Fourth Row Center

"A man of action is his own son!" bellows John Lithgow to a confused Jeffrey Tambor in the new NBC comedy Twenty Good Years , an uneven but sometimes funny show about two retirement-age men who realize they have about twenty good years left and decide to live life to its fullest. Going in I wanted to like this show. I have not regularly viewed a show on network television since Frasier ended its run, and I thought Tambor and Lithgow might have enough chemistry to make this one soar. They are both talented and funny and they do click on screen. Unfortunately, their scenes together are the only ones in this premiere episode that work. I found the first act rushed, sloppily written and unfunny, and I was about to give up on the show when plastered surgeon John Mason (Lithgow) arrives late for his own birthday party and tells Jeffrey Pyne (Tambor) he's changing the way he lives. At this point the jokes become crisp and edgy, and the force of Lithgow's pesonality keeps me...

I saw Scoop this week, the new Woody Allen film starring Scarlett Johansson and Hugh Jackman, and both Allen and the film felt tired. Although there were a few laughs, I did not find the film particularly funny, and I wonder if the 70-year-old actor/director still has a comic touch. Allen's one-liners seem familiar and the plot is not particularly imaginative. Set in London, Allen's new cinematic home, Scoop seems like an afterthought to his 1993 film Manhattan Murder Mystery . That one, with Diane Keaton, Angelica Huston and Alan Alda, was a much better comedy. Scoop suffers from familiarity more than anything, Allen's performance as magician The Great Splendini included. Johansson is fine as the young student reporter investigating a millionaire she suspects (with help from beyond the grave) to be a serial killer. Hugh Jackman, as millionaire Peter Lyman, holds the film together with his breezy and convincing performance. But it's not enough.

Many years ago my friend and roommate Chuck and I found that fourth row center was the optimum place within most auditoriums to view most movies. Heaven knows in all of the hundreds of movies we have seen together over many years we tried just about everywhere else. In the large auditoriums the seats are a reputable distance from the screen, and the fourth row is close enough to be enveloped by the cinema experience without being so close that one’s view of the motion picture is distorted. In the smaller venues which offer smaller screens, any further back than fourth row and one may find oneself distracted by restless audience members and the occasional top hat. Since then, Fourth Row Center has come to mean to me an ideal location for viewing not just movies, but the world around me. A view from near the front, but central enough to put what I am seeing into some sort of context. I have established this blog for that purpose - a forward but centered viewpoint from which I plan to mak...