TV Top 9: NYC Shows

Tonight is the night for 30 Rock!! (Unless, like me, you watched the sneak preview online). And quite possibly the greatest thing about 30 Rock are the NYC jokes. So in honor of Tina Fey and 30 Rock's NYC beauty, here are the top 9 NYC-based TV shows.

9. The Late Show with David Letterman

David Letterman has been on the air in the city that never sleeps as long as I've been alive. (That's 26 years for folks who need numbers.) Johnny and Jay may love Burbank, but for Dave, no La-La-Land magic competes with a basket of cantaloupe dropped onto 53rd Street from 20 stories up. And that's just fine by me. I may be projecting, but in my opinion Letterman's Big Apple locale lends itself to more gritty interviews (Madonna once used the word "fuck" 13 times in a single interview) and a vibe that screams "at any moment this 'orderliness' might turn to chaos." I love the devil-may-care attitude of The Late Show so much that I have a picture of myself and Rupert from the Hello Deli in a frame in my apartment (if you don't know who Rupert is, you haven't been paying very close attention to Letterman). If you want New York mystique, look nowhere else but to your TV screen at 11:35 every weekday night. Oh, and smoke a cigar through a broken window while you do it. -- dcg

8. All in the Family

One of the two shows ever to be rated #1 for five consecutive seasons (the other being The Cosby Show, another excellent NY sitcom) and the winner of four consecutive Emmy Awards as Outstanding Comedy Series, All in the Family has made pretty much any and every list of influential moments in pop culture. Based around a typical Queens family, the show touched on topics most still considered taboo for the 70's. From racism to anti-Semitism to homophobia (they used every slur in the book) nothing was too controversial to come out of Archie Bunker's (Caroll O'Connor's) mouth. And when it was unusual to see a black customer at The Peach Pit or The Central Perk in the 90's, All in the Family had an entire African American family as supporting cast members, which, lest we forget, spawned one of the greatest spin-offs of all time (even better than Joey? But how!?), The Jeffersons. All in the Family wasn't just a television series, it was a cultural moment. It started the debate over whether comedy was the correct medium for discussing serious social issues and without it we wouldn't have shows like South Park, The Daily Show, or any other show that we take for granted. -- ab

7. I Love Lucy

In their Upper East Side apartment (the address would actually make it an underwater abode), Lucy (Lucille Ball) and Ricky Ricardo (Desi Arnaz) told one of the earliest and certainly most successful American immigrant stories. Ricky/Desi, the Cuban-American band leader was masterful at his job. In her effort to live up to her husband's success, the real humor came in Lucy's attempts to make a name for herself in the city. Whether it was the relationship with their neighbors (the Mertzes) in the apartment or the time when Lucy and Ethel Mertz were wrapping candies at the factory and it went really fast or when Lucy wanted to do a commercial for Vitameatavegamin, Lucy was pure sitcom perfection. The NYC setting added a nice exploration of the immigrant experience and the white-Latino marriage...and well, the all important neighbor relations. -- bjr

6. Sesame Street

There's a Sesame Street station of the New York City subway (on the show, not in real life). Many of its human inhabitants live on 123 Sesame Street (it's got a great stoop). Mr. Hooper's store has always been a mainstay. There's a homeless guy named Oscar who lives out of a trash can too. Sure there's a really big bird, an imaginary monster named Snuffy (Can we say hallucinatory drugs?), and the neighbors actually all talk (and sing) together, but Sesame Street IS a part of New York. Face it, most New Yorkers learned their ABCs and 123's on this very street. And Ernie and Bert are the cutest gays too, don't you think. I've just never seen a Chelsea apartment that looked so plain, guys. Or wait, did Ernie & Bert actually live on the street? -- bjr

5. The Cosby Show

If you think the Williamsburg insurgence popularized Brooklyn, you need to think again. For 8 seasons, millions of Americans were schooled outer-borough-style thanks to the Huxtable clan on The Cosby Show. Anomolous in many representational ways, The Cosby Show treaded incredible ratings success with finesse and care. Patriarch Cliff Huxtable (Bill Cosby) was originally written as a plumber, but star Cosby thought the idea trite; he required that his character be a doctor and his wife, Clair (Phylicia Rashad), be a successful lawyer. As a result, The Cosby Show featured one of the first, upper-middle-class families of color on network television. And unlike the nouveau riche Jeffersons, the Huxtables weren't faced with a transition from working- to middle-class (and middle-class interactions). As such, the show fell very infrequently into the territory of "social issue"; this fact often provokes responses that the Huxtable family was unrealistic or, even worse, that they are black characters meant solely for the enjoyment of white people. Another angle: in its refusal to make a constant issues of its characters' race, The Cosby Show illustrated that representations of people of color with great educations and a lots of cash need not result in constant shock and awe. -- dcg

4. Law & Order (and all subsequent spin offs)

You need only hear that classic double chime to know which show (or shows) you're watching. The reason I love Law & Order so much (and really, it's almost a crippling obsession) is that when I'm watching I know that anyone who isn't from New York is most likely missing something I'm seeing. Whether it was the occasional political guest star (Mayor Giuliani or Congressman Serrano to name a few), landmark reference (Yeshiva University and Queens College are both name dropped more than once – I'm a proud-ish alum of both) or the episode of SVU (my personal favorite of the franchise) where they investigate a Russian immigrant who, of course, lives in Rego Park (hell yeah!) Law & Order really was New York, it wasn't just filmed here. You didn't need to get the references to understand the show, but they added an extra layer for those of us who were aware. In fact, a street down by Chelsea Piers was even named after the show. If that isn't hometown love, I don't know what is. -- ab

3. NYPD Blue

From its jack-hammering, melancholy opening theme to its vérité brutality in formal execution and controversial content, creator Stephen Bochco's NYPD Blue is an exemplary representation of its setting: New York City can be gritty, random, beautiful, or rhythmic, but it's rarely boring. NYPD Blue introduced primetime viewers to Detective-cum-Sergeant Andy Sipowicz (Dennis Franz), a trash-talking, fallable drinker and rager--the serial drama's answer to Archie Bunker. Featuring partial (male and female) nudity, bloody violence, and the crudest language ever aired in scripted network television, NYPD Blue was canned from many of ABC's Southern US affiliates before the premiere of its first episode (which was preempted, as all episodes were, by the warning that "This police drama contains adult language and scenes with partial nudity. Viewer discretion is advised.")--what could be more New York than that? The program ran for 12 seasons. It also, unfortunately, enabled David Caruso's acting career. I suppose no show's perfect... -- dcg

2. Seinfeld

Let's admit it, there isn't one of us who doesn't have ONE episode of Seinfeld we love. Sure, there was a moment where Kramer thinks that he's reached the apex of the universe when he finds the intersection of 1st Ave and 1st St. If you're a real New Yorker, you know that the real apex of the universe is the point at which West 4th St meets West 4th St. Seinfeld has a spectacular reputation for using NYC as a punchline, nearly every episode. Before 30 Rock, there was Seinfeld. From the Soup Nazi to Babu to Newman to George Steinbrenner, there was a bit of New York in each episode (mostly the untrue mean, unfriendly side). Be careful, though, Tom's Diner (2880 Broadway) is not the set for the show, just the exterior. And the waitresses are mean in real life. -- bjr

1. Sex & the City

Well, the name says it all doesn't it? This show wasn't just about sex (though we all know there was plenty of it) it was also about the city where the sex happened. And not just any city – New York City. I once read an interview with Sarah Jessica Parker where she explained that the city was actually the fifth cast member. And that's extremely clear from the way the city, and all its many facets, are used. The show shot in nearly every single neighborhood (even venturing outside the city to show the gritty summer homes of Suffern and the Hamptons), popular New York hotspots were name dropped, Carrie even declared the city her true love in Season 5 ("Anchors Away"). From Park Avenue to the Meat Packing district, from Fleet Week to Art Gallery openings, from the opening credits of the skyline (that was quietly edited after 9/11 to remove the Twin Towers) to Carrie's biting but true one liners (one of my favorites – "No wonder the city never sleeps. It's too busy trying to get laid.") – we were exposed to every side of this wonderful city. I think that the feeling can be summed up in one simple conversation between Carrie and Miranda, who is preparing move to *shudder* Brooklyn –

Miranda: Why do I think living in Manhattan is so fantastic?
Carrie: Because it is. -- ab

-- bryce, arielle, and dana c. gravesen
Dana's blog can be found at http://714delawarestreet.blogspot.com/

Flying on One Engine: I Saw a Film at My Festival

While I'm wearing my film nerd (Cinema Studies) hat, I've also been wearing a film festival director hat for the past two months. I'm just now finishing up my tenure as the Managing Director of the South Asian International Film Festival. What that means is that I did a lot of planning an office stuff before the festival and I haven't been watching many of the films. Sooo, when I had to watch Flying on One Engine, the longform directorial debut of Joshua Z. Weinstein, I was quite happy to see something in the festival. The film was quite spectacular, and I'm writing about it here most because of my obligations to my first hat -- the film nerd one -- and not my second -- the one that promotes the festival's films (which are spectacular from what I've heard...and I've seen). I've seen a few other great films in the festival, but this one resonated with me for some reason.

The film, presented by Weinstein and editor Hemal Trivedi, follows the life of Dr. Sharadkumar Dicksheet. Dicksheet is a plastic surgeon who focuses most of his attention on operating on cleft lips in India. What makes this story worth telling is not only the sheer number of operations Dicksheet performs a year. Dicksheet is wheelchair-bound, sans larynx, crude, forthright, and near death. The film paints an incredibly rich character out of Dicksheet. His medical deeds are spectacular, yet he is a real person. In a scene he lambasts Mother Theresa for not deserving the Nobel Peace Prize. Instead, Dicksheet proposes, he should receive the award. After all, he's been nominated eight-plus times. And Mother Theresa was just cleaning up beggars and converting them to Christianity. And she wasn't even doing the work! (Dicksheet's logic, not mine.)

It's easy to call this film thoughtprovoking; it's hard to pinpoint the thoughts that it provokes. Mostly, the viewer is forced to struggle with how they are supposed to sympathize with Dicksheet. And what you realize is something painfully true. Even the people who do the most spectacular things are real people. They have real opinions, and sometimes some/most people don't agree with these opinions. And these character qualifications are what make Dicksheet's story so darn rich. What I think is so spectacular about this film is that Weinstein gives you all the tools to love the guy, hate the guy, to have hope, to feel hopeless. But you end up feeling none of these things and all of these things at the same time. Through a carefully edited film, there is a satisfying confusion about the standard understandings of altruism, activism, and the human condition.

As a side note, I found three comments from the Q&A particularly interesting: 1.) In the name of efficiency and safety, Dicksheet only operates on cleft lips. He does not operate on the palate. 2.) Dicksheet is not supported by cleft-lip-and-palate NGOs because he does not work under their medical standards. Therefore, he operates using money from direct donations. He also lives on social security. 3.) The fact that Weinstein did not speak Hindi or any of the other regional languages depicted in the film leads Trivedi to believe that the subjects were more candid with him on camera. Afterall, the man with the camera had no idea what he would be looking at later...

Try to catch this one if it gets any more showings.

--bryce

Political Correctness Makes Me Feel Blahg

Religion you've ruined my week once again!!

The release of what promises to be the coolest (and cutest, look at his little adorable round face!) game published in a while, aka Little Big Planet, has been delayed due to the use of two lines from the Qur'an in one of the background tracks from African musician Toumani Diabate. According to a press release from game developers Media Molecule the release date had been pushed back after they found that there was "a lyric in one of the licensed tracks which some people may find offensive, and which slipped through the usual screening processes." The language here is a little tricky - it's not the actual words that are offensive to Muslims, it's the mixing of the words of the Qur'an with music.

The complaint was initially brought up on the official Playstation forum here, by a very astute and well-informed player. Apparently, he's got every instance of this kind of music faux pas memorized. I'll admit I'm actually kind of impressed with the "Zelda: Ocarina of Time" reference. If you keep reading the posts, an interesting discussion was almost started before the thread was locked down. But the other posters raised some interesting issues - Diabate is a devout Muslim, which would lead one to assume that he was only creating this music in order to exalt his chosen religion. Point deux, the song has been around for a couple of years (and was written by an award winning musicians, not I've never heard of him but I'm sure he's big in certain circles) how had this not been an issue before?

What I find most interesting though is the translations of said lines - "Every soul shall have the taste of Death, everything on Earth shall perish." Hm, interesting choice of music for a game about creating worlds. You can listen to the song here, I'm actually enjoying it a lot, and make sure to check out the comments (again my favorite part of the internet) especially the first one posted by Heatx79 -

"The idea, that the recall was to prevent Muslims from being offended, is to prevent them from being offended by the recall itself. 'Every sould shall have the tase of Death, everything on Earth shall perish' is more likely to offend American/English righ-wing Christians...I doubt very much any Muslim (extreemist or not)complained about this before the bandwagon started rolling... more likely a Christian poseing as one."

I love that someone with the username Heatx79 could make such a perceptive observation with so many annoying spelling mistakes! Well, at least the part about Christians being equally offended. I don't know where he's going with his conspiracy theory fake Muslim bit...

So now Sony has to not only delay what was supposed to be their hugest game of the year, decade, century - any of these are true depending on how nerdy the gamer you ask - but they also have to recall the games already sold in Europe. I can't imagine any gamer actually giving up this game once they already have it, especially if they aren't Muslim/offended by the lyrics. Why not just release a patch for the gamers who are? Who knows. I guess big business is just covering its ass, which is understandable in the day and age that we live in.

I had intended this post to be a rant against overly sensitive people, but really it isn't the sensitive ones we need to be angry at. Having answered viewer emails for a television station for two years, I know better than most how impossible it is to please everyone. Someone, somewhere will always be offended at something you do no matter how minor. I think what really needs to be addressed is how these issues are handled. A lot of the gamers on these sites make valid points - why should they have to suffer because someone else finds something offensive? It's not like they're giggling to themselves every time the Biabate song comes on thinking, "We got those Muslims good!" No one would have realized it was an issue at all if they hadn't brought it up. And by bringing it up didn't they just draw more attention to the song, guaranteeing it thousands of more listeners? Oh the internet, you hurt just as much as you help, don't you? So I guess this is just another one of those times where I admit that most of the times I don't get the world or how people in it react to things - but then again here I am complaining about people complaining. I think I just got too meta even for myself.

-Arielle

Mr. Grier, I know Dave Chappelle, and You are No Dave Chappelle

And you're not John Stewart or Stephen Colbert either. This Wednesday marked the debut of both Joe the Plumber and Chocolate News on the TV tube. And well, both of them pretty much blew up in their viewers' face. But let's not talk about politics. I mean, I've already voted. Absentee baby! David Alan Grier, who gained fame on In Living Color, is back on television with his ode to news parody, Chocolate News. And oh my sweet Jesus is it terrible. But Grier is just misguided as a star and as a writer and as a performer. Let's look at where he's mis-stepping by looking at a hypothetical grilling session I'd have with Grier.

Q: What's worth parodying in the black community?

Well, in the first episode, I've really gone up against some hot button issues like: rap music, Maya Angelou, and the n word. What? This isn't 1998? This has been done before? Ad nauseum? Tu plaisantes! Things are going on in rap music beyond Ying Yang Twins and 50 Cent? Maya Angelou hasn't been mentioned in an everyday conversation in the past 10 years? A peace accord between whites and blacks on the use of the n word, which includes a compromise that allows blacks to call whites things like "snow owl mother fucker," "bird turd cocksuckers," and "twinkie hos" isn't funny? On what planet???

Q: Mr. Grier, who are you?

A: I'm a man out to make a quick buck. After trying to market myself as a black comedian on In Living Color, I decided to do things that are more mainstream, more race-blind, like Jumanji and Sesame Street. And then I decided to not work for awhile, maybe because people don't like my humor-by-yelling. But then the makers of An American Carol were looking for some street cred for their conservative Michael Moore- and Rosie O'Donnell-bashing train wreck. And hey, I'm poor. Then, Comedy Central decided they wanted to tap into the black audience they had with Chappelle's show. And so I grabbed at the offer, hoping none of them found out I had taken up that role in An American Carol.

Q: Why did you dye your hair? Your old and I saw you in the West Village, and your hair is very grey.

Black is beautiful?

Okay, yeah...it just doesn't work...



This kind of historical look at the black community cannot be the only trick up a news parody show's sleeve.

--bryce

The Time I Hated a Charlie Kaufman Film

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is my favorite movie ever made. It is unsettling and perfect, unsettlingly perfect. I also enjoy Adaptation and Being John Malkovich. And I've always (rightly) given much of the credit of these films' successes to their screenwriter -- Mr. Charlie Kaufman. And I'm not alone in my Kaufman-love. The Academy loves him. The critics love him. My fellow film nerds love him. By god, most people that see his movies like them. And that's something for someone who has a repuation for being "smart." But let's be honest. Synecdoche, NY is not getting him an Oscar (nomination), not all critics are gonna like it (3 out of 6 film nerds in my group did not), and not many people are going to see this film. I'm going to be well-measured in this critique because 1.) I love his work and 2.) I attended a screening that was followed by a Q&A with the man himself, and he warned that he takes negative criticism to heart. But by no means will I avoid saying what I felt. And what I felt was that I had a really strong reaction against this movie.

Philip Seymour Hoffman plays Caden Cotard, a playwright/director of the theater, is falling apart...doctors are referring him to doctors are referring him to doctors. Meanwhile, his marriage is falling apart, and his wife (Catherine Keener, a brilliantly played painter of miniatures) runs away from him with their daughter. Dejected, Cotard falls back on "mistresses," Claire Keen (Michelle Williams) and Hazel (Samantha Morton). Just as his life seems to be falling apart, he receives a MacArthur grant, a genius grant, and he decides to produce his life, to relive it on a surreal stage with actors playing his life's characters. And when the actors become apart of his life, they then get actors playing them. And then actors and real life people interact on the stage and in real life. And it's all crazy and Philip Seymour Hoffman gets old and dies (You're waiting for it from the first jump in time, that's not a spoiler). And that all sounds like a really excellent Charlie Kaufman film.

But unlike the $500,000 genius grant that could never turn into the opulence that Cotard puts on his warehouse-stage, Kaufman as director feels like a student filmmaker wanting to make an existential argument but instead of working on a shoestring, he's got a few million (ok, maybe that's a shoestring in Hollywood terms). But what then, makes his other existentially minded scripts different? In the other films, the greater themes are clear, but so are the characters' motivations. While Keener and Hoffman did a lot of work to get their characters to a point where they could be that pissed off at each other (according to Kaufman in the Q&A), we didn't see any of that. And I think we needed to. After all, it was a motivating force throughout the entire film that he wanted to be close to his (ex-)wife and daughter. But we never actually see a reason why he would care about her.

But at the same time, the film felt incredibly long. Why? Well, one audience member asked, "Why is Cotard irresistable to all women?" And Kaufman answered, "Well, he's not." And that's true! He's not! But the thing is, in the 2 hours of his life, we probably see most of the sex in the last 60 years of his life. So it looks like women can't resist him, because in the film, we spend too much time with him being hit on and too little time with him being alone. And it's the latter half of his life that is so formative of his personality. In other words, the film seems to skew his life and actually makes us misunderstand the character, which made ME bored with the character, and willing his life to end so much earlier than it did. I respect the man, I liked the film at its heart. It needed another set of eyes.

--bryce

The British Are Coming! The British Are Coming!

In case you weren't aware, an extremely large chunk of the shows premiering this season on your local television stations were once acted out by Brits. Like so many attempted crossovers before them (some successful - The Office, American Idol - and some not, Viva Laughlin!, Coupling) this Fall we're going to be lambasted with another set of remakes, none of which really interest me too much. Life on Mars might make me consider watching a rerun or maybe a hulu stream, but Worst Week, Eleventh Hour, Bad Mother's Handbook and Kath and Kim (ok that one's Australian, but you get my point) all seem like duds and I'd be surprised if they made it too far into the season without being canceled.

I think that there is probably a reason that most of these remakes are duds (and I'm not including the gazillion reality shows we stole from the UK, because practically every reality show is a hit regardless of how mind numbingly boring it is) and I'd like to think that it's more complicated than "British audiences are different than American ones." Well, that's probably a factor but when you compare the versions of the shows, there is usually a bigger issue at hand - the American ones are just usually not very good. I don't know what happens in the conversion process but there is some kind of major dumbing down for the American audience (of course I'm not including The Office here because Lord and Master Ricky Gervais would never let that happen. Example deux, Extras) that just kills the original tone and thereby success of the original.

Which is why I prefer to watch the originals. Luckily BBC America had a stroke of genius and decided to air all of the original series before their counterparts even had a chance to breath American air. Yet, I can't help but wonder when American producers will come and ruin my new favorite BBC show, which, this year, happens to be Skins. For those of you who haven't heard of it (and I'm sure that's pretty much all of you) Skins is just your basic teen drama, but done completely right. It follows a group of 16 to 19 year olds who live in Bristol and go about their daily lives - which happens to include a lot of sex, drugs, and mayhem. We get a new perspective each episode, giving the entire series a very rounded, complete feeling. The writing is brilliant the kids (all unknowns previous to this show) are surprisingly good actors and their accents are just adorable. There are plenty of serious issues tackled - religion, homosexuality, depression, suicide - but they're all done in a very non-judgemental, "sometimes shit happens in life" kind of way.

Which is what makes the show so easy to enjoy. And so different from the 90210's and O.C.'s. I could never get into to any of the teen shows everyone else watched. Maybe it was because all their plot lines seemed completely implausible. Maybe it was because none of the actors actually looked like anyone I knew. I think that one large factor was that even though the writers and directors were creating these shows for me I could tell that no one there had ever really experienced anything they were writing about (except, of course, for Freaks and Geeks, but that's a whole different bowl of candy). With Skins though, I believe every word that comes out of these actors' mouths and I believe that whomever wrote them went through it too. And that's what makes me coming back week after week. But then again, it could also just be the adorable accents.

-Arielle

Anyone Else Have a Girl Crush on Rachel Maddow?

I must admit, I don't listen to talk radio. In fact, I don't listen to the radio now that I live in New York. I mean who does? So the arrival of Rachel Maddow on TV is like when everyone on the underground's favorite band gets a record contract and now you hear them on the radio but you don't want to say that you just heard them for the first time while you were totally rocking out to KROQ or 100.7 The End or Ryan Seacrest for that matter. Her move from Air America to MSNBC (she hasn't left Air America) is awkward (she's kind of stiff), but we need her. But I totally have a crush on her. You may or may not know that I think that 24-hour news networks and news websites, democratic as they look are a downward spiral to rehashing the same sensational stories over again. But this girl's got brains. And she's got a brilliant interview in the new L Magazine. Allow me to gush:


First, she's on her way to being on board with me on the whole TV news sucks thing:

For me, the priority is making sure that I’m not regenerating common wisdom; that I’m saying exactly what I mean, all the time; that I’m not rounding-up the facts for my analysis. In that sense, I mean not rounding-up in the sense of going to the easy thing rather than the truer thing or the specific thing. It’s more of a challenge to do that on television because what I am thinking about in the news has to be processed through so many more peoples’ jobs before it actually gets on the air. It feels very different for me.

She's making a move from radio -- no makeup, no hair, no people who need to find footage that is broadcast quality. Think about how much more effort needs to go into finding a sound bite and playing it on your computer's iTunes which is fed out directly onto the radio waves compared to the fifty bajillion editors who need to get rights to, find high quality tapes of, and find the right spin for the PERFECT video footage. The process of finding video footage itself makes a TV show infinitely more complicated. And here, she's right. To this point, she is relieved that she has not been reined in. And it's probably because she's actually intelligent and not interested in being Nancy Grace...or Alan Keyes:

I also think it’s irresponsible to talk about accusations of bias in media without recognizing that accusing the media of having a liberal bias is a partisan political tactic of the Republican Party and the conservative movement. So, the idea that there’s an evil, liberal media out there that must be counter-acted by conservative voices and some sort of fake balance, is not necessarily an organically derived critique of the media. It’s something that’s been ginned up for political gain by people on the right who wanted to maximize their impact. I have some respect for them for doing it—it really worked. But I think it’s important to see that critique in context, and in all of the ways I mean, I’m working at a network that once hired Michael Savage to do a television program. I’m working at a network that once hired Alan Keyes to do a program. They literally called the program Alan Keyes is Making Sense because they needed to make that assertion in the title to reassure viewers of what they were seeing as far as I can tell.

In explaining her shows' refusal to ignore the War in Iraq, Maddow says:

I feel like it is a real problem for the country, for the self-perceptions of Americans, for our understanding of our role in the world, and for our strategy for moving forward in a complicated, post-Cold War, not-post-9/11 world that we don’t feel like we’re a country at war, even though we’ve got 185,000 Americans in uniforms serving abroad in countries that don’t want us there...I will tell you that, strategically, in planning a show every day, unless you pick a specific place where the news of the war goes, because the rest of the news corps doesn’t pay attention t o the war, it’s very easy to go through the preparation of an entire day’s news without ever coming across anything about the war, even on days when Americans are killed.

And finally, she takes on the Palinator, in a way that makes me want to modify the rules of "Sarah Who?," because I think she makes such a compelling argument, one that too many former McCain fans (to his dismay) may really identify with:

Historically, the rule about picking vice presidents is that the presidential nominee has a technical role and a patriotic role to fill. And the patriotic move is to pick somebody who actually can be President. You owe that to the country because the choice of a vice presidential nominee is such an anti-democratic move...So, on a patriotic level—and I don’t mean that in a jingoistic sense, but literally, out of a desire for the success of our country—I think the Palin test failed. I do not think that she inspires confidence. I don’t think that her record of that or her performance as the vice presidential nominee inspires confidence in the American people that McCain takes this process seriously.

Andddd I'm smitten with a lesbian.

P.S. She's MSNBC's highest rated show, and she's beating Larry King in viewers in her time slot.

--bryce

Bill vs. Ben: Battle of the WHO KNOWS??

It's a battle of two men who have the face for radio but made it big on TV (and for one, in the movies...well, a movie). It's a battle of two men whose religious convictions or lack thereof compelled them to link up with a documentary filmmaker (one to Larry Charles and the other to Nathan Frankowski). It's a battle of two men where there's gonna be a clear winner...maybe not hands down, but Bill's got the upper hand. (Two hand metaphors in one sentence does not a good blog entry make.) It's a battle between Bill Maher and Ben Stein.

The films are Religulous (I've been told it's a hard g...like my last name, k thanks) and Expelled. The first is about, well, you can read my earlier post. The second is Ben Stein's ode to intelligent design. Intelligent design is basically the belief that DNA is so complex that it couldn't have just happened naturally, some may say evolutionarily. It's as simple as that. And to pit the two docs face-to-face on this subject: while making fun of the curator of the Creation Museum, Maher makes it a point to say that neo-Darwinism is almost universally held within the scientific community. And...well, sorry Ben, it is...and I mean, we've seen it. I'll concede that Lucy may be a stretch, but see Peppered moths if you don't believe me or Bill.

But that's not really what I want to talk about here. Let's talk about their rhetoric. Which is well, assholish...I don't want to be too redundant on Bill, but he treats the uneducated masses as blind following drones and all believers -- the uneducated and the educated -- as people ignoring logic for the sake of their salvation. With Ben, he talks about how hard it is to be a believer -- or at least a questioner of science. Using a case study where an editor of a Smithsonian science journal got canned after publishing an article by a scholar who wrote an essay on the possibility/probability of intelligent design, Ben says that America has no free speech for those who question science. And from there he goes on to say that if you are a scientist or you're anyone who wants to be taken seriously by scientists, then you better not watch his movie because you'll be fired or lose friends. No, really, he says this in his movie. Ben actually tells you to stop watching. Does he think that people think so highly of his brainwashing abilities (it must be the hypnotic drone)? Cuz I mean, if I were a scientist and I told my frizzy-haired, bespectacled, labcoat-draped friends that I saw Expelled, they'd laugh at me, but they'd probably still let me sit at the microbiologist lunch table. And that's a good thing because the physiological ecologists are bitches.

Both movies are preaching to their respective choirs. But let's think about what both are trying to do: Ben's trying to get people to look at the evidence of such cases as sexual selection to allow oneself to get deeper into one's faith by championing a WHO KNOWS? mentality. Bill has his own brand of WHO KNOWS? But for Bill, some facts exist, that's science. And religion all this magic wand stuff is the big WHO KNOWS. The difference is that Ben's scare tactics are meant to turn people away from engaging with the facts of evolution. It's happened in our lifetime! You don't have to believe in the shit that's happened over millions of years, but by God, there's a million cases of natural/sexual selection that change gene pools EVERYDAY. Bill's trying to get people to stop getting so crazy defensive over something they can't even prove. Inevitably, the (Christian) believer would tell Bill, "Are you telling me my Bible is fiction?" To which he would say, "Yes." And well, there's nowhere that conversation can go for the 95% of Americans who don't know the historical facts of Bible authorship. Bill's underlying cause seems to be peace, yet his "You're a dummy" attitude is getting him nowhere. And Ben, well, Ben's a dummy.

Update: Religulous opened with $3.4 milliion in 502 theaters; in its opening weekend in April, Expelled did $3.0 million in 1,052.

--bryce

Another Successful Palahniuk Adaptation...With A Different Ending

I'd have to put Choke in my top three favorite Palahniuk novels of all time. Number one is always occupied by Survivor, if not just for sheer readability, but also because it was written before Chuck had his taste of fame which personally I think ruined many of his books post-Fight Club. (Lullaby? Completely unreadable. Diary, just barely readable.) The next three usually fluctuate between Choke, Invisible Monsters, and of course, Fight Club. Though, I'll admit Fight Club usually floats towards the bottom of the list, I'm not sure why, but here's my theory - I saw the movie first. And really there's no way to top Fincher's telling of the story, even by the man who wrote the story himself. Maybe I would feel differently if I had read the book first, but we'll never know.

Now, Choke I read first. I was still in my "I worship the air Chuck Palahniuk breathes" stage so I read the novel as soon as it came out. And I loved it. It had everything that I loved about a good Palahniuk book - insane characters who you knew you shouldn't like, yet you couldn't help yourself. It had his smooth narrative style, that I tried to emulate in my first fiction workshops and of course just came off sounding like a really poor Palahniuk rip-off. The novel wasn't too heavy on the philosophy, but still had enough to keep my Philosophy Major brain happy. Plus it was filled with sex - dirty, disgusting sex, which proved to be completely entertaining.

So when I saw the preview for Choke and didn't see any of these things I had just mentioned, I became very skeptical. The film looked so...tame, so euthanized. I actually hadn't planned on seeing the film at all, but a friend of mine saw it with a Q&A with first-time director Clark Gregg and explained to me that the final version of the film was just one of many versions. Gregg had tried to make an exact adaptation of the book, but it didn't work. And I have to admit that the version Clark ended up with was exactly how this film needed to be made. Instead of tame I realized that the storyline was just completely mellowed. And mellow makes for a very easy and smooth watching experience.

One major critique on the film has been that Gregg failed to capture the tone of the novel, but I don't think that's a tone that would translate well into film. Palahniuk writes ideas that make great films, but his actual stories work well only as novels. Like I said before, he tends to saturate his books with internal thought and philosophies that would just create a jumbled and overdone narrative in a film. Which explains why Fight Club the film differs so greatly from Fight Club the novel, especially the ending. Most of what Palahniuk puts down on paper just does not translate easily into film. With some excellent casting (Anjelica Huston completely stole the film) and an ability to know when to edit (the entire film came in at a very reasonable 89 minutes) I think Gregg, like Fincher, managed a very successful Palahniuk adaption, with, of course, the required ending change.

-Arielle

Not All Religions are as Religulous

At the 8:20 screening of Religulous in the world's cauldron of decadency -- the corner of Houston & Mercer (the Angelika), there was a line winding through the lobby at 7:50. I met my friends and we found seats together. At 10:20 or so, I left the Angelika absolutely entertained. But I had some qualms with Bill Maher, the hero of Religulous.

The film is directed by Borat's Larry Charles. And it uses the same awkward "do they know this is a joke on them?" interview style. Unlike Borat, though, Bill Maher isn't trying to pass as anything but himself -- an agnostic (NOT an atheist! he goes through pains to define all of our unknowability) who is out to ruin the idea of the proud religuous practitioner. For, after all, how can someone be so invested in something that is so against rationality!?!


The film is incredibly fun. The editing is brilliantly manipulative (we all understand that films are edited for rhetorical effect by now, right? Thanks, Michael Moore, for taking the brunt of that anger.). But all too often, the sound bites from Maher's interviewees far outpace anything that could be cobbled up in Final Cut Pro by a twenty-something cut-and-paster. How about the time when the ex-gay gets into a giggle orgy with Bill and needs to hug him before he leaves? How about the time when the pastor who prosyletizes on DVD talks about his $2,000 suit, you know rockin' it just like Jesus would like? And what about the time the Arkansas senator says that you don't need to take an IQ test to serve in the Congress?

While Maher is sharp in his attacks against people's rationality, his tactics are applied unevenly. There is a strong anti-Islam bias. While the Christian subjects who negotiate science and religion aren't questioned, and their own rebel-rising is encouraged, the liberal Muslims are dismissed for encouraging acknowledgment of an inherently violent religion. Bill, for real, your whole argument is that ALL religions are used incorrectly for violence. Islam is no different. And there's non-violent Muslims just as there are non-violent Christians, Jews, Hindus, agnostics, etc. This, along with his focus on only the Abrahamic religions (he says once "the three religions" when talking about claims of the Holy Land in the Near East), signal Maher's own bias and situation in a Judeo-Christian background that privileges their views as the most important to combat. I mean, then once these Jews and Christians become ex-Jews and ex-Christians, then do they take on those zealots who practice Islam?


That being said, this film was fascinating. It film embodied the reasons I decided to study Religion, so I'm afraid this may become a three-part series on Religulous. I'm feeling that blahg.

--bryce

Nick & Norah's Awkward Adaptation

I waited a few weeks to make this post, because I wanted to make sure to be the only one over 15 (are there any critics under 15) to read the book before reviewing the Peter Sollett movie. I was motivated to go back to the novel because I was so struck by the unquestioned presence of queer characters in the film. They were flat, the gay content was flat, and the fact that the novel was co-written by David Levithan (Boy Meets Boy) made me think there was probably more to this stuff in the novel.

That being said, there was a bit more to the queer stuff in the novel. For instance, the novel is really concerned with Norah's anxiety that Nick could be gay. Something that the film just barely touches. What was most striking about the book, though, was the utter hunkiness of Nick. And don't worry, Michael Cera's take on Nick is actually not far off from his character from Arrested Development or his character in Juno or his character from Superbad. Let's face it he's one note. And that one note doesn't really fit into this teenage one-wild-night-of-intimacy mold. The casting of Cera as Nick doesn't exactly capture the sense of desire that both film Norah and book Norah seem to exude.

The thing that's so gripping about the book is that it is one of these cheesy "OMG I can't believe I met you and on what a strange day and in what strange conditions" kind of stories. And it's really hot! While the hotness does jump to the screen, the visibility of this teenage sexuality did make me feel a little like R. Kelly (what do you mean by teenager?). But ho hum its realistic. The actual sexual intimacy between Nick and Norah is quite different from the book to the screen. The book's a bit more naughty and raunchy; the film's is a bit misplaced. The film stretches out Nick and Norah's search for their friends as a cat and mouse game, whereas the book frames the whole Nick and Norah thing as kind of an imposed therapy session for them both. The film rebels against the novel's internalization of thoughts about relationships, fate, and emotions, and the result is a lot of flat slapstick characters and an endless search for Fluffy.

and P.S. I'm not buying this whole "infinite playlist" metaphor. I mean in it's all about the mixtape.

Oh, and P.P.S. I think I smell a co-written feeling so blahg novel... Move over Rachel Cohn & David Levithan...

--bryce