Lemony Snickett's A Series of Unfortunate Events

Very mixed reaction to this one. It LOOKS great, the cast is appealing, and some of the script is very funny. But it has two notable problems. First, a number of key scenes fall curiously flat. Especially scenes with Jim Carrey as villainous Count Olaf, when he is abusing the unfortunate Baudelaire orphans. It's weird. He LOOKS perfect in the role -- and his scenes with Olaf's dreadful acting troop work fine -- but somehow when he plays off the kids it just...sits there. The timing is off, or something. But, since Olaf's relationship with the kids is central to the movie, this flaw turns out to be pretty major.

The other problem is how the baby Sunny was scripted. She is pre-lingual, which in the books (and in the introduction) is handled like: Sunny said, "Urgle!" which probably meant, "Who is that man over there and why is he wearing a bowler hat on the beach?" But in most of the movie she is given subtitles. And the subtitles are hideous. A completely different sense of humor from everything else in the movie. Things like, "she's the mayor of crazy town!" Cringable.

Overall, though, I was still glad I saw it. I would recommend getting the DVD and watching it with commentary from Lemony Snickett and the director. Mr. Snickett is really funny. He does things like calling Cedric The Entertainer "Mr. The Entertainer" and playing the accordion during the scary bits.

Insomnia

Disappointing. It starts with beautiful northwest scenery (filmed in British Columbia and Alaska) and an intriguing premise (cop starts to lose it when he can't sleep during Alaskan white nights, kills the wrong person, then develops weird relationship with the original killer as he covers up his mistake). But the story ends up being thin and rather dull. Lazy writing is the big culprit here -- the script advances the plot and a couple of really obvious themes, but doesn't do much to make the characters or their world seem compelling. Motivation is often frustratingly murky. The cast (Al Pacino, Robin Williams, Hillary Swank) indicates this was an A-list thriller. Not recommended.

The Business of Strangers An intriguing little movie that flirts with the edges of psycho killer movies, yet -- to its benefit -- never really goes there. Stockard Channing is delightful as the hard-driven and successful executive uncomfortable with her human weaknesses. Julia Stiles is funny and weirdly compelling as the mysterious younger woman who originally shows up to work the audio visual equipment. Recommended.

Lost in Translation

A good movie: funny, well-acted and carefully scripted. Yet, ultimately, fairly simple and obvious. I feel it was...overpraised. I remember reading so many "best of the year!" reviews of this, that to encounter a film that is merely good comes as a bit of a disappointment.

One DVD extra is worth watching: the full footage of the bizarre Japanese talk show (Matthew's Best Hit TV) that Bill Murray's character appears on.

On a side note -- since the movie gets a lot of humor mileage out of the cultural displacement of an American in Asia, I missed the scene where we get to see weird foreign junk food. There are a couple of "weird food" restaurant scenes, but they're not nearly weird ENOUGH, and there's no JUNK food. Asian junk food is one of the funkiest things about going to Asia (or, let's be honest, some parts of the lower BC mainland). Because you can tell it's junk food -- bright cartoony packages of crunchy salty things, sweet goop, and cans of carbonated beverages -- but everything else is up for grabs. Like, it's SODA POP, and there's a picture of fruit on the package, but you don't even know what kind of fruit it is.

Oh, well. Maybe movie stars don't eat junk food.

TV

The War at Home

Unbelievably unpleasant, baffling, and unfunny. Takes a page from All in the Family (everybody is either a bigot, or an idiot, or both) but it's the WRONG PAGE. (Hint: All in the Family worked because Archie Bunker was not ACTUALLY the viewpoint character, because the stories found the humanity under the characters' terrible behavior, and because, uh, THE SCRIPTS WERE FUNNY.)

This is by far the worst new show I've seen in a long time. It's so bad that I wonder how it even got made. Was there ever a point in its development when somebody working on the show actually read a script, or watched a scene, and thought, "yeah, that's funny"? Because it's really difficult to imagine that happening. I can only come to one conclusion:

They are still doing way too much coke in Hollywood.

On the plus side, it gets me to shut off the TV immediately after the Simpsons are done. When they jumped into Malcom in the Middle or Family Guy, I would sometimes watch the show that followed. But I never really got anything worthwhile out of the experience. They were neutral TV. Brain numbing mild diversions.

The War at Home? That's the kind of show they will make me watch in the afterlife if I'm really bad.

Kitchen Confidential

Saw this because it immediately followed Arrested Devlopment on its new Monday night. And, it has Buffy cred! Nicholas Brendan plays a pastry chef. Not a terrible show at all -- paced very much like Arrested Development, with no laugh track and lots of offbeat humor. But the humor and story are a little more typical -- which makes it less fun, but perhaps more likely to get a mainstream audience. Also, pilots aren't usually the BEST example of any show, so I'd definitely give this one another chance.

Bones

Saw this at the comic convention, actually, but thought I'd mention it here -- more Buffyness! David Boreanaz plays a cop, in a show about forensic anthropology. I liked the pilot okay -- good cast, interesting characters, intriguing premise, occasionally surprising humor -- but it had some major awkward spots. You know, the kind of mind-numbingly obvious dialogue like: "You have trouble with intimacy, don't you?" "I don't know. I guess maybe I do have trouble with intimacy." "That's because of your trouble with intimacy."

But that's exactly the sort of thing that tends to get smoothed out when a show finds its stride, so I'm optimistic and will give this one another chance.