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.
7.17.2012
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.
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.
7.13.2012
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.
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.
7.11.2012
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.
* 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.
6.16.2012
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.
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.
6.15.2012
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.
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.
6.12.2012
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.
* 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.
5.25.2012
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.
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.
5.11.2012
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.
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.
5.09.2012
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.
5.06.2012
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.
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.
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.
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.
5.03.2012
5.02.2012
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.
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.
14 summer movies we want to see
It's already been established that 1984 was the greatest movie summer ever. But what about 2012? Here's the movies we're interested in seeing:
1. Prometheus (June 8) - Let everyone else clamor for the new Batman movie. We're among the contrarians waiting for the new Alien movie. Yeah yeah, it's not a sequel or a prequel. Whatever, Ridley Scott. If you've seen any of the half dozen trailers that 20th Century Fox has been doling out like free crack samples these last few months, then you know this looks like one extremely badass movie, sequel/prequel or not. How eagerly you want to see it depends on whether the term "space jockey" means anything to you.
2. The Bourne Legacy (August 3) - Some complain that it'll be the same plot only with a different lead character (Jeremy Renner replaces Matt Damon). To us, that's the only reason to go. The first three Bourne movies, with their kinetic, loosely-framed, fists-flying, car-racing, psuedo-documetary realism, completely changed for the better how Hollywood envisions action movies (see also: Casino Royale and Taken). We hope this one is as half as good as those.
3. Dark Shadows (May 11) - This has long been a dream project for Johnny Depp and Tim Burton. When we'd hear updates about this from time to time, we'd sort of scratch our heads. Why adapt into film some weirdo 1970s TV soap opera enjoyed by a tiny group of fans? It'd be like turning Fox's "MANTIS" into a movie in 2022. Odd. But this is Johnny Depp and Tim Burton we're talking about here. They do odd. And then we saw the trailers with its screwball 1970s fashion and wry fish-out-of-water vibe for Depp's vampire character. We think we get it now.
4. Rock of Ages (June 15) - We know this isn't an accurate representation of 1980s Sunset Strip's gritty dive clubs (it's not Whiskey-a-Go-Go, it's the Bourbon Room, get it?). But who needs reality when you get this kind of sleek, bubble-gum gloss? The Cheese Fry came of age during the height of hair bands, which means we really, really want to like this. Tom Cruise is singing Bon Jovi, people. If that doesn't attract the rubberneckers, what will?
5. Battleship (May 18) - We hate the Transformers movies. And we recognize that this seems like Transformers on the water. But there's also something Independence Day cool about a war between aliens and the U.S. military, don't you think? So it could go either way. But we'd follow director Peter Berg anywhere. He gave the world the exemplary (aside from the 2nd season, if you what we mean) television show "Friday Night Lights" and for that deserves respect from all of us. (We're also curious to know if anyone in the movie utters the immortal phrase "You sank my battleship!")
6. The Dark Knight Rises (July 20) - There are those who believe writer-director Christopher Nolan can do no wrong. We are not among those. We found both Inception (what a middle-finger of an ending) and The Dark Knight (way, way too much plot for one movie) stylish and cinematic but way overrated. But there is no denying that Nolan is a master at infusing dumb pop culture archetypes like Batman with complex themes and somber mood. We want to see this, but we'll do so with our arms crossed.
7. Men in Black 3 (May 25) - One of those sequels that no one really much wanted outside of the Sony accounting office. Men in Black 2 came out ten years ago, during the second year of George W. Bush's first term. In entertainment, ten years is an eternity. Then you hear stories about production problems, how they started shooting without a script, then had to put everything on hold while they worked out the storyline. These are not good signs. These point to a train wreck of a movie. But then we saw Josh Brolin doing a Tommy Lee Jones impression. They got us.
8. The Avengers (May 4) - This is our homework movie. We feel an obligation to see it, even if we really don't care. We're probably more DC than Marvel. We loved Iron Man, hated Iron Man 2. We liked Hulk better than most, but never saw The Incredible Hulk. And with a toddler, Captain America and Thor last summer didn't make the cut like Super 8 and X Men First Class. While we appreciate that fanboy director Joss Whedon will do a good job and there's no denying the powerhouse cast, there's something unseemly with the way Marvel has so carefully laid the groundwork for this movie starting way back in 2008. This isn't so much a sequel as an inevitability, it seems. The Avengers wasn't contingent on how we reacted to Iron Man and its Sam Jackson cameo in the tag. This movie was going to happen. In fact, we resent how the first round of stand-alone Avenger movies kind of feel like placeholders, obligatory teasers that existed solely to get us to this superhero-team movie. We're also dubious of the logistics in cramming in so many big characters. Too many villains is what killed the pre-reboot Batman and Spiderman franchises. Could too many heroes kill this one?
9. Safety Not Guaranteed (June 8) - This is our kind of movie: a quirky little independent film with a hip cast of up-and-comers. You know, the kind that hits big at Sundance and gets a lot of critical acclaim. The kind that makes you feel oh-so-discerning and sophisticated when you pay money to see it in a half-empty theater. It has a clever premise - what if the crazy person who claims he's from the future isn't really crazy? - and could be a sleeper hit. But more than likely it'll come and go in theaters in just a couple of weekends, then get released on DVD in September. And then one day you'll stumble onto it and really like it and ask your significant other, "Was this in theaters?" Yes. Yes, it was.
10. The Amazing Spider-Man (July 3) - 2007's Spiderman 3 sucked. On that, we can all surely agree. But the Tobey Maguire/Sam Raimi team did more good than harm overall. Spiderman 2 ranks among the best movies ever, not just best among comic book movies. That crew deserved another shot, a chance to wash the bad taste of Spiderman 3 out of our mouths. But the budget for their proposed Spiderman 4 got too high, so Sony fired everyone and decided to reboot a franchise that was booted for the first time just ten years ago in 2002. (What is it with Sony and its obsession with 2002 comic book movies?) So now we have to sit through another origin story about Spiderman and again learn about "with great power comes great responsibility" and oh, but it's Gwen in this one, not Mary Jane. Whatever, Peter Parker. Whatever. It'll probably be good, but it just seems so tedious going in.
11. Ted (July 13) - We may not watch the show as religiously as some, but we have enormous respect for underrated "Family Guy" which even today hasn't gotten its due thanks to the large shadow cast by the comparatively upscale satire on "The Simpsons." Seth McFarlane's first feature film Ted is therefore worth a look, especially given the premise of a foul-mouthed, pot-smoking teddy bear (voiced by McFarlane himself) causing trouble for his owner who's now a grown-up Mark Wahlberg. Genius.
12. The Chernobyl Diaries (May 25) - The "found footage" phenomenon - in which a fictional horror film pretends that it's all a documentary to better goose the audience into suspending disbelief - fascinates us. When done well, as in Paranormal Activity, the effect is terrifying in its simplicity because the real scares comes not from what you see but fron what you don't see or what you think you see or what you imagine the characters are seeing just out of the frame. So we're always curious to see these kinds of movies (in this one, our hapless heroes find scares near the Chernobyl nuclear accident site) to find out how well they succeed. Please note, however, that we never said we'd see it in theaters. That'd be too scary. We'll wait for home video.
UPDATE: Okay, it looks this isn't a "found footage" movie, though it does seem to have a few sequences filmed from the POV of a video camera. The Cheese Fry regrets the error. But the movie still looks scary as hell.
13. GI Joe: Retaliation (June 29) - Look, we have to be honest here. We have a crush on Adrianne Palicki. She's in this. We want to see it. The end. Bruce Willis and Dwayne Johnson are just icing on the cake. The first GI Joe was good, not great.
14. Savages (July 6) - Oliver Stone hasn't had a slam-dunk mainstream success since probably 1999's Any Given Sunday. As we all know, his movies tend to be political in story and inflammatory by design. Admirable and noble, perhaps, but not always able to attract wide audiences. But Savages would seem to be just what Stone needs, a sweaty, down-and-dirty thriller about Mexican cartels, marijuana growers, and kidnapping plots. America also gets it's third Taylor Kitsch movie in three months, whether you want them or not.
For the record, we won't be seeing these two movies: another apparent comedic misfire from Adam Sandler called That's My Boy and the completely unnecessary (bordering on sacrilegious) sequel to Total Recall.
1. Prometheus (June 8) - Let everyone else clamor for the new Batman movie. We're among the contrarians waiting for the new Alien movie. Yeah yeah, it's not a sequel or a prequel. Whatever, Ridley Scott. If you've seen any of the half dozen trailers that 20th Century Fox has been doling out like free crack samples these last few months, then you know this looks like one extremely badass movie, sequel/prequel or not. How eagerly you want to see it depends on whether the term "space jockey" means anything to you.
2. The Bourne Legacy (August 3) - Some complain that it'll be the same plot only with a different lead character (Jeremy Renner replaces Matt Damon). To us, that's the only reason to go. The first three Bourne movies, with their kinetic, loosely-framed, fists-flying, car-racing, psuedo-documetary realism, completely changed for the better how Hollywood envisions action movies (see also: Casino Royale and Taken). We hope this one is as half as good as those.
3. Dark Shadows (May 11) - This has long been a dream project for Johnny Depp and Tim Burton. When we'd hear updates about this from time to time, we'd sort of scratch our heads. Why adapt into film some weirdo 1970s TV soap opera enjoyed by a tiny group of fans? It'd be like turning Fox's "MANTIS" into a movie in 2022. Odd. But this is Johnny Depp and Tim Burton we're talking about here. They do odd. And then we saw the trailers with its screwball 1970s fashion and wry fish-out-of-water vibe for Depp's vampire character. We think we get it now.
4. Rock of Ages (June 15) - We know this isn't an accurate representation of 1980s Sunset Strip's gritty dive clubs (it's not Whiskey-a-Go-Go, it's the Bourbon Room, get it?). But who needs reality when you get this kind of sleek, bubble-gum gloss? The Cheese Fry came of age during the height of hair bands, which means we really, really want to like this. Tom Cruise is singing Bon Jovi, people. If that doesn't attract the rubberneckers, what will?
5. Battleship (May 18) - We hate the Transformers movies. And we recognize that this seems like Transformers on the water. But there's also something Independence Day cool about a war between aliens and the U.S. military, don't you think? So it could go either way. But we'd follow director Peter Berg anywhere. He gave the world the exemplary (aside from the 2nd season, if you what we mean) television show "Friday Night Lights" and for that deserves respect from all of us. (We're also curious to know if anyone in the movie utters the immortal phrase "You sank my battleship!")
6. The Dark Knight Rises (July 20) - There are those who believe writer-director Christopher Nolan can do no wrong. We are not among those. We found both Inception (what a middle-finger of an ending) and The Dark Knight (way, way too much plot for one movie) stylish and cinematic but way overrated. But there is no denying that Nolan is a master at infusing dumb pop culture archetypes like Batman with complex themes and somber mood. We want to see this, but we'll do so with our arms crossed.
7. Men in Black 3 (May 25) - One of those sequels that no one really much wanted outside of the Sony accounting office. Men in Black 2 came out ten years ago, during the second year of George W. Bush's first term. In entertainment, ten years is an eternity. Then you hear stories about production problems, how they started shooting without a script, then had to put everything on hold while they worked out the storyline. These are not good signs. These point to a train wreck of a movie. But then we saw Josh Brolin doing a Tommy Lee Jones impression. They got us.
8. The Avengers (May 4) - This is our homework movie. We feel an obligation to see it, even if we really don't care. We're probably more DC than Marvel. We loved Iron Man, hated Iron Man 2. We liked Hulk better than most, but never saw The Incredible Hulk. And with a toddler, Captain America and Thor last summer didn't make the cut like Super 8 and X Men First Class. While we appreciate that fanboy director Joss Whedon will do a good job and there's no denying the powerhouse cast, there's something unseemly with the way Marvel has so carefully laid the groundwork for this movie starting way back in 2008. This isn't so much a sequel as an inevitability, it seems. The Avengers wasn't contingent on how we reacted to Iron Man and its Sam Jackson cameo in the tag. This movie was going to happen. In fact, we resent how the first round of stand-alone Avenger movies kind of feel like placeholders, obligatory teasers that existed solely to get us to this superhero-team movie. We're also dubious of the logistics in cramming in so many big characters. Too many villains is what killed the pre-reboot Batman and Spiderman franchises. Could too many heroes kill this one?
9. Safety Not Guaranteed (June 8) - This is our kind of movie: a quirky little independent film with a hip cast of up-and-comers. You know, the kind that hits big at Sundance and gets a lot of critical acclaim. The kind that makes you feel oh-so-discerning and sophisticated when you pay money to see it in a half-empty theater. It has a clever premise - what if the crazy person who claims he's from the future isn't really crazy? - and could be a sleeper hit. But more than likely it'll come and go in theaters in just a couple of weekends, then get released on DVD in September. And then one day you'll stumble onto it and really like it and ask your significant other, "Was this in theaters?" Yes. Yes, it was.
10. The Amazing Spider-Man (July 3) - 2007's Spiderman 3 sucked. On that, we can all surely agree. But the Tobey Maguire/Sam Raimi team did more good than harm overall. Spiderman 2 ranks among the best movies ever, not just best among comic book movies. That crew deserved another shot, a chance to wash the bad taste of Spiderman 3 out of our mouths. But the budget for their proposed Spiderman 4 got too high, so Sony fired everyone and decided to reboot a franchise that was booted for the first time just ten years ago in 2002. (What is it with Sony and its obsession with 2002 comic book movies?) So now we have to sit through another origin story about Spiderman and again learn about "with great power comes great responsibility" and oh, but it's Gwen in this one, not Mary Jane. Whatever, Peter Parker. Whatever. It'll probably be good, but it just seems so tedious going in.
11. Ted (July 13) - We may not watch the show as religiously as some, but we have enormous respect for underrated "Family Guy" which even today hasn't gotten its due thanks to the large shadow cast by the comparatively upscale satire on "The Simpsons." Seth McFarlane's first feature film Ted is therefore worth a look, especially given the premise of a foul-mouthed, pot-smoking teddy bear (voiced by McFarlane himself) causing trouble for his owner who's now a grown-up Mark Wahlberg. Genius.
12. The Chernobyl Diaries (May 25) - The "found footage" phenomenon - in which a fictional horror film pretends that it's all a documentary to better goose the audience into suspending disbelief - fascinates us. When done well, as in Paranormal Activity, the effect is terrifying in its simplicity because the real scares comes not from what you see but fron what you don't see or what you think you see or what you imagine the characters are seeing just out of the frame. So we're always curious to see these kinds of movies (in this one, our hapless heroes find scares near the Chernobyl nuclear accident site) to find out how well they succeed. Please note, however, that we never said we'd see it in theaters. That'd be too scary. We'll wait for home video.
UPDATE: Okay, it looks this isn't a "found footage" movie, though it does seem to have a few sequences filmed from the POV of a video camera. The Cheese Fry regrets the error. But the movie still looks scary as hell.
13. GI Joe: Retaliation (June 29) - Look, we have to be honest here. We have a crush on Adrianne Palicki. She's in this. We want to see it. The end. Bruce Willis and Dwayne Johnson are just icing on the cake. The first GI Joe was good, not great.
14. Savages (July 6) - Oliver Stone hasn't had a slam-dunk mainstream success since probably 1999's Any Given Sunday. As we all know, his movies tend to be political in story and inflammatory by design. Admirable and noble, perhaps, but not always able to attract wide audiences. But Savages would seem to be just what Stone needs, a sweaty, down-and-dirty thriller about Mexican cartels, marijuana growers, and kidnapping plots. America also gets it's third Taylor Kitsch movie in three months, whether you want them or not.
For the record, we won't be seeing these two movies: another apparent comedic misfire from Adam Sandler called That's My Boy and the completely unnecessary (bordering on sacrilegious) sequel to Total Recall.
4.03.2012
Knee-jerk review: "The Hunger Games"
1. We liked the book. We also liked the movie. And we'll defend either with extreme prejudice.
2. True, lead actress Jennifer Lawrence is more woman than girl. But she brings the sort of dramatic gravitas that poor sourpuss Kristen Stewart can't ever really muster in Twilight.
3. And did you see what just happened? We already succumbed to the culture's rather sexist need to compare The Hunger Games with Twilight. Because all young-adult fiction geared to tween girls is the same, right?
4. So let's go with it. But whereas Twilight, at its heart, is about a girl who wants to be with the Bad Boy, The Hunger Games has much bigger thematic aspirations involving class and media and politics. In other words, we don't think Bella Swan would be the type to foster rebellion. (There are also those who say that Bella's pursuit of Edward involves Mormon issues about the dangers of sex, but that starts to get a little too Womens Studies for us.)
5. Our admiration for Woody Harrelson continues to grow. He is amazing. We recommend The Messenger.
6. There's no denying the "99%" element in the plot where the wealthy elite dine on delicacies, wear ridiculously fancy clothes, and do what they can to pretend that the working masses don't have it so bad. And may not be aware that they're about to face some real retribution, French Revolution-style.
7. We wonder why the producers couldn't have spent another $1 million or so to fix the awful special effects of the parade sequence. It's really bad. Like, SyFy bad. What should have been a triumphant moment of awe is instead rather silly and goofy-looking. This won't happen with the next movie, not with $262 million and counting pouring into the Lionsgate coffers.
8. "I volunteer as tribute." Powerful moment.
9. We love how the movie's boffo success at the box office surprised so many. Plenty of studios bigger than Lionsgate passed on the chance to make it, while too-cool-for-school bloggers loved to snark about the growing buzz. If you read the books, however, you had a sense of how big it could be. We suspect The Hunger Games will eventually pass Twilight and wind up second only to the Harry Potter franchise. This shows how out of touch Hollywood can be when it comes to grass-roots pop culture. "The Hunger Games" book gained popularity not because it was a comic book or some overhyped TV show fueled by millions in marketing dollars. Something called word-of-mouth made it catch fire, with able assists from Stephen King and Stephanie Meyer, both early fans of the book. If you read it, you got it. If you only read the logline "Kids fight to the death on live TV" then maybe you roll your eyes. In a way, this same thing happened with Twilight, which is how little indie studio Summit snapped up the rights and made a mint. Hollywood doesn't know what to do with outliers like this, properties that don't come from the A-listers.
10. Much was also made about the film's PG-13 rating. "How can they show the brutality of murder without an R?" Relax, people. The movie is plenty violent. The kid-on-kid bloodbath that begins the games is uncomfortable to watch. Plus, why would the producers be so dumb as to adapt a young-adult book and then earn a rating that cuts out young adults?
11. The arrow through the apple. Awesome. "Thank you for your consideration."
12. We're also sick of hearing it compared to Battle Royale and The Running Man. It's the sort of lazy, smug comment that invariably comes from someone unfamiliar with the details of The Hunger Games. For the record, Battle Royale is a deliciously crazy, over-the-top movie and The Running Man is a very dated, very lame 1980s satire. Read instead the Stephen King book.
13. Trackerjackers and mockingjays.
14. Still not big fans of the giant dog animals at the end, but we do appreciate that the movie omitted one dog-related detail from the book that was probably its most ridiculous element.
15. Proof that casting is king. What a strange story. But Donald Sutherland, Lenny Kravitz, Stanley Tucci... they can sell anything.
16. Poor Seneca Crane. He didn't contain it, did he?
17. Should we incorporate Katniss' three-finger kiss salute in our everyday life? That's not nerdy, is it?
18. Probably just shy of being a great movie, but definitely a very good movie. Worth your $8.
2. True, lead actress Jennifer Lawrence is more woman than girl. But she brings the sort of dramatic gravitas that poor sourpuss Kristen Stewart can't ever really muster in Twilight.
3. And did you see what just happened? We already succumbed to the culture's rather sexist need to compare The Hunger Games with Twilight. Because all young-adult fiction geared to tween girls is the same, right?
4. So let's go with it. But whereas Twilight, at its heart, is about a girl who wants to be with the Bad Boy, The Hunger Games has much bigger thematic aspirations involving class and media and politics. In other words, we don't think Bella Swan would be the type to foster rebellion. (There are also those who say that Bella's pursuit of Edward involves Mormon issues about the dangers of sex, but that starts to get a little too Womens Studies for us.)
5. Our admiration for Woody Harrelson continues to grow. He is amazing. We recommend The Messenger.
6. There's no denying the "99%" element in the plot where the wealthy elite dine on delicacies, wear ridiculously fancy clothes, and do what they can to pretend that the working masses don't have it so bad. And may not be aware that they're about to face some real retribution, French Revolution-style.
7. We wonder why the producers couldn't have spent another $1 million or so to fix the awful special effects of the parade sequence. It's really bad. Like, SyFy bad. What should have been a triumphant moment of awe is instead rather silly and goofy-looking. This won't happen with the next movie, not with $262 million and counting pouring into the Lionsgate coffers.
8. "I volunteer as tribute." Powerful moment.
9. We love how the movie's boffo success at the box office surprised so many. Plenty of studios bigger than Lionsgate passed on the chance to make it, while too-cool-for-school bloggers loved to snark about the growing buzz. If you read the books, however, you had a sense of how big it could be. We suspect The Hunger Games will eventually pass Twilight and wind up second only to the Harry Potter franchise. This shows how out of touch Hollywood can be when it comes to grass-roots pop culture. "The Hunger Games" book gained popularity not because it was a comic book or some overhyped TV show fueled by millions in marketing dollars. Something called word-of-mouth made it catch fire, with able assists from Stephen King and Stephanie Meyer, both early fans of the book. If you read it, you got it. If you only read the logline "Kids fight to the death on live TV" then maybe you roll your eyes. In a way, this same thing happened with Twilight, which is how little indie studio Summit snapped up the rights and made a mint. Hollywood doesn't know what to do with outliers like this, properties that don't come from the A-listers.
10. Much was also made about the film's PG-13 rating. "How can they show the brutality of murder without an R?" Relax, people. The movie is plenty violent. The kid-on-kid bloodbath that begins the games is uncomfortable to watch. Plus, why would the producers be so dumb as to adapt a young-adult book and then earn a rating that cuts out young adults?
11. The arrow through the apple. Awesome. "Thank you for your consideration."
12. We're also sick of hearing it compared to Battle Royale and The Running Man. It's the sort of lazy, smug comment that invariably comes from someone unfamiliar with the details of The Hunger Games. For the record, Battle Royale is a deliciously crazy, over-the-top movie and The Running Man is a very dated, very lame 1980s satire. Read instead the Stephen King book.
13. Trackerjackers and mockingjays.
14. Still not big fans of the giant dog animals at the end, but we do appreciate that the movie omitted one dog-related detail from the book that was probably its most ridiculous element.
15. Proof that casting is king. What a strange story. But Donald Sutherland, Lenny Kravitz, Stanley Tucci... they can sell anything.
16. Poor Seneca Crane. He didn't contain it, did he?
17. Should we incorporate Katniss' three-finger kiss salute in our everyday life? That's not nerdy, is it?
18. Probably just shy of being a great movie, but definitely a very good movie. Worth your $8.
4.02.2012
We don't want to hate "Dora the Explorer"
Li'l Fry loves "Dora the Explorer." We sometimes think she'd be happy watching six uninterrupted hours of back-to-back episodes. "Can I watch Dora?" But while we've learned to embrace the subtle charms of "Mickey Mouse Clubhouse" and "Team Umizoomi" and "Elmo's World" and, yes, even "Barney and Friends," we cannot keep from repeatedly rolling our eyes and making sour faces at "Dora the Explorer."
1. Her voice - The screechy, sing-song, uptalk voice of Dora is incredibly annoying and grows only moreso over time. "Can YOU help us FIND the singing GARDENS?" We're told small children respond well to this sort of speech pattern, but our response involves a desire to shove sharpened pencils into our ears.
2. Crude animation - Many contemporary children's shows involve sophisticated, slick animation. Not this one. It's like what you saw on Saturday morning cartoon back in 1982, but NBC's "The Smurfs" probably had more polish. The movements are jerky, the designs simple and dull, and the whole thing looks incredibly cheap, which is rather insulting given the goldmine this character has become. The producers clearly aren't putting their profits back into the show.
3. Unreality - We know it's not Ibsen, but we would like some sort of dramatic realism. It's like the producers don't even try to maintain any sort of internal story logic. Even "Sesame Street" creates a clear set of rules (puppets and people living in New York City) and sticks to them. But here Dora flies into outer space, turns into a mermaid, visits the Old West, talks to dinosaurs, goes on a medieval Arthurian quest, in addition to the usual silliness involving looking for wrecked ice cream trucks or returning lost frogs to their frog families. We don't think there's anything these people won't turn into an episode. It's like a preschool fever dream of bridge trolls and swimming bears and go-cart races. We'd probably have an easier time swallowing it all if we just had one question answered: are we supposed to think this is all really happening? The little cursor-arrow-clicks (also irritating) suggest this is all a video game, which could work. And there's also the possibility that this is happening in her imagination. But it's left very vague. The producers are seemingly too lazy to even clarify the show's basic premise. They'd rather make an entire episode about picking blueberries. And count their money.
4. Everything has a face - In Dora's world, there is not a single object - not one - that doesn't have a face and speak in that same childlike grating monotone.
5. The map - If you've seen him in action, you understand. Could he be more whiny?
6. The other characters - We like Boots. Really. There's a childlike innocence to him, but also an intelligence and a sense of fun. He rarely comes off as simple-minded and humorless as Dora. But the same cannot be said for the other animal characters* like Benny the Bull or that ridiculous squirrel who wears the rainbow serape. Each one is more annoying and dim-witted than the next. It really does seem like the producers think the only way to make a children's show is to dumb it down enough to make it completely unpalatable for adults. What a formula.
* Our favorite part of the show is the three-piece insect marachi band that plays the fanfare once each stage of Dora's journey is complete. Those guys need their own show. Just don't let "Dora's" producers make it.
7. Swiper the Fox - Every story needs a good villain, but Swiper is so inept and hopeless that he's practically a joke. Even Wile E. Coyote had an edge to him. If you don't know, Swiper is a a thief who can be thwarted by simply asking him to not steal. "Swiper no swiping!" We can appreciate the need for this kind of incantation. But the producers always cut it so close. Swiper is literally inches away from grabbing the item he wants (instead of waggling your fingers, Swiper, lunge in and grab it already!) when he suddenly understands that he's been told no and backs off. What kind of thief is this? Again, we want to accept this quirk because it's a stupid animated show for kids and life is too short, but we cannot accept it because it's just so completely implausible and illogical. Why does he care what people tell him? Surely there's another way, a more logical way, for Swiper to be repelled.
Adding to the irritation of the entire Swiper nonsense is that when told Swiper is close by, Dora and Boots freeze and stare into the camera rather than turn around and look for Swiper themselves. Yes yes, we know this is for the kids at home so they can be a part of the action. But even those kids must wonder in the back of their heads why Dora doesn't also exert some effort looking for Swiper. Why do the kids have to do all of the work?
8. The vines - There's a lot of Tarzan-style vine swinging in this show, but in keeping with the show's crude and lazy animation style, the laws of physics do not apply. Not even a little. In Dora's world, if you see a vine hanging down, just jump up and grab it and you'll be instantly catapulted sideways in a long graceful vine arc. Ridiculous.
9. Her shirt - Can't Dora's parents buy her a shirt that covers her belly? They seem to have money living in that fancy adobe-looking Spanish-revival-style house. Buy her a shirt!
Will there come a time when we look back on this era with wistful nostalgia and wish Li'l Fry still watched "Dora"? Unlikely.
1. Her voice - The screechy, sing-song, uptalk voice of Dora is incredibly annoying and grows only moreso over time. "Can YOU help us FIND the singing GARDENS?" We're told small children respond well to this sort of speech pattern, but our response involves a desire to shove sharpened pencils into our ears.
2. Crude animation - Many contemporary children's shows involve sophisticated, slick animation. Not this one. It's like what you saw on Saturday morning cartoon back in 1982, but NBC's "The Smurfs" probably had more polish. The movements are jerky, the designs simple and dull, and the whole thing looks incredibly cheap, which is rather insulting given the goldmine this character has become. The producers clearly aren't putting their profits back into the show.
3. Unreality - We know it's not Ibsen, but we would like some sort of dramatic realism. It's like the producers don't even try to maintain any sort of internal story logic. Even "Sesame Street" creates a clear set of rules (puppets and people living in New York City) and sticks to them. But here Dora flies into outer space, turns into a mermaid, visits the Old West, talks to dinosaurs, goes on a medieval Arthurian quest, in addition to the usual silliness involving looking for wrecked ice cream trucks or returning lost frogs to their frog families. We don't think there's anything these people won't turn into an episode. It's like a preschool fever dream of bridge trolls and swimming bears and go-cart races. We'd probably have an easier time swallowing it all if we just had one question answered: are we supposed to think this is all really happening? The little cursor-arrow-clicks (also irritating) suggest this is all a video game, which could work. And there's also the possibility that this is happening in her imagination. But it's left very vague. The producers are seemingly too lazy to even clarify the show's basic premise. They'd rather make an entire episode about picking blueberries. And count their money.
4. Everything has a face - In Dora's world, there is not a single object - not one - that doesn't have a face and speak in that same childlike grating monotone.
5. The map - If you've seen him in action, you understand. Could he be more whiny?
6. The other characters - We like Boots. Really. There's a childlike innocence to him, but also an intelligence and a sense of fun. He rarely comes off as simple-minded and humorless as Dora. But the same cannot be said for the other animal characters* like Benny the Bull or that ridiculous squirrel who wears the rainbow serape. Each one is more annoying and dim-witted than the next. It really does seem like the producers think the only way to make a children's show is to dumb it down enough to make it completely unpalatable for adults. What a formula.
* Our favorite part of the show is the three-piece insect marachi band that plays the fanfare once each stage of Dora's journey is complete. Those guys need their own show. Just don't let "Dora's" producers make it.
7. Swiper the Fox - Every story needs a good villain, but Swiper is so inept and hopeless that he's practically a joke. Even Wile E. Coyote had an edge to him. If you don't know, Swiper is a a thief who can be thwarted by simply asking him to not steal. "Swiper no swiping!" We can appreciate the need for this kind of incantation. But the producers always cut it so close. Swiper is literally inches away from grabbing the item he wants (instead of waggling your fingers, Swiper, lunge in and grab it already!) when he suddenly understands that he's been told no and backs off. What kind of thief is this? Again, we want to accept this quirk because it's a stupid animated show for kids and life is too short, but we cannot accept it because it's just so completely implausible and illogical. Why does he care what people tell him? Surely there's another way, a more logical way, for Swiper to be repelled.
Adding to the irritation of the entire Swiper nonsense is that when told Swiper is close by, Dora and Boots freeze and stare into the camera rather than turn around and look for Swiper themselves. Yes yes, we know this is for the kids at home so they can be a part of the action. But even those kids must wonder in the back of their heads why Dora doesn't also exert some effort looking for Swiper. Why do the kids have to do all of the work?
8. The vines - There's a lot of Tarzan-style vine swinging in this show, but in keeping with the show's crude and lazy animation style, the laws of physics do not apply. Not even a little. In Dora's world, if you see a vine hanging down, just jump up and grab it and you'll be instantly catapulted sideways in a long graceful vine arc. Ridiculous.
9. Her shirt - Can't Dora's parents buy her a shirt that covers her belly? They seem to have money living in that fancy adobe-looking Spanish-revival-style house. Buy her a shirt!
Will there come a time when we look back on this era with wistful nostalgia and wish Li'l Fry still watched "Dora"? Unlikely.
3.29.2012
Now this is a bracket we're happy to fill out
The good people at Esquire have again put together a field of 64 hot women for creepy bloggers like us to objectify and grade. And we thank them for it.
Regular Cheese Fry readers (and we know there's at least four of you) may recall Olivia Wilde winning this exercise last year and Christina Hendricks winning in 2010. So proud they must be to have the Cheese Fry in their corner.
So will win this year?
This year, the 64 women are divided by Esquire into "Movies," "TV," "Royals," and "Models and Music."
Here's how our bracket shaped up.
Emerging from "Movies" into the Sweet 16:
* Charlize Theron (1 seed)
* Kate Winslet (12)
* Felicity Jones (14)
* Emma Stone (2)
The 1 and the 2 advance as expected, no question there. The 3-seed was Jennifer Lawrence, who we feel the Selection Committee seeded much too high. Mila Kunis was 4, which seems right, but she still lost in what Esquire might consider an update to Kate Winslet, ranked at a rather absurdly low 12.
Coming out of the "TV" division into the Sweet 16:
* Sofia Vergara (1)
* Kristen Bell (4)
* Amber Heard (6)
* Maria Menounos (15)
More low seeds advance. Not making the cut: someone named Gugu Mbatha-Raw (2) and the "30 Rock" intern Katrina Bowden (3). We don't really get Kristen Bell, but she's definitely hotter than Elizabeth Olsen (14), whom she beat to get here. We saw Maria Menounos in person once and cannot adequately describe to you how incredibly beautiful she is - it's like she's been CGI'd or something.
From the "Royals" division, we get these for the Sweet 16:
* Helen Mirren (16)
* Kim Kardashian (4)
* Stacy Keibler (3)
* Beyonce (7)
Helen Mirren as a 16? Seriously? It's certainly hip to call Dame Helen attractive, but that doesn't make it any less true. In a fight against #1 seed Duchess Katherine, it's not even close. Kim and Stacy are empty vessels, really, advancing in the most perfunctory way possible. This is surely the easiest division. It's the NFC West of the brackets.
And entering the Sweet 16 from the "Models and Music" group:
* Kate Upton (1)
* Katy Perry (4)
* Brooklyn Decker (3)
* Bar Refaeli (7)
Carrie Underwood (2) missed the cut, or else it would be a favorites-only bracket. Despite how annoying the Maria Menounos anecdote may have been, we must also note that we once sat behind Bar Refaeli at a Lakers game. We didn't recognize her right away, but even with a baseball cap on and no makeup, it was clear she was, as they say, smoking hot.
The Sweet 16 shook out like this:
* Kate Winslet defeats Charlize Theron - Charlize is regal and statuesque, yes, but she wouldn't ever talk to you, but we like to think we could have a beer with Kate
* Emma Stone defeats Felicity Jones - Emma may have been the best thing about last month's Oscar show
* Sofia Vergara defats Kristen Bell - like killing a fly with a shotgun
* Amber Heard defeats Maria Menounous - Maria is the cute girl next door, but Amber is the gorgeous woman across town
* Helen Mirren defeats Kim Kardashian - we protest that Kim was even in these brackets
* Beyonce defeats Stacy Kiebler - cannon fodder for the next rounds
* Kate Upton defeats Katy Perry - we can't believe the stories we hear about how the fashion industry is so unimpressed with Kate
* Bar Rafeli defeats Brooklyn Decker - photo finish, it was so close
And here's who's going to the Final Four:
* Kate Winslet (12) beats Emma Stone (2)
* Amber Heard (6) beats Sofia Vergara (1)
* Helen Mirren (16) beats Beyonce (7)
* Kate Upton (1) beats Bar Refaeli (7)
Upsets, upsets, upsets. Kate Upton advances without breaking a sweat, but underdogs fill out the rest of the Final Four.
And the championship rounds:
* Kate Winslet beats Amber Heard
* Kate Upton beats Helen Mirren
Which means that Kate Winslet beats Kate Upton in a Battle of the Short Names for Catherine. A truly worthy victor, don't you think?
3.25.2012
Knee-jerk review: "21 Jump Street"
1. It's really, really good. Yeah, we're just as surprised as you.
2. Sure, we watched a few episodes of the Fox TV show back in the late 1980s, but we weren't what you'd call fans. We remember best the episode where Johnny Depp's girlfriend got shot dead in a convenience store and he became obsessed with the fact that he could have done more to stop it.
3. Man, there are a lot of penis jokes in this movie. And most of them are funny.
4. Brie Larson. Like, wow.
5. Jonah Hill's bumbling goofball act is wearing a little thin at this point. It's probably a good thing that he's branching out into more dramatic roles like Moneyball.
6. Korean Jesus.
7. Comedies don't get much respect at all from the cineaste film snobs out there, but this script is smart, tight, and well-executed in such a way that it would still work if you took out all of the jokes. What could have been a lame, lazy, cash-in project was taken seriously by everyone involved.
8. We finally understand what the fuss is all about regarding Channing Tatum. He's solid.
9. Yes, you do hear the theme song.
10. And yes, Johnny Depp makes a cameo. We'd heard about that in advance. But we were surprised to see Holly Robinson (Peete) and Peter DeLuise. Why didn't Dustin Nguyen make it?
11. The easy thing would be to send the nerd back to high school to relive his nerd past and the jock to relive his jock past. The genius here is that it's flipped: the nerd goes back and experiences popularity, while the jock goes back and experiences social ostracism.
12. We'd probably watch Ice Cube do anything. He has charisma to burn. This Coors Light commercial was one of our favorites from last fall. "Did you just snow on me?"
3.20.2012
Don't Worry, Do Brackets
The Cheese Fry isn't a big NCAA fan. Considering the time we waste on NFL and NBA games, it's probably a good thing we're immune to March Madness. But we can always appreciate the absurdity of a good pop-culture alternative bracket, like one that something called Mix107.7 created. It pits 1980s one-hit wonders against one another.
Here's how our brackets worked out.
The Sweet 16
"Catch Me I'm Falling" (Pretty Poison - you surely know it's from the Jon Cryer movie Hiding Out)
"Maniac" (Michael Sembello - whatever happened to him? who was he?)
"Cars" (Gary Numan)
"Relax" (Frankie Goes to Hollywood - which we actually quite hate)
"Puttin' on the Ritz" (Taco)
"Toy Soldiers" (Martika - sublime pop classic)
"99 Luft Balloons" (Nena)
"I Melt with You" (Modern English)
"Der Kommissar" (After the Fire - chh-chh ch-ch-chh ch-ch-chh)
"Heart and Soul" (T'Pau)
"In a Big Country" (Big Country - it's the name of our band and our hit song)
"Break My Stride" (Matthew Wilder - a roller rink standard at North Dallas' Starlight rink circa 1982)
"Funkytown" (Lipps, Inc. - another roller rink standard)
"Under the Milky Way" (The Church)
"Somebody's Watching Me" (Rockwell)
"Buffalo Stance" (Neneh Cherry)
The only number 1 seed to advance the the field of 16? "I Melt with You" The other three #1s fall early in shocking upsets - "867-5309," "Come On Eileen," and "Tainted Love."
Likewise, "Relax" is the only number 2 seed, advancing where other, seemingly stronger 2s ("Mickey," "I Want Candy," and "Too Shy") cannot.
The threes fare a little better - "Cars" and "In a Big Country" make it to the Sweet 16 while the insufferable "Whip It" and "She Blinded Me with Science" rightly fall.
So it's a bracket full of late-80s FM radio Cinderellas that get to the championship rounds.
The Final Four
"Toy Soldiers" (11) beats "Catch Me I'm Falling" (8)
"Buffalo Stance" (9) beats "Heart and Soul" (12)
And in the championship match:
"Buffalo Stance" (9) beats "Toy Soldiers" (11)
Vindication: "Buffalo Stance" is indeed one of our most favorite songs from the 1980s, though it came out late 1989 and almost counts as a 90s song.
That's one way to waste 20 minutes.
Here's how our brackets worked out.
The Sweet 16
"Catch Me I'm Falling" (Pretty Poison - you surely know it's from the Jon Cryer movie Hiding Out)
"Maniac" (Michael Sembello - whatever happened to him? who was he?)
"Cars" (Gary Numan)
"Relax" (Frankie Goes to Hollywood - which we actually quite hate)
"Puttin' on the Ritz" (Taco)
"Toy Soldiers" (Martika - sublime pop classic)
"99 Luft Balloons" (Nena)
"I Melt with You" (Modern English)
"Der Kommissar" (After the Fire - chh-chh ch-ch-chh ch-ch-chh)
"Heart and Soul" (T'Pau)
"In a Big Country" (Big Country - it's the name of our band and our hit song)
"Break My Stride" (Matthew Wilder - a roller rink standard at North Dallas' Starlight rink circa 1982)
"Funkytown" (Lipps, Inc. - another roller rink standard)
"Under the Milky Way" (The Church)
"Somebody's Watching Me" (Rockwell)
"Buffalo Stance" (Neneh Cherry)
The only number 1 seed to advance the the field of 16? "I Melt with You" The other three #1s fall early in shocking upsets - "867-5309," "Come On Eileen," and "Tainted Love."
Likewise, "Relax" is the only number 2 seed, advancing where other, seemingly stronger 2s ("Mickey," "I Want Candy," and "Too Shy") cannot.
The threes fare a little better - "Cars" and "In a Big Country" make it to the Sweet 16 while the insufferable "Whip It" and "She Blinded Me with Science" rightly fall.
So it's a bracket full of late-80s FM radio Cinderellas that get to the championship rounds.
The Final Four
"Toy Soldiers" (11) beats "Catch Me I'm Falling" (8)
"Buffalo Stance" (9) beats "Heart and Soul" (12)
And in the championship match:
"Buffalo Stance" (9) beats "Toy Soldiers" (11)
Vindication: "Buffalo Stance" is indeed one of our most favorite songs from the 1980s, though it came out late 1989 and almost counts as a 90s song.
That's one way to waste 20 minutes.
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