Reviews and More

Ever since I got my Seinfeld DVD box set, I’ve been spending practically every spare moment with Jerry, Elaine, George, and Kramer. Elaine especially has always been my favorite character, and seeing all these old eps made me want to see Julia Louis-Dreyfus in something current. So, I started watching The New Adventures of Old Christine again.

I had watched 2 1/2 seasons of the show before dumping it because my viewing schedule was too full. But I’ve been catching up on the CBS website, and am now into Season 4. Even though Christine is nowhere near as funny as Elaine Benes, I still love JLD’s special brand of neurosis. Seriously, that woman could sit there on a couch rattling off diet pill reviews or reading a phone book and I would probably find it entertaining!

Anyway, I’m not sure where the whole Christine-Barb fake marriage thing is going, but I don’t really care at this point. I’m watching for Christine alone!

Plot summary (with possible spoilers:) Lucy Hill (played by Renée Zellweger) is a big-shot executive at a Miami firm. One of the firm’s subsidiaries, a food processing plant in New Ulm, MN, has been underperforming for quite some time. The president has decided to cut losses at the New Ulm plant by releasing most of the work force and replacing the old equipment with high-tech robotics to streamline operating costs. Lucy will be in charge of the project.

Lucy heads to New Ulm, where she’s met by Blanche (Siobhan Fallon), a scrapbooking, tapioca-loving woman who will serve as Lucy’s secretary. Blanche does her best to make Lucy feel welcome, but it’s clear that they are just from completely different worlds. Nevertheless, Lucy accepts a dinner invitation to Blanche’s house on her first night in New Ulm. There she meets Ted Mitchell (Harry Connick, Jr.), whom Blanche clearly intended to set her up with. The only problem with that is Lucy and Ted disagree about nearly every subject that comes up during dinner, and Ted ends up leaving in disgust — over Lucy’s feelings about how successful Fergie is.

The next day, Lucy heads to the plant, where most of the workers, including foreman Stu Kopenhafer (JK Simmons), view her with complete distrust. They do their best to humiliate her, and manage to convince her that the plant will be closed the next day to celebrate Beaver Day (or some kind of made-up holiday like that). When Lucy finds out the truth, she actually takes it rather well and goes to a bar where most of the workers are hanging out to talk to them some more. But they engage in more juvenile behavior intended to show their intense dislike, so she gives up on them.

Meanwhile, Lucy learns to her horror that Ted is the head of the union, so she must negotiate with him about all the upcoming changes. Neither of them are particularly happy about the arrangement, but they can’t get around spending time with each other. Their relationship heats up considerably when Ted’s teenage daughter has a Valentine’s Day emergency requiring a woman’s help. Lucy swoops in to save the day with a shopping spree and trip to a hair salon, and she and Ted end up getting to know each other on his couch.

As Ted and Lucy’s relationship develops, the imminent layoffs hang over Lucy’s head. Once the workers find out what’s going to happen, everyone blames Lucy, including Blanche and Ted. But Lucy, who has grown to like these people, comes up with a plan (involving Blanche’s tapioca pudding) to save the plant. This being a romantic comedy, the plan works out perfectly. Jobs are saved, Lucy becomes a hero, and she and Ted end up together.

My Reaction: Even though she hasn’t had a hit in quite some time, I like Renée Zellweger. She reminds me of one of my favorite high school teachers, and I just can’t get past that. So I try to watch and enjoy her films despite all the negative reviews from professional critics.

The problem is, there’s sometimes very little to like — which was the case with New in Town. Right from the beginning, the entire premise seemed completely familiar and staggeringly unoriginal. Anyone who has ever watched movies before could figure out the entire plot after 15 minutes, making the rest of the film boring. The writer took zero chances and offered zero surprises. It was a paint-by-numbers script that felt completely lifeless and generic.

Furthermore, I didn’t like how so many of the supporting cast chose to adopt Fargo-like accents for their characters. Yes, I know both movies take place in Minnesota, but still. That was just another way in which the film hammered home its unoriginality.

Nevertheless, I thought New in Town was watchable — just barely. Thanks to Zellweger and an almost unrecognizable Harry Connick Jr., I found myself sort of interested in what was happening on screen. But that just helped bring the rating up to 5 stars out of 10.

Nurse Jackie 1×04 — “School Nurse”: This episode was a lot better than the first three, so maybe the show will start to hit its stride soon. I don’t have all that much to complain about this time around — except that I think they’re spending too much time focusing on Jackie’s family. That part of the show is the least interesting so far. Frankly, I don’t really care what’s wrong with Jackie’s kids, nor am I interested in finding out why her oldest daughter doesn’t add the sun or any colors to her drawings. What a snooze!

– I find it kind of odd — in an interesting way — that Jackie and her husband seem to have such a good relationship. I mean, he actually seems to contribute a hell of a lot to the household. He takes care of the girls, does some cooking and cleaning, and runs a bar as well. Plus, he’s pretty nice to Jackie. So why is she cheating on him? Is it just for the drugs?

– Dr. O’Hara is growing on me. She’s so opposite to Jackie that their interactions are invariably amusing. I particularly liked the aversion to children she displayed in this ep, and had to LOL when she said that she was grossed out after having been touched by “sullied midget digits”.

– Oh, poor Zoey, losing her first patient like that. This character is still my favorite. I have to find out who this actress is. She’s awesome!

– And who would’ve thought that Coop could have such a good bedside manner. I’m a bit of a sucker for men who are kind to the elderly, so his nice interactions with that patient led to an “Awww” moment for me.

I am much more optimistic about Nurse Jackie after watching 1×04. Let’s hope the good eps continue!

Seinfeld 7×07 — “The Secret Code”: This is one of the few Seinfeld episodes that I’d never seen in its entirety until I bought the DVD box set. The episode wasn’t all that great, but there were a few solid moments. For instance, it’s just like George not to tell his ATM code to anyone, isn’t it? I had to laugh when he even refused to tell Susan. What a freak.

And what kind of bank ATM codes do they have in New York? My ATM code is a 4-digit number. I’ve never had the option to use a word as my code, and I’ve never heard of anybody else being able to use a word either. It’s supposed to be a number. That’s why it’s called a PIN (personal identification number), right?

The Kramer stuff was kind of dumb. He was always my least favorite character, though, so it’s not surprising that his storylines still fail to interest me. He thought he could give better directions to the fire department than the ones they’d been using? That’s pretty silly — though I guess in the days before gps systems were so common, taking shortcuts might have been a bigger issue.

I thought it was totally weird that J. Peterman would want to stick around and have dinner with Jerry and George even after Elaine, their only common bond, bailed. I would never do that if I were in the same situation. Just too awkward!

I think there are like 5 more episodes that I haven’t seen. After that, I’ll start digging into the bonus features and some of my favorites. Can’t wait!

Plot summary (with possible spoilers): After the events of the first Transformers film, the Autobots, led by Optimus Prime, were invited to remain on Earth to help protect the planet from any future Decepticon shenanigans. The Autobots worked closely with a top-secret military group called NEST to respond to Decepticon problems around the world. After a recent mission, a dying Decepticon utters the cryptic message, “The Fallen shall rise again.” Apparently, Prime knows exactly what this means — and it’s not good.

Meanwhile, Sam Witwicky (played by Shia LaBeouf) is preparing to head off to college. He’s looking forward to a chance at leading a normal life now that his Autobot adventures are behind him. To be sure, he still keeps Bumblebee in his garage, but freshman aren’t allowed to have cars on campus, so he’ll be entirely on his own. He’s still with Mikaela (Megan Fox), though the two will have to attempt a long-distance relationship during the first year.

Of course, nothing goes as planned. The problem begins when Sam finds a piece of the AllSpark at his house. He’s not really sure what it is, but he hands it over to Mikaela for safekeeping after a bunch of hidden Decepticons try to attack him for it. After that, Sam starts having seizures and writes strange characters everywhere — most likely as a result of having come into direct contact with the AllSpark. This freaks out new roommate Leo Spitz (Ramon Rodriguez), who is all about aliens, government cover-ups, and conspiracy theories.

It turns out that Sam’s mind has been injected with all the knowledge from the All-Spark, making him a valuable commodity to the Decepticons. They’re sent on a mission to capture him. Once they get their hands on him, however, Bumblebee and Optimus arrive in the nick of time to save Sam. Unfortunately, Prime is killed during the battle, giving Megatron the opening he needs to order an all-out Decepticon assault on Earth.

From there, Sam, Mikaela, and Leo discover that there’s a chance to revive Prime and thwart the Decepticon attack. With the help of Agent Simmons (John Turturro) and a few Autobots, the group race off to Egypt to find a secret tomb of the Primes, where a magic Matrix can bring Prime back to life. The group succeeds in their hunt, Sam resurrects Optimus, and the Decepticons are defeated again.

My Reaction: Even though I just got back from seeing the film, I had to read the summary on Wikipedia to sort out the details of what happened. It was damn near impossible for me to keep track of all that while I was watching! Admittedly, I’m not any sort of fangirl, so I don’t know the whole Transformers lore, which might have something to do with why I was kind of clueless about what was going on in the film. But seriously — it seemed like the movie was just a series of loooong action sequences with no plot in sight.

The lack of a genuine plot was just one of the problems with this film. Another was the fact that the robots dominated far too much of the screen time. I know this is called Transformers, which would lead you to believe that they’re the main characters, but it’s just not all that interesting watching robots battle each other. The human-robot interactions helped make the first film as fun as it was. But the fun was definitely lacking in this installment.

Also, the action sequences were often undecipherable as well. There were so many close-ups and tight shots that it was hard to tell what was going on. And they just went on and on and on, with plenty of loud noises, but not much else of note. I ended up with a headache from all that crap.

And there were just so many other cheesy, cringe-worthy moments in this film that I couldn’t believe it. For instance, that first shot of Megan Fox, where she’s sprawled out on top of a motorcycle, practically dry-humping it… OMG, that was so incredibly stupid!! I never notice these types of stupid poses, but Michael Bay was just so obvious with this one that I couldn’t help it. Who the hell lies on top of a bike to do detail work like that??? Utterly ridiculous! Yeah, Megan Fox is amazingly hot, but there are more natural ways to showcase her body.

Overall, I was quite disappointed with Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen. The first one was a surprise hit for me, as I ended up enjoying it far more than I ever expected. I was hoping this one would be just as much fun, but that wasn’t the case at all. What a waste of time and money. I give it 4 stars out of 10.

No surprises here. Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen easily outpaced the competition at the U.S. box office by raking in an estimated $112 million over the weekend. The film actually opened nationwide on Wednesday, but I think the $112 million figure refers only to the weekend, because IMDB also lists a cumulative gross of $201 million — which is a lot more in line of what a movie of this magnitude would make in 5 days. But I can’t be sure about that. Either way, there’s no question this will be another profitable effort from Michael Bay.

Second place went to the Sandra Bullock-Ryan Reynolds romantic comedy The Proposal, which earned another $18.5 million to bring its 10-day total to a very respectable $69 million. I’m actually surprised at how well this movie is doing at the box office and might end up checking it out.

The only other new release besides Transformers 2 to crack the top 10 was something called My Sister’s Keeper, which stars Abigail Breslin and Cameron Diaz. Breslin is one of the few child stars I can stomach, and this looks like a decent movie, so I’m going to put this on my To Watch list as well. The film earned $12 million in its debut.

Here’s the complete Top 10 at the box office for the weekend ending 6/29/09:

1. Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen, $112 million
2. The Proposal, $18.5 million
3. The Hangover, $17.2 million
4. Up, $13 million
5. My Sister’s Keeper, $12 million
6. Year One, $5.8 million
7. The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3, $5.4 million
8. Star Trek, $3.61 million
9. Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian, $3.5 million
10. Away We Go, $1.68 million

There have been lots of great television series over the decades, but my all-time favorite is definitely Seinfeld. I can watch these episodes over and over again without getting sick of them — and now that I’ve purchased the complete box set of the series, I’ll do just that. I’m starting with episodes that I haven’t seen before (or that I’ve just seen part of), which is why I began with 3×23, “The Keys”.

I’ve never lived in an apartment building long enough to develop close relationships with my neighbors, nor did I ever feel the need to give a spare set of keys to a friend for safekeeping, so I didn’t really relate to what was happening in this ep. Yes, I could see Jerry getting fed up with Kramer barging in all the time and therefore asking for his keys back, but all the back and forth swapping between the gang was a bit out there.

But as is usual with a majority of Seinfeld eps I still found things to laugh at even though I didn’t particularly like the main plot. For instance, I loved how Jerry sometimes pretends that a crazed killer is chasing him and he has to try to open his door as quickly as possible. I swear, I’ve done that sometimes too! Also, I had to LOL at Kramer’s humongous key ring with a hundred and fifty keys on it! That looks like it would belong someone with a house in the Hamptons, Wilmington NC real estate, and other properties all over the place, not some unemployed mooch who doesn’t even have a car!

My favorite part of the ep was finding out that Elaine was writing a Murphy Brown spec script! That was awesome because it was unexpected, and yet something that Elaine would totally try to do. Brilliant!

I have never been a Michael Jackson fan, but even so, I can’t help but watch all the news reports of his death. I guess I didn’t realize that people still considered him such a pop culture icon — especially since in the past decade or so, he’s become more of a joke than anything else. The child molestation charges, the plastic surgery, the freaky behavior… I seriously had no idea that he was still relevant.

Anyway, from the newscasts I’ve seen, fans are treating this as a pretty huge deal. They’re doing the whole, “Where were you when you heard?” thing — as if MJ was on par with Kennedy, Challenger, 9/11, or any other major event. Seriously?

Well, if you must know, I was weaving my way through all the exercise equipment at my gym on my way to the locker room when the TV monitors started flashing the news. Will I remember this detail forever? Probably not.

At any rate, I can only hope that Michael Jackson is at peace now. He was clearly a very troubled individual, who, deprived of a real childhood by a demanding father and overwhelming work schedule as a youngster, tried to recapture his lost youth by buying into the whole Neverland-Peter Pan thing. Very sad.

I’m still working my way through Season 2 of Burn Notice. I’m aiming to watch at least one episode a week, but I’ve been so busy recently that this hasn’t been possible. My schedule should lighten up a bit in the near future, so hopefully I’ll be able to get back on track and eventually catch up with current airings! Anyway, here’s what happened in episode 2×11, called “Hot Spot”.

Odd Job of the Week: Sam’s friend is a high school football coach who notices that one of his players is in trouble. It’s Corey, a standout both on the field and off. Corey has been having problems with a local gang-banger named Felix, who lured Corey’s sister Tanya into his car and tried to attack her. Tanya escaped and told Corey, who then went after Felix with a baseball bat. That ruined Felix’s rep, so now he’s after Corey to even the score.

Fiona is absolutely livid about the situation, and tells Michael that they must take the case no matter what. So she, Mike, and Sam impersonate a rival gang of car thieves, and go to work on making Felix look stupid with his boss Tony. The three succeed, mostly by making it appear that Felix put a hit out on Tony. Felix has to leave town, and Corey and Tanya are free to resume their lives.

Burn Notice Progress: Michael spends a lot of time viewing surveillance footage from businesses near his loft because he and Fiona figure that the guy who rigged his door to explode might have been caught on tape. Michael does indeed spot a likely suspect, a guy who works at a local demolition company. Fiona poses as a beefcake calendar creator, and gets employee names and phone numbers that way. She comes up with the suspect’s name — Derrick Poole — and then decides to head to his house to see what’s what. The place was rigged to blow, and Fiona is caught in a fire trap. Michael rushes to the address, and, unable to reach Fiona on her cell phone, fears for the worst. Fortunately, she’s safe and sound back at his place. She just needs a new phone.

Character Development: I guess it was inevitable that Michael and Fiona got back together. I have to say that I didn’t like them much as a couple when the series first started, but Fiona has really grown on me, so I don’t mind seeing them together now. Oh, and I loved how we learned that she and Mike met in Dublin while he was undercover as Michael McBride. I can totally picture it!

My Reaction: I liked this episode. There was a lot of forward progress in all areas, and that’s always a good thing. The OJotW was interesting (how cool was that tidbit about the phone books??) , particularly because of Fiona’s reaction to it. The way she got so angry, it made me think that perhaps there’s a similar sexual assault incident in her own background. I would love for the writers to explore that angle. It’s cool that Fiona’s all tough or whatever, but I want to see a more vulnerable side, too. And not just when it comes to Mike.

I was determined to give the new Showtime series Nurse Jackie a chance this summer, but after the third ho-hum episode in a row, I’m not so sure about this anymore. Ep 1×03 was called “Chicken Soup”, and while it continued with the character development that was begun in the pilot, I just don’t see where this is going.

I guess the biggest problem for me so far is that the episodes don’t really have a point. It’s like reading a stream-of-consciousness novel or something. Jackie just flits from one scene to the next, without anything connecting the action.

Zoey continues to be the highlight of the show for me, but only because she reminds me of a girl I work with. I’m sure that her newbie antics will get old after a while, though, so unless she gets something more to do than tremble at every nurse or doctor higher up on the org chart than herself, she’ll end up being a waste of space as well.

I think I read that there are 12 episodes in this first season. I’m going to watch the first six and then decide whether or not to bail. So far, I’m leaning towards giving it up.

So was anyone out there surprised that Jon and Kate Gosselin’s “big announcement” was that they’re getting a divorce? I don’t even watch the show, have never seen a single minute of the series, yet I could still guess exactly what was happening. The tabloid headlines for the past few weeks have said it all. Jon caught at a nightclub with another woman. Jon and Kate spending their anniversary apart. Et cetera.

I just don’t even understand what the attraction of this show would be. Is it really that interesting to watch a couple in a dysfunctional relationship trying to raise 8 kids? I get a headache just thinking about this concept….

Moonlighting 4×03 — “Take a Left at the Altar”: I’m finally into Season 4 of Moonlighting. It has been fairly slow going because I have a bunch of other stuff to watch and because Season 4 wasn’t exactly filled with stellar episodes. But at the same time, I haven’t actually seen a lot of these eps, so I do want to see how the show winds down. Thus far, it ain’t pretty.

I think the real decline in quality eps can be traced back to 4×03. This is when Maddie and David are separated just for the sake of being separated, with no real justification given. Yes, Cybill was pregnant and needed to scale back her hours, but the writers really dropped the ball in explaining why Maddie was hiding out in Chicago. She needed to think things over? Come on!

The only truly notable things about this episode (for me) were the guest stars. There were two fairly famous ones, and I recognized both of them not by their faces, but by their voices. The first was Terry O’Quinn, who I knew only as John Locke from Lost. I don’t recall ever seeing/noticing him in anything else, so I just recognize him as an older, completely bald man. Since he was pretty young in this Moonlighting ep and had a full head of hair, I didn’t register who he was until he spoke.

The second guest star that I recognized was Amanda Plummer. Again, it wasn’t her face that did it, but her voice. As soon as she spoke, I heard not this character from Moonlighting, but Honey Bunny from Pulp Fiction.

Other than the two guest stars, this ep was completely forgettable. God, I forgot how totally annoying Bert Viola is. No wonder I quit watching the show when he and Agnes DiPesto more or less took over!