Conan Releases A Statement

Earlier, Conan O'Brien released a statement stating that he refuses to move to 12:05 as had been proposed earlier.

He says (in part), "I sincerely believe that delaying the Tonight Show into the next day to accommodate another comedy program will seriously damage what I consider to be the greatest franchise in the history of broadcasting. The Tonight Show at 12:05 simply isn't the Tonight Show. Also, if I accept this move I will be knocking the Late Night show, which I inherited from David Letterman and passed on to Jimmy Fallon, out of its long-held time slot. That would hurt the other NBC franchise that I love, and it would be unfair to Jimmy."

Read the full text here.

Programming Note: Tonight's guest on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon tonight is Ringo Starr. He'll be playing 3 songs and, I believe, will be the only guest for the entire show.

Dave Explains Things #1

In this Episode: Dave explains the modern history of NBC's late night schedule up to the present day and proposes his own homespun solution to the current problem. Still no idea what to do about Carson Daly.

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"Whip It" : Good.... "Whip It" : Real Good

"Whip It" as a box office draw was probably doomed from the start. You tell someone there's a new movie about women's roller derby and their eyes will probably glaze over and they'll probably change the subject immediately. The idea of roller derbies in cinema is either too kitsch or assumed to be exploitative or was simply ruined by peoples' experience with the terrible, terrible "Rollerball". But such pre-conceived notions are well-worth ignoring here or you risk missing out on a very good movie.

Ellen Page stars as Bliss Cavendar, a young girl struggling to meet her mother's expectations. For most of her life she's been pressured to compete in ridiculous beauty pageants (see "Little Miss Sunshine") but is starting to grow tired of them and her parent's rules. One day she sees a flier for a local Roller Derby league at an abandoned warehouse and decides to lie to her parents and check it out. Soon she's trying out and the next thing she knows she's on a team. Not long after that, she's met a boy. But how long can keep up the lie and avoid confronting her parents with her true wishes? Oh, and also a bunch of women punch and tackle each other.

"So, that all sounds pretty formulaic, what's the big idea, see?!", you might say at this point turning into a gangster from the 40's. The point is that none of that matters. It surely is formulaic, it's the same formula as "Rocky", as "Major League" and as "The Mighty Ducks". It's a formula that works and this movie (like the others) is smart, fun, funny, sincere, exciting and has a lot of heart. In fact, I can summarize best what this movie is in one sentence: this movie is John Hughes meets "Slapshot".

As far as formulaic goes it doesn't get much better than that. And that's exactly why it's worth seeing. It deals joyfully with a bunch of misfit goons who beat each other up for fun and, at the same time, it's a coming-of-age story that deals authentically with teenage friendships, parental pressure, the struggle for acceptance, and romance.

Drew Barrymore, in her directorial debut hits the ball out of the park as far as delivering a funny, touching teen movie straight out of the 80's. Jimmy Fallon is fair as the greasy play-by-play man 'Hot Tub' Johnny Rocket. It's great to see Daniel Stern again, he plays a great Dad character. There are also very funny performances by Kristen Wiig, Eve, Juliette Lewis and Andrew Wilson (who knew there was yet another funny Wilson brother?) as the coach.

Comedy, sports, drama this movie does all very well. Particularly, it is highly recommended as a fun date movie.

Rating : 7/10 (Quite Good).

Teen Angst Rating : 6 Å (Teen Angst is measured in Angstroms).

It's The ?uestions, It's The ?uestions Y'all.

In this segment, Roots drummer ?uestlove "goes deeper" as is his custom.

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They've done this segment three or four times in the past and it hasn't been great but this one, I thought, was quite good. Don't mess with Texas.

The inspiration for this post's title:

Why do I need I.D. to get I.D.? If I had I.D., I wouldn't need I.D.

Tonight Show Moves To Tomorrow

Following the woeful performance of the new "Jay Leno Show" and decreased ratings of "The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien", NBC has decided to move Jay Leno back to his 11:35 slot though with a shortened duration.

This means that "The ---- Show" (it's my blog, I don't feel like typing it) will air from 11:35 - 12:05 and "The Tonight Show" moves to 12:05 - 1:05. Yes, that's right, the brainiacs at NBC have decided that "The Tonight Show", as it is called, will not actually air "Tonight". "Late Night with Jimmy Fallon" will move to 1:05 AM - 2:05 AM. Eeeeeee. Presumably "Last Call with Carson Daly" will air at a new time specifically invented for NBC called "fliggen o'clock" and "Poker After Dark" will air when it's light out.

Isn't it amazing that NBC used to rule the TV ratings with a golden fist? From "Seinfeld" to "Friends" to "E. R." to late night TV they had it all. Not that they were actually that great ("Frasier", "E.R.", "Will and Grace", Jay Leno all suck and I have never understood why ANYONE watches/watched them) but they did, somehow, completely dominate the ratings. And nowadays, they're the television version of "Kruger". "'The Jay Leno Show' is a horrendous failure", one suit behind a desk with pseudo-intellectual glasses begins, "instead of cancelling the crap, let's keep it around in a way that punishes everyone who's actually good." "Sounds good to me, I'm late for pilates", replies the female suit behind a desk with pseudo-intellectual glasses.

Interestingly, the scenario outlined above is the currently proposed scenario but it is only one of three possibilities. The change in time slot technically constitutes a breach of contract by NBC and Conan can now do one of three things:

1. He can quit and go on vacation for the next four years while collecting as much as $80 million for doing nothing.
2. He can move his show to a competitor (Fox/ABC), compete directly with Leno/Letterman and still get payed by NBC. (The money that NBC owes him is offset by the money he makes there. So for instance, if he's making $10 million per year now, and ABC payed him $7 million per year, NBC would owe him only $3 million per year.)
3. Go with the flow, take the new time slot and ride it out.

If I know Conan as well as I think I do, he'll go with option #3. But, for some reason, part of me is hoping for #2.

TBL : PoC - NO..... WTF?!

The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call - New Orleans (2009)

Sometimes you're in the mood to watch a movie that makes you laugh. Sometimes you're in the mood to watch a movie that makes you cry. Sometimes you're in the mood to watch a movie that makes you think. Are you ever in the mood to watch a movie that makes you say, "WTF?!"

No? Me neither.

But, for the purposes of this review let's pretend that you are. Well then, I highly reccomend "The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call - New Orleans". Directed by Werner Herzog and starring Nicholas Cage, "TBL : POC - NO" is about a corrupt cop working in New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Lieutenant McDonagh (Cage) fights to rid the world of drug dealers, prostitutes and gangsters when he isn't doing drugs, visiting prostitutes and making deals with his bookie. Actually, that's not true, he can multitask. Going to question a witness? Close the door and smoke some dope. Caught a couple doing drugs? Let them off with a warning and take their stash.

Cage is attempting to solve a quintuple homicide case, keep his prostitute girlfriend safe and pay his bookie (and the mob) before something unfortunate happens to him. All the while, he's deteriorates in front of us, devolving into the Edgar the "sugar water" alien from "Men in Black". Sometimes he sees imaginary iguanas and can't stop staring. Are they imaginary? The Val Kilmer character said it wasn't real, but was that a joke? I know the dead alligator was real but what's the long out of focus shot of the living alligator all about? I'm pretty sure the snake was really there.

Is this a taught crime drama? Is it humanist tragedy of contradiction? Is it a clever satire of society's corruption? Maybe it's a parody of corrupt cop movies. Maybe it's farce. It's probably a farce. Watching the movie, one doesn't know what to think. Having watched the movie, I guess it's safe to apply the catchall term "dark comedy".

This is the kind of movie that people who are more intellectual than I will hale as brilliant cinema. Probably everything is symbolic, everything weird is to provoke a reaction and everything that seems stupid was done on purpose to be stupid. This is also the kind of movie that morons berate because it doesn't make sense as a straight-ahead, formulaic thriller. While I think the former are more right than the latter, this movie isn't my type of entertainment. And it's a "must see" if you want to see something confounding and ambiguous with shades of silliness mixed in. Or is it?

Rating 5/10 - Ambivalent.