Noiseless Chatter Archive

The final season of The Office began last week, with the lowest-rated premiere the show’s ever had. Even lower than the premiere of the first season, which I’m pretty sure was only watched by people so that they could give it a voodoo curse. As far as season 9’s premiere? I think more people witnessed the birth of Christ. So I thought it would be fitting to look for the silver lining on the cloud of crap, and highlight each of the 10 times that the US version of the show succeeded in not being utter shit. I know I’ll be accused of exaggerating here, but, honestly, I think I’m totally justified in saying that there were, in fact, ten distinct times that The Office rose above the level of “outright garbage” and succeeded in being “arguably watchable.” You may think I’m being too generous, but I think it’s quite fair. So join me now as we look back at the ten times The Office managed to narrowly beat the odds, and become something that didn’t reflect poorly on viewers...

Noiseless Chatter Advisory: Ben, of Ben Likes Music , likes music. He also wrote this, and hopefully more in the future. Please give a big welcome to our latest guest author. Or call him obscene things. It’s really up to you. It only occurred to me relatively recently that the word fan was just a shortened version of fanatic. I’m 34 years old. Understandably, a lot of you reading this may have just snorted your Starbucks out of your nose at my incredible naivety, but so be it. When it comes to Pavement however, I do believe that I am indeed more of a fanatic than a fan. A fan – in my short-sighted eyes that are well into their fourth decade – is someone who has a passing interest in something; someone who will wave from the touchlines and not really care too much what is going on. A fanatic however, is someone like me. Someone who scours record stores and internet auction sites for an EP from 1989 and pays way over the odds for a record that has a B-side that has a s...

I’ve been considering writing this post for a while now. Since the moment I first played New Super Mario Bros. 2 , in fact. But, obviously, I put it off, and it’s only due to Jacob’s brilliant piece on the game that I thought I’d revisit it, dust off my ranting cap, pull on my bitching pants*, and get down to hollering vaguely at the metaphorical children on my lawn. With a high profile release such as a Super Mario Bros. game, reviews are everywhere. That’s fine. And they vary pretty widely in opinion, which is fine too. What’s not fine, as far as I’m concerned, is the perpetually echoing criticism that it’s not different enough from New Super Mario Bros. That’s missing the point, and it’s missing it in several substantial ways. First of all, I will concede this: you have every right to be disinterested in New Super Mario Bros. 2 . Of course you do. What baffles me, though, is that anybody would expect the game to be something other than what it is…and even to hol...

Philip’s Note: Please welcome Jacob Crites to the Noiseless Chatter team. He’s going to provide some great articles to carry you through the times when I’m not posting meandering, unfocused bullshit. I hope you don’t mind. New Super Mario Bros. 2 is the best 2D Mario game since Super Mario World . I’d say it was better, but my nostalgia won’t let me. That’s the thing when it comes to comparing and contrasting Mario games — nostalgia. The ones that mean the most to us are typically the ones that came during formative years in our lives. Super Mario World , for example, was the first video game I ever played; not surprisingly, it’s also my favorite. Because, for a lot of us, Mario was our Mickey Mouse — Mario was the embodiment of youthful optimism and sprightliness that was missing from our cynical, assembly-line cartoons; as a result, the thought of any game being “better” than those formative, child-hood-defining games, be it Super Mario Bros. 3, Super Mario World , ...

Whenever the characters sing, take a sip. If dancing is also involved, take a bigger sip. If the group of singing and dancing characters includes those who are absolutely not the kinds of people who would sing and dance at work but are being forced to because someone wrote it to kill four minutes of screen time, finish the glass. Whenever we are reminded of the poor financial shape that the company is in, take a sip. Whenever a new employee is hired on in spite of what we’ve been told about the poor finiancial shape that the company is in, take a bigger sip. If that new employee’s hiring is redundant because there is already a character on the show doing that job, finish the glass. If that new employee now hangs around in the background or off-camera of every episode without being given anything to ever say or do by the writers, smash the glass on the floor and rub your face in it. Whenever you feel pity for the remaining talent on the show which is forced to perform thes...

It’s not uncommon for a television comedy to lose steam as the years go by. Sometimes it finds a second wind, and usually it does not. There’s nothing remarkable about the fact the The IT Crowd went from critical darling to such a mess that creator Graham Linehan chose to pull the plug rather than drag it on any further. What is remarkable is that it only took 24 episodes to get from that dizzying high to a show-killing low. I rewatched the fourth and final series recently, and was struck all over again by how lifeless and dull it felt. It’s nothing to do with the performances as the cast makes the best of what they’re given, and any laughs that we do get come from an effective delivery rather than any particular cleverness in the line…there just seems to be a sloppier approach to the comedy, and perhaps an ultimately-destructive assumption — however correct — that the cast could be relied upon to make up for any shortcomings in the writing. Nowhere is this more appa...

On Christmas Day of 2004, Wes Anderson released The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou . It was his fourth full-length motion picture, and to this day it’s also his biggest box-office flop. It failed to recoup even half of its budget domestically, and while the reviews weren’t exactly scathing, it was rare to read one that didn’t express immense disappointment. It’s also my favorite film of all time. I do remember, however, being slightly disappointed by it the first time I watched it, which was a few days after its release in theaters. It was good, but it didn’t feel as dense or substantial as Anderson’s previous films. It was funny, but basically shallow. Then, not long afterward, I saw it a second time because another friend of mine asked me to go. And that’s when it clicked. It became — suddenly — profound, effective, and brilliantly moving. The first time I watched it I was looking for an experience along the lines of the rich, many-leveled The Royal Tenenbaums ...