“Yes, I remember committing elf-cide.” http://www.bubbleblabber.com/review-son-of-zorn-return-of-the-drinking-buddy/
Son of Zorn 1.8 Review: “Return of the Drinking Buddy”
December 7, 2016
Son of Zorn, Son of Zorn Episode Reviews, Television Son of Zorn, Son of Zorn 108, Son of Zorn Season 1 Leave a comment
The Simpsons 28.9 Review: “The Last Traction Hero”
December 7, 2016
Television, The Simpsons, The Simpsons Episode Reviews The Simpsons, The Simpsons 2809, The Simpsons Season 28 Leave a comment
“That’s like telling Three-Finger Brown he can’t play for the Brooklyn Tip-Tops.” http://www.bubbleblabber.com/review-the-simpsons-the-last-traction-hero/
What Won TV? – November 27-December 3, 2016
December 7, 2016
Television, What Won TV? Arrow, Comedy Bang! Bang!, Jane the Virgin, Legends of Tomorrow, Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Saturday Night Live, SNL, Westworld Leave a comment
In this feature, I look back at each day of the past week and determine what shows “won TV” for the night. That is, I consider every episode of television I watched that aired on a particular day and declare which was the best.
Sunday – Westworld
Monday – Jane the Virgin
Tuesday – Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
Wednesday – Arrow
Thursday – Legends of Tomorrow, Successful Crossovers of Today
Friday – Comedy Bang! Bang! says Comedy Bye! Bye!
Saturday – SNL, mostly for those Woodbridge HS kids
SNL Review December 3, 2016: Emma Stone/Shawn Mendes
December 6, 2016
Saturday Night Live, SNL Weekly Recaps, Television Emma Stone, Saturday Night Live, Saturday Night Live 4208, Saturday Night Live Season 42, Shawn Mendes, SNL, SNL Season 42 Leave a comment
SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE — “Emma Stone” Episode 1712 — Pictured: (l-r) Beck Bennett, Mikey Day, Kate McKinnon, Emma Stone, Kyle Mooney, and Aidy Bryant during the “High School Theater Show” sketch on December 3, 2016 — (Photo by: Will Heath/NBC)
This review was originally posted on News Cult in December 2016.
Love It
Woodbridge High School Student Theater Showcase – I love the maddeningly self-righteous Woodbridge crew, but with each new edition, I fear their appearances have run their course. But then I remember what is going on in the world, and I realize how much we need them. Where else are we going to get a joke about a modern Holocaust that is so nonchalant and so cutting? Or a Black Lives Matter joke that is so loopy? And you know this is the only we can hear Aidy Bryant say, “Yep. You guessed it. I have AIDS.”
This Is a Movie Review: Nocturnal Animals
December 4, 2016
Cinema, Movie Reviews Amy Adams, Jake Gylenhaal, Michael Shannon, Nocturnal Animals, Tom Ford 1 Comment
The story-within-the-story in Nocturnal Animals – Jake Gyllenhaal teams up with Det. Michael Shannon to track down the rapist-killers of his wife and daughter in the Texas desert – is a satisfying pulp yarn on its own merits. But it exists as it does within a frame device so that we have the added pleasure of Amy Adams (Jake Gyllenhaal the author’s ex-wife) looking distraught as she reads the story that she believes she inspired, and so that director Tom Ford can play around with the editing and sound design as he cuts back and forth between reality and fiction in a way that gets under our skin and sticks in our craws. Also, there is a scene in the middle with Jena Malone that suddenly switches genres that will have you indelibly jumping out of your seat. That is certainly how my entire theater reacted.
I give Nocturnal Animals 9 Lovingly Framed Butts out of 10 Wails of Anguish.
This Is a Movie Review: Elle
December 4, 2016
Cinema, Movie Reviews Elle, Isabelle Huppert, Paul Verhoeven Leave a comment
Elle opens with Michèle (Isabelle Huppert) enduring a sexual assault from a home invader. This scene is revisited multiple times, both mentally and in actuality, as the assailant continues to strike. These repetitions play with your head, partly because it is sickening to watch the scene play out over and over again and partly because Michèle is so seemingly calm when coming to terms with it. She eventually unmasks her attacker and gets her own twisted revenge. Meanwhile, she is dedicated to her job at a videogame company developing an aggressively sexist World of Warcraft-style game, so score one for thematic consistency. Also, weirdly, there is also an acidic family dramedy going on, which certainly can realistically exist alongside the nastiness, but surprise, surprise: its ordinariness may actually be the film’s most button-pushing quality.
I give Elle 8 Pants Around 10 Ankles.
This Is a Movie Review: Jackie
December 4, 2016
Cinema, Movie Reviews Billy Crudup, Greta Gerwig, Jackie, Jackie Kennedy, Jackie Movie, John Hurt, Natalie Portman, Pablo Larrain, Peter Sarsgaard 1 Comment
This review was originally published on News Cult in December 2016.
Starring: Natalie Portman, Billy Crudup, Peter Sarsgaard, Greta Gerwig, John Hurt
Director: Pablo Larraín
Running Time: 99 Minutes
Rating: R for an Alarming Recreation
Release Date: December 2, 2016 (Limited)
The strongest biopics often take the most intimate approaches, and it does not get much more intimate than Jackie. In terms of chronology, cinematography, music, dialogue, and everything else, Pablo Larraín’s portrait of the iconic Mrs. Kennedy is razor sharp in focus. The opening shot, and essentially every shot thereafter, is a tight close-up of Natalie Portman as the First Lady. She is told, in the wake of her husband’s assassination, “the world has gone mad.” But this has been so ever since she has taken residence in the White House. The relentless gaze she endures in such an existence makes it so.
Jackie is constructed around four key relationships. The framing device is an interview conducted by a persistent, but plainly frustrated Billy Crudup (supposedly playing historian Theodore H. White, but credited only as “The Journalist”). Jackie welcomes him into her home, but insists that he is prohibited from printing basically everything she reveals to him. He seeks truth, whereas she only offers stories. Yet, her film is filled with details, and in the wake of tragedy, she latches onto them for some semblance of survival.
Bobby Kennedy (Peter Sarsgaard) is in full-on family mode, as he attempts to anchor his sister-in-law back to reality. Does our knowledge of the tragic fate that awaits him suggest that her buzzing, restless psyche is the better response to all this madness? Social Secretary Nancy Tuckerman (Greta Gerwig) is a constant, near-silent presence, practically a friendly neighborhood specter propping up Jackie’s decorum and fabulousness. And then there is a priest (John Hurt), who only offers answers wrapped in ambiguity. (Or is it the other way around?)
The teams on sound and design assemble it all to give you the front-row seat that is almost too disturbing to bear. Indeed, its boldness in key moments may in fact be too much for some audiences to handle. Cinematographer Stéphane Fontaine understands that the medium is the message. His Super 16 photography is a mix of grainy distortion/clarity and that old soap opera-style intimacy. Mica Levi’s avant-garde score is unnerving, yet somehow comforting, and therefore unnerving to think that such a tragedy could ever be comforting. A constant string phrase sounds like the THX theme being drained of life. Like all of Jackie, it is indelible.
Jackie is Recommended If You Like: The Tree of Life, Under the Skin, Black Swan
Grade: 4.5 out of 5 Bloodstains That Are Hard to Wash Off
Billboard Hot Rock Songs – Week of December 10, 2016
December 4, 2016
Billboard Charts, Billboard Hot Rock Songs, Music Billboard, Billboard Hot Rock Songs, Hallelujah, Leonard Cohen Leave a comment
Each week, I check out the Billboard Hot Rock Songs chart, and then I rearrange the top 25 based on my estimation of their quality.
Original Version
1. twenty one pilots – Heathens”
2. X Ambassadors – “Unsteady”
3. twenty one pilots – “Ride”
4. Lil Wayne, Wiz Khalifa, & Imagine Dragons with Logic, Ty Dolla $ign ft. X Ambassadors – “Sucker for Pain”
5. John Mayer – “Love on the Weekend”
6. Fitz and the Tantrums – “HandClap”
7. Coldplay – “Hymn for the Weekend”
8. The Lumineers – “Ophelia”
9. The xx – “On Hold”
10. Kings of Leon – “Waste a Moment”
11. The Lumineers – “Sleep on the Floor”
12. Zach Williams – “Chain Breaker”
13. Bastille – “Good Grief”
14. The Lumineers – “Cleopatra”
15. Highly Suspect – “My Name is Human”
16. Metallica – “Atlas, Rise!”
17. Metallica – “Hardwired”
18. Metallica – “Moth Into Flame”
19. Judah & the Lion – “Take It All Back”
20. The Head and the Heart – “All We Ever Knew”
21. Leonard Cohen – “Hallelujah”
22. twenty one pilots – “Cancer”
23. Jeff Buckley – “Hallelujah”
24. Five Finger Death Punch – “I Apologize”
25. Green Day – “Still Breathing”
Jmunney’s Revision
1. Hallelujah (Leonard Cohen)
2. My Name is Human
3. Unsteady
4. On Hold
5. Ride
6. Good Grief
7. Moth Into Flame
8. Hallelujah (Jeff Buckley)
9. Atlas, Rise!
10. Ophelia
11. Heathens
12. Waste a Moment
13. Cleopatra
14. Take It All Back
15. Cancer
16. Hymn for the Weekend
17. I Apologize
18. Sleep on the Floor
19. Hardwired
20. All We Ever Knew
21. Still Breathing
22. HandClap
23. Love on the Weekend
24. Sucker for the Pain
25. Chain Breaker
Billboard Hot 20 – Week of December 10, 2016
December 4, 2016
Billboard Charts, Billboard Hot 100, Music Billboard, Billboard Hot 100, Sia, The Greatest Leave a comment
Each week, I check out the Billboard Hot 100, and then I rearrange the top 20 based on my estimation of their quality.
Original Version
1. Rae Sremmurd ft. Gucci Mane – “Black Beatles”
2. The Chainsmokers ft. Halsey – “Closer”
3. The Weeknd ft. Daft Punk – “Starboy”
4. Bruno Mars – “24K Magic”
5. Zay Hilfigerrr and Zayion McCall – “Juju on That Beat (TZ Anthem)”
6. Ariana Grande ft. Nicki Minaj – “Side to Side”
7. twenty one pilots – “Heathens”
8. DJ Snake ft. Justin Bieber – “Let Me Love You”
9. D.R.A.M. ft. Lil Yachty – “Broccoli”
10. Maroon 5 ft. Kendrick Lamar – “Don’t Wanna Know”
11. Drake – “Fake Love”
12. Aminé – “Caroline”
13. Hailee Steinfeld & Grey ft. Zedd – “Starving”
14. gnash ft. Olivia O’Brien – “i hate u, i love u”
15. Alessia Cara – “Scars to Your Beautiful”
16. Major Lazer ft. Justin Bieber and MØ – “Cold Water”
17. Shawn Mendes – “Treat You Better”
18. Sia ft. Kendrick Lamar – “The Greatest”
19. Justin Timberlake – “Can’t Stop the Feeling!”
20. X Ambassadors – “Unsteady”
Jmunney’s Revision
1. The Greatest
2. Starboy
3. Scars to Your Beautiful
4. Black Beatles
5. Side to Side
6. Cold Water
7. Unsteady
8. Broccoli
9. Closer
10. 24K Magic
11. i hate u, i love u
12. Starving
13. Heathens
14. Let Me Love You
15. Can’t Stop the Feeling!
16. Caroline
17. Fake Love
18. Don’t Wanna Know
19. Treat You Better
20. Juju on That Beat (TZ Anthem)
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