We saw Syriana last night. I liked it more when I left the theater than I do now.

I thought the acting was good. I found the narrative less bewildering than the reviews prepared me for. It came together better at the end than I expected. But it was surprisingly didactic given that it’s based on true incidents. The screenwriter seems to have invented characters in order to fill particular roles: Conscientious Arab Prince, Dissolute Arab Prince, Young Moslem ready to be molded into a terrorist, Hardened CIA Operative who speaks the truth, Slimy Corporate CEO, etc.

Too bad the character writing wasn’t just a little bit better. [Tags: syriana movies]

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You may view this and think it is a really cool way of celebrating Christmas. I look at it and think: Worst. Neighbors. Ever. [Thanks to Leah Weinberger for the link.] [Tags: christmas]

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Ricky Gervais, creator and star of the original The Office and now Extras has started a weekly series of half-hour podcasts, along wth Stephen Merchant and Karl Pilkington.

I haven’t heard one yet — I’ve got to get some drive-time into my life — but I suspect it’s probably pretty damn funny. [Tags: podcast RickyGervais]

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[Note: What follows is my opinion. No, there is no reason on earth why you should care.]

The American version of the BBC’s excruciatingly wonderful “The Office” isn’t nearly as bad as I thought it was going to be. In fact, I’m enjoying it.

In its second season, it seems to be moving away from the British original, which is a good thing: I’m a Steve Carell fan, but he can’t touch Ricky Gervais, the creator and star of the British version. Gervais’ office manager was a masterpiece of unself-knowingness. You could see what he was thinking even as he ran from what he was thinking. Just a gorgeous performance. Carell is funny, but he’s not half the actor that Gervais is.

So, this season wisely has focused more on the ensemble dynamics, and there are some fetching performances — I’m liking Jim (John Krasinski) and Pam (Jenna Fischer) almost as much as Tim Freeman and Lucy Davis.

So, “The Office” is definitely on our TiVo list. It’s sillier than the British one, not as deeply funny, and not as squirmtastic. But it’s better than I expected and getting better over time.

Two criticisms/concerns, though. First, Dwight, the buffoon, is too buffoonish for my taste. He’s buffoon all the way through. Gareth (Mackenzie Crook) in the British version verged on caricature, but, as with Gervais, you could see through him. Overdoing the buffoon is practically a national pastime on American TV.

Second, the British version only ran two seasons, which meant the Tim-Dawn flirtation could come to a conclusion. I don’t know how the American version is going to sustain the tension over multiple seasons. [Tags: TheOffice television comedy bbc SteveCarell]

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Of course Lamb and Lynx Gaede, angelic twin 13-year-old girls, are the new darlin’s of the racist set, singing pop songs with lyrics such as “Strike force! White survival. Strike force. Yeah!,” and throwing in a “Seig Heil!” now and then. They look simply adorable. Really. And their Hitler smiley face t-shirts are the apotheosis of the cuteness of evil.

But these are nasty nasty girls. For example, the name of their band, Prussian Blue, refers to the supposed lack of residue of that color in the gas chambers, “proof” that there was no Holocaust. (Here’s the bright side of Holocaust deniers: They at least think that the Holocaust is nothing to be proud of.) When they performed to raise money for Katrina victims, they tried to stipulate that the money only go to whites. One of their songs praises Robert Matthews, the founder of The Order and a bank robber, and William Pierce, author of the book that “inspired” Timothy McVeigh. (On the other hand, the same song praises Rudolph Hess as “a man of peace.” This confuses me. Hess was Hitler’s lunatic buttboy who secretly parachuted into the UK in 1941 to offer to leave Britain alone if Britain would stay out of the European fight. He was promptly arrested and spent the rest of his life in jail. He apparently didn’t have Hitler’s authorization to make this deal. Seems sort of wimpy to be admired by neo-Nazis. Also, Hess was insane, although that seems to be a positive in this group.)

Anyway, here’s an mp3 of the girls’ song I Will Bleed for You, in which the girls heroically promise that for those men who won’t believe, they will believe for them, and for those men who won’t bleed, they will bleed for them. They’re quite awful singers, although they have mastered the rock ‘n’ roll accent.

They’re sure going to brighten up Hell.

[Notes: 1. It’s not clear to me that the twins are anything but unknowns with an ambitious mother and people eager to write about them. (Yes, this includes me, obviously.) 2. No, I don’t really know who’s going to Hell. In fact, I’ve placed a firm bet on there being no such place.]

Resources:

UK Telegraph article

Southern Poverty Law Center article

Wikipedia article

The girls’ web site

(Thanks to Leah Weinberger for the original link. Leah points out that there’s a Hitler smiley-face at this non-Nazi mega-collection of emoticons.) [Tags: neonazis evil PrussianBlue OlsenTwins]

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Christina Aguilera required the 150 guests at her wedding to sign a three-page confidentiality agreement before they were allowed into the event. “Banned subjects included the cake, the rings, entertainment, speeches, food, the venue and other guests.”

I wonder if her pre-nup has a non-compete?

And on a semi-related note, there’s a very good article in the Guardian by Andrew Brown on why thinking of ideas as property is screwy and destructive [Tag: DigitalRights].

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Here’s a short short made by our daughter and her friends, all Emerson College students, as an entry in a Halloween festival. I love it, but I don’t want to say anything about so you can see it fresh. [Tags: LeahWeinberger movies halloween EmersonCollege]

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This ad made me laugh. Overall, it’s a terrific piece of work. (Maybe everyone has seen it. TiVo has taken me out of the advertosphere.) [Tags: ads marketing]

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I saw Serenity last night and liked it. But I woke up wondering if I would have liked it as much if the credits had read “Written and directed by George Lucas,” keeping all else exactly the same.

I am so disposed to like anything Joss Whedon does. His stuff is compassionate and witty, fantastic and character-based, admits of complexity, and is more true about the love and weakness that binds social groups than what comes from hardly any other popular, mainstream director. Plus he treats his fans like human beings. Not to mention that he wrote the music and lyrics to the musical Buffy episode himself. (How he didn’t get an Emmy for that still stumps me. I guess there must have been a Very Special Thanksgiving Episode of Everyone Loves Raymond or a Hallmark TV movie about an intelligence-challenged school crossing guard who teaches her town the true meaning of dignity.)

So, even though I found the Firefly series to be too formulaic — granted, it mixed a couple of formulas — I was eager to see Serenity. But I can’t tell how much I liked it because I was pre-charmed by Whedon. Hence my Lucas thought experiment.

[Mild spoilers ahead. Very mild.]

So, if Lucas had directed it, I think I would have been amazed that I cared about the characters. In fact, simply having characters not carved out of birch stumps would be a big advance for Lucas. Did he take a crash course in directing ensembles? The movie wasn’t as visually imaginative as usual, but, thankfully, the special effects were appropriate, not show-stopping dance numbers. The big, multi-hundred spaceship battle was surprisingly inept for a Lucas film — who was shooting at what? The dialogue wasn’t fake witty repartee, a la Indian Jones, but was actually pretty witty repartee. The blending of genres was a breath of fresh air, although we were stuck with the question why in an age of hyperspace travel they can’t make weapons that never miss, not to mention how a six-shooter could still be an effective weapon. It was good to see Lucas get a little more complex about the Rebels vs. the Dark Side battle. But there were some typical Lucas plot weaknesses, such as stipulating that a single video player can insert information into broadcast streams throughout the universe. Also, I’m getting oh so tired of Orcs as bad guys. Three other big improvements from Lucas’ previous movies: No ethnic-racial stereotypes, no embarrassing faux-religious themes, and no dead spots. Lucas is fun again!

Of course, he had to become Joss Whedon to do that.

[Tags: serenity sf JossWhedon GeorgeLucas StarWars]

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Yule Heibel blogs about three shorts from tiny Paintful Productions — creative and playful. The shorts are hipper than I am (i.e., they don’t star Danny Kaye), but they’re also a reminder that there’s more creativity in the world than there is time. Which is exactly as it should be. [Tags: YuleHeibel, PaintfulProductions, media]

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