiftly failing transmission (i.e., the car would every so often just kind of, like, drop out of fourth gear into third while driving at 40mph, no big deal), the Cheese Fry was unwilling to spend another $3000 to eke out a few more months of life.
But the Subaru taught us some important lessons.

* Jamba Juice stains won't come out, especially not Banana Berry.  We had to look at the same purple seat stain every day since 1998.

* A papasan chair won't fit inside the back end.  You'll have to lash it to the roof and creep it home.

* Those little replacement bottles of exterior paint you get from the dealership... looks nothing like the factory exterior paint once you take it out of the bottle.  You might as well buy a set of poster paint from the corner Walgreens.

* Manual transmissions are a lot of fun at first.  Then it's not so fun.  Then you start to curse the person who invented it.  Stick shifts were not meant for gridlocked stop-and-go traffic in a community full of steep hills and curves.  You can get worn out just from working the clutch pedal.

* If a quarter falls between the seat and center console, it's gone forever.

* You'd be surprised how many people just assume every car out there has power locks and power windows.  Whenever someone pulled up on the passenger side to say something ("where's the freeway?" or "you have a flat"), we had to do that lame lean-over to stretch out and hand crank the window open.

* If you drive away from a gas station with the nozzle still shoved in your gas tank, turns out you can completely rip off your gas tank lid.  And scare the hell out of the other customers at the pump island who likely envisioned a blooming fireball consuming everything.

* There's something about the chemical properties of the door pocket that turns wooden pencils into something akin to stone.

* We still don't know what that white smoke was all about.  And always only at the top of hills.

* No matter how much we had to pay AAA each year, it was always a bargain.

* Those letter plastic letters that spell "Subaru" on the car hatchback cost about $85 each.  Rather than replace one that fell out, the dealership actually advised us to just peel off the others.  So we did, turning our car into an unidentifiable stealth vehicle.

* An AM-FM radio sometimes isn't enough.

So how far is 176,248 miles?  

That's 930 million feet, which translates to 310 million yards.  That's roughly 3.1 million football fields laid end to end.

176,248 miles would allow us to drive back and forth from Los Angeles to Tokyo 16 times.

On a more cosmic level, we drove our Subaru a little over seven times around the earth's equator or 26 times around the moon.  

And if our Subaru were a rocket, we would have made it almost 3/4 of the way to the moon from earth.  The Apollo astronauts surely didn't have Howard Stern on Sirius to help pass the time.

Goodbye, Subaru.  It's been... fun.

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Knee-jerk review: "Cabin in the Woods"

1. Wow.
2. As you may have heard, it's hard to talk about Cabin in the Woods without spoiling the big third act secret.  But we will tell you the answer is right there in the opening credits if you know where to look.
3. We hate to use the word "genius"... but the conceit of this movie is audaciously original.  We've seen nothing else like it.  And it works.
4. In short, we pretty much loved it.
5. Stoner guy Marty, played by Fran Krantz, steals the movie with his metal thermos bong.
6. Writer-director Drew Goddard, part of the J.J. Abrams mafia, also wrote Cloverfield, one of our all-time favorites.  He's now officially on our radar.
7. There are scary "gotcha!" moments, sure, but it's really more of an academic deconstruction of the American slasher film - namely, those predictable and formulaic movies where good-looking 20-somethings visit an isolated lake, make dumb choices, and meet gruesome ends.  But because of the way the movie so openly upends the cliches of the genre (a distant cousin may be Scream), the horror is kept at arm's length.  That is, you'll spend more time working to understand why what's happening is happening and less time covering your eyes.
8. Honestly, the preceding trailer we saw of Chernobyl Diaries was way more chilling and creepy than this movie.
9. We'll say it again: the final 15 minutes here are so crazy that you won't believe they're actually committing to it.
10. Merman.
11. In addition to the smart post-modern breakdown of horror tropes and motifs (what are thee $10 words? is this a dumb blog or a pretentious film studies class?), the movie also has some interesting things to say about religion .  Note the scene where no one pays any attention to the suffering going on behind them.  Administrators and managers - like, say, God - may or may not care about your little problems.
12. Which are you: the scholar, the athlete, the fool, the whore, or the virgin?
13. Seriously, you could write a decent film theory paper about the way this movie examines the horror movie formula.
14. Okay, we give up - it is genius.  There, we said it.

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Old vs young is the new red state vs blue state

We hate getting political on a blog that spends most of its time discussing 1980s radios hits and superhero movies.  And now we're going to get political.  Pundits like to talk about red states versus blue states, left versus right, or rich versus poor, but Esquire's Stephen Marche recently makes a compelling argument that the real division in this country is old versus young.  Specifically, Marche puts blame at the feet of the Baby Boomer generation.  To us, it's a new way of looking at the problems in Washington.

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Knee-jerk review: "The Avengers"

1. $200 million opening weekend.  Millions of moviegoers can't be wrong, can they?
2. Hollywood marketing executives spend a lot of money to lure you into theaters on opening weekend, while Hollywood distribution executives make sure that their movie plays everywhere so there's zero chance you won't be able to see it when you want.  That is, first you make sure everyone wants to go and then you make sure everyone who wants to go gets in.  Unless you have a turkey on your hands, a la John Carter, this strategy of spending millions to make millions usually works.  Especially if your movie is a engineered to please crowds like this so clearly one is.
3. It is very entertaining.  We were pleasantly surprised.
4. It's a little slow to get started, but by the time the Avenger characters are all in the same room bickering and sniping, it really takes off.  The dialogue crackles and the actors share a nice chemistry.
5. The movie takes great pains to pair off as many different Avengers as possible for big special-effects fights and missions of derring-do.  You want Iron Man to fight Thor or Hulk to take orders from Captain America?  You got it.
6. Who would have thought that most of the laughs come not from Tony Stark, but from Bruce Banner and the Hulk?  Mark Ruffalo is pretty much perfect.
7. It's a lot more science-fiction/fantasy-based than you might expect, what with the aliens invading from another dimension.  Harder to suspend disbelief.
8. Scarlett Johansson makes a great redhead.  But her character pales in comparison to the other superheroes.  All she can do is pout and reload her gun.  Not much of a power.  It's almost laughable.
9. Hawkeye's pushing it as well.  He has good vision.  Neat!
9. Sam Jackson does... his usual impersonation of Sam Jackson.  It's getting a little old.
10. There's more fake-science technobabble here than in a typical episode of "Star Trek: The Next Generation."
11. Don't worry about the plot.  It's barely there.  This is a movie of big moments and bigger set pieces.
12. And the third act climax (aliens attack New York City) is about as big a spectacle as we have ever witnessed.  Wow.  We also liked how the good guys started to really get their ass kicked, overwhelmed and exhausted by the sheer number of attacking villain aliens.  It creates a real sense of worry: can they pull this off?
13. Dig that flying aircraft carrier.
14. Who knew Robin Scherbatsky was such a bad ass?
15. And so the summer movie season has started.
16. You sort of have to see it, right?  Just to be able to be in on the water cooler talk.
17. Joss Whedon did it.  We didn't think he could.  But he did.

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Cassette tape rewind: freshman summer

The summer of 1986 was a time of transition for the Cheese Fry, leaving the brutally awkward and dangerous halls of an inner city middle school, complete with a daily 20-minute round-trip ride on a yellow school bus and the regular roars of airplanes taking off and landing a hundred feet over the roof, and preparing to enter the brutally awkward and dangerous (for different reasons) halls of a suburban high school.  MTV was king, riding our bike was starting to get uncool, and a fun Friday night was touch football under the streetlights after dark.

Here's the top ten songs this week 26 years ago.

1. Robert Palmer, "Addicted to Love" - Played to death at the time, both on the radio and in double-super-heavy rotation on MTV, this song has become shorthand for mid-80s pop.  The lyrics can be repetitive, but the grinding guitars and whap-whap-whap of the drums make it imminently enjoyable.  And for a 14-year-old, that video of sleek, barely-dressed women wearing bright red wet lipstick was fascinating on a number of levels.

2. Pet Shop Boys, "West End Girls" - We respect the artistry of this song and the lush Yamaha-keyboard mood, but it's rather dour.  And full of too many esoteric lyrics that likely only make sense if you know England.  It hasn't aged very well.

3. Prince and the Revolution, "Kiss" - Hated it then, hate it now.  Our pathetic school bus driver (she once decided not to drive her bus in the ice, but didn't tell anyone that was her plan so all of us kids were stranded in the freezing cold on our bus stop corners) always broadcast from her crap plastic Radio Shack transistor radio some local adult-contemporary station and, we kid you not, they played "Kiss" every single damn morning.

4. Van Halen, "Why Can't This Be Love" - 1984 was one of the first three cassette tapes we ever bought (other two: Huey Lewis and the News, Sports and The Police, Synchronicity - the more you know...).  We wore that thing out, playing it over and over.  While at the time we loved "Jump" now it's very clear to us the best song is "Panama."  So the departure of singer David Lee Roth was a worrisome development in the Cheese Fry's childhood home.  This single was the first one off the new Van Halen album 5150 featuring replacement singer Sammy Hagar.  It sounds like a Van Halen song, but then again it also sounds completely different.  Clearly, they had us with the opening weeee-eeee-ahhh bent guitar chord.
5. The Rolling Stones, "Harlem Shuffle" - We suspect this is rather humiliating for them, don't you think? "Sympathy for the Devil," it ain't.

6. Janet Jackson, "What Have You Done for Me Lately" - Remember when Janet - Ms. Jackson if you're nasty - was a legitimate music force cranking out these kinds of sexy, angry dance songs (unless they were slower, softer, more introspective ballads like "Let's Wait Awhile")?  This was one of several hits from her breakout album - remember when we called them albums? - Control.  It is definitely a time-travel song.  Hear it and you're instantly transported to the rundown 1981 hatchback you rode in during a secret lunch run, crowded full of fellow freshman.

7. Whitney Houston, "Greatest Love of All" - We're not afraid to admit that there are a great many Whitney Houston songs out there that we really like.  This is not one of them.  A textbook example of the kind of sappy, melodramatic cheese danish that was so very popular back before things like SoundScan started keeping track of what people actually liked and bought, not what record stores and music labels pushed on the public.  Gag us.

8. Outfield, "Your Love" - All together now: "Josie's on a vacation far away..."  One of the best pop songs ever recorded.  Seriously.  The end.

9. Phil Collins, "Take Me Home" - Another of the many hit singles from the Phil Collins juggernaut album No Jacket Required (we have a guilty-pleasure soft spot for the brassy "Sussudio").  We always liked the jingle-jangle synthesized background and the chorus has a nice soar to it.  But like so many Collins songs, it overstays its welcome by several minutes before that slow, slow fade-out.

10. The Bangles, "Manic Monday" - It's hard to fathom any 1980s teenage boy in American not having a crush on at least one of the Bangles.  Flirty singer Susanna Hoffs was the popular one, sure but we liked to go against the grain so our favorite was guitarist Vicki Peterson.  This is by far their biggest hit, imminently sing-a-long-able, and very much a child of the 80s, famously written by Prince (see #3 above).  It's sunny and peppy and wry, but we prefer the darker "Hazy Shade of Winter."

P.S. Will our kids think of the Bangles or Robert Palmer the same dusty, distant way we think of the Beatles and Elvis from our parents' generation?  Egad.

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"Survivor: One World" odds

Kim, 2:1
Sabrina, 3:1
Chelsea, 4:1
Tarzan, 5:2
Alicia, 10:1
Christina, 20:1

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If a jingle falls in the forest

An interesting debate raged at Cheese Fry headquarters regarding the Kelly Ripa commercial for Electrolux washer and dryer:
 


Do you recognize the music?  Is it important that you do?

It's the theme to the 1964-72 TV series "Bewitched."  The implication seems to be that if you use this product, you'll have the sort of supernatural ability to multi-task household chores that was so common to Elizabeth Montgomery's character on the show.

But who remembers that show?  Or its theme song?

And does it matter?

The key question: to whom is Electrolux selling its product?

One would might assume that it's young adults with small children who might be looking for new washers and dryers.  Kelly Ripa is a youthful 42 with three children, so this makes sense. But would anyone Ripa's age or younger get the "Bewitched" reference?  The Cheese Fry is almost 40.  We watched "Bewitched" in reruns as a kid and has vague memories of it, but it's certainly not filling TV schedules today and winning new fans.  Mrs. Cheese Fry (still comfortably in her 30s) didn't recognize the song until told, then she said she remembered it.  More important to her was the old-school retro mood it conveyed, harkening back to simpler days of nuclear families.

And then we looked at the price.

Those units go for $1600 each.  That could price most 30-something parents right out of the market.

So then maybe this spot really is for the Baby Boomers who know "Bewitched" very well, who have more disposable income, and who know Ripa best from her role in the older-skewing morning show with 70-something Regis Philbin.

What's this all mean?  How should we know?

But someone certainly chose that music for a specific reason.  Often it's very clear to us why recognizable pop-culture song cues are used.  Advertisers like to reference songs that appeal to the target demo, which is why Generation X gets TV spots with Motley Crue selling cars while Baby Boomers get Led Zeppelin selling cars.  They're creating a clear connection with the market, linking the song to the product.  This is opposed to music like in say, iPod spots, that are so obscure that they're more about conveying mood than making a specific pop culture reference.

So we're confused by the "Bewitched" theme because the reference is so specific, so perfectly in tune with the spot's content, yet could well go unrecognized by a good chunk of the viewer.

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