The Artist

I finally saw this year's underdog Oscar nominee, The Artist. It is a good movie overall, but I was somewhat disappointed, possibly because I expected too much.

Even though I am not an expert, I have seen a good number of movies from the era (20s-30s) back when I was an avid movie watcher. The Artist captures the cheesiness and predictability of the story lines of the day. Unfortunately, that is not where the charm of the classics lies. At least for me. Busby Berkeley movies, for example, are pretty boring. You watch them for the musical sequences.

If anything, The Artist reminds us how most dialog in modern movies is unnecessary. Think back and you will remember a lot of very powerful scenes without a single spoken word. Who can forget the opening sequence in The Hours, for example.

To end on a positive note. If you have seen the movie, the following video of Fred Astaire and Eleanor Powell (the king and queen of tap) dancing to Cole Porter's music in Broadway Melody of 1940 will look familiar. This homage made me think how great it would be if someone did a sequel (The Artist 2!) about the musical era of Hollywood. The plot would still be cheesy, but there would be a lot of dancing!

Relatively Speaking

I don't get to go to the theater often, but every once in a while we splurge and visit the ol' Broadway. Saturday night we saw Relatively Speaking.



Relatively Speaking, directed by John Turturro, presents three one act plays: Talking Cure by Ethan Coen, George is Dead by Elaine May and Honeymoon Motel by Woody Allen. They tell different stories, but they all revolve around the concept of family, mostly mothers.

May's bittersweet "George is Dead" is the strongest play in the pack. The main character, Carla (Lisa Emery), has to deal with a marriage problem as well as her old, rich, socially clueless and demanding "friend"(!) Doreen (Marlo Thomas). Doreen finds out her husband George died in a ski accident and rushes to Carla's apartment for consolation. Marlo Thomas plays Doreen to such perfection that you hate her, yet at the same time can't help pity her. Just like Carla.

Woody Allen's "Honeymoon Motel" is, well, classic Woody Allen. I unfortunately cannot say much about the play without a spoiler, but it includes a multitude of dysfunctional characters, most of whom are related to each other. Let's just say they are trying to resolve a family dispute with the help of a psychiatrist, a rabbi and a pizza delivery boy. If you like Woody Allen's hyperactive, verbose style of comedy, you will love Honeymoon Motel. The cast includes Police Academy's Steve Guttenberg, The Simpsons' Julie Kavner and Caroline Aaron from Crimes and Misdemeanors.

Coen's "Talking Cure" had a few good moments, but it was not long enough for him to develop his quirky characters.

If you are going to be in town for the holidays and if you like the works of these playwrights, Relatively Speaking might be worth checking out. If you don't believe me, you can read this article where one of them (May), interviews the other two. It plays at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre until 15 January 2012.

Post-Irene

People walking outside Sunday morning, right after Irene passed, seemed like a weirdly familiar scene. I couldn't put my finger on it right away, but then it came to me:

Goodbye Little Red Envelope!

No, I am not going to write one of those angry blog posts about how Netflix increased the price of their plans 60%. In fact, I was thinking about dropping the DVD service temporarily. I don't have too much time for entertainment and lately I have just been playing shows I have already seen to have some background noise while I am busy with something else. The last DVD I ordered sat on my desk for a month, then went back without being watched (something I never did before). So, the price hike was a good excuse to just go stream-only. (hence no more envelopes)

I am worried about Netflix though. Not that I own stock or anything, but like many of their customers I love the company. They provide an excellent service for a very good price. Also, a strong Netflix means better content deals. As Netflix gets weaker, number of competitors and their exclusive content deals will increase, which will make us, the customers, pay for multiple services. One that specializes in movies (e.g. Netflix) and one that has better TV offerings (e.g. Hulu).

Competition is good, but I would much rather see the companies battle over non-content issues. Like providing a  better player, higher speed, better social integration, more perks (Amazon's Prime for example, uses Amazon free shipping as a perk. Or videos are the perk for being an Amazon Prime member. Either way, it is a perk!). In fact, that is how Netflix became such a major force. They changed how people rented movies. They could rent out more or less everything Blockbuster had (except for those defensive driving videos!), they just had a different business model. I am sure the same will apply to the online distribution business in the future, but we are going to have to wait while the industry sorts itself out.

One reason I never considered switching to Hulu Plus (I refuse to pay for two services!) was Netflix's strongest extra: The DVDs. Even if I haven't been utilizing that part of the service fully, I still couldn't let it go, because there are times when you really want to rent a movie that is not available online. It was like insurance for those days, for a few dollars a month. With this last price change, Netflix completely separated the two services (streaming and DVDs) and won't give you a discount if you get both. I understand that it wasn't profitable to send unlimited DVDs for 2 extra dollars a month, but not giving any bundle discount doesn't make sense. That is how you get people to give you money for a service they don't want that much. (case in point, me!)

Obviously, I don't have the company books (I couldn't understand them anyway) and something that doesn't make sense to me might be a good business plan for Netflix. It is known that they saw the streaming as the future of the business and the DVDs as a stepping stone. So, a lot of people think that this is the move to finally kill our DVD addiction and get our entertainment from the cloud. If that is the plan, timing might have been a bit off. DVDs will definitely be around for a few more years.

So, I say goodbye to the red envelope, but keep my ties with the red website. But I sure hope that they are cooking some major content deals back there, because I don't want to move to some other company. Could you imagine how long it would take to transfer 7 years worth of rating history?

Mr. Sunshine

ABC's Mr. Sunshine premiered last night. In case you missed the aggressive ad campaign, it is Matthew Perry's (Chandler from Friends) return to TV (sorry Mr. Perry, but not everybody is going to know your name).

Perry's previous TV show was Studio 60 created by Aaron Sorkin (see, people know him, because he wrote a movie about an internet company!). Matthew Perry says that he saw Sorkin on the set of that show muttering to himself while writing the script and he said he wanted to be that guy. So, he wrote a show for himself.

Sorkin must have really affected Perry, because Mr. Sunshine has the feel and the crew of a Sorkin show. It is directed by Thomas Schlamme and stars Matthew Perry, Allison Janney, Nate Torrence and James Lesure, all of whom worked with the Sorkin gang before.
There is also Andrea Anders. You may remember her from another short-lived show, Joey. [Point of interest, Anders is now the first actress to have TV-show-sex with two of the three male Friends cast members on a show that is not Friends. If you include Friends there is also Jennifer Aniston, Maggie Wheeler (who played Janice) and with the rare Joey-Chandler combo Paget Brewster (they fought over her. In fact, it was on TV last night!)]

It is unfair to judge a show by its pilot episode. So much time is spent on character and background exposition that the writers don't really have a chance to show what they can do. So far it looks like Mr. Sunshine will be a comedy of big characters (more like Arrested Development, not so much like Sorkin) who walk and talk fast. However, the main conflict of the show (Perry's character's midlife crisis) was not explored on this episode. So, we need to see how it will affect things.

As a fan of Sorkin-style TV shows and Matthew Perry I am sure Mr. Sunshine will be fun to watch. Let's hope the Gods of the TV agree.