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.

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.

"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.

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

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.

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.

...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.