Aaron R. Davis

I read this week that Katherine Heigl said she wanted back on Grey’s Anatomy. Katherine Heigl stories in the gossip media are always hilarious to me for three basic reasons. 1) Katherine Heigl obviously (and wrongly) thinks she’s a very popular actress and person, 2) there are these bizzaro lady fans she has who troll the news feeds for any remotely negative thing anyone says about her so they can jump to a pointless and impassioned defense of this actress they’ve decided to make the symbol of how everyone obviously hates successful women who speak their mind (doubly hilarious if these people aren’t actually working for Heigl, which I’m not convinced they are), and 3) seriously, it’s Katherine Heigl, if she weren’t such a gigantic bitch, no one would even be talking about her in the gossip media, anyway.

I was also going to add that Katherine Heigl has a crippling lack of self-awareness, but she’s shown an amazing media-savvy for the last five or six years now. It’s just that her presupposition that people like her is the flaw in this savvy that brings down everything she wants to do.

Example 1: she gets herself cast in the movie Knocked Up after Anne Hathaway drops out. After years of crappy television and Lifetime movies, she has her first major hit playing an irredeemable, self-centered jerk, because you should play what you know for the sake of authenticity. It makes a lot of money, and it makes her look bankable to Hollywood, and they start building romantic comedies around her assuming that she’s now a movie star.

But then, she decides to go on record talking about how Knocked Up was a terrible movie and it made all women look like bitches. So while she’s smart about how being in a hit film can pay off in other aspects of her career, she’s also publicly an ingrate. That doesn’t make you friends in an industry that is surprisingly over-sensitive about what people think. You’d think money would help you get over it, but I don’t know personally. I’d love the opportunity to find out. I mean, if Katherine Heigl really hated it that much, she’s free to give me some of the cash she made of off degrading herself playing professional make-believe. Just a suggestion.

And so what if her movies are crap? I mean, 27 Dresses, Life as We Know It, The Ugly Truth … yeah, they’re all the same movie, but who cares? All actors and even directors do is make the same crappy movies over and over again. Makes Michael Bay millions. Gets Steven Spielberg called, for some reason, the greatest director of all time. Tom Cruise makes the same movie over and over again, and people go to see those. Hell, Christopher Guest has basically remade This Is Spinal Tap four times, and this supposedly makes him a comedy genius. Her movies make a respectable amount of money, and they probably don’t cost much to make, so more power to her. She found a job that pays a lot of money compared to the actual work that goes into it. (Let’s face it, it’s not like movie stars are teachers, or something where people aren’t compensated in relation to the actual, exhausting work that goes into the damn thing.)

Anyway. Katherine Heigl’s kind of a movie star. I’ll give you that. And she’s got this One for the Money that’s come out, which is going to be a failure, obviously, because the books were popular 20 years ago or something and no one goes to see a movie just because Katherine Heigl is in it (despite whatever you’re going to screech about in the comments section, Heigl defenders, because she was probably someone’s ninth choice to star in this), and there’s not going to be enough profit to justify a sequel (much less a franchise), and if it’s such a great movie with a bankable star in the lead, why is it being dumped in the last week of January when everyone’s going to see whatever got nominated for the Oscars instead? This leads me, roundabout, to my second example.

Example 2: she gets a regular role on Grey’s Anatomy, a show which is inexplicably popular and inexplicably still running. Whatever, not my cup of tea, doesn’t matter. It’s a big ensemble, so when she sees an opportunity to pull focus, she does. She goes out and protests during the writer’s strike when there are cameras present, so she looks like she really cares. When Isaiah Washington calls TR Knight a homophobic slur, Katherine Heigl is there telling the media that this really hurts KATHERINE HEIGL because tr knight is KATHERINE HEIGL’s friend and KATHERINE HEIGL really cares about gay people. She’s smart at recognizing opportunities for Katherine Heigl to make the world (or the few people in it who care) see what a kind and caring person Katherine Heigl is. An orphan baby has a curable heart defect? Make it known that KATHERINE HEIGL SELFLESSLY ADOPTED A SPECIAL NEEDS CHILD. I’m kind of amazed she didn’t decide to frame it as “adoption by Katherine Heigl heals the sick.” Someone at work is an asshole and says something nasty to a gay actor? Tell the media: KATHERINE HEIGL WON’T PUT UP WITH GAY-BASHING! Because what’s the point of being a good person if everyone in the world doesn’t see how good a person you are? It’s not like kindness is its own reward, or anything. Not when there are shitty romantic comedies that need leads and a race for the film quality bottom against Jennifer Aniston to be won!

But here’s the real flaw with it all: she’s still an ingrate. Because she comes out and very ungraciously says “Oh no, I know you Emmy voters think I’m incredibly talented, but don’t vote for me this year because the Grey’s Anatomy writers didn’t write anything good for me, and instead of talking to them or to producers about it, I think it’s much more polite and professional to whine publicly about it.” So when no one wanted her around anymore because she burned all of her bridges there, she just said she was too big for the show and was going to have a grand movie career, anyway.

It’s an astonishing character flaw in a person who is otherwise pretty smart about the way she handles her business. It’s seriously, just rubbernecking it online when people report on her, like looking at someone who has selective self-awareness. Someone who knows how to make her career work, but can’t stop herself from saying really stupid things about the people she works for because she thinks she’s a special little princess and has all of the love in the world. I mean, seriously: was she just hoping to be fired so she could move on, or did she genuinely think that Grey’s Anatomy writers were going to look at what she said and realize she was right and they should do better by her?

I think it shows a real self-awareness on her part that she realizes One for the Money is going to do about as much for her career as VI Warshawski did for Kathleen Turner’s. But it shows a real lack of said self-awareness for her to publicly opine that Grey’s Anatomy should have her back on when she’s done her best to make everyone there never want to see her face again.

Seriously, Katherine Heigl: what is your deal? You should really just stop talking to the media for a few years.

Aaron R. Davis lives in a cave at the bottom of the ocean with his eyes shut tight and his fingers in his ears. You can contact him at samuraifrog@yahoo.com

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Ned Bitters

This week’s inductee into the “Overrated Hall of Fame” is … watching sports in a bar.

It would be fun to talk about how overrated the Super Bowl is, but more often than not we are treated to one hell of a game. Ever since the great Cowboys and 49ers teams stopped making the game a yawnfest by the midway point of the second quarter, the Super Bowl is usually a great game that is decided in the last four minutes.

As for the commercials, even the lame ones turn out to be kind of fun, or at least worthy of some discussion at work on Hangover Monday.
Super Bowl parties might or might not be overrated, but being an unsociable, friendless misanthrope, I can’t speak on that. The invitations no longer come, and even if they did, I know I’d decline.

But what can be overrated, at least when talking Super Bowl, is watching the game in a bar. Okay, watching any big game in a bar is overrated, and there are myriad reasons for this.

I ended up in a bar for the entire Giants-49ers NFC Championship Game. The bar is owned by a former NFL great. The TV set-up surpasses that of any sports bar I’ve ever been in. No matter where you sit, you can watch half a dozen of the more than 30 hi-def flat-screens without having to twist your body or neck. Cool memorabilia covers the walls. The servers are fast and attentive. Bud Lites ran a whopping $2.50 for the entire game. The menu was expansive, the portions huge and the food not terrible.

And it sucked because I seemed to have missed half the game. Watching a big game, regardless of the sport, should be done at home and not in a bar.

Here’s why:

There are too many distractions. If your waitress or bartender is even remotely hot, every time you see her (or him, I guess), you get that rapist-stalker tunnel vision thing going, and instead of focusing on Eli Manning’s big third-and-12 pass, you’re eyes are locked into a set of sweet server ass cheeks that are hard enough to play quarters off of. I’m a lifelong Steelers fan, but I guarantee that I’d have missed all of James Harrison’s epic interception return had I been ordering mozzarella sticks and a beer from some poor man’s Jennifer Aniston at Super Sports Bar Emporiama.

Even if your server isn’t hot [see: Last Sunday night], you still have to deal with the constant interruptions to see if you’re “still working on that,” if you “need another round,” if everything is “all right” (you know, as if you’re going to go all gourmand on the poor girl’s ass and complain that the chicken wings are a tad undercooked and the nachos are a bit wanting in the cilantro department) or to see if you’d like the 12-layer Chocolate Thunder to go with that 8th beer.

Another problem is that the other patrons can sometimes be more compelling than the game itself, and that can be true even when the game is a good one. Despite the epic game transpiring on the 37 TVs last week, I was more involved in what was going on at the tables around us. To my left I had the creepy-looking couple with dyed red hair and too much eyeliner. Yes, that includes the male half of the couple. They looked like they had just come from a casting call for World War Z. They were not at all into the game, yet they stayed in a loud sports bar for over three hours. I couldn’t stop watching them. To my right were the strapping high school boy in the Class of 2012 letterman’s jacket and the hot older woman with him who might have been his mother but was more likely some milfish cougar he was banging. One more beer and I know we’d have gone over and asked just the hell their situation was.

And directly ahead of me was the NFL lineman who, after buying megashots for the skanky groupies at his table, made repeated trips to the outdoor patio so that he could autograph their sweet little ass cheeks. It’s hard to pay attention to an Alex Smith screen pass when you hear drunk, dirty blond chicks yelling, “For another hundred dollars you can sign my other ass cheek!” (And they say Terrell Owens is broke. Gee, hard to imagine how that kind of thing can happen after seeing a second-year lineman throwing around c-notes just so he can sign some ass.)

But it’s not just the visual distractions that take you attention away from the game. Having a set of working ears can prove bothersome, too, because every sports bar has those loudmouth know-nothings who can’t resist the urge to broadcast their sports ignorance to everyone within a 20-foot radius of their never-closed mouth. There’s the guy who yells that someone is lining up offsides on every third play. (No flag is ever thrown, making him more indignant with each missed call.) This same guy, if watching hockey, believes every pass is a missed offsides call. If baseball, why, every at-bat is a prime opportunity to go with the hit and run. (This holds true even when the bases are empty.)

And finally, we have the hardcore fans of one of the two teams playing. They sport $400 dollars worth of team garb and come armed with a big right hand ready to do some nonstop high-fiving. Four-yard run off tackle? High five! Good punt coverage? Up high, bro! 32 yard touchdown pass? The high five turns into a prolonged, shaking, clamplike grab, leaving you with shattered hand bones and a possibly separated shoulder.

So whether it’s the Super Bowl or just some first-round Stanley Cup playoff contest, it’s best to stay home to watch any big game. The beers are cheaper, the bathroom less crowded, the ass-signing cheaper (Mrs. Bitters charges just $25 per cheek) and the only idiot yelling offsides is you.

Ned Bitters is, in fact, overrated. You can contact him at teacherslounge@hobotrashcan.com.

Hobo Radio 215 - Don't let your fingers do the walking [ 1:08:51 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

It started out innocent enough. As the show begins this week, Joel Murphy talks about his awkward middle school years, sharing a story about attending his eighth grade dance with an attractive young lady. But it doesn’t take long for things to devolve into a lengthy discussion about strippers and strip clubs.

Lars shares the story of a recent outing that involved a prominent local businessman and the fabled “backroom” of a strip club. He also shares a shady, drunk experience on “The Block.” And Joel talks about his experiences a decade ago when he was a regular at a local strip club and the ladies knew him by name.

How did Joel do at the eighth grade dance? Does Mr. Tire like looking at naked ladies? Are strippers like the Yellow Pages? The answers to these questions and more are in this week’s podcast.

This week’s music:

• Intro – “Giddy Up” by Tahuna Breaks
• End – “Skullcrusher Mountain” by Jonathan Coulton

Hobo Radio is the official podcast of HoboTrashcan, brought to you by The Podcast Network.

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Joel Murphy

Charles Carmichael is a hard man to kill. On the show Chuck, The Ring, Daniel Shaw and Alexei Volkoff have all tried to take out the lovable spy. And in real life, the powers that be at NBC have almost canceled the show more times that you can count. Yet somehow, after five years and 91 episodes, it all comes to an end tonight.

When you stop to think about it, it’s pretty amazing we’ve made it to this point. After season two, every episode we’ve gotten has been a gift. It was only thanks to a grassroots campaign by dedicated fans who all went to Subway en mass to show their support that we got a season three. (Chuck himself, Zachary Levi even served sandwiches to patrons on that day.) The show has been on the brink of cancelation ever since. The writers have had to come up with a variety of midseason and season finales that could serve as a series finale if the show didn’t get renewed. (By some counts, the show has had five different “series” finales.)

But tonight the show gets what it deserves and it gets something most shows don’t, which is to go out on its own terms. This season, the writers went in knowing it would be their last and they were able to gear these final 13 episodes toward one final, definitive end. And they’ve come up with something great. Chuck’s final battle, which will play out in a two-hour finale tonight, is against the love of his life Sarah Walker, who has the Intersect in her head and no recollection of her relationship with her husband.

While I’m excited to see how it all plays out tonight, I can definitely say the show will be missed. I’ve written about the show at length over the years during various “Save Chuck campaigns” and also I’ve had the good fortune to interview cast members Mark Christopher Lawrence (Big Mike), Scott Krinsky (Lester) and Bonita Friedericy (General Diane Beckman). I’ve loved the show’s quirky blend of comedy and action and I’ve always thought it had a surprising amount of heart in an era when television often seems quite cynical and bleak.

The show has always felt to me like a throwback to a long gone era of television. It feels one of those campy shows from the 70s or 80s where an everyman is given some type of gift (like an alien supersuit, a talking car or six-million dollars worth of bionic implants). But what I’ve enjoyed most is that while the show has always been a bit silly and ridiculous, it has also built this complex mythology that has unfolded over the past five seasons, revealing why Chuck Bartowski was chosen to have the Intersect in his head and what the powerful database can do if it ends up inside the wrong person.

What I’ve also really loved seeing is the evolution of Sarah Walker and how it has paralleled Chuck’s in this really fascinating way. While Chuck’s journey has been from compassionate, brilliant slacker to a formidable spy (who now can get by on his own without the Intersect as a crutch), Sarah has gone from a detached, unstoppable spy to someone who relies on and empathizes with those she cares about. Her decision to retire from active field duty so she can raise a family with her husband doesn’t seem like a cop out, it’s an ending this show has earned five years in.

I’ve also enjoyed the expanded cast of characters they’ve given us. Sarah is a great character in her own right, but watching her and Chuck together has been a joy (and I’m not someone who generally enjoys “Will they or won’t they?” relationships on shows.) Seeing Adam Baldwin, who I loved so much as Jayne Cobb, sink his teeth into a role as juicy as John Casey has been a lot of fun too. (He can convey so much with one simple growl.) Morgan Grimes, who was a bit of a problematic character early on in the show, has evolved into a really great sidekick and has taken over the role Bartowski had early on of “guy in way over his head in the spy world.” Eli and Awesome are both such perfect supporting characters. Jeff and Lester have provided some fantastic comedic moments, though they are best utilized in small doses. And Diane Beckman’s personal life has proven to be a fertile ground for comedy.

I’ve also enjoyed the high profile guest stars they’ve been able to snag. My Scott Bakula man-crush knowns no bounds thanks to his role on Quantum Leap. Having him play Chuck’s dad is such perfect casting. I honestly can’t think of anyone else who would have been a better fit. Having Linda Hamilton as his mom turned out to be wonderful casting as well. And the role of Alexei Volkoff became one of my favorite things Timothy Dalton has ever done and I’m a big fan of his work.

So thanks so much to the cast and crew for bringing these characters to life. Thanks so much to the writers for building the complex mythology of this show and giving us all moments like the Jeffster “Mr. Roboto” montage, Chuck outmaneuvering Volkoff in their showdown inside the cabin and everything involving the Giant Blonde She-Male of Thailand. And finally, thanks to NBC for letting this show go out on its own terms. (Now do the same thing for Community.)

It’s been a great five years. And while I will definitely miss this show, I’m happy that they have given us 91 episodes of this quirky, fun little show. It will certainly live on in my DVD collection for years to come.

Joel Murphy is the creator of HoboTrashcan, which is probably why he has his own column. He loves pugs, hates Jimmy Fallon and has an irrational fear of robots. You can contact him at murphyslaw@hobotrashcan.com.

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Man on a Ledge Release Date: January 27, 2012 Director: Asger Leth Writer: Pablo F. Fenjves Stars: Sam Worthington, Elizabeth Banks and Jamie Bell MPAA Rating: PG-13 HoboTrashcan’s Rating:

Man on a Ledge is by no means a good movie. It is, however, a fairly entertaining one.

Borrowing heavily from the 1998 Samuel L. Jackson movie The Negotiator, the film stars Sam Worthington as Nick Cassidy, a police officer facing a 25-year jail sentence for a crime he didn’t commit. However, instead of taking a room full of people hostage, Cassidy climbs out onto the ledge of the 21st floor of a hotel and threatens to jump off. Playing the Kevin Spacey role of the police negotiator who believes the wronged cop’s story and decides to help him is Elizabeth Banks as Lydia Mercer. Cassidy requests Mercer by name, knowing that she is haunted by a case one month earlier in which she failed to talk a police officer down from a bridge.

Cassidy was convicted of stealing a $40 million diamond from ruthless businessman David Englander (Ed Harris). Nick uses his ledge stunt as a distraction to draw attention to himself while his brother Joey (Jamie Bell) and his brother’s girlfriend Angie (Genesis Rodriguez) break into Englander’s vault to find the diamond, which Cassidy believes never actually left the premises.

By adding the diamond heist element and by giving us a flashback to Nick’s prison escape, the film finds ways to keep the action moving while Nick is perched up on the ledge. Not that the scenes on the ledge are boring. Director Asger Leth chose to put Worthington and Banks on the actual 21st story ledge of a New York City hotel, which undoubtedly added an extra level of realism to the performance and gave Leth the ability to get some really captivating shots. Any of you with a fear of heights will definitely get that queasy feeling in the pit of your stomach several times throughout the film.

The performances are mostly solid too, which helps sell the film. Worthington and Banks have a good chemistry and their scenes together work well. Harris unfortunately isn’t asked to do very much, but he makes the most of the scenes he’s in by chewing just the right amount of scenery. Titus Welliver, Anthony Mackie and Edward Burns are all really enjoyable in their supporting roles. The only two weak links are Bell and Rodriguez, who give underwhelming performances. (Leth does his best to distract you from this by having Rodriguez show off as much cleavage as humanly possible in all of their scenes together.)

The story is fairly formulaic and every “surprise” twist is easy to spot a mile away. Still, it all works well enough until the end. The climax of the film, however, is a complete mess. The story falls apart and no matter how much suspension of disbelief you are willing to apply, the films gives you an ending that is in no way believable. Even overlooking the completely unrealistic action movie hijinks that ensue in the end, the resolution itself makes little sense when you stop for even one second to think about it.

The film also has two flaws in its design that it struggles to overcome. First, since Cassidy is an escaped convict and has no hostages, the police don’t really have a compelling reason to let him stay out on the ledge threatening to jump off and creating a huge spectacle. The film is fairly successful in handling this problem in two ways. Number one, Cassidy checks into the hotel under a fake name and wipes down his room for prints, so it takes a while to positively ID him. And two, once the police know who he is, Nick has Mercer on his side keeping the tactical unit from swarming in and forcibly removing him from the ledge.

Unfortunately, the film never really finds a way to address the second problem, which is Nick’s overall plan. Cassidy has his brother break into Englander’s vault to find the diamond, proving Englander had possession of it all along. But why would anyone be convinced that Cassidy and his brother didn’t simply plant the diamond in Englander’s vault in order to clear Nick’s name? A jury didn’t believe his story once, so why would anyone believe him now? The film never really addresses this. The most frustrating thing is that there are actually several outs they could have used to overcome this problem, but writer Pablo F. Fenjves failed to utilize any of them.

Problematic writing aside, the film is paced well enough that it never really overstays its welcome. While the story ends up being quite ridiculous, it is never boring. If you are looking for a mindless January action film, you probably won’t be disappointed. Though with a few added tweaks to the story, this one could have been a lot better.

Written by Joel Murphy. If you enjoy his reviews, he also writes a weekly pop culture column called Murphy’s Law, which you can find here. You can contact Joel at murphyslaw@hobotrashcan.com.