Review: Late Night With Jimmy Fallon

This probably isn't the best review coming from me, a biased Conan O'Brien fan, but hey, I'll try to be as honest as possible.

I was pretty sad to hear that I would be Conan-less for about three months while he transitions from Late Night to the Tonight Show. However, I was satisfied to hear that Jimmy Fallon would be replacing Conan. I was a fan of Jimmy's work on Saturday Night Live as the Weekend Update co-anchor and as the crazy Red Sox fan. After Conan's departure, I wasn't really able to catch Late Night with Jimmy Fallon due to having class early the next morning. Although, since this past week, I've been on spring break and have been able to give Late Night a solid chance.

Beforehand, I read reviews saying that Jimmy was a disaster and I thought that it just couldn't be true! Well, I was wrong. One thing that Jimmy and Conan have is bad writers, but Conan can deal with that. Conan can make a bad joke funny just by reacting to it and realizing that it wasn't funny. Jimmy tries to do the same, but doesn't seem to have the charisma that Conan does. Another thing, Jimmy mumbles everything! I cannot understand thirty percent of what comes out of his mouth. Also, his interview skills are lacking. He can't transition from subject to subject.

Now, I had hope in Jimmy as the new Late Night host, but so far he's been lacking. He's only been on for a month, so hopefully he'll pick up just like Conan did when he first started.

03/31 Edit: I caught another episode of Late Night last night, and you can actually here no one laugh during his monolagues, and he notices it to. The thing is, he has nothing to follow up that awkward silence. I feel a little bad for the guy, yikes!

Review: Slumdog Millionaire

I'm obviously not one to comment on the greatness of movies and to be honest, I can count on one hand how many Oscar best pictures winners I've actually seen, but for some reason I really wanted to see Slumdog Millionaire. I heard many reviews saying that it was an excellent from family, friends, and yes, the ever-so-hated critics. I heard about the plot, I thought it was a rather interesting plot, but I still wasn't interested in going out and paying ten bucks to see it, but I just kept being bombarded with "go see Slumdog!" and by watching the Oscars, I couldn't escape it. That's where I became intrigued (Yeah, I guess it doesn't take much to intrigue me) and what made me want to watch it. I mean, it's also not your typical Oscar winner of a movie either, which I rather enjoyed. It's not a 3 hour period piece. It's definitely an all around movie, and here's why:

Slumdog has elements of everything. It's intense. You see slum children having to watch other children their age getting their eyes burned off. You see kids being chased through the slums by officers who are trying to keep their private areas safe. You see a child see Jamal's mom getting hit to death and falling into a puddle. It's sweet. Jamal spends the majority of the movie trying to find Latika. It's clever. It's about a game show and this kid from the slums knows all the answers, but how does he?

Also to note, the cinematography was beautiful. The portrayal of the slums may have been beautified, but the movie's point, I feel, wasn't necessarily to put you in the slums and the plot is unrealistic, sure, but that doesn't make it bad. The direction from Danny Boyle was marvelous, you felt that you were there watching the whole thing. The acting wasn't necessarily the best part of the movie, but the children from the slums were infact good actors for never acting (or probably even watching a movie) in their lives. Dev Patel and Freida Pinto gave rather satisfactory results for having little to no career before the movie either.

Sure, their were flaws, but this was the first Oscar winning movie to me that was all around good and had many elements to it other than just drama.

Acting: 7.5/10
Directing: 8.5/10
Story: 9/10
Overall: 9/10