johnhayworth Reviews

HBO First Look: The Nativity Story: A Director's Journey (2006) Season 13, Episode 20

Too Bad Catherine Hardwicke is not really a Director

[1/10 · 7 January 2008]

"A Director's Journey"????!!! What pretension! Catherine Hardwicke is one of the current batch of pseudo-directors that Hollywood is trying to force feed to a bored public.

All she demonstrated in her first films is an ability to shoot on video and shake the camera (no doubt to try and hide the fact that the aforesaid video looked terrible).

That she tries to pass herself off as a director is pathetic enough, but that HBO feels compelled to try and help her with a pretentiously titled bad behind the scenes is beyond the pale.

Shame on you HBO. And shame on the studios that give Catherine Hardwicke movies to destroy (I meant "direct").

Friday Night Lights (2006– )

Friday Night Yuck

[2/10 · 7 January 2008]

The endless hype over Friday Night Lights got me to take a look at this show, and boy was it worth it!! I didn't know whether to throw something at the TV or laugh on the floor at the pathetically inept spectacle that is Friday Night Lights.

Apparently NBC still thinks that having a bunch of bad directors shake the camera aimlessly and play with the zoom of their camera as if it were a new toy is something that audiences want to see.

Someone needs to tell them the skinny! Audiences are not watching this fake "masterpiece" because there is nothing masterful about it. Getting a bunch of blind critics to sing the praises of something so badly done only achieves two things: 1) It makes critics lose what little credibility they had left after endorsing Arrested Development.

2) It makes it that much harder to sell the public on anything NBC has to sell next time, because for the next hype I probably won't even bother to try the show.

NBC should apologize to all the people who wasted their time with Friday Night Lights.