I watched it twice, and I'm glad I did. The first time, I was restless; scenes seemed to drag, the film had little energy, often felt inert. The second time I watched was with the commentary by writer-director Jim McCay, who made a fan of me with his surprisingly potent "Everyday People," which was mostly overlooked when it premiered on HBO in 2004. I can't explain exactly what changed in me except to say that it got to me, won me over. I felt like I had a greater appreciation of its deliberate rhythm and a greater understanding of his characters, who are drawn vividly but without embellishment. Following the title character, a troubled inner-city boy aided by a youth counselor (Rachel Griffiths, in a nicely nuanced performance), I felt like I was watching the fourth season of "The Wire" infused with shades of "The Bicycle Thief" -- the inner city seen less with grit and anger than with a gentle, downbeat naturalism. It depicts New York City with authenticity, and every character in the frame is true and without affectation. McCay continues to be a director I admire and will follow.
Grade: B+
"A movie is not good because it arrives at conclusions you share, or bad because it does not. A movie is not about what it is about. It is about how it is about it: about the way it considers its subject matter, and about how its real subject may be quite different from the one it seems to provide." - Roger Ebert, from the introduction to "Awake in the Dark" (2006)
Am I the only one that thinks Scrubs has gotten better every season?
I think 5 was better than 6, but the show is still at the top of its game.
"A movie is not good because it arrives at conclusions you share, or bad because it does not. A movie is not about what it is about. It is about how it is about it: about the way it considers its subject matter, and about how its real subject may be quite different from the one it seems to provide." - Roger Ebert, from the introduction to "Awake in the Dark" (2006)
*** MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS! But I'm so confused that I can hardly tell ***
Part I - Okay, you've got me interested. But the first episode alone flies by with rapid-fire exposition, crosses and double-crosses, and already I'm confused. Why did that guy leak information about a terror suspect? What is that former ambassador guy up to? What are those military guys doing in West Virginia? And why are those two guys kissing? For that matter, why are Americans depicted as such one-dimensional blackguards and represented by a Secretary of Defense whose whole character description boils down to bitch-on-wheels? And why is it edited to within an inch of its life to manufacture suspense? Isn't a terror plot in Washington DC dicey enough? Grade: C
Part II - Yep, still confused. One story thread has got me intrigued: Death row inmate Luke is somehow connected to a secret military group in West Virginia that is bringing weapons to Tyrgyztan, which is somehow connected to the man who blew up that airplane over Washington. The rest I'm still fuzzy on. When you have to read the synopsis online to figure out the episode you just watched, something's wrong. Grade: C+
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"A movie is not good because it arrives at conclusions you share, or bad because it does not. A movie is not about what it is about. It is about how it is about it: about the way it considers its subject matter, and about how its real subject may be quite different from the one it seems to provide." - Roger Ebert, from the introduction to "Awake in the Dark" (2006)
Episode III - Now that's more like it! This episode riveted me. And now when I ask, "What the hell is going on?" it's out of fascination and not head-banging frustration. The emotion of an impending execution, the political conspiracy coming slowly into focus - mostly I loved how the human rights lawyer and the American journalist took a few minutes to unravel the plot so I could catch up with the full-speed-ahead storylines. A wholly satisfying installment. Grade: A
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"A movie is not good because it arrives at conclusions you share, or bad because it does not. A movie is not about what it is about. It is about how it is about it: about the way it considers its subject matter, and about how its real subject may be quite different from the one it seems to provide." - Roger Ebert, from the introduction to "Awake in the Dark" (2006)
I watched the first season of "Top Chef" recently and loved it. It's hard not to make direct comparisons to "Hell's Kitchen", which I'm also into now. "Top Chef" is definitely the more high-end show in terms of production values, knowledge, and content (cursing), and its contestants are much more on their game substance wise than the "Hell's Kitchen" group is. The "HK" contestants pretty much look like knuckleheads in comparison. But the judges on "Top Chef" are a real bore, and none have the galvanizing personality force that Gordon Ramsay has. There's the head judge/chef Tom Colicchio that's okay, but he's still non-compelling as a television personality. The "Home & Garden" lady was the most spot-on of the group in terms of analysis. The host lady just seemed kinda there for most of the time expect to announce who was leaving. Then there's a rotating judge depending on what's going on for the week (the finale's guest judge was LORRAINE BRACCO! And she's this wine expert that has her own brand of wine!). The quickfire challenges are awesome, since they determine who gets immunity for the week (except near the end) and really challenge your creativity. I'm so glad that Harold won this cycle -- he was cool and an awesome chef. But I could have gone for almost anyone other than Tiffani, who everyone basically hated. Dave was the gawdy wildcard of the season, and I'll go crazy if I ever hear the word "sommelier" again (but Stephen was a great "villain" for the season along with Tiffani and to an extent the inept but affable Miguel). So, great season, and I'll likely check out more (including the new season possibly).
Congratulations, Primetime Emmy Winners!
Comedy Series: 30 ROCK Drama Series: MAD MEN Lead Actor in a Comedy Series: Alec Baldwin, 30 ROCK Lead Actress in a Comedy Series: Toni Collette, UNITED STATES OF TARA Lead Actor in a Drama Series: Bryan Cranston, BREAKING BAD Lead Actress in a Drama Series: Glenn Close, DAMAGES Guest Actress in a Comedy Series: Tina Fey, SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE Guest Actress in a Drama Series: Ellen Burstyn, LAW & ORDER: SPECIAL VICTIMS UNIT
Posts: 24779 | Location: North Carolina, USA | Registered: April 11, 2005
Gilmore Girls, Season Three, "Swan Song" Jess and Rory are so cute together. And all this will they or won't they stuff is also cute.
However, it's kinda hard to believe that mom and daughter, especially this mom who had a child when she was sixteen wouldn't have the contraception discussion with her daughter.
I said I'd keep people (vozas?) up to date with my Lost progress, in particular my thoughts on One Of Us
Well it was an amazing episode. Definatly should be one of their submissions. The way they tell the story of Juliet is great and the final twist captivating. While I don't think Mitchell is as great as the hype may suggest this is definatly the best tape I've seen of anyone in this category so far, imo she deserves a nomination. It still dosn't make me think that she's a lock for the top 10 and that will likly be her biggest obstacle. All in all the 2nd best epsiode of Lost season 3 so far, behind "Man From Tallahassee".
So far this season imo has had: 7 rubbish episodes, 2 average episodes, 3 good episodes and 4 great eoisodes
I also just saw Heroes Five Years Gone and what a great episode. This would have made an excellent series submission for the panel. The back story is pretty self explained and the 5 years in the future bit is self contained. Great performance by Oka but not as good as Coleman in Company Man. It was dark, chilling and a great hour of TV.
To compare with Lost here's what I think of Heros' season so far: 5 rubbish episodes, 3 average episodes, 8 good episodes, 4 great episodes
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Congratulations West Wing, Emmys most honored drama. 27 Emmys including 4 best drama series "What's Next?"
Posts: 2461 | Location: Sydney, Australia | Registered: September 07, 2005
Wow, just when I thought this show couldn't get any better, they decide to tackle the race issue. Holy moly.
One of the reasons I like this show so much is that there are just so many moments throughout that are jewels dropped into your lap--the final scene, as the men walk off; the scene between the coach and his wife, as she's in tears, and he tells her how much he admires her; the back and forth between Sarasin and his estranged girlfriend; Smash and his mom in the loan office; Tyra realizing what the deal is with her mom and Buddy Garrity and taking it out on Lyla...just on and on. It's hard to believe all this stuff happened in just one hour of television.
WHAT an incredible show. Week after week after week, this show just blows me away, in a way that no other show on TV does. Stunning work.
Studio 60 - "The long lead story". What a wonderful episode. Sarah Paulson was simply superb , especially in her monologue when she talks about her mother and how she wanted to be a comedian, and the final scene with Matthew Pery with Sting singing "Fields of gold", simply amazing.
It's her submission and I think that if she is in the top ten she will be nominated.
Excuse my english
Posts: 317 | Location: barcelona | Registered: August 13, 2003
Originally posted by MicheBel: Friday Night Lights, "Blinders"
Wow, just when I thought this show couldn't get any better, they decide to tackle the race issue. Holy moly.
One of the reasons I like this show so much is that there are just so many moments throughout that are jewels dropped into your lap--the final scene, as the men walk off; the scene between the coach and his wife, as she's in tears, and he tells her how much he admires her; the back and forth between Sarasin and his estranged girlfriend; Smash and his mom in the loan office; Tyra realizing what the deal is with her mom and Buddy Garrity and taking it out on Lyla...just on and on. It's hard to believe all this stuff happened in just one hour of television.
WHAT an incredible show. Week after week after week, this show just blows me away, in a way that no other show on TV does. Stunning work.
Man did this put a big old smile on my face. haha. And yes, Blinders was amazing. Series tape for sure. This is how you handle a racial storyline, so take note other TV shows.
And I just loved the Powderpuff game, I literally watch it every single day and laugh my ass off. I didnt like Tyra that much until this point, then I loved her.
"No matter what happens today, we're all gonna be winners." "Please"
And if you thought this episode was awesome, just wait til you see Black Eyes & Broken Hearts (if you havent already seen it). One of the best episodes of the entire season, right next to Mud Bowl. The last 7-something mintues of the episode are so chillingly tense, but it has a happy ending... sorta.
God God this show kills me.
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No, I'm watching them in order, so the one I'm at right now is Blinders. I haven't seen the rest of the season yet.
As for me, I always liked Tyra, cause she reminds me a lot of me (always falling for the bad boys...).
Yeah, I can't wait to watch the rest of the season, especially since those are the episodes everyone keeps talking about, but I want to have enough time to really savor them...So Black Eyes and Broken Hearts is next...Cannot wait.
It started confusing. Then was riveting. Slid a bit into preposterousness. Then confusing again. And it ends with a delicious cliffhanger in which two characters stare each other down for the fate of the free world. Who will blink? It's a credit to the miniseries that it ends without answering the question, and it's more interesting that way. We're left to wonder if the truth is worth the cost; the stakes are incalculably high, and we aren't let off the hook.
Many are the pleasures of "The State Within." There's the minor joy of the fact that it features a bad-ass British spook named Brocklehurst ("Brocklehurst. Nicholas Brocklehurst"), and the greater satisfaction of the fact that he kicks ass and is matter-of-factly gay and that those things are not made to contradict one another. There's the humanity of Jane Lavery, who fittingly is a human rights lawyer, fighting tooth and nail for the life of a death row inmate; she's played by Eva Birthistle, who makes her smart and formidable until the plot forces her into familiar damsel-in-distress territory.
The frustrations are many also. The details that flash through the script by Lizzie Mickery and Daniel Percival at light speed had me repeatedly rewinding. I eventually got the names in order, but still wasn't quite sure what they all meant. At the end is the big reveal, the man behind the curtain, but it's an anticlimax. Really, after six episodes, it's all because of that guy?
The funny thing is that the best episodes are the middle ones. They're tantalizing in the way that the various characters, still only tenuously connected, begin to see the machinations working under the surface. The implications grow, and I feel an anxious thrill that is expressed so perfectly by Lavery: "It makes Watergate look like a parking violation!" But as the questions give way to answers, the plot becomes more nakedly absurd, and where once I welcomed exposition with bated breath, I began to chuckle at the many contrivances.
But the actors bring a level of authenticity to the program that couldn't be anticipated from the script. It's superbly cast with actors who haven't been told they're just making a British "24." Jason Isaacs, as the heroic British ambassador, carries himself with dignity and makes us feel the weight of his precarious position, which seems at times to be burying him all at once. Ben Daniels, with a face that's craggy but handsome, is the height of elegant cool as the aforementioned Brocklehurst, tough and resolute and able to sell a line like "Don't get moody with me, sweetheart" with suavity worthy of classic film noir. He should be tapped for a spinoff, or cast for the seventh season of "24," because his performance proves why most of that show's cast this season was so flaccid and ineffective.
But my favorite character of the miniseries is a minor role. FBI Special Agent George Blake (Marnie McPhail) is an important entry point for the audience. The bureau has picked up bits and pieces of the conspiracy, stumbling upon murders and cover-ups and struggling to figure out where the pieces fit. Like the audience, Blake is often perplexed, and there is a priceless scene where she is asked to invent a story to account for two dead bodies. She doesn't ask why, just sighs with weary resignation, as if to say, "Sure, what the hell!"
McPhail has a quality like Julianne Moore, and her performance is easy and unforced. Many actresses put on airs of overly practiced, manufactured toughness when they play law enforcement, but McPhail is remarkable in how she inhabits a potentially thankless role and steals scenes by not trying to. She plays the character straight, confidently, without embellishment or emphasis, and we believe her as a smart woman simply doing her job and winding up in confounding places. If there's a spy thriller out there with Ben Daniels's name on it, then there's a great procedural with McPhail's.
I'm not in love with "The State Within," but I like it. It works in its own pretzel-logic way, and underneath its labyrinth of dirty dealings, I'm confident that it makes some kind of sense. With characters this strong, I'd be happy to follow them into an equally convoluted sequel, should one ever be made.
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"A movie is not good because it arrives at conclusions you share, or bad because it does not. A movie is not about what it is about. It is about how it is about it: about the way it considers its subject matter, and about how its real subject may be quite different from the one it seems to provide." - Roger Ebert, from the introduction to "Awake in the Dark" (2006)
WHEN THE LEVEES BROKE: A REQUIEM IN FOUR ACTS Grade: A
Simply and completely a masterpiece. One of the best documentaries I've ever seen, "When the Levees Broke" is essential viewing for Americans. Spike Lee, over four sweeping but precisely focused hours, develops a clear-eyed analysis of the Hurricane Katrina disaster, but he doesn't frame it as a natural disaster. Through interviews with various experts, residents, and politicians, he illuminates conditions before, during, and after the hurricane and establishes the massive flooding, displacement, and loss of life as a scandalous political and bureaucratic failure: flood walls that were never built to withstand significant storms (the conditions that toppled the levees were well beneath the full force of Katrina), a government that fell behind the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in its response, the unwillingness of insurance companies to pay residents for damage, and the persistent ineffectiveness that continues long after the storm hit. The federal response to Katrina should be the scandal of the decade, and it might be were it not for all those other scandals. (Shocking to consider that ten years ago, our greatest political concern involved an intern and a dress stain.)
Lee doesn't only document Katrina and its aftermath. He evokes New Orleans: its history, traditions, and shortcomings. He evokes the musical culture. "Levees" is an incredibly musical film, using a score by Terence Blanchard that was largely taken from Lee's "Inside Man"; I saw "Inside Man" and didn't realize its music was this good. It plays under the images of destroyed New Orleans as if specifically calibrated for these images. A mournful violin, a forlorn trumpet. In Act IV, Lee stages a spellbinding jazz funeral: The act opens with a dirge and a procession of sad marchers symbolically burying the specter of Katrina, and it ends with a joyous parade, a celebration of the city's resilient people.
On the generous commentary track, Spike Lee often just reiterates his anger and frustrations, but it's as if we're watching the film with the camera turned back on Lee, and the heartbreak and outrage poured into this work can be heard flowing unfiltered out of him. It's furious, often funny ("If you think race, combined with class, had nothing to do with this, you should stop doing crack"), occasionally paranoid (eluding to conspiracies on par with a season of "24," but given the evidence presented in the film, they aren't all that far-fetched), but reveal a man fueled by intense, passionate love for the people of his country. Like Michael Moore, Lee has a gift for controversy, but also like Moore his work expresses a love for his country and a demand that it be all that it promises to be, and much, much better than it is.
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"A movie is not good because it arrives at conclusions you share, or bad because it does not. A movie is not about what it is about. It is about how it is about it: about the way it considers its subject matter, and about how its real subject may be quite different from the one it seems to provide." - Roger Ebert, from the introduction to "Awake in the Dark" (2006)
A sensational mystery, with only three problems in the tail end. (1) I've reached the right conclusion about thirty minutes before the police characters have gotten there. I didn't suspect the identity of the killer right away, but at a certain point two and two still equals four, and it takes a little too long for the law enforcement professionals to reach the same conclusion I have. (2) The final interrogation scene spells out an emotional subtext that didn't need spelling out and which results in a rather unprofessional interview. (4) A succession of climactic scenes flash across the screen in a matter of seconds - including a hostage situation, an apprehension, and an arrest - as if whole scenes have been whittled into a meager montage to save time.
But that's all I have to complain about. The rest of this three hour miniseries is tautly directly and superbly acted, and is written in such a way that perfectly balances Jane Tennison's personal and professional dilemmas and how they intersect - a dying father, a drinking problem spun out of control, and a devastating murder. It's all anchored by Helen Mirren's flawless performance, who displays a keen understanding of Jane's demons; we're not always immediately told when Jane is drunk, but we can tell. She's not stumbling or slurring, but Mirren adopts a sunken expression and a slowness of reaction that gives her away. She nails the stubborn, stiff-upper-lip independence of a professional woman too guarded and proud to acknowledge when she needs help, which makes it all the more moving when she betrays her emotions with an outburst of anger or tears. Yeah, she's gonna win the Emmy for this, and all hail Emmy's reigning queen!
"A movie is not good because it arrives at conclusions you share, or bad because it does not. A movie is not about what it is about. It is about how it is about it: about the way it considers its subject matter, and about how its real subject may be quite different from the one it seems to provide." - Roger Ebert, from the introduction to "Awake in the Dark" (2006)
, especially in her monologue when she talks about her mother and how she wanted to be a comedian, and the final scene with Matthew Pery with Sting singing "Fields of gold", simply amazing.