I don't get HBO.
The first season was awesome.
I watched the second season on DVD from netflix.
It was pretty awesome. The songs were good. Those guys are funny.
something out of something.
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Friday, March 27, 2009
Self Assessment
In life, sometimes a person must expose himself to the harsh light of a critic's eye. I am no exception. Today, I am reviewing my own abilities as a blogger and a critic.
The challenge of a new hobby is sticking to it. All too often, a person will find a new avocation, embrace it for a while, and then let it wither on the vine. I only know 5 songs for the guitar and one of them is "Frere Jacques." I bought an old bicycle as a winter fix-up project. I worked on it twice and it is in worse shape now than when I bought it. I embarked on a blogging project and haven't posted since September 10, 2008.
I think the William Shatner post will go down in history as one of the greatest musical reviews in the history of the galaxy, possibly the universe. Not only did I talk about the music, I worked in a reference to TJ Hooker. Well I maybe skipped TJ Hooker, but the review was solid.
Sometimes, I'm prone to overstatement (see Beast with a Billion Backs, Gladiators of America). Too often, I start sentences with prepositional phrases. I do not always write in the active voice. I can never remember when to use "lay" versus "lie." I show flashes of brilliance then lay fallow for months. But at the end of the day, I offer a fair defense of my critiques and the reader walks away knowing why I think the way I think. And in the end, isn't that what a critic should do?
Jukebox the Critic: Three and a Half out of Five skulls
The "meta-ness" of this post: Five out of Five skulls
The challenge of a new hobby is sticking to it. All too often, a person will find a new avocation, embrace it for a while, and then let it wither on the vine. I only know 5 songs for the guitar and one of them is "Frere Jacques." I bought an old bicycle as a winter fix-up project. I worked on it twice and it is in worse shape now than when I bought it. I embarked on a blogging project and haven't posted since September 10, 2008.
I think the William Shatner post will go down in history as one of the greatest musical reviews in the history of the galaxy, possibly the universe. Not only did I talk about the music, I worked in a reference to TJ Hooker. Well I maybe skipped TJ Hooker, but the review was solid.
Sometimes, I'm prone to overstatement (see Beast with a Billion Backs, Gladiators of America). Too often, I start sentences with prepositional phrases. I do not always write in the active voice. I can never remember when to use "lay" versus "lie." I show flashes of brilliance then lay fallow for months. But at the end of the day, I offer a fair defense of my critiques and the reader walks away knowing why I think the way I think. And in the end, isn't that what a critic should do?
Jukebox the Critic: Three and a Half out of Five skulls
The "meta-ness" of this post: Five out of Five skulls
Monday, November 3, 2008
Not Meerly Fuddy
Just days ago, I asked for suggestions on what I should review next. I will get to those comments with a later post, but for now, it's back to my quest to review every production put on here at SMSU. Our theater (or theatre) department just put on David Lindsey-Abairre's Fuddy Meers. It was directed by Nadine Purvis-Schmidt.
It was good. It was quite funny and, at times, touching. For those of you readers who are unfamiliar with the show, the plot breaks down like this: Claire has amnesia. During the course of a day, she can learn all sorts of things and she'll remember it all until she goes to sleep. At that point it all slips away. She is whisked off to her mother's house by a limping man one morning. As the play progresses, we see her learn the true identities of everyone around her including her husband, son, mother, ex-husband, and a few others. The play follows the basic plot structure of a farce. The pace of the action is very fast, but unlike most classic farces, Lindsey-Abairre takes time to stop everything and allow his characters to come to terms with the craziness that surrounds them.
The nice thing about the script is that it is filled with interesting characters. The playwright managed to put lightning in a bottle with Gertie, Claire's mother who had a stroke and now cannot speak properly. She comes across as very real. She was played here at SMSU by Nissa Nordland and she was truly a joy to watch. In my review for A Body of Water, I talked about Nordland's struggle to portray her character's age, but there was no trouble here. She really threw herself into this character. I've seen Nissa in a lot of plays, and this might be the best performance I've ever seen her give. I don't mean to ignore the other actors in the show. Everyone did admirably. I wouldn't say that there was one person who gave a bad performance, but Nissa Nordland was unquestionably the show's MVP.
This play wasn't all sunshine and lollipops, though. It had some problems. There were issues with the sound. Sometimes it came in too loudly, sometimes it didn't come in when it was supposed to, sometimes the scene changes took longer than the sound cue that was supposed to accompany it. Which brings me to my next thing. Modern playwrights are crazy about scene changes. David Lindsey-Abairre is no exception it seems. It just killed me sometimes. I'm watching a really good scene, the pace is great, the audience is feeling it, the play is really picking up speed and momentum and then BAM! There's a blackout for a scene change and I'm sitting in the dark for two minutes. That kind of thing takes me completely out of the moment. That's more of a complaint about the script than anything, and that's where I need to head next.
While this is a good script, I have some real problems with it. Now, I said before that its strength was its characters, and that's true. But not all characters are created equal. There are seven characters in this show, and three of them are saddled with quirks to make up for their lack of substance. I'm speaking of Kenny (Claire's son), Heidi (a cop who isn't all that she seems), and, finally and most blatantly, Millet (an escaped convict with a foul-mouthed hand puppet). Kenny isn't as bad as the others. He has some great stuff at the end of the play, but in the beginning all he does is pout, say angry things and smoke pot. His big quirk is that he's seventeen but he's still in eighth grade (so funny! Oh, wait, no it isn't. It's quirkiness for the sake of being quirky). The thing with Millet is that he is a completely utilitarian character. He exists in the play to bring people into the other room so that private conversations can be held. That's all he does. So his character is made to seem cooler by adding the hand puppet (I will admit, when auditioning, I was taken in by the whole puppet thing. I genuinely wanted to play Millet. I was wrong and I'm very thankful that the director realized that I wasn't right for the role). You want to talk about quirky for quirky's sake? That's it right there. That's almost Seth MacFarlane levels of laziness. Fortunately, Lindsey-Abairre is a good enough writer that he can work around his own laziness and the actors in the production that I saw were all good enough that the play wasn't hampered by it too much. I realize I wrote a lot of words to describe a problem that didn't really bother me until well after I had left the show. Oops.
All in all, Fuddy Meers is a good show. Nadine Purvis-Schmidt directed it well and the entire cast gave solid performances. I had a few bones to pick with the script, but a good cast and a good crew with a good director (like we had here) can mostly overcome those complaints. Fun stuff.
Fuddy Meers: 3.5 out of 5 skulls
This Post: 2 out of 5 skulls
P.S. For those of you who did not see the show and are wondering why it is called Fuddy Meers:
As Gertie, the stroke victim, tries to jog Claire, the amnesiac's, memory, she talks about going to a funhouse and looking at the mirrors. The mirrors were funny. Funny mirrors with Gertie's particular speech impediment sound like fuddy meers.
It was good. It was quite funny and, at times, touching. For those of you readers who are unfamiliar with the show, the plot breaks down like this: Claire has amnesia. During the course of a day, she can learn all sorts of things and she'll remember it all until she goes to sleep. At that point it all slips away. She is whisked off to her mother's house by a limping man one morning. As the play progresses, we see her learn the true identities of everyone around her including her husband, son, mother, ex-husband, and a few others. The play follows the basic plot structure of a farce. The pace of the action is very fast, but unlike most classic farces, Lindsey-Abairre takes time to stop everything and allow his characters to come to terms with the craziness that surrounds them.
The nice thing about the script is that it is filled with interesting characters. The playwright managed to put lightning in a bottle with Gertie, Claire's mother who had a stroke and now cannot speak properly. She comes across as very real. She was played here at SMSU by Nissa Nordland and she was truly a joy to watch. In my review for A Body of Water, I talked about Nordland's struggle to portray her character's age, but there was no trouble here. She really threw herself into this character. I've seen Nissa in a lot of plays, and this might be the best performance I've ever seen her give. I don't mean to ignore the other actors in the show. Everyone did admirably. I wouldn't say that there was one person who gave a bad performance, but Nissa Nordland was unquestionably the show's MVP.
This play wasn't all sunshine and lollipops, though. It had some problems. There were issues with the sound. Sometimes it came in too loudly, sometimes it didn't come in when it was supposed to, sometimes the scene changes took longer than the sound cue that was supposed to accompany it. Which brings me to my next thing. Modern playwrights are crazy about scene changes. David Lindsey-Abairre is no exception it seems. It just killed me sometimes. I'm watching a really good scene, the pace is great, the audience is feeling it, the play is really picking up speed and momentum and then BAM! There's a blackout for a scene change and I'm sitting in the dark for two minutes. That kind of thing takes me completely out of the moment. That's more of a complaint about the script than anything, and that's where I need to head next.
While this is a good script, I have some real problems with it. Now, I said before that its strength was its characters, and that's true. But not all characters are created equal. There are seven characters in this show, and three of them are saddled with quirks to make up for their lack of substance. I'm speaking of Kenny (Claire's son), Heidi (a cop who isn't all that she seems), and, finally and most blatantly, Millet (an escaped convict with a foul-mouthed hand puppet). Kenny isn't as bad as the others. He has some great stuff at the end of the play, but in the beginning all he does is pout, say angry things and smoke pot. His big quirk is that he's seventeen but he's still in eighth grade (so funny! Oh, wait, no it isn't. It's quirkiness for the sake of being quirky). The thing with Millet is that he is a completely utilitarian character. He exists in the play to bring people into the other room so that private conversations can be held. That's all he does. So his character is made to seem cooler by adding the hand puppet (I will admit, when auditioning, I was taken in by the whole puppet thing. I genuinely wanted to play Millet. I was wrong and I'm very thankful that the director realized that I wasn't right for the role). You want to talk about quirky for quirky's sake? That's it right there. That's almost Seth MacFarlane levels of laziness. Fortunately, Lindsey-Abairre is a good enough writer that he can work around his own laziness and the actors in the production that I saw were all good enough that the play wasn't hampered by it too much. I realize I wrote a lot of words to describe a problem that didn't really bother me until well after I had left the show. Oops.
All in all, Fuddy Meers is a good show. Nadine Purvis-Schmidt directed it well and the entire cast gave solid performances. I had a few bones to pick with the script, but a good cast and a good crew with a good director (like we had here) can mostly overcome those complaints. Fun stuff.
Fuddy Meers: 3.5 out of 5 skulls
This Post: 2 out of 5 skulls
P.S. For those of you who did not see the show and are wondering why it is called Fuddy Meers:
As Gertie, the stroke victim, tries to jog Claire, the amnesiac's, memory, she talks about going to a funhouse and looking at the mirrors. The mirrors were funny. Funny mirrors with Gertie's particular speech impediment sound like fuddy meers.
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
The Limits of My Own Creativity
Well, interwebizens, it finally happened. I hit a wall.
You may have noticed I haven't posted many reviews these last few weeks, outside of performances here at Southwest, that is. Well, the reason is this:
I can't think of anything that screams out at me for a rating. I know, I know, it's pathetic. Here I am running a web-log dedicated to reviewing everything, and I can't think of anything to review. In my defense, I have been busy with school work and with writing some scripts here and there, but that isn't a very good excuse for letting down my six or seven faithful readers. At least my esteemed brother and colleague, the Jukebox Gyro has a legitimate, fantasticly awesome reason for his lack of content on this site. I've just been dropping the ball.
Which brings me to the reason for this post. I don't know what to write about-but you may have some things you want to read about. So I put it to you, interwebizens, what should I review next? We have a comment section. I suggest you use it.
This Post: 2 out of 5 skulls
You may have noticed I haven't posted many reviews these last few weeks, outside of performances here at Southwest, that is. Well, the reason is this:
I can't think of anything that screams out at me for a rating. I know, I know, it's pathetic. Here I am running a web-log dedicated to reviewing everything, and I can't think of anything to review. In my defense, I have been busy with school work and with writing some scripts here and there, but that isn't a very good excuse for letting down my six or seven faithful readers. At least my esteemed brother and colleague, the Jukebox Gyro has a legitimate, fantasticly awesome reason for his lack of content on this site. I've just been dropping the ball.
Which brings me to the reason for this post. I don't know what to write about-but you may have some things you want to read about. So I put it to you, interwebizens, what should I review next? We have a comment section. I suggest you use it.
This Post: 2 out of 5 skulls
Monday, October 6, 2008
Liquid Assets
As I said in my last post, I plan on reviewing every production put on here at SMSU this season. This past weekend, the drama club put on a production of Lee Blessing's A Body of Water. It is a relatively new play and was helmed by first-time director Nick Collins.
I must say that I enjoyed the play. The script was pretty tight, and Collins got some good performances out of his actors. This is not to say that the production was flawless. It wasn't. The night that I saw it, the curtains were not secured to the side walls of the Black Box, leading to a great number of distracting shadows. I found my eyes being drawn away from the action on stage to these shadows more often than not which is a shame, because it took me out of few genuinely touching moments. The only other complaint that I had on the technical side came at the beginnings of each of the play's five scenes. The sound design featured some very interesting guitar music, but instead of the music fading to lead the audience into the next scene, it cut out abruptly. Now, I know that that's a really minor gripe, but it was really jarring.
As far as what was going on on-stage, I don't have too many complaints. As I said earlier, Collins got some very good performances out of his cast. However, there were some problems. The biggest issue for me was that I never got the sense that the show's main characters, Moss and Avis played by Eric Niece and Nissa Nordland respectively, were old. I knew that they were supposed to be old, but I never got a sense of their ages from the performances of the actors. There was also a little hiccup in the first scene where they were trying to push the humor a little too hard, but they soon got into a groove and created some really fantastic moments. This all brings me to the third member of the cast, Amy Gielser. Without her, this play would have suffered greatly. No performance is ever perfect, and hers was no exception, but it felt to me that Giesler gave Nordland and Niece exactly what they needed to really make the show crackle. Individually, all three of these actors are good at what they do, but their chemistry together really elevated their performances a notch. That being said, they could have used some more movement. Collins' blocking provided a lot of good pictures, but sometimes it all felt a bit static.
All in all, I was very happy with this show. I know that the rehearsal period didn't exactly run smoothly, but the finished product was entertaining and, at times, very powerful. I think that everyone involved should be proud of what they were able to accomplish.
A Body of Water: 3.5 out of 5 skulls
This Post: 2.5 out of 5 skulls
I must say that I enjoyed the play. The script was pretty tight, and Collins got some good performances out of his actors. This is not to say that the production was flawless. It wasn't. The night that I saw it, the curtains were not secured to the side walls of the Black Box, leading to a great number of distracting shadows. I found my eyes being drawn away from the action on stage to these shadows more often than not which is a shame, because it took me out of few genuinely touching moments. The only other complaint that I had on the technical side came at the beginnings of each of the play's five scenes. The sound design featured some very interesting guitar music, but instead of the music fading to lead the audience into the next scene, it cut out abruptly. Now, I know that that's a really minor gripe, but it was really jarring.
As far as what was going on on-stage, I don't have too many complaints. As I said earlier, Collins got some very good performances out of his cast. However, there were some problems. The biggest issue for me was that I never got the sense that the show's main characters, Moss and Avis played by Eric Niece and Nissa Nordland respectively, were old. I knew that they were supposed to be old, but I never got a sense of their ages from the performances of the actors. There was also a little hiccup in the first scene where they were trying to push the humor a little too hard, but they soon got into a groove and created some really fantastic moments. This all brings me to the third member of the cast, Amy Gielser. Without her, this play would have suffered greatly. No performance is ever perfect, and hers was no exception, but it felt to me that Giesler gave Nordland and Niece exactly what they needed to really make the show crackle. Individually, all three of these actors are good at what they do, but their chemistry together really elevated their performances a notch. That being said, they could have used some more movement. Collins' blocking provided a lot of good pictures, but sometimes it all felt a bit static.
All in all, I was very happy with this show. I know that the rehearsal period didn't exactly run smoothly, but the finished product was entertaining and, at times, very powerful. I think that everyone involved should be proud of what they were able to accomplish.
A Body of Water: 3.5 out of 5 skulls
This Post: 2.5 out of 5 skulls
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
Coming Home to Improv
While I like to use this web-log to spread around my opinions of various things from the world of pop-culture and so forth, I also wanted a place I could go to write up honest, unflinching appraisals of the work that I and my colleagues here at Southwest Minnesota State University put on stage. So far, I have reviewed our Orientation Sketch Show, and soon I will be posting reviews of both the Drama Club production of Lee Blessings' Body of Water, and David Lindsay-Abaire's Fuddy Meers. But before all that, we had our annual Homecoming improv show.
All in all, it went pretty well. We had a great audience that gave us some fantastic suggestions, and most of our improvised situations got laughs. Some of the sketches went long and felt forced, especially "Newscasters," "Sounds Like a Song Cue," and "Complaint Department." That being said, "Party Quirks," "Revolving Door," and "Gibberish Murder Mystery" went absolutely swimmingly. I realize that most people reading this who weren't at the show probably have no idea what those titles mean, but if you were there, you probably agree with me.
I gotta say, I'm looking forward to our next improv show. With more experience together, we'll probably be able to establish better chemistry and our greener troupe members will have a better idea about what games play to their strengths. This Homecoming show wasn't perfect, but I think it was a good start.
Take 2 Improv's Homecoming Show: 3 out of 5 skulls
This Post: 2.5 out of 5 skulls
All in all, it went pretty well. We had a great audience that gave us some fantastic suggestions, and most of our improvised situations got laughs. Some of the sketches went long and felt forced, especially "Newscasters," "Sounds Like a Song Cue," and "Complaint Department." That being said, "Party Quirks," "Revolving Door," and "Gibberish Murder Mystery" went absolutely swimmingly. I realize that most people reading this who weren't at the show probably have no idea what those titles mean, but if you were there, you probably agree with me.
I gotta say, I'm looking forward to our next improv show. With more experience together, we'll probably be able to establish better chemistry and our greener troupe members will have a better idea about what games play to their strengths. This Homecoming show wasn't perfect, but I think it was a good start.
Take 2 Improv's Homecoming Show: 3 out of 5 skulls
This Post: 2.5 out of 5 skulls
Friday, September 19, 2008
See, It's a Western, Right? But in Outer Space!
Joss Whedon's best known work can often be distilled into so-called blank meets blank statements. Buffy the Vampire Slayer was Valley Girl meets Dracula. Dr. Horrible's Sing-along Blog was comic book villain meets musical theater. Which brings us to the red-headed stepchild of his oeuvre: Firefly/Serenity. Firefly can be most easily described as Stagecoach meets Star Trek (an interesting combination as Gene Roddenberry famously described Star Trek as a Wagon Train to the stars). Now, it may be unfair to call Firefly a red-headed stepchild. It was beloved by most critics and has a very devoted fan base. The fact of the matter is, though, that the show failed to stay on the air, making it tragically unique among Whedon's other famous projects.
But this web-log isn't about history, it's about rating things. How, then, does Firefly stand up to my scrutiny? It stands up pretty well, I gotta say. Its concept borrows a bit from the Japanese show Cowboy Bebop (a personal favorite) in that it features a ragtag crew of people with their own histories and demons trying to make a buck in the cold depths of space by means both legal and not so legal. The characters are well thought out and well acted, the visuals are mostly good (the special effects are a little cartoony), and the show keeps the pace up without wearing the audience out. If I had my way, it never would have been canceled. I would put it right beside shows like Freaks and Geeks and Undeclared and Sports Night and Arrested Development and Futurama in the ever increasing file of shows that were cut short before their time. Seriously, it's that good.
Where the whole thing falls apart is with the movie. Serenity kind of blows. I don't mean that it blows in the same sense that, say, Bloodrayne blows. Its flaws come from Whedon trying to do too much. The TV show introduced mysteries about several characters (Summer Glau's River Tam especially) and the movie focuses all its might on explaining away almost all of them. The reason it doesn't work is that it creates too much need for exposition. All the crap that needs explaining would have been nicely stretched out over the course of a season, but here, it gets crammed into a movie that isn't even two hours long. To say the film suffers from it is an understatement. The performances by the actors were a little rough, also. They weren't terrible, but they could have been a lot better.
All in all, I'd say it would be a good idea to give the show a chance, but avoid the movie unless you really, really can't get enough of this universe.
Firefly: 4 out of 5 skulls
Serenity: 2 out of 5 skulls
This Post: 3.5 out of 5 skulls
But this web-log isn't about history, it's about rating things. How, then, does Firefly stand up to my scrutiny? It stands up pretty well, I gotta say. Its concept borrows a bit from the Japanese show Cowboy Bebop (a personal favorite) in that it features a ragtag crew of people with their own histories and demons trying to make a buck in the cold depths of space by means both legal and not so legal. The characters are well thought out and well acted, the visuals are mostly good (the special effects are a little cartoony), and the show keeps the pace up without wearing the audience out. If I had my way, it never would have been canceled. I would put it right beside shows like Freaks and Geeks and Undeclared and Sports Night and Arrested Development and Futurama in the ever increasing file of shows that were cut short before their time. Seriously, it's that good.
Where the whole thing falls apart is with the movie. Serenity kind of blows. I don't mean that it blows in the same sense that, say, Bloodrayne blows. Its flaws come from Whedon trying to do too much. The TV show introduced mysteries about several characters (Summer Glau's River Tam especially) and the movie focuses all its might on explaining away almost all of them. The reason it doesn't work is that it creates too much need for exposition. All the crap that needs explaining would have been nicely stretched out over the course of a season, but here, it gets crammed into a movie that isn't even two hours long. To say the film suffers from it is an understatement. The performances by the actors were a little rough, also. They weren't terrible, but they could have been a lot better.
All in all, I'd say it would be a good idea to give the show a chance, but avoid the movie unless you really, really can't get enough of this universe.
Firefly: 4 out of 5 skulls
Serenity: 2 out of 5 skulls
This Post: 3.5 out of 5 skulls
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