Friday Morning Update

After I got home last night, I decided to wind down by watching Modern Family and The Office from my DVR stash.  That was a good hour of television (okay 45 minutes without the commercials), especially, as it turns out, The Office.

Last night was the big reveal where the documentary crew entered the action, and the scene leading up to it took a little piece of my heart.  Sigh.  Well-played.

I’ve been so busy with class prep and watching (again) The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and Nanook of the North (okay, so I didn’t really watch that one again) that I haven’t had a lot of time for new films.

This weekend I plan to watch a couple of Oscar-nominated documentaries (in my sweat clothes and slippers while hunkered down inside to avoid the ice outside) and will report back.

Temptation

I’m tempted to wait until I am able to see Amour (on February 13th) to come up with my Top Ten list of favorite movies from 2012, but I’m not sure I can wait that long.  Maybe I will issue a list with a caveat over the weekend…maybe…

SCANDAL

I came to this ABC show late and for one terrible reason and another that speaks to segmented audiences.

Scandal was on my radar a couple of months ago because I noticed that a number of my African American friends would light up Facebook right after the latest episode aired each week.  I made a mental note to check it out since I didn’t watch during the first season.

The terrible reason is that the night of the Sandy Hook shooting, December 14, 2012, I just couldn’t bear to watch another minute of news coverage.  Instead, I watched the five episodes of Scandal that were available on Primetime on Demand.

For all the reasons that Tanzina Vega points out, the show is intriguing.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/17/arts/television/scandal-on-abc-is-breaking-barriers.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20130117

For now, I have put it on my list of shows to DVR and have been watching new episodes since the holiday hiatus.  In my viewing experience, some of the episodes are a lot better than others, but there is a lot of chemistry between Olivia and the President (which I gleaned mainly through the flashbacks from the first season).  Oh, yeah. 

Wonder what tonight’s episode will bring?

DJANGO UNCHAINED — Relief

Yesterday, a friend and colleague treated me to lunch (thank you, Stokes), and we discussed Djano Unchained.

 He went to see it twice to make sure he didn’t like the film and said the second viewing was definitely a case of diminishing returns.  That was a relief to me because now I don’t feel even the slightest need to take another peek.  Though one person I’m usually simpatico with about movies liked it, I am taking myself off the hook.

Let me be clear that it’s not the violence (or the “n” word) but something much deeper that bothers me about this film.  No need to dredge that up again, but I will reiterate that I still think Reservoir Dogs remains Tarantino’s best film.

“Clowns to the left of me, Jokers to the right, here I am…”

Maybe It’s Me?

Of course, it may be me…at least partly…though I think my emotional pulse is okay and my mood at a nice equilibrium.

The season premieres of Girls and Shameless failed to inspire me just like the lastest installments of Downton AbbeyThe Good Wife seems like a series of quirky cases designed to avoid any storylines involving major transitions for characters (making it feel more procedural than engaging in the way it used to feel).

Or, maybe it’s not me.  As it comes to a close, The Office is funny again.  Whew!

HYDE PARK ON HUDSON

My mother’s biggest complaint about Hyde Park on Hudson when she saw it a week or so ago was, “That’s not the FDR I ‘knew’.”  She just didn’t buy Bill Murray in the role.  She’s read several biographies of Eleanor and other Roosevelts, too, and she was generally disappointed with historical aspects of the depictions. 

I went to see the film yesterday with a history buff who had similar questions and left with cinema with big plans to delve into some reading to clarify historical points.  (Please report back, Linda!)

Happy to leave historical inquiry to others with a stronger background than mine, I am comfortable reporting that the film doesn’t work for me on other levels.

What does it want to be?  The point of view is mainly that of FDR’s distant cousin, Daisy (Laura Linney), launched with LENGTHY narration at the beginning of the tale, picked up at some points throughout, and used once again to conclude the film.  But, there are significant portions, mainly in the middle of the movie, when Daisy is not present for events depicted onscreen, which makes point of view a bit of a muddle.

Maybe that’s the best way to describe the film:  a bit of a muddle.  What am I supposed to take away from the picture?  That this is a period piece that could be called “Sister Wives on the Hudson”?  That FDR was a cad and not very hardworking, but he sure knew how to handle the King of England?  The film does not cohere.

A bit of a muddle, yes, although, that doesn’t convey the fact that it seems longer than Lincoln and Zero Dark Thirty despite its (theoretically brisk) 94-minute running time.

Golden Globes

I think Tina Fey and Amy Poehler are funny.  I can only watch until nine, though, because I’m recording so many Sunday shows that I don’t want to give up.

ZERO DARK THIRTY

Several years ago, my two favorite films of the year were Bright Star and The Hurt Locker.  I share this to convey that I have been deeply moved by the work of Kathryn Bigelow (director) and Mark Boal (writer) in the past.

While I found Zero Dark Thirty well-made and thought-provoking, there was an emotional engagement that I expected and wished for but did not find in this film.  I am not sure that is so much a criticism as an observation.  There is a place for films that feel a bit like a procedural, a (manufactured and compressed) tick tock (in the political sense) of the race to capture Osama bin Laden (funny, isn’t it, how his name has become less fearsome since his death).

I like the performances.  I like the cinematography and editing.  I like other aesthetic elements.  I like the script and understand the economy of focusing on one character, Maya (Jessica Chastain), whom Bigelow may identify with as she is a woman in the man’s world of Hollywood.  The storyline of Zero Dark Thirty suggests worlds of organizational conflict with personal implications peeking up at the surface of the narrative.

I think I needed more than a peek to feel more emotional engagement with the film.

The sequence in The Hurt Locker that makes it a great film for me is when Sergeant First Class William James (Jeremy Renner), a member of an Army bomb squad at war in Iraq, goes home.  Everything changes.  During this relatively brief interlude, the film has a blue tone to it literally and figuratively (in contrast to the hot colors of the desert), and viewers see how James has been so damaged by the war – and become so addicted to the adrenalin rush of seeking and detonating bombs – that he can longer connect with his wife and child and the life he left behind.  Wow.  This helps me know the man beyond what he does and gives me a sense of who he is and who he used to be.

There are glimpses into what makes Maya tick, sort of, but not enough for me to experience her as a real person. 

Inevitably, because of the CIA presence and the woman as a lone wolf smarter than the rest of the pack elements, people like to compare Zero Dark Thirty to the Showtime hit Homeland.  Clearly, there are opportunities in episodic television to draw complex characters like Carrie Mathison (Claire Danes) and give viewers enormous insight into how she thinks and why, but Bigelow has proven before that she can accomplish that with amazing skill and great economy, so the lack of insight into Maya’s character is a choice unrelated to format.

By all means see Zero Dark Thirty, which is an accomplished film, but don’t think you are alone if you see Maya as a bit of a cipher.  If this agent has developed a certain opacity to cope with past trauma and organizational sexism, it would be helpful to see a bit more of the context for this in the movie.

Oh, a word about torture.  I will leave the discussion about whether or not torture yields useful information to experts, but the discussion about the sequences in this film as exceptional because of the graphic nature of the content strike me as somewhat uninformed or willfully ignorant.  Just this past week on two network television series — Scandal and The Office — there were waterboarding instances included in the plot.  Yes, one was a joke, but the other was included in a horrific episode of torture inflicted upon an innocent man in the Pentagon.

A ROYAL AFFAIR

Usually when I hear “Danish Film,” I think of Dogma 95, the realistic manifesto signed by a group of visionary filmmakers to abide by a series of limitations on technique that both make the director’s hand in the film more obvious to viewers and also promote an aesthetic of realism.

If you want to look at one of these films for an example, I recommend Italian for Beginners.

A Royal Affair is another type of Danish film altogether, a historical story filled with beautiful production elements, a sizzling romance, and the fight for social justice.  How can I not be entranced?

The logline says it all: “A young queen, who is married to an insane king, falls secretly in love with her physician – and together they start a revolution that changes a nation forever.”  Wow!  And this is based on a true story, so viewers can even feel good about getting a history lesson at the cinema.  Think of A Royal Affair as a lot like Lincoln but set in Europe and including a lot more sex.

I realize that my tone has been a little flip so far, but I really do like this film, and find the performances, especially Alicia Vikander (loved her as Kitty in Anna Karenina) as the queen, Mads Mikkelsen as the doctor, and Mikkel Boe Folsgaard as the king, top-notch.

Maybe I’m working too hard to make it sound like fun so viewers who are normally put off by subtitles will take a risk.  The thing about subtitles, as I tell my students, is that you just have to practice.  Soon you almost forget they are there.