When do the judges tour?

Is Lee DeWyze already irrelevant? American Idol Live! begs the question

American Idols Live at the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion on Saturday
Remember this guy? It's Lee ... um ... DeWyze, that's right.

It is a blessed and lucky life that has allowed me to spend the last 15 years immersing myself in pop culture and finding media outlets that will pay me to share my views on the "what's hot" and "what's not" in popular music.

Occasionally, however, there are rare moments when pouring over the latest craze is dreadful, horrifying, teeth-grinding work that makes adding columns of numbers to Excel spreadsheets ... in a cubicle ... under flickering florescent lights ... drinking bad coffee ... seems like nirvana by comparison.

Need proof?

Exhibit A: Ke$ha — She's sold over a million copies of that horrible album and had three top 10 singles. Are the people buying her synth-pop dreck taking crazy pills?

Exhibit B: Jersey Shore Season 2 has just started and all I can say is, "What the hell?"

We need to start treating the Snooki and the rest of these lunkheads like bears: If we pretend we're dead, maybe they'll go away.

Exhibit C: American Idol Season 9

As a reporter it would be irresponsible of me not to acknowledge that the budding talent from the most recently finished season of American Idol will be performing at the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion on Saturday night, covering songs by the Rolling Stones, Bon Jovi and Katharine McPhee (Idols covering Idols. That's rich.).

As a casual viewer, however, my initial reaction to this news is, "Who cares."

Many of you feel the same because ratings for this last season were down, down, down.

Unlike last year when we marveled at Adam Lambert's fabulousness or Season 4 which unearthed the one true Idol-born superstar talent, Carrie Underwood, this year's cast was as anonymous as Justin Guarini's singing career.

How many of you even know the name of the Season 9 winner? How many remember what song he sang to win it?

My guess is not nearly as many of you as in the past.

Now, how many of you know which judge is allegedly getting canned and which two are leaving of their own accord before Season 10?

All of you know that Kara DioGuardi (the axe is hovering) Simon Cowell and Ellen Degeneres (both moving on to other projects) won't be back? I thought so.

And this is the problem.

From Cowell's obvious lack of interest, to Degeneres' dislike of hurting the contestant's feelings, American Idol is now less a singing competition and more of a reality show vehicle for a star-studded judging panel.

Few viewers or entertainment reporters have been talking about where tryouts for Season 10 are taking place, but entertainment talking heads can't stop talking about who next new year's judges might be.

J-Lo? Steven Tyler? Howard Stern?

Maybe a better American Idol concert would be to send all of these potential judges on tour together and let audiences decide who should win those coveted chairs once we see who can most thoroughly crush the dreams of an amateur singer.

(Hey, nobody steal that idea! I'm calling my agent right now to see if we can get a meeting with Fox.)

Until then we'll have to make do with this American Idol Live! Tour featuring the best of last season's contestants, including winner Lee DeWyze who sang U2's "Beautiful Day" to capture the title.

Now you know.

American Idol Live! Tour 2010, 7:30 p.m. Saturday at Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion

Tickets: $26-$76

P.S. Tryouts for season 10 of American Idol are being held on August 11 at the Frank Erwin Center in Austin. This is your chance to be the next contestant forgotten by the judge-obsessed fanbase. Yay for you!

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Movie Review

Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 doesn't match the first movie's enthusiasm

Blumhouse

Five Nights at Freddy's 2.

Blumhouse Productions first made their name with the Paranormal Activity series, establishing themselves as a leader in the horror genre thanks to their relatively cheap yet effective movies. In recent years, they’ve added on “soft” horror films like M3GAN and Five Nights at Freddy’s to draw in a younger audience, with both films becoming so successful that each was quickly given a sequel.

Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 finds Mike (Josh Hutcherson) and his sister Abby (Piper Rubio) still recovering from the events of the first film, with Abby particularly missing her “friends.” Those friends just so happen to be the souls of murdered children who inhabit animatronic characters at the long-defunct Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza, children who were abducted and killed by William Afton (Matthew Lillard).

A new threat emerges at another Freddy Fazbear’s location in the form of Charlotte, another murdered child who inhabits a creepy large marionette. Mike, distracted by a possible romance with Vanessa (Elizabeth Lail), fails to keep track of Abby, who makes her way to the old pizzeria and inadvertently unleashes Charlotte and her minions on the surrounding town.

Directed by Emma Tammi and written by Scott Cawthon (who also created the video game on which the series is based), the film tries to mix together goofy elements with intense scenes. One particular sequence, in which the security guard for Freddy Fazbear’s lets a group of ghost hunters onto the property, toes the line between soft and hard horror. That and a few others show the potential that the filmmakers had if they had stuck to their guns.

Unfortunately, more often than not they either soft-pedal things that would normally be horrific, or can’t figure out how to properly stage scenes. The sight of animatronic robots wreaking havoc is one that is simultaneously frightening and laughable, and the filmmakers never seem to find the right balance in tone. Every step in the direction of making a truly scary horror film is undercut by another in which the robots fail to live up to their promise.

It doesn’t help that Cawthon gives the cast some extremely wooden dialogue, lines that none of the actors can elevate. What may work in a video game format comes off as stilted when said by actors in a live-action film. The story also loses momentum quickly after the first half hour or so, with Cawthon seemingly content to just have characters move from place to place with no sense of connection between any of the scenes.

Hutcherson (The Hunger Games series), after being the true lead of the first film, is given very little to do in this film, and his effort is equal to his character’s arc. The same goes for Lail, whose character seems to be shoehorned into the story. Rubio is called upon to carry the load for a lot of the movie, and the teenager is not quite up to the task. A brief appearance by Skeet Ulrich seems to be a blatant appeal to Scream fans, but he and Lillard only underscore how limited this film is compared to that franchise.

Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 is better than the first film, but not by much. The filmmakers do a decent job of making the new marionette character into a great villain, but they fail to capitalize on its inherent creepiness. Instead, they fall back on less effective elements, ensuring that the film will be forgettable for anyone other than hardcore Freddy fans.

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Five Nights at Freddy's 2 opens in theaters on December 5.

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