Solitary Man - DVD Review

***1/4

Starring Michael Douglas, Mary-Louise Parker, Jenna Fischer, Susan Sarandon, Jesse Eisenberg, Danny DeVito, Imogen Poots, Richard Schiff, David Costabile and Ben Shenkman.
Directed by Brian Koppelman & David Levien.

I don't know what happened to Michael Douglas. He lost his way somewhere back there and found himself having to take forgettable supporting roles in movies like You Me & Dupree, Ghosts of Girlfriends Past and Beyond A Reasonable Doubt. But between this and Wall Street 2 he seems back on the right track.

He plays a total cad here, a man who learns he might be dying and so throws his life away by cheating on his wife and being dishonest at his business. He hits on college girls, thinking he's still debonaire enough that it'll work. Douglas is great at playing scumbags we still kinda hope will get redeemed. It's his best performance (and role) in years.

My only problem was the ambiguous ending. I just hope he's able to recover from throat cancer, that Wall Street 2 is good, and that he can keep working.

Who Turned Down Dancing with the Stars?

The highlight I got from this is how washed up Melanie Griffith must be feeling that she can't get on a reality show that is thrilled to land The Situation?

Martin Freeman as Bilbo?

Might Martin Freeman be the next Bilbo Baggins?

That's the rumor. The man best known for starring opposite Ricky Gervais in BBC's The Office also played Arthur in the big-screen adaptation of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and will next star in the BBC series Sherlock as Dr. Watson.

TV I'm Watching Now

AMC's Mad Men - A true watercooler show, if my office had a watercooler and two-thirds of the cubicles weren't empty.

CBS's Big Brother 12 - It gets boring once it's down to the final four. It's been an up-and-down season, but at least I don't think any of these contestants are going to use their fame to sell drugs like two from BB10.

ABC's Wipeout - Slapstick's still funny. Plus one of my kids told a classmate I'm going to try out, so I guess I'd better. Next year.

ABC's Bachelor Pad - I watch it with my wife. And my guess is this will be the only season. It's Big Brother with more hook-ups. Seriously some of these people have the morals of guinea pigs, but they dress nice so they don't feel as skanky as a VH1 show.

FOX's Lie to Me - I've been a big Tim Roth fan since Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead.

FX's Louie - It's a comedy about how depressing it is to be a divorced dad.

ESPN's Around the Horn, ComCen's The Daily Show, FNC's Red Eye - I'll DVR most episodes, watch about half of them.

Dropped--

TNT's Memphis Beat - I watched about five episodes. It's fine. It's a summer show. I think it already had its season finale.

TNT's Rizzoli & Isles - I like Angie Harmon, but I've only seen two of the episodes on my DVR and may or may not get to one more before I delete the rest to make room for fall.

AMC's Rubicon - Two and a half episodes in, but it's too cold and impersonal for me to care. I'll wait for The Walking Dead.

NBC's America's Got Talent - I tend to watch the first few weeks, but always drop it by the time we get to semi-finals. If I missed something really cool, I'm sure someone will point it out to me on YouTube.

The White Ribbon - DVD Review

***1/2

Starring Burghart Klaussner, Christian Friedel, Leonie Benesch, Ulrich Tukur, Michael Kranz, Maria-Victoria Dragus, Levin Henning and Ursina Lardi.
Directed by Michael Haneke.

This 2009 nominee for Best Foreign Film lives up to the hype. It's all about quiet malevolence in a small Germany town in 1913. There are children around, but they rarely laugh. There are stern leaders in the town, namely the Baron, who owns half the land and who empliys most of the people. There is also the Pastor, whose harsh discipline he sees as cleansing. The children and the workers are being groomed to learn one virtue, that of submission.

But there are disturbing happenings around the town. Someone drew a wire between two trees that caused the Doctor to fall off his horse. A young boy is kidnapped and tortured. A worker dies in a mill "accident." No one knows what's causing these things, nor is it ever spelled out for us, but it is implied, and the viewer's allowed to draw his own conclusions.

Germany 1913. These children will be adults when Hitler rises to power, and while some have the seed of sadism planted, others have the seed of not rocking the boat, obeying whoever's in power. Negative actions have negative consequences. It's one I'll be thinking about for days.

Cop Out - DVD Review

*1/2

Starring Bruce Willis, Tracy Morgan, Seann William Scott, Kevin Pollak, Adam Brody, Ana de la Regeura, Guillermo Diaz, Rashida Jones, Michelle Trachtenberg, Susie Essman and Jason Lee.
Directed by Kevin Smith.

This is the first movie Kevin Smith's directed that he didn't write, and yet, a lot of it seems like he might have written it. I think it's due to a lot of improvising by the cast, giving it a Smith-ian spirit, seeing as how the screenplay was so thin to begin with.

It's a homage to 1980's cop movies, and if the soundtrack and parade of cliches doesn't tip you off, then Tracy Morgan quoting every movie under the sun in the opening scene will. Here's the thing. It's not like all the old-school cop movies were good. The Last Boy Scout, for instance, was terrible. Should it be resurrected?

Willis and Morgan are Jimmy and Paul, partners for nine years. I didn't believe it for a second. They had no chemistry with each other, and Paul is a man-child way too similar to Morgan's deranged 30 Rock character. Jimmy is trying to figure out how to pay for his daughter's wedding; Paul is worried his wife's cheating on him. Naturally they get suspended early in the film, but they press on to bust a drug case.

The film does pick up once Seann William Scott shows up as a burglar-stoner, the Joe Pesci in the Lethal Weapon trio. I even laughed a couple times. Unfortunately he's not in it as much as the previews suggested.

I haven't liked everything Smith has done, but I was relieved to learn he didn't actually write this. I hope this doesn't discourage him from directing others' work - that's what most directors do - but hopefully next time he'll be more discerning.

Nanny McPhee Returns - Movie Review

**3/4

Starring Emma Thompson, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Rhys Ifans, Maggie Smith, Ralph Fiennes and Ewan McGregor.
Directed by Susanna White.

She's no Mary Poppins. For one thing, Mary would not abide so many poo jokes. The kids are on a farm, and therefore there is a lot of animal dung, but my goodness, when they make Maggie Smith sit on a cowpie, I'd about had enough.

This movie's fun for kids. It has that hyper acting-for-kids style from everyone. If the cast of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang waltzed in with a musical number, the tone needn't change a tittle to accommodate.

Emma Thompson's labor of love (she also wrote it) stays intact. Her McPhee is ugly and scary, but as lessons are learned, her moles melt away, and once she's normal-looking, we know her work is done.

We saw it for free, and that was great. It's more of a rental.

Fall TV Preview - Sunday

=Sunday=

7/6
ABC - America's Funniest Home Videos
CBS - 60 Minutes
NBC - Football Night in America
FOX - The OT

8/7
ABC - Extreme Makeover: Home Edition
CBS - The Amazing Race
NBC - Sunday Night Football
FOX - The Simpsons
- - - - The Cleveland Show

9/8
ABC - Desperate Housewives
CBS - Undercover Boss
NBC - SNF Hour 2
FOX - Family Guy
- - - - American Dad

10/9
ABC - Brothers & Sisters
CBS - CSI: Miami
NBC - SNF Hour 3

No new shows Sunday night.

CSI: Miami's move to Sundays could shake Brothers & Sisters' control of the hour. Football's going to dominate the night. Fox is content with the stale ratings of The Cleveland Show and American Dad, since nothing else they've put in those slots have worked.

Fall TV Preview - Saturday

=Saturday=

College football, repeats, Cops & America's Most Wanted.

Fall TV Preview - Friday

=Friday=

8/7
ABC - SECRET MILLIONAIRE
CBS - Medium
NBC - Who Do You Think You Are?
FOX - Human Target
CW - Smallville

9/8
ABC - BODY OF PROOF
CBS - CSI: NY
NBC - Dateline NBC
FOX - The Good Guys
CW - Supernatural

10/9
ABC - 20/20
CBS - BLUE BLOODS
NBC - OUTLAW

New Shows:

SECRET MILLIONAIRE - This show actually briefly ran on Fox about 18 months ago. ABC has resurrected the premise, where real-life millionaires go undercover in poor neighborhoods and find people worthy to give at least $100,000 of their own money.

BODY OF PROOF - Dana Delany left Desperate Housewives and now stars in this, as a sardonic medical examiner. It's supposed to contain a lot about her private life so it's not just a procedural each week. Jeri Ryan (Star Trek Voyager, Boston Public, Shark) also stars.

BLUE BLOODS - Tom Selleck plays a cop whose two sons are also cops (Donnie Wahlberg, Will Estes). Supposed to have as much family drama as crime story.

OUTLAW - Jimmy Smits plays a Supreme Court justice who resigns to go back into private practice to try controversial cases across the country.

My Prediction:

Well, it warms my heart that the networks aren't giving up on Friday the way they have Saturdays. The Good Guys is a fun show but its low ratings when it debuted tells me it won't survive too long in the fall. Low expectations abound on this night. I have faith Blue Bloods will stick. I do see this being Medium's final season, and CSI: NY's. Outlaw has a fantasy premise, but Smits might be the guy who can pull it off. I have no feel on ABC's slate. Overall it looks like CBS is #1, Fox is #2 (thanks to American Idol), and ABC is hanging on to #3 thanks to Dancing with the Stars, but NBC is poised to challenge them.

Fall TV Preview - Thursday

=Thursday=

8/7
ABC - MY GENERATION
CBS - The Big Bang Theory
- - - - $#*! MY DAD SAYS
NBC - Community
- - - - 30 Rock
FOX - Bones
CW - The Vampire Diaries

9/8
ABC - Grey's Anatomy
CBS - CSI
NBC - The Office
- - - - OUTSOURCED
FOX - Fringe
CW - NIKITA

10/9
ABC - Private Practice
CBS - The Mentalist
NBC - The Apprentice

New Shows:

MY GENERATION - The premise is that a documentarian interviewed a group of kids from the graduating class of 2000, and ten years later, we see where they are now.

$#*! MY DAD SAYS - Based on the popular Twitter account, William Shatner is the politically-incorrect old coot who says outrageous things around his 20-something-year-old son who moves back in with him.

OUTSOURCED - Based on a little-seen movie, it's about an American who moves to India to train a new call-center. Culture clashes abound. I personally work with an office in Bangalore so I'm hoping I'll recognize aspects of it.

NIKITA - Maggie Q (Mission Impossible 3) stars in this reboot of the Peta Wilson series, which was based on the French film La Femme Nikita. It's getting good reviews.

My Prediction:

In the first hour I see Big Bang crushing everyone. Bones should continue to do well, and I don't think Community/ 30 Rock combo will do worse. That leaves My Generation in a precarious position, primarily if it has a poor lead-in to Grey's Anatomy, which may have been getting long in the tooth except it's opposite a longer, toothier CSI, minus William Peterson and now losing Marg Helgenberger this year. If Outsourced bombs, they have Parks & Recreation ready to come back. My hunch is Nikita will do well for CW standards.

No changes in the final hour. Nice to see a celebrity-free Apprentice return, but it and Private Practive will get stomped by The Mentalist.

Fall TV Preview - Wednesday

=Wednesday=

8/7
ABC - The Middle
- - - - BETTER WITH YOU
CBS - Survivor
NBC - UNDERCOVERS
FOX - Lie to Me
CW - America's Next Top Model

9/8
ABC - Modern Family
- - - - Cougar Town
CBS - Criminal Minds
NBC - Law & Order: SVU
FOX - Hell's Kitchen
CW - HELLCATS

10/9
ABC - THE WHOLE TRUTH
CBS - THE DEFENDERS
NBC - LAW & ORDER: LOS ANGELES

New Shows:

UNDERCOVERS - JJ Abrams is behind this new Mr. & Mrs. Smith style series, about a married couple in counseling who keep getting pulled back into the high-spy business. One of the rare network shows where the leads are non-whites. Fingers crossed it's a good show.

BETTER WITH YOU - One sister's going on nine years with her boyfriend, but her spotlight gets stolen by younger sister who's pregnant and engaged to her boyfriend of seven weeks. Hijinks ensue. Kurt Fuller (That's My Bush) and Debra Jo Rupp (That 70's Show) are the parents.

HELLCATS - Tries to do for cheerleading what Glee did for glee clubs. High School Musical vet Ashley Tisdale is part of the ensemble.

THE WHOLE TRUTH - Courtroom drama seen from both sides: the prosecution (ER's Maura Tierney) and the defense (Numb3rs' Rob Morrow).

THE DEFENDERS - Less serious lawyer show, looks like in the vein of Boston Legal. James Belushi and Jerry O'Connell are your stars.

LAW & ORDER: LOS ANGELES - The chung-chung lives, and with such names as Terrence Howard, Alfred Molina, Skeet Ulrich, Regina Hall, Teri Polo and Wanda De Jesus.

My Prediction:

ABC's comedy line-up could use another success to buoy the crown jewel Modern Family, and if BWY flounders, they have Mr. Sunshine in the wings, a midseason sitcom with Matthew Perry. I've heard good things, and by heard, I mean read. Wednesday's really wide open, unlike most nights where it looks like CBS will rule no matter what. Survivor's move is risky, but Criminal Minds tends to win the night. With three law shows at the 10/9 spot, it's up in the air. I can see The Whole Truth being the one that flounders.

Univision beats The CW many nights at this point; they're barely a network. But America's Next Top Model is still their biggest show for ratings, so if Hellcats is remotely good, it has a chance.

Undercovers... maybe the name "JJ Abrams" will get enough people curious. I think Lie to Me's going to get shredded. I like the show and have enjoyed it during summer, but I don't know how much longer it'll last.

Fall TV Preview - Tuesday

=Tuesday=

8/7
ABC - NO ORDINARY FAMILY
CBS - NCIS
NBC - Biggest Loser Hour 1
FOX - Glee
CW - One Tree Hill

9/8
ABC - Dancing with the Stars results
CBS - NCIS: Los Angeles
NBC - Biggest Loser Hour 2
FOX - RAISING HOPE
- - - - RUNNING WILDE
CW - Life Unexpected

10/9
ABC - DETROIT 1-8-7
CBS - The Good Wife
NBC - Parenthood

New Shows:

NO ORDINARY FAMILY - Michael Chiklis (The Shield) and Julie Benz (Dexter) head a family that suddenly gain super powers. Sounds like a live-action The Incredibles. Sounds like it intends to be brighter than the now-axed Heroes.

RAISING HOPE - Blue-collar dark comedy about a 23-year-old who has a surprise baby daughter Hope left on his doorstep. Garrett Dillahunt (Terminator: TSCC) and Martha Plimpton (Goonies) are his parents, and Cloris Leachman is Grandma. Supposed to have a My Name Is Earl meets Arrested Development flavor to it.

RUNNING WILDE - Speaking of Arrested Development, Will Arnett stars as a lazy son of a millionaire who finds out his old high-school crush (Keri Russell) is single and he tries to win her over. She's an environmental activist (hopefully not to the James Lee level), so he has some work to do. Word has it they reshot the pilot after it scored lower-than-expected test scores.

DETROIT 1-8-7 - This drama about homicide cops in Detroit was going to be faux-documentary style, but they had to scrap that idea and now shoot it as a straight drama. Michael Imperioli (The Sopranos, Life on Mars) and James McDaniel (NYPD Blue) star.

My Prediction:

Tuesday's opening slot looks tough, but I can see No Ordinary Family defying odds and breaking out somehow. That'll mean either Biggest Loser or Glee has to slip. It also means the Fox sitcoms are in a high-risk/high-reward bind. Fox hasn't been able to get a sitcom to last for a while. (Til Death should have been cancelled two years before it actually was.) The Good Wife will continue to dominate, and it'll be up to Detroit and Parenthood to duke it out for second.

Fall TV Preview - Monday

New shows in All Caps.

=Monday=

8/7
ABC - Dancing with the Stars Hour 1
CBS - How I Met Your Mother
- - - - Rules of Engagement
NBC - Chuck
FOX - House
CW - 90210

9/8
ABC - Dancing with the Stars Hour 2
CBS - Two and a Half Men
- - - - MIKE & MOLLY
NBC - THE EVENT
FOX - LONE STAR
CW - Gossip Girl

10/9
ABC - Castle
CBS - HAWAII FIVE-0
NBC - CHASE

New Shows:

MIKE & MOLLY (CBS) - Sitcom following the courtship between two overweight people. I've heard more good things than bad.

THE EVENT (NBC) - This treads conspiracy-theory waters and hopes to succeed where FlashForward failed. I do hear there's an assassination attempt and a CIA cover-up of... something. Cast includes Blair Underwood (as the Prez), Jason Ritter (The Class), Laura Innes (ER) and Zjelko Ivanek (Damages).

LONE STAR (FOX) - A man juggles two lives in Texas between a wife and mistress and hopes his powerful father-in-law (Jon Voight) doesn't find out. Supposed to be a less-cheesy Dallas. Zap2It named it the #1 must-see new show this fall.

HAWAII FIVE-0 (CBS) - Remember how CBS kept giving Simon Baker series after series until they found the perfect package in The Mentalist? They're hoping they've found the right vehicle for Alex O'Loughlin, late of Midnight and Three Rivers. His supporting cast includes Entourage's Scott Caan, Lost's Daniel Dae Kim, and Battlestar Galactica's Grace Park.

CHASE (NBC) - Show about U.S. marshals chasing the fugitive of the week.

My Prediction:

NBC is in a world of hurt this year. They have a lot of hopes on The Event, but Lone Star has a much stronger lead-in, and ABC and CBS's scheduling looks bulletproof. Then again, soapy dramas are as big a gamble as mystery series where viewers need to watch each week. I think the gamble of moving CSI: Miami to Sundays is a good one to help a new show. I see Hawaii Five-0 being a hit. I see Chase being the first NBC cancellation of the year, and The Event not being far behind unless word-of-mouth is really strong. But then again, it's NBC. If The Event can just improve on Chuck's lead-in, it'll be considered a hit.

Harry Brown - DVD Review

**

Starring Michael Caine, Emily Mortimer, Charlie Creed-Miles, David Bradley, Liam Cunningham, Iain Glen and Sean Harris.
Directed by Daniel Barber.

Michael Caine is great in everything he does, and when he's the lead, he really gets to show what he can do. I was excited at the prospect of him starring in his own Gran Torino, but that was my first mistake. Gran Torino was really good, and this one pales by comparison, though through no fault of Caine's.

Caine plays Harry Brown, a man living in a rougher, poorer section of London, and the gang violence is increasing around him. The cops don't seem to be effective and after a couple tragic events, Harry Brown decides enough's enough. The guy's a former Marine after all.

He wanders into the seedier parts of town and uncovers the tangled webs between gangs and the drug culture. Dead bodies of lowlifes pile up, and the local inspector (Emily Mortimer) is sympathetic but thinks it might be Harry behind the body count.

Caine's cool, but it really is just a cockney Death Wish.

Machete - Movie Review

**1/2

Starring Danny Trejo, Robert DeNiro, Steven Seagal, Jessica Alba, Michelle Rodriguez, Jeff Fahey, Don Johnson, Cheech Marin, Lindsay Lohan, Tom Savini, Daryl Sabara and Shea Whigham.
Directed by Robert Rodriguez.

I thought the two-minute fake trailer was great in Grindhouse (2007). For some weird reason I wasn't expecting this movie to still feel like a 90-minute trailer of itself, but it was.

The previews we had set the mood. The Town looks good, I'm hyped for Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (kudos to the marketing guy who thought of using "Sympathy for the Devil"), and I'm tired of seeing the preview for Devil ("from the mind of M. Night Shyamalan.") We also had Saw 3D and Resident Evil: Afterlife, this decade's version of grindhouse.

Then the movie.

Trejo's got a very interesting face. It looks like it's made from granite after centuries of ocean splashed against it. He doesn't need to say anything; his intense physical presense commands the screen. He's also got an impressive body for a 67-year-old man. Here he's a federale in Mexico whose wife and child get killed by the local kingpin Torrez (Steven Seagal). They think they've killed him too, but he re-emerges in Texas, doing odd jobs. There we find an eclectic cast of characters. There's Robert DeNiro as Sen. John McLaughlin, running a hate-filled anti-immigrant re-election campaign. There's SHE (Michelle Rodriguez) who runs a secret underground operation treated with the reverance of Harriet Tubman. There's Don Johnson, having the most fun as the evil border vigilante.

The political undertones of the movie were weird, off-putting. The argument seems to be that there should be an open border between the US and Mexico, and sending anyone back to Mexico is cruel, unusual and inhumane. And anyone who wants a secure border is a racist murderer. I guess.

Lindsay Lohan does show up and at one point finds herself in a nun's habit pointing a gun. She actually wasn't very good in this movie. I'm one who keeps hoping she'll get her life cleaned up. She CAN act. Freaky Friday, Mean Girls, A Prairie Home Companion. But her performance here was one where I felt like her off-screen life is catching up to her.

Then there's Steven Seagal. He's best when he's in the teleconferencing scenes, where we only see his head. The guy is really out of shape. I don't know he's been seriously injured recently or what, but he can't move. He cannot do a convincing fight scene. I think they would have needed less tricky camera work if Trejo had been fighting DeNiro. I wasn't convinced Seagal could hold a sword for ten seconds. I don't know what it was.

The movie's full of posing, of allegedly iconic moments. When I was younger, I dug this stuff. I remember thinking how cool it was in Desperado that a guy's guitar case was actually a machine gun. I liked the Mariachi trilogy more. I think I even liked Planet Terror more. Machete is fine while watching it, but I felt like I'd eaten too much junk food the morning after.

I'm ready for Robert Rodriguez to put out his own Inglourious Basterds, as I see RR as QT's perpetual little brother. It may be, though, that Rodriguez is never going to be able to top what he did in Sin City, and this level is his future.

P.S. Kudos for having three LOST alum in the cast.

AMC's Rubicon - TV Review

I have this on my DVR, and I watched two episodes, and I'm wondering if this is going to pay off. It's remarkably unsentimental about its characters. There is no expository dialogue; it's as though we're eavesdropping on morose code-breakers at the CIA and all their dialogue is in the natural short-hand you can have with co-workers you've known for years. So far it's dense and joyless and I'm just wondering if it'll be worth the time investment.

Dwayne Johnson joins Journey 2

I guess the spectacular success of Furry Vengenace has made Brendan Fraser a bit big for his britches. He will not be back for Journey to the Center of the Earth 2, though Josh Hutcherson will. Coming Soon reports that Dwayne Johnson has signed on to play his uncle and that it'll be loosely based on Jules Verne's The Mysterious Island, hence the official title:

Journey 2: The Mysterious Island