Futurama Review

Futurama is Back
The seminal science fiction cartoon returns on DVD
Hartford Advocate Dec. 07, 2007
Futurama returning in any form is great, but a direct-to-DVD version is nearly perfect. The animated show's creators, including Simpsons progenitor Matt Groening, invented a multi-layered television comedy show that looked both backwards and forwards. Steeped in science fiction minutia, the show portrayed a future where every conceivable science fiction scenario had come true, where the incredible is mundane and where everything is possible, but nothing seems to work.

Bender's Big Score, the first of four DVD exclusive Futurama films — they're going to be split up and broadcast as 16 half-hour episodes on Comedy Central in 2008 — is both innovative and antiquated. The format allows them to bypass broadcast television, and include a wealth of special features that reward the obsession the show inspires in its fans (including a full episode of Everyone Loves Hypnotoad, and an equally inscrutably hypnotic Futurama-focused higher math lecture). But considering Blu-ray, Bit Torrent, video iPods and such, DVDs frankly seem like a dying technology. Which is perfect for Futurama.

Even Futurama's biggest fans should acknowledge why the show had limited success in its 72 episode run (seven episodes fewer than the original Star Trek. Or was it? Have at it, nerds.). Certainly it was mishandled by the Fox Network, who shuffled its time slot and ultimately canceled it, but the show had a fundamentally narrow appeal.

It rewarded science fiction literacy, referencing pure mind sugar for geeks like the 1939 World's Fair, Invasion of the Saucer Men and the Grandfather Paradox, but presented them with twitchy, irreverent humor. America just doesn't have the hipster nerd resources to sustain such a project.

There's also a matter of tone. Where the show's most immediate ancestor, The Simpsons, centered on a family and occasionally broke up its nihilism with sentimental warmth, the only mainstream concession Futurama made was the broad humor of an alcoholic misfit robot with criminal tendencies. It might as well have "cult hit" written in binary and Klingon in the opening credits.


Freed from the constraints of pretending to have mass appeal, the Futurama team mine the show's mythology and history for Bender's Big Score, packing the screen with obscure references to past Futurama episodes, and meta-references to the Family Guy (another show retired, then revived by Fox) and South Park. The plot, a giddy mix of Primer-style time-travel anomalies, alien con men and a surprisingly affecting romance, would have been pretty much impossible with broadcast television's constraints on time and ambition.

A lot of it's very funny — I mentioned the alcoholic misfit robot, right? — but more importantly, it's viciously smart. The speculative ideas are precise and fully realized. As the creators explain in the commentary track, every complicated time leap was fully sketched out, and scrutinized for logic and clarity. Time travel paradoxes aren't just acknowledged, they're exploited for punch lines.

If after watching Signs you angrily questioned why an alien race allergic to water would invade a planet with water covering two thirds of its surface, Bender's Big Score will be extremely satisfying. If you never considered that, well, maybe Futurama isn't for you. On the bright side, re-runs of Everybody Loves Raymond are on TV, like, all the time now! Read more!

Sarah Silverman Review

Hartford Advocate Sept. 27, 2007

It can be hard to say why something is funny, but sometimes it's just as difficult describing why something isn't funny. In both instances you run the risk of looking humorless, uptight or obtuse.

Take the curious case of Sarah Silverman, whose Comedy Central show The Sarah Silverman Program is entering its second season. She's a dirty alt comedienne, endorsed by some of the greatest comedy forces of the day (David Cross, Vice Magazine). Respecting publications, from Vanity Fair to The New Yorker, have lavished her with praise. By saying she's not funny, you risk looking like a prude, or someone out of touch with the comedy zeitgeist of the moment.

But Silverman has never been and never will be funny. She's like Jenny McCarthy, except less blonde and more wry. Like McCarthy, Silverman's an avid student of four of the most wretched forms of comedy: fart jokes, fake dumbness, zany faces and bad puns. Of course, The New Yorker would never run a glowing review of McCarthy under the headline "Quiet Depravity."

Of course, she's not exactly Jenny McCarthy. Silverman is good looking, but approachable, so dudes think they have a chance with her and women don't hate her for looking like a cartoon version of sexual attractiveness. But more importantly, Silverman's vapidness is presented ironically. Even when a joke flat-lines — which happens constantly in her stand-up act and television show — it doesn't really flat-line. It was meant to flat-line, and that's the gag.

The fake filth performs the same function. Silverman and her writers seem to believe that a joke doesn't have to be well crafted or even make sense if it has the appearance of being potentially insulting. Let's pick an issue and display horrible taste about it.

It makes for frustrating television. The first episode of the second season of her show contains a key scene where she fondly remembers past abortions. I wasn't insulted. I was impatient, waiting for the jokes to start. A couple of great comic talents are wasted on the show, including Brian Posehn and Jay Johnston, who, like Silverman, got their start on HBO's Mr. Show. They're miscast and typecast, respectively — Posehn's big galoot persona is muted playing a domesticated gay man and Johnston plays an awkward, stiff cop like he did on several Mr. Show sketches and episodes of Arrested Development.

In her stand-up, Silverman acts like an eight-year-old who just learned her first swear word. On the show, she also adopts a faux-naive persona, but adds an unhealthy dollop of faux cluelessness.

It seems like a female variation on Chris Elliot's destructive idiot man-child shtick from Get a Life. That show worked because it was a dark deconstruction of the then-dominant family sitcom genre. The Sarah Silverman Program isn't a parody of anything — it's a platform for absurdist edgeless "edgy" jokes.
Even when the show wades into a deeply fraught issue, like abortion, it's just an excuse for subpar jokes about how clueless Silverman's character is. It's both as subvervise and pleasant as a migraine. Read more!

Sin City Law review

Viva Las Violence
New Sundance documentary series explores the consequences of crime in America's playground
By Adam Bulger
Hartford Advocate September 6, 2007

What happens in Vegas does not always stay in Vegas. Debt, STDs and criminal charges travel. As the new Sundance Channel reality series Sin City Law implies, a more honest marketing campaign for the city of sin might be billing it "the unhappiest place on earth."

The show takes place in the innards of the Clark County criminal court system. The gleaming surface of Las Vegas is present mainly in short shots that cut between scenes, with glitz providing ironic contrast. The eight-part documentary series focuses on four notorious court cases, and while the courthouse is strikingly well designed, the show's primary aesthetic is unadorned honesty.

The series doesn't gradually wade to progressively more intense tragedy, it tosses the viewer into the deep end with the first case, which follows Beau and Monique Maestas, siblings accused of stabbing a three-year-old girl to death and paralyzing the girl's 10-year-old sister in a crystal meth-induced mania.

I don't throw around the word "evil" a lot, but stabbing children over crank? That's pretty much evil distilled to its most petty and human form.

The Maestases seem like Jerry Springer guests, poor and poorly educated, with misplaced priorities and a hair trigger sense of indignity. They're products of a jaw-droppingly awful childhoods, illustrated by the comments their sister makes about family visits to their incarcerated father. Looking at a photograph, she casually says "this is when we visited him and he put his hand up my shirt."

Beau pleads guilty, and, in an attempt to save his sister, claims that he full responsibility for the attack. However, evidence indicates that Monique shared responsibility.

The moral center in this first trial is public defender Alzora Jackson, who represents Monique. A soulful black woman in her 50s, Jackson not only provides Monique the best defense possible, but also helps to pick out an outfit for the accused child murderer to wear during her hearing. She also gives Monique extremely good advice, advice that seems to have unfortunately come several years too late, when she tells Monique that during the trial "you have to control your impulses."



Interspersing news footage and images from newspaper articles, Sin City Law touches on the darkness at the center of the modern soul more than any reality show. The series is an onslaught of pure sober truth. In the second case, Pascual Lozano's mother puzzles over why her surrogate son would rather be executed than rat out his fellow gang members during his trial for the 2002 murder of a 9-year-old girl.

The crimes of Sin City Law aren't reenacted or illustrated with fancy graphics or edits. Sin City Law is mostly set in courts. The bare bones presentation of emotional subject matter makes the show all the more effective. Attorneys argue the fate of a murder in a back room of the court where cameras weren't allowed. Instead, they film a woman wiping computer screens with the attorney's conversation playing as an audio track. It's a surreal and chilling moment. Read more!

Horse the Band review

Horse the Band
A Natural Death
(Combat)
Hartford Advocate August 9, 2007

I haven't heard such a fluid mix of cheesy synthesizers and death metal guitars since, I don't know, either Andrew WK or maybe never. Songs start out like the music from Contra or a John Carpenter soundtrack, then break into silly death metal mosh jams. The dudes in the band are clearly skilled musicians. The keyboards, guitars and drums tightly synch in a manner that's almost disconcerting. The sounds themselves don't really mesh, which is actually kind of fun. While the music's not always listenable, these guys deserve gold stars for originality and balls. — Adam Bulger Read more!

Turbonegro Record Review

Turbonegro
Retox
(Cooking Vinyl)
Hartford Advocate August 02, 2007

Have Turbonegro come to praise rock or to bury it? Are they trying to be Motorhead or Spinal Tap? Jack White or Jack Black? On their new record the Norwegian butt-rock MVPs rock it out like they have something to prove, with snaky intertwining guitar lines and shout-along choruses. It's fierce and fun, with seemingly no potential for irony. But then they have crazy funny song titles like "Everybody Loves a Chubby Dude" and "Hell Toupee." The second song, which actually seems to be about hair, contains the near perfect post scum rock couplet "Other day I was doing a bump/and then I found myself taking a dump." Are these the words of a candid, depraved rocker or a committed, convincing satirist? Does it matter when the riffs approach the level of Appetite for Destruction? Well, it does, sort of, and I have a feeling I'll be unraveling this mystery at top volume for the next couple of months.
— Adam Bulger Read more!

Lil' Bush Review

Bush Bash
The decider-in-chief rendered as a shrimpy little cartoon on Comedy Central
By Adam Bulger
Hartford Advocate, June 21, 2007

It's weird. People talk about Comedy Central cartoon Lil' Bush like it's an audacious gut punch to the president. While the show's not without its charms, it's far from revolutionary. Bush is as popular as salmonella right now. Mocking him almost smacks of lazy writing. It's Leno territory.

Nobody thinks of Bush as the megaphone-toting cowboy standing on rubble on 9-12 anymore. He's the strutting idiot in the "mission accomplished" flight suit. Sure, it's interesting there's a whole animated TV show devoted to mocking him, but it would be a lot cooler if it was better.

The show's central conceit — portraying Bush and his staff as toddlers — is its biggest problem. First, it's confusing. Bush 41 is in office in the show, yet references to current events — like Bush 43's war in Iraq — are referenced constantly.

Many of the gags are predicated on juxtaposing the Bush administration against the formulas of cartoon shows, which doesn't work. The first episode features an extended Josie and the Pussycats-style musical scene that's more distracting than funny. Adult Swim has been on TV for six years — does anyone in America still think Hanna-Barbera parodies are clever? I was shouting at the TV, demanding more Abu Graib references.

All of which would be fine if the show was more precise. The cartoon features a Donald Rumsfeld character, six months after his real life counterpart was shitcanned. Voiced by Iggy Pop, Lil' Rummy is Lil' Bush's most trusted advisor — couldn't the Godfather of punk voice a larval version of Karl Rove instead? Meanwhile, Jeb Bush, the brightest of Herbert Walker's awful spawn, is portrayed as a feral manchild. Lil' Bush at one point chastises the Condoleeza Rice character for using fuzzy math, a reference to a seven-year-old presidential debate. Even worse, there's a tepid Monica Lewinsky gag dating back to the Mesozoic era.

Lacking cutting edge South Park style topicality, the show falls back on gross-out humor. In the second episode, Lil' Cheney not only has sex with Barbara Bush, he gets lodged inside her uterus afterwards. Maybe that's water cooler fodder, but it's a cheap gag that detracts from the smarter jokes the show occasionally attempts.

Lil' Bush isn't the first time Comedy Central show devoted to mocking G Dubs. That's My Bush, produced by South Park's Matt Stone and Trey Parker, aired on the network in the spring and summer of 2001. Starring a befuddled-looking Timothy Bottoms as Bush, the show was a satire of sitcoms, not politics. It featured a sassy maid, and a Larry Dallas-style wacky neighbor. Bottoms reprised the roll, minus the 30-yard stare, in the 2003 hagiographic made-for-television movie DC 9/11: Time of Crisis.

It's unlikely that anything from Lil' Bush would likewise be re-purposed as praise for the decider in chief. But in order for the show to succeed as the comedic assault on Bush it's intended to be, it needs to evolve into a much darker beast.

There are some inspired riffs, particularly showing Baghdad's Green Zone as a scene out of Willy Wonka's chocolate factory. Also, even though the Lil' Bush's character utters his fair share of malapropisms, his most prominent character trait is misplaced self-assuredness, not stupidity. The character believes his own bullshit — there's a perfect moment when he declares his love for tatter tots, pauses slightly and says "decisive."

That's a joke worth being jealous of. More of that, please. Read more!