Gwen always seems to be having a good time. We should all try to be more like Gwen,
Enjoy!
Tag Archives: Lisa Marie Bowman
May Positivity: Grace Unplugged (dir by Brad J. Silverman)
The 2013 film, Grace Unplugged, is about Grace Trey (AJ Michalka) and her father, Johnny Trey (James Denton). Back in the 80s, Johnny was a rock star who had one hit song and then basically wasted away with his career with drugs and alcohol. Eventually, he got clean and turned his back on rock stardom. Instead, he started writing and performing faith-based music. Like her father, Grace is musically talented but, at the age of 18, she is chafing at the idea of living under his strict rules. Though she plays in his band, she resents the fact that he won’t left her play the songs the way that she wants to.
One day, Johnny is visited by his former manager, Mossy Mostin (Kevin Pollack). (Never trust anyone named Mossy.) Mossy explains that, because it was performed by the winner of an Australian singing competition, Johnny’s one hit is suddenly popular again. Mossy wants Johnny to start recording again. “None of the religious stuff, obviously,” Mossy says. Johnny turns Mossy down but Grace, looking for an escape, records her own version of her father’s song and sends it to Mossy.
After she ditches youth group so that she can go to a movie and subsequently gets yelled at about it by her father, Grace decides to leave home and go to Mossy. Mossy offers to manage Grace. He also tells Grace that he will be totally taking over her image. Soon, Grace finds herself in a phony relationship with a vapid television star (Zane Holtz) and she’s told that she has to be willing to sex up her image if she’s going to be a star. Johnny continually asks her to come back home. Mossy continually pressures her to stop thinking and just listen to her management.
On the positive side, Grace Unplugged avoids the many of the cliches that one might normally expect to come along with a film like this. Grace, for instance, doesn’t get hooked on pills or any other drugs. At worse, she has too much to drink one night and then wakes up with a bad hangover. Grace may often feel confused about what she wants to do with her career and she doesn’t appreciate her father’s strict ways but she never becomes self-destructive or strung out or any of the other things that usually happen in movies like this. As well, Mossy is portrayed as being a bit insensitive but he’s not some sort of a mustache-twirling villain. In fact, the film is smart enough to understand that Grace does have a point about her father. Johnny is too over-protective and over-controlling, especially when it comes to her music. He fears that she’ll make the same mistakes that he did but the viewers never have any doubt that she’s not going to. Grace is often naïve and unsure of what she should do but she’s never portrayed as being weak and I appreciated that.
That said, the film ends on a bit of a heavy-handed note as it reveals itself to be yet another adaptation of the parable of the Prodigal Son. The film’s script conspires to only leave Grace with two options, which is either abandon her family or abandon stardom. In the end, the film’s conclusion feels just a little bit too simplistic.
Lisa Marie’s Week In Television: 5/21/23 — 5/27/23
I didn’t watch much this week. For whatever reason, I really wasn’t in a television mood. Still, I did catch a few shows and here are my thoughts on them!
Barry (Sunday Night, HBO)
Monroe “The Raven” Fuches has his own compound. NoHo Hank is discovering that being a legitimate businessman still means doing a lot of illegal stuff. The FBI is now convinced that Cusineau was Barry’s accomplice. And Sally and John have been kidnapped. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a bit nervous about how all of this going to wrap up on Sunday night. I’m hoping for a happy ending but I don’t know if there is such a thing in the world of Barry.
Beavis and Butt-Head (Paramount Plus)
Oh no! Beavis and Butt-Head are dead! Well, actually, I’m sure they’ll find a way to survive being in that car that just got tossed into the car smasher thing. I mean, Old Beavis survived having one of his kidneys explode so it might just be that the boys are immortal and incapable of dying. That’s kind of a scary thought.
Black Bird (Apple TV+)
I finished up this excellent miniseries on Sunday. Paul Walter Hauser chilled me to the bone. Ray Liotta broke my heart.
Bubblegum Crisis (Night Flight Plus)
I watched the fourth episode of this anime on Saturday morning. It features a black car shoving a bunch of motorcyclists out of the way. That was actually kind of neat because everyone knows the frustration of getting stuck behind a motorcyclist (or, even worse, a freaking bicyclist) in heavy traffic.
City Guys (YouTube)
I have finally started in on the 5th and final season of City Guys. You can read my thoughts on the 4th season finale right here.
Forgive or Forget (YouTube)
Robin Givens talked to teenagers who felt that they had been let down by their mothers. Wait …. where’s Mother Love!?
Great Performances (Monday Morning, PBS)
Danai Gurira played the title role in a Shakespeare in the Pak production of Richard III. Gurira was certainly able to capture the character’s ruthless determination but there still wasn’t much depth to either her performance or the overall production.
Hang Time (YouTube)
I’m nearly done with this show. Yay! Read my thoughts on this week’s episode here!
The Love Boat (Paramount Plus)
I wrote about this week’s episode of The Love Boat here!
The Master (Tubi)
Max Keller, union activist! The third episode of The Master was pretty silly and I wrote about it here!
The Office (Peacock)
“Hey there, Mr. Scott, what you gonna do? What you gonna do? Make our dreams come true!” Can you guess which episode of The Office I watched on Friday afternoon?
Red Dwarf (Monday Morning, PBS)
The long-running British science fiction comedy is now airing on my PBS station so I watched an episode on Monday. Apparently, the last Earthling in existence gave some false memories to his companion, a hologram. The hologram was disappointed to learn that his memories weren’t real. It was funny but it was also kind of sad, to be honest. It made me wonder what I would so if I woke up one day to discover that I was the last remaining person on Earth (or in space, as the case may be).
Survivor (Wednesday Night, CBS)
Another season of Survivor has come to a close and I am off the reality show beat until Big Brother returns in August. Yam Yam, to be honest, got on my last nerve because he was so whiny and petulant. He played a good enough game that he deserved the victory but still, I would have preferred to have seen either Carolyn or Carson take home the money. What was up with Carolyn getting zero votes? That sucked! You can read my thoughts on Survivor here!
Yes, Minister (Monday Morning, PBS)
This week, Jim Hacker caused a panic when he threatened to withhold honours from civil servants who did not reduce their budgets. Of course, no civil servant would ever willingly reduce their budget but what’s the point of being a civil servant without the honours? It was all very British but it was also universal. Bureaucrats love to be rewarded for not doing anything.
Retro Television Reviews: California Dreams 5.14 “The Fashion Man” and 5.15 “The Last Gig”
Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Saturdays, I will be reviewing California Dreams, which ran on NBC from 1992 to 1996. The entire show is currently streaming on YouTube!
This is it. This is the last gig This is the end of California Dreams.
But first….
Episode 5.14 “The Fashion Man”
(Dir by Kevin Sullivan, originally aired on December 7th, 1996)
This episode opens with the Dreams performing at Lorena’s loft, except there’s something off. Everyone looks a year or two younger than they did in the previous episode. Sam is singing that old “Hey Baby” song that we haven’t heard since season 3. Sly is hitting on the girls at the Loft, despite the fact that he and Lorena were a couple the last time we saw them. Later, in the episode, Sam will go crazy over a model named Samson and Tony won’t even raise an eyebrow. And, of course, all of the Dreams are still going to high school despite the fact that we saw them graduate a few episodes earlier.
Yes, this is yet another case of NBC showing episodes out-of-order. In this case, The Fashion Man was filmed for the third season but, for whatever reason, it wasn’t aired until the end of the fifth season. The Fashion Man is silly and a bit derivative of Saved By The Bell and it feels very much like a third season episode. It would be a totally acceptable third season episode but seeing it at the end of the fifth season only serves to remind viewers of how much better most of the fifth season episodes were from the episodes that were made for earlier seasons.
Anyway, in this episode, Sly and the Dreams get conned by a fake modeling agency. The rest of the Dreams figure out that it’s all a scheme but Sly is so desperate that he gives the head of the agency five hundred dollars and ends up with a bunch of useless photographs as the only thing to show for the cost.
Poor Sly! Eventually he does figure things out but only after he spends an additional $250 to cover a fashion show at Sharky’s. The Dreams sabotage the show. They say that they’re doing it to help out Sly but I think they mostly just enjoy humiliating the poor dope. This episode is okay but a bit cartoonish. Let’s move on to …. THE LAST GIG!
Episode 5.15 “The Last Gig”
(Dir by Patrick Maloney, originally aired on December 14th, 1996)
Wipe away those tears. The Dreams are playing their last gig.
This is it. This is the final episode of California Dreams. Everyone has graduated from high school. Everyone is making plans for the future. Many will be going away to college. But Jake is determined to keep the band together. And there’s one last gig on the pier to play!
And wouldn’t you know it …. there’s a producer in the audience! He wants to sign Jake but Jake insists that the producer sign the entire band. The band, though, tells Jake that they are ready to move on and that this is his dream. Even though the producer eventually agrees to sign the entire band, the rest of the Dreams turn down the contract so that they can go off to college and start their lives. With the band’s encouragement, Jake eventually signs.
For the record:
Tiffani went to the University of Hawaii.
Sam moves to England to study physics at Oxford. She and Tony amicably break up. They lasted the longest of any couple on this show and it was interesting to watch their relationship develop.
Mark goes to Julliard to study music and specifically states that he will never have time to return to California. So, I guess he managed to take care of all that community service that he got for nearly killing Tara Reid in the Graduation episode.
Lorena and Sly go to Pacific University together.
And Jake, presumably, goes on to become your grandparent’s favorite rock star.
You know who isn’t mentioned? Matt Garrison, the founder of the band! Oh well. Hopefully, things worked out well for him and Jenny, wherever they are.
Consider just how dismissive I was of this show when I started writing these reviews, I have to say that no one is more surprised than I am about how genuinely touched and moved I was by the final episode. Both the show and its cast really came into their own during the fifth season and it was hard not to feel a bit emotional as they said their final goodbyes to each other. The show ended on a mature and realistic note. Nothing lasts forever, to quote Hang Time‘s Coach Fuller.
Well, that’s it for California Dreams. Next week, a new show will be reviewed in this slot. But I’ll never forget surf dudes with attitude….
SING IT!
I’m going to miss this stupid show.
Here’s What Won At Cannes
And so, another Cannes film festival has come to a close! Despite my initial predictions and some generally respectful reviews, Ken Loach did not win a third Palme d’Or for The Old Oak so I’m happy about that. Here’s what did win:
COMPETITION
Palme d’Or: “Anatomy of a Fall,” Justine Triet
Grand Prix: “The Zone of Interest,” Jonathan Glazer
Director: Tran Anh Hung, “The Pot au Feu”
Actor: Kōji Yakusho, “Perfect Days”
Actress: Merve Dizdar, “About Dry Grasses”
Jury Prize: “Fallen Leaves,” Aki Kaurismaki
Screenplay: Sakamoto Yûji, “Monster”
OTHER PRIZES
Camera d’Or: “Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell,” Thien An Pham
Short Films Palme d’Or: “27,” Flóra Anna Buda.
Short Films Special Mention: “Fár,” Gunnur Martinsdóttir Schlüter
Queer Palm: “Monster”
UN CERTAIN REGARD
Un Certain Regard Award: “How to Have Sex,” Molly Manning Walker
Jury Prize: Asmae El Moudir, “Hounds”
Best Director Prize: “The Mother of All Lies,” Asmae El Moudir
Freedom Prize: “Goodbye Julia,” Mohamed Kordofani
Ensemble Prize: “The Buriti Flower,” cast and crew
New Voice Prize: “Omen,” Baloji
DIRECTORS’ FORTNIGHT
Europa Cinemas Label: “Creatura,” Elena Martín
Society of Dramatic Authors and Composers Prize: “A Prince,” Pierre Creton
CRITICS’ WEEK
Grand Prize: “Tiger Stripes,” Amanda Nell Eu
French Touch Prize: “It’s raining in the house,” Paloma Sermon-Daï
GAN Foundation Award for Distribution: Pyramide Films, “Inshallah a boy”
Louis Roederer Foundation Rising Star Award: Jovan Ginić, “Lost Country”
As far as the Oscars are concerned, I think the big winner at Cannes was Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon. Yes, it was screened out of competition but the response to the film was so enthusiastic that it pretty much confirmed that, for now, it’s the Oscar front runner. If nothing else, the response temporarily silenced those who have been insisting that Killers of the Flower Moon would be a disappointment. (Bizarrely, there’s a whole generation of film commentators who seem to be obsessed with claiming that Scorsese is somehow overrated. I’d hate to think this is all about something as petty as Scorsese’s criticism of the Marvel films but then again, we live in petty times.) I would also keep an eye on Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest, which many expected would win the Palme but which had to settle for the jury prize. From what I’ve read, Glazer’s film sounds like it could be an Oscar contender.
Live Tweet Alert: Watch Dario Argento’s Inferno with #ScarySocial
Inferno (1980, dir by Dario Argento, DP: Romana Albano)
As some of our regular readers undoubtedly know, I am involved in a few weekly live tweets on twitter. I host #FridayNightFlix every Friday, I co-host #ScarySocial on Saturday, and I am one of the five hosts of #MondayActionMovie! Every week, we get together. We watch a movie. We tweet our way through it.
Tonight, for #ScarySocial, I will be hosting 1980’s Inferno! Dario Argento’s sequel to the original Suspiria is one of his best films, a dream-like exploration of the dark and the disturbing. I can’t wait to share it with everyone!
If you want to join us on Saturday night, just hop onto twitter, start the film at 9 pm et, and use the #ScarySocial hashtag! The film is available on Prime. I’ll be there co-hosting and I imagine some other members of the TSL Crew will be there as well. It’s a friendly group and welcoming of newcomers so don’t be shy.
Music Video of the Day: Elektro by Outwork (2006, dir by ????)
Enjoy!
Retro Television Reviews: The Master 1.3 “State of the Union”
Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a new feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Fridays, I will be reviewing The Master, which ran on NBC from January to August of 1984. The show can be found on Tubi!
This week, The Master stands up for the working man!
Episode 1.3 “State of the Union”
(Dir by Alan Myerson, originally aired on February 3rd, 1984)
“Hi, I’m Max Keller and this is how I start my morning.”
So begins yet another episode of The Master! This time, McAllister (Lee Van Cleef) is forcing Max (Timothy Van Patten) to start his day by running. McAllister says that it’s a part of Max’s ninja training but I think it’s more a case of McAllister just seeing how many stupid things he can force Max to do before Max says, “Enough!”
This week finds Max and McAllister in Clearwater, California. In order to make a little money, Max enters a dirt bike race. It turns out that Max is very well-known on the dirt bike circuit and he even runs into an old friend named Hog (Mickey Jones) at the race. Hog only shows up for a few minutes. He shakes Max’s hand, jokes about the fact that Max is traveling with a hamster and a weird old man, and then he pretty much disappears from the episode.
McAllister watches the race while stroking Max’s pet hamster.
Try to get that image out of your head.
Anyway, Max does not win the race. Instead, the race is won by Carrie Brown (Crystal Bernard). At the finish line, Carrie is nearly run over by one her competitors, Chad Webster (Cotter Smith). Chad is the son of the owner of the local cannery. It turns out that Carrie also works at the cannery. Max takes an immediate liking to Carrie and decides that he should also get a job at the cannery.
McAllister points out that Carrie is attractive. Max replies, “Does your ninja training make you immune to such things?” McAllister shrugs. It’s kind of an odd scene.
Anyway, at the cannery, Max quickly learns that there’s more to Carrie than just 80s hair and dirt bike racing. Carrie is also a union organizer! She’s carrying on her late brother’s dream of unionizing the cannery. This largely means handing out flyers and encouraging people to go to a meeting. 
How bad are things at the cannery? They’re so bad that an older worker gets crushed by a palette. Fortunately, McAllister and Max show up just in time to help out. Through the use of one of his magic throwing ticks, McAllister is able to send the palette crashing into the ocean. While Max proceeds to flirt with Carrie, attentive viewers will see the worker — who is now probably crippled for life — being carried away in the background. Despite having saved the guy’s life, neither Max nor McAllister ever ask about him again.
Anyway, you know where all this is heading. Carrie wants to unionize the workers. Chad and his buddies try to intimidate the workers into not joining the union. At a meeting at the local church, Max gives a speech about how the workers have to get organized. There are plenty of fights and car chases and yet another bar brawl. That Max just can’t say out of trouble!
McAllister also joins Max on the dirt bike so that he can throw ninja stars at the bad guys. This leads to some pretty bad rear projection shots.
In the end, Chad is revealed to have murdered Carrie’s brother. The cannery votes to unionize and Max and McAllister promptly leave town because even they know better than to work at a union shop. Though it’s not specifically stated, I imagine that the cannery probably closed two months and Carrie ended up following in the lead footsteps of Jimmy Hoffa.
This episode was a bit silly, largely because neither perky Crystal Bernard nor perpetually mush-mouth Tim Van Patten were believable as firebrand labor activists. Lee Van Cleef seemed to be largely bored with the whole thing. Fortunately, next week’s episode features a guest appearance from George Lazenby so maybe that will liven things up on The Master.
We’ll find out soon!
Live Tweet Alert: Join #FridayNightFlix for Attack The Block!
As some of our regular readers undoubtedly know, I am involved in a few weekly live tweets on twitter. I host #FridayNightFlix every Friday, I co-host #ScarySocial on Saturday, and I am one of the five hosts of #MondayActionMovie! Every week, we get together. We watch a movie. We tweet our way through it.
Tonight, at 10 pm et, #FridayNightFlix has got 2011’s Attack the Block!
If you want to join us this Friday, just hop onto twitter, start the movie at 10 pm et, and use the #FridayNightFlix hashtag! It’s a friendly group and welcoming of newcomers so don’t be shy.
Attack The Block is available on Prime and Tubi! See you there!
Film Review: Amityville Emanuelle (dir by Louis DeStafano)
Amityville Emanuelle is the latest film about the dumbass Amityville Haunting.
In order to watch any of the many films about the supposed haunted house in Amityville, New York, you need to be aware of two real-life events.
In 1974, a 23 year-old junkie named Ronald DeFeo, Jr. gunned down his entire family in their Amityville home. DeFeo first claimed that unknown gunmen had killed his family while he was out. He then changed his story and said that he killed his family but he did it because he knew they were plotting to kill him. He then suggested that the whole thing was a mafia hit. He then moved on to claiming that his sister was the one who actually killed everyone. And, finally, he claimed that he had been possessed by demonic spirits.
One year later, the Lutz family moved into the Amityville House. After a month, the Lutzes left the house and George Lutz claimed that the house was haunted and that the family had been forced to flee for their lives. Thanks to a book and a few movies based on that book, the Lutzes made some money and eventually ended up suing a lot of other people in order to make even more money. Subsequent owners of the house have never reported anything strange happening while living in the house, other than strangers stopping by to view the supposedly haunted structure.
So, we can either believe that Ronald DeFeo was a junkie who killed his own estranged family or we can accept that the Devil took one look at Ronald DeFeo shooting up heroin and decided, “I’m tired of possessing the innocent and the naïve. I’m going to possess someone who is already so screwed up that no one will even notice that he’s been possessed. That’ll show ’em!”
And we can either believe that a bunch of demons chased George and Kathryn Lutz from their home or we can believe that the Lutzes looked at the success of books and films like The Exorcist and The Omen and they decided that they might as well cash in as well.
Amityville Emanuelle accepts, from the start, the everything was due to the paranormal, which is fine. It’s a movie and Occam’s razor goes out the window when it comes to the movies. George Lutz’s daughter, Laura (Dawn Church), moves into a new house and is soon visited by a strange woman who claims that she is delivering some of George’s belongings. Laura discovers that George owned an urn that was full of Ronald DeFeo’s ashes. Apparently, George and DeFeo had a psychic connection and George, who is insinuated to have been some sort of an occultist, knew that DeFeo was going to murder his family before he even did it.
(Wow, those are some pretty mean things to say about the late George Lutz, who was a real person and not really around to defend himself. Then again, George Lutz would be totally forgotten today if not for the fact that he made up a bunch of stuff about a haunted house so really, Lutz being portrayed as an occultist feels like karma.)
Laura soon finds herself acting in strange ways, picking up random men at bars and then barely noticing when they’re subsequently killed by someone who looks just like Ronald DeFeo.
Meanwhile, Ronald DeFeo’s son, Gordon (Shane Ryan-Reid, himself a director of transgressive films), makes the mistake of using a Ouija Board with his friends and he’s soon having visions of his father killing people.
(Now, I know that some of you are now saying, “Where does Emanuelle fit in with this?” because, after all, the symbol of sexual freedom and experimentation is namechecked in the film’s title. Well, Emanuelle really doesn’t fit into it, unless you include the scene where Laura goes to a bar and picks up two men. But those watching this film because they’re expecting it to be some sort of soft-core haunted house flick are going to be disappointed.)
Amityville Emanuelle is a low-budget and rather dumb film but it is at least partially redeemed by the fact that it doesn’t appear to be taking itself seriously at all and there’s no attempt to convince the viewer that they’re somehow watching anything that could be based on fact. There’s not much in the way of suspense and both the gore and the sex are rather tame but there is a medium (played by Saint Heart) whose generally annoyed attitude is occasionally fun to watch. The Amityville Haunting has always been a particularly stupid story and the cynicism of the majority of people who continue to try to sell it as being fact has always been more than a bit icky so, at this point, Amityville Emanuelle is kind of what the legend deserves.
Through the Shattered Lens 