Flight of the Concords -- 1/25

Flight of the Conchords
Season 2, Episode 2 - "The New Cup"

This episode was pretty hilarious and didn't feel at all stale in the way the first episode of the season sort of did. It had more of the bizarre nuances of Jermaine and Bret's apartment life, more band meetings at the consulate, more Mel/Doug weirdness, more of Eugene being creepy, and just about everything else that there was to love about the first season. Furthermore, both of the songs were instantly memorable with fantastic sequences to go along with them. The season premiere was certainly enjoyable, but this episode was clearly on a whole other level, maybe because it stuck much closer to the tried and true formula of the first season, which hopefully sticks around.

The plot of the episode is particularly preposterous, and involves Bret buying a new tea cup for $2.70, making their checking account $2.70 overdrawn, which leads to their power and water being shut off (evidently all of their utilities cost less than 2 dollars and 70 cents). Jermaine points out that they already have a "cup roster" to designate times for each of them to use their one shared tea cup, but alas, Bret is insistent on having his own. The wave of financial problems caused by the cup leads to Bret having to sell his guitar, and so Flight of the Concords goes on stage at a gig with only Jermaine actually playing and Bret air-guitaring and mimicking the sounds with his mouth. In probably the funniest scene of the episode, Murray trashes them in a review he writes for the New Zealand consulate newsletter, giving them 2 out of 100 stars, and saying that the song was barely audible with only the "dad guitar" playing (Murray doesn't know what a bass is).

After Bret tries unsuccessfully to raise money by selling super-straws,--big straws made by combining normal sized straws (for people who need to drink from really far away)--and a plan to get paid for giving Mel back massages ends equally unsuccessfully and far more creepily, Bret and Jermaine decide to become male prostitutes. Jermaine sells Bret on the idea with a musical sequence about how everyone's always checking out his junk, with lyrics such as "If you party with the party prince you get two complementary after dinner mints." The whole thing is done with this fast-motion effect that looks like something out of a Beastie Boys video, and is infinitely funnier than either of the two songs from the previous episode. Eugene realizes that Bret and Jermaine are "prostituting" in front of his building, and doesn't much care for it, but suggests that they could try the hotels down by the airport (something which he assures Jermaine he learned in a book--a normal book).

Jermaine heads down to the airport hotels, leaving Bret by himself with a band meeting with just him, Muarry, and Murray's new Nigerian friend that has let Murray in on his perfectly legitimate, and in no way a huge scam business investment. Murray and the Nigerian both agree that Jermaine prostituting himself is wrong, and so Bret rushes to save the day in another hilarious song in which Bret insists that Jermaine can "say no to being a man-ho." In what I think is a first for the series, Eugene is even included in on the music, as he has a little interlude on steel drums.

This episode was compltetely over the top and prepostorous, and I loved every minute of it. It showed me, much more than the season premiere did, that the show didn't run out of ideas in the first season. Jokes like the "cup roster" are much more in line with what the show was about in the early part of the first season, like in the first episode where Bret illustarates on the chalkboard when he's designated time to work on his secret project (his "hair helmet"). The two songs in the episode are both excellent, and are funny on their own merits, whereas, towards the end of the first season, it seemed like they were just sort of a way to be a bridge between scenes and weren't usually all that entertaining. I can't wait for next week now.

Flight of the Conchords -- New Season

Flight of the Conchords
Season 2, Episode 1 - "A Good Opportunity"

When I saw the first "Flight of the Concords" episode back when it debuted in the summer of 2007, I immediately loved it. The off-beat, deadpan humor was right up my alley, and the musical sequences were nothing short of brilliant. Over the course of the first season, though, the show seemed to have lost some steam. It was still enjoyable, but seemed to lack the panache that it had from the start. The musical sequences were fewer and farther between, and not nearly as satisfying which, in turn, further exposed the fact that the show's plot is usually very barebones and often times not that different from episode to episode.

As Bret and Jermaine--the two members of the real life group Flight of the Conchords, which has had a following for some time before they got their HBO gig--started doing interviews, it became apparent that the reason why the show seemed to fall apart towards the end of the first season was because they had pretty much exhausted their catalog of songs that they could fit into an episode. The truly memorable songs like "Business Time" and "The Humans are Dead" were song that they'd been perfecting for years and had a proven track record, having been performed at any number of live shows before the HBO show ever started. It was understandable then, when it was announced that "Flight of the Conchords" would end after its second season, which itself was pushed back from its originally planned start date and just began last night. The pressure of coming up with new songs for each episode is, understandably, exhausting for a band with only two members. With all of this stacked against it, I was only midly excited for the season 2 premiere last night, to the point where I actually forgot about it at first and had to catch on the West Coast HBO feed later (it was also available online, something I also forgot about). The episode felt more like the end of season 1 than it did the beginning, but it made me laugh, and I can plesently report that, for all its faults, I'm glad the show is back.

The basic purpose of the premiere is to retcon the finale of Season 1, in which, despite still being pretty much incompetant, success falls into Murray's lap as his new band the "Crazy Dogzz" becomes a worldwide hit. This is accomplished through a revelation that the Crazy Dogzz's hit song is actually exactly identical to a Polish song recorded 13 years earlier. This leads to one of the funnier bits in the episode, as Murray painstakingly tries to poll Bret and Jermaine as to whether its "bad" or "normal" for this to happen, even as the decision has apparently already been made for him and repo men come to start taking stuff out of his office. The demise of the Crazy Dogzz couldn't have come at a worse time for Murray, as it comes after his original band has decided that they're better off without him and decide to manage themselves.

Things start out well for Bret and Jermaine as they strike it out on their own as their discovered by an ad agency after a gig (where they've apparently moved on from playing nothing except "Who likes to rock the party? I like to rock the party!") that wants them to write a jingle for a "feminine toothpaste" ad. The ad agency people--one of which is Greg Proops, who I haven't seen in anything since "Whose Line is it Anyway" and a woman that I didn't recognize--like the jingle they write, in spite of the fact that it was 18 minutes in length with much of it, as Jermaine admits, not really having anything to do with toothpaste. They like it so much, in fact, that they want to include Flight of the Conchords in the ad, turned them into their feminie toothpaste spokesman. The ad agency characters are kind of weird, and these scenes were really only funny because of Bret and Jermaine themselves. At times it seemed like the ad people were supposed to be playing the "straight man" roles, but at other times they came across as just sort of creepy, and I wasn't sure if they were supposed to be creepy in a funny way and failing, or if they were just beeing creepy unintentionally. Maybe its just that Greg Proops looks kind of creepy in general. At any rate, trouble brews when it becomes clear that Bret and Jermaine don't have green cards (or know what they are), thus setting up an opportunity for redemption for Murray, who of course used to work at the New Zealand consulate.

The songs in the episode weren't all that memorable, but weren't horrible. I did like the very operatic sequence of Murray's "Rejected!" song out on the balcony of his office. As I described at the beginning of the post, it seems like they're still suffering from sort of a writer's block as far as coming up with new songs is concerned. But the episode still kept me entertained, mostly because the surreal "band meetings" were still as funny as they've always been: "Look at all these gold records they've won! Whereas you guys only have those two Grammys. And they're not even real! I had to make those myself!"

Best Movies of 2008

Previous lists:
2007
2004-2006

1. The Dark Knight: The best superhero movie ever made, in part because it's not even so much about the superhero as it is about how he compares to all the peripheral characters. You can spend hours talking about all ideas explored by the movie, from how a hero can become corrupted, to why we can idolize a character who exists outside of the bounds of the law, to how far people should be allowed to go in the name of fighting crime. At the same time, Heath Ledger's performance--probably a lock for the Best Supporting Actor Oscar--is one of the great character studies of all time, as he portrays The Joker as a man who's insane enough to exist with no moral code or ideology of any kind, but sane enough to realize that he's doing it. Some people have told me that it feels too long to them. I disagree. The writing is excellent, and I defy you to point to me any scene in the film that's simply a throwaway that doesn't either advance the plot, develops the characters, or is just cool as hell to watch.

2. Doubt: A powerful character driven drama with excellent performances by Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Merryl Streep. Intentionally opened ended, its a movie you can discuss at length long after you're done watching it.

3. Slumdog Millionaire: The basic premise of the movie is kind of hokey: A slumdog from one of the poorest parts of India gets the chance of a lifetime as he's selected to be on "Who Wants to be a Millionaire." This alone would be enough of a plot for an entertaining, feel-good type of a movie that would probably draw a crowd, but the movie aspires to be something more. As we follow the movie's hero Jamal and his brother Salim from childhood all the way up to Jamal's big moment on the show, we see them take divergent paths as they try and escape poverty, and the conflict that arises between them hilights the plight of the people at the bottom of a society with huge stratification.

4. The Wrestler: A quiet, somber movie from Darren Aronofsky about a washed-up wrestler whose career in the ring has left him physically and emotionally broken down, but who keeps wrestling because it's all he really knows. Mickey Rourke perfectly embodies the lead role.

5. Milk: Led by a great performance by Sean Penn, it tells of the rise and fall of the nation's first openly gay public official. Incredibly prescient in the wake of the passage of Proposition 8 in California.

6. Iron Man: Another great superhero movie which, along with Tropic Thunder, represents a huge comeback for Robert Downey Jr. Not quite as philosophical as Dark Knight, Iron Man is much more reliant on humor and the charm of its characters, and does so very much successfully. The morality tale angle of the movie--which follows Obidiah Stone (Jeff Bridges) as an arrogant executive, trying to steal the Iron Man technology from Tony Stark while simultaneously selling weapons to militia groups around the world--is kind of heavy-handed, but the characters are well written enough such that its still very enjoyable and still puts a smile on your face when Obidiah gets what's coming to him at the end. Sets up for a sequel which has the potential to be every bit as good as the first.

7. Wall-E: An superbly made animated movie with a great, original concept that extends beyond just making jokes about non-human characters doing human things. Manages to introduce you to endearing and charming characters while conveying a somewhat foreboding message. A perfect balance of style and substance, and a shining example of what is possible with animation.

8. Frost/Nixon: Ron Howard takes the play of the same name and adapts it into a pseudo-documentary style movie about the tit-for-tat, boxing match style event that was the series of interviews between David Frost and Richard Nixon in which Frost eventually gets Nixon to admit wrongdoing and express regret over the Watergate cover-up. The actual plot--detailing the run preparation of the interviews, how they came about, and how Frost eventually got around Nixon's ability to control the dynamic of an interview--is fairly interesting, though somewhat predictable. Stealing the show is Frank Langella as Nixon, who shows both his burly, overbearing demeanor as well as an inner struggle with guild and old demons.

9. Tropic Thunder: As mentioned in #3, Tropic Thunder has another fantastic performance by Robert Downey Jr. as (to paraphrase his character's own word) "an Australian dude playin' a black dude, disguised as another dude!", one of four actors trapped in the jungle after their plan to film a Vietnam war movie goes to hell and they run into actual bandits who make and distribute heroin. Directed by Ben Stiller, its a great self-deprecating Hollywood movie, which takes shots at actors who think they're better than they are, film company executives who are painfully self-absorbed, and everything in between.

10. Hellboy II: Yep, one more comic book movie. Hellboy II is definitely in sort of the next tier down from Dark Knight and Iron Man, but still has its merits and is still a lot of fun to watch. The plot is a little bit more cookie-cutter than the two aforementioned movies, but the film has every bit of the gorgeous visual style that Guillermo Del Toro poured into his masterpiece Pan's Labyrinth. Taking us out of the BPRD headquarters where we spent a lot of our time in the first Hellboy, Del Toro presents us with some amazing set pieces from a huge underground society of mythical creatures--from an elven throne room that's been thrown together underneath the New York subway, to a marketplace that's like the new version of the Star Wars cantina scene. Oh, and Ron Pearlman's still great as Hellboy, the demon spawn from the blackest depths who's come to earth to complain a lot about his job and eat pancakes.

Slumdog Millionaire

Slumdog Millionaire (****)


Slumdog Millionaire tells a relatively straightforward story which easily could have made for a hammy and shallow movie, but instead was made into one of the best movies of the year by director Danny Boyle (who made Millions, a movie very nearly as good). Our protagonist and hero in this story is Jamal, a young man who grew up in dire poverty in a Muslim enclave in India. We first meet him being introduced on the Indian version of "Who Wants to be a Millionaire," and then getting beaten up in a prison cell after being accused of cheating, having gotten all but the final question correct before time ran out on the first day of filming.

After this introduction, we jump back and forth between the present and the past, as Jamal explains how he came to know the answer to each question he'd been asked, with each explanation coming in the form of a little vignette from some point in his childhood. Jamal's first question is about a famous Indian movie star, and we go back to when Jamal was very young to see him go to great lengths to get the autograph of said movie star in a scene that first and foremost is supposed to be funny (and is). Afterwards though, we see his brother, Salim, take the autograph and sell it. Salim is less of a romantic and sentimentalist than Jamal, more resourceful, and more desperate to end their plight of poverty and start making money. This scene is the first hint of what will eventually become a large schism between the two brothers that will come to a head in the movie's last act. Another questions asks Jamal what object a certain Indian religious figure is usually holding in depictions of her, an image which, it so happens, was burned into Jamal's mind when his neighborhood was attacked by a band of Hindis who don't take too kindly to Muslims. He's orphened as mother is killed in the ensuing violence, and Jamal, his brother Salim, and another girl, Lakita, barely escape together.

Some scenes are more lighthearted, as when Jamal and Salim stumble upon the Taj Mahall--a building which has no real significance to them, despite its ability to attract tourists from most everywhere around the world--and do odd-jobs for naive tourists, like taking group photos for them, or giving them tours with completely fabricated information (like how the princess who inhabited the palace died in a traffic accident). Other scenes are much darker, as when Jamal, Salim, and Lakita, are taken in by a man who appears charitable but is actually using a veritable army of children for a truly despicable money making scheme. Eventually, Jamal manages to find a steady job at one of those huge call centers where Indian people pretend like they're from Oklahoma. He doesn't actually work the phones, though, he's an "assistant," which is a nice way of saying that he's basically an errand boy. Among his duties is serving tea to people, a fact which the sharply-dressed host of the "Millionaire" show--who vaguely looks like an Indian version of Dennis Miller--finds especially amusing.

All of these scenes reflect the stark differences in life between social classes in India. In a weird way, the fact that they used the Indian version of "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?" complements this theme of social stratification. The Indian version of "Millionaire" is just like the U.S. one, it takes place on a ridiculous set that looks like it could double as the interior of a spaceship from a bad 1950s sci-fi movie, adorned with stage lights that move around the stage in between questions for no other reason than to produce a cool effect. Watching the movie bounce back and forth between Jamal's life in the slums, and his "Millionaire" taping gives the "Millionaire" set a fantasy-like quality, as if Jamal is entering a different world, not just because he can win an amount of money that he couldn't even imagine earlier in his life, but because his life has never had the kind of frivolity enjoyed by the middle and upper class in India who can actually sit down and watch television. Consider his brother Salim at the end of the film, who chooses to rise up out of poverty using a much more direct route. He ends up wealthier than he was before, but essentially indentured to a local gangster.

Slumdog Millionaire is an uplifting story and in many ways a heartwarming story, but also doesn't have its head constantly up in the clouds. Its an excellent portrayal of the stark reality of the most impoverished places in India, but even without the social commentary works as an entertaining drama in the same vein as Quiz Show. Its been widely acclaimed and looks like it might sneak in with an Oscar nomination, an honor it would be most deserving of.