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New Girl: Chicago (2013)
Hard to Imagine How Awful This Show Has Become.
I actually enjoyed season one of New Girl. However the last four episodes have been quite abysmal There is no longer any character to these characters. Lifeless. Forced. Juvenile. Un-engaging. I'm surprised how shrill the tone of the show has become. Any attempts to add some human dimension to these characters has been replaced with simplistic quirks that are supposed to be endearing. The scenes in Chicago are clumsy. I can't figure out what's sabotaging this series more - the writing or the direction. Is anyone looking at this material and saying "Great, that's great". Comedy without laughs - is there anything sadder?
It's off the PVR schedule now. Gone forever. The fall from grace is complete.
Zooey has a new She and Him CD coming out soon. At least that's something I'm looking forward to.
Incendies (2010)
Disappointing Considering All Those Genies
I was expecting a lot more especially after all the awards the film has received. I was curiously zoning out in the middle act - the movie wandered about in the desert (literally)and I did not feel engaged by the characters at all.
There seems to be some sort of ying-yang morality tale going on judging by the ending, but it lacked real emotional punch. I felt manipulated by the story. This was an extreme situation and maybe it was just too hard to suspend my disbelief. Given the source material, I'm not sure they could have done much.
Having re-watched the Hurt Locker the night before I saw this film, I found that the cinematography lacks the clarity and point of view that Kathryn Bigelow's film does. I'm surprised that this film won the Genie award for editing and cinematography - it must have been a slow year in Canadian cinema.
I found Villeneuve sliding into some Gus Van Sant territory - deliberately infuriating shot setups meant to imply something greater than whats on the screen.
Mission: Impossible II (2000)
Warmed over Woo fails to escalate a very buff Tom above typical action movie plotting and execution.
I thought the first Mission Impossible movie was awful -- this was an improvement but only marginally so. The movie starts well, with Cruise tredding on James Bond territory but as the movie wears on the somewhat interesting plot gets disposed of in favor of typical action movie cliche. Instead of building suspense we get no less than 4 "countdown clock" sequences. The supporting cast is wasted in this Cruise vanity project -- they barely contribute to the mission at all. Woo doesn't really attempt anything new here -- it's been a bit of deja vu with him since the fabulous "Killers". My real complaint is for the use of the computer graphic "masks" that play a prominent part in the plot. It's a far too convenient plot mechanism designed to move the story forward -- and very arbitrarily at that. It reminds me of how grade school students might write their way out of a story -- deux ex machinas!! This from the great Robert Towne and Brannon Braga (of Star Trek TNG fame). Smells like writing by committee. Mission Implausible Too.