Very much in the genre of other popular British comedies, Him & Her draws inspiration from both The Royale Family and Gavin & Stacey.  What makes this unique is the slightly more light-hearted take on the mundane, in contrast the seriousness of the Royale Family, and the seemingly static lives of this couple in contrast to the perpetually mobile Gaving and Stacey.

Steve (Russell Tovey – The History Boys) and Becky (Sarah Solemani) are content with just each other and their flat: they eat, they sleep and they have sex.  The repetitious nature of the early stage of a relationship is captured wonderfully while the list of characters which punctuate their habitat are hackneyed but lively: A BNP-supporting sister[1], a strange and lonely neighbour and awkwardly affectionate parents.  Yet, amidst the slightly chaotic cast of ancillary character, there are moments of genuine tenderness and affection which also avoid sentimentality.  Although Him & Her is not particularly innovative, it is a well-written British comedy.

[1] BNP is an acronym for the British National Party.  I do not want to drive traffic to their website and so will not link to them here but trust me when I say these are bad peoples.

I watched Star Wars (1977) (I refuse to call it “Episode IV: A New Hope”) with my kids recently. It was only the second time they had seen it. They watched the original trilogy years ago, and it was a true joy to see them thrill for the first time, basically knowing nothing about Star Wars. When Darth drops the big twist on Luke at the end of Empire, their reaction was the same as Luke’s (“NOOOOOOOOO!”). My second was adamant; Vader is lying, he can’t be Luke’s father!

When I watched Star Wars again with them recently, it struck me that not only is the Darth-Anakin connection absent in the first movie, but it doesn’t even make much sense. I now feel vindicated.

Think about it:

• Luke’s uncle (Vader’s half-brother) doesn’t want Luke getting messed up in Jedi stuff like his father. Okay, so that kind of works, but why doesn’t anyone give Luke the heads up that Luke’s father not only became a Jedi, but crossed over to the dark side? Seems like that might be important.
• Obi-Wan tells Luke that Vader killed his father. I understand the metaphorical interpretation here, but understanding it as a metaphor also means understanding Obi-Wan to be a liar. I don’t see how you can escape that. And it never did sit well with me.
• But most importantly, consider this: Luke lives with his aunt and (half-)uncle, on Vader’s home planet, under the name Skywalker. Does this make any sense at all if Darth Vader’s real name is Anakin Skywalker? Nope. If Luke was really sent to be raised in some backwater corner of the galaxy, surely it would be with kind strangers and under an assumed name.

And don’t even get me started about the Leia thing.

My 15 year old son asked for and received:

Dr Strangelove
He wanted it because it’s the only comedy Kubrick’s ever done. I’d never seen it, so he was sure to point out to me (many times) that it was the inspiration for both my favorite book (Catch-22) and my favorite TV show (MASH). It is completely bizarre and totally awesome. And has some classic Kubrick direction, of course. Did you know the scene where George C Scott is half-running across the room, ranting about something excitedly, falls down and gets back up in the middle of his sentence and never stops talking was an accident? He never broke character so they left it in.

Monty Python’s The Holy Grail
No, we didn’t already own it. My kids have seen it many times already though.

I also got them:

Harold & Maude
Would you believe I’ve never seen this movie? I don’t know how that’s possible, since when I was a teen, my brothers watched it over and over. I’ve seen bits and pieces but have never watched the whole thing. I think this is the only movie that we got for Christmas we haven’t watched yet. But we will, and soon.

Freaks
I’d never seen this one, either. Made in the early 1930s by a filmmaker who used to work in a circus sideshow, he used real circus sideshow freaks as the cast. There is a bearded lady, midgets, “pinheads,” armless women who eat with their feet, a legless man who walks on his hands, conjoined twins, and even a fellow with no arms OR legs who can light his own cigarette. What’s fascinating about the movie is that the real freaks are the “normal” people who use and abuse the sideshow performers. The movie was banned in different places after being released. Probably the most famous scene from it is the wedding celebration scene:

There’s also an extra feature about the performers in the movie, what is known about their history and such. We started watching it because we were interested, but it goes on and on, and we started joking that it was going to be longer than the actual movie. And it is! But we couldn’t turn it off because we wanted to know about them all. The limbless man was married and had kids; the main midget character was in the Lollipop Guild in the Wizard of Oz. Some of the performers later regretted being in the movie because they thought it portrayed sideshow performers in a bad light.

Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story
When I heard about this movie I HAD to get it. It’s not available officially, you can only find pirated copies of it. It tells the story of Karen Carpenter’s struggle with anorexia nervosa. But it’s told using Barbie dolls. Barbie dolls! The filmmakers didn’t get permission to use the Carpenters’ songs in the movie and were sued by Richard Carpenter, which is why it’s not available in stores anymore.

However, it is available on youtube.

I kept asking my kids why we weren’t making movies like it. My son said it was even freakier than Freaks.

I also got my husband the second season of the Miami Vice TV show, because whenever there’s nothing on TV we’ve been watching season one and we’re almost done with it. We are loving it.

Also picked up because they were cheap at Blockbuster:

Star Trek
Knowing
GI Joe
Ghost Town

The only one we’ve tried to watch so far is GI Joe, and we fell asleep in the middle of it. Action movies are so boring.

And a whole lot less sense. (Spoilers below).

I despair for non BSG fans who stumble upon this.  Without detailed knowledge of the series, this is an incoherent mess.  Even with detailed knowledge of the series and the frame story, it still lacks a plot.  It’s a series of events that happen in a certain order, and that’s about it.  It doesn’t end so much as stop.

I’m not really sure how to make sense of this, really.  With the retcon of Cavil as the big bad, it’s quite clear that the creators had to do some retrofitting to make this story work.  And it does answer many of the burning questions people had:  Who was Caprica Six meeting with on Caprica?  Why was there a Cavil with the resistance group on Caprica?  How did Shelly Godfrey disappear?  Why is Leoben so obsessed with Starbuck?

Also – what was the plan?
Not much it turns, out.  It was Cavil’s plan, and really just one particular Cavil (so much for the “they” in “they have a plan”).  There are implications that each model had their own plans (the number 4′s breeding ranch seems to be soemthing done outside Cavil’s domain, though with his knowledge).  And I’ll spoil it:  Cavil’s plan was to kill every last human, and when the final 5 awoke, to have them grovel at his feet and admit that humans were unworthy of love.

Not much of a plan, and it really only works if you ignore EVERYTHING ELSE THE CYLON FLEET EVER DID during the first two seasons of the show.  This movie gets around that by making it appear that the human fleet’s location was totally unknown to the Cylons, and Father Cavil was running an underground insurgency on the fleet with the few models within the fleet.  However, his stated goal is to utterly kill all the humans so that the final five can resurrect and admit Cavil was right.

Since in the series, there were a dozen or so times the Cylons could have wiped out the entire fleet (the Pegasus crew, you will recall, was suspicious of how the Cylon fleet kept hanging back, just out of range), and the whole attempt to make a human/Cylon hybrid doesn’t fit with this plan at all, this movie actually makes the series less coherent overall, despite the way it answers several small questions.   Some of the smaller details now fit, but the overall picture is even less clear.

Also, be warned:  There’s some gratuitous nudity (including male genitalia but mostly boobies) that will clearly be cut for broadcast.  In fact, you can tell exactly where the cuts will be made, which makes the scenes doubly gratuitous.  They add nothing to the movie other than to say “Look!  We can show boobies on the DVD version!”

*Sigh*

At first glance, it looks like a Godzilla movie with a giant human instead of Godzilla fighting the monsters.

It pretty much is. But it’s a lot more than that, too.

It’s awesome.

Big Man Japan is a guy who grows in size when he gets electrocuted. It’s his job to protect Japan from the big crazy monsters that randomly show up—and they are crazy. The movie is shot like it’s a documentary. What makes it interesting is that everyone hates Big Man Japan. He’s constantly hassled and his life is actually very depressing.

The ending of the movie is totally bizarre. It really makes no sense. It seems like the production ran out of money and they suddenly had to change it all. It’ll really leave you scratching your head—which I love. I’ve also heard that there is a lot of symbolism going on that references current events in Japan, so maybe it makes more sense if you’re Japanese. (The big red monster is supposed to be China, the family of superheroes, America.)

It’s out on DVD with English subtitles, no dubbed version. It’s rated PG-13, and I’d caution against showing it to younger kids. Let’s just say there’s a monster that is very phallic and amorous, to boot. It’d probably go right by most kids, but still.

Here’s a fight scene from the movie:

Miss: Dunkin Donuts’ French Cruller, 2.0. A few years ago, the french cruller at DD was my favorite donut, edging out even the fresh-baked Krispy Kreme glazed. Then Dunkin’ took the donut off the shelf as part of an effort to expel all trans fats from the menu. When finally the donut showed up again, I was excited, then deeply, sorely disappointed. The new version is disgusting. I’m not sure what they used to replace those delicious trans fats, but I suspect it might be some sort of fossil fuel. I’ve tried to eat it twice (from two different DD locations), and haven’t even been willing or able to finish it—something that is completely new to me when it comes to donuts.

Hit: Glee (Fox). The pilot to this new serial dramedy debuted on Fox (and online via Hulu and on-demand) last spring, though the series itself will launch in the fall. It’s a self-aware and hugely entertaining show about a high school teacher trying to reclaim the glory of his alma mater’s show choir. It’s got a great cast and is chock full of cheesy ’80s anthems. What’s not to like? What remains unclear is whether the show can maintain its momentum as a weekly serial. It could be a challenge, but I’m willing to watch it try.

Miss: The 2009 pennies. In commemoration of Lincoln’s 200th birthday, you may have noticed some new one-cent coins in circulation. The front is the same, but in place of the Lincoln memorial on the back are a couple of scenes from Lincoln’s life. The first (and most hideous) shows Lincoln taking a break from splitting rails and sitting on a log reading a book. By his side is a sledgehammer that doubles as a carnival prop, and Lincoln doesn’t yet have the beard, but he does sport a bitchin’ blow-dried hairdo. The second shows a log cabin (presumably an artists rendition of Lincoln’s birthplace). Neither seems right to me, particularly because Lincoln himself was never fond of the “rail splitter” nickname or the born-in-a-log-cabin, though he tolerated them during elections. Plus, something about the pictures just seems off, like a gag gift or an arcade token. (As an aside, how is it the government is still making pennies? Is it even conceivable that it costs less than $0.01 to produce our lowest monetary denomination?) UPDATE: Some Googling reveals that there are four new penny designs, not just the two I mention in this post (and that I’ve actually seen in circulation). One of them (professional life in Illinois) I’m somewhat indifferent about, and the other three I think are awful.

The subtext—and, in some cases, the text—of these reports is that there may be a backlash coming if her fans feel they’ve been snookered. I’d like to go on the record now that if it turns out Susan Boyle knew what she was doing all along, my admiration for her will increase exponentially: she goes from being a dowdy-looking English Scottish** villager with a good singing voice to a dowdy-looking English Scottish villager with a good singing voice and an amazing ability to exploit pop-culture media expectations. The latter is much more interesting and, yes, even admirable.

Go back and watch that clip again and see Simon Cowell’s reaction. If you look into his cold, dark eyes, you can see him figuring it out. There are very few people more media savvy than Simon, and he knows something’s up. That doesn’t stop him, of course, from giving Boyle a standing ovation—maybe that’s why he gave her one.

**Edited to account for my typical American ignorance of British sensitivities.

I’m a huge sucker for melancholy music, and they definitely have a melancholy vibe, but it’s not an overwhelming melancholy. Their music has something to it that makes it joyful at the same time that it sounds like your world might be caving in. The singer has this fantastic quality to his voice. A vulnerability. It’s the same kind of baring-my-soul quality that Husker Du (one of the greatest bands ever) had at times.

The show was at Spaceland, a small bar/club in Silverlake, a sort of trendy neighborhood in Los Angeles. Not trendy as in Madonna’s gonna live there. Trendy as in poor twenty-somethings who like to go to clubs are gonna live there. (It’s where Silversun Pickups are from.) I like Spaceland because it’s a good size (which means, small) and if you get there early enough you can get a bar stool at a table.

Only drawback to the show: Ladyhawk were an opening band and therefore couldn’t do a long set. (I’m not familiar with the other bands on the bill, and I didn’t hang around to check them out. I would have liked to, but an early night was more important to me this week—and I was home and in bed by eleven, since Ladyhawk went on first.)

They opened with “You Ran,” a song from their new album, Shots. It’s a short tune that manages to inspire both foot-stomping and swaying back and forth as you sing along. You can go either route with the song. Good opener.

Then came “The Dugout,” from their first album. It’s sweet, with a nostalgic feeling to it. Here’s video of it that I took at the show:

So tell me the truth of your heart
Please tell me, please tell me
I’m haunting the basement again
Turn your light on
Turn your light on me

They did “War,” which is from their “let’s do some shrooms and record some songs this weekend” EP, Fight For Anarchy. Probably my favorite song from that EP.

They did “S.T.H.D.” from the new album. The bassist was cute, he would dance around and fling his long hair every which way. Sort of like he was head banging only in a circular motion.

He also was wearing the tightest jeans in existence. I think he may have put them on 5 years ago when they were loose and then just grew into them.

They did “Fear,” one of my favorites from the new album. It borrows a Beatles line, “I was alone, I took a ride, I didn’t know what I would find,” but my favorite line comes in the chorus: “I just want to feel something other than fear.”

The drummer is a really tall guy, and his set is really small and low. It didn’t seem funny when he was playing, but when he got up to put it away later and I saw how tall he was, it was kinda funny. He sang back up. (Always impressed when a drummer sings.)

They also did “(I’ll Be Your) Ashtray,” one of their songs that starts out quiet and builds, getting louder towards the ened. There was a song I didn’t know that the guitarist sang (maybe a cover?), and “New Joker.” There was a really great moment during one of their songs with quiet parts—I think it was “New Joker,” where it was just the singer and his guitar, and the rest of the band sang along. But they didn’t sing into their mics, just sang along on stage, almost like they were in the audience singing along. It was pretty cool. The band sang along to the songs a lot, I noticed, and I love it when band members do that. Without mics, I mean. It just shows a love for their music.

They closed with “My Old Jacknife,” one of their funner, more rousing songs.

They said they were just finishing a long tour. They’re from Vancouver, BC, and said they were happy to be back on the west coast. If you want to check them out more, this is their myspace page, and here is their website. Kulturblog also did a band spotlight on them here.

Apologies for the darkness of the video, but the venue doesn’t have very good lighting. My camera does good with sound though, which is more important.

It might be a sin, but I think one thing I’ll like is using NetFlix in combination with the Apple TV. One problem I have with Netflix are those movies you want to watch but you have to be in the right mood for. I’ve had some movies home for two months. With the Apple TV I can rip those and watch at my pleasure while getting a new movie I might be in the mood for sooner.

Plus I can rent kid movies without being terrified that my kids will destroy the disk if I leave them alone with it. I just rip the DVD with Handbrake which converts it to the Apple TV. Then play it at my whim. I’m very excited about that – considering how much money I’ve wasted on the Disney DVD club. More than enough to justify the cost of the Apple TV.

Here after a day of use are my feelings.

Pros

Makes dealing with kids very nice.

I can quickly select movies.

My photos are all easily available.

I can put the family movies up.

The UI is surprisingly nice.

I can output sound from the Mac to the Apple TV so I have music going coherently in multiple rooms.

It now handles 5.1 sound.

Cons

No 1080p video. But 720p is probably good enough. Who knows, by the time I actually consider buying an overpriced BluRay player and its overpriced disks a new AppleTV that handles 1080p might be out.

Trailers seem more compressed than the 720p trailers on Apple’s website.

I can’t figure out how to block rentals and purchases from the UI to make the remote “kid safe.”

YouTube videos look even worse resolution-wise when blown up to the size of a TV. Somehow they look bad but are bearable when on my laptop.

You can only sync one Mac to the Apple TV. This bugs me as I have half my stuff on my laptop and half my stuff on my old iMac. Plus the old iMac has only a g network and not the faster n.

No auto syncing of iMovie 08 that I can see. (I may just be missing something)

So when I recently had the chance to interview the creators of MST3000, who have revived their shtick for a project called Cinematic Titanic, which will be released in individual episodes on DVD and direct downloads, I jumped at the chance.

The interview was conducted via email and phone with Joel Hodgson (Joel), Trace Beaulieu (Crow), Kevin Murphy (Tom Servo), Frank Conniff (TV’s Frank), Mary Jo Pehl (various voice roles, including Pearl Forrester) and J. Elvis Weinstein (the original Tom Servo).

How does it feel to know that you all are responsible for prolonging the memory of “Manos: The Hands of Fate” (see, e.g., 214,000 Google hits and numerous “worst of” lists, including this recent one for the Worst Villains of All Time)?

Trace Beaulieu: I’m very happy and deeply sorry.

Frank Conniff: Anything I could do to help ring Manos to the world makes me feel very proud.

Mary Jo Pehl: It’s very gratifying, thank you. If I’m known for anything, let this be it. Let this be on my tombstone.

Do people consider you experts in the field of bad movies? Does this sort of thing tend to dominate conversations with strangers at parties?

Joel Hodgson: I guess so, but there are so many people that know so much more. I think that I know more than the average person, but I don’t consider myself an expert. I just like them. I’m the kind of person that I know if I really spent much time studying that I think I might lose my interest in it.

Trace Beaulieu: I stay at home and watch bad movies. I don’t go to parties.

Kevin Murphy: I think we’re more experts at making fun of bad movies. Uwe Boll is the reigning expert of true movie badness.

Who is the most interesting person you’ve met because of MST3000?

Joel Hodgson: The guy that I think is interesting that I’m certain I wouldn’t have met without doing Mystery Science Theater is a guy named Bob Burns. Bob Burns has the largest collection of science fiction and horror memorabilia and actual artifacts from the films. It’s kind of like going to Mecca when you go to his house.

J. Elvis Weinstein: Trace and I had lunch with Ray Manzarek from the Doors once, that was both cool and based solely on his MST fandom.

Kevin Murphy: Wow, let’s see: Ray Bradbury, Kurt Vonnegut, Richard Corliss, Cristiane Amanpour, the actor Graham Greene, Rob Rosenbaum, Joe Montegna, Barry Levinson, to name a few.

You started MST3000 twenty years ago, before blogs, YouTube or Wikipedia, before the web had really even taken off. Would today’s pop-culture landscape make it easier or harder to do a show like MST3000?

Joel Hodgson: One thing that’s different is that we’re much more accurate in our riffs. Like we were riffing on a movie and using a reference from “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers” and we got the song wrong, but now, it’s just so easy to go, “Well, what are the lyrics to ‘Bless Your Beautiful Hide?’” and we’ll just go to the internet and quote them exactly.

J. Elvis Weinstein: It’s never been a better time for artist-owned entertainment. The internet levels the playing field to some extent in terms of distribution and publicity. Sure, you’re competing with a jillion other things, but people are also searching more actively to find entertainment.

Frank Conniff: As far as Cinematic Titanic goes, the ability to produce an independent show and then have a way to distribute independently it is all thanks to the Internet. MST3K I think would be a harder sell in the current cable TV landscape. It seems that cable executives were much more open to off-beat comedy programing back then.

Kevin Murphy: To make a network show as inherently crazy as MST would be a really tough nut.

Have you had anyone tell you that MST3000 was an influence to them, or impacted what they are doing?

Joel Hodgson: That happens to me about every couple of months. It’s very weird. A professional will come up to me and says, “Oh, I became a writer because I liked Mystery Science Theater” or “I got into TV because I saw what you guys were doing.” When we first started I was kind of discouraged that we didn’t hear that, but now later, I guess I get it a lot. And it’s really great. I love it. It makes my day.

Trace Beaulieu: Yes, that happens whenever we get to interact with our fans. I think the most memorable for me was when I met John Cleese. It was a dinner and another fellow leaned over to me and said that MST had changed his life. I think I had just said the same think to Cleese.

I can’t believe it’s been so long since MST3000 began. How would you describe the general demographic of the show’s fans?

Trace Beaulieu: Our fans are little kids, parents, teachers scientists, astronauts, musicians, dogs, cats. I don’t think we do well with birds or fish.

J. Elvis Weinstein: From the beginning as a local show, we had fans from 7-70, which after 20 years would now make them the “27-dead” demo.

Mary Jo Pehl: Smart and individualistic.
Kevin Murphy: In general, B-plus students with a serious wise-ass streak.

If licensing wasn’t an issue, what movies from the last twenty years would you love to riff on?

Frank Conniff: I’m sure there are other movies that I’m not thinking of right now, but the one that comes immediately to mind is Starship Troopers.

Mary Jo Pehl: Waterworld, Into the Wild, and the list goes on!

Kevin Murphy: Well, come to Rifftrax and see us riff on the movies 300, Star Trek V, a Beowulf, a pair of Spidermen and one entire Cloverfield.

J. Elvis Weinstein: Life is Beautiful.

Tell me a little bit about Cinematic Titanic. How is it different from
MST3000? Will it take a different tone?

Mary Jo Pehl: One of the biggest differences, obviously, is that there are five of us, all of who are riffing, and we’re delivering riffs as ourselves, not as characters.

J. Elvis Weinstein: We’re also all 20 years more experienced as writers since the beginning of MST, hopefully that shines through a little.

Explain a little bit about the way Cinematic Titanic will be marketed and sold. Why did you opt for this approach?

Trace Beaulieu: We will sell DVD’s on the Internet and offer the movies for download to burn. We thought about making one gigantic DVD but then opted to make many smaller ones instead.

J. Elvis Weinstein: We have all worked in show business long enough to know the virtues of working for ourselves.

Frank Conniff: We opted for this approach because the Internet and all the merging technology is giving us the opportunity to make a product independent of the entertainment conglomerates, and that is irresistible.

Bonus question: What’s the name of one thing from pop-culture you’re currently into at the moment?

Joel Hodgson: I’m a big fan of “The Daily Show.” I think that’s great. And the “Colbert Report.” I think that’s been just amazing to watch for the last couple of years.

J. Elvis Weinstein: “Top Chef. As a lover of food and a liker of cooking, it’s the one reality show I can feel a stake (or steak) in.

Frank Conniff: I think the original British version of “The Office” is just about as great as any TV comedy show that’s ever been made and Ricky Gervais and his writing partner Steven Merchant are the greatest comedy talents to come down the pike in a long time.

Mary Jo Pehl: “Rock of Love” and “Frisky Dingo.”

Kevin Murphy: Gnarls Barkley played very loud in a convertible.

The Cinematic Titanic crew is occasionally touring the country doing film festivals—such as this Saturday’s appearance at the 38th Annual USA Film Festival in Dallas where they will perform a live movie riff at the Angelika Theater. Cinematic Titanic episodes can be ordered or downloaded through the official website. Watch the trailer for the first episode, “The Oozing Skull” right here: