On The Lot: Five Finalists Present Their Films

For those who missed why the young man didn't want his girlfriend to be alone with his mother in 'Finklesteins' the last scene is your answer.

He obviously didn't think his mother would say something in front of him, so he thought his girlfriend would be safe as long as she was with him. Then, as they leave, his mother starts blurting out about the grandmother's engagement ring and how the son is going to ask her to marry her, and how she wants grandkids the sooner the better.

There ya go

Cammm I agree, worst producers in television. The network jumped in this week and condensed two episodes into one. Too little too late. I hope this show comes back in the future with a better format. Great idea, poor execution. Carrie, this show has a beginning, a middle, and no end.

How I'd make it better:

1) Let professionals judges do the voting. These guys should be judged based on a talent the viewer's don't have. Boom mikes, lenses, camera angles, etc. I don't understand that stuff and 99% of the voters don't either.

2) If they want an international group of contestants to participate, make sure your professional judges understand international films. The Italian director's short film was very European and very funny to them. These three judges never got that point and neither did the American only voters. If you can't judge them fairly, then get American only contestants.

3) Show more of the film making process - without the in-fighting. I don't think the viewers wanted to see the in-fighting, so they dropped the film making part all together. That's what intrigued me with the show from the start.

4) Do away with the drama while voting people off and show more respect for the directors. These guys are talented people, not some Joe off the street with a video camera. I would have stopped watching 5 minutes into the first episode if "Sanjaya" like directors were competing. These guys don't deserve the "wait till after the commercial" to find out who's tossed or to have the other directors raise their hand if you voted it the suckyist film of the night.

5) OK, I'm selfish on this one. Don't replace the hostess. I agreee with another post - there's two very good reasons to keep her and that out-weights the cue card goofs.

What did Carrie Fisher say about the musical? It was something like "It was so nice to see an original idea in a musical! Most musicals these days are about prisons, or The Supremes!" It was at that moment that I knew that Carrie Fisher is going to be in a mental institution by the end of the summer.

Shalini's movie looked awesome, but the actor was terrible and the dialogue was awful. I kinda want her to stay in the show and get some more sleep before she makes her next movie.

Dough was my favorite of the night, but I thought that he really missed a chance to make an entertaining flick a truly spectacular one at the beginning. There's a scene where a bunch of people are dancing around the baker, and then right after there's a scene where people were helping the girl try on clothes or something. During both of these scenes, the music was purely instrumental! I thought that this would have been an excellent place to stick a chorus.

When Michael Bay called "Teri" a retread of an idea he'd seen before, and then went on to say "But seriously, go see my summer blockbuster about a cartoon you used to watch in the 80s", I couldn't help but laugh.

Did anyone else want to die when the host forced the other contestants to reveal who they voted for? Do they even have directors and producers working on this show?

I've never before felt that I'd LIKE to see Ryan Seacrest

Karen,
Here you go. The movies are available as soon as the episode they originally air on is over.

View the movies here:
http://www.thelot.com/episodes/?ep=6

Didn't I read somewhere that these were the submission films that the director shot as auditions to get on the show? What kind of BS is that!! They made it seem like these were shot just over the past week. I'm so done with this show it's not even funny. What a waste...

Are these films posted anywhere? I'd like to skip the show and just watch the films.

My problem with Shalini's flick was that it looked like a documentary. That would be great, if her character was REAL, but he wasn't. She gets all the benefits of the happy true story feel, only it's not true. In the end it just felt really fake to me.

My biggest problem with Hilary's flick was that the establishing shot of the film makes a big point out of "do not let my mother get you alone" and the film never delivers on this premise. The girl never ends up going toe-to-toe with the mother, which I was sure was going to happen. The flick had a million other problems though. Fixing mine wouldn't save it.

Pipe Dreams was my favorite. It was clever, and made a few good jabs at some established films, most notably Mission: Impossible and The Shawshank Redemption. That scene with the water pouring down was hilarious.

I have no idea why Hillary was given a second chance after the one-minute film about peeing (yeech!). I thought her "Finkelstein" film was anti-semetic and in bad taste. If Carrie Fisher considers her a good writer, I have to question her sanity these days.
I liked Sam's film -- especially the homage to "Shawshank Redemption" with the water pouring out of the pipe and the overhead shot -- but the winner by far was "Dough." Highly original and well-executed. Musicals are so hard to do, just making people buy into the convention of people singing on screen, and "Dough" made it look completely natural. "Teri" was a disappointment -- it had no twist or interesting turn, it just ended. Blah. The last film, a comic's journey, was like a documentary news piece you'd see on CBS Sunday Morning. I think it was overrated.

I was really surprised how sensible Michael Bay's comments were.... He turned out to be the best of the judges they've had so far. (Although it was funny when he said one short should have been cut down because the pacing was too slow. He's the guy whose movies rush from shot to shot every couple of seconds, making them impossible to enjoy amid the constant feeling of seasickness that causes.)

As for the films, I thought "Broken Pipe Dreams" wasn't bad, although -- having faced the situation myself -- I know that opening a pipe leading from the toilet does not result in being sprayed with clean water. Enough said.

Likewise, the story in "Teri," apart from being similar to a hundred other films, wasn't very well thought-out. No one meets an Internet date without seeing his or her photo anymore, and you'd have to be crazy to get together for the first time at one person's house. Haven't these two ever seen "Sea of Love"?

"The First Time I Met the Finkelsteins" was unfunny and borderline offensive. There are plenty of movies satirizing "ethnic" families, but this one just had no redeeming value. (And how come, after it was referenced three or four times in the course of the movie, we never found out why the woman wasn't supposed to be alone with the guy's mother?)

"Dough: The Musical" had all the faults the judges mentioned, especially in the lack of chemistry between the leads. But the singing was good, and the idea that the man and woman had differing expectations was kind of funny. I'd call this one the best movie of the night.

Then there's "Laughing Out Loud: a comic journey," which really was the best-looking of all the films. But it took itself way too seriously, especially for a film about a comedian. We were told all about the obstacles he would face based on being who he was, but then we never got to see any examples of that actually happening. (Plus, how come we weren't shown more than a tiny snippet of his act? You'd think that would tell us more about him than anything else.)

It also bothered me to hear annoying Shalini talk yet again about how hard it is to be a woman in the business. Two of the five contestants we saw tonight were women, and of course good ol' Garry Marshall repeated for the 80th time that women are very, very important. So while it may be true in a general sense, it certainly isn't on this show.

So were these the last five contestants left -- and if so, what happened to the others? I TiVo-fast-forwarded through almost everything except the films, and I highly recommend watching the show this way. Frankly, it doesn't sound as if I ended up more confused than anyone else.