Netflix Diary
1. Undeclared
After renting and enjoying Freaks & Geeks, we decided to rent this one too, which had a lot of the same cast and crew, and was even more short-lived. I watched and identified with both shows a lot when they were on at the time, maybe especially because F&G was on when I was in high school, and Undeclared was on when I was in college. In retrospect this show definitely got a little too overly silly and slapstick-y at times, but it was still pretty consistently funny, and it was good to finally see the episodes that were never aired. Judd Apatow is pretty consistent in a middlebrow comedy kind of way, but I think what's interesting about him is that he situates his characters in the pop culture-obsessed world we live in, instead of only making references that are supposed to be either hip or ironically unhip like most comedy does these days. In F&G it was less notable because it took place almost 20 years in the past, but was still more lived-in and believable than, say, the references in That 70's Show. Sometimes it felt a little out of touch in Undeclared (college kids worshipping Beck in 2001? Really?) but for the most part it was pretty well done. Monica Keena is so hot, I even watched a little of a goofy Christmas TV movie because she was in it, I wish she'd had more guest appearances on Entourage. And Seth Rogen is hilarious, I'm really looking forward to Knocked Up.
2. Hide And Seek
This was pretty dreadful. It was one of those movies where the 'twist' was super obvious to J.G. and she figured it out almost immediately, and I could kinda see it coming too, but I wanted to believe it wouldn't be something so stupid, so I kept up my suspension of disbelief for as long as I could. Also, because the scenes with the neighbors totally threw me off, I guess they were supposed to but apparently there were more scenes with them that got cut, so it was probably more confusing than it was supposed to be. This movie has a dead cat in it, which reminds me of the hilarious graphic that the City Paper ran alongside two recent book reviews.
3. Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels
I remember when this first came out on video, my brother would always try to tell me this was good and get me to watch it but I just couldn't, because of the awful pun in the title and because it looked like a clusterfuck of bad late-90's indie film trends, a Pulp Fiction knockoff combined with a Trainspotting knockoff. But J.G. put it on our Netflix queue and I finally gave it a shot, almost a decade later. And it was OK, I guess, some nice plot twists. Jason Statham definitely had a lot of charisma in this, not surprising that he went onto have a pretty good career.
After renting and enjoying Freaks & Geeks, we decided to rent this one too, which had a lot of the same cast and crew, and was even more short-lived. I watched and identified with both shows a lot when they were on at the time, maybe especially because F&G was on when I was in high school, and Undeclared was on when I was in college. In retrospect this show definitely got a little too overly silly and slapstick-y at times, but it was still pretty consistently funny, and it was good to finally see the episodes that were never aired. Judd Apatow is pretty consistent in a middlebrow comedy kind of way, but I think what's interesting about him is that he situates his characters in the pop culture-obsessed world we live in, instead of only making references that are supposed to be either hip or ironically unhip like most comedy does these days. In F&G it was less notable because it took place almost 20 years in the past, but was still more lived-in and believable than, say, the references in That 70's Show. Sometimes it felt a little out of touch in Undeclared (college kids worshipping Beck in 2001? Really?) but for the most part it was pretty well done. Monica Keena is so hot, I even watched a little of a goofy Christmas TV movie because she was in it, I wish she'd had more guest appearances on Entourage. And Seth Rogen is hilarious, I'm really looking forward to Knocked Up.
2. Hide And Seek
This was pretty dreadful. It was one of those movies where the 'twist' was super obvious to J.G. and she figured it out almost immediately, and I could kinda see it coming too, but I wanted to believe it wouldn't be something so stupid, so I kept up my suspension of disbelief for as long as I could. Also, because the scenes with the neighbors totally threw me off, I guess they were supposed to but apparently there were more scenes with them that got cut, so it was probably more confusing than it was supposed to be. This movie has a dead cat in it, which reminds me of the hilarious graphic that the City Paper ran alongside two recent book reviews.
3. Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels
I remember when this first came out on video, my brother would always try to tell me this was good and get me to watch it but I just couldn't, because of the awful pun in the title and because it looked like a clusterfuck of bad late-90's indie film trends, a Pulp Fiction knockoff combined with a Trainspotting knockoff. But J.G. put it on our Netflix queue and I finally gave it a shot, almost a decade later. And it was OK, I guess, some nice plot twists. Jason Statham definitely had a lot of charisma in this, not surprising that he went onto have a pretty good career.
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on Saturday, January 13, 2007 at 10:19 AM.
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Robocop.
Robocop.