What I'm Watching: Important Things, Milk, Gran Torino

I have a few episodes of "Important Things with Demetri Martin" on my DVR, and I finally got around to watching the one titled "Brains." While the "Jokes" segment isn't very funny, the sketch involving Ben Franklin, Shakespeare, and Galileo was genius.

And the stroller battle between the two dads was laugh-out-loud funny.

Martin's style of comedy (obsessive, conceptual, visual, faux-naive, and yet highly intelligent) works well in small doses, and this show breaks everything up into tiny segments, so the bits that miss the mark don't sting as much, and the bits that are hilarious leave a quick impression and then disappear. It's a good show.

I also caught up with some movie watching this week (and though I may have seen "Watchmen" by the time this is posted, I haven't seen it as of Friday afternoon's writing). I saw "Milk" and "Gran Torino," thanks to some screener dvds.

"Milk" is a good movie, and I liked Gus Van Sant's use of documentary footage mixed in with his own stuff. Van Sant also shot some new footage to match the grainy documentary sequences, but he mostly doesn't even try to make it match, visually. The cinematography between the in-movie Harvey Milk scenes looks like its a different universe from the documentary pieces, and I like the artificiality of the juxtaposition. It's one of the most interesting things about the movie, I think.

I talked about how Mickey Rourke deserved the Oscar in last week's "What I'm Watching" post, and even though I hadn't seen "Milk" at that time, I was confident in my assertion that Sean Penn wasn't as good as Rourke. And I was definitely right. Penn plays Harvey Milk as a gay caricature, which wasn't super-distracting as I was watching the film (it's a consistent and fully realized performance), but I have since seen some footage of the real Harvey Milk in various clips on YouTube, and Milk, in real life, was nowhere near as mannered and fidgety as Penn is in the film. Putting the real Milk next to the movie Milk makes Penn's performance seem almost embarrassing.

But nothing about "Milk" is anywhere nearly as embarassing as the abysmal "Gran Torino." If this is, indeed, Clint Eastwood's last performance, then it's a shame. He literally growls his way through the performance as Archie-Bunker-in-the-Hood, and the whole movie feels like a silly made-for-tv production, with 99% more racism.

You know what it reminds me of? Did you see "Million Dollar Baby"? You know that one really out-of-place scene where the the boxer girl's family visits her in the hospital, and they come in with their Disney gear and the whole scene is tonally unlike everything in the movie? "Gran Torino" feels like that for two hours. Every scene feels wrong, feels out of place, whether it's the embarrassing moments of Eastwood pounding the Pabst and growling racial epithets, or the cartoonish Hmong neighbors, or the after-school-special priest character and his awkward advice.

"Gran Torino" is just plain terrible.

What are YOU watching?

What I'm Watching: The Wrestler

I don't really think the Academy Awards are anything more than a big Hollywood commercial -- and could this year's show have been any more obvious about that? -- so I don't give the results much thought usually, but Sean Penn has NEVER given a performance as good as Mickey Rourke's in "The Wrestler."

And Sean Penn has given some very good performances.

Whatever it is that makes an actor great, that makes a performance become something more than playing pretend, Mickey Rourke has it, and he's never had it more than in "The Wrestler," which I finally got a chance to see this week. It's not just that he becomes Randy "The Ram," it's that Randy Robinson exists and this is his story. As aware as I was of Rourke's virtuoso performance, it never felt like an acting job. It always felt like a window into this character's life. It felt as real as cinema can get.

"The Wrestler" is not my favorite Darren Aronofsky film. It's too much like a minimalist short story to compete with my fondness for other Aronofky movies. Too simplistic in getting from point A to point B. I prefer the formal experimentation of "The Fountain" or the manic stylishness of "Requiem for a Dream" -- more of the latter than the former. But "The Wrestler" is still a very good film, full of brilliant small moments and an attention to detail that makes almost every other movie seem like a work of pure artifice. When the Ram is working the deli counter, the movie gains a lively, passionate rhythm, and when he's in the ring, "The Wrestler" shows the pleasure and pain of the Ram living the only way he knows how. The whole movie shows that, actually. It's a story about struggle and regret, love and loss, and sadness. But it never wallows in its own pity, and Mickey Rourke never lets the Ram's spirit break totally, even when he's at his most outwardly vulnerable.

"The Wrestler" shows as much of any actor's back as I've ever seen in a full-length motion picture. We are constantly behind the Ram, following him as he prepares for battle, a few steps behind him, but never too far away. It's an angle and a camera move Aronofsky repeats throughout the movie -- our "hero" is always walking away from us, even as he's applauded by thousands -- and Aronofsky echoes it to great ironic effect in the march toward the indignity of working at the deli counter.

It's a good movie, but Rourke's performance makes it something special. And even Sean Penn knows who really deserved to win on Sunday night.

What are YOU watching?

What I'm Watching: Day of the Outlaw

Andre de Toth's 1959 snowbound western "Day of the Outlaw" features the incomparable Burl Ives as Captain Jack Bruhn, a military man who leads a pack of roaming outlaws into a small frontier town. Like pretty much everyone from my generation, I only really know Ives as the snowman narrator of "Ruldolph the Red-Nosed Raindeer," so hearing his familiar voice come out of a hardened killer was startling and wonderful.

Startling, because his sweet, soothing voice commands the respect of his men and creates some sympathy from Robert Ryan's Blaise Starrett. Wonderful, because unlike the typical Western villain, Ives seems like a kindly grandfather burdened by difficult choices. He's evil, but it's an evil built upon a series of choices made long ago -- decisions he may regret, but he cannot change the past.

But that spark of redemption drives the film, as Ryan -- a cattleman not without his own dark flaws -- tries to appeal to the best of Ives's morality in an attempt to keep the outlaw gang from destroying the town. The gang wants nothing more than to drink whatever the tavern has to offer and grope whatever women happen by. Ives has more dignity than that -- he forbids whiskey and women -- but he's dying from a bullet wound, and that ticking clock amplifies the tension significantly.

The female lead, so lasciviously shown on the movie poster, is none other than Tina Louise from "Gilligan's Island" fame. She's great in this role (a much more conservative one than the poster would indicate), and she's almost unrecognizable for those of us who grew up on her Marilyn Monroe caricature in reruns. Here, she's fierce and stoic, and she doesn't have enough to do, but what she does, she does well.

"Day of the Outlaw" ends with an anticlimactic showdown in the snow, as Robert Ryan's character leads the outlaws over a mountain pass that doesn't really exist, and one by one, the gang members fall prey to the harsh wintry conditions.

But when Burl Ives is on screen, it's a captivating film, and definitely worth a look.

What are YOU watching?

What I'm Watching: Dollhouse, Lost, Doctor Who

Did anyone else see "The TV Set," written and directed by Jake Kasdan. It was a pretty good little movie about pilot season, and it starred, among others, Fran Kranz as an aggressively terrible actor. Young Mr. Kranz is now in Joss Whedon's "Dollhouse" as a fidgety scientist guy, and I think someone forgot to tell him that he doesn't have to pretend to be a bad actor for this particular role. Or maybe that's just the best he can do.

And, sadly, Kranz isn't the worst part of "Dollhouse."

Maybe "Dollhouse" could work, or could have worked thirty years ago -- it has kind of a vapid, 1970s air about it -- but the premiere episode certainly doesn't give me much faith. Ah, Faith. I guess I could make a "Buffy" joke or something, but that would be more wit than "Dollhouse" displayed in the entire first episode. It doesn't have to be witty to be good, of course, but it isn't good either. Eliza Dushku absolutely fails to carry the weight of this show, and she -- along with so many other cast members -- seem as if they're playing dress up. Even with the darkness of the subject matter, and the violence and murder on display, this is a strangely naive show. It feels as if it's written and directed by someone with no contact with the way humans actually interact with one another. It's all play-acting. All phony as hell.

And maybe that fits the theme of the show, ultimately, but I'm not going to come back next week to find out, because the first episode was shockingly bad.

I also got caught up with the two most recent episodes of "Lost," and while it's fun to see the writers play the game of "hey, look how THESE pieces of the puzzle fit together," some of the apparent explanations are not actually explanations at all. Like the smoke monster, which is "explained" as "oh, it's not a smoke monster, it's the temple's defense mechanism." Those words don't actually explain anything, though. It's still a smoke monster, even when you call it by another name.

Still, it's better than "Dollhouse" by a factor of about three million. Mostly because the actors in "Lost" give weight to even the most ridiculous sci-fi contrivances. I know some critics rank this current season as the best one ever, but I don't think it's quite as good as last season -- the threat is too vaguely defined now, and the time jumps have gotten old fast. Still, it's a well-crafted show, and I have to admire how great every episode looks and sounds, even if it's all slow builds and teases. "Lost" has trained us to expect nothing more, though, so I can stick with it week in and week out.

I really have no emotional investment in the show. And I still sincerely doubt a satisfying wrap-up to years and years of mysteries.

You know what I have developed an emotional investment in? "Doctor Who"! No surprise, there, for anyone who's been reading my writing over the past month. My son and I watched three episodes from Series Two this week: "The Girl in the Fireplace," "Rise of the Cybermen," and "The Age of Steel" and there's more raw emotion and passion and narrative enthusiasm in any one of those episodes than in "Dollhouse" and "Lost" put together. "The Girl in the Fireplace," in particular, was genuinely frightening and full of love and loss. It was a great little episode, perfectly satisfying as a part of a whole, but working astonishingly well as just a stand-alone. And the Cybermen two-parter had a strong emotional core as well, even though the story took place on a parallel world (which could have made it "not matter" in the way that DC's "Trinity" sure the hell does not matter one bit).

Maybe I can't enjoy "Dollhouse" and even "Lost" quite as much because "Doctor Who" has shown that thrilling and funny television shows can feature moral dilemmas without being bogged down in slow storytelling and ponderous mysteries.

If so, it's a lesson I'm glad to learn. Very glad.

What are YOU watching?

What I'm Watching: Doctor Who, Repo

Okay, so thanks to the prodding of reader "teatime brutality," I am fully on the "Doctor Who" bandwagon. After sampling a few episodes on BBC America, I now have the first four "series" sets in front of me, and I've been tearing through "The Complete First Series" all week.

Unintended side effect: my son has now become a HUGE Doctor Who fan. He's a kid who's really into "Spongebob Squarepants," "Pokemon," "Total Drama Island," and anything for the Nintento DS, so I assumed he wouldn't have much interest in a British sci-fi show, but he watched one episode with me and he was completely hooked. He loves that the Doctor solves problems with his brain and a sonic screwdriver. He loves that the show can be funny and sad and exciting. He wants a Dalek action figure.

So we've finished all of the First Series, and we'll be launching into Series Two any day now. And, by the way, at least two episodes that I've watched so far involve a defeated creature (or creatures) falling through time. So any Doctor Who fan must have read "Final Crisis" and thought, "oh, that old gimmick." Morrison, by the way, is a devoted Whovian.

I also watched "Repo! The Genetic Opera," definitely NOT with my son around. My wife wasn't interested in watching that one either, and I think that was probably for the best as she would have loved 70% of it but hated the other 30% so much that she would have, I don't know, punched the tv. Or hopped on a plane to track down director Darren Lynn Bousman and then taunted him about how much of a tasteless hack he can be.

Even though it can be schlocky and disgusting at times, "Repo" is a mostly great-looking movie, and the songs are good, and most of the performances are good. Anthony Stewart Head is fantastic. Even Paris Hilton is kinda good, and I never thought I would say that. She's perfect for the role, which involves not a little bit of self-parody. It's a gruesome, horrific rock opera, with spines ripped out of people who can no longer afford to pay for them, and old-fashioned "injury to the eye motif" action. It's sickening, and while (apparent B-grade horror icon, but still TERRIBLE actor) Bill Moseley gives the worst performance I've seen in anything that cost this much money to make, it's mostly a slick, original production.

I have no patience for senseless gore or cheap thrill horror, but "Repo" has an incredible sense of humor about itself and it looks like nothing else that came out last year. It may be trying too hard to attain a cult status, and it will probably succeed, but at least it's got some catchy tunes.

What are YOU watching?

What I'm Watching: Oz, Lost, Bad CW Shows

I didn't get a chance to watch much this week -- no movies of any sort, and very little TV. I'm working on a project that requires a lot of research for what will end up being little reward, but that's what has taken up most of my time over the past few days.

Anyway, one new thing I did start watching this week was "Oz: Season One." I'm only one episode into it so far, but I have to ask: does it get any better? I have seen one of the later episodes -- probably from Season Two or Three -- when it originally aired (I was in a hotel room, staying overnight to play in the Magic: The Gathering Regional Championship, because I that's how I used to roll), and I liked it okay. And I liked Episode One okay, too, but it was really, annoyingly, on-the-nose with the narration. Everyone's dialogue was pretty on-the-nose too, now that I think about it, and maybe I'm used to better writing from well-regarded HBO shows, but I wasn't super impressed like I expected to be.

Maybe it gets better written in later episodes?

I also watched last week's "Smallville" Legion of Super-Heroes episode finally, and, yeah, I really don't like "Smallville." It was cool to see and hear some of the Legion allusions, and at least the overall storyline has moved beyond the sappy Lana/Clark teen dullness, but it's still an ultra-cheesy CW show, and for every fun/engaging/interesting moment there were a dozen embarrassing bits. I can't imagine how adults can watch this stuff.

But I read superhero comic books, so what do I know?

"Lost" returned this week, and I watched that. All I have to say is Thank God for Jeremy Davies. He made the two-hour return more than just watchable. It's a good show, and I'm glad it's back, but the super-ponderous mysteries are really not all that super or ponderous. Obviously Locke has faked his death using that poison that led to the buried-alive incident of that eurotrash guy and the annoying "movie star." I really can't be bothered to look up their names.

And in addition to reading the Narnia books, Lindelof and Cuse must know their Billy Pilgrim. Unstuck in time, indeed.

There's no way the Grand Unified Theory of Lost, whenever it's revealed, will take into account all the silliness that went on with the child-stealing, fake-beard-wearing "Others" and all the other red herrings that have been thrown at viewers over the years. But it's still a compelling show.

So "Lost" is fine, it's good. I like it. But it's still not up there with "The Office."

What are YOU watching?

What I'm Watching/What I'm Reading

The return of the "Splash Page" knocked my recently-established weekend blogging routine out of whack, and I really didn't actually read many things that weren't comic books this week, so here's a combined "What I'm..." post for today.

Other than the NFL playoffs, the new episode of "The Office," and getting caught up on the last three episodes of "Batman: Brave and the Bold" (Batman dies in that show, too!), the most significant piece of on-screen entertainment this week has been the enthralling "Superman III."

I know everyone HATES "Superman III." I can understand why. But I love it.

I forgot how much I love it, until I watched it again this week. Part of it has to do with the fact that "Superman III" was the only superhero movie we actually owned when we were kids. Television's Ryan Callahan can attest to this, but we watched this thing about a dozen times on VHS because (a) we didn't have cable when we were that age, and (b) it was Superman AND Richard Pryor!

Richard Lester hams everything up whenever possible, but Richard Pryor has so many brilliant scenes in "Superman III." Look, the skiing off the skyscraper and landing in the street gag is not funny, but it's the little gestures that make Pryor's Gus Gorman into the fascinating on-screen character that he is. My favorite moment: when Robert Vaughn grabs Pryor by both arms and emphasizes something he just said, and Pryor awkwardly reaches to give Vaughn a little hug because he doesn't seem to know what else to do with his arms. It's a complete Michael Scott moment, and it's hilariously subtle.

And the visual asymmetry in this movie makes it more interesting than the others in the Christopher Reeve series. Superman, in costume, sitting on Lana Lang's floral-patterned couch? Brilliant visual. And it's followed up by sleazy Superman's line when he says "nah, I don't need to rescue that truck."

"Superman: The Movie" NEVER made me believe a man can fly, but "Superman III" made me believe that superheroes can be weird and wonderful (but mostly weird), and I will carry that lesson with me forever.

I also have begun my newest Geek Assignment (TM 2007 Timothy Callahan) with "Doctor Who." Challenged by reader "teatime_brutality" to learn to love the good Doctor, I finally sat down and watched the two most recent episodes of the BBC series. And now I'm becoming a little obsessed. I want to watch more. I want to immerse myself (and those two eps were really, really good), but I'm not willing to shell out for the $80 season sets just yet I'll have to wait until my Season sets arrive (just got Seasons 1-4 on ebay for under $150 total about five minutes ago, and I'm a sucker for a deal, even though that is still ridiculously expensive). Still, I'll keep you posted on whether or not this Doctor Who thing is just a brief dalliance or a real and total geek out.

Speaking of Doctor Who, besides my weekly stack of comics, a large chunk of "New Teen Titans Archives" Vol. 3 (I just picked up Vol. 4, and remembered that I never read the third one), a Calvin and Hobbes collection I'm reading with my son, I've also just started a novel by Paul Cornell called "British Summertime." I don't know anything about it, but I'm on a Cornell kick, and since I couldn't get my hands on any of his Doctor Who novels in the U.S. (which would have fed into my Geek Assignment and my Cornell crush, but oh well), I picked this one up. I don't know if it's any good, and I probably won't get around to finishing it this week, but if it's worth reading I'm sure I'll blog about it eventually.

What are YOU watching and reading?

What I'm Watching: Budd Boetticher

Last week, I was asked to contribute to the "What Are You Reading?" section for the Robot 6 launch, and it made me think that I should do something like that each week on my very own blog. So this is the first installment of "What I'm Watching" and tomorrow you'll get the first installment of "What I'm Reading." It gives me something to write about on the weekends other than comic book reviews, and it will be interesting to see what you guys are all watching and reading too.

What I'm watching this week: Budd Boetticher Box Set. I've already watched the documentary on Boetticher: A Man Can Do That, and last night I watched The Tall T, which is a brilliant western that's shocking in its vicious austerity.

Hopefully I'll be able to fit in some more Boetticher over the weekend, but, you know, NFL playoffs and all. Football is good.

What are you watching?