Posts tagged “review”

Show Busy-ness

The critics seem to have grasped the limited resource of attention that is impacting (and yet driving) the exploding volume of media we are faced with.

From two different reviews of The Nine

The SF Chronicle

What the TV industry has wrought this year, making us choose among “Brothers & Sisters,” “Men in Trees,” “Six Degrees,” “Ugly Betty,” etc. — puts a burden on viewers to make a bevy of decisions quickly.

The New York Times

Not many people have time and energy to commit themselves to yet another series that requires weekly loyalty and close attention.

There’s obviously some problems with the models here; as everything gets more narrowcast, we can’t – and aren’t expected to – consume it all, indeed we’ll need to just ignore most of it. So why are there more products that demand even greater loyalty? Dick Wolf, in an extensive New York Times Magazine profile a year or so ago, pointed out some of the elements designed into Law and Order that made them re-watchable and timeless, making for huge wins in syndication. These other shows – cliffhanging serials – may or may not do as well in syndication, but I imagine they’ll do better on DVD. The barrier to entry is high, the barrier to late entry is impossibly high. This can breed high loyalty, doubtless, for those that do join the exclusive viewer club, but the critics are right to question the wisdom of Lost-followers trying to repeat that trick.

Bitchy Rashid Review

From House & Garden comes this awesomely negative review of Karim Rashid’s new book.

Considering the chutzpah of the basic conceit, I expected Rashid to pepper the volume with absurd pronouncements. To my great disappointment, the most shocking thing about the book is the banality of the designer’s advice: “If you’re short, don’t worry about it.” “Clip and trim your nose hairs.” “Make friends online.” “Know yourself.” Try to imagine Dr. Phil grooving on some pharmaceuticals at the Milan Furniture Fair and you start to get the picture. Predictably, the book is rife with evidence of Rashid’s narcissism, but even those passages don’t relieve the painful tedium.

WB lowers its standards one last time

Another hilarious Tim Goodman skewering of crappy TV (new series The Bedford Diaries) in WB lowers its standards one last time

The WB sent two episodes. To finish the first was like having dental floss wrapped around your spleen and then pulled up and out of your mouth by a runaway horse. Second episode? There’s not enough Percocet on this continent.

Through wincing eyes, one must endure young Owen getting paired in a class assignment with a pretty young girl who — gasp! — was the sole survivor of a rash of students who jumped off a very, very tall building in a suicidal leap. (Apparently they had all seen early screeners of the series.) Having survived (she has a small limp, because anything more would be ugly by WB standards), she’s paired with Unlikable Fabio and he says to his video camera later: ‘A girl who would jump off a roof. There is something very hot about that kind of crazy.’

There might be a word missing in that quote. If you put both of your hands over your ears and yell ‘Make it stop!’ at the top of your lungs, then it’s quite difficult to be verbatim about these things.

DUX05 review

On UXmatters, Elizabeth Bacon writes up her experiences at DUX05, including a pretty nice summary of my tutorial

After more immersive improv exercises, Steve helped put the concepts together for the class. Successful improv involves taking an idea thrown to you by another participant and turning it into something else?something greater and maybe even something funny?and then tossing that idea along to the next participant. Improv is a group activity wherein listening is essential. Also, as in ethnographic research, experiencing empathy for your fellows is an essential key to gleaning and processing information. We can?t move from an analytical, or etic, point of view to an internalized, or emic, perspective that interprets the true meaning of things without engaging our hearts, minds, and bodies in the activity.

Bitchy review of Rosie in Fiddler

Bitchy review of Rosie in Fiddler

Here are instructions for transforming yourself into a Jewish matriarch in provincial Russia in 1905, inspired by Rosie O’Donnell’s performance in “Fiddler on the Roof” at the Minskoff Theater. Feel free to try this at home.

1. Plant yourself on the floor as if you were an oak.
2. Puff out your chest.
3. Place the palm of your left hand on the back of your left hip.

And, voilÔø?!, you have instant Golde, the wife of Tevye, the philosopher-milkman in the musical adaptation of Sholom Aleichem’s stories of shtetl life in the twilight of imperial Russia. Just strike that commanding maternal pose and all other essential elements of character will soon arrive naturally. It might help if you prayed a little, too.

That would seem to be Ms. O’Donnell’s approach to a role previously played by Randy Graff and Andrea Martin in David Leveaux’s elegant but empty revival of this much-loved show by Joseph Stein, Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick. Alas, a pose and a prayer prove to be not quite enough to allow Ms. O’Donnell – the comedian, television personality, theatrical producer, sometime actress and confessional blogger – to make us believe that she is someone other than who she so famously is.

Her accent trots the globe, through countries real and imagined. It is variously Irish, Yiddish, Long Island-ish and, for big dramatic moments, crisp and round in the style of introduction-to-theater students. Her relationship with the notes and keys of a song is similarly fluid.

In the scene where Tevye (Harvey Fierstein) frightens his wife by describing an ominous dream, Ms. O’Donnell puts her hands to her pinchable cheeks and emanates a series of high-pitched o’s, bringing to mind a distressed dolphin. Whether center stage or on the sidelines, she can be relied upon to react with italicized gestures and facial expressions to what everyone else is saying.

Ms. O’Donnell, who has previously appeared on Broadway as a tough teenager in “Grease” and the Cat in the Hat in “Seussical,” executes all this with a cheerful confidence that is unfortunately not infectious. A stalwart promoter of Broadway when she was a television talk show host, Ms. O’Donnell does seem to be enjoying herself.

But as is usual with her stage performances, she suggests a jill-of-all-trades who thought she might as well try her hand at acting, too. The overall impression brings to mind what might happen if the lead in a high school production fell ill and the director turned to the most popular and reliable girl in the senior class (who is already the captain of the field hockey team, the debating society and the pep club) to fill in.

So much for fact checking


So much for fact checking. A review from the SF Chron

CD REVIEWS: “In a time of austerity in the music business, ‘Weird Tales of the Ramones‘ is a behemoth, containing 85 songs on three CDs and every single video the band filmed from 1981 to their retirement in 1996. In this unsentimental but nonetheless fascinating document of rock endurance, fans visually and audibly experience the Ramones in their sullen glory, all deadpan pasty faces, ripped skin-tight jeans and off-the-rack leather jackets. They go from snarling through three-minute blasts of rage and irony on songs like ‘Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue,’ ‘Cretin Hop’ and ‘Blitzkrieg Bop’ to having most of their raw edges rubbed down as they become the benign cartoonish elder punk statesmen of their later years, wading through a myriad of age-related songs like ‘When I Was Young,’ Tom Waits’ far too revealing ‘I Don’t Wanna Grow Up’ and the painfully brilliant ‘I Want To Live,’ from Joey Ramone’s posthumously released solo album. This is a fascinating but hardly weird tale, unless you consider it weird how undervalued these pre-eminent architects of the American punk juggernaut were during their lifetime.

— Jaan Uhelszki.

But I Want To Live isn’t from Don’t Worry About Me (the above-referenced posthumous Joey album), it’s from 1987’s Halfway to Sanity (and it seems to be called I Wanna Live, in fact).

How hard would it be to get that right? I haven’t seen the new box set, but don’t you imagine it includes liner notes that indicate where the songs were from?

Lame.

Rise Lord Vader?

rise_vader
Rise Lord Vader has become a catchphrase for the last Star Wars film, appearing in ads, and reportedly even in the trailer. But the scene where he is commanded to RISE doesn’t use that line. Kind of a drag, since the PR machine has got us waiting for it.

Vague spoiler in terse review. It was alternately cool and cheesy. When Anakin becomes Darth Vader, with the black helmet sliding into place, and you hear the mechanized breathing, it was pretty spine-touching cool. But moments later the actor in the suit stands up (and yes, he’s just had surgery etc. so will be wobbly but still) and moves in no way that resembles the Vader we know. It just looked…wrong. Moments later he is told something that causes him to scream “Nooooooooooooooooooooo!!!” (and I’d swear the camera pulled far back and up at that time) – something that the Simpsons have rendered into an absolutely ludicrous cliche and only a moron would try to get away with that in a movie we’re supposed to take seriously.

Pete’s Tofu2Go desserts

Intro
Pete’s Tofu2Go is a series of products that attempts to create new, appealing, and useful applications for tofu.

This includes Snackable in four flavors, with dipping sauces
* Sesame Ginger with Jazzed Ginger Soy Sauce
* Thai Tango with Mango Wasabi Sauce
* Lemon Pepper with Mango Chipotle Sauce (U.S. only)
* Santa Fe Sizzle with Pineapple Mango Fusion Sauce (U.S. only)

as well as Marinated Cubes in Tequila Lime and Sesame Sizzle (for cooking or snacking), and dessert.

The Package
We tried two flavors of dessert tofu, Very Berry, and Caramel. Looks pretty good on the package; bright colors, familiar flavors (i.e., yogurt, or pudding).

Look at the tiny little spoon they come with! Kinda cute, if somewhat less than optimally functional.

Here’s everything. Each package contains two substantial containers. and two baby spoons.

The packages break apart – with some effort – for individual consumption, and I guess packing in lunches, etc. We tried it at home.

Serving
In order to open it, one must grasp the clear thin plastic layer at one corner and pull back. It’s fairly well attached, and so one must steady the hand against a surface in order to pull. Of course, at the beginning of the opening process, the only thing to steady against is the tofu itself. This caused the strawberry version to bulge rather sickly through the opening, a large layer heaving with eagerness to depart.

When I finally got the plastic off, the excess liquid in the container gathered on top of the tofu, presenting a wet, glistening, slightly pink and almost alive surface. It wasn’t so appetizing.

But things went from bad to really bad when I opened the caramel. Some difference in the texture of the dessert lead to a completely different bulging behavior. With the caramel, the pressure of my hand on the plastic caused the tofu to flood sickeningly and rapidly out the opening.

It was the first time I wished I was a videoblogger, because the video would be much better than these pictures. The quick and dramatic depature of the tofu slurry looked for all the world like an exploding zit. Not good.

Eating
I really was hoping for the best. But it was inedible. The water in each spoonful created multiple textures, a weakly-flavored water with a gelatinous pile of glop in the middle. With no yogurt or pudding taste, but something like medicine, a Robitussin or other medication that makes ya shiver.

And even though the package says “serving suggestion” – I really did think the caramel was going to have some drizzled caramel sauce or a layer of topping in the container somewhere. I figured the phrase referred to the nice berries on the side but not the lack of a topping. I felt grossed out, but also scammed.

This is a product to avoid.

Note: This is the fourth in an occasional series of reviews of new grocery (and other) products that strike me as interesting or unusual. See also Tiger Power, Grapple, and Bumblebee Entre Style Tuna.

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