The new show has had the rough edges of the British version sanded down just a bit. It’s no longer quite as difficult to watch in bits. Perhaps this is because Ricky Gervais’ David Brent is devastatingly real while Steve Carrell’s Michael Scott is a bit of a buffoon. The UK Office always lets us believe this is all real and really happening. The American version, despite copying the original’s “reality show†trappings always…
Las Vegas, about the security staff at a casino primarily and secondarily about the other workers at that casino, offers none of that. It’s just another attempt at empty TV escapism, designed to numb minds after a hard day at the office. It’s popcorn TV…
SCTV, though, has a higher batting average than most sketch comedies. The latest DVD set chronicles one of the series’ later years, but it’s still got plenty of laughs. There is the occasional skit (or episode) that completely falls dead, but most of these pack enough laughs still to merit your viewing.
In June 1973, the Nixon appointee-loaded Supreme Court reorganized the obscenity laws. Law enforcement began cracking down. At the same time, the Mafia, the film argues, got involved in adult film distribution. By the mid-1970’s, the feds decided to prosecute Harry Reems. The prosecutor? Larry Parrish, a former preacher. Parrish implemented, as Alan Dershowitz called it, “a very creative use” of the…
Yuri Orlov (Nicolas Cage) is part of a machinery without a conscience: The arms industry. To illustrate, I think, the soullessness of this machinery, the film opens with a vignette about the birth, life and death of a bullet. You see, from the bullet’s point of view, how it is manufactured, packaged, distributed, and ultimately, used. As with Andrew Niccol’s films, “Gattaca” and “The Truman Show,” Niccol personalizes…
Dr. Elizabeth Masterson (Reese Witherspoon) is in a beautiful garden, only to wake up and realize she’s been up for 23 hours straight in the ER/Trauma center of St. Matthews General Hospital in San Fransisco. My initial inclination was that this would be another hokey romantic comedy, and, well, to a certain extent, it is. But it’s…
In the documentary interviews on this DVD, Gregory Peck reveals that his mannerism of clutching the pocketwatch is taken directly from observing the way Harper Lee’s father fiddled with his pocketwatch. During filming, Lee befriended Peck and believed…
Was Emily Rose possessed or afflicted by a medical disorder that required clinical treatment and therapy? If that question sounds perfunctory, it is—intentionally. The way in which the subject of Emily Rose’s death is approached is with equal parts mysticism and fact. I’m pointing this out because generally, in real life, I tend to err on the side of…