'You deserve to have a family. Even if you don’t like them.'
Florent Emilio Siri's 'Hostage'
I didn't even want to see this movie. Seriously, why would I? It's just that my dad was watching it in the background so I kinda assimilated it anyway.
What actually threw me the most here is not what Bruce Willis is doing here (the movie is a perfect outlet for his Tough Guy, Suffer in Silence persona) but why the hell did Alexandre Desplat make the music for it. Truth to tell, I'm not all that familiar with Desplat's early career, perhaps all these obscure French titles in his filmography are actually not-so-good action flicks, but since he got himself exported into big-time English-language cinema (meaning, since 'The Girl with a Pearl Earring') I know that he deserves so much better than this. And I doubt he feels comfortable with the action genre because, while his music here could be called interesting on its own (and when combined with cool visuals - the opening credits? cool) but it didn't fit the actual movie in the slightest - it felt more like spirited from some dark comic-book adaptation, something Batman-ish.
The movie wasn't really all that bad. Some moves were quite silly (and I saw more believable negotiation scenes that the one at the beginning on any given 'Standoff' episode, and that wasn't even a particularly good show), but, on general, nothing really that would justify calling it 'bad'. The word that comes to mind instead is 'redundant'. I do realize that at this point practically every action movie is a remix of storylines and scenes from other action movies, but sometimes they are all patched together cannily enough to create the illusion of the real thing. Sometimes they just aren't.
Now I'll tell you why the Loser Thieving Trio cracked me up. Because it consists of Tommy Donnelly, JL Burrows and Angel. Well, actually, they are supposed to be, respectively, The Less Decent Brother, The More Decent Brother and The Homicidal Psycho, but it's still hilarious.
My final thought? That was one quality house they put up in smoke. When I'm obscenely rich, I want one of those. I don't even care that it's got very extensive monitoring system and armored walls but apparently no working anti-burglar alarm, I still want it.
Nicole Holofcener's 'Friends with Money'
It's one of those movies without any specific plot. It pretty much just ambles on more or less randomly. The 'slice of life' type. I'm quite fond of those. The movie would have certainly benefited from a better defined closure - it takes the no-given-direction thing a bit too far - but it gives the genre justice.
Stories like that usually fall into two categories: quirky drameries and existential dramas. It's a rough generalization but it works pretty well if you don't mind sliding over some details. I expected 'Friends with Money' to land into the first bracket but it surprised me by leaning quite heavily towards the second.
It's actually a very unforgiving movie. Quite unexpectedly, it focuses almost entirely on human flaws, magnified here and brought into the center.
We follow the lives of four fucked-up women and their equally dysfunctional life partners. Frances McDormand, the ever-hostile shrewd and pansy Timm Sharp who might or might not be gay; Katherine Keener, sharp when it comes to others, but naive about her own life, locked in a perpetual battle with the superior jerk Jason Isaacs, that she already lost; Joan Cusack, the constant optimist, domineered by the wealth-obsessed, narrow-minded Greg Germann and devoid of her own identity; Jennifer Aniston, washed-out ex-teacher, currently working as a maid, completely non-assertive and letting yet another man take advantage of her. They are all regular, unextraordinary women, drifting through life, not better than the archetypal (but nonexistent) Average Woman, but also not worse. For all the grand declarations we might throw, our life doesn't have any distinct purpose either. And there's something rotten in every single one of us.
I'm pretty torn whether to add 'The Dresden Files' to my dance card or not. I'm a big urban fantasy fan and Paul Blackthorne is pretty hot, but I can't say the show made that much impact on me so far. Feels actually kinda bland. Oh, well, I'm still just three episodes in, there's always a chance it's going to pick up the pace. A very slim chance, but a chance nonetheless.
'Grey's Anatomy' 3x18 - 'Scars and Souvenirs'
Ok, let's run through what happened in the last *wince* eight episodes. Meredith and Sheppard are still happily together and thank God for that, because any more melodrama on that front would make me scream in vicious rage. George's dad died and then Callie and George not only got chummy again, but even got themselves a paper to prove it. I still think Callie deserves a better (and a bigger) man but an interesting development anyway. Cristina and Burke survived the hand drama, even though they had to live through a few episodes of toxic silence first, and then got engaged for good measure for some unfathomable reason that probably made sense to them at a time. Given the speed the whole thing is already deteriorating with, I don't think we have to worry about any upcoming nuptials, though. It looked like Alex and Addison were going to happen at some point but then they, well, didn't. Mark somehow morphed from a dull asshole into a cool asshole overnight. Izzie was cheerily annoying, and sometimes just cheery. Bailey was awesome as ever, but never got enough screentime. Chief decided to step down five episodes ago (resulting in the highlight of season 3 - the Sheppard/Burke/Addison/Mark mega-catfight) and is stepping down ever since. I guess the man just likes to take his time.
Oh, and there was a pretty boring three-parter. And Meredith nearly died in a completely unnecessary storyline, the only plus of which was that it featured Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Kyle Chandler. And Meredith's mother died, not just nearly but for real. Dying parents might actually be the theme of the season.
So we are all caught up. Let's get rolling then.
It suddenly turns out Callie is rich, what makes her the second unexpected millionaire of the season. George got entertainingly upset about it because now Callie is a lying liar (seriously, if I got news like that, I'd get over the 'lying liar' thing in, like, three seconds flat and skip right over to the 'ooooh, shiny shiny money' part'), but mostly because that makes him even lesser part of this marriage than he was before. Then Callie sprung out her pet conspiracy theory about Izzie wanting to steal her man that George first scoffed at somewhat tactlessly ('She's the Supermodel. I'm George.' - nasty) but then got drunk and actually put it into action. I actually think George and Izzie go quite well together, but, dude, he's married now and Callie should so kick his ass. The Supermodel's too. Cristina slept with her professor at college, which actually is totally in-character for her, but she also had a three-year-long relationship with him, which totally isn't. Burke is definitely Not Happy about it, especially that it also clicked for him at last that his supposed bride-to-be has a pretty casual approach to this whole marriage idea of his (sometimes I think he might be a bit retarded). The professor in question has very good chances of becoming the next chief because apparently every American ensemble show needs a person with a sexy accent. If he really gets to stay I estimate the chances of one of the interns sleeping with him within five episodes at 50 per cent at least. Also, Meredith bonded with her family. That was the boring bit. And Alex moved into the Intern house. Which will get him more screentime, I hope. Bailey could move in too, because lately she gets about twenty seconds an episode and you know that there's certainly something wrong when you can choose an inopportune moment to blink and miss the Nazi altogether. Oh, and Shohreh Aghdashloo guest starred. Snazzy.
Is 'Veronica Mars' really getting canceled? That would be a shame. I know I haven't reviewed that show for more than four months (which means that I missed the end of one storyline, and the entire runtime of the other) but that doesn't mean that I don't care anymore.
.
I didn't even want to see this movie. Seriously, why would I? It's just that my dad was watching it in the background so I kinda assimilated it anyway.
What actually threw me the most here is not what Bruce Willis is doing here (the movie is a perfect outlet for his Tough Guy, Suffer in Silence persona) but why the hell did Alexandre Desplat make the music for it. Truth to tell, I'm not all that familiar with Desplat's early career, perhaps all these obscure French titles in his filmography are actually not-so-good action flicks, but since he got himself exported into big-time English-language cinema (meaning, since 'The Girl with a Pearl Earring') I know that he deserves so much better than this. And I doubt he feels comfortable with the action genre because, while his music here could be called interesting on its own (and when combined with cool visuals - the opening credits? cool) but it didn't fit the actual movie in the slightest - it felt more like spirited from some dark comic-book adaptation, something Batman-ish.
The movie wasn't really all that bad. Some moves were quite silly (and I saw more believable negotiation scenes that the one at the beginning on any given 'Standoff' episode, and that wasn't even a particularly good show), but, on general, nothing really that would justify calling it 'bad'. The word that comes to mind instead is 'redundant'. I do realize that at this point practically every action movie is a remix of storylines and scenes from other action movies, but sometimes they are all patched together cannily enough to create the illusion of the real thing. Sometimes they just aren't.
Now I'll tell you why the Loser Thieving Trio cracked me up. Because it consists of Tommy Donnelly, JL Burrows and Angel. Well, actually, they are supposed to be, respectively, The Less Decent Brother, The More Decent Brother and The Homicidal Psycho, but it's still hilarious.
My final thought? That was one quality house they put up in smoke. When I'm obscenely rich, I want one of those. I don't even care that it's got very extensive monitoring system and armored walls but apparently no working anti-burglar alarm, I still want it.
Nicole Holofcener's 'Friends with Money'
It's one of those movies without any specific plot. It pretty much just ambles on more or less randomly. The 'slice of life' type. I'm quite fond of those. The movie would have certainly benefited from a better defined closure - it takes the no-given-direction thing a bit too far - but it gives the genre justice.
Stories like that usually fall into two categories: quirky drameries and existential dramas. It's a rough generalization but it works pretty well if you don't mind sliding over some details. I expected 'Friends with Money' to land into the first bracket but it surprised me by leaning quite heavily towards the second.
It's actually a very unforgiving movie. Quite unexpectedly, it focuses almost entirely on human flaws, magnified here and brought into the center.
We follow the lives of four fucked-up women and their equally dysfunctional life partners. Frances McDormand, the ever-hostile shrewd and pansy Timm Sharp who might or might not be gay; Katherine Keener, sharp when it comes to others, but naive about her own life, locked in a perpetual battle with the superior jerk Jason Isaacs, that she already lost; Joan Cusack, the constant optimist, domineered by the wealth-obsessed, narrow-minded Greg Germann and devoid of her own identity; Jennifer Aniston, washed-out ex-teacher, currently working as a maid, completely non-assertive and letting yet another man take advantage of her. They are all regular, unextraordinary women, drifting through life, not better than the archetypal (but nonexistent) Average Woman, but also not worse. For all the grand declarations we might throw, our life doesn't have any distinct purpose either. And there's something rotten in every single one of us.
I'm pretty torn whether to add 'The Dresden Files' to my dance card or not. I'm a big urban fantasy fan and Paul Blackthorne is pretty hot, but I can't say the show made that much impact on me so far. Feels actually kinda bland. Oh, well, I'm still just three episodes in, there's always a chance it's going to pick up the pace. A very slim chance, but a chance nonetheless.
'Grey's Anatomy' 3x18 - 'Scars and Souvenirs'
Ok, let's run through what happened in the last *wince* eight episodes. Meredith and Sheppard are still happily together and thank God for that, because any more melodrama on that front would make me scream in vicious rage. George's dad died and then Callie and George not only got chummy again, but even got themselves a paper to prove it. I still think Callie deserves a better (and a bigger) man but an interesting development anyway. Cristina and Burke survived the hand drama, even though they had to live through a few episodes of toxic silence first, and then got engaged for good measure for some unfathomable reason that probably made sense to them at a time. Given the speed the whole thing is already deteriorating with, I don't think we have to worry about any upcoming nuptials, though. It looked like Alex and Addison were going to happen at some point but then they, well, didn't. Mark somehow morphed from a dull asshole into a cool asshole overnight. Izzie was cheerily annoying, and sometimes just cheery. Bailey was awesome as ever, but never got enough screentime. Chief decided to step down five episodes ago (resulting in the highlight of season 3 - the Sheppard/Burke/Addison/Mark mega-catfight) and is stepping down ever since. I guess the man just likes to take his time.
Oh, and there was a pretty boring three-parter. And Meredith nearly died in a completely unnecessary storyline, the only plus of which was that it featured Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Kyle Chandler. And Meredith's mother died, not just nearly but for real. Dying parents might actually be the theme of the season.
So we are all caught up. Let's get rolling then.
It suddenly turns out Callie is rich, what makes her the second unexpected millionaire of the season. George got entertainingly upset about it because now Callie is a lying liar (seriously, if I got news like that, I'd get over the 'lying liar' thing in, like, three seconds flat and skip right over to the 'ooooh, shiny shiny money' part'), but mostly because that makes him even lesser part of this marriage than he was before. Then Callie sprung out her pet conspiracy theory about Izzie wanting to steal her man that George first scoffed at somewhat tactlessly ('She's the Supermodel. I'm George.' - nasty) but then got drunk and actually put it into action. I actually think George and Izzie go quite well together, but, dude, he's married now and Callie should so kick his ass. The Supermodel's too. Cristina slept with her professor at college, which actually is totally in-character for her, but she also had a three-year-long relationship with him, which totally isn't. Burke is definitely Not Happy about it, especially that it also clicked for him at last that his supposed bride-to-be has a pretty casual approach to this whole marriage idea of his (sometimes I think he might be a bit retarded). The professor in question has very good chances of becoming the next chief because apparently every American ensemble show needs a person with a sexy accent. If he really gets to stay I estimate the chances of one of the interns sleeping with him within five episodes at 50 per cent at least. Also, Meredith bonded with her family. That was the boring bit. And Alex moved into the Intern house. Which will get him more screentime, I hope. Bailey could move in too, because lately she gets about twenty seconds an episode and you know that there's certainly something wrong when you can choose an inopportune moment to blink and miss the Nazi altogether. Oh, and Shohreh Aghdashloo guest starred. Snazzy.
Is 'Veronica Mars' really getting canceled? That would be a shame. I know I haven't reviewed that show for more than four months (which means that I missed the end of one storyline, and the entire runtime of the other) but that doesn't mean that I don't care anymore.
.