Harrelson Helps Kunis and Timberlake in Friends With Benefits

Friends With Benefits is a romcom that carried a ton of buzz into its opening. After the trailer was posted on You Tube, it took only 2 days to reach 1 million views. Special video announcements were made for Facebook and Twitter. And two superstars of the social-media generation (Mila Kunis and Justin Timberlake) were secured to each play their biggest movie roles yet.

The only thing missing was a name. The film was originally called No Strings Attached, but that name was taken by a flick, starring Ashton Kutcher and Natalie Portman, that beat this one to the punch. I guess that means Topher Grace will be the next That 70s Show star in a formulaic movie about friends falling in love. Friends With Benefits was lucky to get out of the gate with this title as well. An unrelated NBC sitcom with the same name is just about set to launch.

So what of the inspired promotional campaign and the uninspired title? The bottom line is that Kunis and Timberlake tend to force their acting a bit, but end up being believable and likable. I'm inclined to say that the storylines of Timberlake's dad having Alzheimer's and not knowing his wife has left him and Kunis' mom as an over-sexed child of the 70s are too serious for the movie's light tone. But, then again, these stories serve to help us understand why the stars have such a damaged view of relationships.

Kunis is a headhunter who helps Timberlake secure a big-time job as art director at GQ. These two are complemented by Woody Harrelson, who plays GQ's sports editor. He appears sparingly, but when he does, he steals every scene. All his lines are golden.

Harrelson, and the chemistry of the two stars, helps propel Friends With Benefits into a better-than-average romcom.

*** out of ***** stars

Civilization Threatens to Bring Down Woolly Mammoth's Season of Apocalypse

Woolly Mammoth shows are almost always between really good and near-perfect. But Civilization (All You Can Eat), whose run ended last night at the downtown DC venue, is off-the-charts, unexpectedly bad.

I'm not one to hold absurdism against anyone or anything. But this play, which features fine acting performances, simply has a script that prevents the audience from constructing any rationale whatsoever for caring about the characters.

Civilization is about how individuals have odds stacked against them to make it in this world. Sarah Marshall is one of the great regulars of Woolly shows, and here she plays "Big Hog," a fat, all-knowing pig.

The person-conquering mindset of her character, which is creatively costumed, has been done before in classic novels like Animal Farm and Watership Down. It's not clear why we need another riff from this perspective on the cruelty of mankind. I actually think the plot line of Big Hog taking us on the journey to escape the slaughterhouse and make something (or other) of itself could have been quite interesting if something original and exciting resulted from it.

The script by Jason Grote, a writer for NBC's Smash, is just not funny. It's not illuminating in any way. I'm not even sure it's trying to be "deep" in any way. If it is, it fails miserably. The attempt at weirdness in the changeovers is just pathetic and uncomfortable - so absurd that it lacks absurdity. It's certainly clear why the play is 100 minutes with no intermission. At least half the audience would have left, if the comments made all around me were any measure.

A big misstep for Woolly, and one that will hopefully be redeemed with the next show of this season, which, with its theme of the apocalypse, has been otherwise wonderful.

* out of ***** stars

Greenberg Adds to Ben Stiller's Cast of Classic Character Studies

Greenberg is a slight film, but one entirely worth 90 minutes of your time and a nominee for best picture of the 2010 Independent Spirit Awards. Ben Stiller scales back his usual zaniness to play the titular part of a middle-aged former musician who has been released from a mental facility.

The New Yorker decides to live in his brother's empty house in Los Angeles to "do nothing" for a while. Greta Gerwig plays Florence, who is taking care of the house and Mahler the dog while the family is vacationing in Vietnam. She is the reason this movie is impossible to stop watching.

She falls almost immediately for Roger Greenberg, and their relationship goes through a series of hiccups that would typically spell the end of any affair if not for her duties at the house bringing her back again and again to the eccentric Greenberg.

Gerwig complements Stiller perfectly. And this is actually one of Stiller's best-ever characters, although the movie as a whole doesn't measure up to his high-bar-setting classics Reality Bites, Happy Gilmore, There's Something About Mary, Meet the Parents, Keeping the Faith, The Royal Tenenbaums, Zoolander, Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, and Tropic Thunder.

***1/2 out of ***** stars

R.I.P. Davy Jones: Some Monkees Memories From Our Archives

Davy Jones has died of a heart attack at the too-young age of 66. He always looked too young, which is probably part of the reason why this is such a surprise. I would argue that The Monkees and The Archies (seriously, check out their back catalogue, which is far deeper than that of Jones' band) are the two greatest bubblegum bands of all time.

I recently listed the top 10 Monkees' songs here. Agree?

And here is my review from last summer of a new biography of the band:

In Monkey Business: The Revolutionary Made-for-TV Band, the Monkees are described just as I remember from all the after-school TV-watching of my youth: "a kind of visual LSD for the Kool-Aid set."

The author, Eric Lefcowitz, interestingly describes how he forgot about the band throughout the 1970s. But at the start of the next decade, he heard "a bizarre cover" of "(I'm Not Your) Stepping Stone" by the Sex Pistols. Despite being a fan of dark and political acts like Joy Division, The Clash, Dead Kennedys, and Black Flag, Lefcowitz found himself a few days later buying a Monkees album.

I similarly feel that there will always be some "music purists who never get the Monkees, who don't care that the Beatles, themselves, were fans." Or that some of the Monkees' songs were penned by legends like Harry Nilsson, Neil Diamond, and Carole King. Or that their TV show used "cutting-edge techniques" and band member Michael Nesmith, "for all intents and purposes [along with the Beatles' movie A Hard Day's Night], invented the revolutionary music video format that would later become MTV."

Other interesting tidbids from this book about a space in time that endlessly fascinates me:
- Urban legend has it that mass-murderer Charles Manson auditioned for the band, but that was later proven false.
- Stephen Stills, later of Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young, actually did audition, but he lost out "due to a receding hairline and a recessed tooth."

Classic Reads: The Lion, the Witch, and The Wardrobe Takes a Basic, Slightly Boring Road to Fantasyland

Other "classic reads" can be found in the Books section.

The first of C.S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia series was The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. At a country house outside of London during World War II, Lucy Pevensie and her three siblings are visiting a house that takes them away from the urban bombings and find a magical wardrobe that leads to another world.

With fur coats in the wardrobe somehow turning into trees, a half-man and half-goat invites Lucy to tea. But her brother Edmund comes face-to-face with the White Witch, who feeds him "the sweetest and best candy in the world, Turkish Delight." The witch is interested in knowing he is one of four siblings, and promises Edmund that, if he brings them all to the castle, he will get more Turkish Delight.

All the kids do eventually end up in Narnia and find a note that says Mr. Tumnus, the goat-man, has been arrested by the queen for high treason and turned into a stone statue at the palace of the White Witch. The children then find a beaver who tells them where they can find the statue, and also tells them about a legend of four children who would sit on four thrones and end the rein of the White Witch.

The witch kidnaps Edmund, and as the kids are traveling along a frozen river, they encounter Father Christmas, who gives Peter a sword and shield, Susan a bow and horn, and Lucy a magic elixir that will heal any wounds. The children recruit the lion Aslan to help them, and he enters negotiations with the witch to spare Edmund's life. She, in turn, stabs a "razor-sharp knife" into Aslan, but he miraculously heals. The children are able to save Edmund, defeat the witch, and rule Narnia for many years, until they stumble back into the wardrobe and into the house, where no time has passed at all.

The story is a little silly and basic, and a little too-hastily wrapped up, but it's fun enough if you're not expecting as much as most classics.

Pop Culture Lunch Box Gains Syndication at Yahoo!

Hi Pop Culture Lunch Box readers. Exciting news: As of today, Yahoo! is now picking up some of my blog posts, so please GO HERE and browse some of my early contributions to bump up my hit count, leave comments, and basically show the love so that my writing picks up steam on the Yahoo! Contributor Network.


Thanks for the help, and for continuing reading. My blog continues to grow, and readership is up over 3,300 hits per month, so I'm gratified that so many people are enjoying!

Paul

Will Self Asks Whether to Live Alone or Together

"Flytopia" is the second short story I've delved into from the Will Self collection called The Undivided Self. And what a pleasure.

The story opens with Jonathan Priestly, "an indexer by profession," playing pool against himself in a bar. His girlfriend, Joy, has been visiting the city for several days away from their country town.

Jonathan's house is oddly filled with all kinds of flies and bugs. Sometimes they are worse than others. But after his pool-playing evening, he wakes up, stumbles into the kitchen, looks down into the sink, and finds a group of silverfish lining up to spell the words "welcome to flytopia" to him.

They continue to communicate with him by forming large packs to spell sentences, and they note that flytopia is a place where humans and insects live in harmony. Occasionally, the bugs misspell words and need to be reminded to rearrange themselves to be grammatically correct.

The flies begin the attempt at harmony by asking Jonathan to remove the fly-paper he has laid out. He is contemplating such a concession when he notices his bed has been spotlessly made. Mites flow off the pillows to make the bed even more perfect. Later, various kinds of bugs clean his toilet, give him a facial, and cleanse his entire body. Their next request is whether they can have the entire second bedroom to themselves.

Jonathan eventually decides to give them the second bedroom. He also begins to feed them meat, and when they ask him for "more meat," he replies that he'll think about it. Suddenly, Joy's cab pulls up out front. Jonathan is so happy in his new living situation that he is revolted by the sound of her voice. She asks him for a fiver for the cab and he tells her there might be a pile of change in the spare bedroom. She enters the room, Jonathan hears the "oppressive, giant, fluttering hum, as she is engulfed, then he rises and and goes out to pay the cab."

Pretty sicko, but still a very interesting and quirky take on the eternal conflict for people on whether to live alone in harmony with themselves and nature or to have other humans in their intimate spaces.

****1/2 out of ***** stars

Classic Reads: Watership Down Rabbits Jump Into Action

Find the other parts of this ongoing series of "Classic Reads" in the Books section.

When Hazel, the leader of a warren of rabbits, and his little brother Fiver arrive at a field of blood, Fiver predicts an apocalypse and that they need to flee. They decide to save as many of their fellow rabbits as they can, and 10 of them are able to escape.


This group's adventure entails avoiding a farmer who is using the most plump bunnies for lard in his food. They travel for two days and reach a hillside known as "Watership Down." Fiver's prophesy of doom ended up being correct, as their old home is gassed soon after they leave.


The rabbits set out on a crusade to help other animals. They care for a black gull until its injured wing heals. They free penned rabbits. Hazel gets shot but survives in a drain until Fiver rescues him. Later on, Hazel almost gets killed by a cat.


Watership Down is no doubt a classic and is Penguin Books' best-selling novel ever. Written in 1972 by Richard Adams, the author never really wrote any other classic books. And this one is still not at the level of Animal Farm, George Orwell's superior and similarly-themed tale of animals rebelling against humans.

Blogwatch: Happy Valentine's Day (From Some Interesting Characters)

This is definitely the funniest tribute to love I've ever seen.

And if you don't pay attention to the Awkward Family Photos site, this slideshow should convince you that it's one of the best on the web.