Sometimes the signs from heaven are vague
Marisa had her "golden" birthday on Friday, which means she turned the age of the date on the calendar (Jeff says this is a thing, and he knows a lot about computers and has a house and stuff, so I'm going to allow it; let's see where this is going, counselor). So I thought the best way to celebrate this would be to get a bunch of our friends to go out to dinner with us after waiting like an hour for a table. I've detected kind of a Union Square food problem. That is, I don't know where to go for reasonably good but non-fancy food in Union Square if you (a.) have a decent number of people on hand, (b.) don't want to wait a long time, and especially (c.) would really like Asian food. So that problem persisted at Spice.
But we have some pretty cool friends willing to wait around starving and squished against walls -- Nathaniel and Ben & Lorraina and Katie and Sara and Maggie & Kyle and Rayme are extremely good sports and excellent company.
After we finally got to eat dinner, hooray, we understandably lost some people (but gained an Allison and an Amanda!) with our decision to see When in Rome. This has vague connection to the fact that we saw the surprisingly cute Win a Date with Tad Hamilton! for Marisa's birthday and Tad Hamilton himself, Josh Duhamel, is the dude in this movie, although he still isn't Timothy Olyphant. Plus, fact: I will see just about anything with once-and-I-hope-future Veronica Mars Kristen Bell. So we settled in and hoped that maybe the support of Will Arnett, Jon Heder, Danny DeVito, and that chick from Scrubs who sings the "Pregnant Women Are Smug" song would add some actual comedy into the romantic-comedy formula.
Make no mistake: When in Rome is poorly made. Watching it, particularly the ultra-awkward first ten minutes or so, made me think back to this Glen Kenny post that Mark at the L mentioned in my Friday column, regarding, in fact, how garishly overlit When in Rome looked in its trailers. But it's not just bad romcom lighting; as Kenny mentions in his post, it's basic technical stuff like editing. Often in When in Rome, two characters will be having a conversation and start walking. Then the movie will cut to another location with the characters still walking, by the looks of it thirty seconds or a couple of minutes away from where they were in the previous scene, only their conversation is continuing seamlessly. So, what, the people started to talk, paused for a minute as they continued to walk, and then picked up the conversation exactly where it left off? This isn't nitpicking continuity errors like, hey, in one scene the water glass is half-full and in the next it's full again. This is pretty simple A-to-B stuff. I guess maybe Ray Winstone is hiding in the shadows, stopping them connecting A to B (I didn't see that movie this weekend; I need a break from seeing the trailer, then maybe I can go back and watch Mel do his crazy vengeance thing).
But: I have to say, despite Mark Steven Johnson not having any more facility with rom-coms than he does with his superhero work (maybe less, because I don't remember Daredevil, whatever its flaws, being assembled with such lack of rhythm; it just wasn't as good as it should've been), I did get a few laughs out of When in Rome. I mean, it's not hilarious; it's not even really very good. But like Amy Adams and Matthew Goode in Leap Year, Bell and Duhamel are cute and appealing together when the movie lets them just hang out -- and this movie is quite a bit funnier than Leap Year. I chuckled maybe twelve or fifteen times. I laughed out loud a few times when Bobby Moynihan came in with some top-notch best-friend quipping.
That's not to say Johnson knows anything about directing comedy. In fact, he bungles the comedy stuff left and right. During that atrocious first ten minutes, there's this bit where Bell's three coworkers/friends are sort of looking on while she's having this confrontation with her ex-boyfriend (Lee Pace! Why is he playing one-scene ex-boyfriends?), and Johnson keeps making these awkward cuts back to them that display no rhythm whatsoever. The script isn't there supporting any kind of witty-commentary jokes, but Johnson seems to have no idea that this stuff isn't working, and in fact holds on these cutaways too long, letting them just die on screen and editing them into Bell's scene as if they were shot in a whole other room (maybe they were, but if that's the case, why on earth did they bother?).
Later in the movie, there is actually a really good sight gag/sequence about a restaurant where you eat in the dark, led around by the waiters -- but the audience is seeing the night-vision version, so we can see the characters sort of stumbling blindly through this experience. I don't know, I found this funny. But Johnson doesn't know how to really milk it or pay it off, so he just has these Arnett/Heder/DeVito stalker characters show up inexplicably so Bell can run away. This is how a lot of his scenes end: he has his lead actress book it out of there. He doesn't know how to build a scene, or frame sight gags for maximum impact, or even make the movie look cinematic and appealing, which Leap Year managed to do in some scenes -- When in Rome has that B-footage, CGI backgrounds, overlit-soundstage look. I'm ripping off this point from the Kenny thread, but you look at a comedy Greg Mottola directs, like Superbad or Adventureland, and notice that comedy can feel natural, and comedies can actually look good. Or if you're talking about broader comedy, look at Adam McKay or Frank Oz (Death at a Funeral excepted). I'm not saying the script for When in Rome has a lot of untapped potentail (it's from the writers of Old Dogs), but it has enough funny ideas to suggest that a good director could've made it work. Still, I'll take this movie over the likes of 27 Dresses any day, because I did laugh a little bit. Bell and Duhamel manage to come off as smart and funny and attracted to each other, and if that sounds remedial, well, yeah, that's pretty much the state of big-studio romantic comedies.
Then we went to Sundaes & Cones. On the coldest day of the year so far. Yeah, we are the smart kids. But whatever, you can't let the cold run your life.
I haven't left Greenpoint since we got home on Friday night. I haven't gone further than the place we went for brunch on Saturday morning. The L train may be a shock to the system tomorrow morning.
But we have some pretty cool friends willing to wait around starving and squished against walls -- Nathaniel and Ben & Lorraina and Katie and Sara and Maggie & Kyle and Rayme are extremely good sports and excellent company.
After we finally got to eat dinner, hooray, we understandably lost some people (but gained an Allison and an Amanda!) with our decision to see When in Rome. This has vague connection to the fact that we saw the surprisingly cute Win a Date with Tad Hamilton! for Marisa's birthday and Tad Hamilton himself, Josh Duhamel, is the dude in this movie, although he still isn't Timothy Olyphant. Plus, fact: I will see just about anything with once-and-I-hope-future Veronica Mars Kristen Bell. So we settled in and hoped that maybe the support of Will Arnett, Jon Heder, Danny DeVito, and that chick from Scrubs who sings the "Pregnant Women Are Smug" song would add some actual comedy into the romantic-comedy formula.
Make no mistake: When in Rome is poorly made. Watching it, particularly the ultra-awkward first ten minutes or so, made me think back to this Glen Kenny post that Mark at the L mentioned in my Friday column, regarding, in fact, how garishly overlit When in Rome looked in its trailers. But it's not just bad romcom lighting; as Kenny mentions in his post, it's basic technical stuff like editing. Often in When in Rome, two characters will be having a conversation and start walking. Then the movie will cut to another location with the characters still walking, by the looks of it thirty seconds or a couple of minutes away from where they were in the previous scene, only their conversation is continuing seamlessly. So, what, the people started to talk, paused for a minute as they continued to walk, and then picked up the conversation exactly where it left off? This isn't nitpicking continuity errors like, hey, in one scene the water glass is half-full and in the next it's full again. This is pretty simple A-to-B stuff. I guess maybe Ray Winstone is hiding in the shadows, stopping them connecting A to B (I didn't see that movie this weekend; I need a break from seeing the trailer, then maybe I can go back and watch Mel do his crazy vengeance thing).
But: I have to say, despite Mark Steven Johnson not having any more facility with rom-coms than he does with his superhero work (maybe less, because I don't remember Daredevil, whatever its flaws, being assembled with such lack of rhythm; it just wasn't as good as it should've been), I did get a few laughs out of When in Rome. I mean, it's not hilarious; it's not even really very good. But like Amy Adams and Matthew Goode in Leap Year, Bell and Duhamel are cute and appealing together when the movie lets them just hang out -- and this movie is quite a bit funnier than Leap Year. I chuckled maybe twelve or fifteen times. I laughed out loud a few times when Bobby Moynihan came in with some top-notch best-friend quipping.
That's not to say Johnson knows anything about directing comedy. In fact, he bungles the comedy stuff left and right. During that atrocious first ten minutes, there's this bit where Bell's three coworkers/friends are sort of looking on while she's having this confrontation with her ex-boyfriend (Lee Pace! Why is he playing one-scene ex-boyfriends?), and Johnson keeps making these awkward cuts back to them that display no rhythm whatsoever. The script isn't there supporting any kind of witty-commentary jokes, but Johnson seems to have no idea that this stuff isn't working, and in fact holds on these cutaways too long, letting them just die on screen and editing them into Bell's scene as if they were shot in a whole other room (maybe they were, but if that's the case, why on earth did they bother?).
Later in the movie, there is actually a really good sight gag/sequence about a restaurant where you eat in the dark, led around by the waiters -- but the audience is seeing the night-vision version, so we can see the characters sort of stumbling blindly through this experience. I don't know, I found this funny. But Johnson doesn't know how to really milk it or pay it off, so he just has these Arnett/Heder/DeVito stalker characters show up inexplicably so Bell can run away. This is how a lot of his scenes end: he has his lead actress book it out of there. He doesn't know how to build a scene, or frame sight gags for maximum impact, or even make the movie look cinematic and appealing, which Leap Year managed to do in some scenes -- When in Rome has that B-footage, CGI backgrounds, overlit-soundstage look. I'm ripping off this point from the Kenny thread, but you look at a comedy Greg Mottola directs, like Superbad or Adventureland, and notice that comedy can feel natural, and comedies can actually look good. Or if you're talking about broader comedy, look at Adam McKay or Frank Oz (Death at a Funeral excepted). I'm not saying the script for When in Rome has a lot of untapped potentail (it's from the writers of Old Dogs), but it has enough funny ideas to suggest that a good director could've made it work. Still, I'll take this movie over the likes of 27 Dresses any day, because I did laugh a little bit. Bell and Duhamel manage to come off as smart and funny and attracted to each other, and if that sounds remedial, well, yeah, that's pretty much the state of big-studio romantic comedies.
Then we went to Sundaes & Cones. On the coldest day of the year so far. Yeah, we are the smart kids. But whatever, you can't let the cold run your life.
I haven't left Greenpoint since we got home on Friday night. I haven't gone further than the place we went for brunch on Saturday morning. The L train may be a shock to the system tomorrow morning.