Tag: Ken Levine

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Point & Click

Is it the season or am I just being mean?

  • Screen Junkies has an excellent selection of kids’ letters to Michael Bay, my favourite being:  07SEP12 UPDATE: Unfortunately the Screen Junkies image/link thingie no longer works. If memory serves, it was a child’s hand-drawn picture requesting Mr Bay explode his – the child’s – father. Guess you had to’ve read it at the time.  (Fedora-tip: The Big Picture.)
  • Ken Levine has his 2009 Summer Movies preview, with all-time classics like:
    • Ghosts of Girlfriends Past – A new spin on the single most tired premise in RomCom history — hire a leading man who is an enemy of comedy. Stars Matthew McConaughey and the lovely but not-exactly-hilarious Jennifer Garner.
    • Whatever Works – Woody Allen’s 285th movie, the 247th with the same theme: older neurotic Jew in a relationship with hot young girl who could be his granddaughter. Larry David as Woody Allen. Reviews are mixed. Middle-aged Jews love it, young girls are appalled.
    • The Time Traveler’s Wife – “Where were you last night and don’t tell me the Middle Ages, you bastard!?”

    (Fedora-tip: The Big Picture.)

  • Forget Robert Rodriguez and his Ten-Minute Film School. I give you Mark L Lester‘s Commando is the Best Film Ever (with parts 2 and 3):
    [This] film wasn’t an accident, just like Jesus wasn’t an accident. It took real vision to pull off, starting with the theme of a parent’s love for his child, and the lengths he will go to to get her back from a wily South American dictator. Also, it has explosions, and a rockin’ saxophone-driven soundtrack that really gets the people moving in their seats.
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A Late Letter to Aaron Sorkin

Dear Mr Sorkin

I’ve been a big fan, Mr Sorkin, for a looong time.

I first noticed your work when Jack and Tom chewed the scenery (and each other) in A Few Good Men. Even though Det. Steve Keller Michael Douglas played The American President, I still enjoyed how you mixed in the love and politics.

And then there was Sports Night. A comedy with no laugh track? A drama that played for just half-an-hour? A show which wasn’t really about sports but about relationships? That used sports as a metaphor for what it meant to be a decent human being in this world? You sly dog, you: I was hooked. You showed me that not only was it possible to be funny and enlightening, you made me a believer in intelligent television – sometimes less was more.

The West Wing did not disappoint. Only you could create a drama about politics without regularly resorting to situations in which the world was saved at the last second. I only got to Season Three unfortunately – life had plans for me and I drifted away. I hear that around Season Four, life had its own plans for you, too.

I’m not afraid to say that I had a flutter when I heard you were returning with Studio 60 on Sunset Strip. So what if Teevee quickly tired of the numerous rants soliloquoys. And you have to admit Ken Levine was pretty funny with his if Aaron Sorkin wrote a show about baseball. I knew without question that I was going to tune in whenever it reached our shores.

The first half-dozen eps were classic Sorkin. I lapped it up. Whatever industry japes and spikes were there went straight over my head. So you wanted to vent – I was cool with that. And maybe your signature back-and-forth dialogue wasn’t so fresh a third time around – I didn’t mind; it was nice to have you back on the box. But then there was the The Harriet Dinner two-parter. Then the 4am Miracle ep. Then The Disaster Show.

Mr Sorkin – all due respect but… WTF?

I’m sorry, Mr Sorkin, but I just… I can’t take any more. I’ve stopped watching. I may never know how Danny and Jordan go with the baby, or if Matt and Harriett’s rollercoaster love will straighten up and fly right, or even if the New Black Guy will get his first sketch aired. I don’t care. I feel insulted. If I wanted will-they-or-won’t-they relationship arcs or idiot-plots-A through to -Z, I’d be watching CSI or Medium. I wanted to enjoy your last outing but it didn’t work out. It wasn’t me, it was you.

Please don’t take this to be a beatdown. I’m a big fan of your work – even if Studio 60 plumbed some depths, it was still superior television. Whatever your next show is, you can count me in, no questions asked.

Yours sincerely

d f mamea

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