Season Three of Project Runway: Yeah, I blogged about that, too

I hated Jeffrey like Romney hates Huckabee. Here's the link to those recaps.

You've got to start from the bottom up.

On Second Thought, Pass Me the Bucket: The Bucket List review

1 star

Have you ever been out shopping with a pal and you tried on a sweater that looked like everything else in your wardrobe and your friend helpfully said, “Don’t you own that already?”
Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson need to get better friends.
It’s not just that the two actors are playing characters we’ve seen them play countless times before—Nicholson, an ornery and irascible billionaire; Freeman, a wise and sagacious good egg—they’re playing ersatz versions of these characters. This is a made for TV version of a Morgan Freeman/Jack Nicholson buddy film, except it actually stars Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson. (And it’s directed by Rob Reiner. Oh, whither Meathead?)
One critic suggested the film might be better if the two actors had switched parts, and I sort of agree. At the very least, it would have been more watchable. But in the end, nothing can save this cloying, shallow, disingenuous film from itself.
Here’s the premise: Two old men meet in a hospital room. Edward Cole (Nicholson) actually owns the hospital (among others)—he only shares a room because his personal assistant/whipping boy (Sean Hayes) convinces him it’s a good PR move. His roomie Carter Chambers (Freeman) is a mechanic and trivia whiz who sacrificed a college degree to support his family. (How do we know Carter’s smart? Because he shouts out the answers to Jeopardy questions. Can we put a moratorium on this character device please?). Both men are dying of cancer but are conveniently “asymptomatic.”
While Carter—who provides the film’s patient, doting voiceover narration (I know, it pains me to write this as much it pains you to read it)—has a loving family, lonely Edward has four ex wives and an estranged daughter. (Gee, wonder if Carter is going to facilitate some sort of father/daughter reunion? Oh, I don’t want to spoil the surprise). While at first the men dislike each other (so different from other buddy films I’ve seen!), they eventually become allies and friends.
It is then that the concept of The Bucket List—a list of things both men want to do before they “kick the bucket”—is introduced and the two fogies embark on one last intercontinental adventure.
Just take a guess as to what they might do.
If you guessed skydiving, you’d be right!
If you guessed race car driving, give yourself two more points!
View the pyramids? Check and double check!
Dine at the finest restaurant in Paris? Oui, oui, oui.
And so on.
The list also has some vague, treacly entries like, “See something truly majestic” and “Kiss the most beautiful girl in the world”—designed to wrench maximum tears from the audience.
What else can I say? The film is one big fake, by-the-numbers buddy film crossed with some comforting Hallmark bits of faux-wisdom on death.
You want to see a film that tackles death and love with sincerity and guts? Rent Sarah Polley’s Away From Her. But whatever you do, stay away from this stinker. Let Freeman and Nicholson know that even they can wear out their welcome.

Liked It: Thoughts on the L Word Season 5 premiere

Last night, the L Word had its fifth season premiere. It was good. So good, in fact, that fans of the show might dare to call it, “Season One good.”
“Season One good” is a shorthand for everything that worked so well in the first season of Showtime’s sapphic drama: Great fashion, glamorous and fabulous characters who hung out together and seemed to genuinely like each other, insiderish dialogue, tons of romantic intrigue, and, of course, lots and lots of sex. Season One was shallow but smart—like a soap opera written by a Bard graduate. It didn’t hurt that I developed a whopping girl crush on Shane (Katherine Moennig)—the laconic, shaggy-haired lady killer. (Apparently, I wasn’t alone in this crush. There’s actually a t-shirt you can buy that says, “I’d Go Gay For Shane.”)
I actually still kind of liked Season Two, but there were signs that things were unraveling. Ilene Chaiken, the show’s Svengali-like creator, is obviously a very smart woman—but maybe not quite as smart as she thinks. When L Word is on target, it’s a juicy guilty pleasure. When it tries to get serious about art and politics, it gets maddeningly pretentious.
With each passing season, the show seemed to take itself more and more seriously. Transgenderism, gays in the military, censorship, cancer, sexual abuse were all taken on with grad school studiousness. Straight people were often a target—straight men in particular—saying ridiculously ignorant things (from last nite’s eppy: “What does the T stand for in LBGT—tentative?”) and being as unhip and unglamorous as Chaiken could depict them. (A gay/straight “mixer” in Season Four is particularly painful.)
Often, the most annoying character was writer Jenny Schecter (Mia Kirshner, not her fault), clearly a surrogate for Chaiken herself. It was Schecter who was a victim of childhood sexual abuse—and it was she who often led to those two most dreaded words in television: Fantasy sequence. In them, she was often at a carnival (?) being chased by frightening carnies or people with pig snouts or bearded ladies. You’d watch those sequences and think, “Yada, yada, yada. . .can we get back to the breakup between Tina and Bette?”
As the seasons went on, the L Word was kinda all over the map. Characters would have these radical personality changes: rich Helena Peabody went from a delectably bitchy villainous in Season two to a veritable Mother Theresa in Season Three. Likewise, funky, spunky Alice (the sexy and funny Leisha Haley) turned into a pill-popping stalker in Season Three—but recovered by the end of the season, only to deal with the show’s biggest misstep (and bummer), the death of adorable tennis pro Dana. Way too many new characters entered the picture, the least welcome of which was the transgender Max (Daniela Sea). Nothing wrong with introducing this character, but the actresses’s monotone delivery and puppy dog passivity made her difficult to warm up to. What’s more, all these new characters were beginning to feel like interlopers. Didn’t we have enough characters as it was?
Chaiken obviously had read the message boards where fans were clamoring for more group interaction, a la Season One. Sometimes she tried to force this action—a scene in Season Three where the gals sat around a table at The Planet (the show’s answer to “Central Perk”) discussing euphemisms for the vagina was particularly forced and unfunny. Season Four got a little better—a scene where our West Hollywood fashionista heroines attempted a pickup basketball game was genuinely entertaining. But in many cases, it just seemed like the L Word had lost its groove.
So why did I keep watching it? That’s a natural and fair question.
Give credit to the stellar cast (particularly Jennifer Beals, who shines as alpha femme Bette), who often elevated the crummy dialogue and absurd scenarios with their nuanced performances. And yes, give credit to Chaiken, who managed to do just enough to keep me intrigued (or at least, optimistic that things would get better.) (But no, I can not give credit to musical director and sometimes writer Elizabeth Ziff. That inane theme music HAS to go.)
Last night seemed to reward me for my patience. A lot of the extra characters have been kicked to the curb (Papi, we hardly knew ye), Shane is back to her hound dog ways (yay for slutty Shane!), Bette and Tina are making googly eyes at each other, and the group dynamic seems frothy, fun, and real.
Keep it up, Madame Chaiken. At this rate, we might be referring to future seasons as “Season Five good.”

I’m Going to Wander Off Now: The Project Runway recap

If you ever secretly suspected that Tim Gunn sleeps in a smartly pressed white shirt with a Windsor knot tie and a tailored pin stripe suit, this episode of Project Runway would certainly not disavow you of that notion.
Because there was Tim, looking impeccably crisp and fresh at 6 am, as the designers stumbled around, rubbing sleep out of their eyes and pulling up their boxer shorts.
“I was a little traumatized,” admitted Kit. “I’m in my pajamas in front of Tim Gunn!”
Yeah, that can pretty much scar you for life.
But no time for dwelling on the humiliation, as the designers were off to the Hershey store in Times Square.
Sadly, Jillian slipped out of her pajamas and into rainbow suspenders from the Mork from Ork 1978 collection. Designer, heal thyself.
The Hershey store inspired three different reactions:
There was jaded know-how from Chris: “I have a lot of experience with knowing not to use food.” (And immediately, the mind wanders to an image of a drag queen slipping on a pool of melted Jell-O on the runway.)
There was unmitigated glee from magical forest sprite Elisa: “How can you not want to make things out of magic, magic, magic?” (So true.)
And there was “this sucks” teen eye-rolling from Christian: “Oh God, we’re going to make things out of candy.”
So off they went, ransacking the store like a bunch of toddlers on ritalin, grabbing as many Hershey’s Kiss pillows and giant Kit Kat bars as possible.
As for the poor woman who was possibly going to be in charge of cleaning up the destruction, all she do was muster a grim faced, “Have a sweet day.” (Kill me if I ever have to work for a company that forces me to exhort, “have a sweet day!”)
Back in the studio, Jillian was the only one dumb enough (smart enough?) to use actual food—in her case, intricately woven Twizzlers—but some seriously cool Pop Art creations were being designed.
Christian thought he was the absolute bomb diggity with his Reese’s cup dress, but it was actually just a (tasty) variation on the coffee filter dress we’ve seen a couple of times.
I totally LOVED Kit’s Kit-Kat dress, pictured. An obvious choice to be sure—what? You were expecting a Mounds bar?—but seriously cool and fun.
Chris managed to temper every fabulous bone in his body to create a surprisingly tasteful Hershey’s strapless sheath dress. He wanted that Gay Pride float (and apparently, so did Michael Kors—those two should so start their own line for drag queens and MOBs) but was able to resist, quite winningly.
Elisa revealed that she had been hit by a Porsche and in a coma (holy $#!@!!!!)—but that still didn’t quite explain her ungodly combination of doody-brown dress with metallic water wings.
Kevin disappointed me with his ho-hum outfit. Yes, it was well made and tasteful. But really, what about giant metallic candy wrappers makes the mind leap to a brown cocktail jacket and matching slip skirt?
Jillian’s finished project was impressive—and smelled good, too, apparently!—but maybe too gimmicky to actually win?
Ricky Hershey’s Kiss shaped dress didn’t suck, which is a big improvement for him.
Sweet P was a hot mess today. (Although Tim Gunn’s assessment that her skirt looked like a maxi pad made it clear that he is not familiar with women’s toiletries.) But I’m glad she got to stay. I really love her Aging Hipster That Could pluck.
Victorya also let me down with her milk maid monstrosity. The less said about that dress the better
Finally, our winner, Rami. I liked his dress—it had a kind of Candyland fantasy quality and it represented a nice departure from his risk-free chic of past shows. Also, its level of craftsmanship had Zac Posen’s eyes popping out of his (adorable) head. Still, I have a hard time getting amped about any Rami win. It’s just so. . . predictable. In a year that had kitchen wiz Hung win Top Chef, and Tyra clone Saleisha win ANTM, a Rami win at Project Runway would be another letdown. Let’s go, Christian, Jillian, and Victorya (and dark horse Kevin). Pick up the pace!
As for our new age nymph Elisa? It was time for her to go. And she seemed to agree. “As it should be,” she said when Sweet P eluded the cut. (I suspect this was more of a “everything happens for a reason” bit of Zen equanimity than a “your dress was better than mine” acknowledgement.)
Then she saw Heidi’s “auf wiedersehen” and raised it an “ashay”—which is clearly some of kind of secret yogi tree hugging salutation. And with that, she wandered off into Mother Earth’s kind embrace.

The Most Underrated Films of 2007

I’ve decided to break these down into three separate categories:

RG-really good
BTYT-better than you think
EB-enjoyably bad

Reign Over Me (RG) – Maybe it was Adam Sandler’s frizzy hair (he looked more like Bob Dylan than Cate Blanchett does). Maybe it was the slightly annoying strain of male fantasy wish-fulfillment that permeates all of writer/director Mike Binder’s work. (He was also responsible for that lousy HBO series, The Mind of the Married Man.) Whatever the case, I thought the critics really missed the boat on this one. It’s about a man (Sandler) who loses his whole family on 9/11 and retreats into a state of permanent adolescence. He is helped by an old friend (Don Cheadle), a reasonably happily married therapist who, on some subconscious level, secretly envies his friend’s new freedom. The film, which could have sunk into mawkishness, has a surprisingly deft touch and is often quite insightful. It almost excuses Sandler for I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry.


The Hoax (RG) – Gere’s best performance of the year—and no, that’s not damning with faint praise—in this true story about Clifford Irving, a down on his luck writer who claims he’s been given exclusive authority to write Howard Hughes’s memoir. While Irving lies with such panache he begins to believe his own bullshit, his fretful business partner (Alfred Molina, nearly stealing the show) can’t bluff his way out of a paper bag. They make for a great comedic team—until things get horribly, and predictably, out of control.


Nanny Diaries (BTYT) – I know. I’m a big fat Laura Linney apologist. But she’s not the only reason to see this moderately successful adaptation of the beloved book (although her performance as an Upper East Side Mother From Hell alone is worth the Netflix queue). You’ve also got Scarlett Johansson, delightful as ever as the put-upon nanny; Paul Giamati, playing against type as the rapacious husband; and dreamy Chris Evans as the aptly-named “Harvard hottie.” Plus, the movie gets the essential thing from the book right: You believe that Scarlett’s Annie loves her small charge enough to put up with his hateful parents.

August Rush (BTYT) – It’s funny. I saw this and Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium in the same week. Both can be accused of the same thing—whimsy up the butt. But while Magorium seemed fake, I bought the Extreme Sentimentality (is that an X Games event?) of Kirsten Sheridan’s debut. The phrase I used to describe this tale of an orphanage-raised boy with magical musical gifts who goes on a quest to find his musician parents (Keri Russell and Jonathan Rhys Meyers) is “drunk on humanity.” It may be corny (it is), it may be over-the-top (Robin Williams as a Fagan like street musician? enuf said), but it believes what it is selling, and so did I.


Jane Austen Book Club (RG) – I actually found those damn Ya Ya sisters annoying. This film gets the sisterhood thing right—attractive, likeable characters, bonding over literature, and falling in and out of love.

Music and Lyrics (BTYT) – You’ll either love it, or it’ll give you a cavity. I thought Hugh Grant and Drew Barrymore, playing a songwriting team under the gun, were a rom-com match made in heaven. The spot-on parody of ’80s pop is merely an added bonus.


Shoot Em Up (EB) – Quentin Tarantino meets Bugs Bunny. Okay, there’s no plot to speak of. Just slap-happy action and a ludicrously cool hero played by Clive Owen (he nibbles on carrots when he’s not brandishing them as a weapon) who has to mow down the baddies while saving an orphaned baby. Absurdly violent, madly in love with itself—and undeniably fun. (If you like that sort of thing.)

Breach (RG) – This one kind of came and went, inexplicably, from the theaters. The story of a rogue CIA agent (brilliant Chris Cooper) and the neophyte agent (Ryan Phillipe) charged with spying on him is as tense and gripping as you might hope. The best part? The writers of this film seem to actually know a lot more than I do. I love when that happens.

Rocket Science (RG) – This is one of three double dips from my “Honorable Mention” section of my Top 10 list. (Rescue Dawn and The Hoax are the other ones.) Here’s what makes this so good: Our hero's triumphs over adversity are subtle; the object of his adoration (gleefully played by Anna Kendrick) is way smarter and meaner than he is; and “Blister in the Sun” gets played on the cello. Sweeet.

Talk to Me (RG) – Has all the sass of Good Morning Vietnam and all the civil rights fervor of The Great Debaters. And then there's Don Cheadle’s electrifying performance as silver-tongued con-turned-DJ Petey Greene. Is it possible the film simply didn’t know how to market itself? Is it a buddy film? (The relationship between Greene and his buttoned-down program director, played by Chiwetel Ejiofor, is certainly the stuff of buddy lore.) Is it a comedy? (Cheadle rattles off some Eddie Murphy-worthy improvs). Is it a tragedy? (Greene’s reaction to the death of Martin Luther King will break your heart in two.) Indeed, it is all of those things. And the problem with that is . . .?


Bug (BTYT) – Folie a deux in a seedy hotel room. First, only he (Michael Shannon) believes that the room is infested with government-issued bugs. Eventually, she (fearless Ashley Judd) does too. As they go mad together, the film becomes as paranoid and twitchy as you would hope.

Mr. Brooks (EB) – Downright ridiculous, but undeniably entertaining: Kevin Costner plays a pillar-of-the-community by day who is a serial killer by night. William Hurt plays his sniggering alter-ego, who goads him on from the back seat of his car. Danielle Panabaker is daddy’s little girl— to the core. Truly preposterous, but slick and fun.

Surf’s Up (BTYT) – Shia LeBeouf got a lot of attention for Disturbia (good) and Transformers (good until it sucks), but he’s especially affecting as the voice of surfer dude Cody Maverick in this animated mockumentary. Bonus: Jeff Bridges brings back his “The Dude” voice as legendary surf guru Big Z.

Rescue Dawn (RG) – Wanna know what it feels like to be trapped in a Vietnamese prison camp? I mean, what it really feels like? Then witness Werner Herzog’s fictionalized retelling of his own documentary, Little Dieter Needs to Fly, about gung-ho soldier Dieter Dengler (Christian Bale) whose plane gets shot down in Laos and, despite humiliation, starvation, and constant fear of death, never loses his wits—or his hope. The criminally overlooked Bale will one day get one of those make-up Oscars for a performance not nearly as brilliant as this one.

Max's Top 10 Films of the Year

All in all, I thought it was an extraordinary year at the movies—certainly the best in recent memory. (That might explain my rather self-indulgently long list of “honorable mentions.”)

1. No Country for Old Men- The Coen brothers have a created a nouveau Western of sickening violence and dread. Javier Bardem’s villain will chill you to the core (yes, the ridiculous pageboy somehow makes him scarier); Tommy Lee Jones breaks your heart as the mournful town sheriff who realizes that he’s no match for today’s lawless landscape; and, in the Coens’ masterful hands, there’s unspeakable menace in every crawl space, keyhole, and corridor. Oh, and did I mention that the film is darkly funny, too?

2. Juno- She’s whip smart. She’s balls-out funny. She’s a little crabby. In short, Ellen Page’s Juno is unlike any movie heroine you’ve ever seen. Partly this is because first-time screenwriter Diablo Cody has written a character—a pregnant teen who decides to give her baby to a squeaky clean Yuppie couple—for the ages. And it’s also because, in Cody’s muse Ellen Page, a true star is born. The tomboyish actress wins us over with her snub-nosed beauty and droll way with a one-liner, and breaks our hearts by showing us the secret longing beneath that snarky exterior.

3. Sweeney Todd- So what if Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter aren’t great singers? They’re great actors, and they bring Stephen Sondheim’s ghoulish characters delightfully (and gruesomely) to life. It seems that director Tim Burton was born to adapt his play. His extraordinary visual flair, his passion for the macabre, his affinity for the world’s freaks and outcasts—all come together perfectly in this eye-popping, blood-spurting, brilliantly entertaining production.

4. Lars and the Real Girl- Man-child buys a sex doll on the Internet and believes her to be his real girlfriend—friends and church folk play along to help him “work through” his delusion. The premise shouldn’t work—we expect it to either be a tawdry sex comedy or some unbearably precious indie creation—and yet it does, miraculously. Give credit to the cast—Ryan Gosling as the man, Patricia Clarkson as his wise therapist, Paul Schneider and Emily Mortimer as his befuddled (but doting) brother and sister-in-law. But mostly give credit to a dazzling script by Nancy Oliver—she manages to bring out the universal in her absurd premise, making Lars’s predicament both slyly funny and unexpectedly touching.

5. Into the Wild- There are those who think that Christopher McCandless—the real-life young man of privilege who dropped out of society, renamed himself Alex Supertramp, and died, horribly ill-equipped, in the wilds of Alaska—was naïve, selfish, self-aggrandizing. And there are those who think he was a poet, a prophet, an inspiration. The beauty of Sean Penn’s perfectly calibrated film—anchored by a starmaking performance by Emile Hirsch—is that he manages to show that both sides were right.


6. There Will Be Blood- Paul Thomas Anderson’s devastating portrait of a corrupt oil man (Daniel Day Lewis) who wreaks havoc on an unsuspecting Texas town in the early 1900s is deeply weird and undeniably brilliant. Some have criticized the film’s gory, rococo ending: Did they not note the film’s title?



7. Ratatouille- The Triplets of Belleville meets Tom and Jerry meets the Food Network. That’s one way to describe this beautiful animation (from those geniuses at Pixar . . . who else?) about a gourmet rat in Paris who teams up with a hapless chef to create culinary—and movie—magic. As the voice of the cranky critic who is simply waiting for one truly great meal, Peter O’Toole nearly steals the show.

8. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly- How can you make a film completely from the P.O.V. of a man trapped in a waking coma (so-called “locked in syndrome”) who can only express himself by blinking his one good eye? Director Julian Schnabel does it, masterfully, by focusing on that one-eyed perspective—people loom, they come in and out of focus, they step out of frame—and by letting our hero’s memory and imagination (including a still healthy libido) soar. That this is based on the true story of Jean Dominique Bauby, the French Elle editor who was struck down by a stroke in the prime of his life (and who blinked out the autobiographical work that the film is based on) makes it all the more powerful.

9. Atonement- At the onset of World War II, a precocious young girl (haunting Saoirse Ronan) makes a horrible mistake: she accuses a promising young man—her sister’s lover—of a crime he didn’t commit. The reasons why she told this lie—and the consequences of her actions—are revealed in surprising and devastating ways. With the brattily beautiful Keira Knightley as the slightly haughty older sister, dashing James McAvoy as the ruined young man, and Vanessa Redgrave, in what amounts to a cameo-as-master-class, as the doleful adult version of the little girl.

10. The Savages- An adult brother and sister have to care for their estranged father, who is dying, while both still dealing with the consequences of his abandonment. Laura Linney gives what is possibly a career-best performance as Wendy Savage, a pushing-40 playwright who is having a joyless affair with a married man, and who takes perverse pleasure in both her own lies (she drops them like tiny, conversational atom bombs), and her own melodramatic sense of nobility (it’s her martyr complex that allows her to lie with such guilelessness.) Watching Linney work with Philip Seymour Hoffman, who plays her world-weary brother—a man who hides his own vulnerability behind a baggy parka and pounds of girth—is a rare cinematic treat. We get to watch two of America’s great actors play off each other, in a script (by Tamara Jenkins) that is worthy of their gifts.


Honorable mention: Away From Her, Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead, Crazy Love, The Hoax, I’m Not There, Lust Caution, Rescue Dawn, Rocket Science, Sicko, Superbad, Waitress, Zodiac.

I’ll Show You Mine if You Show Me Yours . . .

All-time Favorite American Idol contestant: Fantasia Barrino

All-time Favorite Project Runway contestant: Jay McCarroll

All-time Favorite America’s Next Top Model contestant: Lisa “eat a cookie” D’amato

All-time Favorite Top Chef contestant: Sam Talbot (duh)

All-time Favorite So You Think You Can Dance contestant: Danny Tidwell (okay, this whole post was just an excuse to post this picture.)