Shout-out to everyone attending the National Association of Broadcasters convention in Las Vegas this week. I realize the fact that the city is not just a den of sin, but also a bustling business hub, is nothing new, but I still like to imagine that when you told your friends you were going to Vegas for work they were all like, "Hell yeah, you are gonna get some boobs up in your face and do mad yayo and rage it up!" and then you were like, "Ha ha, for sure, son, also definitely gonna check out some really informative panels about current developments and trends in the television industry, whuttt!" and then you guys all high-fived awkwardly. Kudos to you for remaining a professional while still enjoying a good time, theoretical NAB attendee.
ANYWAY: Tuesday at the NAB, the Netflix panel went down, and the news was dominated by the impending return of Arrested Development. Below are some pertinent details about what the new iteration will look like, but the major takeaway: Somehow, this long-desired AD revival continues to not be an elaborate and cruel hoax being perpetrated on a nation of eager comedy nerds.
What It’s About: A sheriff (Shaggy 2 Dope) and a crime lord (Violent J) battle for control of the Wild West town of Mud Bug. Also, many characters wear clown makeup.
Who It’s For: Fans of normal, classic Westerns, and also fans of people who wear clown makeup.
Big Money Rustlas is a comedy Western starring Insane Clown Posse’s Shaggy 2 Dope and Violent J, and their label Psychopathic Records produced the film. Beyond laughing along with the rest of the Internet over viral ads for the Gathering, I was not especially familiar with the genre of clown music before I watched this film. It certainly seems weird on paper. An interest in looking like a mean clown is a pretty crazy unifying quality for a type of music, but maybe just crazy enough to work. (It doesn’t work.)
What It’s About: Twenty years after graduation, an emotionally crippled writer is still hung up on Winona Ryder, a girl who was nice to him once. He returns to his hometown to give a commencement address and tries to put it in her.
Who It’s For: Emotionally crippled writers.
High school was not the easiest. Sometimes people were mean, sometimes I was mean, and I hadn’t yet figured out who I was or what I wanted. I did not have the best time in high school. Do you know who else didn’t have the best time in high school? Everyone. It's true for everyone, the end.
What It’s About: Your friend Billy Zane plays a composer in a wig falling victim to the manipulative charms of a young girl who can’t sing and doesn’t take off her bra.
Who It’s For: Music industry professionals. This is the most accurate on-screen portrayal of the recording industry since Alvin & the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel.
Sometimes Netflix has no faith in me. “Best Prediction For You: One Star.” Why would you even think that, Netflix? Blue Seduction stars Billy Zane and it’s called Blue Seduction! It sounds like four-star material to me.
What It’s About: An Abercrombie model with the ability to time travel tries to solve his ex-girlfriend’s murder, killing scores more on the way.
Who It’s For: Mothheads, which is the name for Butterfly Effect superfans that I just made up.
Don’t you hate it when you keep forgetting to watch a movie, for 416 straight weeks? I’m such a bonehead sometimes. I have totally and consistently flaked on ever seeing the first Butterfly Effect, released a little over eight years ago. It’s a horrendous oversight, I know.
Each week, Netflix Watch Instantly adds hundreds of new titles. Four or five are movies you want to watch, some are bad TV shows or camp classics, and most make no sense at all. Those in the latter category are puzzling: not bad enough to be good and certainly not good enough to be interesting. In this column, comedian Max Silvestri will review a new film on Netflix Watch Instantly and ask, what is this?
What It’s About: A creature suspiciously similar to the Predator is hunting soldiers in either South America or Louisiana. Who It’s For: Somebody working on a YouTube montage of railing kills, as this movie has at least one of them. (A railing kill is when a disposable bad guy gets shot and goes flying over a railing. Only the BEST movies have them.)
Each week, Netflix Watch Instantly adds hundreds of new titles. Four or five are movies you want to watch, some are bad TV shows or camp classics, and most make no sense at all. Those in the latter category are puzzling: not bad enough to be good and certainly not good enough to be interesting. In this column, comedian Max Silvestri will review a new film on Netflix Watch Instantly and ask, what is this?
What It’s About: A young boy turns 11 on 11/11/11, so despite there being over 10,000 live births every day in the United States, that means he is the devil.
Who It’s For: People disappointed by how little The Number 23 focused on 9/11.
Each week, Netflix Watch Instantly adds hundreds of new titles. Four or five are movies you want to watch, some are bad TV shows or camp classics, and most make no sense at all. Those in the latter category are puzzling: not bad enough to be good and certainly not good enough to be interesting. In this column, comedian Max Silvestri will review a new film on Netflix Watch Instantly and ask, what is this?
What It's About: A corrupt elderly caregiver is sentenced to give more care to the elderly at a nursing home, which is filled with different types of characters and lessons.
Who It's For: The guy who has to cut the sizzle reel for the writer/actor's funeral video.
When I first spoke with the Grantland folks about Netflix Watch Instantly, I stressed that I wanted to focus on a very certain kind of title. Yes, campy genre films offer many things to talk about, and so too do terrible mainstream movies, but nothing interested me as much as the profoundly and deeply mediocre things I write about here. They exist in a spooky Middle Place. (You'd need a tesseract to travel there alone.) Movies, from everything I've read, are very hard to make. Not difficult necessarily, but they absolutely require many different people saying yes, many different times. "Is this script good enough? Should we cast the guy whose face and neck look like that to play someone handsome? Can I please have more money so we can do a scene near a lake?" Mediocre movies are fascinating, because why would anyone bother?
What It's About: Two parents still reeling over the tragic death of their young child find a genie and wish for cash.
Who It's For: Delusional orphans and Louis Gossett Jr. superfans.
While I rarely trust the opinions of the Netflix user community, sometimes the member reviews are exactly what draw me in. It certainly worked in the case of The Lamp. "5 Stars: They had me at Louis Gossett Jr! Wonderful cast, wonderful story and something the whole family can learn from." You had me at they had me at Louis Gossett Jr.! Mr. Gossett Jr. is a notorious deal-closer in Hollywood. They say only two men's names can get a project green-lit regardless of the content or the cost: Steven Spielberg, and Louis Gossett Jr. "Say no more. Sold." That is what the fat cats in Tinselwood say when someone pitches them a movie starring Louis Gossett Jr.
What It's About: When an undercover CIA agent's assassination target is almost assassinated by other CIA agents, he decides to try and save the guy for no reason.
Who It's For: People clinically addicted to the sound of silenced pistols firing blanks.
Benjamin Franklin said that nothing is certain except death and taxes. But that was before Wesley Snipes. If you hate taxes like Wesley hates taxes, the only thing that is certain is death. (Though I sometimes think Mr. Snipes believes he IS Blade, a Daywalker he has played in films. Therefore, not even his death is certain.) 2010's Game of Death does not address Snipes's recent tax troubles. It focuses mostly on death.
Each week, Netflix Watch Instantly adds hundreds of new titles. Four or five are movies you want to watch, some are bad TV shows or camp classics, and most make no sense at all. Those in the latter category are puzzling: not bad Enough to be good and certainly not good enough to be interesting. In this column, comedian Max Silvestri will review a new film on Netflix Watch Instantly and ask, what is this?
What It's About: After his more fertile child dies during a sex accident, a terminally ill stand-up comedian demands that his remaining son grant him a dying wish: leave the priesthood and get married.
Who It's For: People fed up with films that paint humor, familial love and human sexuality in a positive light.
What was this movie? I was enchanted by the summary on Netflix: "After learning that he's dying, a man has one last request for either of his two sons: Get married! But when one of them dies trying, it's up to his brother — an aspiring priest — to fulfill his father's wish before it's too late." One of them dies trying? An aspiring priest? A nonsensical concept plus an all-star cast full of such notables as Danny Aiello, Joe Piscopo, Mario Cantone, and Gilbert Gottfried meant The Last Request seemed perfect to write about. The credit sequence, a dream in which our main character Jeff is being chased by boob-sharks, solemnly declares, "...And introducing T.R. Knight as Jeff." What an introduction! T.R. Knight used to be on Grey's Anatomy, a show I have never seen. Apparently the show is famous because in each episode one of the main characters dies or has an abortion or both, so it's high stakes.
Each week, Netflix Watch Instantly adds hundreds of new titles. Four or five are movies you want to watch, some are bad TV shows or camp classics, and most make no sense at all. Those in the latter category are puzzling: not bad Enough to be good and certainly not good enough to be interesting. In this column, comedian Max Silvestri will review a new film on Netflix Watch Instantly and ask, what is this?
My Fake Fiancé
What It's About: Two misanthropes stage a sham wedding in order to grift money and presents off everyone who has ever cared for them.
Who It's For: Men and women who hate either women or men. Melissa & Joey completists.
"Not another wedding!" This is the auspicious first line of dialogue in My Fake Fiancé, which should really be called We Are Both Fake Fiancés. I presume the reason it's not called that is because our society is not ready for the plural of the word fiancé. Or maybe because the title, like everything else in this film, was given only passing thought, the seeming product of an all-night don't-lift-your-pencils free-write with an attitude of outright disgust toward revision, logic or likeability. (I imagine many of the things I'll write about in this column will have a similar vibe, so I should probably make peace with it soon.)
Paul Bettany is in talks for Showtime’s Masters of Sex, an adaptation of Thomas Maier's book Masters of Sex: The Life and Times of William Masters and Virginia Johnson, the Couple Who Taught America How to Love. Masters and Johnson were sixties pioneers in human sexuality research, and the show will follow their relationship as well as the cultural impact of their research. In the first episode, the origins and intricacies of the baseball/sex analogy are explored. Grade: B+ [Deadline]
Where were you when you heard the news that brought a generation of Motherboys out chicken dancing into the street? On a Segway perhaps? Or just chilling at the Banana Stand? Did it make your eyebrows raise or fall off entirely, a la Stan Sitwell? Yes, it was just 48 hours ago that Arrested Development creator Mitch Hurwitz, flanked by the cast, declared live from the stage of the New Yorker Festival his intention to make a “limited-run” fourth season of the culty sitcom leading into the long-awaited feature film in the summer of 2013. The subsequent elation amongst a certain class of UCB-chronicling comedy nerds was palpable — a joy almost matched by Michael Cera’s agent and the guy renovating Hurwitz’s pool house. More Arrested Development means all is right with the world, an ancient (by Internet standards) wrong will be righted, a huge mistake of Gob-ian proportions will finally be undone.
