Entertainment roundup
Thoughts on various TV shows (mild spoilers here, if you haven't seen the shows already, well, get off your ass and do it).
- Recently finished watching Babylon 5 on DVD. Season 5 was not as bad as my recollection of it. Considering the circumstances of suddenly having to produce another season when they thought everything had to be wrapped up at the end of 4, they did a pretty good job. Still, it wasn't as good as 2-3-4. It's hard to make politics/diplomacy/statesmanship as interesting as the Shadow War and its mythology. Wish JMS had learned more about the effective uses of subtlety. I forget where I heard this, but there's something about letting the audience get too far ahead of you. It's one thing to enjoy the irony/pathos/whatever when the audience knows something that will happen and the characters don't, and quite another when a conversation is clearly going to go somewhere and then takes its damn sweet time doing so. Prime example: S5, when Lochley tells Garibaldi that she *does* understand what she's going through because she is a recovered alcoholic, it took her way too long to get there. Also Passing Through Gethsemane, the episode where Brad "Chucky" Dourif plays the mind-wiped ex-serial killer, it felt really clumsy/awkward when he repeated (while bleeding out his mouth) at the end "I knew what was going to happen and I waited for it anyway" or whatever. In a similar mental space I also hated hated hated when Sebastian said "known only... as JACK!" Yes, the clever people in the audience figured it out 60 seconds ago, beating us over the head with it was kind of disappointing. Overall, however, the show was a tremendous accomplishment, and I'm glad I watched it again.
- I'm now onto watching TNG straight through. I said that B5 Season 1 really sucked -- I'd forgotten just how bad TNG season 1 was. I hope it hits its stride in S2, because I've really forgotten. I suppose this is a common problem with TV shows though, as writers, directors, and actors all figure out what's going on with the characters.
- Kinda sad Monk is in its last season, but kinda glad. It was the right time to end it. Hope the Trudy thing gets resolved and/or Monk finds some closure and/or at least gets to move on.
- I'm really really really geeked out about the upcoming season of House. As others have noted, they really did a brilliant thing when they quasi-fired the original assistants and hired new ones. It kept things fresh. The Amber-haunting-House-as-his-subconscious thing was pure genius. I recently watched these eps again as FOX is rerunning them as a lead-up to the season premiere, and wow. The writing on this show is fucking fantastic. Maybe not the medical stuff, but who cares -- this show is about the characters and their interactions. And so much of it is so gut-wrenchingly tragic, it's just really gripping. I even, on second viewing, liked the two-episode fantasy arc where House thinks Cuddy helped him detox (whereas on initial viewing I let out a primal "NOOOO!" scream when it was revealed to be a dream). I can't wait for House-in-a-psych-ward.
- Saw Inglourious Basterds with S. over the weekend. Of Tarantino's films I think I've only seen Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, and now this; don't remember RD, loved PF, and totally love IB. I suspect those who speak or have an ear for French or German will get more out of this -- subtitles work ok (I loved Iron Chef with subtitles; hated it with dubbing; even though I don't speak a word of Japanese) but there's a lot that's hilarious if you know one or more of the languages. If Christoph Waltz doesn't get an Oscar it will be highway robbery. In the opening scene, where they start out speaking French, and Landa says something like "We've exhausted the extent of my French and I have no desire to butcher your tongue further, so do you mind if we switch to English?" we all laugh because we know it's partially a device for the audience to listen to the next part in English, but it's extra amusing because his French has been utterly flawless (or sounded nearly so to me, anyway, but actual native Francophones might disagree, I suppose). I don't speak Italian (beyond a few touristy phrases), but the parts where Brad Pitt's character is attempting to pass himself off in heavily accented Italian (they're banking on Germans not having an ear for Italian) and Waltz switches effortlessly into a stream of again perfect-sounding-Italian were riotous.
I did find some of the violence gratuitous. Yes, yes, I know, it's a Tarantino movie, but I mean, even for him. I suppose there's the ear in RD and any number of things in PF but in particular, there seemed to be more baseball bat than necessary, the scene where someone's face gets shot until it's almost unrecognizable seemed more than necessary, and the scene at the very end seemed like it could have been just as effective if he'd cut away (so to speak) before it all went down.
I also found myself feeling somewhat awkward/uncomfortable about the almost gleeful amorality of the Basterds, and also whether it was appropriate to be making fun of some of these things in an alternate universe where certain things happen differently than they did in reality. Not that I think "too soon" for WWII, nor do I have any illusions about what people have to do to survive or win wars, but even as I laughed at a lot of the funny bits, I felt a bit uneasy doing so. It got me thinking, anyway, which is never a bad thing for art/entertainment. Of course, I found all of this hard to explain to S. and did about as bad a job with him as I'm doing here, but I said something like "Imagine if they made a half action movie half comedy set in a background of the events of 9/11" and he said "Well, they'd *never* do that!" but I wonder if WWII vets thought the same thing.
- Recently finished watching Babylon 5 on DVD. Season 5 was not as bad as my recollection of it. Considering the circumstances of suddenly having to produce another season when they thought everything had to be wrapped up at the end of 4, they did a pretty good job. Still, it wasn't as good as 2-3-4. It's hard to make politics/diplomacy/statesmanship as interesting as the Shadow War and its mythology. Wish JMS had learned more about the effective uses of subtlety. I forget where I heard this, but there's something about letting the audience get too far ahead of you. It's one thing to enjoy the irony/pathos/whatever when the audience knows something that will happen and the characters don't, and quite another when a conversation is clearly going to go somewhere and then takes its damn sweet time doing so. Prime example: S5, when Lochley tells Garibaldi that she *does* understand what she's going through because she is a recovered alcoholic, it took her way too long to get there. Also Passing Through Gethsemane, the episode where Brad "Chucky" Dourif plays the mind-wiped ex-serial killer, it felt really clumsy/awkward when he repeated (while bleeding out his mouth) at the end "I knew what was going to happen and I waited for it anyway" or whatever. In a similar mental space I also hated hated hated when Sebastian said "known only... as JACK!" Yes, the clever people in the audience figured it out 60 seconds ago, beating us over the head with it was kind of disappointing. Overall, however, the show was a tremendous accomplishment, and I'm glad I watched it again.
- I'm now onto watching TNG straight through. I said that B5 Season 1 really sucked -- I'd forgotten just how bad TNG season 1 was. I hope it hits its stride in S2, because I've really forgotten. I suppose this is a common problem with TV shows though, as writers, directors, and actors all figure out what's going on with the characters.
- Kinda sad Monk is in its last season, but kinda glad. It was the right time to end it. Hope the Trudy thing gets resolved and/or Monk finds some closure and/or at least gets to move on.
- I'm really really really geeked out about the upcoming season of House. As others have noted, they really did a brilliant thing when they quasi-fired the original assistants and hired new ones. It kept things fresh. The Amber-haunting-House-as-his-subconscious thing was pure genius. I recently watched these eps again as FOX is rerunning them as a lead-up to the season premiere, and wow. The writing on this show is fucking fantastic. Maybe not the medical stuff, but who cares -- this show is about the characters and their interactions. And so much of it is so gut-wrenchingly tragic, it's just really gripping. I even, on second viewing, liked the two-episode fantasy arc where House thinks Cuddy helped him detox (whereas on initial viewing I let out a primal "NOOOO!" scream when it was revealed to be a dream). I can't wait for House-in-a-psych-ward.
- Saw Inglourious Basterds with S. over the weekend. Of Tarantino's films I think I've only seen Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, and now this; don't remember RD, loved PF, and totally love IB. I suspect those who speak or have an ear for French or German will get more out of this -- subtitles work ok (I loved Iron Chef with subtitles; hated it with dubbing; even though I don't speak a word of Japanese) but there's a lot that's hilarious if you know one or more of the languages. If Christoph Waltz doesn't get an Oscar it will be highway robbery. In the opening scene, where they start out speaking French, and Landa says something like "We've exhausted the extent of my French and I have no desire to butcher your tongue further, so do you mind if we switch to English?" we all laugh because we know it's partially a device for the audience to listen to the next part in English, but it's extra amusing because his French has been utterly flawless (or sounded nearly so to me, anyway, but actual native Francophones might disagree, I suppose). I don't speak Italian (beyond a few touristy phrases), but the parts where Brad Pitt's character is attempting to pass himself off in heavily accented Italian (they're banking on Germans not having an ear for Italian) and Waltz switches effortlessly into a stream of again perfect-sounding-Italian were riotous.
I did find some of the violence gratuitous. Yes, yes, I know, it's a Tarantino movie, but I mean, even for him. I suppose there's the ear in RD and any number of things in PF but in particular, there seemed to be more baseball bat than necessary, the scene where someone's face gets shot until it's almost unrecognizable seemed more than necessary, and the scene at the very end seemed like it could have been just as effective if he'd cut away (so to speak) before it all went down.
I also found myself feeling somewhat awkward/uncomfortable about the almost gleeful amorality of the Basterds, and also whether it was appropriate to be making fun of some of these things in an alternate universe where certain things happen differently than they did in reality. Not that I think "too soon" for WWII, nor do I have any illusions about what people have to do to survive or win wars, but even as I laughed at a lot of the funny bits, I felt a bit uneasy doing so. It got me thinking, anyway, which is never a bad thing for art/entertainment. Of course, I found all of this hard to explain to S. and did about as bad a job with him as I'm doing here, but I said something like "Imagine if they made a half action movie half comedy set in a background of the events of 9/11" and he said "Well, they'd *never* do that!" but I wonder if WWII vets thought the same thing.