Movie of the Week: Rise of The Planet of…

It has been a long Summer with many terrible movies, some good, but no great ones.  Until now.  Rise of the Planet of the Apes is absolutely fantastic.  And for any readers of this blog who are Tea Party members, no this is not a documentary about the 2008 Presidential Election.  And please stop visiting my website.

I will start with the one negative and that is in casting.  Everyone is good that is in the movie, but there were some missed opportunities.  Ron Perlman of Sons of Anarchy and Patrick Ewing, former NBA star, could have both been in the movie (perhaps in the next Ape movie about a white-black buddy cop film about ape cops).  But other than that there is really nothing bad to say about the film.

I don’t want to spoil anything in the movie, but it has a great pacing, the CGI work is incredible and the emotional work with the Apes, who are all CGI, is off the charts great.  The plot is great and the movie moves along with an entertaining confidence.  What I mean by that is the last 45 minutes of the movie are incredibly exciting and action packed, but the filmmakers and writers were not in any hurry to get there because they  were doing such a good job establishing the story.  It is two hours of steady and entertaining build up to an incredibly entertaining finish.

I will keep this review short because there is not much funny to say about it because it is so good.

Final Grade – A

3 Non-Partisan Things America Should Be Doing

1) Helping Somalian Children

I am fascinated by a few stories (or in some cases non-stories) in America today.  One is our non-involvement in Somalia.  We are all scarred by Black Hawk Down, both the actual incident in 1993 and the disappointing film by Ridley Scott.  But every day the news and the newspapers report the fact that around 500,000 children are close to starvation in Somalia.  The options for the innocent in Somalia are go to a Taliban-style Muslim section where freedom is non-existent, or live in a war zone.  Now that would seem to be all the things “real” Americans care about – there are children at stake.  After all, the Super Bowl was never the same after  “the children” saw Janet Jackson’s nipple, so naturally if half a million kids are dying we should surely care.  Plus, it is a chance to take on the scourge of radical Islam, which has provided a nice replacement for the Red Scare in post Cold War era (admittedly real in many cases, but used as a boogyman in others).  But we can do nothing?   It is the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.  I was all for fighting in Afghanistan, but once again this is related to the decision to fight in Iraq.  All the money and international good will it cost us is still relevant even though people have “It’s Bush’s fault” fatigue.  Who gives a sh*t if you are tired of hearing that – it doesn’t make it any less true!  And why is it so hard for so many “real Americans” to wrap their heads around the idea that sometimes a problem that took between 7 and 30 years to develop (our Frankenstein-esque de-regulated capitalism), might take more than 2 1/2 years to solve?  As a country we are just seeing the tip of the iceberg of how warped a spoiled nation, with increasing ADD and an overflow of information sources, both credible and absurd, can become.

2) Building A  National High Speed Rail System

This could be the stimulus the country needs.  A WWII level stimulus project that employs people in 48 states, uses real American labor and builds something that doesn’t involve a dot-com, but rather a tangible product to be used by Americans.  It could help reduce the use of oil as a nice bonus.  And it would be a long-term project, not some 12 month replacement of a small bridge (I am talking to you Cleveland).  These are all the advantages I see for building a high speed national rail system.  Admittedly, I have only been to two foreign countries (and neither is Canada or Mexico), but my more well-traveled friends tell me that in developed nations in Europe and Asia the rail systems put ours to shame.  So if we pride ourselves as a nation as being number one (even if only in our own minds) why do we have such a substandard rail system.

I am a huge fan of rail travel and have travelled most of this country by Amtrak.  Imagine how many more people would if they tripled or quadrupled the speed of it.  Instead of 21 hours to Chicago from New York it was 6 or 7.  Instead of 17 hours to Atlanta, it was 5?  All presumably built with some form of updated green technology.  Why can’t Amtrak be this decade’s Man on the Moon?  Well, of course there are several reasons.  One is the oil lobby.  Another is the aviation lobby.  Another is we have been conditioned to see the rail as some sort of purgatory between the Heaven of aviation and the Hell of Greyhound.  But how could America not take a renewed pride in the rail system if it was a massive and beneficial national project?  Well, of course that probably sounds like socialism so I guess if we got beyond negative perceptions of Amtrak and intense lobbying we would still have to compete with American stupidity.

3) Use a Dictionary and an Encyclopedia

With the Internet providing any “fact” that anyone wants to support their pre-existing belief I think we need to get back to agreement that words and facts exist and are sometimes not up for interpretation.  A standard Merriam-Webster dictionary and an Encyclopedia Britannica should do (if we can agree that those are not tools of the radical left or right).  These texts used to provide a basic presentation of facts that we could all agree with if we bothered to read them.  I would not go as far as to suggest that the New York Times, which until the advent of Fox News Propaganda (which it is – brought to “real Americans” by an Australian with a pro-business agenda), was known as the public record because of its thorough and excellent worldwide reporting, could possibly be this in our current society.

I have a selfish reason for suggesting this.  Yesterday I made the mistake of getting into a Facebook discussion with a conservative on his Facebook page.  His ignorant cabal of friends then proceeded to jump on me with the usual Tea Party rhetoric that is more faith-based than historically based (random assertions of “The Constitution says” as if there are not actual words that can be verified).  Here are some of the highlights that I think an Encyclopedia and a dictionary would have helped:

  1. “Liberalism is all about socialism and stripping us of our Constitutional rights” – Funny, liberals are often accused of giving people too many rights (see the Warren Court).  You know who else is about socialism?  Your police department, your fire department, your public schools, your parks, your sanitation workers and your libraries to name a few.
  2. “What about groups like the Black Panthers that Obama endorses?”  – I am not sure a comment is needed here.
  3. “Liberals bringing socialism is definitely as dangerous a guy with a bomb strapped to his chest” – see #1
  4. “Ask the Brits how well gun control works for them… they can’t own anything to protect themselves. Even if they use a toy gun to seize a burglar the home owner gets arrested for assaulting the criminal. Thats what the liberals want for the USA.” – see also the murder rate and gun violence statistics for Britain.  I know it is Europe and that is “faggy” and “awful” for “real Americans” but fewer dead Americans would seem like a good thing for America.  As of 2000 their murder rate with firearms was 10 times less than ours.
  5. “This is laughable. As if the left hasn’t practiced these same exact tactics (referring to when I said the Tea Party nearly brought our government to default): gay rights, environmentalists, gun control, the list goes on and on. What was it we were talking about again? Small, well-financed groups of people holding a party hostage? – In other words this person (these comments were from several different individuals on the same comment stream) took an unprecedented event and claimed that there were several non-existent precedents.  When exactly did the left brink the country to the brink of economic disaster over “gay rights,” or the environment?  Even though perhaps they should since civil rights and the future of the planet are more important to America’s creed than low taxes for the wealthy.

So in sum, my platform is simple:

  • We should intervene on behalf of half a million dying children before we intervene on behalf of oil interests;
  • We should develop a national high speed rail system as a tangible stimulus plan and;
  • We should all read a major newspaper (that hopefully hasn’t been fact-raped by Rupert Murdoch’s minions – and despite his vast empire this DOES NOT exclude all conservative leaning publications) and occasionally open a dictionary or an Encyclopedia Britannica if we want to verify something that maybe sounds outrageous.

20 years ago this would have seemed sensible.  Today it seems too ambitious.  Sadly in another 20 years it may seem like a fantasy.

Why The Founding Fathers Would Hate The Tea Party

I have been working hard to understand the debt ceiling crisis (I actually think I understood the 2008 housing crisis and related issues better but that was thanks to lots of books and documentaries).  The basic idea I think was that if we did not raise the debt ceiling we would run out of money to pay our debts and that would have catastrophic effects throughout our economy.  I think the general descriptions from everyone not associated with Fox News was the following:

Of course, economists and Wall Street were not enough to convince the de facto leaders of the Republican Party, the Tea Party, that this was necessary.  The Tea Party basically held their own party hostage (probably making John Boehner cry some more) in order to secure deficit reduction at all costs, as if it is the 11th Commandment.  They secured massive entitlement cuts as a prerequisite for doing something that has been done many many times as a non-political issue.  John Boehner cried that he had “stuck his neck out a mile” but when the crazies leading your party are ten miles from sanity, sticking your neck out a mile to meet them is still 9 miles from sane.

But what is most significant about many of the political conflicts over the last three years is that our politics have finally outgrown what the Founding Fathers could have conceived.

American Capitalism Has Finally Worked.  And That Is A Bad Thing

I think our financial crisis of 2008-present has proven that capitalism as it is constituted in America now is a failed system.  The problem is that the only people it is not failing are the ones with the most money and the most political access.  Let me count the ways:

  • Money controls our politics
  • There are no term limits so the most important relationship to a member of either house of Congress is with those that donate money to them, not their constituency
  • Lobbying money, which is the key to political power, NOT elections, dictates policy, legislation and regulation.
  • The increasing disparity of wealth will only get bigger because those individuals and companies with wealth can dictate the political narrative through advertising (thank you Supreme Court for Citizens United) and have greater access to the lawmakers.  This will lead to an exponential growth in the wealthy controlling policy, which directly benefits them, as well as the narrative, through advertising and local elections, which will manipulate many people into targeting their anger at the wrong people.  Why do you think Americans seem to hate Mexican immigrants working bad jobs and gays who want to get married more than the money manipulators (I mean “job creators”) on Wall Street.  Why do they hate unions more than the company executives who refuse solid profits to conduct business in America, in favor of making wild profits producing things abroad?
  • We have made news coverage a money making endeavor.  That means for advertising dollars we have to put stories about things people are interested in (dumb people apparently still want the occasional update on Lindsey Lohan) and that has allowed stations (most notably Fox News and to an almost equal degree (but far more correct) MSNBC to turn news into a team sport where the message is guided by what crowd you want to hang with.

Furthermore, who elected Grover Norquist to anything?  If Obama were adhering to pledges from a private citizen or an unelected group do you think that would be palatable to Americans?

 

My solutions would be simple and would never happen.  Term limits for members of Congress.  2 terms for Senators, 3 terms for House of Representatives.  It is supposed to be public service, not a path to long term enrichment.  If a member of Congress were not nearly as worried about re-election then they would not worry about constant fundraising and would worry less about annoying their lobbying interests and focus more on the people who sent them to office.  Some people may say, that elections are enough, but with money controlling everything (even the gay marriage legislation in New York was a victory for money in politics, not civil rights.  The left applauded, but it was only because financial carrots were placed in front of swing votes by well-financed proponents of gay marriage that it passed), elections are no longer enough when incumbents are so flush with decades worth of cash stockpiles, which only increase as their time (and influence) grows in Congress.

The Founding Father’s Lack of Vision

But thanks to the Tea Party’s hostage of the already extra-conservative Republican party, they have now demonstrated that our very form of Republican government may be failing.

We know that the leaders of the Tea Party, like Michelle Bachman, are lovers of the Founding Fathers, at least in theory, since she seems to be less than schooled in what the Founding Fathers actually believed and did (see Founding Fathers fighting slavery).  And perhaps if Bachman and her crew knew that the Founding Fathers they would not speak of original intent so much, mainly because from the Founding Fathers’ own words, they could not conceive of a political minority being able to manipulate government the way they have.

In Federalist 10, from the Federalist Papers, James Madison wrote that the danger to a Democracy was the faction, whether it be tyranny of the majority or the minority.  Here are some of the highlights from Madison:

By a faction, I understand a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority
or a minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse
of passion, or of interest, adversed to the rights of other citizens, or to the
permanent and aggregate interests of the community.

If a faction consists of less than a majority, relief is supplied by the
republican principle, which enables the majority to defeat its sinister views by
regular vote. It may clog the administration, it may convulse the society; but
it will be unable to execute and mask its violence under the forms of the
Constitution.

In the first place, it is to be remarked that, however small the republic may
be, the representatives must be raised to a certain number, in order to guard
against the cabals of a few; and that, however large it may be, they must be
limited to a certain number, in order to guard against the confusion of a
multitude.

Reading those passages it would be hard to believe that the Tea Party would be lovers of the Founding Fathers.  From these quotes from Federalist 10 it goes beyond Madison disapproving of what the Tea Party has been doing to our government.  It is as if he could not conceive of what they are doing! Now of course, ask a member of the Tea Party what the originals intended and they can tell you how all their words can apply to today, but could they really have envisioned our current society if they could not have even envisioned the tyranny of the Tea Party?  Madison clearly believed that our Republican form of government could stop a cabal from controlling or at least clogging the workings of the government.  Madison did not think a minority faction could hide their actions and interests, but thanks to fake grass roots organizations they can.  In short, Madison was wrong.  He just had no idea that he could be wrong because he figured that a majority decision for the nation’s interest could not be subverted by a ideological minority.  It is almost Oedipal.  For the Tea Party to thrive they had to kill an idea of their cherished Founding Father.  And we already know some Tea Partiers have probably slept with their mothers.  Or at least their sisters.

Another person who loves to talk about the Founding Fathers is Sarah Palin, who I believe is the political equivalent of a store front preacher who also sells snake oil elixirs.  I don’t think she will run for president, unless her agent tells her it could raise literary sales.  She is touring the country earning speaking fees and selling books.  She is selling Patriotism the way a preacher sells healings – the only one who actually benefits at the end is Sarah Palin.  But this is who many Americans believe has America’s interests at heart.

The Republicans in general have demonstrated over the last three years that they will allow a minority to control and freeze government action.  In the House, the Republicans allow themselves to be controlled by the Tea Party.  Why?  Because they are all afraid that they could be the target of the well-funded interest groups in the next election (the midterms of 2010 saw many Republicans who did not meet the ultra-conservative litmus test lose in primaries).  Of course, once again, if there were term limits they might not be as worried about clinging to the power of elected office.  In the Senate, the entire Republican party has turned 60 votes into the new 50.  If they have any disagreement the filibuster is called in.  Once again Madison 0 for 2 on the current Congress.

So to sum up the Tea Party – they believe in the Founding Fathers’ vision, which they don’t seem to understand since the Founding Fathers would be at a loss to explain the Tea Party’s death grip on the House of Representatives.  But they probably would have equally perplexed reaction to a black president, which in all honesty is what really spurred this on.  The Founding Fathers would have called Obama a slave, today the S word is socialist.

So as I look at America today, I see an experiment that has failed.  This does not mean America sucks or anything like that, but we have proven that capitalism is not a rising sea that lifts all boats.  Combined with a new Democracy that the Founding Fathers could have never envisioned, we have turned America into a country where the financial minority can deliver power to a political minority and own the entire process.  The progressives who are attacking Obama need to realize that this is now how the country works and that it is way bigger than anything he can do.

Movie of the Week: Cowboys & Aliens

My real movie of the week is The Devil’s Double, but unfortunately I promised the gf I would wait to see what critics are calling the “Scarface of Arabia” so instead the review of the week is for Cowboys and Aliens.

 

The movie is solid, but by no means spectacular.  Here’s the breakdown:

THE GOOD

Daniel Craig is nearly perfect in the movie.  His few fights are well executed.  His few moments of humor are perfect and not cheesy.  And he seems to have the gravity to convey a cowboy, despite being in a sci-fi movie.

The action scenes are pretty well done and I will not specify how it ends, but at least it does not do that shameful “NOW WE HAVE TO HAVE A SEQUEL!!!!” moment.  Now if the movie is successful I am sure there will be a sequel and that is OK, but at least the movie does not conclude in a pandering and obvious way.

The supporting cast is largely solid, headlined by the alluring eyes of Olivia Wilde.

THE BAD

Harrison Ford.  He has officially announced his candidacy for the “Robert DeNiro – My Legacy Be Damned I need a Paycheck” club.  Watching Harrison Ford in this movie gave me the same feeling I had watching Karl Malone play his final season for the Los Angeles Lakers.  My thought in both cases was “You have earned the right to do this, but I still do not know why you did.”  Harrison Ford has one note in this movie – crusty old man.  It is as if he took the line from The Fugitive at the police station where he yells “You find this man!  You find this man!  He had… a mechanical arm!” and just delivered every line with the same grit.

From the middle of the movie on I felt like Favreau and the team that wrote the movie were veering into Michael Bay territory of cheesy jokes and excessive amounts of knowing smirks.  Be on the lookout for Favreau (after the quality of Swingers and Iron Man 1) to turn into the next Michael Bay.  Hopefully he does not, but I am sure with the money Bay’s crap makes it is tempting.

This movie does something that a lot of sports and action movies do.  In the beginning of the climactic battle between (spoiler) the cowboys and aliens the aliens are kicking the cowboys’ (and Indians) asses.  Then a character dies, which get the cowboys and Indians pumped up (as if the fate of the world and their own lives was not sufficient motivation to give it their all) and then, without any additional weaponry or manpower they start to turn the tide.  I hate that sh*t.  That is only the beginning portion of a pretty good conclusion of the film, so do not feel cheated by that description.

The Indians – why are Native Americans always extremely noble or extreme fu*k ups?  Just once I would like to see (even if not true) a group of apathetic Indians who just want to be left alone in a movie, rather than either fighting for the spirit warriors of the past or drunk in a gutter somewhere.

THE UGLY

This portion is dedicated to the black gentleman sitting behind me in the theater.  He represented his stereotype well, not allowing a single moment, whether funny, action-packed, tense or boring to go by without his inner monologue being expressed outwardly.  By my comment count here is the breakdown:

Oh wow’s – 19

Oh sh*t!s – 11

Ooooooo’s – 33

Miscellaneous – 114

And my personal favorite – “Use that knife to stab that nigga!”  And by “nigga” he meant alien.

Final Grade – B/B-

The Last Bringer (part 17)

I needed a clean tape because I want to submit for a few TV things so I did a bringer last night at Gotham Comedy Club (this is what someone might say at their first meeting of Comedians Anonymous to treat their addiction to laughter-based approval from strangers).  To put that in civilian terms, imagine you are a married woman and you just found out your husband was in a gay gangbang porn film before you got married.  And all your friends have copies now.  That is the level of internal embarrassment I feel doing a bringer at this stage of my comedy career.  But more important that my sense of pride, which I abandoned sometime in 2009 with regards to my comedy career, is getting a a good clean tape.

To get on the show last night I had to scrounge together a bunch of friends, who literally represented every part of my life other than law school.  I had at least one representative from my family, family friends, high school, college, comedian friends, the Bronx DA’s office and Blank Rome (the firm I worked at).  Considering I was annoyed enough doing a bringer and the lengths I had to go to get people I said to myself that I could no longer do another bringer so I had to make last night’s set a good, nay, a great one (I also probably said this three years ago).  And as it turned out my set really did turn out great.  I have almost never been happy with a set, especially when taping it for a specific purpose, but last night was the exception.  Crowd was great and I felt like I stuck the landing.  In fact it took me longer than usual to fall into a post show funk.  Here is the set:

But it was as if Gotham knew that it would be my last bringer ever because on the lineup was Jim Gaffigan, Sherri Shepherd, Jeff Dye, Judah Friedlander and Louis C.K.  I have said and still believe plenty of terrible things about bringer shows, but last night was actually pretty damn impressive.   Oh well, thanks to everyone who came out and hopefully the tape can do some work for me.

Comics Unleashed HERE I COME!!!!

Someone Must Stop Adam Sandler

During the Cold War, the United States and the USSR battled for the future of the world, in part through a massive arms race.  In the process, many dictators and tyrants in developing and third world nations were put and kept in power, leading to the oppression of millions worldwide as both superpowers kept spending billions on weapons.  Eventually the United States emerged victorious, but billions upon billions of dollars had been wasted and countries from the Middle East to Haiti had been victimized by the global power struggle.

The reason I bring this up is because there appears to be an arms race in Hollywood with many parallels and Adam Sandler appears prepared to destroy anything he can to be the world’s worst movie maker.

I recently saw a preview for Jack and Jill, which is Adam Sandler’s newest movie.  Here is the preview:

The preview for this movie seemed like an effort to put Kevin James in his place.  For me Kevin James has been the worst star in movies since he emerged (the way Marlon Brando had a small, but powerful group of performances that made him an inspiration to younger actors, Paul Blart is Kevin James’ anti-Godfather).  But I feel like Jack and Jill is Adam Sandler’s answer, as if to say, “In case you forgot, I am the king of shitty movies so take this!”  Like a rap artist dropping an incredible comeback album full of vengeance and spite, or an athlete taking a challenge seriously and then destroying the competition on the field.  Jack and Jill is Adam Sandler’s declaration to the world that screams, “You cannot do shittier movies than me no matter how hard you try!  I will take Kevin James and Rob Schneider humor and incorporate Martin Lawrence and Tyler Perry sensibilities into my movies.  I dare you to try and beat that!”

And what is great about Jack and Jill is Sandler wanted to do more than destroy Kevin James and America’s sense of humor (the audience is the third world victim in the Sandler-Cold War scenario).  He was going to finish off a Hollywood legend.  I do not know how he got Al Pacino to agree to this, but now Al Pacino will have the ultimate blemish on his resume (apparently replacing Righteous Kill which sucked something fierce).  “Serpico, The Godfather, Dog Day Afternoon, Scent of A Woman, Heat, The Insider and… Jack and Jill.”

Now some people have said to me that Pacino is in cruise control like Robert DeNiro and I disagree.  Robert DeNiro has not touched a good movie in 11 years (Meet the Parents).  He has debts or dementia, but clearly he has decided that he is never going to make a good movie again.  However, Pacino has won an Emmy and been nominated for a Tony in the last couple of years.  He certainly has garbage on his resume in the last 10 years, but it is not near DeNiro’s legacy.  And for the record someone seriously should have killed them both before they were allowed to make Righteous Kill.  But when Sandler had the option of ruining a titan of cinema, he probably thought, “DeNiro is done, but Pacino still seems to have some passion for the craft in him.  So let’s rape that to death.”

So this Fall we will get Jack and Jill.  The shame of this is that when Sandler was new to movies they were funnier.  Then we made him rich and gave him control over his own production company.  Now, left to his own devices he has done the act opposite of successful Hollywood players.  Usually, actors who become A-listers get passion projects made that normally would be tough to get greenlit.  Sandler seems to be an example of a guy who actually benefited from more studio control.  He is like a mentally retarded kid with a 100 mph fastball.  If the coach is constantly guiding him on where to throw it he can make some decent things happen (Happy Gilmore).  However, if the coach leaves him alone he can cause tremendous damage to the fans in the stands (almost every movie he has made in the  last decade).  Heads up – Jack and Jill is headed straight for your face!

Movie Of The Week: Captain America

In an effort to save some money on electricity I contemplated spending the entire day in the movie theater and seeing Captain America, Friends With Benefits, Larry Crowne and Zookeeper.  However I realized what is the use of saving on your electricity bill and carbon footprint if you kill yourself midway through your trip to the movie theater?  So I stuck with Captain America and was entertained throughout.

As I sat down in the theater with my face on fire from the heat I was treated to an array of previews.  Taylor Lautner is in a new movie, sort of looking like a Latin Jason Bourne.  The movie is called Abduction, or Abducted or Abortion (Liam Neeson must have rejected it as part of his Taken-Unknown trilogy of angry men who are clueless but have fighting skills to help them get clues).  It actually looked pretty good, except it had Taylor Lautner.  He just doesn’t appear to have much acting talent, even in the previews.  And it is directed by John Singleton.  How far the mighty have fallen!  Despite starting his career with an Oscar nomination for Boyz N The Hood, he is now relying on spoiled and stupid teenage girls from Team Jacob to bail his career out.

Then there was a preview for The Amazing Spider Man.  I want to reject this film because it is unnecessary.  When The Hulk was rebooted (successfully in my opinion) in 2008, after only 5 years from the first attempt it was acceptable because the Ang Lee Hulk was one of the 20 worst movies of all time.  But Spider Man (at least the first two in 2001 and 2004) were excellent.  There was no need, but Hollywood now treats franchises like NBA jerseys – they keep changing them, whether they work or not, because there is a significant portion of the jersey wearing population that will immediately go get the new one to be in fashion.  I hope the new Spider Man fails on principle, but I’m sure it won’t.

Then I saw a preview for Mission Impossible 4.  I don’t care who hates on Tom Cruise and why they hate on him – the dude is one of the greatest, if not the greatest, movie star of the last 30 years.  The dude is still cool to me.  He does his own stunts, has talent (not Daniel Day Lewis level, but he is also no Paul Walker) and I still feel that, unlike Al Pacino, who will be in this Fall’s Jack and Jill – an Adam Sandler film that I will be dedicating an entire post to next week, Samuel L. Jackson and Robert DeNiro, Tom Cruise, whether he fails or succeeds, does not appear to take film roles with the desperation of a crack addict seeking a paycheck.

But then it was on to Captain America.

This Summer has been up and down with the comic book movies.  X Men First Class is I believe the best movie of the Summer so far (but my money is on Rise of the Planet of the Apes to take the crown August 5th).  Thor was OK (thanks I think to very low expectations I had) and Green Lantern should be the death knell for Ryan Reynolds’ movie career.  He is not funny, looks like a buff, but goofy Dane Cook and his movies suck badly.  Even from the commercials of his next movie, The Change-Up, it looks like Jason Bateman is going to carry Ryan Reynolds like he’s wounded on the battlefield.  But enough with the negatives – Captain America was pretty good and never really had any lulls.

Chris Evans, who will always have a spot in my heart for his portrayal of Jake Wyler in Not Another Teen Movie, plays the lead character who goes from undersized wimp to Major League Baseball player in the Bay Area circa 2003, thanks to a government experiment.  Evans gets lumped in with Reynolds way too much (e.g. Bill Simmons’ recent column on Hollywood stars) as an under-performing, over-exposed young star.  I think he has much more potential than Reynolds and this film should be the showcase for that.  He is very solid in this movie and can clearly carry this franchise (until it gets rebooted in 6 years).

There were several supporting players to admire in this movie.  Hugo Weaving is back from purgatory, probably as karma for his ridiculously good fortune of being in both The Matrix and Lord of the Rings trilogies, as the villain and Tommy Lee Jones is especially good (at least for this genre that usually either under-writes or under-employs supporting actors of quality).  He manages to deliver mostly comic relief with the same dry, go fu*k yourself delivery that won him an Oscar in The Fugitive.  I honestly think we was the least replaceable member of the cast, even though he is only in about 15% of the movie.

On this hot weekend, Captain America is a good choice for a summer movie.  It never gets too ambitious, but it manages to deliver a solid 2 hour experience.

Final Grade – B+

A Tale of Two Comedy Clubs – Cleveland Finale

“It was the blackest of club, it was the whitest of clubs…”

So I just wrapped up a two week stint at the Cleveland Improv and it was a fun, eventful and unpredictable time.

The most interesting thing, as I had predicted it would be, was opening the first week for Rodney Perry, an African-American comedian who is on the Mo’Nique show on BET and recently appeared in Tyler Perry’s Madea’s Big Happy Family, and opening the second week for Matt Braunger, a Caucasian comedian who has an alternative vibe and appears on Chelsea Lately on E!

Here is a statistical breakdown for the two crowds per week:

Number of audience members who jumped up and testified during bits as if it was a Pentecostal Church:

Perry – 31

Braunger – 0

Number of Audience Members Entering at least 25 minutes late for the show:

Perry – 77

Braunger – 10

Number of times I had to say fu*k or b*itch to save my set:

Perry – 11

Braunger – 2

Black/White Audience percentage:

Perry – 95/5

Braunger 15/85

The trip was fun throughout and both Rodney and Matt were awesome to work with.  But the trip’s two milestones can be summarized through two bits I told.  One was a bit I came up with a few hours before one of the shows because I needed something light and easy to get the crowd to laugh at during the first week.  I only had one set that really displeased me so as a response to that I resorted to a bit of recent news that forced me to dust off an impression that I had hoped to bury forever (even though it is good).  Well, of course they liked it and I hated myself a little bit more for telling it:

The other bit, which I told the last day of the trip (and is completely true) concerned my experiences walking around Cleveland during my two weeks there:

So even though I had to dig up an impression like a bad horror film, in between Dicks Gone Wild! in Cleveland, I still had a great time in Cleveland.

Breaking Bad – The Best Thing On TV. By…

When it comes to television I hold something that some may call an opinion, but is, in actuality, a stone cold fact: Breaking Bad is the best show on television.  By far.  After only three seasons it has already jumped into elite company.  Here are my favorite shows of all time in order (minimum 3 seasons, so although I love Game of Thrones and Eastbound & Down, to name a couple, it would be unfair to put them up yet – it is called the True Blood rule – do not judge a show on one great season because it may become a campy, soft-core porn for women and gay men in the next two to three seasons):

1) Six Feet Under – The best finale of any show I have ever seen and the best show ever at making you feel like you knew the characters as people and not characters.  Also a show whose greatness, with the exception of certain episodes, can only really be appreciated cumulatively, similar to life in general.  When I see Peter Krause on Parenthood, or even Michael C. Hall on Dexter, I sometimes feel like I am watching Michael Jordan play for the Washington Wizards.

2) The Wire – possibly the most important show of all time.  Other than a so-so final season (by Wire Standards that means an A-/B+) it was an incredibly real and entertaining portrayal of the desperate plight of urban America.  Of course its ratings sucked and it never got nominated for a Best Drama Emmy.  I am sure creator David Simon wears that as a badge of honor.  As he should.

3) Breaking Bad*

4) Arrested Development – the funniest show I have ever seen.  So good that it’s diet coke knock off (but admittedly very good) Modern Family is in line for its second Best Comedy Emmy

5) The West Wing – Was always mad that The Sopranos would lose best drama to the West Wing.  Then I actually watched the West Wing.  Given Aaron Sorkin’s hand, it is the dramatic screenwriting equivalent of Arrested Development.  As Rick James might have said regarding Sorkin’s writing, “Cocaine is a hell of a drug.”

6) The Sopranos – Some might have this higher and the fact that it is arguably the first of the new cinematic-style dramas (but check out #9 on this list) means that it should be higher simply out of respect.  But there was too much of a downward trajectory to the show (and the 2 year wait for the season that revolved around a closeted gay mobster remains one of the most disappointing seasons in TV history) for it to maintain a loftier place.

7) All In The Family – Archie Bunker – maybe the greatest single television character of all time.  I still wonder how this show from the 1970s seemed more willing to tackle, mock and explore racism than most shows do in 2011.  A show that I would call ahead of its time if I knew when we would actually catch up to it.

8) Seinfeld – Brilliant and the most quoted show of all time.  This is another show that it would be tough to say “changed the sitcom,” mainly because no one had either the skill and/or balls to make a show about nothing.  And having just watched the entire series this Summer, I forgive Kramer.  Him and Jason Alexander are brilliant.

9) Homicide: Life On The Streets – I must give credit to my older brother, who I still think sometimes wishes he followed his boyhood dream of becoming a police officer, for his obsession with good police dramas (I am not talking to you any shows on CBS).  Homicide, which was partly the work of the creators of The Wire (and arguably was doing the Sopranos shtick several years before The Sopranos).  The show, like #10 on this list, represented a rare network television departure – meaning even though ratings suck, we will keep this going because it is a high quality show.  Homicide featured several things that other later shows, higher on this list, have received credit for.  One character spent several seasons exploring his bisexuality, it depicted crime and police work in a much more realistic manner than had really been done and it featured a rich array of black characters that weren’t Huxtables.  And this was all on Network television.

10) Friday Night Lights – This show’s lack of general success says so much about American culture.  The pitch was probably easy – “how about a show featuring attractive people playing America’s favorite sport, football?”  Sounds great, right?  Except it is going to be a sometimes heroic, but other times sad look at small town American life and all of its good and bad parts.   The result?  Well, with The Wire,  America showed that they generally did not want to watch a show critical of urban blight (isn’t there a CSI on right now?), but surprisingly, America did not tune in in huge numbers to see their small town American fantasy depicted in a realistic light either.  Season 4 of FNL was not very good, but seasons 1, 3 and the 5th (and final season) were top notch television.

Of these shows, there is obviously a recency bias, but I think that makes sense.  As far as television is concerned we live in simultaneously the best and worst time.  The proliferation of reality television has made us dumber.  And made stars out of some of our dumbest citizens.  I feel like there was a brief time where if you were on reality television you were a loser and then, when our culture realized any fame was good fame, we started to turn these people into bona fide celebrities.  I still think if Al Qaeda simply adjusted their mission statement to be, “We will only wage jihad on those who call themselves ‘Real Housewives of anything'” we might be able to find some common ground.  But the growth of reality shows also forced new avenues for actual writers of good television.  It feels almost like if a major sports league contracted one-third of its teams.  if you eliminate the worst 10 NBA teams, the remaining 20 will just get stronger because there will be greater competition for fewer spots.  Similarly, good writers have either been forced to consolidate on other shows or to be more creative in pitching things to places like HBO and AMC.  And the top of this New Television Order is Breaking Bad.

Some people may be saying what about Mad Men?  Mad Men is good.  That is all I have to say about it.  I have repeatedly called it The Emperor’s New Television Show.  It has won three straight best drama Emmys (the same body that never once nominated The Wire, but saw fit to hook Boston Legal up with multiple DRAMA nominations) and has young people feeling a hip nostalgia for an era that they never experienced.  Other than the confusing feelings I get admiring the handsomeness of Jon Hamm and the incredible Jessica Rabbit come to life that is Christina Hendricks, I don’t think the show is any better than good, which stands in contrast to Breaking Bad.

I owe a debt of gratitude to Nick Cobb and Ross Stephenson, two friends who told me after the first season of Breaking Bad had aired that I needed to watch it.  No show on this list has had the trajectory of Breaking Bad.  The first season was excellent.  Then season two was beyond excellent.  And then last year season three aired and was even better.  More specifically, episodes 7-13 of season 3 is the greatest six episode stretch of any show I have ever seen.  There are a few reasons why I think Breaking Bad has been so good:

  1. The cast.  Bryan Cranston has won three straight best actor Emmys for a reason.  What he has done with Walter White has been superb – taking him gradually and believably from mild mannered cancer-stricken high school teacher, to alpha male quasi-villain.  But the rest of the cast is also perfect.  That is what is so great – there is not a weak spot in the cast.  Everyone is bringing their A game.  It reminds me of watching a Christopher Nolan movie, where even the guy with two lines seems to know what is at stake and knows that those two lines must be delivered perfectly.
  2. It reminds me of The Fugitive (the movie).  Let me explain.  I have a friend from college, Mike, who often waxed on how it seemed in the early 1990s there were movies that were both wildly entertaining, but also had real substantive cinematic quality (unlike today where it sometimes feels more bifurcated – you are either seeing The King’s Speech or Transformers).  Movies like In The Line of Fire and The Fugitive came to mind – where you could actually have a legitimate Summer movie, which also had serious Oscar quality.  That is what Breaking Bad is for television.  It packs great dramatic moments, with action packed scenes and incredible tension.  It is so good that you get both the feeling of watching a guilty pleasure and fine art at the same time.
  3. As several newspaper and magazine articles have indicated – Breaking Bad follows a different route than other dramas in its class.  It is following the moral destruction of its main character.  And yet we still root for him.  Other shows like The Sopranos or The Shield (which was hit and miss, but the second to last episode of The Shield is one of my five favorite episodes in TV history) had characters who had paths that were downward, but they were already villains to start.  Walter White, on the other hand is the good guy who you root for who forces you to rationalize still rooting for him as the episodes go on.

So tonight is the season 4 premiere and the question I have is how much better can the show actually get.  But I put an asterisk next to Breaking Bad on my list because it has the potential to be the best of them all.  It doesn’t have the emotional depth of Six Feet Under or the societal importance of The Wire.  That is what makes it so special – it is simply great for being the most entertaining thing on television.