Day: June 3, 2010

MasterChugs Theater: ‘Forgetting Sarah Marshall’

With The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Judd Apatow succeeded in an endeavor that foiled many of the more accomplished directors to precede him: the merging of the romantic comedy, a quintessential “female genre,” with the raunchy comedy, a quintessential “male genre.” The result had broad appeal. Apatow used the same basic formula to similar effect for his follow-up, Knocked Up. With Forgetting Sarah Marshall, he passed the baton to one of his buddies, former Freaks and Geeks cohort Jason Segel. The movie, written by and starring Segel and directed by first-timer Nicholas Stoller, is at least as good as the two Apatow-directed films, with a script that’s both a little sharper and a little more romantic.

And that’s a good thing. Continue reading MasterChugs Theater: ‘Forgetting Sarah Marshall’

Another one bites the dust

Yukio Hatoyama is OUTTA HE-AH. Japan has managed to lose yet another Prime Minister fall after less than a year of service. Ever since Junichiro Koizumi, no man seems to be able to stand up to the challenges of managing the Japanese government.

Eight months since sweeping into office under the notion of “hope” and “change” from the Liberal Democratic Party (boy, that sounds vaguely familiar), the Democratic Party of Japan quickly quagmired itself on issue after issue, the most contentious internationally being the relocation of the Futenma base in Okinawa. Domestically, Hatoyama’s reign was cut off at the knees thanks to a number of corruption scandals and the DPJ’s shadow leader, Ichiro Ozawa. Squabbles were constant and the jaded public didn’t seem to care about that-but all the hope and change that was promised was not getting done.

Hatoyama said:

“Unfortunately, the politics of the ruling party did not find reflection in the hearts of the people. It is regrettable that the people were gradually unwilling to listen to us.”

The party plans to meet on Friday to choose a new Prime Minister, since the DPJ still holds a commanding lead in the Diet. Naoto Kan, the Finance Minister, and Katsuya Okada, the Foreign Minister, are the front-runners for the post. I’d personally like to voice my decision to nominate myself as Prime Minister of Crazy Stuff Land.

It’s not like I’d be any worse of a choice. Plus, my hair is a lot better than Hatoyama’s.

The Russians are going to mars!

This is bad news, nothing short of the launch of Sputnik. Folks, we have fallen behind in the space race. A crew of six scientists, three Russians, a Frenchman, a guy who’s Colombian and Italian and a Chinese guy are going to Mars.

OK, well actually, they are just locking themselves in a windowless capsule for a year and a half to see if they can make the time that it would take to go from Earth to Mars. The worst part is that they are all wearing RED. We might as well drop moon landing photos in Moscow to remind them who’s boss.