New Shows, 4: Accidentally on Purpose, The Good Wife, NCIS: LA
September 25th, 2009 | Jonathan Gray
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Archive for the ‘reviews’ Category
New Shows, 3: Community, The Beautiful Life, Flash Forward
September 19th, 2009 | Jonathan Gray
New Shows, 2: The Jay Leno Show, or NBC is Tyler Durden
September 16th, 2009 | Jonathan Gray
Yes, Jay gets his own post, because NBC thinks it’s worth five other shows. Below the fold …
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New Shows, 1: Melrose Place, Vampire Diaries, & Glee
September 15th, 2009 | Jonathan Gray
While living in New York City, I enjoyed attending the Paley Center’s new show sneak peaks each September. That’s not so possible now, in Madison, but instead I’ll be reviewing the new shows as I get around to watching them off my DVR.
Let’s start with The CW’s Melrose Place and The Vampire Diaries, and FOX’s Glee, after the fold…
The New Show Promos, 1: Southland
April 12th, 2009 | Jonathan Gray
This is the first in a series of posts I hope to write, evaluating and discussing not the recent spate of new shows per se, but rather their promos, both on air and online. A good promo shouldn’t just get one turning on the television, but it should also start the text, telling us what to expect, creating characters, introducing themes, and so forth, and a good website should do likewise, while also reinforcing central themes and frames for those who visit after seeing the promo or the show itself.
I start with NBC’s Southland
While the clip above is an extended promo, many of the smaller ones underlined similar points, pushing three key points:
- It stars Ryan Atwood, of The OC fame
- It’s an edgy, gritty, warts and all depiction of the tough job of policing LA’s streets that promises to tell us what it’s “really” like for the city’s cops. Think Training Day meets Colors for television
- It comes to us from the folks behind ER
More after the fold …
The Pleasures of Reading Scathing Reviews
November 15th, 2008 | Jonathan Gray
A recent post at television writer Ken Levine’s blog previewed the next few months’ films. Of Four Christmases, he had this wonderfully caustic comment:
Every Xmas Hollywood trots out at least five ghastly formula high concept hijinks holiday movies. This is four of them.
It made me think about how much I love really funny, really scathing reviews. I have some things to say about the rather peculiar pleasure of enjoying destructive criticism, but first, I went searching for some more examples.
Let’s start with Roger Ebert’s Your Movie Sucks, a collection of his more critical reviews. The book’s title comes from his review of Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo. After starting by noting that the film is “aggressively bad, as if it wants to cause suffering to the audience,” Ebert notes that its star Rob Schneider got really pissy with critic Patrick Goldstein following his review of the film. Schneider bought full-page ads in Variety and Hollywood Reporter to fight back (imagine if our students bought ads in the Chronicle when we gave them bad grades), saying Goldstein had never won an award, and therefore was somehow unable to criticize the horrible film (editorial note: it really is “aggressively bad”). Ebert responds:
Schneider was nominated for a 2000 Razzie Award for Worst Supporting Actor, but lost to Jar-Jar Binks. But Schneider is correct, and Patrick Goldstein has not yet won a Pulitzer Prize. Therefore, Goldstein is not qualified to complain that Columbia financed Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo while passing on the opportunity to participate in Million Dollar Baby, The Aviator, Sideways, and Finding Neverland. As chance would have it, I have won a Pulitzer Prize, and so I am qualified. Speaking in my official capacity as a Pulitzer Prize winner, Mr. Schneider, your movie sucks.
Some other highlights from Ebert’s book after the fold:
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