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Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 failed in ousting the Bush administration from the White House in 2004. Slacker Uprising, the new film by Moore documenting the 2004 tour of the same name, gives him one more chance to proclaim, “Mission accomplished,” and be correct this time. (On a personal note, I don’t see how this film could fail in getting rid of Bush.)
^^ Shannen Doherty ^^
Or, Keeping Up with the Walshes
If there’s anything the TV industry trusts, it’s precedent, which has brought us a parade of Judge Wapner impersonators, provided sixty-seven variations on CSI and Law and Order, and given Chevy Chase the opportunity to have a late-night talkshow. In other words, precedent is responsible for some of the great travesties in televisual history. Following suit, the new 90210 is monopolizing on the uberhip ’90s original Beverly Hills 90210 and it’s all about being up-to-date.*
Airing on the illustrious FOX network, Do Not Disturb, at first blush, seems to get its name from the fact that it’s set in a hotel. But I discovered, too late, that it had been named by my TV Guide, warning me not to mess with this show because I wasn’t going to like what I saw.
With a chic New York City hotel as its backdrop, this half-hour sitcom centers a lot of its action in the bowels of a hotel, expelling awful things from its back-office mise-en-scène.
Ethan and Joel Coen (not to be confused with Etan Cohen, co-writer of the great Tropic Thunder, or Joe Colen, my adult-film pseudonym) put the audience in a privileged position with Burn After Reading. In fact, we feel that we are in cahoots with the Coen brothers.
This dark comedy oozes tragic irony, which the Sarcasm Society, if they can be believed, defines as the “form of irony [in which] the words and actions of the characters, unbeknownst to them, betray the real situation, which the spectators fully realize.” We know more than the characters and sit uncomfortably at times, and elatedly at others, as bits of information are misunderstood or imperceptibly slip by the characters in an intolerably cruel way.
I am so horribly offended by I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry, and I hope that whatever defamation league that fights for a comedy’s right to be comedic comes out to protest this juggernaut of hackneyed material and predictability.
Adam Sandler and Kevin James, the ostensible stars of this film, deliver, perhaps, their most inspired performances, which is to say lackluster. They play lifelong pals who feign to be a homosexual couple in order to reap the legal benefits of domestic partnership for the children of the widowed Larry, played by James (don’t think I didn’t consider making a King of Queens joke, Mr. James).
Continue reading ‘I Now Pronounce You Chuck and…Oh, Who Cares?’
