i love this place. "employees' entrance"!

THERE IS A SEQUEL TO HENRY FOOL AND IT IS IN POST PRODUCTION.

Nathan Barley

This is the best TV series I've seen in a while, and I'm sure everyone already loves it, and I'm the last to find out, but REALLY. Let's get talking.

SUGARApe is Vice + Black Book with all that Camden town stencil art and giant ape tokyo influence fonts & the djs from 1980s manchester and there's like this amazing street coffee bus culture and I love the sister whose plot is moved in episode 2 because she owes 2,496 "quid" to the video store for a rental that's been out for 7 years. I bring this up because I'm confusing, because I need to prove my love through something more concrete, because just what it is that Nathan Barley does that's so good is it depicts through Media a culture whose disease is being Media Soaked. This is Gide's Immoralist for the 21st century, and the protagonist, Dan Ashcroft, reminds me of a D.L.B. or a Steve Q--someone who's seen it all and is just plain sick of it. In desiring to escape, the "cool factor" ascends and they just can't escape. Dress like a hobo? You're a trendsetter. Kill a man? That's "out there." Everyone on the program is pushing the margin so hard they're only becoming props for everyone else's ascension. And then just watching them all sputter and fail is like how Daria explained to Jane her amument at watching her parents fawn over Quinn, "It's like watching Nascar for the crashes." Eiga no kotoboa zakai dake. The language of cinema is universal. GENIUS award.

Little Murders

Directed by
Alan Arkin
Writing credits
Jules Feiffer (play)

Elliott Gould
....
Alfred Chamberlain

Marcia Rodd
....
Patsy Newquist

Vincent Gardenia
....
Mr. Newquist

Elizabeth Wilson
....
Mrs. Newquist

Jon Korkes
....
Kenny Newquist

John Randolph
....
Mr. Chamberlain

Doris Roberts
....
Mrs. Chamberlain

Lou Jacobi
....
Judge Stern

Donald Sutherland
....
Rev. Dupas

Alan Arkin
....
Lt. Practice

teachers

In eleventh grade, i thought i was smart and clever and interesting. At this age, I wrote a short story about english teachers talking about their students in the Teachers' Lounge. It was based off of my own life--using the water cooler during track practice, listening to my english teacher kvetch as he treated me to root beers in the Ruby Tuesday's adjoining the school parking lot after hours. But it was also based off of Boston Public and in tune, very much, with Teachers. This Nick Nolte starpic takes comedic issue with the plot of the Michelle Pfeiffer mindfuck Dangerous Minds, or with the plot of Sisterhood Two: Back in the Habit (yes the real name) where the WHITE teachers gracefully glide in to Underpriveleged Overstuffed Downtown Public High Schools, prison rip-offs busting with kids with boomboxes blast white noise and pussy mammas boys get shanked. The plot here is insubstantial, but has all the lovable stock characters. The psycho "School Counselor" (who has a mental breakdown), the Good Hearted Lovable Wrongdoer ("Eddie"), the Nerds in Debate Class, the tried, tired teachstaff and the Hopeful Dreamer Teacher (Nolte) who tells it like it is and gets respect!

But I didn't like this movie for any of these reasons. It's a terrible movie with bad camera, bad dialogue, and a lot of "comic" actors who make a lot of "Comic" handgestures while other peoples heads are turned. No, I rented it because it has a really awesome cover design (an apple, about to explode) and because it stars CRISPIN GLOVER, who's failing math class. Teacher teach bends down and murmurs, touching his paper, "Don't you think you better carry the zero?" Perhaps Built to Spill was referencing the next scene when they wrote their emo anthem, because Crispin is all emo all the time. He bites this teachers hand and doesn't let go. The Prof screams like there's no tomorrow: "Get him off me! Get HIM off ME!" so that a weary Nolte comes-a-running, and atempts to pry doglike Crispin from his rival. The boys are on the floor, screaming while the other students jeer and leer.

Finally, pried apart, Crispin looks at the camera, wipes the smile off his face, and spits out a mouthful of blood and chunks of flesh and bone.

I laughed, I cried, I will play that scene on loop at my first son's bris.

Marie Antoinette Trailer

Maybe it's just the Age of Consent by New Order talking, but I've argued my way out of seven? conversations today convinving atheists in a new, vain, presumptous, ditzy, cake-smearing God: Dunst-say-it! Oh, Dunst. I also DO like "lost in translation" partly because I'm obsessed with Japan, and partly because I think Scarlett is very very attractive. As is Mr. Murray, whose Karaoke recordings I play in the depths of depression. Anyway, shout out to Hannah for being a good friend and turning me on to this.

NOT A MOVIE

Believing their patriarch, George Sr., to be dead, the dysfunctional Bluth family at the core of the Fox sitcom Arrested Development, holds a wake. “Wow. He’s really gone,” says George-Michael, the youngest Bluth, when called upon to speak. “If he was here right now, I would probably tell him that it all worked out. And that um, I’ll be bringing you some salmon rolls right away. In heaven.” The show’s jerky, hand-held camera cuts to the attic where George-Michael has stowed his grandfather, who is enjoying his own funeral like a curious Tom Sawyer. “Goddammit,” he says as he peeks through the air-vent, “How many times I gotta tell this kid, chicken wings?”
Like George Sr., the sitcom Arrested Development both is and isn’t dead. On November 10, Fox swashbucklers announced they would cut back the number of episodes ordered without officially canceling the show—encouraging Arrested’s producers to shop to other networks. Rumors of buy-outs abound (Showtime, FX) but the general buzz agrees that the eight episodes to air starting December fifth are no better than a deathbed.
With a paltry audience of four million, Arrested Development could be treated as just another sitcom that will die quietly unwatched. But the show has garnered such unprecedented critical acclaim—top 10 lists, Emmys, SAG awards, a Golden Globe—that its end is being protested with petitions and op-eds. One militant fan-group is even shipping bananas to Fox, a snarky reference to the frozen banana stand operated by the Bluth family.
So why the ratings? First, the show is basically un-marketed. Second, it is too hard to jump into—the plot builds like a serial novel instead of supplying story-lines like lozenges, to be swallowed whole. Third, the humor is too dry and witty, too intelligent: “America is stupid,” said one freshman, “And it’s a show for smart people.”
Such explains why Yale is one of the nerdy strongholds where Arrested’s passing will be most mourned. At a Masters Tea this October, a writer for the TV series Penn & Teller: Bullshit!, asked his audience if they had ever seen his show. Of the forty wannabe-TV writers, perhaps three had seen a single episode. Incredulous, he asked: “What shows do you watch, then?” There was really only one reply: “Arrested Development?” Yale’s Facebook Group, “Arrested Development Devotion” (A.D.D.) can claim 55 members while “The Simpsons Fan Club” has only 25.
And it’s not just for the kids. In last spring’s American Literature after 1945, professor Amy Hungerford used the phrase “Use Your Allusion” to encourage students to speak up during lecture. Hungerford was, of course, “alluding” to the name of an Arrested Development character’s magic act. “I almost cut her off to ask whether I could be Chaucer or Poe,” said Maureen (“Fuck Mountain”) Miller ’06, alluding to the episode to which Hungerford had originally alluded.
On any Monday night at 8 p.m precisely, Teddy (“Chicken Dance”) Goff SY ’07 can be found with his feet propped on his common room coffee table. Dozens of fans seated around him mouth the opening theme they’ve already memorized: “And now the story of a wealthy family who lost everything and the one son who had no choice but to keep them all together…” They are this family. And this television show may just be the glue that has “no choice but to keep them all together.”
Over in Timothy Dwight, Simon (“How much can a banana cost—10 dollars?”) Heitin ’07—a die-hard who believes “There are only two kinds of people: people who love Arrested Development and people who have never heard of it”—wrote a letter to Fox. Jonathan (“I will be my dead father’s body”) Dach’s JE ‘08’s freshman Farnam suite bonded over the first season, while over the summer Erin (“Yes, we know your name is Annyon”) Kelly PC ’07 connected with her actual family by watching the fictional one. “Once I missed an episode,” Kelly recalled, “and my dad called to remind me it was on.”
Speaking of the show’s end, Christian (“The Bullet”) Nakarado SM ’07 describes “a great darkness [that] will spread across the land, extinguishing all hope for next semester, or the rest of my life, really.” One off-campus house is hosting a mandatory-black “Wake” after December 5th’s episode. Offerings will be burnt on a makeshift raft, which will float to its death in the bathtub. There will be smoothies.
“You have to have a certain amount of intelligence,” said Michael Cera, the actor who plays George-Michael, “to decipher [the joke] and know that it's just a dirty penis joke.” Certainly, this trickery is what Yalies treasure. To loyal fans, Arrested Development can never really die. We can only hope that this coffin, like Gob Bluth’s magical one, has a trap-door.