In Which Our Hero

BOOKS: I Am Half-Sick of Shadows, Alan Bradley (2011)

2012-01-26T13:04:00.000-08:00

Fourth in the Flavia de Luce series.

Our setting is Buckshaw, a somewhat rundown British country estate in the years after WWII, where Colonel de Luce lives with his three daughters. The youngest is 11-year-old Flavia, a budding chemist (with a particular interest in poisons) who finds herself caught up in the many murders that plague the small village of Bishop's Lacey.

In this one, it's Christmas 1950, and the Colonel hopes to stave off the tax collector for a few months by renting out Buckshaw to a film crew, among whom is the legendary actress Phyllis Wyvern. There is, of course, a murder -- strangulation with a piece of film -- and a locked-house element this time around, as nearly the entire village is snowed in at Buckshaw.

As is typical for this series, the mystery itself is pleasantly entertaining. I continue to wish, though, that Flavia were a few years older; even by the standards of literary precocious children, she's a bit hard to believe as an 11-year-old. (And Bradley blunders, I think, in the other direction on an issue of age this time, with a subplot about Flavia setting out to prove whether or not Father Christmas really does come down the chimney on Christmas Eve. Surely an 11-year-old is too old to still believe in Father Christmas, especially an 11-year-old who is as passionately devoted to reason and critical thinking as Flavia is.)

What makes the series work is style and atmosphere: the slowly fading genteel aristocracy of the de Luce family, the comic relief of the servants, the Christie-esque coziness of the setting. There's nothing in this volume that would be confusing to a series newcomer, so you needn't feel that you have to start at the beginning.

BOOKS: Humiliation, Wayne Koestenbaum (2011)

2012-01-23T12:31:00.000-08:00

For 20 years now, Wayne Koestenbaum has been writing books that combine literary criticism, memoir, and essay. His books are all, regardless of their ostensible topic, very much about him and his obsessions; when he hits upon a particularly interesting obsession, the results can be fascinating. I liked, for instance, The Queen's Throat, an exploration of the relationship between gay men and opera; and his book on Jackie Onassis, Jackie Under My Skin, had some intriguing moments.

In his newest book, he shares with us his lifelong fascination with humiliation, both his own and that of others. And because he is now a Prestigious Academic Intellectual Person, and because people will pay him to do things like this, he shares every single fucking thought he has ever had on the subject. Humiliation, I must report, is not a subject that can sustain a reader's interest for 184 pages.

Koestenbaum's style is very free-assocative, which often leads him to make awkward and uncomfortable juxtapositions -- from the sexual abuse of slaves to Alec Baldwin's infamous berating of his daughter, from the tragedy at Chappaquiddick to Koestenbaum's own restroom cruising experiences. To his credit, he is aware of how awkward these moments are, and there is a lot of "am I being overly crass to leap from A to B?" in the book, but if you're smart enough to ask the question, how can you not be smart enough to realize that the answer is yes?

The book's not entirely without merit; there are some lovely insights and beautifully written paragraphs, some thoughts that made me stop for a moment to think. But when your subject is humiliation, and your habit is to relate everything you write to yourself, you will inevitably find yourself writing long lists of your own humiliating moments, as Koestenbaum does (taking up most of the last 20 pages of the book). The book becomes an exercise in creepy oversharing, a highfalutin' academic episode of Oprah, in which we learn far more about Koestenbaum than we have any right (or any desire) to know. It is embarrassing stuff to read, and I can't help but think that it is (what else?) humiliating for him to have it all on display to the world. And that may, in a ghastly masochistic way, be the point of the whole damn book.

MOVIES: Best Films of 2011

2012-01-22T15:26:00.000-08:00

It was a year filled with movies that I liked, but not offering very many that I loved without reservation. The top two this year are a mile ahead of the rest of the pack.

Starting with #10 and counting down to #1:

Tabloid -- documentary as farce, in which Joyce McKinney narrates her own delusional fantasies of romantic heroism.
Midnight in Paris -- Woody Allen's fascination with the paradoxical appeal/danger of nostalgia takes center stage, in a movie that is impeccably cast; Kathy Bates, Adrien Brody, and Michael Sheen are all perfect choices for their parts.
Pariah -- a relatively familiar coming-out story in some ways, but we haven't gotten the lesbian version of the story nearly as often, or the African-American version. A calm, melancholy tale of simple courage and dignity.
Rango -- a deliriously goofy homage to a wide range of Hollywood movies and traditions, with a fresh, distinctive animated style, and a terrifically creepy villain in Bill Nighy's Rattlesnake Jake.
The Skin I Live In -- Almodovar mixes many of his favorite motifs -- women in jeopardy, wild melodrama, twisted sexuality -- with the Frankenstein story to spectacularly entertaining effect.
Take Shelter -- not only a powerful allegory about the economic and social anxieties of the moment, but a dark nightmare about a man slowly losing his grip on reality.
The Artist -- yes, the story's fluffy and light, but there's nothing wrong with fluff when it's this precisely crafted. The most joyful movie of the year.
Weekend -- the year's best love story, and the year's best acting duo. Tom Cullen and Chris New bring remarkable spontaneity to their unexpected whirlwind romance.
A Separation -- it's a legal thriller, it's a family drama, it's a glimpse inside Iranian society -- and it does all of those things extremely well. There are no easy answers, no clear-cut heroes or villains to be found here -- only complicated people, struggling with complicated problems in ways that we can always empathize with.

And the year's best movie:

Melancholia -- the gentlest, most humane movie Lars von Trier has ever made; a movie that finds thrilling joy and magical ecstasy in the apocalypse.

MOVIES: Best of 2011 -- Actor

2012-01-22T15:05:00.000-08:00

The runners-up:

Tom Cullen, Weekend
Paul Giamatti, Win/Win
Brendan Gleeson, The Guard
Joseph Gordon-Levitt, 50/50
William Shimell, Certified Copy

The nominees:

Demian Bichir, A Better Life -- one man, quietly struggling for an honorable way to survive; a performance that never pushes too hard for effect.
Jean Dujardin, The Artist -- a superb physical performance that reaches the heights of joy and the depths of despair, and is never anything but utterly convincing.
Peyman Maadi, A Separation -- from the first scene, Nader is terrified that his life is about to collapse in front of him; everything that follows is rooted in that panic and desperation
Owen Wilson, Midnight in Paris -- the best use that's ever been made of Wilson's inherent sadness

The winner:

Michael Shannon, Take Shelter -- a performance largely of gestures; Shannon says more with a raised eyebrow or a shrug than other actors say in a three-minute speech. Which is more terrifying: the possibility that his apocalyptic visions are real, or the possibility that he's simply going mad?

MOVIES: Best of 2011 -- Actress

2012-01-22T14:54:00.000-08:00

The runners-up (and there are only four; the pickin' was slim this year):

Sareh Bayat, A Separation
Juliette Binoche, Certified Copy
Elizabeth Olson, Martha Marcy May Marlene
Tilda Swinton, We Need to Talk About Kevin

The nominees:

Berenice Bejo, The Artist -- a smile that brightens the room, some perfectly played physical comedy, moving emotional moments -- what more could you want?
Vera Farmiga, Higher Ground -- the pain is palpable as Farmiga struggles with the realization that she is losing the faith which has always sustained her.
Adepero Oduye, Pariah -- the joy of first love, the pain of watching a marriage disintegrate, the fear that secrets will be discovered -- all of these things feel fresh again in Oduye's quiet performance.
Yun Jung-hee, Poetry -- another very quiet and understated performance, capturing the struggle of a woman to find her own voice, and a way through her moral labyrinth, in a society that doesn't take women (especially old women) very seriously.

The winner:

Kirsten Dunst, Melancholia -- the smiles in the opening scenes can't hide the terrifying knowledge that her demons are back; this is as good a portrait of crippling depression as we've ever seen.

MOVIES: Best of 2011 -- Supporting Actor

2012-01-22T14:44:00.000-08:00

The runners-up:

Jonah Hill, Moneyball
Ezra Miller, We Need to Talk About Kevin
Seth Rogen, 50/50
Corey Stoll, Midnight in Paris
Max von Sydow, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

The nominees:

Albert Brooks, Drive -- cast against type, Brooks is a revelation as a psychopathic gentleman mobster who mixes courtliness and sadism.
Armie Hammer, J. Edgar -- from the twinkly-eyed romantic of the young Tolson to the physical and mental struggles of the older, post-stroke Tolson, Hammer gets the details just right.
Patton Oswalt, Young Adult -- a gloriously immature voice of reason whose history of nursing his own wounds makes him uniquely able to call out Charlize Theron's Mavis on her own bullshit.
Christopher Plummer, Beginners -- a fine performance buried in a sentimental slog of a movie; Plummer's joy and thrill at finally exploring his real identity are contagious.

The winner:

Brian Cox, Coriolanus -- the ultimate glad-handed schmoozing politician, trying desperately to pass on his skills to a stiff, unpopular protege before tragedy strikes.

MOVIES: Best of 2011 -- Supporting Actress

2012-01-22T14:33:00.000-08:00

The runners-up:

Elle Fanning, Super 8
Sarah Paulson, Martha Marcy May Marlene
Vanessa Redgrave, Coriolanus
Octavia Spencer, The Help
Shailene Woodley, The Descendants

The nominees:

Jessica Chastain, The Help -- the best of her work in a remarkable year was found here, in a performance that was both broadly comic and subtly heartbreaking.
Viola Davis, The Help -- yes, I said supporting; the movie is about Emma Stone's personal growth, and the maids are merely props to that story. But Davis made Aibileen the most fully rounded, richly human prop a movie could want.
Janet McTeer, Albert Nobbs -- the best performance in a dull movie (that will be a theme this year, folks); McTeer's cross-dressing was convincing in a way that Glenn Close's never was.
Kim Wayans, Pariah -- Audrey is so cruel a mother that we can't ever really sympathize with her, but Wayans does help us to understand the fears that control her.

And the winner:

Dagmara Dominczyk, Higher Ground -- a lively, delightful performance that becomes something very different (but equally fine) when Annika's circumstances change abruptly midway through the movie.

MOVIES: Best of 2011

2012-01-22T14:21:00.000-08:00

The January DVD catch-up marathon proved to be a disappointment, with almost nothing that was worth sitting all the way through, so I'll get my lists out today, ahead of Tuesday's Oscar nominations. Only likely/possible nominees I haven't seen in the major categories are Michelle Williams and Kenneth Branagh in My Week With Marilyn, and Nick Nolte in Warrior.

BOOKS: Tag Man, Archer Mayor (2011)

2012-01-19T16:14:00.000-08:00

22nd in Mayor's series of police procedurals about Joe Gunther and the Vermont Bureau of Investigation.

The finer homes of Brattleboro are being burglarized. The burglar isn't particularly menacing, as burglars go; he does no property damage, and there's nothing stolen except a few bites of the priciest food in the fridge. His signature is the Post-It note he leaves on his victims' bedside tables: "Tag! You're It," for which the local press has dubbed him the Tag Man.

Relatively harmless the Tag Man may be, but still, burglary is burglary, and the members of the Brattleboro Police Department would like to track him down. And when he stumbles into evidence of the more serious crimes committed by some of the wealthy folks he visits, the police may be the least of the Tag Man's problems.

Gunther and his colleagues are marvelous characters; the ongoing stories of their lives will have more resonance for those who've followed the series from the beginning, but Mayor skillfully lays in the background details so that the novice can follow those parts of the story. The crime story is, as usual, top-notch, and the multiple strands of the story are carefully woven together for a terrific climax. Mayor continues to be one of our best (and most underrated) writers of police thrillers.

TV: Alcatraz (Fox, Mon 9)

2012-01-17T19:53:00.000-08:00

The premise is irresistible. The closing of the prison on Alcatraz in 1963 had nothing to do with budget cuts, but was caused by the mysterious disappearance of the 302 men (prisoners and guards) who were there at the time. Now, 50 years later, they've started reappearing in San Francisco, seemingly no older than when they vanished.

Their appearances are being investigated by a four-member team. Emerson Hauser (Sam Neill) is the federal agent who won't answer anyone else's questions; he's assisted by Lucy (Parminder Nagra). Rebecca Madsen (Sarah Jones) is the San Francisco cop who's brought into the operation, and who has her own family connections to Alcatraz; her fellow newbie on the team is Diego Soto (Jorge Garcia, essentially reprising his Lost role as Hurley, with a little bit of The Simpsons' Comic Book Guy thrown in), a local Alcatraz scholar, with the careers, crimes, and MOs of every prisoner at his fingertips.

(Is it just me, or does this collection of characters/actors sound vaguely Fringe-like? Jones in the Anna Torv role of the pretty blonde cop; Garcia in the Joshua Jackson role of the ordinary guy caught up in the whole thing; Neill in the John Noble role of the old guy who knows more than he lets on; Nagra in the Jasika Nicole role of the smart/geeky/ethnic sidekick/assistant.)

As a weekly-bad-guy police procedural, the show's OK (it appears that the title of each episode will be the name of that week's returning criminal); Madsen and Soto are an appealing team (though Garcia's doing most of the work in terms of chemistry), and they do some reasonably clever detective work.

But in the long run, the show will succeed or fail on the pacing of the larger story. Where have the "63s" been for 50 years? Why haven't they aged? Who's behind this? And how much does Hauser know, anyway? J.J. Abrams' shows have, in the past, tended to flounder a bit at the beginning. It was a year or two before Fringe really settled into its alternate-universe mythology; Lost often seemed to be killing time until a firm end date was set for the show.

I felt like we got enough information in the first two hours to keep me interested. We learn about Hauser's and Madsen's connections to Alcatraz's past, and there's a terrific last-minute bombshell involving Lucy that raises both tantalizing questions and intriguing possibilities. Like most serialized shows, this could fall completely apart at any moment, but so far, I'm intrigued, and I'll keep my fingers crossed.

MOVIES: Pina (Wim Wenders, 2011)

2012-01-17T16:12:00.000-08:00

Pina is a likely Best Documentary Oscar nominee this year, and has an outside shot at also being nominated for Best Foreign Language Film. It's about the work of choreographer Pina Bausch, who died in 2009, shortly after filming began.

What Pina does -- almost the only thing it does -- is show us Bausch's dances. Four of them are presented, not quite in full, but in substantial excerpts, and there are interludes filmed in the public spaces of Wuppertal, Germany (where her company is based) with her dancers doing brief passages from other dances.

We get occasional talking-head commentary from Bausch's dancers and colleagues; Wenders chooses to present them sitting in front of a dark screen, not actually speaking, as we listen to their pre-recorded comments. But if you don't know anything about Bausch, you won't learn it from those commenters, because the movie isn't interested in giving you the facts. We don't learn how long she's been doing this, why she's considered an important figure, or what differentiates her work from that of her peers.

I found that frustrating, because I know nothing about modern dance, and I would have enjoyed some background or historical context useful. I liked watching the dance, but I'd have enjoyed it more if I'd been given some understanding of what I was seeing.

The things that did strike me as (maybe?) unusual were that Bausch doesn't retire her dancers the second they stop being young and pretty; one of the major works we see, in fact, is specifically for dancers over 65. (At least, one version of it is; there's a second version for teenagers, and the film cuts back and forth between the two.)

She also seems to like to put lots of stuff on the stage. Her dance to Stravinsky's Rite of Spring requires that the stage be covered in several inches of dirt; Vollmond fills half the stage with a giant rock, behind which is a waterfall; and Cafe Mueller clutters the stage with chairs and tables.

If you enjoy modern dance, you'll surely enjoy Pina, even though you'll be frustrated by the fact that it's all visuals and no information; if you know enough about it to know why Pina Bausch matters, you'll probably enjoy it even more.

TV: The Revolution (ABC daytime)

2012-01-16T18:39:00.000-08:00

In its ongoing attempt to fill its entire daytime schedule into clones of The View, ABC today premiered The Revolution, in which a panel of five hosts help women transform themselves.

The better known members of the show's panel are Ty Pennington (Remember when he was on Trading Spaces and he was really cute? Now he looks like beef jerky brought to life) and Tim Gunn; they are responsible for, respectively, decor and fashion. They're joined by Harley Pasternak (fitness and nutrition), Dr. Jennifer Ashton (who is always addressed as "Dr. Jennifer," and is responsible for health), and Tiffanie Davis Henry (self-help and mental health).

Each week, the show focuses on a different "hero," a woman who has turned herself over to the show for a five-month process of transformation. The first week actually has a pair of heroes, sisters who want to lose weight and develop lives that are more independent of one another. Each day of the week follows one month of the hero's process, with the reveal of the fully transformed woman on Friday.

That makes it hard to judge the show in certain ways. One of the strengths of The View (and of its food-centric clone The Chew) is the interaction among the regular panelists. But there's less of that on this show, which tends to be divided into segments featuring one host at a time -- Tim's "Timtervention" fashion segment, an exercise segment with Harley, and so on.

And since much of today's episode, which introduces us to the Harris sisters and follows their first month of progress, was filmed four months ago, the hosts haven't yet had a lot of time to develop much chemistry even when they do work together. It'll be interesting to see if they feel more like a team on Friday's episode, which will have been filmed more recently. The first few months of the show may have a very odd weekly structure -- awkward group interaction on Monday, progressing daily to lively team on Friday. (I'm not quite interested enough to watch a full week to see how this dynamic progresses, but I do plan to catch Friday's show to see if the group's interaction is noticably changed.)

Even if the group chemistry improves, though, this strikes me as by far the least interesting of ABC's panel shows; the individual elements are all things that are being done better on other shows. Much will depend, of course, on how well cast the weekly heros are and on how well the show can develop the audience's interest in them. But it seems like it's going to be largely the same show every week, and not a terribly compelling one. It may simply be that I find the pop culture/gossip of The View and the food chat of The Chew more interesting than the personal transformation on display here, and those who enjoy this sort of psychodrama may find The Revolution absolutely delightful.

TV: Rob (CBS, Thu 8:30)

2012-01-13T21:35:00.000-08:00

Rob Schneider stars as Rob (never an encouraging sign when the lead actor can't be trusted to remember a name that's not his own), who has just married Maggie (Claudia Bassols) after a quick 6-week relationship. Maggie is significantly younger and more attractive (in standard sitcom fashion), and is nervous about introducing Rob to her large Mexican family.

That's the setup for half an hour of ethnic jokes that I thought had gone out of fashion 30 years ago (Oh, look! The Mexicans like the guacamole!). Maggie's parents are played by Cheech Marin and Diana Maria Riva, and it is their sheer skill and determination that produces the few laughs to be found here.

We also meet Uncle Hector (Eugenio Derbez), who seems to be up to something shady in the garage and keeps hitting Rob up for a "loan" of $7,200; and Abuelita (Lupe Ontiveros), who speaks only Spanish (and doesn't say much even in that language) and has turned her bedroom into a shrine to her late husband.

(And why would you bother to hire an insanely talented actress like Lupe Ontiveros if you're not going to allow her to speak, or to get laughs, or to do much of anything but shuffle around the house in a tattered robe?)

Now, you could make a funny show about a nervous white guy who's not particularly close to his family, and his struggles to deal with his in-laws, both in terms of their close-knit nature (to him, bizarre clinginess) and the culture shock of the ethnic difference. But to do that, you'd have to rise above cheap Mexican cliches (Rob on entering a crowded room, filled with Maggie's extended family: "I feel like I'm at a Julio Iglesias concert."), tired henpecked husband routines (with both Schneider and Marin as the victims), and offensive sex jokes (Rob's caught looking as if he wants to rape Abuelita! Ho, ho, ho!).

Even if this sounds like something that might appeal to you, I wouldn't bother getting attached; it's not going to be around for long.

TV: Are You There, Chelsea? (NBC, Tue 8:30)

2012-01-13T21:32:00.000-08:00

This is another in this year's wave of comedies that claim to be edgy because the people being vulgar in them are women (see also 2 Broke Girls, Bridesmaids, Whitney...), this one based on the comic essays/memoirs of Chelsea Handler. The title is a dumbed-down for TV dilution of Handler's book title Are You There, Vodka? It's Me, Chelsea.

Laura Prepon plays Chelsea, who waits tables at a New York bar, drinks a lot, has a lot of sex, and talks a lot about drinking and having sex. Prepon is a likable actress, maybe even too likable for this part; her version of Chelsea is a little too sunny and not quite as cynical as the show wants her to be.

The supporting cast features Chelsea's best friend (Ali Wong), who is supposedly extra funny because she's a vulgar Asian woman; the hunky bartender (Jake McDorman); the little person barback (Mark Povinelli) -- little people are apparently a comic fixation for Handler -- and her father (longtime sitcom veteran Lenny Clarke, who deserves better than this). Each of those characters has precisely one character trait -- Asian, hunk, short, dad. Even for the first episode of a sitcom, they're thinly written.

Chelsea's sister, Sloane, will also make occasional appearances; she is, confusingly enough, played by the real Chelsea Handler, wearing a brunette wig and doing a bad Parker Posey impression.

The show's best character is Chelsea's new roommate, Dee Dee, played by Lauren Lapkus with a lively, weird spin on the Phoebe Buffay "is she crazy or just stupid?" type. Dee Dee is a virgin, and it's interesting that neither she nor Chelsea appears to be particularly judgmental about the other's lifestyle; slightly puzzled, perhaps, but ultimately just writing it off to different people making different choices.

There is an occasional good joke here, most of them so far for Dee Dee, and though their characters are underwritten, I think most of the supporting cast has the potential to be interesting. If the writers can flesh out the characters and find the right comic wavelength for the non-Dee Dee cast members, this could become something interesting. It's never going to be sophisticated humor, and a certain number of the jokes are always going to be built around how many euphemisms Chelsea can find for her vagina, but there is -- maybe -- some potential.

BOOKS: Lightning Rods, Helen DeWitt (2011)

2012-01-12T15:26:00.000-08:00

By coincidence, my second book in a row built around taking a big idea as far as it will go. Drew Magary's The Postmortal pulled off that trick very nicely; Helen DeWitt's Lightning Rods did not.

DeWitt's big idea is this: In a lot of large companies, the hard-driving alpha males who hold most of the executive spots are, in part because of the same hard-driving alphaness that makes them top executives, among the employees most prone to commit acts of sexual harassment. So what if you could defuse their levels of sexual tension by providing them with an on-the-job way to get their jollies?

Thus, the "lightning rods" are created; they're women who are legitimately employed by a company as secretaries or IT people or whatever, but who agree, for a significant bonus in pay, to provide (and the premise really is this crude) a convenient hole when a guy needs something to fuck. The gimmick is that the lightning rod service is to be entirely anonymous. The company agrees to turn over the majority of its staffing to the lightning rod agency, and thus doesn't know which of its employees are also serving as lightning rods; and the sexual encounters happen through a hole in the wall that allows each participant to see only the lower half of the other's body.

There is an occasional clever or amusing extrapolation from this idea (how do you maintain the program's anonymity at a small midwestern company when its first black female employee wants in on the lightning rod pay bonus?), but mostly the book is cheap, smirky, juvenile smut.

BOOKS: The Postmortal, Drew Magary (2011)

2012-01-11T15:54:00.000-08:00

The Postmortal is set in our near future after a cure for aging is developed. Doesn't mean you can't die, mind you -- you can still be shot, or fall of a bridge, or get cancer -- but you won't get any older and you won't die of old age.

Magary does a fine job of exploring the possible social and political fallout of such a cure. There are new religious cults to deal with; new legal structures surrounding marriage and divorce are developed (not to mention the redefinitions of "life sentence"); pregnancy becomes taboo (because with fewer people dying, the world's resources are strained as it is); and inevitably, a new government bureaucracy arises to deal with the postmortal who decide they've lived long enough and are ready to die.

The best thing about the book is that it does a lot of things well. It's a smart extrapolation of one idea and its consequences; it's a creepy apocalyptic thriller; and it is very funny, in a dry and dark way. And Magary builds the story well; the consequences of living in a post-cure world don't all appear at once, but instead build up and develop over time. Things are worse after forty years than they are after ten, in ways that are entirely sensible and logical.

If there's a serious flaw, it may be that the narrator doesn't seem to mature much as the book progresses; the 89-year-old at the end of the book feels about the same as the 29-year-old who gets the cure at the beginning. You could, I suppose, argue that aging is an integral part of maturing, and that if the physical self doesn't age, neither will the emotional self. But even that potential problem didn't really strike me as I was reading the book, which I enjoyed as a surprisingly smart piece of light entertainment.

MOVIES: Drive (Nicolas Winding Refn, 2011)

2012-01-10T15:42:00.000-08:00

There have been studies showing that people will interpret a blank facial expression very differently depending on the context in which it's shown. Greta Garbo was famously asked to make her face as expressionless as possible for the final shot of Queen Christina. In Drive, Ryan Gosling and director Nicolas Winding Refn set out to find out if blank and expressionless can sustain an entire movie. The answer, sadly, is no.

Gosling -- his character is never named, and identified in the credits only as "Driver" -- plays a movie stunt driver who occasionally hires himself out as getaway driver for bank robbers and small-time crooks. He also works at a garage owned by an old friend (Bryan Cranston) who has connections to local mob bosses Bernie and Izzy (Albert Brooks and Ron Perlman).

The movie takes a sudden turn when a getaway gig goes very wrong, and suddenly it's Killapalooza 2011, with shootings, stabbings, slashings, and stompings. The violence is intense and makes a strong visceral impact, though I suspect we don't actually see as much gore as we think we're seeing at the moment.

Gosling's performance -- if you can call it that -- consists of staring blankly ahead, saying as little as possible, and occasionally exploding in a frenzied burst of violence. Driver isn't a character; he's an impassive slab of stoicism. The only interesting acting in the movie comes from likely Oscar nominee Albert Brooks, playing very much against type as a gentlemanly thuggish gangster; it's a lovely, dry performance, and the movie would have benefited greatly from more of the understatement and wit Brooks brings to it.

MOVIES: Bill Cunningham New York (Richard Press, 2011)

2012-01-10T15:37:00.000-08:00

Bill Cunningham New York is an entertaining documentary about the veteran fashion photographer. For fifty years, Cunningham has been documenting fashion in New York. His focus has included the obvious runway shows and society galas, but he's perhaps best known for his weekly New York Times "On the Street" feature, for which he assembles 20 or 30 candid shots taken that week built around some trend he's spotted -- picture frame collars, men in skirts, denim.

Taking those candid photos is how Cunningham spends most of his days, getting around the city on his bicycle and photographing whatever catches his eye. For some, being seen in an outfit interesting enough to get Cunningham's attention is a badge of honor.

Many of those photographed for "On the Street," though, don't even know they've been photographed until they see the picture in the paper. While it's true that there is no legal expectation of privacy on a public street, the stealth photography of ordinary people does make me a bit queasy ethically. The movie only briefly addresses that issue, with Cunningham arguing that he's different from the paparazzi in that he's not chasing celebrities; his photography is done quietly and discreetly, and he's always more interested in the clothes than in the people wearing them.

Cunningham is a charming eccentric who has, as one of his colleagues says, "never taken a cruel picture," and he's a delightful personality to build a movie around. Bill Cunningham New York is a sweet little bonbon of a movie.

BOOKS: The Night Strangers, Chris Bohjalian (2011)

2012-01-06T12:36:00.000-08:00

Shortly after taking off from Burlington, Vermont, pilot Chip Linton is forced to land his plane in Lake Champlain; thirty-nine are killed. It wasn't Chip's fault, but that doesn't relieve his guilt and depression. Hoping for a fresh start, Chip relocates his family from Philadelphia to upstate New Hampshire.

The social life of Bethel is dominated by a circle of "herbalists" who spend hours in their greenhouses, growing a variety of plants, common and obscure, culinary and medicinal. As a group, these women take a disquieting interest in Chip's ten-year-old twin daughters.

And what on earth is that mysterious door in the basement of the Lintons' new home, and why has it been so securely bolted shut (with thirty-nine bolts exactly)?

This is a departure for Bohjalian, who frequently focuses on some hot-button social or legal issue (midwifery, transgender people, interracial adoption, etc.), but here gives us a creepy tale of ghosts and haunted houses. It still reads like Bohjalian -- the prose is elegant and graceful without being stuffy, and the characters are beautifully and precisely detailed -- but it's Bohjalian's Stephen King novel. (Except that it's better than King, because Bohjalian knows how to edit himself instead of blathering on for 800 pages or more.)

The ending will infuriate some; I appreciated the fact that it was less tidy and predictable than I'd expected. Those who are bothered by children-in-peril stories should probably avoid; otherwise, happily recommended.

MOVIES: A Separation (Asghar Farhadi, 2011)

2012-01-02T17:03:00.000-08:00

This Iranian film is widely considered to be one of the front runners for this year's Foreign Film Oscar, and it is a fine piece of work.

It begins with a couple seated before a judge, asking him to resolve their dispute. Simin (Leila Hatami) has finally gotten visa papers that would allow the family to leave Iran, but Nader (Peyman Maadi) refuses to leave, as he is the sole caregiver for his father, who has Alzheimer's. Nader is not contesting Simin's request for a divorce; the sticking point is custody of the couple's ten-year-old daughter. Since they cannot agree on that issue, the judge refuses to grant their divorce.

Simin moves back to her mother's home, and Nader is forced to hire a woman to tend to his father during the day. Razieh (Sareh Bayat) finds the job more demanding than expected, and suggests that her husband Hodjat (Shahab Hosseini) could take over for her.

That sounds like a lot of plot, but it's only the first few minutes of the movie, and things haven't even begun to get complicated yet. The two couples eventually find themselves caught up in a painful legal battle in which gender, religion, and economic class all play key roles.

Those social issues are always present, and we're constantly being reminded of their impact on the story, but not in a heavy-handed way. The story comes first, and it will grab you and hold your attention from the opening scene.

Writer/director Asghar Farhadi doesn't give us an obvious rooting interest, and he does everything he can to maintain the ambiguity of the story. Scenes cut off just before important events; the questions that characters ask one another frequently go unanswered; almost everyone is eventually proven to be lying about something.

You can't easily lump A Separation into any particular genre; it's equal parts detective story, courtroon drama (in an Iranian way, which has a very different feel than an American proceeding would), and family drama. It's a movie in which we empathize with all of the main characters, even as we wince at the awful decisions they're making.

Happy New Year!

2012-01-01T19:11:00.000-08:00

...and for those who might be looking forward to a year-end top ten movie list, it will, as is my custom, not be here for another few weeks. January is a dead month for worthwhile new releases, which makes it a fine time to catch up on DVD with some of the year's movies that I missed the first time around. There will always be something that I've missed, no matter when I put a list together, but giving myself a DVD month lets me feel at least a little more complete.

MOVIES: The Iron Lady (Phyllida Lloyd, 2011)

2012-01-01T19:06:00.000-08:00

The Iron Lady gives us Meryl Streep as Margaret Thatcher. It is a skillful impression; you would expect no less from Streep. Unfortunately, as we should have guessed after her similar Julia Child performance, you should also expect no more than mere impression. The voice and accent, the hair, the pearls, the physical tics -- all are there -- but there's no soul, no personality. I left the movie having learned a bit about recent British history, but having learned nothing about Thatcher.

The framing device gives us Thatcher in the present day (the old-age makeup is superb); she lives alone, though she is often visited by her hallucinations of her late husband Denis (Jim Broadbent). She hasn't entirely slipped into senility, but the lucid moments are increasingly rare. It is through her memories that we view the key moments of her career -- her entry into politics, her image makeover at the hands of consultants, her election as Prime Minister, the Falklands war -- which means that the version of history that we get is very pro-Thatcher. The movie doesn't avoid the fact that she was a controversial leader, but the arguments against her are kept very much in the background, and the movie argues that they are rooted not in politics, but in sexism.

The only particularly interesting performance in the movie comes from Harry Lloyd, who is utterly charming in his few scenes as the young Denis Thatcher (Streep and Broadbent take over the roles in roughly 1960, when Margaret is about 35).

I know that I am in a small minority where Streep is concerned. I think she's a far better comic actress than a dramatic one. In comedy, she can be delightfully spontaneous and unpredictable; in dramatic roles, I can always see how carefully every choice is being made -- breathe here and emphasize that syllable and let the voice quiver just so -- which is both distracting and annoying. If you are (like most) a fan of her dramatic work, you will probably enjoy this performance and movie more than I did.

MOVIES: Pariah (Dee Rees, 2011)

2012-01-01T19:03:00.000-08:00

Pariah is the debut feature film from writer/director Dee Rees, and it's a remarkably confident first effort. It's the story of Alike (Adepero Oduye), a 17-year-old African-American girl who is coming to terms with her lesbianism. Her mother (Kim Wayans) suspects and does not approve; her father (Charles Parnell) is doing his best to avoid the subject. That's just one of the many stresses that is slowly destroying their marriage.

The performances are very good. Oduye, who is in her early 30s, is entirely convincing playing half her age. It's a difficult role, because Alike is very reserved and a bit shy, so Oduye has to say a lot with facial expressions, but every thought shines through.

Wayans reportedly lobbied very hard to get this role, wanting to prove that she was more than just a comic actress, and she does fine work. Audrey is the obvious villain of the piece, and while we can't really sympathize with her at any point, Wayans does make clear the fears that dominate her life -- loss of both her husband and her daughter.

There are, I think, a few specific cultural details that flew over my head because I am neither black, lesbian, nor young, but the bigger themes are universal -- the pain of a marriage in collapse, the rush of first love, the fear that secrets will be discovered. A fine movie, and I look forward to seeing what Rees does next.

MOVIES: War Horse (Steven Spielberg, 2011)

2011-12-31T17:47:00.000-08:00

How familiar a story is War Horse? So familiar that you could begin the movie with an old-fashioned soap opera-style voice over: "In today's remake of Lassie Come Home, the role of Lassie will be played by a horse."

That horse is Joey, who's raised and trained by Albert, and oh, how they love one another. But then World War I comes along, and Albert's father is forced to sell Joey to the military in order to save the family farm.

So it's off to France for poor Joey, who gets to live out every WWI movie cliche you can think of -- he hauls artillery, gets captured by the Germans, hides out in a French windmill. He's even rescued from No Man's Land in one of those scenes where a British soldier and a German soldier venture timidly out under flag of truce in order to save the horse, because goddamm it, Joey is just that special.

Making Joey the protagonist of the movie has the odd effect of making War Horse a movie that is utterly disinterested in who wins the war. English, German, who cares as long as Joey survives? Albert's nearly blinded by mustard gas, but that's not important; we have to worry about Joey's injured leg.

And if you're annoyed by the anthropomorphizing of animals, then you're going to hate this movie, in which Joey sacrifices himself for his horsey BFF and is treated as though he has the full range of human emotions.

It seems almost silly to comment on the human beings here, but there are some pleasant performances to be found. Emily Watson and Peter Mullan ooze devotion as Albert's parents; Niels Arestrup is all grandfatherly concern as a French jam-maker; David Thewlis brings comic mustache-twirling villainy as the evil landlord.

If you enjoy old-fashioned sentimentality, then you'll love War Horse. But Steven Spielberg is working so hard to create an old fashioned John Ford experience, without adding anything new to the mix, that you might as well just go to Netflix and watch an actual Ford movie.

MOVIES: Shame (Steve McQueen, 2011)

2011-12-31T10:25:00.000-08:00

Shame made me angrier than any movie has in a long time. It presents itself as a bold story of sexual addiction, which is merely an idea it uses to tell an utterly conventional story that reinforces the most Puritan strain of American sexual morality.

In the world of Shame, the only acceptable sex is that found within a monogamous long-term relationship, and even that is only allowed in moderation. Frequent sex, sex with multiple partners, or sexual activity entered into for physical pleasure (as opposed to emotional bonding) is to be condemned in the harshest terms.

Brandon (Michael Fassbender) is the movie's protagonist, and because he is attractive enough to pick up women easily, and wealthy enough to hire prostitutes when he likes -- and above all else, because he has lots of sex -- he must be miserably unhappy and incapable of any basic human decency.

His sister (Carey Mulligan) arrives for a visit, and though it's clear that he has her own emotional problems, the blame for her choices and the things that happen to her is placed squarely at Brandon's feet, because y'know, he's a slut.

One particularly offensive moment: Late in the movie, Brandon is put through a "long dark night of the soul" moment, during which he sinks ever deeper into compulsively self-destructive behavior. How does director/co-writer Steve McQueen choose to tell us that Brandon has gone as low as he can go? Why, with a visit to a gay sex club, of course, because nothing's more degrading than that.

Even beyond the movie's ghastly Puritanism, it's just not that well made. McQueen is fond of slow and static moments, apparently thinking there's something profound about them. Take, for instance, Mulligan's 5-minute rendition of "New York, New York," an optimistic anthem that she slogs through as if it were a suicide note; or the long, long, looooooong shot of Fassbender jogging through Manhattan in the middle of the night.

Awful, offensive, insulting, cheap movie. Run from it as fast as your little legs will carry you.

MOVIES: A Dangerous Method (David Cronenberg, 2011)

2011-12-30T17:22:00.000-08:00

A Dangerous Method is a somewhat aimless ramble through a few years in the lives of Carl Jung (Michael Fassbender), Sigmund Freud (Viggo Mortensen), and Sabina Spielrein (Keira Knightley), a woman who begins as Jung's patient before becoming Freud's, and ultimately becoming their colleague in psychotherapy.

Fassbender and Mortensen give blandly competent performances, both speaking in the slightly formal, vaguely English-accented tones that signify "cultured European" in Hollywood movies.

Knightley, by contrast, is anything but bland, especially in the first twenty minutes of the movie, when the character is at her most disturbed. It's a festival of tics as Knightley jerks and shrieks and chokes her words out through clenched teeth, with an attempted Russian accent that veers unpredictably from nonexistent to full-on Boris Badenov. It is without a doubt the most embarassing performance of the year.

The movie can't make up its mind what story it wants to tell. At first, it looks like it's going to be the story of Jung curing Spielrein of her sexual neuroses, then it turns into a romance between the two, then it's the story of the disintegration of the Freud/Jung relationship. And none of the stories are very interesting.

MOVIES: Albert Nobbs (Rodrigo Garcia, 2011)

2011-12-30T09:20:00.000-08:00

Glenn Close has been trying to get Albert Nobbs made for 30 years, since playing the role in a stage version of the story. It's the story of a woman living as a man in 19th-century Dublin. Albert has been Albert for so long that he doesn't even remember the name he was born with; he took on a male identity in order to survive financially after being orphaned in his early teens.

The movie is beautifully appointed, with lovely sets and costumes, and the period details are spot on. I found that it took a few minutes to adjust to the Irish accents, but eventually got used to it.

The problem with the movie is what I think of "Boys Don't Cry Syndrome." That is, because Glenn Close is not for a second convincing as a man, you leave the movie thinking not so much about Albert's plight as about the fact that everyone else in Dublin is a frickin' idiot for not catching on.

To be sure, Albert Nobbs has a huge advantage over Boys Don't Cry in that Glenn Close, unlike Hilary Swank, can act. As wrong as she is for the role physically, the rest of the performance is excellent. Albert's pain and fear of being discovered are palpable, and his hope of finding a happy ending with one of the hotel's maids (Mia Wasikowska) is contagious, even though we know how unlikely it is.

Doing a much better job with the male drag is Janet McTeer as Hubert, a woman living under similar circumstances. (The sheer coincidence of these two winding up employed by the same Dublin hotel does not bear much scrutiny.) McTeer is very believable as a man, to the extent that in a scene where Albert and Hubert decide (for the first time in many years) to put on dresses, she actually looks like a man in drag.

Not anything you need to rush out and see, but worth catching when it hits cable or Netflix.

MOVIES: Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (Brad Bird, 2011)

2011-12-29T17:19:00.000-08:00

You don't expect much from the fourth installment of an action franchise, but this one's a terrific popcorn flick. There are a couple of great action sequences, and a story that holds together reasonably well and provides stakes high enough to hold our attention.

No one is called on for any great acting, to be sure, but Tom Cruise, Jeremy Renner, and Paula Patton are pretty to look at and fight well, and Simon Pegg provides effective comic relief.

The movie's high points are both set in Dubai -- the much-promoted sequences in which Cruise climbs the outside of the Burj Dubai tower, and an even better chase scene set during a dust storm.

Lots of fun, and a very pleasant surprise.

MOVIES: The Adventures of Tintin (Steven Spielberg, 2011)

2011-12-29T17:15:00.000-08:00

If you come to The Adventures of Tintin with a pre-existing fondness for the characters, you may enjoy the movie; if not, I think you're going to find them flat and uninteresting, and the story predictably simple.

On the plus side, these are the best CGI humans we've seen yet, only occasionally slipping into creepy "uncanny valley" territory; it's helped by the fact that they're not quite going for photorealism, and the characters retain just a little bit of cartoonishness (there are a lot of enormous noses). Some of the action sequences are exciting, and John Williams' score is a lively rouser in much the same style as his Raiders work.

But the characters are paper-thin, given one characteristic apiece, at most. Tintin is intrepid; Thomson and Thompson are bumbling incompetents; Haddock is a drunk (and the movie treats that as a joke in an offensive way). They're cardboard cutouts being pushed around the world in service of a story that's not very interesting, and it doesn't add up to very much.

MOVIES: Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (Stephen Daldry, 2011)

2011-12-26T16:34:00.000-08:00

There are some interesting things to be found here, notably a couple of fine supporting performances, but the movie is done in by some lazy screenwriting choices and a horrible lead performance.

Here's a screenwriting challenge for you: Your central character is a young child; his parents are important characters, but they have relatively little screen time. You need to be sure, despite their limited time in the movie, that they make a strong impact and come across as likable, devoted parents.

You could work hard on writing their few scenes to give them those characteristics, or you could take the lazy way out, as screenwriter Eric Roth and director Stephen Daldry have done: cast Tom Hanks and Sandra Bullock in the roles, and let the audience's affection for those actors do the work for you.

Similarly lazy, and bordering on vulgar and offensive, is the use of 9/11 as the movie's generic tragedy. The movie centers on a child's attempt to cope with the death of his father; for plot purposes, that death could have come about in just about any way imaginable. Admittedly, this one can't be blamed on Roth and Daldry; Jonathan Safran Foer's novel takes the hit for this choice.

Oskar, the child at the center of the film, is played by Thomas Horn, who is making his acting debut after having been spotted by the producers on Jeopardy! He is painfully bad, particularly in the more emotional moments. The movie relies heavily on his voice-over narration (another bit of screenwriting laziness), and he delivers every line with the same ponderous solemnity.

There are two marvelous supporting performances that almost make the movie worth seeing. Jeffrey Wright plays one of the many people who cross paths with Oskar during the film; one of the movie's worst moments, a particularly vile bit of cheap tear-jerking, is the monologue Oskar addresses to Wright. The marvel is that Wright, simply by sitting there and listening with absolute attention, sincerity, and conviction, comes damn close to making the scene bearable. It is a spectacular reminder that acting is much more than what you're doing when you're delivering lines.

Even better is Max von Sydow, who doesn't get to deliver any lines at all; his character has suffered trauma of his own, and as a result, he does not speak. But when he arrives about halfway through the movie, he is the first character who feels like an actual person, and the strength of his performance elevates Horn almost to believability.

But even with such solid support, Horn isn't capable of the performance this movie needs, and since he is the indisputable star of the movie, it collapses around him. Even with a better actor in the lead, though, I don't think the movie works, and I'd still be offended by its use of a national tragedy in so cavalier a way.

MOVIES: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (Tomas Alfredson, 2011)

2011-12-26T16:31:00.000-08:00

I have not read John Le Carre's Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, though after seeing this adaptation, I'd like to. It seems fairly clear that there's an interesting story being told, but in condensing it down to 2 hours, so much detail has been lost that the result is a confusing muddle.

Gary Oldman stars as George Smiley, a recently ousted British intelligence agent who's brought back for a secret mission. It's the early 70s, the Cold War is in full swing, and there is apparently a Russian mole at the very top of the organization. Smiley is tasked with finding him.

There's a marvelous cast of actors here. Ciaran Hinds, Toby Jones, David Dencik, and Colin Firth are Smiley's four principal suspects; Benedict Cumberbatch is his young assistant; Tom Hardy is an unpredictably rebellious agent; John Hurt is the former director of British intelligence.

But the screenplay by Bridget O'Connor and Peter Straughan condenses the story so tightly that every single line of dialogue is freighted with significance. You barely have time to breathe here (and don't even think about taking a restroom break); if you miss a small detail in the first five minutes, you're likely to spend the rest of the movie confused by everything that happens.

You have to remove some detail when you turn a novel into a movie, but there are limits, and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy goes well beyond them. You can't shrink a novel, especially a complex espionage tale, down to a haiku and expect anyone to make sense of the results.

MOVIES: Carnage (Roman Polanski, 2011)

2011-12-26T16:28:00.000-08:00

A child has been assaulted, and a group of well-meaning but rather clueless adults come together (in the absence of both the perpetrator and the victim) to argue about what would be a just resolution. Hmmm....what might have attracted Roman Polanski to such a story?

Carnage, based on Yasmina Reza's play God of Carnage, is a talky bore, marred by miscasting, loathsome characters, and a story that simply isn't all that interesting.

The setting is the New York apartment of Michael and Penelope (John C. Reilly and Jodie Foster), whose son has been attacked by another boy; the assailant's parents, Alan and Nancy (Christoph Waltz and Kate Winslet), have agreed to a meeting to discuss the situation.

And the next 79 minutes (yes, the movie's that short, which is mercy in this case) are utterly predictable, as the veneer of polite civility breaks down (especially once the booze is broken out), and the four find themselves shrieking sub-Albee insults and accusations at one another.

Waltz comes off the best of the four, with a vicious icy politeness that never quite fades and does nothing to disguise the fact that he's the most ruthless of the four, and the one who's least interested in being there.

Foster is badly miscast. There needs to be a sharp class distinction between the couples, I think, with Foster and Reilly being more nouveau riche than the other couple, who come from older money; Foster feels as if she'd be far more comfortable in Winslet's role. Reilly is somewhat better suited to his role, though he lacks the physical menace that I think the part needs. (James Gandolfini played the role on Broadway, and Matt Dillon was originallly announced for the part in the movie; either would have been an improvement.)

But ultimately, the problem is that there's no story here to hold our attention; it's just four people in a room being nasty to one another. The movie's message doesn't seem to go any deeper than "people are bastards, especially when they're pretending not to be."

MOVIES: Young Adult (Ivan Reitman, 2011)

2011-12-26T16:25:00.000-08:00

Charlize Theron stars as Mavis, a writer of factory-line young adult novels in the Sweet Valley High mode whose career is about to come to an end; her series is being discontinued, as no one much cares about teenage romance these days unless there are vampires involved.

Even without that blow, Mavis would be a bit of a mess; she's a serious drunk who's never really left adolescence. So when she discovers that her old high school sweetheart (Patrick Wilson) and his wife have just had a baby, that somehow triggers in her the conviction that he really does still love her, and she just needs to go remind him of that.

Once Mavis arrives in her old home town, she winds up spending much of her time with Matt (Patton Oswalt), another former classmate. They hadn't been close in high school, and they only meet now because they happen to be at the same bar.

The performances are good. Theron is to be commended for her absolute commitment to Mavis's loathsomeness; there's not an ounce of typical movie star "you must love me" in the performance. And over the last few years while no one was really paying attention, Oswalt has turned into quite a good actor, and he's the best thing about the movie; he's nursing his own high school wounds (literal and metaphoric) in ways that are only slightly more adult than Mavis, and he's perhaps the most immature voice of reason the movies have ever seen.

But Diablo Cody's script falls flat. You wouldn't expect from these characters the same sort of whiplash-inducing pop culture references that you got in Juno, but what we get in its place is a steady drip of nastiness and cruelty. Despite the best attempt of all involved, it's hard to make that either funny or entertaining. This is the first Reitman movie that's left me feeling sort of meh.

MOVIES: Coriolanus (Ralph Fiennes, 2011)

2011-12-11T10:00:00.000-08:00

Coriolanus is not one of the more popular Shakespeare plays, and I think this was the first time I'd seen a Shakespeare movie without having first read the play, or at least a summary of the story. So I was a little nervous about whether I'd be able to follow things, but Ralph Fiennes has assembled such a good cast that even if you don't follow every single line, the gist and emotional thrust of the scene always comes through, and the story's very easy to follow.

Fiennes has updated the story to the present day, and we begin in "a place calling itself Rome," which is not quite our Rome. The opening scenes feel rather like Shakespeare's take on the 99%/1% political rhetoric of our day; the masses are starving, and there are riots throughout Rome, notably at the Central Grain Depot. The people place the blame largely on Gaius Martius (Fiennes), a general who holds the masses in contempt.

Martius leads a successful defense against an invasion from the neighboring Volscians, with his principal victory coming at the city of Corioles; for this victory, the Senate confers on him the honorific "Coriolanus." They are prepared to name Martius the new consul -- ruler of the city -- but tradition requires that their choice be ratified by the people, and Martius's inability (and unwillingness) to communicate with them leads to serious conflict.

The cast includes Gerard Butler as Martius's longtime rival, the Volscian general Aufidius; Vanessa Redgrave as his mother, Volumnia; and the ubiquitous Jessica Chastain as his wife, Virgilia. Best of all is Brian Cox as Martius's principal political ally, the senator Menenius, who is particularly delightful in the early going, when he's the ultimate glad-handing schmoozer; he's just as good, though, when his story moves into darker territory.

Coriolanus is a marvelous war story, a tale of a man brought down by his pride and snobbery, and if it's not quite as compelling a story as those of the major tragedies, Fiennes makes as entertaining a movie of it as one could want.

MOVIES: We Need to Talk About Kevin (Lynne Ramsay, 2011)

2011-12-11T09:58:00.000-08:00

What is a mother to do when she finds herself raising a child that she doesn't like very much, a child who she comes to believe may be so evil as to be unworthy of love at all? That's the dilemma facing Eva (Tilda Swinton) in We Need to Talk About Kevin, a chilly and impressionistic look at a woman coping with her own sense of responsibility after her teenage son kills several of his high school classmates.

Director Lynne Ramsay fragments the story, jumping back and forth in time, giving us tiny pieces of information and trusting us to put them together. And as we do, the real horror of Eva's situation begins to sink in: Her son hasn't been warped by bad parenting; he's simply a budding sociopath from day one.

And we get to watch him grow up, with three different actors playing the role. Kudos to Ramsay and casting director Billy Hopkins for finding three kids who look enough alike to be convincing, and for getting such creepy, affectless performances from all three -- Rocky Duer as the world's most malevolent toddler, Jasper Newell as a willfully bratty pre-teen, and Ezra Miller (who gets the most screen time of the three) as the teenaged Kevin.

It's Swinton's movie, though, and she's very good here, struggling to cope not only with her son, but with a husband (John C. Reilly, whose amiable doofus shtick is put to good use) who doesn't see the problem, and with a marriage that's disintegrating under the strain.

Sadly, the movie is not up to the level of the performances from Swinton and Miller. Ramsay's hopscotching through time feels somewhat aimless, and gets tiring after a while; it begins to feel as if Ramsay is withholding information not for any particular storytelling purpose, but merely for the sake of being artsy and cryptic. Worth seeing, though, for the strength of the central performances.

A note to those of you in Los Angeles: The movie's having a one-week Oscar qualifying run here (it'll re-open more widely in January), at the Silent Movie on Fairfax. That's an odd choice for such a run, and it's not a good place to see a movie. It's a cramped room with ancient, uncomfortable seating, a tiny screen, and a terrible sound system. It's currently used mostly for eccentric repertory screenings at night, and rarely does regular runs of first-run films. Unless you really feel compelled to see the movie right now, I'd wait to see it in a real theater in January.

BOOKS: 11/22/63, Stephen King (2011)

2011-12-08T10:51:00.000-08:00

A time-travel tale in which a Maine high-school teacher goes back to try and stop the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

Well, eventually, he does that, but not until King has spent nearly 300 pages on an entirely unrelated trip to the past. It's not until 400 pages in that Lee Harvey Oswald makes his first appearance, and we're still only halfway through the book.

Lord knows King can tell an entertaining story, and this book is no exception. But he's now become so popular and famous that he's not required to submit to editing, and apparently has no interest in editing himself. The bloat here is terrible. There's some fancy technobabble at the end about the cumulative impact of all these trips to the past, but by that point, it comes off as only an attempt to justify his lazy refusal to edit.

At half the length, this could have been one of the year's best books. Not great literature, certainly, but a wonderful, breezy time travel tale. At 840 pages, it's mostly a sad example of an author who's become too big to be disciplined anymore.

BOOKS: When She Woke, Hillary Jordan (2011)

2011-12-08T10:45:00.000-08:00

Here we have a near-future reimagining of The Scarlet Letter. It is also, though you won't see these dreaded words on the book or in any of its advertising, a science fiction novel.

A sexually transmitted plague has greatly reduced global fertility, and contributed to the rise of theocratic government in much of the United States. Abortion is banned in most states, and our protagonist, Hannah Payne, has just been convicted of murder for having an abortion. Her punishment is to be Chromed -- to have her skin color medically altered so that she is instantly visible and recognizable as a murderer. (Murderers become red, sex offenders blue, relatively minor offenses yellow, and so on.)

Thanks to Chroming, the prison system has been largely shut down, with only the most violent and dangerous offenders being jailed; people like Hannah are simply released into society to make their way as best they can, which isn't easy, given that Chromes (especially Reds and Blues) are social pariahs.

Jordan doesn't give us all that much plot; Hannah spends some time at a religious halfway house before finding her way to an Underground Railroad of sorts that helps Chromes get to Canada, where Chroming is viewed with horror. Instead, the novel is a cautionary "if this goes on" tale, giving us a glimpse into a world in which government and religion have become closely intertwined.

The notion of Chroming is the most interesting thing in the book, and it raises a lot of fascinating questions and possible stories that are beyond Jordan's scope here. I would love to see Jordan return to this world for more novels, but given how carefully the book's publicity has avoided the science fiction label, I don't expect that to happen. "Literary" authors, after all, don't stoop to writing sequels and creating franchises.

TV: catching up on some new stuff

2011-12-06T19:56:00.000-08:00

A bunch of new stuff I hadn't gotten around to posting about yet:

I Hate My Teenage Daughter (Fox, Wed 9:30)

(or: When Bad Sitcoms Happen to Good Actors, Part I)

Finally, we get what is officially the last new show of the Fall 2011 season, and what is certainly one of its least impressive efforts. Jamie Pressly and Katie Finneran star as best friends, both of whom were social outcasts in high school. They want desperately for their daughters to have a happier teenage experience than they did, but are horrified to see the girls becoming precisely the same sort of spoiled brats who made their own lives so miserable. Pressly and Finneran are both marvelous comic actresses, and my god, they're giving it everything they've got, trying desperately to pull laughs out of nowhere. But talent only goes so far when there's no material to support it, and there's not a joke to be found anywhere.

The Exes (TV Land, Wed 10:30)

(or: When Bad Sitcoms Happen to Good Actors, Part II)TV Land's latest attempt to find a companion piece for Hot in Cleveland is a step up from Teenage Daughter, but it only rises as far as amiable blandness. In what has quickly become TV Land style, the cast is mostly made up of actors you remember from previous sitcom work. Kristen Johnston stars as Holly, a divorce attorney who sets up her newly-single clients in need of new homes as roommates in the apartment across the hall from her own. As we begin, the apartment is occupied by ladies' man Phil (Donald Faison, getting to stretch the most from his old image) and inert lump Haskell (Wayne Knight, adding to his resume of vaguely creepy slobs).

They're about to be joined by new roomie Stuart (David Alan Basche, who's been playing second banana roles on flop sitcoms for a decade now; you'll know the face, even if you don't know the name), who seems to be a recent graduate from the Felix Unger School of Roommate Annoyance.

Again, the material isn't up to the level of the cast, though the characters are more likable than those of Teenage Daughter (but then, a crippling migraine is more likable than those characters). This one might be worth checking in on in a few weeks to see if it's gotten its bearings yet. (And I think the show's one relative unknown, Kelly Stables, will eventually go on to better things; she's got the charm and timing of a young Sarah Jessica Parker.)

Would You Rather? With Graham Norton (BBC America, Sat 11)

The British panel show is a distinctive genre that's never really quite caught on in American television. A host poses questions or discussion topics to a panel of celebrities, who are expected to answer in delightfully witty style (a touch of bawdiness is always welcome, too). The host may award points for the best answers, and a winner may be named at the end, but the scorekeeping is always distinctly secondary to the banter, the spontaneous one-liners, and the general sense of jolly conviviality. What's My Line and the early versions of To Tell the Truth had some of the spirit, but they weren't as witty, and they took the game far too seriously; Hollywood Squares had the right sense of humor, but everything was scripted, and the improvisational nature of the thing is a key factor. The genre's had more success here in radio, where Wait Wait Don't Tell Me is a fine example of the form.

As part of BBC America's first ventures into original programming for its American audience (as opposed to programming imported from the UK), we're being offered this panel show, hosted by Graham Norton, whose chat show is a staple on the network. Here, he has a panel of four celebrities -- that is to say, one person you've heard of and three B-level standup comics -- to whom he poses a series of "would you rather" questions, such as "Would you rather spend the rest of your life with the voice of Darth Vader, or with the voice of Alvin the Chipmunk?"

The best of these shows rely heavily on the interplay among the regular panelists, who learn how to riff off one another and how to set up one another's jokes. Obviously, in the early stages of the show, that chemistry doesn't exist yet, so the show's going to be heavily reliant from week to week on how well that week's guests improvise. Based on the first two episodes, it'll be a bit of a bumpy ride for a while, but Norton's a charmingly naughty host. Hardly essentially viewing, but mildly amusing if you've nothing better to do on a Saturday night.

MOVIES: Rampart (Oren Moverman, 2011)

2011-11-30T14:27:00.000-08:00

There is corruption and evil in the world. Now that you know this, you have no need to see Rampart.

The movie's getting a one-week release here in LA as a long-shot Oscar bid for Woody Harrelson, who stars as a corrupt cop. It's set in 1999, at the height of the corruption scandal in the Rampart Division of the LAPD. Harrelson is a detective working out of Rampart who's caught on tape beating a guy nearly to death; he suspects that the presence of the video camera (they weren't yet part of every single cell phone in the world) is too big a coincidence, and that he's been set up by the department to distract the media from the bigger, more complicated Rampart scandal. That might be true, but the problem he has in making that case is that he really is a hateful, loathsome, incredibly corrupt cop.

There's a large cast of terrific actors surrounding Harrelson -- Sigourney Weaver, Robin Wright, Cynthia Nixon, Anne Heche, Ned Beatty, Steve Buscemi, Ice Cube -- but none of them have been given anything to do that might distract from Harrelson's hamming it up. He's evil, by god, and so determined for us to know it that he's a mere mustache twirl from being Snidely Whiplash.

Not worth your time.

MOVIES: Hugo (Martin Scorsese, 2011)

2011-11-30T11:29:00.000-08:00

When I first heard that Martin Scorsese was making a family film, I couldn't help but remember Bette Midler's response to the 1973 megaflop Lost Horizon: "I never miss a Liv Ullmann musical!" The thought of a Scorsese kid's flick triggers the same sort of disconnect, a mix of morbid curiosity and vague "this can't be a good idea" dread.

Sadly, the dread is justified, because Hugo is, even in its better first half, an uneven mess. Asa Butterfield stars as Hugo Cabret, an orphan living in the walls of a Paris train station, where he tends to the clocks and avoids being discovered by the station's inspector (Sacha Baron Cohen), a tyrant who lives to send orphans to the orphanage.

Hugo's late father left him a mechanical man which he is trying to repair, believing that it will deliver a final message from his father. He gets help from Isabelle (Chloe Grace Moretz), the goddaughter of the man who runs the station's toy store (Ben Kingsley).

And up to that point, when it's just a kid's adventure movie, Hugo isn't terrible. Scorsese's visual flair comes through in some lovely shots, and there are some nice supporting performances among the background characters (Christopher Lee is charming as a kindly librarian). But Butterfield lacks charm or charisma, and he and Moretz feel like 21st-century kids playing dressup in 1920s clothes; the slapstick bits for Baron Cohen are badly timed and not funny; and Kingsley's grumpy grandpa is a familiar one-note bore.

And when the mechanical man gets repaired and turns out to be connected to early film pioneer Georges Melies, the movie stops being even mildly entertaining, turning into a long series of lectures and public service announcements about silent film history and the importance of film preservation.

Film history and preservation have long been important issues to Scorsese, but better he should have simply made a good documentary about Melies than to bury a bad one inside this movie, a didactic "family" film that will likely bore kids and parents alike.

MOVIES: The Descendants (Alexander Payne, 2011)

2011-11-29T14:22:00.000-08:00

The holidays are here, and with them, the arrival of the year's designated Oscar Movies. You know the type -- serious drama with just a touch of humor, big movie star, important subject, everything perfectly respectable and slightly on the stodgy side.

As a perfect exemplar of the form, I give you The Descendants, with George Clooney as a man whose wife is in a coma after a boating accident, and doesn't have long to live. He's already stressed out about how he's going to raise his two daughters on his own ("I'm the backup parent," he says in the overly long voice-over narration that begins the movie) when he learns that before the accident, his wife had been cheating on him.

The performances are generally good, with the standouts being Shailene Woodley as the older daughter; Robert Forster as Clooney's father-in-law; and Judy Greer (why is she not a huge star already?), who has a small role, but gets every second of it just right.

But there's something polite and tepid about the movie, especially coming from director Alexander Payne, who seems to have sanded off all of the rough edginess we've come to expect from him. The Descendants is skillfully crafted, and you'll probably enjoy it, but you'll never be surprised by it, and you know exactly what you're going to get from it before it even starts. It is this year's The King's Speech, which means it's probably going to win the Oscar.

MOVIES: The Artist (Michael Hazanavicius, 2011)

2011-11-29T10:24:00.000-08:00

The Artist is a black-and-white silent film about the death of silent film. It's equal parts Singin' in the Rain and A Star Is Born, with homages along the way to everything from Citizen Kane to Vertigo, and it's one of the best movies of the year.

It opens in 1927, when George Valentin (Dujardin) is the biggest movie star in the world. But sound is about to change the movies, and George has no interest in what he sees as gimmickry. Making the adjustment more easily is Peppy Miller (Bejo), who has clawed her way up from extra to leading lady, and replaced George in the public's eye.

Their relationship is the heart of the story, and the two are absolutely charming, both individually and together. Dujardin plays George as sort of a Douglas Fairbanks swashbuckler, and even when his characters are at their most roguish, you understand why audiences love him. Bejo is more of an "America's Sweetheart" type, almost cloyingly sweet at moments, but her intense warmth and large, expressive eyes cut through the treacle whenever it threatens to become overwhelming.

They dominate the movie, but there are nice small turns from John Goodman as a studio executive, James Cromwell as George's manservant, and Penelope Ann Miller as George's increasingly neglected wife.

The Artist uses its throwback style in delightful and surprising ways (the black-and-white lighting is gorgeously done), Ludovic Bource's score hits all the right emotional notes without ever resorting to mere Mickey Mousing. It's a joyful wonder of a movie.

MOVIES: The Muppets (James Bobin, 2011)

2011-11-28T14:22:00.000-08:00

The Muppets asks a simple question: -- Are simple things like song and laughter still relevant in our cold, cynical age? -- and answers it with a resounding "Hell, yes!"

As we open, Gary and Mary (Jason Segel and Amy Adams) are on their way to Los Angeles to celebrate their tenth anniversary of dating; they're accompanied by Gary's brother Walter (a puppet), a lifelong Muppet fan who can't wait to visit the Muppet Studios. Alas, the studios have fallen on hard times, and are about to be torn down by oil tycoon Tex Richman (Chris Cooper) unless Walter can convince the Muppets to re-unite for a fund-raising telethon to save the place.

The movie does drag a bit in the middle, and there are one or two subplots too many; as much as I love her, I think Amy Adams' character could have been written out entirely without losing much. But the musical numbers are delightful (well, mostly; I'm not sure that Cooper's rap number was a good idea); the "getting the band back together" sequence is great fun; and the movie's final act, in which the Muppets take the stage to do what they do best, had me grinning from ear to ear.

As in every Muppet movie, there are a variety of celebrity cameos, spanning the generations from Rico Rodriguez to Mickey Rooney; Jim Parsons' beautifully conceived appearance gets one of the movie's biggest laughs. But the heart of the movie is, of course, the Muppets themselves, and those marvelous characters have such warmth and charm that you can't help but smile when they're on screen.

It takes a few minutes to get used to the absence of the voices of Frank Oz and the late Jim Henson (Eric Jacobson's Fozzie is particularly problematic), but when Kermit breaks into "The Rainbow Connection," or when Camilla and her fellow chickens take the stage for their big number, those concerns melt away.

BOOKS: Out of Oz, Gregory Maguire (2011)

2011-11-28T14:19:00.000-08:00

After the mild disappointments of Son of a Witch and A Lion Among Men, this fourth volume brings the "Wicked Years" series to a satisfying conclusion.

The principal surviving characters from the first three volumes return -- Glinda; Elphaba's son, Liir, and his wife, Candle; the Lion Brrr (who doesn't much appreciate the whole "Cowardly" thing) -- and they spend much of the book wandering around Oz, trying to protect the Grimmerie, the immensely powerful book of magic that may be the key to ending the civil war between Munchkinland and the rest of Oz.

The major new character is Liir and Candle's daughter, Rain, who as the female descendant of Elphaba -- hereditary government in Oz is matriarchal -- is also being hunted by both sides. And there are return appearances by a few characters who've been absent from the scene for some time.

The book takes place over the course of ten years or so, and Maguire's not always as clear as he could be about indicating how much time has passed since we last saw character X. He's also a bit too fond of winking references to Judy Garland and the 1939 movie, as though Dorothy and Judy Garland were one and the same; a reference to the Emerald City being overrun by Dorothy impersonators was a bit much, for instance.

But the plot lines left dangling from earlier volumes are mostly wrapped up here, and Maguire's characters are rich and convincing; I was always fond of his Glinda, and it's nice to see her get a good-sized role here.

This is billed prominently as "the final volume in The Wicked Years," which it well may be. But there is ample room for Maguire to return to Oz (perhaps under a new series name?); several of his characters are left at the beginnings of new phases in their lives which would make interesting stories, and there's an entire pre-Wicked history of Oz that could be fruitfully explored. And given the relative lack of success of his non-Oz novels, I'd be quite surprised if he doesn't eventually find some reason to get back there.

MOVIES: J. Edgar (Clint Eastwood, 2011)

2011-11-26T15:17:00.000-08:00

J. Edgar is exactly what you'd expect a Clint Eastwood biopic to be -- overly reverent and a bit stodgy. It's salvaged, to some extent, by some fine acting.

The story jumps back and forth from the late 60s, when Hoover is dictating his memoirs to an assortment of young agents (all of them strikingly handsome), to the 20s and 30s, as we watch Hoover's version of the events in question. (The movie mostly skips over the 40s/50s.)

Leonardo DiCaprio is quite good as Hoover, though his accent does wobble a bit; he does a fine job of capturing the mix of patriotism, paranoia, and narcissism that made Hoover so dangerous when given power. Even better is Armie Hammer as his longtime companion and assistant, Clyde Tolson; Hammer is particularly strong in the movie's last act, doing a superb job of capturing the physical and vocal debilitation that followed Tolson's stroke.

Eastwood fills the movie with a lot of marvelous character actors who make strong impressions in small roles -- Stephen Root, Zach Grenier, Ken Howard, Josh Lucas, Jeffrey Donovan (as Robert Kennedy).

The movie is less coy than I'd have expected about the precise nature of the relationship between Hoover and Tolson, though Eastwood and screenwriter Dustin Lance Black aren't willing to make a definitive statement that they were lovers when we have only circumstantial evidence.

The old-age makeup on DiCaprio (and on Naomi Watts, as Hoover's longtime secretary) is quite good; Hammer's is significantly less so. Eastwood has yet again scored his own film, which is yet again a mistake; his standard piano noodlings give everything the feeling of sepia-toned elegy, which is only occasionally appropriate here.

On their own, the screenplay and direction wouldn't be enough to recommend the movie, but the performances are strong enough to make it worth renting when the DVD arrives.

MOVIES: In Time (Andrew Niccol, 2011)

2011-11-25T15:15:00.000-08:00

In Time is a servicable action thriller with unexpected political timeliness. The central gimmick is that everyone stops aging at 25, but that's when the clock starts ticking; they're given one year to live for free, but any life beyond that has to be earned (or given to you). Time is literally money; some wake up scrambling for enough time to get to tomorrow, and some have centuries of inherited wealth stored up.

Given the lead time involved in making a movie, the resonance with the Occupy Wall Street movement and the 1%/99% rhetoric is surely coincidental, but that doesn't stop it from occasionally feeling a bit heavy handed and clunky. Vincent Kartheiser, for instance, is saddled with a few too many speeches about how "for some to be immortal, many have to die."

Justin Timberlake can be an interesting actor in the right role, but he doesn't have quite the right charisma to be an action hero. He does have some nice moments with Amanda Seyfried, though, especially when they become the Bonnie and Clyde of time. Kartheiser gives the most interesting performance as the evil tycoon.

The movie's a perfectly nice piece of popcorn entertainment, and it will make for a pleasant afternoon in front of the TV when it gets to cable, but it's hardly something you need to rush out and see in the theater.

MOVIES: Melancholia (Lars von Trier, 2011)

2011-11-24T15:13:00.000-08:00

OK, I know that some people are, shall we say, rather hostile to Lars von Trier these days, but Melancholia is, by a long shot, his finest work. It's the most gentle, delicate, humane movie he's ever made. Who would have thought that the frackin' apocalypse would bring out his softer side?

The movie is set at the large country estate of Claire and John (Charlotte Gainsbourg and Kiefer Sutherland), and begins at the wedding reception of Claire's sister, Justine (Kirsten Dunst, who won the best actress award at Cannes for this performance) and Michael (Alexander Skarsgard). As the evening goes on, it becomes clear that Justine suffers from some sort of emotional disorder, and is struggling to get through the reception without giving in to her gloomy side.

During that long night, Justine spots an unfamiliar red star that turns out not to be a star at all, but the planet Melancholia, which is headed straight towards us. The second half of the movie takes place some weeks or months after the reception, when Melancholia's arrival is only days away; scientists are divided as to whether it will collide with Earth or narrowly miss.

(It would seem to me that any miss that narrow would be essentially indistinguishable from a collision in terms of the destruction that would be caused, but like Another Earth earlier this year, Melancholia is less concerned with the scientific impact of its newly discovered world than with the emotional impact.)

Performances are superb all the way around, and Dunst really is remarkable here, playing all the subtle shades of Justine's unstable emotions. There are lovely small performances from John Hurt as the sisters' randy father, Charlotte Rampling as their acerbic mother, and Udo Kier as an increasingly frazzled wedding planner.

The final moments of the movie, as the sisters wait for the end, in whatever form it may arrive, are gorgeous. It is a strangely joyful and ecstatic ending, a magical climax to a deeply moving film.

MOVIES: Tower Heist (Brett Ratner, 2011)

2011-11-23T15:11:00.000-08:00

Ben Stiller stars as Josh, the general manager of The Tower, a high-class apartment building for New York's elite. Occupying the penthouse is Arthur Shaw (Alan Alda), a Bernie Madoff type who's just been arrested for defrauding his investors. Among those investors is the pension fund of The Tower's employees, leading Josh to head up a team of several of The Tower's employees to break into Shaw's apartment and steal the money they believe is hidden there.

The team of bungling robbers includes Matthew Broderick and Gabourey Sidibe, plus Eddie Murphy as the small-time burglar recruited to be the brains of the operation; Tea Leoni gives the movie's best performance, loose and charming, as the FBI agent on Shaw's case.

It's not a horrible movie, and there are a few amusing moments; the climactic heist scene makes good use of the Macy's Thanksgiving parade. But it's a sadly unambitious movie, and everyone involved seems to be perfectly content to have cleared the "not horrible" bar, with no thought that a little more work (or, dare I say, some rehearsal) might have actually led to a good movie.

BOOKS: Anne McCaffrey, 1925-2011

2011-11-22T15:50:00.000-08:00

Anne McCaffrey has died. I hadn't kept up with her new writing for many years, but I adored the early Pern novels when I was in junior high and high school; along with the Heinlein "juveniles," they were my introduction to science fiction. R.I.P.

MOVIES: Margin Call (J.C. Chandor, 2011)

2011-11-22T15:11:00.000-08:00

Having read several glowing reviews of Margin Call, I went in with fairly high expectations. I left utterly baffled at the praise the movie's been getting.

It's the story of a Lehman-esque brokerage firm, and the long night in which they discover that the mortgage-based securities they've been peddling are so financially unstable that they could easily bankrupt the firm at any moment.

There's a large ensemble cast with a strange mix of fine actors doing their usual good work (Kevin Spacey, Jeremy Irons, Stanley Tucci), B-level stars and up-and-comers who mostly hold their own (Paul Bettany, Zachary Quinto), and some less talented folks who are painfully out of their depths in such strong company (Simon Baker, Penn Badgley, Demi Moore).

The script, which is so desperately aiming for Mamet territory, lacks the wit and the crispness (not to mention the several dozen "fuck"s) needed to be even bad Mamet. Tucci delivers a monologue about a bridge, for instance, that's filled with long strings of memorized numbers and statistics -- people just don't talk like that. And the movie is filled with speeches like that, clunky, stagey clods of text that seem to have been translated into English from some other language by someone who doesn't speak either very well.

BOOKS: All Men of Genius, Lev AC Rosen (2011)

2011-11-15T13:39:00.000-08:00

Lev AC Rosen's All Men of Genius is an odd mashup of Twelfth Night and The Importance of Being Earnest set in a steampunk Victorian London.

Violet Adams wishes to study science at Illyria College, but Duke Ernest only accepts male students, so she disguises herself as her twin brother Ashton in order to gain admission. Once she's there, she finds herself falling in love with the Duke, while simultaneously fending off the attentions of his ward, Cecily; the Duke also finds himself mysteriously drawn to "Ashton," which confuses him mightily, as he has never had any tendencies to inversion before.

(Yes, "inversion," that charmingly antiquated term for homosexuality. I suspect that the characters' generally tolerant attitudes towards inversion are somewhat out of keeping for the era, but then, they are scientists and therefore relatively well educated.)

The plot derives principally from Shakespeare, with the Wilde influence limited mostly to tossing in the character names here and there; Duke Ernest's late father, for instance, was Duke Algernon, and Illyria's faculty includes Professors Prism, Bunburry, and Bracknell. And with a plot as solid and time-tested as that of Twelfth Night, it's hard to go too wrong; the most boring parts of the story are those things added by Rosen, like the army of evil robots hidden in Illyria's labyrinthian basement.

It's also hard, however, to do anything too surprising when you're mostly playing out Shakespeare's story beat for beat; you know that "Ashton's" nemesis, Malcolm Volio, is in for a world of romantic humiliation, and that Violet and Duke Ernest will find happiness in the end.

But Rosen's version of the story is not without charm; his prose is not distinctive or memorable, perhaps, but neither is it ever particularly ungraceful. All Men of Genius is far from essential reading, but if you've always thought that what Twelfth Night really needed was some killer robots, this will make you very happy indeed.

MUSIC: LA Philharmonic, Nov 13 (Ravel/Dubugnon/Rachmaninoff)

2011-11-13T17:39:00.000-08:00

Semyon Bychkov, conductor; Katia and Marielle Labeque, pianos

The program:

Ravel: Rapsodie espagnole (2-piano version)
Dubugnon: Battlefield Concerto for Two Pianos and Double Orchestra
Rachmaninoff: Symphonic Dances

A friend asked me after the last Philharmonic concert I saw what I thought of Gustavo Dudamel, and that question was still on my mind during today's concert. I found myself thinking about how the Rachmaninoff might have been different under Dudamel than it was in Bychkov's hands.

And the things that stood out for me in today's performance were not the same types of things that I normally notice in a Dudamel concert. Today I noticed the careful calibration of dynamics, especially in long crescendos and decrescendos; the impeccable balance of melody, countermelody, and accompaniment; the rubato passages with just enough give to walk right up to schmaltz without ever tipping into it. Ask me to sum up each composer in one word, and I'd say that where Dudamel is visceral, Bychkov is precise. (Which is not to suggest, of course, that either conductor lacks the other quality.) If I could only have one of the two on a regular basis, I think I'd prefer Dudamel, but I certainly enjoyed Bychkov's Rachmaninoff very much.

As for the rest of the concert, the Labeque sisters opened the program without the orchestra; the Ravel was performed very nicely, but I go to Philharmonic concerts because I want to hear the orchestra, not for 15 minutes of unaccompanied piano.

Dubugnon's concerto had its world premiere at this weekend's concerts, and I don't think it's going to have a long life. It is not an encouraging sign, I think, when the composer describes his themes as "jingles," as Dubugnon did in his pre-concert talk, and his concerto reached just about the level of depth and subtlety that word might lead you to expect.

Dubugnon divides his orchestra in half. Each orchestra has a small, but complete complement of strings; one orchestra gets the high winds and brass (and an electric bass), and the other gets the low. The orchestras and their respective pianists get separate musical themes, with which they battle back and forth -- the piece is a musical depiction of a military battle -- until the "peace and reconciliations" movement late in the piece, when the two sets of forces begin to trade and share musical materials.

The piece is flashy and pleasant enough to listen to as it goes along, and certainly the performance was everything a composer could wish for in a premiere. But I think everything the piece has to offer is sitting right on the surface, and never had the feeling that repeated hearings would reveal anything more.

BOOKS: Machine of Death, ed. North/Bennardo/Malki! (2011)

2011-11-07T12:46:00.000-08:00

Machine of Death is an anthology inspired by this comic. Imagine a machine that takes a drop of blood, then spits out a piece of paper that tells you how you will die. No dates, mind you, and not many details. And the machine is prone to vagueness and ambiguity. If your paper says SUICIDE, for instance, you're not necessarily going to kill yourself; you might be one of the casualties of a suicide bomber.

Some predictions are less inherently vague than others, of course. A prediction like TORN APART AND DEVOURED BY LIONS doesn't seem to leave much room for interpretation, and as one character says, "I'm not likely to be hit crossing the street by a runaway colon cancer, am I?"

The 34 stories collected here are each titled with the printout from one prediction slip, usually that of the story's protagonist. There's been no effort on the part of the editors to place the stories into a single world, and different stories imagine very different societal reactions to the existence of the machine. In some, everyone is tested at birth; in others, the test is a teenage rite of passage akin to getting your driver's license.

Some of the stories are quite funny. Alexander Danner's "Aneurysm" tells of a man who finds a way to escape his ex-wife's horrid party games; Camille Alexa's "Flaming Marshmallow" reminds us that teenage cliques and peer pressure will adapt to any new circumstance.

But there's a wide range of moods -- the poignance of Pelotard's "Nothing," the heartbreak of Dalisa Chaponda's "While Trying to Save Another," the existential angst of John Chernega's "Almond," the remarkably concise resignation of Brian Quinlan's "HIV Infection from Machine of Death Needle."

Editors Ryan North, Matthew Bennardo, and David Malki! (the "!" is not a typo; that's how Malki! spells his name) are working on a second collection of Machine of Death stories, and I'm looking forward to it. I wouldn't have imagined that so many variations could be rung on a theme that seems, at first glance, rather limited.

MOVIES: Martha Marcy May Marlene (Sean Durkin, 2011)

2011-11-04T15:58:00.000-07:00

Martha (Elizabeth Olsen) has broken away from the communal farm where she's been living -- the movie never uses the word "cult," but it would certainly be appropriate -- and is staying with her sister Lucy (Sarah Paulson) and brother-in-law Ted (Hugh Dancy). She's been on that farm for several years, and is having trouble readjusting to life away from its charismatic leader, Patrick (John Hawkes). Her behavior's not always appropriate, and she's clearly been deeply affected by whatever happened to her during her years away.

Durkin's movie jumps back and forth between the farm and Lucy's lakeside summer home, gradually filling in the pieces of the puzzle. At the same time, it's painting Martha as so emotionally and psychologically unstable that we're not entirely sure how to take those farm scenes; if these are supposed to be Martha's memories of what happened, how much can we trust them, given her obvious psychological damage?

The movie increasingly plays on that ambiguity and on Martha's distrust and paranoia, teasing us with hints of resolution that it ultimately refuses to provide; the last half-hour or so, and the final scene in particular, are a frustrating exercise where we're never quite sure what Martha's seeing, or if she really is seeing what she thinks she's seeing.

Despite my irritation with the ending, I'd recommend the movie, because the performances are quite good. Olsen (who is, as I believe I am obliged to mention at some point, the younger sister of Mary Kate and Ashley) creates a very convincing portrait of a woman on the verge of complete emotional collapse, and in the earliest farm scenes, gives us a strong enough glimpse of who Martha once was that we can easily see the extent of her deterioration. Paulson is nearly as good as Lucy, who wants desperately to help but finds it nearly impossible to understand what the problem actually is; Hawkes oozes creepy charm and menace.

MOVIES: Puss in Boots (Chris Miller, 2011)

2011-11-04T15:44:00.000-07:00

The Shrek sidekick gets his own movie, a nifty western tale with moments of surprising emotional depth.

Antonio Banderas provides the voice of Puss, an outlaw on the run who falls in with the femme fatale Kitty Softpaws (Salma Hayek) and her associate Humpty Dumpty (Zach Galifianakis). Puss and Humpty have a history, and neither entirely trusts the other, but they agree to work together with Kitty in a plot to get hold of the magic beans and steal the golden goose at the top of the beanstalk.

The voice talent is mostly very good -- Billy Bob Thornton and Amy Sedaris are also on hand as Jack and Jill -- though the weak link is Galifianakis, who doesn't have his physicality to help sell the performance, and doesn't provide quite enough vocal energy. (The character looks remarkable, though, a creepy egg-child who is simultaneously riveting and repulsive.)

The jokes are funny, and less pop-culture-of-the-moment than those in the Shrek movies; they mostly avoid the obvious, and find interesting new twists on some of the things that are expected. The one catnip joke, for instance, is the best line in the movie. And kudos to Henry Jackman, whose Latin-flavored score is charming and witty.

BOOKS: Very Bad Men, Harry Dolan (2011)

2011-11-03T15:54:00.000-07:00

Seventeen years ago, five men attempted a bank robbery in Michigan. One was killed, one got away, and three were arrested and send to prison. They're all out now, and someone is killing them. The killer's rather proud of his work, going so far as to leave a manuscript confessing to the first killing outside the office door of David Loogan, editor of a small mystery magazine whose girlfriend Elizabeth happens to be a detective on the Ann Arbor police force.

As David and Elizabeth try to figure out, through her official channels and his less official ones, who the killer is and what his motives might be, they wind their way deeper into a complicated case involving an ambitious tabloid reporter, a Senate campaign, and two generations of family secrets.

Dolan has a large cast of characters and a complicated plot here, and he does a marvelous job of keeping the narrative clear. The twists, turns, and revelations do start to pile on a bit too thick in the final act, perhaps, but you won't be confused by any of it. The characters are interesting and convincing, and the mystery is cleverly plotted, with one clue ingeniously revealed through a combination of two elements you wouldn't expect to play a significant role in such a story: grammar and synasthesia.

TV: Allen Gregory (Fox, Sun 8:30)

2011-11-02T13:29:00.000-07:00

The latest addition to Fox's Sunday animation lineup, and what a mess it is.

Allen Gregory DeLongpre (voiced by Jonah Hill, who also produces the show) is an obnoxiously precocious 7-year-old who wears nothing but suits, looks down on everyone, and believes himself to be the most important person in any room. When his gay dads face some sort of financial crisis, he is no longer able to be home-schooled and forced to attend public school, where he does not fit in very well.

That isn't an inherently awful premise, but for the show to work, we would have to have some reason to root for Allen Gregory, and we don't; he's utterly loathsome. But then, in this show, everyone treats everyone else with contempt, and there's not a single decent human being to be found. Allen Gregory and dad Richard (French Stewart) heap abuse on younger, hunkier dad Jeremy (Nat Faxon); the school superintendent (Will Forte) dumps on the principal (Renee Taylor); everyone dumps on Allen Gregory's adopted Cambodian sister. The only person Allen Gregory likes is the principal, a morbidly obese elderly woman with whom he falls instantly in love, declaring that they are destined to spend their lives in bliss together.

An odd quirk of the casting/drawing of the characters to mention: Richard looks and sounds so much like Community's Dean Pelton that I was sure he must be voiced by Jim Rash, who plays that character; Rash happens to be the writing partner of Faxon, who voices the other dad. Rash and Faxon don't appear to be involved in the writing of this show, so I guess it's just a coincidence.

The visual style of the animation is sleek and attractive (and Jeremy is pretty darned hot, as animated characters go), but that is the only thing the show has to offer, and it's not enough to make me want to spend any more time with these horrid people.

BOOKS: Dominance, Will Lavender (2011)

2011-10-31T16:00:00.000-07:00

Lavender crams an awful lot of story into this book. Here's the setup:

We alternate between two time frames. Fifteen years ago, Alex was one of nine literature students taking a special night class taught by the renowned Richard Aldiss; he's teaching by TV feed from prison, having been convicted of murdering two of his students. Aldiss's class, he tells the students, will lead them to the answer to one of the great modern literary mysteries: the identity of "Paul Fallows," the pseudonym used by an author who wrote two brilliant novels before his death. No one has ever been able to figure out who Fallows really was.

Alex quickly figures out that the mystery of Paul Fallows is closely tied to the murders for which Aldiss has been convicted, and that she can't solve one riddle without solving both. Which -- and this is hardly a spoiler, since Lavender tells you this very early on -- she does, becoming a hero in the literary world for solving the Fallows mystery, and not so much a hero for getting Aldiss freed from prison.

Jump to the future, where someone has started killing members of that special class, in precisely the same way that those two students were killed so many years ago. Could Aldiss have done it after all? Did Fallows ever really die? Is one of Alex's classmates a murderer?

So there's a lot going on here. Too much, really, and by trying to stuff two novels' worth of story into one not particularly thick book, Lavender can't give either piece of the puzzle the attention it deserves. Everything is rushed, and clues fall with loud thuds instead of being gracefully planted along the way. There's no time for character development beyond a few broad strokes, and since no one really has much personality, it's hard to care very much when any of them are killed off. The identity of the killer is painfully obvious -- the Rule of the Unnecessary Character will serve you well here -- and there's a final cutesy twist of ambiguity that's meant to make us rethink the entire resolution we've just been given, but only annoys.

(Which, it seems to me, misses the whole point of the mystery novel. The appeal for most mystery readers, I think, is that we get to see justice done, to see evil punished. When you follow "and the killer was caught, and the good people lived happily ever after" with "or did they?," you rob us of that basic element of the genre.)

Lavender certainly has ideas and imagination to spare. If he can learn to pare them down to more manageable size, he might write a pretty good book some day.

TV: Grimm (NBC, Fri 9)

2011-10-29T18:44:00.000-07:00

The second fairy tale inspired show of the new season, this one focusing on the dark, scary side of things.

Portland police detective Nick Burkhardt (David Giuntoli) has begun to see strange things, like monstrous faces on random passersby. His aunt Marie (Kate Burton) arrives in town to tell him that she's dying of cancer, and that with her death, the family gift/curse will be passed to him. Nick's family are Grimms, people with the ability to see the monsters who live among us for what they are, and it is their responsibility to hunt and kill those monsters.

So what we have is a supernatural police procedural, in which Nick will be tracking down a different fairy tale monster each week, with the help of his partner Hank (Russell Hornsby); the show will presumably milk much dramatic tension from Nick's having to get Hank's help without telling him about his Grimm-ness or the things he can see. Also helping Nick will be Eddie (Silas Weir Mitchell, bringing the show its only burst of charm and energy), a reformed "big bad wolf" (not, mind you, the big bad wolf) who stays on the side of good through "a strict regimen of diet, exercise, and Pilates.'

Now, I have always preferred the whimsical side of the fairy tale to the dark and scary side, so it's to be expected that I much preferred Once Upon a Time to this show. But I can imagine a show focusing on the darker side that had more wit and more cleverness in the way it uses its fairy tale tropes. This is just another in the long series of "cop shows with a twist" we're getting in recent years; it's Law & Order: Fairy Tales Unit. And when a show's formula is already starting to feel stale and predictable before the first episode is over, it's hard to be very optimistic.

BOOKS: Happily Ever After (John Klima, ed., 2011)

2011-10-26T15:56:00.000-07:00

Here we have an anthology of fairy-tale retellings. It's a reprint anthology with only one story original to this book (and about half of the stories come from the superb Datlow/Windling series of fairy-tale books from about 20 years ago), but the stories are well chosen and it's an entertaining overview of the last two decades in fairy tales.

I particularly liked Josh Rountree's "Chasing America," which places Paul Bunyan against some mythic moments in American culture/history; Wil McCarthy's high-tech Alice update, "He Died That Day, in Thirty Years;" and Robert J. Howe's "Pinocchio's Diary" (the one original story), which brings some of the more disturbing subtext of the original closer to the surface without ever quite making anything explicit.

Hit-to-miss ratio is very high here; I only found two or three outright clunkers. Worst of the bunch are Paul Di Filippo's "Ailoura," a Puss in Boots variation that ends by suggesting both bestiality and incest (ick); and Robert Coover's ponderous, glum Pied Piper sequel, "The Return of the Dark Children."

TV: Boss (Starz, Fri 10)

2011-10-23T21:27:00.000-07:00

Starz takes a shot at serious drama with Boss. Kelsey Grammer stars as Tom Kane, mayor of Chicago, and in the opening scene, he is learning that he has Lewy-Body disease, which combines all the worst aspects of Parkinson's and Alzheimer's. He probably has 3-5 years to live, and will likely lose control of mind and body within a year or two. That news makes Kane determined to accomplish as much as possible while he still can, and to leave as big a legacy as possible.

There's a fine supporting cast, including Connie Nielsen as Kane's wife, Kathleen Robertson and Martin Donovan as his political aides, Jeff Hephner and Francis Guinan as candidates for governor, and Troy Garity as an investigative reporter. But it's Grammer's show, and he's terrific, in a performance that will remind you what a fine dramatic actor he is; not once during the first episode did I feel like I was watching Mayor Frasier Crane.

It's an entertaining political drama that is about the workings and process of politics more than it is about political issues, and that isn't afraid to be wonky; it appears that the principal political subplot is going to be about eminent domain, of all things, as Kane fights to begin construction on an expansion at O'Hare Airport. Some of the subplots don't come into focus very well yet; Kane's estranged daughter (Hannah Ware), an Episcopalian priest who runs a free clinic, seems particularly adrift from the central story at this point.

What's interesting is that the medical story that opens the series is not all that important. Some of Kane's behavior is driven by it -- we see him arranging to get black-market meds in an attempt to keep his condition a secret -- and it makes him an even more driven man than he would normally be, but I'd be perfectly happy if this were just a political drama about the scheming and conniving of a healthy Tom Kane. The show itself is not quite up to the level of Grammer's star turn, but there's enough there to keep me watching for a while to see what develops.

TV: Once Upon a Time (ABC, Sun 8)

2011-10-23T21:23:00.000-07:00

Once Upon a Time is the first of this season's "what if fairy tales were real" shows (Grimm arrives on Friday night), and it's created by two of the writers from Lost.

The Lost influence can certainly be seen in the show's parallel story-telling. We begin at the wedding of Snow White (Ginnifer Goodwin) and Prince Charming (Josh Dallas), at the end of which the Evil Queen (Lana Parilla) bursts in and announces to the assembled crowd -- basically, every fairy tale character you can think of -- that she is going to bring down a horrible curse upon them all, exiling them to the most horrible place imaginable, a place with no happy endings.

Meanwhile, in our world, bail bondsman Emma Swan (Jennifer Morrison) gets an unexpected visit from 10-year-old Henry (Jared Gilmore), who announces that he is the son she gave up for adoption, and begs her to come home with him. "Home" turns out to be the quiant little village of Storybrooke, Maine. Henry claims that everyone in Storybrooke actually is a fairy tale character (but doesn't know it), as is Emma, and that it is her destiny to break the spell and return them all to their home.

Casting of the lead roles is excellent. Morrison plays tough very well, but also has enough vulnerability that you can understand why she's drawn to Henry despite thinking that the kid is crazy. Goodwin is, both physically and temperamentally, as fine a choice as you could make for Snow White. Gilmore (the most recent Bobby Draper from Mad Men) has self-assurance and wisdom that never cross the line into creepy, and it's not until the pilot is over that you think to wonder how it is that Henry is the only one who knows what's really going on.

There are a few too many cutesy in-jokes for Lost fans -- the Queen disappears in a very Smoke Monster-y puff; several references to The Numbers; a scene that begins on a close-up of an opening eye -- and I hope the writers will get over their "remember us?" cleverness and stop doing that.

The show's tone is a delicate balance of earnest sincerity and slight campiness, and keeping those things in proportion will be one of the bigger challenges as the show continues. But the pilot is an absolute delight; I haven't seen a drama pilot that pleased me this much since Pushing Daisies.

MUSIC: LA Philharmonic, Oct 21 (Adams / Chapela / Prokofiev)

2011-10-21T23:16:00.000-07:00

Gustavo Dudamel, conductor; Johannes Moser, electric cello

The program:

Adams: Short Ride in a Fast Machine
Chapela: Magnetar
Prokofiev: Symphony #5

The highlight of the night was the Prokofiev, in which Dudamel emphasized the jittery tension of the piece. There was a constant striving for serenity that was never quite reached. Melodies were too brittle and angular (and everyone kept interrupting everyone else, anyway), chords and harmonic progressions were just a little too off-kilter, for calm to ever be attained. And always, there were the bass instruments -- double basses, tuba and trombones, contrabassoon and bass clarinet -- serving as harbingers of doom, grumbling out their ominous warnings. It was like spending 40 minutes in the chase scene of a paranoid thriller. And the mood of it stuck with me after the concert; I was looking over my shoulder all the way home. It was a marvelous performance, and I was particularly struck by the beautifully played clarinet solo in the 4th movement, a jerking little tune that bounces from high to low and back.

Enrico Chapela's Magnetar, getting its world premiere in this weekend's concerts, is a concerto for electric cello. The instrument is shaped like a cello, though only about half as thick, and there's no body to it, just a frame with a vertical board only wide enough to attach the strings. On the back of that board are the inputs for the sound cables. The sound goes into a computer where it is processed and altered in various ways, some of which are controlled by the computer, responding in real time to the cellist, and some of which are controlled by the cellist via several foot pedals. Chapela's inspiration lies in the fact that the e-cello is an electromagnetic instrument, so he wanted to write about the largest magnets he could find. That turned out to be magnetars, giant neutron stars that emit periodic bursts of magnetic energy.

The concerto is in three movements, which Chapela describes as "fast, slow, and brutal," and for the most part, he uses the electronic effects very cleverly. The third movement opens with a cello blast that has the distortion you'd expect from an electric guitar, and the Phil (especially the percussion section) is flat-out rocking behind Moser. There's a jazzy interlude where the cello trades wah-wah riffs with a wah-wah muted trumpet. Best of all is a delightful moment when the clarinet and brass suddenly become a swing band, and I found myself thinking "now, I know there's no saxophone in that orchestra" for about 20 seconds before realizing that the cello was doing a fine imitation of an alto sax's timbre.

The piece doesn't always work; the cadenza at the end of the first movement is a bit too blip-bleep-bloopy in the style of some early electronic movement, and Chapela's a bit too pleased with his own naughtiness in the rock and jazz moments. But on the whole, it's an entertaining piece, and I'd like to hear more of Chapela's music.

The opener was from John Adams, and I will confess that I have a blind spot where his music is concerned. But Short Ride is indeed short, no more than five minutes, and for that length of time, it's not actively unpleasant; it's Adams' usual bright and shiny chuggachuggachugga. I just wish it added up to more than bright and shiny.

If you're in San Francisco, Dudamel and the Philharmonic will be at Davies Hall on Sunday night with this program. Worth going just for the Prokofiev.

MOVIES: Take Shelter (Jeff Nichols, 2011)

2011-10-21T15:41:00.000-07:00

Take Shelter stars Michael Shannon as Curtis, an Ohio laborer who's beginning to frazzle under the economic stress of the day. That stress is manifesting itself in horrifying nightmares, usually beginning with intense storms of brown, oily water, and ending when Curtis or his loved ones are violently attacked.

The dreams would be bad enough, but Curtis can't shake the feeling that these apocalyptic visions are premonitions of some horror to come, and he's self-aware enough to be even more scared by that feeling than he is by the dreams. Curtis's mother, after all (Kathy Baker, absolutely perfect in her one small scene), has been in assisted living since being diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia when she was roughly the age that Curtis is now.

And so Curtis slowly disintegrates, becoming obsessed with enlarging an old storm shelter in his backyard, an expense that infuriates his wife (Jessica Chastain, continuing this spectacular breakthrough year she's having), who doesn't understand what's wrong with her husband.

Michael Shannon is an actor I haven't been particularly fond of in the past, but he's remarkable here; Curtis is not a hugely talkative man, but Shannon conveys volumes with a furrowed brow or a shrug. Look at the anguish he's enduring, for instance, in a late scene where he's desperately looking for the courage to do what his wife needs him to do; it's painful to watch him fight against his own terror.

I wish the movie had ended about five minutes earlier; the final scene is an attempt at eerie ambiguity that comes off instead as artsy and pretentious in precisely the way that the movie has so skillfully avoided to that point. But the rest of the movie is so beautifully made, and such a deeply resonant allegory about the economic and social anxieties we're living with these days, that I have no qualms about recommending it with great enthusiasm.

MOVIES: The Skin I Live In (Pedro Almodovar, 2011)

2011-10-21T15:39:00.000-07:00

Almodovar revisits many of his familiar themes -- beautiful women in jeopardy, complicated parent/child relationships, twisted sexuality, overheated melodrama -- in The Skin I Live In, his take on the mad-scientist movie. Antonio Banderas stars as Robert, a plastic surgeon who works from his remote estate outside Toledo. His clients like the privacy, and there are suggestions that Robert has occasionally taken advantage of the isolation to perform surgeries where the paperwork is, shall we say, not entirely in order.

As the movie opens, there is only one patient in residence. Vera (Elena Anaya) is a lovely woman who does a lot of yoga and usually wears nothing but a skintight body stocking. She is, for unknown reasons, locked in her room, and tended to by Robert and his maid, Marilia (Marisa Paredes).

Suddenly, we get a "six years earlier" caption, and we're introduced to Vicente (Jan Cornet), a young window dresser who is flirting with a pretty co-worker just a bit too persistently. The rest of the movie is spent filling in that six-year gap and explaining how Vicente's story ties in with that of Robert and Vera.

The mad scientist element brings some freshness to the story, and as ever with Almodovar, the plot twists are gloriously loopy. This doesn't rank with the very best Almodovar (I'd put Volver and Bad Education at the top of the list), but it's a lot of fun.

TV: Man Up! (ABC, Tue 8:30)

2011-10-19T08:27:00.000-07:00

Here we have the companion to Tim Allen's Last Man Standing in ABC's "Hour of the Oppressed White Heterosexual Male." About all I can say for Man Up! is that it's less egregiously offensive than Last Man Standing.

It's the story of three guys in their early 30s who are insecure because they aren't sure what it means to be A Man today. They're not helped by the women in their lives, who are all castrating harpies, determined to convince them that they aren't men. Says one wife, "Your grandfather fought in World War II. Your father fought in Vietnam. You play video games and use pomegranate body wash. You're man-ish."

There is only one bright spot in the show, and that's Henry Simmons, playing the new beau of the ex-wife of one of our trio. There's nothing terribly original about what Simmons is doing. It is, in fact, so derivative that you feel like the director told him, "We wanted the Old Spice guy and couldn't get him, so do that, OK?," but Simmons is doing a very good copy of Isaiah Mustafa's shtick, so confident in his manliness that he sails right past arrogant and somehow comes out again at charming. It's a performance completely at odds with the rest of the show tonally, but when Simmons exits the episode, I'd have rather followed him and watched the show he thinks he's in than been stuck with the show he's actually in.

BOOKS: What Language Is, John McWhorter (2011)

2011-10-17T15:44:00.000-07:00

What's unusual is not when a language is frighteningly complicated, but when it isn't.

That's the conclusion McWhorter reaches in this entertaining and fascinating study of languages and their innate complexity. It is, McWhorter claims, the natural tendency of languages to grow more complicated and intricate with time, to accumulate grammatical oddities and inexplicable requirements that seem to make no sense, mostly because of the ways they've changed in the centuries since they were introduced.

What's the best way to simplify your language? Empire. Go out and conquer a lot of new citizens, preferably from lots of different places with lots of different languages of their own. All of those new people trying to learn your language -- and to learn it as adults, who have a much harder time learning languages than children do -- will inevitably make lots of mistakes, and those mistakes will consistently lean towards simplifying the language and making it more regular. Get a critical mass of new adult learners, and those changes will take hold even among the population of native speakers. McWhorter uses the Persian language as his illustration, and calls this process the "Persian conversion."

And it's a process that most of us have seen a clear example of, because Black English is a classic example of a Persian conversion. Lots of African slaves from different places, trying to learn English as adults -- from a historical/linguistic perspective, it would have been bizarre if something like Black English hadn't been created. McWhorter points out that many of the grammatical features of Black English -- things that may sound like grammatical errors to speakers of Standard English -- are in fact part of the natural grammar of the 18th and 19th century rural British immigrants from whom the slaves would have heard most of their English. (Most slaves, after all, spent more time with the relatively uneducated indentured servants than they did with the educated slave owners.)

What does a language look like that hasn't gone through the simplification of a Persian conversion? Well, it looks like (to pick one example among McWhorter's many) Navajo, a language that is so spectacularly complicated that it has no such thing as a regular verb. It's so difficult to learn that linguists use "Navajo" in sentences the way the rest of us use "rocket science": "You had problems with this language? C'mon, it's not exactly Navajo, y'know."

McWhorter also talks about the distinctive challenges faced by people who use languages in which the written form has remained fossilized as it was centuries ago, while the spoken form has continued to evolve. In most of these places, the written form is considered the "real" language, so much so that some people don't even consider what they're speaking to be anything more than slang. This privileging of the written word is something of an oddity, given that only about 3% of the world's languages even exist in a significant written form.

In lesser hands, this book could be a stodgy, academic look at esoterica of interest only to a handful of linguists, but McWhorter has a great gift for making his subject matter accessible, interesting, and entertaining.

MOVIES: The Ides of March (George Clooney, 2011)

2011-10-17T09:28:00.000-07:00

Engrossing political drama with a top-notch cast.

Ryan Gosling is the media advisor to a top Democratic presidential candidate (George Clooney), who is presented as a very Obama-esque figure, who is inspiring genuine devotion and excitement in even hardened professionals like Gosling. Gosling reports to campaign manager Philip Seymour Hoffman, who is worried about the upcoming Ohio primary, which Clooney needs to win to sew up the nomination.

The campaign of the principal opponent is managed by Paul Giamatti, who isn't buying Clooney's uplifting message, and wants to steal Gosling away to his side of the race. But politics is a dirty game, and it's not hard to predict that this is going to be the story of Gosling's disillusionment as he realizes that even the best men can't help but be corrupted by politics.

The cast is superb from top to bottom, and Gosling cements his position as one of the best leading men of his generation, completely holding his own against heavy hitters Clooney, Hoffman, and Giamatti, all of whom are in fine form. Evan Rachel Wood is also very good as a campaign intern with high-powered relatives. In smaller roles, Marisa Tomei is a tough-as-nails New York Times reporter, Jeffrey Wright is a third candidate, who knows just how much difference his endorsement will make, and Gregory Itzin makes a very big impact in two small scenes as the chair of the Democratic National Committee.

The screenplay, by Clooney and Grant Heslov, occasionally reveals its stage origins (based on a play by Beau Willimon); you can easily identify the moments where the intermissions would be, as the action pauses for a short musical interlude over a few dramatic silent closeups. But making Clooney's inspiring governor a presence in the story was a good idea (in the play, he's entirely an offstage character), as it gives us a better idea of why Gosling has become so devoted as to lose his political common sense and objectivity.

MOVIES: Moneyball (Bennett Miller, 2011)

2011-10-16T17:42:00.000-07:00

I left the theater thinking that Moneyball was a perfectly nice movie -- maybe even a very good one -- but a bit baffled by the level of awards buzz it's already getting.

Brad Pitt stars as Billy Beane (not Billy Bean, mind you, whose role in baseball history is rather different), general manager of the Oakland A's; as the movie opens, they are being knocked out of the 2001 playoffs in the first round. Beane is determined to do better, and hires a new assistant who he thinks may have the answer.

Peter Brand (Jonah Hill, acquitting himself nicely in a role without a single fart or vomit joke) believes that baseball has placed too much value on the wrong things. To win games, he argues, you have to score runs; to score runs, you have to get men on base. Look for the players who get on base the most often, and you'll win games, even if those players aren't taken seriously when evaluated by more conventional methods. In fact, Brand argues, such an approach is perfect for a relatively poor team like the A's, because the players it will lead you to can likely be obtained at bargain prices.

(This is rather an oversimplification of the "moneyball" approach, as described in the Michael Lewis book on which the movie is based, but that was probably necessary for dramatic purposes, and the point is still made that Beane and his assistants were trying something wildly out of the mainstream.)

And we're off, as Beane and Brand try to build a team with an approach that their scouts don't understand and the team's field manager, Art Howe (Philip Seymour Hoffman), thinks is utterly foolish. Howe seems to be right at first, as the team gets off to such a disastrous start in the 2002 season that Beane is at risk of losing his own job.

This is a sports movie, however, and Brad Pitt is a movie star, so it will come as no surprise (even if you don't remember how the A's 2002 season turned out) that the team turns things around in dramatic fashion, that Beane wins Howe over to his view of things, and that Beane becomes a star GM in the process, being offered great gobs of money to take his approach to other teams.

But here's the thing: The 2002 A's won a grand total of one more game in the regular season than the 2001 A's had done, and they were knocked out of the playoffs in the first round again. That's what all the fuss was about? It's hard to imagine that Oakland fans left that last game thinking, "Hooray! We got exactly the same results as last year, but spent way less!"

It's not that Moneyball isn't entertaining. Pitt is settling comfortably into middle age, and has the look of a former athlete; the movie does a nice job of establishing that Beane has his own reasons for not trusting the traditional scouting system. Hill gives a performance that should get him opportunities beyond the braindead comedies that have been his specialty, and Hoffman does his usual skillful job of glowering and harrumphing about. There are nice turns from a variety of actors in small roles as the various players, and Kerris Dorsey is charming as Pitt's daughter.

But the movie does go on a bit long, and is essentially just another "triumph of the underdog" movie. There's not a lot here that we haven't seen before, and though it's certainly done with great skill and professionalism, there's rarely any real surprise to be found in it.

MOVIES: 50/50 (Jonathan Levine, 2011)

2011-10-16T17:27:00.000-07:00

50/50 has gotten a lot of attention for managing to be a funny movie about cancer, but I'd argue that the more impressive feat is that it manages to make Seth Rogen charming and likable.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt (rock solid as usual) stars as Adam, who is diagnosed at 27 with a rare form of spinal cancer, and the movie follows him through chemotherapy and surgery. He's got a solid support network -- best friend Kyle (Rogen), overbearing but well-intentioned mom Diane (Anjelica Huston, making a big impression with relatively little screen time), and a young counselor-in-training (Anna Kendrick, finding the endearing side of being minimally competent).

There are also nice supporting performances from Philip Baker Hall and Matt Frewer as two of Adam's fellow chemo patients, and Bryce Dallas Howard as Adam's girlfriend. (Howard is, I think, in desperate need of a non-Evil Bitch role, and fast, before she's completely typecast.)

The comedy works because it never feels like writer Will Reiser is just going for the jokes; they all build naturally out of who the characters are and what they're going through -- Adam's attempt to hide his fear, Kyle's desire to be supportive and helpful, Diane's feeling shut out of Adam's life. There's also an understanding that some moments can't support jokes, and the movie pulls off its more serious scenes very well without getting too melodramatic or tear-jerky.

BOOKS: Ready Player One, Ernest Cline (2011)

2011-10-13T15:27:00.000-07:00

The world of 2044 is on the verge of collapse, and most people spend their time hooked into the OASIS, which is a massive virtual reality playground where you can visit your favorite fantasy worlds, go to school, meet your friends (who may or may not be people you've ever met face-to-face) in virtual restaurants (or clubs, or chat rooms...). The popularity of virtual reality means that the entire world is in mourning when James Halliday, inventor of the OASIS, dies.

Halliday has one last surprise up his sleeve, though. In a videotaped will, he announces that hidden somewhere in the OASIS is a series of complicated puzzles, and that the first to find and solve them all will inherit his multi-billion dollar estate, which includes ownership of the OASIS. Cline's novel follows high school student Wade on his quest to find and solve Halliday's puzzles, the answers to which are rooted in Halliday's love of the 80s pop culture he grew up on.

It's a reasonably entertaining story, and Cline's vision of the OASIS, of lives spent in virtual reality, is fascinating. But I suspect that most of what I liked about the book was the opportunity to stroll down memory lane, playing "spot the reference" with the pop culture of my own teen years. If you're a child of the 80s, you might enjoy this; if you aren't, I don't think it'll have much to offer you.

MOVIES: Weekend (Andrew Haigh, 2011)

2011-10-12T15:43:00.000-07:00

Weekend tells the story of a weekend-long conversation between two gay men who meet at a bar on Friday night; in tone, you might think of it as a gay Before Sunrise.

Russell (Tom Cullen) is an introverted, semi-closeted lifeguard; Glen (Chris New) is a chatty artist. The serious talk begins when the men wake up the next morning, and Glen wants to tape Russell talking about their evening; he says the recording is for an art project on gay sexuality. That conversation opens the floodgates to a wide-ranging discussion of gay marriage, coming out stories, and the importance (or lack thereof) of longterm relationships. There's clearly a strong attraction between the two, both physically and emotionally, but there are a host of obstacles making a serious relationship unlikely.

The two principal actors are both terrific; Cullen is particularly good as the quieter of the two men, finding ways to let his silence speak more clearly than words. Haigh's dialogue has an improvisational quality; and while the specifics of these conversations will certainly be familiar to any gay man, the topics of love and intimacy are universal. The language is blunt, and there is one sex scene that's more graphic than any Hollywood scene between two men would ever be, but is roughly equivalent to the hetero scenes you'd see in an R-rated movie.

BOOKS: Before I Go to Sleep, S.J. Watson (2011)

2011-10-12T10:57:00.000-07:00

Christine has amnesia. Any new memories she makes during the day are lost when she sleeps, and memories from earlier in her life are erratic, coming and going unpredictably. So every morning, Christine wakes up with a man she doesn't recognize, who patiently explains that he is her husband, Ben, and tells her that this has been her life for more than 20 years now, ever since the car accident.

But Ben doesn't know that Christine has begun seeing a new doctor, or that on the doctor's advice, she's been keeping a journal. The doctor phones every day to remind her who he is, and where she's hidden her journal; he thinks that writing down her daily experiences will help her to develop and retain new memories. As Watson's novel opens, Christine has gone through what is apparently her morning ritual with Ben, and is sitting down to read her journal. On the first page, below the neatly written "Journal of Christine Lucas," she is horrified to see written in frantic bold letters, "Don't trust Ben."

That's a pretty nifty setup for a thriller, and though the payoff doesn't quite live up to the premise (I'm not sure any payoff could), the book is still a fine piece of entertainment. I particularly like the way Watson uses Christine's amnesia to subvert some of the basic expectations of mystery writing. Normally, for instance, when some apparently irrelevant detail is repeated for the third or fourth time, we readers can say, "Aha! That must be a clue!," but here, everything has to be repeated over and over because Christine has to learn it all from scratch with each new day.

And Watson does a nice job of laying the groundwork for the big twist at the end, slowly ratcheting up the tension until the final confrontation. Is that twist as surprising as it ought to be? Well, no; you're likely to see it coming long before the end of the book. But it's a well written scene, and it delivers enough emotion that I'm willing to forgive the mild failure in the suspense department. A very promising first novel.

TV: Last Man Standing (ABC, Tue 8)

2011-10-11T21:10:00.000-07:00

Tim Allen, Nancy Travis, and Hector Elizondo are three talented people, which makes one wonder how it is possible to build a sitcom around them and not get a single laugh.

Allen plays Mike, who supervises catalog shoots for Outdoor Man, a mail-order company selling outdoor gear. But catalog sales are declining, and his boss (Elizondo) can no longer afford to send him off to Alaska and Costa Rica for expensive photo shoots, so he is charged with finding a way to boost the company's anemic web presence.

This is good news for his wife (Travis), who's just gotten a promotion and will have to work extra hours (it's a sign of how unimportant a character she is that we are never told what her job actually is), meaning that Mike will have to step up and help out with their three daughters (20-ish single mom, boy-obsesed teen, jock tween).

So, we're in very similar territory to Allen's old Home Improvement, with the exception that Tim Taylor's cluelessness was well-meaning and likable, where Mike's is aggressively assholish. He tosses off causal sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, and general loathing of the modern world.

This is an awful mess of a show, and it's baffling that anyone thought it was funny enough to put on TV.

TV: Reed Between the Lines (BET, Tue 10)

2011-10-11T19:39:00.000-07:00

Here we have a serviceable, though not very exciting, family comedy that is very clearly and deliberately in the mold of The Cosby Show. Mom and Dad are New York professionals Alex and Carla Reed (he's a college professor, she's a psychiatrist) with three adorable kids (boy/girl twins in early teens and a cute little girl). Their house is even laid out almost exactly like the Huxtables' -- door, stairs, sofa, kitchen all in the same place.

The resemblance is only emphasized by the casting of Malcolm Jamal-Warner as the father. He co-stars opposite Tracee Ellis Reed, and they have a similar warm chemistry to that of Cosby and Phylicia Rashad, albeit at a much lower level of skill.

And "lower level" is, I'm afraid, the dominant phrase for the show. It's all perfectly competent; Reed and Jamal-Warner are likable enough; the kids are cute. But if you're going to so obviously invite comparison to The Cosby Show, a classic of its type, then perfectly competent isn't going to cut it.

TV: Enlightened (HBO, Mon 9:30)

2011-10-10T20:17:00.000-07:00

Enlightened may be from HBO, but it feels kind of like the comedies Showtime's been doing in recent years, with a not-quite-middle-aged actress struggling with an emotional/physical crisis in a show that's never really laugh-out-loud funny.

This one gives us Laura Dern as Amy, who we meet in the midst of a nervous breakdown at work. After an ill-advised fling with her boss, she's being transferred to another, less prestigious division, and isn't taking the news well.

Cut to Hawaii, where Amy is attending some sort of New Age-y meditation/therapy retreat. She's writing in a journal, she's gone off her anti-depression meds, and she seems immensely calmer. So much so that when she returns home, no one knows quite what to make of her. Her mother (Diane Ladd, who happens to be Dern's real mother) and ex-husband (Luke Wilson) are both skeptical of the new Amy. Amy even manages to get re-hired by her old company, though we don't yet know what her new position will be.

It would be easy to laugh at Amy, but I think co-creators Dern and Mike White are after something more complicated than just another "let's make fun of the New Agers" joke. Amy's transformation seems to be genuine and sincere, and I think that as we watch her struggle to face the world in a more open-minded, less judgmental fashion, Enlightened is challenging us: Can we give Amy the same benefit of the doubt without giving in to the easy, reflexive, cheap laughs at her expense? This one could be very interesting.

BOOKS: Plugged, Eoin Colfer (2011)

2011-10-06T15:43:00.000-07:00

After much success with his Artemis Fowl series of novels for young adults (which I've not read), Colfer makes the move to adult fiction with this oddball crime caper.

(We should note that, jacket text to the contrary, this isn't Colfer's first venture into adult fiction; there was his unfortunate attempt to cash in on the corpse of Douglas Adams by continuing the Hitchhiker's Guide series. But the less said of that, the better. Let's just say that this is Colfer's first adult novel based entirely on his own ideas.)

Colfer gives us a comic crime caper about Daniel MacEvoy, an Irish ex-military man working as a bouncer in a sleazy New Jersey strip club. When people around Daniel start dying -- the stripper he has a not-so-secret thing for, his hair transplant doctor/best friend -- he finds himself suspect #1, and is forced to use his military training in ingenious ways to get out of the mess.

The tone is a bit offputting; Colfer's trying to make Daniel a lovable thug, sort of a more violent version of Donald Westlake's lovable thief Dortmunder. But the amped-up violence doesn't mix well with the humor, and Daniel comes across as just a bit too unstable; I felt like he wasn't resorting to violence in desperation so much as he was happy to have an excuse for it.

Not a horrible book, and it has some nice moments along the way, but it never really takes off. I'll be curious to see if Colfer gets any better with his next effort, or if this is really the best he can do.

BOOKS: The Guilty Plea, Robert Rotenberg (2011)

2011-10-06T15:31:00.000-07:00

Followup to Rotenberg's Old City Hall, which I liked very much. I say "followup" and not sequel, because there's really no significant plot connection between the two books. They share a few characters, but the small bits of backstory from the first book that you might want to know are very skillfully worked into the narrative; you won't feel lost at all if you pick up this one without having read the first.

This is another courtroom drama set in Toronto, and our murder victim this time is Terrance Wyler, youngest son of a prominent family. He's found stabbed to death in his kitchen on the morning that his divorce trial is scheduled to begin; when Samantha, his soon-to-be ex-wife, shows up at her lawyer's office shortly thereafter carrying a bloody knife wrapped in a kitchen towel, the police and prosecutors have every reason to expect a simple and speedy resolution.

But what kind of a book would that make? No, Rotenberg has plenty of twists in turn for his characters, and lots of new suspects to meet along the way. There's the Hollywood beauty queen with whom Terrance was having an affair; ditto for Samantha and the teenaged boy next door. Terrance has a pair of older brothers who've never quite forgiven him for his (failed) attempt to break away from the family business. And what about the mysterious librarian from the small town where Samantha grew up?

The characters are more fully dimensional than we generally get in this sort of story, and Rotenberg has a nice knack for knowing how and when to toss in a bit of comic relief along the way. If the final whodunit revelation feels a bit implausible, it has at least been fully and fairly prepared for, so doesn't come as a total shock.

A good, solid piece of entertainment.

TV: American Horror Story (FX, Wed 10)

2011-10-05T20:48:00.000-07:00

Here's the latest from producer Ryan Murphy, and in some ways, it is weirdly reminiscent of Murphy's other current success, Glee. That is to say, it's an ambitious, overstuffed, tonally inconsistent, occasionally brilliant mess that throws everything at the wall in the hopes that something will stick.

Dylan McDermott and Connie Britton are Ben and Vivien Harmon, and their marriage has been under great strain; they lost a baby (stillborn at seven months), and a few months later, Vivien caught Ben in bed with one of his students. Now, a year later, they're moving to Los Angeles for a fresh start, and their new home has a lot of unpleasant history, including the murder-suicide deaths of the most recent occupants.

McDermott is a psychologist who's seeing patients in his home; among them is Tate (Evan Peters), a boy with violent fantasies. He quickly becomes friends with the Harmons' daughter Violet (Taissa Farmiga), who's having problems settling into her new school.

Throw in the elderly maid (Frances Conroy) who Dan, and only Dan, sees as a hot young bombshell (Alexandra Breckinridge); the snoopy neighbor (Jessica Lange) who seems to have escaped from a bad Southern Gothic novel; and her daughter (Jamie Brewer), who has Down syndrome and a habit of telling everyone who moves in that "you're going to die in there," and you've got a wildly overheated mix of horror cliches.

The cast members seem to be acting in several different shows. Britton is doing realistic psychological dramas; Farmiga and Peters are straight out of 90210: Psych Ward; and Lange is camping it up like her life depends on it. Of all the shows on display, Lange's is the one I'd like to see more of; the delicious menace in her voice when she threatens Conroy ("Don't make me kill you again") had me giggling with delight.

But moments like that come far too rarely, and the show's utter inability to settle on one style or tone makes it a struggle to sit through. For horror aficionados and completists only, I'm afraid.

TV: Homeland (Showtime, Sun 10)

2011-10-02T20:31:00.000-07:00

Very strong start for this one.

Damian Lewis plays an American POW who's rescued after eight years of captivity in Iraq; Claire Danes is the CIA analyst who suspects that he might have been turned by his captors, and is plotting some sort of terrorist attack in the US. She has a somewhat spotty work history, causing at least one international incident that got her removed from field work and put behind a desk, so her superiors aren't taking her concerns seriously.

I like the ambiguity of the principal characters; we have ample reason to believe that Lewis isn't telling the entire truth, but we also understand that Danes's history of instability (of various sorts) makes her not entirely reliable.

Fine performances from Danes and Lewis, as well as Mandy Patinkin as Danes's CIA mentor and closest confidant, and Morena Baccarin as Lewis's wife.

TV: How to Be a Gentleman (CBS, Thu 8:30)

2011-10-02T12:12:00.000-07:00

What a mess.

"How to Be a Gentleman" is the column that Andrew (David Hornsby) writes for an Esquire-ish mens' magazine. It's devoted to the old-fashioned finer virtues of elegance and refinement. But when Andrew's editor (Dave Foley) informs that the magazine's been sold to new owners who want to move it a few notches down the classy ladder ("they've decided to increase readership by appealing to people who don't read"), Andrew is at a loss.

A series of sitcom coincidences bring Andrew back into touch with Bert (Kevin Dillon), who had been his high school bully and now works as a personal trainer. It's not long before Andrew realizes that Bert is the answer to his writing challenge, and we're set up for a series in which Bert teaches Andrew how to be a dude and Andrew teaches Bert how to be a gentleman; it's an Odd Couple for the new millennium.

There are a lot of problems here. The writing is flat and unfunny, wasting a lot of fine comic actors in supporting roles (Mary Lynn Rajskub and Rhys Darby as Andrew's sister and her husband; Nancy Lenehan as Andrew's mother). But worst of all are the two lead actors, who are both incredibly irritating. In Dillon's case, I'll put most of the blame on the conception of the character, who is written as such a bullying asshole that no actor could make him likable or funny.

But the problems with Andrew lie mostly at Hornsby's feet. One can be a gentleman without being a simpering priss, but Hornsby plays the character as someone who longs for the days of valets and ascots, and he's affected a speaking voice that is painfully whiny and petulant. By the end of the episode, hell, I wanted to give the little twit a noogie or two.

This is an absolute disaster, without doubt the worst new sitcom of the year so far.

TV: Suburgatory (ABC, Wed 8:30)

2011-10-02T12:01:00.000-07:00

Tessa (Jane Levy) is a New York girl, so she's not happy when her father George (Jeremy Sisto) decides to move the two of them to the suburbs for a more wholesome life. But by the end of the first episode, she's found a potential new best friend and just maybe the mother figure she's been missing, and the suburbs are starting to look not so bad after all.

That's a fairly standard setup for a sitcom, but this one looks to be a particularly good exploration of familiar ideas. Levy is a tremendously likable lead, capable of being a sullen, resentful kid while retaining our sympathy; Sisto is clearly having a terrific time getting to play comedy for a change, and if he hasn't yet figured out quite how to tone down his innate "hello, my name is Jeremy and I'll be your stalker this evening" creepiness, I think he's headed in that direction.

The new best friend Jane (Allie Grant) and bitchy rival Dalia (Carly Chaikin) are thinner characters than the leads, but you can't develop everyone to their fullest in thirty minutes. And the other principal supporting player, Dalia's mother Dallas (Cheryl Hines), is a terrific character. At first glance, she's a shallow Real Housewife type, only interested in big hair, botox, and tight shorts, but Hines gives her more depth than you'd expect, and her relationship with Tessa is likely to be the most interesting thing in the show. Dallas has begun to realize that she's turned her own daughter into just another beauty-obsessed brat, so she's fascinated by Tessa, who's smart and sarcastic and not remotely interested in those suburban cliches. Watching how these two change one another could be great fun.

There's a lot of potential here, and it's been given a time slot (between The Middle and Modern Family) that should be a good fit.

TV: Hart of Dixie (CW, Mon 9)

2011-09-28T15:57:00.000-07:00

Hart of Dixie returns to one of TV's standard formulas -- the big-city person forced to live in a small town -- and executes it with a fair amount of charm. What we have here is a new version of Northern Exposure, with Rachel Bilson taking the Rob Morrow role, and Bluebell, Alabama filling in for Cicely, Alaska. The tone may also remind you a bit of Gilmore Girls, as will the set; after the pilot, the show will use the old Stars' Hollow backdrop.

Dr. Zoe Hart (Bilson) wants to be a cardiothoracic surgeon, but she has no people skills, and her supervisors insist that she can't tend to the hearts of others until she gets in touch with her own. (The actual dialogue is almost precisely that treacly.) So, it's off to Bluebell, where a kindly old doctor has been trying to get her to join his general practice ever since she graduated from medical school. Upon arrival, she finds that Dr. Kindly is recently dead, and that he's left half of his practice to her.

Bluebell is, of course, populated with a host of lovable small-town locals and eccentrics. There's Dr. Brick Breeland (Tim Matheson), the doctor who owns the other half of the practice, and who wants nothing to do with Zoe. Brick's daughter, Lemon (Jaime King), is the local Queen Belle, engaged to the town's golden boy, George (Scott Porter).

George is one potential romantic interest for Zoe, but there's also bad boy Wade (Wilson Bethel). And the town's mayor (Cress Williams) is a former NFL star (and so far, the only black guy in town) who owns a pet crocodile named Burt Reynolds.

The pilot of a show like that has obvious beats to hit, and you won't be surprised by a moment of it -- Zoe reluctantly goes to Alabama, hates the town and the people, alienates everyone, finally starts to win people over with her skill, and begins to understand the place enough to decide to stay. But the cast is very likable; Bilson has a knack for being just snarky enough to get laughs without making herself hatable, and she has particularly good chemistry with both Porter and Williams.

So, yeah, the pilot is absolutely predictable, but the execution and the casting are good enough that I'll give it a few more weeks to see what happens beyond the establishing of the premise.

TV: Terra Nova (Fox, Mon 8)

2011-09-27T21:27:00.000-07:00

It's the early 22nd century, and the Earth is on the verge of total environmental collapse. You can't venture outside without wearing an oxygen mask, and an orange is a rare, exotic treat.

In that world live the Shannons, parents Jim and Elizabeth (Jason O'Mara and Shelley Conn), sullen teenage son Josh (Landon Liboiron), nerdy science whiz Maddy (Naomi Scott), and adorable moppet Zoe (Alana Mansour). Zoe is a problem for the Shannons, because she's an illegal third child, and when she's discovered, it's off to prison for Jim.

Two years later, Elizabeth has been recruited to join the Terra Nova project, an attempt to give humanity a fresh start by traveling back in time 85 million years; she's a doctor, so her skills will certainly be useful. She can't bear to leave Jim, though, so she helps him bust out of prison and crash through the time portal with the rest of the family.

(If the show's trying to create sympathetic protagonists, it's going about it very strangely at this point. Jim and Elizabeth's selfishness in having an illegal third child makes them a perfect symbol of the selfishness that has nearly destroyed their planet, and one has to wonder whether any struggling colony would really welcome a family willing to break that many rules, regulations, and laws to get there.)

The rest of the 2-hour pilot is spent getting to know the Terra Nova colony. It's run by Commander Taylor (Stephen Lang, reprising his Avatar shtick), who has to deal with a group of breakaway colonists called the Sixers; it's got lots of CW-reject teens for Josh and Maddy to crush on; and it's got dinosaurs. Lots and lots of dinosaurs.

The show has a huge special effects budget, and you can see every penny on the screen; Terra Nova looks spectacular. But once you get past the gorgeous landscapes and frightening dinos, there's not much drama to speak of. Jim, a cop in the 22nd century, winds up on Taylor's security team (again, I can't help but wonder if a convicted felon who busted out of jail to get here would land such a job) and stomps about as if he's on CSI: Cretaceous; Josh is a pouty little brat who deserves to be eaten by the slashers; and Zoe is so pwecious it'll make your teeth itch.

As hard as the show works to establish a variety of season-long mysteries -- Who sent the Sixers? Why is someone drawing weird hieroglyphics on the nearby rocks? What is the Terra Nova project really all about? -- it doesn't establish any reason for the audience to care about any of them. A verypretty, veryexpensive bore.

TV: Pan Am (ABC, Sun 10)

2011-09-26T14:45:00.000-07:00

It's 1963, and the newest jet in the Pan Am fleet is making its maiden voyage from New York to London. Over the course of that flight, we meet the four stewardesses who are our main characters and peek into their backstories, as well as set up the mystery that seems likely to be the main season-long story arc.

Colette (Karine Vanasse) is the French stewardess, who is surprised to see on the flight a man she had a fling with in Rome a few months ago, and even more surprised to see him traveling with the wife and son she didn't know he had. Kate (Kelli Garner) is a veteran stewardess, recently recruited by US intelligence to do occasional bits of spying and courier work for them. Kate's younger sister, Laura (Margot Robbie), recently left her fiance at the altar before deciding to follow in Kate's stewardess shoes. And Maggie (Christina Ricci) is an intellectual, correcting her boyfriend on the distinction between Hegel and Marx, and a rebel, recently suspended from work for failing to wear her girdle.

We also meet pilots Dean and Ted (Mike Vogel and Michael Mosley), and get a quick look at Dean's romance with stewardess Bridget, who has abruptly quit her job and vanished.

This is the second of the year's Mad Men knockoffs, and it's vastly better than The Playboy Club. The show is a very different take on the 60s than that of Mad Men, less cynical and gray-tinted, more glamorous and colorful. The ensemble cast is uniformly fine, and they all do a solid job of quickly sketching out their characters in the relatively limited time each is given.

By far the best drama pilot of the year, and it should be great fun to see where it goes.

TV: The X Factor (Fox, Wed/Thu 8)

2011-09-25T19:01:00.000-07:00

It's a little hard to judge a show like The X Factor on the basis of a first episode, since the competition will move through a variety of different phases, some of which will vary more than the audition phase does from American Idol. But at this point, it's hard to see the show as much more than Idol Redux.

In the role of Simon Cowell, we have Simon Cowell, who can be just as cutting as ever, but who's also playing up his softer, sentimental side with the better contestants. In the role of Randy Jackson, we have L.A. Reid, which is a significant step up; Reid actually offers comments with more insight than Jackson's typical "it didn't work for me, dawg". He's also capable of giving Simon a run for his money in the bluntness department, and the show is clearly interested in setting up a Simon/L.A. rivalry.

The role of Paula Abdul is now being shared, which seems appropriate, since during her Idol days, you never knew whether you were going to get the sweet, charming, relatively lucid Paula or the incoherent, babbling, "what the hell is she on" Paula. Lucid Paula is being played, somewhat surprisingly, by Paula herself, on her very best, at least in the first few days of auditions; Loopy Paula is being played by Nicole Scherzinger, who so far doesn't have much to offer.

(For the Los Angeles auditions only, the fourth judge was Cheryl Cole, who was abruptly fired and replaced by Scherzinger, to no appreciably significant difference.)

Like Idol, the audition shows give us a mix of really good singers and ghastly ones; what's new here is the age range -- lower limit of 12 and no upper limit -- and the fact that auditions are held in front of an audience of 3-4,000 people. That can make the really good auditions more exciting, but it makes the mean ones feel even more cruel.

Host Steve Jones is blandly efficient in the Ryan Seacrest mold (though he's much prettier), but we won't really know how good he is until later in the competition. And it's only in those later rounds that the show's more significant breaks from the Idol formula will become apparent. At this point, you will probably enjoy this show to just about the same degree that you enjoy Idol.

TV: Prime Suspect (NBC, Thu 10)

2011-09-25T16:28:00.000-07:00

Very pleasant surprise here, a smart police procedural that does a good job of updating the original. Maria Bello is terrific as Detective Jane Timoney, the lone female homicide detective in her squad; most of her colleagues believe that she's only gotten there by sleeping her way up the ladder, and they're doing all the can to avoid giving her any real responsibility.

The sexism isn't quite as blatant as it was the original BBC version of the series 20 years ago (unless the men are drunk, in which case it's pretty damned explicit), but it's just as real. The boss keeps skipping over her name when it's time to assign a chief detective to a case; her theories are dismissed as foolish.

The cast is filled with fine character actors like Brian F. O'Byrne and Aidan Quinn, but it's Bello's show all the way, and she commands attention. Timoney takes no nonsense from anyone, and has no qualms about using unconventional tactics when questioning potential witnesses, or using her police connections to get what she wants in her private life.

I'm not a huge fan of police procedurals, but I like the fact that this one is less interested than most in showing us the brutal, gory details of the crime, and Bello's performance alone is enough to keep me watching for at least another week or two.

TV: A Gifted Man (CBS, Fri 8)

2011-09-24T15:59:00.000-07:00

CBS has had very good luck with lightly supernatural dramas on Friday nights -- Joan of Arcadia, Ghost Whisperer, the last two years of Medium -- and A Gifted Man should continue the tradition very nicely.

Michael Holt (Patrick Wilson) is a talented neurosurgeon with no time in his life for anything but work. He unexpectedly runs into his ex-wife, Anna (Jennifer Ehle), whom he hasn't seen in ten years; she's now running a free clinic, and says she hadn't called because she didn't think he'd want to hear from her. Michael is delighted to have run into her again, and thrown for a loop the next morning when he learns that she died two weeks earlier.

Yup, it's Anna's ghost visiting Michael, determined to make Dr. Ghost Whisperer a better man. By the end of the episode, he's doing free surgery for poor Latino kids, and reluctantly accepting Anna's presence in his life.

The cast here is terrific. I've never quite understood the "Patrick Wilson is so sexy" bandwagon, but he's a fine actor, and very good at arrogant and contemptuous. Jennifer Ehle comes across as a bit too perfect for words, but that's not entirely inappropriate, since she is a spirit, and to a large extent, we're seeing her as Michael's idealized memory.

Also on hand is Margo Martindale as Michael's hyper-efficient assistant, Rita; Julie Benz as his sister, Christina, who sees Anna's visits as a "cosmic gift;" and Pablo Schreiber as Anton, a shaman whose role will be to help Michael understand and cope with Anna's presence. All are well suited to their roles; Benz provides the show with just the right touch of comic relief without letting the character's New Age-iness become just a cheap joke.

So, it's part emotional/supernatural journey of growth, part medical procedural (with both Michael's upper-crust clientele and the free clinic patients), and all of it done with great style and skill. It's a little too earnest and sincere for my taste, and I probably won't be watching regularly, but the target audience for the show should be very happy with it.

TV: Person of Interest (CBS, Thu 9)

2011-09-24T11:35:00.000-07:00

Michael Emerson is the mysterious Mr. Finch, who recruits the equally mysterious Mr. Reese (Jim Caviezel) to be his partner in crime fighting. It seems that Finch was the developer of the computer system the government uses to keep an eye on all of us in this post-9/11 world, and he left himself a small backdoor into the system, through which it spits out to him the Social Security numbers of people who are soon to be involved in various crimes. Nothing that the feds would be interested in, like terrorist attacks -- more relatively small stuff like kidnapping and murders.

But Finch doesn't know whether the people he's given are going to be victims or perpetrators, and he needs someone to do the investigate legwork for him if these crimes are going to be stopped. That's where Reese comes in; he's a Special Forces vet with dark secrets in his past that have left him extremely reluctant to kill (a lot of people get shot in the leg in this show).

The show suffers from one fairly obvious problem -- if we aren't allowed to know, for dramatic purposes, whether our persons of interest are victims or criminals, then we spend most of the show trying to care about people we aren't being told enough about to make us care.

But even worse, it suffers from a serious talent imbalance in its leading men. Michael Emerson is a fine actor, and well cast in the role of the secretive recluse. But he's at his best when he has an equally strong co-star to play off -- think of Camryn Manheim in The Practice or Terry O'Quinn in Lost -- and Jim Caviezel simply isn't up to the task. Caviezel has chosen to play the entire role in a hushed whisper that sounds like an audition to be Christian Bale's Batman understudy, and he projects very little personality. You can sort of see what he's trying to do, going for the whole "I'm so wounded that I don't let anyone in" thing, but all he's accomplishing is "I'm a sullen little prick."

Love Emerson, hate Caviezel, and the story itself isn't interesting enough to sway the difference in the show's favor.

TV: Whitney (NBC, Thu 9:30)

2011-09-24T11:25:00.000-07:00

Standup comic Whitney Cummings stars as Whitney in yet another comedy about the friendships and romances of six friends. Whitney lives with her boyfriend Alex (Chris D'Elia), and they're about to celebrate their three-year anniversary as a couple. Lily and Neal (Zoe Lister-Jones and Maulik Pancholy) are dating; she's a pushy shrew and he's a doormat. The singles are Roxanne (Rhea Seehorn), a bitter cynic who's also a borderline alcoholic, and Mark (Dan O'Brien), who tosses off sexist one-liners as though it were 1973.

Cummings and D'Elia have some interesting chemistry, and they share the one scene in the pilot that really works -- Whitney puts on the "naughty nurse" costume to seduce Alex on their anniversary -- but the supporting characters are even more cardboard than usual. The show's filmed before a live audience, and the laughter is somehow even more obnoxious and obtrusive than a mechanical laugh track would be.

Cummings is funny enough that it might be worth looking at this one again in a month or two to see if the writers have figured out what to do with their other characters, but as it stands now, the show's unwatchable despite her.

TV: Charlie's Angels (ABC, Thu 8)

2011-09-24T11:19:00.000-07:00

The 70s version of Charlie's Angels was trash, but it knew that it was trash, and had no loftier ambition than to provide cheap, frothy entertainment. The new Charlie's Angels, lord help us, wants to be taken seriously.

To be sure, you couldn't simply remake the original; its jiggliciousness was already right on the edge of being too sexist to be tolerated 35 years ago, and would be scolded off the air in minutes today. But you can still do light entertainment, even without the bouncing bosoms and tight bikinis. Alas, the new Angels is a show of dark, shadowy alleyways; gloomy abandoned warehouses; and pretty girls being tortured by sex traffickers.

The cast? Oh, does it really matter? None of them are being asked to do any real acting; they're just there to look pretty and recite the clunky dialogue. It is an interesting change, I suppose, that Bosley is no longer a middle-aged schlump who spends all his time in the office, but an attractive man of roughly the same age as the Angels who gets involved in the action scenes himself. And Victor Garber is a nice last-minute choice to provide the voice of Charlie.

But the whole thing is so stiff and wooden, and above all joyless. As trashy as the original was, you at least felt that everyone involved was enjoying themselves and having a good time. No one here is doing anything more than collecting a paycheck.

TV: Revenge (ABC, Wed 10)

2011-09-22T19:07:00.000-07:00

Coming on the heels of Ringer, Revenge raises one question: Does nobody remember how to do camp anymore?

Our heroine is Emily (Emily VanCamp), whose father was a hedge fund manager falsely convicted ten years ago of funnelling money to terrorists; his friends and co-workers conspired to destroy him for some (as yet unknown) reason, and Emily has returned to the Hamptons, where she lived as a child, to bring down the people who ruined her father.

This ought to be a frothy, silly, lighter-than-air confection; instead, it's a plodding, overly serious, brick of dullness. Only Madeleine Stowe gets the right tone; she's a magnificently bitchy diva as "Queen" Victoria Grayson, the reigning socialite in town, and Emily's biggest target. In the lead role, VanCamp isn't a bad actress, but she's a bit too sweet and lightweight to be convincing as an obsessed seeker of vengeance.

The action of this one takes place between Memorial Day and Labor Day; I suspect it'll be off the air before they reach the 4th of July.

TV: Unforgettable (CBS, Tue 10)

2011-09-21T19:32:00.000-07:00

It would be an easy cheap shot to simply say that Unforgettable isn't, but that would be a bit too harsh. It's not a particularly memorable show, but it's a perfectly adequate entry in the ever-growing series of CBS crime procedurals, and the audience who enjoys those shows will find this one just as innocuously entertaining as the rest.

Poppy Montgomery stars as Carrie Wells, who has a rare medical condition giving her perfect recall of everything she's ever experienced. (This is a real condition, which fewer than ten people in the world have; one of them is Marilu Henner, who is a consultant on this show.) She's an ex-cop who is the closest thing to an eyewitness in a murder case, and winds up working as a consultant with the Queens Police on the case. (Does Queens actually have its own police department?)

As is obligatory in these shows nowadays, Carrie has her own traumatic backstory to overcome: The one day she can't remember is the day her sister was murdered. The cop with whom she's working on the case in Queens (Dylan Walsh) just happened to be her partner when she was a cop in Syracuse, and he was the lead investigator on her sister's murder; Carrie has never forgiven him for closing the case before it was solved.

Aside from the memory gimmick (and it's hard to imagine how that can be sustained, unless Carrie's going to be an eyewitness to a major crime in every episode), this is fairly standard procedural. It's blandly professional; Montgomery is competent, but rarely more than that; the writing suffices to get the necessary exposition across. But it's a CBS crime drama, so it's not as if the bar is set all that high, and they can probably scrape three or four seasons out of it.

TV: The Playboy Club (NBC, Mon 10)

2011-09-20T20:12:00.000-07:00

Meet the girls of The Playboy Club.

There's New Bunny Maureen (Amber Heard, not selling the innocent girl from Ft. Wayne shtick very well); "Chocolate Bunny" Brenda (Naturi Naughton, playing exactly the same role she played as Lane's Bunny girlfriend on Mad Men); Lesbibunny Alice (Leah Renee), who's secretly married to the gay bartender and trying to raise enough money to start a Chicago chapter of the Mattachine Society; and Very First Bunny Ever Caroline (Laura Benanti, who is delightfully bitchy and evil, and the only actor on the show giving an actual performance).

The principal male character is Nick Dalton (Eddie Cibrian). Nick Dalton is a lawyer. Nick Dalton wants to be State's Attorney. But Nick Dalton used to work for the Chicago mob. Nick Dalton is a very important man, which you can tell because everyone keeps referring to Nick Dalton by his full name. Nick Dalton Nick Dalton Nick Dalton.

The Naturi Naughton connection is not the only connection The Playboy Club is making to Mad Men. Cibrian wants so badly to be Jon Hamm that you can taste the desperation; he's even dropped his voice into Hamm's register and cadence.

The story, such as it is, is a tiresome murder mystery involving the very mobsters for whom Nick Dalton used to work, and the show even gives us the rasping, quavering voice of the ancient Hugh Hefner himself to provide the voice-over narration. This is a god-awful mess, and it'll be off the air by the end of October.

TV: 2 Broke Girls (CBS, Mon 8:30)

2011-09-20T18:53:00.000-07:00

CBS has been crowing all summer that 2 Broke Girls was their highest-testing pilot in years. Either they're lying or their test audiences were smokin' the crack, because for most of the way, this show isn't very good. But there is a sudden uptick at the very end that just might be cause for hope.

Kat Dennings and Beth Behrs are Kat and Caroline, two waitresses at a run-down diner in Brooklyn. Kat's been there for years; Caroline is the new girl, a trust-fund baby forced into honest work because her family's assets have been seized (Daddy's a Bernie Madoff-type swindler).

The supporting characters are a rainbow of ethnic cliches -- Matthew Moy as the heavily-accented Asian owner of the diner; Jonathan Kite as the cook, a crude, vulgar, vaguely Slavic type; and Garrett Morris, who sits near the door doing god knows what. Selling chewing gum, maybe?

When Kat and Caroline are in scenes on their own, the show's at its best; Dennings and Behrs are likable, and have interesting chemistry. The last five minutes of the pilot are the strongest; the women move in together, and Caroline starts planning to use her business-school background to help Kat open a cupcake shop. Those five minutes are good enough that I'll watch next week, hoping that those first twenty minutes of mediocrity are just pilot jitters.

TV: Two and a Half Men (CBS, Mon 9)

2011-09-20T18:15:00.000-07:00

Not a new show, of course, but the first post-Charlie Sheen episode of Two and a Half Men seemed to be worth a quick comment. Producer Chuck Lorre wastes no time getting rid of Sheen; the first shot is of Charlie's coffin, and we're told that he's been killed in violent, messy fashion that doesn't leave much room for any "he's not really dead!" visits down the road. (Though since the only person present at his death was Rose, his crazy stalker, I suppose we have to leave open the possibility that she's lying about the whole thing and has Charlie tied up in a closet somewhere.)

The show's style and tone haven't changed much -- broad, vulgar jokes that are (for what they are) reasonably well written and delivered by a top-notch cast. Ashton Kutcher fits in reasonably well, and his Walden Schmidt is a different enough character from Charlie Harper that the rest of the cast will get to play different relationships than they have in the past. It appear that Jon Cryer, in particular, can be grateful that he won't always have to be the pathetic guy, and may even get to occasionally provide the voice of wisdom and experience.

Unless you were only watching the show for Sheen, your reaction to THM2.0 should be about the same as your reaction to the original version.

BOOKS: The Supergirls, Mike Madrid (2009)

2011-09-20T16:01:00.000-07:00

The Supergirls is a breezy history of comic book heroines and the challenges they've faced in being accepted by the reader, not to mention by the male characters who dominate the superhero world. Chapters on each decade alternate with chapters on more specific overall issues -- sex and the superheroine, for instance, or what happens when groups of female heroes bond.

The history of superheroines over the last 70 years is in many ways a re-telling of the history of women; as roles for women have changed, characters who were too deeply rooted in their historical era have faded away. Sheena, Queen of the Jungle, for instance, was a spectacularly sexy character who couldn't be tamed down enough to survive the creation of the Comics Code in the mid-1950s. The fondness of comic book writers for frequent updates of their fictional universes has allowed some characters to stick around for decades, though, with each new revision bringing their history in line with current views of what women "should" be; Madrid's chapter on the many image overhauls, reboots, and rewritten origin stories of Wonder Woman is particularly entertaining.

Madrid shows a sharp awareness of the subtle (and not so subtle) ways in which comics have failed to allow their female characters the same level of power as their male characters. As an example, he notes that a disproportionate number of superheroines have "pose and point" powers -- controlling the weather, telepathy or other psychic powers -- that don't require them to run, lift heavy objects, or do anything that might muss their hair; they just have to stand still and gesture dramatically, looking fabulous in the process.

This is a smart and affectionate piece of pop culture history, well worth the time if you have any interest in the subject matter.

our links are here to stay

2011-09-18T14:24:00.000-07:00

At The Rumpus, Steve Almond on the "decade of magical thinking" since 9/11.

At Celebrity Gossip, Academic Style, Anne Helen Petersen examines visual indicators of class.

At The House Next Door, Philip Maciak discusses the changing role of Nina Garcia as a character on Project Runway.

And finally, physics can be pretty:

BOOKS: The Twelfth Enchantment, David Liss (2011)

2011-09-17T15:03:00.000-07:00

David Liss is a rather erratic author. His historic/economic thrillers, set in England against the creation of our modern financial institutions -- the first stock markets, the first commodities markets -- are delightful. His attempts to recreate the formula with a colonial American setting have been less successful. And the less said about his lone contemporary novel, The Ethical Assassin, the better.

So in this new book, we have a good news/bad news situation. The good news is that Liss has returned to an English setting; the bad news is that he's abandoned his economic backdrop for a Jane Austen knockoff. And as seems to be increasingly popular these days, it's faux-Austen with magic thrown into the mix.

The setting is Nottingham in 1812, where the Luddite rebellion against the Industrial Revolution is beginning. Liss asks us to believe that the Luddites are actually a cabal of evil zombies (he doesn't actually use that word, and his version of the undead are more able to pass for human than the standard brain-obsessed crowd, but still, a zombie's a zombie) who can only be defeated by the skilled magicians of the Rosicrucian order, in conjunction with our heroine, Lucy Derrick.

Lucy is the leading lady from the "write your own Austen novel" kit -- she's beautiful, mildly disgraced, and about to be forced into a marriage to a man she does not love. She's also, much to her surprise, naturally gifted in the occult, and winds up leading the attempt to defeat the Luddite zombies.

Lord Byron is a significant supporting character, and William Blake makes a cameo appearance. It's all very silly, and gets off to a sluggish start, but Liss eventually works up a head of steam, and the final confrontation sequence is more exciting than I'd have expected.

And you have to have at least some affection for an author who can, in the midst of that grand climax, toss off this sentence without it feeling completely absurd: "Lucy would have responded, no doubt saying something cautious and uncertain, but the words never left her lips because that was when Mr. Morrison was struck down by a tortoise."

Certainly not up to the level of Liss's best work, but if you can slog through a slow opening, it has its moments.

TV: The Secret Circle (CW, Thu 9)

2011-09-16T20:24:00.000-07:00

I didn't expect to like The Secret Circle; it seemed like a pretty cynical ploy to replicate the success of The Vampire Diaries, which it follows on the CW schedule. Both shows are based on books by the same authors; both are about pretty teens caught up in the supernatural; The Secret Circle just replaces vampires with witches. But much to my surprise, the show is a surprisingly entertaining bit of cheesy fun.

Britt Robertson stars as Cassie, who moves to a small Washington town to live with her grandmother after her mother's death. (Grandma is played by Ashley Crow, who in two years has gone from playing the cheerleader's mother on Heroes to playing the grandmother of a girl the same age.) Strange things seem to be going on around her, and finally she is approached by a group of five local students who explain that she is a witch, as are they.

There are, it seems, six witch families in town, and when a member of each comes together, the circle has more power than any one of them could muster individually; Cassie is the sixth member of this generation's circle. They have to keep the circle a secret, because something went horribly wrong with their parents' circle 16 years ago, and several members of the group were killed, possibly at the hands of the survivors; as a result, the families have banned witchcraft. But those surviving parents aren't going along with the ban, and they have mysterious plans for the new circle, and for Cassie in particular.

It's usually the case in a show like that the bad guys are the most fun, and that's certainly true here. Phoebe Tonkin steals the show as Faye, the power-hungry bad girl in Cassie's circle; Gale Harold and Natasha Henstridge are the survivors of the parental circle, and both clearly relish getting to play over-the-top gleeful evil.

But the good guy characters are well cast, too. As Cassie, Robertson is wounded and vulnerable, and it should be great fun to watch her discovering her power. Thomas Dekker and Shelley Hennig are likable as Adam and Diana, the (so far) nicest members of the circle.

This is not a sophisticated show; it's another teen soap opera at heart -- Eastwick 90210, or Footloose with witchcraft in place of dancing. But the pilot sets just the right tone of slightly campy, slightly oversincere melodrama, and I had a lot of fun watching it.