Bible Study

I was recently reading an article about an upcoming documentary on education, said to be quite powerful and effective. A sidebar to the article briefly praised five other existing documentaries that take on other socially important issues. I decided to check out one in particular, For the Bible Tells Me So.

The film is a look at the attitudes of Christianity in regards to homosexuality. It follows around half a dozen different stories of families with strong religious backgrounds who had to come to terms with having a gay child. It also features interviews with a number of religious scholars who go into detail about the passages from the Bible routinely cited as precedent for a moral position against homosexuality.

I'll confess that one of my main motivations in watching the film was to wag a finger from my couch at the ultra-conservative religious nuts and their backward thinking. That was my expectation, anyway. And the movie does effectively skewer a literal reading of the Bible. It explains the true historical context of the oft-quoted lines, it talks about how this hyper-literal reading of scripture is a relatively recent development in Christianity, and reminds how similar religious quotations have been used historically to deny rights to woman, ethnic minorities, and more.

But the movie also shows that tarring all religious people with that brush isn't fair either. Sure, you get moments of hateful vitriol from James Dobson, Anita Bryant, and their ilk. You get a couple not nearly as accepting of their lesbian daughter as you'd hope them to be. But you also get some families that are remarkable, even inspirational. You get the heartbreaking story of a mother who makes the conversion from one side of the issue to the other.

In short, you get a truly measured, nuanced, and rational documentary film. It has some powerful things to say not only to the sort of narrow-minded people I wish I could strap to a chair, Clockwork Orange-style, and force to watch it -- it's eye-opening, informative, and revealing to people on all sides of the issue.

I don't know that a 90 minute movie is truly enough to actually change any minds, but I would recommend this documentary to literally anyone and everyone. Outstanding work; emotional and educational. This is top notch documentary film making. I rate it an A.

Networking

Before I headed out Las Vegas, I caught the new movie The Social Network. It's received some notoriety as "the Facebook movie," a somewhat fictionalized account of the motivations behind the creators of Facebook, and an examination of the hardship that led them into a lawsuit against each other.

What the movie is also getting noticed for, and much more appropriately, is the exceptional lineup of people involved in its creation. It's written by Aaron Sorkin, the man who created The West Wing and Sports Night, and who wrote the fantastic films A Few Good Men and The American President. This movie is crammed to bursting with his signature rapid-fire and witty dialogue, and populated with intelligent characters that are a challenge for the audience to keep pace with.

The triumph here for Sorkin is that he's done his "schtick," if you will, in reverse. Where he often writes characters who are abrasive at the outset, but soon grow into people you love and root for, The Social Network is populated with characters who are at their most sympathetic when you first meet them. The more the film unspools, the more you dislike them -- the protagonist perhaps most of all. But even as the characters become less likable, the film remains fun and engaging.

The director is David Fincher, the highly stylized filmmaker behind Seven and Fight Club, among others. The film is a triumph for him too, because it bears his fingerprints less than any of his previous movies. He's never made anything this dialogue-driven, with this little visual effects flash in it. (Though the movie does have its share of effects wizardry, in the form of a single actor playing identical twins.) He's never made a movie like this, but still gets excellent performances from his actors.

The main trio of actors in the film are Jesse Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield, and Justin Timberlake. Jesse Eisenberg is best known for the fantastic Zombieland and average Adventureland. Until now, it wouldn't be unfair to think of him as the guy you hire when Michael Cera isn't available -- he's played similar characters so far. His role in this film starts from the same "social misfit geek" origins, but quickly reveals itself as an entirely different performance.

Andrew Garfield is being talked about right now due to his recent casting as Tobey Maguire's replacement in the next Spider-man film. Here is his chance to show, before that hits, that he can indeed act.

Justin Timberlake's acting has been almost entirely comedic so far. His role is the smallest of the three, but he's still crucial in the movie, plays no more likable a character, and is still very effective in it.

So fine work all around from writer, director, and actors. Still, I won't quite give the move a rave review. It was certainly intellectually stimulating. But it's not really emotionally stimulating on any level. The movie never really tries to make you feel joy or sympathy for its characters. You laugh, but you don't cry. You don't feel much of anything. It's simultaneously a very smart and clever movie, and a movie with rather low aspirations. It's a "talkie movie's" version of a "big dumb action movie." Good for what it is, but unlikely to offer any more on repeat viewings.

But I would recommend it. I rate it a B. If you don't check it out in theaters now, make a note to look for it on DVD a few months down the road.

Viva Las Vegas!

Seems like Las Vegas is an annual excursion for me. Not a bad thing, I say. Last year was for a wedding. This year is for a birthday! A friend of mine has never been, called out of the blue to ask if I'd go, and my answer, of course, was "of course."

So I'm off for a couple of days to have fun. The blog will keep trucking along with scheduled posts for the next few days. Until then, wish me luck!

Dropped Call

Tonight, I went to see the local Curious Theatre Company's production of the play Dead Man's Cell Phone. My stage managing friend was in that role again for this show. It also had among the cast an old college friend that I've seen only once since those days -- and who I've never seen in a theatrical production that I wasn't also in myself.

Dead Man's Cell Phone is an unusual melodrama by Sarah Ruhl about a woman in a cafe who answers a cell phone at a nearby table that won't stop ringing. As you'd guess from the title, it's because the owner is dead. The play then begins a fast-paced descent into the surreal as she hangs onto the phone and begins to insinuate herself in the lives of the people who knew the dead man. She tells whatever lies she think the people need to hear to get some closure, even though she knew nothing about the man herself.

The truth is, it's not much of a play. Before it's weird, it's simply pretentious. There's little profound to offer in the observation that cell phones have led to very superficial communications in daily life. And when this shallow point is made with 10-minute monologues, strange phone/umbrella ballets, and trips to the afterlife, it just gets tedious.

But though I basically hated the play itself, the production was commendable on many levels. The artistic set had an excellent and lavish lighting design that simultaneously made multiple locations credible while unobtrusively coming off like a painted canvas of its own.

And the cast was really solid throughout. In the lead role of Jean, Emily Paton Davies seemed credible and honest in every scene, even though the play does little favors in logically connecting the behavior within those scenes. As the "dead man," Gordon, William Hahn is saddled with opening act two with that 10-minute monologue I mentioned; he holds the audience's attention through every second, giving a layered and sweeping performance.

As the mother of the deceased, Mrs. Gottlieb, Kathryn Gray channels a great oppressive mother stereotype without actually making it seem like a stock character. And as Dwight, Scott Bellot (the college theater friend I mentioned) sweetly rises to the challenge of being a love interest in a fun relationship with the main character, even though it makes barely any sense at all on paper.

The bottom line is that I simply cannot recommend the play... which is really a shame, since the people involved (both those I know and those I don't) did some really phenomenal work with it. I wish this were being performed in rep, so I could go back another night and see them all put on a different show. Instead, I'll hope that all of them end up working on something else exciting very soon.

Date Night

I recently watched an unusual documentary movie, My Date With Drew. It's built around a struggling man in Hollywood that decides to take the $1100 prize he won from a game show appearance and put it toward an effort to land a date with Drew Barrymore. So... shades of Being John Malkovich (in terms of its oddly specific weirdness), if it were a documentary.

But then, it's sort of hard to actually call this a documentary. It's more some guy's home movies with some moderately skilled editing work. It's filmed on a camcorder "borrowed" from Circuit City (where it will be returned after 30 days, in accordance with the store's return policy). It's not trying to make a point. It's "see how many corn kernels I can shove up my nostril" on a grander scale.

However, there's something oddly likable about the guy. And his friends are true friends to go along with it (whether "it" be a legitimate effort to land a date, or simply an aspiration to make a documentary). I mean, we're basically talking about stalker-type behavior here, so the protagonist is digging his way out of a hole from square one. The fact that you actually start rooting for him in the course of the film, cheering at his breakthroughs and frowning at his setbacks, is kind of amazing.

I have to spoil the ending of the movie to talk about the other thing I really liked about the movie, so if you suddenly have to the urge to watch this, skip the next paragraph.

As for the real winner in this movie? Why, it's Drew Barrymore herself. She finds out about this guy's efforts, and actually agrees to the date. And she's both charmed and charming. She's either an incredibly warm person who sees the good in people... or she's a truly fabulous actor who's able to muster an effortless performance for the duration of the date at the end of the movie. Either way, my praise to her.

So My Date With Drew actually turns out to be a bit of a ride that you get caught up in. Still, at the same time, it's barely a movie -- made so incidentally and on-the-cheap that you can't pretend it's more than it is. I'd rate it a B overall. One of the odder Netflix recommendations I've yet received.

Lost Re-view: Hearts and Minds

The next episode of Lost was a fairly momentous one, as it marked the first writing credit for Carlton Cuse. The story is that co-creator Damon Lindelof had been left alone running the series when J.J. Abrams went off to make Mission: Impossible III, and the pressure was affecting him so much that he was considering leaving the show. But his friend Carlton Cuse, who'd worked with him before on the series Nash Bridges, convinced him to stay, and agreed to come on to share show-running duties with him. This was the beginning of the pairing that would see Lost all the way through to the end.

Officially, Cuse started as part of the writing staff during the episode Solitary. And also officially, he shares writing credit here with Javier Grillo-Marxuach (who'd already contributed two episodes). Nevertheless, this episode marks a pretty big milestone for Lost. (On the directing side, it was less noteworthy. Director Rod Holcomb only worked on one other episode besides this, much later during season five.)

In front of the camera, this episode also marked the end of the short two-episode run of "second flashbacks." The focal character of this installment is Boone, and his flashbacks cover him flying to Australia to save his sister from an abusive boyfriend. They also include several big revelations.

First, there's the reveal that the entire situation is a con by Shannon, working in tandem with her boyfriend. The only "trouble" she's in is financial -- not that she's in a dire state. After her own father's death, Boone's mother kept all the family money, and she thinks she's entitled to it. If she can extort some of it from Boone, fine with her.

Second, there's a cute moment in a police station. Boone is there trying to file a report on the "abusive boyfriend," and Sawyer is also there, ranting and raving. (We'll learn why a few episodes down the road.) This is really the first time that we see the crash survivors connected in their pre-Island life. Sure we saw Jack and Sun in the same flashback scene a few episodes back, but that was hardly unusual, as both were at the Sydney airport checking in for the fateful flight. This Boone-Sawyer connection, though fleeting, is the first time we see any connection between the characters prior to the flight, and paved the way for more meaningful connections between characters down the road.

But the main thing we learn in Boone's flashbacks is that Shannon is not actually Boone's sister by blood. She's his stepsister. And in a drunken moment near the end of the episode, she asserts that he's in love with her and always has been. The two sleep together, though before the morning even comes, she wants things to go back to the way they were. This re-frames everything we've seen of these two so far a very different way. What the viewers assumed was just typical sibling rivalry and banter was actually the relationship between a young man and his unrequited-but-then-requited-oops-no-completely-shut-down-after-all love. It informs why Boone has thrown in so enthusiastically with Locke in an effort to redefine himself. He hasn't been able to leave his pre-Island past behind after the crash; it's right there on the Island with him.

..and really tormenting him in this episode. Things kick off with the expected close-up on Boone's eye, as he watches Sayid bringing a gift to Shannon and flirting with her. That's more than Boone can stand, so he's quickly off to challenge Sayid. Stay away or else. It seems to be all Sayid can do not to laugh in Boone's face; he does noticeably smile as he basically tells Boone, "bring it, kid."

But fortunately, Locke is there to defuse any trouble, pulling Boone off into the jungle for another excursion to the now partially exposed Hatch. They've apparently just been going to stare at it for a few days, Locke waiting for inspiration on how they might get it open. He tells the story of Michelangelo, forbidden to "work with his hands" by his father, who simply spent months staring at the block of stone that would one day become the famous statue of David. The fact that this is the metaphor Locke thinks of tells you how spiritual a mission this is for him, and how important he thinks it is. Locke may well be on his way to believing that finding the Hatch and getting inside is the true reason he was brought to the Island.

Then things take a dark turn. Boone wants to tell Shannon about the Hatch, and Locke won't have it. He knocks Boone out and trusses him up with a series of arm-breaking knots. Leaving Boone tied up with a knife just out of reach, Locke abandons him in the jungle, saying that he'll be able to get free once he has "the proper motivation."

But not before some cryptic dialogue and actions that only make sense by the end of the episode -- or, of course, upon a second viewing. Locke mixes up a hallucinatory paste and smears it on Boone's wound, in order to give him a form of "vision quest." He's taken it upon himself to rehabilitate Boone, saying: "I'm doing this because it's time for you to let go of some things. Because it's what's best for you. And I promise, you're gonna thank me for this later."

Boone does get free after a bit of intriguing camera work with a fish-eye lens, and responds to a call for help from Shannon. Make that "Shannon." What follows is all in Boone's mind, as he finds his stepsister tied up as well, and then both take off fleeing through the jungle, pursued by the Monster. Of course, Boone doesn't know what the Monster is or what it looks like anymore than first time viewers do at this point in time, so all any of us sees in this episode is a shadow falling on the trees.

Boone's imaginary Monster catches Shannon. After the attack, Boone finds her chewed-up body dead in a stream. And the first time around, this is what really brought down my opinion of the episode. I mentioned a few episodes back that outside of the show itself, the creators had gotten into an ill-advised sort of game of "chicken" with the audience about their willingness to kill a main character.

First, they'd faked Charlie's death. Now in this episode, they fake Shannon's. And even though I believed this death more at the time than I ever believed they'd kill Charlie, this fake-out ends up being far cheaper than the other. Charlie's near-death really happened and had emotional heft for multiple characters. Shannon's death here is just Bobby-Ewing-in-the-shower cheating of the audience. I think it tweaks the viewer so much that after this second fake death, you're almost angry at the writers. You'd better not trick me again, you cowards!

Even on a repeat viewing, Shannon's fake death here simply doesn't carry any weight. The only character this matters for is Boone. And it's actually a liberating experience for him. He confides to Locke at the end of the episode that at the thought of Shannon being dead, he "felt relieved." It's just much harder to relate to a character who would feel joy at a death than it was two episodes ago to relate to two characters filled with sorrow and guilt at a death. Plus, of course, there's the shadow hanging over all of this in the second viewing -- the knowledge that Boone himself will be dead before the season is out. It's hard to get too invested in what he feels, be it relief, guilt, or anything else.

Boone's on-Island story might be a bit of a misfire, but it's not the only story going on in this episode. Hurley and Jin are paired up in a fun subplot. Hurley's not getting enough protein (what with Locke now doing things other than catching boar), so he needs to get some fish. Jin's the man to talk to about that. The trouble is that Hurley is convinced Jin has it in for him after a brush-off in an earlier episode. "That guy holds a serious grudge."

Still, Hurley sucks it up, and manages to explain in charades to Jin that he just wants to be pointed to where the fish are. Hurley will catch his own. Jin gives a "sure you will" smile in reply, very much like Sayid's "sure you will" smile earlier in the episode when Boone threatens to kick his ass. Even more hilarious charading follows when Hurley steps on a sea urchin and he tries to get Jin to pee on it. But in the end, the two do bond. In the final act, Jin brings Hurley a fully cleaned fish to eat. It's not just fun, but is the most kind and fun-spirited we've ever seen Jin (outside of Sun's flashbacks on their early relationship).

Jin's "other half" is involved in a subplot too. Kate is helping Sun with the garden she's planting, going around looking for seeds in the jungle. (An activity that Jack rather creepily spies on. After being oddly cold to Kate in the previous episode, he's suddenly warm again this time. Maybe it's because the only Sawyer appearance this episode is in that flashback.)

Kate discovers that Sun can speak English in the episode, but promises to keep the secret. Sun exacts this promise by asking Kate, "have you never lied to a man you've loved?" This very clearly hits Kate close to home, though the full details are in flashbacks yet to be seen.

Locke and Sayid have an interesting scene together as well. Sayid's still working on Rousseau's map, and trying to make an improvised compass. It leads to an interesting character anecdote where Locke reveals he was in Webelos (which Sayid of course doesn't know), and that he was not "the most popular kid" growing up. He then gives Sayid his own compass, not needing it anymore since he's already found what he's looking for.

And also not needing it because it doesn't really work on the Island. In a subsequent scene between Sayid and Jack, the strange electromagnetic properties of the Island are first hinted at, when Sayid explains that the compass doesn't point where it should. Sayid simply believes it's a defective compass, but we the full-educated viewers know otherwise.

Another interesting scene occurs between Jack and Charlie. After Kate suggests that Locke has stopped catching boar on purpose for some perhaps nefarious reason, Jack goes looking for other opinions on Locke. Charlie's got nothing but praise for him. Locke saved his life, Charlie says. Yes, he thought Locke was crazy at first, but now he's the one man on the Island that Charlie would put his faith in more completely than any other. In short, we're slowly starting to set up the mighty Locke for a fall in the back half of the season.

Finally, in a sort of replay of Sawyer tearfully looking at his letter on the beach several episodes before we'd learn what it said, we briefly see Michael this week looking into a wooden box. He's found his own luggage, it turns out, and this item is important. Though like Sawyer's letter, we don't get to see inside yet.

As you can see, it's a bit of a winding episode. Many of these simple stand-alone scenes do work. The Boone flashbacks aren't bad either, and better the more you can empathize with his "loving the wrong girl" situation. But the main Island plot isn't very strong, and is undermined farther with the second faked death in just a few episodes. Overall, I rate this episode a B-.

Tuesday's New Lineup, Part 2

Not quite all the new TV shows premiered last week. ABC decided to wait until tonight to roll out their new show, No Ordinary Family.

Michael Chiklis and Julie Benz star as parents with a waning marriage who, along with their two children, are in an accident that gifts them all with superpowers. Think The Incredibles, by way of something like Spider-man's origin story.

Why would someone like me, who generally doesn't like comic book-like tales, have any interest in this show? Well, think of all the above, by way of Brothers & Sisters. In fact, it's co-created by a TV man with his hands in that very show, Greg Berlanti. The other co-creator is Jon Harmon Feldman, a force behind Tru Calling, which may not have started out great, but ultimately did find its way into something fairly cool.

Anyway, the gloss of this current series might be the superhero angle, but the backbone is a family drama. And the first episode did an excellent job of showing how the series could be both in good measure. I was pulled into the relationships between characters, and could imagine taking interest in not just their unusual problems, but their ordinary ones.

The show was humorously aware of the real world in which it exists, making references to other superheroes, and thwarting a few conventions (such as having them not keep their secret from their friends).

I was definitely entertained, and will be hanging in to see where it goes from here.

Some Magic for the Kids

A friend of mine has been on the prowl recently for games will one day be good to play with his young son when he's older. But for the sake of both of them, he wants them to be good games. No Candy Land, no Game of Life. Good EuroGames a kid could grasp but that an adult won't find torturous to play. He's decided that winners of the "Kinderspiel des Jahres" are probably a good place to start, so he picked up the 2009 winner, The Magic Labyrinth. And indeed, it was a good selection.

The idea is simple. You assemble a maze, using bits of wood for the walls that fit into a tray. Then you cover the maze with a "ceiling" that is the actual play board, a grid of spaces with symbols on them. Each player places a pawn on top of the board, starting in a corner, and under the board he places a marble held in position by a magnet on the bottom of the pawn.

On your turn, you move through the unseen maze, trying to reach various symbols on each of the spaces. But if you move into a wall, the marble you don't see will be knocked free from your pawn, and you have to start again from the corner. Trial and error on your own turns -- and careful observation of your opponent's turns -- will eventually reveal the shape of the maze beneath the board. The player who accumulates the most chips (for reaching the most symbols -- along the lines of Ricochet Robot) is the winner.

It's simple but fun. It plays very quickly. It's easily scalable in difficulty, just by building a more or less complex labyrinth to hide beneath the game board. Luck does play a role, mainly in terms of whether a player's pawn is already near the next "target symbol" drawn for the players to reach. And certainly, in the absence of much true strategy, it might be more accurate to call this a "puzzle" or something rather than a game. But whatever is, it's definitely enjoyable. A perfect way to pass 10 or 15 minutes while waiting for more players to arrive on a game night.

Or a perfect game to play with a young child.

Outside -- Looking In

Director Francis Ford Coppola may be best known for The Godfather films, but I've heard some speak of him with even more reverence for his adaptation of the S.E. Hinton novel, The Outsiders. It's considered by some to be the first "Brat Pack" film, and is stuffed to bursting with recognizable actors, including C. Thomas Howell, Matt Dillon, Ralph Macchio, Patrick Swayze, Rob Lowe, Emilio Estevez, Tom Cruise, and Diane Lane.

What struck me as odd about it was how unfocused it seemed to be. At a slim 90 minutes, I expected a simple and direct narrative. But instead, the movie's three acts are all strikingly different. They don't feel very related save for sharing common characters, and they don't have related emotional content either.

The first act is a "life in a 1960s greaser gang" tale. At times, it's so silly that it almost plays like Grease (or West Side Story) without the songs, like a movie playing purely for nostalgia and without much else to say. It brushes up against a few serious issues like the death of one's parents and child abuse, but pulls up long before landing a serious emotional punch.

But then the act is capped when a young boy is forced to murder another boy in defense of a friend. The two then take off on the run together, going into hiding to escape the police. Suddenly it's a buddies-on-the-road movie. Things do get more serious at this point, yet the film still steers clear of portraying any real psychological impact these events have had on either kid.

The emotion is all stored for the last act, after the kids have saved some school children from a fire -- leaving one of them crippled. Had these elements been the focus, the film might have managed in the end to be more profound and make more of an impact. But instead, the bulk of the last act is given over to a inter-gang rumble between the greasers and their rivals. Characters who've barely had a speaking line in the first hour of the movie suddenly come center stage.

This sort of meandering slice of life narrative probably played much better in novel form than I think it does on the screen. There are some moments of good acting, but the movie seems to try so hard to say something about so many things that it ends up not saying much of anything. I rate it a D+. As a platform to launch half a dozen great acting careers, it's a commendable movie. That's about all I think it has to offer.

Friday's New Lineup

The CW network has seen fit to ship Supernatural off to Fridays, so now I know how Smallville fans have been feeling for a while now -- it's just not a good night to watch a show. And Supernatural is a show that really shouldn't be watched during the day (for maximum effect), so that's going to be an awkward one to keep up with. But I did decide to give one new Friday show a shot.

Blue Bloods. This is part family drama, in the vein of Brother and Sisters or some such, part cop show. Three generations of one family with people in (or retired from) the New York Police Department fight crime... and each other. Or some cliché like that. That really was problem with the first episode -- it felt like an extreme cliché. Three siblings: one's a fresh on-the-beat cop, one's a jaded and hotheaded veteran, the third is a prosecuting attorney for the city. You really could get this kind of stuff from some kind of script-manufacturing computer program. (And in an early scene, I think maybe they actually did. The exposition was so thick you could spread it on your toast.)

But the thing that made it greater than the sum of its parts, both reading about it on paper and seeing it in execution, is a solid cast. Tom Selleck is the father of the family. Donnie Wahlberg (excellent in the short-lived series Boomtown) and Bridget Moynahan are two of his kids. His other kid and his father are played respectively by Will Estes and Len Cariou, two actors not recognizable by name, but who have both showed up over the years as leads in series that didn't fly, or guest stars on plenty of other series that have.

In short, it seems to me like if Blue Bloods can tip the balance more toward family drama in the future, this cast will carry it well and then the show will be something good. But this pilot tipped the balance very much toward police procedural, and a show like that would have to be very excellent indeed to hold my interest amid the dozens of others on TV. Hell, against the half-dozen others just on CBS alone!

So I suspect I'll give the show another episode or two. But how long I hang with it will very much depend on it improving before I get tired of playing "TV catchup" with it on the weekend.

Lost Re-view: Whatever the Case May Be

No dancing around it: halfway into Lost's first season, and this episode is the clear front runner for the worst of the entire year. It starts with the same strike against it that I mentioned about the previous Jack-centric episode, that it seemed off-putting at this point in the show to get a second episode focused on a character we'd already seen -- Kate, in this case -- when there were still characters whose back story was yet to be filled in. But where the Jack episode made up for that in other ways, this episode trips up.

The A-list behind-the-scenes talent was responsible here. The main recurring director, Jack Bender, was calling the shots, and the script came from creator Damon Lindelof and Jennifer Johnson. (For the latter, this was her final script credit, but she did also contribute to the excellent episode The Moth.) But they all still turned in a subpar effort.

The problem is that this is the first episode of Lost that truly goes nowhere and provides little. Coming off the last hour, Claire was missing, abducted by Ethan. Boone and Locke had found "something metal" buried in the jungle. And this episode furthers none of those previous plots. In fact, it's almost as though we've just moved on or something; it's four days later, Shannon tells us in a bit of snarky dialogue, marking the longest off-screen passage of time the show has had yet.

This episode kicks off with a manufactured event completely unrelated to anything that has come before -- Kate and Sawyer are off in the jungle together and come across a beautiful lagoon with a scenic waterfall. When they go for a sexy dip together, they discover dead plane crash victims at the bottom of the water, sitting on top of a MacGuffin -- a locked metal case that has something inside Kate wants very badly, though she doesn't want to say what it is. So Sawyer, being Sawyer, decides to keep it from her simply because she wants it.

Some retroactive storytelling occurs to grease this storyline. The case belonged to the dead marshal that was escorting Kate. The key's in his wallet, on his body that Jack turns out not to have burned with the fuselage, but rather buried for vague reasons out in the jungle.

And speaking of behavior that doesn't quite make sense, Jack is oddly snippy with Kate now. When she approaches him saying "we have a problem," he immediately and out of nowhere throws it back in her face with: "we have a problem, or you have a problem?" He does agree to help her, even blackmailing Sawyer by threatening to deprive him of the medication for his stab wound, but he's pretty pissy about it the entire time.

What's even worse than having this whole episode be built around the previously unknown "what's in the case?" device is the reveal of what's actually in the case, and the tedious flashbacks getting to this information. It's nearly 11 minutes into the episode before we even get to the first flashback, and it's Kate pulling a bank heist with a bunch of thugs we don't know and who wind up dead by the end of the hour. It's all just to get into a safety deposit box. (Box 815, by the way. While this isn't the first time that one of "the numbers" shows up just casually, this is the first time they seem to be planted deliberately to match the Oceanic flight number.)

And what's in the box? A little toy airplane, whose significance we don't even actually learn anything about this episode. "It belonged to the man I loved... it belonged to the man I killed!" declares Kate as she breaks down at the end of the hour. But coming at the climax of an episode in which she lied repeatedly to Jack and Sawyer on the Island, and ran an elaborate con in the flashbacks, I don't see how we have any reason to believe her when she makes this admission. In fact, while it is eventually revealed to be the truth, it's still a bit of a lie. I think the writers want us to believe that "the man I killed" is a reference to why Kate is a wanted fugitive, when in fact we learn later that this particular death was collateral damage long after the crime that put Kate on the run.

But the episode isn't a total loss. It also marks the return of Rose for the first time in a while, just the person to help Charlie through his current depression. Charlie's withdrawn after losing Claire, but in a series of nice scenes, Rose gets him to open up, and assures him that nobody blames him for Claire's abduction. He did everything he could, including almost dying himself.

They also share a nice scene about her missing husband, who she still maintains is alive. "It's a fine line between denial and faith," she says. "It's much better on my side." This culminates in Lost's first overtly religious moment, as Rose says a prayer as Charlie breaks down.

Sayid and Shannon are also brought closer together this episode. Sayid has backed down off his crazy claims about "whispers" and "Others," but he is interested in having the notes he swiped from Rousseau translated. This means going to the only French speaker among the survivors, Shannon.

You get a taste of their eventual relationship, as Sayid mostly remains patient and encouraging (and even a little flirtatious) with Shannon, even as she almost constantly whines about how she can't actually speak French. Boone does berate her for being "useless" in this episode, so there's at least maybe a little room to feel sympathy for her. And yet, in the sort of "go nowhere" spirit of this episode's plot, the translated notes end up being nothing more than the lyrics of a song with no apparent meaning. (Other than very obliquely hinting that Rousseau has a child.)

The only significant takeaway from this episode is that the beach dwellers have to move their camp because the tide is coming in suddenly and strongly, threatening to wash the fuselage out to see, and all the survivors as well if they don't relocate. This was purely a bit of real-world necessity, since the actual filming location that was being used until this point was now experiencing higher tides after several months of shooting. In the world of the show, Sayid does remark that these sudden tides are abnormal for the roughly three weeks that have passed so far, which is maybe, if you really stretch it, the first oblique reference to the weird time/space properties of the Island.

Aside from that, the only other fun things in the episode are getting to see flashback Kate repeat the "I don't know how to use a gun" lie she used in the pilot, and just to see her generally being bad. (A necessary thing for her character, since she didn't really come off like much a criminal in her previous flashback episode.)

But overall, it's basically Lost's first stand-alone episode, and that's just not the kind of story this series was built to tell. I rate it a C-.

Wednesday/Thursday's New Lineup

Tonight, I got caught up on the one new show from last night that I wanted to check out, Undercovers. This is the newest show co-created by J.J. Abrams, who also directed the pilot. The other co-creator is Josh Reims, who worked on Brothers and Sisters and (with Abrams) Felicity, among other shows.

Undercovers is about a married couple who retired from separate jobs at the C.I.A. to run a catering service, only to now be reactivated by Gerald McRaney to work as a team together. Basically, Alias with a married couple, but without the double-agent theme. Or, based on the first episode at least, anything like the sometimes interesting, often infuriating "Rambaldi" MacGuffin.

Comparing to Alias is a tricky proposition. I absolutely loved the pilot episode of that show. And Alias totally kicked ass for the first two seasons. But there wasn't even a slow decline after that. Beginning with season three, Alias was just terrible, watchable only on the strength of its exceptionally talented cast.

Undercovers didn't match the incredible thrill of that first episode of Alias. But it was miles ahead of those latter Alias years. There is some potential here. The leading couple has some very good chemistry together. The side characters seem like they could be an interesting spice in the mix (except for the obnoxious sister). But the story wasn't really that compelling, and crammed an awful lot of globe-hopping in 42 minutes. It didn't seem exciting so much as "designed for short attention spans."

But maybe this was just not a "good episode" of the show. The building blocks were apparent. Airing on a struggling network like NBC, this show may well get the time it needs to work out the kinks over the next few episodes. And I think I'm willing to sample a few more to see if it does that.

I had time tonight to catch up on yesterday because the new Thursday material this year was widely reviewed as awful. From the treacly My Generation to the stale (if not offensive) Outsourced, I couldn't find any positive reviews about anything new debuting tonight. And yet, there was one show I decided I just had to try for myself anyway...

$#*! My Dad Says. Despite the warnings, despite the obviously stupid premise of a TV show based on a Twitter feed, I had to tune in for William Shatner. That's what the creators were counting on, of course. I enjoyed Shatner for years in his comedic role on Boston Legal. The man has been on one multi-season show nearly every decade since the 1960s. I was willing to give the man 22 minutes.

Or so I thought. I think I made it 10, maybe. Having not cracked a smile, and under assault by the cloying laugh track, I was grateful to receive a phone call from a friend. I turned the show off and never turned it back on. It was like watching an imitation of a sitcom rather than an actual sitcom, a script written by an emotionless alien robot trying to understand our strange Earth sense of humor. Just dreadful.

I'm only planning to sample one more new show this week, the Tom Selleck-fronted cop drama Blue Bloods, that debuts tomorrow. (Though I probably won't actually get to it until some time on the weekend.) But unless it's exceptional, it looks like this year's new crop is overall a very average one.

Dream Like

I did have one new Wednesday show planned to sample, the spy drama Undercovers. But since I also had plans tonight to play board games with friends, I won't be watching (or reviewing) that show until tomorrow.

So instead, a write-up of a movie I just watched -- the recent film musical Dreamgirls. It's about a fictionalized version of a group like Diana Ross and the Supremes breaking big while dealing with internal conflict and hardship. I had been aware that it was basically a musical, or like a musical, but not aware that it was actually an adaptation of a Broadway musical.

I actually found this to be one of the bigger strikes against the movie. I most certainly have nothing against musicals. (One -- Moulin Rouge -- is in my top 10 favorite movies.) But I find it a bit of an odd challenge to tell a story about music performance that is also a musical. This is the challenge that the TV series Glee has to surmount every week, and the fact that it's so successful most of the time is a real testament to the quality of that show.

For me, there's just a clash with the underlying conceit of the musical format. People burst into song unrealistically, and articulate their innermost emotion through songs. That's how it works. But when the story is about people who actually perform music, then the "bursting into song" might be entirely motivated by a realistic situation -- they're rehearsing, they're giving a concert, whatever. And the song they're singing might not get as truly at the heart of their character when it's motivated by some "real" reason and not part of the musical convention.

Put in a less roundabout way -- Dreamgirls is just over a two hour movie. And it isn't until a half hour into it that a character first sings a song in the musical style. Oh, there are three or four tunes before that, but they're part of entering a singing competition, learning how to sing backup for a new headline act, taking that act out on the road... all situations where characters would logically sing even if the movie was technically not a musical.

I hear some people talk of musicals and say they just can't get over people bursting into song for "no reason." And I've never understood the complaint until right now. Because after 30 minutes of "motivated singing," when that first true musical number comes along, I definitely had a moment of "wait, why is this guy singing right now?"

It also didn't help that it was around that time the plot began to fragment a bit too much. What starts as a unified tale of one group of young singers ends up split into three mostly separate plots: the leader of that group realizing how unhappy she is; the woman who was kicked out of the group suffering to make it on her own; and the washed-up James Brown ringer they all used to sing backup for trying to re-start his career. There's certainly a thematic connection in all this, but the plots never really intersect again after the moment they diverge.

But the movie also has a great strength on its side that overcomes a lot of these flaws: its cast. The acting in this movie is pretty phenomenal, both in song and not. The emotion is powerful and raw, and really moving. Jennifer Hudson proves worthy of the Oscar she won for the role. Her "big number" in the film, And I'm Telling You I'm Not Going, would be nearly as effective even without the context of the movie around it to set it up. Jamie Foxx, Beyoncé Knowles, and Eddie Murphy are all excellent, as are the less well-known Anika Noni Rose and Sharon Leal. There are even a few cameos from members of the original Broadway musical cast.

Director Bill Condon sets up a good style for the movie, at times dipping his toe in the sort of theatricality used by Chicago (and, less effectively, by Nine), but also striking out and doing something different. He also adapted the screenplay, but not knowing the original play, I'm not sure I can offer any comment on that -- other than to repeat my wish that the movie had not waited to boldly declare itself an actual musical until 30 minutes in.

Overall, I'd give Dreamgirls a B-. There are better movie musicals, but this isn't a bad one.

Tuesday's New Lineup

I decided to only give two new Tuesday shows a shot, both half hour sitcoms.

Running Wilde. This show is about an activist who moves into a rich man's house with her young daughter. Man, does that sound cheesy. But it wasn't the story that drew me in; in this case, I was going with pedigree. This new show comes from some of the people who made the hysterical and brilliant Arrested Development. It even stars Will Arnett (and had a cameo from David Cross in the first episode), furthering the connection to that awesome show. Plus, Keri Russell has some decent comedy chops of her own. Sounds like a pretty good recipe.

But I think it's a recipe that's going to need to simmer a little longer. There were definitely moments in this episode that made me smile, but nothing laugh out loud funny. Comedy sometimes takes time to find its legs -- last season's Cougar Town being a prime example. Of course, this being on FOX, it's not likely to get that chance if it doesn't pull down decent ratings in its cushy "in the hour after Glee" time slot. We'll see.

Raising Hope. But immediately after Glee was another new sitcom, this time from some of the people behind My Name Is Earl -- which I actually didn't like very much. It's the story of a teenage boy who (through circumstances you'd best see for yourself in the pilot) comes to be raising a six-month-old baby girl with his goofy family. This show wasn't even on my radar until several places named it one of the top new shows of the season. So what the hell, give it a half an hour and see.

So far, so good -- I'd say the reviews were accurate. This show actually did make me laugh out loud. More than once. And while it maybe dipped its toe once or twice into the sort of dumb country hick humor that turned me off of My Name Is Earl, it mostly steered clear. Plus, the cast includes Cloris Leachman, and two solid working actors both more than due a shot at a starring role on a series, Martha Plimpton and Garret Dillahunt.

So anyway you slice it, I think this was better entertainment "bang for the buck." More enjoyment, and in far less time, than in anything I sample last night.

Monday's New Lineup

We're on the back stretch of September, which means the TV networks are rolling out their new shows. I had a "veg out on the couch" night and sampled a handful of them. So a few snap comments:

Lone Star. This was billed as sort of "the new Dallas," a show in which a con man leads a double life both as a "simple man with a loving girlfriend," and an "up and coming presence in a big oil company." Most of the cast seemed likable enough, including Jon Voight as the owner of said oil company. But the pilot really left me wondering, "so what's the series here?"

This seems an inherently limited premise, with a very finite amount of stories that can be told before it's no longer plausible that the con man protagonist's house of cards won't crumble. Indeed, it's already crumbling a bit in the pilot episode. If the subject and setting in Texas didn't seem so inescapably American, I'd say this could only be a British TV series. It seems like the sort of thing you'd get one or two six-episode seasons out of, and then call it done. I'll probably be "calling it done" myself.

Hawaii Five-0. I probably wouldn't have bothered checking this show out at all, but the write-up in Entertainment Weekly suggested it was actually pretty good. I'd say that's maybe going a little far, but it wasn't half bad. There's a solid cast here (Alex O'Loughlin, Scott Caan, Lost's Daniel Dae Kim, and Battlestar Galactica's Grace Park). They seem to have a good rapport with each other.

And yet, it felt good in the same way "your USA network summer show of choice" is good. If you watch Psych, or Burn Notice, or Royal Pains, or Covert Affairs, you know what I mean. Those are the shows that are good enough to watch during the summer when there's nothing on. If they were competing at a time when any other big show was actually running new episodes, they wouldn't make the cut, you know? So it seemed to me with this Hawaii Five-0. By the end of the hour, there wasn't anything about this particular "they fight crime!" show to make me choose it over any of the dozens of other such shows on TV.

The Event. This show was simultaneously compelling and frustrating, exciting and tedious. This is the new "we want to be mysterious" show of the year, and boy, did they achieve that. The pilot episode jumps around in time (though at times, this comes off less like a narrative necessity than a way to shoot only 35 minutes of footage and replay it enough times to get 42 minutes of show time), all leading up to the end of the episode, where... well, I'm not sure. Was that "the event?"

There were some good action sequences, and some hints of interesting character relationships. And yet, there was a whole lot of meaningless dialogue that reminded me too much of the worst "conspiracy" episodes of The X-Files. You know, actors trying to lend ominous weight to dialogue they don't quite understand themselves. Characters being vague not because they would be in a situation, but because being vague is supposed to intrigue the audience. And yet... I sort of do feel like I might give it another episode or two to see if it actually might go somewhere.

So in all, no clear winner for me tonight. No "this is my new addiction for the season." Which I think might suit me fine, actually. I probably have more than enough appointment shows already.

But the week is just getting started, with more new shows ahead...

Lost Re-view: All the Best Cowboys Have Daddy Issues

More than any Lost episode I've re-watched so far, my opinion of this episode has changed dramatically since seeing it the first time around. There were a lot of factors muscling in on this hour the first time around that didn't weigh in all these years later.

This was the first episode to "repeat" a character in the flashbacks. Jack had already had an episode, and now just six episodes later, here he was getting another one. At the time, this really disappointed me. There were still characters who hadn't been delved into at all -- Michael and Walt, Shannon and Boone, and most importantly/annoyingly of all, Hurley. Why "waste" more time on Jack?

Of course, when you've seen all of Lost, you have all the answers about those other characters. You also have an understanding of how important Jack is to the narrative of Lost. If you had to argue that Lost was somehow one person's story (not that I would), that one person would be Jack. There could be no one more deserving of the "first second flashback."

The other albatross around the neck of this episode, the first time around, was the climactic scene where Charlie is found hanged in the jungle by Ethan, ostensibly dead. Well, actually dead, I suppose; Jack manages to revive him. I'll get back around to discussing the scene itself a bit later. Right now, I want to just focus on the context in which this scene -- and episode -- originally aired.

Lost had been running for around three months at this point. My recollection is that there was a lot of talk in entertainment media about the level of actual danger on the show. Sure, there were polar bears, monsters, a crazy jungle lady, and more... but the argument was that none of the characters were ever really in danger, because you knew as a TV viewer that none of them were actually going to die.

Foolishly, in my opinion, the show's creators decided to engage on this point. "We mean business," they'd say in interviews. "There is danger. We could kill a character at any time. In fact, I think we're going to before the end of the season." And thus began an unfortunate sort of "shell game" that existed outside the actual narrative of Lost, not actually helping the storytelling itself, in my opinion.

So along comes this episode, where we find dead Charlie hanging from a tree. And with Dominic Monaghan and Matthew Fox as the only two actors on the show who were widely known at this point in time, my reaction to this scene had nothing to do with the actual drama or emotion of it. I simply thought, "yeah right, as if they would ever kill Charlie on this show." (Yes, I see the irony.) Even as the scene played out uncomfortably long and it seemed like maybe Charlie really was dead, I think I just wouldn't let the emotion in. I didn't want to be "taken" by the writers trying to pull a fast one on me. Which they were here, though I think that's beside the point. The point is that when you actually know the whole tale of Lost, and you're not trying to be "more clever than the writers" as you watch this episode, you can relax and simply enjoy it for what it is.

So what is it?

Well, it's the fastest-starting episode of Lost since the pilot, for one thing. No quiet introspection. No close-ups of eyes. Things start in full panic in the wake of the last episode. Where's Claire?! Where's Charlie?! Where's Ethan?! Jack wants to charge off to the rescue, and is soon clashing with Locke. Locke blames himself for hunting with Ethan but not seeing him for who he truly was, yet he still wants wants to return to the caves first. He wants to recruit more help for the search, and he wants Jack to stay behind so that the group's doctor is kept out of harm's way. "Be the doctor, let me be the hunter," he says. Not that Jack is about to give up.

The two do find more help from Kate and Boone. For Boone, this is the beginning of his forging a strong bond with Locke. (I suppose you could say it's the beginning of the end for him.) Locke admires Boone's determination in this episode, even as he dazzles with his tracking skills and his ability to predict the beginning of a rain storm. (And revel in it.)

Boone reveals his work for a subsidiary of his mother's business. Locke tells Boone the truth about his job at a box company before coming to the Island -- though Boone doesn't believe it. The two trade banter, including a humorous exchange about the fates of red-shirt crewmen on Star Trek. (To Locke, Kirk "sounds like a piss-poor captain.")

And of course, the episode culminates in the two of them first discovering The Hatch. I use capitalization because this was capital-Important, the only thing about Lost anyone seemed to be talking about from this episode's December air date all the way until next September's season two premiere in which we finally got to see inside. (Nine months? Holy crap!)

Locke gets more offers to help, from Walt (who wants to use Vincent to track) and Michael, but gives them the "oh, that's nice dear" treatment. This sends Michael on another one of his pissy rage fits, though I really don't understand why. The last thing I remember between Locke and Michael, Locke had brought Vincent back, but was happy to let Michael take the credit for doing it. What's up with Michael that that's suddenly all gone sour? In any case, this irrational anger makes us like Michael still less. But it does prompt Walt to defend Locke to his father, making us like him a little more.

Also a mark in Walt's plus column is a fun scene where he plays backgammon with Hurley, and displays an uncanny ability to call he dice rolls he needs. Hurley says that no one is that lucky, making me wonder briefly if the writers hadn't decided yet that his back story was that he'd won the lottery. But then as Hurley walks off and Walt complains "you owe me $20,000," the tossed off "you'll get it" makes me certain that they actually did.

Walt's kind of a busy little bee this episode, because he also has a great scene with Sawyer. In discussing Ethan's absence from the flight manifest, Sawyer suggests "maybe he lied about his name." Walt zings him without realizing: "It's stupid to lie about your name." He then talks of the possibility of others (or Others) on the Island, which Sawyer shoots down as the product an active imagination, ironically laying out the real facts of the entire scenario: that someone from a group of natives snuck into camp to kidnap a pregnant lady.

But the real meat of the episode is the Jack storyline. He's beating himself up over not believing Claire when she said someone was trying to get her. It's a bit of a stretch, but he's equating this "failure to do the right thing" to the flashback we see, in which he also failed to do the right thing. We see firsthand in this hour how powerful a motivator guilt is for Jack.

Jack's first flashback episode had a casually tossed away line about the falling out between father and son, that Jack had somehow done something to his father. Here we get to see exactly what that was. His father had performed a surgery while under the influence of alcohol. (And not for the first time.) An avoidable mistake had cost the patient her life, even though Jack showed up to make a futile effort to save her.

The "right thing" would have been to reveal his father's condition immediately, but it takes the full episode, and a series of very emotional flashbacks before that happens. We see Christian try all sorts of tactics from bargaining to intimidation to apologies, even trotting out "I was only hard on you so you'd be great," before Jack finally sees what he must do. The straw that breaks the camel's back is when he hears the woman who died in surgery was pregnant. Jack tells the hospital what his father did, and we've already basically seen how that ends up for Christian a short while later. I do have to ask though, was Jack really doing this because it was the "right thing?" Or was the larger part of him doing it just to get back at his Dad? You might want to think the former of the noble protagonist, but the title of the episode makes me suspect more the latter.

Ultimately, the big moment of the episode happens on the Island, and it's the scene I talked of earlier: finding Charlie hanging dead in the trees, strung up by Ethan. Jack fights to revive him, and it's a powerful scene. It's set up by the opening flashback in which Jack failed to save a life. It's brutal and violent, with Jack pounding away at Charlie's chest time after time. It's photographed perfectly, punctuated with a brilliant wide shot in which Jack, Kate, and the lifeless Charlie are all insect-tiny in the frame. Michael Giacchino plays the emotion for everything it's worth in his score. Kate walks away in tears, giving up, and even knowing the outcome, I believe her.

In short, without all that "will they kill someone" crap from the real world intruding on the drama, this might be the most emotional scene yet in Lost. I completely failed to appreciate this the first time around, but applaud it this time. It's a triumph for the actors, a triumph for writer Javier Grillo-Marxuach (whose previous effort was House of the Rising Sun), and a triumph for first time Lost director Stephen Williams (who would go on to be a regular director for the show through the fifth season).

Still, despite wonderful scenes, the episode is held back a bit for being essentially incomplete. The on-Island story doesn't resolve, with Charlie rescued but Claire still missing at the end of the episode. And though we maybe didn't know it the first time around, the flashback story is somewhat incomplete as well, between the further information we'd get on Jack and his father and the later revelations about how and why Christian got from this moment of disgrace to his final fate in Australia.

But overall, this is really just a solid episode of Lost. I rate it an A-.

Going to Town

I was a fan of Ben Affleck's directorial debut, Gone Baby Gone. (In fact, since first seeing it in theaters, I've watched it again on DVD and decided it probably will be a "top 100" contender by the time I've finished remaking the list.) So I was curious to see what he'd done with his latest film, The Town. It's another story set in Boston, about bank robbers being pursued by a federal agent.

This time out, Affleck chose to wear other hats as well, working with other writers on the screenplay, and taking the lead role. This kind of multitasking didn't detract from the best things he proved about his directing in his previous film. He's very clearly good with actors.

The cast of this movie is very strong. Jeremy Renner is effectively menacing as the most violent hothead in the group, while Jon Hamm makes for a good adversary (though technically, he's the "good guy") as the agent trying to catch the team. And Ben Affleck the director doesn't let Ben Affleck the actor get away with giving less than the rest of the cast.

But the story just isn't as solid as Gone Baby Gone. Like that movie, this one wants to play around in moral gray areas, but isn't at all thought provoking, or even that ambiguous. The main character is supposed to find himself pulled between wanting to stay true to his friends, but also wanting to quit and start a new life. The pull of the latter is clearly outlined in the film. But the old friends don't seem to exert much of a pull at all. We're told about much more than shown the relationship between them, and the case to stand by them just doesn't seem very strong.

There's also an odd romantic plot in the film. I can't decide if it's a subplot or if it's supposed to be the main plot, and all the robbery incidental. In either case, the two don't blend together so well most of the time. Each of the separate "movies" plays well on its own, but doesn't interplay with the whole so smoothly.

But I think the weaknesses are really just in the script. I'd still be there opening weekend to see the next film Ben Affleck directs. This one I'd call a B-, which still isn't bad.

Great Use of Space

In rebuilding my top 100 movie list, Office Space was another movie I knew I didn't really need to watch again -- I knew that movie would make it on there somewhere. But I recently just felt the pull to watch it again anyway. You know, because I just really like it!

You might see it as a rather unlikely selection. Writer-director Mike Judge is sort of hit-and-miss with me. Mostly miss. I never really liked Beavis and Butthead. Extract was good, but not great. King of the Hill was a damn abomination. But anyone can capture lightning in the bottle once, and so it was with Office Space.

Much of the humor of Office Space comes from just how real it is, how only slightly it pushes beyond reality. The portrayal of the daily annoyances of working in a cubicle farm, or as a server in a resturant, are just spot on. The behaviors of people with grandiose delusions about the little power they wield. Even minor moments like the tyranny of static electricity, or living in an apartment with thin walls. This movie is hysterically, sometimes painfully authentic.

The rest of the humor comes from the pitch perfect performances of the brilliant cast. Ron Livingston does some his best work ever, surpassed only by Bands of Brothers -- an apple and oranges comparison that really should demonstrate just how good (and underused and underappreciated) he is. Jennifer Aniston scores good laughs in one of her last roles before she became locked down in bringing her A-list name to C-grade romantic comedies. Stephen Root so hilariously plays his character of Milton that despite mountains of other appearances all over the place, he's still best known for this. Gary Cole as boss Bill Lumbergh? He's a cultural icon now.

Even the less prominent characters land their own great moments. There's Diedrich Bader (of The Drey Carry Show), John C. McGinley (Scrubs), and Michael McShane (the original U.K. version of Whose Line Is It Anyway?), plus a bunch of other solid working actors bringing the funny in one of the tightest 90 minutes ever put on film.

My only complaint about the film -- and it would be a very minor one -- is that the plot is rather flimsy, secondary (at best) to the wonderful array of characters and jokes. But then again, the movie doesn't pretend otherwise. It even tells you what other movie it's stealing its most significant plot point from -- Superman III -- and then proceeds to mine still more comedy out of that.

I rate Office Space an A-. I can't imagine many people who wouldn't find at least something in it to like.

A Step Up?

A new trend in board games this year seems to be that everyone wants to release their own game that's "like Dominion." This is hardly surprising, as the "like a trading card game, but all in one box" concept has pushed Dominion to big sales and multiple expansions.

But since writing that initial review of Dominion a while back, I've soured on the game considerably. It was not immediately obvious, but repeated plays exposed the poor balance at the core of the game. In my experience, it simply isn't worth it to take much interest in buying cards with game text. Three, maybe four, will help your deck out, but more than that seems to be self-defeating; you'd best just stick with acquiring more money cards (when you can't afford the big points). At the end of every Dominion game I've played (and thought to check), the winner is always the player with the fewest "text" cards in his deck. And since game text is what trading card games are all about (even not-a-trading-card-game-games), that makes the game rather boring, in my opinion.

Enter one of the new Dominion clones, Ascension. It has a more Dungeons and Dragons kind of feel to it (though not as much, I gather, as the other recent Dominion clone, Thunderstone), where you pick up items and heroes and slay monsters. It admirably addresses the "text equals bad" problem by simply lifting Dominion's restriction of only playing one "action card" during a turn. In Ascension, you can play all your special cards on every turn, and they're definitely "special" enough that you'll want to pick them up when you can afford them.

The pace also seems to be improved over Dominion. I've played four-player Dominion games where it feels like an eternity passes between your turns, yet all but the most involved Ascension turns seem to move at a good clip.

But after a few plays, my opinion is that these improvements in Ascension came with an unfortunate loss as well -- there simply isn't much strategy to it. (Though I suppose my argument is there isn't much strategy to Dominion either -- just the one that works.) Rather than set piles of cards to purchase, as Dominion has, Ascension has a row of six single cards, dealt off a single, shuffled super-deck. When one card is bought, the next card off the deck replaces it. There's no ability to plan ahead; what you want may well be gone -- for good -- before your next turn arrives. And if an awesome card comes available when it's someone else's turn? Well, that luck of the draw may well decide the game in his favor, not yours. All you can really do is wait for your turn, play all your cards (no decisions to make there), then acquire the most expensive card(s) you can each turn (hardly any decisions to make there either).

In short... well, I don't want to say it's like Fluxx. But the game does smell an awful lot like Fluxx in its "you don't really play the game so much as it plays you" vibe. Its brief 30-minute run time, even with four players, might make me think that's okay, save for the fact that there are plenty of other 30-minute games I find more enjoyable.

Still, I think I'd be willing to play Ascension if that's what the group was playing. Dominion, I think I'd just sit out on.

Scarred for Life

I recently watched another classic film -- or at least one that quite a few contend is a more recent "classic," Scarface. Made in 1983, the film is now over 25 years old. But it feels older and more dated to me than half the movies that really are considered classics.

That age starts with the "period" setting in 1980, in the waning months of Jimmy Carter's presidency. The movie is steeped in high hair and shoulder pads, neon colors, and all the trappings of 80s. But there are tons of 80s films like that that don't feel so stranded in time to me.

The real problem is the casting. This movie is supposed to be about an influx of crime in Miami brought on by a mass of immigrants from the slums of Cuba. And starring as the "Cubans," you have a series of actors each less logical than the last. Al Pacino. Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio. F. Murray Abraham? Robert Loggia?! You would never make this kind of movie today and not cast people of at least a reasonably close ethnicity appropriate to the story. This is not a reflection on the actual performances of any of these actors. I've loved them in other films. But here they're simply too distracting to ever take the story seriously.

And it's a plodding and slow-paced story at that. Clocking in at nearly three hours, the film practically wants to tell you the life story of the title character. We don't get his life from birth, thankfully, but we do get every single detail of his rise from street rat to kingpin. And we get it -- lots and lots of drugs.

Really, the only thing I could find to like about the movie is some occasionally clever camera work and staging from director Brian De Palma. At least, in the moments where he's not to taken with showing off how long he can hold a shot without an edit. I certainly saw none of the glamor I feel that many have attached to the movie. I rate it a D-.