What is odd to me about The Office is that, for a show that seems to have such a broad appeal, it is so outside the mainstream of your typical American comedy in just about every conceivable way. The mockumentary style thankfully ensures that there is no laugh track, which to me is a blessing. I can’t tell you how much I despise laugh tracks. There’s nothing worse than watching a formulaic, Everybody Loves Raymond-type show and watching the actors waiting for the laughter to die down so they can make their next by-the-numbers joke. I think the biggest thing that separates The Office is the ensemble cast element of it. It’s very rare for a comedy to use such a large group of characters. Even really good shows like Seinfeld, Curb Your Enthusiasm, or 30 Rock don’t have a ton of characters. It’s a pretty risky move, if you think about it, to (for instance) base an entire storyline around an Oscar or a Phyllis. It completely pays off though, because slowly learning about the characters over the seasons is a lot of fun. It's fun to pick up on these random tidbits about Creed or Stanley and slowly crafting an idea of their characters over the seasons.
It’s tough to pick out a favorite character from a show that is so rich in character development, but Andy “Nard Dog” Bernard might be my favorite. I know he's a new addition to the cast, but the guy is simply hilarious (check out The Hangover for further proof), with his love of a cappella music, the way he tries to slip the fact that he went to Cornell into every conversation, and his general kick-assness. I love Andy’s line about how he’s going to rise to the top through “personality-mirroring, name repetition, and never breaking off a handshake.”
I’m also a big fan of Kevin Malone. I wish we got to see more of Scrantonicity. One of my favorite scenes with him is when he’s talking to the cameras about his band and the possibility of playing Pam and Roy’s wedding and he says something along the lines of “We actually don’t play in public a lot. (Pause) This could be a turning point for the band.”
I find the interplay between Dwight and Jim to be another one of the show's biggest strenghts. The two play off each other beautifully when they're enemies and even more so in those rare cases where they're forced to work together, like the sales call they make together or when they begrudgingly plan Kelly's birthday party. However, I do think Jim needs to do a little less of his trademark "I can't believe these shenanigans" eye-brow raise, which gets annoying when he does it five times per episode. Dwight, though, is consistently the funniest character on the show. He's got such a unique personality and worldview that I enjoy just listening to him talk, even though he's a complete dick most of the time. Like this story about his insanely detailed "perfect crime":
-They Might Be Giants is a very underrated band. I just listened to their CD "The Spine" and was very impressed. Just throwing that out there.
-I'm generally a fan of Geico commercials. However, this one seems to defy logic:
You'll never go broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.
The Skids and Mudflaps characters have taken a beating for being racially insensitive caricatures of black people. I didn't catch this during the movie, but looking back on it I can totally see that. From Wikipedia: "The characters have been given ape-like appearance, speak in street-slang dialogue, and confess and inability to read." In response, Michael Bay said they were "good clean fun". Not much of a defense.
I mentioned Megan Fox in the "what worked" section solely for her looks. Her acting leaves a lot to be desired. I watched the Big Lebowski the other day, and her acting skills are reminiscent of Tara Reid's Bunny Lebowski in the scene where Maude shows the Dude the porn film with Uri(man that took a lot of explaining, but you know what I'm talking about).
The thing that bothered me the most was the overall tone of the film. A no point in the movie did I feel like there was any real danger. Even in the scene where Sam Whitwicky is on the verge of death , I was thinking "there's no way they're gonna let him die." Even when Optimus Prime died, I knew they'd somehow bring him back to life, I was just waiting to see how it happened. Last summer's big blockbuster, The Dark Knight, was the complete opposite. I had no idea what to expect. I wouldn't have been shocked if Batman had died, or if it was revealed that Alfred and the Joker had been in cahoots the whole time and were plotting to take over the world.
Best Scene: Probably the fight between Optimus Prime and the Decepticons where Optimus gets killed.
Worst Scene: Hmm, I guess I'll go with the entire sequence of events when Sam is at college. Really brutal stuff to sit through, especially at 1 in the morning. Starting with the Sam's dorm was being populated exclusively by models, then the episode with the mom smoking pot, leading up to the ridiculous exchange with the Decepticon disguised as a college student. Just a terrible sequence of events. I'm not expecting a movie about robots that can turn into cars to be picture-perfect representations of reality, but make an effort, man. Also, Transformers cannot turn into humans.
Best Lines: "This is top secret: do not tell my mother" was the only line that I truly laughed at. "Autobots roll out" was a nice throwback to the cheesy lines that dominated the television show.
Worst Lines: Pretty much anything that comes out of Sam's parents' mouths is terrible. These two were moderately funny in the first film, but incredibly annoying in this one.
I don't actually remember hearing this during the film, but in the trailers there's a part where Lennox, the head soldier guy, says, with apparent sincerity "We got a lot of fight coming up" or something along those lines. Terrible.
Unsung Hero: John Turturro is much better in this film than in the previous one. He provides some comic relief that is actually funny, unlike Sam's roomate, his parents, Skids and Mudflap, the annoying dog, etc.
Final Anaylsis: The problem with both of these Transformer movies is that they just do not work in live-action. Transformers 1 got by, I think, because of the novelty of the action sequences. By necessity, the brunt of the story has to fall on the humans in a live-action film, something which was not even close to being the case in the cartoons or the 86' movie. I wouldn't necessarily blame the actors either. Shia LaBeouf does an adequate job, John Turturro is good as usual, Fox is terrible, the army guys are alright. A word about Shia LaBeouf: I think he's a good actor. However, for the past two summers I have seen him in two atrocious movies (this one and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull). He was also in Eagle Eye, which was awful.
What's really infuriating about this film is that the one storyline that could have saved the film was destroyed before it ever got off the ground. The Watchmen-esque story featuring the guy who wants to ban the Autobots because they are bringing the Decepticons to Earth was the one part of the plot with any ambiguity to it, but Michael Bay dissolved that one in the bluntest, stupidest way possible: he literally had the guy thrown out of a plane. That about sums up Michael Bay as a director. Rather than letting a nuanced, morally ambiguous plotline develop, Bay chucks it out of a plane.
Grade:3/10
Alright, time to buckle down. I hear Mao Zedong calling my name. Peace...
compare with:
Do you have a facebook?
Facebook is a form of instant nostalgia that can be accessed at any time. It is essentially a journal that documents your development via wall posts, photos, and a shit-load of applications. It allows you to view your own past as it is happening. What's more interesting, and creepier, is that anyone you happen to be friends with, or anyone within your network, has access to this information as well. Never before have we been able to reminisce so vividly about events that took place just a few hours ago. Not only that, but the constant stream of new photos, applications, and groups lets us experience nostalgia for our friends (or complete strangers) just as easily. It's a fascinating, post-modern phenomenon.
I think that Facebook is one of the better innovations of the internet era. Its ability to connect people across the world is astounding. However, FB creates an unusual situation: it allows people who no longer have a "normal" or "traditional" relationship to have a quasi-real one that is ultimately unfullfilling for both parties.
Let me use an example to illustrate . It’s 1986. Boston native Bill decides to attend MIT. Freshmen year, he meets Amy from California. They fall in love at orientation and are inseparable thereafter. Until disaster strikes; Amy has been spending so much time with Bill that she's failed three of her classes and kicked out of school. They are both crushed, as their relationship is effectively over unless one of them decides to pull some romantic comedy-esque shenanigans. During the next year, they exchange phone calls or send letters on an increasingly irregular basis. By the end of college, the two have, for all practical purposes, forgotten about each other.
Push the clock ahead twenty-three years. It’s 2009. The same situation occurs, yet something is drastically different in terms of their relationship post-Amy’s move. The advent of Facebook allows them to get a constant reminder of what they’ve lost. They regularly check each other’s pages, send each other messages, look at new pictures.
You might think that this situation is actually preferable to the original one. After all, these two people were so close at one point in their lives; it must be a positive that they now have an easy way to stay in touch. It could be argued, though, that Facebook is making things much worse. Unless Bill attempts some harebrained, Lloyd Dobbler-like move to California, their relationship is over. Sometimes, the best thing to do to get over someone is just to forget about them. I'm not suggesting that either one should pull an Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind type procedure and literally erase all memory of each other. But in this kind of situation it's very possible that Bill and Amy should, in the words of Third Eye Blind frontman Stephan Jenkins, put the past away.
Facebook doesn’t allow for this though. When either Amy or Bill signs on it’s a virtual guarantee they’re checking out their former lover’s page. And this extends beyond the boyfriend/girlfriend paradigm. Say you used to be close with a group of people, but things fizzled out once college started. With Facebook, you can see your former best friends yucking it up without you on a daily basis. Or imagine an unrequited love interest from high school that you were friends with, but never had the balls to ask out. What about people who move to different states or countries? They are not allowed to forget about their prior life. Facebook is like the ghosts that visited Ebenezer Scrooge in a Christmas Carol, effortlessly taking us back to points in our life in an easy and often depressing way. It gives us a daily update of what we no longer have, or what we never had in the first place.
