Up and Coming Weekly is a weekly publication in Fayetteville, NC and Fort Bragg, NC area offering local news, views, arts, entertainment and community event and business information.
Issue link: https://www.epageflip.net/i/38156
Dress for Excess Mad Fashion takes clothing to crazy extremes TV by DEAN ROBBINS The subjects of Bravo reality series tend to be gar- goyles: vile real housewives, greedy real estate people, ill-tempered chefs, airhead designers. So it’s refreshing to meet Chris March’s fashion team on Mad Fashion (Tuesday, 10:30 p.m., Bravo). This crew of wig experts, seamsters, master builders and sundry assistants have a good time working on their extreme specialty outfits. They make witty comments, toss out arch movie references, tease one another and laugh easily. You too will laugh — or gasp — at the wild designs, such as dresses made out of shoes or sandpaper. Half-seriously and half-ironically, Chris worships Fleetwood Mac’s Stevie Nicks as a deity. He writes her name inside each of his designs for good luck. “She blesses everything we make,” he says. I was going to thank God for this delightful reality series, but I guess the credit goes to Nicks. Friends with Benefits Friday, 8 pm (NBC) It’s another sitcom about gorgeous, charming singles with incongruous dating problems. Friends with Benefits was scheduled for midseason but got bumped to summer, where NBC is now presumably “burning it off” in advance of the new fall series. I was about to make a wisecrack about that, but then I realized I really have nothing better to do in August than watch NBC’s castoffs. So I’ll just sit here quietly and watch the gorgeous, charming people deal with their hellish lives. Teen Spirit Sunday, 8 pm (ABC Family) A high school’s mean girl (Cassie Scerbo) accidentally dies on her way to the stage to accept her prom-queen crown. She ends up in limbo, where an af- terlife bureaucrat offers to send her to heaven if she first returns to her school to help a nerd (Lindsey Shaw) be- come popular. I sense that you are mentally crossing this TV movie off your must-watch list. DON’T DO IT! ABC Family probably expected the production to be normal cable junk — probably wanted it to be normal cable junk — but the talented filmmakers took things to another level. The script sparkles with snark, and the actors are all gifted comedians. Plus, I suspect that Teen Spirit is the only high school movie in the history of television that contains a reference to avant-garde composer Charles Ives. His “Concord” sonata happens to be a favorite of Lisa, the aforementioned nerd. Lisa gets the usual Cinderella makeover montage and a chance to date her school’s dreamboat, but the movie lampoons these clichés rather than em- bracing them. The only thing that could have made me happier about Teen Spirit is a Charles Ives soundtrack. A word to the wise: If your name is called at this year’s ceremony, run in the opposite direction of the podium. Curb Your Enthusiasm Sunday, 10 pm (HBO) Larry David’s sitcom about his own life as a calculating Los Angeles TV writer is as brilliant as ever in its eighth season. David is the Mozart of devious- ness, capable of seemingly endless variations. You might have read that Larry’s character will head from Los Angeles to New York during the season. The plot twist comes in this week’s episode, and I guess I shouldn’t tell you how it comes about. I’ll only say that it’s the result of sneakiness, lying and cowardice over an incredibly trivial matter. But you probably already figured that out. 20 UCW AUGUST 3-9, 2011 WWW.UPANDCOMINGWEEKLY.COM