weekly (month so far for me) film viewing post

[murdermystery]

So, my screening log (in terms of note-taking) is actually an entire year behind now, but since I have this idea that once my two "fiction" books come out I'm going to actually write a "film book," I figure it'd be good discipline if I actually start doing this again, and with the minor resurgence here, hyg

Comments

[danschank]

i'm gonna use this comments thread to talk about tv, since i've been watching a lot of it:

girls: have you guys been following the controversy about this? i'm glad to see a real discussion about diversity and the default status of NYC-twentysomethings as the emblems of all experiences everywhere, but i think this show is getting an unfair smackdown prematurely. the first episode wasn't bad - dunham has a knack for a certain kind of physical comedy, and her breed of mumblecore avoids the bullshit smugness/sincerity dichotomy of those films at their worst (see young adult for an annoying recent example). better still, she extends the best parts of tiny furniture, imo... namely the way young women are pressured into enduring the weird sexual appetites of oblivious, insensitive men. dunham is good at making sex uncomfortable without condeming it outright, and she has a knack for writing male characters that suck without being capital-A-asshole-cartoons that rarely exist in real life.

but back to the diversity thing. it's a problem. it was actually a bigger problem in tiny furniture, which has a few ugly laughs at the expense of arab kitchen workers. still, i can't help thinking that there's a real double standard in the conversation about this - it seems like every time there's a show where white women actually co-exist in relation to one another in an interesting, bechdel-test-approved sort of way, the universe suddenly decides to have a debate about diversity that also applies to, like, everything else on tv as well. case in point, girls is replacing another exclusively white comedy about entitled young people living in NYC starring the child of extreme hollywood royalty - that's bored to death, if you haven't guessed. where was the diversity debate surrounding that one?

the walking dead: speaking of shows with major diversity problems (is t-dog really this comfortable being lead around by two white southern cops, the brother of a neo-nazi and the LITERAL owner of a southern plantation?), this one has pretty thoroughly shit the bed at this point. the atmosphere works well enough, and i'll probably continue watching it because i'll watch anything with zombies, but MAN does this need better writers. something i really hate on dramatic tv shows is the tendency to whip up meaningless plots to give peripheral characters something to do. most of this show's 2nd season consists of that sort of thing (the hunt for sophia, quibbles between glenn and maggie over nothing in particular, the whole captive-who-must-be-executed thing), and the big overarching storyline was a real lemon as well. the dude who plays shane is an awful actor - kind of a 13-year-old's idea of a tough guy, to incorrectly paraphrase raymond chandler - and the whole "who's gonna better protect the womenfolk?" debate was stupid from the moment it began. looks like they're trying to liven things up with the yucky "governor" storyline from the comics (which also suck, btw), but i'm not too excited.

[danschank]

justified: on a brighter note, this show is finding its stride. i'm only about halfway through the third season, but it's shaping up to be interesting and complex. when it began, justified had the opposite problem of walking dead, lots of good characters (boyd crowder especially)... not a particularly compelling atmosphere. the single-story-arc structure can dumb it down from time to time as well, but they seem to be moving away from it as the show finds an audience. timothy olyphant is a better actor than he was on deadwood - more suited to a classically "western" role than the revisionism of deadwood. there's an easy-breezy quality to justified that reminds me of the old westerns that mann, boetticher and co. used to make; the elmore leonard framework gives this extra support. season two has one of the most memorable pseudo-villains in recent memory and season three is making strikingly good use of the dude who played bubba in forrest gump!

the good wife: more and more, i'm coming to love this show. it has its faults - it's premised around an infidelity narrative that's not interesting from really any angle. in fact, the stories surrounding the main character (her love triangle, her interpersonal conflicts, her expertise) are usually the show's weakest link (despite juliana marguellis' decent performance). the real fun is on the sidelines, where we get to see alan cumming do a bitchier take on rahn emmanuel, or where kalinda gets to play philip marlowe and sleuth around, or where a variety of likeable guest stars are always showing up (amy sedaris, martha plimpton, michael j. fox, parker posey). finally, sharon lockhart, the all-business boss of the operation, is slowly becoming my favorite character on television over 5 feet tall (peter dinklage still takes the cake). her romance with the dude from office space is super endearing and always hilarious.

[glazomaniac]

i just downloaded all of justified. i'm-a give ti a whirl soon enough.

[danschank]

i'm all but certain you'll like it. especially season two onward. the first season is kinda hit or miss for a while.

you know

[murdermystery]

it seems like since the advent of long-form narrative television series, people (myself included) have been bitching about 'meaningless sub-plots that give peripheral characters something to do'-- is there anybody who actually enjoys these/think they add depth to a show? why do they keep happening?

[danschank]

i think it's a side-effect of what's interesting about the tv format, actually. with a tv series, you have the opportunity to really branch out and explore the nooks and crannies of a character's motivations, or of a landscape, or of whatever. but if the writers aren't up to the task, they need to fill space. walking dead seems caught in this trap. i suspect that its writers are a bunch of bros who really like the genre (robert kirkman almost certainly is guilty of this), but who aren't really insightful enough to build a convincing universe of characters around their own, high-budget apocalypse. so instead everyone makes inexplicably bad decisions ALL THE TIME to mobilize enough mayhem and move things along.

the sad thing is that the zombie apocalypse universe has such a nice legacy through people like romero and richard matheson and such. you'd think the few people fortunate enough to write this sort of thing for a major tv network - and one that lets its productions take interesting risks, to boot - would try to measure up to the task. instead they just send their dipshit characters into the same town over and over again for supplies, and tragedy always ensues.

[cut_dead]

I'm watching Girls as well. It seems very much like an extension of Tiny Furniture & I'm hoping that the show will get into the nitty grit of girl friend camaraderie/companionship. It's nice to see Dunham including a more diverse set of characters (i.e. people who aren't herself or her immediate family) which is good because there is only so far she can go with the self-loathing broke really awkward sex-having quarterlife crisis-suffering New Yorker. I also hope that she creates male characters who aren't shallow douchebag creeps (not that those people don't exist in real life), but...

I apparently missed the controversy. Also, HBO is really stupid to have this show in the same time slot as Mad Men (which I'm totally into this season).

[danschank]

it's funny you should mention mad men, because it's also been accused of lacking diversity (something they're awkwardly trying to make up for this season). in the case of girls and mad men, there's a case to be made - but i sense that one of the reasons these shows get singled out is that narratives with female-centric elements make people uncomfortable (see also the endless debating about sex and the city vs. the never-ever-debating about entourage). in the case of girls, a bunch of blogs i read regularly (feministing, racialicious, colorlines, etc.) have all called it out for focusing on four white girls in a city where diversity is really the norm, and then one of the writers on girls made the whole thing worse by posting a sarcastic tweet about how the movie precious "doesn't really represent her." there's a legitimate debate to be had, but some of the writing has been kinda lazy - singling out the part of the pilot where dunham calls herself "the voice of a generation," which is totally played for laughs. and bullying the cast for having famous parents - as if anyone but me knew who carroll dunham was prior to five days ago. there's a hipster-haterdom to the debate that i find kind of willfully superficial.

anyway, i forgot to write about mad men! i started out hating this season... i hate HATE HATE megan and the whole story arc surrounding her. i don't see a way where she's anything other than barbie dream wife or secret duplicitous hussy, and i don't like the way the show is expecting me to be really curious about which way she'll go. i also hate the jewish minstrel guy who seems like a character hank azaria would play on the simpsons, and fat betty, which is just kind of mean-spirited. i've never been a fan of the whole "mad men indulges sexism under the guise of critiquing it" way of looking at the show, but i do find the betty and megan developments kind of troubling in that sort of way.

HOWEVER, last week's episode was awesome-sauce all the way (pete!), and the week prior was pretty good too, even if the joan story felt a bit hurried. roger has been especially excellent this season. so i'm hoping for the best... what exactly are you liking so much?

[cut_dead]

As for Mad Men compensating for racial diversity, at least they have some sort of context & aren't ham-handing it (at least not yet). If a show like Girls was more "diverse", people would probably accuse Dunham of "tokenism" or its hypothetical representation of said diversity.

I'm kind of apathetic about Megan. She seemed to come out of nowhere last season. I mean yes the show is telegraphing what is going to become of her, but I'm optimistic that Weiner & co. will be able to at the very least try to flesh her character out into something more. The portrayal of Ginsberg I think is deliberate. Again, same sort of thing even though I found the scene with his father kind of obnoxious. Even fat Betty seems like a refreshing departure from the frigid shrew she's been reduced to in the last couple of seasons.

Anyway, the main reason I like this season is that they're finally breaking out of the "Who is Don Draper?" arc & focusing on the other characters, which I'm glad since the show mostly has such a strong ensemble. The Pete/Roger (and Lane!) war has certainly been the meatiest part of the season so far. The Joan episode while rushed was terrific. Don Draper as mentally sober monogamist is a nice development as well.

Addenda to Girls: It's too bad this'll probably be the only time we get to see Chris Eigeman on the show.

[danschank]

i actually think girls does miss an opportunity re: diversity, and that there are ways you could include someone of color that wouldn't be "tokenism" necessarily... like, i think dunham could mine the comedy/tragedy of an asian girl dealing with skeevy white guys and their fetishes, for example. i guess i'm just happy to have another show on tv where women are capable of hanging out with each other, rather than competing over men or having their identity defined as "the woman" or whatever. i also like that, so far, the show isn't smug in the way that weeds or enlightened is - it doesn't go for broad satire, for the most part.

i actually agree with everything you've said about mad men. less don at this point makes sense. and the pete/lane/roger thing has been a blast, absolutely! i actually wouldn't be upset if they wrote betty off of the show entirely at this point - the writers don't seem to know what to do with her, and she ends up being kind of a de-fault villain as a result too often. plus january jones is probably the weakest link acting wise, and her new husband is kind of dull.

[danschank]

also, in total agreement regarding the nonstop array of douches on girls... i was kinda bummed to see the yo la tengo looking dude from tiny furniture show up halfway through the pilot. he better not move in with her!

[bob_le_flambeur]

i also thought the ways in which the guys were depicted as being douchey was one of the best things about girls.

i also liked the second ep way better than the first!

[danschank]

still waiting to watch the second episode... i was holding off to comment until then, but i wanted to share this awesome essay that says all the good critical stuff without bullying a show that just started for not living up to expectations that no other show ever lives up to:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/29/arts/television/hbos-girls-is-hardly-the-only-example-of-monochromatic-tv.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

[bob_le_flambeur]

i agree with the sentiment of giving the show a fair shot at being what it is before making it about what we want it to be. and i love the calling out of chevy chase's dumb character on community who i wish would disappear forever. but i'm also a bit iffy on the tone of that piece:

"So maybe, in a second season, “Girls” will reach beyond its white walls, though if it’s done only to temper criticism and not in a way that’s true to Ms. Dunham’s personal experiences - the gasoline of the show - it may fall flat. What’s a worse fate: clumsy token diversity or honest whiteness?"

i kinda strongly disagree that anyone of dunham's obvious brains and self-consciousness about living "right here, right now" in a country that's 4 years into electing its first black president should consider the handling and depiction of race some sort of creative afterthought. whenever i hear the argument about "staying true to one's personal vision", i can't help but think "unless your vision is in dire need to be broadened, in which case by all means please do that!"

but i'm actually kinda pretty happy this is happening. i really liked the jezebel article that article linked to, for example. it's the kind of conversation that should be going on more often.

ps, for something really fucking awkward, here's a trailer for a recent, well-received (79% on rottentomatoes, woooo...what?) movie that uses the word "exotic" like it's 1862:

[danschank]

i think i interpreted the quote you pulled a bit differently. what i thought the author was trying to say was that it's up to her to not treat this issue like a creative afterthought. i hope she's up to the task.

the way i see it, there are two big issues: one is a simple problem of representation - the further you get from the straight white male standard, the harder it is for people outside that box to literally appear on tv at all. so simply having a character of color along for the ride (by which i mean physically appearing on tv) would actually have some significance, i think. the second is the bigger problem - how do you incorporate the experiences of different communities into the recipes for tv shows? by concentrating on four women who are actual friends with each other in a way that doesn't fall back on some male love interest, and who talk about things other than shoes, i think girls is doing a decent job so far, save maybe the shoshanna character. it's doing it from a place of privilege, and according to fairly predictable standards of coolness/normalness (young, brooklyn, etc.), but it's doing it better than a lot of other bullshit, and from a female perspective that's still unfortunately a rarity. if dunham added a non-white woman (or two, or three) to the mix, she would have to measure up to the challenge of rendering the character(s) well, which might mean getting out of the pseudo-autobiographical comfort zone the show seems to be located in. i actually think this IS hard to do. like, if i were writing a tv show, i would probably be pretty uncomfortable writing in the voice of someone of a different race/gender/sexuality/class myself, actually.

[discotarantula]

Would you mind talking about Young Adult? I'm not sure what to think of the movie other than being kind of impressed by Theron's performance.