Deadwood: Season Three

Is anyone watching this? I am not sure if there is much to add to the comments made here about season two, but I am astonished by the consistent quality of this series. Almost every moment and every scene is perfectly crafted. The language is as lyrical as ever. Every character, no matter how minor, has depth (except perhaps Timothy Olyphant). Ian McShane is an even stronger presence, and now the underlings are being given a chance to shine. Unlike the last series of the The Sopranos, here the loose story linking the episodes (the battle between Hearst and Swearengen) is never hurried, but nor is it lost: it infects every secondary character and plot in the camp. This is quite sublime and easily the best thing on TV at the moment.

Doctor Who

The British bloggers will instantly recognize this title; I am interested to know how widely known this is outside the confines of the British Isles. Anyway, for the uninitiated, Doctor Who is a cult British sci-fi TV series that has lasted on and off since the early 1960s. It follows a time travelling “Time Lord” who jets about the universe in an old blue Police call box with a series of pretty companions. To handle the change in actors playing the Doctor, every so often the time lord would experience a sort of death and a new doctor would be reborn. My formative experience was with the Doctor played by Jon Pertwee and then Tom Baker.

The series was distinguished by its tiny production budget and consequent cheesy special effects, wise-cracking and often camp dialogue, and extremely loyal following. Enough 14 year old boys found the implications of time travel and the possibilities that the inside of a box could be larger than the outside to be sufficiently profound that the fan base sustained itself.
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your mother is a terrorist whore

no one, except maybe the protagonists themselves (though memory can be deceitful), knows for sure what materazzi said to induce zidane to butt him in the chest during the final of the world cup. lip readers and zidane himself say that materazzi called zidane’s mother and possibly his sister bad names. anti-racism website proclaim confidently that he accused zidane’s poor mother of being a terrorist, even as materazzi proudly proclaims not to know what an islamic terrorist is (since italian soccer players don’t have a reputation for culture and sophisication, i’m inclined to believe him). in an interview released yesterday or the day before (depending on what time zone you live), zidane said that “as a man” he could not leave his mother’s (and sister’s) honor unprotected and unavenged. Continue reading your mother is a terrorist whore

Faith and Reason – PBS – Bill Moyers

A quick, hearty recommendation for this series on PBS, third episode running tonight (Friday). Hour or half-hour length interviews with believers, atheists, and at some point I’d imagine, those in between. So far they’ve run interviews with Salman Rushdie, Mary Gordon and philosopher Colin McGinn. Coming up is Martin Amis, Margaret Atwood and the very in-the-news Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

Moyers is damn good at this. And while his previous show, Now, tended to be a more depressing version of 60 Minutes, and a terrible way to spend a Friday night, this is surprisingly uplifting thoughtful material.

steve martin’s shopgirl and why we fight

why are movies as vile as shopgirl being made? why are they marketed in such a way that idiots like me fall for it and watch them? if movies such as this one can be made and sold, why don’t we make and sell really groundbreaking movies that unveil the lies and horror of what is happening to the world?

we watched why we fight last night. how do we make it required watching for everyone? anyway, i found it oddly peace-inducing. it’s all so much bigger than i. my activism is futile. i think i’ll have another mojito.

Superman‘s Big Fat Crying Jag

Well… I didn’t hate it.

The first half-hour, forty-five minutes has some nice touches. As in many of his big-budget extravagaction films, Bryan Singer displays a real fondness and talent for the character-driven, carefully-staged, small-scale suspenseful witty moments… even as such films invariably stomp all over such smaller pleasures, looking to supersede the sequence with CGItis.

What works: a lot of small character details and witty side-ways moments (again, mostly in that first third of the film). One particularly good sequence involving a henchman, a defiant Lois Lane, and her sickly little boy, the boy and h-man playing “Body and Soul” on the piano together. (It’s a really great bit.) Spacey, occasionally. Posey, less occasionally.
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clubland: white

i have not yet seen the extras but i’m eager to write on this, so i’ll pitch a few ideas. idea no. one: is this a comedy? what makes something a comedy? i’m sure there are people on this blog who are way more qualified than i to discuss the necessary requirements of comedy, but it was hard for me the first time around, ten years ago, and it is hard for me now to see this film as a comedy. there is no laughter. there is, instead, a lot of heartbreak. surely, though, laughter cannot be considered a necessary requirement for comedy, because laughter is so subjective and culture-dependent. simon’s suggestion is that this is a comedy because karol is a schlemiel, and since this sounds interesting to me, i’ll go with it a bit. Continue reading clubland: white