The trailer for Julie and Julia has been making its way around. Is it just me or does Meryl Streep look like she’s gonna be kind of either brilliant or insufferable? I get an iffy vibe from her in the trailer, but I’m sure the film is cute. (And for the record: Meryl Streep can do no wrong, so if it her performance is wonky, it’ll all be Nora Ephron’s fault.)
Big band night is ALWAYS the best night on Idol, ever since Season One, and tonight didn’t disappoint at all. Let’s go through the performances, shall we? (And this is basically my one in-depth-ish Idol post for the season and an excuse to talk about my favorites.)
Kris Allen: “The Way You Look Tonight”
It doesn’t hurt that Kris is totally attractive, but I find him to be one of two singers left where I a) look forward to hearing their album and b) look forward to checking out their full-length songs on iTunes. I appreciate his consistency in sound – it seems to be important to the judges that we get a sense of “who they are as an artist,” and you can totally tell what kind of album this guy is gonna put out when all is said and done, and he manages to use the all-important “artistry” each week to mold the theme week to his sound. Tonight was no exception. It was a solid performance, and it sounded very Kris. I hope he’s one of the two in the finals.
Allison Iraheta: “Someone To Watch Over Me”
Allison’s my other favorite. She’s a great singer, she’s got loads of sass and personality, and she’s another who’s consistently shown what kind of album she’d put out. And it’s an album I’d buy. I don’t understand all this business Simon keeps bringing up about her not feeling like she’s in it to win it. If she didn’t want to win it, she wouldn’t have auditioned in the first place, I say. It seems like a lame criticism and the only one they can level against the otherwise solid Allison in an attempt to knock her off the show to get to the preordained Adam/Danny finale. Her performance tonight was damn good – I don’t get why the judges can’t get behind her more resolutely. If she and/or Kris made it to the finals, I’d be pleased.
Matt Giraud: “My Funny Valentine”
At this point in the show we got to the “good, but past Idols have done it better” portion. With this song, Melinda Doolittle’s rendition was a hell of a lot better – whole other league:
And Matt’s always been a good-not-great performer. He’s a good singer, yes, but he’s in a competition with better people, in my opinion. My problem with him is that we already have Justin Timberlake and we already have a JT backup in Robin Thicke. If both of them go away, I suppose we could call on Matt, but for now, I think two are enough. Also working against him? I have an irrational issue with men who wear fedoras, vests with t-shirts, and scarves indoors. He’s done all of this and insists on continuing to do this.
Danny Gokey: “Come Rain Or Come Shine”
Here’s my beef with Gokey: guy sings really great karaoke. Really really great karaoke. But he’s got the Lil Rounds problem where he doesn’t do ANYTHING to a song, and I find that kinda flat. If he made an album of covers, the covers would all sound like the originals and they’d be competently sung, yes, but the whole thing would be kinda rote. Tonight he finally put a spin on a song and surprise surprise, he was about as good as he’s ever been on the show. For once he wasn’t singing a mildly uptempo song in the exact same style as the original, which is all the guy has done all season. Still wasn’t quite as good as Katharine McPhee’s version, though:
Adam Lambert: “Feelin’ Good”
Adam Adam Adam Adam Adam… Um, let’s break it down. He’s obviously talented. He’s obviously born to be on a stage performing. And that’s where I think my biggest problem with Glambert is. This is a singing competition to find a recording artist, and I just don’t think an album from him would be all that great. He’ll probably make a killing on Broadway when all of this is finished, but just listen to any of his performances with your eyes closed; while his voice is good, it’s not suited to being an album. Even his better performances like “Tracks Of My Tears” were just alright when you take away the emotion that he projects through his stage presence. And that’s why I think he’s a little bit in the wrong competition here. He’ll probably get to the finals, but I think he’d be better served by coming in third or fourth like Daughtry so he isn’t so tied to the Idol marketing juggernaut that the winner (and usually runner-up) gets cordoned off into.
And while we’re on a major Idol write-up, let’s address the judges:
–Randy is increasingly useless, though he generally tends to have coherent thoughts. He needs to stop saying “For me for you, dawg… [insert criticism here],” though. And most of his criticisms tend to either be “this is the best you’ve been, you’re in it to win it” or “wasn’t your best; pitchy.”
–Kara DioGuardi is actually doing just fine, I think, regardless of her being maligned by most. She’s generally on point and she usually has constructive things to say. I hope she’s around to hopefully improve next season and win people over.
–Paula is noticeably less loopy than she’s been in past seasons, but it still takes girlfriend forever to get out a sentence. I find her on the whole to be charming, though. We can’t have all the judges up there being professional and coherent and eloquent all the time, can we?
–Simon clearly wants out of his obligation to the show. He’s most likely to be gone next season, I think. I won’t be crying over it.
Basically, the show is clearly waning in its relevance and its success rate. This season definitely needs to produce a Kelly Clarkson or Carrie Underwood level star to remain successful. It’s the kind of show that I keep watching because it’s remained part of the zeitgeist and it’s still mildly entertaining, but as the show gets closer to its tenth cycle, it all becomes a little tiring and rote. Next year will hopefully feature a more exciting group of singers in the top 12. For now, we just have to wade out the season and hope the better singers continue on. Unfortunately, it’s looking like Allison’s days are numbered and Adam’s win is all but certain.
Lastly, can someone explain to me how the hell Alexis Grace isn’t on this show anymore? Or how Ricky Braddy didn’t make the Top 13? Voting public: you all suck.
It’s great how your life can kind of turn on a dime and all of a sudden, you realize when you go to bed that something completely different has changed.
Perhaps this is a small example, but in the space of the last, oh, three hours, the possibility of moving became a very real possibility. My current roommate Michelle, our one-time semi-roommate Brendon, and I all got dinner tonight and somehow the idea came up about moving and as I write this now, it’s looking like a very real possibility that we’re gonna move.
The idea is that our location where Michelle and I are now isn’t ideal. It’s in Hollywood, but kind of in the jankier part of the city. Out of curiosity, we looked at a complex that we both were really interested in and it turns out that there are units available that range in price from cheaper than our current place to just a little more expensive than our current place. And Brendon is looking to get out of his current living situation by June 1st, so…
I dunno. It’s very exciting when something like this happens. When you realize that you have it within your power to drastically change an integral part of your existence. I’m remembered of the days when zefrank’s video blog was still around (aw… forgot how much I miss that). He did an episode centering on the conceit of “Bust That Cycle.” I’m paraphrasing, and perhaps incorrectly, but the general conceit was that we become so ingrained in our daily routines and simply accept our surroundings and the constants in our lives as unchanging that we get stuck in that rut. He advocated for busting that cycle. For doing something in your day that completely goes against what you would do in autopilot (not to get kind of a tie in to Click or anything).
Tonight, it feels like we busted that cycle. The possibility presented itself and it feels like something that would be such a fresh change. Our current apartment is totally fine, but we certainly have begun to feel suffocated. Stifled. Hopefully, we’ll get a new place in this complex that we both love – the location’s so much better, the complex is a lot nicer with a lot of included amenities, and it would just be much more freeing to live there. Our current building has seven units and is surrounded by barbed wire. It’s just a very depressing place to have to live.
Anyway, I’m very excited by this development, and on a broader scale, excited for what this development represents. It represents the idea that change is possible, and that change can come when you least expect it.
So this is like, the weirdest mishmash movie I’ve seen in a long time. The premise is that an overworked man gets a “universal remote control” that is literally universal and controls everything around him, allowing him to fast-forward through boring family dinners, traffic, showering, etc., etc., etc.
Then it goes into A Christmas Carol territory when the remote starts remembering this guy’s preferences and automatically fast-forwards through things he’s fast-forwarded through before, so he inadvertently fast-forwards years at a time, losing his wife and alienating his kids without his being aware. Of course, he ultimately learns the importance of family and all that good stuff by seeing what happens when he goes into Auto Pilot and pays attention to work instead of his wife and kids.
It all sounds like a really intriguing premise – high concept, for sure, but intriguing. In fact, it feels like something one of the more creative kids would’ve tried to run with in one of my college screenwriting classes. As we all know, though, Adam Sandler is the main actor here (producer, as well), and it seems that his style (and perhaps the director is at fault here, too) is at odds with what is ultimately a really downbeat story. I mean, this guy ends up losing everything dear to him because of this stupid remote, yet the film tries to have it both ways by putting in a lot of broad slapstick Sandler-esque humor (like him gaining a bunch of weight through one fast-forward, losing it through another, then excessively flapping his weight-loss skin flap). There’s also a running gag about their dog(s) dry-humping a giant stuffed duck, to which the most appropriate response is: “really, guys?”
Ultimately, it’s like they half-assed making it a family film when it really really isn’t a family film. What they ultimately came up with isn’t bad, just immensely uneven. There’s a great film buried in the premise, but they obscured it with Sandler being Sandler. And he’s been great in other films (Punch-Drunk Love, Spanglish to a lesser extent), and he’s pretty good here, but the studio or director or whatever ran wild with the derivative comedy that he’s done before and it works against the film. There’s some nice acting from Sandler and Kate Beckinsale as his wife, some really subtle work done to make the settings futuristic as Sandler fast-forwards (though it comes amidst some really obvious and too-futuristic set design and graphics work). It’s all just uneven, which is too bad, given that it seems there’s a better film in here somewhere. B-
Most depressing part of the movie, though? In the world of the film, “Linger” by The Cranberries is a song that will be remembered for decades. I hate that song.
Before the critics got a hold of this one last year, it looked super super promising. High profile director: Fernando Meirelles (The Constant Gardener). High profile cast: Julianne Moore, Mark Ruffalo, and Gael Garcia Bernal. High profile source material: José Saramago. It all seemed primed to be Oscar bait.
And then critics kinda hated it (or at least strongly disliked it), and it flitted in and out of theaters super quick without much of a blip.
I finally caught up with the film last night, and ultimately, while flawed, the film is pretty good. The book was clearly a parable, using an epidemic of blindness as a catalyst for demonstrating humanity’s greatest and worst tendencies. I’ve read some of the book, but not all, and from what I can tell, the film is intrinsically faithful to its source material.
Which is a fault of the adaptation, I think. What probably worked really well in print becomes flat on screen sometimes. As the blind are quarantined, all hell breaks loose as one of the three wards stockpiles the food and only exchanges it with the other two wards for valuables, then sex (of course, our main characters aren’t the evildoers). There’s some bleak stuff in this film, kids. Bleak bleak bleak. But the characters are all fairly indifferent to the horrible scenarios they find themselves in. There’s also a drastic tone shift for the final fourth of the film that, again, may have worked on paper, but on film, it’s incredibly jarring. The film ends on an optimistic note – not something you’d expect from something that’s so bleak for so long.
What works so well in the film are the individual moments. Any five-minute stretch of this film is a mini-masterpiece on its own, the cinematography gorgeous throughout, the set design brilliantly realized (as a parable, we don’t know what city this takes place in, so they’ve formed a fictional city from an amalgam of sources, I would guess; it all looks vaguely European, but the street signs are American). Though the filmmakers strive a bit much to mimic the idea of blindness through their visual style (blurry stuff going on a lot of the time), it’s at least interesting, and at least they’re trying.
It’s far from perfect, but it’s also far from the maligned film that the majority of critics talked about. This was a nice surprise, and while I can’t see wanting to watch it again any time soon, I’d recommend giving it a look. B+
