Marisa LaScala: Writer, Editor, and Good Addition to Your Bar Trivia Team

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 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.

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."

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).

Here are a few thoughts about So You Think You Can Dance.

So You Think You Can Dance: Season Six Premiere

"Then again, So You Think You Can Dance seems willing to shake things up. For one thing, the move to fall suggests it the series is no longer content to dominate the summer, where its competition is comprised of reruns and other reality competitions. But this means the show needs to surprise us each week with knockout numbers. While other reality competition shows pin their hopes on the contestants and judges, in this case, the choreographers finally get their wish: It’s their show. They will determine if this season will fall flat."

It's not Vogue, but the September issue is still my favorite issue of the year. Fall Arts Preview! I take a look at upcoming arts, culture, and events.

Fall Movies
"Where the Wild Things Are: It might seem like Maurice Sendak’s chidren’s book classic is impossible to adapt into a feature-length movie, but leave it to a couple of hipsters: Being John Malkevich director Spike Jonze and A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius writer Dave Eggers have come up with a big-screen version that actually looks faithful to the spirit of the book. Yeah Yeah Yeahs frontwoman Karen O. stirs up the wild rumpus by providing original music."

Fall TV
"Melrose Place: Consider Tuesday flashback-to-the’90s night. Coming on the heels of the CW’s 90210 revamp, Melrose Place is another resurrected, catty, soapy, California-based drama with an ensemble of fresh-faced up-and-comers (and a couple of original Melrose Place veterans). Watch it while wearing your old flannel and drinking a Zima."

Fall Books
"The Humbling: Philip Roth is one of the country’s most decorated authors, winning the Pulitzer Prize, the National Medal of Arts, the PEN/Faulkner Award, the PEN/Nabokov Award, and the PEN/Saul Bellow Award, among others. It’s strange, then, that the protagonist of his newest book has lost all confidence. The celebrated actor no longer feels at home on stage, and he has to learn to get through his most challenging performance: life in his 60s."

Fall Events
"Bike Rides: In between releasing albums with Brian Eno, staging critically raved-about tours, and generally being awesome, former Talking Heads frontman David Byrne is a tireless bicycle advocate. It’s no shock, then, that he is an advisor on this exhibition, which features two-wheelers that have been customized and repurposed by artists. We love the Pimp my Piragua bike, which is essentially a giant boom box with huge speakers attached to the bike frame. Keep an eye out for museum-sponsored bike rides (where some of the artwork actually performs), bike raffles, and other fun two-wheeled events."

In addition to the Fall Arts Preview, it was also an issue devoted to kids, so wrote about the best in children's books and movies.

Book Reports
A survey of almost two dozen local children's book authors and illustrators: "No matter what your book is about, two things will always happen on a school visit. A kid will ask you about dinosaurs, and another how much money you make. I know a fair amount about dinosaurs. As for the other question, I usually reply, ‘More than you do.'"

New Classics
Local children's librarians and film educators were asked to name recent classic books and movies: "It’s inconceivable that you haven’t heard about the young wizard and his attempts to avenge his parents and stop the evil Lord Voldemort. 'Part of the series’ appeal is the proximity of the magical world to our world,' Rovenger says."

On top of all of that, there were my usual departments:

Craft Work
A look at some upcoming craft fairs: "Why learn to knit, decoupage, or make jewelry when you can buy artisanal goods from neighbors much handier than you?"

Culture Etc.
Los Lobos, John Scofield, Alan Menken, and more.

Home Theater
Sugar, The Wizard of Oz 70th Anniversary Ultimate Collector's Edition, and more.

After it was posted, my review of this new Fox animated show was one of the most read and most commented items on PopMatters.

Sit Down, Shut Up: Series Premiere
"For the new series, Hurwtiz has tapped three Arrested Development alumni (Bateman, Arnett, and Winkler). But while the blueprint looks the same—self-interested characters go about their daily dramas while Bateman plays the straight man who thinks he’s above it all—the shows operate on very different levels. The first offered sophisticated wordplay and superb timing. Sit Down, Shut Up makes jokes about nut-sacks (of the legume variety). Still, it does one thing very right, and very like the beloved Arrested Development, with talented comedians delivering gags at an exhilarating, rapid-fire pace."

A cool-sounding genre series doesn't live up to its promise in the first episode.

Harper's Island: Series Premiere

"Even without a killer traipsing around the island, this party would be in trouble. The bride has a boyfriend on the side. Her father is trying to stop the marriage. The female guests maraud around in their underwear, Henry’s uncle threatens to blackmail his father-in-law-to-be, and Henry’s brother is suicidal. Even the flower girl seems pained, frying slugs with a magnifying glass and looking generally creepy."

Another show canceled before its time:

Andy Richter Controls the Universe: The Complete Series

"While there are unbelievable moments involving kangaroo fights, sequined in-office song-and-dance routines, and Andy squeezing coal into a diamond, the characters on the show are always seen as realistic. Nobody is a moustache-twirling villain. The closest thing Andy has to a rival is his very attractive coworker, Keith (James Patrick Stuart)—who also happens to be one of Andy’s best friends and is an all-around nice guy. Life is just easier for him because he’s handsome, and Andy is understandably bitter about that, but the show stops there and doesn’t fall into the trap of turning Keith into a cartoonish, womanizing jerk. In fact, they go out of their way to give him some insecurity about his looks. (He has small feet.)"

I got to review the craziest new show on television.

Kings: Series Premiere

"Repeatedly, Kings shifts from personal to political conflicts, intimating that they are, after all, the same thing. Whether disputes occur between two nations or two people, all the relationships here have to do with power. Players do what it takes to get and keep it, exploiting others and making sacrifices. King Silas and David Shepherd are alike in that they both wonder if, in the end, those sacrifices are worth it."