We are two episodes into the second season of last year's best new show (possible the best show, period). The return of Friday Night Lights was far from certain, and so the producers ended the first season on a note of closure, just in case. The Dillon Panthers won state and an almost perfect season of television walked off into the sunset, able to hold its head high alongside the likes of Freaks & Geeks.
Maybe what happened to F&G stuck in the mind of someone at NBC. After all, it's not like that show has retained a rabid following, sold multiple DVD sets, and launched one or two or a dozen rapidly burgeoning careers. For whatever reason, FNL was not sent to the long pine bench in the sky, but returned.
As the Dillon Panthers set out to defend their title, Coach Eric Taylor (Kyle Chandler) is gone to Austin to coach quarterbacks at MTU. His wife Tamy (Connie Britton, I bow before you) is at home, trying to care for new baby Gracie and cope with the hormonal storm that is her daughter Julie (Aimee Teegarden in that rare performance of a teen by a teen that feels like a teen, if you know what I mean). New coach MacGregor (Chris Mulkey) has decided that Buddy Garrity (Brad Leland) isn't welcome on the sidelines at practice or as the host of the team's kickoff rally. Tim Riggins (Taylor Kitsch) is trying to put the wood to every available woman (sometimes two at a time) and Lyla Garrity (Minka Kelly) has decided that maybe Jesus can help her through this mess. Landry (Jesse Plemons) is trying out for the team while trying to get closer to Tyra (Adrianne Palicki).
Oh, and Landry killed Tyra's rapist.
Notice how that last sentence just lays there, like a cow pie on the dining room table. Much of the first two eps has been stellar, but that one development threatens to hamstring the whole show.
Let's start with the stellar stuff. Mulkey's casting is beyond perfect. He's just about twenty years older than Kyle Chandler and that generational difference is a perfect metaphor for their differing styles. MacGregor is a jen-you-wine hardass, and his attitude toward Buddy has brought Brad Leland to the fore. Buddy was the character most ripe for stereotyping, but the writing and acting did him justice, and so far this year he's turning into a figure of real pathos. Connie Britton continues to just nail everything about Tamy; she's utterly fearless. My brother once said of Alyson Hannigan that she "[was]n't afraid to cry ugly." Neither is Connie Britton. When Tamy dissolves into tears over her impossible situation, Britton goes all-in. Combined with the show's penchant for extreme close-up, it stabs you in the heart.
In the second episode, Taylor had to accompany an MTU player to a disciplinary hearing. The subplot was well-scripted, but what made it really work was Chandler's subtle non-verbal reactions. By the end of the scene we realized that we were seeing what happens to young men like Smash Williams if they are in the care of someone less morally rigorous than Eric Taylor. Sometimes even if they are in the care of someone like that.
The Lyla/Riggins story is on low simmer now, but I would like to comment on something that most reviewers don't notice. FNL is about the only show on TV that really gets the part religion plays in the lives of small towns. First, the show notices that most of these people are Baptists and Assemblies of God, not Catholics. That may seem insignificant, but trust me, it's a real difference. Jason Katims and company also realize that many children and teens are completely sincere about their faith, while simultaneously behaving in ways forbidden by it. This doesn't make them hypocrites so much as it makes them kids.
That also goes for the Julie/Matt Saracen thread, where two nice kids are breaking up just because that happens when you're sixteen or seventeen. Nobody's bad, nobody did wrong, you just kind of grow up and out. So far it's been perfectly played, although I'm a little scared of the fact that the new home health-care worker for Matt's demented grandmother just happens to be the smoking-hot Carlotta.
Against all that good stuff you have the Landry/Tyra/murder arc. Landry and Tyra are both great characters, the two who really stand outside all the Dillon Panthers bullshit and realize that there's more to life than football. That the stunning Tyra would be drawn to Landry isn't much of a stretch; not only are both of them outsiders, but once anyone gets to know Landry, he's pretty irresistible (see Riggins, Tim).
Landry is trying out for the Panthers in order to impress Tyra and and his dad. That development alone should have been a rich and fertile field. Clear-eyed (in a way that the team slogan doesn't begin to appreciate) Landry in the middle of Panther mania? Playing football to impress a girl who sees through all the posturing herself? You can get five or six whole episodes out of just that.
But no, they had to kill the rapist and try to dispose of the body. How very One Tree Hill. Say hello to season two of The OC. Now they've added a complication; Landry's watch is missing. Is it on the body? As if a morally responsible, sensitive kid who's killed a man with a pipe wouldn't feel enough regret and sorrow unless he was also threatened with imminent discovery via one o f the oldest tropes known to drama. To make matters worse, Plemons and Palicki have acted the shit out of their scenes together. There's a beat in the season opener, right before they roll the body into the river, where Landry looks at Tyra. Every smart guy who's done a dumb thing for a girl will cringe in self-recognition at that moment, and yet Tyra is not manipulative. Palicki plays her as someone who is scared out of her mind, and whose experience with the people of this town is such that she knows who'll end up guilty in this scenario. It's all there in her performance. They're so good that they almost make the ridiculous twist seem palatable.
Does it ruin the show? No. It takes it from 100% to 89%, or from an A+ to B+, something like that. I'll be there every Friday night. Just like Tamy Taylor, I'm all-in.
Saturday, October 13, 2007
Sunday, September 30, 2007
Mea Culpa
I've been a bit slack and I'm sorry, but that horrible beast known as real life has intruded into my schedule. My daughter has joined the middle school band this year and has remained in the choir. That's a whole other commitment for her, and I think that nurturing her actual creativity takes precedence over analyzing the efforts of other people.
That said, I'll be writing about the Doctor Who finale as a three-part whole, and I'm working on a first-impressions piece about the new TV season. So far the verdict is: Chuck, yes; Bionic Woman and Life, meh. My Name is Earl appears to be holding steady and the funniest show on television, Smallville, is back to its wacky hijinks. What, it's a drama?
Went to the movies and saw Rocket Science. Quick read: interesting, shows great promise for Jeffrey Blitz, but overrated and too self-consciously "quirky" by half. This year's Napoleon Dynamite.
That said, I'll be writing about the Doctor Who finale as a three-part whole, and I'm working on a first-impressions piece about the new TV season. So far the verdict is: Chuck, yes; Bionic Woman and Life, meh. My Name is Earl appears to be holding steady and the funniest show on television, Smallville, is back to its wacky hijinks. What, it's a drama?
Went to the movies and saw Rocket Science. Quick read: interesting, shows great promise for Jeffrey Blitz, but overrated and too self-consciously "quirky" by half. This year's Napoleon Dynamite.
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
The Future Is Now
Or at least it's just around the corner. It's coming, at any rate. I know that for a fact. I also know that it's going to overrun a bunch of people in the entertainment business.
I watched the three remaining episodes of Doctor Who online. I also watched "Blink" prior to US air. I watched them for free. This is the nightmare of many television executives. To them I say:
"How stupid are you?"
Watching "Blink" online only made me absolutely determined to watch it on Sci-Fi. And to buy the DVDs. And watch it again when it finally airs on BBC America. And watch the DVD, and then again with the commentary.
John Rogers at Kung Fu Monkey knows a lot more about this than I do. He's thinking way ahead of the curve, or maybe just further ahead than I am, and one of the points that he's always hammering is that the new media world is going to happen. The powers that be may fight it, they might be able to delay it, but they can't stop it.
So why don't they get out ahead of it? The web has guaranteed that I'm clearing the next three Friday nights so as not to miss the Doctor. Isn't that worth something?
Rogers may have put his finger on it when he said that in the future "nobody will get rich, but everybody will get paid." The present system bestows amazing piles of filthy lucre upon a select few. Do you think they're going to give that up? The sad part is that they are going to lose it, and they don't have to. They might have to give up a little, but by refusing to ride the wave, they will get drowned.
And they'll blame the web.
I watched the three remaining episodes of Doctor Who online. I also watched "Blink" prior to US air. I watched them for free. This is the nightmare of many television executives. To them I say:
"How stupid are you?"
Watching "Blink" online only made me absolutely determined to watch it on Sci-Fi. And to buy the DVDs. And watch it again when it finally airs on BBC America. And watch the DVD, and then again with the commentary.
John Rogers at Kung Fu Monkey knows a lot more about this than I do. He's thinking way ahead of the curve, or maybe just further ahead than I am, and one of the points that he's always hammering is that the new media world is going to happen. The powers that be may fight it, they might be able to delay it, but they can't stop it.
So why don't they get out ahead of it? The web has guaranteed that I'm clearing the next three Friday nights so as not to miss the Doctor. Isn't that worth something?
Rogers may have put his finger on it when he said that in the future "nobody will get rich, but everybody will get paid." The present system bestows amazing piles of filthy lucre upon a select few. Do you think they're going to give that up? The sad part is that they are going to lose it, and they don't have to. They might have to give up a little, but by refusing to ride the wave, they will get drowned.
And they'll blame the web.
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
"American Movies Are So Cliched and Predictable": The Fallacy of Overrating Foreign Films Like My Best Friend
My Best Friend is the sort of movie that should be flung in the face of every snot-nosed, self-important would-be (hyphen record!) cineaste. There's more wit, invention, and insight into human nature in one episode of Arrested Development... hell, in one episode of Scrubs... shoot, in one Alec Baldwin monologue for 30 Rock than in MBF's entire 94 minutes. Cheers had more funny before the first commercial break.
Now, not every example of foreign film has to be Manon of the Spring. Or The 400 Blows. Or even Pan's Labyrinth or Lives of Others. I dug District B-13, a French film which, in the words of Dan of the Moxie, "speaks the international language of blowing stuff up." Night Watch and Day Watch are just hysterical; if anyone can pack more energy into a foot of film than Timur Bekmambetov, please get them some Ritalin (maybe Adderol; Bekmambetov will make you crazy, baby).
No, my problem with MBF is not that it is insufficiently deep, or complex. It's just a dull, middle of the road comedy, with a stale premise and by-the-numbers execution. No, my problem is people like the guy in front of me who laughed uproariously at every here-it-comes punchline, then announced during the intermission that "Hollywood would never make a movie like this." Yeah, yeah they would. In fact, they have. Many times over. Usually starring some combination of Adam Sandler, Rob Schneider, Jim Carrey and/or Matthew McConaughey. Subtitles don't redeem bad writing, and My Best Friend is nothing special.
Now, not every example of foreign film has to be Manon of the Spring. Or The 400 Blows. Or even Pan's Labyrinth or Lives of Others. I dug District B-13, a French film which, in the words of Dan of the Moxie, "speaks the international language of blowing stuff up." Night Watch and Day Watch are just hysterical; if anyone can pack more energy into a foot of film than Timur Bekmambetov, please get them some Ritalin (maybe Adderol; Bekmambetov will make you crazy, baby).
No, my problem with MBF is not that it is insufficiently deep, or complex. It's just a dull, middle of the road comedy, with a stale premise and by-the-numbers execution. No, my problem is people like the guy in front of me who laughed uproariously at every here-it-comes punchline, then announced during the intermission that "Hollywood would never make a movie like this." Yeah, yeah they would. In fact, they have. Many times over. Usually starring some combination of Adam Sandler, Rob Schneider, Jim Carrey and/or Matthew McConaughey. Subtitles don't redeem bad writing, and My Best Friend is nothing special.
Friday, September 14, 2007
And You'll Miss It
Steven Moffat has pureed my brain. Again. Moffat wrote "The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances," the first great two-parter for the revived Doctor Who in its first season, then in season two he penned "The Girl in the Fireplace," the poignant tale of how the Doctor met Madame Pompadour. He wrote Jekyll, the BBC's intriguing retelling of the Jekyll/Hyde story. Both "The Girl in the Fireplace" and Jekyll played with timelines and flashbacks, but not to the degree that he does in "Blink," the latest episode of Doctor Who. There are a couple of reasons I'm not even going to try and describe the plot. First, if you haven't seen it, then you should experience it fresh. It's that kind of a tale. You should be allowed to gasp and giggle at every revelation. Second, the story is kind of like a soap bubble. It's beautiful and exquisitely formed, but try to grasp it and it will burst in your hand.
All time travel stories have holes. That's just a fact. Time travel stories like "Blink," stories of the "shifting-sands-of-time" subgenre, in which characters go backward and forward and sideways and around and down until they run out of ground on the edge of town, have multiple holes and even contradictions. The most you can ask is for the emotional sweep, narrative momentum, or character interaction to carry you over the rough spots like a great guide navigating through Level 5 rapids. If you're a hard-core nitpicker, "Blink" will give you plenty to gripe about, but if you're that sort of person, you're probably not enjoying Doctor Who anyway.
Just as "The Shakespeare Code" was this year's historical DW, analogous to "Tooth and Claw" and "The Unquiet Dead", "Blink" is this season's answer to "Love & Monsters." It's the episode where the Doctor is offstage, allowing another, one-off character to tell the story. Where "Love & Monsters" was a shaggy-dog affair that ended up being very sweet (thank you, Marc Warren and Shirley Henderson), "Blink" tosses up questions about the past, the future, free will, determinism, coincidence, and video technology in a concoction both dense and airy. It also has a shot of Martha Jones running down the sidewalk with a quiver of arrows over her shoulder. That may be the highlight for some of you.
While it's not the point of the story, and not necessary to see it this way, Moffat even fits in a couple of instant attraction/unrequited love beats that can be read to obliquely contrast with and illuminate the season-long Doctor/Martha arc. Russell T Davies has said that Martha's story is unrequited love. The Old Billy Shipton/Sally Sparrow scene made me think even more about that. Old Billy and Sally give us a look at just how sad Martha's fate could be if she doesn't wise up. The Doctor would still be young and vital while Martha developed (to twist Old Billy's line) "old woman's hands." At the end, when Sally takes Larry's hand, that's what Martha wants, but what she'll never get. Just because it works out once in a while doesn't mean it will work out for everyone. While I chafed at Martha's character development early in the season, as it plays out I'm beginning to think that it was simply the deadening effect of "Daleks in Manhattan/Evolution of the Daleks." Take away that rather stultifying two-parter and Martha's character makes a lot more sense and is much more consistent. Her brief screen time in "Blink" reinforces the initial presentation of her as a smart, take-charge woman who has, in this one instance, revealed a fateful, if not fatal, Achilles heel. She's simply fallen head-over-heels for the wrong guy.
The episode creates a surprising amount of suspense, using the Weeping Angels' stop-action nature to deliver some very effective jolts of fear. This was the scariest Doctor Who ever. I yipped at least three times and my daughter asked if she could sleep with the lights on. Often the writing on Doctor Who is praised at the expense of or as apology for the technical aspects, but visually and FX-wise this was a treat. Carey Mulligan turns in a top-notch guest performance, easily carrying the story as Sally Sparrow. All in all, "Blink" is outstanding Doctor Who and plain brilliant by any standard. It would be a thrilling story if you plugged in "anonymous time traveler B." That's what makes it great; it's not dependent on the Doctor's quirks or our knowledge of the series. It's awesome and solid on its own; the Doctor is lagniappe And that's some tasty gravy
All time travel stories have holes. That's just a fact. Time travel stories like "Blink," stories of the "shifting-sands-of-time" subgenre, in which characters go backward and forward and sideways and around and down until they run out of ground on the edge of town, have multiple holes and even contradictions. The most you can ask is for the emotional sweep, narrative momentum, or character interaction to carry you over the rough spots like a great guide navigating through Level 5 rapids. If you're a hard-core nitpicker, "Blink" will give you plenty to gripe about, but if you're that sort of person, you're probably not enjoying Doctor Who anyway.
Just as "The Shakespeare Code" was this year's historical DW, analogous to "Tooth and Claw" and "The Unquiet Dead", "Blink" is this season's answer to "Love & Monsters." It's the episode where the Doctor is offstage, allowing another, one-off character to tell the story. Where "Love & Monsters" was a shaggy-dog affair that ended up being very sweet (thank you, Marc Warren and Shirley Henderson), "Blink" tosses up questions about the past, the future, free will, determinism, coincidence, and video technology in a concoction both dense and airy. It also has a shot of Martha Jones running down the sidewalk with a quiver of arrows over her shoulder. That may be the highlight for some of you.
While it's not the point of the story, and not necessary to see it this way, Moffat even fits in a couple of instant attraction/unrequited love beats that can be read to obliquely contrast with and illuminate the season-long Doctor/Martha arc. Russell T Davies has said that Martha's story is unrequited love. The Old Billy Shipton/Sally Sparrow scene made me think even more about that. Old Billy and Sally give us a look at just how sad Martha's fate could be if she doesn't wise up. The Doctor would still be young and vital while Martha developed (to twist Old Billy's line) "old woman's hands." At the end, when Sally takes Larry's hand, that's what Martha wants, but what she'll never get. Just because it works out once in a while doesn't mean it will work out for everyone. While I chafed at Martha's character development early in the season, as it plays out I'm beginning to think that it was simply the deadening effect of "Daleks in Manhattan/Evolution of the Daleks." Take away that rather stultifying two-parter and Martha's character makes a lot more sense and is much more consistent. Her brief screen time in "Blink" reinforces the initial presentation of her as a smart, take-charge woman who has, in this one instance, revealed a fateful, if not fatal, Achilles heel. She's simply fallen head-over-heels for the wrong guy.
The episode creates a surprising amount of suspense, using the Weeping Angels' stop-action nature to deliver some very effective jolts of fear. This was the scariest Doctor Who ever. I yipped at least three times and my daughter asked if she could sleep with the lights on. Often the writing on Doctor Who is praised at the expense of or as apology for the technical aspects, but visually and FX-wise this was a treat. Carey Mulligan turns in a top-notch guest performance, easily carrying the story as Sally Sparrow. All in all, "Blink" is outstanding Doctor Who and plain brilliant by any standard. It would be a thrilling story if you plugged in "anonymous time traveler B." That's what makes it great; it's not dependent on the Doctor's quirks or our knowledge of the series. It's awesome and solid on its own; the Doctor is lagniappe And that's some tasty gravy
Sunday, September 9, 2007
What Was That?
Because I like to gawk at a freak show as much as the next person, I flipped on the MTV Awards to see what kind of car wreck Britney Spears would produce for the opening number.
Now I just feel cheap and soiled.
Now I just feel cheap and soiled.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
Shoot 'em Up is a cartoon, as deadpan a parody as you'll ever see. Anyone who claims to find any significance to this movie beyond sheer adrenal rush is lying. It really doesn't even have scenes, just one long extended battle with breaks to take a deep breath and (infrequently) reload. It's like half of a good John Woo movie.
What elevates Shoot 'em Up is the presence of Clive Owen and Paul Giamatti as the antagonists. If either of them so much as blinks or grins, the movie will collapse into tiresome, self-congratulatory dreck. Neither of them blink. Owen plays this movie just as straight as he did Children of Men and Giamatti brings as much effort to this project as he did to Sideways and American Splendor. Throw in Monica Belluci as a hooker (Riiiiight; hookers look like Belucci) with a clientele of breast-milk fetishists (are you grinning yet?) and you should know by now whether this is a movie you want to see or not. I personally thought it was one hour and 27 minutes of hoot.
Shoot 'em Up reminded me of The Replacement Killers, Antoine Fuqua's 1999 movie starring Chow Yun-Fat and Mira Sorvino. Chow may have gotten better reviews for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, but he will never look more iconic than he did striding through Fuqua's film in a long black leather duster with a 9mm in each hand. He has never found an American vehicle worthy of him, but Chow Yun-Fat is the coolest man in the movies. His sheer magnetism makes a cliche story that's basically a pastiche of John Woo not only watchable, but fun.
What elevates Shoot 'em Up is the presence of Clive Owen and Paul Giamatti as the antagonists. If either of them so much as blinks or grins, the movie will collapse into tiresome, self-congratulatory dreck. Neither of them blink. Owen plays this movie just as straight as he did Children of Men and Giamatti brings as much effort to this project as he did to Sideways and American Splendor. Throw in Monica Belluci as a hooker (Riiiiight; hookers look like Belucci) with a clientele of breast-milk fetishists (are you grinning yet?) and you should know by now whether this is a movie you want to see or not. I personally thought it was one hour and 27 minutes of hoot.
Shoot 'em Up reminded me of The Replacement Killers, Antoine Fuqua's 1999 movie starring Chow Yun-Fat and Mira Sorvino. Chow may have gotten better reviews for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, but he will never look more iconic than he did striding through Fuqua's film in a long black leather duster with a 9mm in each hand. He has never found an American vehicle worthy of him, but Chow Yun-Fat is the coolest man in the movies. His sheer magnetism makes a cliche story that's basically a pastiche of John Woo not only watchable, but fun.
...and he's wonderful."
Dr. Who kicked my ass last Friday night. "Family of Blood" was the second half of a two-parter, and the last twenty minutes really put the viewer through the emotional wringer. Ross Ruediger has a lovely wrap-up here, so I won't go into too much detail, except to say that I know, I just know that Freema Agyeman will break my heart before the season is over.
I would say that "Family of Blood" is worthy of mention for another reason. All action/adventure shows and movies rise and fall on the strength of the antagonist. The Family was a fine opponent for the Doctor on a conceptual level, but Harry Lloyd's performance as Baines/Son of Mine was outstanding. It was full of immensely silly mannerisms and tics and was all the scarier for that. Baines has a high old time camping it up, but the performance isn't funny. It's scary as hell. Lauren Wilson was also super-spooky as Lucy Cartwright/Daugher of Mine.
I did have an interesting experience over the weekend. My local PBS station has begun running the Eccleston/Piper Who episodes and BBC America has started season 2, the Tennant/Piper eps. I know that many British fans and not a few Americans have gone to great lengths to disparage Martha Jones (and often Agyeman as well) in comparison to Rose Tyler/Billie Piper. Watching three different episodes from three different seasons made me think that maybe nostalgia has already set in.
When season 1 premiered, Who fans were ecstatic just to have him back. That the series was so good was gravy. Immense good will accrued to Billie Piper, who did a fine job, but in no way was her acting superior to Agyeman's. The biggest difference that I can detect is that Piper does a lot of acting with her lips and Agyeman does a lot with her eyes.
In short, any frustration with Martha Jones should be directed at the conception of the character, not at Freema Agyeman's interpretation of same. As "Human Nature/Family of Blood" made clear, Martha's arc is the story of a woman who falls in love with a man who will not love her in return, and who must get over that while still being in close proximity to him. That's not an easy story to tell, nor is it always easy to watch (too close to home for most of us, I'd wager). Still, the last three episodes seem to have turned a corner in Martha's life, and her reaction to the Doctor's hug at the end of "Family of Blood" seemed to me to be a tremendously subtle acknowledgement on her part that she knows it.
I would say that "Family of Blood" is worthy of mention for another reason. All action/adventure shows and movies rise and fall on the strength of the antagonist. The Family was a fine opponent for the Doctor on a conceptual level, but Harry Lloyd's performance as Baines/Son of Mine was outstanding. It was full of immensely silly mannerisms and tics and was all the scarier for that. Baines has a high old time camping it up, but the performance isn't funny. It's scary as hell. Lauren Wilson was also super-spooky as Lucy Cartwright/Daugher of Mine.
I did have an interesting experience over the weekend. My local PBS station has begun running the Eccleston/Piper Who episodes and BBC America has started season 2, the Tennant/Piper eps. I know that many British fans and not a few Americans have gone to great lengths to disparage Martha Jones (and often Agyeman as well) in comparison to Rose Tyler/Billie Piper. Watching three different episodes from three different seasons made me think that maybe nostalgia has already set in.
When season 1 premiered, Who fans were ecstatic just to have him back. That the series was so good was gravy. Immense good will accrued to Billie Piper, who did a fine job, but in no way was her acting superior to Agyeman's. The biggest difference that I can detect is that Piper does a lot of acting with her lips and Agyeman does a lot with her eyes.
In short, any frustration with Martha Jones should be directed at the conception of the character, not at Freema Agyeman's interpretation of same. As "Human Nature/Family of Blood" made clear, Martha's arc is the story of a woman who falls in love with a man who will not love her in return, and who must get over that while still being in close proximity to him. That's not an easy story to tell, nor is it always easy to watch (too close to home for most of us, I'd wager). Still, the last three episodes seem to have turned a corner in Martha's life, and her reaction to the Doctor's hug at the end of "Family of Blood" seemed to me to be a tremendously subtle acknowledgement on her part that she knows it.
Sunday, August 26, 2007
"...and it wasn't me."
"Human Nature," the most recent episode of Dr. Who, seems to be pretty pivotal to me. As much as I've enjoyed this season, it has seemed rather flat for the last couple of episodes. Martha (Freema Agyeman) has been in a holding pattern, there but not really vital. Agyeman is a tremendously appealing actress, and "The Lazarus Experiment" introduced an interesting arc-ish element (who is Mr. Saxon and why does he approach Martha's family?), but Martha still seemed a bit fuzzy, out of focus.
"Human Nature" fixes that. It snaps her into our vision clear and sharp. Martha has always looked at the Doctor with an adoration that wasn't present in Rose. Rose loved the Doctor but she didn't looooooooooove him. Alan Sepinwall has some astute observations about this development, and I don't want to tread too closely to what he says, but I think that it's both a brilliant stratagem and a good use of Agyeman's gifts. Her gaze can linger on the Doctor and melt in a way that Billie Piper's never could (and I thought Piper was great). Rose needed the doctor to rescue her from her dead-end life and reveled in the exhiliration of adventure; Martha needs him to claim her heart and hopes that her gameness will someday make him see that. When she whispered her forlorn declaration in the Tardis, I wanted to reach through the screen and wrap her up in a big hug. Agyeman makes Martha vulnerable in places where Rose was not.
The next episode, "Family of Blood," is supposed to be even better. Curse you, Labor Day, for making me wait two weeks!
Update: A viewer at Television Without Pity complained that Martha (in the viewer's eyes) has "no chemistry with the Doctor, romantic or otherwise." For some reason that stuck in my craw, but I think it digested last night.
Martha is not only in love with the Doctor, but it's the cruelest sort of love: unrequited. There will be no chemistry because he simply does not feel that way about her (at least not yet). It's a one-sided relationship. If that's intentional, it wouldn't be out of character for Russell T. Davies.
"Human Nature" fixes that. It snaps her into our vision clear and sharp. Martha has always looked at the Doctor with an adoration that wasn't present in Rose. Rose loved the Doctor but she didn't looooooooooove him. Alan Sepinwall has some astute observations about this development, and I don't want to tread too closely to what he says, but I think that it's both a brilliant stratagem and a good use of Agyeman's gifts. Her gaze can linger on the Doctor and melt in a way that Billie Piper's never could (and I thought Piper was great). Rose needed the doctor to rescue her from her dead-end life and reveled in the exhiliration of adventure; Martha needs him to claim her heart and hopes that her gameness will someday make him see that. When she whispered her forlorn declaration in the Tardis, I wanted to reach through the screen and wrap her up in a big hug. Agyeman makes Martha vulnerable in places where Rose was not.
The next episode, "Family of Blood," is supposed to be even better. Curse you, Labor Day, for making me wait two weeks!
Update: A viewer at Television Without Pity complained that Martha (in the viewer's eyes) has "no chemistry with the Doctor, romantic or otherwise." For some reason that stuck in my craw, but I think it digested last night.
Martha is not only in love with the Doctor, but it's the cruelest sort of love: unrequited. There will be no chemistry because he simply does not feel that way about her (at least not yet). It's a one-sided relationship. If that's intentional, it wouldn't be out of character for Russell T. Davies.
Saturday, August 25, 2007
Trust Me... I'm A Psychopath!
Posting's been light due real-life busy-ness, but I'll try to resume the regularly scheduled broadcasts soon. For now, I must clean up the love-stains left by my viewing of BBC America's Jekyll.
If you have BBCA and you didn't watch Steven Moffat's mind-bending update of Stevenson's story, then check the schedule and catch it when it repeats. If you don't get into it immediately, stay with it. You won't be disappointed.
If you have BBCA and you didn't watch Steven Moffat's mind-bending update of Stevenson's story, then check the schedule and catch it when it repeats. If you don't get into it immediately, stay with it. You won't be disappointed.
Friday, August 3, 2007
Over The Top... Did You Say Over The Top?
Do not go see Day Watch if you are high. Let me repeat that.
DO NOT SEE DAY WATCH IF YOU ARE HIGH!!!!!
Don't smoke pot. Don't do mushrooms. Don't take Ecstasy.
Your head will explode and you will impair your appreciation of one of the most hallucinogenic visual experiences that the movies have offered in a long time. Timur Bekmambetov makes Guillermo del Toro look like Kevin Smith; he's never met a lighting set-up or camera move that he doesn't just love. You remember the good parts of What Dreams May Come? Not the part with the awful performances by Robin Williams and Cuba Gooding, Jr., but the parts that took place in the afterlife/otherworld, the gorgeous, trippy visions of color and light? Imagine over two hours of that in the service of a story that involves vampires, psychics, a war between Light and Dark, and a car pulling a bootlegger turn on the side of a building.
Forget any kind of plot summation. Frankly, I'm not sure it's possible. You need to remember three things:
1.) Dark Others
2.) Light Others
3.) The Chalk of Fate
Yeah, the Chalk of Fate. Day Watch is like Bubba Ho-Tep; watch it for five minutes and you're either in or you're out. If you're out, I don't think you can (or should) be convinced otherwise. If you're in, well, you're in, baby. For the record, I'm in. I'm waaaaaaaaaaay in.
Day Watch is 132 minutes of ocular excess. It's Matrix-by-way-of-Dostoevsky sensibility is a direct jolt to your monkey brain. For me, any attempt to engage in orthodox criticism of Bekmambetov's opus (the middle episode in a trilogy; the third volume will be called Twilight Watch) is short-circuited by the sheer head-rush of his palette. Did I like it? I was laughing like a fool as I left the theater. Will you love it? I don't know, but you should at least give it a try.
DO NOT SEE DAY WATCH IF YOU ARE HIGH!!!!!
Don't smoke pot. Don't do mushrooms. Don't take Ecstasy.
Your head will explode and you will impair your appreciation of one of the most hallucinogenic visual experiences that the movies have offered in a long time. Timur Bekmambetov makes Guillermo del Toro look like Kevin Smith; he's never met a lighting set-up or camera move that he doesn't just love. You remember the good parts of What Dreams May Come? Not the part with the awful performances by Robin Williams and Cuba Gooding, Jr., but the parts that took place in the afterlife/otherworld, the gorgeous, trippy visions of color and light? Imagine over two hours of that in the service of a story that involves vampires, psychics, a war between Light and Dark, and a car pulling a bootlegger turn on the side of a building.
Forget any kind of plot summation. Frankly, I'm not sure it's possible. You need to remember three things:
1.) Dark Others
2.) Light Others
3.) The Chalk of Fate
Yeah, the Chalk of Fate. Day Watch is like Bubba Ho-Tep; watch it for five minutes and you're either in or you're out. If you're out, I don't think you can (or should) be convinced otherwise. If you're in, well, you're in, baby. For the record, I'm in. I'm waaaaaaaaaaay in.
Day Watch is 132 minutes of ocular excess. It's Matrix-by-way-of-Dostoevsky sensibility is a direct jolt to your monkey brain. For me, any attempt to engage in orthodox criticism of Bekmambetov's opus (the middle episode in a trilogy; the third volume will be called Twilight Watch) is short-circuited by the sheer head-rush of his palette. Did I like it? I was laughing like a fool as I left the theater. Will you love it? I don't know, but you should at least give it a try.
Thursday, August 2, 2007
Plenty O'Toole
Terrible pun, I know, but it's Peter O'Toole's 75th birthday. TCM is running a full day of O'Toole movies ("No prisoners!") and while not all of them are classics, they all highlight one thing about Peter O'Toole.
The man went for it. His famous full-tilt-boogie love of life offscreen steps directly onto the celluloid. When he was on The Daily Show a few months ago, his physical condition was shocking, but the light in those famous blue eyes was undimmed. He radiated vigor in spite of his body's frailty. O'Toole's film resume is all over the map; watch a few of his movies at random and something coalesces in your consciousness. Peter O'Toole may have been in some bad movies, but he's never condescended to the material. Man of La Mancha is pretty terrible, but O'Toole throws himself into his performance in a way that makes you wonder if he wasn't willing to be in a movie that he knew (or suspected) might be awful just so that he could play a part so unlike any other he had attempted. He never winks at the camera, never flags in his commitment. Unlike James Coco as Sancho Panza, O'Toole is never theatrical. When he meets Sophia Loren, it's like watching a thunderstorm forming; two titanic screen presences and underrated actors creating a magnetic field that threatens to suck everything around them into the vortex.
Watch him in Goodbye, Mr. Chips. The songs in the movie are crap, and Petula Clark is, well, pleasant, I guess. Sian Phillips' supporting performances is terrible in a late '60s "with-it" way. The story is, to be charitable, bathetic, manipulative, and cliched. But watch O'Toole; see how Herbert Ross uses the actor's great physical beauty (and Peter O'Toole is not handsome. He is a beautiful man.) to clarify the character's asceticism. Just like T.E. Lawrence, Arthur Chipping's commitment to his cause burns away what is common; it is his oblivious dedication that elevates him to near sainthood, while simultaneously making him baffling and impossible. The greatest strength contains the greatest flaw. Watch Chipping's final speech. See how O'Toole flawlessly navigates the possible pitfalls of treacle and modulates his performance in a flawless arc from the beginning of the speech to the conclusion.
Peter O'Toole is never thinking about the next movie, or the next deal, or how this particular film will affect his bankability. He is, in the best possible way, lost in the moment and going for it. High-brow, low-brow, action-adventure, art film, doesn't matter. Peter O'Toole always gives you everything he's got.
In My Favorite Year, O'Toole's Alan Swann declares, "I am not an actor, I'm a movie star!" He's both. Enjoy.
PS
When the first Harry Potter movie was being cast, I fiercely wanted O'Toole as Dumbledore. Tell me that wouldn't have improved the films. Also, acknowledgment is due the Shamus for his much better appreciation of O'Toole.
The man went for it. His famous full-tilt-boogie love of life offscreen steps directly onto the celluloid. When he was on The Daily Show a few months ago, his physical condition was shocking, but the light in those famous blue eyes was undimmed. He radiated vigor in spite of his body's frailty. O'Toole's film resume is all over the map; watch a few of his movies at random and something coalesces in your consciousness. Peter O'Toole may have been in some bad movies, but he's never condescended to the material. Man of La Mancha is pretty terrible, but O'Toole throws himself into his performance in a way that makes you wonder if he wasn't willing to be in a movie that he knew (or suspected) might be awful just so that he could play a part so unlike any other he had attempted. He never winks at the camera, never flags in his commitment. Unlike James Coco as Sancho Panza, O'Toole is never theatrical. When he meets Sophia Loren, it's like watching a thunderstorm forming; two titanic screen presences and underrated actors creating a magnetic field that threatens to suck everything around them into the vortex.
Watch him in Goodbye, Mr. Chips. The songs in the movie are crap, and Petula Clark is, well, pleasant, I guess. Sian Phillips' supporting performances is terrible in a late '60s "with-it" way. The story is, to be charitable, bathetic, manipulative, and cliched. But watch O'Toole; see how Herbert Ross uses the actor's great physical beauty (and Peter O'Toole is not handsome. He is a beautiful man.) to clarify the character's asceticism. Just like T.E. Lawrence, Arthur Chipping's commitment to his cause burns away what is common; it is his oblivious dedication that elevates him to near sainthood, while simultaneously making him baffling and impossible. The greatest strength contains the greatest flaw. Watch Chipping's final speech. See how O'Toole flawlessly navigates the possible pitfalls of treacle and modulates his performance in a flawless arc from the beginning of the speech to the conclusion.
Peter O'Toole is never thinking about the next movie, or the next deal, or how this particular film will affect his bankability. He is, in the best possible way, lost in the moment and going for it. High-brow, low-brow, action-adventure, art film, doesn't matter. Peter O'Toole always gives you everything he's got.
In My Favorite Year, O'Toole's Alan Swann declares, "I am not an actor, I'm a movie star!" He's both. Enjoy.
PS
When the first Harry Potter movie was being cast, I fiercely wanted O'Toole as Dumbledore. Tell me that wouldn't have improved the films. Also, acknowledgment is due the Shamus for his much better appreciation of O'Toole.
Wednesday, August 1, 2007
A Stiff Upper Lip
Severance is a British film that sort of does for slasher movies what Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz did for (respectively) zombies and zombie-like Michael Bay cops. It was funny and enjoyable, but not as good as it could have been. After the opening murder, we flash back to meet the sales team of Palisade Defence. They are on their way to a corporate retreat/team building weekend. Things go quickly awry and the team ends up in the wrong spot, squarely in the sights of a murderous psychopath.
The film is efficient and rather cheerful about the necessary beats of a modern bucket o' blood movie. It also aims to point out the stupidity and silliness of much modern business lingo. "You can call yourself a warrior all you want around the table in the conference room," Severance says, "but when you're staring down a maniac with a hatchet, well, try not to soil yourself." The movie stars Laura Harris (whom I first noticed in one of my favorite bad movies, The Faculty) and Tim McInnerny (MI-5 and Blackadder) and about a half-dozen actors who are vaguely familiar from various BBC America projects. The film is pretty successful as both comedy and slasher movie, but one character mistake keeps it from being the satire of corporate "warfare" to which it aspires.
That mistake is Richard's (McInnerny) complete incompetence. The movie would have been much stronger in the social commentary department if Richard had actually been a strong, successful leader, someone who really believed in those "business is war" homilies and applied them ruthlessly. The contrast between the blowhard puffery of corporate Big Swinging Dicks and the actual reality of "nature red, in tooth and claw" would have been much more effective. Instead, Richard is almost a cliche of a spineless ditherer. There's no way he would have climbed the ladder in an industry like defense, where the cloying stink of faux-testosterone hangs in the air like musk.
Still, the movie is several notches above the average horror film, and it actually provides a motivation for its killer. It's so much better than Hostel (1 or 2), Turistas, or High Tension that I almost feel bad for pointing out its flaws.
The film is efficient and rather cheerful about the necessary beats of a modern bucket o' blood movie. It also aims to point out the stupidity and silliness of much modern business lingo. "You can call yourself a warrior all you want around the table in the conference room," Severance says, "but when you're staring down a maniac with a hatchet, well, try not to soil yourself." The movie stars Laura Harris (whom I first noticed in one of my favorite bad movies, The Faculty) and Tim McInnerny (MI-5 and Blackadder) and about a half-dozen actors who are vaguely familiar from various BBC America projects. The film is pretty successful as both comedy and slasher movie, but one character mistake keeps it from being the satire of corporate "warfare" to which it aspires.
That mistake is Richard's (McInnerny) complete incompetence. The movie would have been much stronger in the social commentary department if Richard had actually been a strong, successful leader, someone who really believed in those "business is war" homilies and applied them ruthlessly. The contrast between the blowhard puffery of corporate Big Swinging Dicks and the actual reality of "nature red, in tooth and claw" would have been much more effective. Instead, Richard is almost a cliche of a spineless ditherer. There's no way he would have climbed the ladder in an industry like defense, where the cloying stink of faux-testosterone hangs in the air like musk.
Still, the movie is several notches above the average horror film, and it actually provides a motivation for its killer. It's so much better than Hostel (1 or 2), Turistas, or High Tension that I almost feel bad for pointing out its flaws.
Saturday, July 21, 2007
Summer TV Roundup
One of the pleasures of living in the cable and satellite age is summer TV. Now, it's true that the pleasure is often muted and ephemeral, but compared to my childhood (13 re-runs of some episodes of Bonanza and Gunsmoke; later replaced by 13 re-runs of ChIPS), today is a veritable paradise. Let's dive into the lukewarm pool of summer TV, shall we?
One caveat. I don't do reality series. I just don't, at least not since those bastards at Bravo broke my heart with Being Bobby Brown. So don't expect reality to show up here.
I've already soiled myself in my glee over the return of Dr. Who. BBC America has continued the flow of Brit sci-fi/fantasy with the second (it could be third; the way they count series over there confuses me) season of Hex. As a ground-floor fan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, I wanted to like this show when it premiered last summer, but it was a pile of unredeemed stink. It's improved a little, but not enough to recommend it. The mishmash of poor continuity, characters who do a one-eighty every other episode, and halfhearted performances just doesn't add up to watchable, let alone compelling, TV. Who'd a thunk it?
Since I mentioned Dr. Who, let's look at Eureka, the SciFi Channel's original summer series. I like this modest little tale of a town full of eccentric scientific geniuses (genii? I wish. I like that better). What appeals to me are the performances by actors like Joe Morton, Sally Richardson, and especially Colin Ferguson. Hey, any show that offers Matt Frewer a chance to act crazy every couple of weeks is okay. The writing is breezy in that "let's not dwell on this too long or the whole house of cards might collapse" way, and the "scientific" problems and complications are the best kind of frothy sci-fi lite. Battlestar Galactica? Hell to the naw (I weep for Being Bobby Brown), but it sure beats the buttons off the Stargate franchise, at least for me.
SciFi dropped a steaming load on us with Painkiller Jane, however. Turgid writing, leaden plots, acting just slightly better than my daughter's middle-school production of Cheaper by the Dozen (the classic play, not the craptacular Steve Martin movie), and a general feeling that no one involved really gives a rat's ass--it all adds up to a big "whatever".
USA loves to bring out shows in the summer. New episodes of Monk, Psych, Dead Zone, and The 4400 are running and the network has premiered a new series, Burn Notice.
Monk is problematic for me. The show's "mysteries" are pretty weak when they're not downright lame, and the plot often stops dead for a Tony Shalhoub Emmy-nomination grabbing set-piece. So why do I watch it?
Well, my daughter loves Tony Shalhoub (she's weird), and his long career helps the show get guest stars that no other show in this budget and ratings class could hope to snag. The acting by the regular cast members is uniformly excellent (Ted Levine deserves special mention). Shalhoub is quite good as the title character, and the whole enterprise goes down smoothly at 8 PM CDT on a Friday night.
Psych, on the other hand, started out like a bad episode of Monk and went downhill from there. Too self-consciously "wacky", sloppy in its writing and continuity, the only interest the show holds for me is "Why did Dule Hill decide that this was what should follow his stint on The West Wing?"
The 4400 and The Dead Zone run back-to-back on Sunday nights, and I like one and really don't care about the other. 4400 has struggled some since its return, but the show's willingness to examine things like religious fanaticism is good. I hope that the current arc pays off, since I don't think I've seen any other show attempt to dramatize how messianic religion grows. My big gripe about the show? I keep confusing star Joel Gretsch with Colin Ferguson of Eureka.
That leaves us with Burn Notice. Jeffrey Donovan stars as Michael Westen, a spy who has been "burned", that is declared anathema by the Agency. Sort of like the Quaker practice of shunning, but with 9mm handguns. Now he has to take odd investigative/protection jobs in Miami to earn money while he tries to find out who burned him and why. Donovan has an edge and a coldness to his persona that served him well in USA's Americanization of Touching Evil and in Burn Notice. He's a handsome man, but his eyes are close-set and his upper lip curls back in a feral manner. You have no problem believing that this guy would could either kill you if you cross him, or let you walk away. It's all the same to him. His co-stars are Bruce Campbell (the Chin!!!), Sharon Gless, and Gabrielle Anwar.
Campbell is a reliable presence. His professionalism and capable comedic skills make him a joy to watch as Sam Axe (another great character name for the former Ash Williams). Gless is the wild card, both as actor and plot device; she plays Michael's mom. Sure, it sounds funny--"The hero gets a call on his cell phone in the middle of a shootout! Guess what? It's his mom!" Could work, could be lame. Gless turns it into a hoot. The role is pretty generic, but she makes diamonds out of dirt. It's a textbook example of how a committed professional can elevate standard fare.
I was surprised by Anwar. My earliest memory of her is 1993's Wild Hearts Can't Be Broken. She was also in Abel Ferrara's Body Snatchers and Scent of a Woman (hooh-ah). She's 37 now and she looks it. I don't mean that in a bad way; simply that she looks like a beautiful adult woman, not someone pretending to be 22. Her character is Fiona, ex-IRA and also ex-love of Michael's. Anwar plays her dry and competent and a perfect foil for Donovan. I have to say that I'm enjoying Burn Notice.
One caveat. I don't do reality series. I just don't, at least not since those bastards at Bravo broke my heart with Being Bobby Brown. So don't expect reality to show up here.
I've already soiled myself in my glee over the return of Dr. Who. BBC America has continued the flow of Brit sci-fi/fantasy with the second (it could be third; the way they count series over there confuses me) season of Hex. As a ground-floor fan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, I wanted to like this show when it premiered last summer, but it was a pile of unredeemed stink. It's improved a little, but not enough to recommend it. The mishmash of poor continuity, characters who do a one-eighty every other episode, and halfhearted performances just doesn't add up to watchable, let alone compelling, TV. Who'd a thunk it?
Since I mentioned Dr. Who, let's look at Eureka, the SciFi Channel's original summer series. I like this modest little tale of a town full of eccentric scientific geniuses (genii? I wish. I like that better). What appeals to me are the performances by actors like Joe Morton, Sally Richardson, and especially Colin Ferguson. Hey, any show that offers Matt Frewer a chance to act crazy every couple of weeks is okay. The writing is breezy in that "let's not dwell on this too long or the whole house of cards might collapse" way, and the "scientific" problems and complications are the best kind of frothy sci-fi lite. Battlestar Galactica? Hell to the naw (I weep for Being Bobby Brown), but it sure beats the buttons off the Stargate franchise, at least for me.
SciFi dropped a steaming load on us with Painkiller Jane, however. Turgid writing, leaden plots, acting just slightly better than my daughter's middle-school production of Cheaper by the Dozen (the classic play, not the craptacular Steve Martin movie), and a general feeling that no one involved really gives a rat's ass--it all adds up to a big "whatever".
USA loves to bring out shows in the summer. New episodes of Monk, Psych, Dead Zone, and The 4400 are running and the network has premiered a new series, Burn Notice.
Monk is problematic for me. The show's "mysteries" are pretty weak when they're not downright lame, and the plot often stops dead for a Tony Shalhoub Emmy-nomination grabbing set-piece. So why do I watch it?
Well, my daughter loves Tony Shalhoub (she's weird), and his long career helps the show get guest stars that no other show in this budget and ratings class could hope to snag. The acting by the regular cast members is uniformly excellent (Ted Levine deserves special mention). Shalhoub is quite good as the title character, and the whole enterprise goes down smoothly at 8 PM CDT on a Friday night.
Psych, on the other hand, started out like a bad episode of Monk and went downhill from there. Too self-consciously "wacky", sloppy in its writing and continuity, the only interest the show holds for me is "Why did Dule Hill decide that this was what should follow his stint on The West Wing?"
The 4400 and The Dead Zone run back-to-back on Sunday nights, and I like one and really don't care about the other. 4400 has struggled some since its return, but the show's willingness to examine things like religious fanaticism is good. I hope that the current arc pays off, since I don't think I've seen any other show attempt to dramatize how messianic religion grows. My big gripe about the show? I keep confusing star Joel Gretsch with Colin Ferguson of Eureka.
That leaves us with Burn Notice. Jeffrey Donovan stars as Michael Westen, a spy who has been "burned", that is declared anathema by the Agency. Sort of like the Quaker practice of shunning, but with 9mm handguns. Now he has to take odd investigative/protection jobs in Miami to earn money while he tries to find out who burned him and why. Donovan has an edge and a coldness to his persona that served him well in USA's Americanization of Touching Evil and in Burn Notice. He's a handsome man, but his eyes are close-set and his upper lip curls back in a feral manner. You have no problem believing that this guy would could either kill you if you cross him, or let you walk away. It's all the same to him. His co-stars are Bruce Campbell (the Chin!!!), Sharon Gless, and Gabrielle Anwar.
Campbell is a reliable presence. His professionalism and capable comedic skills make him a joy to watch as Sam Axe (another great character name for the former Ash Williams). Gless is the wild card, both as actor and plot device; she plays Michael's mom. Sure, it sounds funny--"The hero gets a call on his cell phone in the middle of a shootout! Guess what? It's his mom!" Could work, could be lame. Gless turns it into a hoot. The role is pretty generic, but she makes diamonds out of dirt. It's a textbook example of how a committed professional can elevate standard fare.
I was surprised by Anwar. My earliest memory of her is 1993's Wild Hearts Can't Be Broken. She was also in Abel Ferrara's Body Snatchers and Scent of a Woman (hooh-ah). She's 37 now and she looks it. I don't mean that in a bad way; simply that she looks like a beautiful adult woman, not someone pretending to be 22. Her character is Fiona, ex-IRA and also ex-love of Michael's. Anwar plays her dry and competent and a perfect foil for Donovan. I have to say that I'm enjoying Burn Notice.
Friday, July 20, 2007
Well Played, Sir. Well Played.
The family traveled to the nearest multiplex to see Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. The Potter movies are an interesting case. The first two, directed by Chris Columbus, were literal, Cliff's Notes versions of the books, fodder produced to cash in on the phenomenally popular books. They had the gloss and plasticity of Hollywood "feel good/family" blockbusters, but the first one was palatable and it was great to see so many outstanding British thespians involved and giving their all (Why are great British actors, like Maggie Smith and Alan Rickman, able to do material like Potter straightforwardly, without the winking/nudge-nudge to which Americans are so prone?).
The third film, Prisoner of Azkaban, was the watershed moment. The books were getting longer and more complex. The success of the first two books had given J.K.Rowling the ability to tell her story at any length she wanted. Would it be possible to adapt an 850 page book into one film? After Columbus declined to direct (a decision worthy of flowers from me), Alfonso Cuaron accepted the challenge. I was ecstatic. Most people knew Cuaron from Y Tu Mama Tambien, but I remembered his transcendent version of A Little Princess, one of the best movies of the last two decades. Cuaron's changes in color palette (the shot of Harry looking out of the clock tower as his classmates depart for a snowy Hogsmeade weekend is clock-stopping in its starkness), his relocation of Hogwarts to a bleaker, more Scottish location, and his decision to get the actors into casual dress, so that they actually looked like students, were great, but the real revelation, the real turning point for Potter as film series, was his approach to adapting the story. Whole subplots, gone. Events reordered. Quidditch toned down. Cuaron broke free from the books and, paradoxically, became more true to their spirit. The Potter books are, at their hearts, great stories. I would entertain the notion that Rowling isn't a great writer, but she's a fantastic storyteller.
Cuaron's Azkaban was the most artistic of the films, but his approach freed Mike Newell to make Goblet of Fire as the action/adventure Potter. He and screenwriter Steve Kloves streamlined the unwieldy novel even further, lopping off huge chunks of exposition and subplot. Draco Malfoy, Harry's constant antagonist in the books, was present only as comic relief. Newell sped up the plot, making the movie race where the book often meandered (which is one of the great joys of books). The film focused on one thread--the Tri-Wizard Tournament. While not as atmospheric as Azkaban, Goblet of Fire furthered the notion of the Potter films as their own works of creative imagination, not just visualizations of Rowling's prose.
David Yates is the director of Order of the Phoenix. I knew nothing of his previous work. At least new screenwriter Michael Goldenberg had the 2003 live-action adaptation of Peter Pan under his belt. There was the usual noise about casting ("Natalia Tena will be Tonks!"), but by this time the cast has grown so large and the plot so dense that the movie consists of Daniel Radcliffe and a huge number of cameo performances . Ron and Hermione are little more than supporting players. They're not really on screen much more than Cho Chang (Katie Leung), Harry's first girlfriend (By the way, if the series has compacted Harry and Cho's relationship as it seems, then the filmmakers have improved on the books). This really is Radcliffe's show.
Except for one other role.
Casting can be 90% of a movie. OotP features Rowling's one great stand-alone villain, Dolores Umbridge, a petty tyrant who hides her vicious soul behind an ostentatiously maternal facade. I'm a great believer that the hero's antagonist is as important as the hero. Dolores Umbridge must be believable, sweet, cruel, and loathsome.
Imelda Staunton was nominated for an Oscar for Vera Drake in 2004. I'm going to suggest something unthinkable to many here and say that her work in Order of the Phoenix is actually better. We love to praise grim, kitchen-sink dramas as the stuff of real acting and that movies like Phoenix are fluff that actors take to pay the bills. I've already mentioned how the cast of the Potter films give their all. One of the things I most enjoyed about OotP was the way people like Emma Thompson, Jason Isaacs, and Helena Bonham Carter attacked their fifty seconds of screen time with such brio. Alan Rickman wrings every drop from his limited screen time as Snape. If he was any drier, he'd crumble into powder.
Staunton rules, however. Umbridge's performance lifts Phoenix and, I think, pushes everyone else to bring their 'A' game.
Yates deserves much credit. The night-flight along the Thames is breathtaking. The set pieces are handled with gusto and Yates is able to keep spatial relationships straight (don't sneer at this; Michael Bay can't do it). The action isn't just disjointed visual noise; it has rhythm and perspective. Yates also handles CGI and SFX well, especially for someone whose background is TV and indie film. Many directors who are comfortable with small-scale pieces can be overwhelmed by the resources available on a big-budget production. Yates is not. He keeps a complex plot moving cleanly and keeps it understandable. I think that he has helped Harry Potter make that most difficult jump; Order of the Phoenix is a movie you can enjoy even if you haven't read the book.
The third film, Prisoner of Azkaban, was the watershed moment. The books were getting longer and more complex. The success of the first two books had given J.K.Rowling the ability to tell her story at any length she wanted. Would it be possible to adapt an 850 page book into one film? After Columbus declined to direct (a decision worthy of flowers from me), Alfonso Cuaron accepted the challenge. I was ecstatic. Most people knew Cuaron from Y Tu Mama Tambien, but I remembered his transcendent version of A Little Princess, one of the best movies of the last two decades. Cuaron's changes in color palette (the shot of Harry looking out of the clock tower as his classmates depart for a snowy Hogsmeade weekend is clock-stopping in its starkness), his relocation of Hogwarts to a bleaker, more Scottish location, and his decision to get the actors into casual dress, so that they actually looked like students, were great, but the real revelation, the real turning point for Potter as film series, was his approach to adapting the story. Whole subplots, gone. Events reordered. Quidditch toned down. Cuaron broke free from the books and, paradoxically, became more true to their spirit. The Potter books are, at their hearts, great stories. I would entertain the notion that Rowling isn't a great writer, but she's a fantastic storyteller.
Cuaron's Azkaban was the most artistic of the films, but his approach freed Mike Newell to make Goblet of Fire as the action/adventure Potter. He and screenwriter Steve Kloves streamlined the unwieldy novel even further, lopping off huge chunks of exposition and subplot. Draco Malfoy, Harry's constant antagonist in the books, was present only as comic relief. Newell sped up the plot, making the movie race where the book often meandered (which is one of the great joys of books). The film focused on one thread--the Tri-Wizard Tournament. While not as atmospheric as Azkaban, Goblet of Fire furthered the notion of the Potter films as their own works of creative imagination, not just visualizations of Rowling's prose.
David Yates is the director of Order of the Phoenix. I knew nothing of his previous work. At least new screenwriter Michael Goldenberg had the 2003 live-action adaptation of Peter Pan under his belt. There was the usual noise about casting ("Natalia Tena will be Tonks!"), but by this time the cast has grown so large and the plot so dense that the movie consists of Daniel Radcliffe and a huge number of cameo performances . Ron and Hermione are little more than supporting players. They're not really on screen much more than Cho Chang (Katie Leung), Harry's first girlfriend (By the way, if the series has compacted Harry and Cho's relationship as it seems, then the filmmakers have improved on the books). This really is Radcliffe's show.
Except for one other role.
Casting can be 90% of a movie. OotP features Rowling's one great stand-alone villain, Dolores Umbridge, a petty tyrant who hides her vicious soul behind an ostentatiously maternal facade. I'm a great believer that the hero's antagonist is as important as the hero. Dolores Umbridge must be believable, sweet, cruel, and loathsome.
Imelda Staunton was nominated for an Oscar for Vera Drake in 2004. I'm going to suggest something unthinkable to many here and say that her work in Order of the Phoenix is actually better. We love to praise grim, kitchen-sink dramas as the stuff of real acting and that movies like Phoenix are fluff that actors take to pay the bills. I've already mentioned how the cast of the Potter films give their all. One of the things I most enjoyed about OotP was the way people like Emma Thompson, Jason Isaacs, and Helena Bonham Carter attacked their fifty seconds of screen time with such brio. Alan Rickman wrings every drop from his limited screen time as Snape. If he was any drier, he'd crumble into powder.
Staunton rules, however. Umbridge's performance lifts Phoenix and, I think, pushes everyone else to bring their 'A' game.
Yates deserves much credit. The night-flight along the Thames is breathtaking. The set pieces are handled with gusto and Yates is able to keep spatial relationships straight (don't sneer at this; Michael Bay can't do it). The action isn't just disjointed visual noise; it has rhythm and perspective. Yates also handles CGI and SFX well, especially for someone whose background is TV and indie film. Many directors who are comfortable with small-scale pieces can be overwhelmed by the resources available on a big-budget production. Yates is not. He keeps a complex plot moving cleanly and keeps it understandable. I think that he has helped Harry Potter make that most difficult jump; Order of the Phoenix is a movie you can enjoy even if you haven't read the book.
Friday, July 13, 2007
Once
Once is a movie that walks a very thin, very taut, and very treacherous tightrope. It's the cinematic equivalent of the bridge scene in Henri-Georges Clouzot's Wages of Fear. Oh, who am I kidding? That scene itself is cinema, so how could something else be its cinematic equivalent? Besides, Wages of Fear is a taut, lean almost-noir and Once is... well, it's not.
I stand by the tightrope remark, though. You may have seen trailers for Once. Do not believe them. The marketing makes it seem like a conventional love story, but it is so much more than that. They make the movie seem like a romance driven by music. It's really about music raised to the level of romance. That's why it's such a balancing act. If all the elements aren't handled with skill and finesse, the whole enterprise could collapse into something maudlin and ugly to behold.
It doesn't. Once is the story of Guy (Glen Hansard) and Girl (Marketa Irglova). He's a vacuum repairman/songwriter/busker and she's an immigrant from the Czech Republic who hears him and strikes up a conversation. He's writing plaintive songs about a girl who left him and she's alone in Dublin with her mother and toddler daughter. The only names they have are Guy and Girl, and her attempt to get her vacuum repaired leads to a lunch-time collaboration at a music store. You see, she cannot afford a piano of her own, so the store owner lets her play at lunch. Guy and Girl are on the same page musically from the downbeat.
At this juncture it seems that Once is about to spiral into conventional romantic territory, but it turns into something much subtler and harder to depict. The two leads connect so completely on a musical level that Guy keeps thinking it's love, but Girl is more practical and hard-headed. Really, after the movie is over, you can see that Guy is something of a dreamer and a sap. He needs the kick in the ass that Girl gives him, first to go to London and reconnect with the old girlfriend and then to record his songs in order to shop them for a record deal. Writer/director John Carney navigates skilfully around possible pitfalls. Hansard (who leads the Irish band the Frames and was in 1991's The Commitments) and Irglova are both honest actors and the fact that they actually write and perform their own music makes the act of creation palpable. The long central sequence of recording Guy's songs could be the spot where the movie stalls out, but instead it really captures the feel of people going for something that they need, driven past fatigue by their love of, the necessity of making music. Carney moves so surely and swiftly through his story that you barely notice that Hansard must be twenty years older than Irglova, but maybe that's the point. Maybe Carney wants to say that if you connect deeply enough with another person on any level, then differences like age drop away. I really liked the way that the almost mystical connection the two characters share over music doesn't become a cure-all and romantic balm. If it did the movie would be sentimental treacle.
I have performed music and drama for over thirty years now. I have found that rapport in the musical arena doesn't mean that you connect with someone in any other area. One guy with whom I have an almost telepathic stage relationship drives me insane in every other way. Another fellow, a dear friend and musician, is the guy with whom I go to the movies and have long, coffee-fueled talks and listening sessions. As much as we both love music, we don't have that connection when we play together. Things have to be spelled out in much more detail, but he's a better friend.
Once revolves around that conundrum; that someone who perfectly relates to the deepest, most personal part of ourselves isn't necessarily our soulmate. The ending is perfect; really it's the only ending that wouldn't feel like a betrayal. I walked out of the theater feeling good, inspired and alive. I think you should definitely see Once.
I stand by the tightrope remark, though. You may have seen trailers for Once. Do not believe them. The marketing makes it seem like a conventional love story, but it is so much more than that. They make the movie seem like a romance driven by music. It's really about music raised to the level of romance. That's why it's such a balancing act. If all the elements aren't handled with skill and finesse, the whole enterprise could collapse into something maudlin and ugly to behold.
It doesn't. Once is the story of Guy (Glen Hansard) and Girl (Marketa Irglova). He's a vacuum repairman/songwriter/busker and she's an immigrant from the Czech Republic who hears him and strikes up a conversation. He's writing plaintive songs about a girl who left him and she's alone in Dublin with her mother and toddler daughter. The only names they have are Guy and Girl, and her attempt to get her vacuum repaired leads to a lunch-time collaboration at a music store. You see, she cannot afford a piano of her own, so the store owner lets her play at lunch. Guy and Girl are on the same page musically from the downbeat.
At this juncture it seems that Once is about to spiral into conventional romantic territory, but it turns into something much subtler and harder to depict. The two leads connect so completely on a musical level that Guy keeps thinking it's love, but Girl is more practical and hard-headed. Really, after the movie is over, you can see that Guy is something of a dreamer and a sap. He needs the kick in the ass that Girl gives him, first to go to London and reconnect with the old girlfriend and then to record his songs in order to shop them for a record deal. Writer/director John Carney navigates skilfully around possible pitfalls. Hansard (who leads the Irish band the Frames and was in 1991's The Commitments) and Irglova are both honest actors and the fact that they actually write and perform their own music makes the act of creation palpable. The long central sequence of recording Guy's songs could be the spot where the movie stalls out, but instead it really captures the feel of people going for something that they need, driven past fatigue by their love of, the necessity of making music. Carney moves so surely and swiftly through his story that you barely notice that Hansard must be twenty years older than Irglova, but maybe that's the point. Maybe Carney wants to say that if you connect deeply enough with another person on any level, then differences like age drop away. I really liked the way that the almost mystical connection the two characters share over music doesn't become a cure-all and romantic balm. If it did the movie would be sentimental treacle.
I have performed music and drama for over thirty years now. I have found that rapport in the musical arena doesn't mean that you connect with someone in any other area. One guy with whom I have an almost telepathic stage relationship drives me insane in every other way. Another fellow, a dear friend and musician, is the guy with whom I go to the movies and have long, coffee-fueled talks and listening sessions. As much as we both love music, we don't have that connection when we play together. Things have to be spelled out in much more detail, but he's a better friend.
Once revolves around that conundrum; that someone who perfectly relates to the deepest, most personal part of ourselves isn't necessarily our soulmate. The ending is perfect; really it's the only ending that wouldn't feel like a betrayal. I walked out of the theater feeling good, inspired and alive. I think you should definitely see Once.
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
Monday, July 9, 2007
"...I think sometimes you need somebody to stop you."
He's back!!! Dr. Who is back.
Now, for a full consideration of all things Who, you should really zip over to Matt Zoller Sietz's blog. Ross Ruediger does a bang-up job of illuminating and appreciating the Doctor's adventures, and at a length I cannot hope to match. That said, how cool is it that the Doctor is back!
Season three kicked off with "The Runaway Bride." Like "The Christmas Invasion", it's a stand-alone aired on Christmas in Great Britain. It's neither season two nor season three, but a bridge between the two. It begins where "Doomsday" ended--the Doctor open-mouthed, tears on his cheeks, turning to find a woman (Catherine Tait) in a wedding dress standing in the middle of the TARDIS. Her name is Donna and she has disappeared from her wedding and materialized in front of the Doctor. According to the Doctor, this is impossible--for a guy who is 900 years old and travels across space and time, he says that a lot.
"TRB" is a rather special Dr. Who. For one thing, it's a full-on, slam-bang action piece. The stellar ratings of the new episodes must have shaken down some money from the BBC tree, because the effects and set pieces are altogether greater than anything the series has attempted before. The chase down the freeway (the TARDIS flying alongside a speeding taxi) not only allows us to see the TARDIS in motion, but it also shows us something heretofore unseen. We've always heard that the TARDIS is "bigger on the inside", but this episode lets us see it, and it's very effective.
We also see one of the creepiest villains that DW has ever shown us, the Empress of Racnoss, a giant spider/centaur. She's a classic villain portrayed by Sarah Parish, who starred with David Tennant in Blackpool. It's also good to see Don Gilet from 55 Degrees North. I admit it; I'm a whore for BBC America.
One of the real strong points of the new Dr. is the way it hides a big point inside the plot. That big moment comes in "TRB" when the Doctor finally vanquishes the Racnoss in particularly final and effective manner. Donna is horrified by his cold and somewhat cruel demeanor; she even shouts at him to stop. That leads to her last lines to him, after she has turned down his offer to be a Companion (about time somebody turned it down, and her reasons are funny and spot-on), the title to this post.
Tennant has really seized the role of the Doctor. His brio and emotional effervescence have made his flashes of darkness even more compelling and "TRB" offers an excellent example. As he is exterminating the Racnoss, his thin-lipped mouth compresses to a flat line framed by his beaky nose and pointy chin. Tennant's eyes go cold and he looks like a great, pitiless bird of prey. It's a chilling moment and one of the hallmarks of Russell T. Davies' interpretation of Who.
So Rose is gone, right? Not on your life. Her spirit haunts the entire episode. The Doctor's references to her as very alive, and happy, and with her family are some of the most melancholy lines you'll hear on television.
"The Runaway Bride" is not only the return of Dr. Who, it's also a perfect bridge between seasons two and three. It's Christmas airing in Britain, five month after "Doomsday", three months before "Smith and Jones", probably made that status even clearer.
"Smith and Jones" introduces Martha Jones (Freema Agyeman), the Doctor's newest Companion. Aside from the obvious fact that she's the first Companion of color, several important differences are established between her and Rose, differences which highlight Martha's uniqueness while also recalling Rose. Like "Rose", "Smith and Jones" is designed to introduce the new Companion and set up her relationship with the Doctor. It does that well enough, but like many of the best Who episodes, the A-story is functional while the cool stuff weaves around and through it. Take the Judoon, an alien race that doesn't want to take over the world. They're cops, there to do a job. It's a nice twist. Notice how the phrase "reverse it" occurs just as it did in "The Runaway Bride." Chuckle as the hospital administrator, one Mr. Stoker, is killed by the draining of his blood. See the Doctor plant a kiss on Martha (pretty hot, that)!
The real trick of "Smith and Jones" is how it outlines Martha Jones. Where Rose Tyler was a shop girl in a dead-end life, Martha is a medical student. Rose was bored with her life and family; Martha is just tired of the fighting and idiocy of her clan. Rose went with the Doctor to escape the numbing drudgery of her life. Martha, on the other hand, seems more drawn to the idea of knowledge, of discovery. She's almost mastered the human body; how cool would it be to know what else is out there? The show also confidently uses it's own mythology. Martha is very aware of the Christmas invasion and the Racnoss web-ship. She isn't staggered to discover how weird the world is. She knows it's weird; what's exciting about the Doctor is that he promises to show her the how and the why of that weirdness.
So he's back, he's really back. Good show.
Now, for a full consideration of all things Who, you should really zip over to Matt Zoller Sietz's blog. Ross Ruediger does a bang-up job of illuminating and appreciating the Doctor's adventures, and at a length I cannot hope to match. That said, how cool is it that the Doctor is back!
Season three kicked off with "The Runaway Bride." Like "The Christmas Invasion", it's a stand-alone aired on Christmas in Great Britain. It's neither season two nor season three, but a bridge between the two. It begins where "Doomsday" ended--the Doctor open-mouthed, tears on his cheeks, turning to find a woman (Catherine Tait) in a wedding dress standing in the middle of the TARDIS. Her name is Donna and she has disappeared from her wedding and materialized in front of the Doctor. According to the Doctor, this is impossible--for a guy who is 900 years old and travels across space and time, he says that a lot.
"TRB" is a rather special Dr. Who. For one thing, it's a full-on, slam-bang action piece. The stellar ratings of the new episodes must have shaken down some money from the BBC tree, because the effects and set pieces are altogether greater than anything the series has attempted before. The chase down the freeway (the TARDIS flying alongside a speeding taxi) not only allows us to see the TARDIS in motion, but it also shows us something heretofore unseen. We've always heard that the TARDIS is "bigger on the inside", but this episode lets us see it, and it's very effective.
We also see one of the creepiest villains that DW has ever shown us, the Empress of Racnoss, a giant spider/centaur. She's a classic villain portrayed by Sarah Parish, who starred with David Tennant in Blackpool. It's also good to see Don Gilet from 55 Degrees North. I admit it; I'm a whore for BBC America.
One of the real strong points of the new Dr. is the way it hides a big point inside the plot. That big moment comes in "TRB" when the Doctor finally vanquishes the Racnoss in particularly final and effective manner. Donna is horrified by his cold and somewhat cruel demeanor; she even shouts at him to stop. That leads to her last lines to him, after she has turned down his offer to be a Companion (about time somebody turned it down, and her reasons are funny and spot-on), the title to this post.
Tennant has really seized the role of the Doctor. His brio and emotional effervescence have made his flashes of darkness even more compelling and "TRB" offers an excellent example. As he is exterminating the Racnoss, his thin-lipped mouth compresses to a flat line framed by his beaky nose and pointy chin. Tennant's eyes go cold and he looks like a great, pitiless bird of prey. It's a chilling moment and one of the hallmarks of Russell T. Davies' interpretation of Who.
So Rose is gone, right? Not on your life. Her spirit haunts the entire episode. The Doctor's references to her as very alive, and happy, and with her family are some of the most melancholy lines you'll hear on television.
"The Runaway Bride" is not only the return of Dr. Who, it's also a perfect bridge between seasons two and three. It's Christmas airing in Britain, five month after "Doomsday", three months before "Smith and Jones", probably made that status even clearer.
"Smith and Jones" introduces Martha Jones (Freema Agyeman), the Doctor's newest Companion. Aside from the obvious fact that she's the first Companion of color, several important differences are established between her and Rose, differences which highlight Martha's uniqueness while also recalling Rose. Like "Rose", "Smith and Jones" is designed to introduce the new Companion and set up her relationship with the Doctor. It does that well enough, but like many of the best Who episodes, the A-story is functional while the cool stuff weaves around and through it. Take the Judoon, an alien race that doesn't want to take over the world. They're cops, there to do a job. It's a nice twist. Notice how the phrase "reverse it" occurs just as it did in "The Runaway Bride." Chuckle as the hospital administrator, one Mr. Stoker, is killed by the draining of his blood. See the Doctor plant a kiss on Martha (pretty hot, that)!
The real trick of "Smith and Jones" is how it outlines Martha Jones. Where Rose Tyler was a shop girl in a dead-end life, Martha is a medical student. Rose was bored with her life and family; Martha is just tired of the fighting and idiocy of her clan. Rose went with the Doctor to escape the numbing drudgery of her life. Martha, on the other hand, seems more drawn to the idea of knowledge, of discovery. She's almost mastered the human body; how cool would it be to know what else is out there? The show also confidently uses it's own mythology. Martha is very aware of the Christmas invasion and the Racnoss web-ship. She isn't staggered to discover how weird the world is. She knows it's weird; what's exciting about the Doctor is that he promises to show her the how and the why of that weirdness.
So he's back, he's really back. Good show.
Sunday, July 8, 2007
A Visceral Reaction
I've been watching Ice Road Truckers on the History Channel and all I have to say is--
sheeeeeeeeeeeeeiiiiiiiiiiitttttttttttttt!!!
sheeeeeeeeeeeeeiiiiiiiiiiitttttttttttttt!!!
Whiplash Cinema 3
Forgive my absence, but I've been literally out of the country for three weeks. I have returned just in time for another edition of Whiplash Cinema. This week's offerings are The Valet, a French comedy, and Ratatouille, a Pixar animated feature set in France.
The Valet (La Doublure), is a competent, pleasant farce about Francois Pignon(Gad Elmaleh), a valet who wants to marry Emilie (Virginie Ledoyen), the girl he has known forever. Meanwhile, Pierre Levasseur (Daniel Auteuil), big-shot CEO and husband of Christine (Kristin Scott Thomas) is having an affair with Elena (the radiant Alice Taglioni), a supermodel who believes the cad Pierre will leave Christine, who is the majority shareholder in the company he runs (ain't it always the way?), and marry his mistress. Yeah, right. Pierre convinces Francois and Elena to pose as a couple. This will prevent his wife from leaving him and taking all that tasty, tasty money with her. Hijinks ensue.
The Valet is a movie that could be transported straight to Hollywood. You could plug in John Krasinki as Francois and cast Rob Schneider as his pal Richard and you wouldn't miss a beat. The only actor without a Hollywood analogue (that I can see) is Taglioni, who is beautiful and sweet and makes Elena the most sympathetic and empathetic character in the film. It has some amusing sequences and a few chuckles, but it's nothing special. It's the sort of movie that someone who "doesn't like foreign films" can view and enjoy.
Ratatouille is the third film by Brad Bird. His first was The Iron Giant, a criminally underviewed masterwork of 2D animation. His second film did better. You may have heard of it. It was called The Incredibles.
Ratatouille is the story of Remy, a rat voiced by Paton Oswalt, who wants to be a chef. When his rat clan is evicted from their home, he makes his way to Paris and the famous Gusteau's restaurant, buuuuuuttttt he's a rat, remember?
I won't go into any plot specifics of the movie. The story is fine, but you can see the beats coming miles away. What elevates Ratatouille is the animation, the voice casting, and Bird's huge, expansive heart. This movie looks incredible; sometimes it contains more than the eye can behold. The cast does yeoman work. Oswalt, a gifted stand-up comedian and in-demand writer, is perfect as Remy, Brad Garrett and Janeane Garofalo are almost unrecognizable (and I mean that in the good way) as the ghost of Gusteau and Colette, and Brian Dennehy is spot-on as Remy's dad, but the crown must be reserved for Peter O'Toole as Anton Ego. O'Toole gives a breathtaking performance using only his resonant, perfectly pitched and intonated phrasing. It's a tour-de-force from an actor whose physical beauty has always been one of his most bracing characteristics.
Bird seems to have found his perfect working environment at Pixar. Ratatouille isn't as all-around great as The Incredibles, but that seems like nit-picking. It's very, very good, and isn't that a nice criticism to level in this day of rampant mediocrity?
The Valet (La Doublure), is a competent, pleasant farce about Francois Pignon(Gad Elmaleh), a valet who wants to marry Emilie (Virginie Ledoyen), the girl he has known forever. Meanwhile, Pierre Levasseur (Daniel Auteuil), big-shot CEO and husband of Christine (Kristin Scott Thomas) is having an affair with Elena (the radiant Alice Taglioni), a supermodel who believes the cad Pierre will leave Christine, who is the majority shareholder in the company he runs (ain't it always the way?), and marry his mistress. Yeah, right. Pierre convinces Francois and Elena to pose as a couple. This will prevent his wife from leaving him and taking all that tasty, tasty money with her. Hijinks ensue.
The Valet is a movie that could be transported straight to Hollywood. You could plug in John Krasinki as Francois and cast Rob Schneider as his pal Richard and you wouldn't miss a beat. The only actor without a Hollywood analogue (that I can see) is Taglioni, who is beautiful and sweet and makes Elena the most sympathetic and empathetic character in the film. It has some amusing sequences and a few chuckles, but it's nothing special. It's the sort of movie that someone who "doesn't like foreign films" can view and enjoy.
Ratatouille is the third film by Brad Bird. His first was The Iron Giant, a criminally underviewed masterwork of 2D animation. His second film did better. You may have heard of it. It was called The Incredibles.
Ratatouille is the story of Remy, a rat voiced by Paton Oswalt, who wants to be a chef. When his rat clan is evicted from their home, he makes his way to Paris and the famous Gusteau's restaurant, buuuuuuttttt he's a rat, remember?
I won't go into any plot specifics of the movie. The story is fine, but you can see the beats coming miles away. What elevates Ratatouille is the animation, the voice casting, and Bird's huge, expansive heart. This movie looks incredible; sometimes it contains more than the eye can behold. The cast does yeoman work. Oswalt, a gifted stand-up comedian and in-demand writer, is perfect as Remy, Brad Garrett and Janeane Garofalo are almost unrecognizable (and I mean that in the good way) as the ghost of Gusteau and Colette, and Brian Dennehy is spot-on as Remy's dad, but the crown must be reserved for Peter O'Toole as Anton Ego. O'Toole gives a breathtaking performance using only his resonant, perfectly pitched and intonated phrasing. It's a tour-de-force from an actor whose physical beauty has always been one of his most bracing characteristics.
Bird seems to have found his perfect working environment at Pixar. Ratatouille isn't as all-around great as The Incredibles, but that seems like nit-picking. It's very, very good, and isn't that a nice criticism to level in this day of rampant mediocrity?
Tuesday, June 5, 2007
Whiplash Cinema 2
This week's mismatched movies were Zwartboek (Black Book) (I use the Dutch title to increase my pretension quotient) and Knocked Up. Not too many similarities between those titles.
Black Book is directed by Paul Verhoeven. It has been hailed as a return to his early form, when movies such as The 4th Man and Soldier of Orange made him seem like a promising auteur. Well, it didn't really pan out. He started with Robocop, a fine film, but he was soon directing Total Recall, Showgirls, and Starship Troopers. I think the last one may have been his Hollywood high mark; many have derided the movie, but I think that Verhoeven got at the heart of Robert A. Heinlein's novel in a way few could. The movie is a $100 million joke--it's Verhoeven saying "I can make you cheer for the Nazis."
Black Book has been cheered as a return to form, but it's not. It's Showgirls with swastikas or, as a friend of mine said, "WW2 mit boobies!" It's a preposterous mess, but it is entertaining. It's a movie ripe for MST3King. If that's your thing, Black Book is worth a look.
I loved Freaks & Geeks, Judd Apatow and Paul Feig's brilliant, short-lived TV series. Apatow gave TV another shot with Undeclared, which was basically the sequel to F & G. It went down in flames. So now Apatow's workin' in the movies and he's already had success as a producer (Anchorman, Talladega Nights) and as a writer/director (The 40-Year-Old Virgin). He's gathered something of a repertory company around himself and many of those players are on display in Knocked Up.
KU passes the first rule of comedy; it's really, really funny. Katherine Heigl plays Alison Scott, who works at E! and celebrates her promotion to on-air status by clubbing with her sister Debbie. Alison gets drunk, meets unemployed slacker Ben Stone (Seth Rogen) and, after a sloshed one-night stand, winds up pregnant. She decides to keep the baby and contacts Ben. That's as far as I'll go in plot summary. Like all the best comedies Knocked Up does not derive its humor from twists and story machinations, but from character. Rogen and the actors who play his stoner friends (Jason Segel, Jay Baruchel, Jonah Hill, and Martin Starr) are Apatow alumni and much of their banter feels as though Apatow just tossed out an idea and turned on the camera. I've never much cared for Katherine Heigl, but her Alison is both beautiful and believable.
Two topics arise when discussing this movie. The first is the, shall we say, pulchritude gap between the leads. The second is Alison's choice to keep the baby and then contact Ben.
As to the first, I'm usually not much for "chemistry" between actors. If you're a professional, you should be able to manufacture it for the camera. That said, Heigl and Rogen project such an easy rapport with each other that it was easy for me to accept them as a burgeoning couple. Also, the idea that Rogen is a gargoyle and Heigl a goddess just ain't so. Heigl's a good-looking woman, but not unattainably pretty. Rogen is not ugly so much as badly-dressed (even then, he's Hollywood's idea of "badly dressed"; he wears a collection of vintage T's that would cost you $80 bucks a throw). If you still can't get over the gap, Google or IMDB Leslie Mann. Now do the same for Judd Apatow. Leslie Mann is Mrs. Judd Apatow. I think it's possible that Judd's writing what he knows.
The second point is thornier. I agree that most young women in Alison's position would end the pregnancy. That's just the way it is. For the movie to work, though, I only have to be convinced that this young woman would make this particular decision within the context of the film. It's true that the movie doesn't spend much time on Alison's decision, but at 129 minutes it's pretty long for a comedy already. Maybe Apatow didn't believe that he could write convincingly about such a decision.
This is a creative work, not a sociological text. The writer, director, and actors all have to make choices. That's one of the things that makes the movies way different than real life. In real life we can dither about decisions for days/weeks. That's a luxury a storyteller can't afford. I think that in the context of the film, Alison's decision works and doesn't seem forced.
But go back a couple of paragraphs. This is a comedy and I want to emphasize this-- it's funny. Most purported comedies today are tired, sagging retreads of TV shows, other movies, or high-concept, one-joke, no-character trials. I say, whatever it's shortcomings, we need more movies like Knocked Up.
Black Book is directed by Paul Verhoeven. It has been hailed as a return to his early form, when movies such as The 4th Man and Soldier of Orange made him seem like a promising auteur. Well, it didn't really pan out. He started with Robocop, a fine film, but he was soon directing Total Recall, Showgirls, and Starship Troopers. I think the last one may have been his Hollywood high mark; many have derided the movie, but I think that Verhoeven got at the heart of Robert A. Heinlein's novel in a way few could. The movie is a $100 million joke--it's Verhoeven saying "I can make you cheer for the Nazis."
Black Book has been cheered as a return to form, but it's not. It's Showgirls with swastikas or, as a friend of mine said, "WW2 mit boobies!" It's a preposterous mess, but it is entertaining. It's a movie ripe for MST3King. If that's your thing, Black Book is worth a look.
I loved Freaks & Geeks, Judd Apatow and Paul Feig's brilliant, short-lived TV series. Apatow gave TV another shot with Undeclared, which was basically the sequel to F & G. It went down in flames. So now Apatow's workin' in the movies and he's already had success as a producer (Anchorman, Talladega Nights) and as a writer/director (The 40-Year-Old Virgin). He's gathered something of a repertory company around himself and many of those players are on display in Knocked Up.
KU passes the first rule of comedy; it's really, really funny. Katherine Heigl plays Alison Scott, who works at E! and celebrates her promotion to on-air status by clubbing with her sister Debbie. Alison gets drunk, meets unemployed slacker Ben Stone (Seth Rogen) and, after a sloshed one-night stand, winds up pregnant. She decides to keep the baby and contacts Ben. That's as far as I'll go in plot summary. Like all the best comedies Knocked Up does not derive its humor from twists and story machinations, but from character. Rogen and the actors who play his stoner friends (Jason Segel, Jay Baruchel, Jonah Hill, and Martin Starr) are Apatow alumni and much of their banter feels as though Apatow just tossed out an idea and turned on the camera. I've never much cared for Katherine Heigl, but her Alison is both beautiful and believable.
Two topics arise when discussing this movie. The first is the, shall we say, pulchritude gap between the leads. The second is Alison's choice to keep the baby and then contact Ben.
As to the first, I'm usually not much for "chemistry" between actors. If you're a professional, you should be able to manufacture it for the camera. That said, Heigl and Rogen project such an easy rapport with each other that it was easy for me to accept them as a burgeoning couple. Also, the idea that Rogen is a gargoyle and Heigl a goddess just ain't so. Heigl's a good-looking woman, but not unattainably pretty. Rogen is not ugly so much as badly-dressed (even then, he's Hollywood's idea of "badly dressed"; he wears a collection of vintage T's that would cost you $80 bucks a throw). If you still can't get over the gap, Google or IMDB Leslie Mann. Now do the same for Judd Apatow. Leslie Mann is Mrs. Judd Apatow. I think it's possible that Judd's writing what he knows.
The second point is thornier. I agree that most young women in Alison's position would end the pregnancy. That's just the way it is. For the movie to work, though, I only have to be convinced that this young woman would make this particular decision within the context of the film. It's true that the movie doesn't spend much time on Alison's decision, but at 129 minutes it's pretty long for a comedy already. Maybe Apatow didn't believe that he could write convincingly about such a decision.
This is a creative work, not a sociological text. The writer, director, and actors all have to make choices. That's one of the things that makes the movies way different than real life. In real life we can dither about decisions for days/weeks. That's a luxury a storyteller can't afford. I think that in the context of the film, Alison's decision works and doesn't seem forced.
But go back a couple of paragraphs. This is a comedy and I want to emphasize this-- it's funny. Most purported comedies today are tired, sagging retreads of TV shows, other movies, or high-concept, one-joke, no-character trials. I say, whatever it's shortcomings, we need more movies like Knocked Up.
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
"That is textbook enigmatic!"
SciFi ran a Dr. Who marathon today. The episodes were from the "second" series, the David Tennant episodes.
I go back a long way with Dr. Who. I went to college in Oklahoma in the late '70s. I came from a small town in Missouri. I had very, very little money, so most Saturday nights found me either studying, taking advantage of the school's free film series (I learned a lot about movies that way), or watching TV. Oklahoma Public Television (OPTV) had picked up a bunch of British TV shows on the cheap, so the typical Saturday night lineup was Monty Python's Flying Circus, Fawlty Towers, and Dr. Who.
I'd never seen anything like it; the PBS station in my neck of the woods had only been on for two years and its signal barely reached my town. The schedule was heavy on educational and high-art programming. OPTV was low-brow by comparison. They were trying to put on a cheap, entertaining lineup. Instead of Love Boat and Fantasy Island, I got turned on to Dr. Who. That was the Tom Baker era. He knocked me out. So did Basil Fawlty, but that's another story.
Like all male Who fans of a certain age, I was madly in love with Sarah Jane Smith. The cheap, cheesy effects were a revelation; the emphasis on story and character instead of surface was a wake-up call to parts of my brain previously untroubled. It was delirious fun.
When Russell T. Davies resurrected DW, I was leery. Thirty years on, how could you do it? Sure, Battlestar Galactica had updated a '70s TV show to great effect, but could it happen again?
The new Doctor was brilliant from the first episode. Fans of a certain age (including myself) are now in love with Rose Tyler (Billie Piper). Christopher Eccleston was fantastic as the doctor. Even as CGI made better effects possible, the show nodded toward its cheesy, low-budget past (the "living plastic" arm in "Rose"). The first season was a joy and a pleasure.
Eccleston left after 13 episodes. He was replaced by David Tennant (Viva Blackpool). I had grown enamored of Eccleston's Doctor and even though Tennant was a capable actor, I wondered if he could do a good job as the Doctor.
Was I stupid. Davies upped the ante in the second season, exploring what it would mean to be an ageless wanderer. As the Doctor said to Rose, "You can live your entire life with me, but I can't live my whole life with you." The melancholy and pain at the heart of the Doctor's existence were probed and exposed, and Tennant handled every revelation with deft prowess. Take the return of Elisabeth Sladen as Sarah Jane Smith in the poignant "School Reunion." Sarah Jane has aged while the Doctor has not. She confronts him about leaving her; her heartbreaking question is "What do I do with the rest of my life now that I've seen the stars?" I defy anyone with a heart to remain unmoved when she demands that the Doctor say goodbye properly. Tennant, his eyes shining and his heart bursting, says, "Good-bye" then blurts out "My Sarah Jane!" I simply cannot imagine Eccleston delivering that line with anything near the power summoned by Tennant. It's a dart to the heart, but its also one small piece of a very deft puzzle that Davies constructs throughout the season. Piper's decision to leave the series resulted in a heartbreaking farewell to Rose, but even that moment of high emotion served to illuminate the tragic nature of the Doctor's dilemma--he's a man who will always need a companion, but none of them will ever stay. His line in the fourth act of "The Girl In The Fireplace" is spot-on: "I'm all right." That's his blessing and his curse. Those he loves will age and die and leave, but the Doctor will always be "all right."
I go back a long way with Dr. Who. I went to college in Oklahoma in the late '70s. I came from a small town in Missouri. I had very, very little money, so most Saturday nights found me either studying, taking advantage of the school's free film series (I learned a lot about movies that way), or watching TV. Oklahoma Public Television (OPTV) had picked up a bunch of British TV shows on the cheap, so the typical Saturday night lineup was Monty Python's Flying Circus, Fawlty Towers, and Dr. Who.
I'd never seen anything like it; the PBS station in my neck of the woods had only been on for two years and its signal barely reached my town. The schedule was heavy on educational and high-art programming. OPTV was low-brow by comparison. They were trying to put on a cheap, entertaining lineup. Instead of Love Boat and Fantasy Island, I got turned on to Dr. Who. That was the Tom Baker era. He knocked me out. So did Basil Fawlty, but that's another story.
Like all male Who fans of a certain age, I was madly in love with Sarah Jane Smith. The cheap, cheesy effects were a revelation; the emphasis on story and character instead of surface was a wake-up call to parts of my brain previously untroubled. It was delirious fun.
When Russell T. Davies resurrected DW, I was leery. Thirty years on, how could you do it? Sure, Battlestar Galactica had updated a '70s TV show to great effect, but could it happen again?
The new Doctor was brilliant from the first episode. Fans of a certain age (including myself) are now in love with Rose Tyler (Billie Piper). Christopher Eccleston was fantastic as the doctor. Even as CGI made better effects possible, the show nodded toward its cheesy, low-budget past (the "living plastic" arm in "Rose"). The first season was a joy and a pleasure.
Eccleston left after 13 episodes. He was replaced by David Tennant (Viva Blackpool). I had grown enamored of Eccleston's Doctor and even though Tennant was a capable actor, I wondered if he could do a good job as the Doctor.
Was I stupid. Davies upped the ante in the second season, exploring what it would mean to be an ageless wanderer. As the Doctor said to Rose, "You can live your entire life with me, but I can't live my whole life with you." The melancholy and pain at the heart of the Doctor's existence were probed and exposed, and Tennant handled every revelation with deft prowess. Take the return of Elisabeth Sladen as Sarah Jane Smith in the poignant "School Reunion." Sarah Jane has aged while the Doctor has not. She confronts him about leaving her; her heartbreaking question is "What do I do with the rest of my life now that I've seen the stars?" I defy anyone with a heart to remain unmoved when she demands that the Doctor say goodbye properly. Tennant, his eyes shining and his heart bursting, says, "Good-bye" then blurts out "My Sarah Jane!" I simply cannot imagine Eccleston delivering that line with anything near the power summoned by Tennant. It's a dart to the heart, but its also one small piece of a very deft puzzle that Davies constructs throughout the season. Piper's decision to leave the series resulted in a heartbreaking farewell to Rose, but even that moment of high emotion served to illuminate the tragic nature of the Doctor's dilemma--he's a man who will always need a companion, but none of them will ever stay. His line in the fourth act of "The Girl In The Fireplace" is spot-on: "I'm all right." That's his blessing and his curse. Those he loves will age and die and leave, but the Doctor will always be "all right."
Monday, May 28, 2007
Whiplash Cinema 1: When Irish Eyes Are Smilin'
I suffered from severe whiplash last week. I wasn't involved in a car accident or anything. No, I went to the movies. Twice. To see Shrek the Third and then The Wind That Shakes The Barley. Perhaps you now see why I'm dizzy and disoriented.
The original Shrek was a decent adaptation of a children's book by William Steig. Sure, the movie cleaned up Steigs's truly ugly ogre until he was just movie ugly, which is actually kinda cute. (It's the same standard that television uses when the terminally adorable Alyson Hannigan is given a bad haircut and we're supposed to believe that she's ugly, or that Sarah Michelle Gellar is an unattractive outcast ((sue me, I've been watching Buffy on DVD with my daughter))). The movie was a funny and mildly subversive take on fairy tales, almost like a family film for parents who loved The Princess Bride when they were dating or without child.
Shrek did very well at the box office, so it was written in the stars that Shrek II would come to be. Surprisingly, it did not come out as a crass grab for cash. It was a breezy, zippy trip that was elevated by the decision to treat the land of Far Far Away as an ur-Beverly Hills/Vegas. Antonio Banderas came aboard as Puss-n-Boots, a welcome counterweight to Eddie Murphy's braying ass... I mean, Donkey. The genuinely witty jokes blended rather well with the fart jokes and the whole enterprise was so well-cast and done with so much obvious affection that it was one of the better sequels in memory. It made piles of gelt. Would there be a third installment? Need you ask?
Shrek the Third does feel like a cash grab. It's not horrible. It doesn't blatantly insult the audience. It does lay there like a day-old fish, something once sleek and shiny, now cloudy and dull and starting to smell just a bit. The sense of enjoyable daftness that propelled the second movie is utterly absent. This is big-budget, lowest-common-denominator Hollywood blockbuster filmmaking at its most depressing--talented people doing a workmanlike job with zero inspiration or joy. C'mon, your movie involves a quest for the young King Arthur and you can't even making a frikkin' sword in the stone joke? The Third is a Shrek too far.
The Wind That Shakes the Barley on the other hand, is a movie that could never be a commercial hit. There are reasons for this. The theater where I saw it has an intermission in the middle of every film (it's a small indie theater and the owner has to change the reels by hand.). This is actually a nice chance to visit the snack bar and the bathroom and chat with other audience members. One fellow kept complaining that the film needed subtitles. He couldn't understand the Irish accents. So, the vast majority of the Deal or No Deal masses probably couldn't understand the actors. The film is also set in 1918 in Ireland. It doesn't explain what's going on; it assumes that you, by virture of your presence, either know something about "The Troubles" or that you'll be able to catch on. It's also unrelentingly intense and packed with passionate people taking opposing sides of a complex issue. Cillian Murphy, an actor both pretty and simian, and Padraic Delaney play the O'Donovan brothers and both actors are fantastic as they portray two characters who start out in very different places and travel the same path to arrive at two (tragically) altogether different endings.
The movie is directed by Ken Loach and written by Paul Laverty. It is gorgeous; the beauty of the Irish countryside makes the violence and bitter anger that occurs even more heartbreaking. At the end of the day, The Wind That Shakes the Barley couldn't be a box-office smash because it has no hero and no real villain. It only has people; flawed, miserable, lovely people who want something noble and who do things both great and awful to achieve it.
The original Shrek was a decent adaptation of a children's book by William Steig. Sure, the movie cleaned up Steigs's truly ugly ogre until he was just movie ugly, which is actually kinda cute. (It's the same standard that television uses when the terminally adorable Alyson Hannigan is given a bad haircut and we're supposed to believe that she's ugly, or that Sarah Michelle Gellar is an unattractive outcast ((sue me, I've been watching Buffy on DVD with my daughter))). The movie was a funny and mildly subversive take on fairy tales, almost like a family film for parents who loved The Princess Bride when they were dating or without child.
Shrek did very well at the box office, so it was written in the stars that Shrek II would come to be. Surprisingly, it did not come out as a crass grab for cash. It was a breezy, zippy trip that was elevated by the decision to treat the land of Far Far Away as an ur-Beverly Hills/Vegas. Antonio Banderas came aboard as Puss-n-Boots, a welcome counterweight to Eddie Murphy's braying ass... I mean, Donkey. The genuinely witty jokes blended rather well with the fart jokes and the whole enterprise was so well-cast and done with so much obvious affection that it was one of the better sequels in memory. It made piles of gelt. Would there be a third installment? Need you ask?
Shrek the Third does feel like a cash grab. It's not horrible. It doesn't blatantly insult the audience. It does lay there like a day-old fish, something once sleek and shiny, now cloudy and dull and starting to smell just a bit. The sense of enjoyable daftness that propelled the second movie is utterly absent. This is big-budget, lowest-common-denominator Hollywood blockbuster filmmaking at its most depressing--talented people doing a workmanlike job with zero inspiration or joy. C'mon, your movie involves a quest for the young King Arthur and you can't even making a frikkin' sword in the stone joke? The Third is a Shrek too far.
The Wind That Shakes the Barley on the other hand, is a movie that could never be a commercial hit. There are reasons for this. The theater where I saw it has an intermission in the middle of every film (it's a small indie theater and the owner has to change the reels by hand.). This is actually a nice chance to visit the snack bar and the bathroom and chat with other audience members. One fellow kept complaining that the film needed subtitles. He couldn't understand the Irish accents. So, the vast majority of the Deal or No Deal masses probably couldn't understand the actors. The film is also set in 1918 in Ireland. It doesn't explain what's going on; it assumes that you, by virture of your presence, either know something about "The Troubles" or that you'll be able to catch on. It's also unrelentingly intense and packed with passionate people taking opposing sides of a complex issue. Cillian Murphy, an actor both pretty and simian, and Padraic Delaney play the O'Donovan brothers and both actors are fantastic as they portray two characters who start out in very different places and travel the same path to arrive at two (tragically) altogether different endings.
The movie is directed by Ken Loach and written by Paul Laverty. It is gorgeous; the beauty of the Irish countryside makes the violence and bitter anger that occurs even more heartbreaking. At the end of the day, The Wind That Shakes the Barley couldn't be a box-office smash because it has no hero and no real villain. It only has people; flawed, miserable, lovely people who want something noble and who do things both great and awful to achieve it.
Saturday, May 26, 2007
Checker Fred is dead.
Carl Wright died at the age of 75. His first movie role was in Soul Food (1997). He was Checker Fred in Barber Shop. I'm not African-American. I grew up a town that was lily-white. By rights, I should be one of those people who, in the infinite wisdom of movie executives, doesn't "get" Barbershop. But I have an uncle who was a barber, and some things are universal. I knew Checker Fred, and I loved Barbershop. Farewell, Fred. Hope you got kinged.
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
"You Look Badass!"
That's the line. That's the one that put the Heroes season finale over the top. It wasn't a perfect finale, and sometimes it seemed like it wasn't even a very good one, but when Ando (James Kyson Lee) said those words to Hiro (Masi Oka), I laughed out loud. It was a good laugh, a laugh of appreciation and identification and it kind of summed up the appeal of Heroes.
The show was a hit from the first episode and it deserved it. From the introduction of Hiro, a Japanese cubicle slave who is convinced that he can control time and space, Heroes introduced a set of well-delineated characters and put them in a well-paced story that papered over weak moments with momentum and showcased a handful of very effective stand-alone episodes that introduced and illuminated a burgeoning mythology.
Special effects played a part in this. Heroes is a beneficiary of the improvement in CGI. Earlier attempts to translate comics to the television screen (think The Incredible Hulk and Spider-Man) suffered due to their inability to convincingly protray certain powers. Heroes had very little of those problems. Even the Niki/Jessica character split was the beneficiary of improvements in split-screen technology. A superhero show needs to be as seamless as possible; Heroes is fortunate enough to be in the right place at the right time.
That's not enough to make a show a hit, though. Heroes introduced us to some compelling characters. Hiro was a breath of fresh air in the way he not only believed he had powers, but embraced them when his belief was confirmed. He was no dark, brooding protagonist. I think Oka's portrayal of Hiro's joy in his specialness was a big part of the show's early appeal. He was a meta-comment on the show's geek-love. Claire Bennet (Hayden Panettiere), Niki Sanders (Ali Larter), and Nathan Petrelli (Adrian Pasdar) were all strong characters, capable of carrying an entire episode. And the character who kicked the plot up to another level, HRG (Jack Coleman), Heroes Cigarette-Smoking Man and Special Agent Skinner rolled into one. Zachary Quinto did really good work as Sylar, the season arc's major villain. Hey, the show's guest stars were better than most casts. Clea Duvall as an FBI agent, Christopher Eccleston and Eric Roberts as figures from HRG's past, George Takei as Hiro's father... hey, the show even got Malcom McDowell to drop by as Linderman. One thing I really like about the season was that the writers seemed to enjoy writing for the actual heroes. Too many writers get attached to charismatic villains. I understand why. It's actually easier to write a vivid bad guy; you can write him as conflicted, turned evil by a bad past, or just make him the funniest, wittiest bastard in the room. Writing for good is harder, and Heroes was able to do it.
The show also knew that for us to believe that characters are in jeopardy, you have to kill one every now and then. At least six characters who were in multiple episodes bit the dust during the season. Every time one of them died, the stakes were raised for the others. There's no such thing as a compelling drama where everyone is safe.
The show wasn't perfect. One of the main characters, Peter Petrelli, was played by Milo Ventimiglia, an actor who makes my skin crawl every time I see him. The subplot about Matt Parkman (the awesome Greg Grunberg) and his wife was cliched and went nowhere. At least it tailed off fast. Mohinder (Sendhil Ramamurthy) wasn't much more than multi-cultural eye candy. The finale was poorly paced and the resolution of Peter's storyline was unsatisfying to say the least.
But I watched and I enjoyed, and my daughter watched it with me and we shared the experience. Heroes wasn't perfect, but it was a whole lot of fun, and I'll be watching next fall.
The show was a hit from the first episode and it deserved it. From the introduction of Hiro, a Japanese cubicle slave who is convinced that he can control time and space, Heroes introduced a set of well-delineated characters and put them in a well-paced story that papered over weak moments with momentum and showcased a handful of very effective stand-alone episodes that introduced and illuminated a burgeoning mythology.
Special effects played a part in this. Heroes is a beneficiary of the improvement in CGI. Earlier attempts to translate comics to the television screen (think The Incredible Hulk and Spider-Man) suffered due to their inability to convincingly protray certain powers. Heroes had very little of those problems. Even the Niki/Jessica character split was the beneficiary of improvements in split-screen technology. A superhero show needs to be as seamless as possible; Heroes is fortunate enough to be in the right place at the right time.
That's not enough to make a show a hit, though. Heroes introduced us to some compelling characters. Hiro was a breath of fresh air in the way he not only believed he had powers, but embraced them when his belief was confirmed. He was no dark, brooding protagonist. I think Oka's portrayal of Hiro's joy in his specialness was a big part of the show's early appeal. He was a meta-comment on the show's geek-love. Claire Bennet (Hayden Panettiere), Niki Sanders (Ali Larter), and Nathan Petrelli (Adrian Pasdar) were all strong characters, capable of carrying an entire episode. And the character who kicked the plot up to another level, HRG (Jack Coleman), Heroes Cigarette-Smoking Man and Special Agent Skinner rolled into one. Zachary Quinto did really good work as Sylar, the season arc's major villain. Hey, the show's guest stars were better than most casts. Clea Duvall as an FBI agent, Christopher Eccleston and Eric Roberts as figures from HRG's past, George Takei as Hiro's father... hey, the show even got Malcom McDowell to drop by as Linderman. One thing I really like about the season was that the writers seemed to enjoy writing for the actual heroes. Too many writers get attached to charismatic villains. I understand why. It's actually easier to write a vivid bad guy; you can write him as conflicted, turned evil by a bad past, or just make him the funniest, wittiest bastard in the room. Writing for good is harder, and Heroes was able to do it.
The show also knew that for us to believe that characters are in jeopardy, you have to kill one every now and then. At least six characters who were in multiple episodes bit the dust during the season. Every time one of them died, the stakes were raised for the others. There's no such thing as a compelling drama where everyone is safe.
The show wasn't perfect. One of the main characters, Peter Petrelli, was played by Milo Ventimiglia, an actor who makes my skin crawl every time I see him. The subplot about Matt Parkman (the awesome Greg Grunberg) and his wife was cliched and went nowhere. At least it tailed off fast. Mohinder (Sendhil Ramamurthy) wasn't much more than multi-cultural eye candy. The finale was poorly paced and the resolution of Peter's storyline was unsatisfying to say the least.
But I watched and I enjoyed, and my daughter watched it with me and we shared the experience. Heroes wasn't perfect, but it was a whole lot of fun, and I'll be watching next fall.
Saturday, May 19, 2007
TV Roundup: Jericho
Jericho didn't make the CBS fall upfronts. It debuted to good ratings, went on winter hiatus, and never recovered. The show's saga (pompous term for 22 episodes, I know) is interesting because of what occurred in the show dramatically and what its fate says about the changing world of television.
First, the show itself. Jake Green (Skeet Ulrich, not looking at all like Johnny Depp anymore) returns home to Jericho, Kansas, after a long, mysterious absence. He runs into old flame Emily Sullivan (Ashley Scott and her ample bosom of hope) and his friend Stanley (Brad Beyer) whose farm is being audited by the IRS in the person of Mimi (Alicia Coppola). Just as the hometown reunion is reaching maximum awkwardness, nuclear explosions rock the world.
That's the setup, and the pilot was just about as bad and stiff as that paragraph sounds. Characters ranged from stock to cardboard. Only the actors redeemed the cliches. Gerald McRaney and Pamela Reed were (as usual) excellent as Johnston and Gail Green, Skeet/Jake's parents, and when Lennie Harris appeared on the screen, I became happy, even if he was playing a character best summarized as "The Mysterious Negro of Omniscience." Characters behaved stupidly and the writers didn't seem to have any idea what might be the after-effects of nuclear detonations, either scientific or societal. The first couple of episodes were borderline awful. Mediocrity was to be cherished.
Then a funny thing happened. The showrunners were smart enough to realize what was working and what wasn't. Nothing ever goes as planned on a television or movie set. The key is to maximize what's right and minimize what's wrong. Jericho began to do that. Skeet Ulrich looks like thirty miles of bad road and leaves you wondering just what the hell he's done to himself since Miracles got canceled? Ashley Scott inspires thoughts of wood, only it's the maple and oak variety rather than the Cialis sort? Minimize the Jake/Emily love story. Gerald McRaney and Lennie Harris dominate every scene they're in? Suddenly Johnston Green and Rob Hawkins are getting a lot more story. No real good explanation for the big "who dropped the nuke" storyline? Focus on how a community might cope with any disaster that ruptured the fabric of society. Does the Eric/April/Mary triangle suck all the air out of the room? Hey, if April dies of pregnancy-related complications after Eric leaves her, we've got years of survivor's guilt to serve as motivation.
Maybe it was planned. Maybe they had it in mind all along, but it didn't feel that way to me. It felt to me like the producers were tinkering on the fly, trying to see what worked and discarding what didn't. I'd bet money that many of the elements of Hawkins' story were made up fast, even if the big arc was predetermined.
BTW, the saga of the family Hawkins provided one of my favorite TV moments of the year. In a mini-arc that coincided with the show's improvement, Sarah Mason (Siena Goines) shows up in Jericho. She's Hawkins ex-partner in whatever nefarious doings he was part of. We learn that she's not to be trusted and the whole affair culminates with her holding a gun on Hawkins in his living room. Shots ring out. Is Hawkins dead? Naw. His daughter Allison (Jazz Raycole, and isn't that the coolest name?) has picked up his gun and plugged Sarah. Hawkins and his wife, Darcy (April Parker) run to her to console her after this terrible event.
Allison's reaction? "I'm okay. Really." I almost fell off the couch laughing. "Hey, dad, I'm a stone killer. Must be your genes." Yeah, post-nuke life be different.
Jericho was righting itself, growing from embarrassing pilot to interesting with potential. I believe its cancellation was indicative of just how TV is changing and how networks are still oblivious.
First, the winter hiatus killed the show. Even Heroes, 2007-08's freshman hit, suffered a ratings drop after taking time off. Broadcast networks are going to have to learn a hard lesson: repeats don't work and hiatus kills. One reason networks still do this is the asinine "order 13 and if we like it we'll go to 22" model. Look at what cable nets do. USA has something on the order of 8 episodes of Monk in January, then it's off until 8 more in July. SciFi will run the second season of Eureka this summer. They'll run it straight through and then it's off. CBS, listen to me: If you like a show like Jericho, order 13 episodes. Shoot 'em and air 'em. Ratings good? Don't try to short-order nine more eps for the same season. Order another 13-22 for next fall. Make the runs shorter and run them straight through.
Second, a show's return must be an event. Jericho aired its last fall episode, "Vox Populi", on 29 November 2006. The next new ep, "Black Jack", aired on 28 February 2007. That's three full months. What about dead-of-winter February makes it a good time to run more episodes? Introduce a limited-run series, maybe, but bring back a show that people haven't seen since Thanksgiving? A show that was just starting to find its own artistic voice? On top of that, CBS did exactly bupkus to promote the return. The networks apparently assume "Hey, they'll be home with their asses on the couch. They'll find it. What else they gonna do?" The answer? They'll do a lot. Networks still don't seem to realize that they are one of several options and the public is no longer beholden to them for content.
Third, the 22-episode season must go. I know someone will cry "Gunsmoke used to do forty (or however many) episodes a year!" No, they didn't. Gunsmoke (and Bonanza, et al.) did four episodes ten times with different actors. Seriously, you ever watch one of those old shows on TV Land? They had three plots and six story elements for variety. They would mix and match by, apparently, posting these on a wall and throwing darts. Seriously, TV is so much better now, but better also means competitive. There's also more of it and, honestly, a finite number of people who can do a good job creating the stuff. Borrow from the British model. Shorter seasons done at higher quality, perhaps set an episode limit during development. If your story can be told fully in 50 episodes, why try and flog the show for six seasons? Why drain a good show of all life and creativity by insisting that it go on well beyond its natural life (this is the X-Files rule)?
So that's Jericho, a modest little show that might have been pretty good, but because of a slow start and network idiocy, never got off the ground. I'll miss it, but not a lot.
First, the show itself. Jake Green (Skeet Ulrich, not looking at all like Johnny Depp anymore) returns home to Jericho, Kansas, after a long, mysterious absence. He runs into old flame Emily Sullivan (Ashley Scott and her ample bosom of hope) and his friend Stanley (Brad Beyer) whose farm is being audited by the IRS in the person of Mimi (Alicia Coppola). Just as the hometown reunion is reaching maximum awkwardness, nuclear explosions rock the world.
That's the setup, and the pilot was just about as bad and stiff as that paragraph sounds. Characters ranged from stock to cardboard. Only the actors redeemed the cliches. Gerald McRaney and Pamela Reed were (as usual) excellent as Johnston and Gail Green, Skeet/Jake's parents, and when Lennie Harris appeared on the screen, I became happy, even if he was playing a character best summarized as "The Mysterious Negro of Omniscience." Characters behaved stupidly and the writers didn't seem to have any idea what might be the after-effects of nuclear detonations, either scientific or societal. The first couple of episodes were borderline awful. Mediocrity was to be cherished.
Then a funny thing happened. The showrunners were smart enough to realize what was working and what wasn't. Nothing ever goes as planned on a television or movie set. The key is to maximize what's right and minimize what's wrong. Jericho began to do that. Skeet Ulrich looks like thirty miles of bad road and leaves you wondering just what the hell he's done to himself since Miracles got canceled? Ashley Scott inspires thoughts of wood, only it's the maple and oak variety rather than the Cialis sort? Minimize the Jake/Emily love story. Gerald McRaney and Lennie Harris dominate every scene they're in? Suddenly Johnston Green and Rob Hawkins are getting a lot more story. No real good explanation for the big "who dropped the nuke" storyline? Focus on how a community might cope with any disaster that ruptured the fabric of society. Does the Eric/April/Mary triangle suck all the air out of the room? Hey, if April dies of pregnancy-related complications after Eric leaves her, we've got years of survivor's guilt to serve as motivation.
Maybe it was planned. Maybe they had it in mind all along, but it didn't feel that way to me. It felt to me like the producers were tinkering on the fly, trying to see what worked and discarding what didn't. I'd bet money that many of the elements of Hawkins' story were made up fast, even if the big arc was predetermined.
BTW, the saga of the family Hawkins provided one of my favorite TV moments of the year. In a mini-arc that coincided with the show's improvement, Sarah Mason (Siena Goines) shows up in Jericho. She's Hawkins ex-partner in whatever nefarious doings he was part of. We learn that she's not to be trusted and the whole affair culminates with her holding a gun on Hawkins in his living room. Shots ring out. Is Hawkins dead? Naw. His daughter Allison (Jazz Raycole, and isn't that the coolest name?) has picked up his gun and plugged Sarah. Hawkins and his wife, Darcy (April Parker) run to her to console her after this terrible event.
Allison's reaction? "I'm okay. Really." I almost fell off the couch laughing. "Hey, dad, I'm a stone killer. Must be your genes." Yeah, post-nuke life be different.
Jericho was righting itself, growing from embarrassing pilot to interesting with potential. I believe its cancellation was indicative of just how TV is changing and how networks are still oblivious.
First, the winter hiatus killed the show. Even Heroes, 2007-08's freshman hit, suffered a ratings drop after taking time off. Broadcast networks are going to have to learn a hard lesson: repeats don't work and hiatus kills. One reason networks still do this is the asinine "order 13 and if we like it we'll go to 22" model. Look at what cable nets do. USA has something on the order of 8 episodes of Monk in January, then it's off until 8 more in July. SciFi will run the second season of Eureka this summer. They'll run it straight through and then it's off. CBS, listen to me: If you like a show like Jericho, order 13 episodes. Shoot 'em and air 'em. Ratings good? Don't try to short-order nine more eps for the same season. Order another 13-22 for next fall. Make the runs shorter and run them straight through.
Second, a show's return must be an event. Jericho aired its last fall episode, "Vox Populi", on 29 November 2006. The next new ep, "Black Jack", aired on 28 February 2007. That's three full months. What about dead-of-winter February makes it a good time to run more episodes? Introduce a limited-run series, maybe, but bring back a show that people haven't seen since Thanksgiving? A show that was just starting to find its own artistic voice? On top of that, CBS did exactly bupkus to promote the return. The networks apparently assume "Hey, they'll be home with their asses on the couch. They'll find it. What else they gonna do?" The answer? They'll do a lot. Networks still don't seem to realize that they are one of several options and the public is no longer beholden to them for content.
Third, the 22-episode season must go. I know someone will cry "Gunsmoke used to do forty (or however many) episodes a year!" No, they didn't. Gunsmoke (and Bonanza, et al.) did four episodes ten times with different actors. Seriously, you ever watch one of those old shows on TV Land? They had three plots and six story elements for variety. They would mix and match by, apparently, posting these on a wall and throwing darts. Seriously, TV is so much better now, but better also means competitive. There's also more of it and, honestly, a finite number of people who can do a good job creating the stuff. Borrow from the British model. Shorter seasons done at higher quality, perhaps set an episode limit during development. If your story can be told fully in 50 episodes, why try and flog the show for six seasons? Why drain a good show of all life and creativity by insisting that it go on well beyond its natural life (this is the X-Files rule)?
So that's Jericho, a modest little show that might have been pretty good, but because of a slow start and network idiocy, never got off the ground. I'll miss it, but not a lot.
Monday, May 14, 2007
TV Roundup: Friday Night Lights
With May sweeps signalling the end of the traditional TV season, I would like to look back at a few shows that caught my attention. I ended up watching three new dramas--Jericho, Heroes, and Friday Night Lights.
Jericho started slow (how often do you get to say that about a show that detonates a nuclear bomb in the first episode) but quickly got better. Heroes was as close to a phenomenon as a scripted show gets these days. It began fast and gained from there. I'll take a more in-depth look at those two shows later. First, I want to consider the best new show of the season, a show that's already one of the two or three best dramas on TV: Friday Night Lights.
This is the third iteration of this story. It started as a prize-winning book by Buzz Bissinger about Odessa, TX, a blighted oil-patch city in West Texas that lives and dies with the Permian Panthers. That turned into a movie starring Billy Bob Thornton, who gave a fine performance as Coach Gary Gaines. The movie was pretty good.
When NBC announced FNL would be on their fall schedule, I groaned. First, I thought it would be another lying hagiography of small-town athletic values. I grew up in a football-crazy small town. Hey, I played in high school. There's no bigger snake-pit in the world. Second, I hate, hate, hate the way most sports are portrayed on TV shows (White Shadow excepted). They look cheesy and cheap.
Then I watched the pilot. It was stunning. From Kyle Chandler (Coach Derek Taylor) to Zach Gilford (Matt Saracen) to Gaius Charles (Smash Williams) the team was amazingly well-cast. Taylor Kitsch was immediately noticed as bad-boy fullback Tim Riggins, but even this seemingly stock character was quickly revealed to have many different facets. And the female characters! Unknown (at least to me) Minka Kelly, Adrianne Palicki (her Tyra was another stock character quickly turned 3-D) and young Aimee Teagarden (one of the few actual teens in the cast) were phenomenal. But the queen bee who ruled them all was Connie Britton as Tami Taylor. I have to admit here that I have a long-standing crush on Britton and have often bitched and moaned about her inability to find a role that took advantage of her smarts and sexuality. Well, she's found that role. Add in Jesse Plemons (Landry Clarke), Blue Deckert (Mac McGill), and Brad Leland (he rules as Buddy Garrity) and you have one of the most talented and jam-packed ensembles on TV.
The writing and cinematography were first-class. The show looked spectacular. Berg's method of shooting (hand-held cameras constantly rolling, camera operators responsible for finding the shot, actors concentrating on performance not blocking) gave a distinctive feel to each episode, and the football action looked amazing. Shot in long takes, you got a real sense of where players were in space and the actors (or stunt performers) actually looked like high-school players, not 30-year-old behemoths. FNL was one of the most expensive shows of the season, but it looked like every dime was on the screen.
I only have one complaint. Dillon was supposed to be a powerhouse team and one of the season-long arcs was whether or not the team would reach its championship potential (they did, btw, in a wonderfully shot state championship game). Some bloggers and critics have complained about the team's improbably second-half comeback in the championship game, but as Gregg Easterbrook likes to say, "Until it's half-time, you've got just as much time to come back as they did to get ahead." Given that the Panthers comeback started early in the second half and stretched across the full 30 minutes, it seemed very realistic. My complaint is not about the championship game. It's about the season. I played for a very good high school team, a state powerhouse in our classification. We usually had two tough games a year. Dillon won every game in the last seconds. Come on, if you're championship caliber in Texas, at least six of your games are going to be wins on the order of 48-6 or 63-7. Still, I realize that a huge rout is not that dramatically interesting, so I'll go with it.
Friday Night Lights has received an order for 22 second- season episodes. A few critics have wondered what the show will do since the Panthers won state in their first season. Come on!! (to quote Gob Bluth) Trying to get a team ready to repeat is its own struggle. I foresee complacency, ego, selfishness....
I can't wait.
Jericho started slow (how often do you get to say that about a show that detonates a nuclear bomb in the first episode) but quickly got better. Heroes was as close to a phenomenon as a scripted show gets these days. It began fast and gained from there. I'll take a more in-depth look at those two shows later. First, I want to consider the best new show of the season, a show that's already one of the two or three best dramas on TV: Friday Night Lights.
This is the third iteration of this story. It started as a prize-winning book by Buzz Bissinger about Odessa, TX, a blighted oil-patch city in West Texas that lives and dies with the Permian Panthers. That turned into a movie starring Billy Bob Thornton, who gave a fine performance as Coach Gary Gaines. The movie was pretty good.
When NBC announced FNL would be on their fall schedule, I groaned. First, I thought it would be another lying hagiography of small-town athletic values. I grew up in a football-crazy small town. Hey, I played in high school. There's no bigger snake-pit in the world. Second, I hate, hate, hate the way most sports are portrayed on TV shows (White Shadow excepted). They look cheesy and cheap.
Then I watched the pilot. It was stunning. From Kyle Chandler (Coach Derek Taylor) to Zach Gilford (Matt Saracen) to Gaius Charles (Smash Williams) the team was amazingly well-cast. Taylor Kitsch was immediately noticed as bad-boy fullback Tim Riggins, but even this seemingly stock character was quickly revealed to have many different facets. And the female characters! Unknown (at least to me) Minka Kelly, Adrianne Palicki (her Tyra was another stock character quickly turned 3-D) and young Aimee Teagarden (one of the few actual teens in the cast) were phenomenal. But the queen bee who ruled them all was Connie Britton as Tami Taylor. I have to admit here that I have a long-standing crush on Britton and have often bitched and moaned about her inability to find a role that took advantage of her smarts and sexuality. Well, she's found that role. Add in Jesse Plemons (Landry Clarke), Blue Deckert (Mac McGill), and Brad Leland (he rules as Buddy Garrity) and you have one of the most talented and jam-packed ensembles on TV.
The writing and cinematography were first-class. The show looked spectacular. Berg's method of shooting (hand-held cameras constantly rolling, camera operators responsible for finding the shot, actors concentrating on performance not blocking) gave a distinctive feel to each episode, and the football action looked amazing. Shot in long takes, you got a real sense of where players were in space and the actors (or stunt performers) actually looked like high-school players, not 30-year-old behemoths. FNL was one of the most expensive shows of the season, but it looked like every dime was on the screen.
I only have one complaint. Dillon was supposed to be a powerhouse team and one of the season-long arcs was whether or not the team would reach its championship potential (they did, btw, in a wonderfully shot state championship game). Some bloggers and critics have complained about the team's improbably second-half comeback in the championship game, but as Gregg Easterbrook likes to say, "Until it's half-time, you've got just as much time to come back as they did to get ahead." Given that the Panthers comeback started early in the second half and stretched across the full 30 minutes, it seemed very realistic. My complaint is not about the championship game. It's about the season. I played for a very good high school team, a state powerhouse in our classification. We usually had two tough games a year. Dillon won every game in the last seconds. Come on, if you're championship caliber in Texas, at least six of your games are going to be wins on the order of 48-6 or 63-7. Still, I realize that a huge rout is not that dramatically interesting, so I'll go with it.
Friday Night Lights has received an order for 22 second- season episodes. A few critics have wondered what the show will do since the Panthers won state in their first season. Come on!! (to quote Gob Bluth) Trying to get a team ready to repeat is its own struggle. I foresee complacency, ego, selfishness....
I can't wait.
Friday, May 11, 2007
If You're Out On The Road...
Gilmore Girls ends its run on the CW/WB on May 15. It's a good thing that Lauren Graham and Alexis Bleidel turned down the offer of a 13-episode run in 2007-08. GG has staggered this season due to the loss of creator/exec producer Amy Sherman-Palladino. It reminds me of the demise of Designing Women, a show that for about four seasons in the late '80s and early 90s was about as funny as you could get until Delta Burke and Jean Smart left the cast in quick succession. Linda Bloodworth-Thomason had created the show with four strong, distinctive voices and losing two of them crippled her. Oddly enough, while Smart is the more esteemed actress, the loss of Burke was probably the one that Thomason couldn't overcome. Burke's Suzanne had become not only a reliable provider of screwball plot twists and character bits, but Burke's syncopated line readings proved impossible for gifted comediennes like Julia Duffy and Judith Ivey to duplicate. Try and replicate Burke's inflection of the lines "Well, I guess she didn't know!" and "I guess she knew!" from 1990's "The Mistress." It can't be done. In addition, Suzanne seemed to be the character most identified with by Boodworth-Thomason. She has said that her planned finale for the show was for Suzanne and Anthony (Meshach Taylor) to elope. What a perfect ending.
But something else connects Designing Women to Gilmore Girls, and that is the love of language. Anyone who ever experienced the dizzy delight of one of Dixie Carter's screwball monologues never forgot it. Here's a sample:
But this is about the end of Gilmore Girls. What it truly shared with DesigningWomen was a love of character and language. And what language!!! Sherman-Palladino whipped up the fastest dialogue since His Girl Friday, but she had the cast to deliver the goods. Lauren Graham never even got nominated for an Emmy, which is one more reason awards suck, but look at the rest of the cast: Bledel, the brilliant Kelly Bishop (Emily Gilmore, you truly rock!), Edward Herrmann... Edward Herrmann!!! FDR, Sunrise at Campobello, voice of the History Channel. Yanic Truesdale, Liza Weil, hell, Keiko Agena. I think that GG may be the last show to really feature dialogue, extended conversations between two or more characters. I'm pretty sure it will be the last one to assume that both characters and viewers will be smart. Television will feel a little dumber for that.
One other area of Gilmore Girls deserves special notice. I can't think of another show that so venerated and featured music, and not just music as product placement ("Tonight's episode of Smallville feature music by--"), but as lifeblood. Not only did Rory and Lane have great conversations about bands, but Lorelai still thought music was important, and not the music of her high school days either, but new music. The show featured wonderful pop songs and had Sam Phillips provide what Television Without Pity calls "the strummy-strummy la-las." Grant Lee Phillips had a recurring role as the town troubadour. It even made Sebastian Bach seem cool. Tell me Sherman-Palladino can't raise the dead.
The only real gaffe in the show's run was the too-long attempt to shove Milo Ventimiglia down our throats as Jess, but even that paid off when succeeding seasons established that, for all her smarts, Rory is an idiot when it comes to choosing men. The show was that good. It could make one of the things I hated about it into a character trait.
So, away with you, Gilmore Girls. Rest easy. I will remember you, and I'll choke up a little every time I hear Carole King sing, "If you're out on the road..."
But something else connects Designing Women to Gilmore Girls, and that is the love of language. Anyone who ever experienced the dizzy delight of one of Dixie Carter's screwball monologues never forgot it. Here's a sample:
after Charlene turns juror Julia in for discussing her case outside of courtAnd another:
Charlene: [on the phone] Now Julia, you sound overwrought.
Julia: Yeah, well you're gonna think overwrought. If I miss my dinner with Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter because of this, you're going to pay and pay big. I'm going to find you and hunt you down like a dog! I'm talking about you running through the woods in the snow with blood hounds ripping your clothes off! And remember Charlene, I have your address. You'd be wise to ask yourself "Do I know where my baby is?"
Yes, and I gather from your comments there are a couple of other things you don't know, Marjorie. For example, you probably didn't know that Suzanne was the only contestant in Georgia pageant history to sweep every category except congeniality, and that is not something the women in my family aspire to anyway. Or that when she walked down the runway in her swimsuit, five contestants quit on the spot. Or that when she emerged from the isolation booth to answer the question, "What would you do to prevent war?" she spoke so eloquently of patriotism, battlefields and diamond tiaras, grown men wept. And you probably didn't know, Marjorie, that Suzanne was not just any Miss Georgia, she was the Miss Georgia. She didn't twirl just a baton, that baton was on fire. And when she threw that baton into the air, it flew higher, further, faster than any baton has ever flown before, hitting a transformer and showering the darkened arena with sparks! And when it finally did come down, Marjorie, my sister caught that baton, and 12,000 people jumped to their feet for sixteen and one-half minutes of uninterrupted thunderous ovation, as flames illuminated her tear-stained face! And that, Marjorie - just so you will know - and your children will someday know - is the night the lights went out in Georgia!And that's from early in the show's run, before Bloodworth-Thomason really found her stroke. I can't find an exact quotation of Carter's brilliant diatribe at the end of "La Place Sans Souci", and I'm not going to try and recreate it. All I'll say is that I always wait for it when I see that episode on Lifetime or Nickelodeon.
But this is about the end of Gilmore Girls. What it truly shared with DesigningWomen was a love of character and language. And what language!!! Sherman-Palladino whipped up the fastest dialogue since His Girl Friday, but she had the cast to deliver the goods. Lauren Graham never even got nominated for an Emmy, which is one more reason awards suck, but look at the rest of the cast: Bledel, the brilliant Kelly Bishop (Emily Gilmore, you truly rock!), Edward Herrmann... Edward Herrmann!!! FDR, Sunrise at Campobello, voice of the History Channel. Yanic Truesdale, Liza Weil, hell, Keiko Agena. I think that GG may be the last show to really feature dialogue, extended conversations between two or more characters. I'm pretty sure it will be the last one to assume that both characters and viewers will be smart. Television will feel a little dumber for that.
One other area of Gilmore Girls deserves special notice. I can't think of another show that so venerated and featured music, and not just music as product placement ("Tonight's episode of Smallville feature music by--"), but as lifeblood. Not only did Rory and Lane have great conversations about bands, but Lorelai still thought music was important, and not the music of her high school days either, but new music. The show featured wonderful pop songs and had Sam Phillips provide what Television Without Pity calls "the strummy-strummy la-las." Grant Lee Phillips had a recurring role as the town troubadour. It even made Sebastian Bach seem cool. Tell me Sherman-Palladino can't raise the dead.
The only real gaffe in the show's run was the too-long attempt to shove Milo Ventimiglia down our throats as Jess, but even that paid off when succeeding seasons established that, for all her smarts, Rory is an idiot when it comes to choosing men. The show was that good. It could make one of the things I hated about it into a character trait.
So, away with you, Gilmore Girls. Rest easy. I will remember you, and I'll choke up a little every time I hear Carole King sing, "If you're out on the road..."
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