Last night's On the Lot blah, blah, blah-blah-blah, blah, blah-blah, blah blah blah blah blah blah, blah, blah-blah.
That's really all I have to say. Maybe because people talk on this show, and that's what I hear at this point. Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. Starting out, Hilary and Shalini — the last two women contestants left — got sent home. ''It's been a dream come true,'' I think one of them said. What I heard was ''Blah blah blah.'' Right after that, five guy contestants got commissioned to make action movies. ''It's time to bring your A game to this entire contest,'' Andrew said. Blah-blah-blah-blah-blah. Just stop talking, everybody! Save the clichés for your short films!
By the look of things, there were more than enough clichés to go around. In just the night's first action film — Sam's ''Key Witness'' — you had a black guy bickering with a white guy as, handcuffed together, they eluded bad guys in pursuit with guns. Swallowing the handcuff key was a major plot point. Halfway through ''Key Witness,'' I got to thinking about what I wrote in my first On the Lot TV Watch — 4,329 Tuesdays ago, or whatever it was. Back then, after the premiere episode, I wondered if the show was ''inadvertently going to show us why so many movies today are so safe and so bad.'' That was back when I imagined this enterprise had any mission other than to fill dead air on Fox's summer schedule. But I got to thinking about the question again when we were watching Sam's movie last night, because what we were watching was real, unabashed Hollywood crap.
Funniest thing is, ''Key Witness'' started to get a little better midway through, when the bad guy tried to jump on the heroes who'd just jumped into the Dumpster. It made no sense that any bad guy would ever do this, but it was mildly funny when the good guys closed the Dumpster cover on him and the bad guy landed with a thud. And the double crosses at the end of the movie came off all right. So at least this was slick Hollywood crap. So Sam advances!
As for the other four movies, let's get going.
''Sweet,'' by drawling Jason. Guy comes home at 3:45 on a weekday and realizes it's his anniversary, has 15 minutes before his lady gets home from work (surely they must be schoolteachers), so he has to run out and get her a present. Wasn't too wowed by the usually interesting/crazy Jason's work here, until the judges correctly pointed out that at least the movie had some real-ish characters in it. ''This is my favorite thing you've done so far,'' said Carrie, and if I cared, or you cared, I'd go through all my notes and count how many times during the summer Carrie's said this exact thing, and how many times she's already said it to Jason. (At first all I heard, again, was ''Blah blah blah.'') To Carrie's credit, ''Sweet'' was probably my favorite thing all night too, not counting the Diet Mountain Dew commercial with the sock puppets that preceded Mateen's short later in the show.
''Zero2Sixty,'' by Minneapolis Andrew, which consisted mostly of a couple high-speed U-turns on the freeway. Throw in some yelpy overacting by the grown-up kid from Kate & Allie as a car salesman on a test-drive hot pursuit, and you've got a movie that the judges were too soft on. I do admire the way that, when facing the softball squad, Andrew pipes up with a cutoff ''Okay!'' or ''Thank you!'' when he gets nervous a judge is gonna go a little negative on him. That strategy seems to work — the judges actually finish their sentences and then stop talking. Can Andrew take that tactic all the way to the finals?
''The Losers,'' a skateboard action movie by Kenny, who wanted to do the stunt where his dad character jumps over an open car door himself, but his crew wouldn't let him, which ticked him off. (''It's something I can do in two seconds, man!'') His concept was original, and Kenny's aesthetic was out there, thankfully without being ''Wack Alley Cab'' out there, but I think he sunk it by cutting too much and shooting all the action too close up, so it did all look a little faked. Actually, I liked what Garry said, for a change, so I'll quote it in its entirety: ''I love that you're wild and abstract. But Albert Camus once warned that often the abstract is done by the undisciplined, sold by the unprincipled, and shown to the utterly bewildered....I love that you stay off the wall, but when you go off the ceiling, my neck gets a kink in it. Stay wild!''
''Catch,'' by Mateen, who is evidently a lot better at action than horror. ''Everybody says Mateen's never done action,'' said Will in the opening bit on Mateen, ''so he's gotta be on his A game.'' There these people go with their A game again, blah blah blah — you expect this kind of blather on The Apprentice, but aren't artist types supposed to be creative? ''I'm in it to win it,'' Mateen said. Make it stop! Mateen's movie concerned the most elaborate plan to rob a good Samaritan ever — first you hook him in with a sexy female street performer, then you pretend to steal her hatful of tips and let the Samaritan chase you all over town, until your accomplice, the sexy street performer, comes up behind him and puts a gun to his head. Nonsense. What I liked about it was that some of Mateen's shots were weird, and the opening banter between the Samaritan and the street musician was off-kilter enough to make me go hmmmm.
So which two moviemakers get booted next week? It's fundamentally unfair that these five guys had to make balls-to-the-wall action movies while last week's group just had to stick to the lame, easy theme of worlds colliding. (The discrepancy of the difficulty levels between assignments really is gigantic; this show is crazy.) That noted, I'd get rid of Kenny and Andrew. What else to say? Antoine Fuqua was a good judge. And Adrianna's dress was smokin'; it's okay that all the women filmmakers are gone because Adrianna's more than enough woman for one show. Stay wild, America.
