Which film critics do you trust (if any?)

South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut was a great musical. It delivers all the pleasures of a conventional dumb Broadway musical, and yet it’s obscene and satirical and silly and rude. It’s the best of both worlds for a Broadway musical queen like me.

that's EDELSTEIN

Don't know/care if he is straight or claims to be or what, but a straight guy who likes musicals joking about it and calling himself a "Broadway musical queen" isn't exactly some kind of Freudian gotcha moment.

also why is he not aware of rock n roll musicals (there were/are plenty - admittedly most of them are subpar and pale in comparison to the pre-rock n roll era but STILL)

It LOOKS like I'm misreading the bit about Hartnett, but he contradicts himself: "Here are people I want to see more of. Like Topher Grace or Josh Hartnett, or whose that guy married to Demi Moore -- I don’t know these people that well. I haven’t seen them. I know they get a lot of parts. I can’t remember them."

Love the bit about Cruise not being "open about his instrument.'

Apparently he sees something in C. Thomas Howell's vanilla face than I ever dreamed.

he wants to see more of ashton kutcher, josh hartnett, and topher grace.

for the love of christ.

Yeah, but that's after he namedrops Hartnett as an example of "bland American juvenile actors" and concedes that "Maybe he hasn’t been tested," so I took him to mean that he'd have to see more of guys like him and Ashton Kutcher before denouncing them as "so bad you wonder why anyone hires them." The way you boiled it down to "Josh Hartnett isn't used enough" makes it sound like a ringing endorsement of the guy to casting directors everywhere. (xpost)

I don't see enough of Topher Grace either.

He repeats Kael's contention that Christopher Walken could have been the Gene Kelly of our time.

(xpost)

He IS being ambivalent, I'll concede. If he admits he can't remember them in movies, that's probably their fault.

Grace would be good in a Woody Allen movie

(certainly better than Jason Biggs)

it's not biggs's fault that allen sucks.

Also the point of the C. Thomas Howell anecdote seemed pretty clear to me to be more like "actors are such a special breed than some lameo 80's comedy dude that noone respects as an actor has an 'it factor' that the camera loves" than that C. Thomas Howell is secretly brilliant. Get one reading comprehension.

Grace and Kutcher have actual comedic talent, but perhaps not perceptible to Arrested Development fans.

oh BURN

thanks for the advice, Alex. I hope to receive your SAT scores shortly.

oh BURN

I see what you did there.

Chris Walken gets to display a lot of his dancing talent surreptitiously through the body language of bizarre characters in SNL sketches, such as the Dead Zone office worker or the sympathetic Jenny Jones audience member.

walken lacks the charm and populist appeal of gene kelly. oh wait maybe that was kael's point!1!!?1!!? clever.

I had the misfortune to watch Walken in 'Romance and Cigarettes' the other day - judging by that, it's a small mercy he hasn't done more musicals.

(Incidentally, I rented it on the basis of this review - http://movies.nytimes.com/2007/09/07/movies/07roma.html?ref=movies - so, re the thread title, Mr Holden can safely be scratched off the list.)

The only hoofin' I've seen by Walken is in Pennies From Heaven and the Fatboy Slim video.

(Actually I now realise that it was actually this pash-note in Salon that I read -http://www.salon.com/ent/movies/review/2007/09/06/btm/index_np.html - so O'Hehir is for the chopping block too.)

Wait, is Morbs seriously saying That 70s Show > Arrested Development?

Based on my viewings, certainly, but I was valuing those 2 actors for other things to (tho I've yet to see Grace in a comic film part that's better than what he did on T70S).

You AD ppl are responsible for getting Jason Bateman back in films that actually get released; thanks.

xp

Disagreeing with a critic once -- or even 200 times -- is no reason to 'chop' them.

you're ignoring the comic nirvana in making a film with Jason Bateman, Topher, and Michael Cera.

It's kind of hard to compare That '70s Show with Arrested Development: they're doing such different things. Part of what a lot of people (including myself) think is so brilliant about the latter is how densely layered it is: there are jokes that call back to earlier episodes, there are blink-and-you-miss-'em visual gags, etc. Whereas That '70s Show is a fairly conventional sitcom. Nothing wrong with that, but the appeals are in the acting and the comforting familiarity of the structure rather than in the dizzying innovation.

I just saw dizzying unfunniness. But anyway, fuck TV.

It's kind of hard to compare That '70s Show with Arrested Development: they're doing such different things.

yeah respectively: sucking balls and being awesome.

hey, to all the sane guys on this thread, i take it "that 70's show" is fairly mundane, dated bullcrap, no?

But anyway, fuck TV.

dude you just invalidated your own opinion of AD

I hate the way this sounds, but I don't think you can judge Arrested Development based on a few scattered episodes: you really have to watch them in sequence, or else half the pleasure is lost.

Shh! You're ruining the surprise!

I don't like AD much, but no way is it less funny than 70s.

Yeah, I should've watched lots more of a show that made me chuckle twice in a half hour.

GUYS, CAN'T ARGUE ABOUT WHAT PPL FIND FUNNY

Paging me on screwball to thread!!!!!

"I don't like AD much, but no way is it less funny than 70s The Awful Trurh."

Roffles

(x-post) Absolutely true and unarguable.

Walken is great in Pennies From Heaven - easily the best thing about the American version

Arrested Development has never made me laugh, so why would I want to watch a whole bunch of episodes of it...?

Why do people keep returning to ILX?

Because I just said, it's funnier when you get all the references and inside jokes. It's just not a show that's meant to be watched in a stand-alone fashion, which is part of the reason it got such lousy ratings.

Anyway, enough people whose judgments I trust said that the show was worth it, so I started from the very beginning. If the first disc of Season 1 isn't up your alley, then that's fair. And I totally understand not wanting to even expend the effort (life's too short), but know that your criticism is kind of unfounded.

Haha, that was an xpost, although there's some truth to that first sentence.

http://blogs.chicagoreader.com/film/2007/09/19/s-not-funny/

that guy hates fun

if he has such a problem with witty dialogue perhaps "Man Gets Hit With Football in the Groin" is more his style

WTF, MGHWFITG = LOL!

i don't want to get all morby esp. because i have liked some of his work, but the last thing i need to hear about is another apatow-related project. i will never get sick of tyra gifs, however.

Eric, the link's down.

here you go

Still works for me (not having cleared cache, et al). Essentially it says "Apatow doesn't make me laugh, Breillat is funny, wah wah wah."