Review: 30 Rock, last episodes

Great, nonstop jokes, and it managed to end on a hug without any actual hugging. ("I love you too, Jack.") (it pisses me off to this day that every episode of "Family Ties" ended with a hug.)

Kenneth's immortal
Every woman in L.A. looks like Cerie
Julianne Moore and Selma Hayek have lost their accents
"I shouldn't have gotten such a loud pacemaker"
The cancellation of the show doesn't sink in until they take away Jenna's mirror.

Really a great way to go.

Some niggling things. Parts of it though reminded me of those dreadful 1980s reunion movies, where we see what Gilligan/girls from "Fact of Life," Rhoda and Mary are doing now. Kenneth is now president of the network, Jack is having an identity crisis in his new role of CEO. If 30 Rock was awful, and they did have a reunion show 15 years from now, that's the kind of plotting we'd have.

But all in all, a great finish to a great show. It should have gotten a complete season to tell this story though.

Film review: Oscar

Yesterday I was bemoaning the state of modern comedy films. Particularly, the absence of plot/plethora of poop jokes. Then today I caught "Oscar," a John Landis homage to 1930's screwball comedy with lots of (perhaps too much) plot and no poop jokes. How refreshing. Critics hated it at the time because it had Sylvester Stallone, and when is it ever fashionable to give Sylvester Stallone a good review?


According to IMDB it cost $35 million to make and made $25 million which explains the absence of Oscar II. And Hollywood then learned that when making comedies use as little plot as possible, and as many poop jokes that can fit.

Film Review: "Bridesmaids," the overdue free HBO weekend edition

For a hit movie, it was really not very good:

Extra-long sequence of dueling toasts which outlasted its funniness
Extra-long sequence on airplane which outlasted its funniness
Extra-long sequence at bridal shower that outlasted its funniness
Diahrea sequence which is somehow mandatory in every modern comedy
I read once that in any movie that centers on women it has to be about competition between two women, either for a man, or in this case, the friendship of another woman.

This was a thin thin story. I keep thinking the original version of "The Producers" is the last comedy that had a plot. Every comedy since "Porky's" has been about people pooping, and isn't it hilarious when people get the runs.

OK, no one got kicked in the balls, somehow they forgot to do that, probably because there were so few men in the movie.

Great cast, some good set up, meeting all the characters, then it loses momentum with the dueling toast scene and never recovers.

Indiana Jones and the Use of Supernatural Foreshadowing

An argument could be made that "Raiders of the Lost Ark" is really a perfect movie. It's exciting, it's beautiful to look at. Harrison Ford is perfectly cast, heck everyone is perfectly cast. And as the years go by, it's becoming universally recognized as a classic. No one remembers the one or two lukewarm reviews it received at the time.

And all the pieces come together at the end.

Or do they?

In all the reviews I've read, I haven't seen what I perceive to be two story holes, one minor, one gaping.

The minor: Where's Abner Ravenwood? The first third of the movie, everyone discusses Abner Ravenwood. He would be Marion's father with whom Indiana had a falling out with several years earlier. This guy has a backstory, everyone talks about him, and as a viewer, you sit there and think, "This is a lot of foreshadowing, that Ravenwood guy should be showing up any minute."

And though Marion said "Abner's dead," I was still waiting for him to show up at the end and save the day.

And he never does.

Then, in the third movie, Sean Connery shows up as Indy's dad. Indy's dad! I didn't even know he had a dad. In the two previous movies a dad is never mentioned. Wouldn't it have been better (from a continuity point of view) that Sean Connery play a character already established in the Raiders universe? Someone who it had already been established had a falling out with Indy? Like Abner Ravenwood?

(There is a similar problem in "The Crystal Skull." Ray Winstone keeps saying, "Indy, I've known you for 30 years." And the viewer keeps saying, "No, I've known Indy for 30 years and I've never met you before." Exactly who was that character written for, Sean Connery, John Rhys-Davies?)

Now, the gaping hole.

Ninety-nine percent of Raiders takes place in the real world, or as real as any early-40s Republic serial. Beating up Nazis, exploring scary caves, etc. But then, something happens at the end. Supernatural doings!

Supernatural doings? Where the hell did those homicidal phantoms come from? Picture watching Treasure of the Sierra Madre, and in the last five minutes, ghosts of dead gold prospectors come out of nowhere and kill the bad guys.

Compare this to possibly the best Raiders clone, "The Mummy." The whole movie has supernatural doings. It's established from the beginning that in this universe, the supernatural exists. It's freaky, but it's there. So when there's a supernatural climax, it's not so jarring.

Not so much for Raiders. Sure they say things like the ark is "A radio to talk to God." But even Indiana pooh-poohs this. Then there's the beginning exposition where Indy shows the feds the Bible illustrations of heathens opening the ark getting smited. I suspect at some point Spielberg thought that that wouldn't be enough foreshadowing. This would explain that one tiny scene in the middle where the ark is in a ship's cargo hold, and the mice start freaking out and the swastika stamped on the side of the crate gets scorched.

This was Spielberg's way of preparing you. He is saying, "Crap, as I'm editing this film, I'm just realizing that giving you a supernatural ending without enough foreshadowing is really unfair, but I've sent the cast home for the shoot, so in post-production I'll make a scene with the ark's crate spontaneously doing something supernatural."

The crazy thing is, all the Indiana Jones movies are guilty of this. The first hour and 55 minutes take place in a realistic world. The last five minutes: A supernatural climax! I think the "Mummy" has the better idea. If you're going to make a movie that takes place in a universe where the supernatural is real, then the whole movie should have supernatural doings.

30 Rock: My Whole Life is Thunder

30 Rock seems to be wrapping up loose ends, and it's an opportunity for the show to get even funnier.

Florence Henderson swilling Windex, the greatest eulogy ever, Jenna responding to bad lighting like a vampire does to sunlight, a room full of women and none of them know how to use a TV remote. Just very funny stuff.

I was happy to see Andrea Martin, she always seemed to me to be a natural fit for the show. I'm surprised she wasn't on sooner.

Both Alec Baldwin and Tina Fey have development deals with NBC and I can't imagine how either of them will be in anything better. Hopefully I'm wrong.

Bond Lore

In William Goldman's "Adventures in the Screen Trade" (run out, buy it), he talks about a script he wrote in the 1970s loosely based on a true story. In the 1800s in Virginia, a rich dandy fancied himself a pirate, and even had a pirate ship commissioned (the only one ever) so he could take to the seas and play pirate.

That's the true part, in the Goldman script, the dandy runs across a real pirate, a Blackbeard type, and the two come to loggerheads until (as in true buddy cop movie formula) they must overcome their differences to fight a bigger threat.

Here's the genius part: For the pirates he suggested to the studios that Roger Moore play the dandy, and Sean Connery play Blackbeard.

Genius!

How come no one else thought of putting the two James Bonds in a movie? I would have paid money to see that.

The script of course never got produced due to the regular list of Hollywood reasons, but still, can you imagine how cool that film would have been?

But...what if...what if they wanted to make the film today? Quick, someone get Pierce Brosnan and Daniel Craig on the phone!

A pop culture thanksgiving

Here's two of the things I'm grateful for in the world of pop culture:

Jimmy Cagney coming out of retirement after 20 years to be in "Ragtime." He didn't have to do it, but he did. And as I sat in the theater, watching Jimmy Cagney for the first time on the big screen, all I could think of was, "This guy's a movie star!" Thanks Jimmy.

Can you imagine if Cary Grant did the same thing? It would have been amazing.

Also, though I watched "E/R" and enjoyed it, I wouldn't describe myself as a fan. I taped the other Thursday night NBC comedies, but only watched "E/R" when my then-girlfriend was watching it.

That being said, how cool was it that George Clooney came back for Julianna Margulies' final appearance? Think about it, at this time, his contractual obligations were up, he was/is a massive movie star. Massive movie stars simply don't return to the TV series that launched them. Just like Cagney, he didn't have to do it, I'm sure they paid him one-hundredth of what he would have gotten making a movie. The only two reasons I could think of he would do this would be a sense of loyalty to his colleagues on "E/R" and/or a sense of loyalty to his fans. Thanks George.