Guilty Pleasure No. 4: The Jeremy Kyle Show

Posted on February 13, 2013 by Lisa Marie Bowman

I’ll just be honest about this.

I do not like Jeremy Kyle.

Jeremy Kyle is an English talk show host. He hosts shows in both the United Kingdom and, since 2011, in the USA. On both shows, he deals with the usual daytime television topics: infidelity, out-of-control teenagers, interventions, DNA tests, and lie detectors. He is also perhaps the most unpleasant person that I have ever seen on television.

As opposed to other talk show hosts who pretend to be impartial, Jeremy Kyle is always quick to let us know that he hates his guests even more than we do. When someone confesses to cheating on his or her spouse, Jeremy reacts as if he was the one being cheated on. With a permanent scowl on his face and speaking in a tone of voice that reeks of manufactured contempt, Jeremy Kyle repeatedly tells us that his main concern is the children and that he has no respect for anyone who he feels has put their own selfish desires first.

“In the UK,” he’ll find an excuse to shout during every episode, “we have a saying — keep it in your trousers, mate!”

In many cases, Kyle’s guests deserve to be yelled at but that doesn’t make Jeremy Kyle any less annoying. For all of his shouting and his moral outrage, Jeremy Kyle is far too obvious a showman to be taken seriously as a sincere crusader for family values. He’s made a career out of exploiting that which he claims to condemn and the fact that he seems so totally humorless about that fact makes him just as bad as the people he has on his show. He’s a bully but he’s also a surprisingly ineffective one. The main image that one retains from the Jeremy Kyle Show is the sight of a husband and wife screaming at each other while Jeremy impotently demands that they both be quiet. The only time that Jeremy really has any control over his stage is when he has his ever present security team standing a few feet in front of him.

When I told my British friends that Jeremy Kyle now had a show in the States, they all had the same reaction. They apologized. As for me, I refused to sign that petition to deport Piers Morgan but if anyone starts a petition to deport Jeremy Kyle, I’ll be more than happy to put down my signature.

So, you may be asking, where does the pleasure from this guilty pleasure come from?

It comes from knowing that there’s always a possibility that one of Jeremy Kyle’s guests might lose it and punch Jeremy out. Every time I’ve seen the Jeremy Kyle Show, I’ve always been struck by just how much everyone on the stage appears to hate Jeremy. When I do watch this show, it’s because I’m waiting for those priceless moments when somebody will tell Jeremy to shut up and his face will briefly turn red. I doubt that I’m alone in laughing whenever a guest unexpectedly jumps to his feet and Jeremy reacts by scurrying behind a security guard. In those moments, Jeremy Kyle’s superior mask falls away and he’s revealed for the pathetic little martinet that he is.

On those rare occasions that I waste my time watching the Jeremy Kyle Show, I’m watching because something like this could happen:

That’s the real pleasure of The Jeremy Kyle Show.

Previous Guilty Pleasures:

Guilty Pleasure No. 3: Every Rose Has Its Thorns

Posted on February 6, 2013 by Arleigh

Time for a new guilty pleasure and this time around we hit the music scene with a song that everyone seems to make fun of but whcih they also secretly love to sing-a-long to.

“Every Rose Has Its Thorns” by the hair metal group Poison has to be the cheesiest of all power ballad that came out during the 80’s hair metal era. The group were so intent on making it stand out from the rest of their hair metal brethren’s own power ballads that they decided to go all acoustic guitar to start things to give it that extra deep thoughts-theme. I will admit that I listened to this song like it was going out of style when it first came out.

What can I say? I was a sophomore in high school and the hormones were kicking in hard.

For someone whose own love of metal ranges from thrash, speed, power, Viking to black it’s such a rose amongst the bramble that this hair metal power ballad will still get me to sing along to this day. Though I usually try to make sure I’m alone….XD

Every Rose Has Its Thorns

We both lie silently still
in the dead of the night
Although we both lie close together
We feel miles apart inside

Was it something I said or something I did
Did my words not come out right
Though I tried not to hurt you
Though I tried
But I guess that’s why they say

Chorus:
Every rose has its thorn
Just like every night has its dawn
Just like every cowboy sings his sad, sad song
Every rose has its thorn

Yeah it does

I listen to her favorite song
playing on the radio
Hear the DJ say loves a game of easy come and
easy go
But I wonder does he know
Has he ever felt like this
And I know that you’d be here right now
If I could have let you know somehow
I guess

Chorus

Though it’s been a while now
I can still feel so much pain
Like the knife that cuts you the wound heals
but the scar, that scar remains

Solo

I know I could have saved our love that night
If I’d known what to say
Instead of makin’ love
We both made our separate ways

But now I hear you found somebody new
and that I never meant that much to you
To hear that tears me up inside
And to see you cuts me like a knife
I guess

Chorus

Previous Guilty Pleasures:

Guilty Pleasure No. 2: Save The Last Dance (dir by Thomas Carter)

Posted on January 30, 2013 by Lisa Marie Bowman

When Arleigh posted his pick for the first guilty pleasure review here on the Shattered Lens, it made me think about just what exactly constitutes a guilty pleasure.

I’ve always been very much of the belief that you should never feel guilty about feeling pleasure. Of course, speaking as someone who was raised Catholic, I can tell you that’s a lot easier said than done. However, I’ve always been the type who can find something to love in just about any film (with the exception of Avatar). I’ve never felt any sort of guilt about the fact that I can both love a film like Citizen Kane and a film like Confessions of a Go-Go Girl. If anything, I take a lot of pride in the fact that I can see the value of a film like Confessions of a Go-Go Girl.

What, I wondered, could I possibly write about?

And that’s when I remembered Save The Last Dance.

Released in 2001 and produced by MTV films, Save the Last Dance tells the story of Sara (played by Julia Stiles), a high school dance student who fails her audition for Juilliard on the same day that her mother is killed in a car accident. The guilt-stricken Sara gives up on ballet, moves in with her estranged father, and transfers to an urban high school in Chicago.

Sara is literally the only white girl in the entire school but still manages to befriend Chenille (Kerry Washington), who takes her to a club where she meets Chenille’s brother, Derek (Sean Patrick Thomas). Despite the disapproval of apparently everyone else in Chicago, Sara and Derek start dating. Derek encourages Sara to try out for Juilliard again but, as the date of Sara’s audition approaches, Derek finds himself pressured to take part in a drive-by shooting.

When Save The Last Dance first came out, I was a 15 year-old ballet student whose life pretty much was all about dancing.. I went to the movie with some friends from dance class and I have to admit that we were pretty catty in the way that only dancers can be. Our lives, after all, revolved around dance and we weren’t about to cut Julia Stiles any slack just because she spent four months taking ballet lessons before making Save The Last Dance. While the rest of the audience was content to enjoy Save The Last Dance for what it was, we fixated on how awkward Julia looked during her second audition for Juilliard. We commented on how nervous her eyes looked whenever she was dancing and how she really didn’t have a dancer’s body.

As one of my friends put it, “There’s no way she would have gotten into Juilliard,” as if Save The Last Dance was meant to be a documentary about ballet as opposed to a teen romance film.

But you know what?

Though I never admitted it to my dance friends, I enjoyed Save The Last Dance when I first saw it and I still enjoy it today. Yes, it is obvious that Julia Stiles was not a trained ballet dancer and yes, the film’s look at race relations is more than a little bit idealized but so what? Sean Patrick Thomas is hot, the club scenes are fun (and Julia Stiles is more believable as a club dancer than as a ballerina), and director Thomas Carter is appropriately shameless when it comes to manipulating our emotions. When I watch this film now, instead of being critical of the film’s unrealistic portrayal of the dancer’s life, I instead see it as a dramatization of every girl’s ideal fantasy. Like the best fantasies, Save The Last Dance tells us that — if you just believe — you can have it all: hip friends to protect you, a hot guy to love you, and a second chance to go to Juilliard.

Or as Derek says to Sara, “You can do it. Sara, you were born to do it.”

(Incidentally, if not for a memorable supporting character in Save The Last Dance, a New Jersey girl named Nicole Polizzi would never have been nicknamed Snookie. So there’s that, as well.)

And so, with this post, allow me to officially announce to the world: I love Save The Last Dance and I am not ashamed!

To quote the tagline from Save The Last Dance’s theatrical poster, “The only person you need to be is yourself.”

Previous Guilty Pleasures

Half-Baked

Guilty Pleasure No. 1: Half Baked

Posted on January 28, 2013 by Arleigh

“Abba Zabba….You’re my only friend” — Thurgood

With the first month of January 2013 almost coming to an end I thought it was high time to introduce a new feature to the site. This one shall be called “Guilty Pleasure” and it will encompass all sorts of entertainment examples that I and those who on the site who wish to participate that they consider a personal guilty pleasure. It could be any film, music, book or games that one considers a personal favorite despite not being highly accepted by critics and the general population, at large.

The first entry to “Guilty Pleasure” is a stoner comedy that I always end up stopping whatever activity I’m doing at the moment to watch. I have it on DVD, will watch it on cable whenever it’s on and if a Blu-Ray version ever gets released I probably would buy it just to have it. This guilty pleasure film is 1998’s Half Baked starring Dave Chappelle and…well let’s just say all one needs to know is that it stars Dave Chappelle. It’s a mary jane flick that’s reached the levels of the Cheech and Chong flicks of the 70’s and 80’s.

My brother and I have seen this film so many times that we could quote scenes from it almost perfectly. I may not be quite the pothead that the characters in this film end up being, but anyone who has seen Half Baked knows at least one or two who fit the different type of stoners we find in it.

In the immortal words of Sampson Simpson: “YES! Cuban B!”

A Guilty Pleasure — The Above The Influence “We About To Go Get Twisted” PSA

Posted on January 18, 2012 by Lisa Marie Bowman

We’ve been talking a lot about guilty pleasures here at the Shattered Lens. Most people, when they hear the term “guilty pleasure” assume that the term applies only to film and the occasional episode of Ringer. However, I would argue that there are wonderful guilty pleasures all around us. You just have to be willing to look.

One of my favorite guilty pleasures is watching anti-drug PSAs that feature either incorrect or nonexistent slang. As an example, allow me to offer you this little gem from the whole Above The Influence anti-drug campaign. In this one, a student in a diner learns that choosing not to get “twisted” guarantees you a free meal.

I love this commercial almost as much as I love the “A.J” Broadview Home Security commercial and that’s saying something!

A Guilty Pleasure – Tron:Legacy

Posted on January 16, 2012 by Leonard Wilson

For January, one of the themes for this month were “Guilty Pleasures”- those films that you simply can’t get enough of, despite how good or bad they may actually be. My first contribution for this is 2010’s Tron: Legacy.

When I look at Tron:Legacy, I see two things. I see a missed opportunity in trying to break new ground for the story, and a hint of promise from it’s director, Joseph Kosinski. I attended the premiere for the movie at the IMAX with a friend and his son, and was totally with it for the first half of the film. However, in it’s second half, it slowed down just like the film before it and admittedly, I almost fell asleep. Let’s face it, Tron as an overall universe was never really that strong.

And yet, I watch it just about every time it’s on, if only for the Lightcycle Race and Clu’s speech. Seeing the grid in an updated view and the new look of the light cycles always brings a smile to my face. Granted, it could be listed just as a Scene I Love, but I find I can tolerate most of the film.

Let’s go with the Missed Opportunities first.

Tron: Legacy’s biggest problem is it really only gave the audience a rehash of the original tale. While the angle with Sam and Kevin Flynn were interesting, along with Clu being a villain this time around, I feel the writers really could have taken the story places. Instead, they went the lazy route and decided to go with what anyone who saw the original film could remember – a problem that I feel plagues many sequels / remakes of old films. I figure if you’re going to do a sequel to film that’s more than 5 years old, be seriously prepared to throw something (at least one thing) new on the table.

When James Cameron made Aliens back in 1986, he took Ridley Scott’s tale and built on it, expanding on the Aliens universe with the addition of the Colonial Marines and the Alien Queen, giving the creatures themselves a sense of heirarchy. For Tron: Legacy, the only real new element would be the ISO’s, but then we’re never really shown just what they’re capable of, within or outside of the grid. It’s an empty element that only serves the purpose for bring Sam and Kevin together.

Tron: Legacy also suffers from a Video Game Tie-In Syndrome, something I’ve hated ever since The Matrix Reloaded. Back when that movie was due to come out, Warner Bros. And Atari came up with the idea of making a Video Game that would bridge the gap between certain elements in the story. If you play Enter the Matrix, you’ll actually have a slightly more complete story than you would by just seeing the film. That robs the audience of content. Granted, they don’t need to know everything, but Tron: Legacy has a few elements that are only really understood in the story for it’s video game, Tron: Evolution.

Then there’s the sense of promise.

Joseph Kosinski was originally a commercial director, his most famous being one for the game Gears of War that featured the Gary Jules version of “Mad World”. Between this and his Halo commercials, it made sense that for the visual style that Tron: Legacy needed, he’d make a perfect fit. Tron needed something new, wasn’t that critical of a franchise to play with and gave Kosinski the freedom to take it wherever he wanted to go (within the constraints of what the writers gave him, of course). For a first time film director, I think he did very well, but that’s just me. It should also be noted that it was his idea to bring on Daft Punk for the soundtrack. If the movie is remembered for anything over time, it’ll be for the music, because that score is just cool.

Tron:Legacy on a visual scale is really beautiful, and it’s cool to see the design updates in the machines, by way of Digital Domain and other F/X companies. That alone is enough for me to watch this repeatedly (it’s on as I’m writing this). I haven’t found myself compelled to pick up the Blu-Ray, but Starz and Netflix have it available to watch.

If he’s lucky, Kosinski may end up getting a project that he’ll really take off with. Maybe it’ll be something of his own making or another remake, but for me it’ll be interesting to see where he goes.