Lifetime, Wow!

We're Moving

2011-01-14T15:18:00.001-05:00

I am kind of sick of Blogger so we are moving to Wordpress.

www.lifetimewow.wordpress.com

UPDATE YOUR RSS THINGIES

Suspense!

2011-01-13T21:25:00.001-05:00

Don't worry, we are not dead. Just hibernating. And making some changes. Please STAY TUNED.

The Boy She Met Online

2010-11-10T17:29:00.002-05:00

What ho, true believers! Haven’t done one of these in a while. We now have another fantastic writer to supplement Rusty’s sporadic bursts of productivity, so the pressure is off ol’ Liz Lemon to do this with anything even resembling consistency. Oh well, let’s give it a try. For my bi-annual contribution to the blog, I chose to confront a primal horror of mothers everywhere: the internet.

The Boy She Met Online starts with our teenaged protagonist Cami studying a computer monitor, then making a printout of a profile from a dating site called Insta-Mail.net. My boyfriend-- who, full disclosure, was an eBay purchase --didn't understand why she needed a copy of a screen she was looking at, and could presumably look at again in the future. Obviously, when you are dating someone online, you print their profile off and carry it with you like a lock of hair from your civil war beau. Printoffs of dating profiles from a website that sounds like an email service for seniors? As always, Lifetime has their thumb on the pulse of teenupsmanship.

Cami seems to have struck gold with her inter-dude Jake: he’s hot, good at writing lame kissy-kissy emails, and an achiever at some college somewhere. But her dude has a deep secret: he isn’t in college, HE'S IN JAIL! You may think that whatever he did couldn’t have been that bad since he still has internet access, but you’d be wrong. DEAD WRONG. Also, the prison doesn’t seem to be that good at being a prison. There is some bullshit story about how he got framed for something and he’s a really good guy in his dumb little heart, but you don’t care about that. Do you? Because I don’t care enough to try and remember it, so you’re out of luck.

Meanwhile, Cami’s mom Tori is struggling to reconnect with her amid the hormonal monsoon of her teenaged years. She tries everything- yelling, whining, yelling and whining, sulking -with no luck. Since none of that works, she resigns herself to being a frumpy gargoyle in the background of her child’s life, scowling in judgment of all she says and does. Oh, and there’s a woman named Kendra who just hangs around for some reason. I’d say that will be important later, but its not, which really begs the question as to why Kendra is even in this stupid thing.

In the chokey, Jake’s luck goes from bad to worse. First his sister shows up to tell him hes not welcome in the house when he's out of jail, then a time conflict in the prison computer lab makes him miss a cyber-date with Cami. His decision to punch the guy that is using the computer he wants lands him in solitaire, a move the movie seems to argue is unfair for some unfathomable reason. His sentence finally ends, and before you can say "unemployable ex-offender", he's on the streets and at loose ends with only an old friend who happens to be a drug dealer to give him shelter.

Being utterly out of options, he makes the classic decision of the mid-twenties slacker and decides to channel his energies into a highly dramatic relationship with a hot moron that is doomed to fail. He moves enough dope to buy a fancy suit and asks his girl if they can finally meet face-to-face. They agree to meet up at a local coffeeshop, and off we go on a whirlwind of romance! I don’t know if you've ever been on a date with someone you met on the internet, but
no matter what you two lovebirds are bringing to the table, it's gonna be awkward as shit. And that’s if you aren’t lying about your criminal background. Despite all that, they still hit it off and manage a shmoopy moment, followed up with the promise of further shmoopiness. Im going to be honest, I just zoned the fuck out whenever they talked to each other unless one of them started crying.

The really uncomfortable thing about it is that these guys cry a lot. Every time they have more then 5 minutes on screen together, Jake manages to either yell at his girlfriend for being a naive child or share some kind of horrific story about his life. This always results in Cami stoically accepting his abuse, which is horrible, or escalating intimacy, which is worse. This effect culminates in an implied sex scene after he tells her that he was actually in jail instead of at a kegger for the last 2 years. It's kind of ironic that he went to such length to hide his identity from her since emotionally unstable criminals are apparently such a turn-on. Oh well. Thats love!

Tori is getting more and more suspicious of her daughter's behavior, and with the help of Kendra the Spy, she learns that Jake isn’t the teen dream Cami portrays him as. This leads to numerous dramatic conversations that crescendo in shrieking and general misunderstandings. We’ve watched about 3 billion of these goddamned films together, so I shall summarize the next 4 hours of it as follows:

Mom: Why did I find a condom full of coke in your gym bag?
Girl: OMG I AM AN ADULT WHY DON'T YOU TRUST ME I WILL NEVER LOVE YOU
AGAIN BLAAAARGH *vomits Arbor Mist and shame all over the living room*
Mom: WTF, grounded forever.

Blah fucking blah, you know the drill. On the more interesting side of the story, Jake’s cellmate Dawayne makes bail and comes to stay with the worlds tiniest apartment-based crime syndicate. They don’t have much manpower, but those kids are scrappy! Which is good, because it isn’t long before Cami inadvertently witnesses a drug deal gone wrong and they’re all targets of a rival gang. In a sequence I can only call Scoobyesque, Dawayne walks into a darkened house and is brained by a big ol' dude with a baseball bat. After Jake and Cami drop him at the emergency room and contemplate revenge, it is decided that the best option is for the dummies to flee to a cabin in the woods and wait for shit to blow over. Fine. Whatever. Moving on.

Since its a Lifetime movie, it is now time for the traditional 3rd act women's intuition gambit. Smug mothers are the Chekov’s Gun of Lifetime movies, and it only takes a matter of time before they get to say “I told you so” to whomever they rescue from the brink of death. Tori manages to get the location of the cabin where the kids are hiding from Jake's sister, and speeds up there to rescue Cami from her lame boyfriend. Unfortunately, the guy that messed up Dawayne’s brainpan has the same idea, and there is a showdown in the works!

Things go all Reservoir Dogs in the cabin, and things end about how you’d expect. The mom gets shot, natch. The evil guy dies, somehow. Jake goes back to jail, and Cami and Tori bond over the whole mess. The movie ends with Cami and Kendra having a fun party and Tori slicing cake with one arm in a sling. It’s like the weird continuity re-set at the end of a sit-com, except nobody got shot in Boy Meets World. That I am aware of.

Awesomeness: 15
I am going to give this movie some credit for a really awesome concept, and the best worst-case-scenario I’ve ever seen in one of these scared suburban mom movies. Obviously, if you daughter meets someone online, he is a criminal and you will get you shot. Why not? It was also overwrought and cheesy in the best ways. However, all of the interactions between Cami and Jake creeped me out. I kind of wanted to see the movie ending with her taking a self defense class. Since it ended with a birthday party instead, -5.

Star Power: 4
Alexandra Paul (Tori) was on Baywatch, which explains why she has been reduced to this now. Thea Gill (Kendra) had major roles in Queer as Folk and some show called Dante’s Cove that looks absolutely AMAZING. Jake was in Saw 3D, so the jury is out on whether this score will be increased when I watch that shit at the dollar theater. That’s about it.

Lifetimeliness: 10
A-yup. Mothers, lock up your daughters. Only you can save them from the marauding dudes of the internet.

29 seems fair. I'd DVR it if I were you. Lemon out.

The House Next Door: House with an E

2010-10-21T19:35:00.001-04:00

Rusty already wrote about this movie, but he said I could write about it again after I begged him to let me not have watched this in vain. Holy crap. From Hulu's description of this movie, I was expecting campy horror and lots of ill-advised scenes of Lara Flynn Boyle trying to kiss Zack from Saved by the Bell with her malformed mouth. I got what I anticipated, but I also got super depressing scenes of a mother grieving for her dead son and eventually hanging herself while her husband is upstairs playing tonsil hockey with the neighbor lady.

I'm getting ahead of myself (and I just wanted to use the phrase "tonsil hockey"). The movie starts with Lara Flynn Boyle's weirdly elderly-sounding voiceover announcing that the house next door is evil or something. Honestly, I couldn't focus on what she was saying, because her narration was done as if she was doing an impression of herself as a 90 year old. "Maybe it's like Titanic," said my boyfriend, before he left the room in disgust.

Anyway, Cole (whose name is later revealed to be either Col or Kohl, in truly the only shocking twist the movie has to offer) and Walker Kennedy are super bummed that someone is building a house next door to them, but they are friendly and go to meet the architect anyway. The architect, who is named Kim because everyone in this movie has a ridiculous name, is excited to finally be building a house. His last project fell through when his client had a stroke, he casually mentions.. Cole/Col/Kohl lets him shower in her house because the water is turned off next door, which leads her husband to make some lame joke about how she totally wants to bone Kim/Zack Morris.

After the extremely ugly house is built, Col goes over to hang out with her new neighbor, Pie, who is expecting her first child with her adoring husband. Pie shows off the new puppy her sweet husband bought her, because housebreaking a puppy is exactly what you want to be doing when you have a newborn. From the second the puppy comes out of his carrier, you know he's going to die, but it's surprising how fast it happens. I felt like thirty seconds elapsed between meeting the puppy and seeing it with its face torn off.

Pie and her husband then have a housewarming party, which ends with Walker accusing Col of getting too cozy with the architect and Pie's loving husband pushing her down the stairs. Pie miscarries, then moves away from the creepy house. Her husband is in jail or something.

Here's part of the house, by the way. It's got like seven garages.

About three days later, an adorable middle-aged couple moves in.Col goes over to welcome them, and the lady mentions they have a son named Toby in Iraq. Watching this part, I was thinking, “oh, he’s going to die, just like the puppy.”

I wish that’s what had happened. Instead, at the housewarming party, Toby’s mom, Anita, opens the front door to see her son standing there in his uniform. “Toby’s home!” she shouts with joy.

“Honey,” her husband says, “Toby’s dead, remember?”

Anita screams, and the vision of Toby transforms into the pizza delivery guy, who is taking this way better than you’d expect. It’s a huge bummer.

Shit gets way more devastating when a new TV is delivered, and the only channel that comes in is just video of Toby screaming for help and then dying. Anita just sits in front of the TV and drinks all day in her bathrobe. She doesn’t even open the door to get the mail, so of course Col has to barge in to her living room. It’s the neighborly thing to do.

Col can’t get Anita to stop crying and drinking, so instead of getting help for her, she decides to snoop around upstairs, where she immediately sees her neighbor Virginia sadly ripping the clothes off Anita’s husband.

Oh, did I mention that five minutes earlier, it was loudly pointed out that Virginia has only ever slept with her husband? Virginia cries and looks horrified as Anita’s husband sucks on her neck, and Col stands there and watches for a little bit.

Then they all go downstairs to see that Anita has hanged herself. Virginia threatens to kill Col if she tells anyone about her tearstained affair.

Col tells her husband that she thinks the house is evil, and he tells her she’s just being stereotypically female and Irish(!). Obviously, this means it’s time for Col and Walker to go on a little vacation at their beach house. Oh, and they bring their cat, because cats love to travel.

Walker mentions how happy he is that Col is painting again. Oh, I guess she’s supposed to be an artist who just does interior decorating to pay the bills, but I forgot for most of the movie because she spends most of her time spying on the neighbors.

Of course, when Walker looks at his wife’s painting, he sees that it is just a lousy depiction of the creepy house next door.

When they go back home, Col and Walker are accosted by their redheaded neighbor, who is pissed that they left without telling her. She says she hasn’t heard from Virginia or her husband, and that nobody knows where they went. When Col won’t tell her what happened to Virginia, she flips out and storms off. This whole fight could have been resolved by Col saying that she didn’t know where Virginia went, or that Virginia told her something in confidence, but instead these two are enemies for the rest of the movie. This does nothing to further the plot, and is even more unrealistic than the concept of an evil house.

Kim the architect comes back, and he and Col share a bottle of wine as he tells her a charming story about a photographer blinded by an exploding light. Col tells him that she thinks the house is evil, so Kim reveals that he knows the security codes and they go in to search for the source of the evil or whatever. The evil house makes them super hot for each other.

Walker comes home, see the two wine glasses, and naturally assumes that his wife is over at the house next door. When he sees his wife on top of Kim, he grabs a knife from the kitchen, kicks the architect in the head, and attacks Col. It is insane that Col and Walker fight and she survives. Seriously, you can’t cast Lara Flynn Boyle if you want a realistic fight scene. A strong breeze could knock that chick over. Once outside, the couple realize that all of that infidelity and attempted murder was caused by the house, and Walker finally believes Col. The viewer is left to assume that Kim decides against pressing charges when he regains consciousness.

A preppy couple with a young daughter move into the house next, and while Walker just wants to move away, Col insists on trying to help. She helps by arranging a meeting with the other neighbors so that they can laugh at her when she tells them the house is evil, and by bringing over banana nut bread. It is during the banana nut bread scene that we catch a glimpse of the worst outfit possible.

Here’s another picture, so you can fully understand the awfulness of this ensemble.

Col and Walker invite the new new neighbors over, and Norman, the father of the little girl, turns out to be a total douche. He keeps referring to himself as Norman-Greene-Greene-with-an-E, and he won’t let his daughter leave the table to go throw up. This is a stupid decision, since she just ends up puking on the patio. Rusty mentions in his review that little Belinda pees herself later on, but it was this scene that made me laugh out loud.

I am including this picture because I want to note that Rusty dressed exactly like Norman Greene with an E in high school.

Later that night, Norman berates his wife, Suzannah, for messing up the invitations for their housewarming party, then tells her it’s too late to fix them, and orders her to mail them. She opens a drawer in the kitchen to get stamps.

What, are you surprised that there’s a gun in that drawer? The drawer where she keeps her stamps? The unlocked kitchen drawer, easily accessible to her young daughter? I’m mostly surprised that she has more than one book of stamps in there. These people are crazy rich.

After the party, where Norman insults Suzannah and their neighbors and shouts his own name a few times and Belinda pees on the floor, he gets out his kitchen gun and attempts to teach his wife how to put things in the fridge. Belinda is freaked out and runs next door into the arms of Col. Walker heads out to talk to her parents, but it’s too late: Suzannah has grabbed the gun and shot her husband and herself.

As soon as the blood has been mopped up, architect Kim and his new girlfriend move in. Col tells Kim that it’s him that’s evil, not the house, but he just puts on his sunglasses and goes inside.

So, Col and Walker decide to blow the house up. They go inside and turn on the gas, but then Col is haunted by disturbing visions of herself with Kim. The best is when vision-Kim stops kissing vision-Col just long enough to look at real Col with an expression of hilarious evil.

Real Col and real Kim start kissing, and I’m not sure if Col is kissing him to try to distract him or if the house is making her crazy horny again, but it all works out for the best: Walker comes in, shoots at Kim, and the house blows up.

Cut to Col and Walker on the beach with their new adopted daughter, Belinda, talking about how they murdered Kim. What a happy ending!

Oops, except for the last scene: a couple looking to build a house are shown the plans for the evil house! And they love it! “It’s magical,” the woman says to her husband, “It’s like it’s alive.” Nobody would ever talk about a house like that, especially this blocky monstrosity, but hey, at least the movie’s over.

AWESOMENESS: 13

This movie would have been hilarious and awesomely campy if not for the Anita-and-her-dead-son part. I felt like that was a total bummer. It was not bad enough to be funny, so it was just depressing.

The rest of the movie was better, and I loved how super-obvious the foreshadowing was, and Norman Greene with an E was AMAZING.

HEY! IT’S THAT GUY!: 10

I only watched this because Lara Flynn Boyle was in it, and I spent the next morning in the bathroom mirror trying to move my lips the way she does, and I totally can’t. And I have big lips! How does she do that? I hate everything about her, including but not limited to her politics and the two sets of earrings she alternated wearing throughout the movie and the weird freckles that start halfway down her chest. I know that it makes me a horrible person to judge her based on her looks, and I tell myself that really I just hate her because she’s a Republican, but I know deep down inside that it’s her stupid floppy mouth that makes me hate her.

Also, Zack Morris and the guy from Eureka.

LIFETIMENESS: 10

Walker was way too supportive and reasonable for a dude in a Lifetime movie, but ten points just for Norman Greene with an E, plus there was also women’s intuition, men not believing women’s intuition, mentions of an ancient Irish curse, and catty remarks about fertility. Oh! And when Anita’s husband cheats, Walker says that’s “just what men do.”

GRAND TOTAL: 33

This movie is worth it just for everything that happens after the last family moves in.

Not Like Everyone Else

2010-10-05T22:55:00.003-04:00

I was a sophomore in high school when Columbine went down. I guess I was sort of lucky because it happened right before our April vacation. We were out for a whole week, so a lot of the crazy immediate fear had passed by the time we got back. Nothing had changed. No increased security. I’ve never had a locker, but no one was searching our home room cubbies (yes, seriously). No one confiscated students’ Marilyn Manson CDs. (I had already gotten rid of mine because, obviously, Marilyn Manson isn’t very good. I expect a ridiculous counter-argument from Kate in the comments. She paid money for Holy Wood.)

That obviously wasn’t the typical experience for the American high school. Score another one for the coastal elites, I guess. As soon as I got the Internet, I set my home page to ACLU.org (you DEFINITELY wanted to be my friend in high school, no nerdo) and freaked out about the INJUSTICES being done to my fellow students across the country. Tinker v. Des Moines, amiright?

And that brings us to Not Like Everyone Else, a movie about post-Columbine hysteria leading to the suspension of a student who is just a little bit different.

That student is Brandi Blackbear, played by cutie-patootie Alia Shawkat (aka Maeby/Shirley Funke from Arrested Development). Brandi is one of those gothy creative types. Her hair is raven black. There is too much eyeliner. She writes about the lemmings that make up the popular kids at school. ANGST!

Jesus. Tone it down. We get it.

The movie opens with a media circus as the Blackbear family appears at a courthouse. They are suing the bejesus out of the school district for suspending Brandi for witchcraft. It looks like the population is on Team School District.

What kind of backwoods place would suspend a girl for witchcraft and have that be celebrated by a bunch of backwood yokels?

Oklahoma? Ok. That makes sense.

Bonus! I watched this movie with a real life American Indian from Oklahoma. I got the inside scoop on what it’s really like in the Oh Kay. Apparently the Lifetime version of Oklahoma has a lot more black people than the reality.

So we flash back to April, 1999, immediately after Columbine. The high school is installing security cameras and metal detectors. Brandi does not approve. The popular kids – for no reason other than this is what popular kids do, I guess – do not approve of Brandi. They go to the principal and accuse Brandi of having a hit list. The principal thinks this is pretty dumb but needs to look into it since all those kids just got murdered.

It’s weird that they introduce the principal as sympathetic considering he spends the rest of the movie acting like a supervillain.

Brandi has her bag searched and they find some poetry or lame short story that mentions killing something or other. Angst, angst, angst. Brandi is suspended for an entire semester.

Life ain’t so grand for Brandi at home either. The folks are behind on the mortgage and are picking up extra shifts left and right. The mom is ok but the dad is a real asshole. He forces Brandi to cook for the family when mom is working the late shift at the diner. He doesn’t allow Brandi to talk on the phone and won’t make eye contact with her. Some real Evil Stepmother type stuff. He won’t even take her to the Medicine Man! He only takes his son.

So Brandi is out of school and then she goes back. But everyone thinks she’s evil. When she starts checking out books from the school library about Wicca, more trouble starts. She gets accused of being a witch. She reacts by sarcastically yelling at her tormentors that she was indeed a witch and had cast a spell that put her teacher in the hospital.

Suspended again.

The ACLU takes notice and goes all, “No, You Didn’t!” They sue for every last cent that the school district has to spare. That school will be so poor, the cafeteria will depend on the services of Rose of Sharon to feed its students.

In some kind of disposition type dealie, Brandi admits that she still has her friends and is doing ok. That is not a good thing to say when you are suing for emotional distress and loss of friendship. Case over.

But it’s ok since Brandi’s evil dad read her diaries when she was asleep and totally gets her now. They are buds. He takes her to the Medicine Man. Because that’s exactly how you make your kid feel happy and accepted. You drag their ass to church.

AWESOMENESS: 6

The two hours flew by faster than a normal Lifetime movie, but that’s kind of damning with faint praise. There are no chuckles to be had here. And a lot of the movie is Brandi sitting around being suspended. It’s far too low impact to be considered awesome.

HEY! IT’S THAT GUY!: 4

This got DVRed because of the presence of Ms. Shawkat. I got pissed when I saw The Runaways in the theater because she didn’t get enough lines. Also, the movie was terrible. But it could have been saved by Alia Shawkat. Please ignore the irony that she couldn’t save this piece of shit.

Brandi’s mom is played by Illeana Douglas, an actress who I really like despite not seeing in her in anything other than 15 seconds of Goodfellas.

LIFETIMENESS: 3

The movie doesn’t really fit the Lifetime template. I guess the women in the family are fantastic and wonderful while the men are cretins. I guess that’s something?

GRAND TOTAL: 13

Woof. But don't fret, I watched this as a double bill with Harmony. She gets to write about a way better movie. Coming soon, kids!

The Party Never Stops: Diary of a Binge Drinker

2010-09-19T21:30:00.002-04:00

If you get drunk in college, you will become a huge slut and/or die. That’s what I learned from The Party Never Stops.

The movie starts with our all-American heroine, the blonde-haired, blue-eyed Jesse Brenner, typing forlornly at her laptop, trying to figure out where it all went so wrong. We’re then transported back in time nine months to see Jesse moving in on her first day of college. She’s sad to leave her mother and her little sister, and she’s concerned that everyone will think she’s a dork, even though she’s a super cute track star.

Jesse’s roommate is Shanna, a bubbly brunette who sleeps under a giant poster of herself. Shanna introduces her to some drunk floozies who share their champagne, then introduce Jesse to a cute boy named Keith. Jesse is traumatized by her awkward conversation with Keith, so she goes home to type “loser-dork-loser-dork-loser-dork-loser-dork” in her secret computer diary. Shanna cheers her up by taking her to a club and getting her totally smashed.

Hurrying to class after she oversleeps the next morning, she meets Colin, a sensitive, floppy haired musician who kicks the back of her chair to keep her awake during the lecture. I love Colin. He is a cheesy caricature, with his torn jeans and his messenger bag and his lousy acoustic guitar music, but I love him.

Jesse does not love him. He dedicates a song to her at a bar, but Jesse goes home with Keith and everything ominously goes slow motion before she bones him.

“I can’t believe I got so wasted that I slept with a guy on the first date!” Jesse laments. “Who does that?” Um, like, everyone in college?

Predictably, Keith doesn’t call Jesse for a week, and then, when they finally go on a date, some chick in the bathroom tells her that Keith has a steady girlfriend. Bathroom Chick tells Jesse he’s taking advantage of her.

“What if I’m taking advantage of him?” Jesse retorts.

“Well, that would make you a skanky little ho, now, wouldn’t it?” says Bathroom Chick, who is a huge bitch.

Jesse storms out of the restaurant. Meanwhile, Shanna has found herself a sweet boyfriend (who she most certainly did not sleep with on the first date), but still spends plenty of time partying and listening to Jesse. She even stays at school with her when Jesse is to sick to go home for Thanksgiving break.

Jesse’s mom and Colin keep calling her, but she blows them off so she can go drink all night. After sleeping with some dude who forgets her name, she continues to party all the time. She crashes a car into a fire hydrant because some thirty-five year old guy in a Hawaiian shirt asked her to park it for him. She returns drunk to her dorm one day to find her mother sitting on her bed. Jesse is so rude to her mother that Mom runs home to sadly fondle her late husband’s clothes. This movie is a huge bummer.

And it gets worse. Colin comes to watch her try out for the track team, but Jesse’s drinking has taken its toll, and she’s not fast enough. Then, she goes on spring break, wears a dorky shell necklace, and flashes her boobs to Joe Francis. Her boobs become an internet sensation, and everyone knows what a huge drunken slut she has become.

Now that the world has seen her topless, Jesse tries to get sober, with the help of ultra-sensitive, guitar strumming Colin. It turns out Colin ruined his life drinking, too! Hooray! They’re perfect for each other and will never be tempted to drink again! They even leave Shanna and the floozies behind at the big end-of-the-semester bash, and go to Colin’s apartment to drink tea and read poetry instead.

After a hot night of not having sex with Colin, because dudes who respect you never want to see you naked ever, Jesse goes to check on Shanna. Shanna’s not in her bed, though. She’s not with her loving boyfriend, either.

Shanna is dead of alcohol poisoning on a couch at a frat house. Of course she is. Of course the one character who isn’t totally one-dimensional is dead. Of course the girl who has a normal relationship with her boyfriend, is a loyal friend, and who parties but still gets to class on time, is totally dead. I hope everyone now understands that this could HAPPEN TO ANYONE. Except the main character.

AWESOMENESS: 10

This had its funny moments, intentional and otherwise, but it was nothing too special, and none of the “cute guys” were very cute. I did laugh out loud at the “skanky little ho” line, though. I almost wish a stranger would insult me in the bathroom of a Mexican restaurant.

HEY! IT’S THAT GUY!: 3

I don’t know who any of these people are, but Rusty says Nancy Travis deserves a 3 for So I Married an Axe Murderer, and I trust Rusty more than anyone else when it comes to campy movies.

LIFETIMENESS: 10

Oh man. The moral panic, the girls who call each other “girlfriend” and borrow each others’ clothes-- but especially, the way every guy who sleeps with a girl right away is a complete douche and every guy who refuses to put out is marriage material—make this one seriously Lifetimey Lifetime movie.

OVERALL: 23

While watching this, I misplaced a glass of wine. My boyfriend discovered it on top of the record shelf hours later.

She's Too Young

2010-08-31T17:17:00.009-04:00

Spoiler alert: No she's not!

Back when I lived in DC, I wrote a more successful blog called Why I Hate DC. The irony now is that I want to move back to DC since Columbus ain't working out. ANYWAYS, one of my self-selected beats on that website was Laura Sessions Stepp. I wrote about her a lot. She is (was?) a Washington Post reporter that specialized in moral panics about the teenagers. They don't date! They have sex parties! They're dancing suggestively! She even got a book published out of it. I lost my signed copy. Damn.

I would bet you a million dollars that LSS has seen She's Too Young.

Well, I hadn't. But I had seen the Frontline special that the movie wasn't based on. An affluent high school had a syphilis outbreak. My religion teacher played that documentary for us. I believe it was the first time I had heard about rainbow parties (of which there has never been a documented case). This was in my marriage class where they taught us about taking vaginal mucus and temperature samples to perfect the rhythm method. A fun class!

So! The movie! Hannah is a 14 or 15 year old girl. She and her friends are getting more popular because it turns out they may be tasty pieces. I don't know if they are or not since they are teenagers. But it's not like some movies where the high school girls are played by buxom sexpots. These actresses are clearly actually 14 or 15 (or look 14 and 15) and that adds a lot of sleaze to the proceedings.

It's good sleaze though since the viewer should, theoretically, be grossed out by 14-year-olds making with the intercourse.

Hannah is ready to start going on dates. Dad is ok with it. Mom is not. Mom loses this argument. Hannah has been doing great in school and great in her cello lessons. Hasn't she earned our trust?

Actually, so far, yeah she has. She goes out for ice cream with a bunch of clearly sexually active people. When they all go have sex, Hannah abstains and calls her mom to get a rescue ride. Trish says that Hannah can always call no questions asked and then she starts asking questions. They don't go anywhere.

Let me be clear here: I think Trish, aka Marcia Gay Harden is a fine actress. I've only seen her in Mystic River, The Mist, and, uh, The First Wives' Club. Please don't judge me regarding the latter. I saw that in theaters. No matter! Ms. Harden is a fine actress but she is horrible to look at. I don't mean that in a sexist or objective way. I need to make that clear after writing a review that talked about J-Love's boobs and used her previous tv show as a euphemism for masturbation. This is not about that. It's about Marcia Gay Harden being so god damned stern looking. You see her and you think angry. And that may be the point, but it's no good for viewing. It's like she's judging me for watching Lifetime when this blog is between me and my God.

So those ice cream sexually active people...two are besties who like to bone all the time. The other is a boy that Hannah is in love with. Eventually, that boy, Nick, asks Hannah out. Yeah, he may have a reputation, but he just wants to be with someone special.

After two dates, Hannah blows him.

Hannah's bestie, Dawn, is not having such a fun time. She used to be the girl blowing Nick. Now? Now she's just the girl who used to have sex with Nick and now has sores in her mouth because, oops, syphilis. When Dawn goes to the school nurse to get treated, she admits to having had sex with 15-20 boys.

From here on out, the movie goes out if its way to show a bunch of young high schoolers and a bunch of local property. Let's be honest here: The real name of this movie should be "She's Too White." There isn't a single black character here save for a nurse. All the panic here is class-based. "We never expected this when we moved here." And since there are no black students in the entire school, one just HAS to think that this shit was on purpose.

I have watched a lot of Lifetime. This is the most racist, at least by omission.

Hannah and Nick's third date doesn't go as well. Nick pressures her into an orgy and Hannah is appropriately skeeved. That's basically the end of the relationship.

Anyways, the nurse realizes that there is a syph outbreak afoot and asks Nick, Patient Zero, to get tested. A commenter named Kim mentioned this scene in some older comments.

"The skeezy guy who gives everyone syphilis goes to the school nurse to get his vaccination and says, "You better stick 'em all. Because I sure did." And then his friends give him high fives the nurse is PWN3D!1!!!1"

That is EXACTLY what happens and it is great.

So people get their syph shots and it should be no big deal but for some reason Hannah and Dawn dip into the latter's mom's liquor cabinet and go to town. When they pass out drunk and get busted, Hannah's folks freak out. To prove a point about not being such a good girl, Hannah drunkenly announces her sexually transmitted disease. But she also makes it clear that it's not, like, a real sexually transmitted disease since it was only in her mouth. Because that is bound to make a parent feel better.

Trish decides to take this news and run with it. She goes family to family to tell them that chances are their children are also slutty, but not as slutty as Hannah since she only went as far as oral. Parents don't really want to be hearing this and Trish doesn't get anywhere.

Well, she gets somewhere. She turns Hannah into a pariah. Her classmates take to the AIM to torture Hannah and accuse her of being a narc. Oh, did I say "AIM"? Whoops! In the sexy, sexy, world of She's Too Young, the instant messaging software is called Teen Playa. Because why not?

Hannah doesn't like being grounded for mouth love, so she runs off to a big hootenanny party even though no one likes her. She almost gets raped but is rescued by her obviously gay best friend who has been in love with her for years. Nick (not the almost rapist) feels bad about the almost rape. Maybe he will change his sticking ways?

Trish ends up at the same party looking for Hannah and sees marijuana and public sex. She looks as stern as always.

Hannah is super happy that her "straight" artsy friend saved her. She's also happy that he has a creepy stalker wall covered in Hannah pictures. Because stalking is more romantic than oral sex, you see. Hannah tries rewarding him with intercourse, going as far as to tell him "it's been two weeks since my syphilis shot so I should be clean by now."

Gay Dude refuses Hannah's advances, waits for her to pass out on his couch, and then he calls her parents to pick her up. AND THE END. THIS IS OUR HAPPY ENDING.

AWESOMENESS: 16

I should probably refer you back to the "sticking" dialogue. God, that was great.

This movie comes from the same writer and the same director as Cyber Seduction. I liked this one more. Porn is definitely funnier than syphilis (there isn't a syphilis version of the Golden Girls...yet), but this movie is funnier than Cyber Secudtion. Intentionally, I mean. There are fun little flourishes like Dawn stumbling around drunk or ridiculous snarky remarks about threesomes with 14-year-old girls. Really wonderful.

HEY! IT'S THAT GUY!: 6

It's nice to have an Oscar winner, but you need more.

LIFETIMENESS: 10

Boom goes the dynamite. I love how the father is villainized for being reasonable about dating and then is villainized for being too harsh for grounding his daughter for being drunk with syphilis. I also like how whenever someone mentions that Hannah is a good daughter, they cut to her singing along to a sexually explicit rap song. Little known personal fact: I lost my virginity the first time I heard hip-hop. I mean, not at that exact moment, but it was definitely the start of a downward spiral into promiscuous sex and drug use.

GRAND TOTAL: 32

A high score for a great movie. And it's available on Youtube! Alarmists of the world unite!

Just Ask My Children

2010-08-25T18:51:00.002-04:00

I don't know what got into the water, but I have been recording a ton of Lifetime movies and even taking the time to watch them. So why not get started with a story of child molestation. Drink every time you hear the phrase "Mommy put her mouth on my penis" in courtroom testimony!

Just Ask My Children is based on the true story of the Kern County sexual assault charges. If I knew this movie was going to be based on a true story, I never would have recorded it. I've known about the false charges levied against parents and day cares in the mid-80s, partially since the Massachusetts case still pops up in the news and even became part of the race to replace Ted Kennedy in the Senate. The Democratic candidate, a dolt named Martha Coakley, had pushed hard as a district attorney to keep clearly innocent people in jail since it always looks bad to be soft on child molesters. Even innocent ones.

Here's a Wikipedia rundown of a ton of false charges that led to serious jail time. It's the worst and it truly makes me infuriated. It's why electing judges is such a joke and why electing lawyers is a joke too. Everything about this is a sick joke.

And God help me, Lifetime didn't do such a terrible job here. It even stuck close to the facts. I mean, some of it is laughable. In the first five minutes, the Kniffen parents are presented as truly the greatest people to walk on God's green Earth. We all should avert eye contact with them they're so great. They love God, apple pie, and walks in the park.

If only things were so good for their neighbors, the McCauns. Those imperfect sons-of-bitches have a Rockwell family too, but it's being soiled by a crazy step-grandmother who likes making crazy accusations. (We only get a glimpse of her, but she's obese and has short hair so you know she's bad news.)

Those accusations make it to the "Welfare Office" and to a case worker who, for some reason, buys into them hook, line, and sinker. The accusations include forced oral and anal sex, hanging the boys from ceiling hooks and jerking them off, and, of course, recording all the festivities. This stuff usually happens in secret rooms (a common factor in a lot of these cases).

Without interviewing anybody, the DA and Social Services decide to go in and arrest everybody. The kids get interviewed and they all turn over on their parents. You know, since they're six and ten and don't know to be as honest as possible when adults are sitting in a room and badgering you with crazy questions about being sodomized. Instead of answering true, they are trying to answer right.

So, despite the no physical evidence of any of this occurring, we proceed to trial and the Kniffens are convicted. Why? Because kids don't lie. That is the entirety of the prosecution's closing argument. When I was 10, I lied all the time. Constant falsehoods to get what I want or to impress people. Maybe I'm a bit of sociopath, but most kids lie, right?

The jury doesn't think so and the Kniffens get over 1,000 years of prison. Not an exaggeration.

From there the parents go to jail AND HOW CAN THE MOVIE ONLY BE A THIRD OF THE WAY OVER!?!? I know this is a common Lifetime complaint, but JESUS. It's such a mistake. By keeping the parents in jail you aren't letting the viewer root for the people we've been following for the past 45 minutes. Instead we switch to the kid's perspective as they come to realize exactly what they did. Who gives a shit about that though? It certainly doesn't help that the actors who play the kids as, uh, kids, and the actors who play the kids as teenagers are fucking terrible.

So for over an hour we're getting nothing but the Kniffens writing letters to the people who care about them. The dad writes to his mom that he is in the same facility as Sirhan Sirhan and Charles Manson. "Remember when you told me to watch the company that I keep? It would be funny except that it's not." I don't know, Mr. Kniffen. That's pretty funny.

Well, his mom dies anyways so whatever.

And Mrs. Kniffen is dealing with the only black character in the entire movie. Of course she's a mean spirited prisoner who keeps spitting and cussing. You know how black prisoners are when compared to their white counterparts. Always with the spitting.

Grandma isn't the only one to die since the Kniffens are stuck in the clink for 12 years. Even when their stupid ass kids recant, they aren't granted a retrial (another common link between these cases). Finally they get out and The End.

AWESOMENESS: 14

Well, the movie is just a teensy racist seeming and that's kind of an issue. And I mentioned the pacing issues. But the movie does a fine job at riling people up about something people should be riled about. These cases and cases like it (think The West Memphis Three) are disgusting and horrible and it's the same kind of stupid hysteria that leads to ignorant assholes protesting a community center in Manhattan.

HEY! IT'S THAT GUY!: 3

True story, I have never seen a movie with Virginia Madsen in it. I know she is supposed to be famous, but whatever. Bonus point for a Buffy alumnus. Principal Snyder from Seasons 2 and 3 is a prison psychiatrist.

LIFETIMENESS: 4

Well, that racist stuff and that plotting stuff are all kind of par for the course for Lifetime. But this could have been a MotW on any network. It wasn't very Lifetime specific.

GRAND TOTAL: 21

BEWARE. Not good for ironic viewing. Very depressing!

My Neighbor's Keeper: BABY FEVER

2010-08-22T19:35:00.005-04:00

I think My Neighbor's Keeper is the first full Lifetime movie I've ever seen, except for that time I was in some pizza place in northern Maine and that movie where a teenage Jenny Lewis gets raped was playing on the TV at the bar. I have never seen so many commercials for birth control and cat food.

Here is the trailer, which shows pretty much every interesting thing that happens in the movie:

Laura Harring stars as Kate, a baby-obsessed woman who loves wearing turtlenecks and holding other people's children while smiling beatifically and staring into the middle distance. The children she covets most are those of her best friend and next-door neighbor, Ann. Ann has a little girl named Ellie and a baby boy named Logan, and she loves complaining about the dumb shit her husband, Mike, buys. Mike works all the time so he can buy dumb shit like secret $3200 golf clubs that aren't really a secret because Ann is a woman with a woman's intuition, and because Mike stores his secret golf clubs in the garage.

Anyway, after a fun day at the lake, Ann, Mike, Kate, and Kate's husband Tim, go back to what we are told is Seattle, except it never rains and it looks exactly like Cleveland. Kate tries to seduce Tim with the least sexy line ever: "my temp was up this morning." Nothing like reminding your partner that you only want him for his sperm to get him in the mood. Tim's like, "I thought the doctor told you that your uterus was a lost cause" and Kate's all, "SHUT UP I HAVE BABY FEVER IMPREGNATE ME NOW" so Tim says, "if I have to." I think he's supposed to be joking, but he sounds sadly resigned to another boring round of sex for procreation with his baby-crazed wife.

The next morning, Kate goes to see her exasperated OB/GYN, who essentially tells her to get a new doctor because she's sick of performing tests on her barren womb. Kate refuses to listen to Dr. Badnews, and talks to Ann, who advises her to "keep Tim on the job." According to this movie, sex is the least fun thing ever. All that matters is BABIES, and if you can't have them, you are a failure as a woman and your life has no meaning.

All of a sudden, it's Halloween, and Mike is working late so that he can buy more dumb shit. He calls Kate to tell her that Ann seems to have left the phone off the hook, and asks her to go next door and tell his idiot wife to hang up the phone.

Cut to Kate running back into her house, screaming and crying and pointing in the general direction of Ann's house. Tim asks her what's wrong, and she just screams and cries and points some more, so he goes next door to find Ann dead of the world's least gory stabbing. I have had nosebleeds scarier than this murder.

Even though the slightly bloodied knife used to murder Ann is right next to her barely butchered corpse, it takes Detective Billings and his silent partner the whole damn movie to find the killer, even though we all know it's Mike. Their excuse? "There's a lot of murders in this town." Comforting.

At the funeral, Mike asks Tim if he wants to buy a boat. Seriously. AT HIS WIFE'S FUNERAL, HE TRIES TO GET HIS FRIEND TO BUY A BOAT WITH HIM."I wanna get a sailboat," says Mike. "It could be fun." Mike sucks at pretending he didn't kill his wife.

Immediately after the funeral, Kate starts freaking out over who's going to take care of Logan and Ellie. Tim mentions that they still have a father, but Kate knows better. A man can't take care of two kids by himself! That's ridiculous! And what if something happens to Mike? What then, huh Tim? Won't somebody please think of the children?

Kate tries to help by telling the detectives that she saw some guy in a Frankenstein mask knock on Ann's door just before she got the phone call from Mike. They find a bloody Frankenstein mask in a dumpster halfway between Mike's office and his house, and he is arrested for murder, but is instantly out on bail. Kate testifies at some kind of murder mediation hearing as a character witness, and she tells everyone how awesome Mike is and how he would never have an affair or kill anybody. In the car on the way home, Tim tells her that Mike actually did cheat on Ann, but it was just one time, so Mike's totally not a murderer.

Kate gets all pissy and goes to Mike's house to yell at him for cheating on Ann, because berating a grieving man is the right thing to do. Mike says he's sorry for cheating on Ann, but Kate knows he's not a killer, right?

"Are you?" she asks.

"Nuh uh, you are," Mike says. "Just kidding. Now you know how it feels." And Kate learns a valuable lesson about accusing her friends of murder. Awww.

The kids are at Tim and Kate's house all the time now, and Kate even tells a stranger at a restaurant that the kids are hers. I think Kate is supposed to be the protagonist, but she totally creeps me out. Her husband warns her not to get too attached, and she says, "I'm sorry the death of our friend is inconveniencing you." She shows up at Tim's law office to ask about becoming Ellie and Logan's legal guardians if "something were to happen to Mike," which is a phrase she uses wayyy too much. I don't understand why she felt the need to ask Tim this question at work instead of waiting until he got home. Tim wants to know if he has any say in the matter, and Kate is disgusted by her insensitive jerk of a husband.

Then, some dude that we never even see confesses to the stabbing! Hooray! Mike throws himself a "my wife's murderer was caught" party, and Tim apologizes to Kate for being a reasonable person.

The neighbors decide to go to the lake again, but Tim has to do lawyery stuff, so Kate goes up with Mike and the kids. She looks through an old photo album and sees a picture of Mike with the Frankenstein mask. This is somehow more damning evidence than the bloody-fingerprint-covered knife left at the crime scene. Kate does the exact opposite of what any normal person would do: instead of taking the photos and putting them in the pocket of her bathrobe and remaining calm until she is no longer alone with a murderer, she hides the photo album under Ellie's bed and then calls Tim to tell him that Mike's a killer. Of course, Mike comes in the room while she's on the phone so she can't tell Tim anything, and then Ellie wakes up and brings out the photo album and asks Kate why it was under her bed. Good job, Ellie. New Mommy is going to get killed because of you.

After explaining why he stabbed his wife, because murderers love nothing more than describing their crimes to people they are about to kill, Mike drowns Kate. We know she's really dead because she never comes up for air, and we see Mike standing in the lake holding her bathrobe.

Tim finally shows up at the lake. "Where's Kate?" he asks.

"I think she went for a swim," says Mike.

Then the cops show up with a soaking wet Kate and arrest Mike. Tim and Kate get to keep the kids, and everyone lives happily ever after, except Ann.

AWESOMENESS: 5

This was a very long 89 minutes. The movie is shot in dark, muddy tones, and the acting was bad in a non-hilarious way. I did like when we get to see Tim's law degree and it says "Tim" not "Timothy," though.

HEY! IT'S THAT GUY!: 4

I guess Laura Harring was in Mulholland Drive, but I haven't seen it even though people keep telling me to watch it. Maybe this should be a ten, or a two; I seriously have no idea. I am embarrassed. But I figure if Brittany Murphy only got a four, I can't go higher than that.

LIFETIMENESS: 7

Let's see: a point for baby fever, a point for our first glimpse of the husbands being a shot of them eating snacks and watching sports instead of cooking dinner, a point for best girlfriends who are always together, a point for murder, a point for Kate's husband apologizing for hurting her feelings, a point for a woman solving a crime that the police couldn't, a point for woman's intuition.

GRAND TOTAL: 16

I can't believe I watched this twice.

Hello.

2010-08-22T18:59:00.004-04:00

Hi, I'm Kate. I live in Maine and I've known Rusty for a wicked long time. In high school, he once came to my house and mocked my mother for watching Lifetime. "Lifetime: where the man is always wrong," he said. I was psyched when he asked me to write for this blog.

I have no idea what to write for an introduction, but Rusty says I am a "crackerjack writer" and to suck it up.

Usually, I write about clothes on my blog Sweet Disorder, where you can read about how I broke my foot wearing cute shoes. I love trashy television, so this is a great excuse for me to watch some. "It's for my writing," I can smugly tell my boyfriend as he rolls his eyes at me. Awesome. I don't have cable, so right now I'll just watch whatever movies I can find online. All the time. I love TV.

When I'm not writing about clothes or watching cheesy movies, I'm probably doing even girlier shit like making jewelry, buying makeup, or hanging out with my cats. I like going to rock shows. I have green hair.

Last night, for research, I drank red wine out of a weird red wine juice box and yelled at the computer as everyone in these movies did exactly the opposite of what a reasonable person would do. I also found that I'm really bad at taking pictures of my computer screen.
How did I manage to turn the flash back on? What the fuck? I will try to do better.

The Client List

2010-07-20T14:26:00.012-04:00

Oh my God. The Client List. Oh my God.

I actually buckled down for this one. No drinking with friends while cracking jokes. Oh no. Not this time. I even took notes! The notes were only necessary for some the wacky one-liners and zingers. Stray observation type stuff. I will not be needing notes for the grand finale when Lifetime finally killed feminism once and for all.

So Jennifer Love Hewitt of vajazzling fame plays Sam, a former beauty queen turned struggling mother of three. Her husband’s football career never took off because of a bum knee and both find themselves out of work. They live in Texas where the hair is big and the accents are atrocious. The house is in foreclosure and they can’t even afford the entry fee for their son to play flag football. Thankfully, the bank gives them a one month extension on the mortgage. Why? Because of Sam’s ridiculously tight dress and her photographic memory recalling that the lender suggested one of those evil subprime mortgages. Oh, and pumpkin pie perfume because Sam read that the smell of pumpkins gives dudes massive boners.

Seriously.

I wonder if Sam’s sex appeal and memory will have some sort of significance later.

Sam applies for a job at a massage parlor because somewhere between winning a pageant and shitting out three kids, she got licensed in two different kinds of massage. A real good investment. Also good investments that the happy couple makes include getting blindingly drunk at the local watering hole and playing the lottery. Now Harmony and I work with distressed populations (remember, we are heroes), so the last thing I want to do is sound like I’m judging. But, come on, guys. Get it together.

Sam gets the job and watches a massage. I assumed that the parlor would ease her into the whole entire prostitution thing, but, no. Sam watches a girl give a fat dude a blowie. She storms out but after declaring that “a girl this pretty shouldn’t be poor,” she goes back to start her career as a sex worker. After all, it beats waitressin’!

The hookers are fantastic, by the way. They are all good Texas folk. One claims whorin’ is like killing a man. It gets easier after the first time. Another prides herself on her Viagra giveaways because “that little blue pill keeps us in the black.” Such sassiness! And they give Sam shots of tequila at 9am to loosen her up. Best job ever!

After the first day on the job, Sam has a conversation with herself on the way home. She is talking to her dashboard guardian angel. (The dashboard is a nice touch since it is literally impossible to drive faster than it can fly thus saving you the cost of a horrible bumper sticker.) Then she tells the angel that she needs to pull over so she can throw up. I always talk to myself about needing to throw up before throwing up. Normal human behavior.

Then we get a montage of Sam in all sorts of different lingerie and costumes servicing clients. It’s awesome. Does anyone want to have a debate over the feminist ramifications of ogling Jennifer Love Hewitt’s breasts? I am a feminist and I’m still staring. Having my cake and eating it too. She is a pretty lady.

FTW

(FYI, “Party of Five” has always been my favorite masturbation euphemism. And there are three reasons that it’s a good euphemism. Two of them are Jennifer Love Hewitt’s breasts.)

Ugh, gross! I am sexualizing body parts! That is not feminist sounding at all. Jennifer Love Hewitt is regressing me back to middle school. I am gross and will stop. Sorry.

I should remind myself that I don’t need to worry about being a feminist, because, as mentioned earlier, this movie has killed off feminism once and for all. Jennifer Love Hewitt is standing over Rosie the Riveter’s grave in a teddy.

Apparently whoring makes you crazy wealthy. The mortgage isn’t an issue. Nor is buying your husband a fucking motorcycle. I know it isn’t just a river in Egypt, but the amount of denial on display from her husband here is staggering. It’s more like depacificocean.

But things are going well! You can tell Sam is a prostitute now because she wears lipstick everywhere. The husband is happy because he has a chopper. And the kids are happy because they get two desserts in their lunch (seriously). Everything is peaches and sex work.

Except one of the hookers isn’t having such a good time. She’s younger and very Christian. After seeing her pastor in the brothel, she has a crisis of faith. Her family doesn’t want her and “Idol auditions aren’t for another six months.” (There are so many “seriouslies” going on here, guys!) She quits the business and tells a bunch of Christians what’s going on. Those Bible Thumpers are going to ruin everything! Why can't they just let a sex ring exist in peace?

Sam is getting kudos for being the best prostitute in town. What’s her secret? Listening and cooking. She bakes cookies for her johns. The cookies are a nice bonus. Sam apparently has twice as many clients as any of the other prostitutes. Presumably her vagina looks like a buzzard’s neck. A bedazzled buzzard.

googling "pimp buzzard" didn't work

Oh, Sam does have one other secret. Cocaine.

The cocaine, parenting, and whoring are taking a lot out of her. She almost falls asleep at the wheel! She is curt with her daughter! She isn’t as nice to her clients!

It actually made me sad that Sam wasn’t as good of a sex worker as she used to be. But it’s a moot concern since the police bust the massage parlor. Sam gets perp walked in a bra and panties. I don’t think the police would do that, but, whatever.

"no time to tie your robe, ma'am. the fingerprinting lady gets off in 15 minutes"

Back at the local bar, Sam’s husband is watching a football game on TV. They cut away from the game to show the prostitution bust. The chances of a station cutting away from football for a local news story in Texas are negative 1000%. Sam gets recognized and, uh oh, Spaghettios!

Sam gets bailed out and begs for forgiveness and, surprise!, she doesn’t get it. Sam’s husband takes the kids and gets the Hell out of Dodge. Meanwhile, Sam is looking at two years for prostitution and cocaine possession. If only she had some skill to bargain her sentence down.

Remember her memory? If Sam were watching/reading this, she would remember her memory.

Sam bargains everyone down to 30 days by revealing 69 (SERIOUSLY) of her clients. This includes judges, doctors, lawyers, and other prominent members of the community. Because journalism is as dead as feminism post-Client List, the local papers and stations publish the list as fact. Why not.

And here is where feminism died. A mob of angry women barge in on Sam. Sam may be a whore, but she is a polite whore, so she makes them iced tea. Then she apologizes. She was raised to only care about her looks and not her brains so when she was in trouble, that’s what she leaned on. Basically it was her mom’s fault.

But the mob tells Sam that they aren’t looking for an apology. They’re looking for advice. “What did you do to make our men happy? What are we missing?” Oh. My. God. Sam then grabs a banana and commences with the lesson.

Since Sam was such a good prostitute because of listening and cookies, I imagine that’s part of the advice too. I am going to make that leap. It’s the women’s fault since they didn’t cook enough. See. I told you. Feminism is over. Back to the kitchens, ladies!

It's been brought to my attention that this is basically the ending to The Ladies Man, but with the genders reversed. And that gender reversal makes this totally unacceptable.

Sam becomes a waitress after her jail term and it is implied that her ex-husband is willing to give it another shot. No harm, no foul, amiright?

AWESOMENESS: 19

I was enjoying this movie. I really was. It was so….competent. Sure, having Sam talk to a guardian angel is the laziest narrative device I’ve ever seen. And the movie somehow got less interesting when cocaine was added to the equation. But any criticisms went out the window once this movie got to Crazy Town.

this movie was butterfly, sugar baby

HEY! IT’S THAT GUY!: 8

I’ve focused enough on Jennifer Love Hewitt. But there’s so much more! She dated an alumni of Sacred Heart High School. I am an alumni of Sacred Heart High School! It’s within the realm of possibility, guys!

not pictured: a shit ton of Abercrombie. pictured: The SAC

I just remembered that vajazzling thing and I am suddenly freaked out by J-Love. Rich Cronin can have her.

Oh, Cybil Shepherd was in this too.

LIFETIMENESS: 10

This movie is so regressive that it actually might be too Lifetimey to be Lifetimey if that makes any sense. But a woman loses her way, does some sordid stuff, and comes out with less jail time than a Lohan. Redemption! Lifetime!

GRAND TOTAL: 37

This is the third highest rated Lifetime movie. It will be on next weekend. DVR it. OR WATCH IT ONLINE AT MYLIFETIME.COM

I watched this on Monday. I saw Inception on Tuesday. I preferred the former. My infallibility combined with transitive properties says that if you liked Inception, you will love The Client List.

It's Full-On Double Wedding All the Way Across the Sky

2010-07-09T18:41:00.001-04:00

Suffice to say, if I saw this amazing video before Double Wedding, the review would have been drastically different.

Seriously though. What does this mean?

Double Wedding

2010-06-22T10:10:00.003-04:00

I’ve only been to two weddings in my life and one of them was when I was in middle school, so that hardly counts. They seem like fun though. So fun that a Double Wedding would be irresistible.

Which brings us to Lifetime’s Double Wedding. Double Wedding follows twin sisters “D” and “D.” That’s right, folks. They have the same freaking nickname. Parent FAIL. One can only imagine the hijinks that could ensue should someone get these ultra-identical twins with the same name confused.

D and D look so similar that even the viewer could have trouble telling them apart. Thankfully, the movie deals with this problem in an efficient 30 seconds of exposition.

“You’re such a Type-A+ personality, but thank you for doing my taxes and being a successful workaholic lawyer, D.”

“Oh, you’re welcome, D. I’m always proud to help my more spontaneous, fashion oriented, pastry chef sister. You’re the best!”

The sisters are at their grandmother’s house when they notice a bridal magazine. Who is getting married? Their grandparents! They are going to renew their vows in a fancy cathedral to celebrate their golden anniversary. Awwwwww. Because this is grandmama’s show, she says no plus-ones for the girls. If they’re going to bring a boyfriend, he needs to be special. The Double-Ds pledge to have boyfriends by the “wedding” six months from now.

You see where this is going, right?

Lawyer D, at her unfathomably wealthy paralegal’s suggestion, goes the online route. The name of the dating site is “Strike While You’re Hot.” Where desperate singles meet before they get all ugly and shit! After a few misses, Lawyer D ends up with Tate, an obviously gay guy working in non-profit housing. Their first date goes pretty well, but Lawyer D has to leave early due to a work emergency. I would think that was a pretty dick move if it weren’t for that helpful 30 seconds of exposition. I was prepared for this.

Lawyer D’s big work emergency? Just the impossibly rich paralegal calling her in to break up the date. This is where the viewer figures out that he loves her, but Lawyer D is about 90 minutes from getting there.

(Incidentally, I know a few paralegals. They aren't collecting antique cars and dressing in the finest Italian suits. They are errand monkeys for lawyers.)

Of course – OF COURSE - Tate runs into Pastry D at a coffee shop. And he can’t tell the difference. So he has twin girlfriends and no one knows.

But, really, someone should have figured it out. It’s kind of weird to have your boyfriend refer to your bakery as “The Firm” when you know that your identical twin sister is a lawyer. And when your boyfriend keeps referring to conversations that never happened, maybe just rolling with it is the wrong strategy.

So, the relationships are moving along nicely. Both want to take it slow so, as Harmony’s boyfriend Michael put it, Lifetime doesn’t have to deal with the icky details of having sex with twins. They take it so slow that Lawyer D and Tate forgo phone sex in order to have “phone sleep.” Yes, they just go to bed as the minutes on their cell phone plans tick away. Such conspicuous consumption isn’t really sympathetic to the nation’s current economic climate, now is it, Lifetime?

But so much talking! And when you imagine that this sap is talking for hours to two different woman…ugh. One nice reveal is that Pastry D is only a very successful pastry chef (top 3 in New York apparently?) because she failed smart person tests after her dad walked out on her? Wait, what? Also, Tate’s parents died in a car accident. Too much sexxxy talk! My TV is melting!

This ridiculousness culminates in Tate having conversations with both Ds at the same time so that they can both invite him to Grandmama’s wedding. First he’s talking to Pastry D. Then the phone beeps and it’s Lawyer D. Jesus, Tate. You have a fucking Blackberry. You should be able to see that the phone calls are coming from two different numbers. Then he drops the phone and that somehow magically patches everyone together? I mean, I could have someone on hold and drop my phone 1,000 times and not once will that connect all three parties, but WHATEVER.

So here comes the big reveal, right? NO! WRONG! Lawyer D and Pastry D manage to say the exact same thing at the exact same time so everyone just thinks there is an echo. What. The. Fuck.

The Double Ds decide to go to Central Park for a nice jog because that’s what successful people do in New York. One of them gets a phone call from Tate and they finally realize what’s happening. I am so glad that they found someone so special for Grandmama’s wedding that they never realized he was spending half of his time with another woman.

After Grandmama makes an inappropriate incestuous threesome joke, everyone agrees that they should just drop the relationship. Well, everyone agrees except for Tate. They just don’t bother to tell him that he’s been duped or that he’s been dumped.

Tensions between the sisters continue to mount. Grandmama goes as far as to cancel all of Thanksgiving when the fighting sisters knock over a pie.

likes: pie. dislikes: eyelids.

Pastry D cheers herself up by hooking up with Tate again. Lawyer D finds out, stalks them, follows them into a nightclub, and uses a hair clip to lock Pastry D in a bathroom stall. Shockingly, her hair clip skills weren’t up to snuff and Tate finally sees both Ds at the same time.

There’s some pointless consternation before Pastry D and Tate realize that they’re right for each other and Lawyer D and Antique Car Collecting Paralegal realize that they’re right for each other. (Harmony and I think this may be our first Lifetime interracial relationship, so, yay?) Somewhere in there, the sisters win second place in a cake contest. The cakes look terrible. It annoys me because I have a friend who actually watches Lifetime that could make better cakes. A real missed opportunity for her. (PLUG)

The movie ends with the Grandmama’s 50^th anniversary “wedding.” There’s all sorts of happiness and then, whoa!, Pastry D and Tate walk out. They got married too! Oh! I get it. DOUBLE Wedding. Very clever. Kind of weird these guys got married after only six months. The couples drive off in their limos when, BAM, an antique car pulls up. Lawyer D and Paralegal Dude come out of the church too! TRIPLE WEDDING, BITCHES. They promised a double wedding and gave us a triple. Lifetime means value!

AWESOMENESS: 8

You got to love a movie where we’re supposed to be rooting for three incredibly stupid people. Even if they all find love they’re probably just going to die in a can opener accident.

Back in the day I used to split awesomeness into “actual” and “ironic” categories. Just know that if I still did that, all eight points would be firmly in the ironic category.

HEY! IT’S THAT GUY!: 5

This is tricky. Objectively, the twins, the famed Mowery sisters are not really famous. They had their own terrible show on ABC’s TGIF lineup and guest starred on an episode of Are You Afraid of the Dark. That’s as famous as Melissa Joan Hart and Melissa Joan Hart is barely famous. But as soon as I found out about this movie, I needed to see it. Immediately. So I’m splitting the difference.

LIFETIMENESS: 7

Whether it’s the wisened black Grandma or every character’s happiness being wrapped up in a nice little bow, this was all pretty Lifetimey. Obvious demerits for no women’s intuition.

GRAND TOTAL: 20

The most mediocre score possible for a mediocre movie.

Sister, sister. I didn’t realize how much I didn’t miss them.

Mind Over Murder

2010-06-17T13:24:00.004-04:00

A week ago I was staying at a hotel in sort-of rural Ohio for work and, hey!, the Quality Inn has the Lifetime Movie Network. Score! I can mix business with pleasure!

There was no pleasure.

Mind Over Murder is predictably terrible. Tori Spelling plays an assistant district attorney (ha!) who hit by a car and develops the power to read minds. She then uses this power to go after a Republican Senator who murdered his mistress.

1. This is going to blow the Lifetimeness scale out of the water. Reread that last paragraph. That is shitbird crazy.

2. After reading that paragraph, don't you know every detail of the movie already? Do I need to spend 1000 words telling you about Tori Spelling using her powers to catch people lying on the stand? Or the forced awkwardness of when the judge realizes that one of the attorneys is psychic? No. You got it down.

And I had it down. I actually left in the middle of the movie to go grocery shopping. Seriously. I don't think I missed much. Somewhere in there Spelling falls in love with a cop played by her real-life husband. The lack of chemistry between those two was astonishing.

And since the movie came out in 2006, way after Spellings's plastic surgeries, you have to stare at this for two hours:

Hypnotically unsexy

But, finally, a Lifetime movie so stupid that I gave up on it. Sadly, this one the "pick-a-flick" contest they run for Friday nights. In other words, this movie was shown because of popular demand. That's a Human Centipede amount of scariness.

AWESOMENESS: 0

They say a D- is sometimes harsher than an F, but, no. This deserves the zero.

HEY! IT'S THAT GUY!: 2

Tori Spelling only exists to fuel the Lifetime Nightmare Machine. She isn't a celebrity anymore.

LIFETIMENESS: 10

And well earned.

GRAND TOTAL: 12

So my shortest review ever leads to a 12. Avoid at all costs.

Family Sins [Trigger Warning for, uh, Everything]

2010-06-01T19:20:00.003-04:00

[Harmony note: Since trauma is the bread and butter of the Lifetime film, I'm going to start putting trigger warnings in the titles when appropriate. On one hand a person can reasonably expect SOMETHING horrible will happen in a Lifetime movie. On the other hand, some movies go a little farther then others, so why not make it easier to skip something you don't want to read?]

It's always a happy occasion when Rusty and I have the time to watch a LMN movie together. Since we don't get to do it very often, it's best to try for a special occasion kind of a film. Family Sins hit our criteria through three very important key phrases: "true crime", "evil basement", and "Kirstie Alley". We sat down on Friday with a bottle of Kid Rock's favorite bourbon (Red Stag!) and gave it a go.

First off, can I just say "ew". It's no secret that my favorite true crime Lifetime movies are the campy ones. This one was like if the team behind Saw remade Serial Mom. I know that it's cliched to proclaim something Saw-like, but this movie is striving for it. Every third scene features someone being tortured in a grimy tableau. Your enjoyment of the movie will be predicated by your ability to enjoy watching a mentally handicapped woman get enslaved, beaten, and raped by people she trusted to take care of herself and her baby. Whoops, spoiler alert. Also, they rape her daughter. Again with the spoilers!

The movie starts with a family photo session that is probably trying to remind us of Capturing the Friedmans. (Remember when we talked about how it's not a good idea to remind us of a better movie in the middle of a bad movie? Read the blog, you hacks!) Is this picture perfect family not what they seem, or will this be the most boring hour since Project Runway moved to Lifetime? Cut to Kirstie Alley playing Brenda Geck, celebrating Mothers Day with her extended brood of biological and foster kids. Her kids are creepy, too. One is a Spencer Pratt-y meathead. There's also a girl who hides in the corner and looks and acts like pre-pubescent Carrie: sad, stuttery, and powerless. She spends a lot of her time shielding a tiny boy in her lap who looks a little too much like the Spencer dude. Brenda receives a bunch of lovely expensive appliances with price tags attached. Carrie, who is actually named Marie, is the only person who did not bring Brenda a Mother's Day present. This is underlined, highlighted, and poked into our eyes by writers who are firm believers in foreshadowing. And rape basements. Mostly rape basements.

The film leaps forward and we learn that Marie has fled the household, little blonde mini-Spence in tow. She's trying to find an official to listen to her story, but everyone is all "That family is cool, you crazy". As always in Lifetime films, social services only exist to rip families apart, ignore children in crisis, and maybe set orphans on fire. Her flight to freedom is interspersed with flashbacks to her icky childhood. Apparently, Mrs. Geck spends most of her time teaching her kids to shoplift and setting fires in her family's rental properties when the tenants displease her. Don't worry for them though, it's not all iron-fist tactics for a Geck property tenant. For example, one of the unfortunate arson victims was lucky enough to be taken in to their home, child in tow, for some loving rehabilitation. It's unfortunate that the Geck family learned their rehab techniques from Abu Ghraib, but oh well. If sexual assault, torture, and forced labor is good enough for our enemies, it's good enough for a mentally handicapped woman and her child. The mentally handicapped woman, who is named Nadine, is locked by Brenda in the basement for "her own good". She doesn't eat unless she does the housework to Brenda's specifications, and the one time she flees the property she's delivered back there by a well-meaning policeman and is rewarded with a beating from a stripped extension cord. She doesn't have the werewithal to escape on her own, and her daughter doesn't fare much better- raised as a Geck, as she grows older she learns of her mother's imprisonment. She also learns that she's expected to shoplift to support the family, and oh yeah, any male member of the family is entitled to sexually assault her at any time. One morning Brenda teases her for getting too fat, only to learn that she's been impregnated by her son. Instead of being horrified, she beats up Marie for being dumb enough to get knocked up by one of her kids. One commenter on the Lifetime site singled this moment out as a "lighthearted teasing" scene that allowed Kirstie Alley to show her fun side. I didn't know they had internet access in the violent offender wings of federal prisons, but you learn something new every day.

Carrie finally manages to find someone who will listen to her, a young DA that hasn't drunk the Geck Kool-Aid. The pieces of Marie's stories don't mesh with what the town believes about the Gecks, but they make enough sense that he's willing to hear her out. A raid on the Geck's house reveals Nadine's imprisonment, which is enough to put them all in custody while the DA builds a case. They slowly learn about the arson, the shoplifting, and the other illegal stuff the Gecks get up to. Brenda is unrepentant, and calls a dude that fences shoplifted goods for her to make things hard on Marie. He haunts her trailer, setting stuff on fire and breaking shit, but is generally just a nuisance as opposed to a real threat. And yes, the only other criminal in the film is black. Of course he is.

The climax of the film is the trial, which pretty much goes how you'd expect. Testimony is given, Marie cries a lot, Brenda looks suitably chagrined, and the men of the family get 10-20 years a piece for their involvement. The judge is super-excited to send Brenda to jail. Marie gets her public vindication, and she moves into a trailer with her mom. The film ends on a touching family hug. Yaaaay!

Awesomeness: 5
Urgh. Yes, this movie is campy and weird, and has a lot going for it in the arena of production values and a very strong cast. BUT! I cannot give awesomeness points to a movie where a mentally handicapped woman reminisces about how gentle her rapist was. Does that sentence make you feel awesome? Hey, me neither. 5 points for baseline awesome and I am cutting you off, movie.

Star Power: 6

Kirstie Alley has to be worth 5 points. She was in Cheers, and also is fat, which apparently means that as a nation we must observe and scrutinize her at all times. Everyone else in this had bit parts in every TV show ever, which makes them all annoyingly familiar but not immediately recognizable.

Lifetimeliness: 10
Now THIS is a Lifetime movie. Motherhood, child abuse, true crime, women in peril: this is the greatest hits reel of Lifetime Movies. This is Now Thats What I Call A Lifetime Movie!. It also had my favorite instance of a social services diss in one of these films: a harried social worker checking her watch and yawning as a child covered in bruises and close to tears says her family life is fine. Fuckin' social workers. Am I right?

I feel 21 is fair. This movie is a riveting watch, and it's certainly everything you'd expect from an LMN joint. But it is just SO GROSS. I'm going to go ahead and say you should watch it once, but I kind of doubt you'll want to watch it again.

LOST Finale: Sad Trombone

2010-05-24T07:29:00.007-04:00

Alternate Title: No, no, no, no, NO.

A few months ago I used my podium here to hate on some non-Lifetime programming. I'd like to do that again. Don't know if you heard, but one of the most influential television shows of the past decade or so closed up shop yesterday. And since Lost is one of the few shows I've watched from the very beginning to its stupid conclusion, I need to get a few things off of my chest.

The obligatory disclaimer: Lost was one of my favorite shows ever. My weekday social calendar revolved around Lost for years. I am a hater by nature* and I love to complain, so please don't allow my incredibly negative reaction to yesterday's finale scare you off from watching the show if you haven't seen it yet.

(*As mentioned in my last review, I am currently watching Angel and Buffy for the first time. It's awesome. Highly recommended to all. But when I talk about it with people who are already huge fans (one of whom named their son after a Buffy character), I have nothing but weird complaints about very minor plot points. I am not pleasant to deal with. So I guess this entire post should be taken with a pillar of salt.)

Obligatory disclaimer #2: If you haven't seen the finale yet or are watching the show and haven't gotten to Season 6 yet, just please stop reading. And since I am only speaking to the people who watched last night's show, I won't get into too much expository detail. You all know what happened.

And Season 6, what a disaster. What a stupid, pointless disaster. The show spun its wheels for months with a bunch of crap like the Temple and the Lighthouse that didn't do anything for me and then tried rushing a resolution in the final four episodes. Let's take a step back and look at how the show has evolved itself into failure.

The first two seasons you have a bunch of survivors on a mysterious island with a monster and some hostile natives. Neat! But then! The end of Season 2, the show kind of evolves into a Dickensian romance between Desmond and Penny. By Season 3 we discover the Hostiles may be looking out for the Island's best interest, but they are willing to resort to great evil to protect it. (I wonder if Richard and Ben saw them genociding The Dharma Initiative when they realized they were in purgatory.) Also, pregnant ladies always die. Which leads for the mad scramble off of the island. Then they need to go back! Also, Penny and Desmond are quickly resolved and the show becomes a battle between two sets of Hostiles: Ben and Widmore. Which is kind of tangentially connected to Desmond and Penny, so, fine. But by the time we get to Jacob vs. The Man in Black/Smoke Monster, no. Too much. The master plot had changed too often and the show's creators saying that only the characters mattered was code for "we cared more about cliffhangers than story so here we are with a bunch of loose ends that can never be answered."

And by the last episode of the last season, we got some of the worst television writing in the medium's history. Basic 101 stuff. What was Smokey's motivation? He wanted off the island, then he wanted to destroy the island. Ok. Why? Why did he need Desmond? Why did Jacob want Desmond on the island? Desmond turned out to be pretty useless, no? What did Ben want? Why did his motivation change every episode? Same goes for Widmore. That whole war he had against Smokey was for what? He wanted to take over the island in order to protect it? Or did he just want to get back at Ben?

These aren't ambiguities meant to add shades of gray to each character. It's just piss poor writing. The entire finale, I was still wondering what it was that each character wanted. And other than Jack and his other candidates needing to save the island, I never got it. I swear to God I am a smart person and I couldn't figure out what was happening. I watch the show religiously, read a bunch of Lost crap on the Internet, and I had no idea why things were happening. That can only be interpreted as a total failure.

And the sideways universe being purgatory....JESUS CHRIST. I admit, that on an episodic scale, neat. It was awesome to see characters reconnect and to have a big ol' reunion at the end of the show. I got all weepy when Sun and Jin saw their pasts (although they as a couple clearly did not give a shit about their daughter). I got all weepy when Sawyer reconnected with Juliette. It made the episode very watchable.

But spending an entire season with it? UGH. Not worth it! Weeks and weeks of stupid can not be made up with some weepies.

And the open plot holes....Those open plot holes. The fertility stuff? The very situation that drove the plot when the show was at the height of its powers? Nope. The show cared so little about the fertility stuff that - as previously mentioned - the miracle baby became an afterthought never to be seen again. And what about Jacob's cabin? What the hell was that all about.

And has there ever been a more frustrating moment on television than when Ben and Hurley were talking about the Island's rules and Ben casually mentioned that those weren't real rules, they were just Jacob's whims? First, how do you know that, Ben? Jacob's been there for centuries. Second, Jacob is the one who made it impossible to find the island, impossible to boat off the island, and allowed the island to shift in time? AND WHAT THE FUCK IS THE DEAL WITH THE ISLAND SHIFTING IN TIME!?!?

The laziness here is really troubling. And it's apparent throughout the entire episode. Why does Desmond think pulling The Cork of the Island will be good? He just does. And why does pulling The Cork make Alpert and the Man in Black mortal, who knows, but it sure is convenient for Jack and Kate. And if plugging the Island back up is all you need to save it, I wouldn't exactly call Jack a hero. I would just call Desmond useless.

This show had so much wasted potential. This awesome science-fiction, mystery, romance thingy became a show about spirituality and religion which freed the writers from having to make a lick of goddamned sense. And even worse, the show ended in an Unitarian Church. Unitarians are stupid. That stained-glass window at the end that had every religious symbol? Stupid as balls. Why not just have Jack ascend to heaven in a Prius with a "coexist" bumper sticker?

And what happened to Cindy the stewardess and the kids!? GOD DAMN THERE ARE SO MANY HANGING THREADS HERE!

I swear I am fine with some hanging threads. I really, truly am. But a lot of these things were driving entire seasons. Seasons I loved and cared about and couldn't wait to find out what was going on. I honestly feel like I was tricked into watching the last season. There was never any attempt to deal with what had come before it. Boo to that.

I truly hope that I'm not one of those people who was going to be unsatisfied no matter what. Despite my hater status, I'd like to think that I was open to loving this episode. I truly believe that I was. I didn't care that Sayid ended up being literally soulmates with a character based on Paris Hilton instead of the woman he literally shot himself for and then later married. Shit like that is fine. It's a finale, weird things like that need to happen for closure. But the show just did not care about what I cared about. And what they cared about was boring and insignificant.

And yes I will be buying Season 6 on Blu-Ray. Why do you ask?

Cheaters' Club

2010-04-23T19:05:00.005-04:00

As mentioned in the last post, Cheaters' Club is the third Lifetime movie I've ever seen. And the first movie I ever saw on the Lifetime Movie Network. This is historic. It might not be the greatest, but it is the inspiration.

Cheaters' Club's opening credits are a direct rip-off of Seven's. The film is all scratchy and the Mexican non-union equivalent of Nine Inch Nails is screeching in the background. All of this just to show us that a psycho has some photos of our unintroduced protagonist.

We start with a call-in radio psychologist chain smoking cigarettes and getting yelled at by angry callers. It seems that she is advising listeners and clients to cheat on their spouses in order to get the spark in their sex life back. These callers are great because they don't make sense. "My 18-year-old daughter is pregnant because of you!" Who wants to bet that nonexistent dude is a Teabagger now?

Finally we get to the titular Cheater Club. The psychologist, who I will refer to as Slutty Frasier, is counseling three clients to cheat up a storm. Well, two clients are already all over it. The third, our protagonist Linda, thinks that adultery might be a violation of her marriage vows. Everyone has a good laugh at the prude and that's that.

That night, Linda tries making the sex with her hubby but he's tired from work and wants to watch sports and sleep.

so sleepy

From there, the cheating begins in earnest.

We next see Slutty Frasier slutty cheating with a shirtless young man. This shirtless young man can not get enough of Frasier. He is going all out. Ropes, chains, and raw oysters. They have sex at least twice. Twice!

Then they get murdered. By a mystery assailant.

The Cheaters' Club meets up because the murder of an adulterous woman with a ton of enemies immediately becomes all about them.

The club consists of three women. Our hero, the aforementioned Linda, is the good gal since she is less eager to sleep with other men. The other two women are pretty weird. Meredith is a controlling lawyer who sleeps with a "pro" escort. She cheats because her husband is a stay-at-home dad and real men work. She also browbeats her secretary and becomes de facto leader once Frasier is stabbed to death.

The third woman, Cindy, is a stranger bird. She is sleeping with her high school flame and seems to like chasing the thrills of her youth. She's more timid, but is clearly capable of stabbing people. She looks generally stabby.

stab stab stab

Anyways, they all agree to keep quiet about the cheating because they don't want to get caught cheating. Um, if your psychologist is FAMOUS for telling women to cheat, isn't that cat out of the bag?

Linda gets paid a visit by a crazy detective who also concludes that this murder is all about the Cheaters' Club. The lady detective demands to know what Linda was in therapy for. When Linda refuses citing doctor-patient privilege, the detective basically tells her there's no such thing and that she is going to subpoena all of her medical information. Right. Because this is a thing that happens.

Linda then somehow gets access to all of Slutty Frasier's patient information. I admit I wasn't paying great attention because a playoff hockey game was in double overtime during the movie (Go Bruins!). In the patient file, Meredith is described as a woman with extreme anger issues. Therefore, Meredith must be the killer! Linda tells the detective that she knows Meredith is a murderer.

Well, good one, Linda, 'cause it isn't Meredith. The killer pays Meredith's escort to record a lovemaking session and when the killer goes to pick up the video, he/she (Who am I kidding? She.) throws in a few stabs for good measure.

The killer sends the video to Meredith's firm and it goes viral. She gets fired. That's it for Meredith.

Linda goes back to her files and, lo and behold, Cindy's file is pretty interesting too. Cindy isn't even really cheating. She's delusional and vindictive and batshit nuts and WHY DIDN'T YOU READ THIS WHILE YOU WERE LOOKING OVER MEREDITH'S FILE WHICH IS ON THE SAME WORD FILE!?!?

Well, too late for Linda since Cindy has already stolen your five-year-old son. Linda goes to Cindy's and realizes that, whoops, she's been sleeping with Cindy's husband.

Now, I know pointing out massive plot holes in Lifetime movies is going after real low hanging fruit, but, Jesus Christ. Cindy and Linda were in group together before Linda had slept with anyone besides her husband. And Linda slept with Cindy's husband the same time Cindy was stabbing Slutty Frasier. And Cindy was supposed to be avenging people sleeping with her husband? She was targeting people before there was any cheating. What? I mean, maybe, if Cindy's husband was sleeping with Meredith and Slutty Frasier too. But then why not just stab the husband? None of this makes sense.

Linda and Cindy fight and stab at each other and Linda kills Cindy. Linda apologizes to her husband and Meredith moves to Cincinnati (*sad trombone*) to start over. THE END.

AWESOMENESS: 14

The movie is fun. Again, it's the second time I've seen it. There are a lot of Lifetime movies I wouldn't watch twice.

That being said, it's not perfect. There are a lot of plateaus where the viewer is just waiting for anything to happen. But the waits are always worth it since the movie is so unhinged.

HEY! IT'S THAT GUY!: 3

The reason I saw this at my old DC group house was that I had a roommate who was flipping through channels who stopped on Lifetime Movie Network. Why? Because the movie stars Charisma Carpenter, an actress from three of his favorite things: Buffy, Angel, and being naked on the Internet. So a point for each of those.

Remember how I tried watching The X-Files in its entirety? Yeah, that was a wash. I, like the majority of X-Philes, couldn't make it past the terrible Season 6. The dream is dead. So, new dream! I am going to watch all of Buffy. It's available instantly on Netflix and a ton of my friends are in love with the show, so I am going to see what the fuss is all about. I just started Season 2 and the show is finally starting to get awesome. That first season though....woof.

Oh, other than Ms. Carpenter, no other famous people. And calling Charisma Carpenter famous is already a stretch.

LIFETIMENESS: 5

It doesn't count as women's intuition if you're just taking wild guesses on who the killer is. There were, like, three non-murdered characters in the entire movie. At some point, Linda was going to figure it out.

But Linda did have a child in danger. And the show is very, very hard on unfaithful women. That scolding tone makes me feel right at home on LMN.

GRAND TOTAL: 22

I'm actually disappointed in the mediocre score. It's definitely not essential viewing, but it is definitely ridiculous.

More Programming

2010-04-19T18:30:00.002-04:00

Well, I said I'd give people more advance, so here we go:

Next Wednesday (4/21/10) at 10pm, Lifetime Movie Network will be showing Cheaters' Club. I've actually seen this one before, back in 1 BLW (Before Lifetime Wow). Other than Fifteen and Pregnant and When Friendship Kills, this was my first Lifetime movie. And I clearly enjoyed it since a few weeks later this blog came to pass.

So won't you watch this with me this Wednesday so we can compare notes?

Programming

2010-04-14T11:50:00.003-04:00

IMPORTANT NEWS.

If you can get to your TV or DVR today (4/14/2010) by 4pm, please watch or record Fatal Trust on the Lifetime Movie Network. It's one of the few movies to score above a 30 on my arbitrary scale and it really is an all-time favorite that I would want to see even if I didn't write these reviews.

I'll try to make these updates more regular whenever an awesome movie is about to be on. Hopefully next time you'll get more of an advance.

ADMIN

2010-04-14T10:59:00.003-04:00

1. Obviously no one reads this blog on a regular basis. What happens is people find us by Googling a Lifetime movie that was just on. And that's great! The problem is, when people leave comments 18 months after the original post, I'm likely going to miss it. I went back through years of archives reading comments left way after the fact and most of them are awesome. It's a good way to kill an hour.

And I totally missed an actress from one of the movies I reviewed leaving a comment. And naturally it's an actress who I teased about her physical appearance. Smooth.

Thank God, the actress, Kimberlee Peterson, star of Painful Secrets/Secret Cutting, has a sense of humor about the whole thing. It's clearly not the first time she's read a joke about her eyebrows not quite lining up.

So, in her honor, I give Ms. Peterson official FRIEND OF THE BLOG status. There's no way she's the only Lifetime actor to stumble upon this site, but she was the only one to strike back. And it is much appreciated.

2. So, the sight that I was previously known for writing, Why I Hate DC, is shutting down. This after I inherited it from its founder and after I passed it down to others. I love the idea of a legacy blog and am greatly disappointed that its last writer, Dave Stroup (who was AWESOME by the way) has decided to end the hate. Now I don't have administrator status anymore and that's just the way I want it. It's his blog and therefore his decision. But I hope he reconsiders.

Plain Truth

2010-04-12T22:25:00.002-04:00

So, Plain Truth. Set in a more primitive time (2004), Plain Truth is the story of a defense attorney who is sick and tired of representing smarmy white collar criminals. So, she does what any lawyer would do, represent an Amish girl charged with infanticide. It's a story as old as time.

The attorney, Ellie Harrison, is all-sorts of no-nonsense. Check out the DVD cover. Power suit? Check. Arms crossed? Yuppers! She's even played by Law & Order: SVU's Mariska Hargitay. She is what would happen if the personification of Hot and the personification of Stern had a baby.

I admit I appreciate seeing Ms. Hargitay in a Lifetime movie. Not just because of the hubba hubba factor. Those cheekbones are DARING Lifetime to put her in soft focus. Thank God Lifetime cuts the usual camera tricks and all of the actors look like normal people instead of people in a tampon commercial.

So there's this Amish girl, Katie. Some other Amish kids find a dead baby in some of Pennsylvania's famed marshlands and Katie is all, "Whuh?" Then the police ask her some questions so she faints. Not because of the stress though. Because of post-birth complications. They find a placenta and shit lying around. (ALWAYS EAT THE PLACENTA. LIKE A CAT.) The autopsy finds the baby died of asphyxiation and this should be an open-and-shut case. But perhaps there is more to this than meets the eye?

No, not really.

Katie needs to lawyer up. And that's where Ellie comes in. She decides to put off a two month vacation in Tuscany because her conscience won't let a person go unrepresented. Remember, she needs the vacation because she doesn't like representing guilty people (UGH) and KATIE IS PRETTY CLEARLY GUILTY. There is a lot of evidence that points to Katie being fucked in more ways than one, amiright, guys?

In the bail hearing, the judge, clearly a fan of sitcoms, decides that Katie can get out on bail as long as Ellie stays with her on the Amish dairy farm to keep watch. Hijinks ensue. Ellie doesn't get cell phone service and her laptop keeps running out of batteries. She can't provide adequate representation without technology, hahaha.

Katie's dad is an especially big asshole about it and won't allow any technology in the house. Even the Elders are a little put off by that. The stakes are too high!

So Katie's argument is that she is a virgin who was never pregnant. She's played by an actress named Alison Pill and that last name is very much appropriate because, ugh. She lies about being a virgin. She lies about being raped when it becomes clear that she had sex. She lies about not knowing the father's identity. Finally, she admits to giving birth but forgetting what happened afterwards. When Katie asks to testify on her own behalf, Ellie literally snorts at the prospect of this pathological liar on the stand. It was great.

(An aside: I love Lifetime. Katie totally invents a horrible rape accusation and when she gets caught in that crazy, a psychologist says it's ok because Katie is just trying to impress Ellie. Oh, Lifetime. Where mommy issues excuse lying about rape.)

(Aside #2: It is only a matter of time before I get Katie and Ellie mixed up in this review.)

It turns out that Katie has a secret brother living in the big city of Harrisburg, PA. He left the church to go to university and he got disowned for his troubles. Their mom secretly allowed Katie to visit Big Bro. Katie met a boy in a dorm and got knocked up. Katie doesn't tell anyone and eventually gives birth in that swamp.

For some reason, after all of the lying, Ellie goes all-in on the forgetting what happened story and gets an expert witness to say that the baby died of an infection caused by contact with animals. And it looks like she's winning! So she does what any sane lawyer would do and calls a surprise witness. The baby daddy!

The best is when Ellie calls a surprise witness and the prosecutor objects. When he finds out who the witness is, the actor almost falls over himself saying "OBJECTION WITHDRAWN." Well played, actor dude.

The baby daddy says that, in his "expert" opinion, Katie would never hurt a baby. The obvious response from the prosecutor is, "Did you think Katie would lie so goddamned much? Oh, you didn't? Good testimony, douche/statutory rapist."

Katie gets acquitted and hurray? Katie's mom goes to thank Ellie back at the farm and says she has a little something to give her. Then the low end of an organ appears on the soundtrack, and, uh-oh. Why what better gift for a victorious attorney than a pair of farm scissors covered in vagina blood. After losing her son, the mom couldn't bear to lose a daughter so she hid the pregnancy and took care of the evidence.

The End.

Oh, P.S., Ellie falls in love with the psychologist who is also her ex-boyfriend and who gives a shit.

AWESOMENESS: 16

Despite all the snark, the first half of the movie was kind of good. A little nonsensical, obvs, but a very breezy hour. Things took a detour into crazy town, but it was expected and appreciated. Seriously, watching this movie, it wasn't a case of if things would go nuts, it was when. And the film handled that well.

HEY! IT'S THAT GUY!: 5

I love Mariska Hargitay, FYI. But she isn't that famous. Kind of fun to see her Ordering instead of Lawing. Sam Waterston she is not!

Allison Pill was in Milk. And Katie's dad was in a personal favorite: Die Gottesanbeterin

LIFETIMENESS: 6

Well, there's a mother determined to keep her family together at all times. And there's the professional woman realizing that she needs to loosen up and date her ex. Both common themes.

The intuition was lacking however. The movie should have been called "Lie to Mariska Hargitay for Two Hours." And it always worked! It's kind of a casting fail since Hargitay is famous for one show where she sniffs out bullshit. It would be like casting Jerry Seinfeld as an action hero or Tina Fey as an ugly spinster.

GRAND TOTAL: 27

A thoroughly above average movie. Definitely worth the hour and forty-two minutes.

If you don't want to spend that much time on the movie, then I HIGHLY recommend a four minute clip of nothing but photos of Mariska Hargitay in Plain Truth set to the worst song by one of the worst bands ever. If this is supposed to be funny, it is genius.

Nickelback > Incubus. If you don't know, now you know.

A Little Thing Called Murder

2010-04-05T22:51:00.003-04:00

HEY! This is IMPORTANT. There is a movie on Hulu that you need to watch right now. It expires in a week, so I consider it a civic duty to tell you about this before it's too late. Lifetime, Wow!: Always looking out for you.

True crime junkies may be familiar with the story of Sante and Kenny Kimes, a mother-son grifting duo that stole houses and cars, kept human slaves (more on that later) and murdered a handful of people before a grand theft auto charge took them down in the late 90s. If you don't know who they are, you're in luck! The "ripped from the headlines" TV movie vogue had hit it's height at this point, and there's a few surprisingly well made movies that tell their story. However, I say fuck those movies. As always, we're here to celebrate the shining of a far crazier diamond. "A Little Thing Called Murder" is a charming, campy, and horrifying portrait of evil people doing inexplicable things.

The movie kicks off with a fun little montage of people associated with the Kimes family, all baffled by the crimes they committed. The off-the-cuff interview style and slightly shaky camera made me think of a Christopher Guest movie about a batshit floozy that went too far. (Note: Someone with connections should ask Christopher Guest to remake House of Yes.) We then cut to sepia-toned musical sequence where a rumpshakin' Elizabeth Taylor clone walks down the street, winks over the top of her sunglasses, and steals a car from a dealership by hopping in the drivers seat and asking for the keys. Meet Sante Kimes!

Sante is a social climber who is obsessed with money, maintaining her looks, and fucking over everyone in her path in order to remain the queen of her insane fantasy kingdom. We first meet her through the eyes of her friend Beverly, who treats Sante more like a bottle rocket then an acquaintance- point her at a bitchy clerk or cheating spouse, light the fuse, and get away. She spends the first 20 minutes of the movie either chewing on the scenery or sweettalking people out of arresting her. While it's a pleasure to watch Sante get her bitch on versus the world at large, it's clear that there's more going on here then a forceful personality. Bev notices things- Sante pocketing saltshakers at a country club, the way the maids flinch when she walks by -but chooses not to speak up. Bev assures us that everyone around Sante isn't blind and stupid, but it's just easier to believe her lies then to call her on them. This is plausible. Most people want to believe that they're made of Keilor-grade moral fiber. But when it comes down to it, it's easier to look away when a friend shoplifts then to call over store security. Money and confidence can help you get away with some really crazy shit. Sante throws a hell of a party, and as long as you're on her good side, you tend to benefit from her sociopathy.

However, there are some crimes that are a little too big to ignore. Human slavery is a very real issue in America, but it's difficult to track and prosecute. At the time of this movie, only 2 private citizens had been successfully prosecuted for slavery since it was outlawed, and one of those people is Sante Kimes. We learn that Bev finally snapped when one of Sante's maids took her aside, confided that she was being kept against her will and beaten, and begged for her freedom. The ensuing trial reveals that the Kimes have a habit of picking up young Mexican women with the promise of money and citizenship, then imprison them and torture them until they manage to get away. Sante's common-law husband drops a dime on her to avoid jail time, and she goes away for 4 years.

Sante's family reacts to her imprisonment with relief. Particularly relieved is Kenny Kimes, Sante's son from a previous relationship. To call Sante's relationship with Kenny "creepy" does a great disservice to well-meaning creepy people everywhere. It's clear from the beginning that Sante is intent on using her son as a pawn in her crazy games. After a Nanny reads "The Boy That Cried Wolf" to Kenny, Sante physically assaults her and tells her to never teach her kids about morals again. (Good thing she didn't read "The Swan That Kept Human Slaves" to Kenny, or she would have been another notch on Sante's murder-stick.) When Sante is almost arrested for shoplifting, she gets out of it by smacking the shit out of Kenny and claiming that the store keeper assaulted her son. Later, she apologizes and lets him pinch her as retribution for bitch-smacking him out of a Sears. They're constantly uncomfortably close, hugging and kissing and adding fuel to the incest rumors that make this story so damn icky. (Well, that and the murder thing). In fact, the only time Kenny ever gets close to a woman who isn't his mom is when his mom talks a stewardess into sleeping with him. The following scene where he cheerfully expounds on his mom's abilities to get him laid is guaranteed to make your skin crawl. Whether Sante genuinely loves her son or is just very good at manipulating him is a question this movie is never quite ready to answer. It is, however, constantly ready to reassure us that whatever was going on there was CREEPY AS BALLS.

Sante comes back from jail, dead set on never going back. She continues to rely on her sleazy faux-hubby, but he is actually not awesome at the whole crime thing. They run a couple of small-time scams (fake checks, fake buisnesses, etc) and end up having to murder their overly-curious lawyer. Bummer for Sante. Things get worse when faux-hubby dies of a heart attack. He never married Sante because he was confident that he'd end up dead or broke within a year of the wedding, which is actually a fair point. This leaves Sante with no legal claim to her home or the money she's been so enjoying over the past 20 years. But now he's dead anyway, so Sante needs a new crimin' buddy. Since he's the most vulnerable to Sante's creepy charms, it will fall to Kenny to drop out of school and take over the family business. In my favorite scene, she picks Kenny up from college and tells him his father's in the backseat. Pan back to reveal an urn. Wackity-shmackity-doo!

Sante and Kenny team up to hide the death of the patriarch from the world until they can forge a new will and access enough money to keep them afloat. Of course, this progresses into another murder, a banker who had the unfortunate luck of being in charge of the Kimes's offshore bank accounts. Sante and Kenny drown him in a bathtub, then stuff him in a chest and send him out to sea. From there it's a rollercoaster ride of fraud, theft, and running from the law. it isn't hard for Sante to talk people into helping her, and the creepy muscle provided by her son is enough to silence most objection.

The film hits it's climax at the case that made the Kimes famous- the murder of socialite Irene Silverman. I won't recount this at great length, as it's been done before. I will say the film did a fine job of recounting this, giving us the bare bones of the crime while still allowing the actors a few scenes to shine. Long story short, Kenny and Sante killed an old woman in New York to try and steal her mansion, and it was the one crime they couldn't talk their way out of. We kind of lose steam near the end. The film milks a little more fun out of Sante's courtroom antics, and ends on a somber note that allows us to pity Kenny and Sante while being repulsed by their 10 year spree of murder and mayhem. And the fact that I got to type that sentence should tell you why this is my favorite Lifetime movie in a good long time.

Awesomeness: 20

Solid 20. There was nothing that was not awesome about this movie. It's the miracle baby of John Waters and Agatha Christie with a little bit of John Walsh thrown in for good measure.

Star Power: 7

10 of the awesome points up there belong in Judy Davis's pocket. Trashy made-for-TV movies can be real career killers, or at least grudging admissions that a career is dead. This often leaves the acting done in these films by established, talented people with a little to be desired. Ms. Davis defies this by going for broke with her portrayal of Sante. She obviously has a ball with the camp weirdness of the script, taking a clunky ripped-from-the-headlines script and elevating it to another level. Also notable for fans of Dead Like Me: George's mom and DOLORES HERBIG GETTING THINGS DONE. YES!

Lifetimeliness: 8

Seems like a 10 on first blush, but I'm docking it a few. While the movie focuses on a mother and son relationship, and is also charmingly insane, a perfect 10 would have explained why it was OK for Sante to murder someone to provide for her children. Also, for a campy masterpiece, we could have really used a sassy gay friend.

35! Finally, a movie that didn't make me want to die. I would watch this movie over and over again, and I wouldn't even have to be drunk the first couple of times. Do yourself a favor and check this one out before it's too late!

Her Only Child

2010-03-07T19:49:00.002-05:00

Following up on the "crazy mom" theme from last week, I watched a film called Her Only Child (AKA Maternal Obsession). I was able to locate the trailer for it on YouTube, and it will give you a pretty good idea of how that shit went down. Check it out:

I'd like to note that "Good intentions were misdirected" will never be a threatening sentence, no matter how growly your voice is when you say it. Good effort, voiceover guy, but no dice.

So the eldest daughter from the Nanny is all grown up and living the sweet life as a mid-level insurance saleswoman named Lilly. She's successful at work, but her personal life sucks- unlucky in love and still living at home with mom in her mid-thirties. Now, living with your parents past a certain age is mildly embarrassing, but it isn't the end of the world. If you're lucky, your parents will give you your old room back and not charge you for utilities. If you're less fortunate, your mother will forget to take her tacklebox full of of anti-psychotic medications one morning and call you at work to come home and kill her hallucinations of giant spiders. Oh yes, Inez is a crazy person, and she reacts to her daughter's attempts to sever the apron strings like most people would react to...well, a giant spider hallucination. All flailing and yelling. Not pretty. In an opening scene, Lily attempts to not eat a cookie that her mother made for her. Her mother reacts by crying and throwing the cookies in the garbage. As always, Lifetime movies indulge foreshadowing with the subtle grace of the Killdozer.

Lily meets a dude at work named Larry. Larry seems like kind of a boring schmuck to me, but Lily goes out with him anyway. I guess dating just about anyone beats sitting at home with mom and helping her swat the flying elves away. Inez takes this about as well as you'd expect. She interrupts their first date by slicing a hunk out of her own arm (ew) and claiming it was an accident so Lily will come home. It's about this time that the movie reveals that Lily's boyfriends have a habit of mysteriously bailing on her just when things get serious. Lily continues to fail to connect the dots between Mommie Dearest and her vanishing paramours. You can't help but feel a little bad for Lily, whose admirable devotion to her clearly disturbed mother blinds her to the obvious.

Of course, it is also possible that Lily is stupid. The Lily Is Stupid theory receives some additional support when Inez runs a background check on Larry and discovers he is secretly married. You know what? I don't care how nice he is, a secret family should be a dealbreaker. Lily snubs him for a while but eventually allows him to cry a bunch over dinner and explain that his wife is holding up the divorce, he doesn't love her, blah blah blah. She doesn't question his ridonkulously flimsy explanation and their relationship is back on. LILY YOU ARE SO STUPID. I can kind of see why your mom is so overprotective. Without an overly-devoted caretaker, I can see you following the promise of a stranger's candy to your doom.

Fueled by this latest evidence that Lily can't make decisions on her own, Inez begins to take more drastic steps to break her up with Larry. When Lily and Larry take off for a romantic weekend, Inez attempts to make their adorable dog eat rat poison. The dog is smarter then Inez and Lily combined, so it doesn't work, but I was still worried. Inez then convinces him to eat a bucket of chocolate frosting. Not cool, Inez. I don't care if you kill your daughter and her stupid boyfriend, but you leave that terrier out of it. Lily does not go home, but her mother's incredibly stupid explanation for how the dog nearly died is finally enough to get her wondering exactly why every boyfriend she's had since high school has mysteriously vanished off of the face of the earth. She tracks down the last dude to bail on her, and he politely explains that he was going to propose to her, but a bunch of armed thugs tackled him and threatened to kill him if he didn't break off all contact with her. I shit you not. He also says that he was going to tell her about it, but he didn't want to make a big deal out of it.

Public Service Announcement: If you are ever dating someone, and armed thugs order you to stop, you should probably make a big deal out of it.

Lily goes home and screams at her mom for a while about how she needs to stop being so goddamn crazy. She also packs all her stuff up and flees to Larry's house. Inez does the logical thing and resolves to make her daughter move back in with her at gunpoint. She steals a gun from her office (?!), shows up at Larry's house, and threatens to shoot them all if Lily doesn't come home with her. Lily stands firm, so mom locks herself in the bathroom and tries to overdose on her anti-psychotic medication. Heartwarming!

In the end, Inez ends up in sort of a minimum-security hotel for crazy people. This is not actually what happens when you have a psychotic break, but god forbid that TV movie writers do any sort of research about the main plots of their films. Inez and Lily chat about Inez coming home soon, I guess we have a happy ending, and as far as I know the dog lives to see another day. Well done.

AWESOMENESS 7 (out of 20)

5 points for being relatively entertaining and super-weird. It wasn't amazing, but it was wacky enough to keep my interest. I'd like to give it a higher score, but it was mostly just derivative of other psycho obsession films that did it way better. As always, I reward any movie that has a cute dog in it some bonus points. You think Rusty's grading scale is arbitrary? Ha!

STAR POWER 2 (out of 10)

I love the Nanny, but Nicolette Tom is not famous. Nor is a dude that was on F/X (whatever the hell that is). The woman who plays Inez had a bit part in everything ever, so that's why she is so irritatingly familiar looking to you.

LIFETIMELINESS 5 (out of 10)

On first glance, this is incredibly Lifetime-y. It's all about mother-daughter relationships with some troubled romance for good measure. However, this is the only time in the history of Lifetime films that an overbearing mother was the problem in the film and not the solution. 5 points.

14. Sounds about right. Meh score for a meh film.

Sins of the Mother

2010-02-22T21:06:00.002-05:00

Happy Black History Month! To celebrate, Lifetime has given us Sins of the Mother, a film about an insufferable college student who refuses to forgive anyone for anything. Insufferable protagonists make for insufferable movies, and this was no exception.

Our protagonist goes by Shay. Or Le'Shay. If someone calls her one name, she demands to be called the other. She gets so righteous about it that, at one point, she interrupts a church service to yell at people for calling her the wrong name. Shay is having some trouble at college. She has some stress disorder where she is pulling out all of her hair. Her brand of crazy is freaking out her profs so they ask her to take a leave of absence.

Shay is such an awful person that she has no friends to turn to. So she flees to Washington to live with her mother, Nona. They haven't seen each other in five years. Apparently Nona had a hella drinking problem. When Shay gets to her mom's house, she finds a reformed woman who replaced booze with gardening. A woman who is active in her church, her community, and her work at a hospital. An amazing recovery!

Shay then makes peace with her mom and The End.

Just kidding! Despite getting her food cooked for her and living rent free, Shay takes the time to yell at her mom every chance she gets. Nona's sponsor and sponsee are coming over for coffee? Well fuck them! Look at Nona's stupid 12 Steps book. Hahahah! Nona reads cliched quotes for inspiration? What a rube!

Shay is the worst.

Shay doesn't deserve a love interest, but she gets one in a college dude who works at a record store. They both like Nina Simone. They also like to have sex. Shay was a virgin, so of course as soon as she even thinks about sex, she gets wicked pregnant.

On the Nona front, Nona's sponsee is backsliding and she drunkenly assaults Shay by pulling off the headdress she uses to cover her insane person scalp. The Sponsee keeps backsliding and eventually burns down Nona's garden.

Are you notcing this movie has no goddamned plot?

So, at a friend's wedding, Shay is all, "I don't like coffee anymore." And her boyfriend, at a fucking wedding, says, "Oh, you must be pregnant. I forgot to tell you that when I took your virginity that the condom tore off." Oh.

Shay spent the entire movie talking about not wanting kids, so of course she almost immediately dismisses abortion as an option. After all, the movie explicitly says "Black women do not get abortions." Jesus H. Christ.

The pregnancy gives Shay an immediate personality transplant. She suddenly loves her mother again and goes back to college in Iowa knowing that she is happy and knocked up.

AWESOMENESS: 0

That's right. Zero. Fuck this stupid movie. I see a lot of Lifetime movies where people refuse to get abortions. But those movies had some semblance of a plot. They had some kind of redeeming quality. This movie has no such thing.

Now, obviously I like the silly Lifetime movies more than the serious ones. I'm in this for the irony, man. Serious Lifetime movies are at a distinct disadvantage in my stupid, subjective ranking system.

I don't care. This movie was balls. Not the balls. Just balls. Big, sweaty, hairy nuts.

HEY! IT'S THAT GUY!: 1

This movie starred Jill Scott. The singer. She does not count. I don't listen to R&B stations. The one point is for Mimi Rodgers, the woman who was gracious enough to introduce her husband to Scientology and set off 25 years of hilarity.

LIFETIMENESS: 4

I am getting sick and tired of reviewing all of this anti-choice shit. But, it's a theme, so it's worth Lifetimeness points.

GRAND TOTAL: 5

The worst reviewed movie? Probably! Too lazy to double check!

This movie is brand new so it will be all over Lifetime. Avoid it. It's terrible.

Tribute

2010-02-01T20:51:00.007-05:00

Tribute is based on a book by Nora Roberts, an author I'm not familiar with but I know I hate. I DVRed this piece of crap because it starred Brittany Murphy, formerly of Clueless and Drop Dead Gorgeous and currently of an L.A. toxicology report. This is one of her last movies, so why not check it out?

If Brittany Murphy never died, I never would have watched this. So you could say I'm taking her death particularly hard.

Murphy stars as Cilla McGowan, a former child actress living off residual checks. Cilla's grandmother was a big time singer and actress who won a bunch of Oscars before killing herself via vodka and sleeping pills. Cilla is moving back to her Grandma's Virginia estate to fix it up. No explanation given.

McGowan's neighbor is a hunky creep who writes graphic novels for a living. When some mysterious assailant cuts up Cilla's trees, leaves dolls lying around with knives in their back, and assaults Cilla's ex-husband (who tries - in a friendly way - to sleep with Cilla ONE SCENE before he tells Hunky Creep that he loves her like a sister) with a blow to the head, Hunky Creep demands that he spend the night in Cilla's bedroom for protection. He won't take "no" for an answer. How charming.

Naturally this asshole is the hero of the story. He proposes to Cilla after two weeks and manages to control every aspect of Cilla's life in that time and he is the good guy that every woman should want.

Ok, back to the assaults.

Cilla talks to her dead Grandma (who she has never met) in a series of soft focus dream sequences. My favorite is the one where Cilla falls down some weird bottomless pit.

Pictured: Rusty not exaggerating

None of this is interesting or important. The bad guy turns out to be the wife of some guy in town who was fucking Grandma. Wifey killed Grandma and now, FOR NO REASON, is going to kill Cilla to finish the job.

But that attempted murder scene is holy fuck crazy. Wifey spikes Cilla's drink and tells her that people will think she killed herself or accidentally overdosed.

THE CLIMAX OF THIS MOVIE IS BRITTANY MURPHY WRITHING AND GASPING LIKE A FISH WHILE A BAD GUY TAUNTS HER BECAUSE EVERY ONE WILL THINK SHE ONLY OVERDOSED.

Why would Lifetime show that!?!? That's like showing Limp Bizkit's Rolling video on 9/12/01.

Oh yeah, Cilla gets rescued and lives happily ever after with a dude who deserves a restraining order.

AWESOMENESS: 7

The movie started slow and never made much sense, but those dream sequences where something special.

And I like my humor dark and black, but that ending... sheesh.

HEY! IT'S THAT GUY!: 4

No one famous except Murphy. I mentioned Drop Dead Gorgeous at the beginning of this review and it deserves a second mention. That movie is awesome. If you think Brittany Murphy suffering through an overdose in a film released months before her real life overdose is hilarious, you will LOVE Drop Dead Gorgeous.

LIFETIMENESS: 4

Harmony mentioned that the male love interests in Lifetime movies are often controlling assholes who would be portrayed as sociopaths by a sane television channel. Lifetime is very much unsane. Points there.

There was a startling lack of women's intuition though. Cilla only figured out who the bad guy was after Wifey was all, "Oh, bee-tee-dub, I just gave you the same poison I gave your grandmother! EFF-TEE-DUB!"

GRAND TOTAL: 15

The end of this movie was like a Family Guy joke. Mean-spirited and non-sensical. Tai deserves better.

MAY SHE GO ROLLIN' WITH HER HOMIES IN THIS LIFE AND THE NEXT

The Pregnancy Pact

2010-01-24T11:38:00.005-05:00

Once upon a time, people paid me to write. Not just any people either. The Center for American Progress. Getting my first check from CAP was a proud moment. Unfortunately, the project didn't quite work. The project, a youth issues blog called Pushback, never took off. There were a lot of writers and I think "youth issues" was just a bit too broad. Ten people blogging about whatever the Hell they want was not a good recipe for success.

Two of the things I always wanted to write about were Massachusetts and the media. Both combined into a neat little package when Time published a hideously irresponsible article about a pregnancy pact between teenage girls in the sleepy fishing village of Gloucester (correctly pronounced Gloss-tah). So, hey, two posts from back in the day by me about the pregnancy pact. One. Two. Now you know my thoughts on this ridiculousness.

Imagine my delight when this pregnancy pact story got wrapped up in the third thing I like to write about: Lifetime movies.

So, The Pregnancy Pact. The story of how some girls decided to get pregnant even though there is no evidence that any agreement was made.

The film opens with a disclaimer saying that the movie is a fictionalized account of the story. This is bullshit. The movie has news footage of actual Gloucester residents (including the mayor) giving actual interviews. Then, at the end of the movie, a video blogger (seriously) says they were all wrong and the debunked myths were all true. Not very responsible, Lifetime.

I was wondering how Thora Birch got to be the lead in this movie. She can't play a kid anymore (Hocus Pocus in the house!) and she can't play a moody teenager. So, she can play a video blogger for Teen Up! (dot net) in New York City. Yes, somehow this vlogger has her own office and employees in New York City. And she has a budget where she can go to Gloucester on a whim and stay there for two weeks.

Vloggers are awful.

Our vlogger, Sidney, actually has a past in Gloucester. She lived there for two years and got knocked up and had that thing scripped out. She's interested in why none of the 18 pregnant teenagers in Gloucester are getting schma-schmortions.

Because these are good Catholics in Gloucester, you New York City heathen!

The girl we spend most of our time focusing on is Sara Dougan. She is 15 and is in love with her boyfriend, the star pitcher at Gloucester High. Sorry casting dudes, but Sara Dougan is not quite attractive enough to be dating a star athlete a year older than her. Of course, star athlete needs to get it where he can, so he knocks up Sara. Sara is pleased with this development because this means her boyfriend will stay in Gloucester and she already made an agreement with her pregnant friends to get knocked up. Not so much an agreement really as a - wait for it - PACT.

And, el oh el, Sara's mom, played by Lifetime staple Nancy Travis, is in charge of some family values committee that has fought to keep condoms out of the schools. How embarrassing!

So there all these pregnant chicks and Sidney interviews all of them. One of them looks enough like Mena Suvari to be legitimately unnerving whenever she's in the same frame as Thora Birch. Sidney is all like, what's the deal, you guys? Pregnancy is hard? You still have a choice! And the girls are all, like, "Whatever, Thora Birch."

Gloucester's principal then gives an interview to Time's Kathleen Kingsbury and claims there's a pregnancy pact. And now the national media is on the case! Thankfully, Sidney is young and hip and is TEENING UP (dot net) and gets the inside scoop from the pregnant hos. THERE IS A PACT.

Eventually Sara's baby daddy walks in on a confidential interview between Sara and Sidney and he freaks out because he got tricked into impregnating someone. Hey, dude, there was no trick. You are 16 and should know what happens when you skeet into fertile soil. Dumbass.

And, yes, this is a pattern in the movie. None of the pregnancies are any of the boys' faults. They were all tricked by devious ladies!

Sara's boyfriend bails because she lied about the pact and he gets a new girlfriend. Sara responds to this by getting toe up wasted at some high school kegger. She gets alcohol poisoning and needs a trip to the emergency room to make sure her fetus doesn't have flippers now. All the while everyone is falling over themselves talking about how Sara is such a good kid. Well, the evidence points to the contrary. Fifteen-year-olds who get pregnant and get alcohol poisoning are the very definition of bad kids. I don't see what one can do as a 15-year-old that could be worse besides mass murder. Basically, here's the bad kid order:

T1. Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold
3. Sara from The Pregnancy Pact.

With Sara getting out of the hospital, Sidney decides that she has had enough teening up (dot net) and gets ready to book it out of Dodge. But first she meets with her ex-boyfriend. The one who knocked her up. They haven't spoken since the 'bortion because he wanted her to keep it and she ended up moving away.

In what I would describe as the most reprehensible scene in Lifetime history, Sidney admits that she didn't really have an abortion but that she gave the child up for adoption and listed the father as "unknown" so this dude couldn't try and get custody. Ho-lee shit. This guy wanted the kid. Why not give him the kid!? And, what?

But it gets worse! The ex-boyfriend looks at Sidney and declares her a better person than he thought because only bad people get abortions.

THE MOTHERFUCKING END. SHIT JUST GOT REAL.

AWESOMENESS: 5

Every point of awesomeness is because TEEN UP! (dot net) is going to be an ongoing joke in my life. I might have given this more but that revelation at the end and the implications of it...I can't support this. Maybe Lifetime deserves a boycott or something?

HEY! IT'S THAT GUY!: 8

Poor Thora Birch needs a new agent. And nice to see Lifetime regulars Nancy Travis and Camryn Manheim get in on the action. I would have liked it if there was just one more person in this. Like, someone you'd be surprised to see on Lifetime. The only surprise with Thora Birch is that she still exists.

So, I was going to give this a six, but, Thora Birch. Did you know that Now and Then is one of the greatest movies ever made? So, two point bonus.

LIFETIMENESS: 9

MORAL PANIC WITH DISGUSTINGLY RETRO ATTITUDES TOWARDS CHOICE.

If you read that totally out of context, you'd still think it was a Lifetime movie, right?

I'm taking away a point because the beginning of the movie pointed out that teen pregnancy had been dropping since World War II but had started to plateau and even rise a bit. This is true. But now I want an apology on behalf of Fifteen and Pregnant fans everywhere who were fed a bunch of bullshit about the "epidemic" of teen pregnancy. They lied!

GRAND TOTAL: 22

Middle of the road. It would have been so much better if Sara died of alcohol poisoning instead of focusing on a decade old adoption/abortion record. I hate it when Lifetime tries to play it coy by not murdering off every character who sips alcohol before they're 21.

And If There's a New Way!!! guitar I'll Be The First in Line!!!

2010-01-21T12:12:00.003-05:00

Fantastic quiz here. Lifetime Movie or Megadeth Song. I only got six out of ten.

Also, please listen to Holy Wars. Right now.

The unannounced sabbatical ends this weekend. Would have ended sooner if Terri didn't accidentally delete all of my DVR'ed movies.

Hope everyone's excited for The Pregnancy Pact!

Volunteering Will Get You Shot In The Face

2009-12-06T22:08:00.003-05:00

Those of you wondering where your reviews are: I got the stomach flu! Hooray for life! It's difficult to get together the stamina to watch and review terrible TV movies when you have the flu, especially when you fall asleep in the middle of them and have to start over. Talk about adding insult to influenza. Since Safe Harbor was on my streaming Netflix queue, it required the least amount of effort to view, so it got bumped up in the setlist. It's the story of a grieving widow, her daughter, the creepy overbearing stranger who wants to fix their lives, and the dangers of volunteering. I am not kidding: Danielle Steele thinks that working with people in need is a quick path to an early grave. But we'll get to that later.

The first half of the movie is pretty dull. Melissa Gilbert is Ophelia MacKenzie (gack), a widow with a terrible French accent and some big-time hangups re: the death of her husband and their son. She blames herself for their deaths because she committed the cardinal sin of the Lifetime movie mother and sent them on a trip because she needed some space. Naturally, they die in a fiery airplane explosion and she goes into a catatonic state of grief. Her daughter Pip, a precocious consolation prize, just wants her mom to stop being so mopey and start having fun again. Ophelia moves them to their oceanside vacation home to sulk in a nicer environment. Will Ophelia get her groove back? Like all Lifetime movies, the answer comes on the broad, hairy back of a possessive man!

Side note: Someone please write How Ophelia Got Her Groove Back. I can't be the only English/Women's Studies nerd who would love that.

Matt Bowles is a recent divorcee who lives in the same resort complex. He spends all day sitting on the beach, painting, and looking wistful as his chest hair puffs in the wind. He takes a weird interest in Pip, calling her over and showing her how to sketch and complementing her on things that are creepy for an older dude to notice. Ophelia notices their uncomfortable closeness, and like any good mother would, tells him to back off. But that's the wrong answer, according to the movie and her erstwile galpal. According to her stupid friend, it's a good thing that a weird guy is following Opie's pubescent daughter around, and she should probably go ahead and fuck the guy now before someone else notices how great he is. The movie gets weirder from there, as Opie and Bill get to be good buddies and Pip and Bill cross all kinds of uncomfortable boundaries. I would like to say the worst part is when Bill takes Pip to a school dance, but that pales in comparison to Bill's Christmas gift for Opie: a portrait of her two children. Yes, Bill stole a photo of Opie's dead son from her bedside table and painted him alongside the remaining living child. BILL IS A NURTURING NUTJOB. DANGER, DANGER OPHELIA MACKENZIE. Not really, it's a Lifetime movie. It's just a countdown until she decides she loves his bossy, boring ass, and until she does the movie trundles on like a gutshot deer looking for a clearing in which to die.

In the meantime, Opie's therapist convinces her it's time to get out there and start working in her community to help her deal with her grief in a constructive way. This isn't an uncommon suggestion for people who struggle with long term depression, and for many people it's actually a great way to start making the human connections that draw you out of your sad blue shell. However, this is a Lifetime movie! Human sacrifice! Dogs and cats living together! Mass hysteria! (I couldn't resist.) Volunteering is set up as a terrifying whirlwind of middle-class nightmares from the get-go. Apparently, a sheltered mumbly lady with a terrible fake accent who has been volunteering with poor people for a whole week has all the skills necessary to go out 5 times a week and work with poor homeless kids. And oh my GOD is it offensive. Every single non-white person in the movie is either a volunteer or a vagrant, and the implication is every time she's within spitting distance of either one of them she's a heartbeat away from certain death The shots of Opie doling out blankets with this air of pained noblesse oblige are vomit-inducing, as is the praise heaped on her shoulders for her continuing stellar work as White Lady Jesus. Goddamn do I hate watching a movie where some pissant wearing bling that's worth more then my car get turned into Lady Madonna because she schlepped some soup. Fuck you, movie.

(Okay, I'm a big time volunteer booster, so here's my disclaimer: YAY VOLUNTEERS! Like in every other thing, Lifetime Movies are not reflections of real life. Volunteers who work hard for non-profits are their lifeblood, and we love them! If you really want to help your community, please get out there and do it. It's always appreciated.)

But Bill is angry about her volunteer work, because it is so dangerous to spend time with people in a low-income demographic that she will surely be killed! Because poor people are violent and unstable and live to eat the flesh of those who shop at Croft and Barrel! And guess what? HE IS ABSOLUTELY RIGHT! She gives in to his pleas to quit, and at her last night on the site she gives this annoying speech about how she was volunteering because the hole in her heart, but now that hole is filled with Bill, so she doesn't need to volunteer anymore. HOORAY! POVERTY IS CANCELED BECAUSE YOU DON'T NEED IT ANYMORE! THANKS, WHITE LADY JESUS! A few minutes later a homeless guy shoots her in the stomach for no discernible reason, and she's off to the ICU. What fucking planet are you from, Danielle Steele? He visits her in the hospital, they are super-in love and decide to get married, whatever.

Bestest subplot ever- it turns out that Opie's only friend was helping her husband cheat on her! Opie finds out, tosses a hissy, and orders the galpal out of her site. She resurfaces about 6 months later with a baby in her arms and terminal cancer. She reveals that she has cervical cancer, which she is sure that God gave her as a punishment for her infidelity, and that she wants Opie to adopt the baby as it is rightfully hers. Opie agrees that all of this is probably true, and we end up with another baby + wedding ending. Is this a common theme with Danielle Steele movies or what?

So, let's summarize: you should not volunteer because you may die, and you definitely shouldn't sleep with a married man lest the Lord decides to rot off your naughty bits with divine justice. However, nurturing a stranger's Henry Darger-esque idealization of your daughter is a good way to meet Mr. Right. WHAT.

AWESOMENESS: 10 (out of 20)
I'm going to give this one a few more awesome points because it was just so fucking weird and crazy. After we got over the first hour blahs I was pretty much on the edge of my seat trying to figure out what weird new twist in the fabric of reality was going to justify the self-absorbed idiocy of the leading lady. It was kind of like watching The Twilight Zone and trying to guess what weird crap is going on just off camera that makes everyone so afraid of the cute little kid in the diner.

STAR POWER: 4 (out of 10)
Melissa Gilbert was the voice of Batgirl in Batman: The Animated Series! Oh, and she starred in the Little House on the Prairie TV show for a hundred years. 3 bat-points for Melissa. Brad Johnson starred in those damn Left Behind movies, so thanks for another point, Kirk Cameron.

LIFETIMELINESS: 9 (out of 10)
White Lady Jesus Christ Superstar! One point deducted for her only female friend turning out to be a traitorous bitch. That's not cool, girlfriend.

23 points. This seems to be the sweet spot for these movies. Next up: Palomino!

Oh God, Not Again

2009-11-16T17:53:00.002-05:00

Some personal issues are preventing me from working on these reviews. I will have one up as soon as I can. In the meantime, you can always read the last one, as these movies are relatively interchangeable. Thanks for your patience.

Heartbeat! It's a LOVE-beat!

2009-11-14T14:49:00.003-05:00

Good news! I found a working VCR, so I got to watch the end of Heartbeat today. And it is a doozy. Unfortunately no clips of this one exist that I can find, but please let me know if you have one I can toss up there.

Heartbeat kicks off with a lovely greeting from the authoress herself, who is for some reason in a kitchen making a giant sandwich. I guess we're supposed to think she likes to kick back with a hoagie when she isn't writing interchangable pink-jacketed novels. Apparently, Heartbeat is a "modern love story" about "finding love in unexpected places"! The first unexpected place we go to is an airport, where successful TV producer Bill Grant gives a weird, exposition heavy goodbye to his kids. My god, he is sad to see his kids go. You'd think they were going to China, or into outer space, as opposed to back to their mother for a while. Get used to it, because Bill is King Weepy Weirdo. He also loves kids more then anything else in the world, and the mere prospect of more kids turns him into a raving-yet-nurturing lunatic hellbent on fathering the fuck out of everyone in a ten-mile radius. But more on that later. Bill loves his kids, but he cannot live near them because he produces a very popular soap opera. He also happens to be dating the lead actress on the show. Way to go, Bill! She begs him to come on a trip to Vegas with her, but he declines. I'm sure he won't regret it. Ahem.

Another program filmed in that television station is some vague news program that is produced by the heroine of our story, Adrain (?!) Townsend. Despite the fact that Adrain is a sentence fragment and not a real name, she has managed to succeed in life. She has a sweet-ass house, a sweet-ass job, and a husband who personifies 90's TV movie beefcake. That is, until she goes and finds out she's knocked up from a home pregnancy test that looks like an entry in a third-grade science fair. Maybe it makes a little baking-soda volcano if you got a positive result, I dunno. Her husband is the career type, and hates kids with a passion, so he informs her that she needs to get an abortion or he's divorcing her. Dick move aside, I really have to wonder how she got pregnant if he's that terrified of knocking his wife up. Snip snip, buddy. She goes in for the appointment and finds she cant go through with it, so her husband lawyers up and steals all their furniture and serves her divorce papers in the span of a week. Anyone else getting the feeling he might be the villain in this story?

Meanwhile, Bill calls his floozy starlet girlfriend only to learn that she's cheating on him with her ex. Apparently they met up in Vegas, had a chat, and realized they were still in love. Now she wants to ditch the soap. Bill, being king of the passive aggressive nice guys, agrees to write her out of the show by having her brutally murdered. There's a weird scene where they film a guy strangling her, then everyone applauds, then she tearfully thanks Bill for setting up a really awesome homicide. I guess we are supposed to think Bill is a sweetheart for releasing Ditzy from her contract and letting her run off with her new boyfriend, but having her faux-strangled in front of her friends and co-workers just seems creepy to me. Good thing Bill realizes he has weird issues with women, goes into therapy, and the film ends shortly thereafter.

Psych! Actually, Bill starts noticing Adrain around the office. And around the grocery store. And finally, around her front yard. He haunts her every step, telling cheesy jokes and insisting she comes to a 4th of July party at his place. This would be cute if Adrain did not reject his invitation 4 times, with increasing firmness, and emphasized the fact that she's married in every conversation they had. It's true that Adrain was in the midst of a divorce, but she was clearly not ready to be seeing someone new yet, and his creepy campaign to befriend her is obviously unwelcome. Nevertheless, she finds herself lonely on the 4th and decides to check his party out. As soon as he spots her, he ditches the rest of the party guests and follows her around talking about how amazing his kids are, and how much he loves kids in general, and how much he misses being married to someone who loves kids as much as he does. It's fucking creepy, and if the guy wasn't played by John Ritter I would have assumed he was going to steal her baby and flee to another country to raise it as his own. Since it is John Ritter, Adrain has no choice but to fall stupidly in love with him and his love for her fertile womb. Bummer for Adrain!

The movie gently montages us through the beginnings of their relationship. 10 synth-pounding-beach-jogging-pastel-hued minutes later, Bill proposes to Adrain. She is excited, but she's not sure she's ready to marry him, and she wants to have the baby first. This is completely unacceptable to Bill, who browbeats her about her inability to get over her husband and get on fast track to domestic bliss. She placates him by saying that she'll marry him after she has the baby, but she wants her ex to witness his spawn and maybe have a chance to be a father first. Kinda stupid, but so are Bill and Adrain, so whatever. It's not over yet, but I'm pretty sure you can see where this is going, so let's fast forward. She drops her calf and immediately calls her husband. He comes around and offers to take her back with the baby as long as he has an option to return them to Bill later if he doesn't want them. Adrain is not in the business of being treated like a holiday sweater, so she tells her ex to shove it and tearfully begs Bill to marry her. He agrees on one condition- he wants his name added to the baby's birth certificate as his father. Adrain, who has already established that her creepdar is broken many times before, agrees to this. The last scene has Adrain and Bill walking down the aisle with their baby in their arms. Seriously. I'm pretty sure Bill would have just married the baby if he could have found a legal way to do so.

Awesomeness: 6 out of 20
This movie was many things, but awesome is not one of them. 5 of these points are for the science fair pregnancy test and a cute dog that appears halfway through the film. Sadly, he doesn't get to walk down the aisle with the baby's posse. The final point is just for the unrelenting bizzareness of the whole thing. I hesitate to reward a film that is about a man who stalks a pregnant woman to hang out with her baby more "awesome" points then strictly necessary. This whole thing made my skin crawl.

Star Factor: 7 out of 10
We all know who John Ritter is, and I'd say he's famous enough for 5 points. Polly Draper, who played Adrain, was apparently a major cast member of thirtysomething. She also created some Nickelodeon show called The Naked Brothers Band, so good for her that she kept busy once the TV movie bubble burst. Finally, the evil husband was on the 1/2 Hour News Hour, so I guess he's evil in real life too.

Lifetimeliness: 9 (out of 10)
BABIES! Babies babies babies. Babies? BABIES.

22. Sure hope Danielle steps it up for Palomino.

ARGH.

2009-11-13T20:10:00.004-05:00

So, maybe a 15 year old VCR wasn't the best bet to view one of these films on. I have made it through all but 10 minutes of Heartbeat, and I promise you it is fantastic, but I am confident that this movie will have an insane enough climax that it's worth putting off the review until I can see the rest. I am in the process of locating a working VCR, and I will have one soon. So my apologies, true believers. You WILL see the review of Heartbeat late tonight or early tomorrow, and Palomino will available on Monday. That's a promise from me to you.

In the mean time, maybe you'd like to visit this awesome John Ritter fanpage?

Let's Celebrate Getting Namechecked in Marie Claire!

2009-11-10T18:24:00.002-05:00

Hey all!

Did you see in Smart Bitches, Trashy Books where they got name-checked in Marie Claire? Very cool! My boyfriend and I both have a weird fascination with romance novels, so you can only imagine how much I love that site. High-fives. Did you happen to see who else got name checked in that article? Oh yes. We may not be as smart as those bitches, but I'll bet my camo-patterned can of beer that we're trashier.

In celebration, I have located 4 Lifetime Movies based on Danielle Steel novels. Big ups to the pawn shop by my house for the following films:

Heartbeat: Starring John Ritter (RIP) as a dude deeply in love with a pregnant lady that just got dumped by her husband. Can he win her heart amidst the chaos of her life? More importantly, can we watch John Ritter trying to be sexy without giggling?

Kaleidoscope: Three sisters that were estranged for years are reunited by a private investigator because of a family tragedy. They apparently have some terrible secrets that will probably be hilarious. Fingers crossed for secret babies!

Palomino: A recently divorced photographer finds refuge on a horse ranch, where she photographs pictures of cowboys to ease her pain. Then she's paralyzed. Sounds like fun!

Safe Harbour: I'm having trouble figuring out what this is about from the box. I guess it's about two people who have dead loved ones getting it on in their memory. It sounds classy. Also, the lead woman in it is named Ophelia? Really, Danielle?

Since I am currently out of a job (don't worry, I've got another one lined up already) I plan to review one of these every couple of days. I will try and get Rusty to help me as well. If you've seen these movies, or-- god forbid --read these books, please leave me some comments so I know what you'd like to hear about. First review will go up Friday.

Good News: "Sherri" Isn't As Bad As It Could Be

2009-11-04T17:22:00.006-05:00

Let me preface this unusually positive review by saying that Sherri is a Lifetime joint, not the new Arrested Development. It isn't subversive, it isn't terribly clever (aside from a few funny moments), and it lays on the Entertainment For Women frosting with a trowel. But for what it is, it's actually pretty good. I have a deep secret I'd like to share with you: when it comes to comfort food entertainment, my drug of choice is the 90's era sitcom. And I don't mean things we all secretly still like, such as Pete and Pete. Remember Cybil? I love Cybil. I could watch Christine Baranski vamp around to a laugh track all day. It's the era I grew up in, and I was born in a house with the television always on. A good episode of The Nanny gives me the same warm, centered feeling that home-baked cookies give to normal people. So imagine my delighted surprise when I sat down with MyLifetime.com yesterday and gave the Sherri sitcom a try. Has this show been waiting in a vault since 1994?

Sherri Shepherd: Mother, Comedian, Photoshop Disaster Waiting to Happen

"Sherri" is the kind-of-fictionalized story of Sherri "Tracy Jordan's Wife" Shepherd, a d-list actress who supports herself with a paralegal gig inbetween appearances on TV shows. She's dealing with being a single parent after kicking her cheating husband out. She has a supportive gaggle of girlfriends, a cute kid, and New York city as a backdrop for her wacky single misadventures. It's basically every 90's girl-power sitcom boiled into a powerful concentrate and injected into the bloated corpse of Lifetime's original programing. It could just be a stroke of luck that this zombie is a lovable Bub/Fido type and not a lobotomized murder junkie. (and yes, that last one is a Re-Animator reference. Good job, pop culture junkies!) I watched three episodes, and here's what I liked:

1: The family interaction rings true. If you ever viewed the evening programmatic abortion that was Reba, the sitcom vehicle for a musician that should have been above it, you were probably dumbfounded by the idea that a woman who got a divorce from her husband after he knocked up another woman became BFFs with that babymama within one season of mean-spirited banter. Sherri borrows that plotline, but takes it in a more believable direction: she is beyond pissed at her husband, but works on a smooth transition to singlehood to make things easier on her kid. The sitcom is firm on the premise that Sherri has too much respect for herself to take the cheater back or play godmother to the new kid. The show allows us to feel empathy for everyone in equal turns, and keeps things realistic in a not-realistic sitcom way.

2: The acting works. Sherri should never be allowed to host a talk show again, but that being said, she's an engaging lead. She's funny and personable, and she can handle a pratfall like nobody's buisness. (Yes, I think it's funny when people fall down.) The supporting cast has some great folks as well, including an icy drunk of an office manager and a funny sweetheart of a co-worker/best friend. It's nothing we haven't seen before, but the actors really give it their all, and the lamer jokes tend to float by on the good grace built up by their performances. There are some weak links (Jersey Girl paralegal, I'm looking at you), but I generally had fun watching these folks do what they do.

3: This show knows exactly what it is and has a lot of fun with it. Yeah, some of the jokes are lame, most of the resolutions to situations are unrealistic, and sometimes the moral platitudes ring false. Hello, every sitcom ever made. This show works the sitcom formula for everything it's worth, and by doing that, it frees itself from expectations to be anything else. You want a quietly crafted melodrama about people dealing with infidelity and loss? Cool, go watch Mad Men. You want to watch a sassy lady act empowered, toss out one-liners with her fun friends, and have a dance-off with her office manager to celebrate a birthday? Sherri will be a treat for you.

Let me make it simple for you. Watch the preview here: If you laugh at someone yelling "Boobs!", you will enjoy Sherri. The end.

In other words, Sherri will not land on your short list for Shows That Represent The Golden Age of Television, but it could end up being your comfort food sitcom this winter. It's like green bean casserole- make it at home, eat it with gusto, and don't tell your friends.

The Messengers

2009-11-01T22:16:00.003-05:00

Obviously, I try to stick to Lifetime movies here. It's such a sinking feeling to watch two hours of shlock on the Lifetime Movie Network only to discover that the movie not only had a theatrical release, but it actually debuted at number one in the box office. And all that happened less than three years ago.

So, yeah. The Messengers. A movie that made no impression on me until it was aired on Halloween weekend on Lifetime. And I watched it, so now I get to write about it. No, I don't care if it's a "real" movie and therefore throws off the entire "Hey! It's That Guy!" scale.

And it's not like this movie is good or makes sense or anything.

The movie starts in black and white. Some shadowy menace is killing the shit out of a family (including a distractingly ugly six-year-old) in their North Dakota farmhouse. Cut to the credits and we're back in full color as the Solomon family is moving into that same house. They're moving from the big city to start over as sunflower farmers.

The relevant Solomon here is Jess. Jess is a teenager and she misses her friends! Also, she is angsty and already has a DUI on her record. A DUI caused after an accident that left her three-year-old brother mute! That is the worst kind of DUI you can get! The DUI accident with the sibling in the car...it's like Rachel just got married. I am glad that reference wasn't strained.

Uh, Rachel Getting Married spoiler alert?

Oh, and because this horror movie rips off every other horror movie, the mute toddler can see all the ghosts but no one else can. And they're everywhere! Mom is tucking in her sheets and you see some ghost legs in the bed. Ghosts be up on the ceilings all the time. The ghosts even haunt the stains on the wall.

So, we have the ghosts from The Grudge haunting the kid from The Sixth Sense inside the house from The Amityville Horror.

Dad Solomon is out trying to learn how to farm when he gets attacked by some vicious crows. A guy shoots at them and they fly off. This lonely drifter with a shotgun is giving a farming assistant job on the spot. And he gets to live on the property. Epic bad parenting job. That is worse than handing the keys to your drunk daughter.

Eventually the ghosts attack the kids and Jess can see them now but no one believes her. Jess first takes the wise approach and acts like the ghosts are looking for help. She approaches the child ghost and it is all sweet on it and then it attacks her and tries to eat her face. This makes less sense when the big plot twist is revealed.

Creepy drifter is also attacked by crows. At the same time, Mom finally starts seeing ghosts coming from the stains on the wall and an attempt is made to flee. At the same time, across town, Jess realizes that the Creepy Drifter is actually the patriarch of the murdered family that is haunting people. Creepy Drifter remembers this after the crows leave him alone and he goes into kill mode. Now we're ripping off The Shining.

Creepy Drifter manages to stab Dad with a pitchfork but the ghosts turn the basement floor into water somehow and drag Creepy Drifter to his doom.

So the ghosts were after Creepy Drifter. Then why were the crows attacking Dad? Why did the Child Ghost scratch up Jess's face? Why did Creepy Drifter remember how murderous he was at the exact moment Jess was all, like, "this guy is murderous."

Oh, and in the flashback where Creepy Drifter remembers how evil he is, it flashes back to someone trying to buy the house from him. Presumably with the same offer made to the Solomons to get them to move out. Who was this mysterious land baron!?

AWESOMENESS: 10 (out of 20)

I have never seen anything this derivative before. Or this ridiculous. But it is fun to watch crows attack that guy from The Practice.

HEY! IT'S THAT GUY! n/a

This is a real movie with a real budget so of course there are famous people in it. Jess is played Kristen Stewart from Adventureland, Panic Room, and ABSOLUTELY NOTHING ELSE WORTH MENTIONING. The bad guy is played that lovable fellow from Northern Exposure and Sex in the City. Even the Cigarette Smoking Man from The X-Files gets in on the action.

LIFETIMENESS: 0 (out of 10)

For obvious reasons. This movie was startlingly low in women's intuition.

GRAND TOTAL :10 (out of 30)

A ten on a reduced scale is pretty bad. Know what's worse? This movie grossed more than Hot Fuzz and Zodiac at the box office.

Visitors Of The Night

2009-10-16T14:25:00.007-04:00

FINALLY. No more bashing our brains against the blunt vanilla wafer of this season of Project Runway. It's movie time.

My friends, this movie was really special. Visitors in the Night is the rare treat that occurs when people who write TV movies try to do something other then stories about eating disorders or disastrous proms. Markie Post is a go-go 90's lady with a demanding-but-unexplained job, a distant politician ex-husband, and a snarky little brat of a daughter. Of course she's a brat, she's Candace Cameron, AKA DJ Tanner. (You're reading a blog about Lifetime movies, so I know you are delighted by this.) Anyway, her life is tough, and her problems are only compounded by the fact that she has some kind of weird brain problem that makes her go into a trance and flail violently at random times. The triggers for her trauma are bright lights, exploding transistors, and horses.

Fig 1. A Perfectly Normal Reaction to A Horse

She's hallucinating and blacking out like nobody's business. Most people would have parked themselves in an MRI machine by now, but maybe the Shoulderpad Lady Office doesn't offer decent medical. To make matters worse, her daughter is experiencing the pains of adolescent rebellion, completed with a rat-faced grunge-y boyfriend and a need to "explore the absence of color" through dressing like a slutty goth librarian all the time. This family is desperate for a father figure. Their salvation may lie in the super beefed-out arms of the dad from Pet Sematary, (you know you want to click that link) who is constantly haunting the troubled family with the excuse of being a small-town sheriff. But the soil of a lady's heart is stonier, and Markie Mark has bigger fish to fry.

Maybe the water in this town make you oblivious to obvious things. Not only is Markie unaware of what is almost surely a brain tumor, the whole town is writing off a panopoly of strange phenomenon as teenage stunts. This includes livestock mutilation, crop circles- you know, all that shit you used to do in high school. I always loved to huff glue, listen to Nirvana, and burn huge geometric designs into the soybean fields of my hometown. Candace tags herself a participating punk by scribbling crop circles in her notebook, landing her some serious principal's office time and a fight with Markie. If only they had something to bond on! Some shared trauma or unbelievable secret, perhaps?

Things come to a head when Markie goes out of town to perform whatever vague business she is responsible for. Candace takes this opportunity to throw a bitchin' party and invite all of her scummy little friends. The party quickly gets out of hand, by which I mean the music gets slightly louder then it was and someone burns a pizza in the oven. Candace freaks out, announces that the party is over, and storms away with a bag of garbage. Party foul, Candace. Save the hissy-fit until you're sloshed. Out at the garbage, which for some reason is a half-mile away in a secluded area, Candace hears a noise that freaks out her dog. The picture then abruptly takes us back to Markie, who is giving a presentation on...um, something? Sounds like she's talking about valves? Anyway, she blacks out and we see that she's daydreaming about a bunch of flashing lights in her house, and her parents are dead or something, and...I dunno, she looks scared? The flashbacks lack narrative structure, so it's kind of hard to figure out what's so damn scary. We can probably assume it's aliens. Oh, shit, spoiler alert!

As the movie progresses, it becomes clear that Candace's issues are not the garden variety teenage trauma that one would expect. After the party, she experiences repeated blackouts and even crashes the family car. She also goes all Jello Biafra on her science class and harangues them about the the inevitable effects of suburban atrophy for some reason. There's a great sequence where she goes to visit her dad at a city council meeting and talks her dad's staff into using green building materials for a housing development. Apparently, alien-themed traumas make you really annoying and eco-conscious. Markie's alien-themed daydreams get more creepily detailed and specific, and her erratic behavior begins to worry the townsfolk. The sheriff makes a weird effort at being a daddy figure for the troubled ladies, but considering what happened to this guy's last family, you can't blame Markie for taking a pass. Instead she visits a hypnotherapist (?!) to try and get some more information about the bullshit tricks her brain appears to be playing on her.

Now here is where you would expect the hypnotherapist to dig up some long-suppressed memories of something traumatic and terrible that her kid-brain would have rewritten as an alien abduction to successfully ignore. But no! Markie was actually abducted by goddamned aliens! We also learn that the aliens put some weird alien junk in Markie's womb, making her baby daughter a freako alien baby. Now the aliens are back- and this time, it's personal.

The aliens are super gross looking, by the way. They're weird butt-headed hybrids of X-Files-style Greys and Tony Harrison of The Mighty Boosh. Observe:

Fig. 2: The Resemblance Is An Outraaaaage!

No wonder they had to abduct Markie Post to get their swerve on. Ew.

Next we suffer through a last minute boring infodump from a "professor" at a local university who happens to specialize in alien abductions for some damn reason. But it's worth it, because afterwards the movie finally allows the aliens to succeed in kidnapping Candace and revealing their nefarious plot. Apparently, they have been trying to make alien/human hybrid babies, and have a whole litter of them up on the ship. But the babies are tiny little sociopaths that don't feel love because "they don't cry". That isn't actually why babies cry, but I guess she's kind of traumatized, so we'll give her a break. Anyway, Candace gets off the ship and is deposited in her mother's loving arms. Everyone goes home, everything's cool-

OH SNAP! THE ALIENS COME BACK AND KIDNAP THEM AGAIN!

Fade to black. No, really, that's the end.

So, how does this mother rate in the grand scheme of things?

Awesomeness: 19

FUCK YEAH. This movie had fucking aliens in it. I don't feel like I need to say anything else here. ALIENS! Just thinking about it makes me want to give someone a high-five.

One point deducted for the creepy rat-faced boyfriend. I just didn't like him. If the aliens had stolen him instead we'd be rolling 20s here.

Star Power: 10

No-Brainer thanks to the poor career decisions of Markie Post. Rule of thumb: if you can find their boobs on Google, they're trashy-famous enough for a 10 on their own. Add in DJ and the gloriously hammy Pet Sematary lead, and it's a perfect train-wreck of TV movie casting.

Lifetimeliness: 6

I'm going to cut the score down here a little. Rusty may disagree with me, but women's intuition completely failed to save the day here. A more Lifetime-y approach would have involved Markie figuring out how to stop the aliens by having a passionate heart-to-heart with them about the pressures of being a working mother in today's fast-paced world. Still, the mother-daughter trauma was the core of the story, so partial credit is due.

35! Not bad, not bad. The score is not really reflective of how amazing the movie is, though. DVR it. Get really drunk. Share it with a loved one. Let us know how it goes.

BONUS OFFICE REVIEW

2009-10-09T10:30:00.003-04:00

Harmony and I give up on Project Runway. Seriously. We are done. I think Amelie Gillette perfectly sums up what's wrong with the show here. Any show that allows Logan's haunted crotch pants to survive another day is not a show I am interested in.

So, instead of dealing with writing a review, I'd instead like to talk about last night's wedding episode of The Office. Basically, it was terrible. And writing contrarian reviews of beloved things is a hobby -no, a passion - of mine. And I want to get this on the record.

The episode begins with the entire office vomiting all over the place in a nice Lard-Ass moment. I thought it was the perfect beginning to an episode advertised as a straight romance. Of course, the writers were just prepping us for an episode that throws reality into the wind. Mass vomitings don't occur in the office and a lot of the things happening at the wedding don't happen in real weddings.

To be fair, the first 15 minutes were fairly solid. I loved Jim blurting out that Pam was pregnant as he slowly morphs into Michael-lite. But one thing at the rehearsal dinner really stuck in my craw. When Pam's sisters mistakes Kevin for Oscar's boyfriend, Oscar's livid response wasn't just inappropriate, it was shockingly out of character. One can be repulsed at the thought of dating someone and still maintain social graces. Especially when the show has worked so hard to make Oscar the most competent and friendliest employee. Terrible stuff.

From there, the show deteriorated into cartoonish. Andy tore his scrotum! Yuck, yuck, yuck. Kevin's feet smelled so bad they had to destroy his shoes and he walks around in tissue boxes! Har! Dwight bones Pam's bridesmaid and coldly blows her off because sleeping with people and ignoring them two hours later is something to be laughed at! Haha! Sucks to be you, pretty lady who slept with Dwight!

Pam starts freaking out before the wedding and loses it when she snags her veil on a nail. Oh no! Such drama! How can she get married with a slightly torn veil!? This is what screenwriters and other people in the know like to call "conflict."

Jim cuts his tie in half in solidarity and they decide to run off to get married in private. Two problems here:

1. If I drive five hours for a friend's wedding, I expect two things. Open bar and punctuality. If my friends make me wait in a church for two hours, they are bad friends and selfish people who deserve to get divorced.

2. They basically stole this entire plot from How I Met Your Mother (reruns on Lifetime!). Marshall gets a bad haircut and freaks out trying to shave it off. Lily still loves him and they are sick of the pressures of a big wedding so they sneak off and get married in private. I can't expect the writers of the Office to remember every plot point from every sitcom, but just know that this has been done and it was done better and it was done years ago.

Jim and Pam return from their secret wedding to get church married. Before anyone can walk down the aisle, the office workers play some music from a convicted domestic batterer and a bunch of people that were in no way in the wedding party (namely, the entire office) dances down the aisle.

Apparently, this is a recreation of a Youtube video I have never seen or heard of. You know how Michael is lame for discovering Youtube memes a few years too late and living out the fad? That is what the entire show has done and people are supposed to find it cute or endearing? No. And why would that bridesmaid be so happy to dance down the aisle with Dwight? And why is it funny that she got kicked in the face? And I know it's The Office and not The Realistic Wedding Simulator, but a bunch of people just imposed themselves on this wedding? That's not cool. That's just more horrible, selfish behavior.

Since the episode, I watched the Youtube video in question and it looks pretty sweet and nice and fun and the only thing that sucks about it is that Chris Brown beat the shit out of his girlfriend. Romance fail. Still very nice though. It just didn't work on The Office. Not even a little bit.

To be fair, I laughed a few times. I loved Jim's "Let's talk on the phone for a very long time." I loved Dwight's wedding gift complete with live turtle. Niagara Falls looks very pretty. But the tone, the meanness, the jokes that were so broad that Adam Sandler would be embarrassed (A torn nutsack? Really?)...it didn't work. Not only did it not work, it made me aggressively hate the presence of most of the cast. Well played, Office writers!

So, thank you for letting me vent about a show that isn't even remotely affiliated with Lifetime. Project Runway coverage is done, forever. And Harmony will be posting a movie review shortly. It's a doozy.

Kelli's Last Stand

2009-10-08T09:12:00.003-04:00

So Kelli's commentary was conspicuously absent from the last two Lifetime reviews. Kelli actually did respond to episode six...just after episode seven had already aired. So, I skipped it to avoid confusion.

As for episode seven criticism, we have it in spades.

Now, remember, last Thursday's episode was truly the worst episode ever. I was filled with as much righteous anger as anyone else. Anyone else besides Kelli, who was pissed.

I am flipping out about this past week's episode! Yes, Louises' dresses were ugly, but most of them were! I could design an INC look with my eyes closed! I actually realized that I had turned into an old woman when I migrated from the junior's section of Macy's towards the INC section! (While COMPLETELY skipping over the Michael Kors rags too!)

The shows formula is sooooo, incredibly obvious to me now! This episode was so much like my kick off episode (the same time too!), and it played out in the same manner! I am soooo over this crap, I could DIE! I would rather watch reruns of Facts of Life than this shit! AGAIN, it isn't the designers....I actually feel like they are nice people, and talented....it is the show! It is too much like other reality shows, when it used to pride itself in true talent and entertainment.

Also, I would like to vote this season as the WORST dressed season for Heidi. Season 5, I almost broke my neck to see the next outfit....now I cringe!

It also sucks that these auf'd contestants get this speech about how much they suck, when Heidi is just repeating what is said in her ear piece, line for line! And slllooowllly at that! Don't you have a brain to remember a sentence or two? Better yet, don't you have your OWN opinion??? I HATE tv. I HATE the fashion industry. I hate reality show...the line between talented people and Rock of Love contestants is becoming too blurred. I got a chewed gum portrait of me done by some idiot who was trying to show that reality stars last as long as a piece of gum! Great. [Ed note: I would like to see this.] Couldn't you have chosen Heather from Rock of Ass, or something?? She will probably die of STDs soon, but I have a feeling I will be designing regardless. Yuck. Puke. BLAHHHHH!

It's hard to disagree with any of this. My biggest point of contention would be that Heidi's canned lines right before elimination were always a problem, not something that just started happening on Lifetime.

A big moment for me happened last night when I realized I was enjoying Top Chef more than Project Runway. I used to hate Top Chef. It valued personalities more than the food. Iron Chef America spends more time on better recipes and on how to make a flavor profile. Top Chef just has a bunch of personalities say they're going to make something and then it shows up on the plate. Boring.

But, after seeing this season of Project Runway, I trust Top Chef. There is a clear hierarchy of talent. The challenges are usually interesting. And, yeah, the contestants are memorable. That's all I need. And I'm not getting it from Project Runway anymore.

Episode 7: Worst Episode Ever

2009-10-02T11:47:00.010-04:00

By the way, I super promise that Harmony and I are going to start watching some proper Lifetime movies. We saw one together, but it needs a sober rewatch. That's happening tonight.

And Kelli's absence last week: I don't know what to tell ya. She mentioned being much busier in the past few weeks and if I had to choose something to slip through the cracks, helping some people I've never met complain about a reality show would be first on the list. Hell, this is my site and I go weeks without posting all the time.

As for Project Runway, ugh. So terrible. Design two blue dresses for Macy's? Really? That's it?

This is the worst challenge on a season filled with terrible challenges. There are no limitations other than that the color blue should be involved. And the best part about these blue dresses? They're only available at Macy's! That makes no sense. Why is that the best part? The best part of Sam's Club seltzer water is that it's only available at Sam's Club? Wait, what?

So we're doing teams because two dresses in one day is difficult. Epperson wins the awesome award for being thankful that he's with a designer he actually respects in Christopher. Haha, fuck you, Qwacks!

(Oh please God let Epperson make it to the challenge where they bring back all of the eliminated contestants and set him up with Qwacks again. It would actually be - gasp! - dramatic.)

So two blue dresses and that's it. And all of the teams get along, so that's pretty boring too. The only extra "drama" is a lot of big talk from Heidi Klum that they might eliminate TWO contestants!

Spoiler alert: They only eliminate one.

So, take all of these factors and what do you get? The worst episode in series history. It was putrid. Unacceptable.

But on to the dresses!

This is Irina's winning dress:

I hate it. Boring and only the flattest of the flat chested could pull it off. I thought Heidi only liked titty dresses.

I much preferred the team of Carol Hannah and Shirin. Those two elf-women provided two striking dresses that were worthy of a win.

To be fair, this photograph makes the dress look like nothing special and, obviously, I don't know what I'm talking about. But I found this to be prettier and more marketable. Team Leader Carol Hannah was robbed.

Epperson, despite being partnered with a designer he respected, still found a way to be on the bottom.

The judges savaged this. Michael Kors said the model looked like a circa 1979 librarian. This is why it's good to have Michael Kors back, even if his taste is questionable.

I...I kind of like this. Maybe it's because my girlfriend bought a very similar piece of clothing a week ago and I don't want to make her feel bad...but I really like this. It's flirty!

Epperson's teammate (and team leader) made something much worse:

Ahhh! The goggles! They do nothing!

This fashion sin was exacerbated by Christopher's crying jag on the runway. I am sorry for the casual sexism here, but man up. You made a shitty dress and you deserve the ridicule. Frankly, that dress was the worst of the bunch and you should be going home.

But I'm certainly not worried that the judges decided to send Louise home instead. Louise sucks. And her designs were atrocious.

The second, more disastrous number, was actually attributed to teammate Nicholas. But Nicholas had immunity. And it was Louise's design. And why the Hell would you ever choose to work with someone who has immunity?

It was a perfect storm against poor Louise. And a reminder that eliminating Ra'mon last week was a tragedy and a waste of a superior talent.

I Question The Specialness Of Episode 6

2009-09-25T20:53:00.007-04:00

Last night's Project Runway broke my heart and left a bitter taste in the mouths of all good, right-thinking people who watch reality shows on Lifetime (not many). I refer to the cruel auf'ing of Ra'Mon, one of the only interesting designers in this season's decidedly beige lineup. Not only that, but Ra'Mon lost to a bullshit wannabe flapper cocktail dress sewn by mewling art student trash. But I get ahead of myself.

The episode began with the designers thanking their lucky stars that Johnny Methhead finally got the axe, but also worried that the competition was going to be a lot tougher as the group got smaller. Luckily, their fears were for naught, as Tim and co tossed them another softball challenge. Designing a costume for a movie character COULD have been an interesting one, if not for the fact that each person had the opportunity to pick their own genre to work with, and half of the genres were easy as fuck. 'Period Piece'? Really, Tim? You could even write a story to justify the costume you made, so if you happened to fuck up hard there was a built-in way to excuse yourself. The only people who actually got "challenged" by the challenge were Epperson, who got stuck with a cowboy theme as the last pick, and Nicolas, who decided this was a chance to take his space hooker aesthetic to the next level. And, of course, Ra'Mon. But more on that later.

Is this crop of designers getting really boring to anyone else? I fucking zone out when they're at Mood, when they're chatting with Tim, when they're laying faux-dramabombs about how they "aren't there to make friends" or "they have a vision". Fuck you. Shut up and work. I can't even think of anything worth highlighting about this episode other then the outfits because it was just so dull and formulaic. If you were maybe making an instructional film called "How To Make A Show About Catty Design Students And Their Loving Albino Mentor", this could have been the first half. I think the Weinsteins went through and edited out all the dramatic tension as a lawsuit fuck-you to Bravo if they ever got the show back.

The episode was successful in that it gave the really creative designers a chance to shine. Unfortunately, it also gave the boring designers a chance to, well, be boring again. While Nicolas was glorying in the chance to make the evil stepmother in his nightmares, Louise was crying about someone stealing her fucking thread and the fact that it's hard to make up stories about clothes. You know what else is hard? Listening to someone whine about such a stupid fucking problem. As always, I will only talk about the dresses I especially liked or hated, because the others are too boring to bother with. Observe:

(I admit: I was too tired of fighting with my computer to do this, and it had to go up sometime today, so the following photos are shamelessly ganked from the Una LaMarche at the HuffPo. Sorry dudes. At least I didn't leech your bandwidth.)

Hey, remember Althea's challenge winning design in episode 4? She sure hopes you don't! I'm sorry, but I don't get "baggy jacket and bouncing boobs" as a design aesthetic, no matter how much we know Heidi loves them. People always go on about how clean and polished her designs look. If I made the same outfit a bunch of times I'd probably get good at it too.

Chris had my favorite story of the night. She is a vampire bride, who is going to turn her husband into a vampire, um, like in the old times. Yes Chris, good job. Way to think on your feet. And OK, this is a beautiful dress, but the top of it really bugs me. It looks like a lampshade. But the skirt is gorgeous, and it was made in a day. So OK. This dress deserved top 3, and Chris deserves to fight another day.

I just want to point out that both people who got "action adventure" made these lameass fucking pleather catsuits. Really, guys? There are a LOT of action adventure movies to work with, and a lot of them have some kick-ass heroines with sweet-ass outfits. The challenge was "Movie Character", not "Slutty Matrix-Themed Halloween Costume". Weak sauce, Logan.

Epperson! What is there to say about this dress, besides "Good Job, Eppy"? I'm not a huge Epperson fan, and I still think he's a dick, continually impressed with his ability to do something new every time he comes to the runway. His consistent highlighting on the show makes me think he's final 3 bound. So there you go, the judges and I finally agreed on something.

Louise's dress may look familiar, as it is the exact same fucking dress she makes for every challenge ever. Also, this hit one of my pet peeves about Project Runway: She did not pay attention to the challenge. She said this dress is for an actress at an industry party trying to make it big (hey, doesn't that sound a little like episode 5?), but that wasn't the challenge! And even if it was, her dress is boring and cliched as fuck. This is another Halloween costume, but this is the costume donned by someone who can't pick a theme and just goes with "well, I have a feathered headband and this is the one time a year I can get away with that dress". Louise deserved worse then bottom 2. She should have been canned. And we know she's not going to make final 3, so why the fuck keep her and sacrifice Ra'Mon?! We lost Quacks because she was boring in one episode. By that logic, Louise should be beheaded.

WHY RA'MON WHY. OK, so the Lady GaGa reptile-inspired jumpsuit was looking like a mess. But the way to recoup was not to make an even messier looking dress and cross your fingers that someone did a worse job then you! I actually kind of like some of the ideas with this dress. The bust looks cool and the skirt has some nice bunching going on. If he'd had more time, this dress could have been top-3. But it just wasn't going to happen in two goddamned hours, even if you did give your model a backstory from the Super Mario movie (according to Russ). I still think it's bullshit he got aufed. Boring < Too Weird. Plus, Ra'Mon has consistently taken risks and made interesting clothing. Louise has consistently done crap and made crap. What the fuck, Project Runway. If I wasn't blogging this show, I'd be done.

Finally, Nic wins the challenge that was delivered to him on a platter. I don't want to put Nic down, though. This is a great costume and the details are lovely. This is one of the few wins this season I actually get. Plus, Nic is one of the only interesting designers left on the show, so I am starting to get a Stockholm Syndrome-like affection for him. I hope we get to see him and Gordana pal around some more.

Also, the judges for this episode sucked. If I want to know what the fucking costume designer from Walk the Line thinks about specialness, I will blow my goddamned brains out, because there is clearly no hope or joy left in my life. WHERE IS NINA GARCIA. BRING HER BACK TO ME.

So, that's that. Ra'Mon is gone, with a piece of my heart tucked in his sewing kit, and this season trundles on to it's mediocre midpoint. Whatever. Harmony out.

Project Runway Blog Delayed

2009-09-25T13:13:00.002-04:00

Attention True Believers:

Due to an unbelievable amount of bullshit, the PR blog will be going up tonight. All my apologies and etc., but sometimes we hurt the ones we love.

Can we all agree that Ra'Mon was fucked over though?

Harmony

Kelli Martin's Thoughts on the Paper Challenge

2009-09-21T10:19:00.002-04:00

So, at the very least, we don't have contestants designing based on amateur photography of the skyline. That's worth something, right?

FINALLY! A challenge the showcases creativity and is actually entertaining! This is a REAL challenge! Fashion is about innovation and we finally see some talent!

Tim Gunn really tore someone apart tonight. One thing I miss about Project Runway on Bravo was that Tim Gunn's Bravo.com blog showed real dissent. Last year, Columbus's own Terri got a top-3 spot in the drag queen challenge and Gunn spent two paragraphs bashing the outfit.

I REALLY wish that I had been on for that challenge! Tim Gunn is there as an adviser, he isn't always right, but he has always seemed to be the most genuine person on this show. (That, or he's deserves an Oscar for his performance)

So, any personal examples of Tim being totally wrong about something?

Uhhhh, yeah. My "Slutty, slutty, slutty" outfit had the potential of being really stunning. Sexy suit transitioning from day to night. YEEAAAAH, right! I was bashed for it! He even saw it near the end of its completion! However, I do trust his opinion. I only wish he could be slightly more objective when it comes to street style/subculture inspired fashion. I just don't think he gets it.

2b. Did Gunn ever get that "incredulous" during your time on the show. That last scene was ice cold.

That last scene made me double take. Something else must have happened. I have NEVER seen Tim Gunn be that cold! Even when Kenley yelled at him he kept his cool. Yeah, Johnny was an annoying ass that lasted too long, but JESUS CHRIST! Was talking about the kicked off boy necessary?! Looks like someone is letting fame go to his head!

3. The Missus over at HQ wants to know how much work the networks put into how the designers looks? Did Bravo choose your wardrobe and do your makeup? After six seasons, I kind of expected more slobs. Everyone looks well put together.

I am still under contract, but lets just say I wasn't able to sew in my normal get up (band T's and jeans) because of "copyrights", even electrical tape cover up wasn't allowed. That resulted in me mashing together random pieces to form a comfortable outfit, mostly consisting of dresses and other CRAP! Not to mention, there was NOOOO A/C and it was the dead of summer in NY! I WAS SWEATING BULLETS! SERIOUSLY! Fuck the competition it is 1765325 degrees in here and I have to wear a sweater b/c I have no T's to wear!

The WORST part was "continuity" requiring me to remain a blonde throughout the tryout process, which led to fried hair and extensions. (although they did NOT make me get extensions OR dye my hair, I kind of had no choice.)

Sorry, but that was seriously the WORST PART of the show.....they obviously have characters to fill. I even read a blog about a "blonde" conspiracy theory on PR! Apparently, the lightest "blonde" is always kicked off 1/3 of the way through the season (5th-7th episode)! I thought it was crazy, but some of their points were valid! I think it is ALL loosely pre-determined.

4. I know you don't like her, but how does Gordana (too lazy to check spelling) end up in the bottom 3? That is crazy. Crazy!

I don't necessarily hate her. I was just as confused as you! SOOOOO, it was wearable art. Isn't that the point??! It was made perfectly! AND FIT! I did like Althea's dress, although I wish the waist fit better. The winner? I am glad she won, I guess....She, at least, acted humble.

5. We can agree that this episode was a strong step in the right direction, right?

MUCH, MUCH better. Hopefully they continue! This could be a crap shoot!

Random thoughts....

-Christopher's outfit was hideous! Talk about a prom dress! Yeah, so the bodice fit decently....BIG DEAL! The bottom was awful!
-Did I not tell you about Shirin??!! She IS a talented (nicer) Kenley! Hopefully the "talented" part will continue to please at the VERY least.
- I HAAATE the ways Nicholas talks! He is sooo annoying!
-What is up with all of the "immunity" challenges?? You were lucky if 2 of the prizes for the challenge was immunity!
-Next week a one day challenge! We will really see if they can get their shit together and show us fashion!
-Finally, THANK YOU lifetime for keeping Nina and Michael off of my television for another week!

Project Runway Episode 5: Paper!

2009-09-18T11:25:00.007-04:00

I feel better. This was a good episode. Very little to complain about.

And the reason for that, of course, was the challenge: Make a dress out of newspaper.

(Side note: I really hope the Los Angeles Times didn't pay sponsorship money to be the newspaper that made the clothes. Because that would be a colossal waste of resources for a company in a dying industry. Who would watch Project Runway and think to themselves, "Hmmm, I'll but the LA Times today. Never mind that I live in Columbus, or Wichita, or Boise, or wherever I'm hypothetically from.)

When I saw that the contestants had to make a dress out of paper, I figured it would be impossible. But everyone did a pretty great job. So, that was nice.

Of course, the thing that made this episode was that Tim Gunn got really mad. Or, in his words, incredulous!

So we have a paper clothing challenge and everything is going great. Except for Meth Johnny's work. It looks terrible. Tim Gunn, correctly, calls the dress horrible, So Johnny crumples up the dress and decides to start over with only five hours left to come up with something decent. And he fails.

So what does Johnny do? Well, you can take the drugs out of the addict, but you can't take the lies. Despite a dozen eyewitnesses and a bunch of friggin' television cameras, Johnny tells everyone that a steamer malfunction ruined his dress. Johnny even goes far enough to make this audacious claim on the runway after he makes the bottom three.

Spoiler alert: Johnny gets called out on the runway, gets eliminated, and then Tim Gunn refuses to shake his hand. Gunn even calls him out behind his back. Johnny then goes way too far and claims that dealing with addiction was in many ways easier than competing on Project Runway. Super offensive if you have any experience with addiction! Also, Johnny says that he wanted to make it to Bryant Park, but his failure just means something better is in store. Actually, Johnny, it means the opposite!

To the dresses!

Once again this week, no Nina, no Michael. Do not pass go, do not get two hundred dollars. Instead we get Tommy Hilfiger (fine), some lady from Marie Claire (fine), and Eva Longoria Parker (NOT OK!). I hate these guest judges. Especially "celebrity" judges who, let's be honest here, aren't that famous. Eva Longoria Parker's claim to fame is that she's in a Heineken Light commercial (the worst beer I've ever quaffed) and her name kind of sounds like a famous baseball player. Other than that, she is insignificant and I will not be telling you any of her opinions. They don't matter.

I will tell you that other than figuring out who the bottom two were, the judges did a terrible job. Tim Gunn fell over himself complimenting Gordana's dress. It was really pretty! Bottom three. Why? Too boring.

Remember, this is made out of newspaper. That belongs nowhere near the bottom three.

Especially when this qualifies as safe:

Woof. And I was so happy with Epperson last week.

And let's not forget this disaster from Irina:

Uh-oh. Hold on to your O Henries, because this was the winning dress. No, you're not colorblind. This looks like someone turned a color-by-numbers into a kind of ugly coat with scotch tape holding up the back. Ick.

To be fair, this probably wasn't a bottom three dress. But top three? The winning dress? No. No way, Jose.

So, the judges are doing a terrible job, but I finally enjoyed an episode. I'll take what I can get!

More Kelli? More Kelli.

2009-09-15T12:34:00.002-04:00

Kelli Martin's thoughts on Episode 4 of Project Runway:

Q: When there's a new show you're interested in, how many episodes do you usually give it before you give up entirely. Like, there was a History Channel Show called Jurassic Fight Club that showed simulations of dinosaur fights. I gave that 8 weeks. I only give most sitcoms or dramas 3 or 4 weeks to wow me. How many are we giving Project Runway? Because this sucks.

If I hadn't promised to blog, I would have giving up after week two! MAAAYYYBE, week 3! The designers are all likable, but I see nothing spectacular about any of them. I would much rather see a show about designer's who make more avant garde pieces. This is like watching the Home Shopping Network! I can barely stay awake!

2. I ask this not to be snarky, but because I have no idea. Why did Althea's dress win? All 4 of us at our HQ hated it. What did we miss?

Ok, so that's what I thought. I did like the concept, and I get that it would be different, sophisticated, and sexy.....but it looked like a blob! The skirt was not only up to her neck, it was all poofy and puffy! And if Heidi wants to comment on boobs! Those things were flippin' and floppin' all over the place! Not to mention WE COULDN'T SEE THE CONSTRUCTION! From experience, if they barely show the garment, it is pinned together and royally fucked up.

3. Heidi's leopard print top. No question, just ew.

Love the print, hate the gypsy cut. WHAT ABOUT THE GRAY SWEATER??!!! With thigh high boots?! I am all about the boots, but she looked like ACTUAL shit. And she has someone dressing her! (we called her "Messy Johnson", because she looked crazy like Betsey Johnson, but was a total mess!)

4. Do models and designers really get along as well as half of the contestants claim? These people are blowing smoke up our asses, right?

Most of the designer's are total kiss-asses anyway, but the models were nicer than I had expected (at least for my season). I couldn't part with my model because she was sooo nice, got my stupid sense of humor, and "played the game." She wasn't ideal for me, which could have been a problem, but I tend to be drawn to more down to Earth people, and she was one of them. (Then Kenley got a hold of her and made her cry! Said her garment didn't fit because Germaine's body was asymmetrical! Nice try, BIIIIATCH!)

That's all!

Not much to say because it is so f'in dull, but I would have chosen Epperson to win (I liked the idea, but it was slightly trashy '94), or Carol Hannah. I have a feeling Carol Hannah will show us some decent shit. Louise's dress was cute, but HOW MANY TIMES are we going to see that collar??!! I have sen it on like 5 past episodes!!!!!!!!!! ANNNND, I fucking HATE [guest judge] Jennifer Rode! She was a bitch on "How Do I Look?", and obviously still is! She even resembles Nina! It is nicer without Nina or Michael there... the judges seem to actually view it as consumers, not as rich, snobby, son of a bitch, bastards!

Project Runway Episode 4: Still Boring!

2009-09-11T09:34:00.009-04:00

I don't know what to say. This isn't working. It looks like Michael Kors has jumped ship. And today we were without the venerable Nina Garcia. The challenges are boring. One contestant had the audacity to hope for a challenge that will let them show who they are as a designer. Fuck the heck is he talking about? We've had a challenge where you can design any red carpet dress you want. A challenge where you can design any maternity dress you want. And finally a challenge where you can design any surf look you want. God damn it, make something out of car parts already.

But no. Instead we have designers making clothes for their models. Just this time, the models get to choose what they want. I'm sure the models are lovely people (even the one who left the show for an Arby's commercial), but I don't think they know any more than I do about designing clothes.

The episode was really just an excuse to have every contestant looking into the camera nervously saying that these dresses don't really match their preferred aesthetic. The sad part about that is that the show has been so boring so far that I don't know what anyone's aesthetic is. All of these clothes are running together. Watching Episode 4 yesterday, there was a contestant who I had absolutely no recollection of.

Anyways, the challenge. It turns out that the models kind of have terrible taste. They were all happy with whatever crap was sent their way. The best moment in the episode is when once of the many guest judges rejected a model's affirmation of a horrible garment by reminding her that's why she's not a designer. Good.

Here's the winning dress from Dayton, Ohio's Althea:

There were four people in the room watching this. Harmony, Rusty, and our respective lovers. Unanimous disdain. So of course it won. It looked sloppy. It looked like a sloppy suit with a bubble skirt. It was gross and I hate this season.

One dress in the top-3 that I did like was Epperson's. Epperson was the focus of today's episode because he misses his family and was crying while making his dress. Blah, blah, blah. But I liked his dress!

Now, to be clear, this isn't the prettiest thing in the world. But Epperson has actually shown us an aesthetic that he likes. He rejected his model's request for orange fabric and took her moronic request to look "shiek and edgy" and he made it work in a way that shows his eye for design. I didn't like this on the runway, but the more I let it sink in - especially compared to all of the other dresses - the more I like this.

I'm pretty sure Nicholas's dress was the consensus favorite in the room. It could have fit a little better up top, but design-wise, yes please.

It should be clear by now that Nicholas is in this for the long haul. He, like everyone else in this season of the damned, is playing it too conservatively. But he's got a good eye.

Now, two dresses we hated!

I remarked that this looked like a Chinese finger trap. I also liked the AV Club's review that said this model looked like a stick of gum. The funny thing is, I like the color. Hate everything else.

And our losing dress is from Quacks:

A dress couldn't deserve to lose more than this dress. A boring little black dress that's also poorly constructed and designed? Unforgivable.

By the way, Harmony and I watched a fantastic Lifetime movie last week. We really need to write up a review because I need a change of pace from this boring show. Look for that in the next few days.

Kelli Martin's Take on Episode Three

2009-09-09T13:52:00.003-04:00

Spoiler: It's pretty saucy.

Q: So, the obvious question is why you'd ever want to be the leader in a group challenge. That is death. And you know that firsthand. The challenge yesterday, the leaders were picked by luck of the draw. Do think everyone was hoping to be an assistant?

A: First off, I think that "random" little button bag is a scam! This is a reality show man, they have pockets or something in that bag to determine who ends up together! I wanted to be chosen as the leader, I wanted to be in charge, and I wanted to win! I don't trust ANYONE, but I NEVER thought anyone would purposely sabotage another. On the other hand, I caught a glimpse of a few people's sketches on my season for episode 5, and it appeared as if they were attempting to get the assistant job! For instance, Kenley's sketch looked like an ACTUAL stick person! Who presents that to a client??!! As in my season, I am sure that some of the designer's are actually attempting to do a good job, and the others are "playing the game."

Q: When Tim Gunn throws out the curveball that they need another, more complicated dress, is that totally disheartening?

A: It takes next to nothing to whip together a swimsuit.....and like 1/2 yard of fabric! So all of this bitching about what they needed to buy was time wasting....buy a bunch of crap, and you will have choices!

All of the beach looks, especially with 2 people, should take no time to execute! I do understand the stress of having shit thrown at you last minute, so I get it, but it shouldn't be a big deal.

Q: How does one handle friction in a team challenge. Q[uacks] and Epperson clearly wanted to fight to the death. How does one work through that?

A: Honestly, I wish I would have been a TOTAL bitch to Daniel in my challenge. He either deliberately fucked his shit up, or he REALLY didn't know how to sew/construct. (A pencil skirt can be made in like 30 minutes!)

I must admit, I prefer working alone (I am a loner, Dottie, a rebel), but I did my best to not jack his jaw! When one person is practically sewing the whole look, AND helping their partner make their half, the final garment is TOTALLY going to suffer.......they made the right choice keeping Epperson.....I have a feeling we are about to see more DOTS rejects from Q.

Q: What the Hell was Mitchell's problem?

A: He obviously is lazy and cannot sew. He was kept around because he fits the PR stereotype, not because he is a good designer. It's funny how one person can never be in the bottom, win the "innovation" challenge against the ENTIRE cast of 16 contestants, and still be auf'd. Apparently you get 3 strikes now....

Q: This episode was not-so-subtly sponsored by Garnier. How much of an effect do the hair and makeup people have on looks. Do they really complete looks and make your work that much better or could you have done without them? And did they ever make one of your looks worse?

A: Man, I could have done this shit. No offense, and I have been creating my own look for 20+ years, but SERIOUSLY??! Is the hair & makeup typically ever mentioned? They have to push, push, push the sponsors in order to pay for their MASS advertising for this dull ass season. (Oh sorry, did I say that out loud?)

And some Kelli potpourri:

Finally, I hated most of the looks. I thought they were dull and boring. I did, however, LOVE the 2nd look with the zippers by Louise and the Ohioan. (that was her partner, right??) The rest were COMPLETELY forgettable....well, Ra'mon did an ok job with his second look....I love the dyeing of fabric! I am sure that you can tell! Seems like a lot of hand dyeing lately......nice to see them using gloves and buckets, etc.....I used my BARE hands like a caveman!

Oh yeah, did you see Heidi's HIDEOUS extensions in that ponytail??!! You are a millionaire!!!!!! And again, if I hear "chic", "amazing", or anything similar again, I REALLY am going to die! GET A NEW VOCABULARY!!!!! Why do these designer's find it necessary to sound so cliche'??!!!

Project Runway the 3rd: In Which Mitchell Is Fucked and Garnier is King

2009-09-04T13:32:00.007-04:00

Hello loyal readers. I know you are very disappointed to see me writing this instead of Rusty. Unfortunately for you, Rusty and Teri were kind enough to invite me into their home and liquor cabinet for last night's spectacularly mediocre episode of Project Runway. Sorry it's late, but I am writing this under the influence of a sinus infection and getting my 10-year-old eMac to navigate the flash-heavy Project Runway gallery is only slightly more tedious then building a tiny battleship in a bottle. Let's begin!

So, last night's challenge was another let-down: create surf-wear! With the help of surfer people and a partner! And Garnier logos everywhere, because everyone knows that when you hang out on the beach your hair is priority 1! Jesus Christ, it's a bad sign if they're only on episode 3 and they've already stopped trying. There has to be more interesting beach-related challenges to be had. How about we put them all on the beach with metal detectors for an hour and they have to construct cocktail gowns out of whatever they manage to dig up? I would have loved watching Johnny make a cute clutch bag out of used syringes. Even the unflappable Mr. Gunn is bored, and super-cranky about his flip-flops, as well he should be.

(Also: did this episode have anyone missing Uli? She would have rocked this one. So many flowy skirts!)

There was also a very boring sequence where we had to watch the designers hold conversations with "surf look" models. Russ wanted me to point out how bullshit this was, but I'm actually very grateful they were there to provide life shattering insight like "I like clothes that fit over my bathing suit" and "Blue is pretty". Awesome. Thanks.

Since creating an off-the-rack look for PacSun is really fucking difficult, and the producers were apparently getting desperate for SOMETHING television-worthy, they attempted to ratchet up the drama by partnering people up. Most of the designers were pretty much easy-going team players, and were excited to be working together. It was kind of heartwarming to see them rushing around, sewing and ironing and complimenting each other. Kind of like an Amish barn-raising or something. There were some misfires as well, of course:

Ah, Mitchell. Can we talk about Mitchell? He picked Ra'mon because he said he needed someone to 'carry him through' this challenge. He can't sew, he can't design, and he can't go five minutes without making someone want to smack him. Most of the shots of them working consisted of Mitchell sulking like a baby and Ra'mon frantically sewing, cutting, and sending death glares to his team captain. Surely Heidi and the Death Gods won't reward a team captain that shirks their responsibilities that hard? Stay tuned, true believers!

Quacks also got screwed by her choice in partners. It turns out that Epperson is kind of a huge fucking dick. Russ says Quacks sucks and should have taken the reigns better, and I kind of agree, but I also think Epperson is a bully and that his designs don't justify the level of ego he brought to the table. Quacks should have just ignored him, but Epperson also needs to be shut up by a more efficient queen bitch then her. Maybe they can pair him with Nina Garcia next time. She'd probably eat his head.

To further convolute an already-convoluted process, the PR Counsel of Doom demanded a second avant-garde look on top of the surf one. Seeing the look on Ra'mon's face when he realized he would be responsible for not one, but two looks that challenge was heartbreaking. Quacks and Eppy were too busy quibbling over how to stitch a seam to care much, and that was reflected in what they brought to the table for the final look. But more on that later.

My personal favorite partnership of the night was definitely Nicolas and Gordana. I love the fuck out of Gordana, her beautiful workmanship, and her consistent stream of heavily-accented bizarre prattle. Nicolas is kind of annoying, but a decently creative designer and fun to watch. Nicolas went out of his way to praise Gordana's awesome craftsmanship abilities, and Gordana was optimistic about the design "of a mermaid, the movie with the mermaid?". In short, they are BFF, and I was completely rooting for them.

Let's talk about what these folks produced:

Nicolas and Gordana's first look was actually OK. The judges were really into the top, but they said the bottom looked too sloppy, which I guess is fair enough. But isn't this supposed to be something you wear over a bathing suit? Something too tailored would have looked stupid.

Look 2. I think she looks like one of the hooker replicants in Blade Runner, but Blade Runner is an awesome movie, so this works for me. They should have propped a little origami animal in her perfect Garnier hair. Nicolas admitted he probably went "too far" on this one, and the judges agreed, but they seemed to appreciate the effort and went out of their way to comfort them as they were quietly shooed from the stage. Nicolas and Gordana, you're the only pair who did anything truly risky last night, and I salute you for that.

Just a quick aside- the judges were freaking out over this look, and I can't figure out why. It doesn't look like something you'd wear to a beach. Maybe to buy quirky tiki-torch-and-coconut-themed shit from Urban Outfitters for your dorm room, but not to an actual beach. Also, I thought the macrame thing on the back was completely ugly. Congratulations, ladies, you know how to make a potholder.

Eppy and Quack's other look is dull and pretty, so let's look at this explosion of fug instead. That is the least flattering bathing suit I have ever seen. Making a Project Runway model look chubby is a daunting challenge, even with a pregnancy pillow. They rose to the challenge by creating a bathing suit that downplays every positive thing about her body and highlights every imaginary flaw in pleather-looking material that would be embarrassing on bordello furniture. Eppy upbraided Quacks for lacking a vision, but whatever- this look is just poorly designed and constructed. I mean, what are the buttons for? What the hell are they for?!

Here's Ra'mon's surf wear look. I say it's Ra'mon's because Mitchell did not touch the dress at all. If you squint at the model's cleavage, you might be able to see the swimsuit that Mitchell supposedly made. Heidi couldn't, and she gave Mitchell complete hell for it. He really needed to step it up for this episode and he epically failed. As soon as the camera went to a scowling Heidi we all knew he was fucked. Mitchell sucks, so watching the judges turn on him was lots of fun.

Ra'mon's avant-garde look! Please note that after spending a day making a wetsuit that caused a tiny vessel to burst in Mr. Gunn's head, he regrouped, dyed some material, and sewed this dress up in about an hour. Without Mitchell's help. This dress earned high praise from the judges and a lot of love from guest judge Rachel Bilson, who is apparently on a TV show or something? Whatever, she looks like a Bratz doll.

Anyway, Ra'mon clearly rocked this thing, and Mitchell clearly did not. So, in the first time ever in the history of Project Runway, a member of the winning team was auf'd. So long, Mitchell. Don't forget your Garnier grab bag and don't let the door hit you in the ass. I thought it was notable that, while every other departing designer gets a least a little faux-sympathy from Gunn and co, he was solidly given the cold shoulder as he exited the premises. They probably edited out the part where they all peed on his toothbrush.

If nothing else, this episode was a perfect example of how PR on Lifetime errs in favor of boredom rather then shock value. Boring challenge, blah designs, and it took 3 episodes for the most untalented person in the world to get kicked off. Hopefully the next episode will be Mad Max themed or something and the designers will have to battle it out in Thunderdome for the right to make a matching look for Master and Blaster. My money is on Gordana. Girl looks like a scrapper.

I can't access my email, so Rusty will have to amend Kelli's thoughts onto a follow-up post. Oh well!

Project Runway Episode 2 (Still Boring!)

2009-08-28T09:56:00.012-04:00

I dunno. This is the second boring challenge in a row. And the second straight time the kooky guy has been eliminated. I applauded that the first time through, but now I'm worried that contestants who might be able to wow us are being cut in favor of the dreaded middlebrow.

Both episodes also featured new favorite Mitchell in second-to-last place. I know he's not long for the show, but, man, what a treasure chest of material. From admitting he didn't put time and effort into his first design to his hangdog face while on the cusp of elimination...Mitchell is ok by me.

The second episode opens up with Hillbilly James Iha (nee Malvin) eating an apple while covered in drapes. This is shorthand for wacky! Mitchell admits he isn't taking this seriously and, huzzah, off to the runway for the second challenge. The challenge sucks. Make a maternity dress for Rebecca Romijn and her Slider spawn. Ugh. I want to see some clothes made out of breast pumps and baby formula. I loved the simplicity of the first challenge, but doing something so open-ended two weeks in a row? Why? The budget for this was $100 and the cameras focused on one of the still-generic contestants exhaling after being charged $99.50. That led to this exchange with our in-house expert, Kelli Martin:

Q: Ok, this kind of applies to all shows with budgets....but tonight's episode showed a contestant at a Mood register being relieved that she cashed in 50 cents under budget. If you're at Mood and have a few extra bucks to spare, what do you do? Like, do they have stuff behind the counter? "Throw in that sash!"

A: First of all, nothing at Mood has prices. You never know what anything costs, you just grab and factor it out later. When I came back later in my season, Korto and I were gathering leather hides, and I TOTALLY though that we would be auf'd because she was piling everything on! I felt like I strategically grabbed all my supplies when I was on the show, accounting for the cost, when really...it doesn't matter, they will "make the price work for you." I wish I would have know that sooner! It would have saved me A LOT of time!

I find this disappointing. I was hoping they'd get to spend their last dollars on smokes or copies of US Weekly.

Kelli also had this to say about the challenge:

They "casually" mention that the designer's all have 2 days to create the look! We had like half a day! So you give them more time, the audience won't notice, and they magically create better garments. Yuck!

Good catch. I missed that.

But, wait! Kelli's not done. Regarding guest judge Rebecca Romijn-not-Stamos:

Yeah sure, they have MUCH better judges than our "thrown-under-the-bus" season. Who can be excited over Brooke Shields and Sandra Bernhard? What do they know about fashion again????

To be fair, Brooke Shields was a model once upon a time. So, same qualifications as Ms. Romijn. I have no retort for the Sandra Bernhard thing.

More judge snark:

[Second guest judge Monique Lhuillier] is a graduate of FIDM (as am I), and I assume that the proper top 3 were chosen because she replaced Michael [Kors]

So the designers put little tummy pillows on their mannequins and get to work. By now, I have decided who two of the villains are.

1. Nicholas. Nicholas hasn't been top-3 or bottom-3 yet. The only thing he's accomplished is being incredibly annoying in the interviews. I hate stuttering, stacatto laughter. And he seems to find his own jokes pretty funny. I don't like this guy at all.

2. Louise. She hand-dyed some lace this challenge. Neat! But she said she was going for a 1920s aesthetic, and not to judge a book by its cover, but I expect we'll be getting a lot of that from her. Like Kenley with her princess dresses but, hopefully, with more self-awareness. And it looks like she has a barbed wire tattoo. Lamers.

Kelli has her own intuition on who the bad guy will be (and since this is Lifetime, never downplay women's intuition):

I feel like Sherin is a talented Kenley, and I don't think I like her.

Everyone hates Kenley! Somewhere there is a tugboat captain itching to defend his daughter.

Well, I like Sherin. Mostly because her dress and jacket:

was clearly the top design this week. I loved everything about it. Even Sherin doubter Kelli thought that this was a top-3 dress.

The dresses were nice, if not a little boring and I hope this doesn't become a theme. Certainly better than last week. But the bottom-three dresses were truly disasterous.

Before getting to the Bottom Three, Harmony wanted me to call extra attention to a dress that made it past eliminations without additional comment. Quacks's:

I don't think this deserves a spot on the bottom-three. It's horribly boring, but not a disaster. Then Harmony reminded me that Quacks's thing is "plus-sexy." She does plus-sized outfits and this is the best she could whip up? This should have been right in her wheelhouse and she blew it. Quacks will be gone by week six.

Now the true disasters.

Check out Ra'mon's:

Oops! Wait a second here...

There we go. To be fair, anyone could have made that mistake.

Even Mitchell, who we'll get to in a second, said the belly looked like a bowling ball bag before backtracking behind platitudes.

And Mitchell is a joke. Harmony, Kelli, and myself all agree that Mitchell needed to go. The man can't sew shorts. The best part of the Lifetime experience last night was the beginning of the show about the models. They were horrified that Mitchell got to keep his spot.

MITCHELL CONSPIRACY THEORY

So, based on the preview of next week's episode, someone gets dragged across the coals for not knowing how to sew. I wonder who that will be?

Why keep this dude on if he can't sew? The answer: To raise a big, deserved middle finger to Bravo's The Fashion Show for having designers who can't sew. If you missed it (and you should have), one of the designers had a big hissy fit saying this was The Fashion Show, not the "Sewing Show." He made it to the top-4.

Project Runway is oh so gently reminding us that The Fashion Show sucks.

Anyways, the losing dress:

Yes, it's that bad. Yes, it deserves to be singled out for ridicule. No, it wasn't as bad as not knowing how to sew shorts.

Although Malvin lost all of his sympathetic value when he called himself a philospher and complained that this design was too complicated for America. Really? The American market is the problem? Are you stoned?

Hopefully next week we'll get a better idea of who the better designers are. Two weeks in and it's still a crap shoot.