The Center Seat

I am a bonafide horror movie wuss. I will never, EVER see The Strangers. So imagine my delight when Pistola Whipped agreed to review it for The Center Seat! You mean I get to post the review, but don't actually have to sit through it? Yippee!!! Thank God for friends (at least ones that are a bit more hardass than myself). Enjoy.

I do not question Nayana’s love and respect for movies. She has written about movies and we’ve discussed movies that I wouldn’t dream of seeing. And not because I’m a snob, but because…. well, yeah because I’m a snob. I appreciate that kind of dedication, whether it is to movie watching or classifying moss found only in temperate climate forest beds.

However, her love of movies does not encompass the horror/slasher flick genre. I usually don’t like them either. However, my friends had a different idea. They agreed to see Sex and the City with me, and then sneakily tricked me into seeing The Strangers instead. And since Nayana is definitely not going to see this one, I thought I would take it upon myself (I am so busy not doing my actual day job) to review it here: in the blog-a-go-go.

Let me start off by saying that I think that this movie was inaccurately portrayed as a horror/slasher flick in the previews. It actually played out as more of a psychological/psychopath movie along the lines of Silence of the Lambs or Seven. And that, to me, is a big distinction. I watched the first 20 minutes of this movie through my hands because I was expecting that weird tentacled thing in Carol Anne’s closet in Poltergeist to appear. After all, I’m old enough that I have to get out of bed at least once during the night to pee, but young enough to believe that a monster could still hang out under my bed. I watched it through my hands because movies about ghosts, oversized bugs loitering in the mist, crop circles and angry aliens freak me out. Your average roaming group of masked killers doesn’t. That being said, there were parts of this movie that did scare me.



So let’s start with a little plot familiarization. Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman play lovers who have hit a bit of a snag. They attend a wedding, return late in the evening to Speedman’s parents’ comfy summerhouse, and try to make the most of the night by drinking and listening to Sad Bastard music (see Jeff Tweedy, Richard Buckner and Don Gibson). They are startled by a knock on the door. It’s a strange girl covered in shadows asking where Tamara is (how did the writer know that the name Tamara is the creepiest name ever?) They inform her that Tamara doesn’t live there and instead of going away she stands at the end of the driveway, swings on the swing set, stands listlessly amongst the pine trees in an attempt to scare the viewer. At this point, naturally, Liv runs out of cigarettes and Scott runs out in the deep, dark night to fetch her some.

Enter the other two creepy, shadowy figures and let the madness unfold…

This is when my hands came down from my face and rested obstinately atop of each other. Over the next hour the viewer is exposed to sinister encounters with the three masked marauders who torture Liv and Scott for no other reason than ‘you [they] were home’. Bryan Bertino, writer and director, did a few interesting things to make this a creepfest. He would cut to shots of the house, which looked calm and kinda gave me that warm, fuzzy feeling like when you’d see a shot of the ‘Golden Girls’ house after a commercial break. One would never assume that any horrors other than floral-patterned wicker furniture were taking place within the walls of that solidly built 70’s rambler. And Bertino did kind of play on that whole Manson cult killing spree idea that kind of freaks me out too (side note: the Manson thing took place in the sixties--I don’t understand the sixties, and am therefore afraid of them), but overall there were too many token horror flick tricks and plot holes to make this a sincerely terrifying experience. Truly the scariest scene had to be before the movie even started, when the new Nic Cage ego-driven movie was previewed. Yep, it’s called Bangkok Dangerous. Chills literally just ran down my spine.

Liv and Scott get ups for decent acting and I think Bertino could go on to make a downright scary movie. However, the phony ‘based on real events’ beginning to the ‘it will be easier next time’ end line, as well as the casting of Franchise Queen Liv suggests that Bertino could get stalled out making even un-scarier sequels. So, my advice is to see this one…just skip the previews. ...Click here for the rest of this tasty post.

Hey y'all. My good friend Pistola Whipped has graciously offered her rebuttal to my review of Baby Mama. (She liked it; I didn't.) Enjoy!

So, this is my attempt at a movie review and like everything I do, it’s outdated, irrelevant and probably misinformed. However, after reading Nayana’s review of Baby Mama, I felt it my responsibility to the non-douchebag moviegoers of the blog-a-go-go to offer a different perspective on a movie Nayana panned. In fact, I think she may have liked the douchebag sitting next to her, or behind her better than she did Baby Mama.

Lemme say right now that I had no real strong desire to watch Baby Mama. Judging from the previews, I thought it would be another pre-fab SNL skit-to-big-screen attempt, rife with piss-poor jokes, obvious product placement and the dreaded Lorne Michael cameo. And in all honesty, it was those things, except I don’t know if Tina Fey and Amy Poehler ever specifically created a skit for SNL with the Baby Mama motif. It does seem that all the bouncing one-liners and sardonic grins off each other during the past few years of "Weekend Update" was enough energy to spark a light bulb in a GE head upstairs. And poof: those bitches got themselves a movie deal. And not only that, but they got to laugh, look good and hang out in their hometown of Philadelphia while fulfilling it.

I laughed aloud a lot at this movie. I thought it was clever, touching and funny. Tina Fey played her character with humility and practicality, which gave cinematic vets Steve Martin and Sigourney Weaver a chance to play totally offbeat, freaky characters. Greg Kinnear shone in his granola-y, anti-big business, pro-neighborhood role. I don’t know many big-budget, multi-millionaire actors who could pull off the irony of his part. And I’m no fan of Dax Shepherd, but I didn’t really have to be, since he played the a-hole in this movie, and he played it well. I was most surprised by how much I loved Amy Poehler. She was lovably neurotic, fiercely loyal, and even though she was deceitful and felonious, I still wanted her and Tina to be best friends!

So, if dumb, overplayed, stereotypical SNL movies don’t trip your trigger, then I’m not going to try and change your mind. And this movie won’t either. However, I don’t doubt for a second that Fey and Poehler, smarty-pants that they are, view Baby Mama as a way to bust into Hollywood/the men’s locker room so they can brand their comedy and make movies on their own terms. They have honed their trade, and if you can take out the airbrushed cheekbones, plays on stereotypes, and hole-filled plot, Baby Mama is like watching "Weekend Update" for an hour and a half, with some interesting people stopping by. ...Click here for the rest of this tasty post.

Hey, folks! My dear friend Dorcas Hathaway scored advance tickets to Meet Bill, the new Aaron Eckhart/Elizabeth Banks comedy (I'm trying not to be bitter). So today, you have The Center Seat's very first guest critic! I give you.... Dorcas Hathaway.

Aaron Eckhart pulls a very good performance as a middle-aged guy who has a crap job, a cheating wife, and is still living in the shadows of his brother. The ongoing joke about his gut hanging made me laugh every time.

He’s at a groundbreaking ceremony for yet another thing that his rich in-laws have donated, when he first meets The Kid (Logan Lerman). Bill is staring in the bathroom mirror of self-pity when a kid runs into the bathroom to escape the principal (and flush a dime bag). He gets roped into a mentoring program, and ends up with the same kid (or else there wouldn’t be much of a movie). Bill is trying to get out of his current BS job at the in-laws’ family bank and open a SweetSweet doughnut franchise, but his father-in-law basically controls all their assets. Then Bill catches his wife Jess (Elizabeth Banks) cheating on him with the slimy TV news guy Chip (Timothy Olyphant,) so he goes to stay with his rich brother and his brother’s life partner. Then the rest happens, which I won’t spoil.

Reed Diamond (Paul, the brothers partner) reminded me of the hilarious Stephen Guarino in Logo’s "Big Gay Sketch Show". I especially loved when Paul is whining to Sergeant (Craig Bierko) in bed that Bill was loud on a Friday night, “but it’s 10:30.” He sounds exactly like me every Friday night.

Lucy, (Jessica Alba) is a charming and funny sales girl who works at a sexy mall lingerie store. The Kid is trying to get her, though she is obviously ten-plus years older than him.
Jessica Alba is okay at comedy, but really needs to stick to action.

Logan Lerman needs to be in more movies. He is really talented and funny. I loved the glow on his face when he asked to take a vat of chocolate doughnut icing home after he stuck his finger in it. Priceless.

Speaking of price… I tend to be overly sensitive about product placement. When Bill receives a package of SweetSweet doughnuts from DHL, not a crumb out of place, it makes me wonder how much it cost them to put that little box in there. For that matter, how much does Starbucks pay for Mary Louise Parker to hold a Frappucino in every shot of "Weeds"? ...Click here for the rest of this tasty post.