Charlotte Rampling on Dexter

The producers of Dexter scored a major coup in getting Charlotte Rampling for their final season. She plays Vogel, a psychiatrist who was partially responsible for creating Dexter in his formative years. She's like a combination Doctor Frankenstein/mother figure with lots of dark secrets. Needless to say, she's excellent. The always stunning, stylish and gorgeous Rampling has had such a terrific career playing cold, enigmatic woman. A few pictures below.

Tatiana Maslany in Orphan Black

The BBC America series Orphan Black is a total blast. It's a science fiction series in which a bunch of young woman discover they are clones of one another, and that they are being hunted and eliminated. None of it would work if the lead actress, Tatiana Maslany, who plays all the clones, weren't pretty remarkable. Not only has she developed total physical personalities for each iteration, she is often doing scenes with herself, and sometimes she plays clones pretending to be other clones. There is never a moment when I don't believe in her.

The Americans

There's a nice article in The Atlantic about how restrained (and excellent) The Americans' final episode of the season was. I agree. Even though there are plot twists and action scenes in this show about Russian agents living as Americans in the Reagan era, the show has always been about character, plus the hard grim realities of espionage.

Still, there was nothing restrained in the absolute stunner of the scene where Granny (the genius actress Margo Martindale) got a little revenge on a CIA operative. A very good end to a very good show that maybe should have had ten episodes instead of thirteen. Oh, and one more thing for people who watch this show: Did it seem that Philip "marrying" Martha (the amazing Alison Wright) was the cruelest thing we'd seen done on this show? And we've seen some pretty cruel things.

It's a motif, Claire ...

In general, I'm not someone who enjoys watching bad movies or bad television for the sake of laughing at it, but I did watch the entire season of The Following, one of the worst TV series I've ever seen. Truth is, it started out okay. It was illogical and cliched, but it was also fast-paced and surprising. There were two or three major twists in the early episodes that I never saw coming. I had moral problems with the show (in one early episode an entire sorority house is slaughtered as a minor subplot), but it was watchable. Then something happened. It got much, much worse, and in some ways much, much better. It became the epic tale of the lamest, most disorganized serial killer cult in history going up against the worst FBI agents in the world, agents so inept that on good, regular days they only lose two or three of their agents, usually in their own offices by people they trust. 

I don't really think I'll watch Season 2 but I'll make a game time decision. Frankly, the finale for this year was very disappointing. I had completely counted on some crazy, out-of-left-field twist. Emma is the true leader. Claire is a cult member. What we got was just standard run-of-the-mill awful. Oh well.

The False Inspector Dew

This 1982 novel shows up on a lot of best-of lists for mysteries, and up until the final page, I was in agreement with that. This is a very funny, twisty murder mystery that never gets boring. And then, in the final moments, there is one more big twist that absolutely does not make sense. At least not to me. I have read other reviews that talk about the very clever ending but none of them explain exactly how it's plausible. The upshot is that last pages don't usually ruin books for me but when it's a mystery then last pages absolutely do matter.

If anyone's read this, and has an opinion, please let me know.

And while I'm here, and while I'm on the subject of endings, I just finished watching Top of the Lake, Jane Campion's detective miniseries on Sundance Channel that stars an absolutely stunning Elisabeth Moss.

It was an interesting series, one in which I found myself struggling through some of the subplots, but hanging in because of Moss's portrayal of a deeply broken police detective looking for a missing pregnant twelve-year-old girl. But for all its meandering, and this series definitely meandered, the last fifteen minutes were absolutely perfect. One of the best thriller endings I've seen, and made all the more shocking by the looping way in which the writers get you there.

Alison Wright on The Americans

There are many amazing performances on FX's The Americans, but the character I most look forward to seeing on a weekly basis is Martha, the secretary who is an unwilling accomplice to the KGB agent played by Matthew Rhys (another terrific performance). Martha has a small role, and she is played by Alison Wright, who has done very little, according to IMDB. I assume she's a theater actress because there is no way she is this good without having a lot of practice. She does a lot of quirky facial expressions, and comic-style acting, but it feels totally natural and lived-in.

FYI, I have not watched this week's episode, and now that I'm writing this, I'm wondering if Martha survived the week. I'm worried because a) she had a big role in last week's episode and b) the episode ended with her ex-boyfriend following her home. I hope she survives. If not, I hope she gets some more work soon.

Istanbul Dance

I don't watch Bunheads. I tried, but the patented Amy Sherman Palladino dialogue rhythms didn't quite work for me. I was actually a fan of about three quarters of the life of The Gilmore Girls. She does write good dialogue, and I don't mind visiting a world where characters reference old movies, and speak in witty, clipped sentences. But sometimes it gets a little much, especially when all her characters sound the same.

So I missed this single-take dance sequence to the excellent They Might Be Giants song. This is what dance on film should look like--thank you Emily Nussbaum for alerting me to its presence.

While I was sick ...

I watched a few movies, and one television series. Here are the highs and the lows:

The Shipping News (2001). A bunch of hooey with some nice scenery.

The Bedroom Window (1987). A well-constructed thriller from the 1980s. Not helped by some less-than-sharp dialogue and by Steve Guttenberg as a poor man's Fred MacMurray.

Separate Lies (2005). A slowly unfolding infidelity drama written and directed by Julian "Downton Abbey" Fellowes. The acting, by Tom Wilkinson and Emily Watson, makes it worth sitting through, but it doesn't add up to much. And Rupert Everett with his plastic surgery just looks creepy to me.

Navajo Joe (1966). Entertaining revenge flick from Sergio Corbucci. An obvious influence for Django Unchained. Burt Reynolds plays the title Indian. He kills a lot of sniveling bad guys. Great music, natch, by Morricone.

Ghost Town (2008). A rewatch, but it confirmed my belief that this is the best romantic comedy of the last ten years, if not longer. Ricky Gervais is funny and soulful in a role that Alec Guiness might have played in an Ealing comedy.

Dexter, Season 5. The worst season, so far, as Dexter goes up against Colin Hanks (no, really) as a religious nutjob-cum-serial killer. Still, I prefer a bad season of Dexter to no season of Dexter. Especially if I'm sick.

Ten Favorite Shows of 2012

10. DOWNTON ABBEY

A soap opera dressed up like a prestigious drama. Not a great season, but it's still first-rate entertainment. Favorite moment: the snowy proposal.

9. COUGARTOWN

The only network sitcom that is must-watch for me. Happy it's coming back on TNT. Favorite moments: penny jars, and gang of one.

8. THE HOUR

Like Downton, a good show with great costumes and production design. Favorite moments: any scene with Anna Chancellor.

7. GAME OF THRONES

For Peter Dinklage alone. And the episode with the siege. This is a show that I think will just keep getting better. Favorite moment: Tyrion Lannister becomes a man of action.

6. GIRLS

The most divisive show of 2012. I loved it because it was funny. And I loved it because it was brave, presenting twenty-something Brooklyn females as narcissistic and human. Favorite moment: Lena Dunham with food in her mouth at the very beginning and the very end.

5. FRESH MEAT

This BBC series might have aired prior to 2012 in the UK, but it debuted this year on Hulu. A group of freshman sharing a house at the University of Manchester, this show veers between vulgar comedy and heartfelt drama. It's up and down but very, very funny. Favorite moment: the whole episode with the dead dad and the dead horse. And anything with the comedically talented Kimberley Nixon.

4. MAD MEN

Sports coats have appeared! Another perfect season. Favorite moment: Joan secures the Jaguar deal and loses a little of her soul.

3. THE WALKING DEAD

This finally becomes the show I always wanted it to be. Favorite moment: The governor and Michonne resolve their differences.

2. LOUIE

One of the most innovative shows ever. Each week is like a mini-movie that can do anything it wants. Favorite moments: Parker Posey on the rooftop, and David Lynch as the late-show exec.

1. HOMELAND

I'm always going to pick the thriller, especially if the thriller is this good. Knife-sharp suspense with unlikeable (sometimes) good guys and likeable (sometimes) bad guys. I'm only reviewing the first season here. No Showtime in this house. Favorite moment: the lie detector scene.

The Hour

If you get BBC America as one of  your cable stations then you have no excuse not to watch The Hour tonight. There are three great reasons to watch in the above photograph, but there are also about a hundred more. It's like a cross between Mad Men and The Newsroom, if The Newsroom were good.

The Ice House

This 1997 BBC adaptation of Minette Walter's novel is very good. It just came out in a new DVD edition, and if you've just seen Skyfall and need some more Craig in your life, this is not a bad watch. Craig plays a detective investigating a recently discovered body that may or may not be the victim of a ten-year-old homicide. The case revolves around three women living together in a secluded country house, all three subject to vicious local gossip.

The subtext of the story is really misogyny, and how it has affected the three women. Craig's detective seems like just another one of the lads, an angry, alcoholic louse looking for revenge on the wife who has cheated on him, but he grows and alters through the three-hour series. His romance with one of the three women (Kitty Aldridge) is both sexy and romantic. It's no surprise that he is excellent, a future movie star, but I still would never have pegged him as a future Bond.

Well worth checking out, even though it's slightly clunky at times, and somehow seems dated even though it was made in 1997. Is that possible yet?

Poetry Monday

Four new episodes of Lewis began on Masterpiece Mystery last night (Thank you, television), but there was a special treat last week, a one-off mystery called Endeavor, set in 1965, in which a young Inspector Morse (a very good Shaun Evans) solves his first murder mystery. Evans didn't quite mesh with John Thaw for me, but he was an excellent character in his own right, and the writing and direction were first rate.

There was a real literary bent to the episode, especially since primary clues were buried in crossword puzzle solutions and first editions of poetry texts, including John Betjeman, but I was still surprised to spot a completely out-of-the-blue reference to Philip Larkin's poem "Mr Bleaney." Morse is being shown his digs and the landlady quotes the first two lines of the poem. I nearly leapt out of my chair.

Here it is in full:

Mr Bleaney

by Philip Larkin

'This was Mr Bleaney's room. He stayed
The whole time he was at the Bodies, till
They moved him.' Flowered curtains, thin and frayed,
Fall to within five inches of the sill,

Whose window shows a strip of building land,
Tussocky, littered. 'Mr Bleaney took
My bit of garden properly in hand.'
Bed, upright chair, sixty-watt bulb, no hook

Behind the door, no room for books or bags -
'I'll take it.' So it happens that I lie
Where Mr Bleaney lay, and stub my fags
On the same saucer-souvenir, and try

Stuffing my ears with cotton-wool, to drown
The jabbering set he egged her on to buy.
I know his habits - what time he came down,
His preference for sauce to gravy, why

He kept on plugging at the four aways -
Likewise their yearly frame: the Frinton folk
Who put him up for summer holidays,
And Christmas at his sister's house in Stoke.

But if he stood and watched the frigid wind
Tousling the clouds, lay on the fusty bed
Telling himself that this was home, and grinned,
And shivered, without shaking off the dread

That how we live measures our own nature,
And at his age having no more to show
Than one hired box should make him pretty sure
He warranted no better, I don't know.

Tiny Furniture

I guess I'm a Lena Dunham fan now. I really like her show on HBO, Girls, which, after just four episodes, seems to get better and better each week, and I really liked this movie, her debut feature, made for a paltry sum using her mother's apartment and her own family in the cast.

Putting aside stuff like Is she the voice of her generation and Who cares about an entitled post-grad who feels bad about herself and Why are there no black people in her shows and movies, the bottom line for me is that she's funny and the funniness seems to come from a real place. A rare thing. And she is very far from mumblecore despite, I think, sometimes being lumped in with it.

Anyway, count me in the Lena Dunham fan club for now. Maybe I'll leave it if she just keeps making the same movies again and again (it's a possibility). Also, are awkward/terrible sex scenes going to be her trademark the way post-coital conversations are Woody Allen's?

Lady Lazarus

Well, since I posted the Shirley Temple song-and-dance routine that gave Mad Men its title last week, it seems only fair that I post the Sylvia Plath poem that provides the title for this week's episode.

The episode was called "Lady Lazarus," after Sylvia Plath's famous poem from 1962. Is it Megan who is rising at the end like a Phoenix, out from under advertising and into the world of acting? No, I think the title is just one more premonition of the death that this season has been leading us towards. Possibly a suicide. Possibly Pete. There is much speculation about this, and much cataloguing of death references. The Daily Beast calls it their Mad Men Death Watch.

Lady Lazarus

I have done it again.
One year in every ten
I manage it--

A sort of walking miracle, my skin
Bright as a Nazi lampshade,
My right foot

A paperweight,
My face a featureless, fine
Jew linen.

Peel off the napkin
O my enemy.
Do I terrify?--

The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth?
The sour breath
Will vanish in a day.

Soon, soon the flesh
The grave cave ate will be
At home on me

And I a smiling woman.
I am only thirty.
And like the cat I have nine times to die.

This is Number Three.
What a trash
To annihilate each decade.

What a million filaments.
The peanut-crunching crowd
Shoves in to see

Them unwrap me hand and foot--
The big strip tease.
Gentlemen, ladies

These are my hands
My knees.
I may be skin and bone,

Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman.
The first time it happened I was ten.
It was an accident.

The second time I meant
To last it out and not come back at all.
I rocked shut

As a seashell.
They had to call and call
And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls.

Dying
Is an art, like everything else.
I do it exceptionally well.

I do it so it feels like hell.
I do it so it feels real.
I guess you could say I've a call.

It's easy enough to do it in a cell.
It's easy enough to do it and stay put.
It's the theatrical

Comeback in broad day
To the same place, the same face, the same brute
Amused shout:

'A miracle!'
That knocks me out.
There is a charge

For the eyeing of my scars, there is a charge
For the hearing of my heart--
It really goes.

And there is a charge, a very large charge
For a word or a touch
Or a bit of blood

Or a piece of my hair or my clothes.
So, so, Herr Doktor.
So, Herr Enemy.

I am your opus,
I am your valuable,
The pure gold baby

That melts to a shriek.
I turn and burn.
Do not think I underestimate your great concern.

Ash, ash--
You poke and stir.
Flesh, bone, there is nothing there--

A cake of soap, 
A wedding ring,
A gold filling.

Herr God, Herr Lucifer
Beware
Beware.

Out of the ash
I rise with my red hair
And I eat men like air.

At the Codfish Ball

Nice title for last night's Mad Men episode, which was filled with brilliant moments, but the shot of Sally, in her grown-up dress, trying her trout at the Cancer Society gala was right up there. A little benign adult moment before she spies her pseudo-French-grandmother and pseudo-date Roger Slattery engaging in some "dirty" behavior.

Anyway, another benefit of the title was that it led me to its source material, and this video of Shirley Temple dancing with Buddy Ebsen. If you haven't seen it, watch it. Shirley Temple was not just a round-faced girl; she had real talent.

A Little Kiss

I have no intention of blogging about Mad Men on a week-to-week basis. There's too much to say about any given episode. But I will say this, having watched last night's premier episode, "A Little Kiss" (that's the English translation of the French song Megan sings for Don at his surprise birthday party): If the speakers on my TV set burned out I would still watch Mad Men for its unbelievable compositions and set designs. What a gorgeous show. Don Draper's new swanky apartment (picked and decorated by Megan) is worthy of a Sirk film at its very best.

I liked Peggy's Bean Ballet idea for Heinz. Maybe if they'd pitched at at Heinz's international headquarters of 1966 they'd have had more luck. That's the actual lobby in the picture below. Click on it for a better look.

Community is coming back

It looked like it might be dead but the best sitcom with horrible ratings is coming back. Even if you don't watch it, this trailer really captures the go-for-broke insanity of the show.

The TV Report

Life's Too Short

Ricky Gervais and Stephan Merchant's new show, a mockumentary about actor Warwick Davis, is by far the weakest show they've done yet, but it's still Gervais and Merchant. Davis is funny, and kind of sad, as an obnoxious, delusional version of himself. Honestly, I don't really get the complaints that this show is somehow offensive. On one hand, of course it's offensive, that's the point. But it doesn't seem to me to be particularly offensive because the butt of the jokes is a dwarf.

Justified

How do you top Margo Martindale as Mags Bennett from last season? You can't. But Neal McDonough as an ultra-suave psychopath sent from Detroit to take over Harlan County's Oxy trade is none too shabby.

Downton Abbey

Yeah, it's over but it was another great season. Loved the happy ending. Loved the soapy theatrics. Maggie Smith as the Dowager Countess just might be the funniest character on television.

The New Girl

There will come a time when this show's balance of rude humor and twee sensibility will tip into something that doesn't work but right now it does work. Max Greenfield as Schmidt is the second funniest character on television.

Revenge

Still good, but ABC insists on constantly putting this show on hiatus. So we get a couple episodes then a couple of weeks off. How is this good for anyone, and when are they going to get rid of sweeps months? A show this addictive needs to be on every week.

Cougar Town

Abed's favorite show is finally back. If you liked Scrubs you'll like this. It's fast paced and zany and if a joke misses the next one is right behind it. Also, and I don't know why this is, and if I should even admit it, but this show makes me feel good. It's like comfort food.

The Walking Dead

Still have problems with this show. Still watching. I will admit the last few episodes have been the best yet: unpredictable, brutal, loaded with consequence. My favorite part was Andrea's verbal take-down of the entitled Laurie.

The TV Report

Case Histories

Fairly shallow, compared to the excellent book series by Kate Atkinson, these Jackson Brodie mysteries on PBS are highly entertaining. The show catches Atkinson's strange mix of humor and bleakness, and Jason Isaacs is pretty smoldery as Brodie.

The Walking Dead

Sorry, but bleh. Here's the thing, though, I'll probably keep watching, just because I like watching zombies chase humans. The zombies aren't the problem; the humans are. Too earnest, too boring, and in the last episode, fairly despicable. Am I the only one who hated Rick and Laurie for the way they treated the veterinarian who was treating their son. Who knew there'd be obnoxious self-entitlement in the zombie apocalypse? Why can't we follow the cool family living in the farmhouse?

Fringe

It's been pre-empted, of course, by The World Series, but I've enjoyed the season so far. I still love the alternate-universe characters, especially Faux-livia. I miss Peter Bishop but it's awesome that Lincoln Lee (Seth Gabel, above) has had more screen time.

Revenge

Pretty fun night-time soap opera. It's clunky at times, mostly when it focuses on the Hampton's rough-and-tumble characters, but it's getting better: lots of revenge and lots of plot twists. What's good about this show so far is that it lets things happen; it moves, although letting a certain character slip into a coma instead of dying was a lame bet-hedge.

Community

Still awesome. The halloween episode was great, only topped by the previous rift-in-the-time-space-continuum episode. Troy and Abed are the best couple on television.

Luther

Plot-wise, this show is ridiculous, trotting out over-the-top (but often compelling) serial killers on a weekly basis, but Idris Elba makes it all watchable. He has more charisma in his walk than most actors have in their entire performances. Not enough Ruth Wilson in this series, however.

Modern Family

It's still funny, even though I think it's losing steam a little. Every week seems to have a good storyline, then a storyline that feels forced. My review is up for Slant Magazine.