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Reviews
Boomtown: The Freak (2002)
I can see clearly now.
I'm with Matt...because the stunts Fearless performs in the fourth act really do tax credulity a time or two, but Michelle Ashford opened his character to view for the first time so powerfully that from this episode onward, he's not just a very competent cop with great stories, he's a mensch. I can't say enough good things about this show, however there is a computer-generated necessity to pad my comment with a few more lines of text in order to accomplish the very thing I was hoping to avoid; running off at the mouth...again. Still too short?!
So while I'm at it, I might as well mention that in Episode 3, The Squeeze, the blood seen pouring from the bullet-holed cooler is inconsistent with the subsequent reveal when the cooler is opened showing no blood, whatsoever. I prefer to blame networks for mindless notes concerning bloodlessness in television, that Freaktown and Fearless were the sole surviving members of F-Troop (a corps within a squad), and that Fearless captured the distant sniper in deleted footage by going on and on about a .22 slug lodged near a vital organ in his butt since childhood. And now back to our regularly scheduled comment.
If you liked this episode of BOOMTOWN, you gotta check out RAINES.
Deadwood (2004)
The Golden Rule; Government 101
David Milch wrote DEADWOOD like nobody else writes anything: Dictated, open-source and interactive; just-in-time inventory created nearly on-the-spot so actors and crew could barely get it executed. Nearly everyone who can read has been subjected to lessons in civics and history in which glowing images of founding fathers and inspired visionaries brought forth upon this continent a new nation...
I think DEADWOOD is an antidote for all manner of propaganda, because it was pointedly intended to illustrate the evolution of orderly society from anarchy. It might have been set 2000 years ago at the conclusion of Republican Rome, but HBO already had something similar scheduled. So Milch turned to a more contemporary point in time in which thousands of imaginations snapped toward The Black Hills, impassioned by an American Dream of personal wealth (The Golden Rule) and beat an amoral path to get (and keep) theirs' first, in yet another time of violent transition. Custer died the day the telephone was first publicly demonstrated. Odd.
Ironically, the rule of gold and the search for color drew damaged, self-serving anarchists together in a bizarre perversion of selfishness that came to strongly resemble civic pride and benevolent altruism. At least, that's what DEADWOOD presents to me in the form of a truly fascinating entertainment that also unmakes the familiar, laconic Hollywood Western hero, who was the self-censored product of 30s Hollywood moguls' anticipatory auto-antisemitism.
About a year ago, David Milch presented many of his DEADWOOD intentions to an audience at M.I.T., in the form of a riveting interview. More clearly than in two seasons of DVD commentaries, he justifies his use of profanity in the series, explains his resistance to modern settings, and places the responsibility for understanding the DEADWOOD phenomenon on the audience, because the networks can't be bothered to re-educate anybody. In This class, there will be no yawning.
Please check it out. Just drop "Milch MIT" into a search engine, and you'll be streaming the 83minute free interview in no time.
Raines (2007)
Jeff was the draw, but Graham sealed the deal. Mykelti for two?
In episode six of season one of BOOMTOWN, Detective Bobby Smith engages in conversation with his long-dead and long-lost friend in that 2002-3 milestone series that introduced me to incredibly long oners, powerful dialogue, and brilliant actors who portrayed singular events from multiple points of view. Whether Detective Smith's cameo in the RAINES pilot indicates that Graham Yost is planning to blow me away again is moot, but the quality of his work presented in BAND OF BROTHERS and FROM THE EARTH TO THE MOON leaves me very little room for doubt. I'm not much for who-done-it mysteries, and detective procedurals are my cure for insomnia, but I've already bought myself a RAINES season pass at iTunes, because there's just so much more juicy, layered information in the pilot than a single visit allowed me to explore. Mykelti Williamson was uncredited in the pilot, so I've got to wonder whether other spectres will rise from the flawed scraps and fragments of humanity that still make BOOMTOWN spectacularly insightful.
Of all the great cities of the world, spawned by her great rivers, perhaps only L.A. hugs the banks of an open sewer. He's back, and I'm more than ready for the instants of insane camera angle, the unexpected beauty wrung from a place where there's no There, and the onionlike complexity of real personalities opening in the mind of a writer/detective who tells vivid tales of emotional explosions like nobody else. At the center of every episode outline, under the wonderful throwaway lines and ThinMan banter, are the severely mutilated hearts and damaged lives of real people, especially the protagonist.
Michael Raines paints dead victims three-dimensionally, from the bare canvas outward, sifting through layers of hearsay contradiction to reveal a final likeness. Simultaneously, he identifies the killer by initially suspecting everybody, then whittling away impossible suspects; all of whom are merely "ordinary people". It's a process easily confused with making art. I can't spot the difference, although if this were a democracy, I'd vote for more Matt Craven.
The south forty is a ranch, "the back forty at Crawford" is too many golf courses.
Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip (2006)
Characters with character in a show about vision
Each of the personalities introduced since the beginning of the pilot episode drop tantalizing hints that they just might be interesting people. Even the diabolical, psychic clock that always knows how to count backward from 7 has a pivotal role to play in the creation FROM SCRATCH of a weekly television show about the creation of a live, weekly television show. I believe that Studio 60 is long-form television dedicated to the gradual revelation of astonishingly admirable qualities in flawed people who are just like you and me. In the eleven episodes I've seen thus far, thrilling moments of revelation have unlocked some integral mystery (or other) of the ensemble cast that informs and enriches my appreciation of the whole. That's part of the reason that a single pass through the series isn't sufficient. The wealth of pop culture references, legacy references to general knowledge and television history, and to the internal history of relationships within the context of the show make multiple viewings advantageous and immensely rewarding. Sparkling banter, killer comebacks and wonderful camera operation in beautifully lighted and decorated sets don't get old, either. The kicker is that sprinkled liberally among the visual and audible pleasures are chewy nuggets of really delicious junk to think about, like: Focus groups and authentic audiences are not the same thing, Networks and studios seem to attract politically liberal thinkers, no three of whom agree about anything, but these same organizations are run by powerful, conservative fiscal and political forces who are (for the first time in my experience) SHOWN to be openly antagonistic with one another and to the front line protagonists (who are too dedicated or obsessed to have real lives), yet cooperative, multi-faceted and responsible.
I like this television show a lot! Because of it, I've introduced myself to THE WEST WING and SPORTS NIGHT, finding that they all teach (not preach) several sides of contemporary concerns, they're all remarkably fascinating television, and they all open uniquely insightful pathways in the revelation of character in virtual characters who grip me more and more as the episodes unfold. See Eli Wallach in the writers' room describing the members of his writers' room as though you and I belonged there; fifty years later, possibly the same room in the photograph. I think Edward R. Murrow would love this show.
Serenity (2005)
A stunning introduction
My expectations of Serenity were very low because Outland thoroughly quashed my curiosity about spittoons in space a few decades ago. The loaner DVD was offered with Doom and Dune, so I figured to waste a few hours on mindless, predictable violence as a warm-up for The Classic...and never even got to Dune. Eight hours after starting the Serenity DVD, I tore myself away from the fourth presentation of the film just long enough to go to my nearest video store where I bought the complete season of Firefly. I've been studying this body of work every day for the past six weeks. Somehow it never gets old. Rather it applies pulmonary stimulators and cardiac infusers to my cortical electrodes with copious quantities of intelligent humor and insightful suggestiveness that work on every level to entertain and delight. I truly hope this universe is a work in progress, leading to further adventures of the crew of Serenity, but the film and the series have led me to explore source material while I'm waiting. Reviewing Buffy and Angel episodes has helped to flesh out some of the mysteries foreshadowed in the 'verse, but generous references lavished in text and commentaries have led me to Macbeth, Have Gun - Will Travel, and even to Dick Cavett monologues. Serenity is a powerful addiction that offers tremendous value to absolutely everyone.
The Man Who Wasn't There (2001)
Zen Coen
Ed Crane is Everyman. It's tempting to project celebrities of the era on Billy Bob Thornton's appearance and portrait of a nondescript barber who repeatedly, abjectly re-introduces himself to friends, family and acquaintances throughout the film. It's tempting because he really does resemble Bogart, Cooper, Clift, Dean and Ozzie Nelson (my money's on Edward R. Murrow), but he's different. Ed Crane moves through this film like an emotional damping field composed of understated agendas and ironic, situational wit. He acts as a catalyst that sets events in motion that remove the many convincing masks worn by hard-nosed yet optimistic post-war people surrounding him, and ultimately becomes the recipient of all the disastrous effects he initiated. French film freaks in the 70s coined the term "film noir" to conveniently categorize a number of movies made earlier and far away at a time when "communist" was an accusation applied with similarly reckless abandon by recognized authorities. This film tells a far simpler tale of the differences between appearance and truth, and it does so with the appetite of people who love film-making for exquisite visual presentation, superb taste for dialog and narrative, and a treasury of cinematic wisdom and taste intended to delight an audience that also loves film. It works as a radio-drama. It cooks with the sound off. It stands up like Casablanca to repeated viewings, and never grows tiresome. The only thing I'd like to revise is the confrontation between Ann Nirdlinger-Brewster(-Coen) and Ed Crane at his doorstep. I wish that Katherine Borowitz' pregnancy had been made evident as she walks away with a butterfly net over her head, Alfred Hitchcock's profile revealed in the darkness of night, and the suggestion that Big Ed hadn't touched her since the UFO incident outside Eugene hanging like the shadow of a sequel, uncertain in the Santa Rosa stillness. If you mess up during the aggitato and nobody notices, was a mistake made? Freddy Riedenschneider's pimposity is a breathtaking exploration of untruth.
Boomtown (2002)
Boomtown, Freaktown, L.A. Flawed
I missed the broadcast, serialized weekly television presentation and picked up Season 1 at the suggestion of a friend. I think the program was intended to present a city's infrastructure powered by imperfect people employed in occupations that make impossible demands upon their personal lives. I think we were given a unique cops & lawyers show as a wonderful compromise between what was intended and that which network would allow. Unlike Paris, London and Vienna, Los Angeles, though similarly sired by a great river, now has "a concrete drainage ditch" where that great river once was. Likewise, the multiplicity of central characters are revealed in the course of Season 1 to be significantly different from the persons they appeared to be at the beginning of the series. Their imperfections and the enormous burdens borne by each open slowly through the course of eighteen episodes into a fragrant blossom of great power that smells of intense humanity and the brilliant collaboration of writers, directors and more conventionally "technical" artists of every description. I return to Boomtown frequently, simply because its significantly better than broadcast, serialized, weekly television presentations, and it probably always will be.
The Final Cut (2004)
Heisenberg's Diet of Worms
Round, concise and symmetrical is precisely what this film is not. Although I resented (initially) the abruptness with which Naim opens and discards fascinating cans of worms, that device has grown increasingly attractive in the course of 5 viewings in the past 18 hours. Alan Hakman is the foil that permits Naim to raise our eyebrows at a multitude of possibilities explicit and latent in the film. These issues are addressed with humility and terror, and not one of them is resolved at the conclusion/continuum of the narrative. Instead, the filmmaker relentlessly expands the venue of implications presented by an undetectable surveillance device implanted in the brain of an unidentified infant (5% of the population) and with equal relentlessness funnels the viewer's attention into the non-life of an editor who is consumed by his career cutting other peoples lives into glamorized, whitewashed eulogies that flatter the dead subject and appease those who survive the deceased. The Cutter's Code is every bit as ingenious as Azimov's Three Laws, and this film is asymmetrical, unwieldy and awkward as real life. I think it's that way purposefully and brilliantly reductive as a magnifying lens that concentrates our attention on real issues that won't be resolved soon. It's not your father's blockbuster, but then, tomorrow is not your father's responsibility to discuss, wrangle over and fix. I suspect that Citizen Kane will prove to be no more influential a first film than The Final Cut, for many of the same reasons; treating power, responsibility and consequences. The very language of film is spoken in this feature in disturbing new ways.
Out of Africa (1985)
Contemporary mythos
I loved this film, initially, for the score. I bought the DVD for the film's very interesting relationship with Truth. Although the central (and many peripheral) characters actually lived and related to one another in an around Nairobi at the time presented in the film, a great many liberties were necessarily taken to fabricate a reasonably cohesive narrative. At best, the story that resulted attains mythic proportions, but at the very least it's a parable concerning ownership. Karin owns things that come to Africa with her. She fully intends to exert her will upon the place. In the course of her eighteen year residency, Africa changes her profoundly. Whether she has impacted Africa is entirely unclear, but the water that lives in Mombasa returns to Mombasa, and ultimately, Karin goes out of Africa, sadder, wiser and very different from the neurotic adventuress who arrived two decades earlier. Interestingly, the white, central characters ALL are re-invented by Africa. It's not difficult to see them all as representatives of European colonialism, nor is it difficult to see Africa as the first cradle of humanity, or as Eden, from which European colonialism has finally been expelled, like Adam and Eve. The towering problem Pollock faced in making this film was the absence of a storyline that would unite the detailed episodes and anecdotes penned by the consummate storyteller at the heart of the story. He relied upon several biographers and at least one of the pre-existing screenplays to bring to the screen a love story of epic proportions about the decline and fall of an epoch. The film is about many things, but its pace and its sensibilities derive from a time that is barely comprehensible to contemporary filmgoers. The controversy regarding the quality of the film, in my mind, makes it a kind of benchmark. People who don't like it, I don't want to know. There are a great many insights provided by the filmmaker's commentary on the DVD. Redford's excellent British accent was deemed unnecessary and counterintuitive to his cinematic charisma. All the exteriors were shot under canvas beneath ferocious equatorial natural light, yet the ubiquitously backlighted figures are photographed with seamless brilliance. Almost all interiors are lighted from outside the "practical" sets, imparting a lustrous aura to every figure that epitomizes a reverence for the material, the performers and the art of cinema. In dozens of other ways, this film has re-invented the process of making films. Fast film for daylighted exteriors (heavy emusions to soften and diffuse glare, ISO 100 stock for darker interiors. It's profoundly and fundamentally revolutionary, revisionist and eminently worthy of study on every level.
The Duellists (1977)
Visionary as camera operator
I now own the DVD because I've loved this film since it's theatrical release. It essentialized for me the fundamental conflict between a civilized individual and his implacable adversary in the mechanism of social injustice; the insane ghost in the machine. No expert with regard to period, I accept on hearsay the reported authenticity of dress and set decoration. I accept the magnetism of this project that drew luminaries of the British stage into its sway for exquisite cameo appearances; jewels in a largely unseen crown of cinematic achievement.
The overriding priority, the absolute necessity for me to own this classic film is the simple fact that the visionary who conceived it, storyboarded it, pitched, researched and conjured it into existence, also shot almost every frame as its camera operator. Add to these considerations the amazing commentary provided by the filmmaker throughout its length, and even if the film were not a masterpiece, bristling with references to the brilliant efforts of dozens of skilled collaborators, it would still stand as an inspiring how-to document of the art of cinema, forged from a unique union of will, resourcefulness and a staggering immensity of vision.
When the opportunity to view an exceptionally beautiful, intelligent and powerful motion picture is joined to a detailed, realtime deconstruction of it's creator's intention articulated by the filmmaker himself, who among us can refuse?