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September 9, 2007
By Doug Elfman
Chicago Sun-Times
Some journalists don't exactly understand Larry David's humor. I won't name names, but judging by their stories lately, a few members of the press seem to think the creator of "Curb Your Enthusiasm" is a jerk.
Why? Because he's getting divorced, and because he delivered a comedic performance at a press conference in July.
David spoke to fawning TV critics the way his TV character would: caustically, with a knowing smirk. It was, without question, the funniest press conference in history.
Critics in the room laughed throughout. But some press people who weren't there read bits of the transcript, took the tone the wrong way, and aren't on board.
It may seem strange to print the bulk of a press conference in a newspaper, but I think someone should in this case. So here we go. Just remember, each funny line was part of a truthful but comedic performance, not jerkiness.
Q. So what made you decide to keep doing ["Curb"]?
A. Well, [last] season ended, and all the editing was done. And I went into my office, and I was sitting at my desk, and I went, "Jeez, I don't have anything to do." ... And I thought, "This is very uncomfortable. I better do another season." So I did.
Q. Why are you so willing to portray yourself ... as such a shmuck?
A. I'm portraying you, shmucko! [Laughter.] That's you, too, not just me!
Q. But you're portraying yourself ...
A. I'm Jesus Christ. I'm Jesus Christ. I'm sacrificing myself for the betterment of humanity.
Q. I wonder if things happen to you in life now ... where you're angry at what's happening to you, but you're glad, because you're going to get your revenge by acting them out [on "Curb?"]
A. Yeah, if something happens, if I'm angry or something, I'll go, "I'm going to use that." Yeah, so it works like that. Does that answer your stupid question? (Laughter.) ... I can get away with that because there's a very fine line between TV Larry and me. Very close, very close.
Q. Larry, you talked about being raised in this small apartment in Brooklyn as a kid where everyone was yelling. So if everyone was yelling, in the midst of all that chaos, what was the voice of reason that enabled you to believe in yourself?
A. OK, there was no such person. (Laughter.) Nobody told me to believe in myself. Even if they did, I wouldn't have believed them. ... My mother said to me, "You're not special. You're not special, Larry." She begged me to take a Civil Service test to work in the post office. That was her dream for me to work in the post office, deliver the mail, and I thought, "You know, maybe she's right, not such a bad job." But I didn't take the test and, I don't know, one day, you know, I was funny and somebody said, "You should be a comedian."
Q. So you shattered your mother's dreams.
A. Right! [Laughter]
Q. If you do come back for a seventh season -- since there is such a thin line between TV Larry and real Larry -- would you and Cheryl have marital problems?
A. (Looks at actress Cheryl Hines.) Too bad. You're going to be off the show. [Laughter] Oh. What a shame.
Hines: What a way to find out!
A. Good idea for a seventh season, by the way. That's a good idea.
delfman@suntimes.com
Honesty is Garlin's middle name
September 9, 2007
Jeff Garlin's claim to fame is playing Larry's often flustered manager. But in real life, the Chicagoan is just as honest as Larry David is. For instance, he openly proclaims he filmed "Daddy Day Care" for one reason: cash.
"If you see me in something now that's not great, know that I was paid a lot of money," Garlin says. "You know when you have reviews that say, 'So-and-so must have been paid [a lot to be in it],' well, they were."
Garlin's not the only actor eyeing cash. He's just rare for admitting to cashing in.
"Michael Caine is the king of that," he says. "He's won Academy Awards -- and done 'Jaws 3-D' or whatever! And Gene Hackman! He's done his share of crap, but who's a better actor than Gene Hackman?"
I ask him if he also makes a ton of dough performing for private parties thrown by corporations and wealthy fans. He does a few stand-up gigs, he says, but won't name his price. Instead, he names other entertainers' prices.
"I make good money," Garlin says. "But guys like Jay Leno make $750,000 or a million dollars an appearance!"
Garlin does have principles. He wrote, directed and starred in a small movie, opening Oct. 5, called "I Want Someone to Eat Cheese With." He plays a depressed Second City actor. His co-stars are Sarah Silverman, Bonnie Hunt, Amy Sedaris, Dan Castellaneta and Paul Mazursky.
But he turned down a "Daddy Day Care" sequel, since he wasn't offered a good salary.
"I will be honest when it's called for. Why am I going to protect the people who made 'Daddy Day Camp?' " he says. "I've got no reason to protect them. Let 'em pay me enough money, and I'll do it.
"I'm even friends with Cuba Gooding Jr., who's starring in it. Our kids are friends. But you gotta pay me," he says. "And by the way, even when you're doing something for the money, you regret it while you're doing it."
Doug Elfman
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September 8, 2007
BY DOUG ELFMAN Television Critic
'Tell Me You Love Me," the new HBO series premiering Sunday, lays down the most graphic sex scenes ever presented in a serious TV drama. If you watch, you might think thoughts along the lines of, "Is that actress really handling that actor's ... in her ...?"
Seriously. It's vivid. And completely distracting.
But supposedly, "Tell Me" is not about sex. It's about couples dealing with sex problems in their relationships. And, goodness gracious, do they have problems.
One wimpy husband doesn't like the way his ice-queen wife demands sex for the sole purpose of babymaking.
Another wimpy husband pleasures himself in his marriage bed while his loving wife showers, because he doesn't desire her anymore.
Yes, yes, there are submissive men on this show. They cower. They hide. They comply. And their women are not happy with such weak traits.
"Tell Me" implies weak men are indicative of American culture. Also, two characters utter lines which serve as other main themes:
• "Every couple that stops having sex ends up hating each other." (Basically true.)
• "Do you really think you're never gonna be attracted to anyone else for the rest of your life?" (Well, no, but do you really want to become a cheater?)
All of these people need to be in therapy, so they tell their problems to (and lie to) an analyst portrayed by Jane Alexander (the onetime head of the National Endowment for the Arts), whose character goes home and puts her lover's ... in her ... right there on the screen.
Actors and creators of "Tell Me" say it would be difficult to investigate the motivations of these stage play-type characters without including integral sex scenes. I think they make their case with steady direction and acting (especially by Sonya Walger, who is incredibly believable as the ice queen).
In other words, it would be shallower to see a couple fighting about sex. It's more telling to see exactly how terrible or passionate they are in the sack, on the couch and on the kitchen counter.
But since we're Americans, and we're not accustomed to seeing raw, unromanticized sex in visual fiction, viewers certainly will be awed by naked things to the detriment of storylines.
Then again, the storylines are not so much entertainingly paced as they are merely interesting, representational or too often plodding.
The tone is similar to the quite good 1998 Neil LaBute film "Your Friends & Neighbors," which followed a bunch of jerkwads and normal losers suffering sexually dysfunctional relationships.
The people in "Tell Me" aren't necessarily jerks or losers. They're just so damn incompatible. That's the thing I take away from "Tell Me" more than anything else: People will stay in relationships that don't work.
I believe they hold on because they feel possessive about their mates; they don't want anyone else to have them. Or maybe they just don't want to be single and start over. Or they're addicted to their pretty wives' faces. Or it could be they subconsciously enjoy being stuck in bad-relationship cycles.
It reminds me of a "Cheers" episode where Diane asked a therapist (John Cleese) if she and Sam could be a good couple since "opposites attract." Cleese bellowed, "Ah, yes, the song of the truly desperate."
There's only one couple in "Tell Me" that's in fairly good shape and compatible. The rest should break up, I think, and go have sex with other people until they find their real soul mates. At least one character may do just that -- and bully for her for trying.
Friday, Sept. 7, 2007
By Doug Elfman
The Game Dork
Maybe you heard that the romantic stars of Disney's "High School Musical" movies are dating in real life. What you don't know is they love to play PlayStation 3's suspenseful "Resistance: Fall of Man" together.
Zac Efron, 19, and Vanessa Anne Hudgens, 18, tell me "Resistance" was their favorite game over the summer.
"The best game, I think ever, is PS 3's 'Resistance: Fall of Man,'" Hudgens says. "Whenever I play that game, or watch somebody play that game, I get so caught up in it. It's so much fun, killing the aliens. And they're so freaky, you get scared."
Now that video games are a national pastime, it's no surprise celebrities have become game dorks. (Stars are just like us, right?) Efron describes himself as just that, a game "dork" stuck on "Halo," "Fuzion Frenzy" and various PS 3 and Xbox 360 titles.
"I'll be playing PlayStation 3 and goofing off, then I'll go to the grocery store and there'll be photographers" from the tabloids, he says. "It's hilarious" as a lifestyle.
Like gamers everywhere, Efron sometimes has trouble concentrating on real sports, because he's used to controlling virtual sports stars with his thumbs.
"Dude," he tells me, "I was in London for Wimbledon, and I wanted to go see all my favorite players that I play in 'Top Spin.' ... And I was like, 'Oh my gosh, the character should have automatically dove!' I find myself phantom-tapping a controller, like: 'I hit R1 not R2!'"
I think of that phenomenon as "video game vision," when gamers see games as realer than reality. The entertainment industry eventually will cater to video game vision. In the future, I think, Efron and the rest of us will be able to watch real-time football games through the graphics of our modem-synced "Madden" games.
John Madden says, at the very least, sports broadcasts will have to let TV viewers pick which camera angles to watch.
"These players who grew up as gamers, they want to play the game," he says. "They don't want to just sit there like a blob and watch. They want it to be interactive. It's going to be like that someday."
Not every celeb gamer is a pro. Masi Oka, who portrays Hiro on "Heroes," rocks on "Madden" football games during solo PS 3 outings, but isn't fantastic against real-live opponents, he says.
"I thought I was good until I played someone else and said, 'Oh, wait. I guess I'm not that good,'" Oka, 32, says.
Meanwhile, other celebs are digging into the super popular, interactive Nintendo Wii. But a Wii mishap sent Zachary Levi to the emergency room.
Levi, 26, plays a dorky, accidental spy in NBC's new TV show, "Chuck." ("Dork is the new cool," he says.) He injured himself while serving a tennis ball against a buddy in "Wii Sports."
"So I go for this overhead smash, and I put my hand through this light fixture in my living room, and literally glass showered the entire living room," Levi says. "There were shards of glass in the wall, I hit it so hard.
"I bring my hand down with the Wii controller dangling from my wrist by the safety strap -- the SAFETY strap, by the way -- and blood starts dripping from my hand."
You can see Levi's 14 stitches if you look closely at his hand in the first episode of "Chuck."
"I didn't sue," Levi says. "I'm hoping Nintendo hears about the story and gives me some free stuff!"
("Resistance: Fall of Man" retails for $60 for PS 3 -- A pretty, basic sci-fi shooting game. Plays well. Looks good. Moderately challenging. Rated "M" for blood, gore, intense violence, strong language. Three stars out of four.)
September 6, 2007
BY DOUG ELFMAN Television critic
According to the Q&A portion of the latest Miss Teen Whatever pageant, Americans can't memorize the location of America on a map of America. But we sure do know the lyrics to loads of crappy songs.
You can see this on your teevee if you watch NBC's "The Singing Bee" and Fox's "Don't Forget the Lyrics," which has new episodes starting tonight. Both game shows correctly presume that dancing wankers everywhere know the words to Cher's "If I Could Turn Back Time" -- including the apparently awesome lines "Words are like weapons, they wound sometimes."
Maybe you're expecting me to fume here about American priorities -- we memorize tunes over topography. But honestly, have you smelled the world this decade?
American adults have lives to grind. Why should we care less about pop culture than wearisome maps, which are primarily a geopolitical subject?
Geopolitics is now just a Ping-Pong game anyway, where the rest of us are told which Bush or Clinton will be the next president during the coming 1,000-year reign of Bush-Clinton androids manufactured by Acme or Skull and Bones.
Call me a fatalist, but why not drown our sorrows in idiotic karaoke contests and slowly descend into imperial fade?
"Bee" is passable self-medication for the empire. Host Joey Fatone picks a few contestants from an audience. They sing bits of pop hits and fill in the blanks of some lyrics. The final warbler tries to win $50,000 during a speed round.
"Bee" has things going for it. It doesn't take itself seriously. Songs are partly contemporary -- the Drifters one second, Jet the next. And it's bright and cheery. It fits the mood of karaoke, rather than being all funereal like "Don't Forget the Lyrics."
The silhouette set of "Lyrics" is black and shadow-blue. The music and the opening narrator communicate threatening tones, as if losing at karaoke will lead to death by monkey feet.
Like most nighttime game shows, "Lyrics" pounds time to a halt. It takes an entire segment, plus a commercial break, for host Wayne Brady to tell one contestant if he got one lyric correct. Borrrring.
By contrast, "Bee" makes you feel like you're part of a quick, happy bar contest. People who don't browse bars (the marrieds, the parents, the kids) can watch at home and pretend to be at this karaoke bar that they don't really want to be at.
The downside is "Bee" is unfair. One contestant gets to sing "Material Girl." Her rival might have to sing Stevie Wonder's "Part-Time Lover." I bet you even Osama bin Laden knows pieces of "Material Girl." Who the hell knows one sentence in "Part-Time Lover"?
So "Bee" values pageantry over justice, like most things we cherish (the war, celebrity trials, tipping before we even receive our disappointing Starbucks coffee). And unjust pageantry is, you know, puffery, so "Bee" takes you on a journey to nowhere. It's like a lobotomy, but with pizzazz. These days, things could be worse.
September 5, 2007
BY DOUG ELFMAN Television Critic
Now that Rosie's rabble-rousing is gone for good from "The View," Barbara's blabfest is just "eh" -- so far. Whoopi Goldberg replaced Rosie O'Donnell on Tuesday, and it was blase smooth sailing. She didn't rock the boat. She rowed it to a calm state of yawn.
If her debut is a clue to the future, Goldberg may just be another gal pal in the banal cabal, chatting about the birth canal and the female rationale.
That's great if you like it soft in the morning. The women showed photos of their daughters. And Elisabeth Hasselbeck rubbed her pregnant belly (70 days until delivery, and she's still so in-shape she looks like a girl who swallowed a cantaloupe).
But here's an omen. Barbara Walters and the rest had been on vacation for a while, so a whole mess of subjects awaited them to talk about: the stupid Miss Teen USA girl, Michael Vick's dog abuse and gay senatorial bathroom sex.
Yet it was so structured and nonchalant, my mind wandered -- to Goldberg's urban-cowboy shirt, Joy Behar's post-illness shaky hands, Walters' slip ("MyFace" instead of "MySpace"), and Hasselbeck's "I'm pregnant but I'm still sexy" red dress and black choker.
Goldberg pulled out her peace: "All I want to say to people is have a great day and take time to enjoy 'The View.' "
I like Goldberg normally, but "have a great day" is smooth, and "smooth" is also a synonym for "flat." It's not enough for "The View" to comment on pop culture anymore. It has to make pop culture moments happen.
"The View" owned a pop culture moment with this one-day introduction of an O'Donnell replacement. But it had better get back to backstabbing, political scream therapy, or something as equally entertaining. Otherwise, snooze.
Not even Danny DeVito made waves as Goldberg's first guest. Last season, he got notice for making nonsense noises after a night of drinking limoncellos with George Clooney.
This time, DeVito was clear-eyed and ready to promote his funny FX comedy, "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia," plus his new line of limoncello liqueur. In other words, he did what every red-blooded American would do. He turned his last public spectacle into an opportunity to cash in.
"You whored yourself!" Behar said.
"Absolutely," DeVito said. "This is America."
In defense of the show, for the introduction of a new co-host, it wasn't a wreck, and the chemistry was fine.
Goldberg did make me chuckle once, when she explained why she took a "Star Trek" role: " 'Star Trek' was the only guarantee that we had that there were black people in the future."
If Goldberg's going to replace O'Donnell's fun-factor watchability without resorting to anger, she needs to dig in with more of those kinds of quick jokes-with-meaning, which is Goldberg at her winning best. If not, the "new" "View" is through.
September 4, 2007
BY DOUG ELFMAN Television Critic
When I was a little kid in a whiter America, all I knew about Latinos I learned from Don Rickles and "Chico and the Man." Both Rickles and "the Man" kept telling me Latinos were lazy thieves. Then I grew up and got angry at their nasty jokes.
I mention this to Rita Moreno of "Cane," the new CBS drama starring Jimmy Smits, and she looks at me crestfallen.
"And that became your perception of Latinos," she sighs.
TV has improved, of course. But Latinos are only now gaining more positive attention, as networks discover there's money in that huge demographic.
Last year's debut of "Ugly Betty" established -- on a network -- a hit series with a constructive image of an ensemble cast of Latino heritage.
"Betty" co-star Ana Ortiz, a New Yorker with Puerto Rican heritage, told me her job offers before "Betty" fit cliches.
"It's Maria the maid, or Maria the drug-dealer's girlfriend, or Maria the sassy spitfire," Ortiz, 36, said. Or, "We come in and we have an affair with the husband, we ruin the family, and then we leave."
On Sept. 25, CBS debuts the Tuesday night serial drama "Cane." Moreno, who plays the mother to Jimmy Smits' lead character, points out the series may be the first show on English-speaking, American TV that revolves around a rich, successful and assimilated Latino family.
Moreno was, you know, a Puerto Rican-American who wasn't even the Maria in "West Side Story"; she played Anita to white Natalie Wood's Puerto Rican Maria. Since she's seen the business evolve, I ask her if we are living during the dawn of actual Latino integration on English-speaking TV.
"The door is finally not ajar, it's open," she says. "The door is finally open."
Moreno, 75, pried her way into closed doors for generations. She says she suffered Hollywood indignities -- as both a Latina and as a woman -- even though she established a stellar career, with roles growing from "Singin' in the Rain" to "West Side Story" and "The King and I."
There was, for instance, the movie producer who'd never look her in the eyes and referred to Moreno as "her" in her presence.
"What made it even worse is I accepted it. But you have to remember it was the times. It's very hard for me to talk about this without getting very emotional," she says, looking close to weeping, despite her usual cheerfulness.
"But because it still hurts, I get angry at myself for still smarting."
Moreno credits Smits with breaking a barrier in the 1980s by commanding a central role in "L.A. Law."
"You cannot imagine the effect that Jimmy has had on the perception of Latinos," Moreno says. "For me, that was the changing point, when Jimmy got the part of Victor Sifuentes. See, I even remember the character name. I never do that. He was fabulous."
I tell Smits, who's both producing and starring in "Cane," my angry story about Don Rickles and "Chico and the Man." He reminds me I was also watching reruns of the beloved and successful Desi Arnaz in "I Love Lucy."
"I think it's part of the history of America, in terms of what the assimilation process is," says Smits, 52. "Go back to the '20s and '30s, [and look at] how different groups have had stereotypes. And through the assimilation process, [they] have become part of the mainstream.
"That's true of Latinos in this country, as well."
It's interesting to hear Smits talk about assimilation, since there's a part in "Cane" where Smits' character tells a hard laborer in his employ that it's time to talk English, because he's been in the States for 10 months -- plenty of time to have learned it, he says.
Smits says he was drawn to "Cane" by the writing, the production team and the character-based story about a family running a rum and sugar company in Florida.
"Does it have a cultural specificity to it? Absolutely," he says. "It has a kind of an aspirational quality, in terms of a family you might not have seen before. I just think, on a week-to-week basis: We're doing an American television show on CBS."
Smits, whose character was elected president at the end of "The West Wing," is humble about his own role as a groundbreaker.
"It's not lost upon me that the work I've amassed these past years has had a positive impact," he says. "But I'm not walking around as a role model. I'm just trying to keep the work honest and as challenging to me as possible."
delfman@suntimes.com
September 2, 2007
By Doug Elfman
Chicago Sun-Times
Actors from around the world don't even have to go to Hollywood to audition for American TV shows. Two new stars were hired on the Web.
Execs picked Britain's Michelle Ryan to be the new "Bionic Woman" after checking her out "on a tiny little screen," says producer David Eick.
"We watched her on an Internet feed," he says. "You really felt like you were, you know, discovering somebody."
Meanwhile, South African Adhir Kalyan won his role as a Pakistani in the CW's "Aliens in America" after L.A. execs watched his long-distance audition on the "postage-stamp-size image" of a computer, says producer David Guarascio.
"If he was a star on something [as small as YouTube], imagine what he would be like on something this big," says producer Moses Port.
There have been zippy stories in the press lately about TV's new "British invasion." A lot of English actors have signed up to star in new American shows. But as Kalyan can attest, the trend is more international than that.
Yes, Brits will star or co-star in "The Bionic Woman," "Pushing Daisies," "Life," "Moonlight" and "The Sarah Connor Chronicles."
There are also Aussies ("Cashmere Mafia" and "Moonlight"), a Scotsman ("Journeyman"), a Dane ("New Amsterdam") and Kalyan. And that's not counting Latinos (some native, some not) in "Cane" and other new series.
This is a win-win situation for Hollywood. Since most of these actors aren't famous in America, they may work for less.
"I can only assume that we're cheap," British-born Hugh Laurie cracks, a few years after he adopted an American accent for "House."
Shows that look intercontinental earn big cash abroad. "House" is seen in Britain, where Laurie was already well-known. Racially diverse "Heroes" is an international moneymaker.
Some actors don't have to come from overseas. They can merely play to heritage. This summer, I ran into James Kyson Lee -- a serious New York actor who plays Ando on "Heroes" -- and almost the first word out of his mouth was, "Dude!" On the set, he uses a Japanese dialect coach.
Those who do audition in L.A. arrive prepared. Frances O'Connor, co-star in ABC's midseason "Cashmere Mafia," tucks away her Aussie tongue.
"If they see you with an Australian accent, and then you do an American accent, they think, 'Oh, she's doing an accent.' Whereas if you come in as an American, it just makes it easier for everybody," O'Connor says.
Talking American is a breeze for her, she says.
"I've been watching 'Sesame Street' since I was four," she says and laughs.
It's been a longer path for the lead of NBC's "Journeyman," Kevin McKidd. He spoke his native Scottish dialect in "Trainspotting," then a British accent in HBO's "Rome." Even the Queen's English took time to develop.
"I went to drama school in Edinburgh, and they said, 'You know, you're never going to work with a voice like that,' because there are very few dramas being made about the upper regions of the Highlands in Scotland. So ..."
McKidd is trying to sound like he's from San Francisco, the setting of "Journeyman." He's one-upping American actors on the series by focusing on a region, says American co-star Gretchen Egolf.
"He ends up," Egolf says, "being much more specific than all of us [American actors]. He's talking about a West Coast American accent."
One way these actors are getting spotted is by starring in HBO and BBC programs, says David Nutter, producer-director of "The Sarah Connor Chronicles."
"With the advent of shows like 'Rome,' " he says, "people are able to say, 'Oh, look at this person. ... Let's try to get them on this show.'"
For the actors, working in America translates into more exposure and warmer climes. They also say TV here is developing better scripts and products than the movie business. Laurie was drawn to "House" by its first screenplay.
"It could have been a Latvian circus piece, or it could have been in a piece of American television. It didn't really matter in that regard. It was just a stunning piece of writing," Laurie says.
He has said many times that using the accent for up to 16 hours a day is the hardest part of his job.
McKidd says when he first began studying American vowels and consonants, it was tough not to imitate American stars.
"That's the thing, to make it sound like it isn't an impersonation, but that it's your own voice," McKidd says.
Many actors don't seem too homesick.
"The only thing I found difficult to deal with coming to the States is the size of the portions of food," Kalyan says. "Africa doesn't need Bono. Africa doesn't need Geldof. Africa needs a Denny's 'Grand Slam' breakfast."
But if you add them up, more Brits are immigrating than other nationalities. One is Natascha McElhone, perhaps best known here for playing George Clooney's love interest in "Solaris." She co-stars in Showtime's "Californication."
I asked her if she's the most exotic person on the set. She didn't take me seriously.
"What, because I'm English?" she said in a very British way. "It's a myth that anything in England is exotic. You've gotta go there more often."
Aug. 31, 2007
By Doug Elfman
The Game Dork
You play as Jack. You walk into a gorgeous art deco room. You see a pigtailed girl sticking a medical needle into a corpse to suck out his life force. From a transistor radio, you hear a faraway guide warning you to avoid her.
"You think that's a child down there? Don't be fooled," the voice of Adam tells you. "Somebody went and turned a sweet baby girl into a monster."
So there you go. It's not enough for "BioShock" -- the buzz game of the season, and the best-reviewed title in several seasons -- to send zombie nurses and machine-gunning robots after you. Even girls (named Little Sisters) want to destroy your flesh.
Claustrophobic "BioShock" is a masterpiece of a horror game. Lasting longer than more than a dozen films, at 25 hours or so, it is an unparalleled artistic achievement in cinematic, realistic gaming.
It's also the creepiest thing I've played since 2004's prison nightmare, "The Suffering." I literally get chills nearly every time I run up against a zombie.
I will be walking down, say, a medical corridor, where light bulbs just partially give me a view of the room, and I can't exactly see what's coming. Instead, I hear a zombie talking sinister threats while his or her bloody, wet footsteps draw near.
When I finally see these jerks, their fantastically drawn faces are rotted and blood-splattered. Nasty. They try to kill me with lead pipes and point-blank guns.
You fire back using pistols, machine guns and shotguns. You also wield various magical powers, like electric bolts, telekinesis and 1,000-degree flames that zap from your fingertips.
If the little girls aren't eerie enough for you, there's the ghostly, slashed woman staring at a restroom mirror, crying, "I'm all sliced up! Nobody's gonna want me."
Then there are "Big Daddies." They're "Lost in Space"-looking robots that come at you with spiral drills attached to their arms.
All of this takes place in a bizarre, art deco city under the sea in 1960.
The story is a deep narrative about an anti-utopia designed by an evil genius. Literary nods point to Ayn Rand and other paranoid writers. A heavy-handed voice-over echoes in hallways: "The parasites hate three things. Free markets. Free will. And free men."
The lead designer of the game, Ken Levine, has said he's obsessed with "Logan's Run" and "1984" because he's interested in societies where good ideas turn rotten (which would be just about any society ever, Rome onward).
So doctors in "BioShock" used stem cells, surgeries and mind control to turn the leaky city into a terrible, disgusting home. On the floor in one section, you see written in blood, "Aesthetics are a moral imperative!!!"
That's the only funny sentence in the game -- which is otherwise humorless (and offers no online multiplayer) -- since it does seem like the game's artists worked under their own little social constraints of perfectionism, where aesthetics were imperative to the bloody end.
("BioShock" retails for $60 for Xbox 360 -- Plays fun, scary and interesting. Looks unparalleled. Challenging to very challenging. Rated "M" for blood, gore, drug reference, intense violence, sexual themes and strong language. Four stars out of four.)
August 30, 2007
"Dancing With the Stars" will be a hodgepodge of boogie-challenged D-listers again. Before the Sept. 24 premiere, they'd better start practicing in front of their "Silence of the Lambs" mirrors. "Scary Spice" is the favorite at 9-5 odds, as determined by me and my personal Vegas handicapper, Ched Whitney.
--Doug Elfman
JENNIE GARTH
Appeals to: Viewers who go, "Oh, it's Kelly from '90210.' " (Garth was reared in Arcola, 61910.)
Probably signed up to: Do something useless during a career pause.
Odds of winning: 10-1. Dicey. She gets migraines. One bad headache, and boom.
MARIE OSMOND
Famous for: Being "a little bit country," a lotta bit nuts.
Appeals to: Prudes. She turned down "Grease" for its sex, but "Stars" is OK? What an ode to tasteless morals.
Probably signed up to: Help her sell more dolls on QVC.
Odds of winning: 50-1. Poor. Does she even move her feet on a regular basis?
WAYNE NEWTON
Famous for: Ferris Bueller lip-syncing his "Danke Schoen" during the Von Steuben Parade.
Appeals to: Grannies who see him in concert by the thousands.
Probably signed up to: Remind us he was in "Who's Your Daddy?"
Odds of winning: 99-1. Terrible. He dances like a troll.
MELANIE "SCARY SPICE/MEL B" BROWN
Famous for: Singing bits of Spice Girls' "Wannabe."
Appeals to: Four British bloggers.
Probably signed up to: Outshine scarier-looking Skeletor, a k a Victoria Beckham, and promote the Spice Girls reunion that no one cares about.
Odds of winning: 9-5. Great. She's danced for years.
MARK CUBAN
Famous for: Being the new Mouth of the South and making his Dallas Mavericks win. Also wants to buy the Chicago Cubs.
Appeals to: Sports-crazed dudes whose wives will make them watch.
Probably signed up to: Have fun (he's lively) and smooth his rough Mavs image.
Odds of winning: 30-1. Bad. He's no dancer, though he's very competitive.
JANE SEYMOUR
Famous for: "Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman."
Appeals to: People who realize, as in "Wedding Crashers," she's enthusiastically naughty.
Probably signed up to: Avoid making "Dr. Quinn Returns," co-starring Kenny Rogers.
Odds of winning: 5-1. Not bad. She's got brains and body moves.
SABRINA BRYAN
Famous for: Singing and dancing in the girl group, the Cheetah Girls.
Appeals to: Families who watch the Disney Channel.
Probably signed up to: Prove she's bigger than those other Cheetah Girls.
Odds of winning: 2-1. Very good if she can adapt to old-people dancing.
HELIO CASTRONEVES
Famous for: Winning the Indy 500 a few times.
Appeals to: Race fans, forced to watch "Stars" with their wives.
Probably signed up to: Prove how handsome he is, since he's been cast on teevee.
Odds of winning: 20-1. Poor. His legs must get cramped from all that driving, no?
FLOYD MAYWEATHER JR.
Famous for: Being the current WBC welterweight boxing champ.
Appeals to: Viewers who root for clunky musclemen to win dainty twinkle-toes contests.
Probably signed up to: Show off pecs.
Odds of winning: 3-1. Quite good. The Grand Rapids, Mich., native is a pro with the footwork, like any great, girly boxer.
CAMERON MATHISON
Famous for: Playing Ryan on "All My Children."
Appeals to: Soapy women who think he's hot, duh.
Probably signed up to: Take a gig where he's not reading 80 pages of script a day.
Odds of winning: 10-1. Dicey. As a kid, he got leg-damaging Perthes syndrome. He's been OK since. But could dance fever hurt?
ALBERT REED
Famous for: Modeling. Oh, wait, he's not famous!
Appeals to: Women who think he's hot, duh.
Probably signed up to: Take his career to the next level.
Odds of winning: 8-1. Average. As a surfer, he's got balance. But can he rub two thoughts together in his model brain to memorize steps?
JOSIE MARAN
Famous for: Modeling. Again --not famous!
Appeals to: Women who want a hot girl to root against, especially since she doesn't believe in marriage.
Probably signed up to: Do something other than standing still in front of cameras.
Odds of winning: 8-1. Average. She's bendy, since she does yoga, but then so do I.
August 30, 2007
BY DOUG ELFMAN Television critic
So the new Fox drama "K-Ville" probably doesn't sound fun to you. It's about cops and their families dealing with post-Katrina chaos.
My favorite scene is where a cop jokes that "C.S.I." is on the way to a crime scene. Then he laughs, "C.S.I., ha-ha," because come on, this is weepy, seepy New Orleans, not fancy Las Vegas.
The lead cop, Marlin, is played by Anthony ("Barbershop") Anderson, who prepared for his role by shadowing cops on duty.
"To ride around with SWAT at 2 o'clock in the morning, serving high-risk warrants in one of the worst projects in the nation, is hairy," Anderson says.
His eyes look briefly haunted.
"They are operating out of, basically, oversized FEMA trailers with no bathrooms, no running water. ... They literally have to leave their facility to go to a restaurant or a hotel across the street to use restrooms."
"K-Ville's" heavy tone and sober acting capture enough of that essence to make it interesting. The drama does toss in crazy plots about nefarious villains. But I'm a bit forgiving of melodramatic parts, since it's on Fox and not the grittier FX.
The dialogue digs in well enough, like when Marlin's wife explains why she wants to leave. "Half this city still reeks of mold and toxic sludge," she says. "The schools are even worse. The crime -- baby, it's not the same place, and it is never gonna be."
That's what my family is doing. They're striving onward like crazy people with their "Katrina cough." Two years later, government and insurance money has finally all arrived for my mom, 67, just at the moment she exhausted her life's savings.
Thankfully, my family moved out of FEMA trailers, which were polluted with formaldehyde. No wonder Mom went to the hospital so much. She hasn't been sick since she stopped "living" in that thing.
It figures someone sent formaldehyde to "The City That Care Forgot." Too many jerkfaces outside of New Orleans want to embalm it, even though people like my mom, sister, niece, brother, sister-in-law and nephew are striving for a basic human right: to merely exist.
delfman@suntimes.com
Geek squad: these 10 actors will be THIS YEAR'S BREAKOUT STARS -- by playing dorks, nerds and one very naked ice queen
By Doug Elfman
Chicago Sun-Times
August 26, 2007
Last fall, I predicted viewers would love "Heroes" actors Hayden Panettiere and Masi Oka, and see them as top breakout stars of the new season. I shouldn't get credit for recognizing the obvious, I suppose, but I'll take what I can get.
Likewise, this year's breakout performers stand out for creating memorable fake people, even though their shows are more mediocre than 2006's debutants.
Personally, I think David Duchovny gives the grandest performance of any actor in a new show. But I'm not sure enough people subscribe to Showtime to make his fun "Californication" a pop culture hit, which is the gist of this list.
It is a sign of the times that 2007's top 10 breakout actors are filling dorky roles. Thespians pretend to be superpeople, nerds and, in one case, a naked sex fiend.
1. Katee Sackhoff: Sackhoff is so compelling as the bionic villain in NBC's "Bionic Woman," she steals the show. Her performance is one of those "Jack Nicholson as the Joker" moments, where you think, "Oh, this is really about the side character."
This won't surprise "Battlestar Galactica" viewers, who know Sackhoff as Capt. Kara "Starbuck" Thrace. Here, she is again: tough, smart and smolderingly intense.
2. Zachary Levi: NBC is poring mighty resources into a bunch of "Heroes"-inspired fantasy shows, but "Chuck" seems like an NBC comedy commentary on the network's own trend.
Chuck is not a superhero by birth or chemical compound. He's an accidental spy, the surprised recipient of a brainful of American intelligence secrets.
Zachary Levi, who played baddie Kip in ABC's "Less than Perfect," makes Chuck affably dorky. He's like Jim from "The Office" but more realistically approachable as a character, and less arrogant. (Yes, "Office" fans, bring on the letters.)
3. Jimmy Smits: Elected president at the end of "The West Wing," Smits now returns to TV with another power role in "Cane," as head of a rum-running dynasty in Florida.
Smits, a producer of the glitzy drama, continues to own the air around him in commanding parts. He's focused in "Cane" as a somewhat unhappy and corruptible leader of a soapy family that clearly drinks too much or not enough.
4. Jim Parsons: The easiest way to describe Parsons' character in "The Big Bang Theory" is to say he's like "Frasier's" Niles Crane, but as a young scientist.
He and Johnny Galecki (David from "Roseanne") play effete smartypants who communicate with girls in bursts of physics-speak, sounding like big-brained aliens to their cute, dumb, blond neighbor.
There are problems with this CBS show (uh, how about one smooth, intelligent person, por favor). But Parsons comes at his role with a theatrically proven approach. He accentuates dialogue with crisp gusto, a style fit for a studio audience. If you're not into this kind of comedic stage acting, steer clear.
5. Summer Glau: Glau takes over where Arnold Schwarzenegger left off, as the good terminator in Fox's "The Sarah Connor Chronicles." He said he'd back, but as a girl? Ha, ha, Arnold Schwarzenegger is a pansy. (Kidding, kidding.)
Glau is known for her role as the intellectual, ass-kicking Christlike figure River-Tam in "Firefly" and its movie, "Serenity." In "Sarah," she's the skinny little powerhouse who protects Sarah and her kid from evil terminators.
There is a stretch of the imagination, since Glau is small, but that's the point. Terminators can now be deceivingly slight, apparently. And Glau brings her River-Tam-like concentration to the part.
6. Lee Pace: ABC's "Pushing Daisies" looks like Tim Burton-meets-"Amelie," even though it's directed by Barry ("Men in Black") Sonnenfeld. It's a whimsical fairy tale about a guy who brings dead people back to life with one touch, but kills them forever with a second touch.
Lee Pace -- a graduate of both Juliard and the TV critics' darling "Wonderfalls" -- brings to the quirky, detective-ish role a Clive Owen quality, though dorkier and more mischievous.
7. Tyler Labine: Labine has knocked around in good roles on other TV shows, as happy-go-lucky and smart men on "Invasion" and "Boston Legal." He combines those traits in the CW's "Reaper," playing sidekick to a dude whose parents sold his soul to the devil and, thus, is Satan's gopher.
The thing about Labine is he seems at first to be just a goof, but he can't hide the smarts in his head. His clownish dork-by-choice is content to live a fun life of adventure, wrapping tape around his hands to amuse himself.
8. Sonya Walger: I'd be shocked if one of the most-talked-about new shows isn't HBO's "Tell Me You Love Me." The character drama chronicles several couples, uh, copulating, uh, graphically. It looks like penetration. Among actors. Not porn actors, but actor-actors.
It seems as if Michelle Borth could be the star. She's very pretty, she's the youngest of the bunch, and she's quite good as a vulnerable but strong-willed woman digging into sexual issues. How could her career not catch fire?
But my pick for breakout star of "Tell Me" isn't Borth but Walger, who plays a thirtysomething ice queen treating married sex like a robotic quest for childbirth.
Walger was great in HBO's "The Mind of the Married Man," and she's more fascinating with her meatier role in "Tell Me," destroying her man's will to squeeze her.
9. Leah Pipes: Pipes plays high schooler Katie in the CW's "Life is Wild." Katie's dad takes a job in Africa on a whim, sending her into teenage shock, suddenly beset by wildlife, Starbucks withdrawal and crappy mobile phone reception.
The show itself avoids the usual TV slutification and dumbing down of kids. And Pipes provides the narration with a sober lightheartedness.
10. Lloyd Owen: I'm not sure about CBS' "Viva Laughlin." People sing Elvis songs and stuff, while you also hear Elvis. Yes, you hear two voices at the same time. Me too stupid to hear right.
Lloyd Owen plays Ripley Holden, an ambitious convenience-store whiz who builds a casino in Laughlin, Nev. His character is by definition cuckoo. But Owen commits solidly, so as not to look astonished that he's in this show, walking past slot machines while crooning and jiving. If he can continue to pull off that trick, "Viva" may not end up the totally ridiculous series it very well could be.
delfman@suntimes.com
Fun, great looking 'MLB '07' close to the real deal
Friday, Aug. 24, 2007
By Doug Elfman
The Game Dork
Outside Wrigley Field, a man who looks less attractive than Jim Belushi sells eyeshades to Chicago Cubs fans. "Sunglasses!" he barks. "Ten dollars for one; $20 for two. They're $30 inside (the stadium). It's time to use your brain a little!"
David and I already are wearing shades, and our Cubs hats, and our Cubs jerseys. So we head inside. Somehow, we scored seats in the Richie Rich section, even though we are not of wealth.
David and I are on a mission to compare this real baseball game to a baseball video game later. To wit:
We sit behind the Cubs dugout and spy Carlos Zambrano, Derrek Lee and Lou Piniella. To my right, a pleasant father (Rolex) and teenage daughter (bejeweled flip-flops) know by name the scraggly haired guy selling drinks. They tip him well.
Eddie Vedder (beard, one-length hair, smiley) throws out the first pitch. The game starts. And it turns into a foul-ball day. Everyone on both teams seems to knock an errant ball into foul territory, constantly.
One foul ball lands a few feet behind us. A man catches it. A nearby boy smiles but looks disappointed. The crowd chants relentlessly, "Give it to the kid!" The man does not. They berate him. "Apparently," I say to David, "this crowd hates adults."
Wrigley looks familiar. The green wall. Billboard ads for beer, clothes and radio stations. Above left field, someone puts up a "K" sign every time a Cubs pitcher throws a strikeout. This gives me the creeps, seeing all the "KKK's," even if every other "K" is posted backward.
It's the season of the Cubs, but the Cubs lose 6-2 to the Mets.
Immediately after, David and I play the Cubs (him) vs. the Mets (me) on the latest, high-definition version of "MLB '07 The Show" for PlayStation 3.
David, an artist and illustrator, is impressed by the realism of "The Show's" look and feel, the light and shade renderings on the crowd and most everything else arty, though the ivy seems "plastic-y." There are no billboard ads for beer.
The pitchers, Zambrano for the Cubs and Orlando "El Duque" Hernandez for the Mets, look and pitch like the real deals. A backward "K" shows up on the TV screen when someone throws a strike.
Since the PS 3 doesn't have a rumble hand controller, David and I can't tell how to place a pitch as well as we can on the Xbox 360's rumble controller. But we work around this and have a good game -- if long at an hour-plus.
Since I am The Game Dork, I gain a big lead on David's Cubbies. Playfully, he pitches a fastball at one of my Mets' bodies intentionally.
"Doesn't that feel nice?" I ask.
"Yeah, it does," he says.
But it doesn't help the final score, which he asks me not to print here, dejected (slightly) by an off day for his real and virtual Cubs.
"I'm baseballed out," he says.
("MLB '07 The Show" retails for $60 for PS 3 and Xbox 360 -- Plays fun, much more so than earlier-reviewed PS 2 and PSP versions. Looks great. Easy to challenging. Rated "E." Three and one-half stars out of four.)
'PUSHING DAISIES' 7 to 8 p.m. CST Wednesdays starting Oct. 3 on ABC
August 22, 2007
BY DOUG ELFMAN Television Critic
When Ned was a boy, he ran with his dog in a field that looked for all the world like a painting of three colors: blue-blue sky, yellow-yellow daisies and green-green grass. It was Utopia.
Curious to Ned, he developed out of nowhere a rare gift/curse. If he touched dead creatures once -- his mom, his dog, a fly -- they'd spring back to life. If he touched them a second time, they'd die again forever.
"Pushing Daisies" follows Ned as an adult piemaker, along with Chuck (a woman who's the love of his life), plus their detective partner Emerson. They find corpses, Ned resurrects them to find out who killed them, then he kills them again.
That is the literal breakdown of "Pushing Daisies." But the magic of this procedural, romantic fairy tale is in the brush strokes, not the frame.
In Hollywood-speak, it seems like "Amelie" meets Tim Burton, although director Barry ("Men in Black") Sonnenfeld, who is responsible for the tone, bristles gently when people say this since, well, he's Barry Sonnenfeld.
Many scenes look sumptuously saturated in colors. Some shots are composed like postmodern and surreal pictures. A mature male narrator speaks "Winnie the Pooh" soothingly of bends in the storyline.
Creator-writer Bryan Fuller tells me the original conception "was 'Amelie' meets 'Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.' " I can see that, too.
"Daisies" debuts Oct. 3, but it's already garnering better buzz from critics than any other new show this fall, since everything seen so far (one episode) is beautiful.
It works on its most important level, as a twisting tale about lovable goofballs, told with lovely images and crisp dialogue.
When Ned (Lee Pace) sees his childhood crush Chuck (Anna Friel) for the first time in years, he awakens her from death and falls in love with her all over again.
"I guess dying is as good an excuse as any to start living," Chuck says.
But because his second caress would kill her, Ned and Chuck may never kiss or touch each other again. Their sober-eyed partner Emerson (Chicagoan Chi McBride) views their love as tragic and as a bit of a business encumbrance.
Yes, this is sadly romantic. But it is also a parable. We communicate more than we actually touch in our safe-sex, telecommunicative world.
"That is our culture now. We have a barrier to our physical relationships," Fuller says.
I have two questions. One: Will the show continue to look artistic? Fuller says yes. I hope "Daisies" even steps up post-editing color saturation, as director Jean-Pierre Jeunet did for "Amelie."
Two: Will the lovebirds will give us a drawn-out affair with no payoff? Fuller told me a few things about their future, but I won't divulge spoilers.
Fuller does say he's "steering right into" the unrequited love frustration, very soon. "We're doing an episode that's a procedural," he says, "with dog breeders. So Chuck and Ned are surrounded with sex."
Episodes will also see them using unsexy "prophylactics," like when they kiss covered in Saran Wrap or wearing protective suits.
"You mean like bear suits?" I ask Pace.
"I don't think we'll get that kinky," Pace says.
"Them dancing in bee suits, with bees swarming around them, is more our speed," Fuller says.
delfman@suntimes.com
Note: "Anchorwoman" premiered Wednesday, was canceled Thursday.
My Wednesday review: 'ANCHORWOMAN' ZERO STARS7 to 8 p.m. this Wednesday, then 7 to 7:30 p.m. Wednesdays on WFLD-Channel 32
August 21, 2007
BY DOUG ELFMAN Television Critic
As a feminist, I don't want to crassly bash a woman's appearance, but since the crass premise of "Anchorman" is that the lead, Lauren Jones, is hot-hot-hot, I just have to say she's not-not-not.
Like Pam Anderson, Jones looks like a female female impersonator. She's good-looking from far away, with dyed and straightened hair, mega-waxed eyebrows and glob makeup. That's TV pretty, not actual pretty.
In other words, maybe she should anchor a local newscast in tiny Tyler, Texas. That's what a TV station -- and Fox -- thought. They hired the former Bob Barker "beauty" to pack her sequined bikini and take her Kabuki-ish theater there.
The result is a "partially scripted reality show" (whatever that means) that edits scenes so as to make people look ridiculous while clashing over artificial constructs.
One anchor-producer at the station says journalistic credibility means everything to her -- but then we see her on the air beaming, "That's why boys have cooties!"
Jones can't wait to meet "hot cowboys," and is confused about objectivity. "This is such a good opportunity for me to really voice my opinions about things like --- I don't know -- terrorism," she says. (Terrorism is bad!)
The show's not content to make just its cast look stupid. A townie talks about Jones, and he speaks so hickishly, Fox subtitles his drawl.
None of this is amusing, unless you can't get enough of TV shows depicting Americans as imbeciles to make you feel better about yourself by contrast.
delfman@suntimes.com
August 19, 2007
BY DOUG ELFMAN Television Critic
If you don't want to read any spoilers about what's going to happen in "Heroes" this fall, you can stop reading now. Seriously, you have been warned.
I don't have all the answers, but according to what some cast members tell me -- plus what a few spoiler sites say online -- here's the gist of how season two begins:
"We're going to start with two separate timelines," Masi Oka (Hiro) tells me. "One timeline's going to start four months after the events [of the season one finale]. And the other timeline starts with Hiro 400 years in the past."
Hiro will begin where he ended last May -- in feudal Japan, land of swords and horses.
"As a kid" in Japan, Oka says, "you grow up with samurais and ninja stuff. ... American kids wish they could be like cowboys. We wish we could be like samurais and ninjas."
And so, according to other sources, Hiro will come in contact with his own hero, the legendary Kensei, but realizes Kensei isn't the super dude he thought he was. What's worse, the princess who was supposed to fall for Kensei might fall for Hiro. That would be big trouble for future events.
Oka beamed about the Japanese story line.
"Horseback riding is fantastic. It hurts your butt when you're starting. Whenever you're going really slow it's fine, but when they trot -- oh my God."
Also, George Takai will return as Hiro's dad, but Hiro's mother still isn't in the picture.
*******
Hiro's powerless buddy Ando (James Kyson Lee) will start off stuck in New York, at least for a while.
"I don't know if Ando's going to end up in feudal Japan with Hiro," Lee says. "I think that's what people hope for, to go on another crazy adventure."
*******
Both Peter (Milo Ventimiglia) and Nathan Petrelli (Adrian Pasdar) will be back in some form, even though it appeared they both blew up in the sky at the end of season one.
This summer, Pasdar showed up for a TV critics convention wearing a huge beard. I told him it looked spectacular. He referred to it as "Grizzly Adams-y."
Pasdar refused to say what role he'll play this year. But Jack Coleman, who plays Claire's dad, Mr. Bennet, seemed to shoot down my theory that Nathan will be a ghostly Obi-Wan Kenobi.
"We don't know for sure he is alive," Coleman said of Nathan. "All I can tell you is the Nathan Petrelli character has not been -- how do I put this? -- in some way, the character will live on. ... His story line has not been buried."
Claire (Hayden Panettiere) moves away and gets a boyfriend (Nick D'Agosto) who has a superpower.
Somehow, villainous Sylar (Zachary Quinto) is not off the show, even though it looked like Hiro stabbed him to death and sent his blood spilling into a drain. Quinto is on the set. And Sylar's image is flashed in NBC promos.
So, did his drained blood escape alive and give Sylar a way to resurrect life? Or is some other character channeling his face? Dunno. Quinto was excellent last year, but if he didn't die, wasn't the suspense of season one irrelevant?
Several new super people are on their way. David Anders, who played Sark on "Alias," portrays a baddie. There will be an Irish mobster, and Dania Ramirez -- who played A.J.'s fiancee on "The Sopranos" -- will play Mia, a super person on the run from cops in Central America. She has a twin brother, Alejandro (Shalim Ortiz).
"I get to speak my native language, which is, you know, amazing on an English-speaking show," Ramirez says.
*******
Perhaps as a result of its international success, the locales will be even more worldly this season. In addition to Japan, heroes will show up in Mexico, Egypt, Haiti, England and Ukraine.
"We're global now," Lee says. "We're on five continents, and over 40 countries. That's insane."
Plus, the cast will go on a world tour starting Aug. 27 to promote season two and the Aug. 28 launch of the first season's DVD. (NBC is no longer showing the previous episodes online.)
"We'll stop production for a week. We'll be going all over the world, pretty much. I'll be going to New York City and Toronto," Lee says. "Some of the other cities include London, Paris, Munich, Hong Kong" and Singapore.
*******
A central element that will not change is any character can die at any moment, even if such a fate never seems to truly befall a major hero, like Claire, Hiro and Peter. Still, cast members pick up each new script with some anxiety.
"That will never go away," Coleman tells me. "That's the nature of our show. As Adrian said so perfectly, 'I thought I was signing up to do a show called "Heroes," it turned out I signed up to do a show called "Survivor." '
"You go episode to episode, and be grateful for every one you get."
delfman@suntimes.com
HEROIC EFFORTS
On the way to "Heroes" beginning its second season Sept. 24, cast members are hosting reruns of their favorite episodes at 8 p.m Mondays on WMAQ-Channel 5:
* MONDAY Hayden Panettiere and Milo Ventimiglia host "Homecoming."
* Aug. 27 Masi Oka and James Kyson Lee host "Six Months Ago."
* Sept. 3 Jack Coleman and Greg Grunberg host "Company Man."
* Sept. 10 Sendhil Ramamurthy and Zachary Quinto host "Parasite."
I don't know why, but every other year, the newest "Madden NFL" game introduces a new dumb feature that makes it super frustrating to play.
Two years ago, I tried for weeks to start a full season of football, but "Madden NFL '06" wanted me to play nothing but exhibition games. Booo.
Last year, "Madden NFL '07" fixed that, and was a great big, rousing beauty.
But here's the new "Madden NFL '08," behaving like a running back with bad hands. Let's just count the problems in order of asinine terribleness.
1) Everyone is constantly turning the ball over. I played against my friend David four times -- as the New Orleans Saints vs. the Chicago Bears -- and we each fumbled and threw interceptions as if we were newbies. We're not.
Then I played a solo match against the computer. Both my team and the other team -- the Tennessee Titans vs. the Tampa Bay Buccaneers -- fumbled and threw four pick-offs.
That's eight interceptions in a 20-minute game of five-minute quarters. This is wildly unacceptable.
One time, I dove to the ground without any defensive guy hitting me, and I fumbled while falling peacefully to the ground.
2) If you are running with the ball, you can press a button to toss the ball to a teammate: a lateral. But if you accidentally press this button when there's no teammate around you (fairly easy to do), you merely fumble the ball to the ground. How stupid.
3) There is a great "protect" button you can press. It makes you wrap both hands around the football while you're running. This should keep you from fumbling. Yet, I was jogging as a big fullback in the open field toward a touchdown, with the "protect" button on, and a tiny little safety pushed me once, and I fumbled.
4) When a new series of downs begins for my offense, I'm given just more than 20 seconds to scan through my plays, pick one, rush to the line of scrimmage and snap the ball. This is absurd.
I am so angry.
To be clear, I'm giving "Madden NFL '08" a good three stars, because it's a great-looking football game with amazing plays and realistic action.
In other words, these flaws aren't fatal to the whole experience. But they're ridiculously unnecessary stains on what could have been a classic title. It's akin to looking at a Rembrandt splattered by red paint. You can see the beauty there, but you have to ignore big blemishes.
I hope Electronic Arts works out these quirks in a download through Xbox Live and PS 3. If EA does that, I might merrily call this game a masterpiece.
By the way, I'm not angry because I lost. In fact, I won against David and the computer. During my last game against David, he said, "You're gonna kick a field goal and beat me!"
"Dude, we're both losers," I said. "This game makes us both losers."
("Madden NFL '08" release retails for $60 for Xbox 360 and PS 3; $50 for Wii and PS 2; $40 for GCube, Xbox and PSP; and $30 for DS -- Plays both fun and frustrating. Look great. Rated "E." Three stars out of four.)
August 17, 2007
BY DOUG ELFMAN Television Critic
I'm usually allergic to musicals made for kids by Disney, which I refer to as the Circle of Death, for all the dying mothers and lions and tigers and bears. Disney is known in some circles as "The Rat." Marvel, as it scurries.
And yet, "High School Musical 2" is very good. It's more than listenable. The music is surprisingly catchy, smartly penned and not annoying. Maybe Disney finally built a better mousetrap.
And yet, "High School Musical 2" is very good. It's more than listenable. The music is surprisingly catchy, smartly penned and not annoying. Maybe Disney finally built a better mousetrap.
If you're not a parent or a Disney-obsessed perv (I'm neither), then you may not know last year's "High School Musical" was, like, oh, my God, the biggest musical in a generation. It's being staged at high schools around the country, and it's drawing more kids to theater than anything in two decades, supposedly.
If you're not a parent or a Disney-obsessed perv (I'm neither), then you may not know last year's "High School Musical" was, like, oh, my God, the biggest musical in a generation. It's being staged at high schools around the country, and it's drawing more kids to theater than anything in two decades, supposedly.
The sequel, debuting tonight, follows the boys and girls of the original as they begin summer break. Heartthrob Troy (Zac Efron, perhaps the first human who looks exactly like the anime Speed Racer) wants to play with his brunette girlfriend Gabriella (Vanessa Anne Hudgens). But they get love-blocked by blond villain Sharpay (Ashley Tisdale).
It's a basic, moral plot. Sharpay snidely chips away at Troy's heart and loyalties. Will he buck Sharpay just in time to join his friends for the big talent show?
The strengths of "Musical 2" are the songs and performances, directed and choreographed by Kenny Ortega, who did the same jobs for the first "Musical"; he also choreographed "Dirty Dancing."
It's remarkable that the songwriters -- the same stable who wrote for the first "Musical" -- brightly fuse together the diametrically opposed styles of vapid dance-pop and harmonic, storytelling musical theater, both of which can be quite terrible individually when composed by many other musicians in the world.
Just to let you know where I'm coming from, my favorite musicals are "All That Jazz" (about death), "Dancer in the Dark" (death) and "Hedwig and the Angry Inch" (weirdos). And I despised Michael Jackson's idiotic "Thriller" video.
All I'm saying is I am not an easy sell for chipper choreography starring Disney teens. But I have watched this thing twice, and I love the ballad versions of "You Are the Music in Me," and I really like the spirit of other melodies.
Rest assured there are a few sappy parts, goofy dances and predictable lines. ("You know I never wanted to hurt you.") But even weak sections serve as "so bad, they're good" moments to laugh at between fine music numbers.
How often can you say that about a production -- that it works both as a high-quality event and as mockable cheese? Of course, "High School Musical 3" is already in the works. The Rat knows good Gouda when it smells it.
THE STARS SPEAK
Zac Efron, 19, on the first movie's success: "Hopefully, in the future it won't be such a bad thing to be part of the drama club in high school. In my ideal world, I'd love to see everyone auditioning for plays and doing musical theater and singing."
Ashley Tisdale, 22, on paying dues: "We worked really hard. I mean, we've done tons of acting classes, you know, singing lessons. ... When I was in high school, I worked at clothing stores, anything to be able to do this. ... It hasn't been an overnight success."
Lucas Grabeel, 22, on eschewing the L.A. party scene: "I don't like people surrounding me and telling me I'm great. ... I'm not going to overextend myself or whore myself out just so I can let everybody know what kind of person I am."
Vanessa Anne Hudgens, 18, on being a star: "The whole thing is so weird to me. I'm the same person I was before 'High School Musical' came along. I feel the same, I act the same -- and I'm still looking for another job."
Monique Coleman, 26, on her time at DePaul: "There's a different work ethic in Chicago than anyplace else. People really do respect theater and art. ... You are immersed in a really authentic, artistic scene in Chicago. Authentic music. Authentic art. Amazing, innovative, forward-thinking theater, and some good films come out of there, too."
August 16, 2007
BY DOUG ELFMAN Television critic
Serious actors get embarrassed when their shows resort to "stunt casting" of celebrities like Shaquille O'Neal to boost sagging ratings. But Tina Fey is thrilled Jerry Seinfeld is doing a cameo on her NBC sitcom "30 Rock" in the fall.
For one thing, Seinfeld is no Shaq.
"Hopefully, then, regular America might actually find out that we have a show and watch it maybe at least that one time," Fey says. "And also, he's super funny. So that fell in our lap."
It seems goofy to critics such as Chicago Sun-Times critic Doug Elfman that "30 Rock" isn't gobbling up good ratings. It's the best show on TV.
Plus, it airs in the middle of a comedy lineup that (despite low ratings overall) is probably the most flawless comedic Thursday night NBC has ever done.
Bill Lawrence, creator of "Scrubs," says the current Thursday beats all those classic years of "Cheers" and yada yada, if you think about one criterion. Every single comedy now is funny: "My Name Is Earl," "Scrubs," "30 Rock" and "The Office."
"I'm a TV junkie," Lawrence says. "I used to watch all of [those 'Must See TV' lineups]. It used to be a s--- sandwich always. It used to be like three good shows and one giant piece of doo-doo." For instance, he cites, and I quote, "Caroline in the [stinky word that rhymes with 'city']."
"This is actually four good shows," Lawrence says. "Everybody's saying comedy sucks right now. These are three other comedies that I actually watch regularly. So screw the ratings, man."
"30 Rock" was facing other problems because of stars Alec Baldwin (the funniest man or woman on TV) and Tracy Morgan (fairly funny, sometimes just insane). Maybe you didn't hear, but Morgan was accused of groping a woman and violating a DUI thing.
And maybe you didn't see, but Baldwin had said he might not return to "30 Rock" after getting caught up in a messy custody battle.
During a press conference, a TV critic poses this question to Fey: Has she sat down with Baldwin to ask him if he'll show up for season two?
"I've never even met Alec. We shoot everything 'directionally,' " she jokes, but then she says, yes, of course, Baldwin will return.
Three of NBC's Thursday comedies are swinging in new directions, either just a little or a lot.
The biggest challenge-facer is "Scrubs." It enters its last season. Lawrence says his writers have 18 episodes to settle the romantic question of friends/sometime lovers J.D. and Elliott. Some fans want them to hook up forever. Others don't.
"We worked out the first two episodes and the last two episodes, and then I'm mailing in the middle 14," Lawrence jokes. "I think this is the year that 'Scrubs' really becomes a big hit. We had always kind of geared our plan toward peaking in the seventh year."
Over on "My Name Is Earl," Jason Lee's character begins the season behind bars after taking the blame for ex-wife Joy's truck thieving.
"He'll be in prison for a while. We didn't want to come back in season three and just go, 'Oh, he's out of prison,' " says "Earl" creator Greg Garcia.
"I can't really say what ends up happening to him," Lee jokes about jail sex. "But I enjoy some of it."
And at "30 Rock," Fey plans to make the comedy less frenetic.
"The shows were so dense [last year] that sometimes we worried that it was almost going by too quickly for the audience. So we're hoping to let things breathe a little bit," Fey says. (I liked the dense. Poopie.)
Only "The Office" will stay a steady course. Creator Greg Daniels says NBC will probably keep promoting the Jim-Pam romance in commercials, but Jim and Pam will continue to be the "B" plot, not the "A" plot.
"That's by design creatively. [The romance] has more impact when it's not carrying the entire weight" of an episode, Daniels says. "Yeah. And the actors can't memorize that many pages."
John Krasinski, who plays Jim, listens to Daniels' explanation about his "B" plan and eeks, "This is really building my confidence, good."
The decision people behind the shows all say they've found, after all this time, the hardest part of the writers' jobs isn't thinking up gags. It's crafting storylines.
"Especially coming from a sketch-comedy background, where you don't have to deal with story," Fey says, "all of a sudden, you really do need it to move things forward and for people to care about your characters." (I care. Here's a big heart shoutout to the characters. Hearty heart heart, characters!)
Lawrence seems too giddy about getting in one last season of his ratings-challenged comedy to take this "storyline" question totally seriously.
"For our show, at this point," Lawrence says, "it's mostly just about trying to think of new [penis] jokes."
Take that, penis joke haters!
delfman@suntimes.com
August 15, 2007
BY DOUG ELFMAN Television Critic
There are so many wealthy heroes and villains on the fall TV schedule, I don't know if I earn enough money to watch TV anymore.
Last season, people burned through cash on "Brothers & Sisters," "Desperate Housewives" and "Ugly Betty." This fall and winter brings "Big Shots" and "Cashmere Mafia" (CEO types), "Dirty Sexy Money" (drunk and drugged elitists) and "Private Practice" (L.A. doctors).
And those are just ABC's shows. CBS debuts "Cane" (rich family). The CW starts up "Gossip Girl" (uppercrust kids).
"Gossip Girl" proves the kids of "The O.C." just didn't have enough bank, judging by the comments of Josh Schwartz, "Gossip Girl" producer and former "O.C.'er."
"The sort of money that those kids in Orange County grew up with was nice," he says. "But compared to these kids and these families [on 'Gossip Girl'], it's chump change.
"This is really royalty, or the closet thing we have to it -- these sort of young socialites-to-be. You have to be born into this level of wealth."
You heard it here first. The entitled, sometime rapists/ constant boozehounds of "Gossip Girl" are royals. The American Dream has become "Gatsby Gone Wild."
What's odd is listening to creators of shows, like John Harmon Feldman of "Big Shots," explain how rich people are "relatable" to We the Rabble, the other 99 percent of America.
"They have the same issues that any guy might have," Feldman says. "It makes the characters, in a way, more relatable because they have the same problems as everyone else."
Yeah, and maybe you can relate more to "Dirty Sexy Money," where the family members are the wealthiest billionaires in New York, and their nemesis is "the third-richest man in the world."
My indignation is a wee bit cheeky. "Dirty Sexy Money" and other new Richie Rich shows merely fit the revamped formula for nighttime soaps.
"There's a real fun to it," says "Dirty Sexy Money" producer Greg Berlanti. "I think I probably represent the person who sort of watched more 'Dallas' than you humanly should."
ABC President Stephen McPherson says network execs are just giving viewers what they want, the "wish fulfillment" of elitists swimming in green.
There are two societal upsides. For one thing, women also get their day in the gold-encrusted sun, especially in ABC's midseason "Cashmere Mafia," which is like "Sex and the City" goes to the boardroom.
And in CBS' "Cane," a soap about a wealthy rum-running family in Florida, Latino characters get elevated into the upper ranks of wealth without much fuss.
"It's the first time, as far as I know, that you will ever see a successful, educated, beautifully dressed, articulate Latino family" on TV, co-star Rita Moreno says. And they "don't necessarily talk like this all the time," she says, inflecting a heavy accent.
The downside is there are no new "Roseannes." Look for poor people, and you'll see the CW's "Everybody Hates Chris," NBC's "My Name Is Earl" and Fox's new "K-Ville." In the middle-class spectrum, there's ABC's "Carpoolers," plus a few other spots.
One place where money is less important is in sci-fi. The comic-book nature of "Heroes" makes it so Hiro and his pals rarely deal with bills, though they do fight VIP villains. The same is essentially true for Fox's new "The Sarah Connor Chronicles."
Then again, in "Bionic Woman," Jamie Sommers won't be a tennis player turned teacher, as she was in the 1970s' "The Bionic Woman." Instead, she starts as a bartender. As you know, hot bartenders make more dough than teachers do. You can take that to bank.
CORRECTION: In Monday's review of "Weeds," I referred to the show's creator, Jenji Kohan, as a "he." She is a she.
August 13, 2007
BY DOUG ELFMAN Television critic
If you're wondering whether Mary-Kate Olsen can really act, you can check out her meaty role in "Weeds." It's her first part without her sister, and a break from her kids' roles. She plays a dope-smoking Christian who hooks up with the show's teen boy, Silas.
I haven't seen her in the show yet -- she doesn't appear in the first four episodes Showtime gave me -- but the creator of "Weeds," Jenji Kohan, says Olsen gave the best audition.
"If anything, we might have been nervous about her reputation," he says, so he auditioned her twice. "And her performance was wonderful and natural."
She wants to teach Silas (Hunter Parrish) "all about the Bible," Olsen says of her character. "Maybe she's stoned while doing so, but she wants to tell them about it."
Another, sketchier Christian joins Olsen later this season, a housing developer played by Matthew Modine.
"He's a religious pretender, like so many people in our government, who is profiting from the ideals that were written so many thousands of years ago," Modine says.
Kohan says "Weeds" is not attacking spirituality.
"I don't think Christianity and pot-smoking are necessarily mutually [exclusive]," he says. (This comment reminds me of dope-smoking, self-described "Jesus freaks" my sister knew when I was a kid.)
"We are not necessarily poking fun at religion. We are poking fun at the commerce of religion," Kohan says.
The third season of "Weeds" begins tonight with Nancy Botwin (Mary-Louise Parker) standing in a kitchen where she grows pot. A handful of scary, angry drug dealers point guns at her pretty little face. They want her dope. But her kid already stole it. Her ass is grass, and they are the lawn mowers.
Nancy will get out of this jam, but with consequences. The new episodes find the upper-middle-class mother of two evolving into a gangster. This is a good move for the show. In the first season, Nancy's husband died and she turned lightheartedly to dope to pay the bills. The second season, she upped her game and got involved with shady enemies. Now, she chooses to dig deeper into the dangerous lifestyle.
It's interesting how everyone seems to sell pot in "Weeds," but few people smoke it. Nancy doesn't like it ("control issues"). Marijuana is a commodity that drives her financials and her mommy motivations.
In the first new half-hour, the only ingested items are booze, prescription pills and Tylenol with codeine. In an upcoming episode, Nancy's frien-emy Celia (Elizabeth Perkins) goes on her politician's rant -- "Drugs are wrong! ... I'm a crusader!" -- while stumbling drunk in the streets.
You could say the writers are making a statement about how illegal pot is no worse than the legal self-medication regular Americans engage in. But "Weeds" isn't an issues show that pounds you with ideas. It's better than that. It's a character study wrapped in fast-moving plots. Politics and religion are subtextual.
In a few weeks, an anti-war character gets sent into National Guard training against his will, and he sees another soldier die accidentally. This scene could seem out of context, like a political declaration. But it's played as comedy, mainly to show soldiers lighting farts.
That's why "Weeds" is good. It sticks to the rhythm of its very dissimilar people: the self-destructive Nancy, the raging-id hedonist of her brother-in-law Andy (Justin Kirk, the most fun thing about "Weeds") and Nancy's smart horticulturalist Conrad (the subtly smoldering Romany Malco).
Where are the pushers of "Weeds" heading, ultimately? Not to a happy place, Kohan says.
"I don't think there will ever be the happy ending or the tragic ending with 'Weeds,' " he says. "There's always something in the middle."
delfman@suntimes.com
August 12, 2007
BY DOUG ELFMAN Television Critic
BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. -- In the upcoming ABC show "Big Shots," four wealthy chumps lounge around a private club and whine about their wimpy lives. One guy's wife is cheating on him. Another guy's mistress controls him. And a cuckolded husband moans, "I'm so whipped, I can't tell my wife that the delivery company can't seem to find her shipment of Napoleons."
This is when a frowny "man" among them (Dylan McDermott) issues the TV statement of the year:
"Men -- we're the new women."
He's right in one big way. For generations, women have been portrayed on TV as prostitutes, dumb blonds, spurned lovers, sandwich makers, "Oh, honeys," man-eaters, and (if they're lucky) lawyers who may cry when they find out their mates are cheating on them.
But now it's men's turn to be the defeated, put-upon subservients.
I've watched the premiere episodes of the broadcast networks' new shows, and I can't find more than one or two high-quality men who are in a relationship of equals, or who are ethical, realistic, strong-willed and non-victimized.
Some sympathetic men do pop up, but they are left by their wives ("K-Ville"), cheated on ("Samantha Who?"), doomed to roam the Earth until a woman's love saves them ("New Amsterdam" and probably "Pushing Daisies" and "Reaper"), saved from death by a woman ("Chuck" and "The Sarah Connor Chronicles"), incapable of asking out a girl ("Gossip Girl" and "The Big Bang Theory") and rendered virtually unnecessary for reproduction ("The Return of Jezebel James").
Silliest of all, perhaps, is how a good-guy cop in "Women's Murder Club" is labeled a "misogynist" for quietly saying a woman looks "very pretty."
Some men come close to being solid guys. Jimmy Smits plays a rum company exec in CBS' soapy "Cane." But you find out soon enough that he is, well, morally flexible. (I don't want to give it away.)
I suppose you could say the dad on the CW's "Running Wild" sticks up for himself, but then again, he forces his wife and high school children to move to South Africa on a whim, so he's completely out of his mind.
Wait, you know what? On NBC's "Journeyman," Kevin McKidd plays a very faithful husband who travels time to do good deeds. McKidd is Scottish. Maybe it takes a Scotsman to man up American TV.
ABC -- branded as the prime network for women viewers -- is the biggest offender. Take a peak at three new ABC projects.
• "Dirty Sexy Money": Men are corrupt, on drugs, cruel, dumb or siring a bastard child. The lead family man is supposed to be sympathetic, but he's a sellout for money and power, taking over his father's 24/7 job, even though his dad's job was the cause of his mother's suicide. What a dumbass.
• "Big Shots": One guy gets talked into couples therapy by both his wife and his mistress. Not that couples therapy is bad. But this guy somehow became a CEO despite being a total pansy loser.
• "Carpoolers": One husband works all day and does all the cooking and child rearing while his wife does one thing: watch TV. Another wimp rejects sex from his terrific wife (Faith Ford) because he fears she makes more money than he does. What a dolt.
The one man who is probably the most confident, faithful and successful family man on the new broadcast lineup is Ripley Holden (Lloyd Owen) of CBS' "Viva Laughlin." Ripley owns a casino in Nevada. But even he turns down sex from his hot, loving wife because he's stressed. I used to live in Vegas. I never had any idea guys there rejected overtures from their seductive women. You learn something every day.
Against this backdrop of losers, it's interesting to watch the very bad, nasty men on AMC's new "Mad Men." Set around 1960, it depicts how men back then could be sexist, racist jerkwads before people invented the phrases "sexual harassment" and "the Civil Rights Act." (Actually, "Mad Men" characters are not far from the overly macho pigs of "Entourage.")
Then for contrast, I watch the new fall shows, and the feminist in me can cheer that women characters are finally in control of their destinies, their relationships, their men and their wombs -- especially to serve as yin-yang for all the women celebrities and women in reality shows who are cumulatively treated as druggy, drunken, goal-less, backstabbing tarts.
But that's the theory of comeuppance and reparations against men. Two negatives do not make a positive.
It's the fall of man. And we were all created equally unappealing.
Realistically, what kind of woman wants anything to do with these conquered, pitiful cardboard cutouts? Some years back, a song asked, "Where have all the cowboys gone?" I want to know where all the "MASH" Hawkeyes went.
There is, in fact, only one realistic, great, fully formed adult male on any new series. He is Hank Moody on Showtime's "Californication," which starts Monday and is, coincidentally, the best new show of 2007.
Hank is a flawed novelist. His wife has left him and she's engaged to another man. But this does not destroy him. Sure, he drinks too much and struggles with writer's block. But even with all his baggage, he knows who he is. He doesn't apologize for sleeping around or engaging in harmless behaviors. He tries to be a good father. And he is honest and true. Many of these traits are in the script, but family man David Duchovny's brilliant portrayal puts flesh to Hank.
I was relieved to see the show, so I asked Duchovny, 47, about Hank's manly traits, and Duchovny correctly rephrased my characterization.
"What I like to say -- rather than male or female -- is there's no bull---- about the guy," Duchovny said. "So that makes him 'manly' in a way, I think. Although, a woman can be that way [free of bull----], too. I don't know if that makes her 'manly.' "
Duchovny is correct again. If a woman character is free of B.S., that doesn't make her manly. It makes her a self-aware, strong woman.
And I would argue the new fall shows feature far more centered, assured women (if flawed for narrative purposes) than men of the same stripe -- if you add up the females in "The Return of Jezebel James," "Journeyman," "Bionic Woman," "Life," "Carpoolers," "Women's Murder Club," "Pushing Daisies," "The Sarah Connor Chronicles" and "Canterbury's Law."
There is one -- and only one -- female twit in the new fall shows, in CBS' "The Big Bang Theory." Yet, even that blond uses her hotness to manipulate two leading men (university scientists, no less) into gathering her stuff from her beefy ex-boyfriend's apartment.
So there you have it. Women have finally come into their own on TV. But who are they gonna date?
delfman@suntimes.com
Aug. 10, 2007
By Doug Elfman
The Game Dork
I suppose I should acknowledge I rarely watched the "Transformers" cartoon. But that shouldn't influence my review of "Transformers: The Game." A game should stand on its own two feet, or on its own four wheels, or whatever a Transformer has.
If you've ignored the "robots in disguise" mythology as I have for decades, it's essentially the story about cool cars that turn into big robot aliens from outer space that punch and shoot each other (or something-something).
That seems clever, but what's intriguing about the cartoon is its contextual underbelly and literary parallelisms. "Transformers" debuted in 1984, the year made famous by George Orwell in his novel, "1984," his cautionary, futuristic tale about government power gone extreme.
Orwell's satirical yarn taught us to fret that the English-language state could turn into a totalitarian regime. Orwell, writing in 1948, wanted old America to rebel against the threat at the time, the communist Soviet system.
My whole life, I've thought Orwell picked on the wrong futuristic concern. Communism was doomed.
It's corporations (which aren't definitely evil) that are expanding, taking over the world and instilling limits on garden-variety freedoms like health care access and vacation time, more than government (which isn't definitely evil) does on a daily basis. And don't even get me started on homeowners' associations (pure evil).
It's peculiar that while people discussed Orwell in 1984, "Transformers" didn't gibe with Orwell much at all. It let us ponder a future where robotic consumer goods count as a life form, and the life forms are stuck in some sort of huge energy crisis. Or something-something.
Anyhow, the cartoon yo-yoed many narratives, whereas the movie focuses more narrowly on a guy named Sam and his classic Camaro, which (gadzooks!) just happens to turn into this big robot thing with eyes, and it kills evil car-robots that also have eyes.
"Transformers: The Game" follows this cinematic thread. The plot is threadbare. You try not to drive your Camaro over people. You push a button to transform into a machine-guy.
As a robot, you shoot missiles and stuff, and you punch and kick rivals. Quite a few reviewers have creamed the game for not living up to the cartoon, for not looking great, and for feeling repetitive. I would add that the driving physics are stinkwaddy.
Although, I do think the game is getting shortchanged a little. The robot vs. robot fighting mechanics are pretty cool at first (but yes, it's redundant). And on my Xbox 360, the visuals are just fine. Not great, but doable.
You also can play as the good guys (Autobots) or the villains (Decepticons), and you get a fairly different experience with either choice. The big down side is it's not super exciting to punch and kick Transformers, over and over. And you can't play online.
To recap the summer so far, we gamers have been disappointed by titles based on "Spider-Man 3" (fun but ridiculously hard halfway through), "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" (a sweet nothing) and "Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer" (a piffle).
Now here's "Transformers: The Game." As a longtime player, I'm tempted to wonder why these games even get made. But oh right, they make tons of cash. For corporations.
("Transformers: The Game" retails for $60 for Xbox 360 and PS 3; $50 for Wii; $40 for PS 2 and PSP; $30 for DS -- Plays dull. Looks OK. Easy to moderately challenging. Rated "T" for violence. One star out of four. The PSP and DS games are different narratives.)
August 10, 2007
BY DOUG ELFMAN Television Critic
I'm going to spoil just one of the many great bits of dialogue in Showtime's "Californication" -- the best new TV show in a year. The main character, Hank, argues with a naked lover. She insults his writing, so he cuts her down like the great author he is.
"Not only are you a cadaverous lay, you have [crappy] taste in movies," Hank says.
Have you ever heard someone refer to a lover as a "cadaverous lay"? I doubt it. That's a mark of clever, original writing.
There are also three excellent vagina jokes. Now, I'm sure you hear vagina jokes all the time, but how many of them stick to your ribs?
There's more sexiness. Hank (David Duchovny) pleasures three naked women. Since you haven't seen the show (a drama played as comedy), these twists could sound like cheap laughs. They're not. They are integral to the storytelling and the fascinating, adult characters.
The excellent Duchovny plays Hank as a sharp, confident novelist whose longtime love (the mother of his daughter) has left him. He's in the drunk dumps. But unlike other TV characters, Hank doesn't let others define him. He continues to grasp what he desires and to gasp a full breadth of living in the moment.
Can Hank really be the most self-aware and assured male on TV since "Moonlighting's" David Addison? Maybe. We'll see how the series progresses. (Duchovny also made Agent Fox Mulder a real and good man in "The X-Files," though Mulder was a romantic flop.)
At any rate, thank God that Duchovny is back on TV. He's one of the great comedy actors alive. You know what I mean if you've watched the funnier episodes of "The X-Files," his stints on "The Larry Sanders Show" and now this.
Women don't suffer to make Hank look good. Though one passerby is a straw woman for him to set up and knock down, his ex (Natascha McElhone), plus a peculiar fan (Madeline Zima) and others give as good as they get.
The directing and writing are pitch-perfect. Creator Tom Kapinos fashioned Hank on antiheroes of 1970s films like "Shampoo" and "Blume in Love."
"His only problem is he's committed to telling the truth at all costs," Kapinos says. "It's a very noble thing, but I think it gets exhausting for the people around him."
Kapinos wrote for the less noble "Dawson's Creek." After it ended, he wrote "Californication" as a film script, as a method to break writer's block, he says, which may mean his mind was free of industry constraints when he conceived Hank. Showtime liked the first 60 pages and convinced him to turn the script into a "dense half-hour" series about the redemption of a strong man in crisis.
"On television especially, you don't really see stories of people who have fallen in love and then out of love and then tried to get back to it. You see a lot of Cute-Meets and Happily Ever Afters. But, I mean, I think that's part of the problem with our culture ... it's largely crap."
Duchovny, a "Californication" executive producer, hopes people and the press don't "judge it superficially, morally -- that it's a show about a drug addict, or a show about a sex addict, all these tags you try to put on it because ... they might outrage somebody.
"It's a comedy. It's an adult comedy. It's not an adult acting like a 6-year-old, which is what most comedies are like."
Amen and hallelujah -- adults behaving like adults on TV. What a novel idea.
August 7, 2007
BY DOUG ELFMAN Television critic
Keith Olbermann usually spends his time lambasting Bill O'Reilly as a fact-sloppy dipwad, or calling for President Bush to resign. But he's a sometime sports broadcaster, too, so given the opportunity he weighs in on Barry Bonds' home-run record.
"That's human growth hormone," Olbermann says of Bonds' physique. "Past the age of 20, your head is not supposed to get bigger.
"Five, 10 years from now, he's going to be passed by Alex Rodriguez anyway, so this is a Mark McGwire kind of record: 'Oh, you did? You held the home-run record for a while? What are you doing now?'"
MSNBC's "Countdown With Keith Olbermann" is doing so well -- now with 72 percent more viewers since a year ago -- Olbermann was tapped to host tonight's AFL-CIO debate of Democratic presidential candidates at Soldier Field on MSNBC and WMAQ-Channel 5.
"Countdown" is a hit because its mix of politics and pop culture makes it the most entertaining newscast in America. One minute, Olbermann critiques politicians and pundits in the style of a witty professor; the next he flashes video of a man doing squats on the back of a giant elephant, or some such thing.
Olbermann credits some of "Countdown's" success to O'Reilly, whom he calls a "crazy demagogue" in the vein of Joe McCarthy.
"Good ol' Bill writes half my material for me," Olbermann says. "It's how, to some degree, a virus feels about the host. ... I'll try not to compare myself to any one-celled animals again, but there we go."
Olbermann, 48, has seen O'Reilly in person a few times, but they didn't tussle or talk. At a charity event, Olbermann claims, O'Reilly kept inching away from Olbermann when he walked closer to him.
"As soon as I look over, I'm thinking, maybe we're gonna have a conversation, maybe we're gonna have a fistfight," he says. "And I take one step. He then takes one step further. So he's [still] 25 feet away from me. And I think: This is the damnedest thing."
Conservatives tend to say the media is liberal, but Olbermann heads the only lefty show on broadcast or cable news. (Olbermann once described himself not as a liberal, but as an American.)
"I'm surprised that nobody has tried to come in and snake my turf," he says, especially since "Countdown" earns "a good deal of money."
He disagrees with the theory corporate leaders are too conservative to air more lefties.
"If tomorrow Rupert Murdoch woke up ... and it had come to him in a dream he could make twice as much money by turning Fox News Channel into a liberal operation, he would do it." (I agree.)
As for tonight's debate, some liberal bloggers claim Republicans are fielding less contentious questions than Democrats are in this year's debates. But Olbermann disagrees. Voters are just a little touchy, like sports fans, he says.
"There's no fan watching a sporting event ... who believes their team is being treated fairly by the umpires, by the announcers at the game," he says. "A certain amount of suspended logic goes into being an enthusiast for anything."
delfman@suntimes.com
By Doug Elfman
The Game Dork
Just the other day, I told you about the state of three big video game systems. The Xbox 360 is awesome. The PS 3 is the biggest and brightest but still needs more great games. And the Wii is best for young kids and amateurs.
Now it's time to revisit the state of the two hand-held game systems, the Sony PSP and the Nintendo DS Lite. Both have been on the market for three years, so at this point, both machines have proven themselves well and offer loads of good games to buy.
A lot of players buy the PSP or DS Lite as a secondary system to play in cars, buses and trains. But you could feasibly be content owning only a hand-held, as long as you're not into online gaming. Here's the simple deal.
• The PSP ($250) is for serious gamers who want high-end graphics and complex games. The major releases usually are handsome. "Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories" (shooting, rated "M") is the best of the best. It plays and looks like a great PS 2 game.
There are limitations. "Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Vegas" (shooting, rated "T") is a superior title for the Xbox 360 and PS 3. On the PSP, it's also cinematic. But there aren't enough buttons (or joysticks) to make it a smooth experience.
If you buy new or used games, some of the other classics you could pick up on the cheap are "Lumines" and "Lumines II" ("Tetris"-styled games; rated "E 10+"); "Tiger Woods PGA Tour '07" (golf, "E," though a new Tiger comes out at the end of August); "Ridge Racer" (racing, "E"); "Field Commander" (role-playing strategy, "T"); "LocoRoco" (kid's game, "E"); "MLB 2006" (baseball, "E"); and "SOCOM U.S. Navy Seals: Fireteam Bravo" (war, "M").
You also can find fun, smaller games. I recently got addicted to "Ultimate Board Game Collection" ("E"). It comes with chess, checkers, backgammon, Chinese checkers, anagrams, dominoes, jigsaws, naval battle, snakes and ladders and many other familiar pastimes.
The PSP also plays Sony-approved films. After several years of use, when I watch movies on my PSP, the screen still looks fantastic. I can't see a single scratch.
And the PSP's WiFi online engine runs smoother and faster than the Web surfing does on my Blackberry.
• The DS Lite ($120) is a better choice for kids of worried parents and people who like puzzle games. Its visuals aren't very detailed, so violent games aren't very bloody.
What's more, if you want the Nintendo Wii for its interactivity, you may want to look into the DS, too. It doesn't use a Wii wand. Instead, it has a touch screen. Depending on the game, you use the penlike stylus to direct action, fill in puzzles or engage in drawing games.
A few games, such as "Nintendogs" (pet simulator, "E"), let you heel your virtual pet by calling its name into the microphone. This is cool.
Some DS classics you could look for are "Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day" (math, word and sudoku puzzles, "E"); "Clubhouse Games" (chess, darts, hearts, solitaire and other traditionals, "E"); "Viewtiful Joe: Double Trouble" (cartoon action, "T"); "Tony Hawk's American Sk8land" (skate tricks, "E"); "Tetris DS" (puzzle, "E"); "The Urbz: Sims in the City" (life simulation, "E"); "Super Mario 64 DS" (fantasy action, "E"); "New York Times Crossword" (puzzles, "T"); "Kim Possible: Kimmunicator" (cartoon action, "E"); and "Mario Pinball Land" (pinball, "E").
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