A ovie of brutal poverty, great acting, and some edges and surprises: Winter's Bone

"Winter's Bone" likes up to its reputation - a totally captivating movie especially because of the work of its star, Julie(?) Lawrence, young actor who captures the plight of this 17-year-old nearly overwhelmed by the responsibilities of her life - invalid mother, two young sibs, dad on the run, no money, no social or family supports (at least so it seems). The plot's a little hard to unravel at times, made even more so by the heavy accents of the characters and their tendency to underplay the parts and even to drawl. But the tension throughout is palpable, and the director, whose name I don't recall, does a great job creating a whole world - you've never seen true Ozark poverty portrayed so effectively in a feature movie, I guarantee. Every scene, every moment, seems wracked with cold and the anguish of rural poverty: the crappy little houses, the old cars, the ugly landscape, the old tires and broken-down toys littering the yards, the crummy T-shirts and tattered jackets everyone wears, most of all the people, many of them grotesque, full of threat and menace, overweight, unhealthy, it's a world of hell - and a very believable one, not like some of the ridiculous action features and their cartoonish ideas of evil - these characters seem to have grown right out of the land, like forces of nature. (And then again, in the midst of this brutal and mean poverty, one scene of stunningly beautiful music - which makes you think about this terrain and this world in a different way - a movie, and a place, full of edges and surprises.) Many people praise the source book, by Donald Woodrell (?), and I'm sure it's great though I'm in no rush to read it - 90 minutes in this setting was plenty. Some unforgettable scenes: gutting the squirrel, reaching into the cold water to grab the hand of a corpse. After seeing this film, you'll never again set off into the Ozarks to show up unannounced at a meth lab.

I want to like Bored to Death, but it just won't let me

You want to like "Bored to Death" (HBO) but it keeps promising to be good and then disappointing you (me). At its best, it's zany and witty with some good dialogue, a kind of likable nebbishy literary lead character (Jason Schwartzman) who manages to get the girls mostly through his wit, a role Woody Allen might have played 40 years ago. It also offers Ted Danson in a great role for him, a Clay Felkerish boulevardier and magazine editor - Danson continues to get better. Also some amusing name checks and cultural references - watch this show if you want to be reassured that you already know the most hip writers and directors. Also some good stunt casting here and there. All that said, Bored to Death just never comes together and never makes sense. The odd premise is that Schwartzman is a magazine writer, a blocked novelist, with a part-time job on the side as a private eye. He is completely and utterly unbelievable as a detective, and it seems that the writer (Jonathan Ames) has no idea how to blend these elements of plot and character into a unified vision. For example, shouldn't the plot lines link - he solves literary mysteries? He uses his writerly skills to solve mysteries? No, we just have two different characters living in the same body, it seems. His palling around with Danson makes no sense either; no magazine editor of Danson's stature hangs around with a part-time writer and a cartoonist (Zach Galif... - another poorly conceived character, never believable as an artist). Although there are many laughs along the way, the whole feeling is of three musketeers concocted by a screenwriter who have no relation to one another outside of this script. In a great series, you can imagine the characters lives beyond the frame. Not here. And, by the way, no serious writer ever tells someone: I can't hang out tonight, I have to work on my novel.

Season finales are often disappointing - but Friday Night Lights stil among the best

Though final season episodes are almost inevitably a little disappointing - hard to tie so many strands in 41 minutes, so they inevitably feel a bit burdened by the demands of plot, and are often either too arcane (Damages), too ambiguous (Sopranos), or, in this case ("Friday Night Lights") a little too sentimental - Friday Night Lights Season 4 remains among the best. I won't be a spoiler, but I exactly predicted what would happen to principal Tammy Taylor. As to the rest of the plot outcomes, I'll leave them unsaid. Just this: The season beautifully explores some key issues seldom treated effectively on TV or in any dramatic format for that matter: racial tensions (two rival high schools, white and black), moral ambiguity (several characters brush with crime and not all pay a price), friendship (friendship between guys portrayed accurately and sympathetically without recourse to vulgarity or Apatow-like pranks and snarky dialogue, funny as that may be in other contexts), teenage love (Matt's abandonment of Julie was surprising, yet ultimately seemed like just the kind of thing a confused and somewhat immature guy would do - and her sorrow is palpable), marital stress and happiness (Tammy and Eric Taylor cover the whole range of emotions from fury to tenderness all in a totally credible and sympathetic manner). Though most people will say the final game between E and W Dillon is the highlight, I think it's hard to top the Thanksgiving dinner at the Taylors, with the strained dialogue and the awkward toast. The excellence of the scripting, acting, and directing of this scene speaks for the subtle beauty of the whole series.

The inequities between East and West Dillon are criminal (Friday Night Lights)

Penultimate episode of Season 4, "Friday Night Lights," just great - as with many next-to-last episodes in seasons, it ends with just about everyone in trouble and with the sense that there's no way they can clear this up in one more hour. We'll see - but meanwhile I have to step back and admire at how effectively this is written, directed, and played - we believe in each of the characters, we actually like each of the characters, even the screwups. Every plot line is credible, and each is quirky enough and sufficiently unpredictable that you cannot see ahead around the bend - surprises happen, and they feel right and inevitable. To summarize where we are: Riggins brother at their highest point (new dad, new landowner) arrested for running a chop shop, Vince walks away from a gang revenge assignment and into Jess's arms, leaving Landry out in the cold, forces still gathering around Tammy trying to oust her as principal on trumped-up charges that she counseled a girl toward abortion, and most germane: East and West Dillon about to face off, the game made ugly by tremendous vandalism to the already pathetic East Dillon field. The inequities between these two schools are criminal, and I hope they will move that issue to the forefront before the season ends. I for one can't quite see what will happen, though I suspect Tammy will lose her job and nothing good will happen for Vince. Odd how some characters - Matt, e.g. - have been written right out of the series. Another oddity (goof): anyone notice that Coach Taylor calls Landry "Lance" throughout one scene?

You don't have to like football, but... : Friday Night Lights

"Friday Night Lights" Season 4 gets back on track (episode 10?) as Matt at last gets in touch with Julie and she tearfully tells him off, Vince witnesses a shooting while with his thug friends, and Luke finally breaks down and shows Coach his severely injured hip. Also, Riggins gets thrown out of his trailer and again is alone and troubled, sensitive tough kid with terrible luck. And most significant - fundamentalist forces in town (backed by Dillon boosters?) go after Tammy's job, accusing her of counseling a girl (Becky) toward abortion. In other words, a lot happening in this episode as season conclusion (obviously the Dillon E v W game) is on the horizon. Not sure why I find this episode better, stronger, but I think Becky is a weak character and a limited talent, so the episode of her struggle with her pregnancy did not ring true - hard to understand her hookup with Luke, hard to figure the level of her maturity as she comes on to Riggins, that whole plot line seems a little out of kilter - and how it's largely resolved - it was mainly used to set up Tammy. Also, story line seemed to be in danger of moving too far away from the field, which is ultimately at the heart of this series - I tell everyone that you don't have to like or even understand football to like FNL, but some of the best moments in the series concern the team and its players, and we don't know a lot about the E Dillon players - at least compared with how we knew the Dillon Panthers in previous years. This episode puts the team back in play.

Moving toward melodrama in a series that doesn't need to go there

Episode 9 of Season 4 of "Friday Night Lights" OK but not up to standard as most of the others, as it brushes dangerously close to melodrama - we follow the Riggins-Becky-Lance subplot as Becky, 16 and pregnant, decides for an abortion, which kind of rocks the father, Lance, who's from a fundamentalist family and is wracked with guilt and concern. To me, this plot strand is stretched too thin and I don't care particularly about these characters, especially Becky, who is hard to read. At the same time, Vince's mom ODs and he struggles to send her to rehab and has to send her to a private facility at $4k - and the only way he can get that money is by edging back into thug life. OK, it's a good social theme and things like this happen all the time I guess, but again it seems a melodramatic element in a story line that's appealing because it generally takes on themes of ordinary kids and families and their ordinary lives - that is, the college trip and the spat over a girlfriend (described in previous post) much more moving to me and more thoughtful than the complex plot lines about life & death. Episode does give Tammy/Connie Britton and her writers to once again make her a fount of wisdom and clear-headedness, as Becky wisely goes to her for counsel. We'll see where this goes - Vince obviously headed for trouble as, strangely, the racial tensions among the older generation are healing as the old guys come together in support of the E. Dillon football team.

Very real, right, true to life : How can you not like Friday Night Lights?

Two examples of the excellence of "Friday Night Lights" (Season 4, episode 9[?]) in that it shows the way people really do act and (usually) not the way characters act on tv and in movies. Much build-up toward the tension between Landry, goofy and intelligent and very average white-guy football player, v Vince, excellent player, black, a step away from going back to juvenile detention (juvey). Landry's become really interested in a black girl in their high school who it turns out was a long-time girlfriend of Vince's and a particular fave of Vince's mom. We've seen a few scenes of Vince staring down Landry as he's begun to date the girl. Landry seems oblivious - keeps waving to Vince, etc. We expect a big showdown on the field, perhaps ruining the team spirit and sending Vince back to juvey. Landry goes up to Vince, says in his goofy way hey why don't ou hit moe or something or whatever you have to do cause I know you're angry and so on - and Vince pauses, stares, taps Landry on the chest with the side of his fist: as if to say, you're okay, end of story. Very real, very right. Similarly, Glen awkwardly confesses to Coach Taylor that drunkenly he'd tried to kiss Tammy. Taylor seems really angry. That night he asks Tammy, she says she meant to tell him - we're expecting some big and pointless fight, Coach says he's then kissed Glen by proxy, and this whole thing becomes a running joke between them - again, very true to life, very right. How can you not like this show?

Has any mother-daughter pair been better cast than Britton and Teegarden?

"Friday Night Lights" season 4/episode 8 brings us on the college tour with Tammy (Connie Britton) and daughter Julie (Amy Teegarden) and you have to wonder whether mother-daughter have ever been better cast - impossible to believe they're not truly related. Also, better scripted (and acted, for that matter, especially Britton) - any parent who's gone on one of these tours and lived through the process as ambitious daughter applies to top colleges and struggles with desire to leave hom and anxiety about doing so, will recognize that they get all the notes and nuances right. As noted, much of this season - and perhaps an underlying theme of the whole series - is getting out and getting away: who leaves the small town of Dillon and never looks back? Who'd drawn back to it? Who can never leave, and what does that do to them? The town has its beauty and charm, as we see when Riggins surveys the 25 acres he hopes to buy. He could, maybe, have a good life there, if he can stop drinking and stay out of trouble. And the camaraderie surrounding football is a (mostly) good quality, that brings people together, across class and (to a degree) racial lines. But we also see that it's a big world and Dillon's a small town. Amy will have to go, and she's able to go - but what about the others, some of whom count football as their only possible way out? We see a few issues developing on this sidelines, so to speak: The Riggins brothers getting into the chop-shop business, Vince staring down Landry as Landry starts to date Vince's old girlfriend, Lance playing through a serious injury sure to get worse.

Just One Kiss: The highlight of this episode of Friday Night Lights

Best scene in Friday Night Lights (season 4, episode 7?) has to be the teachers at (West) Dillon at a karaoke night - more more specifically, the aftermath of same, when bumbling young English teacher who's obviously long had a crush on Tammy (understandably) and obviously interested in her in part because she's out of reach - married, and in any case out of his league, he a confirmed nebish, embraces Tammy at curbside outside restaurant/bar, friendly, congratulating her on her award, she thanking him for the fun evening, and the embrace lasts just a moment too long and as they break he leans in to kiss her on the mouth and she pulls back astonished. Even better, she goes up to him the next day to talk about this - tells him not to feel bad or guilty but it can't happen again. That's just one of the things so smart about this show - they really know how to write for Tammy, making her the smartest and kindest person without in the least being wimpy or simpering or supercilious. She just always seems to know what to say to put things right. A cheaper, dumber show would have made a huge plot point out of this and would have her guilt and anger simmer and maybe the teacher would have done something stupid leading to a fight with Tammy's husband - stupid melodrama. But FNL writers understand how people should act and how they do act, and maybe nothing more will come of this kiss, but they used it very effectively to illuminate character and to create a revealing moment - revealing primarily about Tammy and her poise and wisdom.

Sorkin has found his perfect subject : The Social Network

Never was a big fan of Aaron Sorkin and The West Wing, though because M was an avid viewer I probably saw the equivalent of many shows just by passing through the TV room. My plaint was that all the characters sounded like smart screenwriters - nobody talks that way. But Sorkin has found the perfect subject for him in the geeky and intellectually arrogant Harvard world of The Social Network. These people - from all I know of them - really do talk like Sorkin, and it feels he has perfectly caught the inflections and the caustic syntax of Mark Zuckerberg (credit also to Jesse Eisenberg). Director Fincher who put me into a novacaine coma with Benjamin Button has figured out how to pace a story, too, with a fast narrative and very effective cutting from present (legal depositions against Zuckerberg regarding the provenance of Facebook) to past (as we watch as Zuckerberg step by step conceives the idea [or steals it?] and develops it). He's a horrible but troubled kid - amazingly, we learn not a single fact about his life before Harvard - and though the irony is a bit thick here we come to see the sorrow in his life, the guy who created the world's biggest social network, based on "friending," has not a single friend in his life - at least that's the Zuckerberg of fiction, the movie treads a line between biopic and pure fiction, and makes no attempt to be a true documentary. The tone and the playing is exactly right, down to the small scenes - the two rich jocks coming to Larry Summers and expecting his help is a great moment. Film should win lots of awards and one would hope a wide audience, though the theater was not filled.

Two social outcasts but with a weird twist: Kimberly Akimbo

Didn't know much about and don't know much about David Lindsey-Abaire but last night saw his (2000?) play, "Kimberly Akimbo," at the always good Second Story Theater (Warren, R.I.) - a fine production of a very good, unusual family tragi-comedy, a contemporary take on the Williams-O'Neil tradition of families tearing themselves apart - with the twist that in this case the only sane one in the family is the teenage daughter. The real twist is that the eponymous daughter has progeria, she's 16 but looks about 40 (played by a 40ish actor), though dresses and talks like a somewhat precocious teen (it's not broadly comic like Freaky Friday, but just touching and a little strange). Kimberly of course is a social outcast at school, and also facing her mortality - average life expectancy is 16 - and at the heart of the play is her relation with a geeky classmate who befriends her, another outcast. Lots of plays and movies have this theme, too, but handled very well here, with the odd twist of the obvious gap in age between the two actors. One of the best lines is K says people at school ignore her and her friend says he wishes they'd ignore him. One amazing scene: The two get a ride to school from K's alcoholic, bumblingly protective father. Don't touch her tits!, the father screams, leading to an argument about Dungeons and Dragons, finally, after much shouting, awkward silence and then: Look, we're here! Which brought down the house. Most touching scene: when K has to dress as her friend's grandmother (to pull off a clumsy bank heist), and she steps into the light in an old lady's dress and with a powdered wig and she really does look 70 or so, and everyone in the audience and on stage is startled and moved. Can he still be friends with her? Attracted to her? Or does this ruin everything for them? Very good play, sharp and lively production by Second Story.

Which actor in Friday Night Lights has matured the most?

Episode 6 season 4 of "Friday Night Lights" is somewhat quiet compared with many others, a transitional point in the middle of this season of episodes - the E. Dillon Lions begin to come into their own as a team, playing a heartening game and proud in defeat. Strangely, none of the players have fully emerged the way the players did on the Dillon Panthers in previous seasons, but there are tremendous plot opportunities in the racial tensions on the team, an issue rarely explored in previous seasons - the racial tensions regarding Smash Williams resided largely off the field. This episode more about people leaving Dillon, Lyla (Mrs. Derek Jeter) comes back for a brief turn with Riggins - I do think she's one of the weakest actors in the show - and then she's back to college leaving Riggins morose. I think she's out of his life for good, or ought to be - he's a guy destined for nothing good, I'm afraid. In parallel plot line, Matt takes off in his beat-up old car - there's nothing left in Dillon for him, now that his grandmother doesn't need him and all he's doing is delivering pizzas - except for Julie, but he knows she'll go off to college, too. Very sad moment, and very true to life, as so much is in this series. Landry increasingly emerging as a very good character, his dialogue with Matt as they toss around a football, after the funeral, just great - smart and thoughtful and boyishly awkward and true. Not sure what range the actor has, but seems to me he could potentially be a very good actor in a bigger part, especially with some comic possibilities. He's grown and matured as an actor more than any other in the series.

Every word and action is revealing and true to character: Friday Night Lights

What makes "Friday Night Lights (Season 4)" so powerful is that it's a wonderful balance between the expected and the unknown or unpredictable. As with all really good dramas, you find yourself thinking: what will he say? what will she say to him? In this case: how will Coach Taylor speak to his team? What will he say when Matt shows up at his house distraught? How will he speak to the two players arrested for fighting? Even more so for his wife, Tammy: what will she say to daughter Julie? And, in episode 5, what will Matt say at his father's funeral? There's always a bit of surprise, you can never quite predict what they will say - but once the characters speak and act, it seems so inevitably right that you can't imagine they could have said or done anything differently. Matt's eulogy, about his father pulling toilet paper off the shelf in the supermarket - tells us a great deal about Matt (his clumsy inability to come up with a real memory), the grandma (fussy, picky, cross, wrong brand of toilet paper), the dad (angry, impulsive, we see why he left home), most of all Matt's awkwardness in this situation tells us everything he says his dad was "funny" but this shows us a 6-year-old boy scared of his father's impulses - anyway, you could analyze this one scene for pages. All of the scenes are like this. It's not that there is never an extra word, which was the case with The Wire, but it's that every action is revealing of character and true to the essence of the character - kids, adults, all.

Racism right out in the open: Friday Night Lights

Why so few people watch "Friday Night Lights" remains one of those unfathomable mysteries. Season 4 (?), as Coach Taylor takes over the East Dillon team, is just as great as the preceding seasons - very likable and wise and funny and credible characters, including all the high-school kids and recent grads as well as the adults, And in this season a whole new theme opens up, the history of racism, segregation, and unequal opportunity in Dillon, Texas. Up to now, though the show always recognized that the town had haves and have-nots and that the black kids on the team faced a particular barrier that the white kids do not (the black star running back is all but ignored by recruiters after a run-in with the law, which would not and did not happen to other players), this season puts the theme right out in the open. East Dillon High is a disgrace compared with Dillon, the resources and conditions are horrible - and what's more incredible, actually it's all to credible, is that nobody in the community owns this problem. The Dillon boosters continue to do all in their (ample) power to build a football dynasty and they let the other school - not just talking about football here - and its kids take the dregs and suffer. We see this in every community! It should be a crime, someone should go to jail for that. Football cannot and will not be the savior, but we can see how Taylor's dynamism will help build pride in the team and then, perhaps, in the whole East Dillon community, but they will face man struggles and confrontations along the way. Great series.

Moody music, mumbled dialog, grainy photography - do not necessarily make a movie a work of art

So we sit down with the fam last night to enjoy some good quality time watching a movie about a serial killer - and what do we get? A pretentious, crappy movie in which the villain (spoiler, I guess, but if you can't figure it out why are you even reading this?) turns out to be the evil SHOPPING MALL DEVELOPER! Gosh, why don't filmmakers leave these guys alone? All they wanna do is make shopping better and more convenient for everyone. So what if they clear away slum housing to build their palaces? Does that mean they also have to be child molesters, too? I'll never see a shopping-mall developer again without a shudder of fear, thanks a lot. The movie - "Red Riding Trilogy Part 1: 1974" - is allegedly, supposedly based on the story of the Yorkshire ripper of the 1980s, but a quick look at any reference will give new definition to the word "loosely," as this killer is a child molester and torturer, not a slayer of prostitutes. Just call it a series murder investigations and police corruption - at least that would be more honest. It starts off reasonably well, but becomes increasingly preposterous as the plot unfolds - one of those stories in which the improbable hero (in this case, a journalist eager for a scoop) - endures way, way beyond the possible realm of physical endurance, and ultimately you have to say: why don't the bad guys just kill him? They've killed everyone else? They obviously leave him alive just so that there will be a story. All the moody music, grainy photography, and mumbled dialog in almost incomprehensible dialect will not turn an ordinary police procedural into a work of art, sorry.