TV: Off or On?

Wait, Obama on TV 5 times this week? Haha, if that was Bush there would a huge outcry " were at war and that a-hole Bush is on Letterman" ,,,lol, hypocrites.

Was very disappointed with the first new season episode of "Curb Your Enthusiasm." Guess I don't find cancer a laughing matter.

I DID like the show that followed it, "Bored to Death." Great concept and the lead man is easy on the eyes.

MM: "Curb Your Enthusiasm" was not not making light of cancer, but rather showing the humor of Larry David's character always finding himself involved with annoying people and/or annoying situations. I think if all comedy were always straight-and-narrow-rated-G-for-everyone, it would be a sad life to live. I also think Family Guy is very funny.

Curb Your Enthusiasm was hysterical. The opening scene is my life with my husband.

Mrs. Martta, you find Jason Schwartzman attractive? I'm disappointed.

He seemed to me in that dopey movie-length music video about Marie Antoinette to have all the presence of a doorstop. Albeit a hairy doorstop. Also, as that movie showed, he's profoundly bow-legged. (And yet has never made a western.) He's kind of like a toned-down version of Jake Gyllenhaal (which already is not saying much in terms of testosterone-laden screen presence).

On September 27 all will be well in TV land. It's the date of the 'Dexter' season premiere.

LOL...Cathar, you comments truly made me laugh out loud. I guess I like quirky looks. I never really went for the pretty-boy, typical leading man types (Brad Pitt) unless there's some substance there (like James Franco or the late James Dean). I dunno, there's something about JS that just struck me. For the record, I also find Crispin Glover atractive. :-)

(cathar, you dare diss Marie Antoinette?... We'll have to disagree on that one because I LOVE me some Sophia Coppola and will watch anything she makes... Anything. Her films take me places... Make me sing and smile... the prof is flying high, thinking and imagining... And that Schwartzman kid is UGLY... Though that thing on his face is kinda cute.)

Cathar is jealous! The green monster arises - our divine Mrs. M is smitten with someone else??!! pah!
LOL

The only TV I plan on watching this fall is Giants games.

I don't know why, but for the last couple of years I've not felt like I was missing out on anything by not turning on the TV.

(Which is strange, because I used to plan my week around making sure I was home for "Buffy" and "South Park".)

Our TVs (all 347 of them that FiOs tries to bill us for each month) are on MUTE or OFF until after this frikkin' election season. Last evening, one station ran the exact same Corzine ad three times in a row -- with nothing in between. Not even an aging Flying Nun touting an anti-ossification medication. Or the little pipe-stem families all worried about peeing in their brass pants. Or the same six guys who can't stop peeing in their pants (or anywhere else for that matter) and who are never seen with female company because the drug they are boosting can cause pregnant women to give birth to little green six-fingered gremlins.

Argh! What hath the Mad Men wrought?

TV is useless. We can do without it.

you know herb, I don't think the outcry was just because Bush appeared on TV during the war, it was more the starting of a war under knowingly false pretenses, torturing prisoners, keeping soldiers on extended tours of duty without proper equipment, and not taking care of them when they returned, which made at least me personaly find his appearances anywhere hard to stomach.

That Don Draper is just dreamy.

If it weren't for HBO GNM, I'd be on the same page as you.

Unfortunately theTrueblood season is over, but Larry David is here right in time to lift my spirits. After I discarded the mental image of Jeff Green having sex, I really enjoyed this episode of CYE. Any exchange between Larry and Wanda or Larry and Funkhouser is absolutely hilarious.

I think Jason Schwartzman is pretty cute!

If I'm not mistaken, Mrs. Martta, Kaity and the good prof, Jason Schwartzman's mummy is Talia (Coppola) Shire. Thus his casting is a family affair in the movies of Sofia (who once gave, I think, the single worst performance and example of parental indulgence in a major motion picture in her own dada's movie). We've really got to stop letting these Coppolas continue to breed so recklessly.

In contrast, prof, two directors whom I've long admired, Pasolini and Joseph Losey (who all his career made "European-seeming" movies despite his humble roots in both WIsconsin and the American studio system) both sadly died without issue.

And in general on today's young male actors, I stand with the proudly dyspeptic Joe Eszterhas, screenwriter extraordinaire. They're generally lacking in the sort of masculinity which guys like Grant, Peck, Holden and even someone like Van Heflin exuded as a matter of course. It is only black male actors, I think, who act gratifyingly much to the contrary. But their white counterparts are usually just wimps, and to give one a gun or a sword in an action movie is akin to handling a child a rattle.

Reckless breeding is an American tradition!!

But you hit the nail with the lack of masculinity in many actors. Though Danny Day Lewis (I know him and can call him Danny, the rest of yous can't...) in There Will Be Blood was a nice change.

Hell, I'd settle for a 70's Burt Reynolds, Jack Nickolson type of man.

However, I would add many Black actors to this list as none can hold a candle to the raw masculinity of a Fred Williamson.

Perhaps it's just the 70's hairy chest and bushy mustache that I like.......

Cathar and Prof sound much like my 85 year old mother in law. Let's see, there's George Clooney, Hugh Laurie, Harrison Ford, Samuel L. Jackson, Javier Bardem and Clint Eastwood still has fire.

And I still think Don Draper is dreamy.

And I still think Don Draper is dreamy.

Second that!

Jerseygurl, you basically named male actors 50 and up. Which is fine, But I was referring to the younger crop of androgynous wimps, who unfortunately will probably be with us mucb longer than George Clooney has left.

As for Jon Hamm, yes, he's fine so far in one role. But he almost seems defined by his smoking there, and as someone who was around at the time summoned up by "Mad Men," I honestly don't recall THAT much smoking. Even then, many showed good sense.

Prof, I too admire Fred Williamson, whom I've always called "The Hammer." So much so that I once attended a 9AM premiere showing of his great directorial opus "Mr. Mean" so that he could personally hand me a movie promo t-shirt in the lobby of the 42nd street grindhouse immediately afterward.

But I think the actor you qualify to call "Danny" (I met his father once but the Commie Stalinist rat never told me to call him "Cecil" or even "CD") can be a bit much a lot of the time. "The Ballad of...," for example, I'm sure he only did that one to shut his wife up, and the Scorsese epic struck me as a disaster. "There Will Be Blood" I just found a pompous exercise in style rather than a movie. Kind of like Brando, he seems to make terrible career choices, and he makes much worse sartorial decisions as a rule.

Well Cathar, so many men in their twenties are still rather boyish. But if you add a decade or two there are still some interesting faces to watch in the under fifty crowd. Daniel Craig, Clive Owen and Colin Farrell (if he doesn't self destruct). Viggo is getting up there but he's still under 50, I believe. James Franco also has potential. Jonathan Rhys Meyers is very steamy in his role as Henry (historical inaccuracy aside) and Johnny Depp has finally outgrown his boyishness.

Television is the world that has been pulled over our eyes to blind us from The Truth: that we are slaves to the medico-military-industrial complex.

Good list, jersey.

I loved Craig in Munich and like him much as Bond.

And Kirk Cameron was great in "Fireproof." (!)

Though, thinking about it further, me thinks much of this, for me, has to do with realizing that I'm older than the 20-30-year-olds who are featured in most mainstream movies.

So, perhaps, I've done what we all do with age: idealize a past time that never really existed because Shaun Cassidy/Donny Osmond and Michael Jackson were all the rage in the 70's. But I chose to only highlight those MEN who fit into the point I was trying to make.

Mark Hamil as Luke Skywalker was a boy.

And so was Hans.

(Billy Dee, though, was ALL MAN!!!)

Colin Farrell? At least pick someone who's a good enough actor to successfully camouflage his Irish accent once in a while, jerseygurl.

And speaking of him and Jonathan Rhys Myers, did you see, and listen to, "Alexander?" I honestly did not realize until that movie that the headquarters of the Macedonian army had probably been a Bronze age gay bar in Dublin. Myers also tried very, very hard to play a midwesterner in "Ride With The Devil," and did not remotely succeeed. He also didn't look like much of a tennis pro under Woody Allen's direction.

As for Johnny Depp, while I've found him adequate and more in a lot of things ("he cleans up nicely," as they say), playing John Dillinger he conveyed all the pouty, eyelinered menace of, at worst, Ryan Seacrest.

Clive Owen may be an exception. Daniel Craig is not, his taciturnity seems merely awkward. Viggo Mortensen may be another exception and definitely knows how to listen to other actors, something which made John Wayne so great onscreen (and, based on "Eastern Promises," may have no more than 3% bodyfat), but I've always been taught to beware somewhat of actors who self-publish their precious little volumes of poesy. Especially actors who insist on self-publishing more than one such volume.

But none of these actors convey anything near the gelid, heavy-lidded and immediate menace Michael Caine did in "Get Carter" (I'm sure he took that icepick he stabbed a guy with in that movie directly out of his own heart). And nary a one of today's idle-brained prettyboys will ever have the ability to move from such roles to genuine screen tough guy status, as the former crooner Dick Powell did so notably post-WWII.

Nor was Cary Grant ever "boyish." He could act cute at any age, but that's quite a different thing.

Viggo Mortensen was great in 'Appaloosa'. I hope they do 'Resolution' and 'Brimstone'. I love westerns.

I wonder who will be playing 'Jack Reacher' when Lee Child's books start hitting the silver screen. All of his novels have been optioned and 2 or 3 will be in production soon.

Michael Caine and Cary Grant were indeed exceptional talents. Still, Caine was probably around 40 when he starred in "Get Carter" and my personal all time favorite, Archibald, was just about 30 and had already had much stage experience by the time he got to Hollywood. Harrison Ford and George Clooney have some of the same qualities, but so many modern scripts are pretty pitiful in comparison to all that fast and witty dialogue Cary Grant was handed. Hindsight is wonderful, and after a few decades and a larger body of work, at least a few of these younger actors will be seen as having been the major talents of their day. It's just too soon to tell for some of them.

If these half-formed sots who currently infest TV and the silver screen will someday be seen as "the major talents of their day," jerseygurl, then God help us. On any day.

If these half-formed sots who currently infest TV and the silver screen will someday be seen as "the major talents of their day," jerseygurl, then God help us. On any day.

Again, my most profound apologies for the double post. (No matter that my wit is always good enough to read at least twice.)

"No matter that my wit is always good enough to read at least twice."

As my teen aged niece would say, "NOT".