Bottle Shock

This wine hasn't peaked

By Alex Dimitropoulos

During the creation of “Bottle Shock,” word must have come from on high that the source material needed juicing up, and the rushed result is a muscled underdog fighting its way through tiresome sports drama conventions. For a film about California wines winning over snooty critics at a 1976 blind tasting in Paris, this approach proves especially problematic. “Bottle Shock,” a movie that should have let the viewer savor a bouquet of historical details, focuses more on selling itself to a broad, beer-guzzling audience than selling its fine subject.

The film opens by panning over rolling hills and an order imposed upon nature: parallel grape vines stretching for miles and miles. They look Photoshop-beautiful, but they have not made their way into shops like the one that British wine connoisseur Steven Spurrier (Alan Rickman) runs in dusty silence. His customer base, like his wine selection, is limited, and the expert initially seems provincial by not including small-town America in his stock.

Before 1976, however, California wines were not even a blip on the grape-stomping radar. Something from Chateau Montelena, which Jim Barrett (Bill Pullman) runs with his son Bo, would not have been worthy of awkward gulping. Barrett, a man’s man who quotes Hemingway and dons gloves to box Bo, also boxes his own wine in Napa, California. He lives his craft and understands that what he makes is special, even if outsiders do not recognize or know his talent.

“You’re a snob,” Jim tells Spurrier. “It limits you.”

But Spurrier expands his horizons, turns ennui into enthusiasm, and invites Jim and his local competitors to face off with French wines in a blind taste test later titled the “Judgment of Paris.” The judges, set up here as prissy, pompous elitists, would never rate a California wine highly, regardless of its taste, if they knew that was what they were drinking.

These plot elements blend well, but Rickman, who out acts all but Pullman with just a studied arch of the eyebrow, disappears for much of the movie. The remainder, like a bad wine, is poorly structured, and the soundtrack and romantic or inspirational subplots cloud the contest’s impact.

The supporting cast, who work under Spurrier in “Bottle Shock,” has too much to support. There’s surfer slacker Bo, who represents stoners who will not let go of Woodstock; Gustavo, who says he grew up with dirt under his fingernails and wine in his blood; and intern Sam, a woman who gets in between the two youngsters and serves solely as eye candy and joke deliverer. The music, which should have been less of a character, consists of French accordions, a clichéd instrumental swelling for every cellar room pep talk and southern rock, better suited for Hicksville football tales than Napa viniculture.

“If one of us wins, we all win,” Bo says.

“Good luck out there. Thanks for representing us,” Gustavo says.

“Things are about to get real emotional,” the film score says.

But what does "Bottle Shock" itself say? It reveals the significance of the results of the contest at the end of the film, but it does so with text on the screen. Though this is a common technique for serious films rooted in history, it clashes with the lighthearted body of the film here. An excellent movie lies somewhere in this muck, but overall, "Bottle Shock" gives a bland, familiar aftertaste. It could leave you thinking more about the film tricks jockeying for your attention than the event that altered menus in even the most exclusive restaurants, be they in America or abroad.

Check it out: Bottle Shock's official website

Bottle Shock Trailer

House - Season 5: "Birthmarks"

For fans of the sweet and sour

By Brittany Cofer

Dr. Gregory House is quite possibly one of the most condescending characters on television. But in season five’s fourth episode, “Birthmarks,” the in-your-face doctor shows a rarely seen softer side.

The acclaimed drama “House” uses the familiar medical show theme but adds a twist by usually coming close to killing patients in attempts to find out what is causing their illness. The show tries to bring in a human element by creating intricate plot lines between the cast of characters.

At the end of season four, Dr. James Wilson’s girlfriend Amber tragically died. Wilson has since quit his job and shut out everyone around him, including his long-time friend House. Ever since, House has been desperately trying to win back Wilson’s friendship, though not conventionally. When the rare glimmer of earnestness slips into House’s persona, it is unmistakable and no doubt carefully crafted by the writers.

In this episode, House’s father has died, and to no one’s surprise, he says he is not sorry about his father’s death and will not attend the funeral. His medical team begins their differential diagnosis on an Asian woman brought to the hospital from China, when House makes an all-too-predictable derogatory statement. Upon receiving the Chinese medical records, House says to an Indian staff member, “Kutner, you’re sort of Asian. You can read this right?”

The obligatory medical jargon makes its way into nearly every scene. But the cast conveys the lines with such ease and fluidity that the viewer can easily follow the action. The show can be heavy at times, but one of the best parts of House’s brash character is that he can say what other characters cannot, and it comes off as humorous. Sometimes he does not even have to say anything at all.

Wilson, who always seems to be drawn to House even when he doesn’t want to be, forces decides to trick House into going to his father’s funeral. On the way, House receives a phone call. The ring tone is unmistakably Hanson’s “MMMBop.” I laughed aloud when hearing the song and seeing the embarrassed look on House’s face as the phone began to ring. Moments like this one uplift viewers, reminding them the show is not all gloom and doom.

House explains to Wilson that he believes the man who died was not his biological father. He said that at the age of 12 he realized he resembled a family friend and not his father. Wilson does not believe the story and thinks it is a ploy to prevent them from attending the funeral. While giving the eulogy for his “father,” House begins to break down and says, “I am what I am because of him, for better or for worse.”

House shows a side that has never been seen before as he bends over his father’s body and kisses his forehead. We then see House holding a pair of nail clippers, with which he snips a bit of the man’s ear for a DNA test. For the House fan, this moment is bittersweet. We wish for him to show a more human side and inevitably, when he does, it is swiftly counteracted.

After the trip Wilson tells House he will be coming back to work at the hospital. “I’m coming back because you’re right,” he says. “That strange, annoying trip we just took was the most fun I’ve had since Amber died.” House, even after confirming the man who raised him was indeed not his biological father, shows a slightly sentimental side by saying, “Wilson, my Dad’s dead.”

Check it out: House's Official site

House Season 5 Trailer

Inside the Actor's Studio- Hugh Laurie

Lipstick Jungle - Season 2: "Let it Be"

Pretty, empty calories

By Jennifer Paxton

Once upon a time an HBO gem celebrated Jimmy Choo’s, Manolo Blahnik’s and the modern woman. Witty, provoking insight accompanied character-driven plot lines, and the ladies were hooked.

Flash forward four years after “Sex and the City”’s conclusion in 2004, and that caliber of fresh television for today’s women has not been met.

In its second season, NBC’s “Lipstick Jungle” follows the busy lives of three expensive purse-toting New York women.

There’s Wendy Healy (Brooke Shields), a movie executive juggling ballsy decisions at work and a family at home. Nico Reilly (Kim Raver, “24”) is on top of her career game as well, taking the helm as editor-in-chief of a “Vanity Fair”-esque fashion magazine. Fashion designer Victory (Lindsay Price, “Beverly Hills, 90210”) plays a hopeless romantic struggling to find Mr. Right while keeping her studio afloat.

It’s no surprise that “Lipstick Jungle,” based on the book by “Sex and the City” author Candace Bushnell, revolves around drama considering its hasty origins. “Jungle” premiered alongside ABC’s “Cashmere Mafia,” which was made by “Sex and the City” creator and executive consultant Darren Star. The two wannabes duked it out in the primetime slot with neither show ever really winning. They featured similarly high-powered, caffeine-fueled women trying to balance executive jobs with marriage, families and an ever-growing collection of enviably cute outfits. Can they have it all?

“Lipstick Jungle” wants to say “yes.” In “Chapter 10: Let It Be,” Nico grapples with how to approach her new relationship with her 25-year-old boyfriend, Kirby, as a widow in public. Victory can’t decide between her new beau, Rodrigo, and her old multimillionaire one, Joe Bennett. Bennett, played by Andrew McCarthy, fills the role of “Mr. Big” for the series, carefully treading the line between sexy intrigue and disappointing stupidity. And Wendy, the anchor of the show, becomes involved in a complex insurance fraud case at work but still magically makes time for dinner with her family.

The negatives of “having it all” comprise the beef of the episode, but all loose ends magically tie up by the end (cue cheesy music and gratuitous shots of the New York skyline), fooling the viewer into believing these women can pull it off.

I don’t buy it. The show’s wrap-ups are forced and unconvincing. These women are not happy, but in dire need of a nap. “Jungle” hopes to portray these women as inspiring busy bees, but they come across as anxious, buzzing mosquitoes who can’t sit still.

And while “Sex and the City” wasn’t afraid to show its characters occasionally downtrodden and hungover (hence, relatable), the “Lipstick” ladies look annoyingly perfect – all the time. Like most women, I love a cute dress. But the emphasis on expensive aesthetic perfection for these ladies reeks of materialistic froth.

The show presents a “jungle” of modern issues for women without examining their roots as its HBO predecessor did. Furthermore, strong friendships between the women are absent. “Lipstick” may as well follow three completely unrelated characters living in the city. Individually, the show allows for some depth into individual characters, however. Victory is the most relatable character on the show for simply admitting some vulnerability, while the other two are beyond unrealistic.

The show does get an “A” on keeping its viewers glued to the screen week after week. What the show lacks in depth, it compensates for in dramatic pull.

If you want a show you can relate to, don’t watch “Lipstick Jungle.” If you want a soap opera at prime time, watch this series, just don’t expect it to bring you back to Carrie Bradshaw’s stoop.

Check it out: Lipstick Jungle

Lipstick Jungle "Let it Be" Trailer

*Editorial note: Lipstick Jungle has been cancelled after the current season.

Dexter - Season 5: "All in the Family"

Hearty, bloody good dish

By Alex Dimitropoulos

A blood spatter analyst who doubles as a serial killer with an increasingly lax code, Dexter Morgan has an identity as disposable as his latex murder gloves, his winsome smile and his mock enthusiasm. “All in the Family,” the fourth episode from the third season, reinforces that notion with an emphasis on role playing and toying with the audience’s feelings for the character, played by the alternately steely and sensitive Michael C. Hall. “The only roles I had trouble with were good guys. Heroes. Knights in shining armor. It just never felt right,” Dexter says. The voiceover in Showtime’s Dexter, which shares his thoughts, rationalizations and confusions, implicates the viewer in the program, part of why the show is so addicting. The audience gets the confessions that Dexter himself will never deliver in a courtroom. He frames others, sidesteps suspicion and lives a relatively guilt-free life in his own mind and in the unsuspecting eyes of others.

It is not a life without stress, however. He learned last episode that his girlfriend Rita was pregnant, and Dexter botches the announcement to her two other children, offers them a puppy and then clumsily proposes. “People don’t get married because it makes sense,” Rita tells him. Dexter cannot grasp why his rational mimicry of affection fails—he lives according to evidence. While on the job in this episode, he tries to solve a murder by simulating it with a dummy in the police station. As a killer, he tries to avoid leaving clues so that others cannot do the same in their own offices.

His personality is his most critical construction of evidence, however, a collection of calculated presentations to his sister Deb, his coworkers and his “friends.” Dexter proposes (evidence of love) and tells a colleague he will attend his keynote address at a forensics conference, an event everyone else at the station avoids (evidence of friendship). He confesses that his mother was murdered (evidence of tragedy) to Ramón Prado, a vengeful cop searching for the man who killed his brother, Oscár.

Ramón believes this murderer to be a drug dealer named Freebo. Only Dexter and Miguel Prado, the other Prado brother and an assistant district attorney played by with verve by Jimmy Smits, know that Dexter killed Freebo. Dexter wants to keep it that way and attempts to prove to Miguel that Ramón is too unstable to guard this binding, vigilante justice secret. The show is a series of nested truths that Dexter must maintain and conceal, and its narrative complexity is a testament to what a group can accomplish outside of network programming and without advertisement constraints. Dexter plays people against one another so that they do not even know whom it is they are fighting, and they fall around him like dominoes, one way or another. “I take no pleasure in manipulating Miguel this way,” Dexter says, orchestrating a violent, barroom outburst from Ramón. “Still, I think he’d prefer it to my usual alternative.” He means gruesome, methodical killing and disposal of the body, all without a trace leading back to him.

“I have only one person I can trust anymore,” Miguel says, when his relationship with his remaining brother falls apart.

“Yourself,” Dexter says.

“I was thinking of you,” Miguel responds.

The genius of this third season is that Dexter no longer determines all of the roles for himself. Rita’s pregnancy was a surprise—Dexter will become a father. By the close of this episode, Miguel has also cast him as his brother. Dexter is much more sympathetic than American Psycho’s Patrick Bateman, a yuppie who kills indiscriminately and still receives compliments, accolades and more and more money. The identity initially intended to distract people from the dark killing compulsion underneath is growing more appealing to Dexter’s new friends, his coworkers and himself. His capacity for surprise and growth is clear in his ever-widening eyes, his dismantling and destruction of some of his evil personae and his gradual leak of feeling to others. He’s becoming a much more sociable sociopath, and this character, episode and season of Dexter are not only worth overhearing or witnessing—they’re worth looking directly in the eye.

Check it out: Dexter on SHO

Dexter Trailer

Kath & Kim - Season One

Tacky like a Blue Plate Special
By Dana Zelman

It’s a shame to see incredibly talented people working on a lackluster show. It’s wasted talent, wasted time, and wasted money, and it’s really only good if you are actually wasted.

“Kath & Kim” (NBC Thursdays, 8:30), an adaptation of a formerly award-winning Australian comedy, is just such a shameful waste. Molly Shannon plays Kath Day, a 40-something divorcée trying to reassemble her romantic life with a horndog sandwich shop owner Phil Knight (John Michael Higgins, “Best in Show”). Her spoiled brat daughter Kim (Selma Blair) comes stomping back into Kath’s Florida suburban home after leaving Craig, her dedicated yet bewildered husband. Craig (Mikey Day) isn’t the “brightest bulb in the salon,” but loves Kim, and even said in his vows that he “is SO into Kim, it’s unbelievable.”

As a Molly Shannon fan I SO want to be into this show, it’s unbelievable — but unfortunately, I am not.

“Kath & Kim” is a botched attempt at trying to transform a critically acclaimed foreign show into a great American show. It has enormous comedy potential for US television, especially with SNL veteran Molly Shannon among their cast members, but somewhere in the transition from Australia to the United States that award-winning brand of comedy was lost.

For starters, this mother-daughter duo is supposed to be a caricature of tackiness, but I don’t feel it; their tack is too subtle and unconvincing. The hair isn’t big enough, the clothes not mismatched enough, and the nail polish not gaudy enough. Shannon and Blair don’t quite allow themselves to be as tacky and trashy as they are supposed to be — Jamie Pressly’s character Joy Turner on “My Name Is Earl” puts their attempts at tackiness to shame.

The character Kim shone in the Australian version, presenting a devious little brat whom the audience both loved and hated. Unfortunately Blair’s characterization of Kim amounts to little more than dull pouty faces. There is nothing genuinely interesting or funny (or even conniving) about her; all she does is pout, eat, or say something totally inappropriate and/or stupid. Kim is supposed to be the essence of brattiness and to make us laugh at her childish behavior, but her jokes are painfully obvious and her spoiledness is completely phoned in.

“Kath & Kim” shows why foreign entertainment really needs to be adapted for American comedy; just because Australians speak the same language as Americans doesn’t mean that they appreciate the same type of humor. There were a number of scenes in the pilot and second episode that were supposed to be funny, but I barely cracked smiles. “Kath & Kim” clearly has not yet figured out the formula for appealing to an American audience.

The show isn’t completely awful, though, and it did manage to eek out a few funny moments in the two episodes I watched. Although Blair can’t quite channel the original Kim, Shannon brings her signature awkwardness to the screen and plays a believable Kath — I loved the scene when she is rehearsing her laugh in the mirror before a date with Phil — but even she could do much better. Unleashing Shannon’s comedic talent would really spice up “Kath & Kim” and make the show more relevant to NBC viewers. I couldn’t help but think that one of the poodles from her SNL skit “Dog Show!” would have been a perfect accessory, opening up a whole new door for tackiness: dog clothes.

I was a cheerleader for “Kath & Kim” from the time I saw their ridiculous family portrait in promotional ads, but after seeing the show I must rest my metaphorical pom-poms. Not only does NBC’s “Kath & Kim” fail to live up to its Australian cousin, but also fails to live up to the comedy potential of its own cast. “Kath & Kim” is supposed to be over-the-top hilarious (and maybe still could be, with better jokes and a fun-sized dog for Molly Shannon), but this American adaptation barely makes it half way.

Check it out: Kath & Kim's official website

Kath & Kim Trailer