DVD Review: Cedar Rapids

Ed Helms’ leading-man debut is a funnier movie than The Hangover Part 2. It’s smarter, too.

Dying is easy and comedy is hard, as the famous adage goes, and by extension of that same logic it’s virtually impossible to get dark comedy right. The wreckage of failed attempts includes the best and the brightest artists of every comedy era, and not a few dramatic creators as well. Dark comedy – black comedy, gallows humor, cringe humor – carries its own additional pitfalls besides the usual minefield of problems awaiting its gentler cousin. And when dark comedy fails, too often the results land with a resounding thud, victims of creative overreach or slipshod understandings of tone.

Cedar Rapids, the often pitch-dark new effort from indie mainstay Miguel Arteta, walks its dark comedy tightrope constantly in danger of falling one way or the other. Though ultimately it succeeds, the suspense of waiting for it to collapse under its own ambitious weight suffuses virtually every scene. You almost come to care about the movie itself as much as its conventional story or oddball characters, wondering when at any second its whole artifice will come crashing down. It never does, thanks largely to its cast.

A star is brown: Helms

Small-town man-child Tim Lippe (Ed Helms) is sent by his boss (Stephen Root) at Brownstar Insurance to a regional convention after the agency’s alpha dog (Tom Lennon) dies of auto-erotic asphyxiation. Lippe isn’t ready for the responsibility, let alone the pressure of bringing home the convention’s “Two Diamond” award that the agency has secured several years in a row. But he goes anyway, propelled by his boss’ bullying. His wide-eyed, gawky enthusiasm, mixed with rustic suspicion for the dangers and promises of the titular “big city,” provide some of the film’s most unguarded moments.

The convention’s hotel (as uniformly cheerless, and cheerlessly uniform, as any of a million such places in America) and the people Lippe encounters there of course compel him to grow up emotionally and sexually. In particular, he finds himself drawn into the orbit of hard-partying, foul-mouthed policy “poacher” Dean Ziegler (John C. Reilly), comparatively straight-laced Ronald Wilkes (Isiah Whitlock, Jr.) and the sultry, melancholy Joan (Anne Heche.) The quartet goof their way through the three-day conference while Tim readies his presentation to convention patriarch Orin Helgesson (Kurtwood Smith). Moral fortitude and honesty count for a lot in winning the “prestigious” Two Diamond trophy, and in assenting to his new friends’ temptations – including a fling with Joan – Lippe risks costing his company the award.

Artete works well within the small confines of the hotel, showing the confines of each blandly friendly space and how, especially given the inhospitable winter outside, even such slim diversions as hotel bar margaritas and overheated pools can offer a welcome distraction. It helps a lot that Phil Johnston’s script does right by its main character, shrewdly demonstrating Lippe’s fish out of water ups and downs: his new friends are a welcoming, non-judgmental bunch, a distant cry from the McJesus snobbery of his home town co-workers and neighbors – the same people, Lippe is decent enough to remember, that depend on him. Of course everything works out in the end, but not before plenty of debauchery and clean, if slightly mean-spirited, fun.

As a comic leading man, Helms’ strengths center on the same aw, shucks likability that’s served him more or less unwaveringly since his tenure on The Daily Show. Lippe is similar to The Office‘s Andy Bernard, more naive but less obtuse, with a greater vulnerability as a result. It’s tempting to thumbnail Lippe as Bernard freed of The Office‘s self-conscious repetition of character and story beats, but there’s more – a little more – to him than that. Helms makes him sympathetic but stops short of making him pitiable or charismatic.

He’s backed by, well, a dream supporting cast for this type of project. Reilly is a leading man trapped in the body of a character actor, and every one of his scenes tends to upset the tenuous balance Artete strikes between Lippe and his surroundings. In fact for much of the film’s first hour, the energy level rises palpably whenever Reilly’s motor- and foul-mouthed party animal comes onscreen. Comedies often rise or fall on the quotability of their dialogue; Reilly has most of the lines you’ll want to repeat to your friends.

The surprise performance, however, belongs to Heche as the otherwise content soccer mom who uses insurance conventions as a vacation from the staid security of her normal life. Heche is sexy, sad, and smart all at the same time, without resorting to vamping or overheated line readings to achieve said results. Her confession to Lippe about the normalcy of her life and the release of Cedar Rapids carries some of the film’s best writing, and her well-modulated delivery of the scene works as an oasis to the dark shenanigans displayed almost everywhere else. Heche’s career was swallowed years ago by the media’s provincial fascination with her sexuality; this performance earns her a shot at a larger comeback vehicle.

Making the most of smaller roles, Whitlock makes a charming straight man for the others, especially in a late scene in which he gets to spoof his role on The Wire. The prolific Root is hilarious as Lippe’s boss, and Smith brings the same imperial menace to Helgesson that he brought to all those years as That 70s Show‘s Red Foreman. Arrested Development fans may find themselves a little shocked to see Alia Shawkat, Maeby Funke herself, playing the hotel’s prostitute; the role allows her to say filthy things and look sultry, which for a career transition vehicle is possibly as good as it gets right now.

Cedar Rapids shouldn’t be confused for a great film, but it achieves its difficult ambitions while remaining entertaining, and it has the rare gift of growing in your memory after you leave the theatre. If its raunchy gags and sometimes awkward staging keep it from really developing into something approaching a classic modern dark comedy – Rushmore, to make a contemporary example, or Ruthless People - it’s trying for something riskier than the pot and potty humor that dominates too many modern “comedies” (Not least of which, obviously, The Hangover Part II.) It’s also, admittedly, refreshing to encounter a comedy that doesn’t bear Judd Apatow’s factory-pressed mixture of bittersweet nostalgia and stunted male growth.

Dying is easy, dark comedy is hardest, and ultimately Cedar Rapids is a damned funny movie with a cast full of people who should appear more than they do. Given a small release in the theatres last winter, it’s unmissable home video entertainment.

- Michael Kabel

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Review: Cedar Rapids

Ed Helms strikes off on his own, into darker territory than you might expect.

Dying is easy and comedy is hard, as the famous adage goes, and by extension of that same logic it’s virtually impossible to get dark comedy right. The wreckage of failed attempts includes the best and the brightest artists of every comedy era, and not a few dramatic creators as well. Dark comedy – black comedy, gallows humor, cringe humor – carries its own additional pitfalls besides the usual minefield of problems awaiting its gentler cousin. And when dark comedy fails, too often the results land with a resounding thud, victims of creative overreach or slipshod understandings of tone.

Cedar Rapids, the at-times pitch-dark new effort from indie mainstay Miguel Arteta, walks its dark comedy tightrope constantly in danger of falling one way or the other. Though ultimately it succeeds, the suspense of waiting for it to collapse under its own ambitious weight suffuses almost every scene. You almost come to care about the movie itself as much as its conventional story or oddball characters, wondering when at any second its whole artifice will come crashing down. It never does, thanks largely to its cast.

A star is brown: Helms

Small-town man-child Tim Lippe (Ed Helms) is sent by his boss (Stephen Root) at Brownstar Insurance to a regional convention after the agency’s alpha dog (Tom Lennon) dies of auto-erotic asphyxiation. Lippe isn’t ready for the responsibility, let alone the pressure of bringing home the convention’s “Two Diamond” award that the agency has secured several years in a row. But he goes anyway, propelled by his boss’ bullying. His wide-eyed, gawky enthusiasm, mixed with rustic suspicion, for the dangers and promises of the titular “big city” provide some of the film’s most unguarded moments.

The convention’s hotel (as uniformly cheerless, and cheerlessly uniform, as any of a million such places in America) and the people Lippe encounters there of course compel him to grow up emotionally and sexually. In particular, he finds himself drawn into the orbit of  hard-partying, foul-mouthed policy “poacher” Dean Ziegler (John C. Reilly), comparatively straight-laced Ronald Wilkes (Isiah Whitlock, Jr.) and the sultry, melancholy Joan (Anne Heche.) The quartet goof their way through the three-day conference while Tim readies his presentation to convention patriarch Orin Helgesson (Kurtwood Smith). Moral fortitude and honesty count for a lot in winning the “prestigious” Two Diamond trophy, and in assenting to the group’s temptations – including a fling with Joan – Lippe risks costing his company the award.

Artete works well within the small confines of the hotel, showing the confines of each blandly friendly space and how, especially given the inhospitable winter outside, even such slim diversions as hotel bar margaritas and overheated pools can offer a welcome distraction. It helps a lot that Phil Johnston’s script does right by its main character, shrewdly demonstrating Lippe’s fish out of water ups and downs: his new friends are a welcoming, non-judgmental bunch, a distant cry from the McJesus snobbery of his home town co-workers and neighbors – the same people, Lippe is decent enough to remember, that depend on him. Of course everything works out in the end, but not before plenty of debauchery and clean, if slightly mean-spirited, fun.

As a comic leading man, Helms’ strengths center on the same aw, shucks likability that’s served him more or less unwaveringly since his tenure on The Daily Show.  Lippe is similar to The Office‘s Andy Bernard, more naive but less obtuse, with a greater vulnerability as a result. It’s tempting to thumbnail Lippe as Bernard freed of The Office‘s self-conscious repetition of character and story beats, but there’s more – a little more – to him than that. Helms makes him sympathetic but stops short of making him pitiable or charismatic.

He’s backed by, well, a dream supporting cast for this type of project. Reilly is a leading man trapped in the body of a character actor, and every one of his scenes tends to upset the tenuous balance Artete strikes between Lippe and his surroundings. In fact for much of the film’s first hour, the energy level rises palpably whenever Reilly’s motor- and foul-mouthed party animal comes onscreen. Comedies often rise or fall on the quotability of their dialogue; Reilly has most of the lines you’ll want to repeat to your friends.

The surprise performance, however, belongs to Heche as the otherwise happy soccer mom who uses insurance conventions as a vacation from the staid security of her normal life. Heche is sexy, sad, and smart all at the same time, without resorting to vamping or overheated line readings to achieve said results. Her confession to Lippe about the normalcy of her life and the release of Cedar Rapids carries some of the film’s best writing, and her well-modulated delivery of the scene works as an oasis to the dark shenanigans displayed almost everywhere else. Heche’s career was swallowed years ago by the media’s provincial fascination with her sexuality; this performance earns her a shot at a larger comeback vehicle.

Making the most of smaller roles, Whitlock makes a charming straight man for the others, especially in a late scene in which he gets to spoof his role on The Wire. The prolific Root is hilarious as Lippe’s boss, and Kurtwood Smith brings the same imperial menace to Helgesson that he brought to all those years as That 70s Show‘s Red Foreman. Arrested Development fans may find themselves a little shocked to see Alia Shawkat, Maeby Funke herself, playing the hotel’s prostitute; the role allows her to say filthy things and look sultry, which for a career transition vehicle is possibly as good as it gets right now.

Cedar Rapids shouldn’t be confused for a great film, but it achieves its difficult ambitions while remaining entertaining, and it has the rare gift of growing in your memory after you leave the theatre. If its raunchy gags and sometimes awkward staging keep it from really developing into something approaching a classic modern dark comedy – Rushmore, to make a contemporary example, or Ruthless People – it’s trying for something riskier than the pot and potty humor that dominates too many modern “comedies.” It’s also, admittedly, refreshing to encounter a comedy that doesn’t bear Judd Apatow’s factory-pressed mixture of bittersweet nostalgia and stunted male growth.

Dying is easy, dark comedy is hardest, and ultimately Cedar Rapids is a damned funny movie with a cast full of people who should appear more than they do.  See it  in the theatre if you can, but don’t miss it on home video.

- Michael Kabel

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Miscellaneous Debris, February 2010 Edition

The latest installment of our Movitetone-newsreel-in-blog-form recurring feature.  

Seriously, is it Spring yet? Like a lot of the United States, winter’s icy fingers continue to clutch and grab at us even while February goes out like a lamb. A frozen solid lamb, encased in thick, sticky ice. We didn’t get to the movies much this month, mainly because a lot of the new releases didn’t interest us and anyway we were working on other things. Still, a few items popped up on our radar, and they’re listed below in no particular order of importance.  

All opinions are our own, by the way. They may be different from yours. That’s okay.  

1. Following up our earlier obituary for Brittany Murphy, the Los Angeles Coroner’s final report  indicates there were no signs of drug or alcohol abuse, and that the actress’ body was not dangerously thin at the time of her death. The 84-page report was released Febuary 25, and reiterated earlier conclusions that Murphy’s death was accidental but also preventable, and that no foul play was suspected.  

2. Ungracefully moving from the tragic to the inane, rumors circulated the Internet this week that John Krasinski (The Office) may sign to play Marvel Comics’ super-patriot Captain America. We’ll just add our voice to the chorus of skepticism. Krasinski isn’t a bad actor, yet we don’t see him as the World War II battlefield leader that the script to The First Avenger: Captain America reportedly requires. Of the possibilities mentioned in this latest round of rumors, we’d probably go with Scott Porter (Friday Night Lights), even though we think most of them – including Michael Cassidy, Mike Vogel, and Chace Crawford – are all too young for the role. Remember that Iron Man was a surprise hit thanks in large part to the irresistable performance given by a 43-year old Robert Downey, Jr.  

3. If you’re not already watching Southland, the serial drama TNT rescued from the ever-widening NBC vortex, the show’s second season begins this Tuesday, March 2. Its initial half-dozen or so episodes had some rough patches, including a surfeit of characters jockeying for clarity in the breakneck plotlines, but the episodes themselves were excellent more often than not. So far the standouts among the cast are Regina King as a LAPD homicide detective slowly buckling under the strain of her job, and Shawn Hatosy as a gang task force agent trying to balance a neurotic wife (Emily Bergl) with working against a ruthless gang that may have him outsmarted.  

  

4. With the Academy Awards just nine days or so away, we’re still mulling over our predictions. We sort of expect Avatar to get Best Picture, given the Academy’s hunger for populist appeal just now, though we’re usually and embarrassingly wrong about such things. If we got to choose the winners, we have to say we’d pick The Hurt Locker from the (long) list of nominees. At the least, that film’s Jeremy Renner deserves the Best Actor nod.  

We’ll have our complete list of awards picks next week.  

5. A recent viewing of The Magnificent Seven got us to wondering who’d play the mighty group of gunfighters in a new version. We’re actually a little surprised Hollywood hasn’t tried it already. (The burly excess of the upcoming The Expendables with its vaguely similar concept notwithstanding.) We imagine Chow Yun-Fat in the Chris Adams role (played in the original by Yul Brynner), with George Clooney as Vin (Steve McQueen) and Clive Owen as the knife-throwing Britt (James Coburn.) We can also see Mad Men‘s John Slattery as the dapper, nerve-wracked Lee (Robert Vaughn) and Joseph Gordon-Levitt as the firebrand Chico (Horst Bucholz). Finally, who better than Javier Bardem to play the bandit king Calvera (Eli Wallach)? Post your own ideas below, please, but here’s the trailer to the original:  

  

6. Pixar’s John Carter of Mars project keeps picking up talented cast members, and as longtime fans of the Edgar Rice Burroughs novels we keep getting more enthused for the film, the studio’s first attempt at live action. Besides stars Taylor Kitsch and Lynn Collins, the cast now also features Mark Strong (Sherlock Holmes), Ciaran Hinds (There Will Be Blood), Bryan Cranston (Breaking Bad), Willem Dafoe (Platoon), Samantha Morton (In America), Polly Walker (Rome), Thomas Haden Church (Sideways) and Dominic West (The Wire).  

The swashbuckling story (think Lord of the Rings crossed with Star Wars) tells of an American Civil War officer’s adventures on the barbaric world of Mars, or Barsoom, eventually uniting its several warlike races. Burroughs wrote more than a dozen stories set on the fictionalized planet, so Pixar undoubtedly has trilogy or more in mind. The film is set for release in 2012.  

Ask your parents: Leno

  7. We harbor little respect for the man and even less affection, but Jay Leno’s return to The Tonight Show and NBC’s willingness to bring him back on at the expense of the much funnier Conan O’Brien indicates something that a lot of the entertainment media likes to pretend doesn’t exist: the millions of television viewers who don’t give a shit about what’s hip or edgy or even on the pop culture radar at all.  As commentator Steve Sternberg points out, Leno’s audience isn’t anywhere near the over-celebrated 18-24 demographic, and likely remained unphased by the public sentiment that bolstered O’Brien in the recent debacle. We imagine Leno’s fan base typically skews toward having plenty of money, too, a quality we’re sure advertisers find appealing.  

8. Finally, we recently saw – and loved – Robert Siodmak’s 1948 film noir Cry of the City, starring Victor Mature and noir heavyweight Richard Conte (The Big Combo) in some of their finest performances. Lieutenant Candella (Mature) stalks career criminal Martin Rome (Conte) through as realistic a ghetto as was put on film up to that point. The film isn’t as famous as Siodmak’s next effort, Criss Cross (which we frankly find a little overrated), but it’s every bit as enjoyable for noir afficianados.  

The film isn’t available on DVD yet, but it is available on YouTube, and Fox Movie Classics has aired it several times recently, as well.  

  

We’ll be back next week. Thanks for reading.  

- Michael Kabel 

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DVD and Blu-Ray Releases This Week

Cult and classic favorites, new editions, and complete series collections dominate today’s new release schedule.

Christmas is a little over nine weeks away, and already the movie studios and television networks are pumping out special editions of DVD and Blu-Ray sets unmistakable for their gift potential, including new editions and expanded versions of cult and classic favorites. This week shows a pretty broad cross section of the last forty years of film and television, including at least one half-forgotten classic TV series, possibly the best cop show ever, and a half-dozen other, smaller releases with appeal to more selective audiences.

The big release this week, of course, is Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen on DVD and Blu-Ray. Nevertheless, the following is just a sampling of what else is available, including the suggested manufacturer’s list price. Of course, prices may vary according to retailer, and will likely decrease as the holidays bear down on us.

Planes, Trains, & Automobiles – “Those Aren’t Pillows” Edition ($14.98)  Boasting career highs from both writer-director John Hughes and co-star John Candy, this 1987 classic features Steve Martin as Neal Page, an uptight Chicago executive stuck in a series of accidents, near-accidents and strokes of bad luck while trying to fly home for Thanksgiving. Candy plays Del Griffith, the slovenly shower curtain ring salesman who dogs his every errant step and false move. The chemistry between Candy and Martin is almost legendary, with each new calamity building on the last to overwhelm the mismatched travelers. Full of quotes and scenes you’ll re-create with friends through the holidays. “Dell Griffith, please to meet you.”

This new DVD includes Hughes and Candy retrospectives and a deleted scene.

Monsoon Wedding – The Criterion Collection ($39.95) This 2001 dramatic comedy won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival and helped reignite foreign film afficianados’ love affair with Bollywood cinema. Directed by Mira Nair (the upcoming Amelia), the story follows the entanglements and complications arising from a traditional Punjabi wedding, showing the ups and downs of both the family members and the servants on whose shoulders the celebration ultimately rests. Maybe some of the characters are a bit broad, and the observations a little precious, but audiences who enjoy family centered works such as this probably won’t care anyway.

The Criterion edition contains all the usual premium-grade extras you’d expect, including three short documentaries about India directed by Nair. Also available on Blu-Ray disc.

Easy Rider ($38.96) - The iconic road movie about 60s rebellion comes – only a little ironically – to Blu-Ray disc with a new featurette and commentary by director and co-star Dennis Hopper. For those few who don’t already know, the 1969 film follows two rebels (Hopper and Peter Fonda) as they drive from California to New Orleans in order to see Mardi Gras. Along the way they pick up a small-town lawyer (Jack Nicholson, in his star-making role) who shares their disillusionment with society and its trappings. For a treatise on freedom, the film’s attention to form, structure, and even geographic accuracy are appropriately loose, with digressions and long talky passages frequently interrupting the travelogue montage sequences. And the infamous ending, though explosive at the time, today feels both pretentious and stiff. Still, the movie overall captures the era’s zeitgeist, even while as a work of cinema it gets creakier by the year.

Vega$: The First Season Volume 1 ($36.98) More than twenty years before the sexy lab rats of CSI:, Las Vegas was kept safe by freewheelin’ private detective Dan Tanna (Robert Urich), cruising the streets in his vintage Thunderbird and solving cases with his bumbling sidekick and single-mom secretary. The show is vintage late 70s cheese, right down to the swanky, horn-driven music and do-your-thing attitude, and with his cool car and hip bachelor pad Tanna is the archetypal private eye of the period. Urich, who might be described not unkindly as the Tim Daly of his generation, holds the show down thanks to his easy charm. The three-disc set includes the first half of the first season, though why CBS video wouldn’t spring for the other half is anybody’s guess.

Homicide: Life On The Street – The Complete Series ($149.95) About as far from Vega$ as humanly possible in tone and approach alike, NBC’s critically-adored, audience-starved 1993-99 procedural consistently struggled to find its audience, and no wonder. The show was simply ahead of its time, as demonstrated by the success of The Wire, Homicide creator David Simon’s later effort and a sequel to this earlier series in all but name. Based on Simon’s book chronicling his year with the Baltimore Police homicide department, Homicide the series ranks among the best television ever produced, and for our money it’s the best cop show ever. Utterly and completely riveting for six of its seven seasons, with the seventh (following the departure of breakout star Andre Braugher) being only very good. The middle seasons depicting the mammoth “Luther Mahoney Saga” are essential viewing for any cop show fan.

The equally mammoth 35-disc collection includes all 122 episodes, three crossover Law & Order episodes, and the 2001 telepic Homicide: Life Everlasting, which served as coda and elegy and for the series.

The Hunger: The Complete Second Season ($39.98) Possibly the closest thing Generation X’ers might ever get to their own Twilight outside of the Whedonverse (True Blood arguably notwithstanding), the second and final season of this British anthology series featured demons, vampires, and smart erotica mixed into a potent swirl and hosted by David Bowie, who at 62 years old still has more erotic cool than the somnambulant hipsters of Twilight likely ever will.

The four disc set includes all 22 episodes, produced by Tony and Ridley Scott and featuring appearances by Anthony Michael Hall, Giovanni Ribisi, Eric Roberts, Brad Dourif, Jennifer Beals, and many others. The first season, hosted by Terrence Stamp, is also available.

- Michael Kabel

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Miscellaneous Debris, January Edition

Our irregular discussion of matters of passing interest.

So how’s your 2009 going so far? Over the holidays we got to see two of the big holiday releases, and both were letdowns. Of the two, Benjamin Button was the bigger disappointment, if only because the stakes there were much higher; Valkyrie was so close to being good we were cheering for the film to tighten itself up halfway through. We’re going next week to see Revolutionary Road, a use of time we’re pretty sure will count as an act of penance.

January is the traditional dumping ground for films whose studios have very little confidence in their success. Time was, Thanksgiving was the season for such likely bombs, a practice that led to films expected to fail getting the nickname “turkeys.” This week, theatregoers are subjected to Bride Wars and The Unborn, two rigidly formulaic genre flicks perhaps distinguished most clearly by their appearance in a theatre at all instead of heading down the direct-to-DVD chute.  January is also if nothing else a time to catch up on the December prestige releases trickling into wider release – Gran Turino and The Reader both open  nationwide tomorrow.

The following is stuff we thought worth mentioning but not worth blogging about for a whole entry. All opinons and snark are our own.

1. Next week’s big release: Paul Blart: Mall Cop, a “comedy” starring the fat guy from The King of Queens. Did Larry the Cable Guy pass on this project? Previews boast that it’s from Happy Madison, which means it’s for sure a script even Adam Sandler passed on (probably Rob Schneider wanted it though.) If God forbid there’s a sequel, we bet anything it’s set in the Mall of America.

2. The Dark Knight is finally getting some recognition from the various awards-givers. The Director’s Guild of America is nominating Christopher Nolan, along with more celebrated directors David Fincher, Ron Howard, Gus Van Sant and Danny Boyle. The film, and Nolan, undeniably deserve the recognition. Besides raising the bar for a genre that’s become one of the most prevalant and profitable of the decade, Nolan’s masterpiece includes Heath Ledger’s already-legendary turn as the Joker as well as the best work of Christian Bale and Aaron Eckhart’s considerable careers. It’s not the kind of film that usually garners awards, but given the apathy greeting Oscar-bait flicks like Benjamin Button and Changeling maybe it’s time to open the awards to other kinds of films.

3. Speaking of superhero movies, rumors are circulating that Sam Rockwell and this year’s comeback kid Mickey Rourke are in talks to play the heavies in Iron Man 2. According to Reuters News Service, if talks go as planned Rourke would play the superpowered villain Whiplash, though Variety says he’ll appear as The Crimson Dynamo, who in the books was the Soviet Union’s answer to Iron Man. Rockwell would appear as Stark Industries rival billionaire Justin Hammer. As reported earlier, Don Cheadle will replace Terrence Howard as Jim Rhodes, though Robert Downey, Jr. is confirmed and Gwyneth Paltrow reported to return to their roles as Tony Stark and Pepper Pots, respectively.

4.  From the Snowball’s Chance In Hell Department: Hustler magazine publisher Larry Flynt and chief Girls Gone Wild cretin Joe Francis plan to petition Congress for a $5 billion bailout. That’s right, the porn industry wants the government to give them money, saying that it’s only fair given the assistance already sent to banks and to the Big 3 automakers. Whatever, we imagine the hearings will go something like this: CONGRESS: We’re not sure why we should give you any money. PORN INDUSTRY: There must be something we can do to persuade you. We’d do anything. (takes off shirt) Anything. CUE MUSIC: Wonk, chicka chicka wonk wonk… Actually, we think Flynt deserves some kind of recognition for producing Who’s Nailin’ Palin?

5. Is it just us, or has The Office turned into a mean-spirited, slow-moving snore this season? Jim and Pam are treading water following their slapdash engagement, Dwight is an unmitigated asshole (instead of a mitigated asshole, like before) and supporting characters like Creed and Stanley are all but absent from the storylines. This year’s Christmas episode, in which Michael tried in vain to get Meredith into a detox center while Angela provoked Phyllis into revealing her adulterous affair to the whole staff, was about as funny as smog. And while it’s possible writer Paul Leiberstein enjoys bashing his own sad-sack character Toby, the joke itself is getting pretty old.

6. Marley & Me, a film in which two fading celebrities are bullied by their asshole dog, has grossed $106 million in just two weeks. What the hell, America? What the hell.

7. The Christian Science Monitor ran an intriguing article a couple of weeks ago about the resurgent popularity of film noir, and how even the genre’s fans are hard-pressed to define its forms and criteria. The cause for its rediscovery by modern audiences isn’t that difficult to theorize: film noir enjoyed its Golden Age in the late 1940s, a time when America was both tired of war and deeply skeptical about its place in the future of the world. In other words, a time exactly like right now. As a reminder to Hollywood, two of Jame Ellroy’s L.A. Quartet novels have yet to get adapted to film, and no one would mind if The Black Dahlia got a do-over.

8. ABC brings its adaptation of the cult British sci-fi series Life On Mars back to the schedule on January 28, giving it the berth after the network’s “That’s not over yet?” former hit Lost. During its six-episode stretch last year, Life On Mars got better by leaps and bounds with each episode, so if you’re looking to get in on the ground floor of something here’s your chance. Oz and Homicide: Life On The Street fans take note: Lee Tergesen and Dean Winters both carry important recurring roles on the series.

9. An era in 00′s television ends next week with William Petersen’s departure from CBS ratings behemoth CSI:  From his earliest work in gritty 80s neo-noirs like Manhunter and To Live And Die In L.A., Petersen has always been a superb craftsman actor who’s inhabited dozens of characters with perfect modulation and poise without showing off for the camera. You’ve probably never seen him in films such as Kiss The Sky, Gunshy, or The Rat Pack, so with his exit from weekly television this is a good time to look up those worthwhile efforts. (His Jack Kennedy in The Rat Pack is so authentic you’ll get chills.)

10. Not that this should do anything for you – we hope it doesn’t, but do your own thing – last year’s clunkers Righteous Kill, Bangkok Dangerous, Pineapple Express, and Babylon A.D. all arrived on DVD this week. Combined with two weeks of reruns, January is the scrap heap even in home entertainment.

We’ll be back next week with some honest-to-Jeebus film reviews. Have a good weekend.
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Homicide: Coldplay On The Street

It’s like chocolate and peanut butter – only it’s a cop show and a rock band.

We miss the 90s cop drama Homicide: Life On The Street, with its cast of underrated actors and plots that never ended in a wrapped-up quip back at headquarters. If you’ve never seen the show, or if you’re a fan of The Wire – or just good cop shows in general, of which there’s a dearth right now – you owe it to yourself to Netflix the series, especially seasons 4-6, when the show truly hit its creative prime.

So we were excited to find this video about the late, great series, set to “Don’t Panic” by the formerly great rock band Coldplay. While touching on some of the show’s key moments, it also reveals the emotional intensity that makes the series stay with its audience now, almost ten years since its cancellation.

Thanks to easilyjaded2 for putting this clip together.

 

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