So, I admit that I've tuned out of Colbert for the most part. He doesn't have nearly the edge that he once did on Comedy Central, and pleasantries on late night with celebrities just isn't enough bite for me. Give me Samantha Bee any day. But he's still funny of course, so every once in a while he'll do something worth watching, and I love this Hillary interview at the diner from the other day. Check it out.
Doris Roberts 1925-2016
Doris Roberts, best known for playing Marie Barone on Everybody Loves Raymond, passed away at the age of 90 this afternoon. Her acting career began in the 1950's, with appearances in movies such as Barefoot in the Park, The Heartbreak Kid, The Taking of Pelham One Two Three and National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. Her longtime television career included guest spots on The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Baretta, All in the Family, Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, The Streets of San Francisco, Rhoda, Soap, and Fantasy Island, before landing a supporting role on St. Elsewhere, for which she won an Emmy, Remington Steele, for which she was nominated, and finally, Everybody Love Raymond, which garnered her seven Emmy nominations and four wins, plus two SAG awards.
RECAP: SNL 4/16 "Julia Louis-Dreyfus"
Well, it was another lackluster SNL episode, even though Julia did her best to liven things up with a real effort being put into some very bad writing, as usual. Sigh. Let's hope they do some kind of writer's intervention before the end of the season in May.
COLD OPEN: This opening though, isn't too bad, as Larry David of course returns as Bernie Sanders for the Democratic debate in New York, and they stage a Seinfeld reunion with Julia popping up as "real New Yorker" Elaine Benes (!) to ask him questions. Love it! Vanessa's Rachel Green cameos as well. Ok, this was cool and the best thing of the night, it turns out.
MONOLOGUE: Julia comes out to poke fun at her own brief SNL years back in the early 80's and her hugely unsuccessful film career, and then Tony Hale shows up to play the hapless Veep's hapless Gary again, as he mishandles the cue cards for her. It's alright I guess. Julia's always a good sport.
HEROIN AM: An ad for suburban parents to take heroin in pill form to help them function better. It's kinda funny, mostly due to Julia's efforts at acting high and loving it.
HUGE JEWELRY: Julia and Kate are Long Island housewives selling oversized jewelry you can "see from space" and using their daughters Cecily and Aidy to model them. Eh. It's just one joke (LI housewives are trashy) and it's actually kinda dull and goes on too long (despite an ending cameo from an all grown up Nick Jonas).
THE POOL BOY: A digital short where Julia is having an affair with Pete's pool boy, who couldn't care less while she tries to melodramatically break it off with him. It ends with her going after Nick Jonas as the new lawn mower guy. It's another kind of meh sketch, but again, I do credit Julia with giving this her all.
CINEMA CLASSICS: A look back at Julia as a '50's actress who can't say her lines unless they're "hidden" on set props. This one doesn't work and goes on way too long, but Julia is again the center of the joke and physically throws herself around the set- sadly, to no avail.
MERCEDES AA CLASS: A commercial for a Mercedes that runs strictly on AA batteries- oof. A total misfire that Julia is forced to shill for. Who thought this was funny?
UPDATE: Several Bernie jokes make way for Kenan and Jay as Charles Barkeley and Shaq to comment on this week's NBA games. They're usually funny here, but this time it falls kinda flat, with the continual mocking of Shaq's intelligence just pounded too hard by Kenan, as though the audience couldn't tell what the joke was themselves. Aidy then shows up as "Animal Annie," a character who mixes fun facts about animals with depressing facts about herself- it's not that funny, but she brings out a real iguana at the end, so...cool? Finally, Cecily comes on as her "one dimensional female character" from a movie. I've never loved any of Cecily's characters, to be honest, although I find this one the least grating. It's a mediocre Update tonight.
WHO WORKS HERE: A game show that asks people to guess who actually works at the CVS store. It's a knock on CVS employees, obviously, but it's a bleh skit that gets no real laughs.
MATCH BAR: Yikes. Kate and Julia show up at a bar as aliens looking for males to mate with and end up killing them by accident. This was horrid and man, I don't know what they were thinking with the concept on this one. Makes me feel sorry for the actors.
CHRISTIAN MOVIE TRAILER: The last sketch is a trailer for one of those recent faith-based films, with Vanessa as a "persecuted Christian" forced to bake a cake for a gay couple and admit in court that God is gay. She fights it by yelling that God's a "boob man!" This is actually good and should have been in the first half of the show. I don't know why they saved it for the end.
Okay, so this episode was not good, although it also wasn't as bad as the recent Russell Crowe and Peter Dinklage outings. It had the opening, the trailer and the heroin ad, so I guess that earns it a C-? Everything else was a bust, despite Julia being cool and trying her best. Hopefully, when the show comes back on May 7th with Brie Larson it brings the A-game material for the final run of the year. See you guys then!
Official Trailer for Cameron Crowe's 'Roadies' Drops
Looks like Crowe is going back to Almost Famous territory here, with a brand new series on Showtime chronicling the backstage lives of roadies. Hmm. To be honest, I'm skeptical about Cameron Crowe these days, since he really hasn't made a good movie in forever. Will coming to television bring back some of that heart and feeling his films have been missing in the last decade and a half? It's hard to tell from this. I guess we can only wait until reviews come out. I do like that the main character seems to be a girl though.
Teaser for 'Mr. Robot' Season 2 Promises Changes
After the unexpectedly well received first season of Sam Esmail's tech thriller, the buzz couldn't be bigger for the upcoming second, which is premiering sometime this summer on USA. I'm looking forward to it myself, although count me among those who were very surprised at all the awards buzz the show gathered in the last few months, outside of Rami Malek's amazing performance, even. I wouldn't say it's undeserved exactly, but the next season certainly has a lot more to live up to now.
The gloves still won't fit
REVIEW: "The People v. O.J. Simpson"
The gloves still won't fit
True crime is an addictive, compelling genre in all mediums of entertainment, be it books, television or film. We were about due for another wave of interest in the subject, and it turns out all it took it was an extremely entertaining, impeccably acted miniseries that managed to generate actual suspense and dramatic impact from a murder trial that pretty much everyone on the planet knows the outcome of. That's what Ryan Murphy delivered with The People v. OJ Simpson, the first in a planned anthology series of American true crime stories, and even if all the subsequent series and spin-offs manage to duplicate even some of this one's success, this will remain the gold standard, especially when it's given the expected shower of Emmy nominations later this summer.
Everyone knows the story, right? It was twenty years ago that OJ Simpson was arrested and tried for murdering his ex-wife Nicole and her friend Ron Goldman in Brentwood, California. It was a hugely sensationalized media event, the beginning of wall to wall coverage of tabloid style reality TV, and a major cultural phenomenon that had the whole country glued to the television and gossiping over the details. OJ was a former football player and national celebrity, and the murders took place against the backdrop of a Los Angeles boiling over with racial unrest in the wake of the Rodney King beatings. The underlying tensions of the trial sparked an enormous racial divide in the country, as public opinion of OJ's guilt or innocence lined up firmly by race.
In a way, this soap opera saga that went on for nearly two years was tailor made to become a television series. All the dramatic twists and star players are already written in. We had OJ of course, and his "dream team" of egomaniacal defense lawyers, with the showboating Johnnie Cochran at the center, and Robert Shapiro, F. Lee Bailey and Robert Kardashian along for the ride. On the other side we have the prosecutors, led by the no-nonsense (and unfairly ridiculed for it) Marcia Clark and Chris Darden, also unfairly publicly maligned for being an African-American on the "wrong" side of history. There are dramatic subplots, including the sexist shaming of Clark by the tabloids and the press, the infamous Bronco chase that captivated the nation (dramatized here in just the second episode), the jury sequestered away as inherent prisoners for eight months, and even a will they/won't they romance between Clark and Darden.
Sarah Paulsen and Sterling K. Brown as prosecutors Marcia Clark and Chris Darden
It's almost easy in a way. Writers Larry Karaszewski and Scott Alexander based the show mostly on Jeffrey Toobin's book The Run of His Life: The People v. OJ Simpson, and were gifted with the ability to base several episodes on major incidents that took place in the saga and are bound to inspire flashbacks among those who remember watching all this unfold like it was yesterday. I have to admit, I am not one of those people, as even though I was alive, I was a little too young to pick up more than just media images at the time. From what I can gather, the prism through which this show affects viewers may be measured by what they can actually remember of the events themselves.
So I'll confine myself to the series only, which I can say is addictive, inherently watchable and most of all, superbly performed by what will likely go down as the best TV ensemble of the year. The MVP's of this cast are, in order, Courtney B. Vance as Johnnie Cochran, who gives the famed lawyer all the charisma and ego and rabble-rousing energy he was known for, Sarah Paulsen as Clark, terrific in her rigidity and stubbornness and possibly more sympathetic in the end than the real life figure she was based on, and Sterling K. Brown as Darden, who eerily resembles his softspoken counterpart right down to the pronunciation and mannerisms. The three of them hold your attention for the majority of the series and every meaty scene they have as the leads, but they're surrounded by a supporting cast that gives everyone a chance to shine, including David Schwimmer as Kardashian, the duped friend of Simpson who develops doubts over the course of the trial, Nathan Lane, hilarious as the delightfully and unapologetically wicked F. Lee Bailey, and John Travolta, who really camps it up as the eventually sidelined Robert Shapiro, OJ's original defense attorney. Travolta gives what may be the most divisive performance here, but I got a total kick out of him, as the tone of the show veers between seriousness, sensationalism and campiness that matches the intense public obsession with a murder trial that often overlooked the real victims in favor of the celebrity intrigue and tabloid stories surrounding it.
Courtney B. Vance steals the show as Johnnie Cochran
Despite how entertaining and ultimately satisfying it is, the show is plagued by Ryan Murphy's direction, and he just can't stop himself from constantly zooming the camera in and around the actors and sets like he's on a swaying cruise line. Everything about the story was dramatic enough, did we really need those extreme close-ups and distracting camera zooms? And I haven't mentioned OJ himself, who was played by Cuba Gooding Jr. in the most unfortunate bit of casting on the series. Everyone else is a dead ringer or close to it for the person they are playing- to make such an epic mistake with the title character is a real shame. Cuba looks and sounds nothing like the 6 foot tall football player everyone remembers. Even someone like me, who remembers no details of the trial itself, remembered him, what he looked and sounded like from his indelible public image all those years. Which isn't to say Cuba gives a bad performance, he's actually very convincing as a mentally unstable, borderline sociopathic, somewhat charming man...he just isn't OJ.
Those missteps aside, anyone will enjoy this miniseries for what it is, and the steps it takes to connect all the societal issues the trial brought to the forefront, is begun with the very first images of the Rodney King news footage. In many ways, we are reminded how little has changed with the continuing problems of racism and police misconduct over the last twenty years, but also of how hollow a "payback" victory this verdict was, as there was never any other suspect charged in the killing of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman. As the final shot of the last episode makes clear, it was a hollow victory indeed. For everyone.
Grade: A-
O.J. and the "dream team"
Kyle Chandler and Ben Mendelsohn are Back for 'Bloodline' Season 2
This is actually one of the shows I decided to dump this year, despite giving a semi-decent review to the first season. The problem for me was that it had no staying power. I realized about a month after I finished it that I had completely forgotten everything that happened. That's not a good thing. The last thing I want to do is get sucked into another House of Cards or Agents of SHIELD, shows that I had reservations about from the start, and which never improved on any of them, but for some reason I kept watching too long anyway. So for me it's so long, Bloodline. But for those who are interested in this family psychodrama, here's a look at the upcoming season dropping in May.
Tyrian Faces the Dragons in New 'Game of Thrones' Trailer
So yeah- the dead are coming, Bran's returning, Sansa wants revenge (please let her get it, that rapist guy is the most repulsive and near unwatchable character on the show at this point, much worse than King Joffrey was), and Tyrian is in charge and facing the dragons in Khaleesi's absence. Looks like Cersei's back on top again too, which is kinda surprising. I thought George R.R. Martin would have killed her off by now, but my guess is the show has turned her into that character you love to hate and can't get rid of, at least until the series finale. All the Lannisters will probably survive until then. But it was just officially confirmed finally, that Jon Snow really is dead, for those who were tormented by that for the last ten months. I myself couldn't care that much- he was never one of my favorites and I always kinda hated the stuff going on at the Wall. Also, if Khaleesi is separated from her people this entire season, I call bullshit, given that it took all this time to let her and Tyrian meet and then they only get like three scenes together in total? Yeah, that's a gyp.
RECAP: SNL 4/09 "Russell Crowe"
Wow. And I thought this one might be better than last week's. Russell Crowe hosted a truly dismal episode tonight, and even though I wouldn't blame it entirely on him, let's just say he wasn't one of the more dynamic hosts. Blech.
COLD OPEN: A fairly boring open with Kate's Hillary opining her recent losses and pandering to New Yorkers in her typical Hillary-esque way. The best bit is mocking her being unable to use the metro card on the subway, but there's no good lines here or anything.
MONOLOGUE: Russell comes out and briefly pokes fun at his "hilarious" filmography, but it seriously lasts like two minutes, making it the second week in a row where they clearly had no ideas for the host's monologue.
PREP H: A lame ad for Preparation H, where Beck is a guy who loudly keeps calling Taran out on his problem in public, but it's a pretty bleh delivery of this obvious joke here.
POLITICS NATION: Kenan does his Al Sharpton impression in front of the real Al Sharpton as a guest, who pokes fun at his weight gain, seeing as obviously Sharpton looks nothing like that anymore. Sometimes Kenan's funny with this, but for some reason this one fell flat, although I did like the joke about Trump's -1,048 approval rating among black voters.
HENRY VIII: Russell is a hologram of King Henry VIII at a museum who keeps insulting patrons and harassing women. Doesn't work.
MATCH FINDERS: Dating show where Russell is one of the bachelors as a pervy old man who keeps making gross sexual remarks to Cecily's contestant. Eh. Russell is trying and he's the center of the joke, but the whole thing just isn't taking off.
UPDATE: A bunch of election jokes from Jost and Che, then Kate comes on as the TV viewer Deenie, and her best bit is that she's actually eating all these brussell sprouts in her plastic container. Then Kyle comes out as the failed stand-up comic Bruce Chandling, and god this whole character is so awful that the audience has no idea how to respond to him. I know his schtick is that he's a bad comedian, but when it's actually truly bombing in front of the live audience it's really uncomfortable to watch. I wanted to cover my eyes for this, it was so bad.
SURVIVOR: The reality show spoof where people's relatives are brought on as a surprise, but Russell is brought out as Pete's uncle's friend Terry, to his befuddlement. Russell goes for it again, but there's just no good jokes in any of these premises tonight.
PORGIE'S PEPPERONIS: A taped Beck and Kyle bit where they're overgrown weirdos excited to work at a Chuck E Cheese style kid's place, so much so that they freak out at everything and eventually, literally explode. And once again, I did not laugh once. Now this episode is starting to feel a thousand years long and I'm getting kinda pissed off while watching it.
NINJA: A horrible skit where Leslie is a ninja saving people from mobsters or something. Oh my god, this sucks SO bad now. When will this episode end???
OPRAH WINFREY: A LIFE OF LOVE: One of those random Mike O'Brien videos that pop up every once in a while, where this time he plays Oprah in a biopic but as himself. That's the joke. Is this over yet?
Yes, finally it ends. My god, this episode was terrible. Not a single thing made me even giggle tonight. I feel like I shouldn't give it an F though, because I've actually seen worse (January Jones will always be the gold standard for worst SNL host of all time, for example). Weirdly, Russell Crowe actually participated in just four skits. Four. None of the pre-taped stuff, and not the Al Sharpton one either. Hmm, I wonder if he was hard to work with behind the scenes, despite his seeming to be putting forth effort in the ones he did do. Anyway, I give it a D- and write this one off as worst of the season. Next week it's Julia Louis-Dreyfus, so hopefully she can bring some life back into this show as it ends the April run. See you then.
First Trailer for 'OJ: Made in America' Documentary
This 10 hour documentary on OJ Simpson premiered at Sundance in January, and will now be premiering on ABC in June, and the subsequent parts on ESPN over four nights. For those who can't get enough of the topic and for whom the FX miniseries wasn't enough, you should probably check this one out, since it got phenomenal reviews, and they will be trying to get it eligible for next year's Oscars, despite the fact that it's airing on television first. Sounds like it's definitely worth watching.
