Fuzzy's Media Consumption

What's not to like about Over the Hedge? Great voice cast, cute animals, slapstick action, original Ben Folds songs, and a heart-warming message about family. Now I need to check out the comic strip. Team Gerdes score: A.

Once was recommended to Erica and she decided to wanted to see it on a date night last week. I took a glance at Rotten Tomatoes and saw that it had gotten 97% on the critics tomatometer. I immediately closed the window -- if a movie is recommended a couple of times, I'd rather see it without any extra information that might color my experience of watching the movie. The next day the Regular Guy on XRT reviewed Once -- I managed to miss the review, but heard the DJs say, "wow, the Regular Guy really liked that movie". Great -- another data point in favor of the movie.

So, with the provisio that you enjoy patient (some might even say slow), intimate movies, I'll add my voice to those saying "go see Once".

If you are the sort who wants more detail before you see a movie, I'll note that this is a sort of a kind of musical -- but no one bursts into song for no reason -- the two main characters ("guy" and "girl") are both musicians and so they burst into song for reason. The guy is played by Glen Hansard of The Frames and the girl is Markéta Irglová, also a musician, and they really wrote all the songs they perform in the movie.

Oh, and I was a little distracted during the first part of the movie, because it was filmed with handheld (digital?) cameras and it looks a lot like a Neutrino Project (with better sound than we ever get).

I saw David O'Doherty do his show "World Champion of Some Things" at the Edinburgh Fringe back in 2004 and I was an instant fan. English (and Irish, I guess) comedy has a delightful space in-between what we would call "stand up comedy" and "a one man show" and that's where David and his "Very Low Energy Musical Whimsey (VLEMW)" reside. So, anyway, I'd call myself a fan, but as I haven't been back to Edinburgh nor Ireland since 2004, I've had to content myself with memories of the show. Now, however, David has finally released an album, recorded in his flat in front of a few friends: Giggle Me Timbers (Jokes Ahoy!). There are some songs (the aforementioned VLEMW) and some jokes and remarkably little pirate material. Gerdes Grade: A.

There were just a very few moments in the second season of The Wire when I thought an acting choice or a camera shot was un-subtle, which is quite a testament to all of the other perfect moments that made up the show.

I didn't really expound on the show when I finished the first season, because I kinda figured everyone in the world but me had seen this show. Since recent conversations seem to proven that untrue, I'll summarize for you. The Wire is set in Baltimore and each season follows a single criminal case from investigation through whatever arrests and charges are made. It's not a mystery, because we get to see things from the criminals' perspective just as often as the cops. Both sides of the law are filled with politics, drama, personal issues, and lucky/unlucky breaks.

The first season delved into the world of a mid-level drug dealer and his crew. This season expands the scope to include the smugglers who are supplying the drug dealers, as well as smuggling human traffic and stolen goods.

You're never going to buy Wii Sports, because it comes with every Wii. Bowling, Tennis, and Golf are pretty fun, but it might be nice if there was more to Baseball than pitching and hitting and I've never met anyone who could actually control Boxing -- everyone just flails around and whoever flails the most wins.

Wii Play has just 9 mini-games and it's a good thing that it comes with a free Wiimote, because you'd be really mad if you'd spent $50 and only got this wafer-thin hint of a game. As it is, you're really getting the second Wiimote you need anyway and getting the game for $10 -- which still might be a bit much. Though Erica did get lost in the Mii-matching/finding game (38 levels is her current record).

Soon I Will Be Invincible is Austin Grossman's debut novel and it's rather good. It's a superhero adventure told in alternating chapters by an experienced evil genius (he's in prison for the twelveth time when the book starts) and a new cyborg hero. The action of the story is straight out of a silver age comic book (the villian says things outloud like "Who dares?" and "In the coming era I will rule the world, as is my right.") but the inner lives of the two narrators are complex and authentic.

FuzzyCo grade: A

Your Movie Sucks is a sequel of sorts to Roger Ebert's earlier I Hated, Hated, Hated This Movie -- both collections of his reviews of movies he enjoyed the least. The earlier book covered a few decades of reviews and so it had the stringent requirement of one star or less; the new book covers just the 21st century and so, I assume to pad out the book a bit, includes 1.5 star movies. It does mean that some of the reviews are less vitriolic and more Ebert basically saying, "eh."

But when Ebert is on a tear, ripping into a terrible movie, it's quite a sight to behold. The book opens with an extended introduction detailing a few reviews that resulted in public exchanges with the director or stars, like Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo (from which review comes the title of the book) and Vincent Gallo's Brown Bunny.

It should be noted that these books are, like so much these days, effectively free online -- just go to the Advanced Search on Ebert's site, set the "Star rating To" field to one or one-and-a-half stars, and click Submit. But it's harder to take your computer into the bathroom, which just might be the natural home for this sort of book. Of course, you might also want to use it as a sort of affirmational -- read one of these reviews right before you leave the house and there will be a certain spring in your step. No matter what you do or don't do during the day, at least you didn't make a terrible movie.

Erica and I saw this hit documentary about a font tonight. Helvetica is a history of the 50-year-old typeface and its influence on design -- and the documentary ends up as an overview of post-war design in general. It was delightful and fascinating. Even Erica, who is not a designer, thought it was great.

We've found ourselves unexpectedly charmed by the Food Network show Ace of Cakes. The show focuses on a custom cake bakery in Baltimore and each week follows Duff Goldman and his staff as they create 2 or 3 'extreme' custom cakes. The combination of the good humor of the staff and meeting design challenges is a winner for us.

Talking about this show is as good an opportunity as any to address something that's been brewing in my head for a while. I think we've reached the point where the term 'Reality TV' really doesn't convey much about a show -- within the supposed one genre we have everything from competitive shows like American Idol or America's Next Top Model, which really owe their lineage to game shows, to shows that approach documentary work, like Ace of Cakes or Miami Ink. I'm not sure what good replacement terms are, but I think we need them to speak intelligently about the different categories of TV shows.

Here are two Food Network shows that we've been sampling (damn you, Food Network -- it's so easy to get sucked in by your shows) and one has made it onto our Tivo SeasonPass(tm) list and the other has not.

In each episode of Dinner: Impossible Chef Robert Irvine is assigned a near-impossible culinary task. Like, make 7000 hors d'oeuvres for 4000 guests in 18 hours. I think a commonality in many of the shows I really like is skilled people doing a task well, and Chef Robert really delivers on that ground. Tivo thumbs up.

Throwdown with Bobby Flay might seem to fall into the same category: each week a cooking expert is told that they're having a Food Network profile filmed, but really Bobby Flay is going to challenge them in their area of specialty. Flay is rarely an expert in the same field (wedding cakes, for example, were very much out of his expertise) and there's some interesting stuff as he researches the style in his test kitchen. And neither Flay nor the show is at all mean-spirited. But nonetheless, these folks are set up to believe that they're simply being honored, when suddenly a famous chef shows up to challenge them. One episode we saw culminated at a woman's birthday party where she thought she was going to be cooking for her friends (and the cameras) and then she was faced with Bobby Flay and a guest judge of her cooking. We don't like innocent people getting suckered around here. Tivo thumbs down.

Stubbs the Zombie: Rebel Without a Pulse was built with the Halo engine, which means that some of the levels have vehicles you can drive, and that I couldn't drive any of them for shit. (I'm sure it's sacrilege, but I can't stand the controls in Halo.) It was fun to play the other side of the usual zombie film motif and eat a bunch of brains. FuzzyCo grade: B-

Slither is a really good scary monster movie. Amazingly, for a movie of its genre, nobody does anything dumb. (Or at least, nothing dumb that's out of character.) FuzzyCo Grade: A

I can't get enough of this show. I watched the penultimate episode of the season and should have gone to bed, but I just had to finish out the season and watch the last episode. This season veered a little back towards conventional television -- stuff like Colvin's tour of the Western for Carcetti just happening to be on the same day as a police/community meeting was a little bit of a stretch. And it probably had the most obviously happy ending of any of the seasons so far. But there's was so much going on, I forgave them that. And, oh, the drama! And the betrayals! And the redemptions! I can't wait to start watching the next season.

The Wire - Season 3.