The first two minutes of this clip makes me laugh so hard.
Oh yeah, I know that episode. Genius!… [continued]
Hanna (Saoirse Ronan) is a young girl who has been raised in total isolation in a frigid, rural setting by her father Erik (Eric Bana). When we first meet Hanna, it becomes immediately clear that Erik has been training her to be a fierce warrior — tough, smart, and fearless, with a keen tactical mind and skills with all manner of different weaponry. Erik has apparently been in hiding from government agent Marissa (Cate Blanchett) for years, but now that Hanna has become a teenager she has grown tired of her isolation. So Erik allows Hanna to let Marissa know where they are hiding, setting young Hanna on a violent collision course with Erik and Marissa’s secret past.
Hanna is a violent, fast-paced thriller. This story could have been a slow-burn story of intrigue and subterfuge, but while there is no shortage of intrigue and subterfuge in the tale, Hanna is a kinetic, adrenaline-pumping film right from minute one. The throbbing, techno-beat pumping of the score reminds me of Run Lola Run, and it drives the action scenes forward with at a propulsive pace that is also reminiscent of that terrific German film (read my review here).
This was not exactly the type of movie I expected to see from Joe Wright, the director of Pride & Prejudice and Atonement. But his second collaboration with Saoirse Ronan is incredibly potent, and Mr. Wright brings extraordinary skill and style to spare to this film. And truly, Hanna is an exercise in cinematic style from start to finish. There’s nothing exceedingly unique about the story of spies and their dark secrets, but the execution by Mr. Wright and his team give the film a truly distinct flavor all its own.
They are ably assisted, of course, by the terrifically talented threesome of Saoirse Ronan, Eric Bana, and Cate Blanchett. I haven’t seen Atonement, the first film that brought Ms. Ronan national attention a few years ago, but she is a captivating presence here. There’s a bright intelligence to be seen behind her piercing blue eyes, and she is entirely convincing as the brutal, feral warrior she has been raised to be. She also completely sells the moments of naive innocence exposed in Hanna when she’s confronted with aspects of the modern world that she’s never before experienced.
Cate Blanchett is touch as nails and entirely unlikable as Marissa, which of course is exactly what the role calls for. Ms. Blanchett dials back her charisma to create, in Marissa, a woman who is clearly a shell of a human being, totally devoted to her job and her pursuit of secrets that has become her whole life. She’s a great villain.… [continued]
When you combine the two main creative forces behind Freaks and Geeks (one of the greatest television shows ever made) with some of the funniest actresses working today, is it any result that the resulting film is an uproariously funny, ferociously entertaining comedy from start to finish?
Kristen Wiig stars in Bridesmaids as Annie, a young woman whose life is on a bit of a downturn. Her boyfriend left her, which would be painful enough if the withdrawal of his financial backing didn’t also cause her bakery business to go under. Annie is at first happy to hear that her life-long best friend, Lillian (Maya Rudolph), has gotten engaged, but soon that happy news turns bitter as Annie begins to feel that Lillian has found a new best friend in one of her bridesmaids, the wealthy, perky Helen (Rose Byrne). As she feels Lillian slipping away from her, Annie tries ever-harder to plan perfect wedding-related events for her friend, but those efforts wind up exploding in increasingly spectacular fashion.
In addition to starring in the film, Kristen Wiig co-wrote Bridesmaids with Annie Mumolo. No one could possibly survive and thrive on Saturday Night Live for as long as Ms. Wiig did without clearly having a strong comedic voice and some writing skills, but this film firmly establishes her as a powerhouse talent. She and Ms. Mumolo have crafted a script that is screamingly funny but also endearingly human. There is some exaggeration in the film, to be sure, and there are some characters who drift closer to comedic archetypes than they do to real people. But the central story-line of the film is very real and very honest. The description of the film’s plot in the above paragraph could just as easily be the plot for a somber, depressing drama. Obviously, Bridesmaids is anything BUT a depressing drama! But the idea of a life-change driving a wedge between long-time friends is a story that rings emotionally true, and that gives the film a weight that many other raunchy comedies don’t have.
Having a potent, real emotional story at the core of the craziest of comedies has been one of the reasons why the films directed by and produced by Judd Apatow over the last several years have been so terrific. Mr. Apatow produced Bridesmaids, and I can see immediately why he responded to the script by Ms. Wiig and Ms. Mumolo. It’s also easy to see why this story appealed to Mr. Apatow’s former Freaks and Geeks collaborator, the amazing Paul Feig. (Mr. Feig created Freaks and Geeks, while Mr. Apatow served as the executive producer. Mr. Feig directed Bridesmaids, which was produced by Mr. Apatow.) You might not … [continued]
Thirty seconds into this trailer, you might be thinking “hey, I like Jason Segel, but why the heck am I watching this trailer??”
Trust me.
Was I wrong?? Heh heh. Can’t wait.… [continued]
I’ve just begun what promises to be a year-long project to revisit all 22 James Bond films. (I plan on also re-watching Never Say Never Again, though I will most likely be skipping the 1954 and 1967 versions of Casino Royale.) Click here for my lengthy article on the very first James Bond film: Dr. No!
The film: The second Bond film, From Russia With Love, has always ranked among my favorite of the Bond films, and this latest viewing only reinforces that opinion. Just like Dr. No, the film is a tense, fast-paced espionage thriller, only I’d argue that this installment is even more ambitious and slickly produced than that first film. From Russia With Love takes place in a myriad of different locations, and is filled with some impressively elaborate-for-the-time action set-pieces, such as the helicopter attack on Bond’s purloined truck and the terrific speed-boat chase late in the film. There’s none of the silliness or bloat that would infect later installments in this series (well, except for a number of absolutely TERRIBLE puns that Bond utters several times in the film after disposing of one bad-guy or another).
The film demonstrates a confidence right from the get-go, as James Bond (the ACTUAL James Bond, not counting the Mission Impossible style face-masked Bond impostor in the opening sequence) doesn’t actually appear in the movie until about twenty minutes in! That’s a pretty surprising and bold narrative choice, when you think about it. The film takes a great deal of time, at the start, to ratchet up the tension by introducing us to all of the new adversaries that Bond will now be facing. It’s a gutsy move, to take so much time before ever introducing your film’s main character, but that’s just one of the many things that I love about From Russia With Love.
The opening/The music: Speaking of the opening sequence, whereas Dr. No started right with the opening credits, here in From Russia With Love there’s a short sequence (the buff hit-man Donald Grant stalking the Bond doppelganger on “SPECTRE Island”) that comes before the opening credits. Opening the film with a pre-credit action sequence would become one of the Bond films’ most notable stylistic devices, and it’s fun to see that begin here.
The opening credits themselves are just as weird as those in Dr. No. In this film, the credits are projected on the writhing body of a belly-dancer. It’s a pretty bizarre, kinky way to start a film! As a fan of the writhing bodies of belly-dancers, I heartily approve, though it’s sort of weird that a film titled From Russia With Love would choose to emphasize the gypsy … [continued]
Some of the earliest Star Trek books I ever read as a kid were written by Margaret Wander Bonanno (one of these days I really have to go back and re-read Strangers from the Sky to see if I still like it as much as I did back then). After the mess with the novel Probe (which is a fascinating and horrifying tale — head to Margaret Wander Bonanno’s web-site and click on “Probe: The Novel I didn’t Write: The Whole Story” on the right-hand side of the page for all the gory details), though, Ms. Bonanno was unable to continue writing Trek novels. Thankfully, a decade later, editor Marco Palmieri (a phenomenal editor of the Star Trek line who was sadly fired himself a few years ago) brought her back into the fold. Her first new novel, Catalyst of Sorrows, was OK, but her next book — an exploration of the life of the Christopher Pike called Burning Dreams — was phenomenal. When I heard that she was working on a new novel that would explore what happened to Lt. Saavik after her brief appearance in Star Trek IV, I was very excited.
The main story of Star Trek: Unspoken Truth is set in the days following the events of Star Trek IV. But the novel continually jumps around in time, allowing us to get glimpses of Saavik’s terrible childhood spent on the Romulan outpost nicknamed Hellguard, her early days on Vulcan (after having been rescued from Hellguard by a young Spock), her time at Starfleet Academy, and the events of Star Trek II-IV. I particularly enjoyed the way the narrative wove in and out of familiar moments from those three films. In particular, Ms. Bonanno makes a real meal out of Saavik’s one brief scene in Star Trek IV. That scene in the movie has always disappointed me. While I was glad she at least got that one moment (even though the creators of the Trek films had clearly decided to jettison the character), it always struck me as a poor finish to the rich character who had received so much on-screen time and development during Star Trek II and III. Ms. Bonanno really fleshes out what was going on in that scene, what Saavik was thinking, why she blurted out that comment about David Marcus, and more. Her writing really redeemed that scene for me in a wonderful way.
Much of Unspoken Truth — particularly the first half of the novel — is made up of short scenes. I found this story-telling style to be quite engaging. Through an accretion of vignettes, Ms. Bonanno is able to build in our minds … [continued]
My friend Ethan Kreitzer had the pleasure of seeing the great Albert Brooks at a book reading in New York City last week. Mr. Brooks was there to promote his new book, 2030: The Real Story of What Happens to America. Ethan was kind enough to send in the following report:
Albert Brooks was awesome.
First of all, he didn’t do a book reading – he talked about the book and the writing process but didn’t give up spoilers and didn’t just blandly read a chapter. He then said he was going to cut his prepared stuff short so he could take as many questions as people had.
From the start, Mr. Brooks was funny. After the events person at Barnes & Noble introduced him, Brooks said “that introduction was the ‘about the author’ page from my book… I’m glad you grabbed the right book and not a John Grisham novel” – then he pointed to an empty “RESERVED” chair in the front row and said “by the way, that seat is for Elijah.” He said it’s his first book reading on this tour and it’s been almost 40 years since he’s done a live appearance in New York City. He said he opened at Madison Square Garden for Blood, Sweat and Tears in 1973. And then said “Blood and Sweat were nice but Tears was a real asshole.” He said he’ll be signing at the end of the presentation and Q&A and he does autograph impressions so he can sign as Bill Clinton or something if anybody prefers that.
When Mr. Brooks talked about the book he said he realized he needed to make it a novel and not a screenplay because he had ideas about what he wanted to write and knew that with the kind of budget he gets for his movies he could never afford to film any of these things. He said that because he writes and directs his films, he’s become like a savant accountant knowing exactly how much every scene will cost and he’s always self-editing himself to move scenes indoors and to “write cheaper.”
I did ask a question. I asked if he used improv in his movies and, specifically, if he came up with having Garry Marshall say “Santy Claus” in Lost in America. He said that he writes his scripts mostly via transcription and actually acts out the scenes so he knows what characters are going to say. He doesn’t want actors changing things and it’s too expensive to just let the cameras roll. He said that he did come up with “Santy Claus” and that Garry Marshall had never acted and had no idea if he was … [continued]
It’s pretty hard to believe that Smallville has been on the air for ten years, and I am even a little bit more astonished that I’ve been watching the show for pretty much all of those ten years! From the very beginning, I have found watching Smallville to be a somewhat frustrating endeavor. I’d be hard pressed to name a show that’s been so wildly inconsistent in quality. A spectacular, exciting, complex episode will be followed by an agonizingly painful, awkward, juvenile installment. But the good episodes have been good enough to somehow keep me watching even through the bad ones (and there have been plenty of bad ones).
Smallville is probably the best argument for the strength of the British TV model (and the increasingly common HBIO/cable model) of shorter (8-12 episode) seasons rather than the standard American network TV seasons of 20-24 episodes. Over the years I’ve read fans writing off this season or that season of Smallville as garbage, while praising other years. Personally, I think pretty much every season of the show has had merit, and has had some great episodes. But boy oh boy have I felt (right from season one) that the story-lines were padded and stretched FAAAAR beyond what made any logical narrative sense. The years and years of yes-they’re-a-couple, no-they’re-not-a-couple Clark Kent/Lana Lang soap opera antics is the most annoying example of this, but even in the later, more focused seasons this has been a problem. The show actually found interesting ways to incorporate Doomsday and General Zod as villains (in seasons 8 and 9, respectively), but by making us wait through the WHOLE long season for Clark and his Big Bad villains to finally come to loggerheads stretched my patience well past the breaking point. Out of the ten seasons of Smallville, I’d say there’s probably a terrific four year-run of a great super-hero show.
That is not a very good record! But Smallville did have a number of moments of real greatness, and those moments kept me from ever giving up entirely on the series. There have been some episodes that have been among the very best live-action depictions of super-heroics that I’ve ever seen, in movies or on TV. (The season two episode, “Rosetta,” guest-starring Christopher Reeve comes to mind, and the show consistently did season-finales like nobody’s business.) The visual effects are not great, but they’ve been good enough to be decently entertaining week in and week out. But when the show was great, it wasn’t because of visual effects, it was because they found a sweet spot between incorporating aspects of the Superman mythology while keeping the over-all narrative fun, engaging, and accessible.
When Smallville was … [continued]
Following up on my review of Source Code, which I posted yesterday, click here for a wonderfully spot-on assessment of all of the myriad problems with the film’s ending. It’s a sweet ending that felt right when I walked out of the theatre, but like the rest of the film, if you think about it for more than five minutes, it totally falls apart.
Here’s a very funny trailer for 30 Minutes of Less. I love the idea of Jesse Eisenberg and Aziz Ansari as buddies. I’m looking forward to this one.
Here’s another trailer — this is for the very low-budget indie sci-fi movie Another Earth. I don’t know anything about this film, but my curiosity is piqued. It’s always interesting to see sci-fi elements mixed with drama (rather than action).
This is awesome. Lucasfilm Animation’s new building is shaped like a Jawa Sandcrawler.
It’s really happening! The Avengers has begun filming!! Here’s what Joss Whedon had to say on the matter. Funny as always. Boy, The Avengers is happening, The Hobbit is happening… this is all very exciting! Now if we could just get the next James Bond film into production, then I’d be over the moon.
I’ve written before about how I think the way some people defend bad movies by saying “oh, it’s not a movie you’re supposed to think about” is incredibly stupid. Here’s a well-reasoned support of my opinion.
This is a beautiful article but it also made me kind of sad. No matter how much we might try to read all the books we want to read, or watch all the films we want to see, or listen to all the music we want to listen to, the simple mathematical truth is that we’re all going to miss almost everything.
I’ve always thought that the next Star Trek TV show needs to move the story forward (the same way Next Gen did after the original Star Trek), not backwards. Apparently I’m not alone in that thinking. Trekmovie.com has put together a fascinating piece on the pitch for a new Star Trek TV show that Bryan Singer, Chris McQuarrie, and Robert Meyer Burnett put together in 2005-06 put never actually presented to Paramount. I would have watched that show!
This is a great defense by Nordling of AICN on the experience of seeing movies theatrically. I agree with him wholeheartedly, but I wish there were theatres like the Alamo Drafthouse here in Boston. It kills me to go to a movie and have people talking on their cell phones or texting or doing other annoying things that distract from actually watching the movie.
Finally, … [continued]
The phenomenally high-quality Moon (starring Sam Rockwell — read my review here) guaranteed that I’d buy a ticket for director Duncan Jones’ next film. Well, that film has arrived, and although it took me several weeks to find the time to get catch it in a theatre, I’ve finally seen Source Code.
Jake Gyllenhaal stars as Captain Colter Stevens. He wakes up on a train heading towards Chicago, but doesn’t have any idea how he got there. His last memory is flying a mission in Afghanistan. Across the seat from him is a woman, Christina (Michelle Monaghan), who seems to know him, but he has no idea who she is. Also, she calls him Sean. After a few frantic minutes trying to figure out what’s happening to him, the train explodes, killing Captain Stevens, Christina, and everyone on board.
But Captain Stevens doesn’t die. He wakes up in some sort of pod. A woman on-screen in a military uniform identifies herself as Goodwin and begins to lay out some of the details of Captain Stevens’ situation. A terrorist detonated a bomb on that train and has threatened to decimate Chicago by detonating another bomb, this one with nuclear material. A technology known as Source Code will allow Captain Stevens to relive the last eight minutes of life of one of the passengers on the doomed train. He has that long to try to identify the bomber and prevent the threatened destruction of Chicago. They’re going to continue sending him back into that eight minutes until he does.
Let me get this right off the bat: Source Code is no Moon. It’s an entertaining sci-fi thriller, and it certainly has some fun mind-bending concepts, but it’s nowhere near as memorable as the incredibly original, tightly-structured Moon.
Both Jake Gyllenhaal and Michelle Monaghan do fine work as the two leads. They’re both talented and charismatic enough that they capture our interest even though we don’t really get to learn much about either character. The focus of the film is far more on the intricate sci-fi plotting than it is on developing characters. That’s not a criticism — I love twisty plot-driven films. But when comparing this film to, say Speed (which is certainly not great cinema but is a rousing action adventure that also focuses on a man and a woman trapped in an enclosed moving vehicle in a tense situation), it’s clear that we certainly get to know Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock’s characters far better than we do those of Mr. Gyllenhaal and Ms. Monaghan. I adored Ms. Monaghan’s work in the magnificent Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang and the also-terrific Gone Baby Gone, and I’ve been waiting … [continued]
Although Thor doesn’t come close to equalling some of the amazing super-hero films we’ve been blessed with over the past several years (the first Iron Man, which kicked off this current run of inter-connected Marvel films, The Dark Knight, the first two X-Men films, and the first two Spider-Man films), it is a WAY better film version of the character of Thor and his mythos than I EVER would have imagined possible.
Despite by being a huge comic book fan and a Marvel Zombie since I was a kid, I never read the Thor comic regularly. I always thought Thor was great as part of the ensemble of The Avengers, but his solo title never captured my interest. And when Marvel announced, after the huge success of Iron Man, that they were working on a film version of Thor (as part of a series of films that would build up to The Avengers), I was dubious. The recent Marvel films had worked so well in large part because they were fairly grounded. Sure, Iron Man wound up with two guys in huge metal suits punching each other, but the filmmakers and the actors took pains to ground the story in the real world (and to give the characters human, real-world motivations and emotions). I think that was a big part of the film’s success. Same goes with the Spidey films and the X-Men films (which, for example, cast off most of the more colorful aspects of the comics — like the yellow spandex costumes).
But Thor? The Thor comic books are all about a big guy who is ACTUALLY A NORSE GOD and speaks in archaic language (a lot of “thees” and “thous”) and who has crazy adventures with other gods or god-like characters. How could that possibly be achieved in a film that wouldn’t feel painfully small-scale (without the budget or the resources to properly achieve the epic scale of Thor’s cosmic adventures as seen in the comics) and/or feel totally ridiculously silly.
And yet, somehow, director Kenneth Branagh managed to pull off a film that, for the most part, works really well and is enjoyable both as a film in its own right and as a key stepping-stone towards The Avengers. This is an impressive achievement and a pretty fun time at the movies!
As with Iron Man, the film’s biggest success lies in it’s casting. There are other things that one can pick at about Thor (and I will of course do so momentarily), but I think the casting is pretty much spot-on perfect. Chris Hemsworth (so great as James T. Kirk’s doomed dad in the opening scenes of J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek… [continued]
It’s been a while since I’ve chimed in with my thoughts on the recent direct-to-DVD DC Universe animated films! Here are my thoughts on the last three releases:
Superman/Batman: Apocalypse – Coming hot off the heels of what I consider to be the strongest film in this series so far, the grim and intense Batman: Under the Red Hood (read my review here) comes this, by far the worst film so far. This one is pretty much a total, unwatchable catastrophe. Despite what the title and cover art might have you believe, this isn’t a story about Darkseid (one of the best Superman villains) at all. It’s really the latest version of the Supergirl story (adapted from Jeph Loeb and Michael Turner’s story which did not interest me when it was published and still does not interest me now). Now don’t get me wrong: I have nothing against Supergirl! I loved the character on Bruce Timm’s animated Superman and Justice League shows. But this desperate-to-be-hip reinterpretation has always smacked of desperation to me, and shoe-horning in Darkseid and his minions just robs those great characters of the focus they deserve. Darkseid and the New Gods mythos were presented with far greater success in the afore-mentioned Superman and Justice League animated series. This is just a sub-par retread of ground that has already been covered. Skip this one at all costs, gang.
Superman/Shazam! The Return of Black Adam — In addition to re-presenting the three DC Universe universe shorts that appeared on the three prior DVDs (with commentary tracks that are interesting but really should have been included on the original releases), this DVD collection includes the new Superman/Shazam short. I say “short,” but it’s a good deal lengthier than the previous three shorts. At almost 25 minutes, this is much more the length of an episode of one of the DC animated series. And, indeed, this short feels just exactly like we’re watching a long-lost episode of one of those Bruce Timm DC Universe animated series. That’s both good and bad. It’s good in that the quality of the story-telling and the animation is high. I find origin stories to be a little tiring, but I like this version of the Shazam/Captain Marvel mythos and I thought everything was presented in an effectively succinct, to-the-point way. But it’s bad in that this felt pretty much like just another episode. There wasn’t anything that jaw-dropping to see, and the story never reached anything near the apocalyptic heights glimpsed in the DVD’s terrific cover painting. Also, as with the Darkseid stuff in the previous DVD, I felt that all of this had been done before, and better, in the old … [continued]
In March, 2007, Sarah Glidden took a Birthright trip to Israel. The Birthright Israel program is funded by a variety of private philanthropists and provides 10-day trips to Israel for Jews around the world who have never been to Israel before. The purpose of the trips, according to the Birthright Israel web-site, is to “diminish the growing division between Israel and Jewish communities around the world; to strengthen the sense of solidarity among world Jewry; and to strengthen participants’ personal Jewish identity and connection to the Jewish people.”
Before going on the trip, Sarah felt pretty sure of her feelings towards Israel. Though she was curious to see the country for herself, for the most part she was critical of the Jewish state’s actions towards the Palestinian people. She went on Birthright ready to challenge the pro-Israel propaganda she expected from the tour. Her experiences on the program, though, were far more complex than that, and caused her to question her initial assumptions and re-evaluate many of her opinions. Eventually, Ms. Glidden set down to write and illustrate a memoir of her experiences, and the result is the wonderful graphic novel How to Understand Israel in 60 Days or Less, which was recently published by Vertigo, a division of DC Comics.
The graphic novel follows the basic chronology of Ms. Glidden’s trip, with each chapter focused on the time that she and her group spent in various different parts of Israel. As the novel progresses, we follow Ms. Glidden’s experiences and get to know the various Americans on her tour and local Israelis with whom she interacts. As the Birthright participants learns about Israel — its history and its people — we readers get to explore this history as well. Ms. Glidden is skillful with the exposition — she’s constantly finding creative ways to illustrate the history lessons she receives, whether it’s by bringing to life the metaphor of stacks of hats to explain how a tel contains layers of the archaeological record (I laughed at the drawings of a little Sarah climbing up an enormous stack of hats) or by imagining herself talking to David Ben Gurion (Israel’s first Prime Minister) or the long-dead Zionist halutzim (pioneers) to help explain the events that led to the establishment of the Jewish state. I know a decent amount about Israel’s history, so none of this was brand-new to me. But the light-touch with which Ms. Glidden brought to those explorations of history kept me thoroughly engaged, and I was impressed by how skillfully she was able to weave those history lessons into the over-all narrative.
I was also impressed by how well Ms. Glidden was able to incorporate multiple viewpoints … [continued]
For seasons 2-4, I thought the American version of The Office was one of the funniest shows on television — hitting near genius-level comedy with extreme regularity week-to-week. Things started to slide a bit during season 5, and I thought the last several years have been pretty hit-or-miss. One of the big problems with the show, I think, is how they’ve lost the thread of the Jim character (played by John Krasinski). For the first several years, he was the real hero of the show. Oh, sure, he shared screen time with all the other major members of the ensemble (all of whom are very talented and funny in their own right), but I always thought that Jim was the major audience surrogate character. We saw the office, and all the characters who populated it, through Jim’s eyes, and we invested in the emotional ups and downs of his love for Pam.
But for the past few years, with Jim and Pam a happy couple, it’s seemed to me that the writers haven’t known what to do with him. He’s faded to the background in many episodes, and when he does have a central part to play, it’s often been to appear incompetent. (His hapless efforts co-managing the office come to mind.) That can sometimes be good for a short-term laugh, but I’ve felt for a while that it seemed like a betrayal of the Jim we knew and loved for the first several years of the show. I always though that if that Jim Halpert ever actually tried to work hard and apply himself, he’d quickly be running the office — or, more likely, he’d leave Dunder Mifflin and find himself a more rewarding gig. That neither has happened has puzzled me, and the inconsistent and often uninteresting characterization of Jim lately has been disappointing and, I think, a large reason as to why my interest in the show has started to wane.
In Jim’s place, Michael has stepped to the forefront as the hero of the show. Don’t get me wrong, Steve Carell was always the biggest name in the cast and the star of the proceedings. But in terms of the actual narrative of the show, he seemed to me to be mostly there as an impediment/frustration for Jim. But with Jim sliding into the background, the last three seasons have seen Michael in the more heroic role — achieving victories (most notably the triumphant ending of his “Michael Scott’s Paper Company” story-line in season five) and winning the girl (the delightful Amy Ryan as Holly Flax).
And so I am very curious as to what sort of show The Office will become now that Steve Carell … [continued]