floating heads

Peep Show: The Best Comedy On TV

Peep Show is a British sitcom that recently finished it’s 6th season, (or “series” as the Brits like to call them.)  It’s not shown on TV here in the states and only season 1 is available on DVD, but those brave enough to seek it out will be rewarded with what I think is currently the best comedy on TV.  (Yep, that includes 30 Rock, The Office, It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia, Curb Your Enthusiasm and pretty much everything else on American television).

The show is about a pair of flatmates: Jeremy (the slacker DJ) and Mark (the uptight office drone) and their relationship that has grown over the course of the show’s 36 episodes.  The premise sounds simple enough but the writing is so strong it’s nearly impossible to pick the best lines from each episode.  The show is shot from the POV of one of the lead characters and features voiceover that allows the characters to behave truthfully while only thinking what no one, not even Larry David, would say aloud.  I describe the series to people who haven’t seen it as the show that out-Curb’s Curb Your Enthusiasm.  I want to show this to everyone I know.

You can watch the first 4 seasons of the show on YouTube here or check out the show’s official site on Channel 4 UK here.

The Fantastic Mr. Fox

There was a time when I considered Wes Anderson along with PT Anderson to be my favorite director(s).  After discovering Rushmore on video, I built a feverish anticipation for The Royal Tenenbaums.  In December of 2001 I drove 8 hours to New York to see the film.  When I arrived every showing that day had already sold out so I had to buy a ticket to Waking Life (you’re welcome Richard Linklater) and sneak in.  It was worth it because it’s still one of my favorite films.  In 2004 I saw an advance screening of The Life Aquatic a few weeks before it was released and though it has great bits I knew I was making excuses for the films shortcomings.  I saw The Darjeeling Limited premiere at the New York Film Festival in 2007 and liked the film, but it didn’t mean the same thing to me that his previous films did.

The Fantastic Mr. Fox is by far my least favorite of his films.  I wanted to enjoy it but have a hard time finding anything good to say about it.  I didn’t think it was funny, the music choices were obvious (I Get Around and Street Fighting Man, really?), and thought it was visually disappointing.  Unlike Henry Selick’s incredible stop-motion work, the scope of this film was extremely limited.  The designs looked flat and they seemed more like miniatures instead of a real environment.  I also found the scale of them to be strange, they looked tall and thin but appeared to only be inches high.

It’s not a terrible film, I just thought were it not for Anderson’s name or the voice cast it wouldn’t be a very notable one.  Logically, the film didn’t make more sense than your standard Dreamworks animated film.  They wear clothes and speak like humans but still eat like animals?  I realize it’s been done in hundreds of animated films but Pixar will at least put some thought behind what their characters limitations are.  I can appreciate Anderson for at the very least trying something different but found myself bored throughout and further appreciated Darjeeling and Life Aquatic even with their flaws.

The Box

Falling somewhere inbetween the promising Donnie Darko and the disasterous Southland Tales, The Box is essentially a very stylish bad movie.  After the epic failure of Southland Tales, writer/director Kelly needed to make a film that would appeal to a wide enough audience to rescue his career and it appeared that The Box would be it.  After seeing it I can say it’s just as idiosyncratic as his previous work with many familiar science fiction elements popping up.  Based on the short story “Button Button”, the film plays like an episode of The Twilight Zone (for which the story was previously adapted) as directed by Dario Argento.  There was a lot to admire in this film, Frank Langella is great, as is his makeup, there are some genuine scares and paranoid creepiness but the film also captured a sort of 70’s cheese so accurately it was hard to take seriously (and the film wanted to be taken seriously.)

An Education

I’ve decided after a few days of mulling it over that I didn’t really like this movie but not because it wasn’t a good movie.  I liked that the film seemed to have room to breathe absent from the generic romantic coming-of-age film suggested by the trailer.  Carey Mulligan was great in the lead (though her character seems too wise for being 16), Peter Saarsgard’s casting instead of someone British was puzzling but he did well in the role.  I actually really enjoyed the film until I realized that I had been swindled by a twist that I wont spoil.  The film succeeded perfectly and it frustrated me.