Playing Catch Up, Part One.

Well, looks as though I've fallen behind on my 'duties' as it were, so I'll just motor on ahead and crank out some really quick reviews for ye...


Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job (B) There's funny 'ha-ha', and funny 'hm', and this is definitely on the side of funny 'hm'. Then again, so was Monty Python. Proof of Michael O'Donoghue's theorem, "Making people laugh is the lowest form of comedy".

Taken (C-) Put A-lister Liam Neeson in a C-list action thriller, drag him from contrived action set piece to action set piece and...we're done. Not a waste of 90 minutes, anyways.

Up (B+) Solid effort from Pixar. Not a classic like 'The Incredibles' or 'Ratatouille', but even sub-standard Pixar fare like 'Cars' is ahead of anything else Dreamworks is doing, so it's a win-win, as far as I'm concerned.

Let The Right One In (B) 'Twilight' for non-stupid people. Naturally, the general population stayed away in droves, as they say.

Quantum of Solace (C) Jason Bourne with a British accent.

Charlie Brooker's Screenwipe (and Newswipe, too.) (B+) Snotty, indignant takes on mostly British t.v. and news. It's a t.v. extension of Brooker's column in the Guardian also called 'Screenwipe', oddly enough. Like Robot Chicken, it's short and to the point. More than 22 minutes of vitriol from Brooker, and you'll find yourself yelling at the screen not in agreement, but for Chuck to get away from the 'telly' and hire a pro to blow him.

Adam Curtis's documentaries (A) He's a British version of Errol Morris in that his style of documentary is witty and, dare I say, playful? Unlike Morris, who tends to operate on the broad theme of discovering people who fall through the cracks in the system, Curtis's overarching theme in his documentaries seems to be an exploration of the effects when a power elite attempts to impose an ideology on a chaotic system. Inevitably, the power elite, whether it's the British government in 'The Mayfair Set' or the P.R. companies in 'The Century of The Self' winds up shooting itself in the foot and creating a bigger problem than the ones that they originally set out to solve.

I like to think of Curtis as an 'anti-conspiracy' theorist, on account that A) anyone with half a brain can tell you that great global conspiracies just don't exist- there's just too many vectors of pressure in the world. and B) Curtis doesn't seem to have any ideological agenda outside of reframing a view of the world in the post WW2 environment. So, with all that in mind, I've thoughtfully provided links to his stuff that you all can watch on your computer, too. Isn't that nice of me?

2009 SBC report: I'm going to have to break my earlier promise to see every blockbuster that's in release this summer on account of Transformers 2 and G.I. Joe looking like the most retarded, insulting crap that a major studio has ever released. I've gone on and on at length about how contemporary entertainment seems to be more bound and determined to literally insult its audience. Honestly, three hour movies based on kid's toys? That's literally a step away from, "Taco Bell Dog: the movie" or "Shamwow: the motion picture". I don't think the executives who green-light these things are sneering contemptuously at the audience. Rather, I suspect they're just throwing up their hands in exasperation, flinging crap at the screen, and hoping it'll stick. The cast and crew on these things rationalize their involvement in these, ("Hey, I've got a family to feed!") and the downward spiral continues...