New Show Review: Outsourced

Outsourced: Series Premiere

You might want to skip this one, guys: "As the series begins, Todd, fresh out of a management training program, has transferred to India to set up a new call center there for Mid America Novelties. He’s been told that his employees are 'B-team.' They didn’t study in the U.S. They don’t know American customs and can’t speak with American accents. Todd is tasked with turning the rag-tag bunch into up-selling machines. This is the central duality of the show: half fish-out-of-water tale about Todd, half underdogs-come-from-behind-to-triumph story about his staff.

The problem is that neither plot has a sound foundation. For the first, it’s hard to identify with Todd because he’s not very likable. When he sees the traffic in Mumbai and calls it 'insane, like "Frogger" but with real people,' Todd seems not only dim but also insensitive, at best. (Has he really never seen bad traffic before? Does he seriously not consider the callousness of comparing people to the digital pixels in 'Frogger?') Because we have seen traffic before, it is easy to feel more sophisticated than Todd, and even the thought of investing an entire season waiting for him to catch up is exhausting...

While Todd’s romantic interest in an employee might complicate the series’ second plot, where the underdogs triumph, the other staff members looking like cardboard cutouts make it downright feeble. In the premiere episode we meet a series of types: the quiet one (Anisha Nagarajan), the one who talks too much (Parvesh Cheena), the corporate weasel (Rizwan Manji), the one who’s fascinated by American dating customs (Sacha Dhawan). They may as well be the pixels from 'Frogger.'"

Follow the link to read the rest at PopMatters.

September & October Issues

September Issue

Fall Arts Preview
A look ahead at the movies, books, network television shows, and cultural events premiering in the fall. Due to the size and number of components in this package, it looks much better in PDF form than on the web. See "Recent Work" for an excerpt.

Where the Laughs Are
Comedians come to the county: "Who says that every-thing in Westchester has to be so serious all the time? No, we don’t have our own dedicated comedy club, and we’re missing improv culture that’s present in a place like Astoria, Queens. But that doesn’t mean we don’t want a good laugh every now and again."

Home Theater
Iron Man 2, The Secret of Kells, and TV on DVD

This Month's Highlights
Roller Derby, circus art, and more.

October Issue

Rock-a-Bye Baby
One local musician arranges Simon & Garfunkel and Billy Joel tunes for babies: "How many times can you listen to one baby-oriented album before you wish they’d be old enough to start listening to Metallica, just for something different?"

Haunted Hudson Valley
A preview of a new Halloween attraction in Sleepy Hollow: "Unlike at certain other haunted attractions, don’t expect to see a man with a Scream mask wielding a knife at an off-model Freddy Krueger here. Lance Hallowell, the man behind Norwalk’s Misery Mansion FestEvil and last year’s haunted hayride in Sleepy Hollow, is in charge of keeping all the haunts—including the 40 to 50 professional actors working in the event—in line with our local history."

Home Theater
Scary movies: The Exorcist, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Splice, and the Alien box set.

This Month's Highlights
An Arts Fest in New Rochelle, Harvesting at Stone Barns, John Lithgow's one-man play, and more.

New Show Review: Running Wilde

Running Wilde: Zero Edges

"Running Wilde is clearly a post-recession show, a response to series where protagonists flaunt their riches and selfishness, too entrenched to acknowledge their own privilege. (Sorry, Gossip Girl.) Wilde’s pursuit of the most inessential items in the world—a horse that can fit into the backseat of a car, for example—makes it easy for an audience of more normal means to laugh at him, as opposed to feel bad about not having what he has."

More TONY

A few Time Out New York articles:

Places You Can Get to Without a Car
Ten destinations you can get to by train, bus, and Metro-North

Island Retreats Right in the NY Area
Including my favorite: Bannerman's Castle!

Free Classes in New York City
Comedy, crafting, boating, and yoga

Best Indie Shots: Williamsburg, Brooklyn
The best boutiques for clothes, housewares, and comics

NYC's Therapy Addiction, By the Numbers
Stats on therapy in the City

Popmatters Round-Up

It's been a while, and there are more in the pipeline, so I figured it was a good time to do another PopMatters Round-Up

The Square

"In unfolding these events, The Square is almost remarkable in its straightforwardness. It is unadorned, like a square—all straight lines and right angles. This isn’t a twist on the noir genre, or an attempt to update and recontextualize it. This is straight-up about bad things happening to bad people."

Remember Me

"Tyler and Ally. They are a bundle of quirky affectations. He works in a used bookstore and re-arranges the books according to the sexual proclivities of the authors! She believes that life is short and disaster can strike at any moment, so she eats desserts before dinner! Ostensibly, Remember Me is a love story – is this a love story that filmmakers really feel the need to tell? Two self-involved adolescents take the time to see past their own problems and affectations to notice someone else for a brief moment in time?"

Mystery Team

"Though everyone in the cast is well matched to his or her role, it’s clear that they were chosen for the movie for their abilities to be naturally funny, not because they can disappear into their characters. The result is a series of encounters with small-town misfits that are exaggerated and distorted versions of the actors who play them (or at least were created with their comedic strengths in mind). This is the right way to approach the material, primarily because the actors they rounded up are really darn funny."

Tetro

"Gorgeous, high-contrast black-and-white images—courtesy of cinematographer Mihai Malaimare, Jr.—give the film a more classic, timeless look.Tetro is worth viewing just to see the breathtaking shots of Argentina—which can easily be stunning with all of the naturally occurring color —done in the dreamy, luscious black-and-white style. Shown in a 2:35 aspect ratio, the shots in the film could be museum quality as still photography."

The Fantastic Mr. Fox

"Just as Tim Burton was able to use stop-motion animation to achieve a perfect expression of his gothic sensibility in his 1993 The Nightmare Before Christmas, Wes Anderson takes to the medium to make the most Wes Andersony movie possible. After all, his movies are always about the little details—the wallpapers, the ties—and stop-motion animation itself is nothing if not an amalgam of millions of little details."

PopMatters Round-Up


Some of my most recent PopMatters reviews:

The Box
"Of course, in the hands of director Richard Kelly, even a simple thought experiment becomes not-so-straightforward."

Moon
The most compelling movie futures are not necessarily the shiniest. They don’t always show us the sleekest designs, most efficient technologies, or the most spectacular visions of what’s to come.

Staten Island
"With the film Staten Island, director James DeMonaco promises to push past all of the borough’s stereotypes—which, let’s face it, are mostly negative—for a more honest look at what it means to be from the Island. He does so, as he mentions in a thoughtful commentary with stars Ethan Hawke and Vincent D’Onofrio, because he grew up on Staten Island, and always felt a sense of being mocked when he told that fact to outsiders."

The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard
"The huge ensemble is reduced to as series of one-note or half-note gags—get this, Ken Jeong’s character is Asian!—used to kill time when Piven is off-screen. And, since yes, it is funny to watch Piven go off on some type of ranting monologue, the film gets out of his way and gives them to him—many times."

The Monster Squad: 20th Anniversary Blu-Ray
"The Monster Squad is one of those ‘80s underdog-adventure movies that’s just one Corey shy of being a Saturday-afternoon television mainstay like the most famous of its brethren, The Goonies."

V: Series Premiere
"Viewers barely had time to wonder at the potential metaphors embodied by the extraterrestrials before we were hit with another shift in identity or expectation."

Flash Forward: Series Premiere
"Instead of engaging in diplomacy and cooperation, the episode focused on investigation: just three FBI agents—Benford, Demetri Noh (John Cho), and Janis Hawk (Christine Woods)—were assigned to figure out the cause of the blackout and the probability of its recurrence. Worse, instead of developing into an international procedural, the show immediately and extremely narrowed its focus, emulating every other unexplained-phenomenon series, from The X-Files to Fringe."

PopMatters's Year-End Lists Contributions:
Best Singles of 2009: Bishop Allen's "Oklahoma."
Best Albums of 2009: The Decemberists's The Hazards of Love (No. 25).
Best Movies of 2009: Coraline (No. 14)
Best TV Shows of 2009: Kings (No. 24).

January, February, and March


We started 2010 with lots of service, and I put together some great packages for the beginning of the year.

How to Do Just About Anything
A huge package full of tips on picking up any skills, from beer pong strategies to nuclear-meltdown preparedness. "Look back on your New Year’s resolutions. Did you vow to become a smarter, handier, more well-rounded person? That’s all well and good, but did you come up with a game plan for how to do it, too? No? Lucky for you, we did. Westchester’s packed with experts ready to teach you everything from the art of faking conversations with wine snobs to shedding those holiday pounds (while at work)."

Read This and Save a Bundle
Another service-packed feature, this time about saving money in the county: "How smart you are, you will think as you gaze at the best buy in your closet, that you were able to find that of-the-moment hot-ticket item for half price while your neighbors had to pay top dollar. And that’s what the best shoppers do: they don’t buy cheap items—they hunt, scour, and hustle until they can find great items at lower prices. And, believe us, it takes a lot of work. Lucky for you, we’ve done a lot of that work for you. We asked the pros, expert shoppers, and proud cheapskates (meet some of them here) to tell us how to find the best bargains in the county. Put down those coupon-clipping scissors and read on."

The Producer: Emily Gerson Saines
A profile of the executive producer of Temple Grandin: "When Cynthia Nixon accepted the Best Actress Tony Award for her performance in Rabbit Hole, there were only three people she mentioned by name: the playwright, the director, and Emily Gerson Saines."

Theater Review: 42nd Street
A review of a local production of the classic musical: "The characters in 42nd Street are excited to be cast in a new Broadway musical, not just for the sake of their showbiz careers, but because the economy is bad and they’re grateful for the jobs—sound familiar at all? Luckily, even if you haven’t been touched by the recession, the Westchester Broadway Theater’s 42nd Street gives you a lot of show for your money."

Five Places to Propose
Where to pop the question: "With Valentine’s Day in the air, and thoughts turning to romance, are you feeling inspired to buy a ring and ask for your true love’s hand? Finding someone to marry is the hard part—proposing should be easy. And, now, it’s even easier with our helpful list of five perfect places to pop the question. Take your pick from our à la carte menu of proposals."

January Highlights
Marianne Faithfull, Gregg Allman, and more.

January Home Theater
The Simpsons, Moon, and more.

February Highlights
Mardi Gras galore!

February Home Theater
A Serious Man, The Wolf Man, and more.

March Highlights
Henry Rollins, Ronnie Spector, and more.

March Home Theater
Kids' movies: Ponyo, The Fantastic Mr. Fox, and more.

October, November, December


I've been a bit behind on posting recent articles, so forgive the pile-up. The December issue just came out, and I had the pleasure of writing the cover story for it.

52 Reasons to Love Westchester
"Most people assume that people who live in Westchester are going for a New York City Lite experience. It’s an easy mistake to make, since we eat BLT steaks, get our hair cut at Devachan Salon, shop for new wardrobes at Rothman’s, and commute down south for a job, a night out, or a Broadway show. The truth is, while we may spend a lot of time in the City and patronize City-based businesses, we choose to live here precisely because Westchester is not New York City. We want to give up the steel and concrete for a little bit of greenery and some breathing room."

Guitar Hero
A profile of local guitar-maker Rudy Pensa: "Pensa got his start building guitars when he was just 13 years old. 'In Argentina, when I was playing in the late sixties and early seventies, it was difficult to find good instruments,' he says—so he started building his own. He opened the famous-among-music-geeks Rudy’s Music Shop in New York City in 1978 and has been commuting there from Scarsdale for almost three decades."

7 Days of Holidays
A round-up of local holiday events: "For you, our true loves, we present seven sets of seasonal events—no leaping lords or milking maids required."

Culture, Etc.
Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings, the Subdudes, and more.

Home Theater
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, District 9, Inglourious Basterds, and (500) Days of Summer.

November Culture, Etc.
Neko Case, Linda Eder, and more.

November Home Theater
Star Trek, Up, and more.

October Culture, Etc.
Sumi Jo, Wallace Shawn, and more.

October Home Theater
Drag Me to Hell, Karloff & Lugosi, and Trick 'r Treat.

Halloween Happenings
A round-up of Halloween events.

Where the Pros Go for Halloween Clothes
A look at the best costume shop in Yonkers.

Witch Craft
A Q&A with The Blair Witch Project's Michael C. Williams