Yearly Archives: 2022

Lisa Marie’s Week In Television: 5/29/22 — 6/4/22

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Let’s check out the butcher’s bill for this week:

Allo Allo (Sunday Night, PBS)

Having returned from England, Rene was named the editor of the town newspaper.  He was expected to just publish propaganda.  Michelle was excited to have access to a printing press.  The latest plan to get the Airmen back to Britain is to make a raft out of telephone poles.  We’ll see how that goes.

Barry (Sunday Night, HBO)

Between Fuches somehow surviving getting shot at point blank range, Vanessa Bayer making silly noises as she explained what she thought Sally could bring to a show about Medusa living in SoHo, and that amazingly highway dirt bike chase, this week’s episode of Barry was one of the best overall episodes of the year so far.  Who would have thought Bill Hader would be so good at directing action?

Creepshow (Shudder)

I finished up season 3 of Creepshow this week.  What a wonderfully macabre show!  It’s just as ghoulish as American Horror Story without being so annoying self-impressed.

Full House (Sunday Evening, MeTV)

Much like Rene on Allo Allo, DJ become editor of the school newspaper!  Kimmie Gibbler wanted to report on sports.  It led to a big fight but things worked out in the end.  Meanwhile, Joey tried to direct a commercial with Danny and Rebecca.  It led to a big fight but things worked out in the end.  Did I already say that?  Anyway, it was indeed a very full house.

Maid (Netflix)

At ten episodes, this miniseries was a bit on the long side but it was still a very good show.  Margaret Qualley played an aspiring writer who, having left her abusive husband, finds work as a maid while trying to move forward with her life and her daughter.  Qualley gave a great performance in the lead role and the show dealt with serious issues without ever descending into melodrama.

Norm McDonald: Nothing Special (Netflix)

In his final comedy special, Norm McDonald talked about …. well, he actually spent a lot of time talking about death.  He was undeniably funny, an older comedian who could talk about how the world was changing without coming across as being either mean-spirited or performatively woke.  What was interesting about this special (which was recorded in his home studio, in one take) was watching how McDonald would seemingly just stumble from point to point while still always bringing everything together in the end in a way that revealed the fierce intelligence that hid beneath the “average guy who likes to drink beer” persona.  At first, I thought he was just rambling but then I noticed that he kept returning to his love of the color yellow.

The final 30 minutes of the special were made up of David Letterman, Conan O’Brien, Molly Shannon, Dave Chapelle, Adam Sandler, and David Spade talking about Norm and his special.  The roundtable was mostly interesting just for the obvious the affection that everyone involved had for Norm McDonald.  It was sweet to witness.

Pistol (Hulu)

I really enjoyed Danny Boyle’s six-episode miniseries about The Sex Pistols and, needless to say, I related to Sidney Chandler’s Chryssie Hynde.  I have no doubt that the miniseries offers a bit of a romanticized view of how things went down (that’s kind of Boyle’s thing) but it was well-acted, well-shot, and compulsively watchable.  The first four episode were the strongest.  The final two got a bit bogged down with Sid’s heroin addiction but the same can be probably be said of the band itself.  All in all, though, this was a good and respectful miniseries.  I know that Johnny Rotten is not a huge fan of the show and I can kind of understand why because, as I said earlier, it does tend to romanticize things.  But, as played by Anson Boon, Johnny is always one of the most compelling characters in the show.

Saved By The Bell (Peacock)

I watched the second and final season of Peacock’s Saved By The Bell revival on Friday.  This was actually a really good and clever comedy and it’s kind of a shame that it didn’t last longer.  Mario Lopez and Elizabeth Berkley Lauren were both a lot of fun to watch as they not only parodied their SBTB past but, at the same time, managed to make Jessie and Slater into actual human beings.  It was nicely done.

BEAT VALLEY!

We Own This City (Monday Night, HBO)

The finale of We Own This City aired on Monday.  As I watched the first half of the finale, I came dangerously close to writing the show off as just being an example of how heavy-handed David Simon can be when he doesn’t have an equally strong collaborator to work with.  However, I stuck with it and I’m glad I did.  The final 30 minutes, in which we watched the crooked cops get sentenced to prison while also learning that it all ultimately made no difference as far as Baltimore’s culture of corruption was concerned, were undeniably powerful.  The final flashback, to Jon Bernthal pumping up the cops about doing their job, was sad because it represented the failure of the cops to live up to their oath but it was also frightening because it perfectly captured the “warrior cop” mentality.

I have to give special mention to Jamie Hector, playing an otherwise honest homicide detective who was driven to suicide by the possibility of losing his job because he was on the periphery of corruption.  It took me a few episodes to get used to Hector (best-remembered as psycho drug lord Marlo Stanfield on The Wire) in a sympathetic role but he truly delivered an outstanding performance in the final episode.

Film Review: The Sky Is Everywhere (dir by Josephine Decker)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

What is the best way to deal with the grief of losing a family member?

That is the question asked by The Sky Is Everywhere, the latest film from Josephine Decker.  The film’s answer seems to be that the first step is to have a quirky grandma who paints and a stoner uncle who is somewhat inevitably played by Jason Segel and to live in a big, rambling house that, in the real world, you probably wouldn’t be able to afford to keep up.  The second step is to be a member of the band at one of those weird high schools where everyone loves the band kids as opposed to finding them to be insufferably pretentious.  The third step is to have a chance to win admission to Julliard but only if you can play through your grief.  Finally, find yourself a bland and non-threatening love interest who is supposed to be a musical prodigy.  If you can complete those four steps, you might just make it!

The Sky Is Everywhere, which is based on a YA novel that I have not read, stars Grace Kaufman as Lennie Walker, who was extremely close to her sister, Bailey (played, in flashbacks and fantasy sequences, by Havana Rose Liu).  At one point, Lennie explains that she always felt like she was “a show pony” whenever she was next to her sister and that she never really had any identity outside of being Bailey’s supportive sister.  But then Bailey dropped dead while at rehearsals for Romeo and Juliet so Lennie has to find her own identity and decide whether to date the aforementioned bland musician, Joe Fontaine (played by Jacques Coliman), or Bailey’s ex-boyfriend, Toby (Pico Alexander).  Lennie’s real name, by the way, is Lennon and I assume she’s named after John Lennon because that’s just the type of film that The Sky Is Everywhere Is.  What if Lennie’s parents had been fans of the Starlight Vocal Band and decided to name her Taffy?  Would she still be the first chair clarinetist?  It’s something to think about.

(Also, who was Bailey named after?  I’m going to guess Connecticut political boss John Bailey.)

Grandma Walker (played by Cherry Jones) is a painter who keeps insisting that it’s time to pack up Bailey’s things.  Grandma also has a gigantic garden, one that is full of roses.  When Lennie and Joe listen to music together, they’re suddenly floating through the air and surrounded by Grandma’s flowers.  When it comes time for Grandma to finally express her grief over losing Bailey, she does so by destroying the least favorite of her paintings.  “Not my best work,” as Grandma puts it.  But, to be honest, all of Grandma’s paintings suck so I have to wonder how she managed to narrow down her least favorite painting to just one.  Does Grandma make her living as a painter?  I guess so, since Jason Segel’s Uncle Big doesn’t really do much other than smoke weed and pick bugs off his windshield.  

Anyway, I suppose this film was made with good intentions but it’s just too overwritten, overdirected, and overly quirky.  For a film that deals with grief, there’s really not a single authentic moment to be found in the film.  A huge part of the problem is that, though we always hear everyone talking about Bailey, we never really know who Bailey was.  The same is true of Lennie, who is on-screen all of the time but who always just seems like a collection of YA quirks.  She reads Wuthering Heights (presumably because she and Bailey are meant to be like the Bronte sisters).  She plays the clarinet.  She likes to walk among the redwoods and she writes messages on leaves.  These are all legitimate interests but they’re not a personality.  They’re not an identity.  It’s hard not to compare this film to something like CODA, where Ruby’s love of singing and her love for her family were all a big part of her life but they weren’t the only things that defined who she was as a person.  Ruby was an individual, which is something that really can’t be said for any of the characters in The Sky Is Everywhere.  Since none of the characters feel real, there’s no emotional authenticity to any of the big moments.  Instead, it just feels like we’re watching people who learned how to talk and act by watching other YA adaptations.

The Sky Is Everywhere tries so I guess it deserves a half-star for that.  But, in the end, it doesn’t add up too much.

A Blast From The Past: Why Study Speech? (dir by Herk Harvey)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Director Herk Harvey

98 years ago today, director Herk Harvey was born in Lawrence, Kansas.  Today, Harvey is best-remembered for his only feature film, 1962’s Carnival of Souls.  Carnival of Souls is a Halloween favorite here at the Shattered Lens and it’s a film that has been cited as being an influence on everyone from Sam Raimi to Martin Scorsese to David Lynch.

However, before and after he directed that ground-breaking film, Herk Harvey made his lesson directing educational short films.  Today, in honor of what would have been his birthday, the Shattered Lens presents Why Study Speech?  This 1954 short film explains why all high school seniors should study speech when they get to college.  It opens with a somewhat quirky montage that, if nothing else, serves to remind us that we’re watching a short film from the man who, just 8 years later, would direct Carnival of Souls.

And now …. WHY STUDY SPEECH?