Archive | September, 2009
Cougar Town – Advance TV Review
23 Sep
The thing about “Cougar Town” that makes it fun is that it goes for it. After seeing producer Bill Lawrence pushing it tirelessly at TCA back in July gives it a vision of just bombastic raucousness. Granted you have to look at it from a tongue-in-cheek point of view but if you can get past that, you are in for gold. Courteney Cox doesn’t do anything half ass. Ever since “Dirt”, I give her props because she takes chances. Maybe it is because she has stability at home. Watching her out of the gate here, she has an energy that seems to be growing with age because she has no fear in front of the camera. You don’t tend to judge her on it because it works. As she grows older, her comedy has that great sexy cynicism mixed with what made her stand out on “Friends”.
The thing that the pilot does is paint everyone in her little playground as just a rider on the merry go round, wine and all. Her kid is great because he plays it just right so you know that he is not taking it too seriously. The ex is a complete dunce who knows what a cad he is. Her next door neighbor and best friend cheers her on while her younger assistant fans the flame in always an interesting albeit often wrong way. The reasons this is funny are all wrong and that is why it works for me. Cox’s star power might be just enough to push it through. While I was not a fan of “Scrubs” since it never caught me, that same humor here from the female point of view rocks out in a different way. Bill mentioned that half of the writers in the story room are women. If they can write these jokes and keep them coming with fire, this should be fun. It might be too much for the current audience but saucy it is without getting too dirty. But being messy is fun.
Earth – Blu Ray Review
23 Sep
“Earth” on Blu Ray takes the greatest essences of “Planet Earth” and spins them with the aspects of a narrative. Now while James Earl Jones’ voice now soars in reflection of Sigourney Weaver, the impact is the same in the plethora of images. Now while this can be considered a “Greatest Hits” compilation of the series in certain respects, the music accompaniment by George Fenton does add much to the cinematic superlative. The story of the polar bears in dichotomy with the humpback whales making their trek across the globe speaks to a consistent aspect in the animal kingdom of family which is what this film celebrates. While perhaps not as in depth as the aforementioned series, its throughline which is also enhanced by a tale of a small elephant and his mother makes it very relatable to a younger audience, The HD brilliance of the images is obviously made for this format and goes over very well. A specific slow motion scene of a cheetah chasing down an antelope is ultra vivid as you see the prey screaming silently. The paradox to this is that the scene from the series in Africa with a giant crocodile almost eating a wildebeast would be too much within the context of this film despite the fact that this one of the most intense images of the series.
This packaging brings to mind the educational pieces that Disney used to do when Walt was alive and gives a good tip of the hat to those thoughts. The filmmaker annotations within the movie mirror the “Earth Diaries” short documentary with the latter being the more intrinsic. You see the cameramen waiting in the cold to shoot the polar bears who come around to their hut when they smell food. The jumping of the great white shark is so quick that only the camera could see it. When there is another great jump, the irony is that the camera is still downloading the 1000 frame per second shot still into the computer on the boat so one of the opportunities is actually missed. It shows the nature of how a film like this is made. There is a brief sense of how much man power went into making this film. It is a lot of work. At times it can be quite hard to fathom what it took but a lot of time and money were keyed in. At the end game, it does create a unbelievable vision. Disneynature’s “Earth” on Blu Ray is bare bones but the images speak for themselves. Out of 5, I give it a 3 1/2.
