The Things I Do For "You People": A Review Of The Craptastic Liz & Dick

Oh god, I'm Ann Romney!

No, I'm just a glutton for punishment because I actually watched ::::gulp:::: Liz & Dick, that spectacularly craptastic Lifetime movie wherein Lindsay Lohan plays Elizabeth Taylor. It premiered Sunday night while Dexter and Homeland were recording, so I set the DVR to record the 11PM showing. Well, Monday came around and, lo and behold, there was no Liz & Dick but some other Lifetime fiasco. I thought the universe was saving me, but, yes, glutton that I am, I recorded it Monday night.

Here's what I thought, bullet-point style--which suits the review just fine because there were many times I wanted to put a bullet in my TV set while this mess aired:

• WTF is Theresa Russell doing in this mess? I've always liked her quirky acting, and she's always made some avant-garde choices in films, but I think she just needed a paycheck. How else do we explain why she's here?
• Lindsay Lohan. Where to begin? First off, she sounds as much like Liz Taylor as I do--actually, I think I'm a better Liz. Her face--Lohan's, not Liz's--has that alcohol-bloat going on even before Taylor starts drinking incessantly in the film.
• I felt like I was watching a little girl playing dress-up because Lohan could never seem to fill Taylor's shoes, roles, or life. The only resemblance to Taylor was the violet eyes.
• It was a typical cheesy Lifetime production, with some really bad backdrops so we would think we're in Rome, or Gstaad, or Puerta Vallarta, or, well, anywhere other than a soundstage in Canada.
• When she's drunk, and swallowing fistfuls of pills, I felt we were watching The Lindsay Lohan Story and not Liz Taylor.
• Grant Bowler was fine as Richard Burton, though he did peak my interest when he removed his shirt.
• The semi-English accent that Taylor had, comes and goes in the Lohan performance, as though she'd forgotten where she was and what she was doing.
• Lohan's greatest acting feats were drinking, smoking and rolling her eyes.
• Oddly enough, though Taylor and Burton met on Cleopatra, the Lindsay Lohan Liz wore the Egyptian cat-eye make-up almost all the way through the film.
• Liz got fat. Lindsay plays Liz getting fat except Lindsay doesn't even get fat--through make-up or prosthetics. A scene where she as Taylor, bemoans being called Cleo-Fatra, Lindsay is as thin as a rail.
• One of the biggest travesties and guffaws, was actually having Lindsay film scenes from Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? She was just awful, and where Liz Taylor took to making herself look drunk and disorderly and unkempt, Lindsay's "scene" kept her in Laura Petrie Capri pants and tousled hair.
• The producers seemed to think that if they slapped a turban on Lohan--and they slapped quite a few on her--she'd seem more like Taylor. All I could think was, Lipstick on a pig.....
• One of the greatest guffaws of the film was when Lohan, as Liz, is told that Burton has died. Cue eye roll and dead faint. Cue Bad Acting Police.

What have we learned:

We learned that Lindsay's lost the promise she displayed as a younger actress. Sure, in The Parent Trap she made me long for Haylie Mills, while in Freaky Friday she made me wish for Jodie Foster, and in Herbie The Love Bug, she made me want for Dean Jones, but she had promise in Mean Girls. 

That's all gone now. She's stiff as an actress, and the scenes with Lohan are often so short--vignettes really--that you wonder if it was done that way because Lohan  couldn't sustain a scene longer than two minutes.

We learned Lifetime makes crap movies and doesn’t have the budget of an access cable channel. It was cheese from costumes to backdrops to locations sights; apparently standing in front of a beige building with a Vespa in the background, signals the fact that we're in Italy.

We learned that I’ll sit through two hours of crap, not craptastic, TV just for this blog.

Oy!

Liz & Dick: That Sure-To-Be-Craptastic Lifetime Movie Airs TONIGHT!!!!

It seemed as though Elizabeth Taylor had just drawn her last breath when Lifetime announced they'd be doing a TV movie based on her relationship--and marriages--to Richard Burton. It sounded kinda good, given that Taylor was such an icon for so many decades. But then Lifetime stepped in it when they announced that jewel thief, kidnapper, drug addict, alcohol, party girl, car crashing, vah-jay-jay baring, can't pay her hotel bills, bum, Lindsay Lohan would be playing Dame Elizabeth.

And that movie--Liz & Dick--airs tonight, and the reviews are in:

• Tim Goodman, of The Hollywood Reporter says "don't miss Liz & Dick," but only because it "is spectacularly bad" and a "classic of unintentional hilarity." Goodman says the star is "woeful as Taylor from start to finish.....At one point, Lohan has to shout, 'I won’t live without you!' and then run down a hall. It’s like a high school play....By the time Lohan is playing mid-’80s Taylor and it looks like a lost Saturday Night Live skit, your body may be cramped by convulsions."
• Alessandra Stanley in the New York Times says, “There are moments in Liz & Dick when Lindsay Lohan looks a lot like Elizabeth Taylor. There are others in which she looks like Elizabeth Taylor doing a Saturday Night Live impersonation of Lindsay Lohan." But Stanley gives Lohan some props, I guess, saying Lindsay isn't "ridiculous" in the role, but that "she is oddly passive, sleepwalking through scenes that call for passion and caprice."

There's a headline: Lindsay Lohan ISN'T Ridiculous in Liz & Dick!

• Ken Tucker of Entertainment Weekly's gave the film a C- rating and describing it variously as "very peculiar," "dinky" and "tin-eared." About the star's performance, Tucker says that a "wall goes up between the actress and us. Is it years of ducking tabloid photographers that have frozen her face into a blank stare?" Instead of the real Taylor's "high-register, girlish" voice, Tucker says Lohan provides line readings in "the raspy rattle familiar to anyone who has seen [her] on TMZ....No effort seems to have gone into Lohan's preparation other than tinting her eyes Liz-violet."
• Willa Paskin, from Salon, says "there is nothing 'unintentional'" about the hilarious awfulness of the movie, pointing out that by its very "Lifetime movie" nature, the film is meant to be a subpar slice of overcooked melodrama. Paskin says the framing device in which the two stars sit in director's chairs talking directly to the camera actually serves Lohan well: "The destruction Lohan has wreaked on her own voice -- it’s the come-hither, smoky growl of an equally jaded, but much older woman -- works perfectly here. And with no blocking or costumes or screeching to worry about, she’s almost decent." 

Another headline: Lindsay Lohan Is "Almost Decent" In Liz & Dick!

• Maureen Ryan of Huffpost offers up a list of things a Taylor-Burton biopic should do: "1. It should establish Burton and Taylor as charismatic, complex people.  2. It should make the electricity of their relationship apparent.  3. It should be a treat for the eyes." Needless to say, Liz & Dick " does absolutely none of these things....Exploitation really is the name of the game here," Ryan writes, noting that "the whole point of casting Lohan was to draft off her status as a formerly promising actress who some time ago became a tabloid fodder thanks to her career-destroying antics." The movie is "badly paced, cheap-looking and encrusted with a tinkly, preposterous soundtrack that is designed to make viewers go insane."

And yet another headline: Watching Liz & Dick Causes Insanity!!

• Ryan also offers rules for a drinking game: "Take a drink every time you think a set looks cheesy; take a drink every time you think of better casting for the leads; take a drink every time you think you've spotted Bowler wondering if his check cleared; take a drink every time you spot Creed from The Office, because WTF?"
• Matt Roush of TV Guide asks that age old question, "What unbecomes a legend most?" before nominating Liz & Dick for the "TV Turkey Hall of Fame." It's "an epic of stunningly cynical and pathetic miscasting, a TV movie so laughably inept it doesn't deserve to be on a first-name basis with anything resembling humanity."
• But it's not all bad news for Original Recipe Lohan™; Linda Stasi of that bastion of intellectual journalism, the New York Post, gives the movie three stars out of four, saying Lohan "is so often believable you might think you're seeing the real thing....There are so many things in this movie that are just so damned juicy," Stasi notes," that it is sure is [sic] more fun to watch than the exploits of today's orchestrated star pairings."
• Brian Lowry, from Variety, says the movie has "secret weapon" in Grant Bowler, who "classes up the movie in much the way Burton's classically trained Shakespearean actor played off Taylor's lifelong movie star." The famous couple "engage in epic fights, spend money like drunken sailors, take refuge from the prying press by living on a yacht, and struggle through Burton's bouts of melancholy over failing to win Oscars." Lowry ends up saying that the movie may be "wobbly" at points, but that it "ultimately stands on its own."

Which the audience won't be able to do if they play any sort of drinking game while watching. I, of course, will struggle to remain sober through the insanity that is Liz & Dick!

It premieres on Lifetime tonight at 9 p.m.

Be there, or not. Meh.

via THR

The Emmy A-wk-wards

I watched the Emmy's last night because I'm a slut for awards shows. I was, however, a bit of a bored slut, and allow me to bullet-point it for you:

• Jane Lynch. Love her. A Fabulous gay. Not, however a fabulous host for an awards show. Funny bits, but not really funny.
• The opening musical number, where TV actors sang and danced in a pre-recorded skit was slightly reminiscent of last year when TV actors sang and danced in a pre-recorded skit.
• The Emmytones? Again. Not funny. Kind of creepy and sad, actually.
• Julie Bowen and Ty Burrell win Outstanding Supporting Actors for Modern Family. Loved that. And then Michael Alan Spiller wins Outstanding Directing for Modern Family. Loved that he looked like a Jon Hamm knock-off because I loves me some Hamm. And loved it again when Steve Levitan and Jeffrey Richman win for Outstanding Writing for Modern Family.
• Freaked out a little when Jane Lynch creeps into my head and steals my Modern Family Awards line.
• Ricky Gervais is still riding that Ooooh I was a naughty naughty host at last year's Golden Globes. Move on, Ricky. The rest of us have. Well, except for you and the Emmy producers.
• Charlie Sheen, doing his mea culpa, and looking like he'd been rode hard and put away wet while doing so, awards Jim Parsons Outstanding Actor in a Comedy for The Big Bang Theory, which I've never seen, and don't care to see, no matter how many people say it's funny.
• First truly funny moment comes when Amy Poehler is announced as a nominee for Outstanding Actress in a Comedy and marches to the stage. That sets up the joke as all the other actresses in that category join her, and when Mike and Molly's Melissa McCarthy is named the winner, they tiara her and rose her and crown her, I guess, queen. Still, a half hour in and this was the first funny bit?
• Laura Linney was robbed. just sayin'.
• Outstanding Reality Series again goes to The Amazing Race.
• Outstanding Writing for a Variety/Musical/Comedy goes to the Daily Show.
• Then there was something called The Lonely Island and a musical number which put the 'wk' in award; as in awkward. Michael Bolton? Seriously?
• Outstanding Directing of a Musical/Variety/Comedy goes to Don Roy King for the Justin Timberlake/Lady Gaga SNL. Pre-dick-in-a-box-table.
• Outstanding Musical/Variety/Comedy winner is The Daily Show, for the ninth consecutive year. Really? There has been no better mu-var-com in the last nine years?
• Jon Cryer and Ashton Kutcher lame joke us and present the Outstanding Writing for a Drama to Jason Katims for Friday Night Lights.
• Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama goes to Margo Martindale for Justified, which stars the seriously sexy Timothy Olyphant.
• Outstanding Director for a Drama goes to Martin Scorsese because Emmy always awards film folk when they stoop to TV.
• Jason O'Mara...seriously hot and Irish....presents Outstanding Supporting Actor ina Drama to Peter Dinklage for Game of Thrones. I haven't seen that, but loved The Dinklage in the original British-Far-Funnier-Than-The-American version of Death At A Funeral.
• The Emmy's wasted my Husband-In-My-Head, Anderson Cooper, in some lame Jersey Shore mess, but then he introduced Katie Holmes and some guy. Katie. WTF happened to her face? She talks out the side of her mouth like she spends most of her time trying to say Help me that way. Just run, Katie. Nicole got away and she's happy now.
• Outstanding Actress in a Drama went to Julianna Margulies, who has the gayest looking husband ever. I ain't sayin' he's gay, I'm just sayin' that if he was, I would not fall outta my chair at the news.
• A retread group of Charlie's Angels give hunky Kyle Chandler the award for Outstanding Actor in a  Drama for Friday Night Lights. Kyle needs a new show because he's dee-lish.
• Downton Abby, one of my favorite shows from last year, wins Julian Fellowes an Outstanding Writing for a Movie/Miniseries/Drama Special award, and then wins Maggie Smith an Outstanding Actress for a Movie/Miniseries/Drama Special award, and then Bryan Percival wins the Outstanding Directing for a Movie/Miniseries/Drama Special award, and finally it wins an award as the Outstanding Writing for a Movie/Miniseries/Drama Special. Very well deserved.
• Barry Pepper gets the award for best use of fake teeth for playing Robert Kennedy in The Kennedy's, which was produced by the History Channel, then dropped by the History Channel, and ultimately shown at check-out lines at your local WalMart and Target stores.
• David Boreanaz looks like the Original Darrin from the Original Bewitched. Google them and see for yourself.
• Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Movie/Miniseries/Drama Special goes to Guy Pearce for Mildred Pierce and he thanks Kate Winslet for letting him schtup her on-camera. And then, of course, because, well, because she's brilliant and a film actress, Kate Winslet wins Outstanding Actress for a Movie/Miniseries/Drama Special for Mildred Pierce.
• And finally, Modern Family is crowned the funniest show EVER...or at least in the last year.
• Last, but not least, the very best thing about the show? It lasted just a hair shy of three hours. Three hours I won't ever get back, but just three hours.

What did you think, if you could stand it long enough to watch all of it?

Lifetime: Maybe Not So Gay After All

The old joke is Lifetime: Television for women....and gay men.

Maybe so, but not televison for gay characters apparently.

This week, Lifetime aired The 19th Wife, a TV movie about a man named Jordan, who was excommunicated from the Mormon Church, and his efforts to help his mother, a member of a polygamous sect, accused of killing her husband.

The movie is based on a novel by David Ebershoff, but Lifetime took a little liberty with the story: in the book, Jordan is gay, and part of the novel deals with his relationship with another man. It seems that Lifetime cured Jordan of "The Gay" and made him straight.

David Ebershoof: "I had no role in the adaptation. A few weeks before filming began I learned that Jordan had been rewritten as straight. I was told that this was a network decision. Obviously I was offended, disappointed, and baffled. I hope that the movie sends people to the book so that they can meet my Jordan, along with his boyfriend, Tom, and their dogs, Elektra and Joey."

Lifetime paints the change as no big deal: "There was a lot changed from the book and that was one of the things."

Books are changed all the time from the page to the screen, but what was the point here? And why from a network that recently received a "good" rating in GLAAD's Network Responsibility Index, and also aired the highly-praised, Prayers for Bobby, also based on a book, about how a religious woman's anti-gay beliefs drove her gay son to suicide.

How can the LGBT community move ahead towards acceptance when, in adaptations of books to film or stage, we are magically converted to heterosexuality?

We're here.

We're queer.

We're in the books.

Put us on TV!

The Last Templar

There was this book, The Last Templar by Raymond Khoury, that I bought for Carlos a Christmas or two ago. It's along the lines of The DaVinci Code--DaVinci Code Light--but it moved along at a good speed, and told a rather interesting story about whether or not Jesus was a mortal man or the Son of God. I won't spoil it here for you.

Imagine our surprise then, when we saw a promo for a TV movie based on the book. The clip showed the horses busting into the museum; the treks across the desert; the shipwrecks; the decoder. Looked good, right?

We decided to watch it Sunday night.

Train.
Wreck.

They cast Mira Sorvino as the lead character; a very studious archaeologist, pretty but plain. Mira Sorvino? Really, NBC? Really? Sorvino couldn't act her way out of a soap bubble. She played the archaeologist like she was a blow-up doll, more concerned about her Monolo Blahniks than anything else. It was like Archeology Barbie. Boobs; legs; winks; smirks.

She could give Kate Winslet a run for her money. If Kate Winslet were to stop acting this very minute and become a vacuous nonentity.

And the lead actor, the love interest, the gruff FBI agent on the trail of the stolen icons? Scott Foley. Who? Exactly. His claim to fame is that he was the first Mister Jennifer Garner. Now, don't get me wrong, he's cute. Nice dimples. But as a gruff, Catholic, faith-obsessed FBI man? Um.....no.

Still, it started off right. Four men, dressed as the Knights Templar, ride up Fifth Avenue and into the Metropolitan, where they wreak havoc by destroying glass cases filled with treasures of the Vatican, trying to get their hands on the decoder, so they could find out where the Knights buried the treasure they snuck out of Jerusalem oh so many years ago. The scene played out just like the book, until.....and seriously....this happened.

Miro Sorvino, in some flowy, chiffony-looking micro-mini and the afore-mentioned Manolo's--because that's how archaeologists dress--chased the Knights out of the museum with something that looked like a jousting sword. By herself, She's running through the museum in her Red Carpet finery shouting 'Come back!' and 'Hey!' and 'That's not yours!'

Then.....seriously.....she runs out of the museum and steals a policeman's horse, and leaps onto it and chases one of the Knights into Central Park where they joust and she captures him.

And that was the first ten minutes.

I could not look away.

I could not turn the channel.

I showed up last night to watch part two.

My name is Bob.
And I'm a Train-Wreck-o-holic.

Hi Bob!

Prayers For Bobby

from Lifetime....television for women....and gay men. I've always loved that joke.
But now Lifetime has stepped it up from the usual woman-in-peril-cheating-murdering-husband movies, to Prayers for Bobby, airing Saturday, January 24 at 9 pm, with encores on Sunday, January 25 at 8 pm and Tuesday, January 27 at 9 pm et/pt.

It's the story of a young man who killed himself because his parents would not accept him as gay.

Sure, it's TV; it's Lifetime. But this story is all too frequent, even in these days when we're all supposed to be so enlightened. Many gay men and women, young like Bobby Griffith, or even older, are pushed into so much shame about who they are, that they believe the only way out is suicide.

This story wounds me. Think of all that Bobby Griffith could have been if he'd lived; all he might have done. But we'll never know the last chapter to that story because the book was cut short. think of all the lives of gay men and women that were cut short through murder or suicide, and all that those lives might have meant to the rest of us.

You can say being gay is a choice. It's not.
You can say being gay is a lifestyle. It isn't.
You can say being gay is a persuasion. I wasn't 'persuaded.'
You can say it's a preference. It isn't.

But no matter what you think of being gay, no one....no one...should have to die because of it.
No one should have to die simply because they're gay.
_____________________________________

Here is an excerpt from the book, Prayers for Bobby:

Bobby was choking on his secret. He needed desperately to confide in someone. The diary was not enough. It helped, but he longed to unburden himself to another human, someone who could help him sort out the powder keg of feelings imploding within. But who? He couldn't tell his parents, certainly not his mother. He had no friends he trusted enough. Joy? Ed?

He turned to Ed, setting off a chain of events that might have made him wish he had kept his secret to himself and his diary.

Ed Griffith turned seventeen on a rainy day in late April 1979. He was a junior in high school, an accomplished athlete with dreams of being a professional baseball player. Ed was a strapping, muscular young man, with sandy hair and a square, chiseled chin. He was a straight shooter free of guile or subterfuge. He believed deeply in the Gospel and the teachings of his church. For the longest time as a child he related being a Christian to being a soldier. He loved war movies, toy soldiers, playing army. Yet behind his macho aspect there was a caring, nonjudgmental person.

Perhaps it was those traits that led Bobby to choose his brother as the person to whom he would unburden himself one warm spring afternoon in May. The two lounged near the blooming apricot tree in the family's backyard. Bobby, a month away from turning sixteen, seemed very nervous. Finally, he said, "There is something awful I have to tell you. You are going to really hate me and never want to talk to me again."
Ed's heart fluttered with a rush of worry. He imagined everything from criminal activity to drugs. He responded, "Bobby, it doesn't matter what it is. I'm never going to stop loving you.
It was true. They had grown up together, sharing the same small bedroom. They had had many a long heart-to-heart through the years. They were different, true, and there were times they had been jerks to each other. But their love for one another was solid. What's more, Bobby trusted Ed.

Bobby said in a choked voice, "I'm gay."

Ed breathed a momentary sigh of relief. It could have been worse. He said, "Bobby, how do you know this?"

"I've known for a long time," Bobby answered.

"But how can you be sure?"

"I'm sure, Ed. Believe me, I'm sure." Bobby hung his head as if in pain. They talked some more, and Ed could see that Bobby considered his gayness to be a terrible defect.

Ed asked, "Are you going to tell Mom and Dad, or see a counselor?"

Bobby flared, "No! I want you to promise you won't tell anyone, especially Mom and Dad!"

Reluctantly, he said, "Okay, okay, I promise."

Nothing in life had prepared Ed for such a burden. Homosexuality. It was like something from another planet. He had seen it on television. And he'd heard different religious people say it was a choice and a sinful one at that. He preoccupied himself with other things and tried to convince himself that this crisis would work itself out. He had a new girlfriend, and it was baseball season. There was lots to distract him from such an unpleasant disclosure. Ed collaborated with nervous silence in keeping Bobby's secret.