Well, I think they're funny!

I thought the Groupon ads satirizing the overly touchy-feely, obviously phony begging-for-donation TV spots were hilarious. The company has decided to pull them, because they have outraged what they consider their target market (I assume).

Given that the most extreme histrionics about saving whales, saving the rain forest, and saving Tibet come from whacked-out liberals, I am wondering if the histrionics about these Christopher Guest-directed, and very funny, ads didn't come from them as well.

And I wonder how many of them thought this violent fantasy about murdering people because they don't buy into a group-think party line about Global Warming was harmless satire?

What is the phrase? You never notice until it's your ox that gets gored? (And one can't help but wonder if the "Save the Whale" ads isn't going to be considered the most offensive them all... because it's also the most honest.)

The ads are on Youtube for a the moment at least. Here are all three of them.

Groupon Ad: Save the Rainforest


Groupon Ad: Save Tibet


Group Ad: Save the Whales


I'm curious to hear what readers of this blog think. There's a comments section. Please use it. :)

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And now EVERYTHING goes to 11!

And here are some celebratory music videos from the hard rockers who originally took it to 11--Spinal Tap!

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'For Your Consideration' is a shaky mockumentary that can't maintain a tone

With the 2011 Oscar Awards ballots being mailed to members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences today, this seems like the perfect time for a review of this movie.


For Your Consideration (2006)
Starring: Catherine O'Hare, Harry Shearer, Parker Posey, Eugene Levy, Christopher Moynihan, Jim Piddock, and Christopher Guest
Director: Christopher Guest
Rating: Four of Ten Stars

When a rumor gets started that three stars in "Home of Purum", a third-rate, low-budget art film (that is still in production) are going to nominated for an Oscar, the Hollywood dream machine and egoes kick into high gear. Can there be a happy Hollywood ending for once?


"For Your Consideration" is a real step downward for Christopher Guest, a writer/actor/director who has turned in some of the best mockumentaries ever made. But his magic formula--which involves a group of actors he works with on movie after movie ad-libbing scenes based on a story outline and that worked so well in Waiting for Guffman", "Best in Show", and "A Mighty Wind"--doesn't quite click in this case.

The fatal problem with "For Your Consideration" is Guest doesn't seem to have a firm handle on the film's tone and style. The film doesn't have a convincing documentary feel to it, and the story is too loose and rambling to be a good "traditional" movie. It occupies a middleground between Guest's mockumentary style and his 1989 film "The Big Show", a straight movie that spoofed the Hollywood establishment and delivered much the same observatiions and messages as this latest film. But, although "The Big Show" had its problems, it was secure in its style. "For Your Consideration" is not, and it ultimately fails, because it feels phony as it unfolds.

The movie features all the faces we've come to expect in one of Guest's mockumentaries, but no one manages to be quite as funny as they were in "Best in Show" or "Waiting for Guffman". Stand-out cast members are Catherine O'Hare (who portrays a Hollywood has-been who comes to believe "Home for Purum" is her final shot at stardom), but she is remarkable here because her character is more tragic than funny and Parker Posey (who plays an obnoxious up-and-coming actress with devastating perfection).

Despite the good performances, this film is only of interest to the biggest fans of this troupe and Christopher Guest. Because the director failed to create a convincing tone--Guest utterly fails at making the film feel like a documentary--the film is shot through with a sense of fakeness and hollowness.

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'The Big Picture' is far from perfect

The Big Picture (1989)
Starring: Kevin Bacon, Emily Longstreth, J.T. Walsh, Michael McKean, and Jennifer Jason Leigh
Director: Christopher Guest
Rating: Five of Ten Stars

When film-student Nick Chapman (Bacon) wins a prestigious award and is immediately given a movie to direct by a studio executive (Walsh), he thinks his career is rocketing along. But, after selling out with lightning speed, he discovers how fickle and phony the business and people in the movie industry are.


Although the story of "The Big Picture" is one that's been told a hundred times over, it's retold here with great charm, humor, and a cast where every actor is excellent and at the top of his or her game. (Kevin Bacon, J.T. Walsh, Jennifer Jason Leigh, and Micheal McKean are particularly good in this film. Leigh truly rocks as a kooky artist.)

Unfortunately, the first act of the movie really drags for me, partly because it consists almost entirely of scenes featuring people being awkward or indifferent, but mostly Nick is such a dunderhead. Basically, in the first case, the director is trying to show us that Nick is about of his element, and that he is feeling starstruck and awkward, but it's done too many times and it feels over done. Maybe that's because I've been on both ends of that situation--the one feeling awkward and star-struck AND being the person who had to suffer through encounters with the awkward and star-struck that I feel this way. Plus it annoyed me throws his friends and fiance overboard for one film deal and a slutty B-actress. I felt like Nick's film school nemesis deserved more success, because he was a self-absorbed prick from the beginning, while Nick turns into one almost overnight. I initially found it impossible to root for Nick, and I found him too repulsive to be funny.

Things get better as the film goes on--once Nick gets kicked in the teeth by the soulless and fickle Hollywood Movie Machine and then later inadvertently turns it to his advantage--but that first act was so hard to get through that it really dragged the whole movie down.

Although I've had very few dealings with the real-life people being mocked in this film, I suspect there is much truth in what is portrayed. It certainly explains how some of the crap I watch and review gets made. It's a fun movie, but I would have enjoyed it more if the first act had been stronger. (Or maybe weaker? Perhaps the actors were TOO good during that part of the movie?)

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'Best in Show' is among the best mockumentaries

Best In Show (2000)
Starring: Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, Catherine O'Hara, Fred Willard, Eugene Levy, Jim Piddock, Parker Posey, John Michael Higgens, Jane Lynch, and Michael Hitchcock
Director: Christopher Guest
Rating: Nine of Ten Stars

I first came across this film while channel-hopping, and I thought I was documentary or maybe some reality show. I was astonished at what I was seeing. Yeah, I know people forget the documentary crew is there as time goes on, but these people pitching a fit in an airport with their dog were almost too much to be true. Then, I started seeing familiar faces, and I realized I was watching a movie from the makers of "This Is Spinal Tap", "A Mighty Wind", and other "mockumentaries." Like the two great comedies I just mentioned, "Best In Show" is a fabulous bit of comedic movie making.

"Best In Show" follows a number of show-dog owners as they take part in the Mayflower Dog Club's "Best In Show" competition, where dogs of all breeds come to compete to see who is the top dog and walk away with the Blue Ribbon. There's the lovable country boy Harry Pepper (Guest) with his bloodhound, the simple Gerry & Cookie Fleck (Levy & O'Hara) with their terriers, nut-case yuppies Hamilton & Meg Swan (Hitchcock & Posey) with their hunting dog, the loving gay couple Scott Dolan & Stefan Vanderhoof (Higgins & McKean), and the airheaded millionare Sheri Ann Ward Cabot along with her trainer Christy Cummings (Lynch). From the trips to the show, through the pre-show party, the show itself, and a wrap-up detailing "where they are now", the film stays solidly grounded in the pretense of being a documentary, never breaking style once.


Several of the actors portray their characters so naturally that it's easy to believe their the real thing, such as McKean as the low-key gay hairdresser and Piddock as the consumate professional dog expert who is stuck doing show commentary with an idiot TV announcer (Willard). Other actors, such as Levy and portray such hapless characters that it's impossible to not feel sympathy for them. Finally, we have naked satires, like Hitchcock and Posey's ever-bickering obnoxious yuppie couple and the aforementioned Willard. The mix of these types of characters interacting and moving through a story more realistic-feeling than any of the previous mockumentaries from this same general crew makes this an engaging and constantly hilarious movie.

The DVD version of the film is also excellent. It's got about an hours worth of excellent additional scenes that weren't in the film. These are all great, previously unseen bits... unlike the dreck that is often present as "extras" on DVDs. These scenes were cut for length, not because they were crap. It's also got a commentary track by Guest and Levy that's actually interesting to listen to, and that sheds all sorts of light on how Guest and his actors make these sorts of movies.

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Big-time dreams in small-time theater

Waiting for Guffman (1997)
Starring: Christopher Guest, Eugene Levy, Fred Willard, Parker Posey, Catherine O'Hara, Lewis Arquette, Bob Balaban, Don Lake, Larry Miller, Paul Benedict, Michael Hitchcock, and Matt Keeslar
Director: Christopher Guest
Rating: Eight of Ten Stars

A documentary crew follows the casting, staging, and performance of a musical created by Corky St. Clair (Guest), an actor who has failed his way from Broadway to small mid-western town, to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the town's founding. When he learns that a New York theatrical producer, Guffman, will be attending the performance, he inspires dreams of major stardom in the small-town amateur actors (Arquette, Keelar, Levy, O'Hara, and Posey) who are performing the play.


"Waiting for Guffman" is a hilarious mockumentary that pokes fun at community theater, smalltown life, and the desire that lurks withine every performer or creative person--no matter how meager their level of talent--to be a star.

From beginning to end, "Waiting for Guffman" is packed with quirky characters and well-done jokes. In some scenes, the jokes are coming so fast, or simulataniously, that you have to watch the film twice to get all of them. (My personal favorite part of the movie is not so much a gag as commentaries that arise from the film... the orchestra plaing the musical's score is almost at a professional level, as opposed to the actor's who are plainly under-rehersed on opening night. The orchestra was being led by a man who kept wanting to have more organization and less touchy-feely, free-form theatre workshop activities during rehersal time.)

The actors are great and very believable in their parts. Christopher Guest, as the effeminite director/playwright, and Parker Posey, as a teenaged fast foodworker, are particularly remarkable and convincing (which is saying something in the case of Guest's character, because it is truly an odd one0, but Fred Willard and Eugene Levy deliver the lines that get the biggest laughs.

An astonishing to me is that this film (like Guest's other films "Best in Show" and "A Mighty Wind") are mostly improv'ed. The backstory (and in this case the history of Blaine gives rise to much of the film's humor), general plot, and general nature of the characters is worked out, but most of the scenes themselves are unscripted. In "Waiting for Guffman," the only scripted things onscreen is the musical "Red, White, and Blaine", everything else in it was improv'ed and much it was done in just one take.

It's very cool, very remarkable, and very well-performed stuff.

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