On a scale of Peter Hyams to Paul Verhoeven, director Jonathan Mostow is Roger Spottiswoode. Grade: C+
I guess I should just admit I've been watching this show. The "Grey's Anatomy in space" angle has been grating for the eight episodes aired in the US thus far—but wouldn't you know it, the ninth episode, which I had to finagle the Canadian broadcast of because the show's been pulled from ABC's schedule—that's the episode that finally revealed enough of a big idea to keep me interested … in a show that's probably been canceled. Eh, the production values really weren't half bad, considering.
When it's good, The Informant! is the kind of sunny, unblinking satire Alexander Payne used to make. When it lags, you become acutely aware of the pointless cameos by stand-up comics; production design that's mired in the Seventies despite being set in the Nineties; the fact that no real effort is made to examine the main character beyond his numbskull-cipher charades; and that there's no way said numbskull could have watched the 1993 thriller The Firm at a suburban multiplex circa 1995 (well, it bugged me, at any rate). Grade: B
Mike Judge once again trains his keen observational sense and crude cinematic technique on suburbia, and the result is yet another amiable shambles of a comedy—interestingly peopled and frequently funny but mostly meandering before it abruptly peters out. Grade: B-
Artist: The Rapture. Album: The Music of Grand Theft Auto IV.
Artist: Carla Bruni. Album: Quelqu'un m'a dit.
It's easy to get a contact high from Doug Pray's survey of great advertising. Unfortunately, the elevation is brief, as Pray's sample is neither wide nor deep—frequently no more comprehensive than the advertorial puff pieces local news broadcasts trot out every Superbowl, replete with an over-reliance on obvious brands (Apple, Volkswagen), clips that appear to have been culled from YouTube, and broad, gaping lapses in chronology. Next time more art, less copy. Grade: C+
Artist: Miss Li. Album: Dancing the Whole Way Home.
Artist: Shakira. Album: She Wolf – Single.
Artist: Morgan Mayer. Album: If I Ruled the World.
Artist: Tyrone Wells. Album: Remain.
Artist: Minnutes. Album: Pretty Baby.
In recent years Nora Ephron has veered disastrously into big-B broad comedy. What she's always excelled at is a specific kind of comedy of manners—populated with fussy, privileged white people in scenes and states of intimate anxiety. This return to smaller-b "broad" comedy is therefore a qualified success—a double-fisted biopic that's breezy and generic in many of its details but undeniably crowd-pleasing and ultimately ingratiating. The cast itself is a stacked deck, in the best sense. Grade: B