My Life, Made Possible By Pop Culture

Well kids, this today.com blog certainly has been fun while it’s lasted, but unfortunately it’s run is coming to a quicker end than originally intended.  While I still plan to continue my pop culture articles in the blogosphere, today.com just isn’t making it worth my while to post in this forum anymore.  I encourage all of you to keep checking my personal website: danielletbd.blogspot.com for news and events coverage, including an exclusive “Fish out of Water” piece about the upcoming Comic Con San Diego.  I contribute original film reviews to www.socal.com, original “Best/Worst of” pieces for www.starpulse.com, and random product integration blurbs for L.A. Direct Magazine.  I have also officially started writing my first non-fiction book, ironically titled “My Life, Made Possible By Pop Culture,” which will take a good, hard (though not too serious) look at my influences growing up and how they’ve affected my relationships today.  So clearly there is a lot in store for me… just not in this corner of the web anymore.

Who even knew this show was still on!? Well, apparently the good folks at On Demand did because they thought it was smart to buy the season from NBC for all of the diehards who have better things to do on a Thursday night than sit home and wait for this to pop on… you know, all five of us.

I personally love stand-up comedy. Always have, always will. I have never laughed so hard tears have started streaming out of my eyes more than when catching a Robin Williams or Chris Rock special on HBO or Comedy Central. Last Comic Standing then should have been a goldmine for me– a chance to learn about up and coming comedians who I’d want to check out at the Laugh Factory or UCB or whereever. And at times, it was: it brought me Kathleen Madigan, Alonzo Bodden, Chris Porter, and Michele Balan. I was willing to overlook the few (ahem, Doug Benson) who clearly had moderate success but were still put forth past the semi-final rounds because I was convinced the return would be great. But sadly, the show buried some of its greatest talent just as the network buried the show in the middle of the summer with few promos. Last week was the first round of semi-finals on this season (which is actually only (?) the sixth), and it showed great promise (Jeff Dye, Ron G, Erin Jackson and Andi Smith)… but then Bill Bellamy announced who actually made it through, and to quote NPH, it was “a sausage fest” in there. Not one woman made it through. Now, I’m not saying they should pass a woman through if she isn’t as funny as the men she is competing with; affirmative action doesn’t work when an audience who has to be entertained is involved. However, even if every other one deserves to get the boot, it was only because Shazia Mizra blew them all out of the water. But she didn’t make it. Neither did Erin or Andi, and though I admit I need to hear a bit more from Andi (hard to pass a judgment on three minutes, especially when the show… trims some comedians’ sets), Erin was certainly funnier than Paul Foot, a stringy haired Mr. Bean, and God’s Pottery, who we’ve seen three times, and thus far they’ve performed the same one song about virginity over and over. My jaw actually dropped as an audible “Aw, hell naw!” spilled out of my lips.

Tonight we had a few more funny women (the stoned Mary Mack, the banking on stereotypes Esther Ku, and Iliza Shlesinger, who, if editing is to be believed, got the hardest laughs of the whole group) and some only okay guys (Dan Cummins, who is the Oliver Stone of stand-up, putting the emphasis on the exact word he finds to be the “funny point” of the joke, lest you miss it; Sean Cullen, who did like twenty minutes (or two) of “What Happens In Vegas,” chanting and then sang about porn (he actually has a decent voice and maybe should go for America’s Got Talent instead; and Stone & Stone, another duo who resued the same jokes from multiple episodes past and who I never personally found funny). There was a much smaller percentage of women who even made it to these semi-final rounds than men, so I guess it’s just basic math that fewer would get to take the next step, but to put it bluntly, it still sucks. I mean, really, the Lurch-looking dude with the giant cello? Really? At least Iliza made it or one of us would have had to cut a bitch (Bellamy)!

I admit Marcus is a genius for his impressions, and I’m glad to see him step outside the box and do some “regular” material, as well. He also looks like a less douchebaggy Dane Cook, so that doesn’t hurt. While I would normally boycott LCS based on principle, let’s face it, TV is slim pickins these days, and as long as there’s some eye candy for me, I’m pretty much a guaranteed pair of eyes. NBC, you’ve been warned: assuming you’re planning to fix the votes anyway, fix them in Marcus’ favor or lose me much sooner into the season than the pitiful ratings can stand.

Mariah Carey has debuted her newest video (for “I’ll Be Lovin’ U Long Time”) today exclusively through Yahoo! Music and AOL, after weeks of images from the Hawaiian photo shoot being passed around those sites and dozens more. The video is an ode to the story-less videos of Mariah’s early days, when Sony opted instead to just focus on their star and her voice, placing her alone in a room to sing and sway to the tune. Though this video definitely has the “emancipated” feel (she’s in teeny bikinis instead of form-fitting dresses, and it employs the hip-hop techniques of blinking to black and reusing certain “money” shots over and over), it lacks all of the creativity she exalted when she first broke free as a woman and an artist. Unfortunately, director Chris Applebaum shows even less imagination with “I’ll Be Lovin U Long Time” than the last video (”Bye Bye”); there is no leading man, no arc, no story at all: just an exceptionally fit Mariah dead center. For someone who has been honing her acting chops with independent film, I’m underwhelmed, but what about you?

I recently read an article hypothesizing that independent film was dead, and after working on one such set this past weekend, I can’t help but disagree… but I must not how different today’s indies are compared to even just a year or two ago. Independent film allows an artist room to grow, which is why so many gravitate towards that medium. If you’re passionate about your craft, you usually don’t want to spend years working your way up through a system that ultimately may never reward you, and you certainly don’t want to get stuck working with material that is not what you love. But where it gives, independent film is also known to take away: without the financial and reputation cushions of a well known studio or production company, a filmmaker can’t literally turn their imagination into reality, as they are often restricted by budget and time.

By a studio’s definition, an independent film is primarily funded by one person or institution. However, that means the actual budget of the project can be anything from SAG Ultra Low Budget (under two hundred thousand dollars) to IA Tier Three, which is just under ten million dollars. With such a discrepancy in numbers, the gap in production value is just bound to be as wide; it doesn’t matter how talented someone is or how many favors one can pull, there are just certain things that can’t be done with only a few thousand, especially when compared to those that had triple the money.

But the common audience member doesn’t think of such things; the common audience member doesn’t even see budgetary figures. So what is an independent film to them, then? Is it still something that doesn’t feature big name stars? Well, perhaps, depending on what one considers is a “big star,” but Juno features the exceptionally recognizable Jason Bateman, Allison Janney, and J.K. Simmons, not to mention Jennifer Garner. So, is it something that features a ton of monologues, dialogues, banters, and virtually no action? Sometimes, especially on the ones with severe budget constraints, but even that is not an all or nothing formula: Contour is a low budget martial arts flick, Broken is a guerilla horror/suspense flick, and That is a straight-to-DVD snowboarding flick. Really what independent film has always meant to me is that you’re just free from a studio’s control: you can tell the story you want to tell and in the way you want to tell it. Sometimes this means hiring specific actors that maybe you see a lot of potential in but who, for one reason or another, would only get typecast and/or Under Five roles in bigger projects. Sometimes this means telling a story outside its “typical” genre structure and not being forced to open the first five minutes with some big and flashy just to hook the audience. Sometimes this means being a hybrid filmmaker (Writer/Producer, Producer/Director, Director/Writer, or many more permutations…), but all of it means (IMHO) that for once the film is really yours because you don’t have a studio head breathing down your neck and controlling the important creative decisions about which they usually know nothing anyway.

Independent films are no easy feats: with less money to play with and without the cushion of having a studio attached, often times shots must be sacrificed and scenes rewritten to work around the locations you actually get versus the ones you have on a wish list. Same goes for talent on occasion, though after the surge of independent films sweeping major awards shows, perhaps starting with 1999’s Boys Don’t Cry, many more A and B list stars are reading (and loving, I might add) those “small” scripts. Well, small in budget, but big in substance: after all, some of those offer the meatiest character work some of these actors will ever get offered, and you can’t argue with that!

There is rarely distribution in place before production begins on independent films, though, so there is often a post-production limbo that can go on for years before anything happens with the project. Things like product integration, advertising, and marketing often falls on the shoulders of the producers, no small jobs that undoubtedly the people aren’t used to doing; in the studio system there are whole departments dedicated solely to each of those things. At least in the beginning, when the film is just in the can, you are your own publicist with independent films– taking them to festivals, hosting private screenings, trying to get write ups in the trades. You have to sell yourself and your work to not only get someone to buy the completed work but to also hopefully give you money for the next one. And sometimes that’s the hardest thing of them all for artists to do.

The first five minutes of Vantage Point start off strong and with a bang (no pun intended), as Sigourney Weaver and a crew of news producers sit inside a control room, ready to go live with reporters on the scene of a high-profile presidential appearance in Spain. As Weaver gets into a petty squabble with one reporter (Zoe Saldana) over the tone she chose to take in a live shot, a gunshot fires, hitting the president, and the crew scrambles to cover it. The pacing picks up significantly, as it begins to match the panic-mode of the people in the square, and then comes the one-two punch of an explosion at the base of the hotel in the center of the events. Travis chooses to introduce these events– the ones that supposedly set up the course for the whole film– to his audience through the limited angles this crew’s cameras are able to capture, and in doing so, he doesn’t allow us access to all of the information just yet. The give a little, hold a lot back approach of Vantage Point shows great potential, but unfortunately it gets old quickly and just ends up frustrating the viewers.

It’s painfully obvious what is really going on from the first few minutes of Vantage Point– in part because the majority of the plot is covered neatly in the promotional trailers but also due to the fact that the script is just not imaginative, and the plot is quite thin overall– meaning, the stereotypical bad guys are the bad guys; there are no twists here.  Barry Levy, a former teacher who sold Vantage Point as his first screenplay, sets up a few points (such as the fact that the president used a double for his appearance and therefore didn’t actually get shot) that– if the film was allowed to play out past the course of the same two violent events over and over and over– would actually offer interesting and unique commentary. It would have been great to see the ramifications after the realization that the public had been duped; it would have been something rooted in reality and just tongue-in-cheek enough to elicit smiles. Instead, Levy’s sophomoric style keeps the audience five steps ahead of the movie at any given moment, eliminating any real reason to keep watching.

The film is full of filler, offering the same sequences from varying angles and POVs– from Secret Service agents (Dennis Quaid and Matthew Fox) to a civilian with a video camera (Forest Whitaker) who just happens to be in the right place at the right time to capture the “truth”  to an up-and-coming terrorist (Said Taghmaoui, who is really too good for that kind of typecasting).  Between the repetition, the slo-mo, the rewind sequences in between POVs, and the ungodly amount of running, there is no real plot– just a whole lot of fast motion. The script must have been only twenty pages long and therefore would have made a really clever, really innovative short… or even a web series.
Vantage Point boasts a huge cast of name talent, none of whom Travis seemed to know what to do with.  Only Quaid and Whitaker have backstories, as simple as they may be, because Travis instead chooses to focus on convoluted action, muddying the importance of his wide net of supporting players and making the majority of them much more expendable than they perhaps should be.  There is really nothing at stake for any of them other than “stay alive,” and the few attempts at character connection or dimension– most of which are given to Whitaker– are too on the nose, as if Levy doesn’t trust his audiences enough to read facial expressions, and Travis doesn’t trust his actors to give the right ones. Levy tells when he should show; when Whitaker is alone, he mutters to himself ridiculously, unrealistically, and expositionally. There are actual, audible “Oh my Gods” spilling from these wide-eyed characters’ mouths, and suddenly six-foot-tall, hulking men are reduced to melodramatic seventh grade girls.  It’s fitting, really, that in a film about deception, corruption, and violence, the filmmakers themselves proved to be similarly paranoid control freaks, unable to allow their actors just to do their own thing.
Far too much is by “chance” in this film, again namely with Forest Whittaker, who is the only civilian featured, and who happens to stumble onto just about everything. Dennis Quaid, too, though, just happens to have luck and timing on his side, finding pieces of the puzzle literally one after the other just dropped at his side, which is really just typical of the arc a once-fallen hero desperate to redeem himself takes in films like Vantage Point.  Everything just comes too “easily.”  Travis is far too distracted by manufacturing suspense to focus on the huge holes and just expects his audience to be willing to suspend their disbelief enough to join him on this “convenient” journey.

What could possibly be left to say about Vantage Point, then, in a two-disc special edition?  Well first off, you are given three versions of the film: the widescreen, full screen, and a digital copy to burn onto your hard drive or tote around with you on a PSP.  Special features include a featurette called “An Inside Perspective,” which is really nothing more than hype interviews from the cast and crew, which is the most interesting thing on the disc, including the feature; “Plotting an Assassination,” which is a semi-in-depth head-scratcher of an interview with Levy; one deleted scene; and an audio commentary with Travis, in which he attempts to give his choices merit.  Like the majority of the film itself, these are superfluous.

Vantage Point’s concept is clever, and its effort is certainly admirable, but it was just too big for these green filmmakers, and unfortunately they got caught up in the flashy style and eliminated all substance.  The result, which is just laughable when it isn’t intended to be a comedy, would have been much more successful if it was half its length– and at only ninety minutes, that’s certainly saying something.

If you’re like me and you prefer an entertainment news wire over an actual one, you have your finger on the pulse (and your bookmarks set to) websites like Perez Hilton, Entertainment Weekly Online, and perhaps most notably No Control. These are sites that post religiously, pulling news and gossip from all facets of entertainment and a myriad of sources onto one central page and reprinting it for your convenience. No Control happens to be the best of the bunch (IMHO) and not just because they link to me They are simply the best for finding gems of articles like the in-depth exposé on New York’s first Reality Television School. Yes, it’s real. It’s a school for wannabe reality show contestants where they learn the ins and outs– what to do and what not to do– in a casting session in order to get selected for the show– any one of the shows and all of the shows.

I intended to write a lengthier “response” piece, but I am literally left speechless after reading the craziness in that article. The whole thing sounds like a prank for yet another reality show! But sadly no, Reality Television School is where our culture has gone these days: it’s acting school but for the less ambitious. And doesn’t that one statement alone speak volumes for us as a society?

OMG, you guys! Okay, so though I may have never officially committed my feelings about Rachael Ray to print in the past, it has never been a secret how little I care for her. Her loud “Italian” mouth, wild hand gestures, and abrasive laugh all scream “I’m drunk” a little more than I enjoy my talk show hosts to. Plus, I just don’t find her cute. I’m sorry; I don’t. She’s not some spunky, petite, little firecracker in the kitchen; she’s just plain annoying. And she’s one of Oprah’s protégés, which, let’s face it, makes me like her even less.

Needless to say, when I saw her pop up on The Next Food Network Star last year, not only was I shocked that she agreed to allow these “wannabes” onto her “precious” program (I attributed her ultimate commitment to the fact that she was, in fact, drunk when her assistant or manager or producer or whoever got her to sign the paperwork), but I was also bummed that this would be an episode out of which I could half-tune. But this season, oh this season! Working in Video On Demand, one of the perks, I guess you could say, is that content is often delivered to us prior to it airing linearly. We process it and prep it for pitch out to the cable companies and affiliates, and while its start date is more often than not after the first linear airing, it often sits in our library for weeks prior. Every now and then I sneak an early peek. Ssh, don’t tell anyone

This week (it airs Sunday night; set your TiVos!) on The Next Food Network Star is once again Rachael Ray week, and immediately I groaned inwardly at the thought. However, the surprise twist was that not only would each contestant have to create a fun “kid friendly” meal to prepare in front of her live studio audience– and in only a four minute segment!– but that they would each be working with a Girl Scout in order to do so. The challenge was one part cooking, one part playing to the audience, one part engaging the kid and Rachael, which is no short order! While some contestants admitted they were overwhelmed by the lights, cameras, and audience members, one said she was intimidated by Rachael herself, and to that I have one piece of advice: hide the knives and the wine! A few contestants really excelled in this challenge, using their honest, open personalities to make everyone feel involved, as well, but of course the best moments came with the contestants (or in this case one in particular, Kelsey) who stepped on Rachael’s toes. And that’s when I sat straight up in my chair and removed my finger from the fast forward button.

Kelsey is one of the youngest chefs in this competition and also one of the smallest. She is tiny and blonde and looks like she belongs more in at a pep rally or sorority house than commanding a kitchen, so one of the criticisms given to her in weeks past has been that she really has to step up her authoritativeness to let everyone know she’s in charge. And that she did with Rachael.

Rachael always smiles a big fake smile like being paid millions to stand in front of the audience for a few hours a week is just torturous work. Then along comes perky, cheery Kelsey, whose smile is always big, bold, and ridiculously genuine, and suddenly, standing next to her, it is just painfully obvious (even to her supporters) that Rachael has something stuck up her nether regions. Something tells me she will now decline any future involvement with this show. Kelsey starts at the top by throwing a task Rachael’s way: one that is probably a bit menial for such an “experienced” chef; she asks her to prepare an egg for a breakfast sandwich. Rachael tries to make a joke about how she’s getting stuck doing Kelsey’s job, but in Kelsey’s innocence and sweet, bubbly nature, it just makes Rachael sound bitter, and the tension begins. Kelsey further adds to it (probably without even realizing it) by calling her “Rach,” to which I thought her eyes would pop out of their sockets, and she’d overturn the hot pan of eggs on the younger chef’s head. Thankfully, there was the kid there to act as a buffer, though she was smart enough to stay on the other side of Kelsey, safely out of Rachael’s path and wrath.

The rest of the show, “judge’s table” included, was far less eventful, but I kid you not, the four minutes between Kelsey and Rachael were well worth the price of admission. I hereby submit them into the blogosphere as Best Reality Duo– like the cooking Odd Couple! I won’t spoil the outcome and tell you how the judges thought Kelsey (or any of the others) fared. I will just tell you that if you’ve never tuned into this show, now is the perfect time to start! I can’t wait to see what craziness gets cooked (get it?) up next week!!!

“Back in the day” when a gun battle or a car chase came on screen in the theater, the goosebumps the audiences members got were because the things they were seeing unfold in two-dimensional form in front of them made them want to get up and experience life.  Stunts have a way of fueling even the most passive movie goer’s adrenaline, testing their theories about what we are capable above and making them want to take some risks all of their own.  Though special effects, in one archaic form or another, have been around as long as cameras themselves– in 1895, the first documented case of stop-motion photography (then simply known as “trick” photography) was created by Alfred Clark when he had his actors freeze in place, stopped the camera, and switched out his actress with a dummy while reenacting the beheading of Mary, Queen of Scots– they were not used with such liberalism until recently.  In fact, CGI, the technology that makes effects quicker and easier than ever before, was not introduced until 1976, and even then it’s technology was quite unsophisticated.  Still, filmmakers were excited by the prospects, and slowly but surely, they began incorporating its elements into action films, horror films, period pieces, and lately even straight dramas or comedies: the next time you’re watching something that takes place in an arena or sports stadium, think about how many of those bodies you see in seats are real and how many are bots.  At first it seemed like it would blow over: everyone was just excited by the technology and what it could do, and they used it with a heavy hand, but certainly the honeymoon phase would fade away… right?  Sadly no, that doesn’t seem to be the case.  In an ever-escalating effort to keep raising the shock factor bar, more and more action films rely on CGI enhancement to create larger-than-life moments but unfortunately just end up falling into the traps of the technology and gives us something akin to an overblown videogame: just a bit too loose at the hinges to be mistaken for anything that could pass as reality.

In-camera special effects, such as stop motion technology or stunts allow filmmakers to get creative with their storytelling but to do so in a way that still lives in reality.  There is an element that keeps the scenes grounded in reality: everything we watch unfold before us is something that a real person actually did.  Not only does that give us a surge of power about what our limitations are, but it adds credibility to the work of fiction.  CGI most certainly allows filmmakers to get creative in other ways; their horizons are expanded and roadblocks to ideas are virtually torn down, but there’s a thin line with what’s complementary and what’s just too much.

Let’s take today’s release, Wanted, as an example. The Fight Club meets Smokin’ Aces on meth high-octane shooter flick boasts a protagonist whose sped-up heart rate actually allows him to slow down and focus on details of chaos in front of him, grabbing a metal ball from inside a piece of clenching machinery, racing atop a moving train, and curving a bullet.  But let’s back up a minute: one of the first scenes in the film is an assassination on a Fraternity member who supposedly went rogue: standing in a high-rise office, a laser beam cuts through the windowpane, hitting his female companion in the middle of her forehead and sending her blood, as red as the laser light itself, splattering onto the wall behind her.  From there the man takes off, running for the elevator, assumedly fleeing to safety.  Instead, he breathes deeply, crouches down, and everything in his vision begins to pulse.  He presses his foot against the back of the elevator, and the wall crumples like he’s turning into the Incredible Hulk.  He runs at down the hall, sending papers flying in his path, and plunges through the window, shooting at men on a rooftop across the way.  Then, in a move over which Jerry Bruckheimer will probably sue, we see a bullet push through a man’s forehead, as he gets shot from behind, and then everything reverses, and we follows the bullets path, sucking out of his skull and spinning back through the air into the barrel of a gun.  Cool?  Sure.  Additional quality?  Not at all.  If anything, it was a cheap tactic to show off what they figured out their Macs could do.

The first time the young protagonist in Wanted is introduced to his destiny it is during a similar shootout, which once again focuses on the trajectory of the bullets rather than the dance the shooters have to do to in their chase. He, too, flees the scene and ends up in the center of a parking lot, with a delivery truck barreling down on him. His savior comes in the form of Angelina Jolie who whips a cherry red Viper around and manages to scoop him inside without even stopping. She can curve cars and bullets; she must be the master. While that shot had the audible “how’d they do that?” gasp going for it, what follows is a computer generated inspired mess of a chase that is incomparable in its frenetic nature, as well in the number of cars she purposefully drives into or against. Stunts like these used to be about artistry: about perfecting the use of an instrument (be it a prop gun, a car, or even just their own bodies) to the point where they would bring it to the edge (get inches from another car, for example), but at the last second they would always regain control with a simple smirk and flick of the wrist. Stunts are about grace and creativity and testing boundaries, but computers are just about formulas and equations and the easiest way possible to make something louder, faster, and more over the top.  Stunts get you on the edge of your seat; though you know the players involved will survive, you still want to see how far they push themselves.  CGI removes that risk and therefore a lot of the suspense, and to compensate, the result is often much glossier and flashier than it need be, provoking eyerolls and chuckles of disbelief. A dangling Amtrak train off a bridge that ultimately splits apart and plummets down a cliff to water below; a young hero blowing away his enemies one by one with muzzle flashes and mini-bombs? CGI can (and did) do that, but there’s no choreography there; there’s no interaction between a director, his actors, his stunt doubles– his trained professionals. There’s only a guy sitting behind a computer screen, creating a cartoonish, isolating world, and while CGI hasn’t completely eliminated the need for actual people in films just yet, I’m sure (especially with all these talks of strikes) producers would love to work out a way for that to happen.  And suddenly, Toto, we’re not in filmmaking anymore; suddenly we’re just computer programmers projecting our projects onto a big screen.

In the early part of his career, Jason Bateman was known as the cute sandy hair boy from the wholesome TV family. Beginning with Little House on the Prairie and taking it through Silver Spoons (where as the best friend character, he became part of the extended family) and Valerie, he wore that role like it was his own skin. Only as he aged (like with 2001’s Some of my Best Friends) did he start to include sarcasm into his portrayals, opening up a world of possibilities for him to steal scenes in a number of feature films.

In 2002’s The Sweetest Thing, Bateman’s crass, horndog brother was the perfect snort-worthy anecdote to Thomas Jane’s dry goofball. In a movie filled with overly dramatic and dislikeable characters, Bateman brought a level of sincerity to the silliness, making it impossible not to laugh out loud when he got escorted out of the club, told his brother not to “be gay in God’s house,” or sang a remarkably sober wedding band version of “Eternal Flame.” Where it would have been easy for a lesser actor to get lost in the female buddy comedy, Bateman’s knack for comic timing and delivery was actually a positive for the film as a whole, taking the tone down a notch and making at least one relationship (that between him and Jane) feel believable. While the film itself certainly didn’t break any records, it set Bateman on track for a long and lucrative big screen career.

As Pepper Brooks in 2004’s Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story, Bateman was back playing the cocky, pompous, self-assured d-bag one can only love in the movies. His sideline commentary was completely nonsensical, as he chomped on gum and grinned like he just didn’t care that Gary Cole was shooting him annoyed looks from the adjacent seat. His carefree attitude and wide smile made you love him, and every time you shook your head in response to some inane comment he made, you laughed, too.

Playing a character (Rip Reed) pent up in a hotel room in 2006’s Smokin’ Aces, Bateman could have been a metaphor for the frenetically charged, high octane, tweaker of a film itself. He spoke in drawn out, seemingly Tourette’s induced monologues; sweaty and squinty-eyed, he was manic and A.D.D., and despite all of the chaos, he still managed to command attention during the mere minutes he was on screen. With so many characters flitting in and out—and so many bullets flying around– they were all expendable, but Bateman grabbed onto something in the audience and implanted himself in their subconscious. Even if his character was not so lucky, his scenes would stick around in their memories.

2006’s The Ex, a blink-and-you-missed-its-release romantic? comedy about a guy (Zach Braff) who becomes increasingly, insanely jealous of his wife’s ex-boyfriend when they are forced to move back to her hometown, and he is forced to work alongside the ex (who is, of course, Bateman). In this case, Bateman is just one in a sea of fine supporting actors (Charles Grodin, Amy Poehler, Paul Rudd), but he manages to stand out for the earnest way he once again plays a sleazebag. Even though you should be rooting for Braff to keep his marriage afloat, when the “other guy” is Bateman, that’s damn near impossible. Maybe it’s incredible method acting or maybe it’s his natural boyish charm, but everything he touches turns to gold.

2007’s The Kingdom was a slightly different side to Bateman, who was still comic relief but this time in a very serious setting. Playing a member of a government team sent into Riyadh to investigate the bombing of an American base, for the first time, his sometimes snide humor was gentler, subtler, and quieter. He offered a chance to smile warmly as a break from the suspense. And with his proven track record at spicing up everything from gross-out comedies to heavy, based on real life dramas, there is no doubt Bateman’s yet another supporting role in Hancock (taking theaters by storm July 2) will be a hit with critics and fans alike. Though it can be said that really all he’s doing is just playing the same character over and over again, how can one argue with such a winning formula?