This blog will present news items about the motion picture business, with emphasis on lower budget, independent film in most cases. Some reviews or commentaries on specific films, with emphasis on significance (artistic or political) or comparison, are presented. Note: No one pays me for these reviews; they are not "endorsements"! Starting in May 2016, many of the reviews for new feature films have been done on a hosted Wordpress site, and this blog now mostly does shorts and older films.
Since the 1990s I have been very involved with fighting the military "don't ask don't tell" policy for gays in the military, and with First Amendment issues. Best contact is 571-334-6107 (legitimate calls; messages can be left; if not picked up retry; I don't answer when driving) Three other url's: doaskdotell.com, billboushka.com johnwboushka.com Links to my URLs are provided for legitimate content and user navigation purposes only.
My legal name is "John William Boushka" or "John W. Boushka"; my parents gave me the nickname of "Bill" based on my middle name, and this is how I am generally greeted. This is also the name for my book authorship. On the Web, you can find me as both "Bill Boushka" and "John W. Boushka"; this has been the case since the late 1990s. Sometimes I can be located as "John Boushka" without the "W." That's the identity my parents dealt me in 1943!
"Wingman, Inc.": a formulaic sex comedy whose concept is apparent from the title
“Wingman, Inc.” (2015), directed by Choice Skinnner, is a
new situation comedy about the concept in the name: that is, a man who helps less secure men pick
up women, or, conversely, a woman who helsp companions fend off undesirable
men. I don’t think this concept would
find much application in the gay community.
So the natural question becomes, what happens when the
wingman (Bobby, played by Kristopher Turner) and the wing-woman (Kristy, played
by Erin Cahill) meet, and maybe have a romance?
Admittedly, the comedy is pretty silly. Bobby has a business as a dog psychiatrist,
that doesn’t bring in enough to pay the rent (or pay back student loans) in
modern Los Angeles. There are plenty of
cute and imposing pooches, especially a Shepard named Parker (inspired by
Richard Parker in “Pi”, maybe). So the
Wingman business may help with the bills and keep him from getting evicted.
Bobby has a creative roommate Bud, who smokes bongs in his
pad. Bud is played by Reid Ewing, who
appears with a modest beard for the first time that I recall. Later Bud cleans up and plays a constructive
role in Bobby’s renovation. Ewing seems
to be playing a sequence of supporting roles in smaller films, many of them
comedies. I still don’t know what
happened to the release of “South Dakota”.
Reid's role doesn't bring him much into direct contact with Bobby's "patient' dogs, but that's ironic; Reid is well known for his interest in rescuing animals (Facebook post from Utah here).
This film is not as successful as “10 Rules”, because it
simply is a little slow and not quite goofball enough to transcend itself. I guess Bobby has just the right amount of hair on his chest, so that he can survive a botched mugging near the end. The Coen Brothers were not consulted about how to shoot that.
The closing "wedding sequence" and epilogue of fast-moving post-establishing shots does present an interesting idea for cinematic narrative.
Lionsgate has a site for the filmhere ; the site listed on imdb does not work.
I watched it on Amazon instant play ($4.99 in HD). It can
be rented on YouTube for $3.99 from Lionsgate. I sometimes find that the Amazon
feed can stall (delivering video) when Netflix always works – is that because Netflix
payed Comcast for the fastest lane?
Picture: LA along the 405 (not far from Reid's own "Traffic Jam"), Angelino Hotel, my trip, 2012.
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