God bless HBO. While most networks surrender the summer time period to bottom rung reality shows or a few scripted series so awful the networks know they can’t compete in the regular season, HBO has been unveiling a different documentary every Monday night. I believe last week was the final one, but luckily most of…
Category: Mindless Mondays
Monday Morning Movie Reviewer: The Help
This is probably the hardest movie of the year to review. I feel alternately cool and warm towards it, as often the movie goes from a great scene to a terrible scene within five minutes. It’s just so hard to really say a movie that is half comedic about Civil Rights is really doing its…
TV Shows Are Like People: The Good Die Young and the Most Profitable Live Forever
R.I.P. Men of a Certain Age. After a meager two seasons of charming us as TNT’s only non-cop show, the network cancelled it, supposedly to make room for Salt Lake City Homicide or Grand Rapids Beat or Gonzo & Nash or some such other stupid ass cop show in a TV landscape swimming in them….
Mom Jokes: An Entire Week’s Worth
MONDAY The mother of a 17-year-old girl was concerned that her daughter was having sex. Worried the girl might become pregnant and adversely impact the family’s status, she consulted the family doctor. The doctor told her that teenagers today were very willful and any attempt to stop the girl would probably result in rebellion. He…
TV Review: Curb Your Enthusiasm
What can you say about Curb that hasn’t already been said? It’s now in its 8th season and I think almost everyone in the country has had some type of exposure to it in one form or another. I’ve found the show to be deeply polarizing among people I know. Some love Larry David’s improvised,…
Monday Morning Movie Reviewer: 30 Minutes or Less
America didn’t show this movie much love over the weekend. It opened to a disappointing fifth place at the box office and it looks like I’m once again one of the few people in the country to see a Danny McBride movie (the immensely talented co-star of such duds as Land of the Lost, Your…
Movie Review: The Change-Up
I won’t make this review a long one. If I wrote ten paragraphs I would be putting more thought into it than America has (the movie came and went last weekend at the box office) so I’ll just get to the bullet points of this body swap flick. What Works: MVP Jason Bateman who almost…
Movie Review: Crazy, Stupid, Love
This movie’s a tough one. On the one hand, I do find it better than approximately 98 percent of romantic comedies. On the other hand, that isn’t exactly a rave endorsement. I felt like this movie really had me in the beginning and gradually let me go, getting less genuine and more stupid as it…
Mom Jokes: Moms in Group Therapy
A psychiatrist was conducting a group therapy session with four young mothers and their small children. “You all have obsessions,” he observed. To the first mother, he said, “You are obsessed with eating. You’ve even named your daughter Candy.” He turned to the second Mom: “Your obsession is with money. Again, it manifests itself in…
Entertainment Editorial: Does Spielberg’s Name Carry Weight for Younger Audiences?
In a way my nerves answer that question, but Spielberg is (by my own admission) so powerful writing anything remotely unflattering about him is cause to worry. He actually could snap his fingers to ruin someone’s life if they’re in the entertainment industry, so I just have to hope he won’t take this article as…
TV Review: Falling Skies
Continuing our Alien Invasion day takes the genre from the cinema, where it’s exhausted (Super 8, Battle LA, Transformers, Cowboys and Aliens) to TV, where it’s just getting started. Last night saw the ending of the first season of TNT’s Falling Skies, which stands out on the network by being one of only two shows…
Monday Morning Movie Review: Cowboys & Aliens
It’s “Alien Invasion” Day on Alabama Liberal and so that includes a review of this movie which tries to join two genres: alien invasion movies (which have been almost exhausted) and westerns (which have been almost entirely ignored for two decades). I can’t say it’s entirely successful, but I absolutely appreciate the effort. In a…
Movie Review: Attack the Block
Alien invasion week day continues in this scrappy upstart horror film that manages to be more fun and just as scary as Cowboys & Aliens on less than one tenth the budget. In this movie the aliens attack a housing project in inner city London, and our “heroes” are a “gang” of wannabe toughs that…