Roni…

I Didn’t Like Downton Abbey

February 21, 2012

Season 2 RT @roniweiss OK... At what point does #DowntonAbbey transcend being simply a pre-World War I soap opera?

February 20, 2012 11:13 pm via webReply RetweetFavorite

Allison Carlton

Note: I watched half of the pilot. That’s all I could get through feeling no connection to any of the characters and with no further encouragement from the masses.

Count me one for two when it comes to ostensibly girly things. This weekend, I wrote a piece on the inevitability (and desirability) of Pinterest for the RW Social blog. While it has been seen as a female-centric site, if Pinterest and businesses are smart, it’ll will expand beyond its current U.S. demo.

Downton Abbey. The new hit show on ITV and PBS. A “Masterpiece Classic”. A slice of life in pre-World War I Britain that lets us into the lives of the upper crust and those who keep them comfortable.

I expected Mad Men; I got Days of Our Lives.

@roniweiss Much better production value than any soap opera that I've ever seen.

February 20, 2012 11:18 pm via Twitter for iPhone ReplyRetweetFavorite

@ShannonNeff

Shannon Neff

Sharing my opinion, I was criticized for an unfair stance given my open obsession with The OC, but my problem with Downton isn’t melodrama, it’s scope of characters and length of scenes. The show is paced like any soap opera that I’ve seen in a hospital waiting room (generally the only time soaps come into my life). Brief scenes that give you a tidbit of information, then move on to another character. And boy, are there a lot of characters. Characters I couldn’t have cared less about. Conniving characters, dickish characters (Spoiler alert: Apparently, the disabled weren’t treated well in 1910′s UK) and a hapless Lord of the Manor. Who was I supposed to care about? What relationships were supposed to draw me in? Am I supposed to feel bad for a guy that can’t do his job? It’s wonderful having accommodations for the disabled when you can, but halfway into the show (as far as I got), I was lead to believe that all of the jerky characters were right, that the new valet really wasn’t up to the task, esp. for the times.

I am well aware that I’m in the minority on this (and quite possibly controversial on my above thoughts on workers with disabilities). I’d love for you to tell me what I’m missing about Downton and why I should give it more of a chance than I did. Otherwise… I’m moving on to Breaking Bad.

Navel-Gazing Back at 2011

December 31, 2011

This has been a transformative year for me. I’ve started a company and have begun to settle down (as much as I’m able to do such a thing).

Through the magic of Facebook Timeline, Flickr, Gmail and scouring through old posts, let’s look back…

Mission: Impossible-Induced Amnesia

December 29, 2011

Welcome to a post where I do things for the post as I write it.

I have so little to say about Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol. The movie has a whole plot line about Tom Cruise’s wife dying. I have no idea if that was referenced in prior films, because I can barely remember anything from the first three movies.

I remember some details from the first one: The iconic wire scene, lots of masks and Jon Voight being the bad guy.

From MI:II: I think there was a big scene at the beginning with Tom Cruise on a rock face. There probably were more masks. I remember a car scene annoying me. That’s it. I reviewed it on my old site… Lemme dig up what I said.

Here’s a quote:

Mission: Impossible 2: Quick review: Sucked. Flat out predictable crappy action flick.

Wow. OK then.

I literally cannot remember anything from MI:III. I’m almost inclined to think I didn’t even see it, but I’m fairly sure that I did. I’m going to go check the Wikipedia page. BRB.

Woah. Simon Pegg is in MI: III? Ha. I just assumed he was added in this one. I vaguely, vaguely recall some of the cast (and boy, there really are some stars, at least for the time). Actually, now that I see Philip Seymour Hoffmann was the villain in it, I recall there being a really good trailer for MI: III. BRB again.

K. Found it.

Hmmm… It seems that the whole ‘wife’ thing was pretty much exactly what MI: III was all about. Oops.

Anyway, MI: IV. It’s a standard action flick. There are a few good touches here and there, but really, it’s just another unmemorable movie. I’d go so far as to call it a “predictable action flick”, minus the ‘crappy’ that I threw at MI:II. Watching it, I thought, “Boy, I hope that the next Bond movie is good.”

My advice: instead of watching MI: IV, just watch Casino Royale again. Better use of time.

Want to play James Bond at home in your PJs? Poker it up.

Roni Sees Shame

December 16, 2011

Shame Poster

Spending $13 on a Times Square showing isn’t my norm, but I felt I needed to see Shame as it is the NC-17 movie of the day. I won’t get into the fairness or lack thereof of an NC-17 rating, but if wang shots are what get you one, I can say that Shame fits the bill.

Side note: It’s a funny feeling, getting carded to see a movie.

Review:

There’s a wonderful sequence at the beginning, cutting between Brandon (the main character, played by Michael Fassbender) wanging around in his apartment and eye-screwing a woman on the subway. This quality filmmaking gives way to masturbationally long, uninterrupted shots, such as Brandon and his sister (played by Carey Mulligan) standing on a subway platform with their back to the camera. Finding out that the sister’s name is ‘Cissy’ (read: ‘Sissy’, read: ‘Sister’) was the first scent I had of cinematic laziness; it got worse from there. There were great moments throughout the movie and all of the reviews on Michael Fassbender’s acting are accurate, but overall, the film is ham-handed.

Minions of Gozer: The Ghostbusters Shadow Cast

November 25, 2011

Nothing replicates the experience of watching a movie at a theater. There’s another reason (other than sheer obsession) that Lord of the Rings fans wait on line for days to see opening night, as opposed to just going the next morning. The energy is just different. People transmit their excitement through the aisles.

Expanding even further on the theatrical experience is the ‘shadow cast’, which is when people act out the movie in front of the screen (and around the theater). Known best because of midnight showings of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, shadow casting spread to Repo! The Genetic Opera and now, Ghostbusters.

Minions of Gozer put on their first shadow cast of Ghostbusters this past weekend at IFC Center. Having never been to Rocky Horror, I wasn’t exactly sure what to expect. I knew throwing of some kind was involved with Rocky Horror. Minions of Gozer follows suit with “trap packs“, which consist of sponges, Twinkies, Crunch bars, marshmallows (of course) and other items. Sitting in the first two rows enabled me to amass a selection of the throwables on my lap.

The actors were clearly enjoying themselves. Dana Gallagher’s Zuul was god-like creepiness before your eyes and Ian Dunford’s Walter Peck smacked brilliantly of the jackassery of the original. The audience was right along with them. It’s the sort of event where you need to let yourself go and have a good time. And if you have your own, full-on Ghostbusters costume, you have to have somewhere to wear it, right?

Overall, it was a fun night. At points, I felt there was too long between the actors coming out and doing stuff, which speaks to the fact that they were entertaining when they were out. The pre-movie audience interaction was a bit stilted and it wasn’t clear how long it was going to go on, ending somewhat abruptly. I hope that they iron out some of the crinkles whenever the show happens again (which it isn’t exactly clear as to when). If you’re a Ghostbusters fan, I don’t see how you wouldn’t enjoy it. Unless you’re really into watching movies on your MacBook.

Want to know more about shadow casts/Minions of Gozer? This video will help you out.

Minionsofgozer.com has more info on the Minions of Gozer.

Zuul commands that you follow them on Twitter, as well.

Roni Recommends: CocoBongo

September 17, 2011

While walking around Playa del Carmen, you see an endless advertising stream for CocoBongo. What is it? A show? A club?

Turns out that it’s a bit limited to see it as one or the other…

For a considerable amount of my time at CocoBongo, I kept thinking: “You don’t go to CocoBongo, you experience CocoBongo.”

The quick summary is that it’s a series of mini-shows of dancing and acrobatics with an open bar that then becomes a nightclub. But really, it’s so much more.

It Takes All Kinds (AKA “Tim Burton at LACMA”)

August 16, 2011

I like good museums; the ones where it’s clear that someone has put thought into what should go where and how to briefly put a piece into context. LACMA is a good museum. Enough so that I really wish I had liked the Tim Burton exhibit, because it was well done. But the problem wasn’t the exhibit itself, it’s Tim Burton.

I thought that by going to a Tim Burton exhibit, I’d be better able to appreciate a guy that I’ve never totally gotten the appeal of. Quite the opposite happened: I ended up not liking him even more.

The exhibit is a lot bigger than it looks from when you first walk in through the Burtonesque frame. The first room starts with sketchbooks and a newspaper with sketches on it. One thing you see a lot of throughout the exhibition are sketches. Before-you-knew-him and before-you-saw-it-on-the-screen sorts of things.

The first room is “Surviving Burbank”. Tim Burton was born in Burbank, California, a pleasant suburb that did not suit the guy who would create Halloweenland. He started off clearly influenced by Don Martin of MAD Magazine, then experimenting with a Disneyfied style during his time at CalArts. By the early 1980′s, he had the Nightmare Before Christmas style that he’s most associated with. As a high school student, he won various contests for local Burbank PSAs and made Super 8 films with nods to silent film. Clearly an outsider, he stayed focused on his drawing and filming, refining his style until it achieved broader success.

The next room, “Beautifying Burbank”, is vast, covering Vincent (a short film Burton did while working as a conceptual artist at Disney), and various art pieces he did: more sketches and some bigger paintings.

You then go through this really cool blacklight room with a mini carousel to get to his movie work, in “Beyond Burbank”.

Captain Boring

July 26, 2011

Picture Stories from the Bible: The Old Testament in Full-Color Comic-Strip Form

A two-part post, “My history with comic books”, then, thoughts on Captain America.

The first comic book/graphic novel I ever had was Picture Stories from The Bible: The Old Testament in Full-Color Comic-Strip Form (seen above). My mother’s mother, who is very much a practicing Jew, gave it to me sometime in early childhood, with an inscription from “Safta Haya” (Safta = grandmother in Hebrew). The book is, as far as things go, a pretty good way to indoctrinate kids into religion, as it tells the stories with a flourish. I can still picture various frames from it: the anger of Cain with the rock that he’s about to bash Abel with, Lot’s wife turning into a pillar of salt and various kings of the Israelites doing their thang.

I never collected comic books growing up. I had The Death of Superman, The Greatest Superman Stories Ever Told and a plastic-wrapped set of various comics surrounding the death of Superman that they sold at Costco that I still haven’t opened, because I’m one of those collector types.

In college, there was a guy on the crew of a play I was in who loaned me some of his comics. He was mostly into Marvel. I remember reading The Infinity Gauntlet. At this point, I gained learned a little about the world of comics, but still had no familiarity outside of the superheroes that most people have at least a cursory familiarity with.

Then, I met Sean Meyer.

Sean was my best friend at the University of Washington. We hung out 8+ hours a day. Sean voraciously read and collected comic books. In the dorms, he had a small portion of what he owned. His college collection, whose long boxes took up a decent amount of his room, was the biggest amount of comics I had seen. Sean was mostly into DC and independent stuff and bought comics every Wednesday from a shop in the U-District. Through Sean, I read Preacher, Transmetropolitan, The Long Halloween, Watchmen and a variety of others. After Sean and I spent less time together, my comic book reading dropped off precipitously, as I wasn’t going to be buying them. I still do read them at libraries from time to time. The point being, I like comics.

The review

Captain America: The First Avenger is all right. Its central flaw is that Captain America is a boring character. He’s an aw-schucks, bring it to the bad-guy type of hero. He’s a proxy for any scrawny kid that wishes he could kick some ass. And that’s about it. That’s the problem with the movie.

LA Comedy Shorts: Top 10 Stranger-To-Me Flicks

April 25, 2011

Top 10 favorite films of people I did not hang out with (as much):

10. The Softest Touch – About a couple that sees a Skinemax actor at a restaurant. At first, I couldn’t figure out why the production quality was so low, but it became clear that it matched the parody that they were going for.

9. dik – An Aussie flick about a guy that is concerned that his young boy might be gay. It was nice, in that it was comedic, but felt more like comedy than just a sketch.

8. Mega Racist White Man 2 [VIDEO] – Animated Mega Man 2 parody. If you like old-school video game references, you’d dig it.

7. The Office Orphan [VIDEO] – Two office drones talk to the Dickensian orphan that works there. It’s a lot funnier because the executives are British, as well.

6. The Interview – Post-apocalyptic movie where the two last men on Earth meet each other for a radio executive job interview. Excellent production quality and also more cinematic than sketch.

5. Make Every Day Christmas [VIDEO] – What would happen if you really made every day Christmas? No one could stand you.

4. Bobby Visits the Library – A mashup of two old-school educational videos: anti-pornography and a library visit. Pitch perfect. One of the few films at the festival that didn’t feel like it could use some editing to make it snappier.

3. Time Freak – An inventor tells his friend about what has gone awry due to his latest invention – a time machine. The movie felt like it answered the question: “What would it take for you to create your own Groundhog Day?”

2. Fish Without a Bicycle – A mundane situation (a guy getting fish for his pregnant wife) that blows up into a classic action movie.

1. Suiker – The only subtitled movie in the bunch. A Dutch flick about a guy that accidentally kills his housemate and the fallout. Dark comedy to perfection.

Extra story: With or Without U2 was pitched as having a “live element” to the piece. Turned out that this was a live choir coming in to sing U2′s “With or Without You”. Couldn’t figure out what it possibly added to the piece. Turned out that it wasn’t what the original intent was. The filmmakers had been trying for a while to get the rights to use “With or Without You” for the festival, but ended up not getting the rights. And without the song, the piece is useless. So, finding a loophole that said you could have the song performed if it was a live performance, they were inventive and sought out a choir, getting one in the nick of time who came, had one rehearsal, then rocked it.

And in case you missed it, Part Three of my LA Comedy Shorts ROLs, with celebrity panelists and my awkward interaction with Jeff Garland.

LA Comedy Shorts: ABCs

April 24, 2011

Three posts coming up (including this one) about LA Comedy Shorts 2011, covering:

ABCs
My Top 10 flicks from people I didn’t hang out with
My celebrity-meeting stories

Below, my Award-winning new friends, shoutouts to my new Bros and the most memorable Celeb shorts.

Award winners:

Lorne Hiltser and the Bollywood dancers

Best student film - Karl Mulberry: Gorgeously shot with tones of both sweetness and underlying incestuousness. Instead of thinking of the film itself, I will remember director Lorne Hiltser as my nemesis, as I continuously managed to inadvertently take his reserved seats at the festival.

Carlos Alazraqui and Andy Mogren

Best of show - Bear Force One: Director/star/writer Andy Mogren bursts with energy in real life. You see it on screen, too, in a frenetic Air Force One/Executive Decision/Snakes on a Plane/other stuff parody. And, of course, he drove me to my car a few days before winning. Nice guy all around. Congrats, Andy, you Son of a Pitch.

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