Juvenile Cinephile

I like to imagine that the award itself is a gold plated statuette modeled after this:

Anyway, here we go:

BEST DRAMA

THE WALKING DEAD

SHAMELESS

FRINGE

JUSTIFIED

PARENTHOOD

BEST COMEDY

COMMUNITY

COUGARTOWN

IT’S ALWAYS SUNNY IN PHILADELPHIA

THE UNITED STATES OF TARA

LOUIE

BEST ACTOR IN A DRAMA

SEAN BEAN, GAME OF THRONES

JOHN NOBLE, FRINGE

ANDREW LINCOLN, THE WALKING DEAD

DONAL LOGUE, TERRIERS

MICHAEL RAYMOND JAMES, TERRIERS

BEST ACTRESS IN A DRAMA

ANNA TORV, FRINGE

EMMY ROSSUM, SHAMELESS

KATEY SEGAL, SONS OF ANARCHY

LAUREN GRAHAM, PARENTHOOD

EMILIA CLARKE, GAME OF THRONES

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR IN A DRAMA

MICHAEL SHANNON, BOARDWALK EMPIRE

JOEL KINNAMAN, THE KILLING

JARED HARRIS, MAD MEN

MICHAEL B. JORDAN, FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS

VINCENT KARTHEISER, MAD MEN

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS IN A DRAMA

MAE WHITMAN, PARENTHOOD

KIERNAN SHIPKA, MAD MEN

KHANDI ALEXANDER, TREME

MELISSA LEO, TREME

MICHELLE FAIRLEY, GAME OF THRONES

BEST ACTOR IN A COMEDY

JOEL MCHALE, COMMUNITY

ROB LOWE, PARKS & RECREATION

ADAM SCOTT, PARKS & RECREATION

ZACHARY LEVI, CHUCK

BILL HADER, SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE

BEST ACTRESS IN A COMEDY

TONI COLLETTE, THE UNITED STATES OF TARA

COURTENEY COX, COUGARTOWN

MARY LOUISE PARKER, WEEDS

KALEY CUOCO, THE BIG BANG THEORY

YVONNE STRAHOVSKI, CHUCK

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR IN A COMEDY

NICK OFFERMAN, PARKS & RECREATION

DONALD GLOVER, COMMUNITY

DANNY PUDI, COMMUNITY

CHARLIE DAY, IT’S ALWAYS SUNNY IN PHILADELPHIA

DAN BYRD, COUGARTOWN

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS IN A COMEDY

ALLISON BRIE, COMMUNITY

GILLIAN JACOBS, COMMUNITY

YVETTE NICOLE BROWN, COMMUNITY

NAYA RIVERA, GLEE

BUSY PHILIPPS, COUGARTOWN

BEST GUEST IN A DRAMA

NOAH EMMERICH, THE WALKING DEAD

JESSICA PARE, MAD MEN

HAL HOLBROOK, SONS OF ANARCHY

LENNIE JAMES, THE WALKING DEAD

DENIS O’HARE, TRUE BLOOD

BEST GUEST IN A COMEDY

BETTY WHITE, COMMUNITY

JOSH HOLLOWAY, COMMUNITY

MOST OF THE CAST OF TWIN PEAKS, PSYCH

MEGAN MULLALLY, PARKS & RECREATION

LEVAR BURTON, COMMUNITY

BEST WRITING IN A DRAMA

DAYS GONE BYE FROM THE WALKING DEAD

HAIL MARY FROM TERRIERS

THE BEAUTIFUL GIRLS FROM MAD MEN

BAELOR FROM GAME OF THRONES

WINTER IS COMING FROM GAME OF THRONES

 
BEST WRITING FOR A COMEDY SERIES

ADVANCED DUNGEONS & DRAGONS FROM COMMUNITY

INTERMEDIATE DOCUMENTARY FILM MAKING FROM COMMUNITY

COOPERATIVE CALLIGRAPHY FROM COMMUNITY

ABED’S UNCONTROLLABLE CHRISTMAS FROM COMMUNITY

LI’L SEBASTIAN FROM PARKS & RECREATION

SPECIAL DISTINCTION OF MOST UNCATEGORIAZBLE TV PROGRAM

ARCHER

THE VAMPIRE DIARIES

EVERY ORIGINAL SHOW ON THE USA NETWORK

PORTLANDIA

WHISKER WARS

RED STATE

DIRECTED BY KEVIN SMITH

Red State is truly a different film from anything Kevin Smith has ever done.  Never has a film felt so well-done yet so uneven and compartmentalized.  It succeeds in what it offers in each section but nothing feels all that together in flow be it characters, story lines, or tone but I would not say anything felt unnecessary.  Even if this film is imperfect, it is a remarkable work in showing a different side to a writer-director who mostly went against his own style and trademarks.   Mostly. 

Let me just say do not go to see this movie on the premise that this is a horror movie.   For about the first 20 minutes, certainly the movie is a perfect hybrid of Kevin Smith dialogue in an all too appropriate high school setting with slasher set-up that involves horny teenagers who want to get fucked.  The final 10 minutes that I am still grappling with as to whether I liked it or not, as this film could have gone in a million different directions, is completely like a Kevin Smith film.  Other than that, you get a whole half-hour hour of a film devoted to partly serving as a dramatization of a trigger-happy mirror of the Phelps family that blooms into a kind of spine-tingling wonder the way the documentary Jesus Camp captured the Evangelical brain-washing of children.  The next half-hour is felt transposed from the third act of Hot Fuzz.  Again, none of these sections are bad and if you look at these sections each as a stand alone piece you have great ideas that all involve the main idea of the trigger-happy Evangelicals with the horny teenagers, the US Marshal, the Cooper family, and US government’s standoff with the Coopers.  All four of these ideas could have been extended into their own movies. 

It is somewhat forgivable that Smith shifts focus from characters and stories as the cast is an embarrassment of riches from the obvious with John Goodman as the affable US Marshal to Melissa Leo as the bait turned Shirley Phelps stand-in to the teens being every bit as frightening as the film’s real standout Michael Parks as Albin Cooper.   Parks really captures what makes Albin Cooper an attractive leader and Type A personality rather than a straight up caricature of a monster the character Albin Cooper truly represents.  His sermon is one of the best things that Kevin Smith has ever written and certainly the best monologue acted by anybody in a Kevin Smith film.  Parks’ Cooper is charming, direct, and controlling all at the same time.  You cannot take your eyes off of him. 

The movie begins appropriately in a high school civics class talking about the only constitutional rights Americans, specifically Americans in this movie, care about: guns and free speech, and the order is often swapped around at their convenience.  What makes this Phelps clan stand-in so frightening, that they are packing, is also what is their weakest link.  It is an interesting concept Smith brings about and really the only consistent theme that sticks from beginning to near the end.  As far as the ending, I would not go as far to say it tonally betrayed the rest of the film, not like Jay and/or Silent Bob made an appearance.  Still, I wish the darkness and humor should have been more melded together for the movie to work at a different level but I understand why that was not the case.

However imperfect I find the movie to be in stringing together an overarching approach to the central story of the Cooper Family, I definitely recommend this to the curious about Kevin Smith’s new turn as a writer-director mostly because aside from a lack of real focus, the dialogue is pretty realistic and well-written in addition to being well-acted ensemble led by Michael Parks (though Kevin Alejandro’s role still seems incredibly out of place).  Do not watch it as a horror movie but as almost a Roger Corman B-movie, soft-exploitation film that is somehow very well-made and well-acted. 

ATTACK THE BLOCK

DIRECTED BY JOE CORNISH

ATTACK THE BLOCK is a great little film to go out with a bang this summer movie season.  It is a shame that there is little marketing for this movie in the states and the availability of this film outside major US cities is nil.  I can understand why with much of the cast aside from Nick Frost, in a supporting role is unknown, multi-ethnic but predominantly people of color, and London street slang with thick accents is just not a great formula of success for US audiences.  But the fact it is not compromised, unlike Greg Mottola’s Paul or JJ Abrams’ Forrest Gump for Generation X in fan-servicing a particular set of moviegoers makes me more appreciative.  The movie is short, around 80 minutes, but so much goes on while its quick pace preserves its length.  The whole cast ensemble is charming with their characters in the mold of anti-heroes that are quite comparable to the characters on the English TV series Misfits rather than the clean-cut ‘misfits’ from either The Goonies or Super 8.  To be more blunt, think of this movie as if Joe Cornish approached making and writing this movie as if he were Joe Dante directing a Walter Hill film in the London projects.  Do not confuse this with an Edgar Wright movie, despite Wright being a close associate of Cornish who also has production credits for the movie, that is part spoof while vicariously creating its own clever world.  It is more of an extension for the PG-rated 80s sci-fi/horror/comedy genre-melding of Joe Dante and John Carpenter where there is a lot of gray area among who is right, wrong, good and bad among the characters.  

The movie involves a gang who while in the process of mugging of a white woman, who is not all what she seems to them, until there are creatures dropping from the sky.  The gang of kids, of the video game generation, are not shaken about it for a brief amount of time until their leader Moses (played by a star in the making in John Boyega) kills their first contact quickly and easily, giving them the false confidence that they can just go around looking for more of them like sport.   Quickly they come to realize how dangerous it is getting for them.  Suddenly the invasion is something of a gang war and the block must be defended and protected.  The police powers ignore the problems and quarrels in the block the way the Public Enemy song ‘911 is a joke’ portrayed years before, but the gang structure of an underclass group of youths is neither sentimentalized, celebrated, nor completely demoralized.  These kids are told multiple times, most notably their own peers and family members, that they should not be doing what they are doing but there is a sort of code of responsibilities that the leader Moses subscribes to that suddenly takes form during the attack.  The gang is supported in the fight by the mugged white woman who just wants to survive, a marijuana grower for the black drug kingpins, and a hipster pothead who becomes something a key player amidst the madness. 

I loved that the aliens were introduced and shown immediately.  The film is very well-balanced and well-structured going straight into the action and while not conveniently ending in a tied-up bow with moral lessons akin to an after school special it ends with a sense of celebration and euphoria for our protagonists despite knowing the laundry list of petty crimes that they have committed in the just the movie alone.  The sense of claustrophobia, tension, suspense, comedy at the expense of aliens, teens, chavs, and potheads while supported by a pitch-perfect soundtrack by Basement Jaxx makes Attack the Block the great surprise of the summer.  I could actually see this in my end of the year Top 10.  It supplies enough in its run-time that I wanted more despite getting a really satisfying movie experience.  This is the movie that Super 8 should have been.  

The Sundance Channel aired all nineteen episodes of the short-lived, but much beloved My So-Called Life over this summer.  I found out through the internet, reading from a major fan, child of the 90s excited to watch it all over again on a week-to-week basis.  I came into it with high expectations since this show was supposedly the essence of 90s teenagedom (I was still watching Sesame Street but unlike Rayanne Graff, I was still 4 years-old) all the while Beverly Hills 90210 got the glory despite being soapy-ist of primetime soaps at the time (certainly the case after Brenda Walsh left the country).  Winnie Holtzman, the show’s creator, found a much more similar fate when her one-season wonder show Huge got canceled by ABC Family after just one season while on a network responsible for The Secret Life of the American Teenager, two shows that could not be more night and day in dealing with various teen issues.

I have read a lot of the retrospective reviews, The AV Club coverage of the show in 2008 was a godsend along with the fan message boards, about how many of the original viewers feel now at an older age watching the show.  Since I am at the weird age of being too young the be the age of Angela’s parents and too old to really be swept up in teenage dream of Jordan Catalano.  For the most part, despite being a newbie to this show, I liked what I saw for the most part despite one of the more unfortunate, untied endings for a TV series.  That does not mean the Christmas and Halloween episodes with bizarre supernatural elements that were completely unfit for the show were not total shit.  They were.  Oh god, they were terrible episodes. 

However, I will not concentrate on comparing the dichotomy between great episodes like “Betrayal” and “Life of Brian” to terrible PSA, after school specials like “Halloween” and “Some Kind of Angels”.  But I will say that the dichotomies that befell much of the characters and writing for the show made taking any middle ground, whether it is Jordan versus Brian or Patty Chase to Rayanne’s mother, completely impossible. 

Or how about that Graham Chase’s affair in the pilot was completely hidden and went the way of Tino after episode 2 even with Angela knowing or Patty having various suspicions with Graham’s new restaurant partner?  Or the purpose of Danielle Chase in this show at all besides precocious foil to the equally precocious teen philosopher, bottled redhead Angela Chase.  But my criticisms go back to the dichotomies between the Chase family, specifically Patty and Angela and their all-too similar worldview, versus everybody else.  I often wonder if the portrayal and writing of Angela Chase as an angsty teenager who had her head in the clouds was always on purpose or that there was some moral lesson in that the Chase family despite their in-fighting were always right or doing right in the end.  Either way, it was pretty insufferable through a lot of the episodes. 

I mention that Patty and Angela were similar and maybe it is because I could easily see Angela become Patty in a 20 year flash forward.  She could still be googly-eyed when speaking about Jordan Catalano but still be the clinging helicopter parent of two and a half kids while working a full-time job.  The characterization of Patty Chase was one of the more interesting developments.  In the pilot, she seemed like caricature of the worst fears people have of working mothers who have whipped their spouses into submission while they are the breadwinner and goodness, they are judgmental wenches to the nth degree!  Think of her as Tipper Gore with a bad wig in the pilot. She gets a little more sympathetic, a little more fun, but boy does she rue that higher ground like a pitbull. 

Graham Chase occasionally does interject and assert himself with his daughters and he is for the most part a good dad but their is an underlining anxiety between both Graham and Patty that suggest that they could easily divorce each other but not until Graham gets his business started or not until Patty finds out about the infidelity (Who did not think that in the episode “Betrayal” that it would be about Graham and Patty and not a Jordan-Rayanne-Angela deal?).  It started off pretty problematic in the series, as if Patty’s shrewdness were to blame for Graham’s affair but then it just turned into Patty being all too aware of what she may be doing to him.  That said the tension seemed a bit too overplayed at times, especially when it seems to not share any connection to plot A involving the teens in many of the episodes.    I feel like retroactively giving notes to the creating team after the pilot and take the Daria approach in giving the parents enough screentime that shows enough anxiety and tension but not take itself so seriously, or seriously enough to hijack an episode.  In my opinion, Jake Morgendorffer to me captured the anxieties of 90s masculinity and middle-age, but never a whipped man for to his spouse, to an audience that were not caught up into the Fight Club craze.  Nowadays the Chases would be lucky to be featured enough for a compulsory parent-teacher conference with the gay teacher and Rickie Vasquez getting more of a story arc that did not involve their hearts broken and their secrecy instead of being closer to asexual based on mid-90s TV censorship. 

But just because I did not like the parents getting screen time I did not feel like taking their sides once in a while, especially when it involved Jordan Catalano.  In “Betrayal” you could almost see in Patty’s eyes that she was a bit content knowing that Rayanne ‘ruined’ the infallible deity of Jordan Catalano for Angela when Rayanne fesses up to her.   As hot as he was, Jordan Catalano was a mess.  The complexities and vulnerabilities that Angela found in him made him more undesirable.  He was pretty, he can just be that for Angela.  Angela never found another guy with the exception of Corey, who to me was still sexually ambiguous but also forgettable enough to not count, for about two episodes tops.   She could have learned about Brian Krakow’s feelings but even her parents were not clued in on his awkward, near autistic spectrum of unrequited love.  They never could work romantically but boy did Angela need a lesson on friends. 

It brings me to my final axe to grind with the show.  Angela Chase was kinda a horrible friend.  She often needed to be told directly that she was be from Ricky or Sharon (who fortunately turned out to be a decent frenemy with Rayanne Graff).  Often times I wondered how she became friends with such interesting people.  Sharon is the easiest answer but sadly it just seems they became friends based on their mothers being friends and for Brian it was because he could manage a coherent sentence to her and she did not just walk away.  But I cannot figure out why she became friends with Rickie or Rayanne.   Angela often felt like too much of a try-hard once she hung out with them, getting her hair dyed, wearing plaid, finding her poetic side and listening to grunge.  Rickie and Rayanne, in turn, seemed to like Angela more for her stable (as it appears) nuclear family.  They deal with and appreciate Angela in her wallflower-ness and innocence but really appreciate the family she came from.  If there was ever a second season, I do question how long this group could have survived.  They seemed to be moving in a million different directions and choosing sides would seem to be too much drama for each other, except Brian Krakow.  

Anyway, the show dealt with issues and conversations among teenagers that did not feel forced or out of place.  When the parents got involved (or specifically, when a specific holiday hit the calendar), it often got into the PSA realm.  The characters were interesting and not black and white, but I could see how having two major characters, Angela and Patty Chase, being a double-team of a proto-Betty Draper could cause people to be stabby.  I do wish there were more things addressed, and not in a 2011 retroactively getting into Rickie’s sexuality kind of way, but more about Graham’s infidelity and Brian possibly getting his ‘issues’ explained.  My So-Called Life is a good time capsule show that really surprised me in how much stuff has changed from the portrayals of high school and what can be portrayed on television when it involved ‘teenagers’.  The show deserves a watch but I would skip the holiday episodes.  They really add nothing except confusion.