"High concept" was the hot showbiz term of the 1980s. The thinking went that if you couldn't describe your movie/tv show in one sentence, it wouldn't sell. That popular marketing wisdom stuck and High Concept itself shrank. First it devolved into This meets That, each new pitch being a mashup of preexisting hits. Today instead of one sentence pitches or previous hit fusions most new potential blockbusters are required to rely on a simple colon. It works like so… "Title of That Thing You Already Know: The Movie!"
The 1987 cast of "21 Jump Street"
This has led to all sorts of unfortunate movies based on books, games, plays and tv shows (and vice versa) many of them big hits. The danger is obvious. When you don't even have to try to make your entertainment memorable because the audience brings half the affection with them, creative laziness can often follow. But every once in awhile the audience gets lucky and Title of That Thing You Already Know: The Movie is surprisingly fun on its own terms.
Chan & Jonah in High School21 Jump Street began its life as a high concept television series...
Young-looking cops go back to high school… undercover!"
And now it's a 21 JUMP STREET: THE MOVIE (the last half of that title is silent/implied) The twist is that rather than the earnest though light-hearted procedural drama it was in its infancy when it introduced us to Johnny Depp, it's now a full fledged buddy comedy starring Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill. Continued after the jump...
"Let's make ourselves a Marilyn"Since so many of you seemed to be watching Smash judging on response to the pilot episode, and since its a fictional show about a possibly real musical about a very real departed movie star, I thought I'd write it up weekly. But Oscar is a needy lover and hogged all my time. Now there are so many episodes to discuss! To get caught up we'll do two doubles, so here's the first of them.
1.2 "The Callback" In the second episode, we were both thrilled and shocked to find that they didn't drag out the "who will they cast as Marilyn Monroe?" drama for weeks on end. Though obviously they could and will revisit it since we're a long way from opening night. Both girls, Ivy (Megan Hilty) and Karen (Katharine McPhee) endured torturous waiting and callbacks while the power players made up their mind. Ivy it was. The best sign that the show is serious about being an actual show about the business of Broadway theater rather than a show about whatever the hell it feels like being about in any given scene (Glee... sigh) was that we actually see Julia and Tom (Debra Messing and Christian Borle) toiling away at work wondering about structure and characters and arguing about song order and even the process itself. You can't just write a musical by stringing songs together. The worst sign for the freshman show is the insistence on Julia's adoption subplot. Isn't birthing a brand new musical enough parenting?
Jack: It's a big risk Eileen: Nothing's Bigger Than Broadway! Jack: I'm aware.
Set List: Blondie's "Call Me" (McPhee), "Let Me Be Your Star" (McPhee/Hilty), "20th Century Fox Mambo (McPhee), Carrie Underwood's "Crazy Dreams" (Hilty) Pop Culture and Movie References: vampire craze, Clash By Night, Monkey Business Best Moment: Ivy practicing her Monroeisms "thank you ever so" Anjelica Awesomeness: Huston's condescension towards her ex's new blonde plaything "We've met" / "I don't think so" / [mocking her with squeaky bimbo voice] "I doooo" Gay Gay Gay "Nothing's bigger than Broadway!" Curtain Call: Megan Hilty does a stunning cabaret rendition of "Crazy Dreams" to close the episode.
1.3 "Enter Joe DiMaggio" In the third episode Karen gets invited to participate in the workshops as part of the chorus and she takes a trip home to Iowa for a babyshower. Things get more complicated when Michael (Will Chase), a rising actor, signs on as Joe DiMaggio and Tom's assistant Ellis starts feeling proprietary about the musical (his casual comment in the pilot sparked the whole thing) and steals Julia's notebook. The best thing about both of these developments is that they make Julia (Debra Messing) way more interesting as a character because she has such irrationally strong reactions to both, one being an ex-lover the other being someone she just bristles at instinctually. In fact, Messing really steps up in this episode making her own case for an Emmy run. (Julia is a surprisingly thorny and multi-faceted character by episode 3. Not at all what we were expecting after the pilot.) Emmys for everyone!
Megan Hilty as Ivy Lynn as Marilyn & Will Chase as Michael Swift asJoe DiMaggio
We're noone you've ever seen Movie stars don't live anywhere here Except on the local drive-in screen ♬ "
Set List: Bruno Mars "Grenade" (Chase), Gretchen Wilson's "Red Neck Woman" (McPhee) "Mr and Mrs Smith" Pop Culture and Movie References: Gone With the Wind, The Seven Year Itch, My Fair Lady, Sinatra, Siegfried & Roy Best Moment: Julia's intense jarring switch from painful confession to Tom to bitchy showdown with Ellis Anjelica Awesomeness: Huston's Eileen Rand is really a marvel of a character creation. She has Huston's usual dragon lady severity but there are so many exquisite playful beats that the character feels unpredictable even when she's working a repetitive "bit" like throwing drinks in her ex-husband's face. Their dinner scene together is filled with weirdly flirtatious hostility, giving off the distinct impression that they once had great sex but always enjoyed pissing the other off. "You have exquisite taste. When you weren't cheating on me it was one of the things I really enjoyed about you." Curtain Call: "Mr and Mrs Smith"... I'm more and more convinced that this needs to be an actual musical on Broadway. Can this series be about a different new musical every season and put it on Broadway directly afterwards? I mean... many new musicals don't have songs as uniformly strong as the ones this show is cranking out.
LATER THIS WEEK... we'll discuss "The Cost of Art" and tonight's episode "Let's Be Bad". If you're not watching, start. Good show. You can get caught up on Hulu or iTunes.
Don't misunderstand . I don't actually watch Supernatural but you know how some nights you're bone-tired and whatever is on is what you end up half-watching. (I think my TV must have been on the CW due to Ringer). I always perk up when TV shows reference movies and wonder what possessed the writers.
Sam (Jared Padalecki) and Dean (Jensen Ackles) discussing witches
In the episode the supernatural hunting brothers are investigating mysterious murders connected to this guy Don (played by James Marsters) and his wife (played by another Buffy alum Charisma Carpenter... so it's like Spike & Cordelia got married. Ewwww!)
Dean: So the scorned wife is into the dark stuff. Sam: And Don's just in the dark. Dean: Hmmm. it's kind of like Bewitched. You know Don is Darren and doesn't even know it. Lot of laughs 'till you cheat on your wife.
Sam: A Bewitched reference? Really? Dean: [Lustfully] Dude. Nicole Kidman was in the remake. Redhead. Hellooooo.
This is the first time I've ever heard the BEWITCHED (2005) referenced in a positive way anywhere in my life !!!
I know that MTV's Teen Wolf is based on an 80s movie but it's not set in the 1980s so what to make of the bizarre opening scene of its latest episode "The Tell" in which Jackson (Colton Haynes) and Lydia (Holland Roden) visit that nostalgia-inducing endangered species, The Video Store, and have the following ½ "80s" argument...
Jackson: "Hoosiers" is not only the best basketball movie ever it is the best sports movie ever made. Lydia: No. Jackson: It's got Gene Hackman and Dennis Hopper! Lydia: No. Jackson: Lydia, I swear to God you're going to like it. Lydia: No. Jackson: I AM NOT WATCHING "THE NOTEBOOK" AGAIN
[cut to: Jackson, defeated, inside the store]
Jackson: Can somebody help me find "The Notebook"?
Haha. So, maybe this was intended it as a Men are from Mars / Women are from Venus argument but do today's teenagers (non film-fanatic variety... not you reading, obvs) even know who Dennis Hopper and Gene Hackman are? It seems like this argument was between a 30something man and a teen girl. Or maybe Hoosiers mania still lives on in high school boys? I'm not a sports person or a high school boy so I cannot speak from authority.
Once inside the store, there are a ton of movies on view but none of them seem intentionally placed there for the camera. Lazy set dressers (kidding!). For instance, there's telltale signs of a dead body (a foot!) peaking out from behind the I Am Love row. But I highly doubt the director's were like "ooh, someone dies in that Tilda Swinton / Italian melodrama that won Best Pic at the Film Bitch Awards, so let's put the body there!".
This one on the other hand is 100% intentional.
Turns out there's an evil werewolf in the store and Jackson ends up hiding right next to a copy of Let The Right One In, the only movie with its own closeup. "The Tell" that it's intentional: It's out of sequence with the other movies sitting next to it, which begin with "S". Video stores may be on the verge of extinction but surely they still alphabetize.
Summer is a strange time at Chez Nathaniel. Though I'm a film guy, summer movie season isn't really even close to my favorite movie time. And though I'm not totally a TV guy, I miss my shows (No Mad Men this summer is going to be the strangest).
Fr'instance, I'm already missing Parks & Recreation since the fantastic two part Season Finale aired a week back.
The Haverford Charm Ray! wah-wah-wah
You know I LOL'ed at this moment when Tom Haverford (Aziz Ansari) decides to use the "Haverford Charm Ray" on an old lady who works on the dread 4th Floor. How to do it? Flatter her with screen goddess comparisons.
He wants this old lady to do his work for him. Time to butter her up.
Monday, March 19, 2012 at 6:00PM 
The 1987 cast of "21 Jump Street"
Chan & Jonah in High School21 Jump Street began its life as a high concept television series...
