It's where I talk to myself. Gaming, politics, and links I don't want to forget about.
The season two premier of Dollhouse got lousy ratings, which it deserved. The problem’s highlighted in the climatic scene, where Eliza Dushku is flipping through identities. You can’t really tell the difference between them. Which kick-ass identity is the meaningful one?
Kind of sad, insofar as Fran Kranz and Amy Acker knocked their scenes out of the park. Whedon just isn’t all that great at casting female leads, I guess.
I woke up this morning thinking about FlashForward. (Jack Davenport, so big awesome potential. Susan notes concern that the show has absorbed all the British character actors, however, which could lead to a shortage over in the UK.) So I wanted to read some discussion on it, and I wound up missing Usenet.
Back in the day you could just go read the television newsgroup or the alt.tv.flashforward newsgroup and you’d get your fix of cranky geeks expressing poorly-formed opinions about new shows. These days, where do I go? I guess TWoP.
Kids, lawns, etc.
I finally coax eMusic into letting me download the bonus tracks from the new Matthew Sweet and Susanna Hoffs. “Marquee Moon” is one of the songs. That’s most of why I wanted them. I play it.
For a moment I’m worried that my headphones are broken, as the guitar is isolated in my left ear. Then the rest of the music comes in to the right, echoing through my skull. Two guitars twine back and forth like snakes kissing. It is abbreviated, terse. Every time the chorus occurs, the notes extend out, bridging across austerity with sudden melody. Tom Verlaine and Richard Lloyd alternate solos… wait.
Matthew Sweet plays all the guitar himself. This is not a reinterpretation. This is a tribute. Richard Lloyd played guitar on his breakout album, Girlfriend. These cover albums of his aren’t just power pop meditations. The Who, Richard Thompson, Neil Young, Television, Eric Clapton: let us pause to honor our guitar heros.
For a few bars, Susanna Hoffs sings harmony. Not much. The final solo fades to nothing. The first verse repeats. Silence.
10 minutes, 50 seconds. The original is 10 minutes, 40 seconds.
I put the original song on. Lightning struck itself.
Rose Madder? Nah, probably not. But spoilers, definitely.
Mad Men is back. As the Anglophile in me decrees, everything’s better with Brits. The office politics are going to be sharper and, probably, meaner. And funnier, since we’ve now got a world of misapprehensions and bad cultural assumptions to play with. Since this is Mad Men, we even get that point thrust home with a Don Draper metatextual commentary.
Not his only one this episode, either. Consider the implications of his London Fog tag line given that he’s just seen Sal with a half-dressed bellboy. “Limit your exposure.” He’s quick, that Don. Whereas Mad Men is pleasantly slow. It took three seasons for Sal to get even a taste of the sexual release most of the cast has already seen; but it worked. A slow build is good. Good for AMC, as well, for not shying away.
Ah, metatext. The new British CFO is named Pryce? Cute; but I’ll forgive it since he’s played by Jared Harris. I didn’t realize until afterwards, but that’s no doubt while I had the little frisson of alarm when I first saw him. Some part of me was expecting him to try and break through into an alternate world, no doubt.
Awesome show remains awesome.
If you aren’t watching it, you might want to catch up. The characterization has improved remarkably, and as of the end of the season the plot is equally enjoyable. We’ve taken a heavy turn into the SF. Also, Brad Anderson is producing and directing a bunch of episodes, and he is one creepy director.
Spoilers follow in the form of transcribed newspaper headlines, cause we couldn’t resist freeze framing.
Even after downloading and playing this I’m still substantially surprised that Richard Thompson found his way onto Rock Band. But it’s awesome!
The fan reaction has also been pretty gratifying. There’s a lot of “it started badly but then I got to the solo, whoa.” It’s weird realizing that this track has the potential to be the top selling Thompson song ever.
My favorite comment on the video: “Is all of that solo really played on a guitar though? Man, I wish mine sounded like that. ;P”
That was a very loyal adaptation of the comic book, which did not improve on or shed new light on the source material. So hm.
Ack, I never wrote about The Wrestler. Well, there’s not that much new to say, really. It’s fundamentally a simple tearjerker, which is where Darren Aronofsky does a lot of his best work. Like Pi and Requiem for a Dream, he’s telling a story about outsiders. I think that’s his niche as well: people who can’t relate or participate in what we might cynically call the world of the squares. Or marks.
Mickey Rourke is really good. It doesn’t hurt that he’s reiterating his own story of burn out and stupidity, of course; still, he’s really good. I’ve seen a fair number of the movies he’s made in the last five or six years. He’s not just acting the same part repeatedly. He gets the pain and suffering and — eh, call it what it is; Randy “the Ram” Robinson is not smart. I tend to think that’s a commentary on twenty years of concussions, but regardless, Rourke’s playing a dense caring guy with a lot of skill.
This sadly overshadowed Marisa Tomei, who was also really excellent. Pained, cynical, allows her caution to get in the way of happiness — I’ve seen a few reviews which talk about how the two characters are the same story, failure and redemption. But that’s not it. It’s contrast. Rourke is the guy who refuses to be cynical and suffers the consequences. Tomei is the woman who accepts cynicism as a lifestyle and suffers the consequences. Hey, it’s Aronofsky. He is not prone to happy endings.
Now, Mick Foley covered the wrestling realism better than I ever could, but just in case, go ahead and read that last link. The weird beard guy who rips the living shit out of Rourke in the second wrestling scene? That’s Necro Butcher, a staple on the East Coast indie wrestling scene, and that’s what happens. All the wrestling was filmed at actual Northeast promotions. As far as I know, that’s pretty much exactly how it goes down behind the scenes.
Which, yeah. After Benoit, it’s hard to watch wrestling. This was hard for the same reasons. It’s a tearjerker, and I cried, but it’s not melodramatic. It’s too grounded in reality to be melodrama.
Looking back, I never did talk about Fringe outside of some RPG wanking. That was because I wasn’t that enchanted with the show. John Noble is a superior being, and his Walter Bishop is a great TV character, but I found Anna Torv to be fairly dull and uninteresting. Her FBI agent was bland and played the victim a bit too much for my tastes.
As of the 11th episode, “Bound,” things changed. Agent Dunham… let’s say she revealed her inner badass rather than claiming her characterization changed, because I haven’t gone back and watched the early episodes to see if I missed something. She is now really interesting, because we’re seeing this vast well of anger inside her, which she mostly has to keep repressed. But man, it comes out sometimes. She is ruthless without being apologetic and without making a big deal of it.
This means I want to see what she does next. It also heightens the importance of the problems she’s facing. Boring characters can’t support epic threats, in the same way that bland villains can’t support epic heroes. So this is all very good.
Meanwhile, John Noble is still awesome, and the plot has taken a giant hiccup forward with “Ability,” the most recent episode. Odd as this may seem for a J. J. Abrams show, we have been provided with a basket of answers. And more questions, because it’s still Abrams, but the outline of the season makes sense.
Oh yeah. And there was a Jonathan Carroll reference in the last episode.
So: if you had been dissing Fringe, it might be worth another look. I’m not saying great, because not great, but way better than it started.
Check off American Gangster on the Oscars list. I don’t think I’ll bother to do a whole review. It was okay, very competent, not great. Ruby Dee got an Oscar nomination for like five minutes of acting, which was probably not deserved.