Monthly Archives: May 2012

Lisa Marie Does The Dictator (directed by Larry Charles)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

For the past year or so, I haven’t been able to go to a movie without seeing the trailer for the new film from the creators of Borat, The Dictator.  The first few times I saw the trailer, I chuckled at a few scenes and I rolled my eyes a few times and I thought to myself, “Maybe I’ll see that.”  And then I had to sit through that trailer another 79 times and I stopped laughing and rolling my eyes because I had reached the point where I could practically recite the entire damn trailer by memory.  For a while there, I told myself, “There’s no way I’m going to waste my time seeing this.”  But, just a week ago, I realized that, after seeing the trailer 139 times, I had no choice but to see it.

I needed closure.

I finally saw The Dictator last Wednesday and my reaction to the film can best be summed up by a mild chuckle and a shrug of my shoulders.  It’s not a bad film by any stretch of the imagination.  It’s just a rather forgettable one.

In the Dictator, Sacha Baron Cohen plays General Aladeen, the ruthless leader of the Middle Eastern country of Wadiya.  Aladeen spends his time playing video games, rewriting the dictionary, ordering executions, and trying to develop a nuclear weapons program.  Aladeen is a pretty bad guy but he’s also strangely likable because 1) he’s more stupid than evil and 2) he’s played by Sacha Baron Cohen.  Anyway, Aladeen goes to New York to deliver a speech to the United Nations and while there, he’s kidnapped by an assassin (a hilarious John C. Reilly) who was hired by Aladeen’s uncle Tamir (Ben Kingsley, who has pretty much cornered the market when it comes to playing evil uncles).  Though Aladeen loses his beard in the process, he manages to escape the assassin and he soon finds himself lost and unrecognized on the streets of New York City.  With the unwitting help of a clueless pro-democracy activist (a very funny Anna Faris), Aladeen attempts to figure out a way to thwart Tamir’s plan to introduce democracy to Wadiya.

Watching The Dictator is something of an odd experience because, while the film itself is full of funny moments and Sacha Baron Cohen shows an admirable willingness to follow his character to the most of logical (and illogical) of extremes, it’s also a strangely forgettable film.  It’s certainly funnier than the typical episode of Family Guy (I hate that freaking show, by the way) but it’s nowhere near as profound as a below-average episode of Community (which was the best show on TV last season, in my always correct opinion).  Director Larry Charles doesn’t seem to be sure whether he’s trying to make a thought-provoking satire or if he’s just trying to make a broad, gross-out comedy that just happens to have an international backdrop.  The end result is a film that is extremely uneven, a film that climaxes with a speech that feels like it was taken straight out of the Occupy handbook despite the fact that the movie has just spent the last 70 minutes poking fun at the Leftist stridency of the Occupy movement through the character played by Anna Faris. 

(Personally, I preferred the film when it was simply content to be funny as opposed to when it tried to be important.)

Watching this film, it became apparent to me that, for all of his comedic talent, Baron Cohen works best when his cartoonish (if well-played) characters are placed in a recognizable reality.  Baron Cohen needs a “straight man” to play off of and unfortunately, The Dictator doesn’t provide him with that.  Everyone’s equally cartoonish in this film and, as a result, the movie makes us laugh but it never really makes us think.

There’s a part of me that always wants to declare that I’m officially “burned out” on Sacha Baron Cohen because, seriously, it’s become rather trendy to claim to be a huge fan of his work.  Seriously, I’m at a point now where if I one more person brags to me about how much they loved Borat (always speaking in a tone as if to suggest that only they have seen and appreciated this “obscure” film), I am going to scream.  However, every time I get close to getting on twitter for the sole purpose of making snarky remarks about the guy, I see him give a surprisingly good performance in a film like Hugo.  The Dictator may not be Sacha Baron Cohen’s best film but I still look forward to seeing what he does in the future.

Okay, So I Saw “The Avengers”

Posted on by Ryan C. (fourcolorapocalypse)

Or should that be “Okay, so I saw Marvel’s The Avengers ?”

In any case, I wasn’t going to. I was determined not to participate in the so-called “biggest event of the summer” because I’m flat-out tired of seeing Marvel (and, by extension, Disney) rake in hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars off the fruits of Jack Kirby’s imagination while “The King’s” estate gets more or less nothing (although in fairness — or should that be unfairness — they do get some sort of pittance for anything featuring Captain America in it, since he’s officially recognized as Cap’s co-creator along with Joe Simon). Stan Lee’s recent comments about Jack didn’t do much to up my enthusiasm level for this latest blockbuster either, and basically reaffirmed my opinion that he’s a major-league asshole who was lucky enough to glom onto the works a true creative genius that now he doesn’t even have the decency to acknowledge, much less thank, so yeah — it’s fair to say I was pretty cool to this whole thing and found most of the absolute gushing over it that’s been infecting the internet, Twitter in particular, to be annoying in the extreme.

But then the folks who are trying to put together The Jack Kirby Museum came up with a novel idea — donate the price of your ticket to their brick-and-mortar fund, so that future generations can have an actual, physical place to go and experience first-hand the power of the unfettered creative genius that everyone else but his family has gotten rich off. That sounded good to me, so for the price of a $7.50 admission and a matching $7.50 donation, my conscience was suitably assuaged  — hey, I guess I always knew there was some price at which my principles could be sold out, but it’s rather depressing to think that it could be so cheap. Still, best not to spend too much time dwelling on that —

Anyway, before I kick over the hornet’s nest of fan opinion, let me state for the record that I found The Avengers to be a perfectly fun, generally-well-executed, thoroughly entertaining superhero romp. But (and you knew there was a “but” coming, didn’t you?) — that’s all it is.

Sorry, assembled hordes of fandom, but it’s not “groundbreaking,” it’s far from “the best superhero movie ever,” (hello? The Dark Knight? Batman Begins? Spider-Man 2? Superman :  The Movie?) much less “the best comic book adaptation ever,” (hello again? American Splendor? Ghost World? Sin City? A History Of Violence?) and it doesn’t “prove” that co-writer/director Joss Whedon is a “visionary,” or the “new master of the superhero genre.”

And all those quotes I  pulled are, frankly, just a sampling of some of the less effusive praise I’ve seen bandied about online in regard to this flick. I’ve also seen it called “the new benchmark by which all others will be judged,” “the summer blockbuster to end them all,” “a singular work of astonishing breadth and scope,” and “the defining cinematic statement from the undisputed master of the craft.”

In this armchair critic’s opinion, unpopular as saying so is bound to make me, it’s none of those things. Not even close. Whedon has concocted a nice little script and brought it to life in an appealing and pleasant manner, but this isn’t a movie that bears any authorial signature whatsoever — if the credits were blank and someone told you it was directed by, say, Jon Favreau, you’d believe it, because it plays out pretty much exactly the same, in tone and style, as either of the two Iron Man films, and it doesn’t have anything like the individualistic flair of Kenneth Branagh’s Thor or Joe Johnson’s Captain America : The First Avenger. Hell, it even completely overuses the tedious inside-the-helmet perspective shots of Robert Downey Jr.’s head that Favreau is so annoyingly fond of.

In addition, our guy Joss shows no particularly deft touch with his cast. The acting ranges from surprisingly good (Mark Ruffalo positively nails it as Bruce Banner) to completely lethargic (Scarlett Johansson is completely listless as the Black Widow and is the least-convincing Russian superspy in movie history). Downey plays himself, as always, and the talented Jeremy Renner is criminally underutilized as Hawkeye, while both Chris Hemsworth’s Thor and Tom Hiddleston’s Loki, the central villain of the piece, came off much better in Branagh’s flick. Samuel L. Jackson pretty much owns every scene he’s in as Nick Fury, but I don’t think there was ever really any doubt that he would. All told,  the whole thing has the feeling of a director who just told his cast “okay — have at it” and then let the cameras roll.

In his favor, fandom’s newest and biggest crush does do a nice, pacy job with the action sequences, of which there are many (although even he can’t make the bog-standard CGI alien invaders that attack the Earth at the end and, yawn, double-cross Loki seem interesting), and doesn’t overplay his hand in the pathos department — he gives each and every character a nice little individual “story arc” that never taxes the imagination too much and remains dimly interesting without seeming intrusive vis-a-vis the “bigger picture” — which is, of course, to show all these folks coming together and fighting a menace big enough to require their assembled talents and abilities. And while Whedon has an annoying habit of defusing every potentially tense situation with a pithy little quip of some sort, on the whole the interplay between the various characters is reasonably well-handled and plausible (as far as these things so).

So The Avengers has some pluses in its favor, as well as some minuses working against it. It’s good, solid, mindless summer entertainment with a nifty, if thoroughly uninspired, visual sensibility; it plays to what the fans want in a generally competent manner; and it keeps you at least modestly interested in the proceedings throughout. It doesn’t have the mythic scope of Donner’s Superman, nor does it redefine the possibilities inherent in the superhero genre in the way Nolan’s Batman films do. It doesn’t take the time to examine the gap between what these characters symbolize and who they actually are in the way that Marvel’s two far superior summer blockbusters of last year (again, Thor and Captain America : The First Avenger) did — hell, it doesn’t even have much of anything to say about the human condition, much less the superhuman condition. And while it’s all pretty fun to look at by and large, it doesn’t have the inventive, groundbreaking, downright operatic visual flair of Burton’s forays into Gotham City. So it’s fair to say that even the things this movie does well have been done a lot better in other films of this same genre.

But it is fun. Not as fun, or as immediate, or as dramatic, or as dynamic, as the classic Avengers stories brought to life by Jack Kirby that it’s essentially a modernized (and, frankly, watered-down — proof that “The King” could do more with a pencil than Whedon can with a couple hundred million bucks) rehash of, but a good time nonetheless — and in a society as desperate for diversion and spectacle as the one we live in, I can certainly understand why it’s such a big hit. But please. Let’s stop pretending it’s anything more than what it is — modestly-well-realized, lively,  big-budget summer fun that doesn’t demand anything from its audience apart from kicking back and enjoying the ride. And let’s stop venerating Joss Whedon for what’s essentially a director-for-hire project executed in what’s basically become Marvel’s “house style.” Sure, there’s a good possibility that the financial success of The Avengers means he might be able to write his own ticket in Hollywood from here on out — and more power to him if that’s the case since other projects he’s helmed (most notably the excellent sci-fi TV series Firefly) do indeed show that he’s capable of distinctive, highly imaginative drama — but it’s just as likely that Marvel will replace him on this film’s inevitable sequel with some youthful up-and-comer who can deliver essentially the same product and will work for half the price.

Once the novelty of having all these superheroes on screen together wears off, I predict that we’re going to realize we’ve been had a little bit here — but seeing as how we had a pretty good time in the process, there’s no real harm done.

Trailer: True Blood Season 5

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

With the end of the 2nd season of the Walking Dead and Game of Thrones entering the final half of its sophomore season, I am now impatiently waiting for the return of True Blood (or as my Aunt Kate refers to it, “that show with all the naked people”).

In order to make me even more impatient (as if that’s actually possible), HBO has released this trailer for the 5th season of True Blood.

The show with all the naked people will return on June 10th.

The Amazing Spider-Man 4-Minute Preview

Posted on by Arleigh

Tonight saw the release throughout all NBC channels (both network and cable) of a 4-minute preview of Columbia Pictures’ entry in this summer’s blockbuster season: The Amazing Spider-Man.

The preview begins with new footage that shows Andrew Garfield saving a young boy from a dangling SUV held only by him as Spider-Man and his super-strong web. Once this sequence ends the rest of the preview is mostly a rehash of scenes from the last two trailers the studio has released.

With Marvel Studio and Walt Disney Pictures hitting the jackpot with the recently released superhero team film The Avengers the other big films this summer, especially the superhero ones, have their work cut out for them. It’s going to be a tough going for this web-slinging reboot to capture the magic the original Raimi film was able to bottle when in came out in 2002, but from the looks of this preview and the trailers before it there’s a chance it could do so again.

The Amazing Spider-Man is set for a July 3, 2012 release date.

Review: Game of Thrones S2E07 “A Man Without Honor”

Posted on by Arleigh

“It’s hard to put a leash on a dog once you put a crown on it’s head.” — Tyrion Lannister

“A Man Without Honor” is the name of tonight’s episode which also happens to be the season’s seventh. How time flies when one is enjoying a series, but this is amplified when it’s a series that only runs ten episodes a season. Considering that HBO’s other hit series in True Blood gets twelve episodes a season makes giving the channel’s biggest hit and moneymaker only ten a season an interesting choice. Having ten episodes a season definitely allows for the series to not dawdle on too many subplots, but it also means certain characters and events in the book source either got dropped (some for the better and others not so well-handled) or amalgamated with others to create something wholly different. Tonight we got some great examples of how changes from book-to-screen made for a better narrative.

Tonight’s episode moved from place to place. We get to spend some time with Jon Snow north of the Wall with his wildling prisoner Ygritte. There’s some definite sexual tension between these two young people as Ygritte constantly baits Jon about their night spent close together (only for warmth as Jon kept trying to tell the young lass) and how Snow and his brother Crows must either be having congress with each other (something Jon denies very loudly) or with the local goat population (for some reason his denials about this weren’t as loud). Throughout their exchanges Jon continues to act the honorable man he was brought up to be by his father Ned Stark and he even tells Ygritte this though something he wishes he kept to himself if her reaction to the information was any indication.

Jon’s honorable behavior during his time with Ygritte and the consequence of it at the end of their part in tonight’s episode was a constant reminder about how Ned Stark’s brand of honor and intractable principles really has no place in the world created by George R.R. Martin. It’s idealism that masks the truth of the reality around them and Jon Snow, like his father before him, might be too late in learning the true costs of his idealism.

The same could be said about Daenerys over at Qarth as she has to deal with more of her followers dead because they decided to trust and follow her. Then there’s the little thing about her dragonlings still missing and taken by one of the Thirteen. It’s easy enough to surmise that the warlocks of Qarth had taken her dragons, but as to the reason other than wanting them still eludes the young Targaryen Queen-to-be. It’s left to her guardian knight and close adviser Ser Jorah Mormont to try and talk some sense into her, but as her experiences in Essos has clearly been teaching her it’s trust that she can’t afford to have anymore. Whether it’s others offering their trust or her being asked to trust in others. Here we see Ser Jorah testing the boundaries of Daenerys’ trust towards him and we see even more clearly that he has had and continues to have some very strong feelings towards his khaleesi that even Daenerys begins to suspect.

Unlike Jon up North, at least Daenerys has begun to shed some of the idealism she started this series with and looking towards learning how to truly become a ruler of people. Once again idealism was the casualty in this part of the episode but one that might help Daenerys survive a little longer in this deadly game of thrones.

Tonight’s episode also sees the return of the Kingslayer. He still remains a captive of the Starks, but now has a jailhouse companion in a distant relative the young Alton Lannister who once squired for him in years past. This section of the episode was really one extended exposition done well as we get a deeper look into the backstory of Jaime Lannister. He’s much more than the male half of the twincest pairing of the show, but unlike Cersei he seems to have accepted his lot in life and the sort of figurative bastard he has turned out. His reminiscing to Alton about his own time as a young squire was quite honorable in putting the young man at ease, but once again Jaime continues to be this show’s rare survivor in that he uses everyone he thinks could be of use to help him survive one day longer even if it means killing several young men in less than a night and throwing the hypocrisy of the Stark honor back at Catelyn’s face.

Jaime might be a villain, but he’s one who doesn’t blame his lot in life for turning him so and sees clearly how those who try to look down on him might be just as sullied and dishonorable as he is. He just happens to admit to it.

The best part of tonight’s episode once again come from one of the major changes from book-to-tv. It’s an extended scene between Tywin Lannister and Arya as the two sit down for a meal and talk. It never happened in the novel, but the fact that the showrunners thought this peculiar relationship between the elder Lannister and the young Stark daughter would make for some strong scenes and dialogue was a change that I fully accept. The back and forth between Charles Dance as Tywin and Maisie Williams as the young Arya was great. Whenever Tywin makes mention of how observant and learned his cupbearer seem to be Arya would have a ready-made reply. Even when Tywin makes it known that he believes her to be more than a local peasant girl but more akin to a noble-born Arya doesn’t break stride and continues her charade.

What’s great about this scene is how we’re able to believe Arya’s deft ability to stay in character even when she knows she might have been found out. She’s learned to play the part to help her survive and even gotten better to hide her true feelings from her face. Even Tywin seem to be quite impressed by Arya and even though he might have some suspicions about her true upbringing he’s still not fully sure about the truth of it so he bides his time. The two characters really look like they would’ve made the perfect father and daughter if not for their present situation.

Finally, we see just how low a man without honor can go. Back in Winterfell we see “Prince” Theon blaming everyone but himself for allowing the two young Stark boys to escape the castle. We see how he’s turned to violence as a way to court respect from his men when all it does is just show just how much a child playing at ruler he truly looks. What’s worst is how the episode ends with what looked like two young figures burnt beyond recognition and hanged above the castle gates and Theon looking like he had a hand in it. If people had any sort of sympathy for the Greyjoy son tonight’s episode did much in burning those bridges.

Tonight’s episode did much to grow some of the characters in the show, but also show how the war between the five kings have shown particular characters faults and virtues. With just three more episodes remaining in the season we’re getting close to the culmination of the war or, at the very least, narrowing down even more pretenders to the rule of Westeros before we look towards season 3 of HBO’s Game of Thrones.

6 Trailers For Mother’s Day

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Hi there!  If you’re a mom, Happy Mother’s Day.  And if you’re not, you better go do something nice for your mom or else run the risk of being given back to the gypsies that she got you from.  (Incidentally, there’s no shame in being a gypsy adoptee.  According to my sisters, I was left in the backyard by a wandering gypsy band and just look at me now…) 

Here’s the latest edition of Lisa Marie’s Favorite Grindhouse and Exploitation Film Trailers for you to watch and maybe (or maybe not) enjoy on this temperate Sunday….

1) Teenage Mother (1967)

I’ve featured this trailer before but I figured that since it’s Mother’s Day…

2) The Bloody Brood (1959)

Yes, this is the same Bloody Brood that I reviewed on this website a few days ago.

3) Operation Kid Brother (1967)

Come October, we’re going to be reviewing every single James Bond film ever made here at the Shattered Lens.  Until then, why not enjoy this trailer featuring Sean Connery’s kid brother Neil?

4) Lightning Bolt (1966)

Much like Operation Kid Brother, this appears to be another Italian attempt to make a Bond-style film.  Apparently, Neil Connery is not featured in this one.

5) Avenging Angel (1985)

Awwww…this movie was released the year I was born. 🙂

And finally, let’s close things out with a film that’s become such a classic and is so influential that film snobs tend to forget that it’s essentially a very well-made grindhouse film…

6) Psycho (1960)

An Underrated Quickie With Lisa Marie: The Five-Year Engagement (dir. by Nicholas Stoller)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

When Jeff and I recently went to see The Five-Year Engagement, we literally had the entire theater to ourselves.  Seriously, that evening, we were apparently the only two people who took a look at the showtimes for the AMC Valley View and say, “Let’s see the Five-Year Engagement.” 

Now, I’m not complaining because, quite frankly, we enjoyed having that theater to ourselves. However, later that night, I found myself thinking about the empty theater and the fact that very few of the film lovers in my circle of friends had expressed much interest in The Five-Year Engagement.  The critics, in general, have been kind to the film but audiences seem to view it as a Netflix film at best. 

That’s a shame because, oh my God, The Five-Year Engagement is such a sweet film!  Seriously, I loved this movie!

Produced by Judd Apatow and directed by Nicholas Stoller, The Five-Year Engagement is a romantic comedy about a chef (played, quite well, by Jason Segal) and a psychologist (played by Emily Blunt, who is apparently destined to star in 65% of the romantic comedies released this year) who get engaged and end up remaining engaged for the next five years as the marriage ceremony is continually delayed by everything from Segal’s best friend marrying Blunt’s sister to the couple moving to Ann Arbor when Blunt gets a job working at the University of Michigan.  Along the way, various relatives die while still waiting for the blessed event and Segal and Blunt’s relationship struggles to survive against the distractions of everyday life.

The Five-Year Engagement isn’t a perfect film.  As often seems to happen with films produced by Judd Apatow, the film is about 20 minutes too long and sometimes the mix of sentimentality and crudeness is a bit awkward.  I could have done without an extended sequence in which Jason Segal (after having settled into life in Michigan) is revealed to have briefly turned into a crossbow-weilding survivalist. 

However, in the end, those flaws don’t matter because the Five-Year Engagement is, at heart, a sincerely sweet movie.  Jason Segal and Emily Blunt have a very real and very likable chemistry.  They make for a cute couple and you really find yourself hoping that they stay together.  Playing, respectively, Segal’s best friend and Blunt’s sister, Chris Pratt and Alison Brie both provide strong comedic support.  One of my favorite moments features Brie attempting to give a toast at Segal and Blunt’s engagement party and quickly dissolving into teary gibberish.  (Admitedly, one reason I loved this scene is because I did the same thing when I attempted to give a toast at my sister Megan’s wedding.)  Brie and Blunt also have another hilarious scene where they find themselves discussing realtionship matters while pretending to be Elmo and Cookie Monster.  It’s an odd but ultimately truthful moment.

Ignore the naysayers.  The Five-Year Engagement is sweet movie that deserves to be seen.

10 Reasons Why I Hated Season 8 Of The Office

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

(Note: This post originally appeared on my new TV-related blog, What Is Lisa Marie Watching Tonight?)

This has been a truly depressing television season for me and it all comes down to one show.  For seven season, I loved the Office.  Even when it wasn’t at it best, it was still the show that I based my Thursday nights around.  And yet, as I watched the finale of eighth season of The Office last night, I breathed a sigh of relief once it was finally over.  Why?  Because season 8 was not only the worst season of the Office so far but it was also one of the worst seasons of television that I’ve ever sat through. 

Don’t get me wrong.  I knew that this season of The Office (the first without Steve Carell’s iconic Michael Scott) would be a rough one.  However, nothing could have prepared me for just how bad season 8 would become.  Looking back over season 8, it’s a struggle to remember one memorable line or moment that made me laugh out loud.  Instead, most of my memories center around being annoyed that the show that I loved could have possibly become so …. bad.

In the future, I’m going to write a post detailing how I would have handled the first post-Carell season of The Office.  But before I write that post up, I want to take a few moments to highlight 10 reasons why I hated season 8 of the Office.

(And, believe me, it wasn’t easy to narrow it down to just ten…)

1) Andy Bernard

I have to admit that my heart sank a little bit when, during the Season 8 premiere, it was revealed that the show would now center around the character of Andy Bernard.  Even before Steve Carell left the show, I always dreaded any episode that revolved around Andy.  Andy, who started out as such a perfectly annoying villain in season 3, had developed into a rather pathetic and needy character and Andy-centric episodes were usually the weakest of their respective seasons.  It didn’t help that Ed Helms — who is a great character actor — has a tendency to go overboard whenever cast in a lead role.

So, I knew from the start of the season that I wouldn’t be totally happy with Andy Bernard as manager but I had no way of guessing just how much I would eventually come to despise the character.  Whether he was weakly pursuing Erin or cruelly dumping his previous girlfriend twice in one day or failing to sue Robert California for giving his job away to Nellie, Andy proved himself to be just as stupid as Michael Scott but also a hundred times more pathetic.  It was impossible to root for Andy because so many of his problems were of his own creation.  As needy as Andy was as a character, Ed Helms was just as needy as a performer and every time he showed up on-screen, I felt like he was begging me to love him as opposed to giving me a reason to do so.  It didn’t help that the show’s writers devoted three or four episodes to having everyone in the Office basically spend half an hour tellings us that Andy was a great manager and we really should love him.

At the end of last night’s finale, Andy — after being unemployed for the last few episodes — got his job back in the least plausible way imaginable.  Instead of firing Nellie, he gave her a new job and then he flashed that big, toothy grin of his.

Fortunately, for the first time during season 8, he resisted the temptation to break out into song.

2) Nellie

Nellie showed up during the second half of the season and essentially appointed herself as the new manager of the office.  It was a plot development that made no sense and it was hard not to feel like the show’s producers were trying to force the audience to love Tate as much as they did.   

Yes, the writers of The Office love Catherine Tate and maybe the audience would love her to if  Nellie, the character she was playing, had any real reason for existing beyond the fact that the writers wanted to work with Catherine Tate. 

Since Tate had no real reason to be on the show, it was hard not to resent the amount of screentime that was devoted to her.  It’s also hard to look forward to the fact that it appears that she’ll be an even more prominent character during season 9.

3) Robert California

At the start of Season 8, we were informed that Robert California (played by James Spader) had somehow managed to talk his way into being named CEO of Sabre.  We were told that he was a mysterious, charismatic figure who might be a genius.

Instead, he turned out to be just another inconsistent character whose personality changed from episode to episode until finally, he was revealed to be so pathetic that he couldn’t even handle Nellie declaring herself to be the new regional manager.  In his first few appearances, James Spader brought his trademark quirkiness to the role but then, once it became apparent that show’s writers couldn’t be bothered to figure out who Robert California actually was, Spader pretty much gave up on giving a performance.  Instead, he just became a name actor getting paid a lot of money to do not much of anything.

And yet the writers still insisted on trying to convince us that Robert California was an interesting character.  The first half of the season was largely devoted to the character.  We went to his mansion, we met his soon-to-be ex-wife, and we continually found ourselves wondering why the CEO of a Florida-based corporation was spending all of his time in Scranton, Pennsylvania.

Robert California (and James Spader) will not be back for Season 9.  In the final episode, Robert California announced that his latest business venture would involve young women from Eastern Europe.  It was an unfunny end to an unfunny character.

4) Kevin and Erin: Just How Dumb Are They?

This has been an issue for a while but it really became obvious (and annoying) as things got more and more cartoonish during Season 8.  Erin and Kevin both seem to be stupid when the plot calls for it and just dumb when the plot doesn’t.  It wouldn’t be so much of a problem if not for the fact that there’s no logic to their occasional stupidity.  It’s never been firmly established just how stupid either one of them is and, as a result, their inability to understand the simplest of things feels more like lazy writing than anything else.

With Erin, this is an issue because this season was largely built around Andy pursuing her.  For a plot like that to be effective, you have to care about the characters and to care about the characters, you have to see some sort of vague reality in them even when they’re threatening to go over the top.

As for Kevin — well, where to begin?  Remember how, in the earlier seasons, Kevin seemed like he actually had the most active life out of the office of any of the people working there?  He would show up with a jaunty little hat on his head and he would drop hints about being addicted to gambling.  He was even the drummer in not one but two cover bands!

Now, he’s just another moron in the corner.

5) Angela and the Senator

Yes, we get it.  The senator’s gay.  It was funny the first four times that various characters went, “The senator’s gay!” but now, it just feels like a lazy punchline. 

Wouldn’t it have been fun to see Angela and the Senator’s wedding?  Seriously, this is a show that had a tradition of funny wedding episodes but, when given the perfect opputunity,  the show’s writers ignored a chance to showcase one of the strongest members of the original supporting cast.  Instead, Angela (and so many others) were just pushed off to the side so that we could spend more time with Robert California.    

6) What Does Jim Have To Smirk About?

Seriously, the man’s stuck in a rut.

7) When Did Pam Give Up On Being An Artist?

Whenever I watch reruns of The Office, I’m surprised by how much I relate to Pam.  That’s mostly because the Pam of the first few seasons seems to have very little in common with the  Pam of the 7th and 8th seasons.  Do you remember when Pam was an artist and, even more importantly, do you remember how great it was to watch as she finally started standing up for herself and following her dream during the first four seasons?

As I watched this last season, I thought about that wonderfully sweet scene from seasons past when Jim showed Pam the “artist’s studio” that he had set up in the garage.  And I wondered if that art studio was still sitting in the garage, untouched since Pam has apparently decided to give up on her dreams and just spend all of her time obsessing on the people that she works with.

8) What do Ryan and Gabe do all day?

Like seriously. 

9) Val (and others)

Seriously, what was the point of Val’s character this season?  If you’ve watched the entire season, do you know anything about Val beyond the fact that Darryl developed a crush on her?  I didn’t even catch that her name was Val until around her fifth appearance.  Obviously, the show’s writers expected us to take some sort of emotional stake in Darryl’s attempts to woo her but they never bothered to figure out just who exactly Val was meant to be.   

The same can be said, of course, of just about every new character on The Office this season.  Can you remember the name of the woman who Andy dumped so he could (finally) be with Erin?  How about Cathy, the girl who, out of nowhere, tried to seduce Jim and then mysteriously vanished from the show? 

Admittedly, this problem didn’t start with season 8.  Starting back in season 5, the Office developed a bad habit of carefully introducing and then randomly abandoning characters and plotlines.  (Remember Danny, the superhot traveling salesman played by Timothy Olyphant?)   However, it’s never bothered me in the past quite as much as it did during season 8.  Past seasons at least had someone there to anchor the show even when the writers seemed to get distracted.

And that leads me to the tenth reason why I hated season 8 of The Office…

 10) No Michael Scott

That, I think, pretty much says it all.

A Canadian Quickie With Lisa Marie: The Bloody Brood (dir. by Julian Roffman)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

As part of my ongoing mission to see all of the film’s featured in Mill Creek’s 50 Chilling Classics box set, I watched a 65-minute Canadian film called The Bloody Brood last night.

First released in 1959 and filmed in moody, noir-ish black-and-white, The Bloody Brood tells the story of a low-level drug dealer and aspiring beatnik named Nico (Peter Falk).  One night, while hanging out at the local coffeehouse and listening to decadent jazz, Nico witnesses a man drop dead of a heart attack.  Intrigued by the man’s sudden death, Nico and his nervous friend, a tv director named Francis (Ron Hartmann), decide that they want to experience what it would be like to deliberately kill someone.  Before you can say “Leopold and Loeb,” Nico and Francis are feeding a random stranger a hamburger laced with ground glass.  That stranger, a hard-working telegram delivery man named Ricky (George Sperdakous), later dies of an intestinal hemorrhage.

Unknown to Nico and Francis, Ricky has an older brother named Cliff (Jack Betts) and Cliff doesn’t believe that his brother’s death was an accident.  With the covert help of Detective McLeod (Robert Christie), Cliff starts to investigate his brother’s death.  Cliff eventually meets Ellie (Barbara Lord), a disillusioned woman who has fallen in with Nico and his murderous crowd.

The Bloody Brood is an unexpected surprise, a genuinely entertaining B-movie that more than overcomes the confines of its low-budget and limited running time.  While Peter Falk is the obvious center of the picture and steals every scene that he’s in with his coldly charismatic style of evil, the entire film is well cast and well acted with Hartmann and Betts both bringing unexpected nuance to their roles.  However, the real star of the film is director Julian Roffman who gives the film a shadowy and threatening noir-look. 

In many ways, The Bloody Brood represents everything I love about the low-budget, often sordid B-movies of the 50s and 60s.  Working with limited resources and a small cast, director Julian Roffman managed to create a genuinely memorable movie.  Films like The Bloody Brood continue to serve as proof that you don’t need millions of dollars to make a good film.  You just need a strong creative vision and the imagination to make that vision a reality.