March 2016 – Eyes of Potatoe

The Magicians – Season 1 – Episode 11 Feelings are bullshit.

One of the things I like most about The Magicians is how realistic it is. I mean, yes, they are going to Narnia to fight Satan, but putting that aside, this is all extremely familiar to anyone who went to a co-ed college in recent times. Let’s do dangerous things to our bodies and have hugely emotional overreactions and do stupid stuff that we later regret, involving lots of drugs and sex! It’s not as concretely complete as Buffy‘s highschool-is-hell but it’s up there.

I cannot remember if I have ever heard any of these characters use “TV Speke” – the lines that only people on TV shows say or hear seriously. Probably they have, because the writers are only human (or are they?), but even if they have it’s very rare. Which makes the show very rare.

Episode-specific-wise, the bottled emotion scenes are of course hilarious. As is that Penny – the one who has the most invested in denying that he has anything as stupid as emotions – is the one who immediately vows to never do that again when they drink them back. Differently from Alice, who I think sees it as cheating. Alice is a ball of deep, though, it’s hard to tell.

Nice to see Julia have a positive development for a change. It will all go hideously wrong soon, of course, but for now, nice.

Underground – Season 1 – Episode 2 Mmmm, that's good hooch.

In which our heroes prepare for the big heist by doing more stuff that is going to get them all killed goddamnit. Otherwise, life as usual, I guess? The slaves endure degradation to avoid worse fates, the “masters” enjoy their evil gains and wear way too much clothing in that heat. We get some nice father and son bonding over tracking and murdering a helpless, hopeless man who chose the wrong parents. Oh and the Northerner couple turns out to have a clue or two and be somewhat useful, that’s good.

If Aldis Hodge and Jurnee Smollett-Bell aren’t already big damn stars then Underground should sure as hell make them. I had to ice down the TV after their scenes, and they’re just getting started.

American Crime Story – Season 1 – Episodes 5-7 Are we not men?

It’s probably an essential example of privilege that until I saw the protest signs outside the courtroom, I’d totally forgotten the single biggest actual divide in opinion in my circles about the trial: the women vs the men. Now this is the boomtown San Francisco techy/goth/weirdo scene, but still. The women saw a wife-beating murderer, full stop, trying to change the subject. That story was so old, so common, there really wasn’t any need to overthink it. The men were into the theories and the details and the soap opera, because it wasn’t personal to them. Just TV.

These episodes of American Crime Story do a good job of showing what unites both sides in this case: bitches, man. The amount of crap that gets thrown at Marcia Clark, oy. And because this is back in the Elder Days, it’s all mediated. It’s what TV producers and news desks and tabloid editors think will sell, what they (mostly men) think is a good story or a good quote from “real people like you”. People talk shit about the internet but it’s nothing to the hellbeast that was television, believe me.

It’s also interesting to watch Chris Darden’s character move along his path in the story. It’s a trap! I was kind of glad to see him back off from Marcia’s hotel room but honestly there was no scenario that was going to end well at that point.

I have to add, about the gloves: obviously they shrank, yes? So why not go buy a new pair of the same model, confirm first that they are larger than the gloves in evidence, confirm that they fit the hands of someone of OJ’s build etc., and then have him try those new ones on? And then compare them to show how the old ones are smaller? But in a way, this is like inviting your co-prosecutor/boss to your friend’s birthday party for the weekend. You lost as soon as you got into it, because we are not rational beings.

The Catch – Season 1 – Episode 1 Sounds like dialog.

The Catch is my first Shondaland show, for no special reason beyond not getting in on any of the others at the start and then not being interested enough to catch up. So I’m just guessing, but I take it that this is a common style? It feels like that to me – one of those parts of America that just escapes me. The people, the fashions, those shoes, the money. So much money.

I watched this mostly for Mireille Enos, but much of what worked in The Killing came across here as a bit off. It’s hard to say. I was entirely too distracted by the eye makeup, because like I said, this is a strange land to me. They nearly lost me anyway within the first 20 minutes with that endless Pitbull-soundtracked scene. A bullshit simulation of some kind of “character setting”.

After that it got a bit better, but not much. They do the treat-obvious-stuff-as-difficult trick that makes people watching feel like “Me am smart!”. Not a plus. The ne’er-do-well husband is So Generic good gravy. Vat-grown cruelty-free casting.

The painting that’s one of the episode’s MacGuffins is gorgeous, though:

http://mariakreyn.com/alone-together

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice If you've seen the trailers, you can skip the movie. Seriously.

For me, the main thing about Batman v Superman is that it wasn’t about anything. You will only know and care about what you yourself bring into the theater. If you watched this film without already being soaked in American comic book lore, it would be … hmm well it would be crazy but maybe more enjoyable? Who is the guy in the blue leotard? He can fly? What the hell? And this other guy flies too? Oh that’s a dream? But there’s some kind of bat thing going here? If he’s rich why does he live in a ruin? Who’s the British guy? Why does everyone look so constipated?

Wonder Woman looks cool, I guess, but still, you’re who now? Let’s not even talk about Khal Drogo doing some kind of underwater hair conditioner commercial or whatever that was.

The B vs S fight was dumb, the way it was “resolved” was dumber. But then everything in this movie is dumb. You just cannot try and bring any kind of logic to anything that happens in it. It’s beyond reason or truth or reality. Now is the time in Syndertown when we say ARRRRRRRRRRGGGGGHHHHHHHHHH!!!! and show our back teeth.

The Magicians – Season 1 – Episode 10 "But you haven't touched your penis!"

I officially completely love The Magicians now. Penny is a dick but he’s not stupid or a plot-device stereotype and that combination is amazingly rare. Quentin and Alice are such complete nerds, and very believable to me; I’ve known that type, simultaneously super attractive and yet so personally damaged that they end up awkward as hell. Julia breaks my heart every episode somehow. Even Eliot and Margo, who teetered on the border of annoyingly “whimsical”, have unexpected depths.

The plot keeps veering off in ways I wouldn’t expect (an unbooker so far), and the not-strictly-plottish parts are just as interesting as anything else. Like, good grief Alice’s parents. The whole adult-child dynamic seems to have escaped them. Beyond creepy. And the library! And that librarian! The Sand People ish kids! The Margolem!

The cast should be grateful that we don’t know any real magic because I think we’d keep them making us an episode every week forever.

Daredevil – Season 2, Episodes 5-10 In which our characters have a few issues

I don’t think it’s too spoilery to say that the main point of this middle block of Daredevil episodes is that Matt Murdock is kind of a big jerk. He wants to run everything but then can’t stick around to actually, you know, run things, because he’s too busy trying to be in charge of something else.

Thoughts that are too spoilery continue below the break…

Continue reading “Daredevil – Season 2, Episodes 5-10 In which our characters have a few issues“

Allegiant If symptoms persist, see a doctor

You know, when someone asks why you are doing a stupid thing, “A leader has to make the tough calls and the hard decisions” is not actually a reason. Unless it truly is – that you genuinely followed some chain of thought like “Well, I could pay the electric bill, but bombing the utility’s office would be a tougher call so I should do that.” – which is even more terrifying than simply being an idiot. And let’s not even get into the utter bullshit of “keep you safe” or “trying to protect you”. What worries me is that this is affecting the way real people make choices in the real world. It all sounds awfully familiar.

As to the actual movie Allegiant, it’s the tire fire you’d expect. Most of the “acting” is handled by wardrobe changes. See the white pumps of bamboozled collaboration! The leads are meh, Miles Teller tries with what he’s given but you can’t pick a lock with a wet noodle, Zoë Kravitz is small and inoffensive, Maggie Q’s wig looks like it outweighs her, Kate Winslet is still glad she made them kill her off in the last one. You can see Naomi Watts’s growing horror at understanding what kind of film she’s in, which actually works for her character.

And apparently there’s another movie coming for the second half of the book? Because that is so what the world needs.

Daredevil – Season 2, Episodes 1-4 Punch it up

Leopold and Loeb were famously brutal murderers who Clarence Darrow helped avoid death sentences. Loeb was killed in prison, but Leopold went on to help improve life in his prison, participate in malaria research, and work as a medical lab technician – probably helping to save and benefit many more lives than he took. As Matt Murdock might put it, he got a chance to try, and he took it.

For a show that is primarily about people beating the absolute crap out of each other, Daredevil gets pretty deep.

I’ve always had some mixed opinions about murder and retribution. I don’t support the death penalty, I don’t think the state should be killing people at all, let alone based on our rather … spotty judicial system. At the same time, the idea that a surviving family member or lover who knew who the killer was might go after them, I think I’d have a hard time not sympathizing. I guess at a bottom line, I agree that there are some people who just need to die.

Or I did, at least. Maybe I still do. But Daredevil, in its first four episodes, presents some pretty compelling illustrations of how it might not ever be that simple. What does Karen “deserve” for killing Wesley? If some or even many people in a group do something terrible, do all of them “deserve” retribution? Can we ever judge a person as an individual, when as Father Lantom puts it, we are each “a whole world”, a web of connections to other people?

Moving past the thinking stuff, the excellence of the fight choreography continues in this second season. They make some clear nods to the famous hallway fight in the first season, along with the echoes of The Raid movies, Oldboy, etc. So much more than the super senses, it makes a case that Daredevil’s main superpower is that he just won’t stay down. Somebody needs to get Matt an audiobook of Concussion though. Helmets won’t save you.

At this point I expect a character played by Jon Bernthal to be an asshole, honestly, but the writers broke past that and Bernthal sold it. He gives a speech that at one level is entirely predictable but as a whole will tear you up. So much better for being unexpected, and part of why I can’t wait to watch the rest.

American Crime Story – Season 1 – Episodes 1-4 Crime and Press Releases

I don’t remember the details of the tales of OJ being depicted so vividly in American Crime Story: The People v. O. J. Simpson. I remember the Bronco chase, but probably as much from coverage after the fact as at the time. I remember the trial going on and on in its soap opera way, but not much concrete – probably because I was deliberately avoiding it. I have no interest in reality TV or TV reality, I just don’t even want to see it. What I do remember is that the general opinion around me was that probably it was all true: that he did it and that the cops had monkeyed with the evidence. And what I don’t remember at all is OJ.

I have no idea how accurate this show is, how much what we see is like what “really happened”. It seems realistic but then that’s their job. But in the story they’re telling, what immediately strikes now, watching it from 2016, is the depth of Johnnie Cochran, his gravity as a person and the deadly serious business of the work he did. As a peripheral spectator, I only saw the showboat. The writers and Courtney Vance do an amazing job of showing us the man who has seen so many terrible things.

The same with Sarah Paulson as Marcia Clark – how at the same time as she has her particular blind spots, she never stops seeing the bottom line truth: two people, slaughtered in rage.

Really, the whole cast is superb, even CGI John Travolta. (Again, no idea how true to life, but boy have I known people like the one he’s portraying…) In a way, though, the most difficult job is Cuba Gooding Jr.’s, because as written, OJ is just … not there. He can’t, or won’t, deal with any of it. He acts like it’s not even real. Nobody wants to have to talk to him. Well, except Bob Kardovian or whoever he is. Everything is projected on to him, nothing is underneath the projections. If they could have legally tried him under a different name, in some completely different town, well. But then they only even came to suspect him because he was the famous Orenthal J Simpson, and they had to go tell him in person.

And then in Episode 4 we get a small reminder of what’s not a projection, what’s not a circus, in the pure volcanic rage of Joseph Siravo’s Fred Goldman, father of the dead delivery boy or cocaine smuggler or gigolo or whatever awful caricature people used, instead of seeing his real son, his dead son. It’s crushing.

A stray thought: listening to OJ strangling his football team metaphor, I began to wonder – are we seeing a prequel to Concussion? I have no idea if this has ever been suggested, but I wonder. Could he really have been such a barely-there sketch of a person all along? It seems unlikely.

In a way I’m reminded of Manhattan – we all know how it turns out, but they’re making it riveting to watch anyway. On to the trial!