Comfort Food Cinema: Broadcast News

 Cranky Network Manager:  "It must be nice to always believe that you know better, to always think you're the smartest person in the room."

Jane Craig:  "No. It's awful."


Broadcast News (1987).
Call No.:  DVD COMEDY BROADCAST
Find it in the catalog!

For many people the hey day of romantic comedies was in the 1930s and 40s.  And while I'm a huge fan of rom-coms from this period (His Girl Friday, The Philadelphia Story, anything with Jimmy Stewart), I'm also partial to romantic comedies from the 1980s.  While Broadcast News doesn't exactly fit the mold of romantic comedy perfectly; it's one of my favorites of the era. 

The film follows Jane Craig (Holly Hunter), a gifted, but neurotic news producer.  Her friend and frequent collaborator is Aaron Altman (Albert Brooks), a talented writer and investigative journalist who also has secret feelings for Jane.  However, her relationship with Altman, is challenged when her network hires the hunky, but less substantial journalist Tom Grunick (William Hurt).  Tom is a former sports reporter turned anchor  Though he is quickly promoted, he lacks the knowledge and integrity of a journalist like Jane or Aaron.  In spite of their different perspectives on journalism, Jane finds herself falling for Tom.

Albert Brooks really steals the show as Aaron Altman.  He's got some of the funniest lines in the movie.  Even though Altman can be smug and manipulative, it's really hard not to feel for the guy.  He's gifted, super smart, but gets passed over for a promotion because he lacks the charm and attractiveness of Tom.  This jealously towards Tom is only intensified because of his feelings for Jane, and her preference for Tom in spite of all the similarities she and Aaron share and their great chemistry as friends.  In one of the most cringe-inducing scenes of the movie, Aaron gets his shot at becoming an anchor, only to ruin it with an incredible flop sweat attack.

From the fashion to the technology, the film definitely is of the 80s.  Jane has one scene where she's dressed to impress, which does not translate at all to today's fashion.  However, the themes and relationships in the movie are still fresh today.  This is a wickedly funny movie that also has some real heartbreaking moments in it.  If you have not seen it before, or haven't watched it for a while, it's definitely worth checking out!

Pick Me Up Pictures: Moonstruck

Moonstruck (1987)
Call No.: DVD COMEDY MOONSTRUCK
Find in the Catalog!

In spite of having a big soft spot for 80s romantic comedies (i.e. Tootsie, Broadcast News, anything with John Cusack), I had never gotten around to watching Moonstruck.  I blame it partly on not really seeing Nicholas Cage as a convincing romantic hero and partly on some skepticism about Cher's acting abilities (I should have known not to doubt Cher!).  However, recently I was in the mood to watch something light and fun after watching lots of depressing romance movies from the Guardian's 25 best romance films of all time list (I'm looking at you, Brief Encounter).  So I checked out Moonstruck and was immediately cast under its spell. 

Loretta (Cher) is a widowed bookkeeper in her late 30s.   Her first husband was hit by a bus.  Loretta believes this is because of curse put on her marriage due to getting hitched in City Hall.  When her boyfriend, Johnny Cammareri (Danny Aiello) proposes, she accepts but decides to do everything right this time.  Johnny is a nice, middle-aged mamma's boy who Loretta likes but doesn't love.  When he flies off to Sicily to look after his dying mom, Loretta tries to honor his wish to have his estranged brother Ronny (Nicholas Cage) attend their wedding.   However, things become a wee-bit complicated when Loretta and Ronny wind up in bed together.

Moonstruck gives off the vibe of a modern fairy tale.  From Loretta's strange Italian grandfather walking around with a million dogs to the giant, over-sized full (Cosmo's) moon, the movie definitely has a quirky, magical quality to it.   Probably my favorite aspect of the movie is Loretta's tight knit family.  Olympia Dukakis gives an inspired performance as Loretta's practical but heartbroken mom.  She has some great lines, including advising Loretta that it's good that she doesn't love Johnny because "When you love them, they drive you crazy because they know that they can."  I also really liked that Loretta is a really strong character.  Whether she's making Johnny propose to her on his knees or telly Ronny to "snap out of it" when he confesses his love for her, Loretta certainly doesn't kowtow to the men in her life. 

Overall, this is a super cute movie! Definitely check it out if you want a movie that's light, funny, romantic but also smart and well acted.  

Dreamy Men of Masterpiece Theater

There are lots of good reasons to check out Masterpiece Theater.  It has quality shows, helps you pretend to have read classic novels like Great Expectations or Tess D'Ubervilles, and there really isn't too much else on Sunday nights (when Breaking Bad and Mad Men are off season). But best of all, it has handsome British men in period dress!  Who could ask for more?

Below we* list our favorite men of Masterpiece Theater.  Since PBS has created a  Men of Austen website, so you can rank which Austen hero is the most eligible bachelor (surprise, surprise: Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy is winning), I'm leaving them out of the running (though, Rupert Perry-Jones as  Captain Wentworth would have been my pick). 

Matthew Crawley
Found On: Downton Abbey
Played by Dan Stevens
Why we love Matthew:  Those blue eyes.  And he's the least terrible of Lady Mary's many suitors.
The down side: Matthew can be a little bit stubborn.   

Also worth mentioning from Downtown Abbey:

William Mason (Thomas Howes) looks like a younger, blonder, old-timey sibling of John Krasinski.  William is also a sweetheart and can play the piano. 

Thomas Barrow (Rob James-Collier) is terrible.  But he's gorgeous and he seems to have curtailed his bad behavior a little bit in Season 2. 

Sherlock Holmes:
Found On: Sherlock.
Played by:  Benedict Cumberbatch
Why we love Sherlock:  He's brilliant, has a great head of hair, and looks equally great in a suit or a towel. 
The down side:  His personality is a lot to tolerate on a daily (or even hourly) basis.

Also worth mentioning from Sherlock:

Martin Freeman makes an adorable Dr. Watson.  He's definitely the more marriageable one of the duo.

Magnus Martnisson:
Found On: Wallander (seasons 1 and 2).
Played by:  Tom Hiddleston.
Why we love Magnus:  He's dashingly handsome, but his longish curly hair makes him look nerdy enough to be attainable.
The down side:  Martinsson saves the day on at least one occasion, but some of the time he can be a little bit incompetent. 

Also worth mentioning from Wallander:

Kenneth Branagh is a little bit too mature to be my type, but his character Kurt Wallander seems to have a way with the ladies on show, in spite of his near constant dourness.

*All "we"s are meant in the royal sense. 

Flock of Seagulls Awards: Best Achievements in Hair and Grooming

After two years of doing the Beardys, I'm officially over beards.  I'm sick of talking about them.  I'm sick of seeing them.  I'm even over Ryan Gosling having one (scorpion jacket? okay, beard? no!).  So instead of awarding the bewhiskered this year, we will celebrate the weird and the wonderful world of hair in pop culture this year. 

I will, however, award a solo Beardy to Jason Segel for most disgusting facial hair in honor of his wispy mutton chops in the Five-Year Engagement...ew.  Unfortunately, I couldn't find a picture on the interwebs of Segel's chops, so here's my mock-up.  The real version is much more terrifying:

Now on to the Flock of Seagull's Hair Awards:

Best Hair Performance by a Group: The cast of Parks and Recreation.
Okay, I'm slightly biased.  Donna (played by Retta)  has more or less my exact haircut.  However, the rest of the Parks department has enviable hair too.  Pawnee must have some pretty good stylists!

Best Hair Performance by an actor:  Kit Harrington as Jon Snow from Game of Thrones.
So pretty, I'm jealous of his curls!

Best hair performance by an actress:  Connie Britton as Tami Taylor from Friday Night Lights.  Pretty much every woman in Hollywood has a good head of hair, but if I could only pick one to emulate, it would have to Mrs. Taylor's big, wavy blond coiffure. 

Best Bangs:  Hannah Simone as Cece on New Girl. 

Best Masterpiece Theatre hair performance by an actor:   Benedict Cumberbatch as Sherlock Holmes on Sherlock.
Besides solving crimes, playing violin and generally being a pain in the neck, Sherlock knows his way with a curling iron!

Best Masterpiece Theatre hair performance by an actress:  Laura Carmichael as Lady Edith Crawley on Downton Abbey. 
Sure, she might be the last Crawley sister to marry, but she has the coolest hair.  Spinster power!

Best Red Head: Christina Hendricks as Joan Holloway/ Harris on Mad Men.
Sorry Conan!

Most Red Heads in a single film:  The Help
Including Emma Stone, Jessica Chastain, Bryce Dallas Howard, Sissy Spacek, and Allison Janney.

Actor Spotlight: Viggo Mortensen

A brief primer on why Mr. Mortensen is significantly cooler than you are:

• He is fluent in at least three languages (English, Danish, Spanish), and is conversant in several others. His performance in the 2006 historical film Alatriste is one example of his mastery of the Spanish language.
• He was married to Exene Cervenka, co-founder of the influential Los Angeles punk band X. This, in itself, places him in a fairly rarefied realm of coolness. To exceed that level of cool, you'd pretty much have to be Exene Cervenka.
• He is a photographer, painter, musician, and published poet. (These are not vanity projects; his earliest book was published in 1993, long before his role in The Lord of the Rings made him a household name.)
• He was in Young Guns II. If you don't think that's pretty cool, then you really need to watch Young Guns II. (You don't need to have seen the first Young Guns, and you don't need to care about Westerns.)
• His brief performance as Lalin, a paraplegic ex-gangster, opposite Al Pacino in Carlito's Way evinced more genuine pathos than any other moment in the entire 144-minute film.
• He played the role of Lucifer (yes, that Lucifer) in the 1995 film The Prophecy, and managed to not seem completely ridiculous in doing so. No small feat, if you think about it.
• His performance in A History of Violence, the actor's first collaboration with director David Cronenberg. Mortensen convincingly plays his character as a small-town everyman, until the plot convinces you otherwise.
• His performance in Eastern Promises, the actor's second collaboration with director David Cronenberg. Look for a false note in Mortensen's portrayal of compromised Russian gangster Nikolai Luzhin. You will not find one.
• Along with Johnny Depp, he may be the only human being who can get away with curiously sculpted facial hair. (I am not advocating this.)
• In A Dangerous Method, his most recent collaboration with Cronenberg, he played the towering historical figure Sigmund Freud. His take on the character was nuanced; calculating without seeming calculated; amusing, but without any trace of parody. (I'm legally required to point out that Mortensen's co-star in A Dangerous Method is the Media Corner favorite Michael Fassbender.)
• He participated in the documentary film The People Speak, in which actors and musicians perform dramatic renditions of the words of every-day Americans. His reading of a letter written by the family of a man who died in the World Trade Center attacks is deeply moving.
• His performance in The Road, an adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's grim  post-apocalyptic novel. Mortensen powerfully portrays the unnamed father's relentless determination to protect and provide for his son.

Best of 2011: Hollywood Hunks

Of course, we love these actors for their souls and/ or talent, but they aren't that difficult to look at either.  Below we highlight our achievements in handsomeness (or more accurately, affable nerdy charm) in TV and film.

Hunk Criteria:

• Made a movie or appeared in a currently running TV show (sorry, Jon Hamm!) in 2011.
• Has a decent filmography (competence is sexy!)
• Makes interesting role choice. 
• Handsomeness.
• Sense of humor.

To even the playing field a bit, I'm excluding several actors that I've talked about at length before (some might say excessively).  Sadly, Paul Schneider, Andrew Garfield, Sam Rockwell, Adam Scott, and Jesse Eisenberg are excluded from the list. They are all, however, totally dreamy (seriously, call me any time guys!).

Achievements in Handsomeness Television:

5).  Zach Gilford as Matt Saracen from Friday Night Lights. 
I pretty much have a crush on every single guy on Friday Night Lights, it's hard to just pick one (Okay, Tim Riggins, if you twist my arm).  That being said, Matt got cuter in the last season.  Maybe it's the whole artist thing or perhaps just Zach Gilford's increasingly floppy hair.

Check out Friday Night Lights or one of Zach's films.

4).  Jake M. Johnson as Nick from New Girl. 

With his relaxed hipster look (Nick loves flannel shirts and hoodies), he is adorable in a guy-next-door sort of way.  Nick manages to be both a straight man to Jess (Zooey Deschanel) and Schmidt (Max Greenfield) and a jaded, neurotic mess. 

Check out New Girl, Tuesday nights at 8PM on Fox.

2).  Josh Charles as Will Gardner from the Good Wife.

Matt Czuchry as Cary Agos from the Good Wife (tie).  
It's hard to choose between these two Good Wife guys.  Will Gardner was definitely my favorite in Season 1. Partly because he's played by Josh Charles, who I've had a crush on since Sports Night, and partly because he was so sweet and lovelorn about Alicia (Julianna Margulies)- even though she was still married and he's her boss.  However, his character seems to be getting increasingly shady.  Still, he looks sharp in a suit.

Meanwhile, Cary seemed immature and conceited in season one.  But in the following two seasons, his character has gained considerable depth.  I really enjoy his relationship with Kalinda (Archie Panjabi) on the show.

Check out the Good Wife or one of Josh Charles's films.

1).  Timothy Olyphant as U.S. Marshall Raylan Givens from Justified.
Never have cowboy hats looked so good!

Check out Justified or one of Timothy Olyphant's other work on film and TV.

Concert Review: Black Keys at Aragon Ballroom NYE

Dundee Media Corner favorites the Black Keys played three sold out shows last week at Uptown's Aragon Ballroom.  I attended the New Year's Eve concert.  This was my second time seeing the Keys live in 2010, having seen them earlier at the smaller and (vastly) acoustically superior venue Metro. 

The Greenhornes opened for the Keys.  On paper, they seem like the perfect openers.  Both bands have garage rock influenced sounds and hail from Ohio.  However, the Greenhornes' sound was no match for the Aragon's deplorable acoustics, leaving much of their set to sound somewhat indistinguishable, like a musical KFC bowl. From what I could tell, the band seem to be playing with a lot of energy and they are very skilled musicians.  The Greenhornes would sound good at a smaller, better venue. 

This was my first New Year's Eve concert and it was definitely a different atmosphere.  It was sort of a mixture between a concert and a party as concertgoers were chatting away with each other throughout the night. The audience was primarily made up of women all-dolled up for the holiday and men in flannel shirts.  There were quite a bit more ladies at this concert, which may have been why the crowd was less rowdy than at the Metro Keys' concert.

The Keys took the stage a little bit before midnight. Much to my surprise, my doppelganger, Dan Auerbach appeared without his trademark mysteriously orange beard!  Opting instead for a clean shaven look. 

The set list was a mixture of old favorites ("Girl is On My Mind," "I'll Be Your Man") and new hits ("Tighten Up," "Next Girl," "Chop and Change").  There was considerable set list overlap from their Metro show; some of which made sense (I'd be sorely disappointed if they didn't play "I Got Mine") and some not so much (Is "Short Stack Billy" really that loved?).  I give the Black Keys credit for playing songs that are popular and giving the audience what they want; the Keys have to be pretty sick of playing "10 A.M. Automatic" by now. But I like it best when they break away from the expected and play some of their less popular stuff.  So I was pleasantly surprised to find that they added several songs from their first album The Big Come Up to the set and- best of all- a cover of the Kinks' "Act Nice and Gentle" from Rubber Factory.