The Oscars and the Independent Spirit Awards are this weekend (whoops, I did not finish this post before the Spirit Awards), so a quick rundown of my thoughts on the nominated movies I've seen:
Haven't seen: Bridge of Spies, Hateful Eight, Trumbo, Steve Jobs, 45 Years, Straight Outta Compton, The End of the Tour, James White, Mediterranea, Mississippi Grind
The Big Short
Better than I expected. 40% polemic, 40% tutorial, about the housing bubble and subsequent financial crisis and its exploitation. If docu-drama is a thing, is docu-comedy? Adam McKay breaks the fourth wall in damn near every way imaginable in order to keep things moving.
One of the best movies of the year, though? I don't know. I am sick to fucking death of the "movie (sometimes a biopic but not always) about very recent history that you pretty much remember" genre -- Cate Blanchett and Robert Redford in that blatant Oscar-bait Dan Rather movie is a good recent example. They're rarely great movies (or even good stories), they're rarely movies we will revisit fondly ten, twenty, thirty years later.
Do you ever rewatch Primary Colors, for heaven's sake? Or W?
That said, while this is not necessarily a good story in the usual cinematic sense, it's a very interesting use of cinema, and in this case this particular story from recent history is one that's ten years old now and still never really got the attention it deserved. We live in the constant shadow of 9/11 but no one even bothered to properly scapegoat the financial crisis. There is a much more reasonable justification for making this movie than there is the Balloon Boy movie, or the Anthony Wiener movie, or whatever.
Brooklyn
This is wholly Saoirse Ronan's movie -- a well-deserved Best Actress nomination. I hesitate to call it a love story as such, but it's a great and beautiful movie of a sort that is otherwise underrepresented in the Best Picture category this year.
Mad Max: Fury Road
As I think I've written about here before, I was skeptical about a Mad Max movie even once people started praising it, because someone I hadn't heard that it was directed by the original director. Turns out the movie is awesome. I've found that with every year I have less and less patience for action movies. I don't think it's my age (so shut up), I think it's the movies -- I think CGI and the other ways that the filming of action has changed have made them less interesting, and even when I watch Mission Impossible movies or whatever, I have trouble paying attention. They just don't hold my interest.
But this, this worked. This was great.
The Martian
They dropped my favorite joke and I think it's silly to cast pretty boy Matt Damon as a dorky space botanist, but this was both a good adaptation and a good space movie. (It may technically be a "science fiction movie," but classifying it as one seems silly -- you may as well call most Tom Clancy books or James Bond movies science fiction.) However, in a year when people are wondering why the Oscars are so glaringly white, this stands out as needing to justify its place in the room -- sure, it makes sense for the technical awards, but Best Picture? Best Actor? Was this really one of the best stories told this year, one of the best performances on the screen?
Given that even Revenant is based on a true story, is Matt Damon the only Best Actor nominee playing a fictional character? That's just weird.
The Revenant
Birdman was A+ direction, A+ lead performance, B- story for me. And in film, that's okay sometimes. I mean, it's the difference between a great movie and an amazing movie sometimes, but everyone's different, people respond to different things. Some people barely notice the visuals, or mostly notice big explosions and car chases. Me, I have trouble with some Godard movies (though Band of Outsiders is a hall of fame favorite), because I can read about them afterward and understand what was groundbreaking about what he was doing visually, but in the moment of watching, I can't get past how much I dislike his protagonists.
Anyway, what kept striking me about The Revenant was that while the story was engaging enough -- it's a straightforward revenge story, but there's nothing wrong with that -- the visuals were just gorgeous. No shock finding out Inarritu was working with the same DP who worked with Malick on The New World.
Room
Maybe my favorite movie of 2015. Certainly way up there. I read the book after seeing the trailer for the movie, and there are parts they skim over, but I don't think it really matters. It's a movie bound by incredibly strong performances on the part of Brie Larson as a captive woman and Jacob Tremblay as the son she's given birth to in captivity -- performances strong enough that including Joan Allen and Bill Macy in the cast, as great as they are, is just icing on the cake.
Spotlight
Surprisingly good! See my Big Short comments re: what I generally think about "recent history." In this case we're talking about 14-15 years ago, so perhaps right on the cusp between history and recent events -- the same as doing a movie in the 80s about the Vietnam War or the protests about such. There's definitely been enough breathing room, anyway, enough space: since the Boston Globe publicized the scope of the cover-up of sex abuse by priests in the Boston area, similar scandals have been exposed in scores of cities around the world.
Furthermore, in the meantime, so many newspapers have gone through such downsizing that it's difficult to imagine investigative journalism like this taking place -- a staff being given this kind of leeway for this length of time, without the pressure to produce a story right away.
More comments about the movie itself, though. Tom McCarthy has been one of my favorite directors, but his last movie before this, The Cobbler, was startlingly bad. It can't solely be blamed on Adam Sandler -- it wasn't a good movie with a bad star, it was just tonally off and weird. While this movie is a huge improvement, it's hardly a return to form -- there is none of McCarthy's characteristic stamp here, none of his quirky loners or loneliness, apart maybe from the nervous energy of Mark Ruffalo's workaholic reporter. That's not a criticism, just an observation. I'm curious what kind of movie he does next.
Too many white people in the Oscar noms watch: again, like with The Martian, the acting nominations here are questionable.
Carol
Todd Haynes is one of my favorite directors. I think everything he does is just amazing and magical and worth umpteen rewatches. Far From Heaven, Velvet Goldmine, and Mildred Pierce are absolute masterpieces. So I was pretty fucking excited about this movie, even though the leads are actresses I'm always iffy about -- Cate Blanchett because her career seems to be evenly divided between great performances and high-profile stuff that makes me roll my eyes, Rooney Mara because just as my brain was rewriting its Rooney Mara associations to link up with the wonderful Ain't Them Bodies Saints and Side Effects instead of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, they cast her as Tiger Fucking Lily in that Peter Pan movie.
Anyway. There was nothing to be iffy about here. It's one of the masterpieces. Too soon to say if it will be as rewatchable as Far From Heaven et al, but I see no reason to assume it won't be. It's a great love story, a beautiful movie, and the fact that it's not up for Best Director or at least the more expansive Best Picture category is nuts. It's hard not to assume that, unlike Brokeback Mountain or a movie about AIDS or discrimination, it's because in this case, the movie isn't about the tragedies of homosexuality; and unlike The Kids Are All Right et al, there's no friendly straight male character as an audience surrogate. I mean, it would still be an exclusively white movie amid a too-white slate, but the exclusion we're seeing in these nominations isn't only race-based.
Joy
Maybe there are diminishing returns with David O. Russell / Jennifer Lawrence collaborations. This was a good movie, a fun movie, but less memorable than American Hustle (okay, so she only had a supporting role in that), much less Silver Linings Playbook. J Law is still great in it, the story itself just seems surprisingly straightforward for a DOR film.
The Danish Girl
Powerful and sad. Nice to see Alicia Vikander in an acting role after just seeing her in The Man from U.N.C.L.E., which asked so little of her.
Ex Machina
So creepy. What a year for Oscar Isaac and Domhnall Gleeson, who both went on to co-star in Star Wars: The Force Awakens, while Gleeson has supporting roles in both Brooklyn and The Revenant.
Star Wars: The Force Awakens
Only up for a few awards, none of them in the major categories, but let's face it, this is one of my favorite movies of the year. My earliest memories are of Star Wars, and The Empire Strikes Back has especially powerful resonance for me. Furthermore, I'm the kind of speculative fiction writer I am -- with little interest in hard science fiction -- because Star Wars was the first science fiction I was exposed to, I think, and because its popularity led to the rather soft science fiction that was on television when I was growing up (Battlestar Galactica, Buck Rogers) and drove a lot of my interests in comic books, the subject of a future post. Anyway, Rey and Poe and Finn are all spectacular.
It Follows
It's a toss-up between this and The Babadook for my favorite horror movie since Ju-On. Smart, tense, evocative. Like The Babadook and now The Witch, it got a lot of criticism from horror movie fans -- but there has traditionally been a deep divide between horror movie fans and horror literature fans, and movies like this feel, maybe they're closer to what the latter likes.
Bone Tomahawk
On the one hand, this was a fun, inventive, well-acted and exceptionally well-paced horror-western -- the sort where you don't really know it's even a horror-western until towards the end. On the other, I am still bothered by the choice to make the bad guys Native American cannibals straight out of 19th century dime novels or 20th century pulps, and briefly including a civilized "good Indian" who condemns them just seems like the token action you take to protect yourself from accusations of racism while indulging in the desire to play with what are still racist story tropes.
Love and Mercy
I've already mentioned I usually have no use for biopics -- as much as I like Bryan Cranston, I have no plans to watch Trumbo, and I have less than zero interest in the Steve Jobs movie. I was vaguely aware this movie -- about Beach Boy Brian Wilson at two different times (played by Paul Dano and John Cusack) -- existed, but it wasn't really on my radar until its Independent Spirit Award nominations. It's really quite good, not only because of those two performances but Elizabeth Banks, as the Cadillac saleswoman who goes out on a date with older Brian Wilson and discovers the weirdly controlling entourage (led by psychotherapist Paul Giamatti) that surrounds him.
Inside Out
I thought the hype for this was really overblown. Not as much as some recent animated movies -- I think the out of proportion response to Toy Story 3, The Lego Movie, and Frozen, all of which were just okay, means I know too many parents who are just grateful that a movie they took their kids too wasn't as fucking awful as the Ice Age shit, or more broadly that there are way too many terrible animated features out there. But if you were to list the Pixar movies top to bottom, it'd be smack in the middle.
Anomalisa
Another contender for my favorite movie of the year. Like Haynes and McCarthy, Charlie Kaufman is consistently one of my favorite filmmakers. This isn't Eternal Sunshine Charlie Kaufman, this is closer to Synecdoche New York Charlie Kaufman -- which makes sense, since that's the only other movie he's both written and directed. Like Synecdoche, some people are going to hate it and others will find it impenetrable or dull. It's a stop-motion animated film with three actors: David Thewlis as Michael, Tom Noonan as nearly the entire world, and Jennifer Jason Leigh as Lisa, a seemingly mysterious woman Michael suddenly hears in a hotel and is fascinated by because, well, unlike everyone else in the world, she isn't voiced by Tom Noonan.
Spoilers of sorts in the next paragraph.
I've seen reviews that say this movie doesn't have a twist, and I understand how they mean that -- he isn't "dead the whole time," it isn't Dark City or the Matrix -- but this is a story about loneliness, about a man who is a successful author of customer service books ("treat everyone as an individual") but who is surrounded by a world in which everyone including his wife and son seem identical to him. The twist, such as it is, is that the loneliness turns out to be the product of his own unpleasantness and dickheadedness, his own inability to appreciate other people, not a hell someone or something else has consigned him to. In this story that's still a substantial twist -- but compared to splashier movies it's definitely a minor key story.
Shorts
You know the Oscar-nominated shorts are available On Demand and on iTunes, as well as in a limited number of theaters, right? The specifics have varied every year. In the past, the live-action, animated, and documentary shorts were three separate packages. This year, the live-action and SOME of the animated shorts (no "Sanjay's Super Team," no "We Can't Live Without Cosmos") were all in one package, and the documentaries weren't available. Not sure if that differed in theaters.
As a huge Don Hertzfeldt fan, I have to go with "World of Tomorrow" for the best animated short, although I'm thrilled that the legendary Richard Williams -- director of the unfinished masterpiece The Thief and the Cobbler, animation director on Who Framed Roger Rabbit, animator of the title sequences for What's New Pussycat and A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum -- has a nominated short, the six-minute "Prologue" to his loose adaptation of Lysistrata. He's been working on it for twelve years and intends a ninety minute film; Williams is 82.
Among the live-action shorts it's hard to pick, though "Shok" and "Stutterer" will probably stay with me the most.
Sunday, February 28, 2016
Tuesday, February 9, 2016
crazy ex-girlfriend
I feel like at least once an episode, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend wins me over again.
And maybe it's like, because it feels like it needs to, because of the title and the premise: after running into her junior high summer camp boyfriend (a relationship she's never gotten over), Rebecca impulsively quits her job in New York to move to his small hometown in California in the hopes of reconnecting with him ("it's a lot more nuanced than that," the title song insists), before realizing that a) he's in a serious relationship and b) this is a crazy plan. P.S. like Galavant, this is a musical comedy.
But for instance, in the latest episode, the inciting incident is Rebecca accidentally sending a text ABOUT Josh (the junior high summer camp boyfriend) TO Josh instead of Paula, her new best friend / co-worker at the small law firm in town. We've seen this basic premise a million times, long before text messages, and so the show immediately skips over one of the usual beats -- instead of a lot of dancing around during the important business meeting when this happens, Paula calls a halt to the meeting, tells everyone what happened, and they drop everything to brainstorm the best solution.
"Tell him it's opposite day!"
"We could say you were hacked."
etc.
Naturally they all break into song.
She winds up with a police escort on her way to get to his phone before either he or his girlfriend (who knows Rebecca's into him but can't get Josh to believe her) can see the text.
That's exactly what I mean. A lot of the situations in Crazy Ex-Girlfriend are familiar, but the show and creator-star Rachel Bloom play with that familiarity. Just as Galavant pokes fun at the tropes of its genre, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend pokes at the tropes of romantic comedies and modern dating -- though I'm going to stop comparing the two there.
The second time in this particular episode when I was won over again? Paula's explaining Rebecca's whole deal to her husband, Scott, and their conversation happens to be the lyrics to the show's theme song. It's goofy, but it works, which is kind of the show in a nutshell.
Crazy Ex-Girlfriend isn't exactly about a crazy ex-girlfriend, not least because Rebecca and Josh "dated" at summer camp when they were kids. Furthermore, it's clear that Rebecca's unhappiness in the pilot went deeper than relationship issues. She hasn't worked out why she's been dissatisfied, but despite her professional success, the last time she can remember being happy is when she was at summer camp dating Josh. On some level, the show is more about Rebecca dealing with the fact that she has been living an unhappy life, and dealing with the consequences of the fact that she finally took radical action to improve that life -- action that is hard to explain to anyone else, and hard for anyone to interpret as anything other than stalking Josh.
On the other hand, Rebecca refuses to give up on her infatuation with Josh, spending the first half of the season denying it to anyone who asks and finally confessing to Paula that yes, she really is obsessed with him. Even though Josh's girlfriend is pretty terrible, it's sort of hard to root for Josh and Paula getting together -- not just because Josh has a good friend who briefly dates Rebecca and is a better match for her, but because Rebecca can't speak for more than thirty seconds without saying something that Josh needs explained. Maybe they were on the same level when they were 14, but they're not dealing from the same deck of cards today.
The show does not sum up well, and there are people who will just never get past the title or premise, but it's increasingly remarkable, a show with a real voice. Rachel Bloom is a genuine talent, and I don't know what this show looks like in its third or fourth season, but I hope it gets there.
And maybe it's like, because it feels like it needs to, because of the title and the premise: after running into her junior high summer camp boyfriend (a relationship she's never gotten over), Rebecca impulsively quits her job in New York to move to his small hometown in California in the hopes of reconnecting with him ("it's a lot more nuanced than that," the title song insists), before realizing that a) he's in a serious relationship and b) this is a crazy plan. P.S. like Galavant, this is a musical comedy.
But for instance, in the latest episode, the inciting incident is Rebecca accidentally sending a text ABOUT Josh (the junior high summer camp boyfriend) TO Josh instead of Paula, her new best friend / co-worker at the small law firm in town. We've seen this basic premise a million times, long before text messages, and so the show immediately skips over one of the usual beats -- instead of a lot of dancing around during the important business meeting when this happens, Paula calls a halt to the meeting, tells everyone what happened, and they drop everything to brainstorm the best solution.
"Tell him it's opposite day!"
"We could say you were hacked."
etc.
Naturally they all break into song.
She winds up with a police escort on her way to get to his phone before either he or his girlfriend (who knows Rebecca's into him but can't get Josh to believe her) can see the text.
That's exactly what I mean. A lot of the situations in Crazy Ex-Girlfriend are familiar, but the show and creator-star Rachel Bloom play with that familiarity. Just as Galavant pokes fun at the tropes of its genre, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend pokes at the tropes of romantic comedies and modern dating -- though I'm going to stop comparing the two there.
The second time in this particular episode when I was won over again? Paula's explaining Rebecca's whole deal to her husband, Scott, and their conversation happens to be the lyrics to the show's theme song. It's goofy, but it works, which is kind of the show in a nutshell.
Crazy Ex-Girlfriend isn't exactly about a crazy ex-girlfriend, not least because Rebecca and Josh "dated" at summer camp when they were kids. Furthermore, it's clear that Rebecca's unhappiness in the pilot went deeper than relationship issues. She hasn't worked out why she's been dissatisfied, but despite her professional success, the last time she can remember being happy is when she was at summer camp dating Josh. On some level, the show is more about Rebecca dealing with the fact that she has been living an unhappy life, and dealing with the consequences of the fact that she finally took radical action to improve that life -- action that is hard to explain to anyone else, and hard for anyone to interpret as anything other than stalking Josh.
On the other hand, Rebecca refuses to give up on her infatuation with Josh, spending the first half of the season denying it to anyone who asks and finally confessing to Paula that yes, she really is obsessed with him. Even though Josh's girlfriend is pretty terrible, it's sort of hard to root for Josh and Paula getting together -- not just because Josh has a good friend who briefly dates Rebecca and is a better match for her, but because Rebecca can't speak for more than thirty seconds without saying something that Josh needs explained. Maybe they were on the same level when they were 14, but they're not dealing from the same deck of cards today.
The show does not sum up well, and there are people who will just never get past the title or premise, but it's increasingly remarkable, a show with a real voice. Rachel Bloom is a genuine talent, and I don't know what this show looks like in its third or fourth season, but I hope it gets there.
Saturday, February 6, 2016
midwinter check-in
I mentioned Galavant earlier; this winter, early spring, whatever this season is in this post-season realm of post-television television, it became the comedy I most looked forward to. I'm not sure if second season is necessarily better than the first -- they're hard to compare -- so much as that more of a spotlight is given to my favorite character, Timothy Omundson's King Richard. While Karen David's Isabella was essentially the deuteragonist of the first season, her role was somewhat reduced in second season -- my only complaint -- with Richard assuming that role, and Galavant and Richard's quest often taking the form of a buddy comedy in the same way that Galavant and Isabella's in first season followed the trope of the guy who falls for his platonic female friend while trying to impress/win back/rescue his putative love interest.
Even apart from the music itself, it's a very smart and clever show, very playful and sometimes arch, right down to Kylie Minogue playing the Queen of the Enchanted Forest, which turns out to be a gay bar. Please let that be a recurring role.
But as good as everyone else is, Richard is the highlight. Richard is amazing. Richard is one of my favorite characters in TV comedy.
Speaking of which -- the other show I find myself looking forward to every week is New Girl, which I would not have believed when it premiered. I openly scorned this show in its first season, having absolutely hated the pilot. When Jake Johnson started showing up in movies I liked, it pissed me off that he was stuck in a shitty show like New Girl. But I would catch pieces of episodes because we didn't have a DVR yet and it was paired with some other show I watched -- Mindy Project, maybe? -- and in time I started watching for Max Greenfield's Schmidt. And before long I was just watching, period, and tolerating Zooey Deschanel's Jess. And since then, either Jess has become less of an obnoxiously precious pixie or I've become used to her, I don't know. Greenfield and Johnson were my main reasons to watch, but, video-game style, the writers have unlocked the secrets to the comedy of everybody else over time, and my favorite scenes are often classic Winston and Cece mess-arounds. It was never that Lamorne Morris and Hannah Simone weren't funny, just that the writers couldn't figure out how to write Winston consistently -- and then sort of made that the point -- and Cece's role as Jess's best friend or Schmidt's crush sometimes made her more plot device than character. Those problems seem to be in the past.
It's not on the level of Happy Endings, Community, or Parks and Rec, don't get me wrong -- nothing at that level seems to be on the schedule right now. Although as far as shows that have the potential to get there, The Grinder turned out to be a hell of a lot funnier than I expected it to be. I don't really understand the Arrested Development comparisons I've seen some people make -- I think you need to rewatch Arrested Development if you think any show can be compared to it -- but:
a) the cast is so fucking solid, and it says a lot about Mary Elizabeth Ellis (the Waitress on Always Sunny) and Natalie Morales (The Middleman, Trophy Wife) that they fit in fine with veterans like Rob Lowe, Fred Savage (who is doing really great work here), and William Devane. Timothy Olyphant's recurring role as himself contributes so much both to the show and to Rob Lowe's character that part of me kind of hopes Tim-O doesn't get his own show and becomes a regular here? I knew he could be funny, but he is perfectly cast here.
b) the show is just meta enough without being a parody, a satire, a send-up, whatever. Actor who played lawyer on not-at-all believable TV show moves back home after his show ends, joins the family law firm in non-lawyer capacity, overshadows his hard-working brother by treating every case like one of his episodes. It's like ... what that Disney movie Bolt was supposed to be. And of course, every episode starts with the family watching an episode of the show-within-a-show.
Everyone is good, and the writing is solid, but the show is absolutely dependent on Rob Lowe's ability to sell his character, and he pulls it off. The Emmys ignored him on Parks, but maybe this will change things.
Meanwhile, off in superhero-world, Supergirl continues to improve, although it also continues to borrow more and more elements from Superman -- having already made Jimmy (James) Olsen part of the cast, they've now had a Toyman episode, introduced Bizarro (and it's Bizarro Supergirl, not Bizarro Superman), and written Max Lord as just a Lex Luthor who hits on Kara's sister instead of on Lois Lane.
Legends of Tomorrow has a boring name but a fun premise -- superheroes and supervillains culled from the Flash and Arrow shows are gathered by Rip Hunter to bounce around in time trying to stop immortal bad dude Vandal Savage. Wentworth Miller's Captain Cold and Caity Lotz's Canary are the standouts here, though I love that Rory from Dr Who is playing a Time Lord now -- but man, the fatal flaw of the show is that the guy playing Vandal Savage is just not good!
I've just looked him up, he's a Danish actor, and maybe in his native language he's a better actor, but here he's a) too campy to take seriously and b) this may be like ... voic-ist or something ... but his voice is simply too high-pitched for him to be a compelling evil immortal mastermind. It's a comic book show. There are conventions to be followed. Maybe if he were a better actor he could pull it off or if the writing were great it wouldn't matter, but in the show as it stands, it matters. Dude is just not convincing me that he's a threat to a box of kittens, much less to this time machine full of superfolks.
In other dramas, I really hope this turns out to be the final season of The Good Wife. As you may have heard, the showrunner-creators are leaving one way or the other (remaining as uninvolved producers) but CBS wants to sally forth if they can get the actors to stay. Between Peter's bid for the presidency, Alicia's solo venture, Eli telling Alicia about that thing that time ... this feels like a proper final season. This feels like time. I love the show, I love Eli Gold, I love Diane Lockhart, I think they did a great job adding the improbably named Cush Jumbo to the cast, and I love all these crazy judges and opposing attorneys, but it's time to either move on or make a spinoff starring the fantastic Carrie Preston.
I've been altogether deeply disappointed by Sleepy Hollow, a show I vocally championed in its first two seasons, this year. It simply doesn't feel like the same show, and I let it languish on the DVR until it feels like we have to watch it.
American Crime Story: The People vs. O.J. is only one episode in, but it seems like it might be ... really good? Caitlin had to convince me this would be worth watching, but she was right. Maybe it helps that the show actually originated outside of Ry-Murpland and was brought into the fold after development had begun, I don't know. I guess it explains why Evan Peters isn't playing Kato Kaelin, anyway.
The Sci-Fi Channel, which I think is now called Syfy or SyFy or sYfY or essWHYeffWHY or some fucking thing, has adapted Lev Grossman's Magicians series, which is an interesting thing. I had some issues with the books, and I have some issues with the show, but it turns out they are not even the same issues!
Nevermind the issues with the books, by and large -- the biggest one was that I didn't like the main character, Quentin, very much. So far that is mitigated somewhat in the show by rearranging the presentation of the story a bit so that we get Julia's story at the same time as Quentin's instead of hearing about it later in flashback.
The Magicians is like an adult version of Harry Potter meets Narnia: magic is real but, as in those books, hardly anyone realizes it, and as in the Potterverse, its proper use is taught at special schools. The first book begins with Quentin finding out about and attending Brakebills, one such school -- unlike Harry Potter, this is a college, not a boarding school for berobed tots, so you have drunken sorcery and whatnot going on. Which is great! It's fun!
And that's my main issue with the show right there: it moves FAST. In the books, the "meets Narnia" part doesn't happen right away, but the show introduces the Narnia analogue of Fillory immediately and is rushing toward it. It seems to me that if you have the television rights to "the grown-up version of a Harry Potter type school for college kids, where they drink and screw and stuff," and there are only three books in the series, the most marketable thing to do is to linger at the school for as long as possible. Spend at least a season showing us what normal life at a college learning magic is like, because surely that is fascinating and challenging and dramatic on its own, right?
But the show doesn't seem interested in doing that, and it feels like dramatic potential squandered.
It's doing a decent job of what it is interested in -- calling it the best Sci Fi Channel show since Battlestar Galactica is faint praise, but nevertheless -- with the other key problem being that the most interesting female role, Alice, has been either underwritten, badly miscast, or both. I think it's a little of both, because I can't imagine anyone who hasn't read the books watching this and thinking of her as the most interesting of these women. Again, it's a shame -- squandered potential, because the book version is a great character, and this is only slightly made up for by the fact that they are doing better by Julia (so far).
Even apart from the music itself, it's a very smart and clever show, very playful and sometimes arch, right down to Kylie Minogue playing the Queen of the Enchanted Forest, which turns out to be a gay bar. Please let that be a recurring role.
But as good as everyone else is, Richard is the highlight. Richard is amazing. Richard is one of my favorite characters in TV comedy.
Speaking of which -- the other show I find myself looking forward to every week is New Girl, which I would not have believed when it premiered. I openly scorned this show in its first season, having absolutely hated the pilot. When Jake Johnson started showing up in movies I liked, it pissed me off that he was stuck in a shitty show like New Girl. But I would catch pieces of episodes because we didn't have a DVR yet and it was paired with some other show I watched -- Mindy Project, maybe? -- and in time I started watching for Max Greenfield's Schmidt. And before long I was just watching, period, and tolerating Zooey Deschanel's Jess. And since then, either Jess has become less of an obnoxiously precious pixie or I've become used to her, I don't know. Greenfield and Johnson were my main reasons to watch, but, video-game style, the writers have unlocked the secrets to the comedy of everybody else over time, and my favorite scenes are often classic Winston and Cece mess-arounds. It was never that Lamorne Morris and Hannah Simone weren't funny, just that the writers couldn't figure out how to write Winston consistently -- and then sort of made that the point -- and Cece's role as Jess's best friend or Schmidt's crush sometimes made her more plot device than character. Those problems seem to be in the past.
It's not on the level of Happy Endings, Community, or Parks and Rec, don't get me wrong -- nothing at that level seems to be on the schedule right now. Although as far as shows that have the potential to get there, The Grinder turned out to be a hell of a lot funnier than I expected it to be. I don't really understand the Arrested Development comparisons I've seen some people make -- I think you need to rewatch Arrested Development if you think any show can be compared to it -- but:
a) the cast is so fucking solid, and it says a lot about Mary Elizabeth Ellis (the Waitress on Always Sunny) and Natalie Morales (The Middleman, Trophy Wife) that they fit in fine with veterans like Rob Lowe, Fred Savage (who is doing really great work here), and William Devane. Timothy Olyphant's recurring role as himself contributes so much both to the show and to Rob Lowe's character that part of me kind of hopes Tim-O doesn't get his own show and becomes a regular here? I knew he could be funny, but he is perfectly cast here.
b) the show is just meta enough without being a parody, a satire, a send-up, whatever. Actor who played lawyer on not-at-all believable TV show moves back home after his show ends, joins the family law firm in non-lawyer capacity, overshadows his hard-working brother by treating every case like one of his episodes. It's like ... what that Disney movie Bolt was supposed to be. And of course, every episode starts with the family watching an episode of the show-within-a-show.
Everyone is good, and the writing is solid, but the show is absolutely dependent on Rob Lowe's ability to sell his character, and he pulls it off. The Emmys ignored him on Parks, but maybe this will change things.
Meanwhile, off in superhero-world, Supergirl continues to improve, although it also continues to borrow more and more elements from Superman -- having already made Jimmy (James) Olsen part of the cast, they've now had a Toyman episode, introduced Bizarro (and it's Bizarro Supergirl, not Bizarro Superman), and written Max Lord as just a Lex Luthor who hits on Kara's sister instead of on Lois Lane.
Legends of Tomorrow has a boring name but a fun premise -- superheroes and supervillains culled from the Flash and Arrow shows are gathered by Rip Hunter to bounce around in time trying to stop immortal bad dude Vandal Savage. Wentworth Miller's Captain Cold and Caity Lotz's Canary are the standouts here, though I love that Rory from Dr Who is playing a Time Lord now -- but man, the fatal flaw of the show is that the guy playing Vandal Savage is just not good!
I've just looked him up, he's a Danish actor, and maybe in his native language he's a better actor, but here he's a) too campy to take seriously and b) this may be like ... voic-ist or something ... but his voice is simply too high-pitched for him to be a compelling evil immortal mastermind. It's a comic book show. There are conventions to be followed. Maybe if he were a better actor he could pull it off or if the writing were great it wouldn't matter, but in the show as it stands, it matters. Dude is just not convincing me that he's a threat to a box of kittens, much less to this time machine full of superfolks.
In other dramas, I really hope this turns out to be the final season of The Good Wife. As you may have heard, the showrunner-creators are leaving one way or the other (remaining as uninvolved producers) but CBS wants to sally forth if they can get the actors to stay. Between Peter's bid for the presidency, Alicia's solo venture, Eli telling Alicia about that thing that time ... this feels like a proper final season. This feels like time. I love the show, I love Eli Gold, I love Diane Lockhart, I think they did a great job adding the improbably named Cush Jumbo to the cast, and I love all these crazy judges and opposing attorneys, but it's time to either move on or make a spinoff starring the fantastic Carrie Preston.
I've been altogether deeply disappointed by Sleepy Hollow, a show I vocally championed in its first two seasons, this year. It simply doesn't feel like the same show, and I let it languish on the DVR until it feels like we have to watch it.
American Crime Story: The People vs. O.J. is only one episode in, but it seems like it might be ... really good? Caitlin had to convince me this would be worth watching, but she was right. Maybe it helps that the show actually originated outside of Ry-Murpland and was brought into the fold after development had begun, I don't know. I guess it explains why Evan Peters isn't playing Kato Kaelin, anyway.
The Sci-Fi Channel, which I think is now called Syfy or SyFy or sYfY or essWHYeffWHY or some fucking thing, has adapted Lev Grossman's Magicians series, which is an interesting thing. I had some issues with the books, and I have some issues with the show, but it turns out they are not even the same issues!
Nevermind the issues with the books, by and large -- the biggest one was that I didn't like the main character, Quentin, very much. So far that is mitigated somewhat in the show by rearranging the presentation of the story a bit so that we get Julia's story at the same time as Quentin's instead of hearing about it later in flashback.
The Magicians is like an adult version of Harry Potter meets Narnia: magic is real but, as in those books, hardly anyone realizes it, and as in the Potterverse, its proper use is taught at special schools. The first book begins with Quentin finding out about and attending Brakebills, one such school -- unlike Harry Potter, this is a college, not a boarding school for berobed tots, so you have drunken sorcery and whatnot going on. Which is great! It's fun!
And that's my main issue with the show right there: it moves FAST. In the books, the "meets Narnia" part doesn't happen right away, but the show introduces the Narnia analogue of Fillory immediately and is rushing toward it. It seems to me that if you have the television rights to "the grown-up version of a Harry Potter type school for college kids, where they drink and screw and stuff," and there are only three books in the series, the most marketable thing to do is to linger at the school for as long as possible. Spend at least a season showing us what normal life at a college learning magic is like, because surely that is fascinating and challenging and dramatic on its own, right?
But the show doesn't seem interested in doing that, and it feels like dramatic potential squandered.
It's doing a decent job of what it is interested in -- calling it the best Sci Fi Channel show since Battlestar Galactica is faint praise, but nevertheless -- with the other key problem being that the most interesting female role, Alice, has been either underwritten, badly miscast, or both. I think it's a little of both, because I can't imagine anyone who hasn't read the books watching this and thinking of her as the most interesting of these women. Again, it's a shame -- squandered potential, because the book version is a great character, and this is only slightly made up for by the fact that they are doing better by Julia (so far).
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