Most competition shows have this episode: The one where the frontrunner gets voted off. Tonight, it was On the Lot's turn to boot the presumptive winner with Zach Lipovsky being sent packing.
This time, it wasn't quite the shock of, say, Austin Scarlett being voted off the first Project Runway or Derek Keeling being dismissed from Grease: 
You're the One that I Want -- I'm citing shows I've watched, and I haven't watched too many. Those sort of came out of the blue, while Zach had been on a slide, and even ended up in the bottom two once before. The brilliance of his early efforts such as Danger Zone and Die Hardly Working (copyrighted photo by Adam Taylor, left, of Zach directing Die Hardly Working, courtesy of FOX) gave way to mediocre efforts such as his Bonus Feature series that was blatantly kissing up to series co-creator Steven Spielberg. It probably didn't help that Zach was from Canada, so he may not have had the fan base here to get out the vote for him the way other contestants did.
Like Winchester's Jason Epperson.
Despite turning in one of his lesser efforts last week, Jason dodged the ax -- didn't even end up in the bottom five, though this was a week where they randomly didn't reveal the box office champ -- and turned in a tres Jason effort with Oh, Boy. It was a return to several Jason themes, including high school bullies, practical jokes and redemption. Guest judge F. Gary Gray was right that it was a safe effort, but after a bit of a misstep last week, you can't blame him for maybe pulling back. And one way Oh, Boy showed real improvement for Jason was in his direction of the actors.
The whole tone of last week's The Move was off because Jason had Jerry O'Connell and his partner in crime playing high drama when the story was really sophomoric humor. Anyway, with Oh, Boy, Jason got a really nice tribute from judge Garry Marshall who said, "you deal with the power of kindness . . . that will bode you well."
If you based the competition now on previous presumptions, with Zach out, we'd assume this is now a contest between Will Bigham and Jason. Will started off the night of four films, all based on the log line, "A man wakes up in a dress, but cannot remember how he got that way," well with The Yes Man. The idea was that a drill sergeant boss isn't at all feminized by the dress and the sycophants around him all end up in dresses too. It was a clever idea with a few plot holes -- like, apparently he got in the dress through a mistaken dry cleaning delivery . . . huh? -- but it was a hit with the judges.
Not so much was Sam Friedlander's Dress for Success, in which an office full of women teach their sexist, lecherous boss a lesson. Cute idea, but muddled direction resulting in a film that was in no way satisfying. Sam was the second lowest vote getter from last week. The track record the last few weeks has been the one that survives a scare one week goes home the next. Logically, it seems that should happen again.
It definitely should not happen to Adam Stein, because his Army Guy was brilliant. If tonight was the death of the frontrunner, it was also the emergence of the dark horse. Adam has been consistently making wonderful little movies like Dough: the Musical, but Army Guy is the best yet. The idea is that the guy in the dress is actually a boy's action figure the kid's sister has borrowed him and put him in a tutu to play in her doll house. And sis has multiple versions of the Barbie-esque Candy, all of whom keep asking "Joe" if he wants to get married. Bizarre and brilliant, and the best film of the series thus far.
Next week, it's down to the final three. The guess here is that'll be Jason, Will and Adam and it is anyone's game.
While I though Adams film was well done, it was not an original idea. He 'borrowed' heavily from two episodes of the Twilight Zone. Jason's film this week was good, but certainly not his best.
Posted by: Clayton Whisman | August 08, 2007 at 10:21 AM