A day late due to being ill last night, and our second batch of wannabes aren't offering much to make me feel better. It's a night in which no one seems to be shooting any higher than "meh," and most of them are failing to reach that level.
The rundown:
Jasmine, "Love Song" -- Well, the last note was pretty. The rest was a collection of pitch problems and wretched enunciation; if I hadn't known the song was called "Love Song," I'm not sure I'd have understood any of what she was saying. Lovely girl, and not without charisma, but this isn't a performance to move her on.
Matt G, "Viva la Vida" -- The core of the sound disappears when he sings quietly, and everything gets very breathy. His falsetto isn't pretty to hear (or to see, for that matter; it scrunches up his face even worse than his usual squint). And as the judges note, it's an odd song choice for the his voice.
Jeanine, "This Love" -- Odd song choices seem to be a theme so far; she gives the chorus a slight smoothness that could be very effective elsewhere, but here only serves to flatten the song and rob of its punch. And she's working awfully hard for the mediocre results she's getting.
Nick, "And I Am Telling You I Am Not Going" -- You know, at least it took a few weeks before Sanjaya started milking his own ineptness for votes; this guy is an insincere buffoon going in. "Norman" certainly doesn't deserve to be kept around, and his presence is an insult to all of the contestants who were cut without getting this far. The biggest shame of it all is that I think Nick might actually be able to sing.
Allison, "Alone" -- Finally, someone chooses the right song. She's not going to make anyone forget Ann Wilson, but it's a fairly good performance, and she goes from quiet to belt with relative grace and ease. She's rough around the edges, but when the night is going this badly, this might get her through to the finals.
Kris, "Man in the Mirror" -- Pleasant, in a bland karaoke kinda way. There's nothing glaringly wrong with it, and there are occasional hints that he's capable of something better. He looks awkward as hell, though, leaping about the stage and pumping his fist, and needs to tone that stuff way down. (The judges are far kinder to him than he deserves.)
Megan, "Put Your Records On" -- I hear a lot of Corinne Bailey Rae in the performance, and I'm not sure whether that's because Megan's imitating her or because the song is so quirky in its rhythms and melodies that there's no other way to approach it. She's got a pretty voice, though like Kris, she will need a lot of work on stage presence; watching those arms churning at her side is a little scary.
Matt B, "If You Could Only See" -- Working a little bit of the Chris Daughtry vibe, to moderately good effect. He doesn't ever deliver the real rock belt that the song seems to be building to, and that lack of power will likely hurt him in the long run if he survives.
Jesse, "Bette Davis Eyes" -- Maybe it's just bad eye makeup, but she looks terribly pained when she sings. It's a harmless, competent performance, but it never becomes anything more than that.
Kai, "What Becomes of the Brokenhearted" -- There's far too much vibrato in the money note at the end, but otherwise this isn't bad. The biggest problem is just that the original is such a classic that nearly anyone who does it can't help but instantly pale in comparison.
Mishavonna, "Drops of Jupiter" -- Hate the song, which is the sort of pretentious twaddle that stoned 19-year-olds think is really deep. As for the performance, it's yet another in the evening's long parade of minimally competent, adequate, unexciting songs.
Adam, "Satisfaction" -- Well, those years in musical theater have paid off; he certainly knows how to command a stage. Yes, he is, as the taped intro had suggested, a bit too big and theatrical, but it's a solid performance, and he should easily go through to the finals.
Deserving the top three spots: Adam, Allison, Megan.
Deserving of a second chance on Wild Card Night: If I'm feeling generous, Mishavonna, Matt B, and Kai, but only if I'm feeling generous.
February 26, 2009
February 22, 2009
MOVIES: Oscar catch-up
Yes, I've been a very bad blogger, and haven't kept up with posting about all of the movies I've seen this month. So, before, the Oscars show begins, a quick catch-up post about some of the nominees.
I didn't care for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. I admired the technical accomplishments immensely, but was rarely emotionally engaged by the movie. Two exceptions: the scenes with Pitt and Tilda Swinton in that Russian hotel kitchen, and the meditation on coincidence leading up to Daisy's accident. And that shot of Pitt on the sailboat is the most stunning and iconic image of male beauty I've ever seen.
I was struck by the fact that the movie only allows Benjamin and Daisy to be happily united as a couple for that brief period when both are physically young and beautiful. As long as Benjamin still looks old, one or the other offers an excuse to keep them apart; once Daisy ages into her mid-40s, Benjamin's gone like a shot (and given a conveniently altruistic-sounding excuse for his departure).
I enjoyed The Reader much more, and I hadn't expected to. My cynicism meter was on high alert going on -- Winslet and Fiennes in a Holocaust movie produced by Harvey Weinstein? This was so obviously an Important Oscar Movie that it couldn't possibly be any good. But the movie works, largely on the strength of fine performances from Winslet and David Kross (who was sadly neglected during awards season). And the makeup -- good old-fashioned makeup -- that's used to age Winslet's character 30 years is far more convincing than all of the high-tech digital wizardry that's inflicted on Brad Pitt in Button.
And thanks to iTunes, I've seen 9 of the 10 nominated short films. The live-action shorts aren't a particularly strong field, but I did very much like "The Pig," which finds an interesting frame for its story of religious values in conflict. I'd bet on "Toyland" to win, though; it's set in WWII-era Germany, and "Toyland" is the answer of a young single mother to her son when he asks where all of his Jewish friends are disappearing to.
The animated films I've seen ("La Maison en Petits Cubes" isn't available for online viewing anywhere that I can find) are a very strong field. Even the slightest of the group, "Oktapodi," is an amusing bit of CGI about octopuses in love. "This Way Up" is the very British story of one coffin's difficult journey to a funeral; "Presto" is the rabbit-vs-magician short that played in theaters with WALL-E.
Best of the field, though, is "Lavatory/Lovestory," in which a men's room attendant finds her humdrum life interrupted by the unexpected possibility of romance. The animation is very simple -- black and white pencil drawings (with occasional well-timed bursts of color) that reminded of children's author Syd Hoff -- but extraordinarily communicative.
I didn't care for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. I admired the technical accomplishments immensely, but was rarely emotionally engaged by the movie. Two exceptions: the scenes with Pitt and Tilda Swinton in that Russian hotel kitchen, and the meditation on coincidence leading up to Daisy's accident. And that shot of Pitt on the sailboat is the most stunning and iconic image of male beauty I've ever seen.
I was struck by the fact that the movie only allows Benjamin and Daisy to be happily united as a couple for that brief period when both are physically young and beautiful. As long as Benjamin still looks old, one or the other offers an excuse to keep them apart; once Daisy ages into her mid-40s, Benjamin's gone like a shot (and given a conveniently altruistic-sounding excuse for his departure).
I enjoyed The Reader much more, and I hadn't expected to. My cynicism meter was on high alert going on -- Winslet and Fiennes in a Holocaust movie produced by Harvey Weinstein? This was so obviously an Important Oscar Movie that it couldn't possibly be any good. But the movie works, largely on the strength of fine performances from Winslet and David Kross (who was sadly neglected during awards season). And the makeup -- good old-fashioned makeup -- that's used to age Winslet's character 30 years is far more convincing than all of the high-tech digital wizardry that's inflicted on Brad Pitt in Button.
And thanks to iTunes, I've seen 9 of the 10 nominated short films. The live-action shorts aren't a particularly strong field, but I did very much like "The Pig," which finds an interesting frame for its story of religious values in conflict. I'd bet on "Toyland" to win, though; it's set in WWII-era Germany, and "Toyland" is the answer of a young single mother to her son when he asks where all of his Jewish friends are disappearing to.
The animated films I've seen ("La Maison en Petits Cubes" isn't available for online viewing anywhere that I can find) are a very strong field. Even the slightest of the group, "Oktapodi," is an amusing bit of CGI about octopuses in love. "This Way Up" is the very British story of one coffin's difficult journey to a funeral; "Presto" is the rabbit-vs-magician short that played in theaters with WALL-E.
Best of the field, though, is "Lavatory/Lovestory," in which a men's room attendant finds her humdrum life interrupted by the unexpected possibility of romance. The animation is very simple -- black and white pencil drawings (with occasional well-timed bursts of color) that reminded of children's author Syd Hoff -- but extraordinarily communicative.
Labels:
Movies
February 17, 2009
MUSIC: American Idol 09: semi-finals, week 1
And at least, the season begins in earnest after the pointless cruelty of the audition shows and the pointless time-wasting of Hollywood Week.
On the whole, I'm not happy with the new semi-final format (which is actually the old semi-final format, used during the first few years of the show). It allows mediocre singers to slip into the finals with one unusually strong performance, where the previous format required singers to put together three good weeks to make the final 12. To be sure, the previous format allowed good singers to get cut based on one unusually weak performance, but that will still happen here, and any singer who can't get through a three-week semi-final without cracking probably doesn't deserve to be a finalist anyway.
The new format also takes away our chance to become familiar with the contestants over the three-week period; by the time the finals had begun, we had heard three full performances from each finalist, and (if the singers were smart) there was a good chance we'd heard them in a range of styles. Now, we'll head into the finals having heard each singer once -- maybe twice, for those who get in via Wild Card Night -- and it'll have been a month since we heard the singers who make it to the finals tonight.
Finally, 36 semifinalists is too many. We've never had 24 semifinalists who were good enough to make the finals, so why do we need to increase the number? This new format would work just as well with three weeks of 8 as with three weeks of 12. (Ah, but then, the competition show would only be one hour long instead of two, and we can't ask Fox to give up three hours of Idol airtime.)
There is one plus: We have at least the potential to get away from the rigid gender balance that was required of the final 12 under the previous format. If eight or nine of the best twelve singers are of the same gender, then that's what we should get, rather than the artificial 6-6 requirement. I'm sure that the judges will be under some pressure to even out the genders with their Wild Card choices (the judges, not the public, will choose the three winners from Wild Card night), but at least we aren't locked in to the 6 boys/6 girls thing.
So, the rundown for the night:
Jackie, "A Little Less Conversation" -- It's an interesting bluesy version of the song, especially at the beginning, but she gets shoutier as she progresses and doesn't quite have the voice to pull off the Joplin shtick. And the brief kittenish interlude in the bridge doesn't work at all. The judges are right, though, when they comment on well she controls the stage.
Ricky, "A Song for You" -- Too much melisma (an unusual comment for a male contestant), and his voice is too thick and throaty for my taste. Still, his intonation is superb and his range impressive, with some very nice falsetto work at the end. A very good performance.
Alexis, "Never Loved a Man" -- Let's face it, looks matter. And if you're a tiny pale-skinned blonde girl, you're going to have a hard time being taken seriously as an R&B belter unless you're amazingly good. This was amazingly good. She's got power without shrieking or loss of control; the voice is solid at high or low volume.
Brent, "Hick Town" -- Idol is primarily a show about pop and rock music. A country singer can survive on this show, but he's got to be better than this (and he's got to choose more interesting material, especially in this format where you get only one chance to make an impression). You can hear performances like this from every bar band in Texas on a Friday night. Bye, bye, Brent.
Stevie, "You Belong With Me" -- She's right that the song's youthful energy suits her, but her pitch is never quite in place and she loses power entirely in her lower register, getting very breathy. She also chooses to breathe in odd places, mid-phrase, sometimes even mid-word.
Anoop, "Angel of Mine" -- Pitch problems throughout, and his high notes don't impress the way Ricky's did, sounding slightly pinched. It might be good enough to at least get him through to Wild Card Night, though. The adorable factor will certainly help; I could just melt in those eyes. (I am, however, already sick to death of the "Anoop Dogg" nickname.)
Casey, "Every Little Thing He Does" -- It's not as if The Police are Iron Maiden or anything, but this song does need a bit more of a rock edge than she can bring; it's like the Muzak version. It's harmless and pleasant enough, though her voice does get unpleasantly harsh when she tries to hit the big, long, belty notes.
Michael, "I Don't Wanna Be" -- One shot to impress, and this is the song he picks? It doesn't offer any opportunity for a singer to really shine. It's a dull song, and the performance isn't much better; Michael's utter lack of charisma isn't helping.
Ann Marie, "You Make Me Feel Like a Natural Woman" -- A few small pitch problems, but a spectacular voice, and she finds a way to sell the song without trying to sound like an Aretha clone. One of the better performances of the night, and I am surprised at how negative the judges' comments are.
Stephen, "Rock With You" -- A very dutiful, restrained performance, with none of the joy or abandon the song needs. And the big long high note that's meant to impress us wobbles all over the place. This isn't going to get him to the finals.
Tatiana, "Saving All My Love For You" -- Not horrible, though she has a tendency to push awfully hard, and the lyrics are mostly lost in mush (and no, I don't think that's just her accent). Maybe she slips through to Wild Card Night, but I doubt it.
Danny, "Hero" -- Best of the night, by a long shot. Simon's right that the other judges are going a bit overboard, but only Alexis has come close to this level of performance tonight.
Deserving of the top three spots: Danny, Alexis, Ricky.
Deserving of a second chance on Wild Card Night: Anoop, Ann Marie.
On the whole, I'm not happy with the new semi-final format (which is actually the old semi-final format, used during the first few years of the show). It allows mediocre singers to slip into the finals with one unusually strong performance, where the previous format required singers to put together three good weeks to make the final 12. To be sure, the previous format allowed good singers to get cut based on one unusually weak performance, but that will still happen here, and any singer who can't get through a three-week semi-final without cracking probably doesn't deserve to be a finalist anyway.
The new format also takes away our chance to become familiar with the contestants over the three-week period; by the time the finals had begun, we had heard three full performances from each finalist, and (if the singers were smart) there was a good chance we'd heard them in a range of styles. Now, we'll head into the finals having heard each singer once -- maybe twice, for those who get in via Wild Card Night -- and it'll have been a month since we heard the singers who make it to the finals tonight.
Finally, 36 semifinalists is too many. We've never had 24 semifinalists who were good enough to make the finals, so why do we need to increase the number? This new format would work just as well with three weeks of 8 as with three weeks of 12. (Ah, but then, the competition show would only be one hour long instead of two, and we can't ask Fox to give up three hours of Idol airtime.)
There is one plus: We have at least the potential to get away from the rigid gender balance that was required of the final 12 under the previous format. If eight or nine of the best twelve singers are of the same gender, then that's what we should get, rather than the artificial 6-6 requirement. I'm sure that the judges will be under some pressure to even out the genders with their Wild Card choices (the judges, not the public, will choose the three winners from Wild Card night), but at least we aren't locked in to the 6 boys/6 girls thing.
So, the rundown for the night:
Jackie, "A Little Less Conversation" -- It's an interesting bluesy version of the song, especially at the beginning, but she gets shoutier as she progresses and doesn't quite have the voice to pull off the Joplin shtick. And the brief kittenish interlude in the bridge doesn't work at all. The judges are right, though, when they comment on well she controls the stage.
Ricky, "A Song for You" -- Too much melisma (an unusual comment for a male contestant), and his voice is too thick and throaty for my taste. Still, his intonation is superb and his range impressive, with some very nice falsetto work at the end. A very good performance.
Alexis, "Never Loved a Man" -- Let's face it, looks matter. And if you're a tiny pale-skinned blonde girl, you're going to have a hard time being taken seriously as an R&B belter unless you're amazingly good. This was amazingly good. She's got power without shrieking or loss of control; the voice is solid at high or low volume.
Brent, "Hick Town" -- Idol is primarily a show about pop and rock music. A country singer can survive on this show, but he's got to be better than this (and he's got to choose more interesting material, especially in this format where you get only one chance to make an impression). You can hear performances like this from every bar band in Texas on a Friday night. Bye, bye, Brent.
Stevie, "You Belong With Me" -- She's right that the song's youthful energy suits her, but her pitch is never quite in place and she loses power entirely in her lower register, getting very breathy. She also chooses to breathe in odd places, mid-phrase, sometimes even mid-word.
Anoop, "Angel of Mine" -- Pitch problems throughout, and his high notes don't impress the way Ricky's did, sounding slightly pinched. It might be good enough to at least get him through to Wild Card Night, though. The adorable factor will certainly help; I could just melt in those eyes. (I am, however, already sick to death of the "Anoop Dogg" nickname.)
Casey, "Every Little Thing He Does" -- It's not as if The Police are Iron Maiden or anything, but this song does need a bit more of a rock edge than she can bring; it's like the Muzak version. It's harmless and pleasant enough, though her voice does get unpleasantly harsh when she tries to hit the big, long, belty notes.
Michael, "I Don't Wanna Be" -- One shot to impress, and this is the song he picks? It doesn't offer any opportunity for a singer to really shine. It's a dull song, and the performance isn't much better; Michael's utter lack of charisma isn't helping.
Ann Marie, "You Make Me Feel Like a Natural Woman" -- A few small pitch problems, but a spectacular voice, and she finds a way to sell the song without trying to sound like an Aretha clone. One of the better performances of the night, and I am surprised at how negative the judges' comments are.
Stephen, "Rock With You" -- A very dutiful, restrained performance, with none of the joy or abandon the song needs. And the big long high note that's meant to impress us wobbles all over the place. This isn't going to get him to the finals.
Tatiana, "Saving All My Love For You" -- Not horrible, though she has a tendency to push awfully hard, and the lyrics are mostly lost in mush (and no, I don't think that's just her accent). Maybe she slips through to Wild Card Night, but I doubt it.
Danny, "Hero" -- Best of the night, by a long shot. Simon's right that the other judges are going a bit overboard, but only Alexis has come close to this level of performance tonight.
Deserving of the top three spots: Danny, Alexis, Ricky.
Deserving of a second chance on Wild Card Night: Anoop, Ann Marie.
February 08, 2009
TV: RuPaul's Drag Race (Logo, Mon 10)
Yet another Project Runway knockoff, and something of a mixed bag.
RuPaul is our host, and he's on a quest to find "America's next drag superstar." Nine contestants arrive, and they are greeted by RuPaul (in drag) on a video monitor, where he is being filmed in the softest focus we've seen on TV in years. After the welcome message is finished, RuPaul, now out of drag in a natty suit, walks in to present the first challenge. (That's right; RuPaul has cast himself as both Tim and Heidi.)
It's a tough one, too, considering the amount of time and money that top drag artists put into their outfits. They are provided with an assortment of ghastly thrift store rejects and told to assemble a fabulous outfit. "And because we know how important the right accessories can be," RuPaul tells the contestants, "we went to the dollar store and bought a whole bunch of crap."
That sort of irreverence is one of the show's strengths, and RuPaul is entertaining as the host/mentor/judge (he's back in drag, and back out of focus, in his role as judge). And yes, I do mean THE judge. Though there is a judging panel who join him in commenting on the challenge results -- Project Runway's Santino Rice is a regular judge, and legendary costume designer Bob Mackie is the guest judge for the first show -- they get no say in the final judgment. "I have consulted with our judges, my lawyer, and my housekeeper," says RuPaul, "but the final decision is mine alone."
The final runway segment in which we see how successfully the contestants have met the challenge is by far the show's greatest weakness; the production values plummet, with the room being far too brightly lit and the editing far too frantic for us to get a good luck at the outfits. But the contestants are a fine mix of personalities and styles; there's the chic elegance of Bebe Zahara Benet, the highly stylized punk/Goth look of Nina Flowers, and the creepy Bette Davis features of Tammie Brown.
Will you enjoy the show? It's certainly an uneven mess, but in its best moments it manages to simultaneously parody and pay loving homage to the Runway genre, and the personalities of RuPaul and his contestants are enough to keep me watching.
RuPaul is our host, and he's on a quest to find "America's next drag superstar." Nine contestants arrive, and they are greeted by RuPaul (in drag) on a video monitor, where he is being filmed in the softest focus we've seen on TV in years. After the welcome message is finished, RuPaul, now out of drag in a natty suit, walks in to present the first challenge. (That's right; RuPaul has cast himself as both Tim and Heidi.)
It's a tough one, too, considering the amount of time and money that top drag artists put into their outfits. They are provided with an assortment of ghastly thrift store rejects and told to assemble a fabulous outfit. "And because we know how important the right accessories can be," RuPaul tells the contestants, "we went to the dollar store and bought a whole bunch of crap."
That sort of irreverence is one of the show's strengths, and RuPaul is entertaining as the host/mentor/judge (he's back in drag, and back out of focus, in his role as judge). And yes, I do mean THE judge. Though there is a judging panel who join him in commenting on the challenge results -- Project Runway's Santino Rice is a regular judge, and legendary costume designer Bob Mackie is the guest judge for the first show -- they get no say in the final judgment. "I have consulted with our judges, my lawyer, and my housekeeper," says RuPaul, "but the final decision is mine alone."
The final runway segment in which we see how successfully the contestants have met the challenge is by far the show's greatest weakness; the production values plummet, with the room being far too brightly lit and the editing far too frantic for us to get a good luck at the outfits. But the contestants are a fine mix of personalities and styles; there's the chic elegance of Bebe Zahara Benet, the highly stylized punk/Goth look of Nina Flowers, and the creepy Bette Davis features of Tammie Brown.
Will you enjoy the show? It's certainly an uneven mess, but in its best moments it manages to simultaneously parody and pay loving homage to the Runway genre, and the personalities of RuPaul and his contestants are enough to keep me watching.
Labels:
TV
January 26, 2009
BOOKS: The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, Stieg Larsson (2005/US 2008)
It's an odd crime thriller that keeps its two principal detectives from meeting for 250 pages, an even odder one that simply interrupts the action for two months while one of those detectives serves a short prison sentence. But they do things differently in Sweden, it seems, and the constant awareness that we're dealing with a culture that's subtly different from America's is one of the things I liked about this book.
Our protagonists are Mikael Blomkvist, a 40-ish financial journalist who's just been convicted of libeling a prominent businessman (thus that prison sentence), and Lisbeth Salander, a 20-ish genuis hacker with a serious lack of social skills. Due to his libel conviction, Mikael is forced to take an extended leave of absence from the magazine where he works, and is offered an investigative job by the elderly Henrik Vanger, whose family has long been a power in Swedish industry.
Some 40 years ago, Henrik's niece, Harriet, disappeared from a family reunion and was never seen again. Her disappearance is a variation of sorts on classic locked-room mysteries, as there's only one road onto the family's island, and it was completely blocked by a major traffic accident at the time. Henrik has been obsessed with the case ever since, and hopes that Mikael's investigative skills will turn up evidence that he's somehow overlooked.
Mikael eventually hires Lisbeth as his assistant; it takes quite a while, though, for Larsson to work her into the main plot, which is a bit of a drawback, because she's the book's most interesting character. Once they're teamed up, though, Mikael and Lisbeth are a fine pair, and their relationship develops in ways I hadn't expected.
The mystery is a fine one, with a variety of loathsome suspects in the Vanger family, and a satisfying solution. I was a bit distracted by the Swedish names; there are eight or nine suspects to keep track of, and I kept thinking that I'd be remembering them better if they were named Bob and Susan and Frank instead of Gottfried and Anita and Harald.
Larsson finished three novels in this series, but died of a heart attack at a relatively young age before the first was published. The three books have been best-sellers throughout Europe; the second (The Girl Who Played With Fire) will be published in the US this summer. It's reportedly even better than the first, and I'm looking forward to it very much.
Our protagonists are Mikael Blomkvist, a 40-ish financial journalist who's just been convicted of libeling a prominent businessman (thus that prison sentence), and Lisbeth Salander, a 20-ish genuis hacker with a serious lack of social skills. Due to his libel conviction, Mikael is forced to take an extended leave of absence from the magazine where he works, and is offered an investigative job by the elderly Henrik Vanger, whose family has long been a power in Swedish industry.
Some 40 years ago, Henrik's niece, Harriet, disappeared from a family reunion and was never seen again. Her disappearance is a variation of sorts on classic locked-room mysteries, as there's only one road onto the family's island, and it was completely blocked by a major traffic accident at the time. Henrik has been obsessed with the case ever since, and hopes that Mikael's investigative skills will turn up evidence that he's somehow overlooked.
Mikael eventually hires Lisbeth as his assistant; it takes quite a while, though, for Larsson to work her into the main plot, which is a bit of a drawback, because she's the book's most interesting character. Once they're teamed up, though, Mikael and Lisbeth are a fine pair, and their relationship develops in ways I hadn't expected.
The mystery is a fine one, with a variety of loathsome suspects in the Vanger family, and a satisfying solution. I was a bit distracted by the Swedish names; there are eight or nine suspects to keep track of, and I kept thinking that I'd be remembering them better if they were named Bob and Susan and Frank instead of Gottfried and Anita and Harald.
Larsson finished three novels in this series, but died of a heart attack at a relatively young age before the first was published. The three books have been best-sellers throughout Europe; the second (The Girl Who Played With Fire) will be published in the US this summer. It's reportedly even better than the first, and I'm looking forward to it very much.
Labels:
Books
January 21, 2009
MOVIES: On the eve of the nominations
The astute long-time reader will have noticed that I haven't done a "best of" list this year. I saw far fewer movies this year, mostly due to some chronic medical problems. Nothing life threatening, just annoying stuff that left me on too many weekends feeling too tired to go out and see movies. And when you see only one or two movies a month instead of five or six, you tend to see the Big Movies and only the Big Movies.
And that means that any Best Of list I could come up with would be made up pretty much of the usual suspects -- Milk, The Visitor, Man on Wire and so on -- and in that case, what's the point? The fun of a good Best Of list is the unexpected surprises, the movies and performances that don't pop up on anyone else's lists. And this year, even the long shots that I'm really hoping to see on tomorrow's nomination list are the same long shots that everyone else is hoping for (Richard Jenkins, Melissa Leo, Rosemarie DeWitt). My one no-chance-in-hell long shot, a nomination that would make me giddy with joy but won't happen, would be a Best Actor nomination for Colin Farrell, who was so unexpectedly marvelous in In Bruges.
So, in lieu of a formal list, a few thoughts on the year:
Expected nominees whose absence would please me: Sally Hawkins and Meryl Streep in Best Actress; supporting nominations for Philip Seymour Hoffman, Dev Patel, and Kate Winslet, not because any are undeserving (though c'mon, Dev Patel? Really?) but because all are clearly leads; The Dark Knight in Best Picture.
Let's talk about that last one. There's really only one interesting thing about the movie, and that's Heath Ledger's performance. And as good a performance as it is -- it will win Best Supporting Actor, and probably deserves to -- it is itself widely overrated; it's a good piece of acting, but it's not the master class the Oscar punditry has declared it to be. The hype and the over praise, of course, were unavoidable from the moment of Ledger's death; that tragedy led us to over hype the performance, and that hype led us to wildly over hype the movie, which really isn't all that interesting. It's certainly not worthy of a Best Picture nomination.
Would there have been any surprises on my hypothetical Best Of list for 2008? Well, one, I suppose: I seem to have missed posting anything on it at the time, but I really liked Speed Racer and couldn't figure out what all the complaints were about. Of course it was loud and garish and frenetic; it was a freakin' cartoon, beautifully translated into live action. The effects were astounding; the cast was uniformly fine, capturing the cartoon tone in just the right style. (I particularly liked Matthew Fox, absurdly square-jawed and stalwart as Racer X, and Roger Allam, perfectly hissable as the Evil Villainous Tycoon.) Not a perfect movie, to be sure -- no movie with an adorable urchin and his pet monkey could be -- but destined, I think, to be the Tron of its generation. In twenty years, it'll be recognized as a misunderstood delight, and it won't even take that long for the influence of its effects wizardry to be felt.
And that means that any Best Of list I could come up with would be made up pretty much of the usual suspects -- Milk, The Visitor, Man on Wire and so on -- and in that case, what's the point? The fun of a good Best Of list is the unexpected surprises, the movies and performances that don't pop up on anyone else's lists. And this year, even the long shots that I'm really hoping to see on tomorrow's nomination list are the same long shots that everyone else is hoping for (Richard Jenkins, Melissa Leo, Rosemarie DeWitt). My one no-chance-in-hell long shot, a nomination that would make me giddy with joy but won't happen, would be a Best Actor nomination for Colin Farrell, who was so unexpectedly marvelous in In Bruges.
So, in lieu of a formal list, a few thoughts on the year:
Expected nominees whose absence would please me: Sally Hawkins and Meryl Streep in Best Actress; supporting nominations for Philip Seymour Hoffman, Dev Patel, and Kate Winslet, not because any are undeserving (though c'mon, Dev Patel? Really?) but because all are clearly leads; The Dark Knight in Best Picture.
Let's talk about that last one. There's really only one interesting thing about the movie, and that's Heath Ledger's performance. And as good a performance as it is -- it will win Best Supporting Actor, and probably deserves to -- it is itself widely overrated; it's a good piece of acting, but it's not the master class the Oscar punditry has declared it to be. The hype and the over praise, of course, were unavoidable from the moment of Ledger's death; that tragedy led us to over hype the performance, and that hype led us to wildly over hype the movie, which really isn't all that interesting. It's certainly not worthy of a Best Picture nomination.
Would there have been any surprises on my hypothetical Best Of list for 2008? Well, one, I suppose: I seem to have missed posting anything on it at the time, but I really liked Speed Racer and couldn't figure out what all the complaints were about. Of course it was loud and garish and frenetic; it was a freakin' cartoon, beautifully translated into live action. The effects were astounding; the cast was uniformly fine, capturing the cartoon tone in just the right style. (I particularly liked Matthew Fox, absurdly square-jawed and stalwart as Racer X, and Roger Allam, perfectly hissable as the Evil Villainous Tycoon.) Not a perfect movie, to be sure -- no movie with an adorable urchin and his pet monkey could be -- but destined, I think, to be the Tron of its generation. In twenty years, it'll be recognized as a misunderstood delight, and it won't even take that long for the influence of its effects wizardry to be felt.
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Movies
January 11, 2009
MOVIES: Cassandra's Dream (Woody Allen, 2008)
I'm so used to the standard Woody Allen movie soundtrack -- old jazz standards, crackly opera recordings, and so on -- that it came as quite a shock to see "score by Philip Glass" during the opening credits. It's the first time in at least 20 years that Allen has used an original score (in fact, I'm not sure he ever has before; any Woody experts out there?). Glass's score is highly effective; his short phrases never repeat in quite the same way, helping greatly to keep the audience on edge.
And the score isn't the only oddity here; Cassandra's Dream feels less like an Allen movie than any other I can remember. Entirely gone are his usual loping rhythms; dialogue here is terse, with no extraneous banter. It's a bit annoying at first, in fact, as characters rush on and off screen for just long enough to deliver some key bit of exposition. But once you adjust to the movie's pacing, there's an interesting story being told.
Ewan McGregor and Colin Farrell star as brothers who are in desperate need of money (McGregor for an investment he wants to make; Farrell to pay off gambling debts), and expect their dear old Uncle Howard (Tom Wilkinson) to dig them out as he has done so many times before. But this time, Uncle Howard wants a rather hefty favor in return, and the brothers find their moral and ethical limits put to the test.
Allen has dealt with similar themes before, in better movies like Crimes and Misdemeanors and Match Point. But the performances are good, especially from Farrell (an interesting companion to his work in In Bruges, another character struggling with his conscience) and Wilkinson, darkly funny as a man willing to do anything to save himself -- well, willing to have someone else do anything to save him, at any rate.
And the score isn't the only oddity here; Cassandra's Dream feels less like an Allen movie than any other I can remember. Entirely gone are his usual loping rhythms; dialogue here is terse, with no extraneous banter. It's a bit annoying at first, in fact, as characters rush on and off screen for just long enough to deliver some key bit of exposition. But once you adjust to the movie's pacing, there's an interesting story being told.
Ewan McGregor and Colin Farrell star as brothers who are in desperate need of money (McGregor for an investment he wants to make; Farrell to pay off gambling debts), and expect their dear old Uncle Howard (Tom Wilkinson) to dig them out as he has done so many times before. But this time, Uncle Howard wants a rather hefty favor in return, and the brothers find their moral and ethical limits put to the test.
Allen has dealt with similar themes before, in better movies like Crimes and Misdemeanors and Match Point. But the performances are good, especially from Farrell (an interesting companion to his work in In Bruges, another character struggling with his conscience) and Wilkinson, darkly funny as a man willing to do anything to save himself -- well, willing to have someone else do anything to save him, at any rate.
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Movies
January 10, 2009
MOVIES: The Wrestler (Darren Aronofsky, 2008)
Finally overcoming his tendency to indulge in excessive artsy-fartsiness, Aronofsky makes his best movie yet by simply telling a simple story.
The story is that of Randy "The Ram" Robinson (Mickey Rourke), who was one of the best professional wrestlers 20 years ago. Today, he clings to his wrestling career, fighting second-rate opponents on third-rate bills in fourth-rate towns. And that career is all he has to cling to; he's estranged from his daughter Stephanie (Evan Rachel Wood), and the closest thing he has to a romantic relationship is the occasional bit of mild flirtation with local stripper Cassidy (Marisa Tomei).
There's really only one big plot point in The Wrestler -- Randy has a heart attack -- and for the rest of the movie, we watch as Randy tries to cope with the ways in which that changes his life. How does a middle-aged man deal with life when the only career he's ever known, the only thing he's ever been good at, is taken away from him?
Rourke is almost always on screen in this movie, and all the good things you've heard about his perfromance are true. It's a performance utterly lacking in vanity; Rourke's own battered face and body -- he spent several years as a boxer during his exile from Hollywood -- are constantly on display.
The rest of the movie is not up to Rourke's level. Tomei does a solid job, creating a full character from the leftover heart-of-gold scraps that Aronofsky has given her, but the movie is none too subtle in pounding home the parallels between the aging Randy and the aging Cassidy (Tomei is still a lovely woman, but as strippers go, she is a bit long in the tooth), or the notion that her strip club is the equivalent of his wrestling ring. The Stephanie storyline is even worse, with lots of wounded "you were never there for me" nonsense, and the standard formulas about Randy buying wildly inappropriate gifts and so on.
And if you're sensitive about movie violence, you should be warned that the wrestling scenes here are absolutely brutal; I found them extraordinarily hard to sit through. Yes, it's important to show us just how Randy has become so battered and damaged, but the point could have been made in half the time with scenes far less intense; these scenes are less about telling the audience something it needs to know than they are about brutalizing the audience, and they are enough to keep me from simply recommending The Wrestler. Yes, Rourke's performance is superb, but I'm not sure any performance is good enough to make it worth being assaulted by unnecessary violence for the first half-hour of the movie.
The story is that of Randy "The Ram" Robinson (Mickey Rourke), who was one of the best professional wrestlers 20 years ago. Today, he clings to his wrestling career, fighting second-rate opponents on third-rate bills in fourth-rate towns. And that career is all he has to cling to; he's estranged from his daughter Stephanie (Evan Rachel Wood), and the closest thing he has to a romantic relationship is the occasional bit of mild flirtation with local stripper Cassidy (Marisa Tomei).
There's really only one big plot point in The Wrestler -- Randy has a heart attack -- and for the rest of the movie, we watch as Randy tries to cope with the ways in which that changes his life. How does a middle-aged man deal with life when the only career he's ever known, the only thing he's ever been good at, is taken away from him?
Rourke is almost always on screen in this movie, and all the good things you've heard about his perfromance are true. It's a performance utterly lacking in vanity; Rourke's own battered face and body -- he spent several years as a boxer during his exile from Hollywood -- are constantly on display.
The rest of the movie is not up to Rourke's level. Tomei does a solid job, creating a full character from the leftover heart-of-gold scraps that Aronofsky has given her, but the movie is none too subtle in pounding home the parallels between the aging Randy and the aging Cassidy (Tomei is still a lovely woman, but as strippers go, she is a bit long in the tooth), or the notion that her strip club is the equivalent of his wrestling ring. The Stephanie storyline is even worse, with lots of wounded "you were never there for me" nonsense, and the standard formulas about Randy buying wildly inappropriate gifts and so on.
And if you're sensitive about movie violence, you should be warned that the wrestling scenes here are absolutely brutal; I found them extraordinarily hard to sit through. Yes, it's important to show us just how Randy has become so battered and damaged, but the point could have been made in half the time with scenes far less intense; these scenes are less about telling the audience something it needs to know than they are about brutalizing the audience, and they are enough to keep me from simply recommending The Wrestler. Yes, Rourke's performance is superb, but I'm not sure any performance is good enough to make it worth being assaulted by unnecessary violence for the first half-hour of the movie.
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Movies
January 07, 2009
MOVIES: Vicky Cristina Barcelona (Woody Allen, 2008)
This is about as good as a late Woody Allen film gets, which is to say there are some amusing moments, you can watch it without cringing (mostly), and it's not going to make anyone forget how much better Allen's early movies were.
This one takes place in several Spanish cities, but mostly Barcelona, where Vicky and Cristina (Rebecca Hall and Scarlett Johansson) are spending their summer with some of Cristina's relatives. They meet a local painter, the grandly egotistical Juan Antonio (Javier Bardem), whose idea of a suave introduction is to invite the two women to join him for a weekend of good food, good wine, and lots of hot three-way sex. Cristina is charmed and agrees to join Juan Antonio; Vicky, who is engaged to a very nice (albeit rather bland) man, is appalled by Juan Antonio's arrogance, but tags along to try and keep Cristina from doing anything too foolish.
Before the weekend is over, of course, Vicky finds herself struggling with her own attraction to Juan Antonio. And because a romantic triangle isn't quite complicated enough, along comes Juan Antonio's ex-wife, Maria Elena (Penelope Cruz), a passionate, suicidal, somewhat deranged woman who's never really stopped loving her husband.
Bardem and Cruz are saddled with cliched roles here -- the Latin lover and the Spanish spitfire -- to which they bring as much life and dimension as anyone probably could, but the characters aren't well enough written for either of them to do much. (On a personal note, I confess that I have always been somewhat perplexed by the alleged sex appeal of Javier Bardem. Fine actor, to be sure, and immensely charismatic, but sexy? Really?)
The movie's most interesting performance comes from Rebecca Hall as Vicky, who struggles against her attraction to Juan Antonio, not only to avoid cheating on her fiance, but to keep from hurting Cristina.
It is particularly pleasant to note that this movie does not have an obvious Woody surrogate, saddled with delivering all of his/her dialogue in Allen's distinctive rhythms. It's an Allen screenplay, of course, so those rhythms aren't entirely absent (they're most noticable in the restaurant scene where Vicki and Cristina first meet Juan Antonio), but we're not clubbed over the head with a bad Woody impression as we were by, for instance, Kenneth Branagh in Celebrity.
A minor diversion, perfectly harmless, but likely to fade from memory in a matter of hours.
This one takes place in several Spanish cities, but mostly Barcelona, where Vicky and Cristina (Rebecca Hall and Scarlett Johansson) are spending their summer with some of Cristina's relatives. They meet a local painter, the grandly egotistical Juan Antonio (Javier Bardem), whose idea of a suave introduction is to invite the two women to join him for a weekend of good food, good wine, and lots of hot three-way sex. Cristina is charmed and agrees to join Juan Antonio; Vicky, who is engaged to a very nice (albeit rather bland) man, is appalled by Juan Antonio's arrogance, but tags along to try and keep Cristina from doing anything too foolish.
Before the weekend is over, of course, Vicky finds herself struggling with her own attraction to Juan Antonio. And because a romantic triangle isn't quite complicated enough, along comes Juan Antonio's ex-wife, Maria Elena (Penelope Cruz), a passionate, suicidal, somewhat deranged woman who's never really stopped loving her husband.
Bardem and Cruz are saddled with cliched roles here -- the Latin lover and the Spanish spitfire -- to which they bring as much life and dimension as anyone probably could, but the characters aren't well enough written for either of them to do much. (On a personal note, I confess that I have always been somewhat perplexed by the alleged sex appeal of Javier Bardem. Fine actor, to be sure, and immensely charismatic, but sexy? Really?)
The movie's most interesting performance comes from Rebecca Hall as Vicky, who struggles against her attraction to Juan Antonio, not only to avoid cheating on her fiance, but to keep from hurting Cristina.
It is particularly pleasant to note that this movie does not have an obvious Woody surrogate, saddled with delivering all of his/her dialogue in Allen's distinctive rhythms. It's an Allen screenplay, of course, so those rhythms aren't entirely absent (they're most noticable in the restaurant scene where Vicki and Cristina first meet Juan Antonio), but we're not clubbed over the head with a bad Woody impression as we were by, for instance, Kenneth Branagh in Celebrity.
A minor diversion, perfectly harmless, but likely to fade from memory in a matter of hours.
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Movies
December 28, 2008
MOVIES: Revolutionary Road (Sam Mendes, 2008)
This one will be a bit longer and more spoilery than usual.
Not that there’s a lot to spoil, for while there are a lot of events in Revolutionary Road, very little actually happens; it’s a movie about stasis and people who are unwilling to change their lives.
It’s the mid-1950s, and Frank and April Wheeler (Leonard DiCaprio and Kate Winslet) are Connecticut suburbanites. He works in Manhattan, for the same company where his father worked; she tends the house and cares for their two children. It is, by the standards of the time, a nice life that they have built for themselves, but it is not enough for them; Frank and April are miserably unhappy and desperate to find a way out of the suburban doldrums.
The problem is that their unhappiness never feels genuine; I always felt that Frank and April were, as today’s academic jargon would have it, “performing” unhappiness because they believe that it will mark them as more sophisticated than their dull little neighbors who are content with their dull little lives. Of course, when we’re allowed brief glimpses into the lives of those neighbors, we realize that they, too, are vaguely dissatisfied with their lives, as most people are.
What Frank and April never understand is this: Thinking that your life has been a disappointment, that it should have amounted to more, that you should have amounted to more – this doesn’t mark you as sophisticated or superior, it only marks you as human.
But since the Wheelers don’t actually want to be happy, there’s no sense of hope that they might ever be. And there’s certainly no reason for us to get caught up in their apparent excitement about the one plan they make for happiness – moving the family to Paris – because we know it will never actually happen. After all, if they move to Paris, they might actually be forced to justify their misery instead of simply relying on the crutch of suburban boredom.
Indeed, both of the Wheelers begin almost immediately to sabotage April’s plans for the trip. Frank starts actually making an effort at the office, putting himself in line for a promotion and a pay raise that would be hard to turn down. When April finds herself pregnant, she buys a black-market home abortion kit, and we know that can’t end well. (When she tells Frank, “It’s perfectly safe during the first twelve weeks,” we know three things: 1) it’s never perfectly safe; 2) she’s going to wait until after the first twelve weeks to use it; 3) it’s going to kill her.)
Revolutionary Road is an unrelentingly bleak movie. That’s not necessarily a bad thing; Frozen River, from this summer, wasn’t exactly sunshine and lollipops, and I liked it very much, and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf certainly showed that an unhappy, bickering couple can be the basis for a rewarding movie experience.
What makes Virginia Woolf work, though, is the high stakes; we know that the games George and Martha play matter immensely to them, even if we don’t always understand how or why. But here, Frank and April don’t really want to be happy, so there are no stakes; there’s no reason for us to care that they aren’t.
How’s the movie as a movie? Well, it’s a beautiful looking production. Kate Winslet is by far the standout, managing at moments to make April seem like a real person, but the rest of the cast isn’t at her level, which throws the storytelling off balance, tipping our sympathies far more toward April than I think they should be tipped. Worst among the cast is Michael Shannon (actually being touted as an Oscar nominee by some) who plays the archetypal fool, a mental patient whose insanity gives him license to utter the cruel truths that everyone else can only think. Shannon’s grating, braying performance grinds the movie to a halt every time he appears.
Thomas Newman’s score is effective, though it’s instantly recognizable as a Thomas Newman score; his bag of tricks is beginning to wear thin. Director Sam Mendes and his makeup crew have done a fine job of populating the movie with 50s grotesques; only Winslet and DiCaprio are allowed to be attractive, with Kathy Bates and Dylan Baker being treated particularly unkindly in this regard.
Fans of the book may wish to see what’s been made of it, and Winslet’s admirers will probably want to see her work, but everyone else can certainly wait for cable or DVD.
Not that there’s a lot to spoil, for while there are a lot of events in Revolutionary Road, very little actually happens; it’s a movie about stasis and people who are unwilling to change their lives.
It’s the mid-1950s, and Frank and April Wheeler (Leonard DiCaprio and Kate Winslet) are Connecticut suburbanites. He works in Manhattan, for the same company where his father worked; she tends the house and cares for their two children. It is, by the standards of the time, a nice life that they have built for themselves, but it is not enough for them; Frank and April are miserably unhappy and desperate to find a way out of the suburban doldrums.
The problem is that their unhappiness never feels genuine; I always felt that Frank and April were, as today’s academic jargon would have it, “performing” unhappiness because they believe that it will mark them as more sophisticated than their dull little neighbors who are content with their dull little lives. Of course, when we’re allowed brief glimpses into the lives of those neighbors, we realize that they, too, are vaguely dissatisfied with their lives, as most people are.
What Frank and April never understand is this: Thinking that your life has been a disappointment, that it should have amounted to more, that you should have amounted to more – this doesn’t mark you as sophisticated or superior, it only marks you as human.
But since the Wheelers don’t actually want to be happy, there’s no sense of hope that they might ever be. And there’s certainly no reason for us to get caught up in their apparent excitement about the one plan they make for happiness – moving the family to Paris – because we know it will never actually happen. After all, if they move to Paris, they might actually be forced to justify their misery instead of simply relying on the crutch of suburban boredom.
Indeed, both of the Wheelers begin almost immediately to sabotage April’s plans for the trip. Frank starts actually making an effort at the office, putting himself in line for a promotion and a pay raise that would be hard to turn down. When April finds herself pregnant, she buys a black-market home abortion kit, and we know that can’t end well. (When she tells Frank, “It’s perfectly safe during the first twelve weeks,” we know three things: 1) it’s never perfectly safe; 2) she’s going to wait until after the first twelve weeks to use it; 3) it’s going to kill her.)
Revolutionary Road is an unrelentingly bleak movie. That’s not necessarily a bad thing; Frozen River, from this summer, wasn’t exactly sunshine and lollipops, and I liked it very much, and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf certainly showed that an unhappy, bickering couple can be the basis for a rewarding movie experience.
What makes Virginia Woolf work, though, is the high stakes; we know that the games George and Martha play matter immensely to them, even if we don’t always understand how or why. But here, Frank and April don’t really want to be happy, so there are no stakes; there’s no reason for us to care that they aren’t.
How’s the movie as a movie? Well, it’s a beautiful looking production. Kate Winslet is by far the standout, managing at moments to make April seem like a real person, but the rest of the cast isn’t at her level, which throws the storytelling off balance, tipping our sympathies far more toward April than I think they should be tipped. Worst among the cast is Michael Shannon (actually being touted as an Oscar nominee by some) who plays the archetypal fool, a mental patient whose insanity gives him license to utter the cruel truths that everyone else can only think. Shannon’s grating, braying performance grinds the movie to a halt every time he appears.
Thomas Newman’s score is effective, though it’s instantly recognizable as a Thomas Newman score; his bag of tricks is beginning to wear thin. Director Sam Mendes and his makeup crew have done a fine job of populating the movie with 50s grotesques; only Winslet and DiCaprio are allowed to be attractive, with Kathy Bates and Dylan Baker being treated particularly unkindly in this regard.
Fans of the book may wish to see what’s been made of it, and Winslet’s admirers will probably want to see her work, but everyone else can certainly wait for cable or DVD.
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Movies
December 14, 2008
TV: Leverage (TNT, Tuesday 10)
A promising caper drama in the mold of the Ocean's movies and the recently concluded AMC series Hustle.
Timothy Hutton stars as Nathan Ford, former insurance investigator who leads a team of con men. Nathan left his former job when his own insurance company refused to pay for the treatment that might have saved his young son's life; now his team devotes its energy to helping little guys who've been done wrong by big companies. (And if a case provides a chance to take some money away from an insurance company, so much the better.)
The team consists of Alex Hardison (Aldis Hodge), the computer guy; Parker (Beth Riesgraf), the thief; Eliot Spencer (Christian Kane), the muscle; and Sophie Deveraux (Gina Bellman), the grifter who handles much of the interaction with the marks. The actors are all fine in their roles, though the characters don't have a lot of depth as yet. Hodge gets much of the comic relief and handles it very nicely; Riesgraf does a nice job of mixing eccentricity and efficiency as Parker, who everyone else thinks just might be nuts.
The members of Nathan's team are used to working alone, and much of the entertainment comes from their struggle to trust one another and work as a team. The show hasn't quite yet hit the light, frothy tone it's going for; it's just a bit heavier than it should be. But the stories are fun, the cast has a nice, easy chemistry, and I think the writers will make the necessary adjustments as they get to know the characters better.
Timothy Hutton stars as Nathan Ford, former insurance investigator who leads a team of con men. Nathan left his former job when his own insurance company refused to pay for the treatment that might have saved his young son's life; now his team devotes its energy to helping little guys who've been done wrong by big companies. (And if a case provides a chance to take some money away from an insurance company, so much the better.)
The team consists of Alex Hardison (Aldis Hodge), the computer guy; Parker (Beth Riesgraf), the thief; Eliot Spencer (Christian Kane), the muscle; and Sophie Deveraux (Gina Bellman), the grifter who handles much of the interaction with the marks. The actors are all fine in their roles, though the characters don't have a lot of depth as yet. Hodge gets much of the comic relief and handles it very nicely; Riesgraf does a nice job of mixing eccentricity and efficiency as Parker, who everyone else thinks just might be nuts.
The members of Nathan's team are used to working alone, and much of the entertainment comes from their struggle to trust one another and work as a team. The show hasn't quite yet hit the light, frothy tone it's going for; it's just a bit heavier than it should be. But the stories are fun, the cast has a nice, easy chemistry, and I think the writers will make the necessary adjustments as they get to know the characters better.
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TV
December 13, 2008
MOVIES: Doubt (John Patrick Shanley, 2008)
There is a moment about halfway into Doubt when Meryl Streep, playing the imperious Sister Aloysius, is on the receiving end of an uncharacteristic tirade from her younger, normally more timid colleague, Sister James (Amy Adams). "In ancient Sparta," Sister Aloysius says, "disputes were settled based on who shouted the loudest. Fortunately, we do not live in ancient Sparta." I couldn't help but laugh at that moment, because Streep is in the middle of stomping and bellowing her way through the movie as if she's Sparta's only hope for salvation. Streep is astonishingly bad here, giving a performance that can only be appreciated (if at all) as camp, and she takes the movie down with her.
She's not helped much by Shanley's direction, which is filled with odd camera angles -- everyone's always shot from far below or far above -- and ominous symbols (birds appearing in places where birds shouldn't be; the cold wind that blows continuously through the neighborhood).
It's a shame, because there's an interesting story to be told here. Sister Aloysius is the principal of a Brooklyn Catholic school in 1964, and she comes to suspect that Father Flynn (Philip Seymour Hoffman) may have "developed an improper relationship" with one of the students. (That's as explicit as the movie ever gets, by the way; it's probably appropriate for the time period, but to contemporary ears, it's a bit odd to see a movie on this topic that never uses the words "molestation," "abuse," or "homosexuality.") The issue of Father Flynn's behavior is even more sensitive than usual, because the student involved is St. Nicholas' first black student.
Aloysius has absolutely no hard evidence, and Flynn denies any impropriety; Sister James, who wants to believe the best about everyone but is (like everyone at St. Nicholas') terrified to cross Aloysius, is caught in the middle.
The one really fine performance in the movie comes from Viola Davis, as the mother of the student, whose reaction to Aloysius' suspicions is not at all what the sister expects. It's a short performance -- one scene, not more than 7 or 8 minutes long -- but it is grounded in reality, honest emotion, and genuine conflict in a way that the rest of the movie never is. Had the rest of the movie risen to her level, Doubt could have been a marvelous movie; but with Streep clomping about like Godzilla preparing to attack Tokyo, I could only wish that the Mystery Science Theater gang was still around to offer commentary.
She's not helped much by Shanley's direction, which is filled with odd camera angles -- everyone's always shot from far below or far above -- and ominous symbols (birds appearing in places where birds shouldn't be; the cold wind that blows continuously through the neighborhood).
It's a shame, because there's an interesting story to be told here. Sister Aloysius is the principal of a Brooklyn Catholic school in 1964, and she comes to suspect that Father Flynn (Philip Seymour Hoffman) may have "developed an improper relationship" with one of the students. (That's as explicit as the movie ever gets, by the way; it's probably appropriate for the time period, but to contemporary ears, it's a bit odd to see a movie on this topic that never uses the words "molestation," "abuse," or "homosexuality.") The issue of Father Flynn's behavior is even more sensitive than usual, because the student involved is St. Nicholas' first black student.
Aloysius has absolutely no hard evidence, and Flynn denies any impropriety; Sister James, who wants to believe the best about everyone but is (like everyone at St. Nicholas') terrified to cross Aloysius, is caught in the middle.
The one really fine performance in the movie comes from Viola Davis, as the mother of the student, whose reaction to Aloysius' suspicions is not at all what the sister expects. It's a short performance -- one scene, not more than 7 or 8 minutes long -- but it is grounded in reality, honest emotion, and genuine conflict in a way that the rest of the movie never is. Had the rest of the movie risen to her level, Doubt could have been a marvelous movie; but with Streep clomping about like Godzilla preparing to attack Tokyo, I could only wish that the Mystery Science Theater gang was still around to offer commentary.
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Movies
December 09, 2008
MOVIES: Milk (Gus Van Sant, 2008)
I had been worried about this one. Sean Penn didn't strike me as an obvious choice to play Harvey Milk. I mean, great actor, sure, but when I think Penn, I think of characters who are tightly wound, who keep everything bottled tightly inside until the "give me an Oscar, please" eruption happens in the last act. And Harvey Milk was anything but tightly wound and bottled up; he was an exuberant, outgoing, effusive force.
I needn't have worried. Penn is marvelous here, in a performance unlike anything I can remember seeing him do before. Some of my friends have complained, in fact, that it's too big a performance, but I don't agree. There are, to be sure, some histrionic moments, but when they occur, it is always clear that it's Milk's histrionics and not Penn's.
By now, you surely know the story of the film -- the political rise of Harvey Milk, whose election to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1977 made him the first openly gay public official at that level in the US, and his assassination by fellow Supervisor Dan White. For those few in the audience who don't know how the story ends, Van Sant tells us in the first few minutes, with archival footage of then-Supervisor Dianne Feinstein announcing to the press that Milk and Mayor George Moscone have been murdered.
One of the marvels of Van Sant's movie, therefore, is that it manages to be entertaining and suspenseful even though we all know how it's going to end. Writer Dustin Lance Black gets a great deal of the credit on this front; his screenplay is crisp, funny, and deeply moving, especially in the final moments.
Milk is Penn's show, to be sure -- he's in almost every scene -- but the rest of the cast is first-rate, too. Emile Hirsch as the young activist Cleve Jones; James Franco as Milk's partner, Scott Smith; Denis O'Hare as John Briggs, Victor Garber as George Moscone -- all memorable performances. Best of the bunch is Josh Brolin's Dan White, a man who didn't have the interpersonal skills to be a successful politician, and couldn't handle failure. (I could have done without the movie's suggestion that White was a repressed homosexual himself. Not all anti-gay politicians are closet cases; some of them are just bigots.)
The only disappointing performance in the movie is that of Diego Luna, who plays Milk's second partner, Jack Lira, and it's not entirely his fault. The movie is oddly unsympathetic to Jack, presenting him as a pathetic, clingy, desperately needy man with no redeeming qualities at all; it's impossible to understand what Harvey ever sees in him.
It's startling how strongly the movie resonates with today's politics. When Harvey argues that the campaign to defeat the Briggs Initiative (a proposition that would have allowed California schools to fire not only gay teachers, but anyone who even supported gay rights) needed to actually include images and voices of gay people, it's impossible not to look back at the cowardly ad campaign that was run against Proposition 8 this fall, a campaign that also avoided the G-word as much as possible.
Milk is a very fine movie, and shouldn't be missed.
I needn't have worried. Penn is marvelous here, in a performance unlike anything I can remember seeing him do before. Some of my friends have complained, in fact, that it's too big a performance, but I don't agree. There are, to be sure, some histrionic moments, but when they occur, it is always clear that it's Milk's histrionics and not Penn's.
By now, you surely know the story of the film -- the political rise of Harvey Milk, whose election to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1977 made him the first openly gay public official at that level in the US, and his assassination by fellow Supervisor Dan White. For those few in the audience who don't know how the story ends, Van Sant tells us in the first few minutes, with archival footage of then-Supervisor Dianne Feinstein announcing to the press that Milk and Mayor George Moscone have been murdered.
One of the marvels of Van Sant's movie, therefore, is that it manages to be entertaining and suspenseful even though we all know how it's going to end. Writer Dustin Lance Black gets a great deal of the credit on this front; his screenplay is crisp, funny, and deeply moving, especially in the final moments.
Milk is Penn's show, to be sure -- he's in almost every scene -- but the rest of the cast is first-rate, too. Emile Hirsch as the young activist Cleve Jones; James Franco as Milk's partner, Scott Smith; Denis O'Hare as John Briggs, Victor Garber as George Moscone -- all memorable performances. Best of the bunch is Josh Brolin's Dan White, a man who didn't have the interpersonal skills to be a successful politician, and couldn't handle failure. (I could have done without the movie's suggestion that White was a repressed homosexual himself. Not all anti-gay politicians are closet cases; some of them are just bigots.)
The only disappointing performance in the movie is that of Diego Luna, who plays Milk's second partner, Jack Lira, and it's not entirely his fault. The movie is oddly unsympathetic to Jack, presenting him as a pathetic, clingy, desperately needy man with no redeeming qualities at all; it's impossible to understand what Harvey ever sees in him.
It's startling how strongly the movie resonates with today's politics. When Harvey argues that the campaign to defeat the Briggs Initiative (a proposition that would have allowed California schools to fire not only gay teachers, but anyone who even supported gay rights) needed to actually include images and voices of gay people, it's impossible not to look back at the cowardly ad campaign that was run against Proposition 8 this fall, a campaign that also avoided the G-word as much as possible.
Milk is a very fine movie, and shouldn't be missed.
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Movies
November 16, 2008
MOVIES: Slumdog Millionaire (Danny Boyle, 2008)
As the movie opens, 18-year-old Jamal Malik (Dev Patel) is one question away from winning the 20 million rupee grand prize on India's version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? How did a kid from the slums of Mumbai get to this improable point? That's the story of Slumdog Millionaire, a collection of hopelessly hackneyed plot pieces (many of them lifted out of Dickens) tied together with ludicrous coincidences.
The host of Millionaire (Anil Kapoor) can't believe that Jamal has gotten this far without cheating, and he arranges for the cops to interrogate Jamal. The police inspector (Irfan Khan) plays back the tape of Jamal's run on the show, with each question triggering a flashback to a key moment in Jamal's life (Isn't that convenient? And in chronological order, no less!).
That life is a mess of sentimental cliche -- the dead mother, the lifelong search for a childhood sweetheart, the Fagin-esque ganglord, the treacherous older brother -- and Boyle does nothing to bring new life or energy to any of them. Oh sure, there's a lot of frantic editing and a lively score by Bollywood veteran A.R. Rahman (which would be even more effective were it turned down by about two notches throughout), and some of the acting is effective, but there's not enough here to overcome the stale story.
Worst of all is the way the movie tidily packages Third World poverty in the most aesthetically pleasing and entertaining fashion imaginable for the entertainment of First World audiences; it's poverty porn, and the kindest thing to be said about it is that it's tasteless.
Many of the Oscar pundits are talking about this as a possible Best Picture nominee, which has me worried about the upcoming glut of prestige pictures; if a movie this tired and overwrought is a contender, how awful must the rest of the field be?
The host of Millionaire (Anil Kapoor) can't believe that Jamal has gotten this far without cheating, and he arranges for the cops to interrogate Jamal. The police inspector (Irfan Khan) plays back the tape of Jamal's run on the show, with each question triggering a flashback to a key moment in Jamal's life (Isn't that convenient? And in chronological order, no less!).
That life is a mess of sentimental cliche -- the dead mother, the lifelong search for a childhood sweetheart, the Fagin-esque ganglord, the treacherous older brother -- and Boyle does nothing to bring new life or energy to any of them. Oh sure, there's a lot of frantic editing and a lively score by Bollywood veteran A.R. Rahman (which would be even more effective were it turned down by about two notches throughout), and some of the acting is effective, but there's not enough here to overcome the stale story.
Worst of all is the way the movie tidily packages Third World poverty in the most aesthetically pleasing and entertaining fashion imaginable for the entertainment of First World audiences; it's poverty porn, and the kindest thing to be said about it is that it's tasteless.
Many of the Oscar pundits are talking about this as a possible Best Picture nominee, which has me worried about the upcoming glut of prestige pictures; if a movie this tired and overwrought is a contender, how awful must the rest of the field be?
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Movies
MOVIES: Happy-Go-Lucky (Mike Leigh, 2008)
Pure character study, which is fine as long as we're given a character worthy of study, which unfortunately, we aren't.
Our protagonist, Poppy (Sally Hawkins), is a happy young woman. Relentlessly, obsessively, oppressively happy. And that's all she is. I kept expecting that something would happen to test Poppy's cheerful disposition, and Leigh keeps teasing us with the possibility that something might, but it never does. Poppy goes to the doctor? Just minor back pain. One of her students is bullying? Just easily fixed home problems. Poppy wanders down a dark alley in the middle of the night to chat with the lunatic homeless guy who she hears muttering? Even that doesn't amount to anything.
There is a dark turn at the very end, but it's too little, too late. By then, I'd lost interest in Poppy's blithe, willful ignorance. (And the dark turn isn't really satisfying, as it forces one character into an extreme personality shift that is neither prepared nor believable.)
The movie's not entirely without merit; Gary Yershon's score is charming, in the best tradition of British light music. Eddie Marsan is funny as Poppy's polar opposite, a dyspeptic driving instructor who is particularly frustrated by her sunny outlook. And there's a fine small performance by Karina Fernandez as a flamenco teacher. The role's a bit of a cliche -- the angry Latina spitfire -- but Fernandez brings more personality and more life to the character in five minutes of screen time than Hawkins gives to Poppy in two hours. When the flamenco teacher left the room, I wanted to follow her; at least there was the possibility that something interesting might happen in her life.
Our protagonist, Poppy (Sally Hawkins), is a happy young woman. Relentlessly, obsessively, oppressively happy. And that's all she is. I kept expecting that something would happen to test Poppy's cheerful disposition, and Leigh keeps teasing us with the possibility that something might, but it never does. Poppy goes to the doctor? Just minor back pain. One of her students is bullying? Just easily fixed home problems. Poppy wanders down a dark alley in the middle of the night to chat with the lunatic homeless guy who she hears muttering? Even that doesn't amount to anything.
There is a dark turn at the very end, but it's too little, too late. By then, I'd lost interest in Poppy's blithe, willful ignorance. (And the dark turn isn't really satisfying, as it forces one character into an extreme personality shift that is neither prepared nor believable.)
The movie's not entirely without merit; Gary Yershon's score is charming, in the best tradition of British light music. Eddie Marsan is funny as Poppy's polar opposite, a dyspeptic driving instructor who is particularly frustrated by her sunny outlook. And there's a fine small performance by Karina Fernandez as a flamenco teacher. The role's a bit of a cliche -- the angry Latina spitfire -- but Fernandez brings more personality and more life to the character in five minutes of screen time than Hawkins gives to Poppy in two hours. When the flamenco teacher left the room, I wanted to follow her; at least there was the possibility that something interesting might happen in her life.
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Movies
October 25, 2008
TV: Stylista (CW, Wednesday 9)
Yet another fighting-for-a job reality competition.
This time, the job is that of junior editor at Elle magazine, and eleven young wannabees show up to compete for the position. The chief judge is Anne Slowey, Elle Fashion News Director, who has clearly prepared for her judgeship by watching Meryl Streep in The Devil Wears Prada some 8,000 times or so. The tossing of the coat onto the assistant's desk, the bitchy comments delivered in hushed tones, the overwhelming sense of fashion as religion -- it's all there, but Slowey doesn't have quite the charisma to make it as entertaining as Streep did.
Also on hand is Joe Zee, the creative director, who takes the contestants in hand in the first episode to teach them how to dress Elle-style. Danielle's smart blue jacket? Good! William's Clockwork Orange goes punk ensemble? Bad!
Each week, the would-bes will be given two tasks -- one personal assistant task, and one editorial task. Week one sent them to a nearby deli to shop for Anne's breakfast, with no guidance as to what she actually likes to eat. And she is a fussy woman (no coffee unless it's an iced latte; no almonds unless they've been soaked overnight).
After their fashion critique from Joe, they're sent off on a shopping spree, where they must prove that they can now shop for work-appropriate clothes, then put on a fashion show for the editorial staff. The final piece of the challenge is to put their fashion show photos into a "contributors' page" for the magazine.
The contestants are young, pretty, and not that bright; Slowey is stiff and awkward on screen; the tasks bear little if any resemblance to what a junior editor would actually be required to do. But god help me, I am a sucker for these shows, and at least the contestants are being asked to develop actual skills and not just each cockroaches. Stylista is trash, and mid-level trash at that, but I'll probably keep watching.
This time, the job is that of junior editor at Elle magazine, and eleven young wannabees show up to compete for the position. The chief judge is Anne Slowey, Elle Fashion News Director, who has clearly prepared for her judgeship by watching Meryl Streep in The Devil Wears Prada some 8,000 times or so. The tossing of the coat onto the assistant's desk, the bitchy comments delivered in hushed tones, the overwhelming sense of fashion as religion -- it's all there, but Slowey doesn't have quite the charisma to make it as entertaining as Streep did.
Also on hand is Joe Zee, the creative director, who takes the contestants in hand in the first episode to teach them how to dress Elle-style. Danielle's smart blue jacket? Good! William's Clockwork Orange goes punk ensemble? Bad!
Each week, the would-bes will be given two tasks -- one personal assistant task, and one editorial task. Week one sent them to a nearby deli to shop for Anne's breakfast, with no guidance as to what she actually likes to eat. And she is a fussy woman (no coffee unless it's an iced latte; no almonds unless they've been soaked overnight).
After their fashion critique from Joe, they're sent off on a shopping spree, where they must prove that they can now shop for work-appropriate clothes, then put on a fashion show for the editorial staff. The final piece of the challenge is to put their fashion show photos into a "contributors' page" for the magazine.
The contestants are young, pretty, and not that bright; Slowey is stiff and awkward on screen; the tasks bear little if any resemblance to what a junior editor would actually be required to do. But god help me, I am a sucker for these shows, and at least the contestants are being asked to develop actual skills and not just each cockroaches. Stylista is trash, and mid-level trash at that, but I'll probably keep watching.
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TV
October 21, 2008
BOOKS: The Prodigal Tongue, Mark Abley (2008)
English is changing faster than ever before, says Abley, as he presents an overview of where the biggest changes are coming from and what they're likely to be. This is specifically not a book about those darned kids and how they're ruining the language; Abley says he has "no ideological ax to grind," and simply wants to report what's happening.
Several of his sources of change are the result of living in an increasingly multi-cultural world -- the way that Spanish is infiltrating the language in Los Angeles, the mix of English, Chinese, and other local languages that you'll hear in Singapore, called Singlish; the influence of Black English and hip-hop.
One of the greatest sources of change, though, is cyberspace. Text speak, that highly condensed form of English used by most students, is a particularly strong source of change. Many of its most common shortenings are already making their way into the mainstream -- the use of "u" for "you;" "LOL" for "laugh out loud." New Zealand has gone so far as to say that high school students may use text speak on their final exams without being marked down as long as their ideas are correct; a British company offers classic literature re-written in text speak as a study aid (Hamlet's soliloquy begins "2b?Ntb?=?").
I think Abley overstates the pace at which these changes are going to affect mainstream English, but his look at the trends is certainly interesting, and I enjoyed the book very much.
Several of his sources of change are the result of living in an increasingly multi-cultural world -- the way that Spanish is infiltrating the language in Los Angeles, the mix of English, Chinese, and other local languages that you'll hear in Singapore, called Singlish; the influence of Black English and hip-hop.
One of the greatest sources of change, though, is cyberspace. Text speak, that highly condensed form of English used by most students, is a particularly strong source of change. Many of its most common shortenings are already making their way into the mainstream -- the use of "u" for "you;" "LOL" for "laugh out loud." New Zealand has gone so far as to say that high school students may use text speak on their final exams without being marked down as long as their ideas are correct; a British company offers classic literature re-written in text speak as a study aid (Hamlet's soliloquy begins "2b?Ntb?=?").
I think Abley overstates the pace at which these changes are going to affect mainstream English, but his look at the trends is certainly interesting, and I enjoyed the book very much.
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Books
October 20, 2008
MOVIES: W (Oliver Stone, 2008)
Stone's look at the current president is surprisingly even-handed, almost frustratingly so; there are moments when I found myself desperately longing for a stronger point of view.
The focus is on the runup to the war in Iraq, with frequent flashbacks to Bush's life before the Presidency. Josh Brolin stars, and his impersonation of Bush is remarkable; it was easy to forget that I wasn't actually watching the real president. The voice, the gestures, the look -- all completely convincing. But the performance goes beyond mere impersonation; Brolin gives us an insightful portrayal, and suggests a more complex man than Bush has ever seemed to be in real life.
(Some of the credit for Brolin's look must go to the movie's makeup artists and casting directors, who have transformed their cast into remarkable lookalikes of the people they're playing -- Richard Dreyfuss as Dick Cheney, Jeffrey Wright as Colin Powell, Thandie Newton as Condoleezza Rice, Toby Jones as Karl Rove, Rob Corddry as Ari Fleischer.)
Stone's central premise is that Bush is motivated by the desire to live up to the high expectations of his father, the first President Bush (played by James Cromwell, in one of the least physically convincing transformations of the movie). Poppy's key line, which we hear at least twice, is "I'm disappointed in you, George, deeply disappointed," and Bush spends his entire life trying to overcome that disappointment.
The supporting cast, with one notable exception, is fine; Cromwell, Dreyfuss, and Wright are particularly good, as is Stacy Keach, almost unrecognizable as the minister who leads Bush to become born again. The disappointment is Newton, who is struggling so hard with Rice's distinctive voice that her performance sinks to the level of a Saturday Night Live caricature.
I don't think that W is a great movie; its "must please Daddy" psychology is a bit facile, and Stone pounds it home rather heavily, especially in an unnecessary dream sequence late in the movie. And if you pay much attention to politics, you aren't going to learn anything new about the history of the last few years. But the performances, Brolin's in particular, are strong enough that the movie's worth seeing.
The focus is on the runup to the war in Iraq, with frequent flashbacks to Bush's life before the Presidency. Josh Brolin stars, and his impersonation of Bush is remarkable; it was easy to forget that I wasn't actually watching the real president. The voice, the gestures, the look -- all completely convincing. But the performance goes beyond mere impersonation; Brolin gives us an insightful portrayal, and suggests a more complex man than Bush has ever seemed to be in real life.
(Some of the credit for Brolin's look must go to the movie's makeup artists and casting directors, who have transformed their cast into remarkable lookalikes of the people they're playing -- Richard Dreyfuss as Dick Cheney, Jeffrey Wright as Colin Powell, Thandie Newton as Condoleezza Rice, Toby Jones as Karl Rove, Rob Corddry as Ari Fleischer.)
Stone's central premise is that Bush is motivated by the desire to live up to the high expectations of his father, the first President Bush (played by James Cromwell, in one of the least physically convincing transformations of the movie). Poppy's key line, which we hear at least twice, is "I'm disappointed in you, George, deeply disappointed," and Bush spends his entire life trying to overcome that disappointment.
The supporting cast, with one notable exception, is fine; Cromwell, Dreyfuss, and Wright are particularly good, as is Stacy Keach, almost unrecognizable as the minister who leads Bush to become born again. The disappointment is Newton, who is struggling so hard with Rice's distinctive voice that her performance sinks to the level of a Saturday Night Live caricature.
I don't think that W is a great movie; its "must please Daddy" psychology is a bit facile, and Stone pounds it home rather heavily, especially in an unnecessary dream sequence late in the movie. And if you pay much attention to politics, you aren't going to learn anything new about the history of the last few years. But the performances, Brolin's in particular, are strong enough that the movie's worth seeing.
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Movies
October 19, 2008
BOOKS: Con Ed, Matthew Klein (2007)
Kip Largo is sitting in a bar when a beautiful blonde approaches him and asks for his help. She knows about his past as a con man, and wants to steal the fortune of her husband, a Vegas hotel tycoon. Kip is an ex-con, just out of prison and trying to go straight, so he's reluctant to get involved. But when his son, Toby, shows up begging for money to pay off gambling debts to the Russian mob, that Vegas fortune starts looking pretty good.
Kip's no fool, and he knows that when an opportunity this good falls into your lap, there's a good chance that you're being played. And so we're off on a rollicking con man caper, with Kip never quite sure whether he's pulling the best con of his life or about to have the rug pulled out from under his feet.
I am a sucker for con man stories, and Klein moves his story briskly along, with a few nice high-tech twists on a classic scheme. The characters are likable, and the suspense builds nicely to the climax, which has its fair share of unexpected twists. Not great literature, but a delightful diversion.
Kip's no fool, and he knows that when an opportunity this good falls into your lap, there's a good chance that you're being played. And so we're off on a rollicking con man caper, with Kip never quite sure whether he's pulling the best con of his life or about to have the rug pulled out from under his feet.
I am a sucker for con man stories, and Klein moves his story briskly along, with a few nice high-tech twists on a classic scheme. The characters are likable, and the suspense builds nicely to the climax, which has its fair share of unexpected twists. Not great literature, but a delightful diversion.
Labels:
Books
TV: Crusoe (NBC, Friday 9)
A very loose adaptation of the classic novel, grabbing bits and pieces from popular TV shows to create an odd Frankenstein of a show.
Robinson Crusoe (Philip Winchester) is marooned on a tropical island, with only two companions -- a dog, and Friday (Tongayi Chirisa), who was rescued from a tribe of cannibals by Crusoe. Together, they've managed to put together a pretty comfy life -- the most spectacular tree house you've ever seen (built mostly from the remnants of Crusoe's ship, but more elaborate than a dozen 17th-century engineers could have concocted), oodles of clever gadgets designed to make life easier (very proto-MacGyver), and nothing much to do bit lounge about in the sun and pine for home.
Of course, there's not much drama in that, so there are going to be a lot of unexpected visitors to the island; it's English pirates in the 2-hour premiere, looking for a golden cannon that's supposed to be buried on the island somewhere. By the midpoint, the pirates are joined by the Spanish jailers from whom they've escaped. Crusoe and Friday have to battle off both groups, eventually chasing them away without being able to get rescued themselves. It seems that's likely to be the pattern of the episodes; visitors arrive each week and don't rescue Crusoe (shades of Gilligan's Island).
We get frequent cryptic flashbacks to Crusoe's past in London, where his wife and children wait for him, and there are suggestions that Crusoe's marooning was not entirely accidental, that there is a larger conspiracy at work, in a 17th-century Lost kind of way.
The gadgets are clever if you can suspend your disbelief, and this might be an entertaining show for boys -- tree house! gadgets! pirates! swordfights! -- if it didn't take such pleasure in its violence; there are a few too many lingering, loving shots of dead guys for most pre-teens. Winchester and Chirisa are very appealing (and both are ridiculously handsome), and they have remarkably good chemistry together; it's almost difficult to believe Crusoe's "oh, how I miss my Susanna" moaning when you see how fondly he and his "brother" Friday look at one another.
As a friend once said about a different show, Crusoe is easy to watch, but it's just as easy not to watch. It's innocuous escapism, but in the long run, the steady stream of non-rescuing visitors is going to become more and more implausible, and I don't have much faith that the conspiracy story is going to play out in an interesting fashion.
Robinson Crusoe (Philip Winchester) is marooned on a tropical island, with only two companions -- a dog, and Friday (Tongayi Chirisa), who was rescued from a tribe of cannibals by Crusoe. Together, they've managed to put together a pretty comfy life -- the most spectacular tree house you've ever seen (built mostly from the remnants of Crusoe's ship, but more elaborate than a dozen 17th-century engineers could have concocted), oodles of clever gadgets designed to make life easier (very proto-MacGyver), and nothing much to do bit lounge about in the sun and pine for home.
Of course, there's not much drama in that, so there are going to be a lot of unexpected visitors to the island; it's English pirates in the 2-hour premiere, looking for a golden cannon that's supposed to be buried on the island somewhere. By the midpoint, the pirates are joined by the Spanish jailers from whom they've escaped. Crusoe and Friday have to battle off both groups, eventually chasing them away without being able to get rescued themselves. It seems that's likely to be the pattern of the episodes; visitors arrive each week and don't rescue Crusoe (shades of Gilligan's Island).
We get frequent cryptic flashbacks to Crusoe's past in London, where his wife and children wait for him, and there are suggestions that Crusoe's marooning was not entirely accidental, that there is a larger conspiracy at work, in a 17th-century Lost kind of way.
The gadgets are clever if you can suspend your disbelief, and this might be an entertaining show for boys -- tree house! gadgets! pirates! swordfights! -- if it didn't take such pleasure in its violence; there are a few too many lingering, loving shots of dead guys for most pre-teens. Winchester and Chirisa are very appealing (and both are ridiculously handsome), and they have remarkably good chemistry together; it's almost difficult to believe Crusoe's "oh, how I miss my Susanna" moaning when you see how fondly he and his "brother" Friday look at one another.
As a friend once said about a different show, Crusoe is easy to watch, but it's just as easy not to watch. It's innocuous escapism, but in the long run, the steady stream of non-rescuing visitors is going to become more and more implausible, and I don't have much faith that the conspiracy story is going to play out in an interesting fashion.
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TV
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