Viewing Diary

1) Slings and Arrows, season 1: Not only is this show smart about people and their interactions, but, unlike pretty much everything else out there that takes Shakespeare as a topic or major component, it doesn't dumb down its inspiration. Instead, whenever there are scenes that involve the text, it goes into enthusiastic explication, not really feeling the need to paraphrase. This is rare! And nice. Way to go, Mark McKinney. Am vastly looking forward to watching seasons 2 and 3.

2) Zack and Miri Make a Porno: Uuuugh. I thought that this was supposed to be better Kevin Smith, and he did, in fact, recruit at least three talented actors this time around (Justin Long is really good in his brief bit, which he transcends nicely), but that only makes you feel worse for them. The idea is interesting, and the emotions are occasionally real-ish, but it's so sloppy and lazy and poorly done in a million ways that it just squanders all the good stuff that's in it. Plus it makes Craig Robinson unfunny, which is sad. I hereby resolve not to watch Cop Out. Or to try not to.

3) Aliens in the Attic: You could do worse. This does not rely on potty humor, unlike the preceding entry. Did I mention someone's face gets shit on in Zack and Miri? Really. Anyway, if you wanted to talk about something interesting in this movie, you could pair it with Crank (et al) and Elephant and discuss the influence of video games on contemporary film. The mind-and-body control the aliens have works through a controller, and the creepy twins who spend all their time gaming have a major advantage in being able to work it well immediately.

4) Wanted and Bangkok Dangerous: These two sort of belong together, not only because we watched them back to back, but because they're both about assassins. Objectively, there's no question the former is a far better film--much more stylish and inventive visually, with some small effort put into the script and such--but I didn't enjoy it that much more. For one thing, it doesn't feature Nic Cage throwing a banana at an elephant. Bangkok Dangerous is pretty terrible. It's oddly dated (it's a remake of a Thai film from 2000) and it feels like the early American Jackie Chang movies, but it has weird charm, like its scenes of the most awkward blind date ever, between an American hit man and a deaf Thai pharmacist, communicating in rudimentary sign language over dinner. Wanted was indeed kind of fun, as I figured, but more effort should have been spent on trimming it down and making it smarter. McAvoy's giant plan at the end, for example, doesn't really seem well thought-out, and isn't Angelina Jolie's character kind of a religious fanatic? But it's enjoyable when they jump cars onto things, and even though McAvoy's better with his real accent, he's still a good leading man.

6) Hot Tub Time Machine: This movie suffers from just about everything I've complained about above, in that it's both dumb and lazy, but it manages to transcend those problems somehow. I haven't figured out how, exactly. It's not smart-dumb. It's dumb-dumb in a lot of ways. And it's mean and homophobic. But it is also very amusing at times, perhaps in its commitment to just how mean Rob Corddry's character is or perhaps in its flaunting of its own stupidity and laziness. I found it oddly charming. Also, it does not make Craig Robinson un-funny.