The captivating Game of Thrones and its many strands and strengths

Visiting bro in law J was regaling me with tales from the series of novels that forms the basis for the HBO series "Game of Thrones" - told J I would definitely never read the books, but was interested in seeing the series. Started with the first two episodes and, so far, very impressed: the series has the extraordinary production values we've come to expect from HBO and its British allies, as interesting to look at as Rome - an entire medieval world, with castles and villages and great open spaces and mysterious huge human construction - The Wall - creating beautifully and perfectly. The acting is good, in that highly trained British way - from the grizzled old knights (and King) to the insufferable King in exile to the forlorn mother and wife furious as her husband heads off to a war she considers avoidable to the obnoxious and self-centered queen and the bratty kids in the royal court. Some really nicely developed scenes and situations and character conflicts - a fight between a prince and the butcher's boy that turns out bad for guess who, two attempts on the life of the knight's youngest son (he saw the queen and her brother engaged in incest so they have to wipe him out) - especially one where he's rescued quite dramatically and gruesomely by wolf pup he's raised, and the long trek of the king's bastard son to his new post on The Wall guarding the northern kingdom, as it becomes more obvious that The Wall is really just a glorified prison camp. The story is a fiction set in quasi-medieval Europe with elements of fantasy (ghosts and such) weaved through. Takes a lot of concentration in first two episodes to get the strands of the story fixed in your mind - various rulers and kingdoms and vassals and their families - and the dialogue, esp in the first episode, can be very hard (for an American) to pick up in its entirety, but I find it a very captivating series and will keep watching, at least for a while (M less enthusiastic, btw).

Iran - A man's world, and not that great for men, either: A Separation

Wish I like the recent Iranian movie "A Separation" more than I did because there are some really great things in it and it's a tremendous cultural document, a view into Iranian families and contemporary life that is shocking in some ways to American audiences - in some ways because it shows the similarities across our great cultural divide and in other ways because it makes evident the vast differences. On the plus side, the movie is completely honest, very well plotted - influenced both by reality TV and by the recent spate of documentaries made with small, light, unobtrusive digital equipment, it's a story of a 40ish married couple with a 10-year-old daughter breaking up: the wife wants to go to live abroad, the husband wants to stay to take care of his elderly father, the daughter torn between the two. Movie opens with a great scene in which the man and wife argue their case before some kind of court magistrate - who refuses to allow the separation - obviously, he favors the man's position and he's particularly put out by wife's desire to live abroad (this scene filmed from magistrate's POV, we never see him). Wife leaves to live temporarily with her mother, and much of the film focuses on father's attempt to manage household - but it's as far from single-dad comedy, and even from single-dad drama (Dustin Hoffman learning to make French toast and becoming a better mom than estranged Meryl Streep - right) as you can imagine - lots of complications ensue with hired household help, which leads to various court scenes and confrontations, some very well dramatized. Overall, unfortunately, I found the movie about 30 minutes too long and tediously paced in sections; I credit the writer-director for not pandering and making the film "popular," but my mind did wander at times. That said, some great scenes: the fight in the waiting room of the hospital, for example. You wonder if this film would be as good or as well received if it had been made in America, the family transposed into an American family, and the first-thought response is, no, it wouldn't, we cut it a lot more slack and take it more seriously because it's a foreign film. On deeper reflection, however, that's really an unanswerable question: what makes this film excellent is its view of Iranian society in particular: part of the plot hinges, for example, on the housekeeper's unwillingness to clean up when the elderly dad pees in his pants because seeing him naked might be a sin; she calls some kind of hot line for advice. Though the mom in this film seems much more free-thinking than we'd imagine an Iranian woman to be, it's also obvious from every shot that Iran is a man's world - and not that great for men, either.

Footnote is a really good movie - but what's with that ridiculous musical score?

The recent Israeli movie, Footnote (writer and director, Cedar), tells a really good, concise story of father-son rivalry and competition, within a context very unusual, at least unusual in American films: both father and son are in the field of Talmud studies and philology, the father more of an old-fashioned, stuffy academic who's got a pretty high position in academe but has never been fully recognized or rewarded (he thinks) and has published little (the joke is that his greatest recognition is being cited in a footnote by a legendary Talmud scholar); the son is more up to date and much more widely published, and the father, instead of paternal pride, feels seething jealousy and depression. (Spoilers here): Plot gets in motion when father gets a call telling him he's won the Israel Prize (something like a National Medal, I think), but we soon learn that the call was mistake, it was actually the son who won the prize, and the committee calls on the son to set things right with his father, which leads to many complications. Part of the beauty of the film is its avoidance of easy answers and happy conclusions: the father indeed learns that the award is not rightly his, but the movie ends with his accepting the award and with he relation with everyone in jeopardy: his family knows he took something not rightly his, the son is even more embittered. The movie is not kind to academics in any form - the logrolling and politicking of academic awards exposed for what it is, in case anyone out there ever thought these things were given out on the basis of merit. Footnote is a very dark movie, with many interfamily scenes of high drama worthy of Pinter or O'Neil, so what's with the ridiculous up-beat, intrusive musical score? Was the director trying to lighten his difficult material to make it seem more jaunty or palatable? Did he think the contrast in moods would give the film an edge? Is this stuff funny in Israel but not in the U.S.? Or was it just a horrible decision - a score that nearly ruins the mood of an otherwise very strong film?

World War, social class - there will always be an England

It's absolutely amazing to me that British literarture and film still go back again and again to World War II (and even to the First World War) as inspiration and material - more than 70 years later. These events were so traumatic and formative for Britain that they still affect they way writers and directors and actors think, generations later. Why is that? Reminds of the time when the empire still stood? England's greatest moment of heroism? The trauma of so many deaths? The challenge, however temporary, to class structure? The postwar suffering and humiliation? All? Current example is "The Deep Blue Sea," set "around 1950," and tells a very simple love-hate story (spoilers follow): begins with attempted suicide of an aristocrats wife, Hester (the excellent Rachel Weisz), and over the next 90+ minutes we learn the back story: her husband is a stiff and conventional, she has an affair with an ex-airman, and, when her husband learns, moves in with airman into a shabby rental flat. Over 10 months and many spats, he loses interest and she tries to off herself - leading to a final, sorrowful breakup. Other than Weisz, the good things about the movie are the powerful scenes in which the airman (Freddy) vents his fury and Weisz gives it back to him and the monumentally uncomfortable scene when Weisz visits with her mother-in-law (though it's puzzling, in that the scene makes it seem as if they're just meeting, when in fact she's been married for some time). At first, the movie made the contrast between the two men too obvious: of course Weisz would leave her up-tight husband for this dashing guy. But gradually, we see that the husband, though a bit feckless, is kind of sweet and caring and Freddy is a dope and a cad. He's a former military guy who, like many in his generation, feels that nothing in civilian life will ever compare with his experience of war - so he turns to drink and other adventures. The relationship between him and Weisz is purely sexual (and her marriage was strikingly asexual); when he tires of her sexually (numbed by alcohol, probably), it's over - for him. Though Weisz is really good, the pacing of the movie doesn't help her. I know that was probably a stage play originally - but at times it feels way too staged - especially Freddy's final departure. Did the director have a contract to make a film of a certain length? There were longer pauses in this final bit of dialogue - Good-bye, Freddy. Good-bye, Hester - than any I can remember: I thought my Blu-Ray had frozen in place. Movie ends with an image of a bombed out London house - a little heavy-handed symbolism, but it does return us to the world outside of Hester's head and leaves us wondering: What will become of her?

The Hour: The British take on Mad Men

The the MI6 espionage subplot is a little hard to buy into and extremely hard to follow - as these things often are - even though you can follow and accept the action step by step along the way, they dissolve as soon as you examine the premises - would the Soviets go to such murderous lengths to recruit an agent within the BBC? could a fragile wisp of a TV reporter actually kill a murderous agent? - the BBC America miniseries "The Hour" was greatly entertaining, a sassy look behind the scenes at a BBC TV news-magazine show in 1956. As noted in earlier post, it's very much a British take on the Mad Men era, replete with the fashions, the sexism, the jazz score, the smoking, the drinking, the office sex - even some of the same tropes: good-looking protagonist (Domenic West, aka McNulty) addicted to serial infidelity, ambitious young guy and gal, each with parental complications, and so on. Part of the driving force of the series is the efforts of the crew to get around some weird British law that media could not (still cannot?) report on events under debate in Parliament - almost inconceivable in the U.S. Though there are lots of plot elements, twists, surprises, it's truly a character-driven series: West for one, and in particular the guy and gal, Whishaw playing driven, eager, idealistic, self-destructive young journalist and Garai playing driven TV producer fighting the sexist stereotypes but inadvertently playing into them by engaging in a very public affair with West. Whishaw and Garai are best friends - though it's obvious that he's in love with her and torn apart by her affair - but their coltish friendship is played very nicely, a kind of relationship we rarely see on TV outside of sitcoms. Not sure if this will lead to other seasons, but the characters are strong enough that they could have a life beyond The Hour - though maybe it's best to leave it at that.

Breaking Bad gets on back on track : Season 5

It has taken a while for the current season (5?) of "Breaking Bad" to find its footing, but the current episode was very strong and has gotten the season on track. The first two or three we very slow and incremental, despite a few fine scenes the excellent writing and acting by the leads that we've come to expect from this strong series. It's as if they felt they had to move slow and recap a lot of material for the many new viewers they inevitably pick up thanks to the strong reviews. Only in this week's episode did the tensions really build and the vise-grip of the narrative take hold. First episodes showed Walter and Jesse getting back into the meth business - setting up a portable lab, with help of tough-guy Mike, the lone survivor from the Mexican-based drug ring now wiped out. He's a great, compelling character and I'm glad they've retained him: one of the best scenes in earlier episodes was his confrontation with the various other survivors of the defunct meth lab and "convincing" them to keep silent. In current episode, we get at last to the heart of the story: the tension between Walter's commitment to his family and his ever-deeper involvement in the big $ of drugs. Terrific scenes showing Skyler's growing alienation and estrangement, culminating in her plunge into a pool - obviously not a serious suicide attempt, but very deranged behavior. This followed by a torrential scene in which she (the excellent Anna Gunn) says she will do anything to get her children out of the household and away from Walter, whom she sees as increasingly dangerous. He (the equally excellent Bryan Cranston) is cool and placid through most of the episode - strangely oblivious to how much his wife is ignoring him - but he explodes in this scene, and you can see and feel that danger that Skyler is beginning to feel in his presence. All the while, the brother-in-law drug agent continues his pursuit of the drug mastermind, and we know - we've been building toward this for 5 seasons (which, oddly, seem to cover only a year in story time) - the ultimate confrontation between Hank and Walter, and what that will do to their entwined families.

Making news: Ace in the Hole

Some have called Billy Wilder's 1952 "Ace in the Hole" the best movie ever about newspapers - that's going too far, I think, as it's not about newspapers per se but more about a perverse and egocentric newspaperman (Kirk Douglas) and his misguided efforts to revive his damaged career (he's an exaggerated version of a type that all reporters will recognize, the charming but ruthless and egomaniacal careerist) - but it does capture a bit of the feeling of small-town or small-city newspapers back in the days when newspapers ruled - almost all movies about the business focus on papers in the big city, so Ace is a pleasant exception: its vision of newspapers is something that virtually every reporter and editor can relate to - we all started, and some stayed, at papers a lot like the Albuquerque Sun-Bulletin that Wilder depicts. Story involves Douglas arriving (a funny scene, as he's sitting in a car being towed through the city) at the newspaper office and talking his way into a job: he admits he's been fired from many large papers and that he's here in AlbuQ to take a job for little money and work his way back up. We cut forward to a year, Douglas is frustrated at the slow pace of the paper and the paltry news. Editor sends him out of town, with a young photographer (if this were remade, the photog would be a woman) to cover a rattlesnake hunt, but they get sidetracked when they learn a man is trapped in a landslide inside some ancient Indian caves he'd been exploring. Douglas worms his way into the cave, befriends the guy, and concocts a scheme to delay the rescue effort so as to build this into a national story that will be his ticket out of New Mexico. The story does become huge (spoilers here!) - but with tragic results, as the guy dies in the cave, and Douglas has to live with the knowledge his scheme cost the man his life. Some pretty smart scenes in the movie - especially as we watch the crowd of the curious spectators grow day by day into a big mob scene carnival - and some excellent dialogue, most thanks to Wilder, one would guess. Some may recognize that the plot setup was the start point for Robert Coover's excellent novel from the 1960s, The Origin of the Brunists (which A. and I unsuccessfully tried to adapt into a screenplay). I would also assume and hope that JK is aware of this movie, which is a great example of one of his key themes: the marginalization of Native Americans in American cinema of the West. Among other things, an Indian has a lowliest job in newspaper office and is subject to various racial slurs that don't seem to bother anyone else - and the guy trapped in the cliff was seeking Indian artifacts - but the Indians won't go into the cave for fear of disturbing the spirits of their ancestors. Cool that the movie recognizes this point of view, but it does so rather derisively.