Reviews and More

I am not much of a basketball fan, but even I had to jump on the Chicago Bulls bandwagon back when they were the most dominant team in the NBA during the 1990s. That’s when Michael Jordan was in his prime, Scottie Pippen developed into an All-Star in his own right, and the Zen master Phil Jackson learned how to corral everyone’s skills and channel the team’s energy in the right direction. The result? A staggering six championships in the form of a “repeat three-peat”. Simply amazing!

How cool would it be to relive the magic of the 1990-91 season, when Jordan’s Bulls finally beat the bad-boy Detroit Pistons in the Conference Finals. That was the series where the Pistons walked off the court with :08 left on the clock because of their utter lack of sportsmanship. And then the Bulls took it to the Lakers in the Finals, winning four straight after dropping the opener.

Well, the Chicago Bulls 1991 Championship Season documentary called Learning to Fly is still available and is still a best-seller. This documentary comes in the form of six DVDs jam-packed with game action (including all five Finals games in their entirety) and behind-the-scenes footage, as well as season highlights and recaps.

Learning to Fly is an absolute must-have for any Bulls fan — or any true basketball fan, for that matter. It’s on sale right now for just $31.97 at Buy.com, which is almost $20 off the list price, and it ships for free. That’s a better deal than I’ve found at other online shopping superstores, so if I do end up buying this DVD set, it’ll come from Buy.com for sure!

The Final Destination, the fourth film in the franchise about teens who simply can’t escape death, pulled off a surprising feat at the box office over the weekend by outperforming Tarantino (and all others). This 3-D horror flick earned a surprising $28.3 million to take the top spot away from Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds, which saw its revenues slip to $20 million.

Halloween II, the second remake of that horror franchise written and directed by Rob Zombie, did reasonably well during its first weekend in wide release, generating $17.4 million in ticket sales — good enough for third place.

The only other new release in the top 10 this week is Ang Lee’s Taking Woodstock, which is about the man who organized the defining music concert of 1969. Starring Emile Hirsch among others, Taking Woodstock earned just $3.75 million, putting it in ninth place overall.

Here’s the complete Top 10 at the box office for the weekend ending 8/30/09:

1. The Final Destination, $28.3 million
2. Inglourious Basterds, $20 million
3. Halloween II, $17.4 million
4. District 9, $10.7 million
5. G.I. Joe: The Rise of the Cobra, $8 million
6. Julie & Julia, $7.4 million
7. The Time Traveler’s Wife, $6.75 million
8. Shorts, $4.87 million
9. Taking Woodstock, $3.75 million
10. G-Force, $2.85 million

Looking ahead to the fall TV season, I’m probably going to drop one or two shows that I usually recap and add a new one to my lineup. I’d heard some good things about Southland and Lie to Me, so I decided to watch a couple eps of each today.

Southland definitely seems like the meatier of the two shows. It looks like it could have some pretty powerful storylines, and I do like Regina King and Ben McKenzie. But there’s just no way I can watch a show that uses a hand-held camera. I cannot stand that in movies, and refuse to subject myself to the jerkiness and motion sickness on a weekly basis. Sorry, Southland, but what a major turnoff.

Oh — two quick notes about the Southland pilot before I discuss Lie to Me. 1) Does every show/movie about a rookie cop have to show said cop puking at his first dead body/autopsy/mutilation? So, so trite. And 2) When Ben’s partner said something about him having “90210″ written all over his face, was I the only one who thought the line should have been changed to, “You have The O.C. written all over your face”? Hee, I amuse myself.

Lie to Me seems fairly interesting so far. I like learning about all these different physical tics that are on display when someone lies, and I enjoy seeing photographs of famous people pulling the same poses. But is this really enough to carry an entire series? Won’t it start getting repetitive? Like the infamous lupus misdiagnosis on House?

The cast seems kind of iffy at this point as well. I like Kelli Williams from her days as Lindsay on The Practice, but Tim Roth is not a favorite of mine. Hell, he’s not even nice to look at for an hour and seems particularly disheveled as Lightman. But — since lots of people have raved about this show, I’m going to continue watching a few more eps to see if it grabs me or not. This could be the one added to my fall lineup!

Plot summary (with possible spoilers): In 19th-century France, a merchant named Baldabiou (played by Alfred Molina) has discovered a way to raise silkworms, thereby allowing him to manufacture silk garments to satisfy the needs of French society. The only problematic part of the entire process is transporting the silkworm eggs from Africa back to Europe. This is a difficult task even under the most favorable circumstances, so when the last crop of silkworms is wiped out by disease, Baldabiou decides to buy from Japan instead.

This time, Baldabiou will entrust the job to Hervé (Michael Pitt), a young military officer who recently married the lovely Hélène (Keira Knightley). Though Hervé isn’t particularly excited to leave Hélène so soon after their wedding, he is happy to have the opportunity to get into a lucrative trade so he can leave the army.

When Hervé arrives in Japan, he is enchanted by the exotic land — and by an unnamed young woman who is part of the local lord Jubei’s (Koji Yakusho) concubine (Sei Ashina). Hervé wants the woman, but ends up having sex with a different girl, who was provided by the concubine. The woman also gave Hervé a note, which he can’t read because it’s in Japanese.

Upon arriving back home in France, Hervé tries to take up with Hélène again, but he can’t get the Japanese woman off his mind. He takes the note to Madame Blanche (Miki Nakatani), the Japanese owner of a Paris brothel, to have it translated. It said, “Come back or I’ll die”, which makes Hervé even more obsessed. He does go back to Japan, but can’t find the woman again. Nevertheless, he doesn’t forget her.

Meanwhile, Hervé’s life with Hélène seems pretty mundane in comparison. They can’t have children, and Hélène’s health is failing, making her weaker and weaker all the time. When Hervé gets another, far more erotic letter from the Japanese woman, it’s all he can do to remain by Hélène’s side. It’s not until after she dies that Hervé learns the startling truth about her.

My Reaction: I generally like Keira Knightley, and wanted to see Silk just because she was in it. Unfortunately, the insufferable Hervé was the main character, which meant I had to spend most of the movie watching Michael Pitt try to act like he was pining away for a woman he saw ONE time. I mean, give me a friggin’ break here. Keira Knightley isn’t exactly an old hag, ya know? You’d think he’d choose to be happy with his wife, a woman he had an actual relationship with instead of someone whose name he didn’t even know.

And that was the basic problem with this movie. Viewers were asked to believe that the few hours Hervé spent with the Japanese woman could change his life forever, but we were given no good reasons to do so. We were supposed to take it on faith, which perhaps played out better in the original novel, but doesn’t work at all on screen. The rest of the plot — the silkworm trade and Hélène’s declining health — were all secondary to this imagined love affair.

Overall, I thought Silk was a dull, boring film with a highly flawed premise. I wanted to sit back and enjoy the beauty of the exotic scenes and nice score, and in this respect, the slow pace didn’t bother me at all. It was the story that stank and made the film virtually unwatchable. I give it 1 star out of 5.

I have a confession to make. Back when I was in college, I had a major crush on a young seminary student who I met in one of my classes. He was very nice, smart, and sweet — as well as cute in a boyish sort of way. I had never met anyone quite like him before, which probably explained the crush. Anyway, as soon as I realized how I felt, I read The Thorn Birds by Colleen McCullough and then spent a small fortune renting the entire miniseries on VHS from the local video store. Yeah, I know this sounds utterly stupid now, but hey, I was 18 at the time!

Anyway, I actually liked the story, and to this day I always think of my seminary student whenever I hear that title. That’s why I would love to add The Thorn Birds DVDs to my collection. The 487-minute miniseries starring Richard Chamberlain, Rachel Ward, Barbara Stanwyck, and Ken Howard has been condensed to fit on two discs, which is much more reasonable than the 11 videotapes that I remember renting nearly two decades ago.

Unfortunately, these DVDs do not include any extras at all. It would have been nice to get at least some commentaries or interviews or something, but I guess not. On the bright side, the lack of extras is reflected in the sale price of $18, which is quite cheap for a movie this long.

I often wonder what happened to my seminary student. I transferred to a different school after freshman year, and we didn’t keep in touch. Maybe I should look him up. It would be interesting to see how he turned out!

Episode 3×03 of Burn Notice was called “Questions & Answers”, and I have to say that it was another fine offering! In all honesty, during S1, I thought Burn Notice was just kind of a cheesy show that was fun summer viewing, but over the years it’s been on, it has developed into a pretty solid series. I could definitely picture something like this on a national network!

Odd Job of the Week: Fi, who apparently makes money as a bounty hunter, has another job from a past client. This woman is named Patricia, and she’s worried because her son Brandon didn’t come home after spending a couple days with dad Howard. Patricia and Howard are separating, and she thinks he might be withholding the boy as a bargaining tool. Mike and Fi agree to help get Brandon back. But once they talk to Howard, they realize the boy has been kidnapped by men who want to use him as a bargaining chip to secure some diamonds that Howard has access to.

Without any leads on Brandon’s whereabouts and with time running out, Michael decides on a very risky play: the reverse interrogation. Basically, he’ll pose as a junkie informant while Sam plays a bad cop. Sam will let Santora (the kidnapper) know that the junkie has info about a double-cross on Santora’s job. For a couple thousand, Sam the bad cop will let Santora interrogate the junkie first. This works — although Michael has to take quite a few punches to “sell it” — and the crew get the boy back safe and sound.

Burn notice progress: Nothing happens as far as the real burn notice goes, but Michael does meet a woman named Det. Paxon, who promises that she’s going to be his “worst nightmare”. Paxson says that she’s been noticing a lot of explosions around town since Michael arrived a couple years ago, and that she’ll be keeping a sharp eye on him. She even knows where he keeps his stash of explosives. But fortunately for Mike, she’s not a dirty cop, so while she’s waiting for a warrant to move in on the storage facility, Mike, Fiona, and Sam are able to sneak in first and retrieve all the C4.

Character Development: This episode was Michael’s birthday (it originally aired on June 11, but I don’t know if that’s the real date in BN land). We learn that he never had parties while growing up, and that the most Madeline ever did was order take out. This time, she cooks a meal and bakes a cake for a dinner party with Michael, Fiona, and Sam. Sam then gives Mike a “five-pack” of expensive beer (apparently he couldn’t resist testing the goods), and Fi gives him a WWI bayonet — since Madeline had earlier said that loving Mike was like “trench warfare”.

My Reaction: As I said, this was a pretty good episode. I was pleasantly surprised at how good Sam was in his role as bad cop. He totally has that look and pulled off that character brilliantly! It’s not often that he’s better than Mike during these assignments, but he was awesome here! He definitely has that look of some guy you’d go to for a used car or rv finance deal, but that totally works for him. I also have to say that I’m liking Fiona more and more. She didn’t bother me at all in this ep — even with the whole “I thought you better arm yourself” thing. Oh, and Paxon seems interesting thus far. Loads better than Carla, at least. I can’t wait to see where that goes!

Plot summary (with possible spoilers): Derek Charles (played by Idris Elba) seems to have the perfect life. He’s a high-powered asset manager with a firm called Gage Bendix, where he has just received a coveted promotion. He’s also married to Sharon (played by Beyoncé Knowles), has a 2-year-old son named Kyle (Nathan and Nicolas Myers), and has recently moved into a lovely home. Derek is on top of the world, which suits him just fine.

Things all change when Derek meets a beautiful new temp at Gage Bendix. Her name is Lisa Sheridan (Ali Larter), and though happily married, Derek can’t help but appreciate the view her short skirts provide. He’s friendly to Lisa in the elevator on her first day, which makes her like him immediately. And though Lisa was originally only hired for one day, she does good work so she’s asked to come back and cover for other staff members, as there seems to be some kind of bug going around. She does some wrangling, and ends up temping for Derek’s assistant Patrick (Matthew Humphreys).

This is when Lisa’s true colors start to show. She is unusually and inappropriately interested in Derek’s life. She learns a lot about him from Patrick’s files, sneaks into his office to look through his stuff, and generally starts acting like a stalker. Once she even stays behind in the lunchroom after everyone else has left. She’s crying, which gets Derek’s attention. Derek innocently asks Lisa what’s wrong, so she spills some story about being attracted to the wrong men. Derek says some generally encouraging stuff and touches her hand, which essentially seals his fate. Lisa is hooked. Even Derek’s best friend Ben (Jerry O’Connell) can see that.

From there, Lisa’s behavior becomes increasingly unbalanced. She aggressively comes on to Derek in a bathroom stall at the company Christmas party, and can’t seem to take no for an answer. Though nothing actually happened in that stall, she believes the two are an item now, so she makes several more approaches, all of which Derek firmly rebuffs.

The rest of the film then shows how Lisa’s attempts to get with Derek progressively escalate in nature. She tries to commit suicide at one point, then breaks into Derek’s home to mess with Kyle at another. Finally, there’s a knockdown, drag-out fight between Lisa and Sharon, which pretty much ends as it should.

My Reaction: I wasn’t expecting much out of Obsessed, but thought it was a decent thriller. The plot is very predictable, of course, but that doesn’t necessarily render a film unwatchable. I was still able to enjoy bits and pieces of this one despite knowing what was coming next for the most part.

Actually, this film made me think how easy it is for a stalker to completely ruin someone’s life. Sure, it might be a stretch, but many of the events in Obsessed could happen for real. Perhaps some people in Derek’s position would have called the cops after the first bathroom incident, but I bet not many would. And then by the time Lisa’s actions escalated to the point where Derek sought outside intervention, she had already quit her job, so he thought he was in the clear. In other words, I could buy someone reacting as Derek did. He wasn’t just a typical movie dupe, which helped make the film more enjoyable.

Some people have complained that Beyoncé’s character ruined the movie for them, but I disagree. Yes, she was shrill and angry in most of her scenes, and I can see how some would find her to be a buzzkill. But that’s how the significant other is always written in these types of movies, so I’m not sure how viewers would expect her to behave.

Don’t get me wrong; Obsessed will never be mistaken for great cinema. But it was a decent film that is entertaining enough to warrant spending $3 on a rental for your next movie night. I give it 2 stars out of 5.

Entourage 6×07 — “No More Drama”: Well, on the positive side of things, at least the episode was Ashley- and Andrew-free. It was so refreshing to get a break from those two incredibly boring characters. On the negative side of things, absolutely nothing else happened in this ep. It was just more filler that felt like a complete waste of 30 minutes. I know, I know — you’re probably wondering why I even bother watching anymore when I seem to hate every ep. It’s because it’s the summer and nothing else is on right now!

– Scott Caan? Really? There is something about that guy that makes me want to punch him in the face. In that regard, I guess he’s a good choice to play someone as arrogant and annoying as this Scott Lavin dude, but still. I just want to change the channel whenever he comes on the screen.

– More Bob Saget explicit sex talk. Sorry, but that shtick is old — and it wasn’t even that funny the first time around.

– I know Johnny Drama is meant to be this unstable guy and all, but are we seriously supposed to believe that he can’t control his temper when his job is on the line? This job that he absolutely loves? All because some asshole in a suit talks about banging Turtle’s girlfriend? It was cool that Drama wanted to defend Turtle and Jamie’s honor the first time, but this is pushing it too far. Even Drama isn’t that stupid, is he?

– I’m sick of seeing everyone and their mother on TV using an iPhone. There are other great cell phones out there, ya know! (And I’m speaking as an iPhone user, so this isn’t about jealousy at all.)

– The writers just really do not know what to do with Vince, do they? All he does is hang out at home all day. That’s supposed to be the exciting life of a movie star? How boring! I miss the days when his career was in disarray and no one would even hire him to do a commercial for Mesothelioma lawyers. Now that he’s got money again, there’s absolutely nothing going on in his life.

– Hey Ari and Vince were in a scene together! Sure, it only lasted a minute and was about something inane, but we have to start somewhere, right?

How many of you watched the TV series Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip when it aired from 2006-07? Judging from how quickly the show was canceled, my guess is not many. I watched the first few episodes, but since I was still in school back then, didn’t have time to keep up on a weekly basis. Then the next thing I knew, the series was gone after just one season.

I actually thought Studio 60 was decent. I loved Bradley Whitford and Aaron Sorkin from their work on The West Wing, and of course Matthew Perry was a television superstar thanks to Friends. I think given a bit more time, the show probably would have hit its stride and become popular. After all, look how much leeway NBC gives 30 Rock even though that show doesn’t have many viewers.

Anyway, I found the Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip — Complete Series DVD over at Buy.com this morning. It features six discs containing all 22 episodes from the first (and only) season, as well as some audio commentary from Sorkin and producer Tommy Schlamme. There’s also a documentary about behind-the-scenes stuff from the show, and a couple of other extras.

For some reason, the suggested retail price of this product is $59.98, which is pretty expensive for just one season of a TV show. But luckily, Buy.com has it on sale for a far more reasonable $16.00. I think anything Sorkin writes is easily worth that much money, so I’m probably going to add this to my collection pretty soon.

It’s not often that I buy DVDs of shows that I haven’t seen yet, so I’m a bit excited about this purchase!

Moonlighting 4×08 — “Los Dos Dipestos”: This episode was another brutal entry in the Season 4 canon. Once again, the main characters were largely absent from the action, and once again, viewers were reminded that Agnes and Bert, thought fine supporting characters, simply cannot carry the entire show on their shoulders. David was in bookend scenes at the beginning and end, but Maddie didn’t appear at all. What a huge letdown in a season full of letdowns.

– The one good thing about this episode was that it actually featured a case. Ok, so there wasn’t a heck of a lot of investigating, and most of the time Agnes and her mother were completely unaware that anything untoward was even happening, but still… at that point any semblance of a mystery was welcome.

– I thought it was kind of funny how Mrs. Dipesto kept calling Bert Mr. Violin instead of Mr. Viola. I mean, it sounds kind of dumb writing it out here, but the timing and delivery by the actress made it funny.

– I wish Mrs. Dipesto had kept those emeralds for herself. Sure, the reward might have been substantial, but there’s no way it would have been more than the jewels were worth. Moonlighting always did go for the pat, predictable endings, though.

Man, I hope these episodes get better soon. There has been a definite dry spell this season!