Vodka Movie Part III

Great, you’ve had the weekend off, now back to Vodka Movie (Part 3). Personally I can’t picture anyone not liking this. But then, you may have different comedic tastes. Doesn’t matter. Stay with me here: Vodka Movie Part 3.

I saw about fifteen minutes of Saturday Night Live this weekend. Scarily bad. I have to tune in for the rest on my DVR, but I’m almost too scared to. The word that keeps coming to mind is toothless. There’s nothing new about that show. For a while I was energized by their Digital Shorts, and I guess I still am. But apart from that and an occasional incredible Kristen Wiig moment here and there, Saturday Night Live has just become an aging, predictable, unfunny dinosaur with boring, pedantic writing that adheres to a formula that got established in the early 90′s. Let’s take some chances. Maybe instead of clearing house with the actors, who are competent, besides Kenan Thompson, who is a senior in high school, it’s the front office that needs a rinse and a haircut.

In other news, I went to the movies on Saturday night and checked out another thing I hated, the new Coen Brothers movie “A Serious Man.” I hate to watch artists get worse as they grow older. It scares me and saddens me at the same time, for I fear my own demise, and let’s be honest, I don’t have that much to work with in the first place. “A Serious Man” was about 40 % as good as Fargo, 30% as gripping as No Country For Old Men,  10% as funny as Burn After Reading, and, again, they just didn’t take any chances. The script fell into the ol’ Coen standby of semi-serious, semi-idiosyncratic with a spiritual twist and just enough plot machinations that you feel like you can’t go off to the bathroom because you’ll miss something crucial and then won’t be able to understand the rest of the film. I don’t know how they write their scripts but I have an uncomfortable feeling that it involves index cards with the name of each character tacked to a foamcore board and they are smug about it. Mostly, this film left me feeling depressed, as much for the demise of Joel and Ethan as clever storytellers as for the subject matter, which was unrelentlingly pathetic, focusing on out of shape Jews in some suburban setting in the mid-60′s. Bleak, bleak, bleak, and maybe self-hating (this film could only have been written by someone who’s had to endure studying for a Bar Mitzvah); but with no satisfying twist or even ironic dagger that made the depressing inward-turned bellybutton-examining self-loathing worth it. I walked out poorer, sadder, and ultimately confused for the muddled yet predictable unsatisfying waste of two hours.

That said, I’m a fan.