Notes From The Underbelly is ABC's
waiting-in-the-wings midseason replacement sitcom starring Jennifer
Westfeldt and, well, a bunch of other people I couldn't care less
about. The pilot was directed by Barry Sonnenfeld, who I believe is
producing, and it has quite a bit of dark humour to it.
Unfortunately that's counterbalanced with about an equal helping of
total cliché. I ask you, please, what could be more painful to watch
than a secretly-pregnant woman tossing drink after drink over her
shoulder in an attempt not to be discovered?
Fortunately I think the scales tip in the dark humour direction
rather than toward cliché. Jennifer is charming, although I didn't feel
that they used her comedically in the right way. From what I've loved
about her work in the past, her strengths are timing and delivery, not
artfully tossing tequila over her shoulder. So that was a bit
disappointing. However, if the show gets picked up (or, you know, airs,
ever) and they go into regular production, it shouldn't take the
writers very long to realize that and start writing for her.
And meanwhile, the dark comedy foundation is there: the
used-to-be-normal friend who turns supermommy three seconds after
announcing she's pregnant, the bitter man-eating friend who hates the
world (who had the honour of delivering the single best line in the
pilot), the shady, slacker guy friend who's always hanging around just
waiting to be a bad influence on Jennifer & hubby's kid...
Because that's the premise of the show - Jen and hubby get pregnant and try not to turn into parentzombies.
Honestly, I probably wouldn't have given it a glance if I hadn't
noticed Jennifer Westfeldt's name. And even then, when I saw she was
starring in it, I kind of figured she'd have a hand behind the scenes
as well, which she doesn't. Disappointing based on my expectations, but
that's not to say I didn't laugh out loud quite a few times.
Oh, and the single best line? Bitter friend is watching TV and
recieving oral sex when the phone rings. She lets it go to the machine
and a few moments later [generic male] pops up from under the covers
and says, "Thanks for not getting that," and she says, "You know I
never answer the phone during Lost."
Yeah, I know, I'm biased. But also, her delivery was extremely dry. :)
Sum: 2.5 out of 5 points. We'll see.
This show is a long ways from starting, as
I've only heard a vague start date of "winter", and in one case January
1, 2007, which would be insane, so I'm pretty sure it's wrong.
I had this one sitting around for a long while before finally
deciding to give it a whirl. The premise was a teeny bit intriguing but
in my mind it seemed a bit superficial, sort of The OC does The
Fugitive. I'm not sure now where I got that idea, although there are a
few moments during the pilot where I felt it was pretty accurate.
Still, it was far better than I was giviing it advance credit for.
Aforementioned intriguing premise: three buddies, having just left
grad school after spending every waking moment together for the past 2
years, set off on a summer-long road trip. They are Jay Burchell (a
freshly barred lawyer), Tyler Fog (a rich kid who's going to be taking
over daddy's business one day) and Will Traveler (an engineer and also
*checks* yep, the title of the show). New York is their first stop, and
Will has booked them into a really fancy hotel with an unusually
friendly bellhop, and all is good. They go out, get hammered, and
generally live it up.
Then, the next morning, they end up at the Museum of Modern Art,
where the other two eventually convince straight-laced Jay to race
Tyler through the museum on rollerblades. Unfortunately, allusions to
French cinema were never quite seized upon, but that's okay because
what does happen is that shortly after the two of them exit, MOMA gets
exploded all to shit.
And now they are the prime suspects, and all traces of their buddy
Will Traveler have completely vanished. Fun! The rest of the pilot
vascillates between paranoia and somewhat kickass action sequences.
As for the characters, a couple of them are lacking, most notably
Will, who should be likeable enough that you sort of trust him and sort
of don't and aren't watching everything he does in flashback thinking,
"Oh, you lying sleazy bastard." You want to believe he's got some sort
of internal conflict about doing this to his friends, even if their
friendship has been a sham all along. Especially since he called them
right before the blast to make sure they got out okay and to apologize.
Tyler is okay, but he's rockin' an emo haircut and kind of always
looks like he's about to start sobbing, so he adds to my initial
aversion to the show. He does, however, have a powerful and connected
daddy (played by the wonderful Bill Sadler!) who may or may not be
trying to help him, so that's interesting.
And Jay is kind of wonderful to look at as well as being our main
identifying character - he's basically Greg from Dharma and Greg, plus
major daddy issues and that Gryffindor stupid/brave thing going on. His
girlfriend, on the other hand, is limp and lifeless as an overboiled
asparagus stalk, but I'm willing to forgive that in the pilot because
her scene was also one of the most riveting scenes, plot-wise, in the
whole thing.
Throw in a dash of FBI-chick-running-in-a-3/4-length-trench-coat,
and have the FBI chick be a profiler who isn't quite sure she's on the
trail of the right guys, and you've got my interest for at least
another two or three episodes.
I say three out of five, for now.
By far my favourite of the new pilots that
I've seen, which was sort of a surprise. I was very hyped about Heroes
(which did not disappoint), but there's nothing like being pleasantly
surprised.
So here's Jericho: The First 17 Hours (contains spoilers, obviously)
Skeet Ulrich, looking decidedly ungirly all of a sudden, returns to
the small Kansas town of Jericho to ask his father, the mayor, for some
cash. Skeet is immediately shady-but-likeable, visiting his old
buddy and his old buddy's hot deaf sister, chatting with the lady that
owns the general store, running into an old flame, and telling them all
a different story about where he's been for the past 5 years. He visits
his also-mayor grandfather's grave, refuses money from his mom, and is
just your all around awww good guy who happens to be a pathological
liar. He also drives a pretty kickass Metallicar of his own, and the
opening driving tune is the kind that'll probably send people running
to their computers for a download as soon as the show ends.
So now we're all set up, and in a tight nine minutes, no less. Cue
the central event of the series: suddenly, all tv, radio and cell
signals cut out. Animals start acting nuts. Slowly, people start to
notice a new addition to the horizon: a mushroom cloud that we're all
pretty sure used to be called Denver.
So now we've got various things going on. We have Skeet-daddy at
home doing mayorly things like digging up old geiger counters to test
the town for radiation and charming a local crazy into letting him use
his short-wave radio. We have Skeet on the road, smashing up his
Metallicar because he's too busy staring at the scary mushroom cloud.
We have panicked parents freaking out about a missing school bus. We
have a mysterious stranger from St-Louis who starts hangin' with the
fire chief and just happens to know how to do everything. We have a
traumatized teenager with a frightening phone message from his mom. We
have a bus full (or rather, not full) of escaped convicts.
And there you go. Mix all the ingredients up. It's not the most
original show ever, in fact by the time Skeet finds the school bus and
performs an emergency tracheotomy on a seven-year-old using a handful
of juicebox straws, you'll realize how strange TV has gotten that you
don't find this unusual in the slightest. But it's got such a good,
small-town heart, and Skeet is about the most adorable hero ever.
Skeet-daddy is a bit of a trial. He's set up as hokey and stiff, and
fulfills that pretty well, but unfortunately that makes his scenes
kinda boring. On the other hand, Skeet-momma is a delight every second
she's onscreen. And the abundance of little kids should put the show in
danger of being syrupy sweet, but instead the kids' dialogue rings true
and is amusing in parts, which helps when the apocaplypse is descending.
Also, I'm giving Skeet about 4 episodes before he slips it to the
hot elementary school teacher. Hopefully the series will last that
long. I want to know what happens. And more than that, I want, nay, need more of that surprising Skeet charisma. Oh, yes.
Bear with me. I just want to start writing up
the movies I see. Although I understand this may be entirely too much
detail for... anyone.
Having just worked my way through every single feature on this disc,
I can honestly say that Jo Gordon-Levitt is completely absent from it.
Aside from, you know, the fact that he's in the actual movie. This is
decidedly tragic.
Wait, that also is not entirely true. He does appear in the deleted scenes.
The deleted scenes themselves are not all that interesting, but the
feature is worth watching because Rian Johnson's introductions are
spoken over various production photos and candid cast pictures and
pretty much images from every stage of the movie's evolution. That
itself was so interesting to look at that it became a bit hard to
concentrate on what Johnson was saying.
The other thing that becomes immediately obvious from watching those
scenes is that that amazing sound design, which I drooled and fussed
and ranted over when I first saw the film, truly is *amazing* sound
design.
Yeah, sometimes you watch those unfinished scenes and the dialogue
sounds hollow and far-off, and you've got no music supporting it, and
it's kind of jarring how ordinary and flat it all seems. But in this
case, the sound crew pulled off an absolute miracle, considering the
source material. Every little sound in this movie has a credible
weight behind it, and it bends in and out of realism so smoothly. It's
just absolutely beautiful work.
The auditions feature is laughable unless you're completely obsessed
with either Nora Zehetner (which, I know... who?) or Noah Segan (which,
yes, also who? but I can see the obsession potential here). Those are
the only two audition tapes here, and they're very short and
provide very little in terms of enlightenment where casting potential
and character construction are concerned.
Which leaves the commentary. This is where a little bit o'Jo would have been terribly helpful, but oh well.
I guess everyone looks for different things in a commentary. I
usually like a scene-specific commentary with liberal space for
digression, because what's a commentary for if not to watch the movie
with the people who made it? But Johnson, in a self-conscious effort
not to be boring (he makes fun of "normal" commentaries in one instance
by just pointing out whatever's on the screen at the time: there's the
mom... there's the pitcher...) speaks with very little concern as to
what's actually going on in the movie. Because of this the first hour
is mildly interesting (containing lots of production details and chats
with Nora Z, as well as the production designer and costume designer)
but somewhat difficult to just sit and pay attention to. In the
more interesting moments, Rian Johnson explains some of the
bargain-basement effects used on the film, such as an eye-dazzling
speed-up/slow-down effect on a punch that was done completely
organically.
It gets better in the second hour, starting with the presence of
Noah Segan, bright and charismatic and actually very eager to talk
about character, which is something we haven't heard heard much about
in the beginning of the commentary. When he goes, Ram Bergman, one of
the film's producers comes on (also very charismatic) and talks about
making a movie on 35mm for $450,000 as if it's the least big deal in
the entire world. He's very pragmatic, and very likeable.
The commentary ends with Segan doing a howlingly hilarious and
credits-long impression of Bergman ordering food in a restaurant. It's
worth it just for that. If anything, start up the commentary and skip to
the credits.
Do I have other beefs with it? Oh yeah, I do. Just one. The
subtitles appear over the picture, and with a frustratingly generous
line-height. Which means they're useful for figuring out a mumbled or
misunderstood line, but not good for what I usually use them for, which
is casual and constant use. That's a bit of an annoyance.
Is it worth it to own the DVD? Yeah. This is a movie I'm going to be
watching again and again. I'm going to be showing it to people for
years to come. In fact, I'm getting pretty psyched about showing it to
my parents in a couple of weeks when I head down there. But the special
features, I'm unlikely ever to watch again.
In brief: movie - YES. Features - meh. Skip 'em without feeling guilty. But cue up the commentary over the credits for a laugh.
Yep, I got a Vox for some unknown reason. At the moment I'm thinking
mostly of using it for film and book reviews. I'll probably start by
posting about 9 Songs and maybe some of the pilots I've been lucky enough to procure. But for now, let me just continue tweaking!
