If Shakespeare were alive, would he write for TV?

Let us now praise Season 2 of Homeland as another one of the great ongoing TV serial dramas - a genre that possibly defines our time and place in terms of popular art with high cultural and entertainment values, our contemporary equivalent of what theater was for the Elizabethans and Jacobeans. Well Homeland does not rise to Shakespearean levels of course, but damn if some of the writing doesn't rival that of any famous contemporary playwright or screenwriter. Episode 5, Q&A, is a paramount example, where the long interrogation scene entirely focused Carrie (Claire Danes) and Brody is unparalleled dialogue - as she slowly, deftly, turns him around, exerts what at least appears to be a confession, and entices him into becoming a secret agent - pretending to keep serving underground for terrorist Nazir while actually carrying out CIA orders. One thing that makes the drama so complex is that we are still not sure, not ever sure, when Brody is telling the truth and when he's lying, which we know he does often as it suits his needs - sexual, political, or professional. By episode 6, when he takes on his first CIA assignment, which goes horribly wrong (agents massacred while taking apart the tailor shop that had been a bomb manufacturing outpost - in Gettysburg - wouldn't this have drawn just a bit of attention? - one of the flaws in the credibility of Homeland, but even Homer nods) - we still don't know if Brody leaked the info. If not him, then who? I still think that one of the CIA folks is a double agent - we're led to think it may be Quinn, the new boss of operations assigned to keep watch on Carrie, a hothead for sure - but he's too easy a choice and too obvious. Throughout Season 1 I suspected Carrie's boss and former fling, who pretty much failed a lie-detector test but they let it slide; now I'm not so sure - don't know what his motives would be at this point other than $ for alimony, which he complains about. I'd still keep an eye on him, though.

Drive, he said?: Gosling miscast as getaway driver

Drive is a throwaway, entertaining movie that's not as good as it maybe could have been but is better than many of its type, mostly because of the action-paced car chases through the streets of LA and tight script that is full of twists and surprises but doesn't go too far beyond the realm of the plausible. It has some good actors, though in my view some real casting gaffes: Ryan Gosling, good as he is on screen, is not credible as a tough guy - in this he plays a loner working as an auto mechanic and stunt drive in LAs who makes a little $ on the side as a getaway driver for hire. Obviously, he gets in way too deep when he takes on a job that puts him between conflicting mob families. Bryan Cranston is always good, and he's good here as Gosling's hapless boss and sometime career manager. Carey Mulligan is sweet and adorable and entirely miscast as wife of an ex-con thug living hand-to-mouth. In other words, the movie refuses to be as noir as it needs to be - it's like an air-brushed pulp fiction. The director - Nicholas Winding Refn (had to look it up) - is way better with the action sequences than with the romantic moments, which for some reason he stages in slo-mo or at least it felt like slo-mo, as the characters, particularly Gosling, are laconic to the point of entropy. That said, the heists and the chases are dramatic and very well paced, the mob guys seem like genuine thugs - and there's a bit of humor, too, as the gang Gosling gets tied into is a Jewish LA gang, with the biggest galoof (who runs a pizza parlor no less - why not a Kosher deli)) smarting about the anti-Semitism of the Philadelphia gangsters. Ah, Hollywood. A fun movie - but not one that sticks in the mind for very long.

Going for it: The Sessions

The Sessions is an earnest little film that apparently takes a nonfiction, first-person magazine article on sex and the disabled - an account by a 30-something guy (Mark O'Brien, John Hawkes), confined since childhood to an iron lung (childhood polio) who wants very much to have sexual relationships - visits a long-haired and unconventional Catholic priest (William Macy) for advice and encouragement (this is Berkeley, circa 1988), Macy tells him to "go for it," he hires a sex therapist who directs him to a "sex surrogate" (Ceryl, Helen Hunt), who initiates him and teaches him over the course of 4 sessions by which time they, inevitably, fall for each other. On the plus side: Hawkes and especially Hunt play these difficult parts very well; I know that so many accolades go to able-bodied actors playing the disabled, but you have admit that he does a damn good job with the role; Hunt even more so - as this part requires her to be extremely calm and comfortable in a # of graphic sex scenes, and she does seem entirely natural before the camera - she's a much under-rated actress I think (pigeon-holed as a TV actress). I in particular like that the movie did in fact follow the natural course of events (spoilers here) and did not go for the so-called Hollywood ending that I half-expected and feared: Hunt understands that she has to walk away from Hawkes and let him lead his life rather than building a fantasy relationship around her - so she actually stays with her deadbeat husband (poorly cast - he does not look at all like a Jewish philosopher) and Hawkes moves on. On the less good side: sometimes a short story is best left as such, and it does feel like this movie, even though relatively short by today's jumbo standards, is filling time - the pace is very slow and kind of boring (I was relieved that they'd cut the sessions at 4, dropping the scheduled last 2). Movie has far too much voice-over narration, by Hawkes and even by Hunt (dictating notes on this case), and very few dramatic scenes aside from the sessions themselves. Sex surrogate is a totally weird and (to me) little-known profession; Hunt does give an explainer as to how and why this is different from prostitution, and we can see how she is actually offering therapy and instruction, rather than just erotic pleasure - but all this made me think I'd rather see a documentary on the subject than this somewhat prettied-up version, in which not one but three beautiful women fall for Hawkes - possible, yes, but possibly also his own view from his own narrative standpoint, accepted within the world of this movie as fact. We learn very little about his background and nothing about Hunt's, which is to me a big blank space in the story. Still, a very unusual topic that the writer-director Ben Lewin handles with dignity and with some light humor - worth watching for that and for two fine performances.

'Swonderful, marvelous - Wonderful Town @ Harvard

As visitors to this blog may know we've taken many pilgrimages up to Harvard over the past three years to see a variety of student productions, and this weekend saw the Bernstein/Comden & Green show Wonderful Town, a fairly obscure musical from the '50s in which LB was clearly figuring out some things that would later come into full fruition in West Side Story - but it's a still a piece with plenty of merit and interest in its own right. The story (based on the source material, more familiar as a straight drama, My Sister Eileen) about two sisters who leave Ohio for NYC where one, Eileen, hope to make it as an actor-dancer-singer and the other, Ruth, as a writer. A great theme treated in so many literary, dramatic, musical venues - La Boheme, aka Rent, being the ur-version I think - and that still strikes home, especially for a college crowd. I have to say this production, directed by family friend Susanna Wolk, was probably the best amateur theatrical musical we've ever seen - in fact, better in many ways that many professional shows I've seen. Anything it may have lacked in production values was more than made up for by the liveliness and excitement of the performances and the performers, the exuberance, the crisp timing, and the sheer fun of this show - I wish they could keep it live and take it on tour or something, such a shame that it had only a six-show run at the Loeb (back to school for all, I guess). Among the many great moments in the show: Ruth Sherwood, played by the extraordinary Elizabeth Leimkuhler, riding the subway in pantomime, the NYC cops singing an Irish love ballad to the beautiful Eileen (who confesses she's not Irish), the most uncomfortable dinner conversation in the world with the sisters and multiple suitors in the Village ground-floor apartment, Justin Pereira in drag as a hilarious and busty Mrs. Wade. Great #s were many, even though the only song well-known on its own is Ohio: others were What a Waste of Time and Money, a fine ensemble of ambitious NYC arrivals consigned to menial jobs, and most of all, in my opinion, two #s in which Leimkuhler really killed: Conga (at times she's singing while being held upside-down) and Swing (she transforms through the course of the song from a bored and affectless kid into a soulful jazz belter) - you really can't take your eyes off her. Her counterpart, Tess Davison as Eileen, also great in Ohio and other #s, and the two play off each other crisply all the time, thanks to S. Wolk's sharp and astute ear for both comedy and pathos. Special kudos also to music director Madeline Smith and choreographer Hazel Lever - the music and the many dance #s are far beyond anything I've ever seen in a student show. Overall, a totally fun theater evening - really everything you'd ever hope to see in a musical revival, and way more than you'd ever expect.

The demise of middle brow

There used to be a whole subgenre identified by that term of snide disparagement: middle-brow by which was meant: seeming to be artistic or meaningful or profound or controversial or intellectual, but designed to appeal to a mass audience and to reassure rather than to confront of provoke. We don't see the term middle-brow often any more, but we could resurrect it to describe Rust and Bone, a perfectly OK movie with many strengths, but not at bottom built on cheap theatrics and false sentiments, and despite its strengths it would no doubt be taken a lot less seriously if it weren't filmed in French, and in France. But there are strengths: it's a pretty engaging though familiar story line (if too long a story): petty criminal (Belgian) drifter and his young son leaving home for unknown reasons crashes with semi-estranged sister in southern France; meets beautiful if troubled young woman (M Cotillard), she gets grievously injured and loses both legs below the knee, he begins a friendship with her that blooms into a romance - through which they both get what they need, she realizes that she need not always be defined by her injury (and that she is still sexual and can enjoy sex), and he realizes that a relationship built on friendship is valuable and profound - he gives up (apparently) the toss-away sexual encounters that have been his life, and shows at last some devotion to his son as well. All very good to watch an agreeable - and Cotillard is excellent in this demanding part (with lots of help from digital imagery on her legs). Interestingly, it's yet another film about a streetfighter who goes pro or semi-pro - and it's hard not to compare with Silver Linings Playbook, Cotillard's Oscar rival, as a movie that touches many of the same notes of mutual redemption through relationship (and competition). At its heart, though, I think the film is phony: the many character, Ali, is a nasty guy and petty thief who would not be so easily won over to tenderness and love; Cotillard's character is confusing and inconsistent - at first she appears to be a tough young woman attracted to tough guys and rough scene (she's alone at a nightclub, dressed like a hooker, gets into a fight)  but we later learn she's an animal lover, tender, sweet, confident - in other words, her personality changes to suit the needs of the narrative. I admire the setting of the film - real people and their struggles just to get by, and a strong vote for workers' solidarity as a team of employees in a warehouse rise up against corporate spying, you'd never see that in the U.S. or in an American movie! - but the reality of the setting does not make up for the mushiness of the characters: despite its high and worthy ideals, the movie feels ultimately tendentious and saccharine, in other words, middle brow.

Too much of a good thing can make it a bad thing: Mad Men 6 premier

Unlike friend TB who enjoys the commercial interruptions on Mad Men as if they're commentary on the show itself, like illuminations in the margins of a medieval manuscript, I am thankful for DVRs that let us more or less skip over the ads to watch the admen - and still - even foreshortened - a 2-hour episode is just way too long; episodic TV is meant to be an hour or less and that's it - 2 hours makes it into a bad movie rather than a big episode - and in fact there was plenty of material for a good (if not great) episode in the MM Season 6 premier: Roger crying over the shoeshine guy's box, Donald's smirky expression while Meagan's having fun on the beach, Peggy oblivious and officious, a mean boss and the most talented one on the room, Betty's visit to the lower east side. And yet - all stretched too think way too much dead space, too many plots twisting around one another and strangling the life out of the series. Sadly, the show seems to be edging away from life in the office - the mixture of talent and debauchery, the office politics, the way in which we see how ad folks work and think, the strange moral confusions involved with client relationship - and becoming more about a bunch of relationships among people who just happen to work in the same place or in the same industry. Friends and sub-friends on FB have been chattering about this episode, and noting the many death injuries have surmised that Don will die in Season 6; I doubt that (especially as there will apparently be a final Season 7) - mostly I see the death images as being subsumed to the images of change in identity: we know that Don did assume a new identity after the Korean War, and the urge to shed his identity and assume a new one is more than broadly hinted at here: from his reading The Inferno in the opening scene (In the middle of my life ... ) to his obvious boredom with Meagan and with his work, to the encounter with the Army guy and the inadvertent exchange of lighters (his first ID change involved an Army buddy, too), the wedding in which Don an obvious outsider poses as a friend of the groom, and finally the bizarre ad campaign he develops for the Royal Hawaiian Hotel. By the end of Season 6, I predict, Don will be alive but will no longer be Don.

A movie that is like no other: Holy Motors

Some people will hate this movie and for them I say OK, stop watching after ten minutes because what you see is what you get, but I found Leo Carax's Holy Motors (2012) a tremendously interesting, complex, confusing, weird, visually dramatic, sometimes funny, sometimes disturbing movie - not sure if at the end it really means anything and not sure if all the pieces hold together or if some are just random - you can get away with a lot of narrative shenanigans if you're building your whole edifice on dream-logic - but the best way to watch this is to just observe and absorb and not worry terribly about whether everything makes sense. What we see is a main character, Oscar (reference to movie-making?) played by French actor Denis Lavant, over the course of what appears to be 24 hours playing about 12 different roles: the structure seems to be: he wakes up in a motel room in a city, lights up, wanders around, breaks through a wall, finds himself in a theater, observing the audience; then, flash, he seems to be a business executive with bodyguards, leaving his modernist-style (Corbusier) mansion (saying good-bye to children) entering limo and heading off toward work; limo driver, Celine, tells him he has 9 "assignments" for the day - we gradually realize that each assignment requires him to undergo a costume/makeup change (in back of limo) and then play some kind of role: so he is an avatar for the movie actor, with many different assignments and roles and realities - in that sense, he is playing himself, an actor who actually must take on each of these assignments. The assignments are sometimes very much within a movie genre - e.g., an assassination, a dad in a dramatic scenes with teen daughter driving her home from a party, a derathbed scene - other times the assignments are just plain weird. Many take him to odd, deserted places in Paris, notably the cemetery (Pere Lachaise?), the sewer system, a deserted former department store (Samarataine) - at least one of which may be a "real" moment in his life rather than an "assignment" (though again with the double-entendre that the entire movie is Lavant's "assignment"). Some of the explorations of staged scenes in after-hours public spaces reminded me of The Russian Ark - a sense of voyeurism and of a secret ongoing life in a great city. The title reference, which we learn more about in the last segment, suggest an allegorical dimension as well, as the limo is like vehicle carrying him through the course not just of a day but of his life, heading for salvation, or not. Some scenes are so disturbing - and I do not mean gruesome of ghastly, but visually and emotionally, like moments from Poe - that they will stay with you indelibly. It's not as controlled and thoughtful as other emotionally stunning movies such as Pan's Labyrinth of The Secret in their Eyes - but Carax creates a world and vision all his own. Not for everyone, but some may find this one of the best movies of recent years.

Something rotten in Denmark: A Royal Affair

I am seldom, in fact almost never, a fan of 1. costume drama 2. programs about royalty 3. programs set in castles 4. historical fiction - so why on earth would I expect to like A Royal Affair? Yet I did! It's a really good film, highly engaging and informative (instructs as well as pleases). In brief, young English woman (we know nothing of her background) is married to the young Danish King Christian, ca 1760 (before they even meet) and she sets off to begin her life as the Queen of Denmark - immediately it's obvious that the King is insane; though she bears him a child, she is trapped in her relationship, sometimes even physically endangered; ultimately, she falls in love with the King's personal physician (and closest confidant). The physician, a serious believer in Enlightenment ideas, gets King Christian to support various liberal reforms - until at last the nobility overrules the King and executes the physician. The wife dies shortly after that, but we learn in an epilogue that their son went on to be (as King Frederick) the greatest reformer in Danish history. All based on historical fact, I believe. Well, many movies based on fact are dry as a textbook, but Royal Affair carefully develops the three main characters, with their passions and their faults; King C. is especially weird and interesting to watch, with his strange and childlike outbursts and his bizarre crudeness. The movie, unlike so many court-dramas, has a great and astute sense of social class and of the life of ordinary people in Denmark at this time - the terrible oppression of the peasants (one brutal scene shows a man who'd been tortured to death probably for stealing) and the urban poor; we see the idiocy and narcissism of the court society as well - willfully oblivious to the suffering around them and to their exploitation of the entire national wealth. The depiction of the era is very well done - down the the hardships of travel by coach, the primitive state of 18th-century medicine, as well as the luxuiousness of the court: the contrasts are what make this movie, and what differ it from so many others. The execution scene is painfully vivid. Only flaw(s): it is a little long (could do with fewer en plein air romantic, Zhivago-like scenes) and the Queen kind of fades from the plot at the end (as she did in life, no doubt). Overall, though, a surprisingly honest and provocative movie that rises well above the conventions of the genre.

Killing Softly: End of Season 2 answers (most) questions

Probably will be spoilers here, so beware - conclusion of Season 2 of The Killing very effective and much more satisfying that conclusion of Season 1, which left wide open questions and resolved nothing. At end of Season 2, we do know who killed Rosie Larsen, and the killer's identity will, I'm pretty sure, surprise all viewers and at the same time make sense within the parameters of this sometimes unfathomable plot. I'm not sure I buy into Jamie's willingness to attack and beat up Rosie, much less to chase her through the woods; not sure I believe he could or would tie and bind her and dump her in the trunk of the campaign car. Not sure I understand how he could have summoned Ames to the scene of the crime, or why. But Terri's presence along with Ames makes sense, and her role in the killing is very surprising and haunting, and I'll leave it at that. Clearly, the team producing the Killing wrote this season as a likely conclusion, while leaving loose a few strands that can draw us into Season 3, which is out there waiting (though not yet on DVD): Why does Richmond so quickly patch things up with the developers and the Indian tribe, in fact why does he spring Ames and Jackson from jail? He must have a deeper motive. Who's body has just turned up near the airport - any connection to this case? In any case, both M and I found Season 2 of The Killing totally engrossing, despite its many manipulative false leads and improbabilities (Rosie in no way seems like a troubled teen who would run away; how could she be working in a casino without her parents' knowing?; isn't the coincidence that brings her together with Terri at the end a bit beyond belief?; could Jamie be as crazy as he seems at the end? - he sure his that side of himself for a long time). Lindon/Enos is a great, strong, if somewhat opaque character; sidekick Holder/Kinnaman grows into the role and becomes increasingly important as a counterweight to Enos's solemnity and focus. I would guess Season 3 will focus even more on Seattle politics, which can be a risk, as at hear this is a police procedural and not a political drama. I'll watch, though.