The many (too many?) plot lines in Slings & Arrows Season 2

As M observes, part of the fun of "Slings & Arrows" Season 2 is that we see multiple productions taking shape during the festival season: Macbeth (Jeffrey's show), R&J (the crazy European-influenced director), and now in episode 4 the original Canadian production with the temperamental playwright in charge. We learn about different aspects of theater and the life of the theater from each production - really funny watching the actors go through their exercises, in R&J reversing genders because of some crackpot semiotic academic theory the director barely articulates and in the original production they struggle through a staged reading as the director keeps throwing away his own script (he's hyper self-critical). Meanwhile, Jeffrey stands up to the vision of Oliver and determines come what may the Macbeth has to be his own production and not Oliver's - great, because what makes this duo work is or should be that they have very different visions of the play and of theater, and S&A loses sight of this too often. Jeffrery fires Henry/Macbeth, which will obviously lead to tensions, as they guy's a brooding egotist. Two other (too many?) plot elements as well, as Ellen is undergoing an audit of taxes (not sure what this brings to show) and engages in a sexual fling with her brother-in-law (I wish she hadn't, we were all beginning to like her), and Richard is going off the deep end with this crazy but funny ad campaign - perhaps this is being pushed too far toward the ludicrous. He has to stand up to them, as he did in Season 1 and as Jeffrey is doing in Season 2.

Looks like an indie but acts like a phony : Please Give

"Please Give" is a thoroughly disappointing movie, which has all the indie earmarks that would be make you think it will be an endearing and thoughtful ensemble piece - talented writer-director (N. Holofcener?) who did the really influential and appealing Lovely & Amazing some years back and a very strong cast including Catherine Keener (Holofcener started her career, in essence), Oliver Platt, Rebecca Hall, and the surprisingly good in an evil role Amanda Peet. It purports to be one of these simple movies of a few ordinary people and their intersecting lives, much like L&A. this time set in NYC, which is the first of many way-wrong notes. Keener & Platt run a little business buying furniture from the deceased, basically swooping in ahead of more formal estate sales - buying what the relatives see as junk and selling it at markup in a vintage store. The store itself looks not much better than a Salvation Army, and yet: these guys are living on, get this!, Fifth Avenue and are waiting to buy the apartment of their elderly nieghbor so that they can break through and double their space? On what planet do they live? This total lack of understanding of basic finances is a tipoff to the cluelessness of the whole movie, which on the one hand tries to convey the message that materialism doesn't matter, life is all about relationships, and on the other hand ends with a happy moment as Keener and Platt get the new apartment and make light of it, they buy their daughter the pair of designer jeans she's always desired, everyone's happy. Never mind that Platt just had a preposterously unlikely affair with Peet, that Peet is still nasty and heading dangerously toward alcoholism - these issues are brushed aside. Not that we need a happy ending - in fact, the highlight of the film is the eldery neighbor and her acerbic remarks about everyone and everything (How's the cake, Grandma? It's dry.). I like this kind of movie, but just because it looks like an indie doesn't make it any more honest that a phony Hollywood studio concoction. To work, an ensemble movie has to be honest and knowing about characters and their environment, and this movie is clueless.

Should a manic artist get psychiatric help?: Slings & Arrows

"Slings & Arrows" Season 2 (episode 3) picks up two plot lines: on the one hand, we watch Jeffrey and Ellen, the director and leading actress (and actually married in "real life") become a cozy domestic couple in Ellen's cute, spacious house - she cooking breakfast for him, waiting up for him, etc. They no longer seem like eccentric, temperamental theater people - more like a sitcom family from a 50s show. What's happening here? Well, the interesting element is that it's increasingly evident that Jeffrey is delusional. His "conversations" with the late director Oliver are useful to him in that they give him ideas about staging Macbeth, but it's also clear that these ar no longer part of a dramatic convention but are a manifestation of Jeffrey's instability - as is obvious when Ellen sneaks into the theater at night and we see the conversations from her POV: which is, Jeffrey walking around a bare stage talking to himself. As with other artist-geniuses, the question is does he need help, will he get help, should he get help? Will help cut off his creativity? Or will his delusions become a mania that will ruin both his art and his life? The tone remains comical and light-hearted so I can't quite see how the series will manage this issue. Meanwhile, insufferable egotist playing Macbeth is very funny, as he moves in on Ellen, and we're getting a subplot developing of an R&J production led by the idiotic director from Season 1 (obviously a fan favorite, whom they wrote into Season 2) and the very funny pr shop ("a brothel of ideas") that has come up with a crazy ad campaign for the festival. Richard, the business manager, remains the funniest guy in the series.

The 5th-grade production of Macbeth: An eerie highlight in Slings & Arrows season 2

The second season of "Slings & Arrows" will focus on the production of Macbeth, in which the "ghost" of Oliver will speak to Jeffrey and guide him through the production, in an eerie echo of the ghostliness of the play. In the 2nd episode we meet the lead actor, Henry Breedlove, and he's such a pompous ass - this will be great. We can see Jeffrey seething as Breedlove draws all the attention to himself and basically takes over the first table reading of the play. So the conflict between them will move the season along, all to the good. I'm still troubled by the lack of clear definition of Jeffrey and the late Oliver and their relation. I get that Jeffrey is a little mentally unbalanced and prone to outbursts when he thinks he's speaking to Oliver - what to him (and to us as viewers) is a conversation to others is a Tourette-like mania. But is Jeffrey a genius director? We don't see that. Was Oliver? At times he's written off as an old-fashioned, out-of-touch has-been, but elsewhere he's a revered figure and an inspiration to Jeffrey. It's just never made clear enough, and I think honestly that the writers want to have it both ways, whatever way will suit the needs of a particular scene of episode. A highlight of this episode was the 5th-grade production of Macbeth, all done in summary (no Shakespearean language) in its simplicity and in the innocence of the young faces makes the horror and spookiness and violence the play all the more real and frightening. When Jeffrey gets the idea to do the play on a thrust stage, we actually get a chill - who wants to be that close to Macbeth? Scenes of Richard meeting with a PR "branding" expert are great, too.

A tragedy that ends up as a comedy : Hamlet, in Slings & Arrows

First episode of Season 2 of "Slings & Arrows" is really or seems to be the final episode of season 1, as the crew wraps the production of Hamlet and indulges in a cast party and which there are various declarations of love, inebriations, fights, and spats - typical cast party. The tragedy ends up as a comedy, as the business manager apologizes for being such a shit, joins in the fun to sing a G&S aria, drunkenly talks about winning the drama award in high school, pledges a great season for next year. Jeffrey and Ellen get together, Kate and Jack leave together for Hawaii, all's right with the world. But on the horizon for the next season is a production of MacBeth, with all the trauma and superstition that evokes among theater people, so we'll see how it goes. The series continues to be warm and amusing, if not an absolute knockout - each episode does have its moments and its vivid sketches of character - perhaps especially of those on the periphery of the show, e.g., the stage manager and the executive assistant. Much of this episode concerned Jeffrey's working backstage during intermission giving actors "notes" for their final performance - some of whom are very resistant and just want to mail it in. Does seem odd to be giving these kinds of notes at the final show - in part it seems the writers just wanted to work in a few more points about Hamlet (OK) or else wanted to demonstrate that theater really matters in a big way to Jeffrey (I think we should get this point by now).

A revealing and entirely credible look at the evil of Bush-Chenyvil

"Fair Game" is fairly good - by no means great. On the plus side, this film about the Valerie Plame-Joe Wilson incident, in which Wilson wrote an NYT op-ed documenting that the GW Bush assertion that Iraq was buying enriched uranium (Bush made the clain in a State of the Union address justifying the invasion) was patently false, which led Cheney's team (Scooter Libby was the heavy and of course became the fall guy -Cheney himself never ever did anything wrong) to out Wilson's wife as a CIA operative and make their lives a living hell. The movie seems very closely based on the facts as we know them (I suspect it might have played up the importance of Plame in the CIA and her bravery), and it's entirely revealing about the Bush admin. I work in government and can assure anyone that there are plenty of times that someone in public life makes a statement or writes a piece that the agency head feels is very damaging and wrong - but our response is always to respond with reason in a public forum. I have never once heard anyone say: hey, let's go after him. Let's dish the dirt on his wife, etc. But it's entirely believable that Cheney et al. acted that way all the time, and if I never see the image of him or Bush again that will be just fine, the movie does a service in reminding us of their nefarious nature. On the down side, Fair Game stays on the surface of events. We rarely get a glimpse into the interior lives of Plame and Wilson - what made her choose such a career, how did they get together, what makes them tick? Naomi Watts (as Plame) and Sean Penn (as Wilson) are both really good, though, as they always are. Amazing the range of roles Penn has played recently.

More literary and intelligent that most American TV: Slings & Arrows

Ultimately, by the end of the first season, "Slings & Arrows" does win you (me) over, despite its flaws and limitations, as a real sweet story that does capture the essence of life in a provincial theater troupe (or among any group of actors, for that matter), that's funny at times, and that is actually quite insightful about Shakespeare and about directing on stage. In fact, the work the director, Jeffrey, does with his troupe, especially in episodes 5 and 6, is among the highlights of the series. Series hinted at the outset that Jeffrey was a revolutionary director, and in fact he's not - he's traditional, in ways that have probably largely vanished from stage direction and have definitely vanished from movie direction - in that he focuses on character, on helping his actors see who the character is, his or her condition, motivations, feelings. His doing so helps us understand Hamlet, too, which is great - made me think about going back and reading the play, or even seeing it live, if that were possible. As anyone would expect from scene one of this series, things will work out well at the end - theater will triumph, the evil Holly will get her comeuppance (I wonder if we'll see more of her in season 2? I do wish her downfall had been more dramatic, but still.) I am still troubled by a few elements - the lack of clarity about Jeffrey's character (would have been much stronger, I believe, if he didn't dress in all 6 episodes like a lunatic), and in Oliver's character. (Is he an old-fashioned out-of-it director or Jeffrey's mentor? Is he an old queen or a sexual rival? Series goes back and forth on this - as if it started out with one premise then modified that concept as series progressed.) Nevertheless, a lot of fun and way more intelligent and literary than almost anything on American TV. Oh, Canada!

A movie that succeeds where thousands have failed: The Secret in Their Eyes

"The Secret in their Eyes" definitely jumps to the top of the list as one of the best movies of 2010, even one of the best of the decade - a totally compelling story with lots of surprises and an absolutely terrifying end (which I will not even hint at) - a story so smart, it succeeds where thousands of movies have failed, right from its premise: starts with an aging man whom we soon learn is a retired jurist (in Argentina) who's trying to write a novel that is obviously based on a case he dealt with when he was a court investigator (the exact roles of the officials not ever totally clear to an American viewer but it doesn't matter much); the case was a brutal rape-murder, and a lot of things went wrong during the investigation. So first of all its a police procedural and a really good one. Also a strange and tormented love story, as the man (Esposito) shows his manuscript to the fellow investigator whom he loved way back then - she plays a big role in the investigation, but their lives go off on separate paths, till now. So we see the novel he's writing, his present-day life as he reconnects with the beautiful former colleague, further investigations in the present, and the suffering he feels as he tries to capture the truth and to write a good book. Part of the beauty is that Esposito is obviously not a good writer, his manuscript leaves out all the important emotions, but we see that full story in this great movie that embraces the manuscript. It's about love and politics and vengeance - a total knockout that in a better world would have a wide audience.

What we learn about Hamlet from Slings & Arrows

Episode 5 of "Slings & Arrows" season 1 takes a turn toward the serious, and that's all to the good I think. The show is weakest in its attempts at high jinx in that the comedy is more subtle and restrained, the best elements are how accurately it captures the world of theater and of an acting troupe - in this episode we for the first time focus on the production of Hamlet and how Jeffrey will bring it to life, and we see some pretty good scenes of his directing - how he gets various actors to really understand their characters (or tries to), culminating in his excellent direction of Jack Crew, the action-movie star hired to play Hamlet (and draw in a crowd). I like these scenes a lot in that they teach us about the practice of theater and about Shakespeare, too, for that matter. They're hardly revolutionary - just a good director at work with a modestly talented cast - which does show the limitation of this largely likable series - the implication from the outset that Jeffrey is a genius actor-director who went off the rails is never made good on. He's no Hall-Sellers-Brooks-et al., just a pro. I'm not sure what to make of the ghost of Oliver appearing - it's a good device in some ways, but the series cannot really settle on the degree to which Jeffrey is insane or impaired. Maybe that's a strength, the ambiguity, I don't know - it's obvious that to other Jeffrey seems to be delusional and suffering from perhaps Tourettes. I think it would help if they had him look less disheveled, and would also help if he weren't such an obvious leading-man type. We'll see how it wraps.

A good series - but what's missing? Why isn't it great? : Slings & Arrows

At last Jeffrey Tenant (?) takes over as director of the New Burbage Shakespeare Theatre Festival's ill-fated Hamlet in the Canadian series "Slings & Arrows." Good, but bad. The pretentious and craven director they'd brought in, with his snide remarks and leather pants and idiotic theories - emphasizing the "rotten" in the state of Denmark - was really pretty funny. Jeffrey is meant to be a super-talented director who's had a nervous breakdown (while playing Hamlet) and fears getting back onto the stage. Well, that's obviously where he's heading - he will not only direct but will take the lead, as the action-movie star who's been brought in to play Hamlet can barely read his lines (Oh, you angles... Stings and arrows ... ). This whole schema would be better and stronger if we could really see that Jeffrey was and still is a great actor and director, but we never do really see this convincingly. Still, he's likable enough, as is the whole cast really - the greatest strength is how well the show captures the nuances of theater types outside of the production, from the aging star to the ingenue to the apprentice, the visiting celebrity, and even the crew and the business staff. Part of the drama in episode 4 concerns the battle for control of the festival board - and I have to admit the obnoxious and scheming business agent and his control-freak, middle-brow girlfriend, Holly, are my faves to watch. The series grows on you a bit as it moves along, but I'm always kind of wanting to push it a little harder and make it better - make Jeffrey a great director, raise the stakes for him and for everyone - which I never feel when I'm watching a truly great series.

I'm not saying ABBA writes better than Shakespeare... : Slings and Arrows

"Slings and Arrows" does kind of grow on you by the 3rd episode (first season), and though it's not great or raucous it continues to have its moments and to be very astute at its portrayal of the lives of theater people at the 2nd rung. One of the best elements is the developing relationship between the insipid Richard Smith-Jones (just like it's spelled), the business manager, and the corporate sponsor's representative, Holly Day, who's a driven, go-getter, middlebrow and who pushes him to take over the festival. In this episode, she carries him off for a weekend in Toronto where they'll, as she puts it, have a great dinner, see a show, and talk about our future. He's totally sick of going to shows, he tells her, but she's got first-row balcony for Mama Mia! That's different! They love the show, which leads to really some of the best dialog in the series, as they confess/agree that the problem is the New Burbage Shakespeare Theatre Festival puts on plays nobody wants to see, not shows like Chorus Line and Mama Mia! "I'm not saying ABBA writers better than Shakespeare or anything..." Richard remarks. Holly tells him she's working on a deal for a John Lennon musical. "I've already talked with Yoko." "Oh, no!" "Um, hm." Very good. Meanwhile, main story starting to gel around Jeffrey's struggle to overcome his fear of returning to the stage and his overall hatred of the festival. Idiotic director they bring in to take over Hamlet is hilarious - his idea is to emphasize the "rotten" in Denmark, and the state is littered with garbage. Though the series lacks the killer instinct, it does have its highlights.

Too many scenes in Slings and Arrows just fall flat

I want to like "Slings and Arrows" but it's just not as good, or funny, as it could be, or ought to be. Though they get the behavioral nuances of theater people dead right (or spot on, as theater people would say), and the skewering of the corporate-management sorts who want to run the Shakespeare festival as a profitable business is very funny and maybe even the highlight of the series, far too many scenes just include a few incidental comic lines or moments and then fall flat. For example, in episode 2 (season 1), there's the big funeral scene for Oliver, and the build-up is what will his rival director/former protege Jeffrey say? Everyone seems almost freaked out that he's been invited to speak, and there's a lot of build-up as he paces backstage and we hear snippets of the other speakers, all very ordinary, and at last Jeffrey speaks and, so what? He reads some "notes" that Oliver had given to the cast in some earlier production, and then he wanders off stage. This should have been a killer scene, it should have established Jeffrey's personality - we have to believe by this point in the series that he's a brilliant but troubled director who's going to take over the festival and change everything. His character has not emerged to the slightest degree. Similarly, Rachel McAdams plays an apprentice who's very sweet but also ambitious - and she tries out for a commercial and seemingly flubs the audition. Then gets the job. This is impossible. They should show her doing something crazy at the audition that shocks everyone and gets her the job. In short, this series has some nice moments but doesn't really know how to nail a scene that will really stand out in our minds.

Why Slings and Arrows could never be a U.S. TV show

It's perhaps surprising that nobody's done this before - a comic series about life in the theater - as you'd think actors and writers would know this milieu, but the fact is they don't know this milieu - probably 1 of a thousand American TV actors/writers/directors have any significant background in live theater. Of course it's different in England, and even in Canada, which as it turns out is where "Slings & Arrows" arises. It's about two theater troupes - not exactly rivals because they're so much on opposite ends of the spectrum - in a Canadian city obviously modeled on Stratford. The festival theater has corporate sponsorship - lots of jokes about, Hello! It's a business! - and lavish production values and a British director who's way burned out and a totally bored audience of worthies and swells. Across town, a another theater (they're both doing Shakespeare, and it doesn't seem as if the small theater is particularly avant garde) is being kicked out of its warehouse space for nonpayment of rent. The link is that the director at the small theater used to act for the British director at the festival until he had some kind of breakdown - it's an episode none of them talks about about, but it seems to be at the epicenter of the lives of several of the characters. Lots of Shakespeare references, which is fun (for me), and the crew gets so many of the types completely right, from the ingenue to the aging star to the earnest producer and the insidious corporate sponsor and the hangers-on - and the lives of actors after the show, centered on a lot of drinking.

Swinton speaks Italian! - and the world's weirdest sex montage: I am Love

Tilda Swinton speaks Italian (and a little Russian). That may be reason enough to watch "I am Love," which surprisingly places Swinton in an Italian-language, Italian-cast family melodrama. It's her movie, and she gives her expected totally powerful and controlled performance. It's also a really good movie, despite a few quirks. I'll be giving a lot away here, so if you plan to see the movie just stop now, but: I am Love is a story of a super-rich Milanese industrial family. The elderly grandfather announces his retirement at a b-d dinner and Lear-like, names son and grandson as his successors. Everyone's surprised he elevated the grandson. Swinton is married to the son, who's now the true power in the business, and plans to sell it. Grandson Eduardo sentimentally wants to hold onto the business - but his real attentions are to the high-end restaurant he want to set up with a friend, Antonio. Part of the fun of the movie is the ridiculously lavish house in which the Recchi family lives and the extraordinary food Antonio prepares, echoes of other great foodie movies like Eat Drink Man Woman. There are hints all along that Eduardo may have a homoerotic crush on Antonio but ultimately, to our surprise, Swinton begins an affair with the much-younger, "lower" class Antonio, culminating in one of the strangest, most graphic, least erotic movie sex scenes, including a montage of closeups of skin patches and insects on plants, set to the music of John Adams. Hard to even imagine, right? Ultimately, Eduardo dies in an accident and Swinton confesses she "loves" Antonio (it's more like a Lady Chatterly thing - pure sex, she hardly knows him). At the end, Swinton, now with short hair and dressed in track suit, takes off and leaves her grieving family. A liberated woman? Or a selfish bitch who ditches her faithful husband in time of need? I think the movies wants us the think the former, but it leaves enough room for us to wonder.

A really good movie that demands a lot of attention: Ajami

It was probably a mistake to watch the Israeli film "Ajami" on a Friday night when I was dead tired because this film was really quite good and demands a lot of attention, which couldn't really give it. Don't worry, I won't give the plot away because I can hardly remember it - I'll need some help. But I would say it's another one of the recent spate of movies that takes seemingly unrelated characters and events and over the course of the narrative pulls them together, as they intersect in violence and tragedy. Making this narrative structure even more difficult than usual, however, Ajami (which I gather is the name of a Palestinian West Bank neighborhood?), the film does not use straightforward chronology; rather, we see certain scenes that are hard to comprehend (even if you're awake!) and later see the scenes the build up to them or put them in context. Further difficulty for Americans will be the general unfamiliarity of the name and the locales - hard to understand which neighborhoods are in Israel, West Bank, Arab, Jewish, etc. Still - a very strong film that is taut and exciting and gives us a sense of what life is like among the many racial-ethnic communities living alongside one another in Israel/West Bank today. Story begins with a drive-by shooting of a Palestinian teen, in revenge for an attack against another Palestinian gang. Over the course of the movie we meet another Palestian man who is trying to negotiate peace for his family in this gang war and falls in love with the daughter of the neighborhood strongman (they're Christian Arabs, but this is not clear to us or at least to me till much later), a Palestinian living without papers in Israel and working in a restaurant, an Israeli police officer whose brother has been killed in the service, a Palestinian restaurant owner dating an Isreali Jew - almost all of these people come to a bad end, and the movie is about how and why this happens. It's in some ways about life in one particular time and place, but it strikes me that Ajami could easily be transported to any American city and the same story could take root and thrive.

An homage to Huck Finn and to Bob Dylan : Kisses

By no means is it a great movie, but the Irish indie "Kisses" has a lot going for it and may foretell more good works from Irish cinema and from this writer-director. Story about two abused kids, boy and girl (about 12 years old maybe?), next-door neighbors in an industrial suburb of Dublin, who run away to the city to escape horrible families. Like most child runaway stories, it's improbable for the most part and meant to be so, but more than most it includes some really rough elements and some very exciting moments. Many times when I was sure the kids would not make it - though I knew in movie terms they would have to (though the ending is ambiguous and intentionally disturbing). Part of the time, as the kids romp through a shopping mall wasting $ on a buzz cut and new sneakers, thought no kids would behave that way, they'd be really worried about how they were going to get through the night. At other times, I accepted that they were just kids, impulsive and naive, and that they'd manage. There are homages here to the greatest runaway story, Huck Finn (they take a canal barge to Dublin), and echoes of other runaway movies such as the great Little Fugitive and, in a funny way, with two young people building a romantic bond as they course through the night, I was reminded of Before Sunrise. The main homage in the movie is to Bob Dylan - the boy is named Dylan, and he learns that his antecedent is a "musical god," and who would disagree? Great Dylan songs on the soundtrack and one amusing "appearance" of Dylan in the film itself.

Should you watch Season 1 after you've seen Season 3? : Breaking Bad

Watched the first season pilot for "Breaking Bad" last night for some reason; had already seen most of Season 3 (but none of seasons 1 or 2). M. is always curious about how these shows (which we sometimes pick up later in their runs) began, but I'm not, once I see where it's going have little interest in looking back. Someone once asked me: If you only had read the last act of Romeo and Juliet, wouldn't you want to see the beginning? Yes, but Breaking Bad is not Shakespeare. In fact, we enjoy reading/seeing great dramas multiple times, but even the best of television, for me, serves for only one round. Nevertheless, the pilot for Breaking Bad is quite well done and I can certainly see why the show was picked up and renewed. Amazing how most of the characters that I'd seen in Season 3 are introduced here; also surprising how little they change - even really good TV is mostly about types and characteristics, not about subtle character development. Pilot starts off with a very exciting and for first-time viewers bewildering scene of van careening through the desert, driver wearing mask, half-naked, bodies rolling around in the back - then we flash back 3 weeks and by end of pilot understand the scene: a meth lab on wheels. Personality and dilemma of main character established well. Friend Andy has noted to me that he could never buy into the premise of Breaking Bad, and I agree - idea that he would keep his cancer diagnosis secret from family and that he would embark on this crime path is not made credible in the pilot - and in that way I think it's almost better to begin watching Breaking Bad at a later point, when the crime history is a given, rather than a choice.