Review: "Atypical" Season 2

by Ben Miller

When Atypical debuted last year, it was not accompanied by widespread critical acclaim or a zeitgeist-catching wave of popularity.  It was seen as more of a niche show with some issues, but with room to grow and a modest budget. Season two didn’t have built-in expectations that a show like Stranger Things or the final season of House of Cards will have. This proves a blessing: with zero expectations, Atypical has now grown into the show we hoped it could be...

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Spike Lee's "Bamboozled" - Still angry, still timely

TFE is celebrating the three Honorary Oscar winners this week. Here's Lynn Lee on one of Spike Lee's most controversial joints...

Is Spike Lee an Angry Black Man?  Reductive as the label is, it’s hard not to associate with an artist as reliably outspoken as he is accomplished—if only because so much of his best work is fueled by genuine anger at the condition of African Americans and the state of American race relations generally.  The irony of having achieved major critical and commercial success by channeling those frustrations surely hasn’t been lost on him, even if it’s done nothing to diminish them.

Bamboozled (2000), an incendiary, balls-to-the-wall satire about a disaffected black man who creates a pop culture monster, shows Lee at his angriest and most conflicted.  The film takes its cue from Malcolm X’s famous wakeup call:

You’ve been hoodwinked.  You’ve been had…You’ve been bamboozled”

It tells the tale of a Harvard-educated black TV writer (Damon Wayans, sporting a deliberately outlandish pseudo-French African accent) who pitches a hideously racist modern-day minstrel show as a fuck-you response to his white boss’s demand for “blacker” material—only to have the show become a megahit despite, or rather because of, the controversy it causes.  [More...]

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Producers Guild Wins for Spielberg and Actors Behind the Cameras

Another day, another awards ceremony. Who can keep up?!?

Last night The Producers Guild of America gave their big prize, a transparent glassy gargantuan paperweight, to the man who helped The Artist come into being, Thomas Langmann. One thing that's not being much noted -- since behind the screen forces rarely get attention -- is that Langmann was once a regular presence in front of the camera in France and he's actually the son of director Claude Berri (of Jean de Florette/Manon of the Springs fame!). Of course right at the moment he's best known Stateside as 'that guy who was trying to tell his heartfelt story at the Golden Globes while Uggie was doing his tricks' and distracting the television cameras... as discussed on the most recent podcast. Another actor turned producer, Michael Rapaport was also honored (along with his co-producers) for the documentary Beats, Rhymes and Life.

Finally, Steven Spielberg was honored twice. He got a career-tribute and also won for The Adventures of Tin Tin because in Hollywood they like to re-reward the already abundantly successful people. (Notice how honorary Oscars often go to people who've already won Oscars instead of people who never won! Such a strange impulse. Perhaps it's a bit like paying tithing or making sacrifices to your gods?)

Winners List
Motion Picture The Artist
Motion Picture, Animated The Adventures of Tintin
Motion Picture, Documentary Beats, Rhymes and Life

Brangelina at the PGA. Sans cane!

TV, Long Form Downton Abbey
TV, Drama Boardwalk Empire
TV, Comedy Modern Family
TV, Competition Amazing Race 
(speaking of rewarding the same things over and over again...) 

TV, Non Fiction American Masters
TV, Live Entertainment/Talk The Colbert Report

Tobey and The Bening were among the many big names presenting

Vanguard Award Stan Lee (the award was presented by Spider-Man himself Tobey Maguire)
David O Selznick Award Steven Spielberg 
Stanley Kramer Award Angelina Jolie for In the Land of Blood and Honey.
(For young Oscar obsessives in training out there Stanley Kramer was famous for "message movie" staples like Inherit the Wind, Judgement at Nuremberg, Guess Who's Coming To Dinner, and the like)
Milestone Award CBS Corp. Chief Executive Leslie Moonves