Worst of the Worst: #18, The Master of Disguise

I'm making this quick so I can get this movie out of my head. Dana Carvey plays Pistachio Disguisey (actual name), the heir to a family that can change themselves into anything. His father, played by James Brolin, is kidnapped by a villain, played by Brent Spiner, and forced to turn into Michael Johnson, Jesse Ventura, and Jessica Simpson (played by the actual people) to steal things like the Constitution and the Liberty Bell. Carvey then needs to learn the art of the Disguisey family, become a Master of Disguise and rescue his parents. Parents, because his mother is also kidnapped. She is played by Edie McClurg. As an old Italian family, Brolin, McClurg, and Carvey all put on really awful stereotypical Italian accents. EDIE MCCLURG PUTS ON A FAKE ITALIAN ACCENT!!!

This is the twenty-second movie I've seen on this list, to add to many bad movies I've seen throughout my life. As I've worked on this "project," I've become more serious about evaluating these movies against each other and for what they are. This movie is so lazily put-together, has so many continuity errors (we're talking dozens), is so poorly written, is so disastrously unfunny. So take this as my gospel: The Master of Disguise is the worst movie I've ever seen. It's on Starz On Demand, so you can watch it for yourself if you want (the one on Netflix Watch Instantly is messed up, with the sound not matching the video). I almost suggest you do see it to see how bad cinema can get. Again: this may change as I watch more, but I say this for right now, during Snowbliteration '10, on the early morning of February 6th, 2010. The Master of Disguise is the worst movie I've ever seen.

Snowbliteration Movie #2: (500) Days of Summer

"It's love. It's not Santa Claus."

For years, I've suggested to all of my female friends that they read Nick Hornby's High Fidelity. In that book, Hornby does a better job of describing how men think than in anything else I've read. Most writers don't get it right. Men are either too obnoxious or too macho or too sensitive. People do a good job of getting one aspect really right, but it's rare to see someone put it all in one package. No matter that they were snubbed by the Academy with no Oscar nomination, in (500) Days of Summer, Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber absolutely nailed it.

I had only heard fantastic things about this film from a variety of sources, so I was excited to finally get to see it. I had heard that it was about a relationship and the five hundred days that it lasted. Not really true. It's about a guy who meets a girl and the ups and downs that take place before, during, and after their relationship and about whether the ideal of love actually exists or not. It's mainly light, very feel-good, very funny. That's not to say that it isn't also complex at times. It's everything you'd expect from a true-to-life story that could happen to anyone. In watching it, I struggled with the fact that the female character is fairly archetypal. For instance, Ringo Starr is her favorite Beatle and she acts exactly like you would expect someone to act if they felt that way. It took some time to realize that the movie was really about the guy, not the girl. It is only about her in how the guy reacts to her. Funny enough, my wife had a hard time relating to it in the same way that I did.

The movie is driven by its script, but that doesn't work without the actors delivering it believably. The female lead is Zooey Deschanel and I touched briefly on what I think about her in my review of The New Guy. I'm a big fan; she is immensely talented and she has that "it" that makes her likable every time you see her. The male lead is Joseph Gordon-Levitt. His bizarre appearance in G.I. Joe aside, he is one of the trendy young actors and for good reason. He was good in a small role in 2008's Stop-Loss and he proved his chops in one of the most underrated movies of the past few years, 2007's The Lookout (I'm hoping that if I say that enough I can convince everyone to see it). The movie also co-stars Geoffrey Arend, and I only say that because I was thinking "I hate you" whenever I saw him because he's married to Christina Hendricks.

(500) Days of Summer marks the directorial debut of Marc Webb, whose next project is the Spider-Man reboot. He started out directing music videos, which was also the road to prominence for both David Fincher (yay!) and McG (boo!). You can see the influence of videos on this movie, with some unorthodox shots and a nice fantasy dance sequence in the middle. There was one part I particularly loved, when the main character is going to a party and the film shows, side-by-side, what his expectations are and what the reality is. Really, really nice stuff.

So, a great script with some of the most realistic presentation of inner thoughts I can remember, actors I love carrying it out, interesting and effective direction. We've had discussions about what constitues a "perfect" movie. I present this one as my newest entry on that list. In addition, it jumps onto my list of my favorite movies from 2009. Inglourious Basterds is obviously my favorite, but there were three movies that had me smiling throughout, so my #4 through #2 are An Education, (500) Days of Summer, and Up In The Air.

Snowbliteration Movie #1: The Taking of Pelham 123

This being the remake of a 1970s movie that has already been remade once before and was adapted from a novel. This one stars John Travolta as a remarkably foul-mouthed subway hijacker and Denzel Washington as the imperfect, but valiant, MTA supervisor who is trying to save the hostages. There are the requisite number of twists and turns. All in all, it's not as bad as I thought it would be, but it's not great. It's almost exactly like Deja Vu, another recent Tony Scott-Denzel Washington collaboration. Most of the movie is over-directed and the other actors don't really seem to click (I was immediately nevous when I noticed that there were two Transformers 2 actors in it, even if one was John Turturro), but Washington is good enough that he carries the day. I'm not sure how Scott and Washington have failed to recapture the magic of Crimson Tide, whether that was just a fluke or if they just haven't gotten back to that level yet. Either way, this one isn't a total waste of time. How's that for a glowing endorsement?

Snowver Tired

Watched Tuesday's American Idol, which was so bad that I deleted the Wednesday one. Community was subpar. 30 Rock was downright awful except for a few minutes. So, whatever. I'm ready to wait out Snowblivion/ Snowbliteration/ Snowverdose/ Snoverreaction/ Kaiser Snowze/ Snowpocalypse 2: Electric Boogaloo with five rented movies between Netflix and Blockbuster: The Hurt Locker, Paper Heart, The Taking of Pelham 123, (500) Days of Summer, Bright Star. Also picked up previously viewed copies of Star Trek, The Hangover, and Waltz with Bashir, and I still have to find a bad movie from the list between Netflix Watch Instantly and On Demand. So rather than coming up with some inane crap for tonight, get ready for movie review after movie review over the next couple of days.

A Generation Lost In Space

Went to see a production of Richard II at the Shakespeare Theatre Company in DC. My brain is fried -- it clocked in at three hours and fifteen minutes, with the first act alone being just short of two hours. The acting was very good and our seats, in the front row, allowed us to get a good view of their expressions, the spit flying out of their months, and got me hit by flowing robes once or twice. I don't know how they memorize all of those lines, especially since right now the show in repertory with Henry V, meaning all of the actors are performing both shows on different days.

Anway, it's February 3, fifty-one years to the day that Buddy Holly, Richie Valens, and the Big Bopper (after Holly's bassist, Waylon Jennings, gave up his seat for him) died in a plane crash. The Day The Music Died.

I actually wasn't really going to comment on the videos at all, but a couple of these are wild. This one is fantastic with "rock and roll specialist" and the creepy prom-dressed kids standing still in the background.


There's almost no actual footage of Richie Valens, but I thought this would be better than just showing Los Lobos.

Dick Clark!

The audience is very subdued, probably stoned out of their minds. I had no idea that Don McLean had such a good voice.

"It Worked"

No reason to talk about the great episode of Archer I watched (thanks to Tom for recommending that) or the continuing snow. Tonight's all about one thing, so if you watch Lost and haven't seen the season premiere then stop looking at this and go find out what happened when Juliet hit the bomb:

• Putting everything else aside for a second, I have to comment on the idea of answers on this show. There are questions that we've had for a couple of years and there are questions that we've had since the series premiere that aired over five years ago. It's easy to mix them up and think that all of the answers are just as important as one another. So the answer to "What is the temple?", which we first heard about in season three (when Ben sends Richard to the temple while he goes to stop Jack from calling the freighter) is a big one. The answer to "What is the monster?" I mean, that may be the second biggest question to "What is the island?"
• And so we know what the monster is, sort of. We know specifically who it is. We just don't know where that "who" comes from and what his mission is. Where is his "home"? It could be the temple, but I really have no idea. With that, it's easy to jump to the very end of the episode, but I'll step back and try to hit on questions/comments in close to chronological order.
• Did the bomb create alternate timelines or is the landing of Oceanic 815 what happens after Jack and company achieve whatever they need to do on the island after the bomb pushed them back into 2007? I think it's purely alternate and that this will be resolved in some way and probably relatively soon.
• You could interpret Juliet's "it worked" as saying either that it worked in pushing them into 2007 or in putting them back on the plane (and destroying the island so that there's no button for Desmond to not push on 9/22/04). I'm going with that she meant the plane, since she also said something about having coffee with Sawyer. Perhaps she, like Desmond (I think Des was actually on the plane in this alternate timeline, not as a ghost of some sort), will pop up again. No island after the Incident means Juliet is probably chilling in Miami.
• I think Des was actually on the plane because there were some differences from the original Oceanic 815 passengers. Boone couldn't convince Shannon to come. Christian's body didn't make it on the plane. We didn't see any tailies besides the ones that weren't actually sitting in the tail section, Bernard and Cindy. No Michael or Walt. Maybe Sun doesn't speak English. Hurley has good luck. Kate killed a plumber instead of her father (it came from a video that the producers showed at Comic-Con).
• We know for the sure that the ash is used to block the Man In Black (should I call him that or the monster?) from going places. Presumably, the ash was laid down around the cabin to keep the Man In Black there. If so, was the circle always broken? If the circle wasn't always broken, then how was the monster going all around the island?
• Did you notice that when Kate knocked the marshal's head against the sink, the cut appeared in the same exact place that it appeared when he was hit on the head during the original plane crash? That and the absence of Christian's body makes me wonder if things are going to start happening in the "landed plane" timeline to mirror things that happened on the island. My first jump to that would be if Charlie had asphyxiated, though that obviously didn't end up being the case.
• My award for "most cryptic line that I don't think was actually cryptic at all" is the: "Richard, the last time I saw you, you were in chains!" We generally assume Richard came on the Black Rock. We know the Black Rock was a slave ship.
• Finally... What was on the paper that Jacob hid in the ankh? I think it was a list of everyone that he has touched. Why? Because those are the people tasked with defeating the Man In Black? Probably, but there's one more facet to it. Perhaps those are the people that, because of the touch, Jacob can inhabit with his spirit. Do I think that Sayid is now possessed by Jacob in the same way that Locke was possessed by the Man In Black? Probably. Can't say definitively yes, since Miles didn't seem to think, by the look on his face, that Sayid was actually dead (and I didn't buy it for a second).
• The other explanation for the piece of paper is that it is a list of everyone Jacob touched and lists those that can defeat the Man In Black, but only if they work together. Hence, that new Others medicine man, or whatever he is, saying that they would be in big trouble is Sayid died (and Jacob being so particular about Hurley saving Sayid). I'm thinking Stephen King's It here, how the group that faced the monster had their chance of success lessen as each member died.
• What did I miss? What do you think?

They're Coming

• The Monologue:
• I don't think I said anything about the President's "Question Time" last week. It was fascinating and entertaining. He knows his stuff. I haven't seen that many white people go after one black person and get shut down since Passenger 57.
• "We Are The World" is being redone for Haiti. We all know this is a mistake. The big question is: who will be the Dan Aykroyd of this version? Will the music video have a random Bill Hader singing in the background?
• This is really all about the opportunity to link to a picture of an old Rip Torn, but I'll also add: "You want to break into this bank? Broken into it shall be."
• Right, because men want a sex robot for the conversation.
• Random Pop Culture:
• Tonight's How I Met Your Mother was fantastic. It had everything that's right about the show with not-so-obvious pop culture references, Seinfeld-ian social jokes, and even a funny Jim Nantz. Also, a surprisingly obscure Phil Rizutto reference that made me laugh out loud.
• For as funny as that was, the best single laugh line of the TV night was Greg House's "The opossum... was meant for me." Even if the ultimate payoff on the pranks was lackluster, the lead-up was great. I can also see Orlando Jones becoming a semi-regular (I don't know if that's the plan since I've been staying away from TV spoiler blogs in anticipation of a certain season premiere).
• 24? You know. I like the Renee stuff for the most part, but anything CTU is garbage right now. Maybe "garbage" isn't the right word since it's recycled from seasons past.
• Random Lost Stuff:
• I struggled with whether to do a big overarching Lost piece tonight or before the series finale, like I did with The Wire. There's a sense that the entire season is a finale, instead of just one episode, but I don't think that's fair to the producers. Season six will have its own plot that will involve more than just answer after answer, so I'll hold off on overarching stuff for now.
• Instead, I'll focus on the standing questions. Newark Star-Ledger television critic Alan Sepinwall (you should be reading his blog if you love TV) asked people what the one question is that they most want answered and the one question about which they least care. So...
• The questions I think are most important: "Guys, where are we?" Who is the "they" that Jacob said were coming, to the Man in Black's horror? Why were the Oceanic 815 people so important to Jacob? What happened to young Ben when he was taken to the temple for healing? Is John Locke really dead? Who is Richard really and what does he have to do with Jacob's game with the Man in Black?
• The questions I don't care about (and, for the most part, don't expect to be answered): Why are Walt and Miles, among others, special? Who started the Dharma Initiative? How did the Others/ Hostiles come to be on the island?
• More tomorrow, obviously.