Storywh0re

Season 7, Episode 10: Death's Door

2012-01-06T17:31:00.000-08:00

I know—once again, there's nothing quite like waiting until just hours before the next episode to review a prior episode. But this time, can you blame me? “Death's Door”, the last episode of Supernatural before holiday hiatus, was one of the most powerful hours of television I've seen. It takes time to properly mull over.

In the episode, a dying Bobby Singer, trapped within his own mind, flees a Grim Reaper. He's knows his time is limited, but he has to get back into his body just long enough to give important information to Sam and Dean. The deceased hunter Rufus is in his mind with him. Rufus explains to Bobby that “the only way out is though”--he has to go through his worst memories to get back to his body. In this way, we learn that Bobby and his late wife had a heartbreaking argument about raising children just days before she was possessed by a demon, and that Bobby killed his own father to defend his mother when he himself was just a child

There are just two things that bother me about this widely-loved episode.

The first has to do with Rufus. I love Rufus as much as anyone, but I always had a problem with the way he went out. In Season Six's “...And Then There Were None,” Rufus tells Bobby that he will never forgive him for what went wrong on their hunt in Omaha. (Bobby Singer's Guide to Hunting indicates that Bobby was responsible for the death of Rufus's daughter.) This angry assertion is jarring, because it runs counter to the jovial banter that the two had been enjoying. Moments later, Bobby, who is possess at the time by a parasitic monster dubbed the Khan Worm, murders Rufus.

It felt like the subtext of Rufus's death was that Rufus doesn't have a right to his opinion about Bobby, This becomes even more uncomfortable when you consider the racial dynamics involved,. Race is also why—as happy as I was to see Rufus again—I cringed to see him bending over backwards to help the person' who's body killed him. Don't get me wrong, Rufus is a great character—funny when need be, badass when need be, as all the best Supernatural characters are. That's part of why he deserved a better story arc. And while I love the fact that he's a Black Jewish redneck, I feel like the show asks us to laugh at that, as if there weren't probably people who were all of the above (okay, at least two of the above.) I'm not even sure how Bobby is able to interact with him, since Rufus's spirit has moved on and they never discussed Rufus's near-death experience in life.

My other complaint is with the way Dean Winchester is being written at the moment. This is not a complaint about Jensen—he will always make the most of whatever he's given. But the losses have been mounting up for Dean—Lisa and Ben, Castiel, even the Impala. If he was ever going to break down, I would think it would be now. We have seen him cry before, and those have been some of Supernatural's most moving moments, in large part because of their rarity. Bobby has earned Dean's tears, but what do we get in “Death's Door”? Dean punching the wall when a guy tries to talk to him about organ donation. Let's face it, at this point, Dean punching a wall is just another day in the office...and this is not another day in the office.

Worst of all, when Sam tries to get Dean to talk about how he's feeling, Dean shuts him down. This leaves Sam hanging, with no one to talk to about what he's going through. I actually felt sorry for Sam, and that's not something I could have foreseen ever happening at the end of Season Four.

None of these concerns, however, dull the overall power of the episode Bobby is able to face his own demons, and revives long enough to give Sam and Dean a series of numbers that will prove a key to the Leviathans' plans. I can't imagine any Supernatural fan who didn't tear up as Bobby confronted his projection of his father, challenging the idea that he breaks everything he touches. 'I adopted two boys, and they turned out great. They turned out heroes.” Sam and Dean also have some hilarious walk-ons, bickering with each other about the relative merits of different action heroes and movie foods.

As “Death's Door” winds down, the darkness encroaching on the landscape of Bobby's mind mirrors the shutting down of his body, in a poignant metaphor about the death that comes to all of us. The Reaper who's been hounding him asks him if he wants to stay or to move on, but you get the idea that it's the equivalent of last call at a bar: “you don't have to go home, but you can't stay here.” As Bobby's memories fade, his last pleasant memory is of Sam and Dean, at home with him on a rare night of relaxation.

We're left not knowing how Bobby answered the Reaper's question. Presumably we'll find out soon enough. The show tends to bring back whoever they want, whenever they want, but as several friends of mine have stated, Bobby's departure feels more final. I honestly think that would be a good decision for the show; but if that happens, I still believe that Castiel needs to come back, or someone else needs to step in to help the Winchesters with their formidable foe. Castiel needs to come back at least once, in any case, for closure's sake.

If this is, in fact, Bobby Singer's final call, he is sure to live on in the hearts of Supernatural fans. Thank you, Jim Beaver, for years of top-notch acting (even though I still expect flashbacks), and thank you Bobby for all that you did for our boys.

Supernatural Season 7 Episode 9: How to Win Friends and Influence Monsters

2011-11-20T21:30:00.000-08:00

After an uneven and widely disliked episode last week, Supernatural returned to form this week with “How to Win Friends and Influence Monsters.”

At the start of the episode, we're reminded of how hard Sam and Dean's lives are in the Leviathan era. We see them trying to get power to an abandoned building (a foreclosed house?) where they and Bobby are squatting. Apparently, not only have they had to put aside their beloved Impala and their rock-star nommes de guerre, but since they they can't use credit cards either, they've had to abandon even the marginal comforts of roadside hotels. Dean is complaining bitterly about this, and says that if the world is going down for the count a third time then maybe it's supposed to end.

Bobby and Sam have other things on their mind, though: they've all come to New Jersey to follow up on mysterious killings that may be the work of the mythical Jersey Devil. Local authorities are blaming a rogue bear, but they're not fooling our heroes: bears don't have opposable thumbs with which to hang people in trees. The plan is to suit up the next day to eliminate all the human-adjacent possibilities.

The next day, they meet the local Chief Ranger (yes, who's name is Rick) at a Biggerson's restaurant. He seems disturbingly blasé about the whole thing, including the fact that his own deputy is missing They also encounter an inexplicably hostile waiter, who had me cackling by referring to Dean as a “Ken Doll” and Bobby as a “creepy uncle.” Dean orders the turducken sandwich special—the TDK Slammer--and acts like he's found a new best friend.

Later, the hunters go into the woods. They reminisce about Bobby's time as a more traditional hunter before his wife's death, and about the hunting trips that he took the Sam and Dean on when they were little. This walk down memory lane is interrupted, however, when they come across the half-eaten body of the deputy ranger. The chief ranger comes along, and is still shockingly indifferent...until he, too, gets dragged away by a monster that was hiding in the shadows. Bobby manages to shoot it out of the trees, but too late to save Ranger Rick.

The creature Bobby has killed is not the Jersey Devil but gray-skinned, glassy-eyed human. What ensues, back at the hunters' crash pad, is one of the grosses autopsy scenes ever on the show. Perhaps on any show. The organs are swimming in gray muck, the adrenal glads are bigger than the kidneys (that's bad, if you didn't know) and the stomach is so full of gruesome stuff that I was waiting for someone to pull out a license plate. Dean, inexplicably, is hungry even in the midst of all of this, so the other two reluctantly accompany him back to Biggersons.

While at Biggerson's, however, Sam finally makes the connection between the TDK Slammer and the strange way that Dean and others have been acting. Sure enough, back at the ranch, the sandwich passes it's expiration date in grand fashion...just as Dean is admitting to feeling better than he has in months.

From there, we learn that the Leviathans engineered the TDK Slammer to induce complacency in the masses. The few folks that went all 28-Days-Later on it were the failures of the experiment. The angry waiter that the hunters encountered hulks out, only to be snapped up by the research team before he can hurt anybody. Richard Roman, the Big Daddy Leviathan, is coming into town, so all the turduckens have to be in a row.

The hunters trail a meat truck from Biggerson's to the research facility in time to see the waiter being dragged inside. As the sun rises, they stake the place out, and see Roman arrive. This is where Bobby educates the boys about Roman's impeccable GOP credentials—a free-market-lovin', gun-totin' member of the 1%, this guy.

Bobby splits off from Sam and Dean, only to get caught and brought to the boss. Pontificating in true true comic-book-villain-who-thinks-you're-gonna-die style. Roman says that he's certain that Sam and Dean will come to rescue Bobby. Bobby insists that they're too smart for that, knowing full well that they're not.

Sure enough, Sam and Dean hijack a janitorial truck that's just shown up, and bust in with industrial cleaners blazing. If I were a Leviathan, I'd try to keep my one weakness far away, but that's just me. At any rate, they manage to distract everyone just long enough for Bobby to get away with valuable information, even though Roman seems to be less vulnerable to borax than the others. Roman continues shooting at Bobby as the boys bring around the van, but Bobby dives in and it seems, for a second at least, that all is well. As the episode ends, however, Bobby is unresponsive.

This episode was a great one for Bobby Singer fans (which is all of us, right?), and packs a lot of emotional punch. Not only are there the stories of long-ago hunting trips, but Bobby also gets a one-on-one heart-to-heart with both Sam and Dean. I particularly enjoy his talk with Dean, where he tells dean to find a reason, “whether it's love or money or a $10 bet,” to get his head in the game, or he'll get himself killed. “If you die before me, I'll kill you,” he says. It's such a classic Bobby line, tender and funny and curmudgeonly all at once, and it's the kind of thing that Jim Beaver does so well.

The script even hints at the possibility of a Bobby-less world toward the end. “I've run my race,” Bobby tells Roman. “Could die worse.”

To get right down to the nitty-gritty: I really don't think that Bobby is going to die. It would be a bad decision for the show, both commercially and artistically. The goodwill of the fans has already been taxed to the limit with the loss of Castiel. Besides, Sam and Dean can't face the challenges of the Leviathans without help, and Bobby's all they've got right now. Jodie or even (ugh) Garth might work as a fourth wheel, but there are no close allies waiting in the wings.

You just don't off half your principal cast less than halfway through a season—not if you want another season. Two actors just can't sustain our emotional investment in a storyline that complex, super-talented though they may be. I'm assuming that the powers-at-be at the show do want an eighth season...that may not be a safe assumption. If we loose Bobby, however, I predict that they won't get one.

The next episode, “Death's Door”, will air on December 2, and appears to be all about Bobby's fight for life. I think it would be particularly poignant if it was just about that—nothing magical or supernatural at all. But that's unlikely—between Supernatural and Grimms, hospitals are pretty dangerous places to be in Horror Television Land. A friend of mine foresaw that if “something happened to Bobby,” we'd finally get to see some emotion from Dan. I'd like that a lot, but that can happen without The Worst Coming to Pass.

This also the perfect opportunity for Castiel to reappear from the blue and heal Bobby. Yeah. I'm not the only one who would be in favor of that.

Happy Thanksgiving to those of you who observe it. Until we meet again, have good food, party and shop responsibly, and enjoy the company of family, whether blood kin or chosen.

And just say “no” to the turducken.

Supernatural Season 7 Episode 8: Season Seven, Time for a Wedding!

2011-11-12T22:35:00.000-08:00

Okay, I'll admit: I knew, very generally, what this episode was going to be about, but I didn't see it coming.

“Season Seven, Time for a Wedding!” begins, we see Dean chatting up a cocktail waitress at a strip club. He's confiding in her about his hypothetical friend, whose hypothetical brother had been going crazy for a while, then took a turn for the better. Then they took their hypothetical annual vacation to Las Vegas, and the hypothetical brother hied of on his own to go camping. Wow, Dean! That stinks. I hope she can give you some advice to pass onto your...ooh, I see what's going on.

As Dean is spinning his tale of woe, however, he gets a text from Sam, telling him to report to a location a few blocks away, and wear a suit. It's a wedding chapel, and Sam hands him a boutonnière as soon as he steps in the door. (Pink is for loyalty? I've never heard that Sammy, but if you say so.) It turns out that Sam has had a whirlwind (as in, almost literally getting engaged over lunch) romance with...Becky?!?!

Yup. That's right. Becky, the obsessed fangirl of the Supernatural books by Chuck Shurley, prophet of God. Becky, who had delusions of being romantically involved with Sam and can't seem to keep from sexually harassing him. Becky, who doesn't seem to know how to be alone, and dated Chuck for a time.

Needless to say, Dean doesn't think this adds up. In a game effort to be supportive, he does buy the happy couple a waffle iron, but it's the most skeptical waffle iron ever.

Dean soon has bigger fish to fry anyway. Two people in town have gotten their fondest desires, only to die in accidents soon afterwards. Could it be a crossroads demon? That's usually a ten year time-frame. Maybe it's a witch! Either way, Dean's concerned that Becky is next. With Sam working the case with Becky (I can't believe I had to write that), Dean calls Bobby. Bobby can't make it, but sends in a local hunter named Garth as backup.

Becky takes Sam to her 10-year high school reunion, mainly to show off to the people who bullied her back when. She also introduces Sam to her friend Guy...who is also her supplier for the love potion she's secretly using. Becky continues to dose Sam, but it seems to wear off more quickly each time. When the potion leaks out into her purse, she hits Sam over the head (with the waffle iron!), drags him to a cabin owned by her parents, and ties him up.

By this time, Dean and Garth have a break in the case. They meet a very surprised new CEO, who reports that CEO-ing is not his dream, but boy, is the Missuz happy. They save said Missuz from a falling chandelier moments later, and she finally cops to a deal with a crossroads demon. Cut back to Becky, and...oh, wait! Guy is also the crossroads demon, and is offering her an unheard-of twenty-five year deal to have her husband without having to use the potion.

Some of the scenes that pass between Sam and Becky are too painfully awkward to relate. Suffice it to say that thank God, their marriage is never...um, consummated. (I did have to laugh, and give the girl props, when she admitted that she'd imagined tying Sam up “in a different context.”) She returns to cabin after Guy's offer, and Sam tells her, “you're better than this.”

Sam's argument must have persuaded Becky, because she helps trap Guy so that Sam, Dean and Garth can confront him. He admits that he made a bunch of deals around town, then had another demon kill the clients so he could collect early. After that demon is dispatched, Crowley shows up, looking better in a beard than he has any right to. He explains that he's been keeping the demons off the Winchesters' backs so that they could hunt Leviathans, and will continue to do so if they hand over Guy. After all, who will want to make a crossroads deal if they hear that Hell doesn't hold up it's end?

Unsurprisingly, the hunters give Guy to Crowley. The episode ends with the Rosen-Winchester marriage annulled, the remaining crossroads deals broken, and Sam and Dean parting ways with Garth.

There are a lot of problems with this episode.

First of all, there was some icky gender stuff. I know, I know...I love the show, but it was ever thus. It was just particularly obvious this time. The two men who made deals with Guy were asking something for themselves: one won the lottery, and the other went pro as a baseball player. Both of the deals offered to women—Becky and the CEO's wife—had to do with relationships. Women want things, money and fame-type things, for themselves too, I promise.

Just in case there wasn't enough gender-fail, the writers made sure to work in some racism and ableism. After Dean saves her, Garth tells the CEO's frightened wife that he's going to send her to a “triracial paraplegic sniper”. This is clearly an attempt to milk disability and race for humor. Is the idea of a multiracial sniper who ends up paraplegic, but is still a badass, really so unthinkable? (ETA: the more I think about it, i would watch the hell out of that show.)

I should say something about Becky calling Guy a “Wiccan” early in the episode. It feels kind of beside the point, since he's actually a demon, but the writers should realize that Wicca is an actual religion. It's true that there are people who try things—like love spells—that are wrong by the lights of that religion; but for those who believe in magic, it's a morally neutral tool, no more inherently evil than a gun.

It seems like the only people we see using magic on Supernatural are “witches” (who are always bad) or hunters. Just once, I'd like to see good witches...or just ordinary people, practicing earth-based faith and using magic for protection, healing and blessing. Then again, if the show's going to get it wrong, perhaps erasure is better.

Then there's the fan issue. You know I had to go there. I know that this episode is about the unethical actions of one person, but it's hard not to feel an undercurrent of contempt for the fans. Many Supernatural fans have in common with Becky that we like to look at pretty boys while enjoying well-crafted, scary, action packed stories. And yes, some of us are shy, geeky, formerly-picked-on or unlucky in love. None of that means that we confuse fantasy for reality, or are willing to hurt anyone. What we are is worth millions of dollars to the show, in ad revenue, retail, and convention profits.

What no one online has asked so far, at least that I have seen, is how Becky even knew that Sam and Dean were alive. As far as the American news-viewing public was concerned, they'd been gunned down a few weeks ago after going on a killing spree. That isn't addressed or even acknowledged. Either Chuck is still writing or Becky doesn't watch the news, but neither of those thing were established. This plot hole is big enough to drive the Impala through.

There are a few good things about this episode. It addresses the issue of consent; Becky realizes that if she really loves Sam, she'll take his "no" for an answer. There's also a somewhat hollow nod to the idea that there's someone out there for everyone. (It's true! Sam says so!) Unfortunately, all of this is buried under the hot mess.

Hopefully next week's episode will be better. If they are really hunting the Jersey Devil, it could potentially be the most awesomely X-Files flavored episode since “Clap Your Hands if You Believe”. For the long term, though, I will say this: if Garth joints Sam, Dean and Bobby while an actress trained in four kinds of stage combat is left to keep mopping the floor, I won't be happy.

Once Upon a Time, Season 1 Episode 3 - Snow Falls

2011-11-09T20:17:00.000-08:00

The third episode of Once Upon a Time may be my favorite so far. It's certainly my favorite with regard to the fairy-tale sequences. In “Snow Falls”, we get to see how Snow White and Prince Charming met. In Storybrooke, he emerges from his coma to become a player in the action, but things quickly take a heartbreaking turn.

Henry convinces Emma to ask his teacher, to read to John Doe, a coma patient at the local hospital. John Doe is Prince Charming, Henry explains, and he needs Snow White to help him remember who he is. Emma relays Henry's request to Mary Margaret, claiming that if nothing happens, it will disabuse Henry of his fantasies.

I still can't get a read on where Emma stands on the whole “everyone here is really a fairy tale character” idea. It seems like one moment, she's reassuring Henry that she believes him, and the next minute, she's reassuring someone else that she doesn't. Either way, she wants to see what happens between Mary Margaret and John Doe, too.

What happens is that John Doe moves...at least long enough to reach out and grab Mary Margaret;s arm. Needless to say, Mayor Regina (a.k.a. The Wicked Queen) is very nervous about this news. That's why the audience gets nervous too when John Doe is missing the next morning.

In flashbacks, we see Prince Charming through the woods in a carriage with his fiancee, who is appropriately shallow and selfish enough to allow the audience to root against her. His family jewels (no, really) are stolen by a hooded highway robber, who turns out to be...Snow White! He recognizes her from the "wanted" poster and everything....apparently “Snow White” passes for a bandit name in Never-Never Land. At any rate, she makes off with the goods, and he returns later and captures her. There was n heirloom ring among the things that she stole, and he of course needs it for Unlikeable Fiancee.

At this point, Snow White is not yet keeping house with dwarves (although they do get a shout-out), but rather using dangerous, ugly bridge trolls as fences. They get the ring back, with some mutual life-saving and bittersweet bonding. Meanwhile, I snicker every time Charming (whose name, it turns out, is James) says “jewels”. The flashbacks end with Snow White and Prince James Charming returning to their respective lives, at least for the moment.

I kind of enjoyed the kick-butt outlaw Snow White that we saw in this week's episode. The only thing is, if the name “Snow White” is supposed to indicate innocence, robbery doesn't seem very...well, snow-white. It's almost as if Ginnifer Goodwin is playing two different characters. While Snow is cynical about love, Mary Margaret speaks longingly to her Obligatory Mr. Wrong about marriage and family. Yes, she goes on one bad date, if only to prove to us that she's not a nun, but that there's only one right person for her.

The story that Snow tells Charming helps to bridge the gap between Outlaw Snow White and the one we're more familiar with. Apparently she was driven into the forest and took up a life of crime when the Wicked Queen offered a reward for cutting out her heart. This was in retaliation for for Snow ruining her life. Only a huntsman got close to the prize, though, and he couldn't do it. My money says that the Huntsman is now the sheriff in Storybrooke.

I'm guessing that as the pre-Curse storyline unfolds, it will be Prince Charming's love that breaks through Snow White's understandable cynicism, and for which she now pines. If nothing else, seeing Goodwin and Dallas together again showed me that I wasn't imagining things during the pilot: they have tremendous chemistry. What I'm still curious about is how Snow White ruined Regina's life. She even admits to Charming that she did, although she doesn't say much else. The writers are still teasing us with this information.

Back in Storybrooke, security cameras reveal that John Doe wandered off his own, but wandered off into the forest. This is better than abduction by mayoral minions, but still far from ideal. The sheriff, with Henry, Emma and Mary Margaret in tow, find him collapsed by a creek. Mary Margaret revives him with a kiss, bringing things full circle rather nicely from the kiss-of-life that appeared in the pilot episode.

With John Doe safely back in the hospital, Emma, Henry and Mary Margaret are relieved and hopeful...until the Regina produces an estranged spouse for him from thin air. Mary Margaret looks on devastated as he hugs the woman uncomfortably. Emma confronts Regina, telling her that nothing about this adds up. “What do you think I did?” Regina asks her. “Cast a spell on her?” Well, now that you mention it...

It's a testament to both the writing and the acting on the show that this episode's final twist really does have quite an emotional impact. Once Upon a Time has me invested. I look forward to learning more of what happened before, and seeing what happens in Storybrooke as well.

Supernatural Season 7 Episode 7: The Mentalists

2011-11-06T21:34:00.000-08:00

This week's episode of Supernatural took place in the real-life town of Lily Dale, New York, which actually does have the world's highest per capita concentration of mediums. As the story begins, Dean comes into town in a “borrowed” car, to investigate the deaths of two high-profile psychics. He runs into Sam in the local diner, Good Graces, and they agree to put their differences aside long enough to work the case.

This is the sort of “monster-of-the-week” story that the show thrived on in it's first and second season, before things got all Book of Revelations. Most fans will cop to missing this sort of stand-alone episode, even if they also enjoy the great cosmic story arcs. In “The Mentalists”, the psychics (two of which die after the Winchesters show up) are being hunted by the ghost of a Lily Dale founder, Margaret Fox, who gives them visions of their deaths before, well, causing them. In life, she was overlooked in favor of her less gifted but flashier sister, Kate. Margaret, in turn, is in the thrall of a local shop owner who is bitter because his predictions are just too punk rock for the paying public.

Also in keeping with earlier seasons, there is a conventionally hot damsel in distress. Melanie Goldman is the granddaughter of one of Margaret's victims, but ends up as a target herself. Perhaps she's aware of how much being involved with Sam lowers your chances of making it through the episode, because she takes a shine to Dean instead. “I wish I'd met you on a better week,” she tells him, as they part without so much as a kiss. “I wish I had better weeks,” he replies.

There are some great moments in this episode. At one point, the curator of the city museum relays a message from Ellen Harvelle to Dean: he had better open up about what's bothering him of she will kick his tail personally. Even after death, Ellen's just awesome. Then there is the Whedonverse shout-out, when the shop owner describes a pendent as an “Orb of Thessaly”. Presumably this is a a play on “Orb of Thesulah”, a magical device from Buffy and Angel. After all, this is the same show that brought us the Serenity Valley Convalescence Home. And Let's not forget the affirmation that the waiter from Good Graces gives Dean, free with his meal: he is a “virile manifestation of the Divine”. Dean girls like myself will, at this point, be both cackling at Dean's discomfort and thinking “Well, I really can't argue with that.”

There may even have been an allusion to something happening in real life. In tracking down the buyer of an ash wood altar, Sam bursts in upon a New-Agey lamaze class. I can't help but wondering if this was inspired by Jared Padalecki's recent announcement that he and his wife Genevieve are expecting their first child. For those late to the party, the happy parents-to-be are requesting that fans make donations to St. Jude's Hospital instead of sending them presents.

Toward the end of “The Mentalists”, Sam and Dean finally discuss the dead kitsune demon in the room. It as about time, too...this particular storyline neither could nor should last much longer. It didn't drag on for too long, though, and I like the way that it was resolved. Without admitting that Dean was right, Sam concedes that he might have killed Amy too if he hadn't known her. And without admitting that he was wrong, Dean admits that Cas's betrayal and Sam's dangerous, delusional behavior may have figured into his decision at the time. Poll the home audience next time, guys—we could have told you all of this!

One of the most intriguing parts of Friday nights' viewing was the teaser for the next episode. I knew there was going to be a wedding, but my money was on Bobby and Jodie. Apparently the groom is...Sam? And I'm not sure who the bride is, except that it's NOT Jodie (that would just be odd) and some fans online seem to think that it's a character who's been on the show before. We'll see! Just wondering which alias they're registered under.

One Upon a Time, Season 1 Episode 2: The Thing You Love Most

2011-11-04T21:30:00.000-07:00

It's only two episodes in, but I'm really digging Once Upon a Time.

In “Everything you Ever Loved”, the battle of wills between Emma and Regina continues. Just as interestingly, we see in flashbacks how Regina came into possession of, and prepared, the evil spell she cast.

One of the most notable scenes was the most awesome woman-against-woman magical battles I've ever seen. When Regina goes to steal the curse from her friend Maleficent, another evil sorceress, the two fling each other around in a fashion that would make Gandalf and Saruman proud. (It's worth mentioning that here too, Maleficent is the witch from the Sleeping Beauty story.) It's both jarring and poignant when, after such a violent confrontation, Regina says, “I can't kill you. You're my only friend.”

That fight is far from the only badass moment in this episode. In one scene, Emma cuts a huge branch off of Regina's prized apple tree, to prove her determination to stay in town. (How do you like them apples?) Between the “soft violence” in things like Gossip Girl and the passivity in things like Twilight , it's rare these days to see a female character do something so tangible and territorial...at last without involving a gun. (Not that Emma doesn't know how to use those, as we saw in the pilot.)

To make a long short: in our world, Regina manages to get Emma locked up again, this time by framing her for stealing records from Henry's therapist. The therapist, Jiminy Cricket, may be conscience personified, but Regina still has him under her thumb. Ms. Blanchard (who, you will remember, is Snow White) bails her out. This happens after Henry shows her pages torn from the back of Regina's storybook, which explain the events of the curse and Emma's birth, and they form an alliance. (In one of his few believably kid-like moments, Henry dubs their plan to break the curse “Operation Cobra”. It's perfect, you see, because it has nothing to do with fairy tales!) Regina tricks Emma into seemingly disavowing Henry's beliefs where he can hear her, but by the end of the episode, they had smoothed things over.

Back in the land of fairy tales, we see Regina steal the curse from Maleficent and then gather the ingredients—and helpers—that she needs. The recipe for the spell includes locks of hair from “those with the darkest souls”, so you can imagine the motley crew she assembles. In spite of also including the heart of Regina's prized childhood pony, the spell fizzles. She makes a bargain with Rumpelstiltskin, who explains that the spell must include the heart of the thing she loves most. Soon after, we learn that the kindly old man in Regina's retinue, who seemed like a servant, is actually her father. She murders him, just moments after he warns her that some power is too dark to mess with. This turn of events both raises the moral stakes of the story and gives Lana Parrilla a chance to add lots of nuance to her character.

There are other things worth noting about this episode. The visuals of the flashbacks? Are still awful. These scenes may be filmed for 3D viewing, but they look cartooney and terrible, even though those parts of the story are enjoyable. Giancarlo Esposito (Breaking Bad) is entertaining as the magic mirror. The show is also trying to drum up some kind of flirtatiousness between Emma and Sheriff Graham, but so far, they don't work together quite as well as Snow White and Charming.

The two memorable themes in this episode are the idea that the hero never believes that they are the hero at first, and that power has a price. Once Upon a Time has gotten me interested enough that I look forward to seeing what happens next.

Supernatural Season 7 Episode 6: Slash Fiction

2011-10-29T23:55:00.000-07:00

What's exactly twice as good as an hour of TV with characters played by Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki? An hour where they each play two characters!

Okay, just kidding. Sort of. I doubt that J & J got any extra screen time out of the premise of this week's episode, “Slash Fiction”, but they did get an opportunity to demonstrate their acting chops by playing murderous doppelgangers of Sam and Dean.

As the episode opens, the Winchesters are back in Whitefish with Bobby. Chet, the Leviathan that they've captured, is awake but still not fully powered up. That doesn't keep him from being immune from all the normal tricks—holy water, silver and so on. He tells them to turn on the news, and that's when they find out that two Leviathans who look just like Sam and Dean have committed a brutal bank robbery and multiple murder. It turns out that Leviathans don't need to eat someone to take their form—the DNA from the hair left in a shower drain will do. (Um, eww.) The FBI manhunt for the boys had ended with their reported deaths (greatly exaggerated), but now it's back on.

Bobby sends them to see Frank Deveraux, and old...well, "friend" is a misnomer. He's “a jackass and a lunatic” whose life Bobby saved. Frank doesn't even believe in the supernatural, but his skills are useful at the moment. His advice seemingly strips away everything that makes Sam and Dean who they are--no rock n' roll aliases, pay for everything in cash, and drive a less conspicuous car. Fortunately, they don't live this way for long before figuring out that their Leviathan selves are retracing their path from the time that Sam left Stanford with Dean.

Back on the home front, Sheriff Jodie Mills shows up to thank Bobby for saving her life. She sees some things that need doing around the cabin, so she stays for a while. Bobby tells her to just disregard the newly decapitated monster in the basement. That actually DOESN'T turn out to be the last of ole Chet, and personally, I would think that would be the time to ask your company to leave. It's a good thing Bobby doesn't think like me, though, because thanks to Jodie's mopping, he learns that sodium bicarbonate (a.k.a. Borax) has roughly the same effect on Leviathans as flaming race car fuel.

Bobby calls Dean and shares this discovery, telling him to decapitate the Leviathans and bury the head separately for good measure. This is handy, because he and Sam have just been arrested and separated, and can assume that their Leviathan-twins are on their way to eat them. Sure enough, the doppelgangers show up and each confront the opposite brother. We've learned by then that Leviathans absorb people's memories when they take their form, so naturally, Leviathan!Dean takes this opportunity to enlighten Sam about what happened to Amy. Sam is still reeling from this when the real Dean bursts in to save him.

When all the shoutin' is over, the one surviving local policeman has agreed to declare the Winchesters dead again. We then see that the FBI has been infiltrated by Leviathans. We also finally get to meet the shadowy Leviathan Boss that the others have alluded to, who is masquerading as a wealthy and powerful man named Richard Roman. Crowley comes along (Hi Crowley! Good to have you back!) and tries to make an alliance, but Tricky Dick isn't havin' it.

The episode closes on the brothers, and Dean is demanding o know what's bothering Sam. Yeah, I know—I was tempted to scream at the television at this point. Sam tells Dean that he knows all about Amy, and storms off. *YAWN* This story arc needed to conclude about now, but let's be honest: of all possible conclusions, this may be the least interesting. I wanted my fistfight.

This was a fun episode. In one scene, The Leviathan!Winchesters rag on the real ones in hilarious fashion. Of Sam's diet, Levithan!Sam says “It's like eating self-righteousness!” Moments later, they do an homage to Pulp Fiction...minus the profanity. (This caused me to muse about whether top-tier profanity would feel out-of-character. I guess we'll find out if there's a movie.) The real Sam and Dean get in on the pop culture fun, too, when Dean lip-syncs to Air Supply while Sam looks on in horror. (Come on! We've heard Jensen for-real sing, and it was good. Let's have it again!)

Thee new characters were fun, too. Kevin McNalley was a joy as Frank Deveraux: caustic, abusive, and totally convinced that he's hilarious. He's the kind of recurring character the show could use right now. And James Patrick Stuart exuded menace and power as Richard Roman. “[Demons are] less than humans, and they're not good for much until you dip them in garlic sauce.” Brr!

Of course, I will never complain about seeing Sheriff Mills back on the case. Maybe I should raise my eyebrow about strong professional woman volunteering to do housework for someone else, but honestly, it's good see someone taking care of Bobby for a change. More important is the epic kiss that Bobby plants on her when he realizes that she's helped him find the Leviathans' weakness. They've been circling each other since at least last season, and have a believable, likable dynamic. It was just sad that Bobby tried to pretend it hadn't happened when she left. I wouldn't mind seeing more between them, provided it didn't end with her dying in his arms or something equally ridiculous.

I think we all know that Sam will be back, and soon. We've been down this road before, and these splits never last more than an episode or two. Sure enough, the promo for next week's episode, “The Mentalists”, shows the brothers working together. But I'm way more intrigued by the title of the following episode: “Season Seven, Time for a Wedding!”

Supernatural Season 7 Episode 5: Shut up Dr. Phil

2011-10-28T18:26:00.000-07:00

Okay, yeah, yeah, I know--there's just nothing like posting a recap an while *next* episode of something is on. But I don't want to break my record of recapping each ep of Supernatural just yet. So I'm gonna give it a whirl.

Last week, Charisma Carpenter and James Marsters guest starred as Maggie and Don Stark, wealthy witches in the midst of some serious marital trouble. Sam and Dean first came on the case because of the deaths of beloved people in town...people who were all connected to Don. You can add cupcakes to the list of things that Supernatural fans now hesitate to eat (see cheese, nacho), and nail guns have joined garbage disposals on the list of things household items we are afraid of. (I had to look away during that scene, BTW. I have a nail gun squick. I literally had nightmares anyway.)

Long story short, the Winchesters let the Starks go...ostensibly due to lack of chilled chicken feet (long story), but in reality because they got their well-sculpted tails handed to them. Seeing as how Don and Maggie have both killed innocent people, this feels kind of unfair, in light of what happened to Amy. Don does save them from Maggie's last attempt on them, though, and they drive away with a knocked-out Leviathan in the backseat thanks to him as well.

This episode has some great moments. Marsters and Carpenter are always a treat. Watching them bicker about their hundred years of history in one scene will give Joss Whedon fans pleasant flashbacks to the Spike/Angel/Darla/Drusilla quartet. It's even funnier to see this happening in the foreground while Dean is pinned in a doorway by swarming bees in the background. And responding to "a thing" with "You know...like a golf club, or a waffle iron" will probably become, well, a thing among Supernatural fans. (If it doesn't, it should.)

There was one thing that bugged me, though. Did anyone else notice that we probably had the first even named lesbian (or bisexual female) character on Supernatural...and she died?
I'm referring to Maggie's friend Sue. There seems to be more than just girl-power solidarity to her support of Maggie. There's something couple-y about the way she refers to "we" when talking to Maggie, reminds her that she has people who love her. Don even tells Sue at one point, "I know you'd be glad to have me out of the way."

It's hard not to notice that Supernatural's sexuality issues are just as bad as it's issues around gender and race. There's never been a major character (such as another hunter) who just happened to be gay, never been a gay person or couple who needed Sam and Dean's help. The only time homosexuality ever comes up, it's male, and it's played for laughs For example, there was th Ghostfacers intern with the awkward crush (who died, ahem), and the couple cosplaying the Winchesters at the comic book convention. Okay, there have also been jokes about Dean and Cas, and I will at least give those credit for being less mean-spirited.

Now, I'm all for having good-natured fun with 'shippers. But if you don't even mention male homosexuality when it's not a joke, your show's open to the accusation that it's view of that segment of the population is less than well-rounded. Gay and bisexual women have been completely off the radar until last week, and if that's the best the writers can do, perhaps it was better that way. As creative as the writers on Supernatural are, they should be able to show more imagination with regard to something that actually exists.

What would I rather have seen, you may be wondering? Well, have Don kill someone other than Sue to establish his villainy. Or don't code sue as being attracted to Maggie. OR (just wait, Im'a blow your mind) have Don's assistant, the one who was not sleeping with him, be not-sleeping-with-him because she prefers women. See? That wasn't hard at all.

Other random observations.

1) It always bugs me to see Dean hassling Sam about taking care of his health. We'd never seem Sam jogging before...this is a new thing. I think we all know that an ideal hunter's endurance and condition would be hard to maintain with constant travel and crappy food. But I digress. You'd think that Dean would be relieved that Sam was motivated enough to exercise, and was doing something that helps clear the mind, considering that he was worried about Sammy going crazy so recently. But of course, he was just taking his own horrible guilt burden out on his brother.

2) Dean continues to refuse to talk. ("Shut up Dr. Phil" is clearly addressed to Sam by both Dean and the Starks.) Considering what he's hiding, that's probably a good call. I'm actually quite the Dean girl, but emotions have always been one area where he and I have parted company. Remember that episode with the wraith at the asylum, where he told Sam just to cram his feelings down inside? I could have hit him. This is never a good plan. It kind of took me by surprise, too, because I had at times thought of Dean as a heart-on-his-sleeve kind of guy. But last week, I figured it out. Dean is in touch with his emotions, he just doesn't wan to be. More importantly, he doesn't want anyone else in touch with them. If the audience always knows what Dean is feeling, it's because Jensen is such an amazingly talented and subtle actor.

Well, at any rate, enjoy "Slash Fiction". I've set my DVR and am heading to a Halloween party, and with any luck, I'll be recapping it and the pilot of Grimms this weekend". "Slash Fiction" looks like kind of a retro/grindhouse/Tarantino thing going on. With a title like that, I'm dying of curiosity.

Pilot Episode - Once Upon a Time

2011-10-23T21:32:00.000-07:00

Yikes! Where has the weekend gone? I know that I still need to recap this last episode of Supernatural...but I just got done watching Once Upon a Time, so it's what's on my brain-pan right now.

I've been looking forward to this one, as well as Grimm, which premiers later this week. Fairy tales are big right now. Not only did we just recently see a movie re-imagining of Red Riding Hood, but Universal, Relativity and Disney all have Snow White movies on deck in the next two years. Sci-fi/fantasy/horror writers such as Catherynne Valente (The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making) have also drawn on European folklore traditions for inspiration. The ticket to making these familiar stories fresh and interesting is to put a new twist on it: make it darker than usual (or as dark as it was originally), throw in contemporary or anachronistic elements, or have a female lead who is stronger and more well-rounded than she is in other versions. So far, Once Upon a Time does a little of all of this.

The story opens on the wedding of Snow White and Prince Charming. The Evil Queen interrupts, promising that she will take away everything that matters to them and to everyone in attendance. She begrudges them a happy ending to their story, and their misery is her happy ending.

In our own time and place, we meet see blond, beautiful Emma Swan. We learn that it's her birthday (28^th, we find out later) and that she has no family or friends. She also turns out to be a hard-bitten bail bondsperson who's not afraid to get rough if she has to.

Alone in her lonely apartment after a capture, Emma wishes on a lonely birthday cupcake of loneliness. A waifish little boy knocks at her door, claiming to be the child she gave up for adoption. She can tell when anyone's lying, or at least claims to be able to, and has a hard time believing him. But since kids on TV are always craftier than adults, he's able to manipulate her into taking him back to his hometown, Storybrooke, herself. Henry—the little boy—tells her that the town is frozen in time, and full of exiled storybook characters who don't remember who they are. He also says that his adoptive mother (who happens to be Mayor) is evil. She doesn't seem so bad to Emma at first, but she is, of course, really the Evil Queen, appropriately named Regina.

The show continues to alternate between present events and the fairy tale events that went before. Snow White becomes pregnant and continues to live in terror of the Queen's threat. The creepy Rumpelstiltskin, a prisoner in the castle, is consulted because he can see the future. He predicts that the Queen will succeed into sending everyone someplace terrible, but that the baby, if she can be spared, will be the one to break the curse after twenty-eight years. (The baby is Emma, naturally—her name is the price for his services.) All that can be done is to build a magical wardrobe that will protect one person, and only one, from the curse. The plan is for that to be Snow White, but she delivers right as the curse falls, and the Emma is placed in the wardrobe alone.

In present-day Storybrooke, Emma heads out of town, only to be crash her car when startled by a wolf (ahem). She ends up in jail, but is released when she offers to help find Henry, who has run off again. The credit card he used on the site where he found Emma leads them to Henry's teacher, Mrs. Blanchard...who is actually Snow White. The kindly lady explains to Emma how lonely Henry is, and advises her to search for him in his “castle”. Sure enough, she finds him in a castle-shaped treehouse. He tells Emma that she's the one who's fated to save the town, and asks her to stay just a week. She initially declines, explaining that she can't be the one he's hoping for, but changes her mind when Regina protests too much in warning her off. At the end of the episode, we see that Rumpelstiltskin is still behind the scenes, pulling the strings, and Henry smiles as the clock on the town square starts moving again.

The one thing that bothered me about this episode was the way adoption was depicted. Too often, adoption is only on TV or in movies in a negative way, as something that all parties angst about and which often leaves children worse off. I know that there are narrative reasons for this---stories aren't interesting without emotion and conflict, after all. But these stories feed to easily into the society's ideas that adoptive families are “less than” biological families. It's also problematic that Regina is a single mother, even though the Evil Queen is married in the fairy tales. Henry does admit that Emma only did what she thought was right, though...and hey: if he'd been happy, he may have never noticed what was going on in Storybrooke.

There was a lot that I enjoyed about the show. The writing, pacing and acting were good, and all served to draw the viewer in. The writers left themselves plenty of mystery to work with. The aesthetics were good, too, even if some of the obviously-3D special effects were off-putting.

One of the things I liked best was the idea of a female Chosen One. That's not something you see very often....in fact, Willow is the only example that really jumps to mind, and that was a baby. Regina, too, promises to be an interesting, well-drawn character. A teaser for next week's episode indicates she may have good reason to be grumpy with Snow White. Imagine that!

As a reluctant romantic, I have to admit that I enjoyed the relationship between Snow White and Prince Charming. Josh Dallas and Ginnifer Goodwin have great chemistry, conveying both strong devotion and strong attraction. I was devastated when the prince was gravely injured by attackers while putting his daughter in the wardrobe. If he died, after all, he won't be waiting for Snow White when the curse was lifted. At the end of the episode, however, we see that he's in the Storybrooke hospital on life support.

In the pilot episode of Once Upon a Time, Henry tells Emma that stories are true “because you believe them”. Later, Snow White explains the psychological and emotional importance of stories. Neither of these ideas is surprising in a project as “meta” as this one. It's why they get done, and why I'll keep watching. Grimm, which, as I mentioned, premiers later this week, is a fairy-tale inspired police drama, and promises to be an even darker take on these beloved tales.

Supernatural Season 7 Episode 4: Defending Your Life

2011-10-16T22:08:00.000-07:00

As “Defending Your Life” opens, the Winchesters are taking a break from their Leviathan hunt to investigate a mysterious death. The victim appears to have been run over by a car...indoors, and several stories off the ground. Their research reveals that the dead man was a recovering alcoholic, who had joined Alcoholics Anonymous after being causing a car accident which killed a ten-year-old girl. It's not long until another strange death follows: a former dogfight-operator-turned-animal-welfare-activist, killed by a dog. Both victims have traces of distinctive red dirt on them.

In tracking the source of this dirt, Sam and Dean run across a frantic old man. He tells them that he'd just been released from prison, after serving thirty years from murder, only to be put on “trial “ in a nearby barn, by a mysterious judge who sicced the ghosts of his victims on him. Leaving the man in a circle of protective salt in their room, Sam searches for the barn where the “trial” took place. Dean cases out the bar from which the man was snatched, and engages in a classic Dean flirtation with the bartender, only to be abducted himself upon leaving.

Fortunately, Sam ends up at the same place where Dean is taken—the barn the old man mentioned. They find out that they are up against Osiris, an Egyptian god who judges the guilty by the weight on their souls. Dean's the one on trial—not surprising, since he's still floundering under the terrible secret of Amy's death. Sam persuades Osiris to let him dust off his pre-law degree and defend his brother. Two prosecution witnesses are called: a ghostly Jo Harvelle and...Sam. Sam manages to shoot down Osiris's contention that Dean is responsible for Jo's death, and for getting him back into hunting. Dean jumps at the god's offer to forgo the third witness against him, who is sure to be Amy, but is convicted nonetheless.

The brothers eave the barn knowing that based on the pattern of the previous deaths, Jo's ghost will be coming for Dean. It's already too late for the old man they were trying to help, who was slain by the ghosts chasing him when he broke the salt circle.

Bobby does research and reports that Osiris can't be killed, but can be put on ice, more or less, for centuries by being stabbed with a ram's horn. This leads the episode's most comically awkward lines. “Apparently Jewish people blow through them once a year,” Sam says. It's called a shofar, Sam, and yes, it's used at Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Sam breaks into a local synagogue to steal one, but the rabbi gives it to him instead. (Apparently asking to be armed against an Egyptian god was not a tough sell there. Imagine that.) Jo's reluctant ghost has a bittersweet exchange with Dean, but Sam vanquishes Osiris before she has a chance to dispatch him. As the brothers leave town, Sam explains that he is no longer troubled by guilt, because he believes that by going to Hell, he paid his dues for all the wrong he did.

This episode was interesting to me because it dealt with one of the gods of antiquity. In the first two seasons, Supernatural drew on different cultures for Monsters of the Week such as wendigos, tulpas and djinn. Since introducing angels in Season Four, however, the shows seems more committed to Judeo-Christian cosmology, and things have gotten more muddled. Take this week, for instance: was the Egyptian judge of the dead going to send Dean to the Christian Heaven? Because he's been there before. I'm so confused.

In my opinion, the hottest mess of all was “Hammer of the Gods”, in Season Five. Why are the gods of antiquity cannibalistic? Is it because there was once human sacrifice? If so, this is not explained. If not, it makes a sort of sense with Kali and perhaps even Odin, but much less sense with the likes of Mercury and Baldur. Speaking of Kali, she would probably make a light snack of the Christian Devil. She certainly wouldn't need two white American boys to take care of her. And did none of the other gods notice that “Loki” never chowed down with them? Or did he?

I realize that accuracy is often sacrificed in the interest of narrative tension. Certainly nothing on Supernatural is further from what people actually believe than how the angels act. At the same time, the Judeo-Christian elements are so familiar to modern, Western viewers that it's easy to forget that the things from outside that tradition are things people believed and believe in. The Norse, Hellenic and Egyptian gods are still followed by reconstructionists and neo-pagans...and their respective numbers are dwarfed by almost a billion people who worship the Hindu pantheon. So for “Defending your Life”, those of us who are familiar with the mythology must forget for a moment that Osiris only judged people who are already dead.

Don't get me wrong: there was a lot about this episode that I liked. Faran Tahir did a wonderful job as Osiris. The whole concept of people being judged on how they felt about their wrongs, regardless of whether slate was clean, was very poignant, especially with respect to the witnesses against Dean. It was also fun to see Sam tap into his law background again.

Dean is still carrying around the secret of Amy's death at the end of the episode. I don't think the center can hold there. He and Sam lie to each other all the time, but it also always comes out. (You'd think they'd figure that out.) At any rate, I look forward to that being resolved, eventually. Amy and Sam deserve for the truth to be known, and Dean, in light of all the good he's done, deserves to be unburdened. Well, that and...we haven't had a good old-fashioned Winchester fist-fight in a while.

Supernatural Season 7 Episode 3: The Girl Next Door

2011-10-08T17:26:00.000-07:00

Last week's episode left the Winchester brothers in an ambulance headed into trouble. At the beginning of “The Girl Next Door”, several problems are solved at once as Bobby Singer shows up to rescue Sam and Dean. They get away, much to the frustration of Dr. Monsterface (not to be confused with Dr. Sexy.). With Bobby's place in ruins, they hole up in a hunting cabin in Whitefish, Montana. Three weeks later, Dean is almost ready to get out of his cast (?!?), and Sam's hallucinations appear to at least be manageable. Sam heads into town for a routine grocery run, and his credit card activity tips off the Leviathans to his location. (See? You KNEW credit card companies were evil.)

More importantly, Sam comes across a monster MO he's seen before. Several local criminals have been killed with ice picks to the head, and found with chunks of gray matter missing. Sam scarpers off alone, leaving a note, and gets a motel room in town. Dean is alarmed but not Bobby.

In flashbacks, we see Sam in his early teens, helping Dean and their dad track a similar monster—a Kitsune. which can be killed by being stabbed through the heart. In the course of this hunt, he makes a connection with Amy, a girl his age. She takes him home to patch up his minor injuries after he saves her from some toughs, and they end up sharing Sam's first kiss. They learn that they both had to relocate a lot and have often felt like freaks. Sam hides in a closet when Amy's mom comes home, and it quickly becomes clear that she's not only a crappy parent, but also the sweetbread-gobbling monster that the Winchesters have been hunting. Sam is caught trying to sneak away, and Amy kills her own mother to save him. Amy begs him to run off and start a new life with her, but he explains that he can't, telling her to skip town and promising to take care of the body.

In present-day Whitefish, it doesn't take Sam long to find Amy. He keeps her from attacking another lowlife, only to get knocked out and wake up in her home. Amy explains that she has a normal life now, complete with a mortgage, and even became a mortician to satisfy her, er, dietary requirements. She shows him her son sleeping in another room, and explains that the only reason she killed was because he had recently gotten very sick and needed the fresh stuff. When she promises not to kill again, Sam leaves her unharmed.

Dean is waiting for Sam when he returns to his hotel room, and is none to happy, especially since Sam took the Impala. Sam tells Dean everything, and Dean maintains that Amy will kill again. Eventually Sam seems to have persuaded Dean to trust him, even if he doesn't trust Amy. On the way out of town, however, Dean tracks down Amy and kills her. He tells her son to go find someplace to go and never to hurt anyone unless he wants the same fate. As the episode ends, we see that the Leviathans have arrived in Whitefish. (On a related note, I may never eat nachos with cheese again.)

The first thing I want to remark on is Jewel Staite's guest turn as Amy. As a devout Joss Whedon fan, it was great to see her. She is, if possible, even prettier now than she was as the fresh-faced, sex-positive, terminally cheerful mechanic Kaylee in Firefly. This role was very, very different, though, and gave her a chance to demonstrate her range. I'll confess, when I learned she would play an old friend of Sam's, I was hoping for a “Screw this! I'm gonna live!” moment. (Whedonites will understand.) Alas, none of that was to be. I was sorry to see the episode end the way it did, and less than thrilled with Dean.

A friend of mine suggested that there may be more to Amy's story than just what was shown in “The Girl Next Door”, because it wasn't like Dean to knowingly leave a young child without a mother. I'm less convinced that Dean didn't mean to do what he did, but once again, my mind swirls with speculation. What if Dean missed Amy's heart, and she's not dead? What if the lore is wrong, and neither she nor her mother are dead? What if her mother committed the killings, and Amy was only trying to cover for her? (We never actually saw her killing anyone, just following.) The writers on Supernatural tend to bring back anyone they want to.

We all know that the death of female characters is a cliché' on Supernatural by now. Sure, almost anyone is fair game, but even Misha Collins jokes about the poor odds for the ladies. I was disappointed that this time was no exception. However, I still have to acknowledge the strange respect that Dean showed Amy, as seen in the way he caught her as she died rather than letting her fall. When interacting with her and her son, he was clearly agonized and conflicted about what he was doing. He's also clearly lost faith in Sam's judgment as a hunter, which I think will matter later on.

Not long ago, Clarissa at TV Over Mind blogged about the things she wanted to see in Season 7. I'm totally with her...well, on #1 most of all, but also on the idea of fewer character deaths and more recurring characters. The three hunters have been effectively on their own for a while. With Castiel seemingly gone for good, the show could us new folks to act as ballast. I hope we either see Amy again or that her death becomes an issue between Sam and Dean. Either way, Whedon fans have gust appearances by Charisma Carpenter and James Marsters (both of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel) to look forward to.

Supernatural Season 7 Episode 2: Hello Cruel World

2011-10-01T12:03:00.000-07:00

After a strong start out of the gate, Supernatural spend this episode laying the groundwork for this season's conflicts. The questions it raised are almost more important than what actually happened.

Since that does matter what happened however, in brief: the Leviathans make The Vessel Formerly Known As Castiel wade into a municipal reservoir. From there, they go out and and take over various people, preying on humans as all good Supernatural monsters do. One of them, posing as a surgeon, has the bad fortune to cross paths with sheriff Jodie Mills, who quickly figures out that something's wrong, and involves Bobby Singer. In the meantime, Sam's hallucinations continue to mess with his sense of reality. By the time the episode is done, Bobby is missing and the brothers are in an ambulance--Dean with a broken leg and Sam still tripping hard. What the ambulance crew doesn't know (but the brothers do) is that there's a nest of Leviathans waiting at the hospital where they're headed.

First, I have to say that it's always good to see Sheriff Mills. She once again proves to be a tough cookie in this episode, pulling a couple of badass moves even though she's recovering from surgery. (I think “Doctor Monsterface” is going to become one of my favorite epithets of the show.) The odds are against women in the world of Supernatural, so I really hope she sees the other side of this one. (Okay, in fairness, it's a dangerous world for everyone, but it seems to be particularly so for women.)

For the second week in a row, the show suggests that we've seen the end of Castiel. I honestly think that shot of his trench coat floating in the reservoir was intended to make people cry. Bobby directly addresses the potential emotional impact of this loss on Dean—but of course, Dean won't talk about it, because he's Dean.

In thinking over the possibilities, I realized what I wanted least: For Castiel to com back in another vessel-- female, white, thin, conventionally hot—and finally hook up with Dean. For the Destiel 'shippers, that would seem to be a cheap solution to the subtext created by the actors and played on mercilessly by the writers. For everyone else, it would cheapen the friendship itself. If another actor must be cast as Cas, what would be poignant would be for Dean to be so happy that his friend, his angel was okay that he paid no attention to the vessel. Whether you 'ship Dean and Cas or not, it's easy to see the poetry of a friendship between a mortal and an angel who ended decades of torment for him and saved him from the fate of becoming a demon. “I'm the one who gripped you tight and raised you from perdition.”

“Hello Cruel World” caused me to question once again to question Dean's wisdom in getting Death to get Sam's soul back. It really bothered me at the time, because once Sam found out the risks, he didn't accept them. (I'm still not clear on what was animating Sam if his soul was absent, but then, I haven't seen all of Season Six.) I mean, sure, it's terrible to think of Sam in the Cage—but he had told Dean to leave him there. The only way I can think to excuse overriding Soulless Sam's wishes is that he is a danger to innocent people, as we find out from flashbacks from his year with the Campbells. In fairness, though, the worst thing he did—attacking Bobby—he did to prevent a charred mess of a soul being forced on him. At one point, Castiel told Dean that if he'd wanted to kill Sam, he should have done it outright. As awful as that would have been, it was an option—and it's on that Dean considers in “Hello Cruel World”.

The friend that I watched Supernatural with last night suggested that perhaps Sam is still in Hell---that the writers, if they wished, could use that idea to reboot entire parts of the storyline, if they wanted to. I don't think they're going to do that—I think we see too much from Dean's POV for that to be what's happening. But I suspect that something similar may be going on. It could be that Sam's soul really is back on Earth, but that Lucifer really is there with him. I don't think he's free from this cage, or he'd be out doing his thing the way he did in Season Five; but I think it's possible that some part of him got grafted onto Sam's soul in the process of extracting it, allowing him to interact with Sam and only Sam. Yes, I know, it would be a very Harry Potter turn of events, but it wouldn't be the only parallel between Sam and Harry. It also seems like one of the few ways that anything could be done about what's going on.

At the same time, there are plenty of other irons to fry and fish in the fire. For one thing, how is Dean going to hunt with a broken leg? The brothers have come back from the dead plenty of times, but I believe this is the most serious non-lethal physical injury that either of them has had in several seasons. Hopefully Bobby is still out there, because they are going to need help, both in the short and long term.

Supernatural Season 7 Episode 1: Meet the New Boss

2011-09-25T20:15:00.000-07:00

On Friday, the Winchester brothers returned, after last season's dramatic finale left their audience facing a long summer. The brothers' angel ally, Castiel (also a fan favorite and slash darling) used all sorts of questionable mojo to become God, taking the place of an absent heavenly Father. He unsuccessfully demands worship from Sam, Dean and Bobby, but gives up when he sees that it wouldn't be sincere, sparing their lives and leaving.

Castiel's next order of business is to start destroying hypocritical religious leaders and hate groups like the KKK, leaving Dean wondering if this new God is really such a bad thing. In the meantime, Sam is having intermittent hallucinations of the time he spent in Hell, thanks to Castiel's decision last season to break down the wall protecting him from those memories. Eventually, Castiel's body count grows too high for the taste of the hunters, but they have no weapon that would work against God. However, back in Season Five, Death himself told Dean that he (Death) would reap God eventually. Crowley, the King of Hell, has been forced into a compromise by Castiel and is only too happy to give the hunters the spell they need to bind Death.

The hunters break into a home to get the final item for the spell and, for some reason, decide to conduct the spell on the premises, in front of the terrified homeowners. Death shows up, bound, and everything seems to be going well until Castiel shows up and frees him with a snap of his fingers. Death explains that Cas's vessel is breaking down under the power of the Leviathans—ancient beasts absorbed from Purgatory. Placated with pickle chips (no, really), Death arranges an eclipse during which the portal to Purgatory can be reopened. After committing a massacre at a senatorial campaign office, Castiel is finally ready to come to the brothers for help, even if preventing disaster will mean sacrificing his life.

At the time of the eclipse, the Purgatory is reopened again, something returns to it. After going down for the count again for a second, Cas appears to be okay. That is until the Leviathans, speaking in Castiel's voice but referring to themselves in the plural, take over, claiming that Cas is dead and throwing Dean and Bobby across the room. In the meantime, Sam is having his worst hallucination yet: Lucifer, telling him that he's still in Hell and that being free was the hallucination. The episode ends with Leviathan!Cas menacing Dean and Bobby and Sam's condition unknown.

I call this a very strong start to the season. The most exciting thing, to me, is that this season, Supernatural appears to be going Lovecraft. ”Old Ones”, as Death refers to the Leviathans, evokes the Great Old Ones from H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulu mythos. Lovecraft came up several times in the last few episodes of Season Six. The web is already buzzing about this connection. If I know anything about Supernatural (and I feel like I do), Lovecraft is likely to be cited as someone who found out about the Old ones somehow, and wrote about them as if they were fiction.

This episode held a lot of treats for fans. There was sort of wry, relevant humor that you would expect—jokes about anime porn and trench coats on tortillas. It was wonderful to see Mark Pellegrino back as Lucifer, as he's always creepy and effective. Also a thrill was Julian Richings as Death. (Can I say just how much I love the fact that Death has a weakness for junk food?) Mark Shepherd, who plays Crowley, is a joy in pretty much everything he does (which is a lot). It was amusing to see Crowley living in a trailer park after having whined about the loss of his mansion is Season Five. When summoned by the hunters, Crowley even seemed to pout for a second about the possibility that they might not want to conspire with him.

And then, of course, there's Castiel. Oh, Misha Collins. I saw you give a panel at a convention this summer, and understand why you are a fan favorite. You may be the Supernatural actor that I'd most like to have a beer with—although Jim Beaver is growing on me, just based on his Twitter account. Unsurprisingly, Misha made us feel sympathy for Castiel in the premier, in spite of everything he'd done. He'd only been trying to make things better, but—to use a metaphor Dean would appreciate—it reminded me of someone trying to cobble together a couple of unrelated car parts to replace a missing car engine. It might work for a little while, but in the end, it's just not an engine. Death had it right: an angel is not up to playing God.

Is our sweet Castiel, whom we'd seen through so much for three seasons, really gone for good? I sincerely hope not. We already know that Misha won't be in every episode this season. Hopefully Castiel is still in there and can take back the reins at some point, like Sam did at the end of Season Five, and be redeemed. Either way, Leviathan!Cas will make a great Big Bad, if that's what he's going to be. Misha turned in a unsettling performance, very different from Castiel

From the look of the preview, the next episode focuses on Sam's Devil-adjacent problems. I predict that Dean and Bobby will have to make a quick getaway at the beginning of the next episode, with an almost-incapacitated Sam in tow, or that the Leviathan!Cas will just walk away, sparing them yet again for no obvious reason. Either way, I, or many others, will be tuned in, watching eagerly.

Starting up again, putting out the hat

2011-09-19T14:06:00.000-07:00

Well...it's been a while, hasn't it? Two years almost.

With the leaves turning in the Northern Hemisphere and Fall TV returning, I've decided to start blogging again. Hopefully I'll be able to do so pretty consistently. It will be mainly TV recaps and (hopefully) movie reviews, with occasional commentary on entertainment news and reposts of things I found interesting. The shows I will be focusing on include

Supernatural (my new obsession this year)
Castle
How I Met Your Mother
NBC Thursday Night Comedy - Community, Parks and Recreations, and The Office.
Fairy tale reboots - Grimms and Once Upon a Time.
Modern Family
Anything older that I end up re-watching on DVD--hopefully including Gilmore Girls, Carnivale and Defying Gravity.

I do have a day job and a career as a fiction writer, so I may occasionally have to lump several episodes of one thing together in one post. The older shows, in particular, are likely to be written about a season or half-season at a time. I hope to make my posts stand out by incorporating concepts from social justice movements, literary criticism, psychology, and comparative religion. I hope to post at least twice a week. Assume that there is a spoiler alert on everything--in the case of TV shows both for the episode(s) in question and anything that came before it.

I'll be installing a PayPal button. This is because I think my time, and my words, are worth something. Other bloggers doing this kind of writing don't have PayPal buttons, and that's fine. I'm just making a different choice. You are more than welcome to read if you can't or just don't wish to pay; but if you want to throw contribute monetarily, that's greatly appreciated. In fact, page hits, friendly comments, word of mouth, retweets--just your time and attention--it's all appreciated.

I'd also like to say a word about my commenting policy. I am perfectly open to having mature, good-faith differences of opinion in this space. You don't have to like what I like, or share all my political opinions either. But comments that are just intended to stir up trouble or play devil's advocate, or which include bigoted words and ideas, will be deleted. (By by "bigoted", I'm referring to racism, sexism, transphobia, sizeism, sectarianism, classism, and similar things.) This is not censorship, as I am not the government. This is my playground, and you have the whole rest of the world in which to say whatever you want.

If you are also a blogger, please don't drop your links in comments. Message me and we can talk about promoting each other. I'm also very open to doing guest posts on group blogs.

Well, that's about it! Pull up a chair, make yourself some coffee. This should be fun.

Storywh0re from the vault - Away We Go (2009)

2009-10-22T21:45:00.000-07:00

(Spoiler warning)

Away We Go is part of a recent trend to market movies in a specific way to telegraph “indie” and “quirky”, regardless of the film's studio or budget or anything else. I had wanted to see it in the theater but didn't get the chance. When I finally watched it recently, I was disappointed.

John Krasinski (The Office) and Maya Rudolph (Saturday Night Live) play Burt and Verona, a struggling thirty-something couple who unexpectedly find themselves pregnant. Verona's parents are dead, so when Burt's parents announce that they're leaving the country, Burt and Verona hit the road to visit friends in search of a chosen family for their child.

There are a few things that I like a lot about this movie, and I want to address those first. I liked the fact that Burt and Verona are an interracial couple. I appreciate the way that the movie takes the idea of chosen family so seriously. I liked the relationship between Burt and Verona, and the approach to parenting that they formulate, both informed by and different from everyone around them.

It's everyone around them that bugs me.

In an early scene, Burt's father—the one who's about to bail on his first grandchild—talks to Verona about a sculpture he bought of a Native American woman. He's not sure whether it's Pocahontas or not, but he wants to honor indigenous people—even if he can't pronounce “indigenous”. Later on, Burt and Verona spend time with Burt's childhood friend, “LN”, and her husband, who practice Continuum parenting, which is a thinly veiled reference to Attachment Parenting. I'm not going to weigh in on Attachment Parenting here, but suffice it to say that it's not portrayed positively in Away We Go. LN, however, also quotes from Alice Walker and Simone de Beauvoir.

Between the two scenes, the message seems to be that only the ignorant, the insincere and the hopelessly flakey would take an interest in people of different cultures, or the words of women.

I understand that LN and her husband were meant to be a counterpoint to the comically crude couple visited before them, who were not involved enough with their children instead of too involved. For me, though, the most problematic moment came with the third family that Burt and Verona visited, which was supposed to be the most balanced.

Burt and Verona's friends, Tom and Munch, seem to have it all—a happy, loving home with three adoptive kids. When the adults go out without the kids, they end up at amateur night at a local strip club. Munch, clad in a black dress, begins to dance for husband to a slow song, and Tom confides to Burt that she had her fifth miscarriage earlier that week. He then waxes philosophical, wondering aloud if they've been “selfish” for waiting so long to start their family.

There are so many problems with this scene, I don't know where to begin. Whatever you believe about abortion, you can't “owe”anything to someone who hasn't been conceived yet. Also, women miscarry for many reasons not related to age. Couples in this situation suffer enough without movies telling them to second-guess themselves.

More importantly though, Tom and Munch already have a family. They are contributing the act of parenting to the world. But naturally, the subtext says, the three non-White and/or non-American kids they have at home are not enough to make them happy.

I found Tom and Munch to be caricatures of infertility. I understand that the desire to have children of one's own loins is very natural, and that the inability to do so can be extremely painful. However, I would dare say that society's insistence on considering adoption second-rate, and it's complete failure to recognize childless couples as families, makes it far more painful than it has to be.

I understand, too, that in the story, Munch's pain was fresh, and she had another woman's pregnant belly in her face. That only makes it more insulting that Tom barely watches her dirge-like dance, but is more engaged in whining to Burt. The message is, infertile women aren't sexy. They're sad.

In the end, Burt and Verona move into her childhood home, although they don't have any chosen family nearby that I can recall. She faces the demons of her parents' death. Whatever. By that point I didn't even care. Burt and Verona were the only characters in the movie that I really liked. Users on IMDB described the others as “overwritten”, and the movie itself as pretentious, and I have to agree. The fail was the most memorable thing for me about Away We Go. Next time I want to see a pseudo-indie movie, I think I'll re-watch Juno. You know—the one that ends with an adoption.

NBC Thursday Comedy Night.

2009-09-17T20:21:00.000-07:00

I watched three-fourths of NBCs Thursday night comedy line-up earlier. (I didn't have the patience for the Saturday Night Live thing.) While I had been looking forward to the return of The Office and Parks and Recreation, I was pleasantly surprised, both by those and by the Peaock's new offering, Community. Not only were they funny, but refreshingly progressive.

Last season on Parks and Recreation, the protagonist, Leslie Knope, started a crusade to build a new park. The season premier doesn't deal with that at all, but finds her focused on other duties. In an attempt to have a cute event at the city zoo, Leslie holds a wedding for two penguins...not knowing that they're both male. She immediately becomes the darling of the local gay community, and the bane of local conservative activists. (Just watching Amy Poehler sing “Poker Face” is worth the half-hour investment.) Her appearance on a morning talk show to defend herself shows poetically how the media can manipulate and sensationalize events. Despite not having intended to make a political statement, Leslie refuses to cave to demands that she resign and “annul” the birds' marriage.

The episode implies that Leslie is angsting over being unmarried, which is potentially problematic. But then, loneliness is a universal human emotion, and the nascent love triangle with Leslie's crush Mark and best friend Ann could be interesting. More problematic is stalking by Ann's ex-boyfriend.

While Parks and Recreation is still defining itself, The Office is more familiar ground. It stays fresh, however, because lives are changing. Pam is expecting her and Jim's baby, but they're not ready to tell their co-workers. Their boss, the lovable but clueless Michael Scott, is feeling excluded from office gossip, so he spreads some dirt that he has on one of his employees. In the end, he goes back and spreads “red herring” false rumors to cover it up. He accidentally gets it right about Jim and Pam. (Not HR-compliant, this place.)

One of my favorite moments happened after Andy comes to Oscar to discus his own rumored homosexuality. To paraphrase, Oscar asks the camera: “Is this really my job? To comfort insecure heterosexuals? Surely that can't fall to me”. It's rare for television comedy writing to squarely examine privilege in this way.

Two for two at this point, I decided to stick around for Community. The prot--well, the main character is Jeff Winger, an unctuous lawyer who is forced to go back to college because his degree is revealed to be from the country of Colombia, not Columbia university. He chooses a community college because he mistakenly thinks he can cheat with the help of a former client there.

Jeff forms a fake Spanish study group just to hit on Britta, another student. A real group forms around his lie, introducing us to the rest of the cast. He incites fighting among the group just to get himself and Britta out of it, but she makes him go back and fix it. The speech he gives to do so is funny and inspiring at the same time. There are hilarious references to The Breakfast Club, and a tribute to the late John Hughes in the credits.

I appreciate the fact that Britta never accepts a date with Jeff, even after his big speech. There's one disability joke they should have lost, though

All in all, a good night of comedy. The shows aren't perfect, but are funnier for being relatively enlightened and intelligently written. I look forward to spending more Thursday nights this way this Fall.

Imma let you finish, but...

2009-09-16T20:11:00.000-07:00

Hopefully, this Kanye West thing will blow over soon.

For those who somehow don't know, he interrupted Taylor Swift's acceptance speech at this weekend's MTV Video Music Awards, to take issue with her victory. Yes, this was mind-bogglingly rude, and easily arguable as sexist. He deserved scorn, and he's gotten it. People will never forget this...nor should they.

However, he has now apologized in several forums, including by phone to Taylor Swift. If it won't be forgotten, it should be forgiven.

And I believe that the punishment has now exceeded the crime.

The reason for that is that is that yesterday, TMZ.com broke the news that President Barack Obama had been caught calling West a "jackass" on a hot mic.

For a Black musician with a passion for racial issues, I cannot imagine how painful this would be, coming from the first Black president. It must have been agony. Simply agony. Agony that the President did not intend for West to have.

Obama did not know that he was being recorded, and thought his statements were off the record. He should know by now, though, that with the press, his words are never off the record unless explicitly stated...and maybe not even then. I wish he'd been more circumspect, considering that West has shown real contrition as he's gone on damage control. Obama may have never done anything so breathtakingly boorish, but he knows what it is to stick his foot in his mouth. (Special Olympics, anyone?)

At this point, I feel sorry for everyone involved: Taylor Swift, Beyonce' Knowles, President Obama and Kayne West.

RIp Patrick Swayze

2009-09-14T21:33:00.000-07:00

I am very sad to learn of Patrick Swayze's passing, although he had been suffering for some time. He was in many movies I enjoyed, including Dirty Dancing, Point Break, Ghost and To Wong Foo. He also always seemed like a good person and a class act.

I really wanted to post a YouTube video from Dirty Dancing, because he deserves a tribute that moves. But the embedding on all of them seemed to be disabled.

So go. Watch anyway. Listen. Have one last dance.

And please accept this macro instead, from Rofflrazzi.com user Jax.bot.

The Quotable Paris Hilton

2009-09-14T21:12:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I read online that Paris Hilton will be included in a new book, The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations

Her quote? "Dress cute everywhere you go, life is too short to blend in."

As much as I don't dig the whole "celebutante" thing, I have to say, I can get on board with this quote.

In fairness, I would say that life is too short to always worry about how you look. The quote, however, is not about consumerism, or wearing the right brand. Nor is it about dressing up to please other people. It's about nonconformity, about chosing something you like and projecting a confident image.

And that's hot.

Pon farr of the vanities

2009-05-12T21:47:00.001-07:00

This week, I had planned to bring you a review of Wolverine and the new Star Trek. I saw them in a self-made double-feature this weekend. Perhaps it will suffice to say that if you can only see one, see Star Trek. Tonight, though, I've got old Trek on my mind.

Today, I found myself reading about pon farr—in Star Trek canon, the condition that comes upon adult Vulcan males (and bonded females) every seven years. It strips away their logic, making them feel like their blood is boiling, and compels them to either mate or die—unless they're lucky enough be able to to fight or meditate through it. There's even a fan magazine called “Fever”, devoted exclusively to pon farr fanfiction. Of course, my interest in this topic may have something to do with how much I loved the pairing of Spock and Uhura in the latest movie. Just maybe.

At any rate, tonight, I watched “Amok Time”, the episode of the original Trek series which introduced the concept of pon farr. In brief, Spock is stricken by the blood fever and returns to Vulcan to marry his betrothed. During the ceremony, however, she invokes her right to subject him to a challenge...and selects Kirk as her champion, to be fought to the death. Bones saves the day with some medical meddling, and Spock lets his faithless female go with the guy she really wants.

Much of what I found in this episode was unexpected. First, I have to admit that William Shatner was a better actor than I thought he'd been at that at point. He had impressive range and subtlety. It was interesting to see Nimoy play twitchy in his role for once, but Spock's agitation was not as convincing as his embarrassment over it. The next thing was the scene where Kirk's clothing gets torn and suddenly, I'm looking at William Shatner's nipples. Perhaps I haven't seen as much old Trek as I thought, but I kind of thought that nipples in the original series would be like or crying in baseball (there is none); but it was more like the Spanish inquisition (unexpected!)

Most unexpectedly, though, I finally saw the sexual undercurrent that so many fans see between Kirk and Spock! Kirk goes out of his way to save his friend, risking even the wrath of the Federation. Spock reacts more strongly to seeing Kirk okay at the end than he reacted to his betrothed. Perhaps I shouldn't have been surprised, though. That is one of the oldest non-canonical pairings in all of sci-fi fandom. People have been writing stores about Kirk and Spock before there was an internet to share them on. In fact, the phrase “slash”, as it refers to same-sex pairings, was first used to designate stories which were “Kirk/Spock”.

On an related note: Star Trek has not been out a week, and already I'm tired of the “Trekkies don't have sex” meme. Jay Leno said something to that effect last night, and there was a similar implication in an online article about the Vulcan salute. Excuse me, but by my reckoning, sci-fi, fantasy and comic book movies have been mainstream since the first Batman, if not since Star Wars. Watchmen was the first movie this year that anyone gave a damn about. Even our hip, beloved President has seen Star Trek...and no one would accuse him of not getting any (he has proof). Of course, all things in moderation, but for the most part, fandom is cool these days.. I guess some folks missed the memo.

Storywh0re from the vault--Imagine Me and You (2005)

2009-04-26T21:34:00.001-07:00

Three things that may break your brain...depending on where you first encountered the actors in question.

Giles of BtVS fame, attempting to fast-dance.
Sarah Connor with a British accent.
Adrian Veidt with short, dark hair.

All of this is found in Imagine Me and You. In this 2005 romantic comedy, Piper Perabo plays Rachel, a young woman who's future and sexuality are called into question. Walking down the aisle on her wedding day, she experiences love at first sight with another woman...Luce, the wedding florist, played by Lena Headey. They hit it off at the reception, and from there, things unfold surprisingly predictably.

I wish I could get more on board with this movie, I really do. I support gay marriage in real life, and better LGBT characters and story lines in popular culture. This film, however, falls back on several existing tropes about homosexuality, and uses more traditional rom-com tropes in ways that failed to win my sympathy.

First of all, Imagine me and You arguably illustrates how Hollywood is more comfortable depicting lesbians (especially if they're both beautiful) than it is gay men. In fairness, Rachel and her husband do run into two men dallying in the woods at one point...but the men have apparently just met, and this taps into another negative stereotype. On the whole, it is hard to imagine the same movie being made with the husband in Rachel's situation.

Next, there is the issue of infidelity. The romantic comedy battlefield is littered with broken engagements, but in this case, the heroine and her Baxter are already married. Rachel and Luce stop short of the sack while Rachel's still married, because that would become something that the audience couldn't condone Maybe I'm just not enough of a romantic, but it seems unwise to throw away a brand new marriage for a brand new romance, regardless of gender. It would be different if Rachel suddenly realized she had no attraction to men...but that would be an issue even without a third party, and doesn't seem to be the case.

In other words, just because it's a same-sex relationship doesn't mean it's better, in this case. It seems like Rachel could end up alone altogether if things don't work out with Luce. Not only might this movie not have been made with two men, but I doubt it would have been made with a marriage breaking up so that another heterosexual couple could form.

Part of the problem, for me at least, is the Baxter. Watchmen's Matthew Goode plays Rachel's husband Hector, who has ended up with the unfortunate nickname of Heck. Unlike so many Baxters before him, he isn't inattentive, abusive or irresponsible. We see him trying hard to make their marriage work. Heck isn't even particularly boring. His worst sin is a reluctance to get naked in the woods at night...and even then, it's implied that he and Rachel have had sex outdoors before.

In the end, I realized that Heck is the hero of the movie for me. He finds himself in the untenable position of being an obstacle to the happiness for someone he loves, and Goode makes that realization agonizing to watch. In that position, Heck does the right thing, without resentment and with as much grace as he can manage. Then he goes on to follow his dream.

I really don't mean to discourage anyone from watching Imagine Me and You. Even I have to concede that it must end as it does. The heart must be followed, crises of identity must be addressed...and it is, after all, a rom-com. It also treats its Baxter and secondary characters with a lot more respect than usual for the genre. There are no villians, and everyone gets a happy ending.

Watching the Watchmen

2009-03-08T19:47:00.000-07:00

Last summer, viewers of The Dark Knight were treated to one of the slickest and most seductive trailers ever. The music of the Smashing Pumpkins helped to sell Watchmen, adapted from the beloved graphic novel and helmed by 300 director Zac Snyder. By the time Watchmen finally arrived this weekend, it was easily the most anticipated movie so far this year. It posted 2009's strongest opening-weekend take so far (over $56 million), in spite of showings being limited by an almost three-hour running time.

The story takes place in an alternate version of the 1980's. President Richard Nixon is in his fifth term, and masked vigilantes are real, but have been outlawed. A retired superhero—The Comedian—is murdered, and the far less retiring Rorschach proceeds to investigate. He believes that “masks” are being targeted, and struggles to convince his surviving colleagues

I went in not having read the graphic novel. One of my friends who was with me summed it up best: “Whatever I was expecting, that wasn't it.”

Let's get one thing straight right off the bat: this movie is bloody. For this reason alone, it's not for everyone. There are broken bones, limbs removed with chainsaws, and multiple people reduced to gory splatters. The camera is unflinching for a lot of this. I have a pretty high threshold for such things, and it was exceeded. Any time I feel like I might as well be watching Sin City, I get kind of pissed off, just on principal.

On the other hand, there is much to enjoy. Rorschach is just a fun character, mostly because he's so ornery and so crazy. Dan Drieberg, whose alter ego is Nite Owl, is irresistably geeky. The very concept of Dr. Manhattan is fascinating. The least well-rounded character is probably Matthew Goode's Ozymandias, and he is still captivating every time he's onscreen.

I should probably not give Watchmen as much of a pass on gender stuff as I do. It fails the Bechdel test. All of the female characters end up in a sexual clinch at some point—including, by implication, a murdered child. There is a brutal almost-rape scene, where the victim fights back but still has to be saved by a man. At the same time, I have to give the movie credit for an unprecedented amount of male nudity (including frontal) in a mainstream blockbuster. I give it credit for showing that sex doesn't always work out, even when both parties want it. I also appreciate the fact that heroine, Laurie Jupiter, moves from one partner to a new one without being considered cheap or traitorous.

The story ends with one character playing the scapegoat a la The Dark Knight...only on a much grander scale. I left the theater asking myself, when did we start insisting that our superhero movies be all deep and stuff? Did Christopher Nolan start it? What happened to lighthearted fun? Remember Batman and Robin? Oh, wait—we all hated that.

It's possible that the public's taste for meaning with its masks will move in cycles, like so many other things. At all times, however, there are movies which capture the spirit of their age. Lately, they seem to have become impossibly timely. We are in the midst of a recession, with record unemployment, sub-prime mortgages defaulting, and no Dr. Manhattan to secure the Afghan border. “What happened to the American Dream?” Nite Owl asks at one point. “It came true,” replies the Comedian. If other movies—most notably Iron Man—were literally or figuratively about the Bush years, then Watchmen is a movie for this moment.

Om nom nom....

2009-01-23T20:21:00.000-08:00

So, this week the Oscar Nominations were announced.

As well as I loved No Country for Old Men, I was pleased to see the unlikeable Burn After Reading get shut out after a degree of buzz.

Heather Ledger was nominated for Best Supporting Actor, to no one's surprise and on the first anniversary of his tragic passing. In somewhat of a surprise to me, he is up aginst Robert Downey Jr as Kirk Lazarus in Tropic Thunder. Now, I stay out of debates about whether or not the deceased should win such awards; it is my feeling that an Oscar should neither be given nor denied just because someone died in the interim. In this case, however, I have to support Downey, for several reasons (other than his hotness and my admiration for him):

The role of Kirk Lazarus encompassed several other roles--specifically that of Lincoln Osiris.
The sub-plot of Lazarus as Osiris drew attention to Hollywood's racial politics in a way that is both funny and inventive without being insulting...all because RDJ made it work.
While Ledger did an amazing job, psychology that abdormal is somewhat less challenging to portray. The audience has no frame of reference and therefore suspends disbelief more easily.

I hope to be posting some more reviews here soon, including oscar contenders--so watch this space!

British Literature Fail

2009-01-15T19:05:00.000-08:00

I usually try to avoid talking about reality television, especially American Idol; however, Idol victor Taylor Swift has recently released a single that is not totally unrelated to Story, and I think about posting this each time I hear it. This week, which saw the kickoff of Idol's--*runs to do resarch*--8th season seemed like as good a time as any.

Now, don't get me wrong: I have nothing against Taylor Swift. From everything I've heard, she seems like a sweet, down-to-earth young woman. She also has a couple of songs that I kind of like--namely "Teardrops on my Guitar" and "Picture to Burn". I even have to concede that The Song in Question is kind of catchy.

It's "Love Story". You can read the lyrics here

Done reading yet?

Can you see what's wrong?

Swift invokes William Shakespeare's doomed lovers, Romeo and Juliet, as a shorthad for both spontaneous passion and parental opposition. Plenty of singers, poets and writers have done this before. That doesn't the change the fact that, as in may of those cases, the story of this ballad ends so differently from the play.

It bugs me a little bit. Was she sick the week they studied that play in high school? Was there not another famous romance that would have worked better? (Antony and Cleopatra? Okay, maybe not...)

I'm not saying the song shouldn't end happily...but then perhaps the "Romeo and Juliet" theme could have lent itself to something more melancholy and twisted, a la Blue Oyster Cult. (Read the chorus from Love Song again if you don't believe me. ) It would have been a more interesting song, but perhaps darker than would ever be Swift's style.

Ah well; until an English major does win American Idol, I leave you with a link to the very corporate but nonetheless pleasant music video. For those readers local to me, yes, part of this was filmed at Castle Gwynn.

An epiphany for Epiphany: The Bechdel Test.

2009-01-06T20:01:00.000-08:00

Recently a friend of mine introduced me to the Bechdel Test—introduced by Alison Bechdel in her groundbreaing comic strip Dykes to Watch out For. The elements of the test itself are covered in the wiki, but in brief, to pass the test, a movie must include:

At least two women
Who talk to each other
About something other than a man.

Once you start thinking about it, it's really a revelation what a simple, objective and accurate measure this is for the importance of women in a given story. It's true, a lot of “chick flicks” have women talking about men—but they pass, because they also talk about other things. It's also true that an action movie can have a strong female character who kicks ass, is treated as an equal and doesn't end up in a refrigerator; but if that is the only female character, or if her role is so peripheral to a male that she does not talk to the other women about anything else, then that film fails the Bechdel Test, because it is primarily about its male characters. What really starts to bake your noddle, as the Oracle said, is to realize that most films fail.

I don't think it's a perfect measure. Sin City actually passes, and I find that a terribly sexist movie. All of the women portrayed are sex workers of some sort—all of them—except for one social worker who spends the entire movie naked and loses her hand. Let's also not forget the gang of prostitutes who have enough firepower to knock over an armored car, but would rather continue making a living by selling themselves. It's not that I think prostitutes don't deserve respect—just that black-market prostitution, as it occurs in the real world, does not; and that to have such a narrow range of characters in a story is more a product of infantile male fantasy than of genre or setting. On the other end of the spectrum, I was relieved that the Matrix trilogy passed, because I couldn't recall any specific instance where multiple women discussed anything other than Neo. (It's worth noting here that presumably, the conversation in question need not be private.)

A movie that fails the Bechdel Test is not automatically anti-woman...it's just not pro-woman. More specifically, it's not as balanced and complete a picture of the human experience as a movie that does. I'm guessing that most of the movies that pass, except for those rare films with an all-female cast, have at least one brief conversation between two men about something other than women.

A good movie is one that tells a human story, and almost half of all humans are male. A movie that fails the Bechdel Test may still be a good movie. But until there is parity in whose story gets told and how, the Bechdel Test provides a useful and fun gauge for the health of our popular culture and the movie industry.

(Bend it like Bechdel! If you want to see how your favorite films stack up, or to chime in on one that's been overlooked, click here. The page includes a lof of other cool links!)

Holiday vidspam

2008-12-25T20:23:00.001-08:00

Hello, all! I just got back from Christmas with my family, and I wanted to stop by to share some things on my mind.

In my very first post, I shared issues with It's a Wonderful Life...a movie I used to love. This year, I seem to have found a new Christmas movie, and that's White Christmas. It's the whole package: a buddy movie, a holiday film, a musical, and even a patriotic (and timely) shout-out to the armed forces. I thoroughly enjoyed it. It may be the actual "anti-IAWL". The message, if there is one, seems to be that the best way to help others is to do what you love. Very Joseph Campbell, non?

Here, in my opinion, is the most brain-breaking moment of the movie.

Also...today we sadly bid farewell to an all-around entertainer, a classic sex symbol, and a free spirit ahead of her time. She also happened to sing one of my favorite Christmas songs. Rest in peace, Eartha Kitt.

Happy Holidays to all, however you celebrate.

Californication rant (Season 2 spoilers)

2008-12-07T12:47:00.000-08:00

Okay, so I just got done watching an episode of Californication..."In a Lonely Place". In it, Hank hooks up with his daughter's English teacher, only to find out that she is the single mother of his daughter's boyfriend.

What really got me was that the boy was absolutely incensed. Okay, I will allow that the circumstances in which he found out (i.e., Hank coming downstairs naked) were far from ideal. But he acted as if his mother had been somehow dishonored.

Are we really living in in such a patriarchy, where it makes sense for a fourteen-year-old boy to act as the warden of his mother's chastity? Last I checked, I did not think a women in this culture had to defer to their oldest male relative, even if that relative was younger than her. Hank's daughter Becca was crushed as well, but that was only because of her boyfriend's irrational reaction.

Both Hank and the English teacher were available and consenting adults. They did nothing wrong. This could have been a teachable moment, but instead, Hank caved to a child's demands over his lover's protests. Her response should have been: "Look, I'm the parent here; and sex is healthy and fun as long as it'safe and ethical."

Okay, I realize that not everyone's values system allows for sex outside of marriage; but I don't think that was the paradigm that the boy was operating from. Even if it had been, Hank's mother was not a helpless victim and, I would argue, was no more besmirched than he was.

Of course, none of this kept Becca from getting all the best lines, as usual....

Let the Right One In

2008-12-06T22:40:00.000-08:00

Last Saturday, I had one of the worst night's sleep of my life. I had just seen Let the Right One In ("Lat den Rate Komme In") at Nashville's historic Belcourt theatre.

This Swedish film revolves around Oskar, a lonely 12-year-old boy living in a Stockholm tenement in 1982. He finds companionship when Eli, a strange girl his age, moves in next door. Soon, however, murders begin to occur in the area. The audience gets to see that the man living with Eli is committing them...but that she seems to be in charge. It isn't long before Oskar, like Bella Swan, figures out what his new friends really is.

As other reviews have pointed out, the action takes place in winter and mostly at night, either outside or under artificial light. This goes a long way toward setting the tone. While there are no weak performances here, Lina Leannderson's Eli is a fae and unsettling presend from the moment we meet her, when she executes a graceful drop jump from a jungle gym

As with most horror movies that are actually good, the true horror here is human nature. The bullying that Oskar stoically suffers is some of the worst that I've ever seen onscreen. There is believable and often moving tenderness between Eli and Oskar...such as the scene where she eats a chocolate to avoid hurting his feelings, and ends up retching shortly after. At the same time, this is juxtaposed with the cruelty she shows to others.

The story takes few liberties with vampire lore. These vampires have to be invited in and have to stay out of sunlight. (There is some ambiguity on how vampires are made.) There are a few cinematic innovations. Animals react strongly to vampires...very strongly. We never actually see any fangs, but we do see what happens if a vampire comes in without being invited. This is also not a movie that makes vampirism itself sexy. The murders committed for Eli are disgusting, and the victims are humanized. Her own attacks, too, are vicious--due to her age, she uses deception rather than seduction. You feel the horror of life with a monster.

Like Twilight, this movie deals with budding sexuality. It looks at an earlier stage, however, and never directly addresses the mechanics of adolescence. One dialog is a mirror of one that takes place in Twilight ("How old are you?"). There is one scene, where we see what vampires look like in pitch dark, that is creepier than anything in Twilight.

For vampire romance, I prefer stories like The Silver Kiss. The vampire moves on, in one way or another, because it's existence is unnatural, and it would not wish that on the one it loves. The human lover returns to normal life, both stronger and wiser for the experience.

This is not that movie.

Instead, at the end, we are left remembering the fate of Eli's human "father", and wondering Oskar's fate will be the same if he does not become a vampire. The looming question makes the tenderness that the children share, even in the last scene, all the more bittersweet.

I expected that Let the Right One In might be more frightening than Twilight. I did not expect it to be more romantic.

Thanksgiving Special - Alice's Restaurant

2008-11-29T23:46:00.000-08:00

Happy Thanksgiving Weekend, everybody! I hope that those of you who observe Thanksgiving had a wonderful holiday. I got back today from visiting my hometown, and look forward to one more day off.

I'm Thankful right now that I actually get the opportunity to pan something. Since I can usually find something in a movie to at least talk about, I worry that I come across as liking everything I see. I don't, of course, like all movies, but rarely do I dislike anything as much as I do Alice's Restaurant, which I saw for the first time Wednesday Night.

I actually love the song, which is based on real events. Arlo Guthrie's “anti-Massacree” message is a Thanksgiving tradition, especially in war years such as these. However, if it is homemade apple sauce--organic and fresh and perfectly cinnamon-spiced--then the movie is cranberry sauce, sloughing from the can with a sickening noise, jiggling and ridged.

The conventions of cinematic pacing were a little different when Restaurant was made back in 1969. Perhaps I am being biased in saying that I like it better now. Because of the pace of the action, it is hard to summarize what happen, because it feels like it wasn't much. An unreasonably beautiful and young Arlo Guthrie gets kicked out of college for following the sound of his own keyboardist. Undeterred, he climbs in his VW microbus (no, really) and takes up with his friends Ray and Alice, who have bought a deconsecrated church in which to live. Alice opens a restaurant nearby as well, the church becomes a shelter for a number of their counterculture friends

Romantic strife between the couple causes Ray to invite scores of their friends to Thanksgiving, so that Alice has to come back and cook. The dinner becomes an ill-fated trip to the dump the same day, and the rest is history. In the end, Arlo experiences losses in both his chosen and blood families. The movie concludes with a bittersweet (okay, mostly bitter) wedding for Ray and Alice.

If there was one thing I found interesting about the movie, it was a glimpse into the past. Arlo and his friends could be described as hippies, but there was also a healthy dose of “folkie”. Perhaps it's even vice-versa, but as we saw in the movie, the distinction was lost on the mainstream culture. Police power could be used to enforce social norms, and sticking someone on a bus out of town was considered a legitimate police activity. The group I watched with included some modern-day, self-described hippies my age; along with me, they cringed at how much was thrown away after the feast. We prefer to compost and recycle as much as possible.

The end of the movie left me so confused that I had to ask my host to explain it. She said that the community depicted was a dystopia...nothing ever changed, and none of their grand plans would ever manifest because no one had their personal shit together. Bleak, huh? No wonder people call this flick depressing.

My favorite part of the movie was my favorite part of the song...with the Army shrink. Ah, you know know what? Just listen for yourself. Arlo tells it better, anyway.

Twilight

2008-11-23T13:36:00.000-08:00

Okay, so it is all said and done, including the shouting. I have seen Twilight, and I enjoyed it more than I expected to.

A brief synopsis for the uninitiated: Loner high-school student Bella Swan is sent to live with her father, who she barely knows, in the rainy town of Forks, Washington. She involuntarily collects a few friends, but her true interest, and her true connection, is with Edward Cullen, the son of a mysterious local family. She soon parses out that the family are vampires. She and Edward bond, even though he considers himself a constant danger to her. They soon find themselves in over their heads when a trio of less ethical vampires swings through town.

As in the book, Bella and Edward's love tends toward the obsessive; but the script manages to make him less controlling. Bella's parents and friends are more prominent, in my opinion, than the were in the book, and this represents an improvement. I can't give Robert Pattison credit for any extraordinary acting here, but Kristen Stewart brings an unexpected gravitas to the role of Bella.

The Cullens as a whole are a treat. The casting and cinematography underscore the creepy way that everyone (except Edward) is paired off, as well as the youthful appearance of the parents. Peter Facinelli seems to be channeling Tom Cruise's Lestat as Carlisle Cullen, which was off-putting at first. He grew on me, though, and I went away regretting the omission of his story. If the movie could have used more of anything, it's Alice Cullen.

It is very difficult to break new ground in vampire lore, but Stephenie Meyer's vampires do so in a few ways, and the movie address them. The evil vampires are hardly original, but they are compelling. The baseball game scene is a lot of fun, and made more sense to me here than it did in the book.

At the same time, there are moments which will cause unintentional laughter. The wire-work gets a little silly. In the early science-class scenes, Edward looks more nauseated than love-struck...although arguably, this is true to the book. My best friend and I laughed particularly hard at one scene, where someone gives the new couple a pop-eyed look of disapproval.

There were scenes that were changed or added from the book, and I don't remember it well enough to say whether this movie will please or anger the purists. I can say, though, that this movie is worth your time...so long as you don't take it too seriously. There is a certain amount of cheesiness inherent in vampire stories...after all, sex and death are at once the most serious and the most funny things to humans. Add teenage romance to the mix, and your own personal riff-track is inevitable.

Twilight at least offers some genuine terror and suspense along the way. There is also a theme of self-sacrifice, which both makes Bella seem healthier and helps the movie's tone.

I now want to read the rest of the books, and see the rest of the movies. The characters of Jacob Black and his father are also well-cast, and with what I know about them, I look forward to seeing their story unfold.

In which I question my committment to sparkle motion

2008-11-22T14:49:00.000-08:00

It's Twilight time! Thousands of fans have already seen the highly anticipated film this weekend, including my niece, a high school freshman; and my turn comes in a few hours.

First, two confessions, in the interest of full disclosure. When I read Twilight, it was before giving that copy to my niece (who had already read it). I have also not read the rest of the series.

I think that Stephenie Meyer is a good writer. I especially appreciate her ability to paint a scene. However, there was something about the gender dynamics in her book that made me twitch. I felt that Edward treated Bella like a possession, and ordered her around. I have a friend who has read and enjoyed the whole series, but says that that trend continues, not only with Edward but with Jacob and Bella's father. There is also something juvenile about Edward and Bella's attraction...it is strictly physical, even if the sense of budding sexuality is well-written. All of us who are past that age have probably been there, and I know that I run the risk of belittling young love. However, it is distressing to see Bella consider making potentially eternal decisions, turning her back on her family and everything she knows, at such a tender age.

I was fascinated by vampires when I was my niece's age, and much of that interest still remains. I remember reading the Vampire Diaries Series by L.J. Smith when I was in high school. The Silver Kiss, by Anette Curtis Klause, is still one of my favorite books. However, there is a plethora of what I call “vamporn” available today, and while Meyer is probably among it's best writers, I don't tend to read any of it.

I truly enjoyed The Host, also by Meyer. It is billed as her first book for adults, but I personally don't find it any more r-rated than Twilight. It is about Wanderer, a member of an alien race who inhabit the bodies of other species and take over their minds. Her species, the Souls, seem to have subdued the earth. However, when Wanderer is assigned to a human host, Melanie, she finds that Melanie's mind refuses to fade away.

There are some troubling gender dynamics here, too, as Melanie leads Wanderer in search of her little brother and her true love. (I gagged when wanderer concluded that Melanie's body didn't belong to her or to Melanie, but to Jared.) At the same time, I liked the way that Meyers writes here about the strength of human emotion, and the idea that emotional memory resides in the body. There is also a touching and believable story arc about the nature of family bonds, blood and chosen. I felt that she accurately portrayed the moral complexity of her world: everyone is faced with imperfect choices, and even the Souls, in the end, are sympathetic figures. To top it all off, Meyer's pulls a happy but cliché-free conclusion out of her a--I mean thin air.

In other words, I would recommend The Host to almost anyone. I also really hope to see it made into a movie one day...I even did some preliminary casting in my head.

So have a good weekend, whether you head to the multiplex at twilight or just host a good book in your home. If you are more Twihater than Twilighter, or if you can stand a little fun at your fandom's espense, check out the following links.

The Most Poular Book in the Whole World!

Occupation: Girl (Cleolinda is one of the greatest pop culture voices on the web, and also the one to whom I owe the "Sparkle Motion" thing.)

Twilight trailer spoof ("I see you brought a snack...")

Your diet needs more iron, man!

2008-11-10T20:31:00.000-08:00

First, there was the brilliance that was Mystery Science Theater 3000. It's brain trusts parted ways to create two spin-offs: Cinematic Titanic and RiffTrax!. This past weekend, I got to watch the...riff track (?)... to Iron Man.

For the most part, I enjoyed it. The technology seemed easy to use...the track only slipped out of synch once, and not by much. Most of the riffs were as dryly witty as MST3K veterans have come to expect.

There were two things, however, that I could have done without.

The first were frequent quips--mostly at the beginning--about Robert Downey Jr.'s former drug use. This is low-hanging fruit as humor goes, and in my opinion, there's nothing funny about it. I have friends in recovery, and it seem like he should get some credit for having been sober for several years now. Then again, it's hard to say, but it's possible that he would actually find these jokes funny. He seems to have a healthy sense of humor about himself.

The other thing that bothered me were the cracks implying that the character of Pepper Potts was stupid. This just doesn't jive with that character at all, or with what I know of Gwyneth Paltrow.

My favorite moment involved the quote in the title of this post. Another was when a "Sherlock Holmes deerslayer cap" was mentioned among the silly-looking hats that Tony Stark might wear.

On the one hand, RiffTrax! is taking on harder targets than MST3K ever did, just by riffing on good movies that people actually like. This can lead to trying too hard, where the badness of a B movie often speaks for itself. On the other hand, all movies require a certain suspension of disbelief, and we have probably all riffed on even our favorite films in this way.

Either way, we are lucky to still have the wise-asses of Deep 13 sitting in the back of the theater with us.

Madagascar 2: Escape 2 Africa

2008-11-09T19:44:00.000-08:00

2008 is almost over, and it has turned out to be a fairly dismal year for movie audiences and critics. This summer's Marvel Vs. DC showoff was between two of only a few exceptions. There are some promising films on the horizon for the holiday season and as Oscar bait. This weekend, however, Madagascar 2: Escape 2 Africa is your best bet, at least for something light-hearted and family-oriented.

I wasn't sure what to expect going in. I have not seen the first movie. That doesn't actually present a problem, as it turns out, because the movie does a great job of catching the viewer up. A lion cub named Alex escapes hunters and survives an ocean voyage to Manhattan Island, where he becomes a local celebrity and grows up with a giraffe, a hippo and a zebra. The previous film saw them fall in among the creatures of Madagascar after a plane crash. This time, early in the plot, they hatch a scheme to return to New York, in a comically cobbled-together plane, with an equally comic crew. They make it as far as Africa, and find themselves, for the first time, among their own kinds.

At the beginning, the references, quips, and quirk-establishment all comes so fast and furious that it's dizzying. Once the action turns to Africa, however, the tone and the pace of the story even out. There are some jokes that are possibly less than family-friendly, but they are so subtle as to slide under kiddie radar.

There is a lot here that we have seen before: an animal with a unique talent, which creates tension with his parents (Alex would rather dance than fight); an evil lion plotting against the king of the pack and his cub; Eddie Murphy's voice on four feet; funny penguins and monkeys; and a dialogue-free sub-plot involving a chase with a small creature. There is even, arguably, an extended shout-out to Joe vs. the Volcano. However, all of it has enough of a fresh spin to be enjoyable.

The story of Marty the zebra addresses something which I don't think I've seen addressed in kids movie's before; that is the idea that it is okay not to be unique...and that yet, at the same time, you're always more unique than you think you are. Gloria the Hippo finds herself in a classic movie dilemma, one part Walt Disney and one part John Hughes. She is torn between the popular male who only likes her for her for her looks, and a more awkward one who loves her for who she is. (As a fascinating side-note in our weight-obsessed society, the hippos have a “bigger is better” mentality.)

David Schwimmer's Melman was probably my favorite character, and the denouement of an extended shark attack was the thing that made me laugh the hardest. Madagascar 2 was a pleasure, and I look forward both to the first and future installments.

In a world...without The Voice.

2008-09-02T18:20:00.001-07:00

Rest in peace, Don LaFontaine.

Independence Day, Special Edition

2008-08-30T20:46:00.000-07:00

I just got done watching the Special Edition of Independence Day. This is truly a sci-fi classic. I consider it one of those movies that doesn't break a whole lot of new ground, story-wise, but which perfectly executes a specific genre or story arc.

I think it really holds up over time. But then, it doesn't hurt that Bill Pullman, Will Smith, and Jeff Goldblum are all totally hot in it.

I enjoyed a lot of the new material. Having seen the movie several times, I recognized most of it. Just for example, there was a sub-plot with Russell Casse (Randy Quaid) and his children, a sequence with Jasmine (Viveca Fox) making her way to El Toro AFB, and the global coordination of the final airstrike.

Best of all, they at least attempted to explain how David Levinson (Goldblum) could hack into alien computers.

David Duchovny enters rehab.

2008-08-29T05:14:00.000-07:00

Here is the text of an Associated Press article found on Yahoo! News.

LOS ANGELES - David Duchovny has entered a rehabilitation facility for sex addiction. In a statement released Thursday by his lawyer, Stanton Stein, the actor said he did so voluntarily, adding: "I ask for respect and privacy for my wife and children as we deal with this situation as a family."
The actor's publicist, Flo Grace, confirmed the rehab report, which first appeared on People.com.
She and Stein both declined to elaborate further.
Duchovny, 48, plays a sex-obsessed character on the Showtime series "Californication," which earned Emmy nominations for casting and cinematography. The show's second season begins Sept. 28. Showtime had no comment Thursday.
The actor appeared in the film "The X Files: I Want to Believe" earlier this summer. He has been married to actress Tea Leoni since 1997. They have two children.

My first thought was not about the irony of Hank Moody's behavior on Californication, but about Fox Mulder's infamous porn collection.

God bless you, David, and good luck. This one is a bitch, I have friends who can attest to that personally.

RDJ takes on TDK

2008-08-26T19:27:00.000-07:00

Okay, this is NOT going to become a Robert Downey Jr fanblog.

Much.

HOWEVER...he recently made some pretty bold statements over at Moviehole about The Dark Knight. I first saw this reported at Yahoo! Here's an excerpt in case the link eventually goes away:

"My whole thing is that that I saw 'The Dark Knight'. I feel like I'm dumb because I feel like I don't get how many things that are so smart. It's like a Ferrari engine of storytelling and script writing and I'm like, 'That's not my idea of what I want to see in a movie.' I loved 'The Prestige' but didn't understand 'The Dark Knight'. Didn't get it, still can't tell you what happened in the movie, what happened to the character and in the end they need him to be a bad guy. I'm like, 'I get it. This is so high brow and so f--king smart, I clearly need a college education to understand this movie.' You know what? F-ck DC comics. That's all I have to say and that's where I'm really coming from."

I can't say that I agree with him about The Dark Knight. I thought it was extremely well-done—specifically the story, the performances and the special effects.

At the same time, I can actually see Downey's point. In being so ambitious, TDK stumbles in several places. The script tries to do too much. The intricate twists and subplots and the fast pace threaten to overwhelm the human significance of the things that happen. Chaos is overcome by human decency, but it leaves such misery in its wake that it still ends up seeming more powerful.

I honestly enjoyed Iron Man more, at least in the conventional sense. Like Batman Begins, it tells a classic origin story, straight out of Joseph Campbell. That story was executed perfectly, and given a heartbreaking (pun intended) contemporary angle. It also had a humor and a warmth that was missing from The Dark Knight.

One could argue that Iron Man was the less pretentious film, but then, I found The Prestige more pretentious than TDK by several miles. If you believe that all stories hav “messages” whether they mean to or not, then both of these movies may have messages that we need right now. In the case of Iron Man, it's “It's never too late to change”. Iron Man 2 is likely to follow the TDK mold in that it will veer into darker territory, but that is more likely to concern Tony Stark's lingering personal demons.

Unfortunately, in making these statements, Downey leaves himself open to charges of sour grapes. He certainly has a vested interest in Marvel Comics at this point. The fact is, though, this summer was going to belong the Jo—I mean to The Dark Knight no matter what. Headlining the second biggest event movie is an accomplishment in itself, as is bookending the main event...and he has accomplished both.

Pop Culture Update

2008-08-24T19:05:00.000-07:00

* Robert Downey Jr. has been cast as the lead in an upcoming Sherlock Holmes movie. Despite finding widespread skepticism on the internet about the involvement of Guy Ritchie, this long-time fangirl of both Downey and Sir Aurthur Conan Doyle is ovejoyed.

* Speaking of Ritchie...his spouse Madonna drew fire this weeked, for concert imagery that seemed to compare John McCain to Hitler and Barack Obama to Mahatma Ghandi. It is difficult to know how exactly this came across without having been there, and I suppose that I understand the point she was trying to make. At the same time, I find both comparisons to be tasteless and excessive.

* Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Collin Farrell have donated their earnings from their new movie, "The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus", to Matilda Ledger, the daughter of their late co-star, Heath Ledger.

Storywh0re's Father's Day Special (with spoiler warnings)

2008-06-15T21:14:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the long absence! I've been busy moving.

I want to hop back in the saddle by posting about fathers in popular culture. I could easily write about Ray Barone (a.k.a. Ray Romano), who's disinterest and incompetence with his own family is an exhausted cliché; or about Alias's Jack Bristow, who's love for his daughter Sydney sometimes led him to do dark deeds to protect her. However, I'd rather write about the two more recent examples--Indiana Jones and Hank Moody.

As you may already know, whether you saw Kingdom of the Crystal Skull or not, the grizzled archaeologist learns in it that he has an adult son. The young man's mother is Marion Ravenwood, Indy's romantic interest from Raiders of the Lost Ark—and, all of the sudden, his one true love. Indy and Marion had allegedly been engaged, until he ran out on her. I found the wedding at the end implausible, even though I know it's supposed to make the audience happy. First of all, Indy never struck me as the marrying type. Nor was I ever satisfied as to why neither of them had ever contacted the other, especially with the doe-eyes that the reunited lovers exchange. I just wasn't convinced that they could pick up where they left off so easily.

I found Crystal Skull to be a lukewarm conclusion to the franchise anyway. The best part was a breathlessly funny gag with a snake. If I were to rank the Indiana Jones movies, I'd put this one above only Temple of Doom. The alien origins of the plot seem like a non-sequitur for the series, best suited to pave the way for next month's X-Files movie.

Which leads me to my favorite recent discovery. Inspired by chatter on LiveJournal, I watched Season 1 of the Showtime series Californication, just to catch up with David Duchovny.

I was blown away.

Duchovny plays Hank Moody, a novelist living in Los Angeles. As the story begins, he has had writer's block for several years, and is forced to accept a job blogging—which he disdains. His breakaway novel has been made into a bad romantic comedy. Most importantly, Karen, his long-time live-in girlfriend, has left him with their fourteen-year-old daughter in tow, for a man more willing to marry her. Missing his family desperately, Hank is the definition of dissolute, losing himself in alcohol and casual sex.

First off, let me be clear: this is cable television. There is simulated sex of various kinds, mild violence, drug use, and—somehow the most jarring to me—vomiting. However, if you're okay with that, and already have a taste for mini-movies such as Six Feet Under and The Sopranos, you are likely to consider this another rare example of what scripted television should be. It is by turns hilarious, suspenseful, and heart-wrenching.

One could argue that the characters in Californication think and talk more about sex than people really do. At the same time, it feels a lot closer to real life than the umpteenth new show revolving around serial killers. In a lot of ways, this is a story about families, as Hank, his agent and his wife, and Karen's new family all navigate the complexity of modern life and field major transitions. No one is completely blameless or unsympathetic. My biggest objection is that casual cocaine use is depicted without consequence, which I do not believe is typical.

I must admit, the show has made David Duchovny hot to me again. (Perhaps I prefer his scruffy Hank to his polished “FBI Agent” look.) I always thought he was a better writer and director than an actor, but he has come a long way since The X-Files, and plays a far more demanding role here .

The plot takes a few delicious twists along the way, and the central tension of the main season is resolved in the last episode. This could be both good and bad. (It keeps things fresh, but forces the show to explore other conflicts.) Either way, I plan to catch Season 2, which airs later this summer, if only on iTunes or Netflix.

Storywh0re from the vault - Eagle vs. Shark (2007)

2008-05-17T22:06:00.000-07:00

Okay, I usually like to let a new movie sit for at least a day before responding to it, but I just watched something that I hated so much that I have to write right now.

It's called Eagle vs Shark, and it's my first time renting from iTunes. The movie poster got my attention last year. For whatever reason, I was expecting Office Space with a costume party. The marketing hinted at a new rivalry along the lines of Pirates vs. Ninjas, with people choosing sides. What I got instead was a New Zealand comedy with a quirkiness similar to Napoleon Dynamite, but without the warmth.

It begins with Lily, a cashier at a burger joint, who has a crush on Jarrod, a DVD store employee who comes in every day. She gets laid off, allegedly randomly, only to learn later that the selection was rigged. Jarrod invites one of her co-workers to a party, but Liliy crashes it instead. They hook up afterwards, and become a de facto couple. Eventually, Lily goes home with Jarrod to visit his family. She gets drawn into their dysfunction, and into Jarrod's plot to street-fight a high school bully.

The awkwardness and flat affect of the characters are what first reminded me of Napoleon Dynamite. “Freakin Idiot” is replaced by “Cockhole”. The biggest similarity, however is the concept of the crystal dragon—a phenomenon found in martial arts and in paganism. A crystal dragon is someone (often male, often young) who makes claims to great power, skill or training that they don't really possess. They are shaped like something fierce, but you can see right through them.

There is so much wrong with Lily and Jarrod's relationship, I don't even know where to begin. In their first love scene, he's sexually unskilled in a way that goes past normal or endearing. Instead of cuddling or talking with her afterwards, he makes a threatening phone call. He stands her up for a date, then tracks her down at her house, where he cuffs her on her arm and accidentally smashes a cake she made him. This he chalks up to his “depression” and “intensity”. On their car trip, he is rude to her and her brother. Once they're with his family, embarasses her with inflated claims about her. He has a daughter that he didn't tell her about, but he clams up about his dating past. He dumps her, stranding her away from home, and goes out with another woman to please his father.

Let's be real clear: many of these are classic warning signs of an abuser.

Jarrod's absurd revenge fantasy culminates in him attacking a man in a wheelchair, only to loose the fight anyway. After all of this, Lily takes him back, just because he finally figures out that a woman named Lily might like lilies, and because he gives her a gift that he's already tried to give to two other people. She's already reclaimed some of her power by taking the center of attention at a party, but still, it made me twitch.

Why is the audience supposed to be happy about this? Because we love happy endings? Because being in a couple is better than not? The underlying idea seems to be to me that that Lily is there for Jarrod's redemption—to do the emotional labor at which women excel--whether or not its good for her or he's good enough. No, no, no, no no. I am beyond sick of these ideas, and I would feel the same if the roles were reversed.

"Kiss her good"

2008-05-08T19:24:00.000-07:00

Does anyone else out there who watches The Office think that Pam has a case for sexual harrassment?

If that ultra-creepy moment at the end of tonight's episode wouldn't do it, then the "she will do you" comment at Career Day would. And this is coming from someone who usually understands Michael Scott as just being well-intentioned but stupid.

Plus, this comes on the heels of the hand-on-the-knee incident in the "Chairmodel" episode...and the crude, thinly veiled oral sex joke in the "Dinner Party" episode. Neither of those were Michael, of course. I wonder if they're going somewhere intentional with this.

Storywh0re's summer movie kickoff

2008-05-04T20:46:00.000-07:00

I would like to mark this fine Mayday weekend by reviewing two of the first films of the Summer movie season—The Forbidden Kingdom and Iron Man

As much as it pains me to say it, The Forbidden Kingdom was forgettable. There is almost nothing about it that stays with you after you've left the theater. In brief, it is the story of a young boy, a fan of Wuxia films,who gets transported back to a fantasy version of ancient China. He aquires two mentors, played by Jackie Chan and Jet Li, who recognize him as the prophesied hero who will rescue the magically imprisoned Monkey King. None of the characters are three-dimensional, none of them grow or change emotionally or psychologically. It bothered me that a secondary protagonist who is eaten up with rage dies without getting past it. For some reason, not even the fight scenes hold the attention—which is tragic, considering how long Jackie Chan and Jet Li have wanted to work together.

The very best part of the movie is the Monkey King. Not only is he a joy to watch, but The Forbidden Kingdom would be a good movie for anyone who wanted to better understand the concept of the Trickster God.

One review that I read compared The Forbidden Kingdom to Willow as a movie that a ten-year-old might enjoy and remember fondly. I was that age exactly when Willow came out, and I think it's the better movie of the two.

Coming out of that disappointment, I saw Iron Man this morning, and now I feel that summer has truly begun.

Iron Man begins in the Afghan desert, with the kidnapping of brilliant multi-billionaire weapons developer Tony Stark. A rogue warlord tries to force him to recreate one of his newer and deadlier weapons, but he escapes instead, by creating a robotic soldier suit. Once selfish and irresponsible, Tony returns home with a new perspective and new energy technology (also his design) keeping him alive. His former captors soon want the suit for their own. To the frustration of the military, Tony, still characteristically reckless, acts on his own to stop them and to help the civilians in the area. His best friend and his personal assistant help him (as does a robot with an adorable canine disposition), but another old friend turns out not to be what he seemed.

I really enjoyed this movie. The action sequences were engaging, and the beautiful, super-cool gadgetry will appeal to the kid in everyone. (There were times when the audience literally moaned over the suit—even the girls.) The story has been updated for our complex times without taking a divisive stance, or losing touch with the themes that make comic books meaningful. (The scene where Iron Man targets baddies using human shields made me wish for a real hero so adept at avoiding “collateral damage”) The movie takes full advantage of Robert Downey Jr.'s comic talents, including one moment at the end that will leave you laughing and saying “Hell, yeah!" We get to see Tony Stark grow up, and the process, as other writers have observed, mirrors Downey's own redemption. (As a former heart patient, I really appreciated the very symbolic “heart” subplot.)

If you do go to see Iron Man, stay for the clip after the credits. It reveals a bit of future Marvelverse casting that had my audience—mainly gamers and comic fans—squeeing. It's been a while since I've been around that many people that happy at one time.

Part of the fun today was seeing trailers for upcoming movies, like The Dark Knight and The Incredible Hulk. Summer is the time for being outside and playing in the water; but it is also the time for slick, big-budget spectacles featuring talented and beautiful folk embodying beloved archetypes. I can't wait!

Storywh0re goes to the Nashville Film Festival, Part 2 - Tennessee Film Night 1

2008-05-03T08:42:00.001-07:00

My second night at the Nashville Film Festival was a redux of Tennessee Film Night One. I got to see a number of enjoyable and well-made films, and hear about them from those involved.

The first film was Electricity: Unplugging the Myth , the 2007 48-Hour Film Festival Winner from Marflux Productions. The character that all of the teams were given to work with was an electrician. The result in this case was a very cute moc-doc predicated on the idea electricity is not real, but really just the actions of microscopic workers. (Needless to say, this theory is disproved in the end.) You could tell that the movie was made in limited time, but it looks really good considering.

Also screened was Blindsided, by Eleven After Films, which won the festival's Tennessee Independent Spirit Award. In it, a young man brings his girlfriend to meet his family for the first time. They are startled that she is blind, but not nearly as startled as she is by the toxic family dynamics into which she has been thrown. The parents' marriage is falling apart, and they and the young man's siblings air their conflicts with each other. This film was filmed in twelve hours, with stage actors, and it practically crackles off the screen. It is by turns funny and shocking, as everyone is “blindsided” by something. While the wisdom proffered at the end is hardly original, it is well worth the reminder.

Fight It, by Darrin Dickerson of Ghostwater films, is perhaps best described a public service announcement for personal activism. We see a young man using money that he has earned and collected at a gym to feed the homeless, provide toys for orphans, and donate to cancer research (his mother is ill). At the end, the viewer is encouraged to “choose one thing and fight it”. The DVDs include include envelopes for related charities, and are available for free. Ghostwater can be contacted online, and Dickerson wants the DVDs to be shared between people and used by various groups to foster discussion and action.

Watkins College was well-represented by recent graduate Brent Montgomery, who directed and starred in The Pugilist. It is the story of a boxer who doesn't realize that he has been the beneficiary of rigged fights, until he is asked to take a fall. One of the most interesting things about this film was its sense of timelessness. There are elements—not just costumes and set, but also newsreels and home movies—that appear to be from different points in recent history. The movie as a whole has a 1920's or 1930's feel. The acting is good, and the boxing elements are well-researched. There are many dry, intelligent laughs, and a tentative love story which ends the film on a tender note.

The evening wrapped up with The Mother Hen, by Carlos Griffin of Half and Half Productions. Set in Middle Tennessee, this is one of the best films I have seen about the topic of immigration. A young Hispanic woman shows up with a baby at the home of a friend of a friend. Her husband has just been picked up by ICE, and she needs shelter until her brother can come get her. Her host is reluctant. The women gradually develop a connection, but not before ICE comes knocking. I felt that this piece told a very human story about the two biggest issues in America today, and managed to do so without being heavy-handed or divisive.

Tennessee Film Night One was an enjoyable and informative evening that highlighted the amazing film talent that we have here in Music City.

Storywh0re goes to the Nashville Film Festival, Part I: Trailer Park of Terror

2008-05-03T08:36:00.001-07:00

Last week, I was lucky enough to spend two evenings at the Nashville Film Festival. This is the first year that the Film Festival has officially categorized their late-night showings.

The first night, I saw Trailer Park of Terror, based on the Imperium comic book series of the same name. It was directed by award-winning music video director Steven Goldmann. Several of the film's stars were there, including Trace Adkins, who has a running cameo as the Devil himself.

The film begins with the tragic story of Norma, a young woman who tries to run away with her fiancee to escape the baseness and poverty of the trailer park where she lives. (A few small details, including the opening graphics and a later newscast, set the story solidly in our own beloved Middle Tennessee.) The ensuing confrontation is a perfect illustration of the “crabs-in-a-bucket” phenomenon: if the people around Norma can't get out, they don't want her to, either. When the lecherous redneck men who control the community accidentally kill Norma's fiancee, and the Devil helps her get her due.

The film picks up a few years later, with a youth ministry group of troubled teenagers whose bus wrecks on a rainy night. They soon find that Norma and her neighbors are still in the trailer park, and don't plan on letting them go.

If you don't like horror movies, Trailer Park of Terror is obviously not for you. If you do, however, then you will consider it an almost perfect example of the form. It's campy supernatural horror, more akin to Rob Zombie's movies than to the self-important solemnity of The Ring. The characters, while they hardly need to be three-dimensional, are distinctive and well-acted. It is highly gory, with elements of sexual and psychological cruelty. There are a lot of dark laughs, but there is also one scene in particular that had me wishing for a character's suffering to end.

Trailer Park of Terror operates on typical horror movie morality, with death and dismemberment as the consequences for sex and drug use. (Interestingly, this provides the context for some of the most beautiful drug visuals I've ever seen in a movie.) The one character who sees the light of of the following morning might be the last one you'd expect; but then, as with all horror movies, we're here to see the protagonists die, even if we're ostensibly rooting for them.

While I actually enjoy a good horror flick more than many people, my favorite part was the music. It runs the gambit, from songs by Adkins to heavy metal to what can best be described, to borrow from Rob Zombie, as Hellbilly--Heavy Metal with a mixed retro gothic and rockabilly aesthetic.

It was interesting to stay afterwards, and hear Goldmann talk about the frenetic 18-day process of filming the movie. Trace Adkins joked that he signed on just for the Devil's “pissin' scene”.
Goldmann said that he made Trailer Park of Terror for Southerners, that he wanted us to consider it “Our fuckin' horror movie”. I have mixed feelings about this. Norma's trailer park at the beginning represents a very extreme picture of only one slice of Southern culture. At the same time, it rings true enough for Southerners to appreciate it; and he did get one thing right: we really do deep fry everything.

"Empty" Idol.

2008-05-02T06:16:00.001-07:00

This is a blog about popular culture, but I try to avoid the subject of reality TV. It's not Story....or is it? A recent incident illustrates why I despise American Idol.

American Idol is nothing more than a record-industry machine set up to discover the next undistinguished voice in a can. Yes, it's true, many of the singers are not ready for a record contract. Many more, in the early elimination shows, are simply awful; but I believe that most people can a be trailed to at least sing passable. Just as many performers who get savaged weekly by the petty and cruel Simon Cowell--who has never, to my knowledge, sung publicly--already have voices that are assets to their communities. Idol looses site of the fact that music is not just a business, it's a force of nature. I go to work and hear "Idol"chatter in the breakroom, and all I can conclude is that "Idol" is there to help people who are out of touch with their artisic passion feel superior to those who aren't.

I'll admit to enjoying the occasional Kelly Clarkson or Carrie Underwood song, but think about this: Idol would have never given us such unconventional voices as Buddy Holly, Johnny Cash, Janis Joplin or Joanie Mitchell.

The only reality show that's ever really held my attention was Rock Star: INXS. INXS was my favorite band at one time, and the outcome was important to me, even if it was a done deal before the last show. I'm not sure whether this incident indicates that American Idol is rigged, or just that Paula Abdul is loosing it (which we knew). Either way, give me a sitcom, courtroom drama or police procedural instead, any day.

Impressions

2008-04-23T22:55:00.000-07:00

From the vault -Saved! (2004)

I watched Saved! on DVD a couple of weeks ago. It tells the story of Mary, a teenage girl attending a Christian high school, who gets pregnant when she tries to "cure" her boyfriend of his homosexual tendencies. Her nemesis is Hillary Faye, the Queen Bee of the school; her allies are Cassandra, the school's lone Jewish student, and Roland, Hillary Faye's wheelchair-bound brother (played wonderfully by Macaulay Culkin). Patrick, the pastor's son, is caught between Hillary Faye, who pursues him but who he dislikes, and Mary, who he likes, but who is reluctant for obvious reasons.

Saved! is a heartwarming funny film, and not at all hostile to religion. Both of the couples are really endearing. I was gad that in the end, even Hillary Faye is humanized, if not excused. She is a cautionary tale of what can happen when the pressure to be “good” becomes overwhelming. The worst thing I can say about Saved! Is that it, likewise, tries to do too much. The pregnancy storyline and the Christian school could both easily be movies unto themselves. (It's also hard to believe that Mary's pregancy would go undetected for so long.)

I think the real theme of this movie is diversity: diversity of beliefs, diversity of abilities, diversity of lifestyles. This is illustrated by the crowd that greets Mary's daughter at the end of the movie. All of them are keeping the faith, doing the best they can, and finding God within each other.

In theaters now - Run, Fatboy, Run

I'm not doing a full response to Run, Fatboy Run because so much ink had already been spilled over it before I even saw it. I don't honestly think it deserves the poor reviews that it's gotten. Yes, it follows a very typical romantic comedy form—boy meets girl, boy panics and looses girl, boy leads a meaningless existence before winning girl back from perfect-on-paper Baxter character. However, it was far funnier and more poingnant than I'd been led to believe. There are many refreshingly likable charaters. Unlike other reviewers, I also thought that Simon Pegg and Thandie Newton made a credible couple.

The “F” word put me off at first. While his character's weight gain is obvious, Pegg didn't exactly don a fatsuit. I'm unsure whether this shows that Europeans are healthier than Americans, or that everyone's body image is screwed up these days. Fortunately, the central issue is the hero's overall health—his stamina and endurance—and the titular insult only comes up once.

Like so many love stories, this is also a coming-of-age story. I totally connected to the idea of someone not finishing things for fear that they might not be deserving of the good results. I'm sure a lot of people can relate. The “wall” that people hit in a struggle, both in sports and in life, has not been visualized so well since The Animatrix. No, this is not Shaun or Hot Fuzz, but it's worth seeing in the theater.

Storywh0re from the vault - The 40-year-old-Virgin

2008-04-21T21:06:00.000-07:00

For a long time, I resisted watching The 40-Year-Old-Virgin. While my personal attitudes are far more sex-positive now than they were twenty or even ten years ago, I expected the movie to be rooted in locker-room perceptions of sex and masculinity. I was pleasantly surprised to read so many reviews describing it instead as warm, funny and even-handed. I finally watched it last night, and what I found was something in between, although ultimately more the latter than the former.

Two years after the movie's release, the premise is probably familiar to most moviegoers. Andy Sitzer, an isolated electronics store employee, admits to his co-workers that, for various reasons, he has never had sex. In the process of trying to help him, they become his friends, bewildering him with their varied and contradictory perspectives on today's muddled sexual politics. He finally meets someone he cares about, and ironically, she decides that they should wait and get to know each other before becoming intimate. (There is one huge medical inaccuracy in the movie, but I won't describe it!)

The first thing that got my attention was how well the film captures the complexity of modern life. Andy's workplace illustrates both inter-racial and intra-racial tensions. The love interest, Trish, is a young grandmother with a complex family situation. A trip to the health department illustrates epidemic sexual misinformation, among both youth and adults, even as society becomes more sexualized. Andy's adventures in dating also feel very contemporary, from the “straight” bar where girls openly snog together to the butch speed-dating bisexual who is "transitioning" back to men.

Not all of these images feel friendly or fair-minded. The character of Jay represents misogynist attitudes that exist all across society, through the lens of the Black community. When confronted by belligerent, stereotyped behavior, he responds by acting the same way. In the end, we're supposed to infer that he has grown up, just because he shows off some sonogram footage and minimizes his own infidelity. I would have felt much more comfortable if there had been at least one more positive, or even more balanced, Black character. Then, there is the “why you're gay” discussion that treads the line between hilarious and offensive.

Also toward the end of the movie, Andy is repulsed by a seductive display from Beth, a woman he picks up when he thinks he's driven Trish away. On the one hand, it's easy to imagine how anyone might be turned off by what she's doing. It's like a pre-packaged porn fantasy that has nothing to do with Andy as an individual. It's good to see the movie elevate women like Trish instead, who are whole in themselves and behave authentically. Unfortunately, the script never quite escapes the Madonna-whore dichotomy or the old Double Standard (R, TM). “I hit that a while back”, Jay explains as he leads Andy away from Beth.

I hesitate to pigeonhole myself by making feminist critique my “shtick” as a reviewer; but this movie is surprisingly ripe for it. All of the characters struggle for self-respect and wholeness in our MySpace-meets-Girls-Gone Wild culture. Trish accepts the news about Andy's inexperience very well, but I did wish that I had been more assured of her eventual sexual happiness. (The musical number at the end also kind of lost me.) The love story and the coming of age story are the real point, and I enjoyed them.

Things that make life woth living

2008-03-25T07:13:00.001-07:00

The beautiful Tina Fey on Sesame Street.

Apparently this episode ("The Bookaneers")is from 2007; but it is still, as they say on LiveJournal, made of win.

(Image co/ ew.com)

When TV is stupid

2008-03-24T19:24:00.000-07:00

I caught a few minutes of Unhitched last night on Fox. I wish I hadn't.

The Tantra subplot was actually kind of funny...although I can neither confirm nor deny how accurate it might be. What really bothered me was the subplot where Rashida Jones's character Kate keeps encountering a female co-worker naked in the gym locker room

I think that many people would find that awkward in and of itself; however, Kate had to go into detail later with her friends about how disgusting the older woman's body is.

Now, I love pop culture, obviously. All too often, though, it's used to try to make women self-conscious about being anything other than the ideal. All too often, it tries to enlist women to judge each other. It is not impossible to imagine the same subplot with a naked man, but it seems less likely. More to the point, that is not how the story was written

As if that weren't enough, once Kate finally confronts her colleague with her discomfort, the other woman breaks down crying. She confides that she feels repulsive, that her body is why she's divorced, and that she's starved for physical contact of any kind. It ends, of course, with an uncomfortable, arms-only hug.

All of this is supposed to be funny.

Guess what? It isn't.

There's really nothing all that unusual about the woman in question. She looks like--if not "better than"--any number of middle-aged ladies you might pass on the street. So I can comfort myself with the knowledge that the writers of Unhitched are out of touch with mainstream America. Most people don't see each other this way...except when they do; except when they've drunk too deeply of this kind of poison, which is as endemic in advertising and popular music as it is in Story.

What's more, to the extent that anyone does go without the physical affection that they need, for any reason, it hardly strikes me as comical. Watching the woman's pain was disturbing to me. I wonder what it says that the audience was expected to find it funny. This is the kind of mean-spiritedness that passes for honesty on many sitcomes these days.

Jones was better off on The Office , even if Jim is better of with Pam.

Thanks for letting me unhitch my high horse for a moment.

Catching up with TV

2008-03-16T22:45:00.000-07:00

These days, I seem to watch most of my television on the Internet. I doubt that that makes me unusual. Sarah Connor Chronicles ended its first season on a high note—well, specifically a low note sung by Johnny Cash—and Medium recovered from a few weak episodes with a cliffhanger that landed Alison in a moral dilemma.

This weekend, however, I decided to end my post-Oscar hiatus by responding to two new shows for you.

Canterbury's Law, the new Juliana Margulies vehicle, debuted on Fox last week. There's very little here that we haven't seen before—aside from the fact that in our post 9-11 America, making your protagonist a public defender represents at least a small risk. Other than that, we have a driven career woman who's personal life is falling apart, a wan, hapless, young male defendant, a unisex bathroom scene (without the laughs of Ally McBeal), and dramatic confrontations culminating in courtroom pandemonium. In the end, I had to agree with Canterbury's associate, who warns her that her less ethical tactics may backfire on her clients. I also found it a cheap gimmick not to reveal until the finish that she has lost a child. The best I can say about it is that Margulies and Aidan Quinn are always very watchable, and it is still probably a better way to spend an evening than any given “reality” show.

The next new thing I checked out was Quarterlife. This is a web series created my Marshall Herskovitz and Edward Swick, the creators of Thirtysomething and producers of My So-Called Life. The first online “season”--thirty-six episodes of eight minutes each—were recently combined into six hour-long episodes for NBC. The pilot got such poor ratings against a Democratic presidential debate that it was moved over to NBC's partner channel, Bravo, to finish it's run. (All episodes are now available on hulu.com.)

To be honest, I wondered at first if I would make it through the first episode; but I didn't want to be like a recently infamous Rolling Stones critic. The characters were just introduced very abruptly, and the dialog felt painfully contrived. We've seen much of this before, too—a cast of pretty young friends, both indie and yuppie, complete with one of their youthful-looking, immature mothers. As the episode progressed, however, some strong performances emerged, and I started to care about the characters. The story also dealt realistically with some very important themes—specifically, fear of success, and the often complicated connections between young adults and their parents.

The one thing that still gets me about Quarterlife is the fact that we didn't actually see the band make music until their concert. I'm around enough musical people to know that music—and not necessarily their own--oozes out of them steadily, especially when they're around each other, just for the pure joy if it. This past December, I saw a group of Nashville musicians on an independent movie set do a much better depiction of a band partying on their off hours. (Yes, you'll read more about that film eventually—MUCH more.)

In summary, neither of these shows is likely to become regular viewing for me, but I enjoyed Quarterlife better. It probably comes down to whether you prefer—or are in the mood for--Thirtysomething” or The Practice.

Storywh0re's Oscar Series - Michael Clayton (Spoiler Warning)

2008-02-24T21:19:00.000-08:00

If I hadn't been reading Dreaming the Dark, by Starhawk, all week, watching Michael Clayton might have been a very different experience. The movie is all about what Starhawk would refer to as “power-over”. It is the power of force, coercion and hierarchy, and the societal institutions which allow some people to prosper at the expense of others; it is also the sense of estrangement between people that allows them to think such systemic suffering is okay.

The film opens in darkness, with just the voice of hotshot attorney Arthur Eden. In the middle of defending an a chemical company in a class-action lawsuit, he's had what appears to be a breakdown, stripping naked during a deposition, and rambling to the plaintiff about offering himself in atonement. The language he uses to explain himself is spiritual. He has had an epiphany, and can no longer be part of the harm that his client, uNorth, is causing. The thing that really struck me is how almost everyone around Arthur immediately tries to pathologize his experience. Only Michael Clayton, the firm's “fixer” who has been called in, even pretends to take his concerns seriously. Go back on your meds, he tells Arthur; if what you've seen is real, it will still be there. Unfortunately, Michael has problems of his own: his brother has just left him high and dry with a failed business, making it difficult for him to resist his gambling addiction.

A lot of the trappings of this movie are quite familiar—the evil company with the harmful product, the innocent victims, the noble whistle-blower, and the character at the crossroads of decision. It does have an immediacy and intimacy that not all such movies have. The characters' personal and professional lives are not neatly separate, all of their problems bleed together.

It drags for a long section in the middle, in part because Michael is catching up to learn what we already know. The black-ops hijinx that we see—especially the faked suicide—weren't convincing to me, even though such things probably happen. On a technical note, this is probably the visually darkest of all the Oscar nominees. The score reminds me of Ambient music, and gives the film a dreamlike quality.

George Clooney does a good job playing a man under extraordinary stress. It was a bigger treat for me, though, to see Tom Wilkinson. This script allowed him a more nuanced role than that of the one-dimensional Carmine Falcone in Batman Begins. (Yes, folks, it's “Six Degrees to Cillian Murphy”.) Tilda Swinton portrays great hidden uncertainty as uNorth's unethical lead counsel, Karen Crowder. That is probably believable, but somewhat cliché. Perhaps a remorseless and arrogant female villian would have been more original, or at least more satisfying.

One thing that bothered me, as someone with friends in recovery, is that Michael loses a form of sobriety at the end, and it is not given near enough importance. It amused me that uNorth outsourced legal services to his firm, and in the end, it is printing outsourced by Arthur that saves the day. Michael is used to presenting limited options to people in tight situations, and then helping them by unconventional means; but he discovers power-within—the power of personal authenticity and interpersonal connection—in time to do the right thing.

Storywh0re's Oscar Series - No Country for Old Men (Spoiler Warning)

2008-02-24T08:34:00.000-08:00

THAT is no country for old men. The young
In one another's arms, birds in the trees
- Those dying generations - at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.
- W.B. Yeats, "Sailing to Byzantium"

No Country For Old Men opens in the Texas desert in the 1970’s. In voiceover, Tommy Lee Jones's character, Sheriff Ed Bell, talks about how times have changed, especially the job of a local sheriff. He mentions the prospect of finding an evil beyond understanding out in the metaphorical and literal wilderness.

We see the arrest of a man dressed in black, who quickly kills the arresting deputy. He then uses a stolen police car to pull over an innocent stranger and cut them down with his weapon of choice—a compressed-air stun gun intended for cattle. We soon learn that this is ruthless hit man Anton Chigurh

It also quickly becomes obvious why Chigurh is in town. Hunter Llewellyn Moss comes across the scene of a drug-related massacre, and finds a satchel containing two million dollars. From there, a bloody cat-and-mouse game ensues that encompasses Moss, his wife, Chigurh, Bell, and bounty hunter Carson Wells.

Movie audiences are very used to seeing Tommy Lee Jones as a lawman; but this is a more nuanced performance than before. Imagine one of his U.S. Marshall characters, twenty years down the road. I enjoyed seeing Kelly Macdonald as Carla Jean Moss. I first saw this Scottish actress in the fabulous Intermission, and here she does a mean Texas accent. However, I'd have to say that the stand-out performance goes to Javier Bardem as Chigurh. His presence is off-kilter, unsettling, and yet somehow mesmerizing. Ironically, that awful late-70s haircut is part of it.

There are some interesting gender dynamics in this story. While there is a great tenderness between Llewellyn and his wife, their relationship is very traditional for the time. He makes all of the decisions, but unfortunately, he makes remarkably dumb ones, and it is hard to watch her struggle to keep up. In a way, all of the male characters are working out their (often cliché') notions of what masculinity means. Wonderfully dry, funny dialog helps punctuate this. Bell is surprisingly open with his feelings and has a relationship of equals with his wife; but Moss and Chigurh let their pride take over them. While Carla Jean is a well-drawn character, her fate is cliché. Cormack McCarthy, author of the source novel, missed a ripe opportunity there. It would have shattered expectations had she been a killer instead of killed.

The narrative shifts in the middle, from focusing on Moss to focusing on Bell. This was slightly jarring to me, especially since I had been wishing for more of Bell's story up to that point. The plot is like a small war there in the desert, which is interesting, because the recently-ended Vietnam war looms large. The importance of choice seems to be a theme. Also, each character's struggle, while interconnected, is also highly individual. The ending is startlingly abrupt and deliberately unsatisfying. We see that Chigurh suffers, on an ongoing basis, for his misdeeds; but we're reminded that life rarely gives us sweeping meaning and tidy conclusions. Instead, there is just wistfulness about the passage of time.

Storywh0re's Oscar Best Picture Series - "There Will Be Blood" (Spoiler warnings)

2008-02-21T21:47:00.000-08:00

There Will Be Blood is based on Oil!, by Upton Sinclair, which in turn was based loosely on oil baron Edward Doheny*. It was directed by Paul Paul Thomas Anderson, who also brought us Magnolia and Punch-Drunk Love.

As the movie opens, we see an oil prospector scrabbling in the desert sand, at the turn of the twentieth century. He gets injured and literally crawls into town on his back. He resumes digging, persevering through setbacks. He adopts the orphaned son of one of his workers. He strikes it rich, going from oil prospector to “oil man”.

All in the first eleven minutes, and all without a word of dialog.

Our protagonist is Daniel Plainview, masterfully portrayed by Daniel Day-Lewis. The real narrative starts ten years after his big strike. An mysterious young man invites him to visit his family's desolate ranch in California, where oil literally lays thick on the ground. Oil on the surface is apparently apparently no guarantee of oil underneath the ground it—only one of many geological facts one learns from this movie. However, when Plainview finds that there are, in fact, reserves there, tapping them and piping that oil to the sea becomes his project for the next twenty years. He ruthlessly overcomes many obstacles, including reluctant landowners, Standard Oil, a long-lost brother, and a tragic injury to the aforementioned (very precocious) son. The principal conflict, however, is with a self-appointed preacher—the twin brother of the young visitor.

A Pagan high priestesses that I know has a list of pop movies which illustrate the Four Elements—Earth, Air, Fire and Water. This is definitely another elemental film—Earth and Fire. Oil, usually hidden deep in the Earth, is omnipresent. It is easy to understand, as Plainview talks about how oil will bring the bread and water to the community, how people could get excited about fossil fuels without thinking about the consequences. The Earth is not just valuable, though—it's mysterious and dangerous. The scene with the oil rig fire is one of the most amazing things I've ever seen on the big screen.

It's hard not to side with Plainview, if only because of his tenacity. There is no denying, however, that he's an asshole. His complete misanthropy is explicitly stated, but never explained. About the time that he's sitting alone in a mansion, firing a gun into the dark, you ask yourself--”Haven't I seen this before?” What? You mean a thinly veiled biography of a rich, influential and lonely man? Yes, you have. It was called Citizen Kane

Paul Dano, who plays the preacher, also does a wonderful job. I had been hoping that his rivalry with Plainview would illustrate a tension between commercial and esoteric values, but that never really developed. Instead, their story ends in a brutal and somewhat unexpected way. There is a sense of detachment and meaningless that left me with a cold, dark uneasiness. I found myself wondering: could a bully be incited to murder by the smell of fear, by the idea that they could get away with it? A terrifying question.

If you want to see an “arty”, somewhat heavy, very well-done film, this is a fine choice. If you're looking to laugh or relax, not so much.

* c/o IMDB

No place like London

2008-02-18T20:24:00.001-08:00

I hope my readers will allow me a moment's self-indulgence tonight.

You see, it was a year ago tonight--not factoring for any differences in time zones--that I got to see "Love Song", a play by John Kolvenbach, at London's New Ambassador theater.

The case was amazing: Michael McKean, Kristen Johnston, Neve Campbell and Cillian Murphy. Yes, I was there to see Cillian Murphy. I would watch that man in a life insurance commercial, as those of you who know me know, and as those who don't will learn. One of my best friends and I went there on a wild hare, just for this show. For the record, this is not the kind of thing we're usually willing or able to do.

I'm writing, however, not to congratulate myself, but to to say, if you ever have a chance to see this play, with any cast--SEE IT!

The story revolves around a lonely eccentric named Beane, whose life finally takes off when he falls in love with Molly, a feisty stranger who breaks into his apartment. His sister and her husband, who have been taking care of Beane from arm's length for some time, are naturally concerned. But without even meeting them, Molly begins to open their minds, too.

I remember the music. The opening song is “Just What I Needed”, by The Cars, and to hear that song still hurts me in the best possible way. All of the songs chosen, however, give the play a funky, intelligent, contemporary feel. The set—at least the way it was constructed in London—was ingenious, making visual the feeling of the walls closing in. And the script? The script is by turns hilarious and sad and poetic. There were times I was laughing so hard that I couldn't breathe, and moments where I grew teary.

Interestingly enough, a lot of the themes in the play are familiar to neo-Pagans like myself. At the risk of revealing too much, the play deals with the power of the imagination, the nature of reality, and even the concept of thought forms. In the end, all the characters are able to strike a balance between “fantasy” and “real life”. Beane emerges ready to face the world, and his sister and her husband restore wonder and vitality to their lives.

The whole night was magical. We were still jet-lagged, as circumstances forced us to see the play the night we arrived. However, as the curtain rose, I was pulled right into the excitement of theater in a foreign city.

In case you're wondering, I did get my autograph. I didn't get a picture—Murphy is notoriously shy, and somehow, that just seemed like too much. It all happened very quickly, and I still hope that I managed not to make a fool of myself. In some ways, the play seems far more real than the press of the crowd backstage, anyway.

I guess February is just a month for theater. This year, my friends and I took to the stage ourselves, and became our own fandom. I'll never forget London, though.

* * *
(Promotional photo found on uCillian.com.)

Storywh0re's Oscar Best Picture Series - Atonement (spoiler warning)

2008-02-17T21:24:00.000-08:00

This being Valentine's weekend, it seemed obvious to resume my Oscar series with the most obvious love story of the bunch--Atonement.

The story begins on a sweltering sumer day at an English country estate, a few years before the advent of WWII. An attraction is building between Cecilia Tallis, the young daughter of the family that lives there, and Robbie Turner, the housekeeper's educated son. Cecilia's younger sister Briony, a budding writer of 13, has a crush of her own on Robbie.

If you have seen the trailer, you know that Briony walks in on an intimate encounter between Robbie and Cecilia, then accuses Robbie of something he didn't do, causing him to be sent to prison and then to war. However, I was surprised that Briony's accusation actually has nothing to do with Cecilia.

The first few scenes of the movie feel disjointed, and the dialog sounds unnatural. As the movie progresses, it pulls together and smooths out a bit. Some confusing things are done with the timeline at the beginning. In the last fifteen minutes we learn that the whole story has been told through an internal narrative device. That device skips so far into the future of the characters, without preamble, that it is at once ingenious and excessively jarring.

All three of the actresses playing Briony at different ages are fantastic. Young Briony and her cousin Lola are wonderfully precocious—probably typical for their context. Some of the best acting in the movie is from James McAvoy. He brings a moving portrayal to the already endearing character of Robbie. Keira Knightly's cold and imperious Cecilia is less likable. It is unclear why Robbie loves her, aside from possibly her beauty; in spite of the injustice she suffers, she has few sympathetic characteristics aside from being in love. The best thing I can say about this pairing? I'll never see library bookshelf ladders the same way again.

As far as the technical aspects of the film, I would not be the first writer to mention the brilliant way that the score incorporates the sound of a typewriter. I also noticed that at several points, the music comes together with the movie itself in one sound. There is some very interesting cinematography--shots around corners and through doors and up stairwells. The rural scenes are beautiful, and the clashing textures and patterns in the manor house express a lot about the family. There is also some striking imagery in the war scenes; this is not, however, a war movie at heart, and I'd say its less disturbing than something like Saving Private Ryan.

Honestly, the technical aspects of this movie are probably the reason to see this film, if at all. If you're looking for a romantic movie to share with a date—or with a pint of Ben and Jerry's—you can do better. Briony is right—the true ending to the lover's saga does feel kind of pointless. Unfortunately, the fact that she chooses to tell a different story doesn't help the audience of Atonement as much as it helps her. I left feeling that the war was the bigger injustice, the thing that really kept Cecilia and Robbie apart; and Briony's own fate only goes to show that everything evens out in the end.

A bigger boat

2008-02-10T20:35:00.000-08:00

I've always thought that Jaws was a very good movie. It has an almost perfect balance of writing, acting and movie magic. I find it to be surprisingly charater-driven...especially that one, wonderful scene where Brady, Quint and Hooper are in the hull of the boat at night, drinking and singing.

Reast in Peace, Roy Scheider.

TV Therapy

2008-02-10T14:09:00.000-08:00

Having moved from East Tennessee to Middle Tennessee means that a few times a year, my throat feels like it has an axe blade in it.

Fortunately, I was able to convalesce from my allergies with some good online TV yesterday.

As much as I hate to admit it, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles is growing on me. I still find that the charactes all tend to come from the same emotional place, all the time, but at the same time, something keeps me watching. This last episode certainly seemed to have enough action, and enough twists, to keep me enganged. I think the show is getting better as it goes along. On an amusing note, my recent experience on a movie set has changed the way I view film. I think they have used the same warehouse set--or at least the pieces of it--for two or three locations by now.

Speaking of sets...that brings me to my juciest discovery of the weekend: HBO's In Treatment. The format of the show is brilliant: it goes through each week in the life of a therapist by showing him in session, as the therapist for four days and as the patient on Friday. Gabriel Byrne and Dianne Weist are well-matched....ooh, is that brogue of his a pleasure to hear! I can't help thinking that most therapists' lives are NOT this interesting, but it is just this side of believable. Plus, the format gives the script an intimacy and immediacy that practically jumps off the screen. Five nights a week could be a lot to devote to one show...but the beauty is that the Paul re-caps his week for Gina at the end of it. I will definitely keep watching.

And good news...the writer's strike may almost be over. Here's hoping for an equitable compromise, and an end to the long drought of new Story.

Storywh0re's Oscar Best Pictuer Series - Juno

2008-01-31T21:36:00.000-08:00

This week, I began my marathon of Oscar's Best Picture nominees with Juno.

The first thing I noticed was a consistent aesthetic, a distinct “vibe” established by the animated open credits and folky music. Initially, the dialog is so aggressively snappy that it takes a second to wrap your head around it...and yet, it's somehow believable.

The movie deals with a very serious issue—teenage pregnancy. I found that very interesting, since teens are so often sexualized in the media. Such pregnancies don't happen as often as they used to, but they still happen. The heroine, Juno, decides to bring her baby to term and give it up for adoption. This is depicted, remarkably, without taking sides in the abortion debate. There is a confrontation outside of a clinic, but it is comically civil (or civilly comical). Seeing Juno walking around her high school pregnant drove home how much things have changed since I was in high school; at the same time, the events around her prom remind the audience that girls bear the burden, so to speak, of an unplanned pregnancy.

Juno is one of the warmest and wisest movie characters in recent years. It's refreshing to see her and her friends portrayed without resorting to stereotpes of teenagers. She's the Creative Kid (R, TM) in your school, not part of the mainstream; but she isn't bitter or cynical. She's totally smitten with her baby's father, even though he's kind of awkward and not conventionally handsome. She remembers their first sexual experience dreamily, where so many teen characters would be blasé. She keeps her baby when she realizes that it has fingernails; and she can't understand why she can't pal around alone with another woman's husband.

Most of the other characters are equally likable. Juno's stepmother, far from evil, ends up being a better mother than her biological mother. The wife of the perspective adoptive couple is speeding down the mommy track, and her husband seems to have a Peter Pan Complex; they both could be villanized, from certain points of view. In the end, though, they, too are three-dimensional characters. My only complaint on characterization might be that Juno and her father both take everything a little too well, almost as if they've done this before.

This is a movie about family relationships, specifically between couples and between parents and children. Juno is struggling to figure these out, and find her role within them. She sees that while we may learn things as we grow older, we always have such questions at different times in our lives. There are no messages or pat answers here, but there is a celebration of love. The resolution of the plot made me cry at a movie for the first time in a long time.

This film has heart, as trite as that sounds. The rest of the Oscar nominees are supposed to be quite bleak. They'll have to be really good for me to like them better than Juno.

Oscars and rememberance

2008-01-22T19:10:00.000-08:00

This year's Oscar nominees were announed this morning. I am embarassed to admit that I haven't seen any of them; but I intend to do so before the telecast on Februaryh 24th.

The Oscar ceremony itself hangs in the balance, as the writer's strike drags on. The ceremony may be reduced to a press conference, as were the Golden Globe Awards. I haven't addressed the writer's strike so far in this blog, but I feel that I should. I am very sympathetic to the writers, because it does seem like they got the raw end of the deal the cut for VHS and DVD rights. There would be no television or movies without them, anyway, so I wish them success...and I wish it quickly, because reality TV is bad for America.

Nor can I post without mentioning the tragic passing of Heath Ledger. I am really still in shock. He wasn't even as old as I am. Yes, I reserve the right to be sad about people I don't know personally--celebrities are human, too. I also enjoyed his work. I wish peace for him and for those he left behind, especially Michelle Williams and their daughter. One of my first thoughts was how strange it was going to be to watch The Dark Knight this summer.

The Blair Kaiju Project

2008-01-18T22:05:00.000-08:00

I just saw Cloverfield.

Wow. Just...wow. Don't let the glib title of my post fool you: this movie makes an impact.

For those who don't know, it was directed by J.J. Abrams, creator of “Alias” and “Lost”, who has also recently taken on the Mission: Impossible and Star Trek franchises. It is the story of a group of Manhattanite friends throwing a going-away party for one of their own...only to be interrupted by a monster that rises from the ocean and devastates the city.

Much has been made already of the style of this film. The monster is shown only in glimpses at first, and even after that, gets a minimum of screen time. The entire movie is shot from one digital camera, originally intended to record the party. This does prove quite effective. Likewise, the origin of the monster is left ambiguous, and there area a few incidents where it remains deliberately unclear what exactly happened.

On the other hand, the jerking and swinging of the camera bothered me more than it did with The Blair Witch project. It seemed me to that Hud, the cameraman for most of the movie, goes back and forth between amateurish shooting (cutting off the top of people's heads) and professional grade (sweeping shots of the Brooklyn Bridge). The idea that he filmed so much and that the tape survived strains credibility.

The cast are not so well-known that it is distracting. I like that. Just based on my brief experience there, I thought the characters look and act like New York. Many small details help evoke the essence of the city. I think it says something that the public accepts a movie this iconoclastic. Perhaps we're finally moving into a post-post-9/11 world.

Then, of course, there is my Lilith complex. I always have sympathy for the monster. Not people who act like monsters, but actual monsters...especially kaiju. They don't know any other way to be. They monst. It's what they do—cut them a break! While I was rooting for the human heroes, I must confess a twinge as fighter planes harried the “horrible thing”. My sympathies did not, however, extend to the smaller horrors it brought up with it.

Early on, one character advises another: “forget the world...cling to the people you care about” (paraphrase). This movie does leave you with a lot to consider. Who would you risk your life for if this happened ? At what point are the odds of saving them just to low? What would you do in an emergency—run or go to ground?

The medium itself, I believe, is the message: moments in time, frozen as ones and zeroes...panic and suffering, poignantly intercut with literal flashbacks to happier times. Some days are good. Others...just aren't. We've seen the subject matter before--Cloverfield owes as much to The Children of Men as to Godzilla; but Abrams' innovative take makes for a gripping ride.

You know...for kids!

2008-01-17T15:49:00.000-08:00

The co-inventor of the frisbee and hula hoop has passed away.

May he rest in peace. I couldn't help but think about The Hudsucker Proxy .

Adventures in the Gaiman-verse

2008-01-05T17:59:00.000-08:00

Recently, I read two novels by revered fantasy/horror writer Neil Gaiman. I thought I'd share some of my thoughts on them.

Good Omens (with Terry Pratchett)
This book is pure joy. It helped get me through a serious illness. I grew up reading Douglas Adams' brilliant Hitchhiker's Trilogy, and this is probably the funniest thing that I have read since then. The subject matter and writing style are different, but the dry humor—by turns irreverent, self-deprecating and absurd--are similar. As a friend of mine said, it's all in the footnotes.

My favorite characters were Aziraphale and Crowley. Their respective angelic-ness and demonic-ness, and the attendant supernatural powers, manifest in very creative and humorous, but believable ways. Also, I'm not usually into slash, but let's face it—such a couple! They are written with a very genuine and even tender connection.

Armageddon was also done creatively, and the Four Horsemen were updated for our modern world. Well...three of them were, anyway. I love the children in the book, and the implied location of Eden. The book idealizes childhood a bit much for me, but as another friend pointed out, perhaps that's the point.

The story has a couple of philosophical points that, while not totally original, ring true for me: the idea that Good and Evil need each other to define themselves, and that the consequences of our actions should be reason enough for the choices that people make. It is also probably no accident that both Aziraphale and Crowley would rather be on Earth than anywhere else.

Anansi Boys
The Afro-Caribbean trickster god Anansi was a secondary character in Gaiman's novel American Gods; but he—and more specifically, his sons—take center sage (sometimes literally) in the sequel.

One of the jacket reviews refers to the story as “spooky”. I don't agree—although in fairness, I have a pretty high threshold for “spooky”. If American Gods had a very serious, heavy tone, Anansi Boys is both funnier and more fun. I would say that the books are different in the same ways that Odin and Anansi are different.

As usual, Gaiman draws on mythology and archetype in ways that are very enjoyable. There is also a strong theme about the power of Art—specifically Story and Song. I really liked the way that Anansi's sons both grow and change to become more whole. The female characters are also quite endearing—especially Maeve Livingston. The only thing I am fuzzy on are the four old ladies from Mr. Nancy's neighborhood. I don't know if they're supposed to represent specific mythological characters, or just the wise women that work quietly in communities all across the Americas.

Since finishing these books, I have thoroughly enjoyed reading Neil's personal weblog. I also wanted to cry when a friend read his short story, "The Price", at the weekly bardic circle I attend. I look forward to further adventures in the rich and magical universe of his work.

The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

2008-01-02T14:08:00.000-08:00

Well, this was supposed to be a review of August Rush, but that seems to have left the theaters. (You'll definitely read about it once it's out on DVD!) Instead, I elected to see and write about Sweeney Todd.

This is a story that has popped up for me more than once. I remember reading the back of a VHS of the 1936 movie as a child, and being disturbed by it. Perhaps this is why, when playing “barbershop”, my best friend and I unceremoniously threw our “patrons” (stuffed animals) behind the couch after they were done. (Her mother explained that this was no way to treat paying customers.) I think my first exposure to the Stephen Sondheim score was a hilarious scene from Kevin Smith's Jersey Girl. (Sadly this song is different in the movie.) Most recently, I went through a “Sweeney Todd” vignette at the London Dungeon...one of the scarier and more effective parts of the Dungeon.

Let's start with the obvious: Johnny Depp singing! He does a good job; his singing voice sounds, strangely, exactly like you'd expect it to. I tend to agree with the reviews which have said that Helena Bonham-Carter's voice is a bit on the fragile side.

Somehow, both Depp and Bonham-Carter manage to create very sympathetic characters out of their brutal anti-heroes. You feel sorry for Todd, who has suffered a lot through not fault of his own; and Ms. Lovett's very typical domestic aspirations are both incongruous and endearing. About the time that we actually see how Todd's victims are disposed of, it occurred to me that she was the one who was really hard-core...after all, Sweeney only cut people's throats! To me, however, the most disturbing story-arc involved Alan Rickman's character, and his cross-generational amorous exploits.

There are two twists at the end...one that you see coming a mile away, and the other one, not so much. There is a happy ending for some characters, but we don't get to see it. Instead, the camera fades out on the sad tableau of characters who seem to have been doomed before the movie started. It kind of makes you wonder what the point was.

Perhaps the point is another vehicle for Tim Burton's vision, the look and sound of his movies...ranging from the surreal to the gritty, but consistently both beautiful and dark. It occurred to me at one point that Todd's razor set was the only thing in the entire movie that was in good condition...including the characters.

Sometimes you think about the strangest things while watching movies. The friend who went with me, a historical reconstructionist, was impressed by the relative accuracy of the costumes. I couldn't help thinking how difficult it would be to pull off a such a succession of murders without running water. I am also grateful for improvements in the justice system and social safety net since the Victorian Era, both in England and the US. (Let's be mindful not to lose those gains, because they are eroding.)

I would say that this movie makes a good holiday diversion. If you can't handle movie violence at all, you obviously don't want to see it; but if you can handle some, as long as it's not gratuitous, you should be okay with Sweeney Todd. It doesn't register nearly as high as it could on the gross-out scale, either.

I would be interested to see this musical with all of the songs that were cut for the film, and with singers who could really blow it out of the water. Most of all, though, Sweeney Todd made me wish that they would make a screen version of the musical Jeckyll and Hyde. Perhaps Johnny Depp or Gerard Butler could play the leads...or maybe Australian singer Anthony Warlow, who sang the roles for an official recording. Any other suggestions?

Christmas Movies

2008-01-01T14:04:00.000-08:00

It's a bright, shiny New Year's Day, and I wrote this sitting sitting in a hip little local cafe, working on my first blog post. This may seem a little belated, but I thought I'd start by discussing holiday movies...starting by taking aim at a sacred cow. Spoiler warnings for all of these, BTW.

It's A Wonderful Life
For a long time when I was younger, I loved this movie. I hate it now. It pains me to say that, because I still really like Jimmy Stewart; but I became done with this movie in the course of one Christmas.

It may have been the last Christmas my grandfather was alive. I loved him, and in some ways, I'm more like him than any of my other grandparents; but unlike me, he was a lifelong alcoholic. He got blood poisoning shortly after my parents got married, and was dependent on them pretty much the whole time I knew them. Rather than take care of him on her own terms and balance his needs with hers, my mother instead fell into a codependent pattern, running herself ragged to preserve the illusion of her father's independence.

I remember sitting with the three of them that year, watching IAWL on my granddad's tiny TV, seeing George Bailey's attempts to see the world get thwarted again and again. His frustration was painful to me. It occurred to me how much it would suck if the same essential thing happened to my parents. What if they spent their whole lives within two hours of their hometown, because of my grandfather? What if death or illness prevented them from ever doing all the traveling they wanted to do, or ever truly having an empty nest? This was an especially poignant possibility since my sister and I often worried about the toll that stress was taking on them both.

In the light these realities, Frank Capra's message of self-sacrifice over self-exploration, of trading the whole world for small town America, seemed like so much garbage.

Fortunately, since my grandfather's death, my parents' health has been very good. They have pursued their interests, enjoyed being grandparents to my niece, and traveled extensively, including Xtapa, Niagra Falls, Italy and the American Southwest. I still haven't been able to go back to It's a Wonderful Life.

Don't get me wrong; I understand what Capra was trying to say. I like the idea that even the most ordinary life has significance, and that you never know all of the impact you have on others. I just still prefer to take a more balanced view. I chose to believe that the missing money turned back up, and that the townsfolk used the money they had collected to put George and his family on a plane.

Whew! Now that that's over, I'd like to write about my favorite Christmas movies.

While You Were Sleeping
I didn't watch this one this year, but I probably have most of the dialog memorized. What can I say? My middle-school crush on Bill Pullman has faded considerably, but I still think he's hot. He and Sandra Bullock make a great couple, and the bubbly warmth of the family in the movie is irresistible. I love fact that Lucy eventually falls for the less ostensibly “glamorous” brother, not the one that never noticed her. Maybe this is the anti-It's-A-Wonderful-Life: it acknowledges the joy of a loving family, but also the importance of pursuing your dreams. I know that a lot of the conventions in this one have been seen 1,000 times since, but to me, this is still a perfect romantic Christmas comedy.

The Family Stone
I think I would have to be in a certain mood to watch this one, an that mood did not come around this year. Nevertheless, I think it's one of the best Christmas movies to be made recently. I like the fact that Sarah Jessica Parker's character, while obviously quite different from the family she's supposed to join, is humanized, rather than demonized, in the end. There is one dramatic scene that addresses the sexuality of older people, and of cancer survivors, with more courage than I have seen in a long time. The movie's only flaws are an somewhat implausible romantic switch-up toward the end, and the way it skirts the edge of maudlin. On the whole, however, I think it portrays its characters and the holiday sympathetically and realistically at the same time. It also reminds you to appreciate the people you love.

Love, Actually
This Christmas was the first time that I've seen this movie the whole way through. It has an all-star cast, and moments that make you laugh, cry, or cheer. It was refreshing to me that it was set in England, although his might not mean as much to others. I liked the way that the storylines overlapped. I appreciated the fact that it dealt with all sorts of relationships, not just romantic ones. Enough connections were made to give you the warm fuzzies, but enough problems remained unsolved for it to be believable. My only warning would be that some of the laughs—especially those provided by Bill Nighy—are on the bawdy side. My favorite story arcs were the one with Liam Neeson, who broke my heart, and Hugh Grant, who brought a touch of Bridget Jones to the role of Prime Minister.