U.S. moviegoers avoided theaters over the weekend, except those showing new release Paranormal Activity 3. But fans of Rowan Atkinson and his Johnny English master-spy character needn't worry about the film's poor performance at the box office--odds are he will live to see tomorrow.
Thanksgiving is around the corner. I’d love to get your thoughts or suggestions for stories or poems concerning the upcoming “day of Thanksgiving and Praise,” as Abraham Lincoln referred to it. Before the holiday arrives, enjoy the offerings below. This week’s short story selections includes “Local Talent,” a bit of original fiction from W.S. Moore, III. Moore’s short story is an intriguing noirish exploration of a hustler practicing his “craft.” Also linked below is “The Gentleman Thief,” a short story from “the winner of the Bita Prize in Persian Letters.” It is an amazing “story of a girl faced with the violence of the state.” Other short fiction offerings come from The Christendom Review, “a literary journal dedicated to the Diaspora of Christendom, that remnant of people who either deliberately or intuitively subscribe to the Judeo-Christian and ancient Greek traditions of the West and to a particular vision of humanity, a vision explored by many of our finest writers.” This week’s essays include, “Comic Romance,” an article from the journal, Philosophy and Literature, about two genres, comedy and heroic romance, and “the kinds of wish and fear they evoke in us.” Wright’s Writing Corner continues and includes a very
W. S. Moore III recommends ‘Adventure Time’ for ten-year-old boys of all ages and either sex. If it’s Monday night at 8 Eastern/Pacific, it’s time for a healthy dose of surrealism, on one of my new obsessions, Cartoon Network’s Adventure Time. Although the network’s “Adult Swim” block has long marked the CN as a Nickelodeon for stoners and slackers, this new series brings the bizarre—and the funny—to their mainstream schedule. The show follows Jake the Dog and Finn the Human as they adventure through the Land of Ooo, meeting and fighting folks like the Ice King, Marceline the Vampire Queen, and hordes of pastry zombies, while enjoying the company of friends like Princess Bubblegum and an assortment of brawling vikings. In short, it’s a fantasy, and it’s filled with Ritalin-free energy and frequent non sequiturs. It’s also a heck of a lot of fun, with jokes for kids, jokes for adults, and jokes for everyone. In some ways, it’s reminiscent of Winsor McKay’s Little Nemo in Slumberland, if Nemo himself did the strip. Characters are simply drawn, with limbs that flex like rubber hoses, and facial expressions that range from smiley-face simple to Munchean screams. Settings, meanwhile are as gaudy
“King of the World” director James Cameron is holding a grudge over Glenn Beck making a joke about him when Beck had a show over on the unwatched CNN Headline News network three years ago. Beck said the man who foisted “Titanic” on the world — especially Celine Dion’s awful “My Heart Will Go On” upon the culture — must be at least in the running for election to become the Anti-Christ. It was a joke. Did I mention it was three years ago? But, apparently, a mantle full of Oscars and a few billion dollars worth of box office receipts can’t heal the wounds Beck inflicted in jest. Cameron unleashed a profanity-laced tirade Tuesday against Beck, and even The Hollywood Reporter is too dense, biased, or lazy to correctly place the easily discerned reason for Beck’s “offensive” quote. Hint: It has nothing to do with Cameron’s 2007 documentary, “The Lost Tomb of Jesus,” which (1) no one has heard of, (2) didn’t air until March of 2007, and (3) aired after Beck’s comments of February 26, 2007. We’ll let the rest of the story be filled in by Beck’s reaction to the flap on his show Wednesday night: Why is
The new movie “Cop Out” has created a lot of buzz, and not just because critics are hammering Kevin Smith’s homage to the ’80s “buddy cop comedies” for being painfully un-funny. The film is apparently racist, too. Film critic Christian Toto gives us the run-down: Armond White of the New York Press, a reliably contrarian voice in film critic circles, slams star Tracy Morgan for his performance: “His broad face and goofy baritone are the essence of how Hollywood once tried to stereotype Louis Armstrong; yet Morgan embraces the denigration, performing a string of mortifying buffooneries.” Critic Emanuel Levy also found fault with Morgan’s character and how the film depicts the Latino heavies in the film. “There’s also an uncomfortable racial awkwardness to a great deal of the material that makes “Cop Out” feel rather unseemly. The opening Morgan monologue is dangerously close to a minstrel act. (Not to mention a recurring and very abysmal subplot involving his raging insecurities about his wife’s alleged infidelities.) “Worst of all, the Mexican criminal lords that become the movie’s traditional heavies are so lazily conceived, overscaled and outrageously drawn that turns “Cop Out” not only into a bad film though a somewhat unpleasant
Jackie Chan has always been among the most amiable and intentionally comical of action film stars, and his latest theatrical release, The Spy Next Door, exemplifies the movement toward a stronger comedy and “family” element his films have taken in the past couple of decades. To be sure, Chan’s movies have always been filled with comedy, with gags often suffusing the action scenes, and the values they convey have always been very positive. But in The Spy Next Door the trend toward more comedy and fewer fight scenes and stunt sequences has solidified, as indicated by his character’s name: Bob Ho. As he ages, Chan is becoming more of a general film actor and less of an action star. His difficulties in pronouncing English prevent him from taking on truly serious roles, for which we can perhaps be thankful, as there does not appear to be any shortage of actors willing and able to fill them adequately. Chan is immensely amiable and can still do impressive things as a physical performer. The Spy Next Door shows that even in his fifties he is willing to undertake action sequences other actors wisely avoid or leave to stunt doubles. His current film
After the success of several tie-in novels featuring characters from the USA Network detective-comedy series Monk, written by TV mystery veteran Lee Goldberg, two more USA Network series will get the same treatment, according to an item on The Blog of the International Association of Media Tie-in Writers. TV writer William Rabkin has agreed to write three original novels based on Psych, with the first going into print in January 2009, and Tod Goldberg will produce three books based on Burn Notice, with the first installment due out in July 2008, when the series’ second season will begin on USA Network.
I haven’t got around to seeing Mr. Warmth: The Don Rickles Project yet, but I certainly will. The documentary on the veteran stand-up comedian, who is now 81 years old, premiered last Sunday night on the HBO cable network and was shown at the New York Film Festival a couple of months ago. According to reports, the movie was directed with evident affection by comedy filmmaker John Landis. (To see the Variety review click here.) Rickles has that effect on people, and he has always been highly respected by other comedians. Rickles is well-known for his tart-tongued improvisations in which he picks on members of the audience and celebrity guests and upbraids them for presumed character flaws and stereotyped ethnic characteristics.
Turner Classic Movies features one of the greatest filmmakers of all time today: Buster Keaton. Here’s a link to my Weekly Standard essay on Keaton, which is available to subscribers only, alas. Here’s a link to my American Culture essay on Keaton’s missed opportunities. Among the Keaton films scheduled for broadcast on TCM today and tomorrow, all of the silent ones up through 1928 are very good, great, or classic. I most highly recommend Cops; Sherlock, Jr.; Steamboat Bill, Jr.; The General; and The Navigator. Here’s the TCM Keaton lineup for today and tomorrow:
The BBC TV program Mayo, now showing on BBC America as The Gil Mayo Mysteries, is an exemnplary TV mystery program. Based on a series of novels which I have not read, the show has engaging detectives and a little romance, and is light on blood and gore and explicit violence but strong on creating plausible suspects with interesting and revealing motives. It also has a nice central mystery: whether police homicide detective team leader DI Gil Mayo, an amusingly literate and in fact pedantic character played well by Alistair McGowan, will get back together romantically with his new subordinate, DS Alex Jones (Jessica Oyelowo), an appealingly good-natured, comely, and stylish detective who was Mayo’s first love many years before.
The USA Network mystery-comedy series Monk and Psych are both entering the season’s stretch run, with their penultimate episodes appearing tonight beginning at 9 EST. The season finales will premiere next week. Monk remains superb and inventive, and Psych has become a sold, entertaining mystery comedy program with real, enjoyably challenging puzzles. In my earlier comments on Psych on this site, I observed that the show was trying too hard to be quirky, and I pointed out that "the best thing about a mystery is the mystery." It seems that the producers discovered this timeless truth in the course of the season. The final episode of the first half of the season, which premiered last August, included a solid mystery and incorporated the central characters’ eccentricities into the story, instead of trying to do it the other way round (which never works). (See my review here.) The producers have continued this approach in the second half of the season. It is important, however, to acknowledge that the best mystery stories don’t just have interesting puzzles, characters, conflicts, and social implications. They also have very interesting detectives. Xavier Lechard, a French mystery aficionado, astutely observed that "the most famous and enduring
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