Archive for the 'TV' Category

Parker? I don’t even like her!

Published by Rob on May 31, 2008 in Bitches, Camel Toes, Career Suicide, Films, Rants, Style, TV and Uncategorized. 11 Comments

Sex and the City has now been in theaters for almost 48 hours, and gay guys are supposed to be part of the target audience, so I feel this requires some acknowledgement. I have almost no active memories of sitting down and watching the show during its 1998-2004 run, but I know I’ve seen just about every episode somehow.

I’m not going to bother with spoiler alerts in this post. My guess is that roughly 30% of the people who want to see this movie went yesterday, in Stoli Raz-soaked groups of 10 or more.

Curious but wanting to avoid the throngs, I skulked into a 9:30 a.m. show this morning by myself, unshaven and clutching a 24 oz. coffee. In a 400-seat cinema, 15 were filled, and I was the only dude. With moderately fond memories of all but the show’s final season - when the focus shifted from serial dating and promiscuity to monogamy and garden-variety bridal/motherhood porn - I braced myself for the worst.

A couple of thoughts before we get to the gay stuff: Did all the characters get 30% dumber during the transition from small to big screen? Why is demure Charlotte squealing in every scene that she’s in, and why is she onscreen so much less than the other characters? Does anybody actually think that the Carrie/Big romance is one for the ages, and should represent the main thrust of the movie, even after we thought we put that puppy to bed eight times already?

If the movie is called Sex and the City, why is everything about monogamy, marriage and children (you don’t even see Kim Cattrall’s nipples, for God’s sake)? Why have all the men been castrated and lobotomized (like Harry and Big), or altered to fit the machinations of what passes for a plot (like Steve)? I realize the show was celebrated for its trendsetting approach to style, but does the movie have to flash 10 designer logos at us per shot, and stop dead in its tracks for a wardrobe-change montage every reel, thus bloating the running time to 145 minutes? Fashion brand obsession is one thing, but does it have to extend to bang-you-over-the-head-with-a-tire-iron plugs for Smart Water, Starbucks and Apple?

Does Miranda actually blame herself for causing Big’s cold feet - and when it becomes clear that Carrie does blame her, why does Miranda put up with Carrie’s bullshit (this, in fact, may be the central question of the entire series)? Did anybody, at any point, think that casting Oscar winner Jennifer Hudson as Carrie’s wide-eyed slave girl…I mean, assistant…whom she actually deems a “saint” may not be the most up-to-the-minute means of diversifying the cast?

And while we’re at it, what’s with the Andre Leon Talley cameo? And the “Charlotte shits her pants in Mexico” joke? And the “Sorry we made you wait till the 2-hour mark for male nudity but oh my God don’t look we’re showing you a penis!” scene featuring Samantha’s hot neighbor (fuck it, I’ll take Jason Segel any day)? Why does no one laugh at Carrie’s hideous Vivienne Westwood bridal abortion with the dead bird on top, until an hour later, they do? Why does Parker, so crafty and offbeat in movies like Miami Rhapsody, steamroll through this like Evita Peron’s preserved corpse? Why does no one laugh anywhere, least of all in the audience, in this jokeless comedy?

I take umbrage with the accepted wisdom that Sex and the City is a cult item among gays. Golden Girls (a show that is arguably less dated in 2008 than SATC)? Sure. Designing Women? Yup. But Sex: The Movie takes a weirdly retrograde approach to homosexuality.

Not far into the film, the old gals are strutting down a Manhattan sidewalk in their ridiculous outfits when Samantha starts checking out a guy, only to watch as he says hello to another dude and - DRAT! - kisses him! (It’s not your self-absorption that’s the problem, mall-dwelling flip flop-wearers in the audiences, the problem is that all the hot guys are gay!)

The only two gay guys that Carrie and company apparently know, dweeby Stanford and shrill wedding planner Anthony, eventually make walk-on appearances, and a split-second scene at a New Year’s Eve party implies that they have become a couple. Why? An episode in which Charlotte tried to set them up with each other established that they have nothing in common. It’s supposed to be five years later, and the lonely queens are finally settling for each other to go pink tuxedo shirt-shopping with?

The movie is so filled with off notes, misjudgments, inconsistencies, irrelevance and Fergie songs that this post could turn into a novel. I’m disappointed in writer-director Michael Patrick King, the SATC showrunner who later went on to create HBO’s brilliant The Comeback. The smarter characters on that show would have called bullshit on this movie, and the dumb ones would have loved it.

All I’m saying is, since it’s a hit, please don’t blame the gays.

Television for fierce hot tranny messes

Published by Rob on April 8, 2008 in Bitches, Style and TV. 0 Comments

Yesterday, we learned the shocking news that big bad Harvey Weinstein has wrestled Project Runway from the limp-wristed clutches of Bravo and stowed it between the dimply, cankled hocks of Lifetime: Television for Women.

Although the cash-strapped Weinstein may have pocketed a few ducats out of the deal (you know it’s all gonna be spent on roast beef and whores), this is ultimately a devastating decision – for Bravo, for the series, and especially for the viewer.

Here’s what we think Project Runway might look like in its Lifetime incarnation:

  • Designers challenged to create a fashion-forward set of Crocs
  • Heidi forced to balance Seal’s baby on her knee while judging runway couture
  • Pre-competition shopping trips move from Mood to JoAnn Fabrics
  • Heidi’s description of Michael Kors as a “top American designer” robbed of its giggly double entendre-ness
  • Nina Garcia replaced on panel by Valerie Bertinelli
  • Designers challenged to create a look for Kirstie Alley’s new line of ass-masking, cleavage-enhancing velour eveningwear
  • Tim Gunn forced to play helpful faghag to Marissa Jaret Winokur in upcoming telefilm about fat girl’s journey toward self-acceptance
  • Catchphrase “You’re either in or you’re out” replaced with “She Cried ‘You’re Out!’ The Heidi Klum Story.”

‘Project Runway’ makes a move [Variety]

“Lycra Spandex County,” and Other Direct-to-Series Network Projects

Published by Rob on March 3, 2008 in TV. 3 Comments

We’ve been retching at the identical twin concepts of Lipstick Jungle and Cashmere Mafia ever since they were announced as upcoming midseason replacements last fall. Months later, both shows appear to be on the brink of cancellation. Yet with the networks’ post-strike intention to spend less money developing new shows and producing pilots, we’re pretty sure that we’re going to see a lot more shows like these in the near future: Predigested concepts featuring familiar fading stars that they can turn directly into series without wasting money on things like shooting a pilot, hiring talented writers or revising the scripts.

And because TV executives love nothing more than pandering to the insecurities of lonely single ladies, we expect a lot more aspirational dramedies about beautiful, high-powered New York women who just want to have it all, dammit. Like these:

Lycra Spandex County: High-powered women’s magazine editor Octavia McBride (Lucy Lawless) falls down the steps outside her Upper West Side condo and into the arms of sexy furniture mover Hud (Steven Strait). What does this mean for her engagement to a wealthy commitmentphobe venture capitalist (Steven Weber)? Octavia frets over omakase with her best friends, an acerbic advice columnist (Samantha Mathis), an assistant DA (Elisabeth Rohm, or maybe Angie Harmon) and a television pastry chef (whichever one isn’t playing the DA).

Eyeliner Village: Workaholic ad executive Violet Heatherton (Teri Polo) is pulling another all-nighter surrounded by foamcore story boards and takeout Chinese food. But an MSG overdose sends her into the emergency room, where she catches the eye of a sexy gastroenterologist (Bradley Cooper). Can Violet juggle the demands of a career and a relationship, while still managing to spend 20 minutes per episode drinking white wine alone in her rent-controlled Greenwich Village loft? She nevertheless finds the time to self-reflect, loudly, during yoga class with her best pals, a wind-chime designer (Annabella Sciorra), the owner of a wildly successful online fortunetelling service (Debi Mazar) and a country singer (Crystal Bernard).

Pantyliner Paradise: Ambitious TriBeCa art gallery owner Marlena Albright (Anne Heche, assuming Men in Trees is cancelled by then) never met a markup she didn’t like - but she can’t put a price on her own happiness. Everything changes when she starts representing a brilliant, 18-year-old artist (Michael Angarano) who paints exclusively with blood and creme fraiche. Can Marlena put aside her prejudices about dating someone half her age? Find out during her weekly mudbath yak sessions with her lady posse, a brilliant veterinarian (Julie Bowen), a Wiccan talk show host (Fairuza Balk) and a token black lady (Regina King).

Blows and Eros

Published by Rob on February 19, 2008 in Bitches and TV. 5 Comments

I have seen the face of Satan, and her name is Patti Stanger, Bravo’s so-called Millionaire Matchmaker.

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, Patti’s show is the one that Bravo’s been running ads for exhaustively over the last couple of months. In them, Patti, who has a face like a Gene Simmons drag king, wearing a bloodclot-red pantsuit, awkwardly shoots arrows Cupid-style and sprinkles rose petals over nothing.

This is not a bad bit of metonymy for the show, in which Patti scams dumb, rich L.A. sad sacks out of thousands of dollars to set them up with terrible matches, then blames their failure to connect on their own personality flaws.

Patti berates her clients, calling a 28-year-old entrepreneur “cheap” because he lives in a modest Pasadena condo. She scoffs when a client suggests, “Maybe I can wait to find someone who likes me for me.”

Her business is run like a telemarketing sweatshop, where she barks orders at her staff (whom she calls her “daughters”) as they cold call potential clients, then melts down when one asks for a raise. She forces a handsome, 5′9″ millionaire to stand behind a two-way mirror and listen to a couple of bubbleheads balk at the idea of dating such a “short” guy.

As for her own personal life, Patti claims to have had a boyfriend for 3 years. He may have appeared in one of the episodes I haven’t seen, but my guess is he lives next door to Corky St. Clair’s wife Bonnie from Waiting for Guffman.

My favorite thing about The Millionaire Matchmaker is that I have yet to see an episode where one of Patti’s matches leads to even a third date. The basic arc of every episode is 1) Patti’s client expresses his desire for a completely incompatible match, 2) Patti argues client’s instincts yet sets him upwith someone who fits his specifications, 3) the setup fails spectacularly, 4) Patti yells at client, 5) show ends.

Like Bravo’s equally, addictively vexing Real Housewives, the show is frustrating/fascinating because it refuses to take a judgmental stance on its subject. Instead, it seems to invite the audience to either enjoy it at face value or, as in my case, recoil in horror at the realization that this is how rich people spend their money.

I’m not sure if I’ll ever watch again, but I think I want to be Patti Stanger next Halloween.

Overdosing on Bush

Published by Rob on January 13, 2008 in Films, Oscar Fever and TV. 0 Comments

No, the title of this post does not refer to the charges in Michelle Rodriguez’s latest arrest.

It’s my reaction to foolishly watching the first 10 minutes of NBC’s misbegotten Golden Globes-but-not-really telecast, in which Access Hollywood-amatons Billy Bush and Nancy Odell announced the winners in each category. If the network had trimmed the fat and just had Bush and Odell run through the nominees and winners, it might have been a moderately tolerable 20-minute news break.

But no, somebody thought it would be a better idea to pad the telecast to a solid hour, so as to allow Bush and Odell to air their own editorial opinions on each winner. Imagine my surprise when, after announcing that Cate Blanchett had won the Best Supporting Actress award for I’m Not There, Bush announced that he was surprised Amy Ryan hadn’t won, because Blanchett “was just doing an impression of a man.”

Yeah, thanks Roger Ebert. And kindly fuck off.

The hour also included multiple airings of a home video of zaftig, 19-year-old Hairspray nominee Nikki Blonsky and her obese New Jersey family learning of her Best Actress in a Musical or Comedy nomination, in which Blonsky screams, convulses like Linda Blair in The Exorcist, and knocks over a coffee table. I’m not sure what happened next, because by the end of the video I was in the bathroom vomiting up everything I’d eaten in the last six hours. It was like 1 Girl, 1 Couch.

Eventually I realized that I could switch to E!, which was airing the somewhat-less-unbearable live press conference, which I guess was feeding into NBC’s bloated circle jerk.

Hopefully this car wreck will serve as a Worst Case Scenario quasi-olive branch that’ll put an end to the Writers’ Strike. Because, come late February, if I have to watch Mary Hart announce the winner of the Best Picture Oscar, I’m going to impale myself on one of the Cable ACE Awards available for $5 on eBay.

Global cooling

Published by Rob on January 3, 2008 in Celebs, Oscar Fever and TV. 1 Comment

I’ll be honest. The news that the striking Writers’ Guild is officially going to picket the Golden Globes, thereby scaring away all the nominees and presenters, is really bumming me out.

Obviously it makes sense within the context of the strike (although WGA members are allowed to work on Letterman and the SAG Awards? Huh?), but it still seems like yet another example of this strike’s tendency toward Audience Punishment. I say this as someone who would race to his computer for a “2 Girls, 1 Cup” marathon before watching 5 seconds of NBC’s American Gladiators revival. (Speaking of which, I love that they’re marketing that show as a 300 ripoff, rather than the sorry excavation of early ’90s dross that it is.)

The Globes are stupid and trashy and, by all accounts, easily purchased. But we need them, especially in January, when a nation of loudmouthed heterosexuals are frothing over the NFL postseason. Isn’t this year’s entire awards season kind of like a Julie Christie postseason? Casey Affleck, Amy Ryan, Ellen Page and others all had really awesome and justly celebrated career breakthroughs this year, and I want to see how they look on the red carpet, dammit. Javier Bardem got a lot of attention for that terrible haircut he had in No Country for Old Men, and he deserves the opportunity to remind people that he looks really, really good in a tux.

So, even in the spirit of complete solidarity with the writers, I have to say that this sucks.

UPDATE, 1/7/08: NBC and the HFPA have somehow MacGuyvered a way to broadcast the awards show without actually broadcasting the awards show. Is it worth me staying home and getting ‘faced on champagne? Probably. But I’ll probably be flipping back and forth to the Desperate Housewives rerun on ABC.

Golden Globes, WGA at odds again [Variety]

Picket? I don’t even like it!

Published by Rob on November 7, 2007 in Bitches, Celebs and TV. 3 Comments

The Writers Guild of America has been on strike all of three days, and already I can’t remember the last time I spent so much time poring over coverage of a situation in which no progress is being made (well, besides the War on Terror). Here’s a quick highlight reel:

1.) Patty Heaton joins the picket lines, perhaps under the impression that the Lord her God will come down from on high and offer a contract that both sides can agree on. Or maybe she just saw that there were cameras. [Deadline Hollywood Daily]

2.) The New York Times’ Alessandra Stanley - every copy editor’s living doomsday scenario - spews out a semi-cogent statement of support for the writers, and manages to impugn both Eva Longoria and the entire art of TV criticism in the process. [NY Times]

3.) After years of un-picked-up pilots and unreleased indie films, it looked like Janeane Garofalo had finally caught a break by joining the cast of 24. Except, oh wait, it won’t be airing this season. [Hollywood Reporter]

2.) Mindy Kaling, B.J. Novak and other Office writers bitch about not being paid extra for writing online content, but are still just cute-and-funny enough to not seem like whiny assholes. [YouTube]

1.) Heroes creator Tim Kring basically admits that his show is an overhyped piece of shit. Although he really should probably cheer up and take credit for delivering America’s weekly dose of Shirtless Milo Ventimiglia. Which will really be a painful price for us to pay if this strike carries on. [Entertainment Weekly]

PEN15 Drippings: Professional humiliation edition

Published by Rob on October 22, 2007 in Career Suicide, Celebs, Drippings, Films and TV. 1 Comment

Gorgeous hunk o’ Australian man-meat Hugh Jackman’s CBS producing effort, the super-faggy Viva Laughlin, gets axed after a pathetic two episodes. Hugh presumably seeks comfort in the jowls of his grandma-wife. [Zap2it]

Jakey’s Rendition gets an opening weekend to match its pathetic reviews, as audiences flock to watch Josh Hartnett fight vampires instead. Also getting trounced were two superb, tough-to-market movies, Gone Baby Gone and Things We Lost in the Fire. [Box Office Mojo]

“Ryan Gosling enters rehab” in 10, 9, 8… [Variety]

Marie Osmond collapses live on Dancing With the Stars. Datalounge explodes. [Datalounge]

And you thought Ellen only cared about pussy

Published by Rob on October 16, 2007 in Celebs and TV. 0 Comments

Ellen DeGeneres’ puppy breakdown on today’s show (I’m not synopsizing it or bothering to embed the video, God knows you’ve seen it) initially struck me as being bizarrely out of character.

Then I remembered late-’90s Ellen, the emotional one who did America the great disservice of Shoving Homosexuality Down Its Throat. That Ellen could easily have been choked up by a stray, abused animal. In fact, she did, if you count Anne Heche.

Part of me thinks that this uncharacteristic vulnerability of Ellen 2.0 is just our gal giving The View a run for its crazy. But Big E runs the risk of re-alienating her hausfrau viewers - you know, the ones who don’t like their celebrities having opinions about things. Even cute dogs.

So in the end, I guess the most surprising part of the experience was her claim that she sees her hair stylist every day. I honestly wouldn’t have guessed.

Animal Rescue Dept: Ellen DeGeneres’ scrappy lapdog meltdown [Defamer]

Insatiable ‘Top’

Published by Rob on October 3, 2007 in TV. 2 Comments

WARNING: This post includes Top Chef finale spoilers. If you DVR’d it and haven’t watched it yet, please scroll down and read this post later.

I’m usually a fan of whatever artisanal reality competition show is running on Bravo at a given moment, but this was the first season I really cottoned to Top Chef. The chefs developed a genuine camaraderie, Tom Colicchio got to be a bit less of a dick, tall-drink-of-water CJ and sweaty Brian provided eye candy, and we got an up-close look at Rocco DiSpirito’s recent facework.

Even Padma’s relentless sycophancy (Colicchio: “That dish was awful.” Padma: “Awful.”) got to be less annoying as the season wore on.

That’s why I was disappointed by tonight’s finale, which saw a shocking flameout for Casey (my favorite of the finalists) and a stick-in-the-craw victory for cutthroat, immature Hung. As for Dale, well…my guess is he isn’t a top anything.

It’s hard to second-guess the judges’ decisions on Top Chef since, you know, you can’t taste the food. But it sucks to invest in watching an entire season only to be left with a douchebaggy victor. Now if somebody would just mail me a vacuum-sealed sample of Hung’s raw hamachi fish ‘n chips, I might re-consider.