Vince Vaughn stars as David Wozniak, who makes deliveries for his family's butcher shop and has a knack for getting himself into ridiculous situations. He won't let his girlfriend Emma (Cobie Smulders) come over anymore because he doesn't want her to know he's trying to grow pot. He currently owes some mobster types $80,000 for reasons that I was never exactly clear on. Emma tells him in an early scene that she's pregnant, but she's doubtful whether she can count on him to step up and be a father.
He soon finds himself in another ridiculous situation. Apparently, when he was in his twenties, he donated a ridiculous amount of sperm to a sperm bank and is now the biological father of 533 kids. He signed a confidentiality agreement when he donated the sperm, but now 142 of the kids are suing the sperm bank to try to find out his identity. He is given a manila envelope with information about the 142 kids, and he starts paying them visits without telling them who he is. He has fathered quite the assortment of children, it turns out (all of whom are now in their late teens or early twenties). There is a wannabe actor who David covers for at work so that he can go on an audition. There is an NBA basketball player. There is a young woman who he saves from a drug overdose. There is a young man with cerebral palsy.
What I have just given you is maybe the first third of the movie, and it's pretty good. David and the people in his world are likable, as are many of the kids. After a point, though, there's just too much going on. One somewhat creepy kid figures out who he is and tries to get closer to him while keeping David's identity from the others. David's lawyer and friend, Brett (Chris Pratt), suggests that David countersue to keep his identity a secret. David doesn't really want to, but he needs to pay off the mobsters. Also, he's trying to prove himself to Emma...all the while keeping this HUGE secret from her. "I can't do this without you," he tells her at one point. "Can't you?" I asked aloud (my two friends and I were the only ones in the theater). He supposedly wants to build a life with her, but he's not telling her about a huge thing happening in his life. Why is she in this movie, even? Supposedly her pregnancy is the thing that makes him want to grow up and figure himself out, but it's really his interactions with the kids that do that.
So...it was okay. I liked most of the characters, but the story (which, granted, was fairly ridiculous from the beginning) lost me after a point.
Wednesday, December 11, 2013
Monday, December 9, 2013
thoughts on Frozen
In this animated Disney film, Elsa (Idina Menzel) and Anna (Kristen Bell) are sisters and best friends. Elsa has the ability to freeze things just by touching them. As kids, this is fun (they build a snowman and bring him to life, they slide around on the ice, etc.) until an accident that happens while they're playing almost kills Anna. Elsa and Anna's parents take them to some trolls who save Anna's life and warn them that Elsa's powers will only grow stronger; she must limit her contact with others and try to suppress her abilities. Meanwhile, the trolls will erase Anna's memories of Elsa's magical powers. Elsa and Anna's parents close the gates to the kingdom, and Elsa shuts herself in her room. Because Anna no longer knows about Elsa's powers, she has no idea why Elsa never wants to play with her anymore.
The girls grow older, and their parents are killed while traveling by boat. Elsa is going to be queen, and the gates to the kingdom are opened for the coronation. Anna meets a prince named Hans (Santino Fontana) and immediately falls in love with him. When she tells Elsa she plans to marry him and have him move in with them, Elsa gets very upset, and her emotions set off her powers. Horrified, she runs away where she believes she can be free to use her powers without hurting anyone. Little does she know that she's set off an eternal winter in the kingdom. Leaving Hans in charge, Anna runs off to find her, getting help along the way from Kristoff (Jonathan Groff), an ice salesman whose business isn't going so well these days; his reindeer, Sven; and Olaf (Josh Gad), the snowman Elsa brought to life as a child.
There's a lot to like about this movie, everyone. First of all, for all of the magical things I just mentioned-- Elsa's powers, the trolls, the adorable talking snowman, etc.-- it all feels really REAL. You just really hurt for Anna when Elsa keeps pushing her away without telling her why. Also, while there are characters in this movie who are not good people and who do bad things to the main characters, this is not a story where the characters just have to overcome a villain and everything will be fine; most of their problems come from chance accidents, from fear, from dishonesty and secrets, from impetuous decisions-- the same types of things most of our problems come from in real life. Like in real life, then, the problems are solved when characters figure things out, when they make sacrifices, when they are honest with themselves and others. There's romance in this story, too, but it sometimes causes more problems than it solves, and definitely doesn't make everything perfect.
In addition to a great story, let's also not forget that this movie is all just generally very well-done. The songs are so good I'd like to get the soundtrack. The animated winter wonderland the characters live in is beautiful. Olaf the Snowman is super cute. The characters are likeable.
Yeah. Not only is this the best Disney movie I've seen in awhile, I daresay this is the best movie, period, that I've seen all year.
The girls grow older, and their parents are killed while traveling by boat. Elsa is going to be queen, and the gates to the kingdom are opened for the coronation. Anna meets a prince named Hans (Santino Fontana) and immediately falls in love with him. When she tells Elsa she plans to marry him and have him move in with them, Elsa gets very upset, and her emotions set off her powers. Horrified, she runs away where she believes she can be free to use her powers without hurting anyone. Little does she know that she's set off an eternal winter in the kingdom. Leaving Hans in charge, Anna runs off to find her, getting help along the way from Kristoff (Jonathan Groff), an ice salesman whose business isn't going so well these days; his reindeer, Sven; and Olaf (Josh Gad), the snowman Elsa brought to life as a child.
There's a lot to like about this movie, everyone. First of all, for all of the magical things I just mentioned-- Elsa's powers, the trolls, the adorable talking snowman, etc.-- it all feels really REAL. You just really hurt for Anna when Elsa keeps pushing her away without telling her why. Also, while there are characters in this movie who are not good people and who do bad things to the main characters, this is not a story where the characters just have to overcome a villain and everything will be fine; most of their problems come from chance accidents, from fear, from dishonesty and secrets, from impetuous decisions-- the same types of things most of our problems come from in real life. Like in real life, then, the problems are solved when characters figure things out, when they make sacrifices, when they are honest with themselves and others. There's romance in this story, too, but it sometimes causes more problems than it solves, and definitely doesn't make everything perfect.
In addition to a great story, let's also not forget that this movie is all just generally very well-done. The songs are so good I'd like to get the soundtrack. The animated winter wonderland the characters live in is beautiful. Olaf the Snowman is super cute. The characters are likeable.
Yeah. Not only is this the best Disney movie I've seen in awhile, I daresay this is the best movie, period, that I've seen all year.
Friday, December 6, 2013
thoughts on Scandal 12/5
I like this show, but I've said it before, and I will say it again: this is a mean, dirty world these characters live in. I HATED the torture stuff with Huck and Quinn, and...CYRUS PIMPED OUT JAMES WITHOUT HIS KNOWLEDGE OR CONSENT AND THEN GOT MAD AT HIM FOR GOING THROUGH WITH IT!!!! What kind of person does that to their spouse?! Of course, though, I will be back for the next episode, what with the Sally Langdon "I've committed a sin" gasp-worthy moment at the end. This show!
Wednesday, November 27, 2013
thoughts on Dallas Buyers Club
Matthew McConaughey stars as Ron Woodruff, an electrician and bull rider living in Dallas in the mid-1980s. He learns, following an electrical accident that puts him in the emergency room, that he is HIV positive. Early scenes of the film have established that he was at a higher-than-average risk for this, and that there were signs of this long before he was diagnosed; he has sex with multiple partners (often, multiple partners at one time), and we see him coughing frequently and getting dizzy and collapsing at one point, though you can imagine he chalks this up to the fact that he drinks, snorts coke, and gets into a lot of fights. The doctors (played by Denis O'Hare and Jennifer Garner) give him thirty days to live. Ron spends the first few of these days in denial; he thinks that only gay men get HIV. However, after he does some research and learns that the virus is spread through unprotected sex, he realizes that this is actually happening.
He goes back to Dr. Saks (Garner) and asks her about a then-new drug called AZT, which is currently being tested on human subjects (Saks thinks the testing process has been rushed). Since the drug is still being tested, Saks can't prescribe it to him, but he manages to work out a deal with a janitor, who sneaks him some. Eventually, someone at the hospital figures out that some is going missing and begins locking it up, at which point the janitor tells Ron about a doctor in Mexico. Ron is initially skeptical, but driven to desperation-- both by his sudden lack of AZT and by the fact that virtually everyone in his life has turned their back on him; he even returns to his trailer to find an eviction notice on the door-- he checks it out.
The doctor there prescribes drugs that work better (AZT is apparently very hard on the body, especially when one has a weakened immune system), and Ron arranges to take a large amount of them back to the United States. With the help of a transgendered man named Rayon (Jared Leto) that Ron met in the hospital, he sets up a "buyers' club" in which people can get whatever drugs they want for a monthly membership fee. He is able to do this for a time because the drugs are not technically illegal, just unapproved, and because he's not actually selling the drugs, but rather membership in the club. However, he faces opposition from the medical/pharmaceutical community (Dr. Saks is sympathetic, but there's only so much she can do), and is also continually hindered by the fact that his health is continually declining, as is Rayon's.
The movie is about several things. It's about how completely awful it must have been to have AIDS in the eighties, when they hadn't figured out how to treat it effectively and when the public had some pretty major misconceptions about how you contracted it. It's about the fact that sometimes the medical community is hindered in their efforts to provide the best care and treatment possible for their patients by regulations, restrictions, and the influence of the pharmaceutical industry. And, it's about Ron, who starts out just trying just to survive and winds up helping a lot of people, and who grows less homophobic through his unlikely friendship with Rayon.
The story itself is very interesting. It felt a bit longer than its slightly less than two-hour running time, perhaps because it's hard to tell where the story is going; after he establishes the buyers' club, you're not really sure what will happen next or what you should want to happen next, and the main characters' deaths are a forgone conclusion. However, it informed me about things/events I didn't know a lot about and made me want to learn more, which I appreciated. The performances are solid across the board. Jared Leto's character is the most likeable, and I think his performance was probably the strongest, though I have no complaints about McConaughey's, either. Garner has the least to work with of the three, but her role is important in that 1) you need someone from the medical community that isn't villainous, as some of the other medical professionals come across and 2) Ron needs someone neutral, sympathetic, and informed to talk things through with. There's sort of a romantic vibe between the two of them that not much comes of, but that's really not what the movie was about.
Anyway, I thought it was a solid movie. Worth seeing.
He goes back to Dr. Saks (Garner) and asks her about a then-new drug called AZT, which is currently being tested on human subjects (Saks thinks the testing process has been rushed). Since the drug is still being tested, Saks can't prescribe it to him, but he manages to work out a deal with a janitor, who sneaks him some. Eventually, someone at the hospital figures out that some is going missing and begins locking it up, at which point the janitor tells Ron about a doctor in Mexico. Ron is initially skeptical, but driven to desperation-- both by his sudden lack of AZT and by the fact that virtually everyone in his life has turned their back on him; he even returns to his trailer to find an eviction notice on the door-- he checks it out.
The doctor there prescribes drugs that work better (AZT is apparently very hard on the body, especially when one has a weakened immune system), and Ron arranges to take a large amount of them back to the United States. With the help of a transgendered man named Rayon (Jared Leto) that Ron met in the hospital, he sets up a "buyers' club" in which people can get whatever drugs they want for a monthly membership fee. He is able to do this for a time because the drugs are not technically illegal, just unapproved, and because he's not actually selling the drugs, but rather membership in the club. However, he faces opposition from the medical/pharmaceutical community (Dr. Saks is sympathetic, but there's only so much she can do), and is also continually hindered by the fact that his health is continually declining, as is Rayon's.
The movie is about several things. It's about how completely awful it must have been to have AIDS in the eighties, when they hadn't figured out how to treat it effectively and when the public had some pretty major misconceptions about how you contracted it. It's about the fact that sometimes the medical community is hindered in their efforts to provide the best care and treatment possible for their patients by regulations, restrictions, and the influence of the pharmaceutical industry. And, it's about Ron, who starts out just trying just to survive and winds up helping a lot of people, and who grows less homophobic through his unlikely friendship with Rayon.
The story itself is very interesting. It felt a bit longer than its slightly less than two-hour running time, perhaps because it's hard to tell where the story is going; after he establishes the buyers' club, you're not really sure what will happen next or what you should want to happen next, and the main characters' deaths are a forgone conclusion. However, it informed me about things/events I didn't know a lot about and made me want to learn more, which I appreciated. The performances are solid across the board. Jared Leto's character is the most likeable, and I think his performance was probably the strongest, though I have no complaints about McConaughey's, either. Garner has the least to work with of the three, but her role is important in that 1) you need someone from the medical community that isn't villainous, as some of the other medical professionals come across and 2) Ron needs someone neutral, sympathetic, and informed to talk things through with. There's sort of a romantic vibe between the two of them that not much comes of, but that's really not what the movie was about.
Anyway, I thought it was a solid movie. Worth seeing.
Sunday, November 24, 2013
"This is the revolution. And you are the Mockingjay." (thoughts on Catching Fire)
The second movie in a trilogy can sometimes be a hot mess. Sometimes, it turns out to merely be inconsequential; for example I enjoyed Scream 2 (and yes, I know that they eventually made a fourth Scream movie, but I think the first three were originally envisioned as a trilogy), but after all was said and done, I recall commenting to someone, "The second movie basically could have not even happened." Not much of real consequence happened in that movie, and there was some stuff that I wished hadn't happened at all.
More often, the second movie in a trilogy is a hot mess in that it's not a self-contained movie at all; you can't understand it without having seen the first one, and it doesn't really end, it just stops. This is not always necessarily a bad thing. Back to the Future Part 2, for example, is my favorite of that trilogy, but I love it because it's insane: now they're in the future! Now they're in an alternate 1985! Now Doc Brown is literally drawing a diagram on a chalkboard to explain what's going on! Now Marty's back in the 1955 of the first movie, and he has to make sure not to run into his other self! It ended with the words "To Be Continued," and very little was resolved; I recall, as a child, being all, "Wait! He didn't even go back for Jennifer!," because the movie ended with Marty's girlfriend still left passed out on a porch in (I think) alterna-1985. I was very concerned about Jennifer.
Anyway. The point is, Catching Fire (the movie, and, really, the book, too) is kind of a hot mess in that there's a ton going on and that it's not really a self-contained story, but like Back to the Future Part 2, it is awesome. Though I liked the first Hunger Games well enough (I really liked it when I saw it in the theater, then found myself with more issues with it upon repeated viewings), in retrospect, it spent a lot of time setting things up; I liked that with Catching Fire, they could just jump right into things.
For those unfamiliar with the story, Catching Fire begins with Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence) back home after the Hunger Games. She and Peeta (Josh Hutcherson) must go on a "victory tour" of the districts. Before she leaves, though, President Snow (Donald Sutherland) visits Katniss to tell her, basically, that he's not buying her act: he doesn't think she's really in love with Peeta, which means that she didn't threaten to eat the poisonous berries at the end of the Games because she couldn't live without him; it was an act of rebellion against the Capitol. At any rate, that's how some of the people watching saw it, and if a girl from District Twelve can defy the Capitol and get away with it, why can't everyone? President Snow threatens that she'd better convince the people (and him) that she and Peeta really are in love and, basically, get this whole thing under control.
The problem is, it's already out of her hands, and they'd better get this whole thing under control...or what? Or maybe the people won't get to go back to their regular lives of, as Gale (Liam Hemsworth) puts it, working like slaves, nearly starving to death, and risking their children in the Hunger Games every year? At one point Katniss suggests to Gale that they run away, but he tells her no: she is in this thing now. There's no going back. Thus, the following conflicts are in play:
1) The Capitol wants to keep control of Panem. Katniss is a threat to that. However, the people see her as a beacon of hope, so simply killing her would only fan the flames of unrest. Thus, they must either control her or change public opinion about her. They try to do both, unsuccessfully, over the course of the film.
2) Katniss wants to go back to life basically as it was before the Hunger Games. It's nice to no longer be starving to death, but she doesn't like the Capitol dictating every detail of her life, as they do now and will continue to do. The problem is, she's trapped; as Haymitch (Woody Harrelson) tells her, there are really no winners of the Hunger Games-- only survivors. She has to play by the Capitol's rules or risk harm to herself, Peeta, Gale, her mom, and her sister. As various characters point out to her over the course of the film, however, what's happening is bigger than all of them, and some things are more important than basic day-to-day safety and survival.
This all comes to a head in the 75th Annual Hunger Games, in which the Capitol announces the tributes will be chosen from the pool of existing victors, which means that Katniss and Peeta are going back in, along with a rather motley crew of fellow contestants. They become allies with Finnick (Sam Claflin), a ridiculously good-looking charmer who Katniss isn't completely sure she can trust; Mags (Lynn Cohen), the other tribute from Finnick's district, who looks to be in her seventies or eighties; Johanna (Jena Malone), who strips naked in front of Peeta, Haymitch, and Katniss in an elevator (the look on Jennifer Lawrence's face throughout this scene is pretty much the greatest thing of all time) on their first meeting and is generally a badass; Wiress (Amanda Plummer), who Johanna nicknames "Nuts"; and Beetee (Jeffrey Wright), an electronics expert. It's different from Katniss and Peeta's first Games: they've all been here before; they're willing to form alliances; and they all know who the real enemy is.
There's a LOT going on here, but the movie handles it all fairly well: basically, we follow Katniss as she goes from thinking that if she just plays by the Capitol's rules, it'll be fine, to realizing that it was never fine and is never going to be fine unless something changes. She basically has to adjust her whole way of thinking. The first movie was all about survival. This movie is about deciding what you want for yourself when survival is no longer your only concern.
So, very good as the second movie in a trilogy. It raises the stakes and leaves a lot let to explore in the last part. I liked it.
More often, the second movie in a trilogy is a hot mess in that it's not a self-contained movie at all; you can't understand it without having seen the first one, and it doesn't really end, it just stops. This is not always necessarily a bad thing. Back to the Future Part 2, for example, is my favorite of that trilogy, but I love it because it's insane: now they're in the future! Now they're in an alternate 1985! Now Doc Brown is literally drawing a diagram on a chalkboard to explain what's going on! Now Marty's back in the 1955 of the first movie, and he has to make sure not to run into his other self! It ended with the words "To Be Continued," and very little was resolved; I recall, as a child, being all, "Wait! He didn't even go back for Jennifer!," because the movie ended with Marty's girlfriend still left passed out on a porch in (I think) alterna-1985. I was very concerned about Jennifer.
Anyway. The point is, Catching Fire (the movie, and, really, the book, too) is kind of a hot mess in that there's a ton going on and that it's not really a self-contained story, but like Back to the Future Part 2, it is awesome. Though I liked the first Hunger Games well enough (I really liked it when I saw it in the theater, then found myself with more issues with it upon repeated viewings), in retrospect, it spent a lot of time setting things up; I liked that with Catching Fire, they could just jump right into things.
For those unfamiliar with the story, Catching Fire begins with Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence) back home after the Hunger Games. She and Peeta (Josh Hutcherson) must go on a "victory tour" of the districts. Before she leaves, though, President Snow (Donald Sutherland) visits Katniss to tell her, basically, that he's not buying her act: he doesn't think she's really in love with Peeta, which means that she didn't threaten to eat the poisonous berries at the end of the Games because she couldn't live without him; it was an act of rebellion against the Capitol. At any rate, that's how some of the people watching saw it, and if a girl from District Twelve can defy the Capitol and get away with it, why can't everyone? President Snow threatens that she'd better convince the people (and him) that she and Peeta really are in love and, basically, get this whole thing under control.
The problem is, it's already out of her hands, and they'd better get this whole thing under control...or what? Or maybe the people won't get to go back to their regular lives of, as Gale (Liam Hemsworth) puts it, working like slaves, nearly starving to death, and risking their children in the Hunger Games every year? At one point Katniss suggests to Gale that they run away, but he tells her no: she is in this thing now. There's no going back. Thus, the following conflicts are in play:
1) The Capitol wants to keep control of Panem. Katniss is a threat to that. However, the people see her as a beacon of hope, so simply killing her would only fan the flames of unrest. Thus, they must either control her or change public opinion about her. They try to do both, unsuccessfully, over the course of the film.
2) Katniss wants to go back to life basically as it was before the Hunger Games. It's nice to no longer be starving to death, but she doesn't like the Capitol dictating every detail of her life, as they do now and will continue to do. The problem is, she's trapped; as Haymitch (Woody Harrelson) tells her, there are really no winners of the Hunger Games-- only survivors. She has to play by the Capitol's rules or risk harm to herself, Peeta, Gale, her mom, and her sister. As various characters point out to her over the course of the film, however, what's happening is bigger than all of them, and some things are more important than basic day-to-day safety and survival.
This all comes to a head in the 75th Annual Hunger Games, in which the Capitol announces the tributes will be chosen from the pool of existing victors, which means that Katniss and Peeta are going back in, along with a rather motley crew of fellow contestants. They become allies with Finnick (Sam Claflin), a ridiculously good-looking charmer who Katniss isn't completely sure she can trust; Mags (Lynn Cohen), the other tribute from Finnick's district, who looks to be in her seventies or eighties; Johanna (Jena Malone), who strips naked in front of Peeta, Haymitch, and Katniss in an elevator (the look on Jennifer Lawrence's face throughout this scene is pretty much the greatest thing of all time) on their first meeting and is generally a badass; Wiress (Amanda Plummer), who Johanna nicknames "Nuts"; and Beetee (Jeffrey Wright), an electronics expert. It's different from Katniss and Peeta's first Games: they've all been here before; they're willing to form alliances; and they all know who the real enemy is.
There's a LOT going on here, but the movie handles it all fairly well: basically, we follow Katniss as she goes from thinking that if she just plays by the Capitol's rules, it'll be fine, to realizing that it was never fine and is never going to be fine unless something changes. She basically has to adjust her whole way of thinking. The first movie was all about survival. This movie is about deciding what you want for yourself when survival is no longer your only concern.
So, very good as the second movie in a trilogy. It raises the stakes and leaves a lot let to explore in the last part. I liked it.
Thursday, November 21, 2013
Nashville/Scandal
Is it just me, or has Nashville gone off the rails into total over-the-top soap opera territory? Don't get me wrong; I love stuff like that. But that moment last week when Charles Wentworth's wife knocked on Juliette's door and just started making out with her? And then last night when Peggy decided to fake her miscarriage, and she just pulls out this plastic tub that has, like, a professionally printed label on it that says "Pork Blood"? Me to my mom on the phone today: "I don't even know where you'd GET pork blood, but I'm pretty sure that it wouldn't come in a TUB LIKE THAT." My mom: "I don't-- I don't know." And Teddy finds her curled up on the floor all, "I think I lost the baby," but he personally doesn't even accompany her to the doctor? I don't know, man. I buy that Peggy wouldn't tell Teddy right away that she lost the baby, and obviously at some point she was going to have to tell him the truth, but that was just some ridiculousness, right there. I'm not complaining, because like I said, I love stuff like that, but that was some nonsense.
So, Scandal. I could get behind this show a lot more if there were no Quinn and no Huck. Their storylines never do anything but creep me out and/or make me sad. I don't particularly like Abby, either, but her romance with David Rosen is kind of sweet. Also, I NEVER feel like I pay enough attention. I need to just get a hot beverage and settle in and watch it without distractions. So...Fitz tells Olivia he had a dream that that house was where the two of them would raise their kids someday, and I'm all, "What?! You have like three kids already with Mellie! What are you even--oh. Okay, that worked for Olivia, apparently." Like, obviously I can see that Fitz and Olivia are hot for each other and in love and all that, but I wish she could just love Jake. I know that she does, too, but-- damn. Also-- did Cyrus ACTUALLY pimp out James, or did James just think that he did and go for it anyway?
Yeah. So this is the type of stuff I'm watching these days.
So, Scandal. I could get behind this show a lot more if there were no Quinn and no Huck. Their storylines never do anything but creep me out and/or make me sad. I don't particularly like Abby, either, but her romance with David Rosen is kind of sweet. Also, I NEVER feel like I pay enough attention. I need to just get a hot beverage and settle in and watch it without distractions. So...Fitz tells Olivia he had a dream that that house was where the two of them would raise their kids someday, and I'm all, "What?! You have like three kids already with Mellie! What are you even--oh. Okay, that worked for Olivia, apparently." Like, obviously I can see that Fitz and Olivia are hot for each other and in love and all that, but I wish she could just love Jake. I know that she does, too, but-- damn. Also-- did Cyrus ACTUALLY pimp out James, or did James just think that he did and go for it anyway?
Yeah. So this is the type of stuff I'm watching these days.
Monday, November 11, 2013
thoughts on About Time (spoilers)
Domhall Gleeson plays Tim, who learns on his twenty-first birthday that he, like all of the men in his family, can time travel-- all he has to do is go into a closet, close his eyes, and clench his fists, and he'll be back in any moment from within his own life that he chooses. What's fairly humorous-- and fairly realistic, I think-- is that he rarely goes back to do anything too major; usually, he just goes back a few minutes to save himself from an awkward or moderately regrettable moment. He goes back to kiss the girl on New Year's Eve instead of shaking her hand and embarrassing both of them. He stops himself from blurting out something stupid the first time he meets his future in-laws. Occasionally, he tries to go back and help a friend or family member, but this usually results in messing things up horribly for himself. He helps an actor in a friend's play remember his lines and misses his first meeting with his future wife (Rachel McAdams). He tries to help his sister (Lydia Wilson) avoid spending years with a no-good boyfriend and accidentally prevents the birth of his first child.
The lessons he eventually learns-- that every little detail doesn't need to be perfect when you're surrounded by people you love; that sometimes you need to let people live with and learn from their mistakes instead of trying to keep them from making them at all; and that you should live each day like you're not going to get a "do over," because most people don't-- aren't super profound. However, the characters are all very sweet and lovable, and I was moved to tears on more than one occasion. My single favorite sequence happens after his father (Bill Nighy), who shares the gift of travel, tells him that he should live each day twice: the first, with all of the regular anxieties and irritations of daily life, and the second, almost the same, but stopping to notice all of the things he missed the day before. He does this, and stops to catch the smile of the cashier who sold him a cup of coffee and a sandwich, and the beauty of the courthouse that he rushed through on his way to court. He eventually realizes that he should just notice these things the first time around. Again, not necessarily an *original* observation, but an important one.
It's...just a really lovely little movie. Tim's a nice guy. Mary's a nice girl. He has a good relationship with his quirky family, especially his father. His and Mary's problems are so normal-- occasionally saying the wrong thing and facing family issues like the illness and death of a parent and having a sister who worries you. The lesson he learns is about learning to appreciate all the good you already have instead of trying so hard to make it perfect. It's all very sweet. I enjoyed it very much.
The lessons he eventually learns-- that every little detail doesn't need to be perfect when you're surrounded by people you love; that sometimes you need to let people live with and learn from their mistakes instead of trying to keep them from making them at all; and that you should live each day like you're not going to get a "do over," because most people don't-- aren't super profound. However, the characters are all very sweet and lovable, and I was moved to tears on more than one occasion. My single favorite sequence happens after his father (Bill Nighy), who shares the gift of travel, tells him that he should live each day twice: the first, with all of the regular anxieties and irritations of daily life, and the second, almost the same, but stopping to notice all of the things he missed the day before. He does this, and stops to catch the smile of the cashier who sold him a cup of coffee and a sandwich, and the beauty of the courthouse that he rushed through on his way to court. He eventually realizes that he should just notice these things the first time around. Again, not necessarily an *original* observation, but an important one.
It's...just a really lovely little movie. Tim's a nice guy. Mary's a nice girl. He has a good relationship with his quirky family, especially his father. His and Mary's problems are so normal-- occasionally saying the wrong thing and facing family issues like the illness and death of a parent and having a sister who worries you. The lesson he learns is about learning to appreciate all the good you already have instead of trying so hard to make it perfect. It's all very sweet. I enjoyed it very much.
Friday, November 8, 2013
thoughts on Enough Said (spoilers)
Julia Louis-Dreyfus plays Eva, masseuse and divorced mom of Ellen (Tracey Fairaway), who will be going away to college soon. At a party she attends with friends Sarah (Toni Collette) and Will (Ben Falcone), she meets two new people: Marianne (Catherine Keener), a poet who becomes her massage client, and Albert (James Gandolfini), who she begins dating. She grows to like both a lot, though she admits she wasn't initially attracted to Albert, and though Marianne is constantly complaining about her ex-husband, who she describes as a fat slob. She is beginning to get serious with Albert-- they're sleeping together; he's introduced her to his daughter, Tess (Eve Hewson)-- when she realizes that he is the ex-husband that Marianne can't stand.
She realizes this by chance, when, over salsa, Marianne mentions how it drove her crazy that her ex-husband always avoided the onions in his guacamole, something Albert had also told Eva about. Eva has the perfect opportunity to reveal that she is dating Marianne's ex almost immediately: Tess shows up, so all Eva would have to do is say hi, and the secret would be out. It would be awkward, and Eva and Marianne would agree that perhaps Marianne should find a different masseuse. Eva would then tell Albert, and they would talk about what a weird coincidence that was, and he would probably wonder, or perhaps directly ask, what Marianne said about him. But it would probably be okay, because it wouldn't be anyone's fault-- just an unfortunate coincidence. But instead, Eva literally hides to avoid having to talk to Tess, later pretending that she wandered off to check out Marianne's yard. Let me repeat: SHE GOES OUT OF HER WAY TO KEEP IT A SECRET THAT SHE IS DATING MARIANNE'S EX-HUSBAND.
It's not that I have to approve of everything a film character does, exactly. But it's nice when their actions don't make me spend maybe a third of a movie cringing. While she may initially keep the secret to put off an awkward encounter, after a point it seems like she continues to give Marianne massages just to hear bad things about Albert. I've thought a lot about what exactly bothers me so much about this, and I think the things is is that while Eva likes Albert and enjoys his company, she basically thinks she's too good for him. When Marianne says bad things about him, she realizes that other people will probably think so, too. She takes him to dinner at Will and Sarah's basically so that they can check him out, then proceeds to spend the whole night either picking at him (making derisive comments about how much guacamole he eats and saying she's going to buy him a calorie book) or actually trying to get her friends to join her in making fun of him (because he can't whisper, of all things). What's going on there is that she's afraid that Will and Sarah will be like, "What are you doing with this fat loser?" (they're not, by the way), so she's trying to act like she doesn't like him that much. Have you ever had a friend who was nice to you when it was just the two of you but ignored you or made fun of you when his or her "cool" friends were around? It's like that, and it's obnoxious.
Eva also oversteps her boundaries with her daughter Ellen's friend, Chloe (Tavi Gevinson). We see this in one of the first scenes we meet Chloe. Eva walks in on a conversation where Ellen and Chloe are discussing whether Chloe should lose her virginity to her boyfriend. Ellen, as a normal teen would, tries to stop the conversation when her mom enters the room. But Eva weasels her way into the conversation, and Chloe lets her, and before you know it, Eva is telling Chloe that she should do it, if she wants to-- she can't live in fear. The advice is too direct, as far as I'm concerned-- help her think it through, if you want, but let her come to a decision on her own, you know? The advice is also inappropriate, given that Chloe is neither Eva's friend (she's Ellen's) nor her daughter, making the whole thing ABSOLUTELY NONE OF EVA'S BUSINESS. Additionally, before long, Chloe (who maybe is having some sort of real problem with her own mother or maybe just is having trouble relating to her in the way that many teen girls do-- we don't know, because Eva never bothers to ask) is showing up at the house when Ellen isn't there, having breakfast with Eva and Albert, painting Eva's toenails, and snuggling with her on the couch. Understandably, neither Ellen nor Chloe's mom like this one little bit. Ellen is doing the normal teen thing of pulling away from her mom (Ellen actually knows she is doing this and articulates it, which I don't buy for one minute), and Eva is kind of letting Chloe take her place, which probably happens sometimes when a kid has a younger sister, or something. But Chloe isn't Ellen's sister, and it's weird, and both Ellen and Chloe's mom call her on it.
There's also this whole thing with a couple of massage clients that Eva finds annoying. One is an extremely chatty mom. Another is a guy who lives up a very long, steep flight of stairs but never offers to help her carry her massage table. When she complains to her friends, Will asks if she's ever asked him to help her carry the table. Eva says she shouldn't have to. Late in the movie, she finally does ask, and he's all, "Oh, of course! I'm so sorry!" Like-- he's not a jerk. He's just oblivious. Eva also stops zoning out during the chatty client's massage long enough to hear her ask, "So what's new with you?" Eva is taken aback-- why, she's nice, too! I guess these encounters are supposed to show Eva that she tends to assume the worst of people. I wasn't overly impressed.
Additionally, there's a subplot where Will and Sarah's maid is constantly just shoving stuff in drawers rather than actually putting it where it belongs. Sarah wants to fire her but can't go through with it. At one point, she does but feels bad. At another, the maid quits and then comes back. There's a whole thing where Sarah is frustrated because Will keeps insisting that she's the one to fire her. I don't know. I kind of rolled my eyes, because could they have picked more of a rich person problem for Will and Sarah to have? God.
The performances are all very good. I will say that. However, there are so few likable/relatable characters that it was pretty hard to care about this movie.
She realizes this by chance, when, over salsa, Marianne mentions how it drove her crazy that her ex-husband always avoided the onions in his guacamole, something Albert had also told Eva about. Eva has the perfect opportunity to reveal that she is dating Marianne's ex almost immediately: Tess shows up, so all Eva would have to do is say hi, and the secret would be out. It would be awkward, and Eva and Marianne would agree that perhaps Marianne should find a different masseuse. Eva would then tell Albert, and they would talk about what a weird coincidence that was, and he would probably wonder, or perhaps directly ask, what Marianne said about him. But it would probably be okay, because it wouldn't be anyone's fault-- just an unfortunate coincidence. But instead, Eva literally hides to avoid having to talk to Tess, later pretending that she wandered off to check out Marianne's yard. Let me repeat: SHE GOES OUT OF HER WAY TO KEEP IT A SECRET THAT SHE IS DATING MARIANNE'S EX-HUSBAND.
It's not that I have to approve of everything a film character does, exactly. But it's nice when their actions don't make me spend maybe a third of a movie cringing. While she may initially keep the secret to put off an awkward encounter, after a point it seems like she continues to give Marianne massages just to hear bad things about Albert. I've thought a lot about what exactly bothers me so much about this, and I think the things is is that while Eva likes Albert and enjoys his company, she basically thinks she's too good for him. When Marianne says bad things about him, she realizes that other people will probably think so, too. She takes him to dinner at Will and Sarah's basically so that they can check him out, then proceeds to spend the whole night either picking at him (making derisive comments about how much guacamole he eats and saying she's going to buy him a calorie book) or actually trying to get her friends to join her in making fun of him (because he can't whisper, of all things). What's going on there is that she's afraid that Will and Sarah will be like, "What are you doing with this fat loser?" (they're not, by the way), so she's trying to act like she doesn't like him that much. Have you ever had a friend who was nice to you when it was just the two of you but ignored you or made fun of you when his or her "cool" friends were around? It's like that, and it's obnoxious.
Eva also oversteps her boundaries with her daughter Ellen's friend, Chloe (Tavi Gevinson). We see this in one of the first scenes we meet Chloe. Eva walks in on a conversation where Ellen and Chloe are discussing whether Chloe should lose her virginity to her boyfriend. Ellen, as a normal teen would, tries to stop the conversation when her mom enters the room. But Eva weasels her way into the conversation, and Chloe lets her, and before you know it, Eva is telling Chloe that she should do it, if she wants to-- she can't live in fear. The advice is too direct, as far as I'm concerned-- help her think it through, if you want, but let her come to a decision on her own, you know? The advice is also inappropriate, given that Chloe is neither Eva's friend (she's Ellen's) nor her daughter, making the whole thing ABSOLUTELY NONE OF EVA'S BUSINESS. Additionally, before long, Chloe (who maybe is having some sort of real problem with her own mother or maybe just is having trouble relating to her in the way that many teen girls do-- we don't know, because Eva never bothers to ask) is showing up at the house when Ellen isn't there, having breakfast with Eva and Albert, painting Eva's toenails, and snuggling with her on the couch. Understandably, neither Ellen nor Chloe's mom like this one little bit. Ellen is doing the normal teen thing of pulling away from her mom (Ellen actually knows she is doing this and articulates it, which I don't buy for one minute), and Eva is kind of letting Chloe take her place, which probably happens sometimes when a kid has a younger sister, or something. But Chloe isn't Ellen's sister, and it's weird, and both Ellen and Chloe's mom call her on it.
There's also this whole thing with a couple of massage clients that Eva finds annoying. One is an extremely chatty mom. Another is a guy who lives up a very long, steep flight of stairs but never offers to help her carry her massage table. When she complains to her friends, Will asks if she's ever asked him to help her carry the table. Eva says she shouldn't have to. Late in the movie, she finally does ask, and he's all, "Oh, of course! I'm so sorry!" Like-- he's not a jerk. He's just oblivious. Eva also stops zoning out during the chatty client's massage long enough to hear her ask, "So what's new with you?" Eva is taken aback-- why, she's nice, too! I guess these encounters are supposed to show Eva that she tends to assume the worst of people. I wasn't overly impressed.
Additionally, there's a subplot where Will and Sarah's maid is constantly just shoving stuff in drawers rather than actually putting it where it belongs. Sarah wants to fire her but can't go through with it. At one point, she does but feels bad. At another, the maid quits and then comes back. There's a whole thing where Sarah is frustrated because Will keeps insisting that she's the one to fire her. I don't know. I kind of rolled my eyes, because could they have picked more of a rich person problem for Will and Sarah to have? God.
The performances are all very good. I will say that. However, there are so few likable/relatable characters that it was pretty hard to care about this movie.
Monday, October 14, 2013
thoughts on Gravity-- IMAX 3D (spoilers)
So, prior to this, the movies I'd seen in 3D were limited to Gnomeo and Juliet, Thor, Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland, and the relatively recent rerelease of Titanic. I only saw Gnomeo and Juliet in 3D out of convenience; now that I'm thinking about it, I'm not even sure if I saw Thor in 3D or if it just seems that way because it gave me a headache ("Why is everything so loud?," I kept wondering); I didn't care for Alice in Wonderland, period, 3D or no 3D; and it was fun seeing Titanic again on the big screen, but the 3D didn't really add anything to it. In other words-- not so impressed with the 3D, usually. However, I'd been told that 3D was the way to see Gravity, and we have an IMAX here in Evansville, so I figured I'd go for the total movie-going experience. In fact, that's what I was hoping for: a total movie-going experience. To explain that further: I love seeing movies in the theater. I'll see a movie in the theater that I would never bother to watch on DVD. Why? It's an EXPERIENCE-- you eat popcorn and drink soda (which I almost never do, in my normal daily life). You're immersed in the film for a couple of hours, no cell phone, no Facebook, no getting up to unload the dishwasher or water the plants or do any of the little things I often find myself doing when watching TV or movies at home. You usually have some friends with you, and even if you're there by yourself, there's a feeling that you're doing something in a way that there isn't when you're just hanging out watching TV at home: you got out of the house and you went to see a movie. And probably, you had a good time, even if the movie wasn't your favorite.
Being in IMAX 3D and taking place in outer space (a place that very few of us will ever get to go), Gravity had more potential than most films to be a total, immersive movie-going experience. I'm happy to say that it didn't disappoint.
Sandra Bullock plays Ryan Stone, who The Internet tells me is a "medical engineer" (all I could have told you based on the film itself is that she is referred to as Dr. Stone, we are told she works at a hospital in her normal daily life, and she doesn't have much training/experience as an astronaut). George Clooney plays Matt Kowalski, an experienced astronaut. Through a series of unfortunate events, just before they are about to head back to Earth, they are left the only two remaining members of their crew, literally floating out in space, tethered to each other, fighting for survival. After a time (spoiler alert!), Ryan must let Matt go, and she is left alone to try to reenter her spacecraft...then make it to a neighboring space station...then make it back to Earth. This film chronicles how she does so.
Interestingly, the film that this reminded me most of was 127 Hours, a.k.a. the film where James Franco cuts off his own arm. That film was about James Franco's character, Aron Ralston, finding himself in a life-or-death situation and finally getting desperate enough to do what he needs to do to survive. It's a very good film featuring a very good performance from Franco; with the exception of a couple of women he briefly spends time with at the beginning of the film and characters we see in flashback, he's basically the only actor in the film, meaning that he has to carry it. Here, Bullock and Clooney are the only actors we spend any significant time with at all, and the stakes are heightened by the literally out-of-this-world setting: Ryan and Matt are dealing with a lack of gravity, as well as dangerous fluctuations in temperature, oxygen, and carbon dioxide levels. There is also more action here, as Ryan has to learn to deal with changes in circumstance and make a series of quick, life or death decisions.
It's an emotional and physical rollercoaster, everyone. I was hunkering down in my seat. I was fighting tears. I was sometimes on the verge of whispering advice. This is what I mean by "total movie-going experience"; I felt like I'd been through something at the end of it. The 3D helps with this, making the action more immediate. Additionally, Bullock's performance is very good. She doesn't usually tend to choose movies that are particularly interesting to me, in general, but I think she's established that she can carry a film, and that's absolutely necessary here. I really think this is a movie that you should see in IMAX 3D if you can, but it will be interesting to see how this plays on DVD, when you are less immersed in the movie-going experience and her performance really does have to carry the whole thing. I'm betting in that case, the film will be less engrossing/exciting but still very good.
Being in IMAX 3D and taking place in outer space (a place that very few of us will ever get to go), Gravity had more potential than most films to be a total, immersive movie-going experience. I'm happy to say that it didn't disappoint.
Sandra Bullock plays Ryan Stone, who The Internet tells me is a "medical engineer" (all I could have told you based on the film itself is that she is referred to as Dr. Stone, we are told she works at a hospital in her normal daily life, and she doesn't have much training/experience as an astronaut). George Clooney plays Matt Kowalski, an experienced astronaut. Through a series of unfortunate events, just before they are about to head back to Earth, they are left the only two remaining members of their crew, literally floating out in space, tethered to each other, fighting for survival. After a time (spoiler alert!), Ryan must let Matt go, and she is left alone to try to reenter her spacecraft...then make it to a neighboring space station...then make it back to Earth. This film chronicles how she does so.
Interestingly, the film that this reminded me most of was 127 Hours, a.k.a. the film where James Franco cuts off his own arm. That film was about James Franco's character, Aron Ralston, finding himself in a life-or-death situation and finally getting desperate enough to do what he needs to do to survive. It's a very good film featuring a very good performance from Franco; with the exception of a couple of women he briefly spends time with at the beginning of the film and characters we see in flashback, he's basically the only actor in the film, meaning that he has to carry it. Here, Bullock and Clooney are the only actors we spend any significant time with at all, and the stakes are heightened by the literally out-of-this-world setting: Ryan and Matt are dealing with a lack of gravity, as well as dangerous fluctuations in temperature, oxygen, and carbon dioxide levels. There is also more action here, as Ryan has to learn to deal with changes in circumstance and make a series of quick, life or death decisions.
It's an emotional and physical rollercoaster, everyone. I was hunkering down in my seat. I was fighting tears. I was sometimes on the verge of whispering advice. This is what I mean by "total movie-going experience"; I felt like I'd been through something at the end of it. The 3D helps with this, making the action more immediate. Additionally, Bullock's performance is very good. She doesn't usually tend to choose movies that are particularly interesting to me, in general, but I think she's established that she can carry a film, and that's absolutely necessary here. I really think this is a movie that you should see in IMAX 3D if you can, but it will be interesting to see how this plays on DVD, when you are less immersed in the movie-going experience and her performance really does have to carry the whole thing. I'm betting in that case, the film will be less engrossing/exciting but still very good.
Friday, October 11, 2013
thoughts on Don Jon (spoilers)
Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays Jon, a young Jersey man who watches a lot of online porn. He goes to confession every week, and it seems that he sometimes watches it as much as three or four times a day. He doesn't actually think there's anything wrong with this, but he knows that he's committing a sin, so he confesses it anyway. Outside of watching porn, he goes out to clubs with his friends a lot and has a lot of one-night stands, but no serious relationships until he meets Barbara Sugarman (Scarlett Johansson). It seems that she is perfect...but he's still watching a ton of porn.
Naturally, she has a major problem with this when she finds out, but that's not the only thing she won't accept as-is about him. He's a bartender, and she insists that he take a night class even though he never would have had any interest in one on his own; in theory, suggesting that someone get an education isn't a bad thing, but she basically just wants a boyfriend (and eventually husband) who makes a lot of money, and she thinks a degree is the way to that.
There's also a scene that I found fairly bizarre where they're in a store looking at curtain rods or some such, and he tells her that he also wants to pick up some Swiffer pads while they're there. She doesn't even know what those are (a housekeeper does her cleaning), and she can't believe that Jon, a grown man, does his own cleaning. She finds it downright offensive, if not disturbing, when she offers to send her housekeeper over and he says that he enjoys cleaning; he's proud of his apartment, and he likes keeping it nice. She tells him that when they're living together, he won't be doing that anymore. She won't even let him go buy the Swiffer pads, because she says it's embarrassing. Like I said, bizarre. She knows he doesn't make a lot of money. Who does she think cleans his place? Would she rather he lived in a pigsty? So...it's not just that she wants to change him, but she's fairly out of touch with reality, to a degree that I was fairly taken aback by. It's a pretty brilliant scene; I can't remember ever seeing a discussion about cleaning products on film before, and it reveals so much about both of them.
Anyway, so she dumps him because of the porn. You think that the film's happy ending is going to be that he learns to give it up and she takes him back, but the film takes an interesting turn involving a fellow night class student named Esther (Julianne Moore) who initially doesn't seem all that important (to Jon or to the movie). She finds out about the porn one of the first times she and Jon meet (he takes to watching it on his phone to hide it from Barbara); she's not judgmental about it, but she eventually helps him understand what he's missing out on with real women, and from real sex, by being so fixated on porn. I still, for a time, thought that Esther was just going to be the person who helped Jon give up porn so Barbara would take him back. But maybe Barbara was never right for him.
I think the amount of time I've spent talking about the plot here shows how interested I was in it. At times, the focus on porn is a little, for lack of a better word, skeevy...but I was genuinely interested in Jon and wanted to find out what happened to him. For that matter, all of the characters are interesting, even those with less screen time, such as Jon's family and two best friends. The film sees the humor in the Jersey world it is set in without making fun of it, the performances are all solid, and the plot has some unexpected turns. I really liked this movie.
Naturally, she has a major problem with this when she finds out, but that's not the only thing she won't accept as-is about him. He's a bartender, and she insists that he take a night class even though he never would have had any interest in one on his own; in theory, suggesting that someone get an education isn't a bad thing, but she basically just wants a boyfriend (and eventually husband) who makes a lot of money, and she thinks a degree is the way to that.
There's also a scene that I found fairly bizarre where they're in a store looking at curtain rods or some such, and he tells her that he also wants to pick up some Swiffer pads while they're there. She doesn't even know what those are (a housekeeper does her cleaning), and she can't believe that Jon, a grown man, does his own cleaning. She finds it downright offensive, if not disturbing, when she offers to send her housekeeper over and he says that he enjoys cleaning; he's proud of his apartment, and he likes keeping it nice. She tells him that when they're living together, he won't be doing that anymore. She won't even let him go buy the Swiffer pads, because she says it's embarrassing. Like I said, bizarre. She knows he doesn't make a lot of money. Who does she think cleans his place? Would she rather he lived in a pigsty? So...it's not just that she wants to change him, but she's fairly out of touch with reality, to a degree that I was fairly taken aback by. It's a pretty brilliant scene; I can't remember ever seeing a discussion about cleaning products on film before, and it reveals so much about both of them.
Anyway, so she dumps him because of the porn. You think that the film's happy ending is going to be that he learns to give it up and she takes him back, but the film takes an interesting turn involving a fellow night class student named Esther (Julianne Moore) who initially doesn't seem all that important (to Jon or to the movie). She finds out about the porn one of the first times she and Jon meet (he takes to watching it on his phone to hide it from Barbara); she's not judgmental about it, but she eventually helps him understand what he's missing out on with real women, and from real sex, by being so fixated on porn. I still, for a time, thought that Esther was just going to be the person who helped Jon give up porn so Barbara would take him back. But maybe Barbara was never right for him.
I think the amount of time I've spent talking about the plot here shows how interested I was in it. At times, the focus on porn is a little, for lack of a better word, skeevy...but I was genuinely interested in Jon and wanted to find out what happened to him. For that matter, all of the characters are interesting, even those with less screen time, such as Jon's family and two best friends. The film sees the humor in the Jersey world it is set in without making fun of it, the performances are all solid, and the plot has some unexpected turns. I really liked this movie.
Thursday, October 10, 2013
thoughts on Runner Runner
Well. That was very disappointing.
Justin Timberlake stars as Richie Furst, a grad student at Princeton whose makes money on the side bringing in customers for an online gambling site. He gets in trouble with the dean for gambling on campus at around the same time his tuition, $20,000, is due; he doesn't have it, but he has over $17,000, so he decides (naturally) to bet it all and see if he can win the rest. He loses everything, but he manages to figure out that the site has cheated him, so he flies down to Costa Rica to confront the site's owner, Ivan Block (Ben Affleck). Ivan denies knowing that his programmers were cheating customers, but is impressed that Richie was able to figure out that this was happening, so he offers him a job. Richie takes it, and all seems great until he is confronted by an FBI agent (Anthony Mackie), who basically tells him that Ivan's up to some shady shit, they're trying to take him down, and if Richie doesn't help them, he's going down with him.
Already you can see that much of this is fairly implausible. The problem is, it should be more fun. Generally, I love gambling movies. I really like Justin Timberlake. Ben Affleck isn't my favorite, but he's playing a shady rich bully here, which he does well, and which should be entertaining. The thing is, though, the fun of gambling movies comes from both the tension of the games the gamblers are playing and the challenge of trying to figure out how they're pulling it all off. Part of the problem is that the gambling here takes place online, meaning it is more difficult for the filmmakers to build tension and completely impossible for the audience to figure out things along with the main character; even if you are a computer programmer yourself, it's not like you have access to the code Richie is using.
Another problem is that though gambling is Ivan's business, it almost might as well be drugs or weapons or any other shady thing, considering the lack of insider knowledge we get on the online gambling industry. The real tension comes (or should come) from Richie slowly realizing that Ivan is up to no good and trying to take him down, but it's pretty easy to tell right from the beginning that Ivan is shady, and the impending takedown is too all over the place to really care about. First Richie is going to be loyal to Ivan and NOT help the FBI! Then, oh no, it looks like the FBI is right about him! Then Ivan is threatening Richie's father! Then a couple of Richie's programmer friends are involved! Then...zzzzzz. It's all just hard to keep track of, and not that interesting.
This movie had potential to be interesting and fun. Instead, it was just kind of boring. Like I said, disappointing.
Justin Timberlake stars as Richie Furst, a grad student at Princeton whose makes money on the side bringing in customers for an online gambling site. He gets in trouble with the dean for gambling on campus at around the same time his tuition, $20,000, is due; he doesn't have it, but he has over $17,000, so he decides (naturally) to bet it all and see if he can win the rest. He loses everything, but he manages to figure out that the site has cheated him, so he flies down to Costa Rica to confront the site's owner, Ivan Block (Ben Affleck). Ivan denies knowing that his programmers were cheating customers, but is impressed that Richie was able to figure out that this was happening, so he offers him a job. Richie takes it, and all seems great until he is confronted by an FBI agent (Anthony Mackie), who basically tells him that Ivan's up to some shady shit, they're trying to take him down, and if Richie doesn't help them, he's going down with him.
Already you can see that much of this is fairly implausible. The problem is, it should be more fun. Generally, I love gambling movies. I really like Justin Timberlake. Ben Affleck isn't my favorite, but he's playing a shady rich bully here, which he does well, and which should be entertaining. The thing is, though, the fun of gambling movies comes from both the tension of the games the gamblers are playing and the challenge of trying to figure out how they're pulling it all off. Part of the problem is that the gambling here takes place online, meaning it is more difficult for the filmmakers to build tension and completely impossible for the audience to figure out things along with the main character; even if you are a computer programmer yourself, it's not like you have access to the code Richie is using.
Another problem is that though gambling is Ivan's business, it almost might as well be drugs or weapons or any other shady thing, considering the lack of insider knowledge we get on the online gambling industry. The real tension comes (or should come) from Richie slowly realizing that Ivan is up to no good and trying to take him down, but it's pretty easy to tell right from the beginning that Ivan is shady, and the impending takedown is too all over the place to really care about. First Richie is going to be loyal to Ivan and NOT help the FBI! Then, oh no, it looks like the FBI is right about him! Then Ivan is threatening Richie's father! Then a couple of Richie's programmer friends are involved! Then...zzzzzz. It's all just hard to keep track of, and not that interesting.
This movie had potential to be interesting and fun. Instead, it was just kind of boring. Like I said, disappointing.
Sunday, September 29, 2013
thoughts on New Girl Season Two
This show, you guys.
As many of you know, I liked the first season a lot. The second season is much better. The first season introduced us to likeable, interesting, flawed characters and put those characters into funny situations. It was very well-written. However, in the second season, we got to know those characters, and their stories started to move forward. For example...
...Nick and Jess. In the first season, it was clear that something would happen between them eventually. In the second season, something did happen, and it was, at different times, hot, touching, messy, and frustrating. Always believable.
The two have their first kiss in episode fifteen, "Cooler." The plot of the episode is as follows: Schmidt (Max Greenfield), Winston (Lamorne Morris), and Nick (Jake Johnson) plan to go out with the intention of getting laid. Jess (Zooey Deschanel) wants to go, too, as her hot doctor boyfriend, Sam (David Walton), is working late; however, Nick tells her that she can't because she's his "cooler": he never gets laid when she's around. At the same time, a neighbor's trench coat has been delivered to their apartment by accident, and Nick loves it and begins wearing it everywhere even though it is a woman's trench coat.
The guys go out, and Jess is initially just bored at home alone, but then she begins hearing scratching noises at the door and gets scared. She tries calling Sam, who initially doesn't answer because he's busy at work; her best friend Cece (Hannah Simone), who is out on a date with Shivrang (Satya Bhabha), a man she is in the courtship stage of an arranged marriage with; and finally Nick. Nick answers, of course, because he loves her. Anyway, the guys wind up leaving the bar with a couple of girls and coming back to the apartment; they are eventually joined by Cece, Shivrang, and Sam. They play a "sexy" version of the drinking game True American, and at one point the "rules," such as they are, require Nick and Jess to go behind a door and kiss. Nick drags his feet about kissing her, to the point where Jess begins to feel a little insulted and wonders why he doesn't want to kiss her. "I just don't want to kiss you like this," he blurts out. She is flabbergasted-- what does he mean, like this?
Later that night, the game is over. Jess and Sam go to bed in her room. Nick goes to bed in his. However, eventually the scratching starts up again, and Nick and Jess both go to investigate. It turns out to be a large dog being chased by a woman. The woman is apologetic until she realizes that not only has Nick not returned the trench coat that has been delivered to him by mistake, but he has apparently been sleeping in it ("It gives me confidence," he tries to explain). She leaves, and Nick and Jess start to head back to their rooms. But then Nick takes her hand and pulls her to him, and they share what I daresay is one of the best TV kisses I have ever seen. Jess agrees; in the next episode she will tell Cece, "He just...took me! He was firm, yet gentle! He was a man, and I was a woman, and for just a minute, I saw through time and space!"
Regardless, the two don't instantly become a couple. She's still dating Sam. Then she and Sam break up, but by then, Nick is dating his new boss at the bar. Then Nick's dad dies; it brings Nick and Jess closer, but when they try to go out on an actual date, it's kind of a mess. Finally, Nick remembers something his dad told him: the best things in life are the things you don't think about. Jess is about to leave to meet up with the guy she lost her virginity to years ago, who is in town and has contacted her. She gets on the elevator, but just before the door is about to close, Nick holds the door and gets in with her.
"What are you doing?" she asks.
"Not thinking," he says. They go back to the apartment and make love.
Here's what I love about all of this: the two are a great couple in a lot of ways. They have great chemistry. They're always there for each other. However, the show doesn't try to ignore the characters' flaws or the actual problems they would realistically have. It's been established that Nick is kind of a mess; he dropped out of law school and now works as a bartender, which isn't horrible, or anything, but he doesn't really have any idea what he wants to do next, drinks too much, and has kind of a Grumpy Old Man personality. He has a lot of good qualities, too, and it seems like he will try harder at life for Jess, but it's not like he just automatically becomes the perfect guy or like the show tries to sweep his issues under the rug. I also like that while, sure, it's pretty normal for TV to delay the couple getting together, all of the things that get in Nick and Jess's way are pretty believable. Finally, I like that through all this, the show still stays its wacky self. Games of True American. Silly storylines like the whole trench coat thing. Schmidt and Winston eventually trying to sabotage Cece's wedding. It stays the show we knew and loved in the first season, but explores the characters with more depth.
This brings me to Schmidt. He was my favorite part of the first season. I liked him in the second season, too, but I feel like as we got to know the other characters more, they all started to be more of a balanced ensemble, with no one standout. I consider this a good thing. Also, he stopped being just the womanizing, clean freak, formerly overweight funny guy with commitment issues to a fully rounded character. Near the end of the second season, we meet Elizabeth (Merritt Wever), who he dated for years when he was overweight. She still is overweight (though she is not now, nor was she ever, as heavy as Schmidt once was). They initially fell in love because she didn't care what anyone thought, which he appreciated and loved about her when he was heavy; however, as he began to lose weight, *he* started to care more about appearances, and, as she puts it, "got mean." They start to date again at the end of the second season, though it's not like he still doesn't care about appearances or isn't generally his funny but slightly douchey self, and it's not like he's not still hung up on Cece, who he dated off and on through much of the first season. Again, the show doesn't skate over any of this or try to pretend he's suddenly this perfect, stand-up guy. I liked this a lot.
Oh. And the second season also manages to work in the song "22" by Taylor Swift and to give Swift a cameo in the season finale. That's also pretty awesome.
Bottom line, I fell in love with this show even more during the second season. I can't wait to catch up on the third.
As many of you know, I liked the first season a lot. The second season is much better. The first season introduced us to likeable, interesting, flawed characters and put those characters into funny situations. It was very well-written. However, in the second season, we got to know those characters, and their stories started to move forward. For example...
...Nick and Jess. In the first season, it was clear that something would happen between them eventually. In the second season, something did happen, and it was, at different times, hot, touching, messy, and frustrating. Always believable.
The two have their first kiss in episode fifteen, "Cooler." The plot of the episode is as follows: Schmidt (Max Greenfield), Winston (Lamorne Morris), and Nick (Jake Johnson) plan to go out with the intention of getting laid. Jess (Zooey Deschanel) wants to go, too, as her hot doctor boyfriend, Sam (David Walton), is working late; however, Nick tells her that she can't because she's his "cooler": he never gets laid when she's around. At the same time, a neighbor's trench coat has been delivered to their apartment by accident, and Nick loves it and begins wearing it everywhere even though it is a woman's trench coat.
The guys go out, and Jess is initially just bored at home alone, but then she begins hearing scratching noises at the door and gets scared. She tries calling Sam, who initially doesn't answer because he's busy at work; her best friend Cece (Hannah Simone), who is out on a date with Shivrang (Satya Bhabha), a man she is in the courtship stage of an arranged marriage with; and finally Nick. Nick answers, of course, because he loves her. Anyway, the guys wind up leaving the bar with a couple of girls and coming back to the apartment; they are eventually joined by Cece, Shivrang, and Sam. They play a "sexy" version of the drinking game True American, and at one point the "rules," such as they are, require Nick and Jess to go behind a door and kiss. Nick drags his feet about kissing her, to the point where Jess begins to feel a little insulted and wonders why he doesn't want to kiss her. "I just don't want to kiss you like this," he blurts out. She is flabbergasted-- what does he mean, like this?
Later that night, the game is over. Jess and Sam go to bed in her room. Nick goes to bed in his. However, eventually the scratching starts up again, and Nick and Jess both go to investigate. It turns out to be a large dog being chased by a woman. The woman is apologetic until she realizes that not only has Nick not returned the trench coat that has been delivered to him by mistake, but he has apparently been sleeping in it ("It gives me confidence," he tries to explain). She leaves, and Nick and Jess start to head back to their rooms. But then Nick takes her hand and pulls her to him, and they share what I daresay is one of the best TV kisses I have ever seen. Jess agrees; in the next episode she will tell Cece, "He just...took me! He was firm, yet gentle! He was a man, and I was a woman, and for just a minute, I saw through time and space!"
Regardless, the two don't instantly become a couple. She's still dating Sam. Then she and Sam break up, but by then, Nick is dating his new boss at the bar. Then Nick's dad dies; it brings Nick and Jess closer, but when they try to go out on an actual date, it's kind of a mess. Finally, Nick remembers something his dad told him: the best things in life are the things you don't think about. Jess is about to leave to meet up with the guy she lost her virginity to years ago, who is in town and has contacted her. She gets on the elevator, but just before the door is about to close, Nick holds the door and gets in with her.
"What are you doing?" she asks.
"Not thinking," he says. They go back to the apartment and make love.
Here's what I love about all of this: the two are a great couple in a lot of ways. They have great chemistry. They're always there for each other. However, the show doesn't try to ignore the characters' flaws or the actual problems they would realistically have. It's been established that Nick is kind of a mess; he dropped out of law school and now works as a bartender, which isn't horrible, or anything, but he doesn't really have any idea what he wants to do next, drinks too much, and has kind of a Grumpy Old Man personality. He has a lot of good qualities, too, and it seems like he will try harder at life for Jess, but it's not like he just automatically becomes the perfect guy or like the show tries to sweep his issues under the rug. I also like that while, sure, it's pretty normal for TV to delay the couple getting together, all of the things that get in Nick and Jess's way are pretty believable. Finally, I like that through all this, the show still stays its wacky self. Games of True American. Silly storylines like the whole trench coat thing. Schmidt and Winston eventually trying to sabotage Cece's wedding. It stays the show we knew and loved in the first season, but explores the characters with more depth.
This brings me to Schmidt. He was my favorite part of the first season. I liked him in the second season, too, but I feel like as we got to know the other characters more, they all started to be more of a balanced ensemble, with no one standout. I consider this a good thing. Also, he stopped being just the womanizing, clean freak, formerly overweight funny guy with commitment issues to a fully rounded character. Near the end of the second season, we meet Elizabeth (Merritt Wever), who he dated for years when he was overweight. She still is overweight (though she is not now, nor was she ever, as heavy as Schmidt once was). They initially fell in love because she didn't care what anyone thought, which he appreciated and loved about her when he was heavy; however, as he began to lose weight, *he* started to care more about appearances, and, as she puts it, "got mean." They start to date again at the end of the second season, though it's not like he still doesn't care about appearances or isn't generally his funny but slightly douchey self, and it's not like he's not still hung up on Cece, who he dated off and on through much of the first season. Again, the show doesn't skate over any of this or try to pretend he's suddenly this perfect, stand-up guy. I liked this a lot.
Oh. And the second season also manages to work in the song "22" by Taylor Swift and to give Swift a cameo in the season finale. That's also pretty awesome.
Bottom line, I fell in love with this show even more during the second season. I can't wait to catch up on the third.
Saturday, September 14, 2013
thoughts on The Spectacular Now
Miles Teller (who you may remember from the relatively recent Footloose remake) stars as Sutter, a high school senior who has recently broken up with (been dumped by?) his girlfriend, Cassidy (Brie Larson, from The United States of Tara and 21 Jump Street). In voiceover early in the film, he says something like, "I don't want to say that we were the life of every party...but we were pretty much the life of every party." He meets Aimee (Shailene Woodley) when he literally passes out on her lawn one night after a party; she finds him the next morning when she heads out to leave on her (technically her mom's) paper route. He offers to help her out, and the two of them begin a friendship that fairly quickly develops into a romance.
I thought the film's performances were pretty solid across the board. Teller is charming as Sutter, a basically nice guy who isn't doing great in Math, who sneaks drinks from a flask pretty much constantly, and who believes his mother (Jennifer Jason Leigh) kicked his father (Kyle Chandler) out years ago. Woodley is insecure and nice as Aimee. However, in terms of plot, I really had no idea where the movie was going, or where I was supposed to want it to go. Sutter and Aimee make an okay couple, I suppose. On the one hand, he drinks too much, and she starts drinking quite a bit when she's around him. On the other hand, through dating him, she gains the confidence to stand up to her mom (who we never meet), who Aimee thinks won't let her leave to go to college.
There is also the issue that since the movie is told from Sutter's perspective, we don't really know that much about Aimee. She reveals at one point that her father, an addict, is dead. She seems smart and like kind of a loner, though we see one friend that she occasionally talks to. She gets along fine when Sutter takes her to a party, though, so it seems mainly that she lacks confidence, not like everyone sees her as some huge dork or anything. When it comes down to it, we don't know enough about Sutter, either; he's supposedly popular, and he seems to get invited to more stuff than Aimee, but it seems to be mostly because he's a partier and somewhat charming. He doesn't seem to be popular for any particular reason; the popular kids at my high school were good at things and really involved in the school, and that doesn't seem to be the case with him. So...it's a love story between two kind of blah characters who don't really do much except hang out together and drink, and you're not really sure whether you want them to stay together or not. In other words...it's hard to care that much about this movie.
I thought the film's performances were pretty solid across the board. Teller is charming as Sutter, a basically nice guy who isn't doing great in Math, who sneaks drinks from a flask pretty much constantly, and who believes his mother (Jennifer Jason Leigh) kicked his father (Kyle Chandler) out years ago. Woodley is insecure and nice as Aimee. However, in terms of plot, I really had no idea where the movie was going, or where I was supposed to want it to go. Sutter and Aimee make an okay couple, I suppose. On the one hand, he drinks too much, and she starts drinking quite a bit when she's around him. On the other hand, through dating him, she gains the confidence to stand up to her mom (who we never meet), who Aimee thinks won't let her leave to go to college.
There is also the issue that since the movie is told from Sutter's perspective, we don't really know that much about Aimee. She reveals at one point that her father, an addict, is dead. She seems smart and like kind of a loner, though we see one friend that she occasionally talks to. She gets along fine when Sutter takes her to a party, though, so it seems mainly that she lacks confidence, not like everyone sees her as some huge dork or anything. When it comes down to it, we don't know enough about Sutter, either; he's supposedly popular, and he seems to get invited to more stuff than Aimee, but it seems to be mostly because he's a partier and somewhat charming. He doesn't seem to be popular for any particular reason; the popular kids at my high school were good at things and really involved in the school, and that doesn't seem to be the case with him. So...it's a love story between two kind of blah characters who don't really do much except hang out together and drink, and you're not really sure whether you want them to stay together or not. In other words...it's hard to care that much about this movie.
Saturday, September 7, 2013
random blog on Alias Season Three/Lauren Reed/Melissa George
Today I'd like to talk about Melissa George as Lauren Reed, a.k.a. Vaughn's wife in Season Three of Alias. Here's a Season Three promotional picture of her in case you are unfamiliar:
Anyway, so after the Sydney/Vaughn YouTube binge I told you all about recently, I went back and watched some full episodes-- not in any particular order, just the ones I felt like watching. The thing I keep puzzling over is whether or not the producers always intended for Lauren to be evil, or whether they either a) decided to make her evil because she was so hated by fans, or b) perhaps *did* intend for her to *eventually* reveal herself as evil, but rushed to this a bit more quickly than they might have because, again, fans just wanted Sydney and Vaughn back together. Don't get me wrong; I was one of those fans. But here's the thing:
Vaughn is DESTROYED when he learns the truth about Lauren. He basically goes completely insane in the last two episodes of Season Three. He freaking pours acid on someone at one point during an interrogation. He leaves Sydney with no back-up to run after Lauren on one mission. Let me repeat: He puts Sydney at risk for a shot at revenge on Lauren. He actively plots Lauren's murder (with Jack's help and encouragement). When he eventually does kill her, it's more of a self-defense type scenario, but he shoots her a ridiculous number of times. He fully wants to do it, which haunts him well into Season Four. There is one Season Four episode where he has to exhume her corpse and where Sydney has to pretend to be Lauren for the purposes of a mission (I don't remember the exact details surrounding this, but trust me: it happened), and this is unbearably painful for him. In another Season Four episode, he confesses to Jack that he can't sleep and that he sees her everywhere. He eventually forgives himself for what he's done (in an episode where he goes undercover as a hot priest, by the way). However, we are led to believe that what happened with Lauren may very well have ruined his life had Sydney not been there to pull him back from the dark side. In order for us to buy any of this, we have to believe that Vaughn was completely and totally in love with Lauren.
This was always going to be a hard sell. For one thing, we are positioned to identify with Sydney in this narrative, meaning that when Sydney lost two years at the end of Season Two, we lost them with her. We didn't see Vaughn and Lauren meet and fall in love. For us, like for Sydney, it was like Vaughn had been with Sydney just earlier that day, planning a romantic vacation for the two of them, and...what now? He's married to someone else? He tells Sydney that he's moved on with his life, and in the first couple of episodes of Season Three, he seems like he has; he seems primarily concerned with making sure that Lauren doesn't feel threatened by Sydney's reappearance in his life, meaning that 1) Sydney doesn't have him, even as a friend, to help her through her transition back to a life where everyone has moved on without her and 2) he sometimes appears a bit insensitive to Sydney, being openly affectionate with Lauren right in front of her. He's not intentionally being mean; he just honestly doesn't seem to care that much about Sydney anymore. Again: hard sell for the audience, who saw Vaughn in love with Sydney at the end of the very last season.
Add to that the fact that his indifference to Sydney doesn't last terribly long. Within maybe three or four episodes, we see him having a post-stabbing dream where he wakes in the hospital to find Sydney sitting next to him crying about how much she misses him. He confesses that he misses her, too, and they kiss. We figure out that it's a dream when she stabs him (again) and asks, "How could you do this to me?" He wakes up and seems a bit shaken, if not a little disappointed, to see Lauren sitting by his bedside. It's not much longer before he is actively lying to/hiding things from Lauren to protect Sydney. It takes him awhile to realize that he still has feelings for Sydney and to make any sort of move to leave his marriage, but...the feelings for Sydney are clearly there, early on. In other words: he was in love enough with Lauren for her betrayal to destroy him? Really?
Also: not even two full years had passed since Sydney's "death," which means that Vaughn either married Lauren roughly five minutes after Sydney disappeared, which doesn't seem overly plausible, or that he had only been married to Lauren for roughly five minutes at the time of Sydney's return, in which case...who cares about Lauren? It doesn't really help that the show doesn't really give us a clear timeline for all of this. I have this Alias companion book that states that Vaughn and Lauren met and began dating nine months after Sydney's "death." At one point, Lauren mentions something about not hearing from her handlers for more than two years after she was assigned to marry Vaughn. At another point, Vaughn makes a comment about how they've been talking about taking a vacation for over a year. When the heck did all of this happen? How long have these people even known each other? When did they have time to fall in love, plan a wedding, and get married? The whole thing makes not one goddamn bit of sense, is what I'm saying.
And yet. The producers of the show did seem to put a fair amount of effort into both casting Lauren and (at least initially) creating a character that Vaughn might realistically marry. Melissa George is very pretty, and in a more va-va-voom type way than Jennifer Garner:
Her role on Friends back in the day was the "hot nanny." On Grey's Anatomy, she played Meredith's wild college friend who allows the other interns to freaking take out her appendix *for practice.* In other words: I haven't seen her in a ton of things (though her IMDB page indicates that she gets fairly regular work, particularly on TV, and I'm kind of excited about the fact that she will apparently be "tempting" Peter Florrick on the upcoming season of The Good Wife), but in the stuff I *have* seen her in, she seems to get brought out when they need someone hot and/or wild and/or shady. Okay, I guess I've just answered my own question. Maybe they totally planned for her to be evil all along.
But beyond her appearance, they gave her character a backstory and independent storylines the likes of which characters other than Sydney rarely got on Alias. In a nutshell, she was a NSC agent/liaison to Sydney and Vaughn's task force at the CIA. Her father, a United States senator, had managed to keep her from being trained as a field agent. That's the thing: we met her parents. They factored into a couple of fairly major storylines. There were a handful of scenes shot at her parents' house. We did not even see Jack's apartment until Season Four. We never saw Vaughn's house until he married Lauren. I'm just saying: why go to all of this trouble with her if they were just going to reveal her to be evil in like half a season, and kill her off by the end of that same season? I feel like when we were originally introduced to her, we were supposed to view her as a legitimate professional and personal rival for Sydney. I also feel like, given the fact that they later added Mia Maestro to the cast in late Season Three, then Rachel Nichols in Season Five, the producers/network were planning for the possibility that the show might last for a long time, that Jennifer Garner might want to leave someday, and that they should have some sort of back-up female character ready in that event. None of them really stuck, and the show ended after five seasons.
The interesting thing was, as unpleasant as it was for me personally to watch Sydney and Vaughn be apart in Season Three, I came away from all of this with mildly positive feelings toward Melissa George. Like, when she shows up on something I'm watching, my reaction is usually, "Oh! I'll bet this is going to be fun!" I actually just watched a couple of her Grey's Anatomy episodes last night; she was pretty fun and entertaining. I feel like maybe Season Three Alias could have been more okay if they'd taken more time to play out the whole Vaughn/Lauren storyline...but even I, at the time it was actually on, pretty much just wanted it to be over with. So, they wrapped it up, they moved on, and, what, eight years after Lauren's last appearance on the show, I found myself puzzling over it. I guess the show wins, then =).
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| You will notice that she is sitting on some boxes that say "Fireworks." |
Vaughn is DESTROYED when he learns the truth about Lauren. He basically goes completely insane in the last two episodes of Season Three. He freaking pours acid on someone at one point during an interrogation. He leaves Sydney with no back-up to run after Lauren on one mission. Let me repeat: He puts Sydney at risk for a shot at revenge on Lauren. He actively plots Lauren's murder (with Jack's help and encouragement). When he eventually does kill her, it's more of a self-defense type scenario, but he shoots her a ridiculous number of times. He fully wants to do it, which haunts him well into Season Four. There is one Season Four episode where he has to exhume her corpse and where Sydney has to pretend to be Lauren for the purposes of a mission (I don't remember the exact details surrounding this, but trust me: it happened), and this is unbearably painful for him. In another Season Four episode, he confesses to Jack that he can't sleep and that he sees her everywhere. He eventually forgives himself for what he's done (in an episode where he goes undercover as a hot priest, by the way). However, we are led to believe that what happened with Lauren may very well have ruined his life had Sydney not been there to pull him back from the dark side. In order for us to buy any of this, we have to believe that Vaughn was completely and totally in love with Lauren.
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| Vaughn and Lauren in a Season Three promo pic. |
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| Vaughn and Lauren getting annoyed with Sydney during a meeting. |
Also: not even two full years had passed since Sydney's "death," which means that Vaughn either married Lauren roughly five minutes after Sydney disappeared, which doesn't seem overly plausible, or that he had only been married to Lauren for roughly five minutes at the time of Sydney's return, in which case...who cares about Lauren? It doesn't really help that the show doesn't really give us a clear timeline for all of this. I have this Alias companion book that states that Vaughn and Lauren met and began dating nine months after Sydney's "death." At one point, Lauren mentions something about not hearing from her handlers for more than two years after she was assigned to marry Vaughn. At another point, Vaughn makes a comment about how they've been talking about taking a vacation for over a year. When the heck did all of this happen? How long have these people even known each other? When did they have time to fall in love, plan a wedding, and get married? The whole thing makes not one goddamn bit of sense, is what I'm saying.
And yet. The producers of the show did seem to put a fair amount of effort into both casting Lauren and (at least initially) creating a character that Vaughn might realistically marry. Melissa George is very pretty, and in a more va-va-voom type way than Jennifer Garner:
Her role on Friends back in the day was the "hot nanny." On Grey's Anatomy, she played Meredith's wild college friend who allows the other interns to freaking take out her appendix *for practice.* In other words: I haven't seen her in a ton of things (though her IMDB page indicates that she gets fairly regular work, particularly on TV, and I'm kind of excited about the fact that she will apparently be "tempting" Peter Florrick on the upcoming season of The Good Wife), but in the stuff I *have* seen her in, she seems to get brought out when they need someone hot and/or wild and/or shady. Okay, I guess I've just answered my own question. Maybe they totally planned for her to be evil all along.
 |
| Melissa George on Grey's Anatomy, possibly trying to convince the other interns to remove her appendix. |
But beyond her appearance, they gave her character a backstory and independent storylines the likes of which characters other than Sydney rarely got on Alias. In a nutshell, she was a NSC agent/liaison to Sydney and Vaughn's task force at the CIA. Her father, a United States senator, had managed to keep her from being trained as a field agent. That's the thing: we met her parents. They factored into a couple of fairly major storylines. There were a handful of scenes shot at her parents' house. We did not even see Jack's apartment until Season Four. We never saw Vaughn's house until he married Lauren. I'm just saying: why go to all of this trouble with her if they were just going to reveal her to be evil in like half a season, and kill her off by the end of that same season? I feel like when we were originally introduced to her, we were supposed to view her as a legitimate professional and personal rival for Sydney. I also feel like, given the fact that they later added Mia Maestro to the cast in late Season Three, then Rachel Nichols in Season Five, the producers/network were planning for the possibility that the show might last for a long time, that Jennifer Garner might want to leave someday, and that they should have some sort of back-up female character ready in that event. None of them really stuck, and the show ended after five seasons.
The interesting thing was, as unpleasant as it was for me personally to watch Sydney and Vaughn be apart in Season Three, I came away from all of this with mildly positive feelings toward Melissa George. Like, when she shows up on something I'm watching, my reaction is usually, "Oh! I'll bet this is going to be fun!" I actually just watched a couple of her Grey's Anatomy episodes last night; she was pretty fun and entertaining. I feel like maybe Season Three Alias could have been more okay if they'd taken more time to play out the whole Vaughn/Lauren storyline...but even I, at the time it was actually on, pretty much just wanted it to be over with. So, they wrapped it up, they moved on, and, what, eight years after Lauren's last appearance on the show, I found myself puzzling over it. I guess the show wins, then =).
Monday, September 2, 2013
thoughts on Butter
Huh.
I'm not entirely sure I completely got this movie, or that it really accomplished what it was trying to do. It seems like it might have been trying to be a few different things, didn't go for any of them quite enough, and thus didn't really succeed at any of them. However, there were enough funny one-liners and enough genuinely bizarre moments that a day after watching it, I find myself chuckling about parts of it in a "What the f*ck was that?" kind of way.
Ty Burrell plays Bob Pickler, who has won the Iowa State Fair butter carving contest fifteen years in a row. He is asked to step down and give someone else a chance to win, and perhaps be a judge. His wife, Laura (Jennifer Garner), whose life seems to revolve around this contest and who seems to fancy herself some sort of First Lady even though...you know...it's a butter carving contest that happens once a year, is initially FURIOUS about this ("Those mother f*ckers don't know who they're dealing with!). She grows even more furious when she catches Bob having sex with a stripper (Olivia Wilde) in their van. She decides to enter the contest herself. Her competition at the county level consists of Carol Ann (Laura Schaal), a butter carving contest "groupie" (is there such a thing?) who carves a laughably bad sculpture of kittens in a basket (in her speech explaining her sculpture, she says something along the lines of, "I really love kittens when they're all tangled up in a blanket, but I didn't know how to carve that, so I just put them in a basket instead"); the stripper, Brooke, who basically enters just to mess with Laura; and Destiny (Yara Shahidi), a ten-year-old foster child who has recently been taken in by Jill (Alicia Silverstone) and Ethan (Rob Corddry), a couple with a fridge full of soy products who think that butter carving competitions are "kind of redneck-y." There is a subplot where Brooke hooks up with Bob's daughter (Ashley Greene) to try to get the $600 (she later raises the price) she says Bob owes her for sex. There is another subplot where Laura has sex with her high school boyfriend, Boyd Bolton (Hugh Jackman), so that she can get him to help her get a rematch after she loses the initial competition to Destiny. It all comes to a head at the Iowa State Fair contest.
So...I've read some stuff that said this was supposed to be a political satire, and as Laura, Jennifer Garner dresses and speaks in a sort of Sarah Palin-esque way. But no one besides her seems to be taking the butter carving contest overly seriously, and she's definitely the only one getting cutthroat and playing dirty about it, so she just comes across as kind of insane, and since her main competition is a ten-year-old girl, it's just kind of like, "Why is she being so mean to that little kid?" I also read some reviews that suggested that the movie was going for a Christopher Guest Best in Show type thing, but in that movie, the dog show was such a huge part of it; here, the butter carving stuff seems almost arbitrary-- it seems like it's more about how insane competition in general can make some people, but again, Laura is the only one who seems particularly insane about it. So it's kind of like, "Here's a movie about some crazy lady who's really into this butter carving competition for some reason, and also there's this crazy stripper running around, and also, hey, there's Hugh Jackman as a dumb local car dealer."
That's not to say that this isn't all sometimes kind of fun and funny. For one thing...this movie is rated R basically just for language, and some of the stuff that comes out of Jennifer Garner's mouth made me laugh just in a "Oh my god, I don't think I've ever heard Jennifer Garner swear before" kind of way (I looked her up on IMDB, and no, it's likely that I haven't. Besides Alias, she's been in Juno, a few short-lived TV series from the '90s, and some romantic comedies. A handful of other stuff, too, but nothing that I would imagine would involve a lot of swearing.). I've also read some stuff about how Olivia Wilde pretty much steals every scene she's in, and that's pretty true; there is one scene where she's riding her bike-- which appears to be a child's dirt bike-- across a football field where a marching band is practicing, and she could easily just ride around the marching band. Instead, she rides right through them shouting, "Out of my way, bitches!" Why? I don't know, but I laughed. Also...what is Hugh Jackman doing in this movie? He's seriously in like four scenes, one of which involves staring at Jennifer Garner's boobs and another in which he prays to God to thank him for bringing her to him. This prayer quickly grows dirty enough that I had another moment of shocked oh-my-god type laughter.
So, bottom line: it was kind of a hot mess of a movie, but it had its moments. It didn't make a lot of sense, but it was pretty funny.
I'm not entirely sure I completely got this movie, or that it really accomplished what it was trying to do. It seems like it might have been trying to be a few different things, didn't go for any of them quite enough, and thus didn't really succeed at any of them. However, there were enough funny one-liners and enough genuinely bizarre moments that a day after watching it, I find myself chuckling about parts of it in a "What the f*ck was that?" kind of way.
Ty Burrell plays Bob Pickler, who has won the Iowa State Fair butter carving contest fifteen years in a row. He is asked to step down and give someone else a chance to win, and perhaps be a judge. His wife, Laura (Jennifer Garner), whose life seems to revolve around this contest and who seems to fancy herself some sort of First Lady even though...you know...it's a butter carving contest that happens once a year, is initially FURIOUS about this ("Those mother f*ckers don't know who they're dealing with!). She grows even more furious when she catches Bob having sex with a stripper (Olivia Wilde) in their van. She decides to enter the contest herself. Her competition at the county level consists of Carol Ann (Laura Schaal), a butter carving contest "groupie" (is there such a thing?) who carves a laughably bad sculpture of kittens in a basket (in her speech explaining her sculpture, she says something along the lines of, "I really love kittens when they're all tangled up in a blanket, but I didn't know how to carve that, so I just put them in a basket instead"); the stripper, Brooke, who basically enters just to mess with Laura; and Destiny (Yara Shahidi), a ten-year-old foster child who has recently been taken in by Jill (Alicia Silverstone) and Ethan (Rob Corddry), a couple with a fridge full of soy products who think that butter carving competitions are "kind of redneck-y." There is a subplot where Brooke hooks up with Bob's daughter (Ashley Greene) to try to get the $600 (she later raises the price) she says Bob owes her for sex. There is another subplot where Laura has sex with her high school boyfriend, Boyd Bolton (Hugh Jackman), so that she can get him to help her get a rematch after she loses the initial competition to Destiny. It all comes to a head at the Iowa State Fair contest.
So...I've read some stuff that said this was supposed to be a political satire, and as Laura, Jennifer Garner dresses and speaks in a sort of Sarah Palin-esque way. But no one besides her seems to be taking the butter carving contest overly seriously, and she's definitely the only one getting cutthroat and playing dirty about it, so she just comes across as kind of insane, and since her main competition is a ten-year-old girl, it's just kind of like, "Why is she being so mean to that little kid?" I also read some reviews that suggested that the movie was going for a Christopher Guest Best in Show type thing, but in that movie, the dog show was such a huge part of it; here, the butter carving stuff seems almost arbitrary-- it seems like it's more about how insane competition in general can make some people, but again, Laura is the only one who seems particularly insane about it. So it's kind of like, "Here's a movie about some crazy lady who's really into this butter carving competition for some reason, and also there's this crazy stripper running around, and also, hey, there's Hugh Jackman as a dumb local car dealer."
That's not to say that this isn't all sometimes kind of fun and funny. For one thing...this movie is rated R basically just for language, and some of the stuff that comes out of Jennifer Garner's mouth made me laugh just in a "Oh my god, I don't think I've ever heard Jennifer Garner swear before" kind of way (I looked her up on IMDB, and no, it's likely that I haven't. Besides Alias, she's been in Juno, a few short-lived TV series from the '90s, and some romantic comedies. A handful of other stuff, too, but nothing that I would imagine would involve a lot of swearing.). I've also read some stuff about how Olivia Wilde pretty much steals every scene she's in, and that's pretty true; there is one scene where she's riding her bike-- which appears to be a child's dirt bike-- across a football field where a marching band is practicing, and she could easily just ride around the marching band. Instead, she rides right through them shouting, "Out of my way, bitches!" Why? I don't know, but I laughed. Also...what is Hugh Jackman doing in this movie? He's seriously in like four scenes, one of which involves staring at Jennifer Garner's boobs and another in which he prays to God to thank him for bringing her to him. This prayer quickly grows dirty enough that I had another moment of shocked oh-my-god type laughter.
So, bottom line: it was kind of a hot mess of a movie, but it had its moments. It didn't make a lot of sense, but it was pretty funny.
Sunday, September 1, 2013
Scandal Season Two
Finished the second season of Scandal today. Not at all sure if I'm going to keep watching it. Yes, Tony Goldwyn and Kerry Washington have some insane chemistry. Yes, it makes me gasp at times. There was one heck of an end-of-season cliffhanger that might make it hard not to tune in. However...
...This show takes place in an ugly, ugly world. This really hit me in a second season episode where we learn Huck's (Guillermo Diaz's) backstory, which is this: as a young Marine, Huck is told that he can avoid a second tour of duty by accepting an assignment from the CIA. He is told that he is uniquely qualified for this assignment because he has no attachments; he was raised in foster care, is not married, and does not have children. He accepts the assignment, which involves torturing people in extremely nasty ways. Along the way, his girlfriend gets pregnant and he proposes. Following his marriage and the birth of his child, co-CIA worker Charlie (George Newbern) shows up at his house and threatens him: he was told no attachments. He needs to take care of this. Huck makes a plan to run away with his wife and son; however, before he has a chance to, he is captured by the CIA, thrown in a hole, and tortured for months and months until he no longer remembers that he has a wife and son. When he is finally let out, he is given the opportunity to go back to work, only he can't bring himself to complete his next assignment. Charlie is supposed to kill him, but instead just points a gun at him and says, "Bang. You're dead. Don't contact anyone you know ever again." He is left with no identity and no money to live as a homeless person.
Ugly story, right? Do I believe that the U.S. government would do this to their own agents? I would like to think not, and I have a hard time believing they would do it under these particular circumstances. While I can deal with some unbelievable shit on TV shows, though (my favorite show of all time is Alias, for God's sake), the question is whether I want to routinely visit a world where *this particular* unbelievable shit can happen. I'm not sure that I do.
Add to this the fact that the only character I particularly like is Olivia Pope. Fitz is okay, sometimes. Joshua Malina's character, David Rosen, is okay. The President's wife, Mellie (Bellamy Young) is so over-the-top evil that she's practically a cartoon. (Side note: you know who would have been good for the role of Mellie? Kate Walsh. I'm pretty sure she was still busy with Private Practice until recently, but I think she could have played that character in such a way that we would have at least loved to hate her instead of just flat-out hated her.) And for all of the times that the show has made me gasp out loud...I went like two weeks without watching an episode just recently. It has cliffhanger-y storylines, but you don't necessarily care about the resolution of those storylines because you don't care about many of the characters.
So, bottom line, I was pretty disappointed. I may or may not tune in for Season Three.
...This show takes place in an ugly, ugly world. This really hit me in a second season episode where we learn Huck's (Guillermo Diaz's) backstory, which is this: as a young Marine, Huck is told that he can avoid a second tour of duty by accepting an assignment from the CIA. He is told that he is uniquely qualified for this assignment because he has no attachments; he was raised in foster care, is not married, and does not have children. He accepts the assignment, which involves torturing people in extremely nasty ways. Along the way, his girlfriend gets pregnant and he proposes. Following his marriage and the birth of his child, co-CIA worker Charlie (George Newbern) shows up at his house and threatens him: he was told no attachments. He needs to take care of this. Huck makes a plan to run away with his wife and son; however, before he has a chance to, he is captured by the CIA, thrown in a hole, and tortured for months and months until he no longer remembers that he has a wife and son. When he is finally let out, he is given the opportunity to go back to work, only he can't bring himself to complete his next assignment. Charlie is supposed to kill him, but instead just points a gun at him and says, "Bang. You're dead. Don't contact anyone you know ever again." He is left with no identity and no money to live as a homeless person.
Ugly story, right? Do I believe that the U.S. government would do this to their own agents? I would like to think not, and I have a hard time believing they would do it under these particular circumstances. While I can deal with some unbelievable shit on TV shows, though (my favorite show of all time is Alias, for God's sake), the question is whether I want to routinely visit a world where *this particular* unbelievable shit can happen. I'm not sure that I do.
Add to this the fact that the only character I particularly like is Olivia Pope. Fitz is okay, sometimes. Joshua Malina's character, David Rosen, is okay. The President's wife, Mellie (Bellamy Young) is so over-the-top evil that she's practically a cartoon. (Side note: you know who would have been good for the role of Mellie? Kate Walsh. I'm pretty sure she was still busy with Private Practice until recently, but I think she could have played that character in such a way that we would have at least loved to hate her instead of just flat-out hated her.) And for all of the times that the show has made me gasp out loud...I went like two weeks without watching an episode just recently. It has cliffhanger-y storylines, but you don't necessarily care about the resolution of those storylines because you don't care about many of the characters.
So, bottom line, I was pretty disappointed. I may or may not tune in for Season Three.
Sunday, August 25, 2013
revisiting Alias
As some of you know, I still consider Alias to be my favorite show of all time. Friday Night Lights is perhaps a better show. However, I was never as invested in a show as I was in Alias.
This past week, I discovered that someone edited together many of Sydney (Jennifer Garner) and Vaughn's (Michael Vartan's) key moments and posted them on Youtube. Posted below is the first series of clips; if you're interested in more, they're pretty easy to find from there:
Anyway, this person did a pretty thorough job, though she left out some moments I really liked, including (but not limited to) Vaughn's description of how he would have proposed in the Liberty Village episode; all the stuff from the Season Two episode where Vaughn was being investigated and the CIA wanted Sydney to break into his computer; and Vaughn as an eyeliner-wearing goth in that one Season Three episode. I also would have liked more from the two-part episode where Vaughn thought his father might still be alive. I can't really complain, though, because altogether this person put together something like four to five HOURS of clips, which I watched over the course of a couple of days. While I liked a lot of things about Alias, Vaughn and Sydney's relationship was what got and kept me hooked, so it was fun to revisit their key moments, what, seven years after the show went off the air? Here are my thoughts:
I've had people tell me they stopped watching the show during the third season, and I will admit that things got pretty bad for awhile there. You'll remember that at the end of the second season, Sydney woke up in an alley in Taipei with no memory of how she'd gotten there or how long she'd been there, only to find that she had been missing and presumed dead for almost two years and that Vaughn had married an NSA agent named Lauren Reed (Melissa George) in her absence. Now, okay: while I found this sudden two year shift ridiculous and Vaughn's marriage unfortunate, I did not find it unbelievable that he would do this. He didn't break up with Alice, the girlfriend he had before Sydney, until the morning AFTER he and Sydney made out for the first time, indicating that the man cannot be alone for even one day. Of course he found someone else while she was gone. Also, he thought she was dead. Sydney was serious with Vaughn less than two years after Danny's death and probably would have gotten serious with him even sooner if circumstances had permitted, so I don't think she can blame him for moving on. In other words, while I wasn't exactly happy that this happened, I didn't necessarily think Vaughn had done anything that bad. I was still okay when he gave Sydney the whole speech where he told her he needed her to know two things: "One: I was so in love with you, it nearly killed me, and two: I don't regret moving on with my life." Fine. Understandable.
Rewatching all of this, I didn't start to have that much of a problem with any of Vaughn's actions until he started following Jack's (Victor Garber's) horrible advice. Vaughn and Sydney start going on missions together again, and of course all of the old feelings start to come back, and of course Jack notices before either Vaughn or Sydney acknowledge it. This prompts Jack to give Vaughn this whole lecture about how "I will not allow my daughter to become your mistress," so Vaughn should "push her away. Be cruel, if you have to. Make her despise you. Because your kindness TORTURES her. And I won't have it."
What Vaughn should have taken away from this was that he needed to let Sydney move on. There are a number of ways he could have done so. He chooses the Worst Possible Way Ever, which is to just start acting like a dick for no apparent reason. This lasts not even a whole episode, because Vaughn and Sydney soon find themselves in a near-death situation. He quickly apologizes and says that he just doesn't know how to be with her anymore. She says she understands. The two of them are going to be put to death by firing squad. He tells her, "Sydney, in my life, there is only one person--" She cuts him off: "We'll find each other. We always find each other." They kiss.
They do not die by firing squad. And when they get back to CIA headquarters, he literally RUNS RIGHT INTO LAUREN'S ARMS WITH NO EXPLANATION TO SYDNEY WHATSOEVER. The hell, Vaughn?
He then proceeds to start acting wishy-washy about who he wants to be with. Fortunately, neither Weiss nor Sydney will abide this nonsense. Weiss (Greg Grunberg) flat out tells him, "I'm not going to tell you to stay in a loveless marriage, and I'm also not going to tell you to leave your wife for another woman." Vaughn asks him if he thinks it's possible to be in love with two women at the same time. "No," Weiss says. "You douche," I add. Sydney also, at around this time in the season, tells him that she won't ever be the other woman. In other words: make a decision.
He finally decides to leave Lauren. He tells Sydney this on a mission, and asks her if she wants to get a cup of coffee when they get back home. She says yes. They go home and find that Lauren's father has died. Vaughn decides not to leave her just yet. This is somewhat understandable. However, when he calls Sydney to tell her this, she's all, "I guess we're not getting that cup of coffee, then." Him: "No. We're not." No further explanation.
Basically, my whole problem with his behavior is that while it is understandable that Vaughn would feel conflicted in this scenario, the writers of the show don't really give him enough opportunities to explain his feelings, so he just comes across as indecisive. I think it could have been handled better.
Things get a little more interesting when Vaughn discovers that Lauren is evil, a double agent, and just married to him in order to play him. Jack tells him that he can't let on that he knows. "What's plan B, because that's not going to happen?" Vaughn responds.
"I'm afraid you have no choice," Jack says.
"Why's that?"
"Because you're the one who married her."
This leads to a pretty awesome scene where Vaughn goes with Lauren to visit her mother, only he's really supposed to break into the safe and steal something, so Sydney and Marshall (Kevin Weisman) are listening on comms. Lauren comes in and almost catches him. He pretends he was just looking at their wedding pictures. She says that their wedding day was the happiest of her life, and asks if they could ever be that happy again. She kisses him, and he says that's a start. She goes for his pants, and Vaughn gets this great look on his face (that she can't see) like, "I can't BELIEVE I have to do this." Sydney takes out her earpiece and storms off. The reasons I like this scene are 1) great acting on Michael Vartan's part and 2) it's the first time we've seen Vaughn, who has been pretty squeaky clean up to this point in the series, do something kind of dirty.
That, I think, was one of the points of this horrible, horrible storyline: to give Vaughn some depth and draw a parallel between him and Jack, whose wife was also a double-agent who double-crossed him. Vaughn is Jack before life beat Jack down; Vaughn doesn't become as cold and hard as Jack because he has Sydney to help him through everything. So, I understand the point of Season Three. I just feel like they could have done something more subtle to accomplish the same things.
That said, all of this leads to some great character-developing moments in Season Four. Again, I know some people who stopped watching in Season Three, but if they did that, they missed the following awesomeness in Seasons Four and Five (in no particular order):
1) the episode where Vaughn goes undercover as a priest. In the course of hearing a confession, he winds up indirectly telling the story of what happened with Lauren (for those who don't know, he kills her at the end of the third season. It's basically to save Sydney-- she's holding Sydney at gunpoint at the time-- but at the same time, he fully knows that he could have found another way. He wanted to kill her. Understandably, he feels some guilt over this.) It's super moving, and since Sydney is listening on comms during the whole thing, it helps her understand what he's been through. It's great.
2) the Welcome to Liberty Village episode, where Vaughn and Sydney go undercover in a village where Russians are being trained to act like Americans. They keep being told they aren't acting American enough. Vaughn has occasion to tell the story of how he would have proposed to Sydney if things hadn't gone all to hell at the end of the second season. Sydney falls in love with him all over again. They make love in the shower. Once again: it's great.
3) the episode where Sydney gets bitten and infected with a disease that makes her super paranoid. Basically, it brings her worst fears-- that neither Vaughn nor Jack will ever really love her because she reminds them too much of her mother, plus her fear that she can't trust Vaughn since he married Lauren-- to the forefront. Again: great.
4) the storyline where Vaughn thinks his father is still alive.
5) an awesome Season Five episode where Sydney is kidnapped and scientists are tapping into her memories/fantasies to try to get information. This leads to the re-creation of a number of key moments from the series. For example, they recreate the scene from Season One where Vaughn tells her that she can't let the darkness she sees every day drag her down. This time, though, she tells Vaughn (who has had occasion to fake his own death, at this point) that it was he who saved her, and she doesn't know how to do this without him. He very firmly tells her that he knows now that she was always the one who was saving him, not the other way around. It's beautiful.
6) the end, when they flash forward several years. Sydney and Vaughn are living on a beach in a remote location with their children, Isabelle and Jack. Dixon shows up and enlists her to go on another mission. Back in her bedroom, Isabelle is putting together a puzzle that we know Sydney could put together as a child, and that proved her abilities as a spy. Isabelle completes the puzzle...and then knocks it down before anyone sees. She could be a spy, but she's probably not going to be.
I was also just reminded, watching the series again even in this fragmented, bits-and-pieces way, how EXCITING this show could be. For example: through much of Season Five, we are led to believe that Vaughn is dead; we learn near the end of the season that Jack helped him fake his death, and that Sydney was in on the secret. Now, I suspected all along that Vaughn wasn't really dead, and obviously I knew this for sure when I rewatched the Sydney and Vaughn scenes. And yet. That moment where we see a man say, "There is good news. You have a daughter," and they CUT TO VAUGHN, ALIVE AND WELL? Even rewatching, I gasped. That's the end of that episode, and the credits come up: Special Guest Star, Michael Vartan as Agent Vaughn, and-- again, even rewatching-- I shouted, "Hell, yeah!" This show was an emotional rollercoaster from beginning to end, and I loved it.
Bottom line: in spite of an extremely questionable third season and the addition of some stupid new characters in Season Five, I still think it was a really solid show. When, at the end of the fifth season, it flashed on the screen, "Thank you for five incredible years," I was like, "No. Thank you." Good show, Alias.
P.S. I'm rewatching the Season Two episode with Ethan Hawke in it. I had forgotten that he was ever even on this show, but rewatching it, I remember how they showed him and Sydney kissing in the preview for the episode and everyone was all up in arms, like, "What about Vaughn?!" I probably was, too. Then when you watch the actual episode, you see that Ethan Hawke is drunk when it happens and the kiss is completely one-sided. Oh, ABC! Getting everyone all worked up with your crafty advertising!
P.P.S. Hey, remember when Anna Espinosa "doubled" herself to look and sound like Sydney? And there was that awesome, awesome scene where Anna-as-Sydney and Sydney come face to face with each other (both are played by Jennifer Garner, of course), and Anna's all, "I have to go. I have a date. I don't know exactly what I'm going to do with your boyfriend, but it's sure going to be fun." And then she throws a match into the wreckage of the car Sydney is trapped in and walks off, smirking as it catches fire. AWESOME. Later, Vaughn realizes that the woman he's with isn't really Sydney, and they beat the shit out of each other. I shouldn't have found that so fun, but-- under what other circumstances would Vaughn and Syd ever physically fight? And it's not really Sydney, of course, but it's still Jennifer Garner, so-- I got a kick out of it.
This past week, I discovered that someone edited together many of Sydney (Jennifer Garner) and Vaughn's (Michael Vartan's) key moments and posted them on Youtube. Posted below is the first series of clips; if you're interested in more, they're pretty easy to find from there:
Anyway, this person did a pretty thorough job, though she left out some moments I really liked, including (but not limited to) Vaughn's description of how he would have proposed in the Liberty Village episode; all the stuff from the Season Two episode where Vaughn was being investigated and the CIA wanted Sydney to break into his computer; and Vaughn as an eyeliner-wearing goth in that one Season Three episode. I also would have liked more from the two-part episode where Vaughn thought his father might still be alive. I can't really complain, though, because altogether this person put together something like four to five HOURS of clips, which I watched over the course of a couple of days. While I liked a lot of things about Alias, Vaughn and Sydney's relationship was what got and kept me hooked, so it was fun to revisit their key moments, what, seven years after the show went off the air? Here are my thoughts:
I've had people tell me they stopped watching the show during the third season, and I will admit that things got pretty bad for awhile there. You'll remember that at the end of the second season, Sydney woke up in an alley in Taipei with no memory of how she'd gotten there or how long she'd been there, only to find that she had been missing and presumed dead for almost two years and that Vaughn had married an NSA agent named Lauren Reed (Melissa George) in her absence. Now, okay: while I found this sudden two year shift ridiculous and Vaughn's marriage unfortunate, I did not find it unbelievable that he would do this. He didn't break up with Alice, the girlfriend he had before Sydney, until the morning AFTER he and Sydney made out for the first time, indicating that the man cannot be alone for even one day. Of course he found someone else while she was gone. Also, he thought she was dead. Sydney was serious with Vaughn less than two years after Danny's death and probably would have gotten serious with him even sooner if circumstances had permitted, so I don't think she can blame him for moving on. In other words, while I wasn't exactly happy that this happened, I didn't necessarily think Vaughn had done anything that bad. I was still okay when he gave Sydney the whole speech where he told her he needed her to know two things: "One: I was so in love with you, it nearly killed me, and two: I don't regret moving on with my life." Fine. Understandable.
Rewatching all of this, I didn't start to have that much of a problem with any of Vaughn's actions until he started following Jack's (Victor Garber's) horrible advice. Vaughn and Sydney start going on missions together again, and of course all of the old feelings start to come back, and of course Jack notices before either Vaughn or Sydney acknowledge it. This prompts Jack to give Vaughn this whole lecture about how "I will not allow my daughter to become your mistress," so Vaughn should "push her away. Be cruel, if you have to. Make her despise you. Because your kindness TORTURES her. And I won't have it."
What Vaughn should have taken away from this was that he needed to let Sydney move on. There are a number of ways he could have done so. He chooses the Worst Possible Way Ever, which is to just start acting like a dick for no apparent reason. This lasts not even a whole episode, because Vaughn and Sydney soon find themselves in a near-death situation. He quickly apologizes and says that he just doesn't know how to be with her anymore. She says she understands. The two of them are going to be put to death by firing squad. He tells her, "Sydney, in my life, there is only one person--" She cuts him off: "We'll find each other. We always find each other." They kiss.
They do not die by firing squad. And when they get back to CIA headquarters, he literally RUNS RIGHT INTO LAUREN'S ARMS WITH NO EXPLANATION TO SYDNEY WHATSOEVER. The hell, Vaughn?
He then proceeds to start acting wishy-washy about who he wants to be with. Fortunately, neither Weiss nor Sydney will abide this nonsense. Weiss (Greg Grunberg) flat out tells him, "I'm not going to tell you to stay in a loveless marriage, and I'm also not going to tell you to leave your wife for another woman." Vaughn asks him if he thinks it's possible to be in love with two women at the same time. "No," Weiss says. "You douche," I add. Sydney also, at around this time in the season, tells him that she won't ever be the other woman. In other words: make a decision.
He finally decides to leave Lauren. He tells Sydney this on a mission, and asks her if she wants to get a cup of coffee when they get back home. She says yes. They go home and find that Lauren's father has died. Vaughn decides not to leave her just yet. This is somewhat understandable. However, when he calls Sydney to tell her this, she's all, "I guess we're not getting that cup of coffee, then." Him: "No. We're not." No further explanation.
Basically, my whole problem with his behavior is that while it is understandable that Vaughn would feel conflicted in this scenario, the writers of the show don't really give him enough opportunities to explain his feelings, so he just comes across as indecisive. I think it could have been handled better.
Things get a little more interesting when Vaughn discovers that Lauren is evil, a double agent, and just married to him in order to play him. Jack tells him that he can't let on that he knows. "What's plan B, because that's not going to happen?" Vaughn responds.
"I'm afraid you have no choice," Jack says.
"Why's that?"
"Because you're the one who married her."
This leads to a pretty awesome scene where Vaughn goes with Lauren to visit her mother, only he's really supposed to break into the safe and steal something, so Sydney and Marshall (Kevin Weisman) are listening on comms. Lauren comes in and almost catches him. He pretends he was just looking at their wedding pictures. She says that their wedding day was the happiest of her life, and asks if they could ever be that happy again. She kisses him, and he says that's a start. She goes for his pants, and Vaughn gets this great look on his face (that she can't see) like, "I can't BELIEVE I have to do this." Sydney takes out her earpiece and storms off. The reasons I like this scene are 1) great acting on Michael Vartan's part and 2) it's the first time we've seen Vaughn, who has been pretty squeaky clean up to this point in the series, do something kind of dirty.
That, I think, was one of the points of this horrible, horrible storyline: to give Vaughn some depth and draw a parallel between him and Jack, whose wife was also a double-agent who double-crossed him. Vaughn is Jack before life beat Jack down; Vaughn doesn't become as cold and hard as Jack because he has Sydney to help him through everything. So, I understand the point of Season Three. I just feel like they could have done something more subtle to accomplish the same things.
That said, all of this leads to some great character-developing moments in Season Four. Again, I know some people who stopped watching in Season Three, but if they did that, they missed the following awesomeness in Seasons Four and Five (in no particular order):
1) the episode where Vaughn goes undercover as a priest. In the course of hearing a confession, he winds up indirectly telling the story of what happened with Lauren (for those who don't know, he kills her at the end of the third season. It's basically to save Sydney-- she's holding Sydney at gunpoint at the time-- but at the same time, he fully knows that he could have found another way. He wanted to kill her. Understandably, he feels some guilt over this.) It's super moving, and since Sydney is listening on comms during the whole thing, it helps her understand what he's been through. It's great.
2) the Welcome to Liberty Village episode, where Vaughn and Sydney go undercover in a village where Russians are being trained to act like Americans. They keep being told they aren't acting American enough. Vaughn has occasion to tell the story of how he would have proposed to Sydney if things hadn't gone all to hell at the end of the second season. Sydney falls in love with him all over again. They make love in the shower. Once again: it's great.
3) the episode where Sydney gets bitten and infected with a disease that makes her super paranoid. Basically, it brings her worst fears-- that neither Vaughn nor Jack will ever really love her because she reminds them too much of her mother, plus her fear that she can't trust Vaughn since he married Lauren-- to the forefront. Again: great.
4) the storyline where Vaughn thinks his father is still alive.
5) an awesome Season Five episode where Sydney is kidnapped and scientists are tapping into her memories/fantasies to try to get information. This leads to the re-creation of a number of key moments from the series. For example, they recreate the scene from Season One where Vaughn tells her that she can't let the darkness she sees every day drag her down. This time, though, she tells Vaughn (who has had occasion to fake his own death, at this point) that it was he who saved her, and she doesn't know how to do this without him. He very firmly tells her that he knows now that she was always the one who was saving him, not the other way around. It's beautiful.
6) the end, when they flash forward several years. Sydney and Vaughn are living on a beach in a remote location with their children, Isabelle and Jack. Dixon shows up and enlists her to go on another mission. Back in her bedroom, Isabelle is putting together a puzzle that we know Sydney could put together as a child, and that proved her abilities as a spy. Isabelle completes the puzzle...and then knocks it down before anyone sees. She could be a spy, but she's probably not going to be.
I was also just reminded, watching the series again even in this fragmented, bits-and-pieces way, how EXCITING this show could be. For example: through much of Season Five, we are led to believe that Vaughn is dead; we learn near the end of the season that Jack helped him fake his death, and that Sydney was in on the secret. Now, I suspected all along that Vaughn wasn't really dead, and obviously I knew this for sure when I rewatched the Sydney and Vaughn scenes. And yet. That moment where we see a man say, "There is good news. You have a daughter," and they CUT TO VAUGHN, ALIVE AND WELL? Even rewatching, I gasped. That's the end of that episode, and the credits come up: Special Guest Star, Michael Vartan as Agent Vaughn, and-- again, even rewatching-- I shouted, "Hell, yeah!" This show was an emotional rollercoaster from beginning to end, and I loved it.
Bottom line: in spite of an extremely questionable third season and the addition of some stupid new characters in Season Five, I still think it was a really solid show. When, at the end of the fifth season, it flashed on the screen, "Thank you for five incredible years," I was like, "No. Thank you." Good show, Alias.
P.S. I'm rewatching the Season Two episode with Ethan Hawke in it. I had forgotten that he was ever even on this show, but rewatching it, I remember how they showed him and Sydney kissing in the preview for the episode and everyone was all up in arms, like, "What about Vaughn?!" I probably was, too. Then when you watch the actual episode, you see that Ethan Hawke is drunk when it happens and the kiss is completely one-sided. Oh, ABC! Getting everyone all worked up with your crafty advertising!
P.P.S. Hey, remember when Anna Espinosa "doubled" herself to look and sound like Sydney? And there was that awesome, awesome scene where Anna-as-Sydney and Sydney come face to face with each other (both are played by Jennifer Garner, of course), and Anna's all, "I have to go. I have a date. I don't know exactly what I'm going to do with your boyfriend, but it's sure going to be fun." And then she throws a match into the wreckage of the car Sydney is trapped in and walks off, smirking as it catches fire. AWESOME. Later, Vaughn realizes that the woman he's with isn't really Sydney, and they beat the shit out of each other. I shouldn't have found that so fun, but-- under what other circumstances would Vaughn and Syd ever physically fight? And it's not really Sydney, of course, but it's still Jennifer Garner, so-- I got a kick out of it.
Saturday, August 10, 2013
thoughts on The To Do List (spoilers)
Aubrey Plaza plays Brandy Klark, a high school valedictorian who panics when she realizes, during a drunken graduation night make-out session, that she has no idea what she's doing when it comes to guys and sex. This confuses her, since, as she tells her friends Wendy and Fiona (Sarah Steele and Alia Shawkat), she normally always knows what to do in her daily life. She's an interesting character, this Brandy. She's super studious and considered nerdy, but she doesn't lack confidence; on graduation night, she seems genuinely excited to attend an all-night graduation party hosted by Mormons (this movie takes place in Boise, Idaho, BTW), and is genuinely irritated when her friends take her to a kegger instead. I'm always super impressed by confident characters in teen films and TV shows, because I certainly wasn't confident at that age; I wanted to fit in and be included and felt super left out if I didn't get invited to something fun I knew was going on.
Anyway, following her embarrassing graduation night experience and a conversation in which her older sister, Amber (Rachel Bilson), convinces her that she needs to lose her virginity before going to college, Brandy puts together a "to do list" of sexual experiences she believes she must have over the summer. The list ends with having sex with Rusty Waters (Scott Porter, a.k.a. Jason Street from Friday Night Lights, here with some longish blonde surfer hair), the hot older guy she made out with on graduation night. She spends most of her time that summer working as a lifeguard at the pool, but her main priority is working on the list.
I mainly was interested in seeing this movie because of the cast, which includes two Friday Night Lights veterans (Porter and Connie Britton, who plays Brandy and Amber's mom), an O.C. veteran, and Bill Hader, who plays Brandy's boss at the pool. I enjoyed all of the performances, as well as the '90s nostalgia; this movie is set in 1993, the year I turned 14, and I certainly wore the scrunchies and flowered dresses and had my Caboodle, just like the girls in this movie. Wendy is moderately obsessed with the movie Beaches, and there is one scene where Brandy, Wendy, and Fiona make up from a fight by singing "Wind Beneath My Wings" to each other; we totally sang "Wind Beneath My Wings" in chorus when I was growing up. So, all of that was fun.
The most interesting thing about the movie, though, is Brandy. Let's talk about the to do list itself: no one does that. No one makes a chart of what sexual experiences they think they should have and goes about accomplishing them like it's a homework assignment. But Brandy does, surprisingly not at all timid about finding partners and performing the acts, but completely oblivious to the facts that 1) people's feelings might get hurt and 2) people might judge her harshly for what she is doing. Both of these things happen; Cameron (Johnny Simmons), her high school lab partner and coworker at the pool, is heartbroken when he finds her chart-- he thought she liked him, and that they were actually dating. Wendy is angry when Brandy accomplishes one of the acts with a guy she knows Wendy likes. The lesson of the movie is that sex doesn't necessarily have to mean everything, but it does mean something, and shouldn't be treated as just a checklist to be completed.
Though there is a lesson to be learned, here, I did appreciate that it wasn't overly heavy-handed, and that Brandy doesn't experience massive regrets about the entire experience. As she says, teenagers don't have regrets. She feels bad about hurting Cameron's feelings but doesn't suddenly decide that she's in love with him or that she should only have been fooling around with him. Sex with Rusty Waters (which, yes, spoiler alert, she eventually has) isn't all she hoped it would be, but she doesn't think she will regret losing her virginity to him-- as she says, he's hot, and he plays the guitar, and it'll be a great story to tell her friends. I liked that while she did mature a bit over the course of the movie, she didn't have some sudden turnaround at the end.
On a more minor note, I also enjoyed Connie Britton and Clark Gregg as Brandy and Amber's parents. Their dad is completely freaked out about the idea of his daughters having sex but manages to keep walking in on them doing it; he has only ever had sex with his wife and is a little crushed to learn that she had sex with other people before him. Their mom is open enough about talking about sex with her daughters to make me, personally-- and at times them-- a little uncomfortable.
As is perhaps expected from a teen sex comedy, there is some gross-out humor involved. I didn't mind most of it, but couldn't really deal with a scene where Brandy literally eats shit. Seriously: this is something that I have seen happen at least three times in movies but have never heard of happening in real life. Why? Why do movies have to go there?
In spite of that one regrettable scene, though, I liked the movie as a whole. Good performances, good characters, decent story.
Anyway, following her embarrassing graduation night experience and a conversation in which her older sister, Amber (Rachel Bilson), convinces her that she needs to lose her virginity before going to college, Brandy puts together a "to do list" of sexual experiences she believes she must have over the summer. The list ends with having sex with Rusty Waters (Scott Porter, a.k.a. Jason Street from Friday Night Lights, here with some longish blonde surfer hair), the hot older guy she made out with on graduation night. She spends most of her time that summer working as a lifeguard at the pool, but her main priority is working on the list.
I mainly was interested in seeing this movie because of the cast, which includes two Friday Night Lights veterans (Porter and Connie Britton, who plays Brandy and Amber's mom), an O.C. veteran, and Bill Hader, who plays Brandy's boss at the pool. I enjoyed all of the performances, as well as the '90s nostalgia; this movie is set in 1993, the year I turned 14, and I certainly wore the scrunchies and flowered dresses and had my Caboodle, just like the girls in this movie. Wendy is moderately obsessed with the movie Beaches, and there is one scene where Brandy, Wendy, and Fiona make up from a fight by singing "Wind Beneath My Wings" to each other; we totally sang "Wind Beneath My Wings" in chorus when I was growing up. So, all of that was fun.
The most interesting thing about the movie, though, is Brandy. Let's talk about the to do list itself: no one does that. No one makes a chart of what sexual experiences they think they should have and goes about accomplishing them like it's a homework assignment. But Brandy does, surprisingly not at all timid about finding partners and performing the acts, but completely oblivious to the facts that 1) people's feelings might get hurt and 2) people might judge her harshly for what she is doing. Both of these things happen; Cameron (Johnny Simmons), her high school lab partner and coworker at the pool, is heartbroken when he finds her chart-- he thought she liked him, and that they were actually dating. Wendy is angry when Brandy accomplishes one of the acts with a guy she knows Wendy likes. The lesson of the movie is that sex doesn't necessarily have to mean everything, but it does mean something, and shouldn't be treated as just a checklist to be completed.
Though there is a lesson to be learned, here, I did appreciate that it wasn't overly heavy-handed, and that Brandy doesn't experience massive regrets about the entire experience. As she says, teenagers don't have regrets. She feels bad about hurting Cameron's feelings but doesn't suddenly decide that she's in love with him or that she should only have been fooling around with him. Sex with Rusty Waters (which, yes, spoiler alert, she eventually has) isn't all she hoped it would be, but she doesn't think she will regret losing her virginity to him-- as she says, he's hot, and he plays the guitar, and it'll be a great story to tell her friends. I liked that while she did mature a bit over the course of the movie, she didn't have some sudden turnaround at the end.
On a more minor note, I also enjoyed Connie Britton and Clark Gregg as Brandy and Amber's parents. Their dad is completely freaked out about the idea of his daughters having sex but manages to keep walking in on them doing it; he has only ever had sex with his wife and is a little crushed to learn that she had sex with other people before him. Their mom is open enough about talking about sex with her daughters to make me, personally-- and at times them-- a little uncomfortable.
As is perhaps expected from a teen sex comedy, there is some gross-out humor involved. I didn't mind most of it, but couldn't really deal with a scene where Brandy literally eats shit. Seriously: this is something that I have seen happen at least three times in movies but have never heard of happening in real life. Why? Why do movies have to go there?
In spite of that one regrettable scene, though, I liked the movie as a whole. Good performances, good characters, decent story.
Monday, August 5, 2013
Netflix update/Scandal Season One (spoilers)
After trying to watch Parks and Rec, which didn't really hold my interest, I decided to check out Scandal. The first season was only seven episodes long; I see that the second season is available on Hulu, so I may get to see it sooner rather than later.
I enjoyed the first season. I didn't think it was great.
In the first episode, Quinn Perkins (Katie Lowes) is recruited to work for a place that she is told is not a law firm, although the people who work there are lawyers. Basically, what the firm does is manage crises; for example, in one early episode, the President of the United States has a certain person in mind to be his Supreme Court nominee, only he knows that this person has slept with a prostitute. The firm's job is to keep this information from coming out. We also start to get to know the characters in the first episode; for example, Stephen (Henry Ian Cusick), one of Quinn's new co-workers, contemplates getting engaged, and his boss, Olivia Pope (Kerry Washington) encourages him to do it: "Normal people get married."
"You don't even date," he reminds her.
"I'm not normal," she responds. We find out by the end of the first episode that, in fact, she has recently had an affair with the President (Tony Goldwyn, who I mainly remember from Ghost). They were (are?) in love, but she broke things off because of the obvious risks; she is very hurt to learn (also in the first episode) that he slept with a low-level staffer (Amanda Tanner, played by Liza Weil, a.k.a. Paris Gellar from Gilmore Girls). The first season of the show revolves around the fallout of President Grant's discretion with Amanda. First, Amanda says she's going to go public with what happened. Later, she reveals that she's pregnant. Eventually (big time spoiler alert!), she is murdered. This opens up a host of questions: Who did it? Did the President have anything to do with the murder? If not, who is out to get the President? Was the baby even his? What will happen if (or when) the public learns of all of this?
I liked the first season for a couple of reasons. The first is simply the "naughty fun" factor; the very first episode had me gasping out loud, and that happened a lot throughout the first season. The second reason is that the show does a pretty good job of developing the "good" characters throughout the first season; everyone who works for Olivia has some sort of past, and we learn the details about these pasts slowly, and only as necessary.
There is also a fantastic episode ("The Trail") that flashes back to the beginning of President Grant and Olivia's affair and makes the whole thing seem very plausible and understandable. We learn about the then-President-to-be's loveless marriage to Mellie (Bellamy Young), who is ambitious, smarter than him (first in her class at Harvard Law, where they met), and pretty much the personification of pure evil. We see the INSANE chemistry between the President and Olivia. Seriously: there is one moment before they have ever even slept together when he tells her that he just wants to have one minute where it's just the two of them, and they're literally just standing very close and looking at each other, and it is HOT. On the night that they sleep together for the first time, he tells her that he wishes he'd met her sooner: "What kind of a coward was I to marry her and not wait for you to show up?" He asks her to call her by his first name (Fitz), which she tells him would be inappropriate; when, after an insanely long moment of silence, she eventually does, and they simply quietly reach for each other's hands, it feels explosive. When they sleep together, it feels inevitable and unavoidable. It is an extremely well-done episode, well-written and well-acted; up until that point, we haven't seen much of them together, and their relationship is an extremely tough sell, what with him being, you know, MARRIED AND THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES and all. That episode, though, establishes how Olivia is different from Amanda; makes us stop feeling sorry for Mellie; and makes us kind of root for Olivia and Fitz in spite of ourselves.
In spite of fantastic episodes like this, here is why I don't think the show is great (or at least, wasn't by the end of the first season. I reserve the right to change my mind). Most of the "bad" characters-- for example, Mellie and Billy Chambers (Matt Letscher), the mastermind behind the Amanda scandal-- are just completely over-the-top evil. Mellie is the type of person who doesn't really care if her husband is having an affair as long as he is discreet about it and who is capable of making up a pregnancy and miscarriage on the spot during a TV interview because she thinks it will make her and her husband look more sympathetic to voters. Billy, meanwhile, literally stabs someone in the neck with a pair of scissors. All of this *could* be believable; I could imagine Robin Wright and Kevin Spacey's characters on House of Cards doing the same things, actually. But Mellie and Billy are so forthright about how evil they are, and give long speeches explaining everything they're doing and why. I just think they could be written and played a bit more subtly. Everyone, for that matter, talks a little bit too much about what they're doing, or what they're going to do; for example, a journalist actually tells Billy exactly what he knows about him and that he's going to reveal it. Why would he do this? So Billy can stab him in the neck, apparently. I think that House of Cards set the bar pretty high for how to handle this type of stuff, but sometimes I'm just like, "You can do better than this, Show."
In spite of THAT, though, I did enjoy this show quite a bit, and I plan to keep watching it. It's good, and I think it can be even better.
I enjoyed the first season. I didn't think it was great.
In the first episode, Quinn Perkins (Katie Lowes) is recruited to work for a place that she is told is not a law firm, although the people who work there are lawyers. Basically, what the firm does is manage crises; for example, in one early episode, the President of the United States has a certain person in mind to be his Supreme Court nominee, only he knows that this person has slept with a prostitute. The firm's job is to keep this information from coming out. We also start to get to know the characters in the first episode; for example, Stephen (Henry Ian Cusick), one of Quinn's new co-workers, contemplates getting engaged, and his boss, Olivia Pope (Kerry Washington) encourages him to do it: "Normal people get married."
"You don't even date," he reminds her.
"I'm not normal," she responds. We find out by the end of the first episode that, in fact, she has recently had an affair with the President (Tony Goldwyn, who I mainly remember from Ghost). They were (are?) in love, but she broke things off because of the obvious risks; she is very hurt to learn (also in the first episode) that he slept with a low-level staffer (Amanda Tanner, played by Liza Weil, a.k.a. Paris Gellar from Gilmore Girls). The first season of the show revolves around the fallout of President Grant's discretion with Amanda. First, Amanda says she's going to go public with what happened. Later, she reveals that she's pregnant. Eventually (big time spoiler alert!), she is murdered. This opens up a host of questions: Who did it? Did the President have anything to do with the murder? If not, who is out to get the President? Was the baby even his? What will happen if (or when) the public learns of all of this?
I liked the first season for a couple of reasons. The first is simply the "naughty fun" factor; the very first episode had me gasping out loud, and that happened a lot throughout the first season. The second reason is that the show does a pretty good job of developing the "good" characters throughout the first season; everyone who works for Olivia has some sort of past, and we learn the details about these pasts slowly, and only as necessary.
There is also a fantastic episode ("The Trail") that flashes back to the beginning of President Grant and Olivia's affair and makes the whole thing seem very plausible and understandable. We learn about the then-President-to-be's loveless marriage to Mellie (Bellamy Young), who is ambitious, smarter than him (first in her class at Harvard Law, where they met), and pretty much the personification of pure evil. We see the INSANE chemistry between the President and Olivia. Seriously: there is one moment before they have ever even slept together when he tells her that he just wants to have one minute where it's just the two of them, and they're literally just standing very close and looking at each other, and it is HOT. On the night that they sleep together for the first time, he tells her that he wishes he'd met her sooner: "What kind of a coward was I to marry her and not wait for you to show up?" He asks her to call her by his first name (Fitz), which she tells him would be inappropriate; when, after an insanely long moment of silence, she eventually does, and they simply quietly reach for each other's hands, it feels explosive. When they sleep together, it feels inevitable and unavoidable. It is an extremely well-done episode, well-written and well-acted; up until that point, we haven't seen much of them together, and their relationship is an extremely tough sell, what with him being, you know, MARRIED AND THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES and all. That episode, though, establishes how Olivia is different from Amanda; makes us stop feeling sorry for Mellie; and makes us kind of root for Olivia and Fitz in spite of ourselves.
In spite of fantastic episodes like this, here is why I don't think the show is great (or at least, wasn't by the end of the first season. I reserve the right to change my mind). Most of the "bad" characters-- for example, Mellie and Billy Chambers (Matt Letscher), the mastermind behind the Amanda scandal-- are just completely over-the-top evil. Mellie is the type of person who doesn't really care if her husband is having an affair as long as he is discreet about it and who is capable of making up a pregnancy and miscarriage on the spot during a TV interview because she thinks it will make her and her husband look more sympathetic to voters. Billy, meanwhile, literally stabs someone in the neck with a pair of scissors. All of this *could* be believable; I could imagine Robin Wright and Kevin Spacey's characters on House of Cards doing the same things, actually. But Mellie and Billy are so forthright about how evil they are, and give long speeches explaining everything they're doing and why. I just think they could be written and played a bit more subtly. Everyone, for that matter, talks a little bit too much about what they're doing, or what they're going to do; for example, a journalist actually tells Billy exactly what he knows about him and that he's going to reveal it. Why would he do this? So Billy can stab him in the neck, apparently. I think that House of Cards set the bar pretty high for how to handle this type of stuff, but sometimes I'm just like, "You can do better than this, Show."
In spite of THAT, though, I did enjoy this show quite a bit, and I plan to keep watching it. It's good, and I think it can be even better.
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