Can Modern Family become one of the all-time great TV comedies?

Is there anyone who doesn't like the comedy series "Modern Family"? How could you not like this show, with its totally adorable characters, a wide variety of types who, as in so many complex modern families, are all somehow related and somehow manage to relate to one another. The episodes are not only very funny, beautifully scripted both line by line and in the odd twists and connections that links the various plot strands in each episode in surprising ways. They're also uplifting, feel-good without being (too) schmaltzy and without being tendentious. Many of the great comedy shows have been largely about character, but this one is almost unique in that it's about character-driven plots, three separate strands generally, one for each family "branch," that neatly tie together in a sharp conclusion - some of the best-written short scripts since the Dick Van Dyke Show, in my opinion. Not as comically funny as shows like Seinfeld or The Office - no one in modern family is a well-known or rising comic star building his or her own career - they're all "in character" in this ensemble rather than comic actors using the venue of a series to spin material. But the show is very funny in the broadly comic sense of humor as an illumination on the oddities of life - we continually recognize ourselves and our friends (and family) in these characters - and yet each is so distinct, and so different from one another. I'm not sure if it's yet one of the great TV comedies, but over time as the characters grow and develop and change it will have a chance to rise to those ranks. For now, it's surely one of the most likable shows on TV.

An early - and not as good - version of Bonnie & Clyde

Post of a week or so ago has led to some suggestions for the list of best American movies in black-and-white, including TB suggestion of "They Live by Night," which I watched last night and - well - you can certainly see the raw material here, and maybe it's hard to gaze back at it through blinding light cast by the later remake, Bonnie and Clyde, but Live by Night is hardly a great movie. Story of 3 guys who break from prison and the youngest of the 3 in particular who hooks up with a young woman and hopes to live with her like "normal people" but is inevitably drawn back into the life of crime, robbing banks. There are some terrific scenes, beautiful shot and conceived by director Nicholas Ray: the opening sequence of the getaway car chase on dusty rural roads (maybe the 40s? but largely unchanged from the 20s I'd say), the terrific scene in the "marriages performed" office, especially the approach to the office as seen through the neon window sign, the hero (Bowie) scouting out the town of Zelton for the next bank robbery, the weirdness of the rustic cabin that Bowie and Keechie (girlfriend) rent and try to fix up "like normal people." What draws the film down, though, are first of all the terrible miscastings or maybe the horrible acting - the gang of thieves looks like a bunch of guys from a method acting class, and Bowie looks like a GQ model - there's nothing here that makes us think even for a second that he could be an ex-con or torn between crime and love. Second, their naivete about being able to break away from the life of crime is totally absurd - it would be obvious tht cops all over Texas would be looking for these 2 and would find them in 5 minutes - it's almost as if the codes or conventions of the era had to make the criminals either totally bad guys or totally good guys and we didn't effectively explore the ambiguities until much later.

The most entertaining series on TV: Battlestar Gallactica

"Battlestar Gallactica" is far from the best series ever to be on TV but it is certainly among the most entertaining ever - once you buy into the premise of the series, which you will inevitably do after the first few episodes, it's impossible not to want to know what happens next to the characters. True, it's often over the top with the cartoonish extremes of its characters and yes the Cylons and all the starship battles are straight out of a video game, but overall the series as a lot of fun, filled with lots of well-drawn characters whom we come to care about, and most of all very smartly written and well plotted - you never feel that they're dragging this out or making it up as it goes along, but rather it has the feeling of an epic drama unfolding slowly over time. The main premise in a nutshell: a force of humanlike robots (the Cylons) attack the "12 colonies" and only about 50k survive, in a fleet of battlestars and civilian aircraft - they continue to fight the Cylons while searching for legendary home called Earth. The Cylons, who can look human and can clone themselves (there are many copies, as we're reminded) infiltrate and are a constant threat - but over the course of seasons 2 and and 2.5, some personal relations develop between Cylon and human, which leads to the inevitable question of: is love possible between these two "species," or are the Cylons just feigning these emotions in order to conquer once and for all? Won't give anything away here except to say that season 2.5 ends in a situation of true despair, but there are some 35 episodes to go, so all is not lost, yet.

A film without fascism: why the fascists were whitewashed out of Paisan

Watched some of the supplementary material on the Criterion disc of Rossellini's "Paisan" (thanks, Criterion/Janus - your discs remain unsurpassed!) - and got some new appreciation for and understanding of this groundbreaking but uneven movie. Interesting to hear in one of the Rossellini interviews that he says he hates (I think that was his word) the earlier Rome, Open City and loves Paisan. Why would this be? They are both part of his so-called War Trilogy, from the postwar Italian cinema, they both ushered in the Italian neo-realism (a term he also "hates," - why not just realism, he asked). But seeing a few clips from each I could see that Rome, though much more tight and tense as a narrative, and much better acted, is a traditional story with all the elements of Italian melodrama - it's almost operatic (Maganini shot dead in the street - a clip shown thousands of times). Paisan is by contrast much more experimental and unusual - an attempt to create a portrait of a nation in time through 6 unconnected vignettes. The pacing is therefore more erratic and uneven, but perhaps grander in the end - Canterbury Tales compared with Troilus & Cressida, as an analogy. Rome is obviously more appealing, but Paisan may have opened more artistic possibilities. One of the commentaries took on the issue rarely discussed: what about the Italian fascists? They are largely washed out of both films as we seem to see the partisans v the Germans as if Italian fascism played no role at all in the country's devastation and shame. Apparently the government at the time was focused on reconciliation and would approve no film that took on the fascists for what they were. The much later Night of the Shooting Stars, though not as good a movie, was more honest on this score.

If you remember liking Closely Watched Trains - don't see it again

Everyone watched "Closely Watched Trains" when it came out (in 1966), I remember seeing it at the Ormont, the "arthouse" cinema in East Orange!, though I remembered nothing else about it. Seeing it again last night brought back almost no memories of the original. If you do remember it, don't see it again, you'll be disappointed. I'm sure at the time it was a huge shock and breakthrough: hailed for frank sexuality, narrative simplicity, seriousness of purpose, sensitive portrait of youth, stark black and white imagery, noble sacrifice, captivating title, and to top it off - who would have expected such a film to emerge from behind the "Iron Curtain"? Today, though it still holds up on the level of cinematography, other elements seem tepid and boring. The sexuality - girl after girl throwing themselves into the arms of the rather unattractive railroad station workers - seems more of a male fantasy: it's not about sexual liberation but about female degradation. The sensitive youth - leading to a suicide attempt because of his sexual impotence - is a very poorly developed character: for example, movie begins with lots of set-up about his family, whom we never see again after the first ten minutes; his naivete seems cute and funny but is actually preposterous and makes light of his torment. The politics - the railroad workers sabatoge a German munitions train (movie set during WWII) - doesn't kick in till well into the film and is not believable in the last; though hailed at the time as a metaphor for Czech resistance to the Soviets, today it seems like a way to make heroes out of guys who were probably just buffoons. Most of all, the movie is painfully, dreadfully slow-paced and at times confusing. What may have seemed serious and profound years ago now just seems like a movie that can't get its plot under way. Sometimes, it's best to leave the past alone.

Nobody films open-air cinema better than Jean Renoir

Even mediocre Jean Renoir films have some wonderful and amazing elements that make them worth watching at least once. "La Bete Humaine" is mediocre Renoir, and therefore a cut above move movies of its era or maybe ever. The problems: a rather confusing, melodramatic plot with a couple of murders and potential murders and with a weirdly unexplained plot element in which the seemingly nice-guy protagonist, a railroad station manager, nearly strangles the girl he loves - and then she disappears from the picture. The film is adapted from the Zola novel, and I think we see here the problem of trying to manage the social and narrative complexities of the great 19th-century realism novels - Zola, Dickens, above all - in a 90-minute span. Today, these works can be and are often told through the miniseries - Bleak House and Little Dorrit two excellent examples, and isn't there a Germinal miniseries out there, too? As to the strengths, two elements come to mind: an absolutely beautiful opening sequences on the French railroads, as we see the engineers dealing expertly with the difficult and dangerous job of managing these locomotives and some great footage shot from a moving train racing along the tracks - a vanished world for sure and still very interesting to see from the inside (Cousin Fred, take note!); second, to this day nobody does en plain air cinema better than Renoir (the legacy of his father is obvious) - this film has a stunning sequence when the station manager visits his godmother in the country, as well as other beautiful nighttime exteriors. Renoir fans will remember the many great country scenes in Rules of the Game. Bete is no Rules of the Game, but it's pretty good in its own right.

Beauty v Truth: Rossellini's Paisan

Roberto Rossellini's 1946 "Paisan" is a curiosity today but highly influential on world cinema and still worth seeing and enjoying, at least once: made up of 6 episodes, each of about 20 minutes, it follows the invasion of American forces as they move north through Italy, from Sicily to the Po Valley, encountering some German resistance and linking occasionally with the Italian partisans. Some of the episodes are kind of melodramatic, but each presents a little story and each is a remarkably different setting: soldier picks of prostitute (and doesn't recognize her as someone he knew in the past), three chaplains stay in a monastery and are overwhelmed by the devotion, a partisan soldier and an American woman try to cross the Arno into partisan territory, a black soldier befriends a street urchin, and so on. Some of the scenes are strikingly beautiful, especially those shot along the Po river and the deserted streets of Florence, which looks like a DeChirico painting. Some are beautifully composed: the dinner in the monastery, with the monks fasting, which looks like a Renaissance tableau. Some of the production is ludicrously amateur by today's standards - Rossellini must have been working on a shoe string - with terrible shot-to-shot continuity. The terrible acting, especially among the American soldiers - who were these guys? GI's who stayed on in Italy after the war? - is a huge detraction. All of us should admire the resistance fighters, and who know whether any of us would have had the courage to take on the fascists or the occupiers, but this and other postwar films make it seem as if virtually the entire nation was partisan - someone must have supported Mussolini (and Hitler) or at least remained silent and unaware - the glorification of the Partisans may have done much to boost postwar morale but I suspect it's a bit of a fiction.