Category — The Arts

I admit it. I fell hard for a television show. Not even a really, really unique show, but a procedural, focused on a cop none-the-less. How many of those are there? And yet, this one had something I like. No, not eye candy… though I liked that too. It had four successful women who actually liked and supported each other. It had girl-girl chemistry.

I’m sad.

…the world cheers.

In her new film, Hilary Duff blows off all things innocence, drops a scorpion down her pants, shimmies, and let’s some guy go in after it.

Shocking?

Sure… in the way that it’s shocking when every young starlet with a squeaky clean image does a really “racy” turn to prove that they are serious actors.

Sexy?

Uh, pretty much, yeah. There is no denying that.

Will parents be disturbed?

More than likely. But here’s the thing about that. Let’s call Hilary Duff ‘X’ for our purposes.

I never understand why parents just let their children flock to things because ‘X’ is in the cast. ‘X’ is an actress and ‘X’ is bound to become an adult at some point, and take on more adult roles. Just because the kiddies grew up watching ‘X’ on a popular kiddie show doesn’t mean that parents shouldn’t check into things before sending their kids off with twenty bucks to the movie theater.

What struck me more than anything about this scene was just how bad John Cusack’s acting is at the end there. I don’t know what it is about it. Something struck me as lame.

How stoked was I when it was verified that Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows would be made into two films?

Pretty damn stoked.

See, I personally love the books. The films? Not so much. I have loved exactly one of them, Prizoner of Azkaban. Sorcerer’s Stone and Chamber of Secrets, virtual page to screen transfers of the first two books, were good enough. Goblet of Fire and Order of the Phoenix, both of which cut out far too much, were barely passable.

If the rumor mill holds true, this year’s Half Blood Prince looks to be truly unfortunate.

But the last hoorah is Deathly Hallows, and Deathly Hallows is also the best of the books by far. To see that they don’t plan to destroy it as handily as they did GoF and OotP, by trying to condense several hours worth of material into two hours, is good news indeed.

Buried on an off-brand network (Fox) in a hideous timeslot (Fridays 8:30p), The Return of Jezebel James premiered tonight. Created by Daniel Palladino and Amy Sherman-Palladino, the same team that brought the world Gilmore Girls, Jezebel James is a ripe enough premise that, with a good squeeze, ought to be able to produce some decent juice.

The first two episodes aired back-to-back tonight, and I’m not going to lie, I was a little bit worried at first. The pilot was, well, how do you say? Bad. In fact, really, really bad, complete with forced humor and a really annoying laugh track, which was pretty much necessary, because it was hard to know when something was meant to be funny. The acting was lacking. The script was lacking. It was pretty much on the level with every other sitcom on television today.

Thank goodness it came in a two-pack.

It seemed everything that episode one lacked, episode two had. It had heart. It had good writing. It had a lot of things that made Gilmore Girls a great show (until that wildly uneven last season).

The verdict?

Watch it… while you can. It’s timeslot is a veritable kiss of death.

I read on one very active, and generally very accurate, message board that Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince is being pimped as a teen romantic comedy. Please tell me this is too wickedly unsettling to be true. You see, the sixth book was the worst book of the series… by far. I have my fair share of conspiracy theories regarding Half Blood Prince. And it definitely did delve a little too far into the romantic lives of the teenage trio, as well as everyone else in the school it seemed, especially considering that it came between Order of the Phoenix and Deathly Hallows, and there really shouldn’t have been much time for romps in the hallways. But a teen romantic comedy? About the only part of this I’m willing to accept is the teen part. Other than that, it makes me very uncomfortable.