The Frame

American Idol 6×08 – Extra Auditions

On February 7, 2007

2/11/07 – added photos for the contestants going on to Hollywood

8:03 – Christa – So, if she felt happy any other random day, she would just wear that to, say, work or something? Paula? Yes? What? *shakes head*

8:05 – Tami – Not bad. There’s something there, but it’s not terribly appealing to me. Appealing to Simon, apparently.

8:12 – Paul – Very pretty voice. Interesting tone.

8:14 – Jack – Um. Less pretty. And he’s trying so hard! :p

8:17 – Gina – Hmm…not the best song choice, I wouldn’t say, but I do think she’s got something.

8:24 – Edward – Well, auditioning for American Idol would be as good a way as any, I guess, to meet Paula Abdul. Embarrassing, but effective. As long as you made it through the earlier auditions. Which…yeah. Don’t know how some people do that.

8:28 – Heather/Ashley/Ebony – Help, the mediocre is attacking! Because actually, the first two girls aren’t bad, but not great. The third one, Ebony, is really, really good. Amazing. And yeah, Ashley was borderline. She was a bit pitchy near the top, but a second chance isn’t out of order. Ebony was one of the best I’ve heard so far, actually…why didn’t they show her on the actual audition show for the city? Mystery.

8:35 – Aha, the songwriting competition is announced. That’s going to be interesting. It could be good (I mean, last year’s singles were pretty bad), but it could also be scarily horrible.

8:36 – Brandon – Hee, he’s actually not bad at that! He should try out for So You Think You Can Dance.

8:38 – William – Ooh, an original song. Too bad it’s crap. People need to learn from Australian Idol, where the singer-songwriters last year were actually GOOD.

8:41 – Alexander – Hee. Paula: “I don’t remember doing it quite like that…” Okay, this guy is just confusing me.

8:50 – Lakisha – Nicely done. Very nicely done. Simon confuses me, though. He uses “old-fashioned” to mean both something he likes and something he doesn’t. He needs to define his terms more clearly, is all I’m saying.

8:53 – I like the Coke commercials. My favorite, though, is the Grand Theft Auto one…you know, where you think the guy is going to steal stuff and beat everyone up, but he ends up doing good deeds for everyone? It’s great. If all commercials were creative like that, people wouldn’t hate them so much and want to fast-forward on their DVR.

8:57 – Ah, Hollywood Week. 172 people. I was concerned there weren’t going to be that many. Dude, there are good people on there that are saying they blew their chances! Wasn’t that Antonella? And Amanda who was ripping on someone (possibly Antonella)? Hmmmm… And both the Malakar twins are crying… Geez. It’s going to be brutal, apparently. Oh, yeah. Anyone ready to make Top 24 predictions yet? I’ll try to come up with some over the weekend. Right alongside trying to figure out a topic for a European Romanticism paper. Any ideas on that front? ;)

Grey’s Anatomy marathon

By Jandy

On February 4, 2007

In Television

Okay, Grey’s Anatomy has hit my top-five most addictive shows ever. I finished S2 on DVD last week, and started watching the S3 eps I’ve been taping all year on Friday. Now I’m caught up. That’s basically fourteen episodes in three days. I COULD NOT TURN IT OFF. And now I’m caught up, and I CANNOT WAIT UNTIL THURSDAY. I love TV marathons. :) And I can finally talk about Grey’s now that I’m caught up, which is very exciting to me. I know some of y’all watch it. So come on, talk to me. I will use bullet points.

Meredith – I like Meredith. I don’t love Meredith. I think I’ve picked up from various fandom areas that she’s not a terribly popular character, but then, a lot of main characters aren’t for some reason (e.g., Buffy Summers was rarely people’s favorite Buffy character). She shouldn’t have given Finn the boot, though. On the other hand, if she doesn’t want him, I’ll take him. I do really like the name Meredith, though, for some reason.
Derek – Meh. He’s sort of an arrogant jerk. At least he seems somewhat less of an arrogant jerk since Mark showed up, by pure virtue of comparison. But I’m not a huge fan of Derek’s. He’s not even really THAT hot. I mean, he’s a’ight.
Cristina – Cristina rocks. She’s so very direct, and while I don’t always particularly like that in real people, I love it in TV characters. So while I don’t LOVE Cristina, I love her interactions with everyone else.
Izzie – Now, I LOVE Izzie. She’s probably my favorite character. When Denny died, I cried for like half an hour. She’s like Willow…when she cries, the world falls apart. Except in the scene where she deposits the check. That was pretty fake.
George – I love George. I can’t imagine not loving George. He’s just so…George.
Addison – I also love Addison. Honestly, I like Meredith, as I have said, but I can’t really imagine choosing Meredith over Addison. But then, Derek and I are clearly not on the same wavelength, so. On the other hand, I want to hit her right now, because she’s apparently still dabbling with Mark. But, see, if I didn’t care about her so much, I wouldn’t care so much about her continuing to engage in self-destructive behavior, now would I?
Mark – Grr. He’s probably the best-looking person on the show, I’ll definitely grant you that. McSteamy indeed. But he’s a TOTAL JERK. I really, intensely dislike him. But I think I’m supposed to. Yep, I’m definitely playing right into the showrunner’s hands. Oh, well.
Burke – Like, not love.
Alex – Eh, I go back and forth. Sometimes he’s a jerk, but sometimes he’s surprisingly nice. I definitely don’t want any of my girls hooking up with him anymore, though. Not Izzie, not Addison (!), not anyone.
Bailey – LOVE Bailey. She’s the awesomest Nazi ever. (Um, if you don’t watch the show, I don’t mean she’s an actual Nazi–that’s her nickname, because she’s strict. But she’s also amazingly empathetic at times.)
Callie – I don’t really know her well enough yet to say. I sort of like her, but I’m not particularly happy about her being with George. And now she’s REALLY with George. Yeah. Anyway. I think the thing that really bothers me about her is the way she was introduced…like, we never saw her in the first season and a half, and then all of a sudden they need an ortho surgeon all the time? Just a little convenient.

What am I gonna do until Thursday when I get more doctor!crack? Oh, right. Study. Darn.

The Films that Need Critics

By Jandy

On February 1, 2007

In Film

I mentioned this several months ago, following…I think , but here is another reminder from the Guardian. The films that get the most coverage by critics are the big Hollywood blockbusters, which would get coverage ANYWAY because of the studio publicity machines. I mean, nobody really needs critics to tell them that Spider-Man 3 is coming out this summer, right? And is a review really going to influence your decision to see it, whether the review is positive or negative? For some fence-sitters, yeah, maybe, but most everyone already knows whether or not they’re the sort of person that’s going to like the third installment of a superhero franchise. Critics would be put to better use highlighting smaller films that might otherwise be missed in the mainstream rush. Not that I’m saying this would make an overnight difference in the audience split between mainstream and indie/foreign film, but even increasing awareness for alternative films would be a help. Plus, wouldn’t it make the critics a lot happier to get to lead with films they actually like and want to see do well than yet another big Hollywood blockbuster? (I’m not against Hollywood blockbusters, but I do get bored with their ubiquity.)

One of the commenters on the Guardian piece does bring up an interesting point, though, that critics get SO excited about the little films sometimes (because they’re different or innovative in a way that Hollywood usually isn’t) that they overhype them too much and thus audiences who do seek out these films are disappointed. I’ve been there, too. It’s a balancing act.

Tom Hanks is Bond. James Bond.

By Jandy

On January 31, 2007

In Film

Dude, this is an awesome trailer mash-up. The voice-over’s a bit weak, and you kind of have to pretend that Tom Hanks looks the same age in all the clips, but wow. Of course, the idea of Hanks being Bond scared me for a second…

I couldn’t catch all the clips, because most of them are from older Hanks films that I haven’t seen, but it has twenty different films represented. TWENTY. That’s an enormous amount of work. Hat tip Trailer Mash.

Awards and Pan’s Labyrinth and Children of Men

By Jandy

On January 30, 2007

In Film

Jeffrey M. Anderson on the Golden Globes. Among other things.

This is an old post (twelve days is really old in blog-world), but I had it marked in my feedreader to mention and I’m just getting around to going through some of those. I mentioned in my brief, ranty Golden Globes post that I was surprised by Babel‘s win. Anderson wasn’t, particularly, because as he accurately identifies, it’s an award darling. It’s calculated for awards, in a way that, say, Pan’s Labyrinth is not. Now, I still haven’t seen Babel, so I’ll let Anderson speak to the specifics, but you can see the difference in the trailers. Babel is Important with a capital “I,” while Pan’s Labyrinth is ethereal and mysterious. Anyway, the point is, as Anderson indicates, it’s become distressingly easy to bait the awards, and the same thing happens at the Oscars, except usually more so.

The Oscar nominations for Best Picture are Babel, The Departed, Letters from Iwo Jima (which I also haven’t seen, but at least it isn’t nominated in the Foreign Language category this time–another thing Anderson rants about the Globes, just as I did), Little Miss Sunshine, and The Queen. Of the three I’ve seen, I’d pick The Departed, though the other two are good as well. But Babel has A Message, so it may very likely win. However, I’d put both Children of Men (although I wasn’t as enamored of it as some) and Pan’s Labyrinth above all of them, and Volver above many. The fact that Volver wasn’t even nominated in the foreign category stymies me. Pan’s Labyrinth better win it.

Because honestly, Pan’s Labyrinth was one of the most beautiful, most moving, most gorgeous, most heartbreaking, most everything films I’ve seen in a long time. It takes place during the Spanish Civil War (also the setting of director Del Toro’s excellent The Devil’s Backbone), and in fact, the “realistic” sections dealing with the war take up substantially more screen time than the “fantastic” parts, despite what the trailer might lead you to believe. The main character, Ofelia, moves with her mother to a military outpost when her mother marries a captain there (her father is long dead); her mother is very pregnant. The captain is a brutish man, only interested in having a son to carry on his name, and focused on routing the rebels up in the hills above the camp. Hating him, Ofelia’s only escape is into a fairy world, where she may be a long-lost princess–if only she can carry out the three tasks that the faun Pan gives her. But the fairy world isn’t a safe retreat; it’s just as dangerous and scary as the real world. But it’s a world where she has a place, where she has a role and a purpose–unlike the real world, where her step-father would just as soon she disappear entirely. Is there a message? Well, yes. The importance of self-sacrifice and doing the right thing, even when it’s dangerous. But the message is woven into the action of the story; you have to tease out the meaning yourself, as you sit in the theatre and quietly cry while the credits roll. Or maybe that was just me.

The thing is, award-winning films hit you over the head with their messages. That’s probably why Children of Men didn’t get anywhere in the awards, either, despite being critically acclaimed from nearly all quarters. I’m hard-pressed to come up with a single, pithy message in the film. Love people? Care about them? Do all you can to help them? Fight against despair? Oppose fascist governments? The thing that made Children of Men great for me wasn’t WHAT it said, but the WAY it portrayed the world of the not-very-distant future. The care in the set design. The perfect camera set-ups. It was able to show the complete devastation of a world thrown into terror and confusion because of a plague with an unknown cause that led to worldwide sterility, without ever needing any of the characters to describe what was going on. It’s one of the most perfectly designed films I’ve ever, ever seen. But “perfectly designed” doesn’t hit as hard with the awards people as “Has a Really Obvious and Laudable Message.”

I should really stop ranting about awards. Everything I write about awards turns into a rant. I should just resign myself to the fact that awards are dumb and rarely get it right and just go on about my business of watching good films. So ignore the rant portions of this post and take to heart my advice to see Children of Men and especially Pan’s Labyrinth if you can. Do note both are violent, so don’t take the kids.