TV REVIEW - BEN ELTON: LIVE FROM PLANET EARTH EP 2

Ben Elton started out the second episode of Live from Planet Earth by apologizing for the first one. Youch. I always think it’s a better option, if your show has been hammered in the press, to just ignore that and do a better show the next time around. Actions speak louder than words and all that. The show rated shockingly last time, but I wanted to give it a chance, so I'm back for round two and hoping for improvement.

The main criticism of the show last week that Elton responded to was that there was a prevalence of knob and vagina jokes that bordered on the pathological.

That was not what I saw the main criticism to be. The main criticism of the show, from myself and all the other reviewers I read, was that Ben Elton: Live from Planet Earth wasn’t funny. Knob and vagina jokes are fine if they’re funny – but improving the show isn’t about making it less crude, it’s about making it wittier and less obvious.

THE PODCASTING COUCH EPISODE THREE

We're back! In this third episode of the podcasting couch, the team:

- reviews the Dwayne Johnson revenge thriller Faster

- talks about the best directors working in Hollywood today and the most expensive films ever made

- admits their Top Four Guilty Pleasure Films

Featuring Shannon Harvey from the West Australian, Simon Miraudo from quickflix.com.au, Laura Hewison and myself.

To listen, simply go to http://boxseattv.podbean.com/ or search 'the podcasting couch' in the itunes store!

FILM REVIEW - FASTER

Sorry, son. It's a starring role in the Tooth Fairy for you.

You know how people have guilty-pleasure songs, or guilty pleasure movies? I have a guilty pleasure actor – Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson. Part of it stems from me being a wrestling fan when I was younger but mostly I just find him an incredibly appealing screen presence. He’s not quite in the Patrick Swayze guilty-pleasure actor pantheon, but he’s getting there.

Wherein lies the appeal? In Johnson, you have a gregarious, cocky presence who owns the screen when given the chance to explore that side of him. (See The Other Guys, Get Smart, Welcome to the Jungle, Be Cool, Saturday Night Live). If you don’t allow that side to come out, you’re playing to his weaknesses – dramatic heft, introspection and so on. What you really need for a role like that is someone with far greater dramatic chops than muscles.

As such, in casting the sedimentary action star as a hard man on a mission who rarely speaks and has no sense of humour, the film completely wastes Dwayne Johnson. There’s a sentence I never thought I’d write.

TV REVIEW – BEN ELTON: LIVE FROM PLANET EARTH

OR AS IT MIGHT BE KNOWN FROM NOW ON – BEN ELTON, VAGINA JOKES FROM PLANET EARTH

(Channel Nine, Tuesday night, 9:30pm)

The first ten minutes of Ben Elton: Live from Planet Earth must have contained at least 2000 words, two comedy monologues and three character sketches. Between Elton’s fast-paced stand-up delivery and the sheer velocity of the first two sketches, it was like walking into comedy machine-gun fire.

(If I was a harsher critic, I would follow that sentence with ‘but more painful’. But I won’t.)

THE (POD) CASTING COUCH EPISODE TWO - CAST HARDER

The new episode of The (Pod) Casting Couch is up! Featuring Shannon Harvey, Simon Miraudo and Laura Hewison. In this episode we discuss True Grit, some of 2010’s biggest box-office hits and our Top 5 Child Actor performances of all time. Enjoy!
Go to http://www.boxseattv.podbean.com/ to download or simply search ‘The Podcasting Couch’ on iTunes.

FILM REVIEW - TRUE GRIT

The Coen brothers have made great movies. No Country for Old Men is well loved and an Oscar Winner for Best Picture. The Big Lebowski would go close to being the most popular cult film ever made and what is widely considered their best film, Fargo, is a classic. So the Coens are no strangers to greatness.

Their latest film, True Grit, fails to bridge that crucial gap between a good, capable, well-executed film and a great one.

TV REVIEW - #&@! MY DAD SAYS

Oh, you're in this cast too? Can you move that way a bit?

Based on a very funny Twitter feed by Justin Halpern, @#&! My Dad says is directed by sitcom legend James Burrows, stars TV legend William Shatner and ends up like the ugly bastard child of Two and a Half Men and Frasier.

It’s not worth your time, but it’s also not as bad as it could have been.