How We Waited Out The Election
Only now, as the smoke clears and the euphoria dies down, do I realise how much the wait for November the fourth had turned my mind into a stagnant pond, a Moebius strip of re-thought thoughts, cognition turned into a chore thanks to the insane worry over something I literally had no control over (at least Canyon could vote, an act that made her justifiably happy). Two days later, and look at me! I’m all florid and shit, like what I was previous, like.
During that interminable wait, we tried to keep ourselves occupied and not just keep reading the same four websites (though we enjoyed it all) and getting even more obsessed than usual with The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. Our efforts bore some pleasant fruit (the cherries and strawberries of the week) and some disappointing fruit too (mangoes, sharon fruit and unripe bananas, metaphorically speaking).
Burn After Reading
I had high hopes for this after the excellence of No Country For Old Men had erased disappointed memories of the previous four Coen Brothers movies (yes, I’m not crazy about O Brother, Where Art Thou? or The Man Who Wasn’t There), but it was frustratingly slight. Being more of a fan of their hyper-weird comedies than their dramas, with The Big Lebowski at the top of my faves list and Raising Arizona close on its tail, I was hoping this would be similarly unhinged and frenetic, but instead it was like Fargo with more jokes, which is a problem considering I don’t really like Fargo that much. At least, not as much as many seem to.
Of course, mid-level Coen Brothers movies still have a lot to recommend. Almost all of the performances were great (though weirdly Malkovich did my head in with. His. Stilted. Fucking. Line. Readings. And. Laboured. Fucking. Profanity.), with special kudos to the ever-wonderful Frances McDormand and Richard Jenkins (who broke my heart). That said, why did they bother casting Tilda “Goddess” Swinton for a part that had about twelve lines? Don’t get me wrong, I’m more than happy to see her on screen in any capacity, but she seemed ill-served. Here’s hoping she becomes a Coen repertory player and turns up again, except with something to do other than be annoyed with the men in her life.
Even with that cast, the film never seemed to come alive, though the central point, that of lampooning the arrogance and solipsism of a bunch of self-regarding twerps who think their pitiful lives have some greater meaning, when in fact all they are little more than a bunch of horny morons, was beautifully done, perhaps even more so than the previous times they have tried to make that point (No Country, Fargo, The Big Lebowski, etc.). I’ve had more fun thinking about the film than I did watching it. That said, Brad Pitt is a better comedic actor than I thought possible.
I’m grateful to the Coens for proving that.
Quantum of Solace
Casino Royale is possibly my favourite Bond movie since On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, leapfrogging over The Living Daylights, The Spy Who Loved Me and Goldeneye, but poverty has delayed us going to see the latest movie. Instead I’ve been rewatching this over and over again.
We might still see it this week, once I’ve sold a kidney, following the wonderful news that Vue Cinemas have instituted over-18′s only performances for people who don’t want to put up with hordes of little shits treating cinemas like the local bus depot. A black man is elected President of the United States and a cinema chain (in our home town, no less) finally realises moviegoers have been staying away because of the behaviour of a bunch of oiks, all in the same week? This truly is the golden age of civilisation. Speaking of which…
Civilisation Revolution
If anything stops me blogging, it will be this game. In its previous manifestations it was already the greatest game ever made (yeah chess, thass right. What have you done for me lately?), but now it’s less fussy, faster paced, and filled with endearing silliness. Canyon has been forced to put up with my wasting hours on the hellishly addictive thing, so much so that I’m now responding to her conversational gambits with a reflexive “Follum follum!” If you’ve played it, you know what that means.
Tropic Thunder
It’s taken us way longer than we would have liked to see Ben Stiller’s attack on Hollywood, and it was not even worth the wait. Despite the odd great moment, the whole ambitious exercise falls flat with upsetting regularity. Though Robert Downey Jr.’s performance is just as amazing as we had heard, he didn’t actually seem have anything funny to say, and we ended up laughing at Jack Black’s cold turkey shenanigans instead. Stiller’s original concept for the film is hugely appealing, but the execution of it just didn’t seem to click at all, with the plot drifting along from one lengthy and ultimately unfunny scene to another, seemingly without direction or purpose. It made Zoolander look like a tightly plotted Preston Sturges movie (I say that as a fan of Zoolander who thinks it sometimes ambles when it should be sprinting). While Adam McKay’s movies mostly come alive in the editing room, this never takes shape, and no amount of amusing scenes with Tom Cruise dancing and swearing can save it. Dispiriting stuff, though I’m hoping to see a longer cut soon that might justify that brilliant idea, and maybe even give Jay Baruchel and Brandon T. Jackson something to do other than be straight men. Zoolander got funnier with each viewing, so maybe something similar will happen here, though I doubt it.
Compare that to Pineapple Express, which we watched again, and is now, definitely, my favourite comedy of the year. Considering it’s a stoner comedy it’s built with the same care that Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg lavished on Superbad, progressing with logical beauty from scene to scene with only a couple of moments at the end of the second act that show they love their McKee a bit too much. It’s not a deal breaker at all, though, and the Hot Fuzz-style genre mash-up of the final act is even more satisfying second time around, with kudos going to Rogen’s repeated declarations of, “Nice!” whenever anything goes his way (such as the hilarious respawning machine guns in the underground lair).
In comparison, Tropic Thunder looks like a first cut mess, something you would show to a studio head to reassure them that the money is on the screen. How talented individuals like Stiller, Etan Cohen (partly responsible for the magnificent Idiocracy) and Justin Theroux could botch this is beyond me. The latter name is especially troubling. My previous excitement at his participation in Iron Man 2 has withered completely. Let’s hope he’s better off without the improvisational scenes between the leads that appear to have derailed the film so badly.
Justice Society of America by Geoff Johns and Dale Eaglesham
Is this the best comic on the market right now? In terms of superheroism, perhaps it is, though of course it has been great since Geoff Johns jumped onto the title early in the previous incarnation. Johns is always great value (especially lately; he’s on fire), but JSA is better than ever, making me retroactively like Kingdom Come more than I originally did. However, the main reason is…
…OMG Hawkman is a TOTAL BADASS. Trust Goody-Two Shoes Jay to get in his way though.
Hunger
Turner Prize-winning director Steve McQueen’s meditation on Bobby Sands’ hunger strike has been damned by some of the UK press for daring to portray the Republican struggle in a noble light, which is hilariously inappropriate as that is absolutely not what the film is about at all. While, yes, it is set in The Maze and follows Sands’ strike from conception to death, and while it shows in horrific detail the back-and-forth mental and physical combat between the imprisoned IRA soldiers/terrorists/politicians (delete as applicable) and the guards, it’s pretty much an abstract exploration of what art is. Prisoners daub the walls of the cells with shit, flood the corridors of the prison with urine, and, eventually, stage a protest that turns their bodies, as depicted by McQueen, into a time-lapse photo of living, breathing decay. Even the poster shows one of the “paintings” by a prisoner (a nod to previous Turner Prize winner Chris Ofili?).
This is, as far as I can tell, the one reading of the movie that explains the peculiar structure. The first third of the film concerns a new prisoner (Davey, played by Brian Milligan) learning the ropes of prison life and the protests therein via his cellmate Gerry (Liam McMahon), the middle third is the much-debated conversation between Sands (Michael Fassbender) and his priest (Liam Cunningham) about mortality and politics, and the final third is an impassive, minimalist depiction of Sands’ lengthy death with Davey and Gerry disappearing from the movie altogether. Bear in mind, except for the middle section, there is almost no dialogue, with only a minimal amount of verbally communicated information giving background on what is happening. There is barely any character development, but then that’s not what the film is about. It’s about their acts, their attempts to say something with little more than their bodies as the conduit of their emotion and rage. Much of what they do has little effect. The shit paintings are blasted away and the urine is washed up in a shot of audience-patience-defying length. Only the deaths of the hunger strikers seem to have any effect, though that is relegated to a few title cards at the end of the movie giving a few nuggets of information about the subsequent years.
Getting angry about the movie for glamourising the strike (shurely shome mishtake; it’s nigh-unwatchable) or having a pro-IRA agenda seems wrong-headed, though I understand many people are never going to allow themselves to move on from those horrible years during the struggle. However, in the terms of the film, that struggle is less important than McQueen’s interest in the way the prisoners and hunger strikers express themselves, with the only scene that debates the details of the Republican battles and the morality of politicised suicide being the notorious static art/anti-art shot of a drab room and Sands and his priest smoking and talking for twenty minutes, which, while hypnotic and superbly played, stands in contrast with the bleak, almost silent beauty of the rest of the movie. McQueen seems to be staring into his soul and wondering why he is an artist, and how his art compares to something as drastic as turning the place you live into a hellhole using only the waste products of your body, or allowing yourself to be brutalised just to make a statement and to psychologically affect those who torture you. Isn’t art meant to affect the people who experience it? Isn’t making a person beat you to a bloody pulp the most extreme way to do that? Where does that leave McQueen and the rest of the YBAs?
Can you tell that I thought it was amazing? There’s a lot to digest (really, no pun intended), especially as it is attracting some fascinating debate, as in this excellent piece from Frieze magazine. It’s definitely on my end of year best film list, and strongly recommended for anyone who can handle the body horror.
I’m unsure as to whether admitting that I spent the last couple of weeks doing all of that in addition to habitually checking on Obama’s progress makes me look more or less sad. I could lie and say I also went sailing, if that helps. Of course, now we’re waiting for his press conferences as if they were episodes of Friday Night Lights, as we tuned into CNN last night to see him talk about getting a shelter dog (which made Canyon almost swoon) and expressing condolences over a journalist’s damaged arm (which almost finished me off). Compared to that slavish devotion to the President-Elect, acting like a couple of lovestruck groupies, six hour marathons of CivRev almost look cool.
Hawkmonkey Endorses Barack Obama
As I’ve said before, this blog is in slowdown for a while, but even more so with the election upon us. It’s affecting us in all sorts of ways (from horrible panic to sleeplessness to random outbreaks of crying), but it’s not just me and Canyon, and maybe Masticator, who I’m sure would be grateful for some event to take Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross off the front pages of the UK papers.
The election has also affected the reincarnated half-Thanagarian reality-anomaly/sock monkey hybrid who is keeping the streets of our town safe at night. I think he’s felt strongly about this election for a long time now, but is only now endorsing Senator Barack Obama for President of the United States of America.
After many threats and demands, Canyon and I carved that Halloween pumpkin for Hawkmonkey, as his sock hands are not built for sensitive work like that. They’re perfect for cracking heads, though, hence our fear.
We used a variety of knives and a screwdriver (no pumpkin sculpting tools around, sadly, which meant we had to improvise, McGyver-style), as well as the evil FridgeKiller, the knife that stabbed a deadly hole in our fridge recently. It didn’t do any damage to anything other than the pumpkin, which makes a change, after a recent bagel-slicing task ended in blood and tears. That goddamn knife is possessed.
I must admit, I was reluctant to do this for Hawkmonkey. Regular readers may remember my early support for the Rufus T. Firefly / Dickie Pilager ticket, but that faltered a while ago, what with it being revealed that Firefly is a Freedonian by birth, and therefore ineligible to run, and Pilager, after taking over the campaign, could never get past his association with the evil industrialist Wes Benteen. A shame. Firefly’s pro-eating-crackers-in-bed / anti-whatever-it-is philosophy is exactly what the world needs right now, but these silly rules just got in the way. As a result, much as I don’t want to, I’m forced to throw my support and formidable political influence behind the duo of Merkin Muffley and Bob Roberts.
I’m not sure they’re good for the USA, but Muffley reminds me of my nervy, ineffectual self, and I’m reassured to know that Bob Roberts is there to run things from the sidelines, and after the last eight years we all know that a powerful, sneaky, vicious and immmoral vice-president is vital. Plus, he’s a kickass musician. Know hopelessness!
All Hail the Fingers Of Fury!
If a writer has writers’ block, then a blogger will suffer from Blogger Clog, and that’s certainly the case here. There are numerous reasons for my infrequent posting, perhaps most importantly this goddamn illness, which, while little more than a cold, has been hanging around for weeks. Hard to be prolific when one side of my head feels heavier than the other. On top of that is a much busier than usual week at work which has drained me of much energy, and oh God this election this fucking election it’s driving my brain crazy with the excessive checking of the politiblogs, so much so that, even though I’ve been enjoying his updates, if Andrew Sullivan writes “know hope” one more time I’ll either turn violent or cry or cry violently. It’s the classic split between his faith and my atheism; he can know hope all he likes, but I’ll not relax until Obama’s inauguration. People who know me will be very familiar with my fatalistic tendencies. ::takes break from hard minute’s blogging to check fivethirtyeight.com::
Another reason, which is probably the main one if I was willing to sit and poke at my ossified brain in order to find out, is my attempt to finish reading Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. Though I’m wary of saying anything about it for fear of angering her many many fans/followers/cultists, I have to say it is about to defeat me. No, Randian visitors, her worldview has not dominated mine, as if it had been dismantled and bested by a philosophy of vast strength and power, like the machines that conquer and crush the rocks and mountains of the earth. I’m just, well, really really really fucking bored by now. Her insanely florid prose might have amused me before, but by now, after being shouted at in a self-pitying and mean-spirited tone for 700 pages, I might not be able to make it. But I must! For am I not a human being? Is not my mind the Alpha and Omega, the force that can harness nature and bend it to my will, able to withstand this mighty onslaught, bearing the winds and rains of her ideas and rising, triumphant, like a Titan, like the owner of himself and his destiny, masterful and immortal? Fuck you, book! You shall never defeat me!
However, I do just want to get it over and done with by now, if only because I need a break from it. I’m glad I’m reading it, especially at a time like this, when one presidential candidate is bellowing “Socialist!” and running from person to person like Kevin McCarthy in the first two versions of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and the world’s most powerful Objectivist, Alan Greenspan, is talking about how there is a flaw in the world that makes his free market ideals untenable (I’m totally paraphrasing; please don’t correct me, people). Before reading Atlas Shrugged I would have thought his comment rather cheeky, blaming people for the market disaster and not The Market itself, but now I see his point (though I don’t necessarily agree with it). If I’m reading Atlas Shrugged right (again, don’t comment, I don’t need clarification just yet), the Objectivist creed would work just fine as long as everyone was “moral” by Rand’s code, but after many many years Greenspan has apparently discovered that people (i.e. traders and bankers and economists and anyone who deals with money anywhere in the world ever) won’t abide by that code of behaviour, and will in fact take as many short cuts as possible to fill their pockets with as much Fat Bank as they can. I see where he’s coming from. I think he’s a bit tapped to be suddenly saying, “Oh, it’s humanity’s fault for this and not mine for coming up with a system of economics that doesn’t take into account actual human behaviour as it really actually exists for reals, but instead bases its assumptions about what people are like on the idealised ramblings of a writer from the 50s who had a weird thing for dominatory industrialists and smokestacks and trains going into tunnels and which therefore cannot possibly work,” but I do see where he’s coming from. Thanks for the recession, jerkwad.
So yeah, it’s been interesting to listen to Republican and conservative thought with a new, deeper understanding of where it’s coming from, and to finally comprehend why followers of that creed hate taxation as much as they do even though I think they’re wrong, and so I do owe a debt of thanks to Ayn Rand for giving me such a long-winded peek into that mindset. Sadly, my brain is dying from the melodrama and the hate and the victimhood, and I just want to get it over with so I can move onto something fun (I got John Hodgman’s new book two days ago and it’s begging to be read). Until then, time I would devote to blogging is being taken up with enduring the endless Rand-ting, so it’s like another blog slowdown, and one I really don’t want to endure but will because I’m stubborn like that and hate leaving books unfinished (especially when I’m 700 pages in). I will get back to the planned post about Mad Men, and some Face/Offs I’ve been looking forward to as soon as I can, but for now, I must complete this mammoth task.
In the meantime, here is the other thing that has totally possessed my mind over the last week, but luckily it’s a thing that is making the brain very very happy. Marnie Stern, super-genius guitarist, has just appeared on my Radar of Unbelievable Awesomeness with her new album This Is It and I Am It and You Are It and So Is That and He Is It and She Is It and It Is It and That Is That (which is a phrase attributed to Zen philosopher Alan Watts, according to AV Club). It is absolutely incredible, easily on my 2008 best list along with Re-Arrange Us by Mates of State and The Family Afloat by Bound Stems and several other lovely works. Stern’s guitar playing is unlike anything I’ve heard before, and strumming along to it would be the most insane Rock Band challenge ever (especially as Zach Hill’s drumming is almost as complex and frenetic). This is her new single, Transformer, and it should be number one across the planet.
Even better is her song Ruler, which you can find on her MySpace page. Thank you for keeping the book cooties from smothering my brain, Marnie Stern.
America’s Next Top Phonies, Jerkwads, and Moosehunters
Due to tardiness and the vice-like grip of the work of art known as The Shield (seventh season PWNs all other shows), it took us way longer than expected to finish the tenth cycle of the World’s Best Reality Show, aka America’s Next Top Model, even though it was much more entertaining than the dreary eighth and ninth cycles. Even weirder, it was fun even though we weren’t rooting for anyone, except for a week when I suddenly thought gloomy punk freako Lauren was the most awesome of all, until she suddenly started screaming at all of the other contestants like a psycho. Other than her, the most entertainment was provided by Dominique, who was an idiot and an egotist, but her photoshoots and adverts were so hilariously misjudged that it was worth the pain of her endless solipsistic monologues to see the crazy genius of her modelling (here is an example of her in a pair of meat knickers).
Even so, the challenges were more interesting than usual, and the chemistry in the house was better than the previous two cycles, which were both snore-inducing. However, the finale was a shocking travesty of justice, with mediocre model-in-training Whitney winning over the transparently superior (though incomprehensible) Anya, seemingly just so Tyra could make a big deal about a plus-size model winning the competition. No matter how heartening it is to see a “full-figured model” (Tyra’s phrase) win the competition, and it is very heartening, it would have been even better if she’d been any good, and if her body had contained even one honest bone. Here’s her cringe-inducing Italian CoverGirl advert, at the 1:30 mark, which earned her little praise (while she’s not as bad as Dominique or Lauren, at least those are hilarious).
Despite being repeatedly told that she was coming across as a ridiculous phoney with an off-putting fake laugh, she would not stop reverting to her overlaugh and cutesiness. Previously, not doing as Tyra has commanded is a crime that has put paid to the ambitions of numerous contestants, but for some reason Whitney’s inability to knock her hokey shtick off was ignored in the final weeks. Just to make me even more annoyed, the finale was rendered shambolic by the farce that was the season overview, which usually compares a significant percentage of the photos of each finalist, but this year was truncated due to the dearth of Whitney shots that could compare with Anya’s professional pictures. That Anya lost because her accent is odd and her final runway walk was not 100% perfect is bullshit pie. Watching the finale and getting that shock nearly ruined our holiday, it left me that flabbergasted. It’s like the Saleisha controversy all over again, except Saleisha was at least talented.
Bitching about Whitney’s win is not the sole reason that I’m posting about ANTM. Early in the cycle I was distracted by Claire, the dive-bombing mom with too much self-confidence and zero personality. That’s par for the course on this show (though usually the dive-bombing doesn’t come into it), but for some reason she reminded me of David Byrne.
I appreciate that I’m the only person who can see that, and the neuronal mishap that created that connection is not only confusing but offensive (to this Byrne fan, at least). Later in the season, as Whitney defied logic and justice and remained in the running as superior models fell by the wayside (Katarzyna, maybe hyper-photogenic savant Lauren, that is if she didn’t walk like a palsied hobo), I started to get the feeling that she looked a lot like someone famous. Not trusting my brain anymore, I tried to forget about it, but the elusive connection picked at my consciousness. Finally, in the penultimate episode, it hit me; Whitney is Lina Lamont for the 21st Century.
Now we’ve started the eleventh cycle, and there a few pre-makeover lookylikeys already (bear in mind we’ve not yet seen the makeover episode, which might change things drastically). Most peculiar is Marjorie’s downright freaky similarity to child actor Barret Oliver from D.A.R.Y.L., which I at first thought was my brain malfunctioning again, but upon mentioning it to Canyon she also saw it, and then, a couple of days later, I found that AV Club commenter L’il Un said the same thing after this customarily hilarious Amelie Gillette recap.
She even acts like Barret Oliver, her nervous tics flashing across her face so rapidly it’s as if she’s running through his entire Neverending Story performance on fast forward. Not quite as dramatic, but during her photoshoot, scatty Samantha was channelling 70s era Bonnie Tyler.
Marjorie and Samantha seem likeable enough so far, though Marjorie’s skittish behaviour is making us equally jumpy. I’m being cautious in my praise as I’ve been burned before by siding with contestants who have turned out to be horrible and catty. While she was my favourite for the majority of the series, I can never forgive cycle five contestant Bre for the Granola Bar Incident, even though that gave us this wonderfully dry Wikipedia comment:
Bre was involved in a memorable argument with fellow competitor [Nicole Linkletter] when she accused Nicole of stealing her granola bar, and retaliated by disposing of all of Nicole’s energy drinks. The girls refused to talk civily until they reconciled during a day out in London when they were paired together, originally to their dismay. The identity of who stole the granola bar remains unknown.
Still, despite my initial caution they, along with the apparently saintly Analeigh, are infinitely better than the bigots Sharaun and Clark, who respectively look like a vampiric Amanda Bearse from Fright Night…
…and good ol’ Southern boy Strom Thurmond.
Hannah, the ignoramus from Alaska, has yet to visually remind me of anybody, other than a young, dopey Beth Orton (sorry Beth Orton!). However her soul seems to be a match for Sarah Palin, right down to her incurious mind, out-of-her-depthness, parochial ignorance, fear of the other, and tedious moose anecdotes.
Oh, sorry, I meant “small-town values” (if I lived in a small town I would be really pissed off with people stating that these values are representative of everyone there). I’ll take it as a good omen if the depressingly beleaguered Hannah gets kicked off the show (bear in mind I’m avoiding spoilers, so I’m aware it might have happened already). It would work out well for her, as she can go back to her home town, where she can avoid “black music”, gang violence (with gang meaning “black”, it seemed), and the playful lesbianism of the third episode, which only offended me (a non-small towner with BAD VALUES!) in that Elina appears to have terrible taste in women, what with chasing after the awful Clark instead of someone nicer. Peer beyond her looks to the cold heart beneath, Elina! You’re too good for her!
A Sad Day For Jazz Lovers
It’s been one of those days where nothing much happens, when everything gets swallowed up with chores and work and flagellating yourself on a treadmill just to lose a few stone here and there. Oh, and I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, working out is never a good idea while watching someone as odious as George W. Bush talks about world events like a kid who hasn’t done his homework, and then being pressured by teachers to explain what he knows about a subject and relying on repetition of a single word over and over again as if that gets him off the hook. His brand of idiotic belligerence and barely concealed hysteria made me do three kilometers more than I expected, and I spent the rest of the day in an exhausted and miserable fugue state.
Anyway, the one thing that did happen today was not welcome at all. One of the music world’s most innovative composers, Swedish jazz pianist Esbjörn Svensson, died today in a tragic diving accident, at the age of 44. I was recently introduced to his music by a colleague, and was beginning to grow enormously fond of his work, which was jazz if played by very aggressive avant-garde hipsters. That sounds like I’m making fun of his work, but I’m definitely not. The album I’ve spent the most time with, EST plays Monk, is exhilarating stuff, using not only Svensson’s piano to adapt Thelonious Monk’s uniquely percussive keyboards, but also attacking Monk’s work with the double bass and drums of Esbjörn Svensson Trio cohorts Dan Berglund and Magnus Öström. It’s a strange way to rework those classic Monk tunes, but it works beautifully.
I’m sad I’ve only just learned of his talent, just as he has passed on, but for now I can enjoy what he has left us. Here is a Last FM page with some Esbjörn Svensson Trio tunes, and here is a live performance of Dodge The Dodo from the album From Gagarin’s Point of View.
My condolences to his family, friends, and fellow musicians.
End Of Season Review – Ugly Betty
Ironically, Ugly Betty, a show about fashion, appears to have been deemed by the hipster douchebag massive to be utterly unfashionable. No longer attracting the torrent of column inches it once did, nor as many articles about how groundbreaking it is to have a major primetime network show have a Hispanic female lead, the show has had to contend with that most galling of fates for a show that was once the hottest thing around; being taken for granted. In the UK, it’s gotten so bad that C4 have delayed its return just so it can show hour after hour of horrible, tacky, stupid displays of unappealing bad behaviour, featuring a cast of blithering fuckwits, hopping from bed to bed, making fools of themselves and only getting a tarnished reputation into the bargain (I know, I said I wouldn’t go on about Dirty Sexy Money again, but I’m seriously pissed about Betty‘s shunning).
After being accepted by the mainstream in its first season, winning awards and magazine covers and the love of even the most fashion-averse person in the world (i.e., me), the second season had the same air of early tiredness that The O.C. had after it made waves with its freshman year, though that might be a consequence of becoming part of the cultural landscape with such speed and success. Just to clarify, I don’t mean that to be the insult that many others seem to. While some cultural commentators have written The O.C. off after its first season finale, we loved almost all of the second season and pretty much all of the fourth season, which was wonderfully unhinged. So Ugly Betty, after its excellent first season, had a sporadically highly entertaining second, with the odd mini-run of mediocrity, and a couple of patches of outright horror. Despite that, it was good enough to keep our interest, but we pray it doesn’t have a third season to match The O.C.
Of all the shows that returned after the strike hiatus, this was the one that seemed most damaged. While pre-strike Betty had been mostly a lot of fun, when it came back it didn’t seem to remember what had made the show fun in the first place. For a show that often feels like a half-spoof/half-homage to both the telenovela format it was adapted from and the endless churning plotlines of US daytime soaps, the second half of the season was disappointingly humdrum. The death of Bradford Meade (yet another onscreen heart attack for Alan Dale, matching the ones he had in The O.C. and Neighbours) triggered one last bonkers plot development, as Wilhelmina (the always excellent Vanessa Williams) extracted his sperm post-mortem, and convinced Christina to carry her and Bradford’s child.
While this was pleasingly melodramatic, it regrettably gave the dreary mugging of Ashley Jensen more screentime, something that had been missing in the first half of the season. Seriously, what with her in this and Lucy Davis stinking up Reaper with her expanding bag of tics and incomprehensible line readings, there seems to be a war between the Gervais graduates to become Most Annoying UK Woman On US TV. Ladies, please call it a draw and come home. There are characters in The Bill going uncast right as we speak.
Other than that, only the relationship between Daniel and Wilhelmina’s bipolar sister, Renee (played with sadly wasted gusto by Gabrielle Union), came close to generating that crazy frisson the show once had, but even that fell flat. It was transparently a contrived way to keep Wilhelmina in the same plot orbit as Daniel and the rest of the Mode staff after Bradford’s widow and children finally found a reason to remove her from the magazine. This was all necessary; once Bradford had died, and Wilhelmina’s duplicity had been revealed, there was no way to realistically keep her on staff before the announcement of her imminent child/heir to the Meade fortune, so she had to be removed.
It was understandable plot mechanics, but it was little fun to watch, mostly because it committed the cardinal sin of separating Marc and Amanda, whose friendship and bitchiness are our favourite thing about the show. There was a stretch of episodes where they didn’t interact at all, with Marc nothing more than Wilhelmina’s foil (also fun, but not in the same league as his screentime with Amanda), and Amanda chasing her real father, who for a time seemed to be Gene Simmons.
That was another problem with the latter half of the season. Although I don’t have anything against stunt casting, and think it’s often brilliant when done well (e.g., James Carville on 30 Rock and Carl Weathers on Arrested Development), it can also go very wrong or be totally pointless. While Simmons and Betty White worked out quite well, I’m still having nightmares about Eliza Dushku’s abominable “comedic” performance, and appearances by Posh Spice (gak!), Larry King, Lindsay Lohan, and Naomi Campbell were wasted (though it was a pleasant surprise to see her appear, the jokes about Campbell’s violent streak were disappointingly predictable). I guess that’s the price you pay once a show you like becomes popular. All the “cool kids” want to hang out with it.
With the garish soap theatrics kept to a minimum, the show relied on the relationship dramas to keep it afloat. We’d grown to like the characters, so it seemed like a good idea, but, sadly, it was often a mistake. Hilda’s flirting with Justin’s high school gym teacher was meet-bland, Daniel’s fling with Wilhelmina’s sister served only to keep the plate containing his irresponsible libido spinning, and Marc’s boyfriend Cliff mysteriously disappeared from sight as soon as they were seen trying to hire pr0n together. Come back, Cliff! Your relationship with Marc was the only one we ended up caring about!
Of course, the main relationship drama was provided by the Betty-Henry-Gio-Charlie square, a plot I had enjoyed at the start of the season. However, by the time the season finale rolled around, I was utterly bored with it. In the first season we had dreaded the onscreen arrival of Betty’s first boyfriend Walter in every episode (for all time he will be known as the Ugly Betty Gupta), while at the same time hoping Henry would return to make nerdy love eyes at Betty.
This season, every appearance of Henry served to piss us off, as we saw that he was actually not good enough for Betty either. As she grows as a person, and moves towards becoming a good writer (though probably never a great one; a lovely and realistic touch in a show that often skirts the edges of absurdity), it’s obvious she’s holding herself back to embark on a doomed love affair with someone whose chivalrous need to do the right thing by his new child will always get in the way of their love, if it even is love by that point. We grew ever more frustrated to see Henry’s vacillation and crossed priorities get in the way of Betty’s happiness, at first because we felt bad for her, and eventually because we felt bad for ourselves, as the same plot returned over and over.
That said, even if we found the arc dull, we thought it featured some of the cleverest writing, directing, and acting of the whole season. At first steadfastly Team Henry, I reacted strongly and negatively to the introduction of Gio, played by Freddy Rodriguez, this time sans rubber arm. Having loved Six Feet Under, we are steadfast fans of Rodriguez, but Gio royally pissed me off with his cockiness and bravado (Canyon was more forgiving). However, with Henry’s need to do the right thing often being indistinguishable from lack of backbone, by the end of the season we had washed our hands of him, thrown out our Team Henry badges, and put on Team Gio t-shirts. When, in the penultimate episode, he says to Betty, “I don’t wanna be the rebound guy. I wanna be the guy,” I went nuts. OMG Betty you have to marry Gio immediately!
Of course, the problem with the rise of Gio is that the battle between him and Henry was only even for about an episode, as Gio’s rise mirrored Henry’s fall. By the time Henry turned up at Betty’s doorstep to ask him to move to Tucson, we just got mad. Gio won! Get over it! (Though it does appear prescient now.) With Charlie (Jayma Mays) turned into a hissable cartoon villain (another misstep for the show; her character worked much better when she was even vaguely sympathetic, making Henry’s need for Betty even more uncomfortable and dramatic), there was no way his plan could work — not to mention that it would wreck the show. The final shot hinted that Betty got on a plane, but to travel to Tucson with Henry, or on holiday to Rome with Gio? Or to New York, where the show will be filmed next season thanks to Arnold Schwarzenegger and tax incentives.
If you’ve made it this far, you’ll note that I have little good to say about the show. Some of the characters became neutered (Judith Light’s awesome Claire Meade went from semi-unhinged bitch to kindly fairy godmother) or too unpleasant (Alexis became a humourless bully). Some plotlines disappeared entirely (Marc and Cliff’s relationship, Ignatio’s past crimes), or started off well and dribbled to an inconclusive stop (Justin’s grief over his father’s death, which had been one of the more compelling arcs of the season). As before, a lot of this could be attributed to the effects of the strike, but whereas the first season had a shockingly high quality level, some of the episodes from the second season are the worst ever. Some weeks I even wondered why I bothered watching it.
If this were any other show that means I would stop, but Ugly Betty still has flashes of brilliance, and remains one of the most consistently well directed shows on TV. Though the clunky episodes were as empty and uninspiring as the most tired examples of the genre it mocks, and even though there were some appalling promotional gaffes here and there (the blatant shout-outs to Wicked and 27 Dresses were just awful), it still held our attention to the end, and still managed to surprise and delight us often enough to make us forgive it its shortcomings. In part that’s down to the great cast, with America Ferrera, Vanessa Williams, comedy genius Becki Newton and her equally brilliant BFF Michael Urie, Mark Indelicato, and (when he has something to do) Tony Plana taking most of the honours. I’d watch the show just to see them all at work, no matter how crappy things get.
Plus, even at its worst it kept its good-hearted tone, which counts in its favour. Though many of the characters are snide, the show itself totally sincere in its klaxon-loud appeals to good nature and honesty, a trait I find myself continually happified by, even though I’m the archetypal grouch. A disappointment, then, but by no means a failure. I do hope next season heralds a real return to form, though that shooting relocation does make one wonder whether the tone of the show will change. One thing is for certain. Unless it suddenly became implausibly awesome as soon as I stopped watching it, Dirty Sexy Money will always be in its shadow, a poor imitation of glossy, soapy entertainment, empty and lunk-headed and mechanical. It’s not fit to lick Betty’s unattractive shoes.
This Post Is Going To Be All Over The Place
Among the many trivial frustrations I endured yesterday, which included the horrifying endirtying of a load of washing due to catastrophic clothesline malfunction, and watching the worst two-parter of Justice League I’ve seen to date (some sympathy, please!) the most exasperating was spending four hours reading the responses to Joan Walsh’s article about the psychic debt Barack Obama owes Hillary Clinton for the behaviour of other people. The article itself irked me enough to ruin any chance of a good mood, but the letters took over my day, from the well-reasoned arguments against Hillary’s determination to stay in the race, to the occasional trolls who insulted her followers, to the vows of her supporters to vote McCain in November to punish the young women who had “turned their back on feminism” by not automatically siding with the female candidate.
It was a series of monologues, screeching at Joan Walsh, Obamaniacs (or Obama Boys / Obamabots, as the Clintonites would have it*), women, men, African-Americans, Geraldine Ferraro, Keith Olbermann, and anyone else who has dared to disagree with someone else. Racist!!! Sexist!!! Troll!!! Robot!!! Ageist!!! Elitist!!! I’ll vote McCain! You fucking idiot! It’s not over! Stupid emotional women! He’d better kiss our asses if he expects us to vote for him! You’re going to sell us all out and ruin our country just because you’re a bit peeved! The horn of Helm Hammerhand shall sound in the deep one last time! Fell deeds awake! Now for Wrath, now for Ruin, and a Red Dawn!
After the third hour of my stupefied click-scroll marathon, eyes dried open, brain pummelled like William Forsyth at the end of Steven Seagal’s best film (Out For Justice), I was just as punchy as everyone else on there, and seriously wanted to join the fray, but as I tend to think of the world in popular culture parameters, I would have just ended up derailing the whole anarchic mess by sniping at Battlestar Galactica fans who dare to suggest it is better than Lost, or accusing all those who refused to see Speed Racer of being fun-averse assholes who obviously despise love.
I’ve said before that I’m wary of talking about things I know little about for fear of being turned into so much Blogger Puree in the comments section, but even in a passive sense, surfing the net can have its hazards. It struck me that that’s one of the worst thing about the internet, that you can often find a multitude of different viewpoints, many of them vile, most of them just different from yours, and end up thinking that you have to modulate your viewpoint until it resembles theirs because no one seems to be thinking the way you are. I’m lucky that though I read some pretty annoying talkbacks (including the often horrific Ain’t It Cool discussions), a lot of them are frequented by interesting people who I may not agree with all the time, but are willing to express themselves like intelligent people do, instead of being troll assholes.
That’s not me saying, “Waaauuuugh! Why are the people being so mean to me?!??!?” It’s more that I just like to learn things, and reasonable, calm, non-histrionic people are great accidental teachers, even when I don’t always agree with them. It also inspires me to be as calm and collected as them, and to think that once I have that part sorted, I can be as bold as I like with my opinions, and not worry about whether it is contrary to the norm, or perceived by the small-minded as being borne of some idiotic impulse simply because they see the world in terms of Manichean conflict between their opinion and everyone else’s. That the more rabid followers of both Clinton and Obama (or Battlestar Galactica and Lost, or Speed Racer fans and the rest of the world) move further and further apart because of some weird need to get into a fight is their problem. Mine is becoming more confident in stating my feelings, having a solid rationale behind it, and then sticking to it until I am proven wrong. I shouldn’t need validation, and I shouldn’t think that every comment made by others that disagrees with me is probably automatically right, as I have little faith in my own reasoning abilities. I should just, “man up”, as they say nowadays.
That said, my distress over delving into the, “You’re racist!” “You’re sexist!” morass, and seemingly getting lost in there for a few hours, was relieved when I read Warren Ellis’ take on it, who not only voices my feelings far better than I ever could due to his Awesome Powers Of The Brain (not self-pity; he did write Transmetropolitan, after all), but is impervious to criticism and more than willing to unleash Arse Eels if he feels his supremacy is being challenged. I mean, that’s bound to make you feel bold and strong. What do I have? Chim Chim Cookies? It’s grim, but it’s not the same thing.
Since then I’ve found other articles that have talked about the contest while avoiding the obvious namecalling, which is a huge relief for one as insecure as myself. The Economist had an interesting one about the mistakes Hillary and Bill made, and even Salon managed to get Joe Conason to write something that was fatalistic and optimistic at the same time, but at least didn’t demand anything of Obama, instead asking the Obamaniacs and Clintonites to shut the fuck up for a bit. What with vicious slime like Joe Lieberman working against his own party like an enormous Judas, it’s not a good time to be making threats in order to win concessions when there are people out there who want to ruin the party to settle a score and are so unwilling to make a deal that they must only be crushed with extreme prejudice.
It’s silly to get so riled by all of that, and I know that, especially as these things are way more ephemeral than it seems at the time, which is why the thousands of pissy letters written to Salon and Huffington Post end up meaning nothing as they change no one’s minds, only occasionally contain any useful information, and are forgotten about a couple of days later. Anyway, I appreciate that politics can bring out the best in people in the real world, and the worst in people when separated by a screen and keyboard (and vice versa). Which is why, even though I am actively interested in politics (especially American politics, partially due to previous studies and partially because I intend to live in America and need to know something about it), and unless I’m really really annoyed by something such as a mean-spirited decision to act like a child over an incontrovertible loss (and seriously Clintonites, it really was), I tend to keep my blog posts and thoughts on a pop culture track, because until I feel more confident about talking about politics, when talking about films or TV shows, no matter how angry the conversations get, and no matter how entrenched the different opinion-factions get, it’s only films or TV shows, and it’s not ever really about anything that important.
* I’m very disappointed that the Clintonistas couldn’t see that a far more entertaining insult would have been Obamatrons.
More On That Heartbreaking Pitch Rejection
I just spent an educational moment watching CNN, which is going on about this whole Democratic nomination business, with this handsome chap Barack Obama winning a chance to go up against the unstoppable Firefly/Pilager team that I seem to have been alone in pimping on the blogosphere. Why can no one see their brilliance? Their vision? Their anarchic free spirit? It baffles me. Just after watching the Democratic nominee make an entire room lose its shit just by turning up, Rufus T. Firefly was busy reacting to Obama’s win with a song, penned by his ace speechwriters Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby:
These are the laws of my administration
No one’s allowed to smoke
Or tell a dirty joke
And whistling is forbidden…
If chewing gum is chewed
The chewer is pursued.
And in the hoosegow hidden…
If any form of pleasure is exhibited
Report to me and it will be prohibited.
I’ll put my foot down, so shall it be.
This is the land of the free.
The last man nearly ruined this place
He didn’t know what to do with it
If you think this country’s bad off now
Just wait ’til I get through with it
The country’s taxes must be fixed
And I know what to do with it
If you think you’re paying too much now
Just wait ’til I get through with it…
After Firefly and his mumbling and incomprehensible enigmatic running mate Dickie Pilager had left the stage, they showed footage of Hillary Clinton. She was backed up against a wall, her flashing blade repelling wave after wave of pirate attack. Or I sat on the remote and ended up rewatching Captain Blood on Sky Movies Classics. I have this weird thing where Hillary Clinton and Errol Flynn look the same. It’s like colour blindness or something.
Anyway, while watching that blade endlessly whirring through the air, I realised I only told half the story of my pitch rejection. I can’t leave out the next chapter, even though I again come out the loser. A year or so after being thrown out of Viewlane Pictures with my first draft sitting unread in a large cardboard box that I was having trouble carrying, I got another idea about the deadly Divider and his zombie politician brother. Still determined to get this twosome team-up of terrifying treachery and torture onscreen, I called Trip Dorfner III and Zack Wackman with a new proposal. Heeding their advice that having a horror movie in which the hero of the tale fends off a deadly attacker for ten or eleven hours might scupper its box office hopes, I realised that they were onto something, and that the movie needed a proper ending instead of the freeform open ending I had envisioned (with Laurie and The Divider battling against each other in the post-apocalyptic 24th century). Zack and Trip were glad to hear it, and thought there was room for renegotiation.
Heartened by their interest, I told them all about the final act. After a few hours of evisceration and explosions, Laurie finally stops and screams at her nemeses, “Why won’t you stop? Please God, why won’t you stop?!!?” Finally, putting down his razor-sharp copy of The Great Gatsby, from under the blood-soaked Groucho Marx mustache The Divider speaks, his voice shrill and annoying. “We just want to hang out with you! Stop trying to kill us, and we can just go get some ribs. That’s all. It’s not just a pretext to kill you later. We really will stop if we can just be BFFs.” And then he gives out a terrifying cackle.
Trip’s response was a bit more visceral this time. What would happen, he said, if Freddy Krueger just wanted to team up with Nancy Thompson, and they danced gaily through other people’s dreams eating ice cream and playing hopskotch? What if Sally Hardesty formed a cheerleading team with Leatherface? Or Laurie Strode turned out to be related to Michael Myers? Did I really think people would forget the previous carnage? No one would buy that the Laurie in my movie could be friends with someone (or something) that had spent so long trying to destroy her. That’s not an ending either. How long until The Divider stabs our hero in the back? Or The Immortal Politician? That kind of ending is just as open and unsatisfying as the other one.
Then he called me a limey jerkoff scumbag asshole motherfucker and told me to never call him ever again, and to go fuck myself for trying to ruin the horror genre. Hah! I had the last laugh then. Viewlane Pictures went on to make the costly horror/historical epic Alexander The Great Zombie, the much-derided Cannibal Holiday, the G-rated horror film I Know What You Did Last Summer And I’m Going To Tell Your Mom, and the vampire-laden remake of Manhattan, starring Woody Allen, Lance Henriksen, Norman Mailer, Liv Ullman, Gunnar Hansen, and Mia Farrow as the horrifying vampire Brood Mother, with a guest appearance by Scarlett Johansson as Woody’s underage lover (a casting choice included in Woody’s contract, apparently). Their company shut down three years ago, and Zack and Trip ended up in jail over unpaid parking tickets and money owed to Kensington Gore manufacturers. Somewhere in the background, inside a shadow taking up half of the screen, a sickening laugh rises up. The Divider shall never die!!!
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Shades of Caruso Mini-Blog- Listmania ’11! The Best Movies Of The Year December 31, 2011
