Tag: The Office

Tribeca 2012 Review: THE GIANT MECHANICAL MAN

THE GIANT MECHNICAL MAN was a bit of a letdown for me. While enjoyable as is, the film never lives up to its full comedic potential, which is a real shame considering the talent involved. In a role written to play to her strengths, Jenna Fischer is the confused, mild-mannered Janice who finds a job selling grape drinks at the zoo. Apparently the zoo is a beacon of hope for the unemployed because this occurs the day after Tim (Chris Messina) walks in and instantly gets a job there after his girlfriend dumps him. (Seriously, is it really that easy to get a job at a zoo?) Tim also has an interesting hobby / side job of painting himself silver, wearing stilts and walking around as the titular Giant Mechanical Man. A friendship forms between the two just as Janice’s overbearing sister (Malin Ackerman) tries to set her up with a motivational speaker / author played eerily well by Topher Grace.

TGMM is a romantic-comedy that tries to be a lot deeper than it really is and that is where it falters. It works best when dealing with the rom-com aspects of the story but gets weighed down by mostly unnecessary dramatic beats that feel too repetitive. I can’t help but feel like this film would have been far more entertaining if all the main characters were not so damn depressed most of the time. I also found myself wondering why Tim didn’t just tell Janice that he was the mechanical man after she not only mentions her respect for him but also visits him while he’s in character. It seems they were saving the revelation for a fairly anti-climatic finale although it probably would have been far more entertaining watching Janice cover up and ultimately explain (especially to her sister) that she’s dating the often-ridiculed street performer.

I guess the fact that I am still wondering what could have been means there was enough substance actually in the film to hold my interest more than a week after watching it. With that in mind, I’ll recommend giving TGMM a chance. It is worth watching at least once anyway if only for Topher Grace’s crazy good take on a motivational speaker or Rich Sommer as his biggest fan.


Jerry Cavallaro – @GetStuck – JerryCavallaro.com

Win THE OFFICE – SEASON 7 DVD

Universal Studios Home Entertainment’s THE OFFICE – SEASON 7 will be available on Blu-Ray and DVD on September 6th and to celebrate the final season for Steve Carell’s Michael Scott, WAMG is giving you a chance to win a copy!

Season 7 also features guest stars such as Jim Carrey, Will Arnett, Ricky Gervais, James Spader and more! This Emmy-award winning series stars Steve Carell, John Krasinski, Rainn Wilson, Jenna Fischer and Ed Helms! The Blu-Ray and DVD includes hours of bonus features, including extended episodes, deleted scenes, bloopers, webisodes and more, in this must-own five-disc collection.

OFFICIAL RULES:
1. YOU MUST BE A US RESIDENT. PRIZE WILL ONLY BE SHIPPED TO US ADDRESSES.
2. FILL OUT YOUR REAL NAME AND EMAIL ADDRESS BELOW.
3. ANSWER THE FOLLOWING QUESTION: Tell us your favorite character on The Office and why.
WINNERS WILL BE CHOSEN THROUGH A RANDOM DRAWING OF QUALIFYING CONTESTANTS. NO PURCHASE NECESSARY. PRIZES WILL NOT BE SUBSTITUTED OR EXCHANGED.
CONTEST WILL END ON FRIDAY, September 9th 11:59pm CST.

Win Season 6 of THE OFFICE

I know! I know! it has nothing to do with movies… But who cares, because we all like free stuff!

WAMG is giving away Season 6 of THE OFFICE on DVD.

OFFICIAL RULES:
1. Fill out your name and email address below.
2. Tell us your best office story. Does your cubicle neighbor have a spastic colon? Does the mail guy stalk you non-stop? Did you quit in a blaze of glory? We want to hear about it!!!
3. Winner will be chosen on 9/7 and be contacted by muah!

THE OFFICE SEASON 6 is available on DVD SEPTEMBER 7th, 2010!

So good luck people… and keep on loving THE OFFICE! (But not in an inappropriate way. We don’t condone that kind of behavior young lady! (or young man!)

ABOUT THE OFFICE:

From Deedle-Dee Productions, Reveille and Universal Media Studios comes the hilarious documentary-style look into the humorous and sometimes poignant foolishness that plagues the world of 9-to-5 in the half-hour comedy “The Office,” based on the award-winning BBC hit. Since its premiere on NBC in March 2005, “The Office” has established itself as a genuine hit, earning prestigious television honors such as the 2006 Emmy Award for Outstanding Comedy Series, 2006 Peabody Award, 2006 AFI Honor, Producers Guild Award, Writers Guild Award, SAG Award for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy, Ace Eddie Award for editing and a Television Critic’s Association Award for Outstanding Achievement in Comedy.

A fly-on-the-wall “docu-reality” parody about modern American office life, “The Office” delves into the lives of the workers at Dunder Mifflin paper supply company in Scranton, Pennsylvania. Regional manager Michael Scott (Golden Globe winner and Emmy nominee Steve Carell, “Get Smart,” “Little Miss Sunshine”) is a single, middle-aged man who is the boastful tour guide for the documentary.

With unshaken enthusiasm, Michael believes he is the office funnyman, a fountain of business wisdom and his employees’ cool friend. He has no clue that his employees tolerate his inappropriate behavior only because he signs their paychecks. Painstakingly trying to be liked and to look cool, Michael comes off alternately absurd and pathetic. His prize possession is his “World’s Greatest Boss” mug — which he had to buy for himself.

Pam Beesly (Jenna Fischer, “Walk Hard,” “Blades of Glory”) is the reasonable and friendly office receptionist who bears the brunt of Michael’s routines. The bright spots in Pam’s day are her conversations with Jim Halpert (John Krasinski, “Leatherheads” “The Holiday”), a likable sales rep with a good sense of humor who should have found a better job years ago, but is too comfortable with his office mates and routine to leave.

Jim shares his working space with Dwight Schrute (Rainn Wilson, “The Rocker,” “The Last Mimzy”), the arrogant assistant to the regional manager. Dwight is intensely irritating to normal people while Jim spends a lot of time finding new, interesting ways to drive Dwight crazy.

Ryan Howard (B.J. Novak, “Punk’d”) is the young, smart, former temp, who quickly figured out the real office politics despite Michael’s attempts to instill the official point-of-view.

Also starring are Melora Hardin (“Monk”) as Jan Levenson, Ed Helms (“The Daily Show with Jon Stewart”) as Andy Bernard, Leslie David Baker (“Malcolm in the Middle”) as Stanley Hudson, Brian Baumgartner (“Arrested Development”) as Kevin Malone, Kate Flannery (“The Heir Apparent”) as Meredith Palmer, Mindy Kaling (“The 40-Year-Old Virgin”) as Kelly Kapoor, Angela Kinsey (“Tripping Forward”) as Angela Martin, Paul Lieberstein (writer, “King of the Hill”) as Toby Flenderson, Oscar Nuñez (“Halfway Home”) as Oscar Martinez, Phyllis Smith (“Arrested Development”) as Phyllis Lapin, Creed Bratton (former member of The Grass Roots) as Creed Bratton and Craig Robinson (“Curb Your Enthusiasm”) as Darryl Philbin.

“The Office” is executive-produced by Ben Silverman, Greg Daniels, who developed the series for American audiences, Ricky Gervais, Stephen Merchant, Howard Klein and Paul Lieberstein.

Thursday Night Scares Up Some Good Comedy

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There are two bits of good news to report about NBC’s Thursday night comedies.   One is that every single show was able to pull off their Halloween episodes perfectly and they were all hilarious as ever, even you Community.   The second piece of news is that NBC has decided to order full seasons of Community and Parks and Recreation! YAY!!   This is really good news for Parks and Recreation which, even though having an amazingly gut-busting season this year, has been struggling hard in the ratings.   There was even a worry that this show might be on the chopping block of shows to soon get the axe but it appears rave critical reviews and a loyal fan base will at least allow it to finish out the year.   And now for the cavalcade of Halloween episodes!

I did like Community’s attempt at a Halloween episode as it featured everything you think would go wrong at a Community College Extra Credit Earning Spanish Class Halloween Party hosted by Annie the jittery ex high school nerd.   You have Chevy Chase’s character accidentally taking some ecstacy and losing it while dressed in a pretty hilarious Beastmaster outfit.  Then there’s Jeff thinking of himself yet again as he tries to score with his insanely hot History teacher but failing on all cylinders.   And Brita dressed in a pretty odd squirrel costume, though I did love the giant acorn, as she tries to stop Shirley from messing up Jeff’s moves.   All in all a good episode which was completely saved by Ahmed dressing up as Batman and of course putting on a whole Dark Knight routine but he did save Jeff and Chevy from a pretty horrible fate and that was pretty brilliant.

Parks and Recreation also went with the Halloween party route as Anne through one of the lamest parties imaginable.   Luckily Tom showed up dressed as T-Pain and saved that party like only a rapper could, he turned on music, that’s pretty much all you have to do.   We did get a little bit more info on Tom and his wife’s fake marriage and how they are going to get divorced and the look on Tom’s face shows he’s not ready for that loss. Leslie, on the other hand, was not able to attend the party as she and her new cop boyfriend attempted to stop some punk kid from vandalizing a statue and failed miserable in the process.   Probably the best bit of the show is when they had Andy try to interrogate the kid and he pretended to be an FBI agent.

The Office on the other hand only spent the first bit before the opening credits on their Halloween party which was pretty good as I liked everyone’s costumes with Michael as a dick in the box guy, Dwight as the Jigsaw puppet, and even Kelly bringing back the chick from The Fifth Element. I wish they had spent more of the episode on Halloween stuff because then it pretty much devolved into just a regular episode of The Office with Michael falling into a coy pond and everyone making fun of him for it.   Also Andy and Pam have to go on a sales call and get mistaken for a couple since Pam is pregnant and some awkward shenanigans arise from there.   All in all not a bad episode and I did like how they are kind of pushing for Andy to go out with the new receptionist because I like his character and would like to see him get some.

And finally on 30 Rock, Tracy Morgan did hid usual crazy bit by fearing that he will be the next celebrity to die after two have keeled over already.   In a really good bit he even calls Betty White and tries to scare her to death and she figures out what he’s doing and says she’s going to be the one to bury him.   Also Frank and the other writers are struggling to make their Halloween party less nerdy and pathetic, I loved Lutz dressed as Boba Fett, and realize that gay guys hang out with Jenna and have amazing Halloween parties that hot girls show up to so they befriend her.   Then there’s Liz and Jack who are still trying to find a new cast mate for the show and for some reason head down to Kenneth’s old neck of the woods and find a ventriloquist act.   Now I’m not a fan of Jeff Dunham and I’m not sure if they were making fun of his act or not but what Jack does to his puppet at the end had me applauding.   Well that wraps up another good year of Halloween comedy episodes and a Happy Halloween to all you blog readers.

The Thursday Night Goods, for The Most Part

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Well it was yet again another well done Thursday night of comedy as pretty much every show on NBC’s line up performed fairly decently.   Sadly I can’t go so far as to say they are all performing decently in the ratings and it leaves me a bit ticked off.   The only one of the shows doing well is The Office.   I don’t know what it is but people still love them some Office.   I can’t say the same for its counter part show Parks and Recreation, which I always find to be the highlight of the night, as this season has only been able to draw in about half of the Office’s audience and is facing a possible cancellation.   Even 30 Rock, which has won the best comedy Emmy yet again, has lower ratings so far this year than from the previous one.

And even though I’m not a huge fan of Community, though it is growing on me, it too can’t hold down decent numbers but I guess is fairing decently for an NBC show.   I don’t know what it is but people seem to have an adverse reaction when they tune in to NBC.   Its always struggling along and can’t really find any shows that click with people anymore.   Sadly shows that are clicking with people are overly wrought procedurals and some of the dumbest reality shows known to man.   I will give it to NBC that they do keep up their credibility with far more engaging and plot driven shows.   But enough about all that unpleasantness, lets discuss the shows.

As far as Community goes, as stated above, it’s growing on me only from a sense that they have fine tuned their comedy from the dregs that was the first episode.   The gags are getting a lot cleverer and the characters are getting deeper personalities and not just your usual plot filler.   This episode was pretty good as we saw Jeff trying to convince Troy to join the lackluster community college football team, I do believe one of the players is full on pregnant, because he didn’t want the dean to send out flyers for the college with his face all over them.   Through this we got some good back story on Anna which has been lacking in the past and the Arab buy was mostly absent from this episode which I liked because I don’t find him a particularly appealing character.   There were also some decent moments with Chevy Chase and the dean trying to come up with a mascot in a very warped way and also Brita not quite understanding the whole women going to the bathroom together thing.   All in all not a bad time spent.

As for Parks and Recreation and The Office, Parks episode wasn’t as funny as last weeks, but how could it be with Fred Armisen’s guest appearance one of the funniest I’ve seen this year, but The Office’s was definitely much better than the rather week one that was given to us last week.   In Parks we had Leslie trying to fill the pit after an inspirational building crew called Kaboom! built a play ground in a day.   Sadly as it’s getting filled they dump dirt all over Andy who is still living in it and he plans to sue the city.   Luckily things get all worked out and we get closer to getting that park done from last season.   On The Office, its revealed that Michael is dating Pam’s mom and it pretty much destroys Pam, which is to be expected.   There are some great moments in this episode as when Dwight tries to bug Jim’s office with a wooden mallard and I thought Ryan’s whole shtick with a fedora was pretty inspired.

30 Rock’s episodes so far this year, I will admit, haven’t been performing as well as I thought they would.   They are pretty funny but they aren’t as bust a gut funny as so many of the last seasons have been, though I did really enjoy Jenna going to Iceland to film a werewolf movie only for it to be sabotaged with a sun that won’t set.   Also Liz finally gets her book out on the shelves which causes men all over the office to attack her verbally, physically, and with a torrent of garbage.   Even Tracy ends up having to move in with Liz and as can be expected is about the worst house guest you could ever have.   Not a bad episode but not even the guest appearance of Will Arnett as the gay Devon was as good as his previous appearances.   But I know the show will start to pick up because it really is one of the funniest shows on TV right now and they always pull through with some pretty hilarious bits.