Entries in the Category "saturday night live"
The News in Feisty Old Ladies
Betty White will be hosting Saturday Night Live tomorrow, and if her interview with Jimmy Fallon is any indication, she's going to rock it. Everyone needs to watch this NOW.
My God, Did You See That?
I've missed the last few weeks of Saturday Night Live, but I tuned in last night simply because I happened to finish a book right around 11:30. I'm glad I saw this episode because host Joseph Gordon-Levitt kinda brought the house down. (In case the name's not familiar, or that picture's too small, he was the kid on 3rd Rock from the Sun; now he's 28 and making indie films. The Lookout was good; I hear Brick is great but it's been in my queue for about three years.)
It's a pretty regular occurrence for hosts to sing and dance in their monologue; Gordon-Levitt chose to emulate the "Make 'Em Laugh" number from Singin' in the Rain. If you have seen that movie, you know the insane physicality involved. If you watched the show, you know that he 95% pulled it off, and that's an incredible achievement.
This link to an Entertainment Weekly recap helpfully provides clips of both Gordon-Levitt's number as well as the original from Donald O'Connor. The writer of the recap, Ken Tucker, is very crotchety about the whole thing, huffing that he was not impressed because Gordon-Levitt didn't make it look as "effortless" as O'Connor did. Not to deride what O'Connor did back in 1952, but he had a cushion that Gordon-Levitt did not have: edits.
Gordon-Levitt did the whole damn thing live! He landed BOTH runs up the wall! So he was huffing and puffing a little by the end. Tucker complains that the thing "wasn't funny," but I think he's missing the point. It wasn't meant to be funny, and it wasn't meant to be better than the original; it was meant to be an incredibly bold gesture by a guy who's just been hovering on the edge of superstardom for the past fifteen or so years, and who I expect will be much-talked about for the rest of the week. It was a calculated move saying, "hey, don't underestimate me," and my prediction is that it will work.
(If you want funny, see the last skit of the night, also playable on the EW page. Gordon-Levitt played Lloyd Dobler doing the boombox serenade and Jason Sudeikis played the neighbor who just couldn't stop ruining it with questions. "Hey, whatcha doing? Is that Peter Gabriel?")
Anyway, it impressed me. Watch those clips--O'Connor's first, so you know what the standard was, and then Gordon-Levitt's--and tell me you didn't have at least a little bit of admiration for the kid. (Who is, incidentally, exactly my age but still seems like he's twenty, only because he's been on TV since he was like four.)
The Most Sexist Season of Top Chef Ever! and the Spunky Blonde Lady Who Might Take the Whole Thing Home (and Dear God I Hope She Does)
I love Top Chef, I do, enough to continue to be addicted to it despite the fact that my personal taste is so pedestrian that I literally had popcorn for dinner tonight. The contestants are all, “Ceviche! Veloute! Scallops!” and I’m all, “Peanut butter! Processed cheese!” and yet, Top Chef and I, we remain the best of friends.
Still, this season has been getting on my damn nerves.
There is one guy on the show this season who is such an obnoxious ass that I’m not going to print his name. I don’t want to increase his Google hits, a number I’m sure he keeps track of in some kind of retro little black book that also has the phone numbers of his favorite escort services and the female cousin he took to his prom. Anyway, this guy should know that I’m on to him. The rude and sexist things that come out of his damn mouth are so clearly designed to rile people up and grab him attention, and I am pissed that this show is giving it to him.
Even though the need has been more than met, other guys are continuing to step up and be bastards, including one in tonight’s episode who blathered on and on about how his dish was more refined and creative and special than anyone else’s and who didn’t even crack the top four. The only two guys who haven’t given me any trouble so far are Kevin (AKA Beardo, AKA Young Santa Claus) and Ash, the quippy gay guy who seemed like a nice guy but not a very good chef, and whose past-due elimination came tonight.
There are four front-runners right now (in addition to the bastards, who seem to consider themselves front-runners without tons of evidence of this): the Voltaggio brothers, and who seem too intent on beating each other to worry about the presence of women in the kitchen, nice guy Beardo, and Jennifer, who is my girl crush. The first couple episodes seemed to be trying to position her as ‘the bitch,’ overplaying footage of her talking about how competitive she is, and how she’s not there to make friends or whatever reality show cliché the producers coaxed her into saying.
Let me suggest, as Tina Fey did in a really funny rant on Hillary Clinton, that YEAH. SHE IS A BITCH. BITCHES GET STUFF DONE.
Jen gets stuff done
She really came alive in the third episode of the season, a challenge in which the entire crew had to fix a big buffet-style meal for an entire airport hangar full of military people and their families. She had won the Quickfire, the mini-challenge that takes up the first ten minutes of every episode, and her reward was immunity—the “you can’t get eliminated tonight” prize. On account of that, the rest of the group nominated her as the head of the kitchen (there’s some fancy name for it, I forget what it was), who would not make a dish of her own but would supervise and manage and just in general keep everything hot, refilled, on plates, on time. She stalked around the kitchen like General Patton, negotiating arguments over the use of equipment, asking people things like, “Can you cook and have this conversation at the same time?” She was alarmingly impressive.
I wouldn’t be so aggressively girl-power if this particular season hadn’t made it necessary. Women have been getting eliminated twice as fast as men have been—and I’m not saying the judging is crooked or anything, but that the contestant pool was thick with mediocre ladies. If you don’t put good female chefs on the show, good female chefs can’t win, and that bugs me.
The second episode of the season pitted “boys” against “girls” (and yes, that’s what they continually called it even though these are all men and women legally able to purchase alcohol and rent cars) and featured tons of trash talk from the “boys” about how they didn’t feel threatened by any of the women. Several episodes in, the designated punching bag has become older woman Robin, who regardless of how annoying she is does not deserve the vitriol that gets hurled at her, especially when she’s not in the room.
Even super-capable Jennifer is not immune. In the very first episode, when the chefs were milling around getting to know each other, she named the restaurant that she works at, and was immediately asked, without a hint of irony, “Oh, are you the pastry chef?” Without a hint of surprise—or bother, for that matter—she replied, “No, head chef.” No offense to pastry chefs, but yeah, that’s a slight. She’s become the Peggy Olson of this show—I am invested now, and if she loses, FEMINISM LOSES. Even if she loses to the talented and utterly inoffensive Beardo.
(Tonight judge-in-love-with-his-own-one-liners Toby Young compared Jennifer’s dish to a hairy armpit. Strangely, this was a compliment, meant to be on par with a more conventional adjective like “earthy.” She just smiled with amusement and said thank you.)
GO TEAM JEN.
Emmys Day-After Recap
I’ve got my Emmy food (pizza and mint creme Oreos) and I’m ready to go!
The Host
Neil Patrick Harris is totally cool. He’s singing and dancing, he’s wearing a white dinner jacket, and I think he just insulted Two and a Half Men. (Theme songs are getting so short, next year’s theme to the show will just be "meh." HA!) Later: I love the way he keeps introducing people from their obscure early credits (“from the 1987 Afterschool Special…”).
Click ahead for much much more!
Continue reading "Emmys Day-After Recap"
Cool Guys and Explosions
I've got tons to say on the subject of our recent move, but I'm too tired to approach that right now.
In the meantime, I have to link to this video from MTV's Movie Awards. By some amazing coincidence, last night Jeremy and I discussed the same cinematic cliche which is mocked in this video while Jeremy watched the end of Shooter. In fact, the very moment from Shooter that prompted my comment is in the video: the "Mark Wahlberg is wearin' a hat" moment.
I should get around and watch one of the million reruns on the Movie Awards on the off chance of there being more Andy Samberg hilarity. This link will bring you to a bunch of the digital shorts he's put on SNL since joining the cast. Do me a favor and skip ahead to page 4 to watch "Cookies," which is my favorite.
Sad to say that Will Ferrell's Neil Diamond impression is a bit rusty, though. The impression is in full force in this Gap commercial: