Last week I wrote about Stanley Kubrick’s film 2001: A Space Odyssey, as well as the novel by Arthur C. Clarke! I enjoyed both of those so much that I decided to continue onwards with the rest of the series of novels (as well as the film sequel).
2010: Odyssey Two is one of my very favorite science fiction novels. It’s my favorite of Mr. Clarke’s Odyssey series, superior in my opinion even to the original novel 2001: A Space Odyssey.
The disastrous Discovery mission of 2001 gave mankind no answers about the mysterious Monoliths and the ancient extraterrestrial entities behind their creation. So, after several long years of work, a new mission towards Jupiter is finally ready — a joint US/Russian endeavor aboard the Leonov (named after cosmonaut Alexei Leonov). Their mission: find the Discovery, determine what went wrong with HAL 9000 and what happened to astronaut David Bowman, and find some answers about the enormous Monolith floating in space.
Aboard Leonov is a familiar character from 2001 (the novel and the film): Heywood Floyd. As one of the architects behind the Discovery mission, Floyd has long felt responsible for the lives lost on that doomed expedition. He hopes that his involvement in this follow-up mission will allow him to finally answer some of the questions that have been gnawing at him for a decade, since his first glimpse of TMA-1 on the moon, and to help in some way to set things right.
Leonov is crewed with an extraordinarily skilled mix of Russian and American officers, but their journey is complicated when they learn that the Chinese have also launched a mission to Jupiter, one that will beat them to Discovery by several weeks. When the entity once known as Dave Bowman returns to Earth, and the Monolith in orbit of Jupiter begins to multiply, the successful completion of Leonov‘s mission might take a back-seat to the preservation of their lives.
2010: Odyssey Two is a ripping yarn. It is a much faster-paced tale than 2001, one filled with a lot more narrative twists and turns. In addition, I enjoyed Mr. Clarke’s increased emphasis on character development in this installment. The Leonov has a large, diverse crew, and over the course of the novel I felt that we got to know each member of the team better than pretty much any character in 2001. Also, 2010 is, I think, superior to 2001 in that it has a central protagonist, Heywood Floyd, who readers can invest in and follow through the tale. Now, 2010: Odyssey Two isn’t a character study, that’s for sure. It’s clear that Mr. Clarke’s interest lies far more in the science fiction story being… [continued]
I’ve been a fan of Lost since the beginning, and I have always been confident that the writers had a plan for the show, and that much of what seemed bizarre or unexplained at the time in the early seasons would ultimately be explained. Even in the somewhat uncertain 2nd & 3rd seasons, I remained a “man of faith” (to borrow a common phrase from the show). With the absolutely spectacular 4th & 5th seasons, I felt that my faith had been rewarded, and I entered the sixth (and final) season of the show with enormous enthusiasm.
Well, my friends, my faith is now wavering, and wavering big-time.
It seems to me that, so far, season six has been by far the most mediocre season of the show so far. The problems are myriad. The alternate-universe storyline, which seemed so intriguing in the season premiere, has started to feel more and more like a time-waster to me. This is exacerbated by my frustration that the storyline on the island has been moving so slowly. Of my enormous list of the show’s unanswered questions, what have we learned so far this season? We now know the nature of the undead Locke/smoke monster/MIB, and we know Richard Alpert’s story. Is there anything else that has been definitively answered for us?
This is extraordinarily disappointing, and it has caused me to begin to resent the time spent, each week, on the alternate-universe stories. It seems to me that that is valuable episode-time that could be better spent paying off some of the many story-lines that the show has built up over its first five years.
As episode after episode ticks by, my hope that my many questions will be answered begins to fade, and this is really starting to honk me off. And as the burden of these unanswered questions grows from week to week, the same thing is happening to me that happened as I watched the final run of Battlestar Galactica episodes — my growing frustration is impacting my enjoyment of episodes that, in previous years, I would have quite enjoyed — such as last week’s Richard Alpert installment. Yes, it was phenomenal to see Richard finally get the spotlight! But did that episode really tell us anything that attentive viewers hadn’t already guessed? Had that episode aired during the 4th season I would have called it brilliant. At this point in the final season, though, I’m just left scratching my head about issues like Jacob’s motivations. (Why does his long-held commitment to non-involvement suddenly switch to his being willing to guide, through Richard, all the people he brings to the island?) And if the wine-in-a-bottle metaphor is all the… [continued]
One of my earliest posts on this blog was a look back through the films of David Mamet. One of the films I wasn’t able to review at the time was Homicide, because it was shockingly unavailable on DVD. Late last year, though, the fine folks at the Criterion Collection thankfully stepped in to remedy that situation, releasing Homicide in a lovely new DVD set (which made my list of the Top 10 DVDs of 2009).
Joe Mantegna plays Jewish homicide detective Bobby Gold. When the FBI screws up the manhunt for a suspect, Randolph (Ving Rhames), in whose case Bobby was originally involved, Bobby and his partner Tim Sullivan (William H. Macy) are tasked with finding the missing man. But on the way to a key meeting in the investigation, Bobby stops to help two young beat cops who have found the body of a murdered woman in a convenience store. It turns out that the elderly Jewish woman had owned the store in the tough neighborhood for decades, and the local kids think she was murdered because of rumors that she kept a fortune hidden in her basement. When Bobby finds himself assigned to this new murder case, he is is frustrated by what he sees as a distraction from his priority: the pursuit of Randolph. But quickly the case begins to get under his skin and leads Bobby to confront long-buried questions about his own Jewish identity.
Written and directed by David Mamet, Homicide stars many Mamet regulars (Mantegna and Macy, along with Ricky Jay, Rebecca Pidgeon, and many other familiar faces) and features his distinct, fast-paced, rough and tumble dialogue and a twisty-turny plot in which the story that you think is unfolding in the film’s opening minutes turns out to be merely a feint, as Mamet has other intentions with his tale.
For, despite its title, Homicide really isn’t a police procedural at all. Yes, Bobby’s investigation into the murder of the elderly Mrs. Klein is the backbone of the story, but that’s not really what the film is about. Rather, Homicide is a story about identity. Over the course of the film, Bobby Gold is forced to address deep-rooted questions about how he defines himself.
According to The 50 Greatest Jewish Movies, by Kathryn Bernheimer (published by Birch Lane Press, 1998): “Mamet, who admits he has always felt like an outsider and acknowledges a great longing to belong, has said the story was inspired by his experience as an American Jew growing up not feeling sufficiently Jewish or American. Like many of his previous films, Homicide deals with what Mamet calls ‘problems of reconciliation and self-worth’.”
When we first meet Bobby Gold, there’s… [continued]
On Monday I wrote about Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 film, 2001: A Space Odyssey.
After re-watching that film last month, I was driven to pick up Arthur C. Clarke’s novel 2001: A Space Odyssey off my book-shelf to re-read that as well.
I had read all four of Arthur C. Clarke’s Odyssey novels many years ago, back when I was in college. After so thoroughly enjoying seeing 2001 the film again, I was excited to take another look at the novel. As Mr. Clarke explains in the introduction (to the 25th anniversary edition, which is what I have), the novel and the film were created simultaneously. Neither was an adaptation of the other, which is pretty unique. Instead, Kubrick and Clarke developed the story together. Then, while Mr. Kubrick assembled his film, Mr. Clarke crafted his novel.
2001: A Space Odyssey is a terrific read. It succeeds as an engaging creation in its own right, and also as a fascinating companion to Mr. Kubrick’s film.
The novel and the film share many similarities. Since they were created simultaneously and in partnership, the basic structure of both tales is identical. There are none of the dramatic revisions found in even the best film adaptations of novels, which is refreshing. The themes and “tone” of both works are remarkably similar.
The novel also shares some of the film’s, er, more challenging aspects. There isn’t a whole heck of a lot of “plot” that actually happens over the course of the tale. And the somewhat episodic structure (in which the story is divided into several distinct parts, set in different locations and wildly differing eras of human history) is unusual, to say the least, and provides something of an obstacle to the narrative building up a full head of steam. (Just when we’re “settling in” to one setting and group of characters, the story moves away from that location, never to return.)
There are also a number of interesting differences between the novel and the film. In the film, Discovery‘s ultimate goal (and the location of Dave Bowman’s encounter with the Monolith) is Jupiter, whereas in the novel it is Saturn. (Indeed, Mr. Clarke devotes a decent chunk of time towards describing the mechanics of Discovery‘s journey through the solar system towards Saturn.) One of the film’s most iconic sequences, in which Dave and Frank discuss their concern over HAL’s increasingly erratic behavior while hiding in one of Discovery‘s small pods (in an attempt prevent HAL from hearing their discussion which proves fruitless when HAL reads their lips) never occurs in the novel. There’s also a lengthy stretch of time, in the book, in between the final confrontation with HAL and Dave’s decision to… [continued]
Sorry for the somewhat sporadic schedule of new cartoons, lately, gang!!
My twin four-month-old daughters have been keeping me busy! I hope by next week to be back to our regular Monday-Thursday schedule. I’ve got a lot more Star Wars: Episode II cartoons coming, and I can’t wait to share them with you all.
In the meantime, my schedule of blog-posts continue unabated. Coming soon: we’ll continue my look through the novels and films in Arthur C. Clarke’s Odyssey saga, and I have reviews of a fun new book called Looking For Calvin & Hobbes, the new Criterion Collection DVD of David Mamet’s film Homicide, and lots more fun stuff.
Thanks for your patience, everyone. See you back here tomorrow!
I well remember my reaction upon watching Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey for the first time, many years ago. The star-child appeared, and the end credits rolled, and I turned to my brother and started laughing. ”What the heck was THAT???” I had no idea what to make of any of the ponderous weirdness that I had just seen, and I wondered what exactly I had missed.
But even during that first viewing it was clear that there was something special about 2001: A Space Odyssey, and it’s a film that stayed with me. I found myself driven to revisit the film (several times, in fact, over the years), and to read the novel by Arthur C. Clarke (which, interestingly, was written concurrently with the production of the film). I can think of few other films about which my opinion has so dramatically changed based on subsequent viewings. Each time I watched 2001 I found myself enjoying it more and more. As I peeled back the layers of the onion of the film, to use a familiar but handy analogy, what was once perplexing obtained profound meaning.
It is a challenge to provide a summary of 2001. If you’ve seen the film, no summary is necessary, and if you haven’t, I’d hate to spoil anything. I can tell you that the film is divided into several distinct sections. The movie opens in primordial times (“the dawn of man”) and then jumps forward to the year 2001, when a strange object is discovered on the surface of the moon. That discovery leads (for reasons I’ll not detail here) to an expedition towards Jupiter. The experimental space-ship Discovery is crewed by Frank Poole and Dave Bowman, and the computer HAL 9000. Things go awry. The final segment of the film is the most perplexing, and the reason for the film’s tag-line “the ultimate trip.”
Right from its opening scenes, it is clear that 2001: A Space Odyssey is a science-fiction film unlike most other science-fiction films. This is a cerebral undertaking, one that is concerned with posing some BIG QUESTIONS for the audience. The film spans the entire history of human-kind — that should give you a good idea of Mr. Kubrick & Mr. Clarke’s ambitions!!
In terms of “plot,” there’s not too much that actually happens in 2001. This, I think (along with the ending, which we’ll get to in a few moments) is one of the chief reasons that this film might not work for many casual viewers. To say that the movie is leasurely paced would be an enormous understatement. Events unfold very slowly, and the movie is filled with stately, long shots in which Mr. Kubrick’s camera moves… [continued]
Today I’m continuing my look at Pocket Books’ series of Star Trek: Titan novels, chronicling the post-Nemesis adventures of newly-minted Captain William T. Riker and the starship Titan. (Click here for my review of Book 1: Taking Wing, and here for my review of Book 2: The Red King.) While authors Andy Mangels & Michael A. Martin wrote those first two books, with the third novel in the series, Orion’s Hounds, they hand things off to Christopher L. Bennett.
The basic premise of the Titan series is that, following the cataclysmic events of the Dominion War and the other crises that followed, Starfleet has decided to attempt to return to its basic principles of peaceful exploration. As such, they have commissioned the creation of a new class of starships, the Luna class, designed for deep-space exploration. Will Riker commands the Titan, one of those new Luna class vessels, and he and his crew have been sent on a mission beyond the boundaries of the Federation (specifically towards the Gum Nebula, one of the largest astronomical landmarks in the Orion Arm of the Milky Way galaxy) to attempt to seek out new life and new civilizations.
As they travel into unexplored space, Deanna Troi and the other telepaths on board Titan find their minds touched by powerful consciousnesses that, while alien, nevertheless, feel somehow familiar to Troi. The reason for that familiarity is soon made clear as the Titan discovers that the telepathic contact originated from a school of “star-jellies” — the same type of beautiful (and enormous) space-faring creatures that the U.S.S. Enterprise-D first encountered in the pilot episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, “Encounter at Farpoint.”
However, along with the star-jellies in their natural habitat, Titan also encounters the Pa’haquel, a species that hunts the star-jellies as well as many of the other space-dwelling life-forms found in that part of the galaxy. The Pa’haquel are actually able to manipulate the dead corpses of the jellies, turning them into their own ships in which they’re able to live and which they use as vehicles for their hunts. Riker, along with many members of his crew, are horrified by the actions of the Pa’haquel, but as per Starfleet regulations they are reluctant to interfere in the culture of an alien race.
Of course, events (which I won’t spoil here) soon force their hand, and a member of the Titan crew commits an act that dramatically upsets the balance between the Pa’haquel and the star-jellies. The repercussions of that event makes plain to the Titan crew that things aren’t quite so simple as Star-jellies=good and Pa’haquel=bad, and they discover that their actions have caused dramatic ripple effects that threaten to… [continued]
I consider Shaun of the Dead to be a near-flawless work of comedic genius. I’m not a fan of Zombie movies, but that didn’t stop me from falling head-over-heels in love with the bizarre, comedic creation of Simon Pegg & Edgar Wright. Shaun of the Dead lead me to seek out Pegg & Wright’s first collaboration: the 14-episode British TV series Spaced. (Read my review here.) Somehow, though, I had completely missed Pegg & Wright’s 2007 release: the feature film Hot Fuzz. Oh, I knew of Hot Fuzz, and I had wanted to see it for some time. I just hadn’t gotten around to it until now.
In Hot Fuzz, Simon Pegg plays the tough, no-nonsense London cop Nicholas Angel. He takes his job extraordinarily seriously, and he’s extraordinarily good at what he does. So good, in fact, that the rest of the London police department hates him, and so they arrange to have him transferred out of London and to the sleepy little British town of Sanford. Poor Angel doesn’t know quite what to do with himself in his bucolic, crime-free new home.
As was the case in Shaun of the Dead and Spaced, Pegg’s character is paired up with Nick Frost. Mr. Frost plays Danny Butterman, the bumbling but well-meaning police officer with whom Angel is partnered in Sanford. But while Pegg & Frost’s characters were, in their two prior collaborations, presented as life-long best-mates, here in Hot Fuzz the two take an immediate dislike to one another. Well, Angel takes an immediate dislike to Butterman. Butterman, though, idolizes Angel, who he looks up to as a “big city” tough-guy cop like he knows from the movies. It’s a great pleasure to watch Pegg and Frost paired up yet again. The two have a terrific chemistry, and they just dominate any scenes that they’re in together. It’s fun to see them play characters who have, at first, a more antagonistic relationship towards one another.
Hot Fuzz is a very funny film. Pegg and Frost are extraordinary natural comedians, and the film is filled with a number of other top-notch comedic actors. There’s a great bit of business early on in the film in which we meet Angel’s supervisors in the London police department, played by Martin Freeman, Bill Nighy, and Steve Coogan. Jim Broadbent is a lot of fun as the jolly inspector Frank Butterman, Danny’s father and the head of the police department in Sanford. But my favorite performance belongs to former James Bond Timothy Dalton, who is absolutely hilarious as the dashingly good-looking, possibly sinister Sanford super-market owner. What perfect casting, and Dalton absolutely knocks the role right out of the park.
Where Hot Fuzz… [continued]
Here we go — my final post giving you my thoughts on my Great Lost Rewatch Project! Yesterday I began my analysis of season 5. Let’s continue, shall we?
“What lies in the shadow of the statue?”
Favorite Episodes
5.2 “Jughead” — We open with Penny giving birth to her son with Desmond, who we learn at the end of the episode is named Charlie. Nice. Three years later, we follow Desmond’s efforts to find Daniel Faraday’s mother, Eloise, and we learn more about Daniel’s time-travel experiments that eventually got him thrown out of Oxford and that apparently left his former girlfriend in a vegetative state. Back on the island, we see that our castaways have time-traveled back to the 1950’s. There we meet a young Eloise Hawking and Charles Widmore, and discover that the U.S. Army had been using the island as a site for the testing of nuclear weapons. Meanwhile, Locke meets Richard Alpert, and since this Alpert of the ’50s doesn’t know him yet, Locke tells Richard the exact date and place of his birth which will happen in 2 years. Locke suggests that Richard come see him – thus explaining Richard’s interest in Locke throughout his youth that we learned of last season in “Cabin Fever.” This is a dazzlingly dense episode, filled to the brim with dramatic revelations and fascinating connections.
5.6 “316″ — This episode declares its awesomeness right from the opening seconds — a phenomenal re-creation of the opening scene in the pilot. Jack again wakes up alone in the jungle – but this time it’s after the crash of Ajira flight 316. He’s back. In flashback, we see how this all went down. The episode is filled with amazing moments, from Hurley’s attempt to buy up all the empty seats on the plane to Lapidus’ perfectly-delivered comment of resignation (see the title of yesterday’s post) when he sees the Oceanic 6 on board. You gotta feel for the guy!!
5.8 “LaFleur” – After Locke disappears down the well, Sawyer & co. see the enormous statue (of which we saw a four-toed fragment back in season 2’s finale and hadn’t been seen nor mentioned since). Guess they’re pretty far in the past. Then they flash again, more violently this time – and seem to settle in one time period. It seems Locke has succeeded in his efforts to stop the time-jumping. For the rest of the episode, we cut back and forth between the next few days in 1974 and 3 years later, in 1977, at which point Sawyer and co. are completely ensconsced in the Dharma Initiative. It’s a lot of fun to see how Sawyer, Juliet, and Miles have adapted to their… [continued]
It’s time to begin wrapping up my post-game assessment of my Great Lost Rewatch Project by beginning my thoughts on season 5! Click here for my thoughts on season 1, season 2, season 3, and season 4. As always, folks, MAJOR SPOILERS lie ahead, so beware.
“OK, so what? We’re gonna go back and kill Hitler?” ”Don’t be absurd. There are rules. Rules that can’t be broken.”
Coming after the magnificent season 4, my favorite season of the show since the first year, I wasn’t sure if season 5 would be able to maintain that high level of quality and narrative momentum. But I shouldn’t have doubted. Season 5 is another home-run, one that deepens our understanding of the show’s characters and of the larger backstory of the island.
Here in season 5, Lost fully embraces the sci-fi aspects that have often been a peripheral element of the show, as the writers dove into a complex time-travel storyline to begin the season. Lost has played tentatively with time-travel before, most notably in the two Desmond episodes “Flashes Before Your Eyes” (click here for my detailed thoughts on that critical episode) and “The Constant.” Those episodes had allowed us to begin to get some sense of the “rules” of time-travel in the Lost universe. This isn’t Back to the Future type time-travel, where one could alter the past and thus change the future. Here in the world of Lost, it seems that “whatever happened, happened” — that making major changes to the timeline are impossible. (Season 6 will tell us definitively, one hopes, whether that is indeed the case.)
After Ben moved the island in the season 4 finale, something goes wrong and our castaways find themselves unstuck in time, jumping around into the past and the future. Over the course of these jumps, much of the secret history of the island and its inhabitants is peeled back for us to examine. We travel back to the ’50s, meeting a young Eloise Hawking and Charles Widmore (I LOVE the revelation that he was once an Other!) and learning of the US Army’s use of the island as a test site for nuclear weapons. We learn the reason for Richard Alpert’s interest in a young John Locke (see in last season’s “Cabin Fever”). We see what befell Rousseau and her team. We see how Ben came to raise Alex. And we learn a LOT more about the Dharma Initiative.
The time-jumping storyline is great fun, but things get even more fascinating once Locke turns the frozen donkey wheel himself. The castaways (Sawyer, Juliet, Miles, and Daniel) wind up back in 1977, and become members of the Dharma… [continued]
I have an extensive series of posts, that will be running over the course of the next month, in which I write about my revisitation of Arthur C. Clarke’s four-novel Odyssey series which began in 1968 with 2001: A Space Odyssey — as well as the two film adaptations (of 2001 and 2010). On Wednesday of this past week, literally moments after I had typed the final words of my review of Mr. Clark’s fourth and final Odyssey novel, 3001: The Final Odyssey, I read the sad news that Mr. Clarke had passed away at the age of 90. What sad news. This detailed obituary from the New York Times is worth a look. Mr. Clarke was a giant in the world of science fiction, and he will be sorely missed by all of his fans world-wide, including this one.
Some big trailers have hit the web recently. Check out this terrific new trailer for Iron Man 2, as well as this intriguing glimpse at the I-can’t-believe-this-actually-got-made sequel to Tron. How great is Bruce Boxleitner in that trailer? How about that glimpse of (newly-minted Oscar winner) Jeff Bridges? Both films look fantastic, and I fervently hope they both can deliver.
Speaking of Jeff Bridges, I wanted to direct your attention to this great recent piece from aintitcoolnews.com, in which Jeff Dowd, the inspiration for “the Dude” in The Big Lebowski, waxes poetic about Mr. Bridges.
And speaking of films I hope will deliver, here’s a sneak peek at Robert Rodriguez and Nimrod Antal’s upcoming movie Predators. Is it possible that we might finally be getting a truly kick-ass Predator film that can hold its own with the Arnold Schwarzenegger original? I am beginning to hope… (At the very least, they have settled on a phenomenal title, one that echoes James Cameron’s Aliens, the sequel to Ridley Scott’s film Alien.)
Finally, all of the fans of Lost out there need to be sure to check out my favorite article of the month: The Real Problem with Midichlorians. I COULDN’T AGREE MORE WITH THIS ARTICLE.
After being catapulted clear of the Milky Way galaxy at the end of Taking Wing (The first Star Trek Titan novel — read my review here), Captain William T. Riker and the crew of the U.S.S. Titan find themselves in the Small Magellanic Cloud, one of the Milky Way’s satellite galaxies. This area of space also happens to be the home of the Neyel, the mysterious race of aliens with centuries-old ties to humanity first introduced in the novel The Sundered (read my review here).
While Taking Wing was focused on introducing Riker’s new ship and its extraordinarily varied interspecies crew, as well as wrapping up a number of dangling story-threads left by the end of Star Trek: Nemesis, The Red King (written by Andy Mangels & Michael A. Martin) is more of what the Titan series was billed to be: a story of exploration, in which Riker and his crew encounter strange new worlds and new life forms. At the same time, The Red King is a direct sequel to both Taking Wing and The Sundered, as Riker and his crew work to locate Romulan commander Donatra’s missing fleet, figure out how to return to Federation space, and unravel the mystery of a terrible new threat to Neyel space. (Readers, meanwhile, get to learn about what has happened to the Neyel since we last met them 100 years earlier during Captain Sulu’s time in The Sundered.)
My recollection was that The Red King was my least favorite of the Titan series, but in re-reading the novel I found quite a lot to enjoy. Mangels & Martin have a nice, easy-to-read writing style that I always find very engaging. The Red King is a fast-paced yarn, and it continues the exploration of the unique natures and backstories of the members of Titan’s diverse inter-species crew that was begun in the previous installment. Most interestingly to me, we finally learn the details of the event that caused the thirty-years-and-counting rift between Starfleet Admiral Leonard James Akaar and Lt. Tuvok (who had been close friends aboard the Excelsior during the events of The Sundered).
But the novel does have some weaknesses. Primarily, the emerging sentient protouniverse that is destabilizing space in the Small Magellanic Cloud doesn’t really present that compelling a scientific mystery (the Titan crew seem to figure out what’s going on pretty quickly) nor that compelling a challenge/adversary. As a result, the novel sometimes seems to be without a central narrative thrust. Riker’s crew comes up with a plan to contain the protouniverse about halfway through the novel, meaning that the whole second half of the book is without any real twists. Oh, a lot happens, don’t get me… [continued]
Last week I wrote about Moon, one of the 2009 films that I hasn’t succeeded in catching before the switch-over to the Year We Make Contact. Today I’m here to write about another 2009 film that I’m glad I found a chance to see before getting too far into 2010: Crazy Heart.
Jeff Bridges plays “Bad” Blake, a once-great country singer who, through a combination of bad luck and his own hard-living, has been reduced to singing in bowling alleys. Bad is a pretty pathetic figure when we first encounter him in the film, pulling up to his latest small-town gig in his battered old pick-up truck and dumping out a jug full of his urine. But drunk and washed-up though he may be, when he starts to perform we can see the embers of his greatness. Until he has to run outside to puke, that is.
It’s not too hard to guess that, over the course of the film, Bad will be able to claw his way up to some small form of redemption. But the pleasures of Crazy Heart aren’t in any big dramatic plot twists or emotional epiphanies. They’re in the way that, through a million small choices, Jeff Bridges brings this broken-down man to fully-realized life. Bad isn’t really a cliched scoundrel-with-a-heart-of-gold. He makes a lot of poor choices, and we see him fully live up to the name he has taken for himself. But Mr. Bridges brings such humanity to the performance that one somehow can’t help rooting for Bad nonetheless. Can anyone deny that Jeff Bridges is one of our finest actors working today?
Maggie Gyllenhaal is solid, as she always is. But I was really pleasantly surprised by Colin Farrell’s excellent work as Bad’s former protege Tommy Sweet. It’s a very well-written part. Tommy is talked about a lot in the film before we ever see him on-screen. While Bad has hit hard times, Tommy has become a country music super-star. I was expecting fireworks when these two finally met up in the film, but I was really pleased that the film went in another direction. There’s friction between the two, but also reservoirs of affection. I was quite taken with Mr. Farrell’s work, giving Tommy the arrogance one might expect of an on-the-rise mega-talent, but also a deep core of loyalty to his former mentor. I’ve always been a big fan of Colin Farrell (I even love him in Daredevil!), and between this and his role in The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (read my review here), it’s nice to see him getting some decent roles these days.
Crazy Heart has a heck of a soundtrack, featuring an array of classic… [continued]
“She’s not my daughter. I stole her as a baby from an insane woman. She’s a pawn, nothing more. She means nothing to me.”
Yesterday I began analyzing Lost season 4. Here are some of my favorite and least-favorite moments from that over-all terrific season!
“Is he talking about what I think he’s talking about?” ”If you mean time-traveling bunnies, then yes.”
Favorite Episodes:
4.2 “Confirmed Dead” – A great episode that begins to introduce us to the “Freighter-Folk” and raises a whole heck of a lot of new mysteries. We see Daniel Faraday watching the discovery of the Oceanic 815 wreckage and crying. We see Charlotte investigating an archaeological dig in Tunisia, where the skeleton of a polar bear (with a Dharma collar!) has mysteriously been found in the middle of the desert. We learn of Mile’s ability to communicate with the dead. We see Laipdus, who was also watching footage of the Oceanic 815 recovery, at which point he becomes convinced that the bodies are not actually those of the survivors, and we learn that he was supposed to have been the pilot of 815 that day. We see Naomi being recruited by the mysterious Abbadon.
4.5 “The Constant” – A phenomenal episode, without question one of the very best of the series. Leaving the island, Lapidus is forced by a storm to shift slightly off the precise bearing that Daniel gave him. As a result, Desmond’s mind is somehow thrown back in time and exchanged with that of his younger self, still serving as a soldier in the Scotts Royal Regiment. Over the course of this mind-bending hour, we are given an enormous amount of information about Daniel Faraday’s time-traveling experiments (information that will prove critical to our understanding of season 5). We also see, in an intriguing scene, Charles Widmore at an auction, bidding on the first mate’s log from the Black Rock (the ship we know is beached on the island), which we learn had formerly been in the possession of Tovar Hanso (an apparent ancestor of the founder of the Dharma Initiative). Suddenly we are forced to reconsider Mr. Widmore — he’s not just Desmond’s troublesome potential father-in-law, he’s a man with some sort of connection to the island. But, of course, none of this fascinating back-story would matter at all if not for the episode’s emotional center: the star-crossed love story of Desmond and Penny. Their tearful reunion, when Desmond calls her from the freighter’s radio room after having obtained her phone number in the past, is wonderfully powerful stuff, and a highlight of the season (and the series).
4.9 – The Shape of Things to Come – In… [continued]
My season-by-season analysis of Lost continues! Click here for my thoughts on season 1, here for my thoughts on season 2, and here for my thoughts on season 3. SPOILERS ARE AHEAD, gang, so beware!
“Rescuing you and your people… I can’t really say it’s our primary objective.”
There were times, watching seasons 2 and 3 of Lost when they originally aired, when I must admit that my faith in the show wavered. There were so many mysteries raised but not answered, and after the terrific first season there seemed to be many times when the show was spinning in circles, narratively. But season 4 firmly established Lost, in my mind, as one of the greatest TV series of our time, as opposed to a show that started off brilliantly but then slowly settled into mediocrity (cough 24 cough).
The writers brilliantly reinvigorated the show by abandoning their signature story-telling device, the use of flashbacks. Instead they began presenting us with tantalizing flash-FORWARDS that hinted at what would befall to our castaways in the time between the on-island events of 2004 and what we glimpsed of 2007, when we met the desperate, suicidal off-island Jack in the season 3 finale. That finale set up all sorts of questions: How did the castaways get off the island? Why did only SOME of the castaways leave? What happened to everyone else — were they dead, or did they decide to stay for some reason? What happened to Jack (and the other Oceanic Six) in their three years off the island? What drove Jack to become the destroyed, shell of a man that we saw in the season 3 finale? Whose body was in that coffin??
One of the great strengths of season 4 is that way that, in decidedy un-Lost fashion, every one of those above questions were answered by the end of the season. Season 4 feels like the most complete of all the seasons of Lost, with a distinct beginning, middle, and end, and in which all of the major questions raised at the beginning of the season (well, really by the finale of season 3) were answered by the end of the season. That all this was accomplished despite the fact that the season was truncated due to the lengthy writers strike is quite astounding. (Season 4 was scheduled to be 16 episodes long — much shorter than the 24 episodes-per-season that seasons 1-3 were — but it was shortened to only 13 episodes because of the strike.) In many ways, I suspect the shortened length of the season turned into one of its greatest strengths. There’s no flab in season 4 — with only 13… [continued]
I don’t take the Oscars very seriously, and I always find myself in strong disagreements with the films and performances chosen by the Academy to be recognized. And yet, I love watching the Oscars, and for many years one of my closest friends (since kindergarden!) and I have always used the Oscars as an excuse to get together, enjoy some great food and drink, and talk about movies. So I’m pumped for the show this Sunday, and I hope that Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin will be entertaining. (For the record, my favorite host in recent memory was Jon Stewart, and I hope someday he’ll be given the reins of the show again.)
To prepare, let’s review the Best Picture nominees:
Avatar — Click here to read my review, and here to read my comics poking fun at the film.
The Blind Side — Haven’t seen it, and have absolutely zero interest in changing that.
District 9 – Click here to read my review, and here to read my comics poking fun at the film.
An Education — This is the film from 2009 I was most bummed to have missed, and I hope to remedy that shortly.
The Hurt Locker — Click here to read my review.
Inglourious Basterds – Click here to read my review, and here to read my comics poking fun at the film.
Precious — I missed this one too. I must confess that I don’t have any burning desire to see this film, but it seems to be well thought of so perhaps I’ll give it a chance on DVD…
A Serious Man – Click here to read my review.
Up – Click here to read my review, and here to read my comics poking fun at the film.
Up in the Air – Click here to read my review, and here to read my comics poking fun at the film.
As for MY choices for the ten best films of 2010? Click here to read my list. (To refresh your memory, my favorite film from 2009 was Where the Wild Things Are, a film that, you might have noticed, didn’t make the Academy’s list. Oh well.)
Enjoy the show, everyone!
After months and months of reading praise for Kathryn Bigelow’s film The Hurt Locker, I finally was able to see the film on DVD. (Once again, thank you Netflix!) I am extremely pleased to report that, for me, the film lived up to its hype.
In the bravura opening sequence, we meet Delta Company, an elite unit of the U.S. Army serving in Iraq. Delta Company consists of the men who get called in to disarm and/or detonate I.E.D.s (Improvised Explosive Devices) and all manner of other sorts of explosives before they can kill any U.S. servicemen/woman or others. The tense, harrowing first few minutes of the film tell us everything we need to know about the incredible bravery and ability of the men of Delta Company who we’ll be following through the film, the excruciatingly difficult task that they are called upon to deal with every single day, and the high fatality rates of their assignments.
The Hurt Locker focuses on three men in Delta Company. Anthony Mackie plays Sgt. JT Sanborn — a tough, by-the book officer of great professionalism. Brian Geraghty plays Specialist Owen Eldridge, the youngest member of the team. Eldridge struggles with the weight of the life-and-death assignments that he must take on every day, but we never see those concerns affect his performance in the field. Then there is Staff Sgt. William James, played by Jeremy Renner in a phenomenal, star-making performance. SSG James is assigned to head up Delta Company after the death of their previous field leader. James is an extraordinarily talented officer, but we quickly learn that he is not one for by-the-book procedures. This brings him into conflict with Sgt. Sanborn, who judges James to be reckless and dangerous. Young Eldridge finds himself caught somewhat in the middle.
That could be the plot of a great movie, but The Hurt Locker isn’t really a drama about conflict within a military unit. Though we see evidence of that conflict that I have just described over the course of the story, The Hurt Locker isn’t concerned with typical Hollywood war-movie character arcs or story-lines. Rather, director Kathryn Bigelow has created a film whose main purpose, it seems to me, is to put the viewer right in the middle of the intense, every-moment-could-be-your-last job that these men serving in Iraq have been given. Through careful direction, tight editing, and above all stupendous acting, The Hurt Locker consists of one nail-biting sequence after another.
The film is episodic in nature. In less capable hands this could be a weakness, undermining the narrative thrust that a successful film needs to achieve. But under the sure guidance of Ms. Bigelow, the episodic structure of the film… [continued]
Though 2009 is well in the past, I’m still trying to find time to watch those 2009 films that I missed (some of which I listed when writing my Best Films of 2009 list). At the top of my I-really-wanted-to-see-it-but-never-did list from 2009 was Duncan Jones’ little sci-fi film, Moon.
When I say “little,” I am referring only to the budget (5 million dollars). Because in no other way is Moon a “little” film. No, Moon is a phenomenal achievement, and it surely would have made my Best Films of the Year list had I seen it in time.
It’s the near future, and the great Sam Rockwell (Galaxy Quest, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, Frost/Nixon) plays Sam Bell, working alone in a small helium-3 mining station on the moon. His only companion is the station’s computer, Gerty (voiced by Kevin Spacey, perfectly cast). Sam is nearing the end of his three-year contract and is anticipating his return to Earth and to his family. Of course, it’s not going to be that simple.
I’ve barely said anything about the film’s story, but I really think that’s for the best. This is a film best appreciated going in cold, without knowing any of the plot twists. Suffice it to say, when a distracted Sam crashes one of the station’s small rovers, he unwittingly sets into motion a chain of events that leads to things quickly going more and more awry in his once-efficient little moon station.
Moon is an acting tour-de-force for Sam Rockwell. With the exception of a few other people glimpsed briefly on computer monitors, Sam is the only character on screen for the entire film. But he dominates the screen so thoroughly that I didn’t even really consider that fact until well after the film had ended. Mr. Rockwell has always been known for bringing a particularly idiosyncratic brand of humanity to the flawed array of characters he has portrayed on screen, and his Sam Bell in this film is a spectacular example. Once the plot gets going, Sam’s ordered life starts to fall down around his ears, and the way Mr. Rockwell brings to life his increasing desperation, and also his surprising inner reservoirs of strength, is wonderful. Shame on the Academy for not nominating this spectacular acting performance!!
Writer/director Duncan Jones jokes in the DVD’s special features that the most recent example of an “indie” sci-fi movie that he can think of is Danny Boyle’s Sunshine, which was made for around 50 million dollars. Moon was made for 5 million. To say that my jaw was on the floor when I learned that this movie was made for such a miniscule budget would be an… [continued]
Yesterday I began my look back at season 3 of Lost. Click here to check out my thoughts on season 1, and here to read my thoughts on season 2.
“This is future crap, isn’t it?”
Favorite Episodes
3.7 “Not in Portland” – Juliet gets a terrifically juicy flashback as we see her performing secret (and somehow unethical?) research on her sister, who Juliet is able to help get pregnant despite her being stricken with cancer. Richard Alpert makes his first appearance as a well-dressed representative of Mittelos Bioscience who tries, repeatedly, to recruit Juliet to come work for him in Portland. We see a few glimpses of Ethan, who has apparently been hanging around Juliet’s place of work, and who is perhaps the one who brought her to Richard’s attention. We see Juliet frustratedly confess to Richard that she can’t work for him because her ex-husband (and boss) would never allow her to take her research elsewhere, and she hysterically wishes that he’d get hit by a bus. Which he does. At which point Alpert tries again to convince Juliet to come work for him, admitting that they don’t really have offices in Portland…
3.8 “Flashes Before Your Eyes” — Click here for my detailed thoughts on this bombshell episode!
3.10 “Tricia Tanaka is Dead” – Oh my goodness do I have great and powerful love for this episode. Hurley finds an overturned, rusted old Dharma van. Convinced that the gang needs a win, he sets out to repair it, with some help from Charlie, Jin, and Sawyer. And repair it they do. In flashback, we meet Hurley’s dad, played by Cheech Martin. He apparently left Hurley’s mom when the kid was about 10, but she doesn’t seem all that sore about it, as she welcomes him back into her life after Hurley wins the lottery. I guess he’s a jerk for ditching them all those years ago, but he seems like a good-hearted fellow who is genuinely concerned with the depressive spiral that Hurley has fallen into because of the curse he feels is upon him. We see good evidence for that curse early in the episode, when an unfortunate reporter, the titular Tricia Tanaka, perishes when an asteroid (or meteor?) smashes into the Mr. Cluck’s that Hurley purchased. D’oh! There are so many great moments in this episode. All the silliness with the head of Roger, Workman (who, in a terrific turn, we later learn is none other than Ben’s dad, Roger Linus). Jin and Sawyer drunk on decades-old Dharma beer, and Sawyer teaching him the English phrases he’ll need to keep a woman happy. Hurley looking death in the face. Fantastic.
3.14 “Expose” – Oh boy,… [continued]
Click here for my thoughts on Lost season 1, and here for my thoughts on Lost season 2! Remember, there are LOTS OF SPOILERS ahead, so be warned. OK, let’s dive into Lost season 3!
“The man from Tallahassee? What is that, some kind of code?” ”No, John, unfortunately we don’t have a code for ‘there’s a man in my closet with a gun to my daughter’s head’. Although we obviously should.”
Whereas season 2 broadened the canvass of Lost to include the characters of the Tailies and their stories, season 3 expands the focus even further to begin shedding light on the heretofore enigmatic figures of the Others.
In many ways, season 3 represents a mid-series turning point for Lost. Towards the end of the original airing of this season, it was announced that the show’s producers had come to an agreement with the network on an end-date for the show. I don’t think I’m exaggerating to say that this announcement (quite unprecedented for a successful network TV series), literally saved the series. There were points in season 2 that felt like treading water, and I got that same sensation more than once in the early going of season 3. But the announcement that the series had a definite end date restored narrative thrust and energy to the show, and allowed the writers to begin parcelling out answers to long-held questions and moving forward on the storylines and plot-twists that they had intended for the end-game of the show.
“Pushing that button is the only truly great thing that you will ever do.”
Season 3 began with a “pod” of six episodes. When watching these episodes originally I found them to be excruciating, as all sorts of weird things seemed to be happening with no explanation whatsoever. At this point in the run of the show I was long-since ready for some answers, and I had hoped that this batch of episodes — in which Jack, Kate and Sawyer found themselves held captive by the Others and so we were at last taken inside the Others’ community — would give us some insight into just what the heck had been going on for the first two years of the show, but that was not to be. To say that this was frustrating would be putting it mildly. In addition, over the course of these 6 episodes we continued to have to suffer through watching our beloved characters treated incredibly cruelly (something that I mentioned that I found bothersome during season 2 as well), abused mentally and physically by the Others. This is tough to watch, and as I commented in my write-up of season 2, the… [continued]