I was at home for Thanksgiving and one of my friends had not seen the Borat movie so we went to see it. Having had time to absorb all the media attention the movie has gotten, I can safely reevaluate my review and present a more objective stance. First, it definitely has funny scenes and they remain funny the second time around. Second, the movie appears much more staged than I noticed the first time around. Third, knowing how they set up many of the "interviews" made it less funny. So, it does not have the retention humor of a movie like What about Bob or Austin Powers, and I reiterate my earlier review that it is a well done satire.
That being said, it isn't that good a movie, but the subtitles certainly make it funnier. I rewatched the scene with the Chi Psi brothers, who appeared even stupider the second time around, which reinforces my idea that they absolutely have no case unless Fox studios simply has a moron for a lawyer who drew up their release form.
Catch the movie on HBO if you've heard anything about the movie, otherwise you will be overly set-up for disappointment. It's been overhyped at this point. By the time it gets to HBO, you can sit back and enjoy it for what it is - an extended bit from the Ali G show, which has exceptionally funny scenes surrounded by lots of shots of him driving around in an ice cream truck.
Conclusion: Funny movie, it can't be in the top funniest movies of all time since it doesn't have much repeatable humor, but it certainly is the funniest movie out this year or in the past few years.
Thursday, November 23, 2006
Borat movie not as funny the second time
Monday, November 20, 2006
Heroes: Chapter Nine – Homecoming Review
Now the review of chapter nine of the Heroes saga, Homecoming. Homecoming manages to show almost every one of who we’ve met so far into 42.5 minutes of jam-packed action, minus the action (until the last 10 minutes anyway). I will say that this episode is pretty good. It appears that the next episode will be some sort of flashback episode, so it may just get taped and I’ll watch it after finals. My review, complete with spoilers and inserted commentary, follows.
Setting aside the fact they announced (via a flyer) the homecoming queen during the day instead of at halftime of the game (but hey, maybe that’s how they do it at Texas high schools, and for purposes of the storyline, it is largely irrelevant anyway), Homecoming starts off by showing that Peter’s brother is a moron. Realizing this, Isaac’s not-so-super-ex-girlfriend Simone realizes that she has to tell Peter that his brother splattered the painting he was looking for a couple weeks ago (and it's how we know from last week that Claire's father knew the date and time his daughter was supposed to be killed). Simone brings Peter to Isaac’s studio and tells him what happened. She then hands him a photograph of the painting, which was a painting of Peter lying in front of a high school banner shortly after 8 PM (that night actually). Simone tips him to the location of the high school, and Peter calls Hiro to tell him to get to Odessa.
Hiro’s friend answers the phone and announces that they are in Midland, a mere 20 miles from Odessa. Since they are still mourning the sudden death of Hiro’s girlfriend-hopeful waitress, however, Hiro obviously was unsuccessful in preventing her death. On another hand, a different waitress appears to remember Hiro, and the writers clumsily but craftily avoid any mention of the waitress’s death (meaning they could try and Sixth Sense surprise us in a future episode). Peter announces that he’s going to hop on the next flight to Odessa, and from New York to Midland/Odessa on a Friday, he’ll probably pay an arm and a leg or just flap his arms and avoid the stand-by line. In either case, he makes it there in record time, and his cab takes him right to the café, where Hiro’s friend is still waiting patiently. Peter introduces himself and announces that his power is not that of a flyer, but that of a copycat – he absorbs other heroes’ powers, a regular Xerox hero.
And since the show is about homecoming and saving the cheerleader, we realize that her super healing powers also must give her fists of fury since she is able to knock out in a single punch to the eye the annoyingly jealous homecoming queen cheerleader runner-up. Her father grounds her, forgetting that a real father would not do so without sufficient cause on the day of her coronation. Her nerdy future-Dr. McDreamy savior helps her escape from her balcony prison and he whisks her away to her fated dance as her mother watches the whole event transpire from the living room window. The Agent, clouded by his emotions, realizes she has run off and chides the mother for her deviant behavior.
On her way in, Claire-bear bumps into the Xerox hero and engages in a short and pleasant conversation, just long enough (in the world of foreshadowing) for him to absorb some of her healing powers. Realizing that he may be trespassing, he steps outside and sees he is standing in front of the steps of the picture to which he had taken from Simone. He hears screaming and we see that Sylar has mistaken Claire for the non-mutant cheerleader. Sylar does the touch of death and kills the wrong girl. Claire, not thinking to stick around and pretend to be dead, gets up, and Sylar realizes his error. She runs, Sylar follows, Xeroxman bumps into her again, and he helps her escape. The two wrestle to the ground and somehow or another fall off the roof, and if neither were mutants, they would both be dead. The picture comes true.
Having absorbed enough of Claire’s power to survive the fall, however, Peter awakens to find Sylar disappeared and Claire is okay. Dazed, he sits there and waits for the cops to show up. Unfortunately for Peter, he is New York Yankee in a Texan court, and being found covered in blood, within minutes of the crime being reported and the body of a dead cheerleader still warm only a few hallways away, the police don't have too much more investigating to do. Hopefully he can absorb Niki/Ikin’s insanity defense ability and attempt to avoid the capital murder charges that will be brought against him but we won’t have to worry about that storyline just yet since all we see is the arrest.
Claire and her stepfather unite and she’s about to tell him her secret. The last scene is of Hiro teleporting to the café six months earlier and re-introducing himself to the waitress. Next week’s episode is going to be set six months before and thus we’ll get a reprise of the development of some of the characters and their power.
Other storylines:
You see Ikin/Niki at target practice. The computer kid and his walk-thru-any-wall father manage to avoid to generate any reasonable articulable suspicion while stopping for gas, but the computer kid runs away in order to teach his well-intentioned but criminally prone father a lesson. After his pop catches him at a bus stop, the computer kid reveals his knowledge about Niki/Ikin’s psychotic break. To his credit, he says that his mom is sick and with the same gusto as Tim Allen delivers the “never give up, never surrender” line of Galaxy Quest, he convinces his father to go back for his better half. It’s too bad he can’t predict the future, though, because he would know that Ikin will be packing heat. In either case, the computer kid's logic is no better than a computer's, and he decides not to tell his father that he already called his mom to tip her off where they were. Ikin (supposedly) snipes D.L. at the end of the episode. Maybe the bullet passes right through him, we'll have to wait and see.
Professor Suresh also continues his quest to figure out his role in the show and meets the dream catcher who tells him that it is he can provide explanations for questions people seek answers to, at cost. Suresh decides to continue his father’s work and miraculously cracks his father’s computer password using the name of his sister. The computer (Cerebro) finds that his father had already compiled a list of all the mutants and now Suresh can fulfill his role as Professor X and unite them.
Sylar is caught by the Agent's assistant who has some sort of Jean Grey mind-controlling power that convinces Sylar to go to sleep. With the help of the Hatian, they take him into their custody.
Monday, November 13, 2006
Heroes: 7 minutes to midnight review
As compared to last week, I think tonight's Heroes episode, "Seven Minutes to Midnight" set up well next week's culmination episode. The description on the tv.com site is a little misleading, so I'll give my summary.
Professor Suresh (formerly "Professor X") goes to India to intern his father's ashes. While there, he discovers that he had a younger sister who died when he was very young and that he also seems to have a hidden power, some sort of lucid dreaming ability. This discovery will undoubtedly restore his faith in his father's genetic research and bring him back to New York. It also means that the list of heroes has increased a little bit more.
Isaac and the Suresh's "NYC Neighbor" (who also appears to now have some sort of undetermined mutant ability, perhaps akin to an attraction to Indian men) are seen in the Agent's care. To a certain degree, it appears the writers are attempting to have us believe the Agent's efforts in this genetic research project are for the greater good and that he is really just a good guy deep down. Perhaps this is and will turn out to be the case, but for now, I will stick with my misdirection theory. Somehow he has determined that in an alternate timeline, the cheerleader dies "tomorrow night" at her homecoming dance and he is perilous to stop it as the evil mutant Silar is bent on destroying all other mutants, including his daughter. I question how he is unable to prevent this from happening, and can only hypothesize that he must be playing both sides and has much more to his character than the show has developed. In the tv world, this sort of misdirection means that he will probably die and warn Peter et al. that Silar is the real enemy.
The only other storyline that gets developed in this episode is that of Hiro, his sidekick, and a new mutant (who was also among Isaac's paintings). As means of introduction, this new mutant (nickname TBD) is a waitress (also in Texas) whose memory has become greater than George Costanza's in The Abstinence. While Hiro and the waitress are trading Japanese lessons for toast, a "dark" character, possibly Silar, displays (for the audience) the ability to move a cup toward him without any strings (a trick John Travolta's character did with a pencil in Phenomenon).
As Hiro goes to the bathroom, the waitress pauses her flirting to open a can of peas, and is subsequently killed by (presumably) the "dark" character because he ordered carrots. Crushed, Hiro decides to go back in time and stop it. At this point it was 9:54, so I knew he wasn't coming back this episode, but a quick shot to a picture on the wall (changed from an earlier pan of the same picture) shows that he at least went back in time to some point and interacted with her. The preview for next week has Hiro in it again, so he makes his triumphant return then (I'm hoping it's going to be like Dennis Hopper's return in the end of My Science Project, but that may be asking for too much).
There was also some continuation of the storyline with the cop who can hear thoughts and his troubles at home as well as the plot about the Radioactive Man who premiered last week in Nothing To Hide (see last week's review). Unsurprisingly, the radioactive man escaped from FBI custody and blew up a car in the process. For punching his boss (last week), the cop gets a month suspension without pay.
I thought this episode was much better than the last couple weeks and I think it's because it kept the various storylines under ten (three and half actually), which left adequate time to develop them a little better than in some of the previous episodes. I question the need to introduce yet another mutant, but if they are going to continue with making Hiro (as compared to Peter) the main character, I guess they have to give him a girlfriend as well.
Next week's episode promises to be the episode I've been waiting for where it all comes together. The previews have been promising as much for the past couple weeks so I'm not holding my breath. On a more optimistic note, however, I don't know how next week can't be the culmination of this first half/third of this season, and on this casuistic logic, I'm positive it will resolve some of the unification issues that have been slowly developing, as well as advance the overall storyline.
Thursday, November 09, 2006
Borat frat suit? hahahahahahaha
This is the funniest thing I have seen yet: Frat Sues Borat. The write-up there tends to contradict what was said in this write up, but obviously I'm not giving too much weight to what some reporter says. I'm sure the actual details/complaint of this "John Doe" suit will be on Smoking Gun's website soon enough.
Of course, this is all monday morning quarterbacking and just an unresearched editorial opinion, but the fact that these clowns have brought suit against the movie producers is just funny. As I have previously discussed when I pointed out how ridiculous their OWN BROTHERS made themselves (and implicitly, their fraternity) look, the Chi Psi brothers involved in this suit face several uphill battles. Now I haven't seen the contract, and will not bother to chime in on my thoughts beyond this post, but setting aside the misleading nature of the whole thing, they signed it (probably without really reading what they signed) and they accepted payment for it. I doubt they are challenging the contract itself, so that means they are challenging the making of the contract and additionally trying to go beyond the four corners of the contract to explain why they took the money.
I suspect that had they read what they signed, they would have seen a rather specific contract explaining away most of what they probably were told (probably quite generally and quickly) and further, they probably agreed to some sort of arbitration or non-recourse by signing and accepting payment. So they signed it without really reading it, took the money, and did the interview. Now whether alcohol was involved or not raises some issues, and the sneaky nature of the whole thing raises some other issues, but I think they would have to be pretty drunk to win on that point and the fraud argument seems like a tough row to hoe also. Wasn't there a case about someone who promised to sell their farm after having a few too many drinks? Obviously some lawyer(s) think they will have a great payday with this one so there must be some merit with the fraud defense.
If anything, this case serves as a lesson to read what you sign and receive payment for. And maybe to watch what you say if a camera is on you. At best it will wind up settling as a nuisance claim through arbitration or mediation, but I would love for an opinion to be written on this one just to exploit further the absurdity of this whole thing. In either case, it's still pretty funny. Take my free opinion for what it's worth...
Read more!
Vilsack announces his candidacy
I saw this "alert" on CNN this morning: "Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack will run for the White House in 2008, a source close to the governor tells CNN. He is the first prominent Democrat to announce his candidacy." I'm pretty sure Biden was the first proiminent Democrat to announce he was running for president, and in the speculation bin, we can toss in Obama, Clinton, Kerry, and Edwards. With the Dems in control of both houses now, we can watch with certainty how the Republicans will now schedule various committee meetings on days when the senator-seeking-the-presidency hopefuls will be campaigning about. The more interesting question is how many people will fall for this overused tactic. I doubt Clinton will get the go ahead, but I would like to see Obama go for VP since I don't think he quite has enough pull to win the whole thing. Where is JC Watts when the Republicans need him?
Tuesday, November 07, 2006
Heroes: Nothing to Hide review
I watched Heroes 7th episode, "Nothing to Hide" last night, and I have to say the show is losing me again. Apparently they have shifted back into character-cross mode, which I'll admit has merit to the extent that it must be building toward their mid-season or season finale (assuming a 24 episode season, next week's episode should complete the first of the three "acts" of a drama's season-premise). On the other hand, and more to the point, however, NOTHING HAS HAPPENED. Now, I can't say too much because Lost in a lot of ways has the same problems at times, but unlike Lost, Heroes just isn't advancing the plot fast enough, in my opinion anyway.
Take last night's episode. Setting aside the fact that these new mutations have absolutely no basis in genetic evolutionary theory (e.g., guy who can walk through walls' kid being able to manipulate computers with his hands or the radioactive man), I just am unable to grasp how this merry band of mutants is going to be able to set aside their whiney, self-promoting personalities and unite for good. They have the flying politician brother and Niki/Ikin trying to band together, and they seem to be able to cross Hiro with just about all the central characters now, and next week the Agent is supposed to meet with the painter to talk about the cheerleader. And on top of that, the little kid has powers (as suspected) and apparently he has known about Ikin all along.
Now, maybe this will change over the next couple episodes, but I don't think that it will. This show is taking the brooding, reluctant hero theme to a whole other level. Accepting that, I want to see some real action. The play has been set up, it's time to move to the next act. I thought episode seven (last night's episode) was going to do it, now I get to hold my breath for another week to see if episode eight does the trick. I will give this show some credit for being able to get me to continue watching it week in and week out, but I know I can't be the only one who finds this show getting increasingly slower-paced. Hopefully next week adequately shifts gears and brings the show up to the speed to which I hope it can top out at. If not, 24 will be on opposite it soon enough.
Regarding cross-over powers and the ability to adapt on another writer's creativity (without stepping on toes too much), the kid's ability to manipulate computers and machines was done first in D.A.R.Y.L., but the kid there was a robot, and I don't think the powers are exactly the same, so I will give a plus for creativity. How that power (and walking through walls, or Radioactive Man's abilities) fit on the evolutionary ladder, however, continues to elude me.
Election day
I voted this morning, and on the way back, I must have heard fifty ads from both incumbents and electorate-hopefuls. We'll see if my earlier election prediction comes true, but at this point, I will go as far as to say that the majority of the country (as far as national elections go) will be in favor of the non-incumbent (75%). Read more!
Saturday, November 04, 2006
Borat movie a brilliant satire and laugh out loud comedy
I saw the Borat movie last night - it had to be the funniest movie I've seen in five years. It is a brilliant satire on a lot of different levels. And it's a comedy, so you have to take some, if not all of the comments with a grain of salt (e.g., Cohen gets a lot of regular American people to expose some of the most bigoted, racial, anti-Semitic, homophobic things you'll ever cringe at). Thus, there are definitely some scenes that you will feel bad about laughing at and others you will just sit and watch in stunned silence, but the situational humor is unlike anything that I have ever seen. As George Carlin says in his opening bit, "if I haven't offended all of you at least once by the time I'm done, I haven't done my job." So, unlike at least four of the people whose faces upon leaving told me that they were not ready for this movie, be prepared to be offended at some things, if not more than some things. Overall, the movie is laugh out loud funny. If you don't like satires like Dogma, you probably won't like this movie either, so don't complain if you go to see it and are then disappointed.
In my rankings of all-time movie comedies, some of them include Austin Powers, Dumb and Dumber, Meet the Parents, Major League, Old School, and Road Trip, to name a few - Borat certainly falls within the top ten or fifteen. There's nothing so great about it that justifies seeing it in the theater (as compared to an action movie), but if you just need 82 minutes of solid laughter, this movie is for you. I can't wait to see the uncut DVD version just to see what got edited out.
Also, thank god I didn't go to the University of South Carolina. What a bunch of tools. Way to represent your Chi Psi fraternity, clowns. Idiots. Damage Control my ass. I'm sure that their contractual releases are legally gold (i.e., untouchable), so good luck with your fraudulent inducement defense.
Update: The Chi Psi frat suit has commenced; my two cents about it can be found here.
Funniest scenes: the chicken escaping on the subway and the bear growling at the kids running up to their ice cream van. And the bear head in the fridge was funny too (esp. given the context that it was shown after Borat was told that the bear ran away).
Here are a couple of reviews that give fairly representative reviews:
Ty Burr, Kazakh it to me, Boston Globe, Nov. 3, 2006.
Joel Siegel, Review: 'Borat' -- Offensive, Juvenile and Very, Very Funny, Nov. 3, 2006.
This one, not so much: Edward Douglas, Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, Oct. 26, 2006.
