Mad Men v Breakfast at Tiffany - which should you watch?

Writers (specifically Maureen Dowd) have compared "Breakfast at Tiffany" with Mad Men (didn't read Dowd's column so I don't know exactly her point - maybe the same as I'm making) - and of course they share a similar world view: Manhattan circa 1960 when New York was truly the center of the world, America was an unchallenged world power, people drank heavily, smoked a lot, ate poorly, and at least a certain set partied like criazy and had no family life - and New York, from the 20s onward (cf Gatsby) had been a place where people from the small towns came to make or remake themselves - today they'd be as likely to go to Portland (either one) or Austin. So yes the two works are similar on a superficial level - but the differences between Peggy Marsh/Don Draper and Holly Golightly/Paul Varjak are profound. In Mad Men the people work for a living and they work hard and say what you will about advertising it was a driving force at the time in American prosperity - but in Breakfast they do nothing but wallow in their own self-regard. Audrey Hepburn, beautiful as always, is completely noncredible as a call girl/glamor girl from Texas - no call girl ever lived/dressed/spoke the way she does in Breakfast - the only less credible character is Paul/George Peppard who seems as much like a writer as I do like an NFL left tackle. Though some scenes are very well staged - the riotous cocktail party (not as good is the one in La Dolce Vita, but still good), the purchase at Tiffany, the "robbery" at the 5&10 - the movie is absolutely hollow at its core, these people have no values whatever, they are leeches and sponges and yet the movie glamorizes them and plays up to their so-called values, as if it's great to moon over fine but unaffordable jewelry and then to make light of literature (hey, it's so easy - buy a ribbon for your typewriter and you, too, can sell a story to the New Yorker!), criminality, marriage, on and on. Holly is in fact one of the stupidest people ever to be filmed - has ostensibly no idea she's running messages for the mob? - and the movie with its idiotic Hollywood ending totally makes light of her criminality. The novel, which I've never read, may be better or at least more honest. Finally, Mickey Rooney playing a Japanese artist is shameful and painful to watch.

Culture Wars: American Office v British Office - which is better?

"The Office" (American version) from what little I've seen of it, to be honest other than snippets just the wedding episode, Niagra, is incredibly cute and fun and very funny. Scripting of the hour-long Niagra episode was a small marvel - it really is as good as a movie and could have been a movie except then they would have made it 90 minutes or maybe 2 hours and it would have lost its charm. Keeping within the hour timeframe (about 45 minutes with commercial breaks) imposed great discipline and showed how efficiently they could tell the story - and you don't even need to be a regular viewer of the show to pick everything up right away. Many very funny scenes and concepts, including Steve Carrell's decorating his own car for the drive to the wedding (Going to a Wedding!), his terrific toast so unfunny it's hysterical (wedding toasts have become a real test of scriptwriter's skills: see the underappreciated Rachel's Getting Married sequence), the guy walking around with Kleenex-box shoes, many more. I've been a fan of the British Office and was not drawn to see the American particularly, but found it great in a different way - which (maybe?) says something about our culture or our differing senses of humor: The American much softer and sweeter, though the characters are of the same type, mostly (the guys, anyway) idiotic but thinking they're smart (cf Dumb & Dumber), the humor is light and inoffensive. The Gervais British original is much more acerbic, and the writing more self-consciously literary (Gervais even reads poems about Slough - they don't do that about Scranton I bet).

Everyone loves Toni Collette, but ... Tara is still bad

"The United States of Tara" should be good but it isn't, so why not? Everyone loves Toni Collette, and she's fabulous in the part of the multiple-personality-disordered Tara - but in a way she's too good. As she plays each of the (at least) 3 "alters" we always feel: wow, she can really play that character. What an actress! But that's not what the story needs. She plays each so well that we don't see Tara in the character - it's just like an actress doing a star turn: a prim matron, a tough guy, a saucy teen. It would be much more truthful, affecting, and scarier to see these figures emerge from the recognizably Tara - which would also mean she wouldn't have a full costume set for each alter. Let each one look like Tara - the old TV movie, Sybil, with personal fave Sally Field, was way better and scarier. Another flaw on "Tara," in my view, is that there is not a thing believable about her family (Gregsons?) - the kids, her husband, everyone in the community just blithely goes through life dealing with each alter in sequence as a minor inconvenience - oh, no, it's Buck. The kids don't seem frightened or disturbed or embarrassed to any significant extent - that is, they don't seem real, they basically Diablo Cody concoctions, the son, Marshall, (maybe the best character in the series) a retread of the boy in Juno and the daughter, Kate another precocious teen who talks like a 35-year-old stripper (and mumbles her best lines). Husband played be the valiant but terribly miscast John Corbett is an incredibly poorly conceived role: he's supposed to be, I guess, a guy's guy, drives a truck, works in landscaping, drinks beer from the bottle, but he seems like any of the various swells Corbett has played in his urban/urbane movies. Series supposed to be set in Kansas but has no sense of place whatever, and one could go on about the utterly preposterous behavior scenes, but one example will suffice: As one of the alters, Tara wears a poncho and straddles the bed where her father is sleeping and pisses on him (wife sleeping next to him, btw). Do you think maybe if a full-grown woman was standing on your mattress and pissing on your blankets you might wake up?

30 Rock is in danger of going adrift

"30 Rock" is kinda fun, I mean, who doesn't like Tina Fey and Alec Baldwin as smarmy studio exec has found the perfect role for him. Some of the secondary characters are amusing, too, in a sitcom fashion - meaning that they're all characteristics, not characters in an true sense - in other words, they are not like any human beings you will ever meet outside of a sitcom. There are always a few good laughs in each episode. However, does anyone else notice that the series has drifted too far away from its initial premise, and charm, in that its less about the actual making of an SNL-like TV show and more or a forum for the actors to display their eccentricities. The show within the show has drifted toward the background, it's become just the excuse to get these characters into the same room, or plot, and ultimately, at its worst, the show just seems like a bunch of lunatics misbehaving. It needs to be grounded more firmly in its reality - we have to know what these guys do, that despite their craziness, or because of it, they are successful at their unusual work: much like Mad Men, for that matter, and MM may suffer from the same draft, as it has gradually become more of a domestic soap and less of a workplace drama. This is less of an issue for a comedy like 30 Rock, in that we don't turn to it to learn about the craft of TV. But think of that other great sitcom based on a TV show, The Dick Van Dyke Show - which always worked because we saw the show as the glue that kept these characters together and accommodated their craziness. 30 Rock is in danger of gooing adrift.

Too long, too dark, too much suffering - but a good movie about an "outsider" artist

At more than two hour running time, "Everlasting Moments" is far too long for its material, but it's a very good, thoughtful movie that seems to truly capture the hardships of a family life in a particular time and place - southern Sweden in the early 20th century - and universally, in a working-class family where the father is alternately fun-loving and charming then a drunkard and a bully. If he were always horrible, it would be a movie of unrelenting gloom, and no doubt his long-suffering wife would have left and end of movie. But he keeps trying to reform and she keeps wanting to believe him and there are so many social pressure to keep her in the marriage. Things seem to be going well, and then he comes home drunk and the movie just explodes. Some very powerful scenes of domestic violence, and a solid political background as the father and some of the other characters get involved in a violent dockworkers' strike. The heart of the movie, though, is the mother's (Maria's?) fascination with photography - she tries to pawn a camera, but eventually starts taking pictures and has some real talent. This work helps keep the family alive, and is an artistic salvation for her - through her vision, and through a friendship she forms with a photographer in the city. This friendship almost costs her the marriage, and the relation between her and the photog remains ambiguous. The film apparently based on conversations with the woman's daughter - unclear whether the ambiguity of the relation with the photog was because of lack of info or to protect the reputation of the mother. Also not clear at all the stature of the woman's work: was she a well-known photographer in her life, or a talented amateur? Anyway, a pretty good movie but dark and full of suffering - reminds me of the many movies about the struggles of immigrants, but in this case they're the ones who didn't immigrate but should have. Also reminds me of the recent spate of movies about "outsider" artists.

Even 2nd-tier Bunuel is beter than most movies made today

Even 2nd-tier Luis Bunuel is far above most movies made today (or ever), so his distinctly 2nd-tier but still engaging "Death in the Garden" (1956) is worth seeing, especially for the 2nd half, when the exiled characters make their way through the South American (Mexican, actually) jungle to escape the pursuing armed soldiers. The trek through the jungle has some amazing scenes, as the characters gradually lose their sanity through hunger and privation: cooking the snake, the priest sitting in a rainstorm talking about soft-boiled eggs, most of all the discovery of a wrecked airplane. This is a truly Bunuelian moment in a film that in other ways doesn't bear the marks of his style throughout (it's an adaptation of a novel, and a truly commercial venture). As the scholar Victor Fuentes notes in an interview extra on the disc, the characters in the jungle suddenly are taken with the trappings of bourgoise society - makeup, jewelry, luggage - right in the middle of the jungle. Only the priest gets them to think about the rites for the dead - in fact, the priest comes off better than any other Bunuel religious figure I think. The film does have Bunuel's contempt for authority and for conventional values (Simone Signoret, as Djin, a prostitute, is really great in the role), the diamond miners' riot after an unjust execution is very exciting, reminds me of Battle of Algiers. Film doesn't have the depth and the wonder of some of Bunuel's greatest but worth watching to see how well he handles more commercial material.

Modern Family is a totally enjoyable series that's never condescending

The sit-com series "Modern Family" is a totally enjoyable, funny, clever little romp, never condescending to its characters and, though far-fetched and slapstick at times, always on the near side of credibility. The likable ensemble cast includes a 40ish prosperous couple in which the mom (Julie Bowen) is a bit overprotective (especially as she recalls her wild youth) and the dad (played too much like a 2nd-tier Steve Carrell) buffoonishly thinks he's in "hip" (I text!), the 3 kids includes a young teen daughter somewhat rebellious, brainy daughter, adhd-ish son. In the extended family - an gay uncle and his partner and their adopted baby girl, and the grandpa newly married to a hot Latina and fathering her chubby 10-year-old son. Hm. That's a lot, and a bit hard to follow when you first start watching - even after several episodes I don't have the names of the characters in mind - but the plots of each episode click right along, very well written, clever dialogue, good laugh lines, and a nice feeling of good will without smarminess throughout. We like the characters and tend to laugh with them and at their foibles, as they obviously mean well and try to do well. Series has a bit of a mock-umentary style, a la the Christopher Guest movies and The Office, in which the characters from time to time will address the camera as if sitting for an interview. Not sure how successful this series has been or how long the Lloyd-Levitan creative team will be able to sustain the mood and storyline, but it's an entirely enjoyable series.