It's the eye of potatoe, it's the tuber of night, loading up on the culture of the hour
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“
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.
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.
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!
Finally saw the Underground premiere, and Damn. Everything about it works. If WGN America could only afford to make one great show, then this one makes up for cancelling Manhattan (almost). You might have heard about the anachronistic soundtrack and thought it sounded gimmicky, but the opening use of Kanye’s “Black Skinhead” is so perfect it’s like it was written for the scene, timestream be damned.
No effort to soften the evil or make the white people the main characters, not even slightly. Yes, sure, they have their complications and issues, but in the end, fuck em. You are either complicit in this horror or you fight it.
What I loved, too, is how clearly it makes the point that what the slaves need to survive and escape is solidarity. Nobody can make it alone, everybody has something to contribute. Even that guy you can’t stand is a slave, too.
The cast is great, as well. So many known faces – Buffy’s boyfriend! Indra from Tondc! That guy from 24 who never stands up straight! (aka Limehouse!) The guy from Dollhouse who is usually evil but then it gets complicated! Hardison from Leverage, looking hella ripped damn!
Which is a good example of why this show seems so promising to me. TV stars in the US are, generally, amazingly good-looking and in great shape, and it’s usually not even noticed, like yeah everyone looks like that. But here they make a point of showing you the guys working out, pushing each other on to do more. Because their bodies are what they have, and strength is something they can get, something they can use towards the ultimate goal: freedom.
I hope this doesn’t end up in the pit of unwatched critical praise. It deserves more.
Wanted is entertaining and all. The two stars are appealing, the writing is decent, there are a couple of genuine earned surprises which is pretty rare. I gather Rebecca Gibney (Lola) is a big star in Australian TV, so its main audience likely has a different reaction to it all. Plus as a simpleminded foreigner, I enjoy just hearing the different ways people say “No”.
But so much of the time it felt like it was set in the last millenium, even though I could see those smartphones in their hands. It’s a world of one-way information, from the big media out to the people. That’s not our world now. If there’s a misunderstanding, if police are trying to kill you, GET ON THE INTERNETS. Make a Facebook post, update your Twitter feed, put a video up on YouTube. Tell your story! Name names! Buy burner phones, buy SIM cards and toss them after one use, you’ve got a big bag full of money so use it!
Granted, they did spend a lot of time in places that looked lucky to have electricity and running water. But still.
Coming to this show late, thought I would start at the beginning. An itchily accurate depiction of how great the junkie life is, yish. I can’t fault any aspect of this, but honestly I don’t know if I’ll keep up with it. Do I need another TV show that’s just going to enrage me? People doing terrible things to other people and going home thinking how decent they are and how tough their lives are and nobody appreciates their trauma. You can see from the start that this is not going to end well for anybody, except probably The Mans.
The Family (2016) showed up on several “must-see new shows” lists, so against my initial instincts, I watched the first episode. And, yeah, that was 40 minutes or so of TV show, yep. I suppose I should stick with the 3 episode rule but …
See the traumatized upper-upper-class white family, trauma trauma trauma. See the standard characters assembled from stock parts. See THE MYSTERY wooo ooooo. The only thing that could make this of any interest would be unusually good writing and/or acting, and it has neither. Is it really their long-lost son? Is it a grifter? Do I care? Nup.