...Gonna Be Busy...

...Can't talk...Playing 'Grand Theft Auto 4'...gotta run...sorry...

"I'm gonna smash your face...to a jelly!"

It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia (B+)

The most successful 'Sit-coms' in recent history, like 'Seinfeld' and 'Arrested Development' worked because they're more comedies of manners than the traditional situation comedies. In the case of 'Philadelphia', the four main characters behave like proverbial bulls in china shops when it comes to violating the aforementioned manners. They blackmail one another, verbally and physically abuse one another, and screw each other over on a regular basis.

I guess if I had to sum it up, it's what 'outrageous' characters in a 'traditional' sit-com get up to in a regular basis, only these selfish, shallow, mean-spirited characters live in the real world.

So the question comes up: If it's a show about four losers who are trapped in the downward spiral of backstabbing, abuse, cruelty, and betrayal, why would anyone watch it?

Because it's funny. Scratch that, it's fuckin' funny. Their reactions to the misery that they've created of their own lives are so over the top, it fills me with a tremendous glee. Plus, as a bonus, you get Danny DeVito coming in season 2 in full-on sleaze ball-Louie-the dispatcher mode as two of the characters (step) dad. Which makes a lot of sense, if you think about it. I guess you'd describe it as "I'm alright, Jack" humour, as the viewer is so insulated from the characters, it's okay to laugh at their misery from a high place.

25 Great Movie Moments...

(note: these are just off the top of my head and not the definitive greatest moments in movie history, mmkay? Anyhoo, see what you think o' these...)

1: (oh, these aren't in any order, either.) The entire audience, in gap-mouthed shock, as the opening number of Franz Leibkind's 'Springtime For Hitler' comes to an end.

2: That electric moment in Oldboy when ex-prisoner Dae-Su Oh discovers who his lover really is...

3: "Hey, Marvin, What do YOU think?"

"Man, I don't even have an opinion!"

"Well, you gotta have an opinion! Do you think God came from heaven and stopped the bull-" Bang! -from Pulp Fiction.

4: "Osgood, I'm a man!"

"Well, no one's perfect!" -from Some Like it Hot.

5: Silence of the Lambs: When the prison-garbed body is taken out of the elevator shaft by the S.W.A.T. team. "Where's Dr. Lecter?"

6: "Hello. I'm Dr. McLuhan. You know nothing of me or my work!" "Boy, wouldn't it be great if life was really like this?" - from Annie Hall

7: Theo walking out of the shot-up building with the mother and the baby in Children of Men.

8: In City of God: the entire sequence setting up 'Rocket's' inability to enter into the criminal underworld.

9: "Gentlemen! You can't fight in here! This is the War room!" -from Dr. Strangelove

10: Jack's experiences in the 'Living with Cancer' therapy group-especially Chloe, from Fight Club.

11: The fist fight between John Wayne and Victor McLaglen that runs the length of the village in 'The Quiet Man'.

12: "She's my sister-SLAP!-my daughter-SLAP-my sister-SLAP!" -from Chinatown.

13: Red finding Andy Dufrene's note by the wall in The Shawshank Redemption. (Yeah, I know, director Frank Darabont wanted Andy's escape from the prison drain tunnel to be the movie's 'trancendent' moment, but- ugh...)

14: Randall reading off the increasingly obscene order list in front of the woman and her kid to the movie retailer in Clerks.

15: Christopher Walken. Dennis Hopper. Their only scene together in 'True Romance'.

16: Dave Bowman 'killing' HAL 9000 in '2001'

17: Rutger Hauer's death scene in 'Blade Runner'.

18: The half-hour silent robbery scene in 'Rififi'.

19: Raymond Burr notices Grace Kelly signalling, thinks for a moment, puts two and two together - then looks straight at the camera! Oh shit - now we're gonna get it...Rear Window...

20: The first twenty minutes of Saving Private Ryan. No, I don't mean the bit of prologue business at the very beginning; if Spielberg took that out, it'd be a far better film...

21: Blondie gets the grave's location from the dying lips of Bill Carson. But only Tuco knows the name on the grave stone... from 'The Good, the bad and the ugly'.

22: Sam Lowrey's dream sequence in Brazil

23: Holly Martins meets Harry Lime under the streets of Vienna - from the Third Man.

24: Daniel on the rope bridge, singing the British Army song - from The Man who would be King.

25: The U-boat starts to rise to the surface, finally. -from Das Boot.

There Will Be Movies...

I finally saw There will be Blood, (B-) and I can say this movie is a bit overrated. It's not bad, just disappointing. I should preface this review by pointing out I'm not a big fan of Paul Thomas Anderson as a filmmaker. He's been compared to Stanley Kubrick, and I'd agree. Not that that's a good thing, mind you. Like Kubrick in his later films, Anderson tends to set up his scenes in very formal, very static images. His films aren't bad, just really stiff.

It's about a turn-of-the-century oilman named Daniel Plainview, and how his drive for wealth and power in California drives him insane. In that regard, it's been compared with Citizen Kane. Though I'd say it's got more in common with Raging Bull. Both movies are essentially character studies of men who's reach exceed their grasp. In 'Blood's case, Plainview's character has Anderson's view-and I suspect,- actor Daniel Day-Lewis's view stacked against him. For instance, when Plainview engages in spiteful and selfish behavior-like when he snubs the young minister Eli Sunday- we have no reason to understand where this streak comes from. I also don't quite buy the common view that Plainview adopts a dead co-workers boy as his own simply so he can pass himself off as a family man to the rubes he's buying the land out from under. (We can clearly see he harbours some genuine affection for the boy.)

I understand it's a rough adaptation of the first part of an Upton Sinclair novel, "Oil". So I'm assuming it's view of Plainview's capitalistic behavior is condemning. Problem being, given how labour was usually treated in the early 1900's, Plainview seems more like Major Barbara's Andrew Undershaft then one of Sinclair's plutocrats. (Compare and contrast, folks, this movie with John Sayles' Matewan...) There's no real connective tissue between scenes through the whole movie. So for instance, when Eli Sunday is pleading with an enraged Daniel in the movie's last scene how "We're old friends, Daniel!", you think to yourself, "Since when?" The main drive in the movie is the petty rivalry between Eli and Daniel, and I'm to assume it's because both men have figured each other out as a phony and a liar.

The main reason I took so long to see this movie is because I'm also not a big fan of Daniel Day-Lewis as an actor. However, I'd say that this is the best role he's taken on in a long time. Definitely better than his showy 'Bill the Butcher' in Gangs of New York. It's because the character is so repressed through the whole film, than when he lashes out at his deaf grown son and Eli towards the end, it's like watching a pipe burst. Here's the problem I have with Day-Lewis, the actor, though. In his recent roles, I'm reminded of Pauline Kael's comments on Dustin Hoffman in 'Rainman'. That is, he's an actor watching his character from an audience's point of view in order to modulate his performance, rather than just act. (I admire the role, but in a way I'd admire a clever piece of engineering...) Put it this way: If Day-Lewis has to spend two years researching a character who is all a front, to even his adopted son, the character has no ground. (I'm to assume the accident at the film's beginning that gave him his limp twisted him inside, but that's all I have to go on.)



American Gangster (C+) Standard slovenly-cop-vs.-dapper-gangster movie glossed up as only director Ridley Scott can. Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe play off each other okay, but the movie's problem is that there's no theme here, really. Well, there's several themes, but it's all so hazy, and I suspect, the racial implication is so timidly hinted at, that the movie loses a lot of its power. Is the movie saying that a black man can only succeed by co-opting Whitey's methods? Haven't we seen Russell Crowe's Ritchie Roberts-angel-with-a-dirty-face in far too many movies before this? (There's a sub-plot involving a custody battle with his ex-wife which adds nothing to the movie.) Is Washington's character Frank Lucas really supporting the community of Harlem by selling them heroin? (top-grade junk at lower prices, but still..) When the writing's on the wall, why doesn't the usually clever Lucas quit while he's ahead? He's too smart to let his pride override his common sense. I'm being a little harsh on the movie, I know. But given the talent at work here, I'm a little disappointed... Still, worth a look at least once.