Author: Alex Doenau

“The Right Stuff”

Yep, House is boring without his team. I dearly wish that there’s no viewer input to decide who stays with him. Check it out! This one has an accent! That one’s Kumar! This one’s a million years old! This other one, over here, is an uppity bitch!
Tell someone who cares!

Also, Cameron doesn’t work as a blonde, but at least she’s somewhere. There’s a fine line between witty and annoying. Right now, House is lacking in anyone to properly bounce things off; the medical case was secondary to the main lines … which would be a good thing if I gave a damn. Bring back the team!

Looks like Foreman has part of the court in the next episode; I hold out hope. Hope is always the last to perish …

“Lizards”

You know how most episodes of Heroes can be subtitled “Parkman is stupid”? Well, add “Claire is stupid” to that continuum! I watched this episode with Ajay and he said “I’m not sure that I can watch this show if you’re just going to be shaking your head all the time.”

Spoilers!

“How Betty Got Her Grieve Back”

Ugly Betty had the best season finale of all last year. It was full of action, drama, and a final bit of synaesthesia so powerful that it made me all teary eyed. This episode had to calm down on the solution to the best part of the finale to keep hope alive and, as such, I was stuck in a dread for the majority of the episode. Thank God for Marc and Amanda! (and ooh-ee! Did she get fat!)

And standard boiler plate: only commenting on this show intermittently.

Betty Spoilers!

“Alone”

Just weighing in to say that, while House III had the best non-medical serial stories of the show so far – which isn’t that difficult given that it had almost always been entirely episodic without much care for the characters in the first two series – this new season hasn’t wowed me yet.

Bring back Foreman, Chase, and Cameron, I say! (and they’re still in the opening credits, so I don’t really have to say that) Also, make me give a care for the case in question, although that’s not so much of a worry. I’m not convinced that House can carry the show by himself, although Doctor Buffer was some good stuff.

“Four Months Later”

TV! You’re back! Like sweet manna from the Heavens, I have new things to look forward to (and perhaps deride) each week. Heroes has led the vanguard, and I was fully willing to write it off … until a miracle happened.

Ned: Mohinder? Mohinder Suresh? Mohinder Suresh, I thought that was you!
Mohinder: Hi, thanks for watching.
Ned: Hey now, don’t you tell me you don’t remember me ’cause I sure as heckfire remember you.
Mohinder: Not a chance.
Ned: Ned… Ryerson. “Needlenose Ned”? “Ned the Head”? C’mon, buddy. The Company. I did the whistling belly-button trick at the high school talent show? Bing. Ned Ryerson, I dated your sister Shanti a couple of times until she died of that degenerative disease you were lecturing on? Bing, again. Ned Ryerson, I can turn forks into gold? Well?
Mohinder: Ned Ryerson?
Ned: BING!
Mohinder: Bing.

Yes. Heroes Season 2 is amazing.

Spoilers Ahoy!

I watched the original Hairspray tonight, having snapped it up on the cheap just the other day (in fact, the movie itself was cheaper than its soundtrack). What was a fairly straightforward movie, rather like the musical but with teeth, slowly degenerated into something approaching insanity. Pia Zadora came on screen, talking about ironing your hair and smoking the reefer, and all bets were off.

This was plainly evidenced by John Waters showing up as soon as they left Zadora’s house (which I assure you was swellegant) and stealing the movie. “Look at the disc!” he implored, and Penny had no choice but to listen. I was so disoriented I almost managed to miss Sonny Bono putting together a bomb and hiding it in Debbie Harry’s hair. There was actual evidence of racial tension featured in the movie, the romance on offer was the traditional “taken for granted instant going steady” variety, and altogether it felt more gritty. It came completely unstuck before the curtain fell (“Tracy! Tracy!!!!”), but was mightily entertaining for all of that.

Waters apparently told Adam Shankman that, in making the musical movie, to make it unlike Waters’ own, or like the stage version. I’m convinced that this was a successful approach to take. Shankman’s musical is more polished, but Waters’ movie is rather more bizarre. Different movies to fit different moods; it’s the new frontier.

“Good Morning Baltimore!”

Movie watching should not come with caveats. I’m not going to say “Hairspray is great, but it’s a musical: be forewarned!”. Screw that; I love musicals, and Hairspray is a consistently and thoroughly awesome, heartwarming and well executed piece of musical cinema (and it says something for me that I didn’t even think until a week later, after confronting many people who don’t like the idea of the movie, that another caveat would be “John Travolta wears a dress”).

There’s no one set of things that I look for in movies, and this allows me to see a variety of films like Black Book, Ratatouille, Shortbus and C.R.A.Z.Y. and to be able to say of each of them that they are precisely why I watch movies. Hairspray, too, is why I watch movies.