On the Lot: more liveblogging folly

OK, so you're probably not watching Fox's director search ON THE LOT. If you are, you probably forgot that it's on tonight because of the All-Star game. (That's what digital video recorders are for.) Anyway, I'm home, the show is on, so following last week's attempt, let's do some liveblogging.

8:00 p.m. In the show's opening tease we see a Universal Studios tour group going by while the guide says that they can see "a lot of filming" for the TV series. And I thought it was too bad that the only film shooting when I went on a Paramount Studios tour was LUCKY NUMBERS.

8:03 p.m. Mateen basically calls Adrianna The Angel of Death. Heh heh.

8:04 p.m. Shira-Lee gets the heave-ho. Not a surprise considering she essentially said that she didn't know the genre she had to work in last week.

8:05 p.m. Adrianna informs the directors that their theme for this week is "when two worlds collide" and *gasp* two directors will be eliminated. This must be Fox's way of getting in an MLB tie-in. Now that the stakes are higher, it's for real, kind of like how the All-Star game stupidly determines home field advantage for the World Series.

8:06 p.m. This week's guest judge is who? Luke Greenfield, director of THE ANIMAL and THE GIRL NEXT DOOR, accepts the call. If this show had any traction, they'd be pulling better guests than this.

8:07 p.m. Zach's TIME UPON A ONCE sounds like it's going to be all about his special effects background. He's directing his actors to do everything backwards. Lin Shaye is back for more, and isn't that Reginald VelJohnson (you know, the FAMILY MATTERS dad)? (I think he was the head doctor in Will's comedy piece two weeks ago, but we didn't get a long enough look at him.) The conceit is that the new neighbors do everything backwards, and the effect he pulls off is convincing. The judges and voters are going to eat this up.

8:17 p.m. Hilary gives us THE LEGEND OF DONKEY-TAIL WILLIE. With her track record of lowbrow humor, that title portends all sorts of bad things but it's cute. She shot this like an old-timey western and employs a gauzy filter because nothing says fairy tale than having glaucoma. It's her best effort on the show, although I think part of it is the better production values. She's gone with the no glasses look this week. That's not important; I just don't have anything else to say.

8:27 p.m. Next week is action movies. Anything that spares us dialogue is a good thing. Speaking of which, here's Will. Hus SPAGHETTI has a present day couple finding themselves in a spaghetti western and has some spoken words. When two worlds collide! Or because Univeral Studios has an old west backlot set. Will's definitely seen a Sergio Leone movie, but keep this guy doing his silent movie thing. It's fine but zzzzzzz..... Like some other ON THE LOT shorts, it could have been a commercial with a tweak here or there.

8:37 p.m. Shalini's FIRST SIGHT definitely looks like it is shot on a studio backlot. The large building in the background looks two-dimensional. Her inspirational movie about a special pair of sunglasses that allows Tatyana Ali to see the true spirit inside people is heavyhanded but generally well exectued. Carrie Fisher rips it by saying that in Hollywood "if you want a message, leave it at the beep." Greenfield is similarly harsh. Leave it to that ol' softie Garry Marshall to stand up for it and defend the charge of lack of subtlety by saying, "Subtle is what they play in Connecticut when nobody goes."

8:47 p.m. An hour for five short films is way too much time.

8:48 p.m. Adam's WORLDLY POSSESSIONS has a military package accidentally delivered to a wealthy suburban couple. He's employed a lot of visual effects, most of them practical by the look of things. It's funny how Shalini just got hammered for a message movie, yet Adam just did the same thing. The difference, of course, is degree. It's a little too on the nose as well, but this features the best storytelling of all the shorts tonight.

8:56 p.m. A shocking elimination on HELL'S KITCHEN tonight. When isn't there? Last week, I guess.

8:57 p.m. I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Adam couldn't look more uncomfortable on camera.

8:58 p.m. Favorite films? Carrie votes for Adam, Luke for Zack, and Garry picks Hilary. Adrianna says she'll see us next Tuesday. Sounds like a threat.

Now that we're a little deeper into the show we can see that the directors have professional competency, but I'd like to draw your attention to what Donna had to say about this in last week's comments:

"...the polish you speak of bothers me more week by week. It's like somebody taught these people a bag of tricks -- filters, angles, cuts, music beats -- and they pour it all over whatever the assignment is, every week. Kenny may be incompetent, but I'll take his rough-edged ignorance over the other directors' chrome sheen. At least it feels like his vision, not a Frankenstein monster stitched together out of the ultra-commercial surfaces that represent these contestants' highest aspirations."

I think that's why the show has become more boring, if that were possible, as the shorts have improved technically. We're getting more emphasis on visual effects, but assuming that all of these filmmakers have talented professionals assisting them--and who knows how much help they are getting--what does that tell us about their abilities? Rather than go for bigger and "better", I'd really like to see what the directors could do with just a conversation scene. It'd be a truer gauge of their directorial visions.

Liveblogging On the Lot

All right, let's give this liveblogging thing a shot. Tonight's episode of ON THE LOT is on the air. Here goes nothing...

8:00 p.m. What, no Adrianna Costa intro? Voiceover announcer: "It's horror film night on the lot." Dude, that's every week.

8:03 p.m. And David gets eliminated, but pervy uncle Garry Marshall reassures him that he got to meet girls.

8:04 p.m. Adrianna informs us who will be directing horror films. What a surprise, it's the contestants who didn't direct last week!

8:06 p.m. Eli Roth is the guest judge. Terrific. You know how much I loved HOSTEL.

8:07 p.m. Kenny's THE MALIBU MYTH kicks off horror night. Looks like Tatyana Ali, who was in David's film last week, is back again. The guy relies heavily on transitional effects, but I have a feeling his aggressive direction will go over well with whoever's watching this show. The film has something to do with missing teens turned into bloodthirsty monsters. Essentially it's a pre-credits sequence to JEEPERS CREEPERS but jokier. The woman in the car talks about what a blog says, but it doesn't appear she has a computer. Continuity is for suckers, though, right? Considering that I don't think the directors have sufficient time to make something scary, I'll give Kenny credit for putting together a short with more polish than most of what we've seen in ON THE LOT'S run. Roth namechecks three horror films to prove how cool he is. Somebody punch him, please.

8:16 p.m. The success of Sam's ANKLEBITERS is going to rely on a puppet. Umm, OK. Actually, it is convincing enough, but is there anything to this other than it being a clip from a feature film? Roth throws out a comparison to DEAD ALIVE, but I have to agree with him that the prologue essentially makes what follows irrelevant. We already know that a new creature "will change everything". Then again, the time limitations pretty much guarantee we won't be surprised.

8:24 p.m. We're two for two with prologues for these shorts. Will Andrew's MIDNIGHT SNACK make it three for three? Nope. Hey, Lin Shaye is back too. Wisely he's not bothered with much dialogue, and he does OK building atmosphere. Still, this isn't going to scare anyone. Sure enough, a joke is the exclamation point on the short. Roth compares it unfavorably to a "got milk?" commercial. Sadly, I can't disagree with what the guy's saying.

8:31 p.m. I expected horror night to be a catastrophe, but I'll grudgingly grant that these films have been better than what we've seen in previous weeks. There's nothing in them that would make people pull them up on any of the numerous online content providers, but they have a sheen of professionalism that helps explain why these people were chosen.

8:34 p.m. They have people make one-sheets for these shorts? Why? I guess it's a nice souvenir for the contestants.

8:35 p.m. Jason's ETERNAL WATERS is up. Boy does that guy like that dream-like, fractured editing style. A boy is drowning in a pool. Now he's underwater in a coffin. Watch out! There's an Asian man with a knife in the house! I guess this is supposed to be redemptive or something, but I'm not seeing it. Roth isn't buying the actress cast as the mother. "You dressed her up like a teenager. She's this blonde with, you know, the big breasts, and she's in a tight t-shirt. It's hard to take her seriously as a mother." Surely he's just taken Garry's lines.

8:38 p.m. Garry Marshall has two words for Jason: "Sen-sational." Oh Garry.

8:43 p.m. Shira-Lee claims to have known almost nothing about horror films before this. For real? Her OPEN HOUSE has an expecting couple wandering into a home for sale. There's no real estate agent...but there is a ghost or something warning the woman to get out. Yawn.

8:46 p.m. Good point, Carrie. Ghosts during the day aren't scary. Roth likes the tag, which is the man suggesting that a name has come to him. It's the name of the ghost woman's dead son. OOOOOOOOOO! C'mon, that was lame. Garry nails it: no conflict.

8:49 p.m. I'll say this for liveblogging the show. It's made ON THE LOT pass much faster.

8:50 p.m. Fox is advertising DON'T FORGET THE LYRICS. Isn't this the same thing as NBC's THE SINGING BEE?

8:51 p.m. The challenge for next week's show, airing on Monday due to Major League Baseball's All-Star Game, is based on the well-worn trailer phrase "when two worlds collide". Yeah, that ought to stretch their creative muscles.

8:52 p.m. Mateen's PROFILE strives for everyday horror. A white police officer pulls over a black driver. Flash forward to the cops giving him a beating in the station bathroom. Of all the directors, he fulfills the task at hand, which is to make the viewers uncomfortable. (One part draws an audible gasp from the studio audience.) Granted, with material this charged, it isn't hard to shake people up, but I'll give him credit for making something that actually could horrify those watching. None of the other films did that. He does make a really odd choice in closing it with an aerial shot of the area that then becomes a view of the planet. Roth: "And then it's the point of view of the moon or something." Ha.

The judges are especially critical, maybe because it gets under their skin? Hitchcock's childhood fear of the police informed much of what happened in his films, and it's that fear of authority with a racial angle that makes the film somewhat effective. (The perspective shifts are correctly identified as a problem.)

I've agreed with Roth, a director I find awfully smug and whose last two films I think are reprehensible, so it's nice that he gives me a rich comment to dine on here. Says the guy whose HOSTEL PART II has a naked woman hanging by her feet getting gutted by another naked woman who showers in her blood, "With subject matter that's this volatile, it's easy to put a shocking image up, but it's tough to relate that horror to the audience." Did I mention that Roth plays scenes like that for laughs?

8:59 p.m. The judges are split on their favorites. Carrie goes for Andrew, Roth for Kenny, and Garry for Jason.

9:25 p.m. Speaking of horrors, my longest entry of the whole liveblogging experience gets chomped in an attempt to publish while the wireless connection is interrupted.

I expected tonight's show to have the directors flailing, but they acquitted themselves better than they have at any other time during the show. OK, so only Mateen's film had a glimmer of frightening images/scenarios, but I was prepared for much worse. I think Shira-Lee's a goner out of this group, but if Mateen succeeds only at making people feel bad, he could be susceptible.

Perhaps the pressure of writing during the show made it feel like the time went quickly, but stepping out of the comfort zone for these filmmakers did produce a smidgen of the creative spark missing in their other films and more entertaining TV. All but Shira-Lee relied on what we've seen from them before, but it didn't seem as tired. (Did anyone catch the mention in the opening tease that they use professional writers? Interesting...) Was it me, or was this show tighter? The judges could still be tougher. As usual, the guest judge made the most valuable feedback.

And so goes this experiment in liveblogging. Thoughts?

When the links for the films are available, I'll update the entry for those who want easy access to them.

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As a recent notebook computer purchaser, how about I try my hand at some liveblogging tonight? There's a new, sure to be awful episode of ON THE LOT at 8 p.m. Eastern. Come back for more then.