The TONYS

So a few weeks back, I decided to try to watch the Tonys. *Snooze.* Sorry, I fell asleep just thinking about it. It really was unbelievably dull. I can only surmise that (1) the theater industry pouts and whines until television networks agree to run their private nobody-has-a-clue-who-these-people-are-except-other-theater-people awards ceremony; (2) the entertainment industry, including television networks, honestly believes that viewers are consumably interested in its every move, including boring awards ceremonies.

It was Dull, and yes, that's Dull with a capable DDDDDDDD. Actually, I happen to think that the Oscars are Dull too. I really wonder about the poor stars who have to attend such ceremonies. At least I can read, eat, clean, take a shower, write while the TV is on. Someone told me once that the Oscars and Tonys hire "fillers," people to sit in empty seats. Stars can go out and mingle in the lobby but the theater will always look full. That lobby must be packed! I can only surmise that stars go to these things because they get to attend parties afterwards. Which I think sounds equally dull, but I'm willing to concede that beautiful people standing around with other beautiful people getting drunk is more interesting than sitting in a dark theater for three hours.

I stuck it out for the first half because some of the musical numbers were okay. Unlike the Oscars, there was no main host (or if there was, I forget who), only a series of announcers. They came out in two's and some of them had little patter routines. And some of those routines were pretty stupid. And some of them were okay. The funniest routine involved the Monty Python musical folks.

And then a man and a woman, I forget their names, came out with a puppet. Who was the puppet? A Republican. A Republican puppet! We know all about that!! Har har har.

And I turned the channel.

It wasn't so much that I was offended, although after two years of grad school, I'm pretty sick and tired of liberal angst. It was that it was so dumb. You see, there are clever zingers and then there are not so clever zingers and then there is pre-adolescent idiocy, like kids who think it is hilarious when you say the word, "Poop."

In other words, there was nothing about the "joke" that was remotedly funny, other than a bunch of actors got to call the President of the United States (yes, it was aimed at George Bush) a puppet on National Television. (Oh, gosh, we're so funny.) But there was nothing else behind the "joke," except, well, animosity. The delivery wasn't especially good (it wasn't Grodin or Stephen Wright, who can make you laugh just by saying the word "pizza"). There was no play on words. No juxtaposition of ideas. Nothing particularly hilarious.

For example, there's a bumper sticker that I see quite often: "I need a good florist who will send two bushes to Iraq." I don't agree with the sentiment, but I think it is really clever. Nice play on words. Nice zing. An excellent capsulation of concept and message. Very well done. But saying the equivalent of "Oooh, the president is a potty head," that's not funny, that's just really, really, really pathetic.

And the TONYS crowd laughed heartily. And I thought, And I'm letting myself be bored by what these self-absorbed morons are doing? And changed the channel.

There are a vast number of actors on Broadway that I admire and respect. But there's also a vast amount of silliness. Unfortunately, the Tonys (and the Oscars) usually show the entertainment industry at its silliest.

CATEGORY: FESTIVALS

Odds and Ends

The last few weeks have been spent on my thesis, which is near completion. This post is a bunch of stray thoughts I've had lately, nothing terribly coherent.

New VW Commercial

I hate it. It's the "low ego emissions" commercial. Actually, there's a series of them. I watch them and think, Do VW owners really think this way about themselves? That everyone else is self-absorbed and egomanical while they are just SOOOO laid back and unconcerned? It would be funny if the commercials were playing off of that self-perception (as some commercials do) but the commercials are more about reinforcing the self-perception than making fun of it. They are really disturbing. They also remind me of the art crowd I knew in high school who were so concerned over not being cliqueish, they kind of turned themselves into a clique. In any case, I have decided to never, ever, ever, ever buy a VW.

More jerks (see previous post)

Bob (Saverrio Guera) from Becker: he also showed up on a few Buffys and Monk. He is a fine actor and hilarious as Bob. He plays the token jerk, but he is allowed to get in some zingers and has a great straight-man demeanor.

Janice (Maggie Wheeler) from Friends. I rewatched some Friends episodes recently. Janice was Chandler's reoccuring girlfriend with the horrible laugh. She did an excellent job of being obnoxious and funny and almost charming. You could see why Chandler went out with her, and you could see why it was never going to work.

Newman (Wayne Knight) from Seinfeld. Seinfeld is a show that I get tired of very quickly. (I like the play on language, but it is mostly the same thing over and over.) But I love Newman. He's the bad guy in Jurassic Park. He also showed up in Branagh's Dead Again. He is great. I love him in anything. He knows how to play scary nerd almost effortlessly.

Richard Dean Anderson

I recently (about a month ago) watched some old MacGyvers. Yeah, I was a MacGyver fan back in the day (as well as a Knight Rider fan, which I have no desire to rewatch). I can't say MacGyver impressed me particularly. What did surprise me is that although, naturally, I thought Richard Dean Anderson was so, so cute back in my teen years, he struck me in retrospect as way too much of a pretty boy. This is a man who has aged extrememly well and is about fifteen billion times handsomer now than he was in his twenties. Granted, I tend to like my men a bit aged (older Angel is way more attractive than younger Angel), but, too, I think teenage girls have a penchant for male effeminate looks (such as Leonardo DiCaprio in Titanic). Maybe, they find effeminate boys less threatening? I have no idea, and I was a teenage girl.

The Da Vinci Code

I may have been wrong about Hanks never choosing the wrong movie. I've heard The Da Vinci isn't doing so well (although doing so well is a relative term). I can't say I'm upset. I realize that movies mangle history all the time. Look at Pocahontas. But Dan Brown allowed himself to be pulled into making out that The Da Vinci Code was real history. In other words, he turned it into a cause (I can't say whether he set out to do that or not, but once the book became a bestseller, he certainly did). I've read several Bible scholar commentataries, and this is precisely their beef. They enjoyed the book, but the moment Brown started selling it as non-fiction, they got a little testy.

Thing is, the book isn't just a little wrong, historically speaking, it is REALLY wrong. As in REALLY, REALLY wrong. As in SOOO wrong, it's kind of embarrassing. As in Pocahontas wrong, without the animation or singing trees to hide behind. It isn't even vaguely right. And all the wrong stuff was checkable. And Brown didn't check it. In other words, he is no Michael Crichton who becomes, briefly, an expert on dinosaurs or submarines of whatever. He's a guy who read a couple of books and then made out he was an expert. (And now the couple of books' authors are upset.)

However, despite the movie's non-smash-hit status, I doubt Brown is crying on his way to the bank. It's not like this is some kind of morality lesson. (Check your facts next time!) And golly, look at the industry he spawned!

CATEGORY: TELEVISION

Not So Bad: I, Robot and Nanny McPhee

When I first saw I, Robot I was very, very disappointed. I, Robot by Isaac Asimov is one of my favorite books. I prefer his robot books to his Foundation series, and I love the format of I, Robot (a reporter eliciting robot stories from Susan Calvin; it is actually a collection of stories Asimov wrote earlier).

Now I've spoken elsewhere, and at length, about how books need to be changed in order to work as movies. What burns me, as I'm sure it burns others, is when a book is used (or ostensibly used) but not taken advantage of. My favorite example of this is The Robe, which is a rather dull movie but didn't need to be. The book upon which it is based is quite exciting, full of chase scenes and such. I can understand screenwriters coming up with dull material on their own. But it really confuses me when screenwriters produce boring material despite having the copyright to exciting material. I mean, huh?

I, Robot (the movie) is not boring, but I, Robot (the book) has some stellar plots, and why, why, why, I asked myself, didn't they use them? However, I later learned (this could be rumor, but it makes sense) that the I, Robot people had a robot movie and then, the copyright for Asimov's I, Robot became available so they decided to use the title (as well as a few Asimovy ideas). I understand their thinking, but I'm not sure it was wise. If I'd seen the movie, sans Asimov's name, I would have thought, Hey, they borrowed a bunch of stuff from Asimov; I wouldn't have thought, Why isn't this more Asimovy?

In any case, the movie is far closer in feel to Caves of Steel by Asimov (which copyright is probably not available yet). Which I also like. And, in fact, I enjoyed the movie very much the second time around. Will Smith is a favorite, the movie has a good plot, not to mention James Cromwell (another favorite). The stunts are a little over-digitalized but still cool. Asimov was more of a pro-technology guy than the movie implies; he stated once that there are two robot plots: evil robots taking over the world; good robots saving everyone. Viki and first Hal (2001) fall into category one. Sonny and Data fall into category two. Asimov favored category two; he believed that in the long run, science was better than no science. However, I think he probably would have appreciated I, Robot, the movie (Asimov, if nothing else, was an author capable of taking advantage of an opportunity). And finally, there is the movie's simple, yet always profound, concept: goodness cannot survive the loss of agency. Unless we have the freedom to not be good, we can never be good. So, I really enjoyed it.

I also recently saw Nanny McPhee. It was advertised as the next Mary Poppins, but didn't last long, and I was a little suspicious, despite admiring Emma Thompson and Colin Firth. Well, it is wonderful. It isn't Mary Poppins. Mary Poppins, which I also admire, is very American. Nanny McPhee is very British (think E. Nesbit). Consequently, I think the director made a mistake by cutting a number of comedic scenes. All the scenes that he cut had this Monty-Python feel to them--extremely hilarious stuff. He says he did it to streamline the plot. Personally, I think he did it to give Nanny McPhee a more American feel. I think he should have trusted us viewers more. We love British TV over here, and I think Nanny McPhee would have found a following. As it is, it is still funny, with a sly humor to it, but it isn't as outrageous as it could be and hence, has a slightly uneven tone. (For one thing, it isn't a sweet kiddy type of movie. It's more Pixar/Wallace & Gromit than My Little Pony, but it was advertised as more like the latter than the former.)

However, the cut version is still worth watching, the children are fantastic, the adult actors (including Derek Jacobi!) are great. Colin Firth is quite a good comedic actor (despite being type cast forever as the only slightly humorous Darcy. However, even in Pride & Prejudice, he managed to work in some eye-rolling, and the fact that Firth could get away with such subtle Austenish eye-rolling is much to his credit).

CATEGORY: MOVIES

Novel Sequels

Price of Eggs in China's posts "10 Worst Sequels" and "Sequel Season" got me thinking about novel sequels I've liked, and others I haven't liked so much.

For instance, my favorite book out of the Riddle-Master trilogy is Heir of Sea and Fire (by Patricia McKillip). I don't necessarily think it is the best written of the three books, I just like it the most what with the main characters seeking revenge, yet neither precisely sure who they are seeking revenge from or on. I feel the same way about Chamber of Secrets by J.K. Rowlings, which I've always been very fond of. It has the strongest horror (as in genre, not as in lots of people croaking) of all of her books; I'm also convinced that it was originally supposed to be the first book or was combined with the first book and then her editor said, "Hey, you know you could turn this entire plot into a separate book." It feels introductory.

There are those sequels I've grown to love over time. When I was a kid, I didn't care for The Voyage of the Dawn Treader; now it is one of my favorite Narnia books. The same is true of Perelandra, also by C.S. Lewis. It is just so heavy content-wise and exposition-wise, I couldn't get through it. I have since, and I like the book, although I still think Out of the Silent Planet is the best of the three. All in all, I don't think Lewis' sci-fi has ever received the credit it deserves. He was writing in the age of Asimov; now, I admire Asimov tremendously, but I also admire the sci-fi writers who have concentrated more on people and societies than machines and systems (although someone like Cherryh does both effortlessly). Anyway, Lewis was one of the first to write sci-fi that was about "first contact," as Star Trek would call it, rather than about tech/robot/alien wars. (Although to be honest, I think I just love Out of the Silent Planet for the part where the bad guy, Weston, is blathering on with his academese and pompous references to "Life As She Is Lived" and Ransom, who is trying to translate Weston's long-winded speech, gets confused and says, "I'm sorry, I forgot who She is.")

Back to sequels, Madeline L'Engle wrote somewhere that the first book you write is always the best because it is the one you really wanted to write. That might be true. When it comes to mystery series, however, I have found that nearly always (with exceptions) the latter books are better than the first, or, at least, more grounded. The author knows her characters better, her milieu, her detective's history. I much prefer Christie's later Poirot books to her first; I enjoy Crocodile on the Sandbank (first Amelia Peabody) by Elizabeth Peters, but it has an incredibly convoluted plot (although actually, most of Peters' books have convoluted plots). Mystery writing is evidently a craft that has to be practiced to be learned. Unfortunately, once it is learned, it quickly becomes trite so mystery series follow a kind of bell curve: okay first novels with convoluted plots, better sequels, a peak and then a falling off where every book is just a repeat of the one before.

Speaking of series, Steve Hockensmith recently wrote a book called Holmes on the Range, a Sherlock Holmes inspired mystery. The main character is not Holmes; he is a cowboy whose younger brother (his Watson) reads him newspaper stories about Holmes. The cowboy becomes convinced, with reason, that he has the abilities, if not the book learning, to emulate Holmes and sets out to prove so. It is fantastic, and I am hoping it is the first of many.

Returning to sci-fi, and fantasy, I prefer Ender's Game to its sequels, which lost a little of the magic, I think. Also, Fellowship of the Ring is my favorite of Tolkien's trilogy; I have read it more than the remaining two books. I'm not sure why. I don't think Tolkien knew where he was going in Fellowship, and it's a little uneven as a result, but I prefer both the book and the movie. I think part of it is the wrenching one feels when the story ends in book 3, a wrenching, I'm happy to say, Jackson (with the help of Annie Lennox) did invoke from me at the end of Return of the King. There are two solutions to great quest stories: Lewis' solution was transcendence; Tolkien's solution was loss. Either way, one cannot return to the status quo and either way, something will change. So, the ending of Lord of the Rings must be sad. But being sad on a regular readerly basis is asking rather a lot.

Turning to good sci-fi/fantasy sequels, I include Diane Duane's Deep Wizardry (#2), Chernevog by C.J. Cherryh (#2: Rusalka is the first); Asimov's The Naked Sun (#2: Caves of Steel is #1); Douglas Adams' Long Dark Tea Time for the Soul (sequel to Dick Gentley's Holistic Detective Agency, both great and less well-known than Adams' Hitchhiker's series); Queen of Attolia and King of Attolia by Megan Whalen Turner (books #2 and #3: #1 is The Thief; I LOVE this series); The Lives of Christopher Chant by Diana Wynne Jones (prequel to Charmed Life, also good); not sci-fi or fantasy: Ashes to Ashes by Emma Lathen (my favorite of that mystery series); Parting Breath by Catherine Aird, my favorite of that mystery series; the latest P.N. Elrod, Song in the Dark (vampire/mystery series), more thoughtful, less gorey than its predecessors; The Finer Points of Sausage Dogs by Alexander McCall Smith (#2 of a 3-book series), which is absolutely hilarious; and finally, Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke--not really a series, but I've seen it split into three books, I highly recommend it all.

Disappointing sequels (not necessarily sci-fi/fantasy): Murdering Ministers by Alan Benchley (his first, An Embarrassment of Corpses is hilarious; his second is just tedious; I guess L'Engle was right!); the last Sarah Caudwell book The Sibyl in her Grave which is, in fact, very good but depressing without the panache of the others; The Gypsy Game, sequel to The Egypt Game by Z.K. Snyder, written many years later; it does not stand up to the comparison; McKinley's Rose Daughter, her re-retelling of Beauty and the Beast; she did it already with Beauty; why do it again? The last few books in Susan Cooper's Dark Is Rising series. She didn't go for transcendence or loss--series ended with a thud.

CATEGORY: BOOKS

Those With an Oscar's Thumb

I watched Splash recently which I never saw all the way through when I was younger. I can't say it's my favorite Tom Hanks movie. In the "Making Of" segment--which was better than many "Making Of" segments*--Tom Hanks mentions how he had just come off Bosom Buddies. He was more or less an unknown TV actor, and he delivered his lines á la Bosom Buddies--going for the laughs--since that was where his skills lay. That is, until Ron Howard instructed him that John Candy would take care of the comedy, thank you very much, all Tom Hanks had to do was love the girl. The result is a somewhat uneven Tom Hanks' performance. He is still good, he just doesn't have that smooth combination of comedy, romance and decency that he achieves later in You've Got Mail (and in Sleepless in Seattle, but I don't much like Sleepless).

What struck me, despite my ho-hum reaction to the film, is that I don't think Tom Hanks has ever picked a dud. I haven't liked (or seen) all of his movies, but he seems to have an instinctual ability for picking films that end up being big hits. I don't just mean The Da VinciCode, which is practically slated for big hit-dom, but movies like Splash and Big. Even films like The Terminal and Castaway have a solid, kind-of-film-you'd-add-to-your-resume feel to them. He doesn't have many (if any) utterly embarrassing flops.

It really impresses me because I don't think all stars have this ability--like Sandra Bullock, for instance, who I really like (and While You Were Sleeping is one of the sweetest movies ever) but who seems to end up in more or less the same kind of film every time, and it is never, really, all that successful. Hugh Jackman is another example of an actor I really like but has made some downright damaging choices--I'm talking Van Helsing rather than X-Men--and there's even actors like Sean Connery and Denzel Washington, who you'd think would be able to walk into anything they wanted (and don't). But having that "Oscar thumb" ("I can add this movie to my resume") proves to be quite the handy gift. Now, there are the occasional stars like Julie Andrews and Ian McKellan and Morgan Freeman who give any movie they are in gravitas simply because they are in it. But most stars' careers are affected (however temporarily) by the quality (ballast) of the movies they choose.

Other actors with Oscar thumbs:

Tobey Maguire
Christian Bale (odd films but usually reputable ones)
Ed Harris (who I think deserves an Oscar for being the industry's best supporting actor)
Bill Paxton (who has the oddest tastes but never seems to fall on his face)
Julia Roberts (who despite some not-so-good films always seems to remain undamaged by them)
Cary Elwes (oddly enough; I'm not saying he doesn't pick duds but since he always plays himself having a good time, it doesn't matter much; that is, he never picks the wrong film for his range; Keanu Reeves does but Reeves is an icon and can't be hurt by anything)
Kate Winslet

Actors without Oscar thumbs:

Leonardo DiCaprio
Ben Affleck
Brad Pitt (no real proof, I just don't think he does)
Denzel Washington (I adore Denzel Washingon; he is a fabulous actor, but his films are all over the place)
Orlando Bloom
Sean Connery (The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen has a lot to answer for in terms of actors' careers)
Emma Thompson (bizarrely enough; I just get this feeling that her career is a bit haphazard)
Halle Berry

*I detest--detest!--"Making Of" segments where the actors sum up the plot and then you are shown clips from the movie WHICH YOU HAVE JUST SEEN. The "Making Of" for Henry VIII was like this, and I would have thrown something at the TV if it hadn't cost so much. I've seen the movie. I don't need to hear the actors' (historically inaccurate) summaries of their characters. What I do want with "Making Of" segments is insight into the craft. The other stuff is just window dressing. Tom Hanks, by the way, usually gives a good interview.

CATEGORY: MOVIES

The Strangest Show on Television

I suppose it isn't really, but it comes awfully close. Everytime I catch an episode of Smallville, I am surprised once again at how (unintentionally) schizophrenic it is. It could be kind of campy and deliberately self-mocking (a la Joss Whedon) but it never is. And the result is a very puzzling show.

Take Tom Welling, for instance. Now, the definitive Superman, to me, is Dean Cain. He may not be the greatest actor to ever hit planet Earth, but he looks and acts completely right. He is handsome in a Captain America kind of way. He is exceedingly fit but rather more Tobey Maguire than the Hulk. He is smart and kind and completely guileless. That is how Superman is supposed to be (while we're at it, I'll admit I tend to like my superheroes a tad more disturbed, a la Wolverine; still, Superman as Superman is very important--see The Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller for a psychological contrast between Superman and Batman).

Here's the weird thing about Smallville--the writers create moments and dialog where Welling is referred to as if he were the Dean Cain prototype. Except that he isn't. In the beginning of the episode I saw Saturday night, Clark is on the football team. As he is running down the field, the episode's bad guy (a bookie), mutters, "Trip," and Clark trips but doesn't fall because he is Superman. He rams into another player but still manages to make the touchdown. Not a bad beginning to an episode.

Next scene, Clark is at the hospital and his assistant couch (the guy who is now on Supernatural) says, "The player [you hit] broke his collarbone in two places," and then goes on to tell Clark that people are getting suspicious, that he (Clark) shouldn't have been able to do that much damage to a guy "twice his weight."

Are they joking? There's no suspension of belief needed here, folks. This isn't Tobey Maguire running full-tilt into Arnold. This is Tom Welling running full-tilt into a high schooler. Of course he's going to break his collarbone, powers or no powers! (Fragile things collarbones.)

The other episode that I watched (I really, really want to like the show; I miss my occasional dose of Buffy/Angel; I need a superhero show to replace it--no, NOT Charmed, which, to give it kudos despite its soap opera nature, doesn't take itself seriously) was pretty much a Charmed take-off...by way of Buffy and Alias. I think I went into shock. It would have been funny if the writers had indicated that there were doing all this borrowing to be funny. But they weren't. Smallville is such a very earnest show, like Everwood--with Superman.

Actually, the kid who plays Lex seems to know that he is playing borderline over-the-top stuff (and does well opposite Marsters, who doesn't really have to try hard to be excellent on Smallville). And Lex is the best character on the show. But I don't really know if anyone else gets it. The show just pulses with teenage angst.