The TV Report

Just a quick recap on the shows I'm currently watching.

Top Chef

The only reality show I consistently watch. It's still good although this season has been very unforgettable, the contestants not really standing out in either their personalities or their cooking. Still, I love the Bravo format, and I love the judges. (Will Gail Simmons still be on Top Chef now that she's getting her own Top Chef: Desserts spin off?)

Inspector Lewis

Good old-fashioned gruesome whodunnits. I'm not even sick of the beautiful shots of Oxford. And Hathaway (Laurence Fox) is the best second banana on television, and a perfect counter-balance to the literal-minded Lewis.

Dexter, Season 4

I'm watching this on Netflix. What I love about this show is how Dexter is constantly growing, even though he is a sociopath and a serial killer. He reminds me of Data on Star Trek: Next Generation. They are both fascinated by humans, and long to find a way to fit in. This year seems to be about Dexter trying to find a way to have a normal family life while continuing to satisfy his urge to kill. By the way, Jennifer Carpenter (who plays Dexter's sister on the show) gets better and better every season.

True Blood

Another season or gory, trashy fun. Some of the sub-plots are more interesting than others, but the main storyline (Russell Edgington as a would-be Vampire dictator) is truly great. Is it too much to ask that HBO produce a prequel series starring Eric Northman (Alexander Skarsgard) in his years as a Nazi impostor tracking down SS werewolves?

Louie

As this show gets more unpredictable week by week it just gets better and better. Envelope-pushing, bleak, and sporadically very funny. The poker buddies talking about the origin of the word "faggot." Louie's date with the woman whose chemistry told her that he was a loser. The kiss with the southern sheriff. Here's my problem with the show: I just don't love Louie's stand-up bits, and it's a big part of the show. Maybe, if the show continues, it will be like Seinfeld and they'll be dropped.

Mad Men

No excuses, but this is the first season of Mad Men that I've watched. A big mistake. (Yes, Charlene, you told me so. You too, Kevin). Last week's episode (almost a two-person play with Don and Peggy) is some of the best television I've ever seen (and I've seen a lot of television).

This is the golden age of television. All of these shows are so much better than their counterparts in film.

Red Riding: In the Year of Our Lord 1974

A disappointment. I'd heard good things about this trilogy of films from England and finally caught the first part, 1974. Each of the films explores, through a different main character, facets of a series of child killings in Yorkshire, England. I had a lot of problems with the first installment. It felt purposefully confusing, as though the director (Julian Jarrold, director of the terrible, recent Brideshead Revisited remake) wanted to make sure he wasn't directing a straight-up serial killer whodunnit, that what he was doing was artier and more ambiguous. It just felt like a mess to me: overly arty cinematography, character motivation that made no sense, and ultimately, a movie done in by some of the cliches of its genre. There were good actors in this: Sean Bean, Peter Mullan, Andrew Garfield, Rebecca Hall (in picture), but they couldn't save it. Don't know right now if I plan on catching the other two in this trilogy.

The Black Tower (1975)

A solid mystery set in a good location, a home for young people dying from muscle-related diseases along the coast of England. In general, I like P. D. James but don't love her. She overwrites at times, and her characters tend to blur together. What was good about this book, in particular, was the location but also the number of dead bodies. Like all mystery-readers, I demand more than one corpse in my who-dun-its. This one had five.

(Isn't it funny that the master detectives in great detective novels get credit for solving the crimes even after letting numerous people die? Sure, Dalgleish gets his man (or woman) at the end of this book but not before half the suspects are bumped off.)

Poetry Monday

The End of the Weekend

by Anthony Hecht


A dying firelight slides along the quirt
Of the cast-iron cowboy where he leans
Against my father’s books. The lariat
Whirls into darkness. My girl, in skin-tight jeans,
Fingers a page of Captain Marryat,
Inviting insolent shadows to her shirt.

We rise together to the second floor.
Outside, across the lake, an endless wind
Whips at the headstones of the dead and wails
In the trees for all who have and have not sinned.
She rubs against me and I feel her nails.
Although we are alone, I lock the door.

The eventual shapes of all our formless prayers,
This dark, this cabin of loose imaginings,
Wind, lake, lip, everything awaits
The slow unloosening of her underthings.
And then the noise. Something is dropped. It grates
Against the attic beams. I climb the stairs

Armed with a belt. A long magnesium strip
Of moonlight from the dormer cuts a path
Among the shattered skeletons of mice.
A great black presence bears its wings in wrath.
Above the boneyard burn its golden eyes.
Some small grey fur is pulsing in its grip.

Film Frames Friday

The American (2010)

For the air conditioning alone, last night was my second night at The Somerville Theatre, in practically the same seat, seeing such a radically different film than Scott Pilgrim, the film I watched the night before. The American is almost a relic, both European in its style and very, very 1970s in feel. It moves slow, has very little dialogue, very little action (for a film about hitmen), and there is nothing winking or snarky or ironic about it. I liked it a lot, and even as I was enjoying it, I was somehow aware that this was a film I'll have to defend. It's got some hackneyed moments (especially any of the scenes involving the priest), it had symbolism and aspirations toward existentialism. There is also a central relationship between the American of the title (played well, as always, by George Clooney) and an Italian prostitute, the almost painfully gorgeous (and frequently naked) Violante Placido, that was somewhat unrealistic, but this was a film in which its sum is so much greater than its parts. It's a riveting, adult thriller in which mood is just as important, or more, than plot.

One more thing: this is an escapist film, one that is not aiming toward naturalism or realism, and part of that escape is its visual beauty, not just the aforementioned Violante (how has that name never been used in a Bond film?) but the beautiful Clooney himself, his cashmere sweaters, and the northern towns of Italy the movie is made in.

Fun fact: Violante Placido is the daughter of Simonetta Stefanelli, the Italian actress who played Michael Corleone's short-lived Sicilian bride in The Godfather. Pictures below.

Juno and the Paycock (1930)

Hitchcock's first "talkie" straight to finish, meaning he started it as a talkie and finished it as a talkie, unlike his previous film Blackmail. For that one he was told to convert it from silent to talkie halfway through. So not only is Juno and the Paycock a sound motion picture but it's almost all dialogue. Essentially, it's a filmed stage production of a very talky play by Sean O'Casey. Not only that but it was low-budget and the sound production is pretty substandard. Add to that some very thick Irish accents employed by the stage actors who were hired for this and this is a film that is close to incomprehensible to a contemporary film-goer.

All that said, while this is a film only for the most devoted completist, it's really not a bad movie at all. In fact, it's well put-together, and while the acting is definitely stage acting, it's done well, and Sara Allgood (in the picture), who plays the Juno of the title, is heartbreaking at the end as a mother who loses almost everything.