Chuck Season 2

Hurrah!

Without a Trace s6 ep 13

Ah, Agent Johnson.  Viv, if I may.  I understand.  I really do.  You get your first decent storyline in ages; it’s all heating up nicely and you’re about to crack your long-running story arc of a case when suddenly…..Of course.  He does it again.  Agent Jack “Did you forget? I told you! It’s all about ME.” Malone goes behind your back, with his usual flair for the stupid and reckless, stomps all over your nicely planned investigation, and gets himself into a whole sackful of danger.

I know, Viv, I know.  You keep plodding away, being the sensible one, trying to do things by the book, and this jackass jumps in with both feet - as usual, Viv, yes - and creates merry havoc.   So this week, you have to chase about looking for him, instead of basking in the limelight.

And suddenly the episode is all about trying to save Mr testosterone-for-brains, instead of being about you catching a seriously bad guy.

But you know, girlfriend - you took care of business anyway.  I noticed your hard work, even if the boss stole your thunder.  More power to you.  And maybe more good storylines.

Dexter s2 ep 7

As Dexter’s private life starts to spiral out of control - another word of advice, dude: by the time you start to find out they’re mad it’s TOO LATE - he’s trying to wrest back the advantage in the Bay Harbor Butcher case, adopting high-risk strategies to get rid of Doakes and to throw supercop Lundy off the scent.  One scheme, for now, is more successful than the other.

And it’s a big week in general for Lundy and this season’s other major newcomers.  I would estimate ‘Dexter’ as being two for three:  Keith Carradine as Lundy has been an unqualified success, and once again his scenes this week with Jennifer Carpenter as Deb have a touching and unforced chemistry.  Jaime Murray, as Lila, is peeling away the layers of her character with precision.  And she’s hot.  I’m less impressed with JoBeth Williams as Rita’s mother Gail - it’s not the fault of the actress exactly, but it’s a bit of a shame that ‘Dexter’ couldn’t sidestep the cliche of The Controlling Mother Who Comes To Stay.

Still, that’s just being picky; there aren’t many misjudgments on ‘Dexter’ as the moment.  The showrunners have the good sense to stick their top acting combinations in situations and let them get on with it, so as well as Lundy and Deb we have a fantastic Dexter/Doakes showdown, and with Lila now wandering in and out of everyone’s lives, behaving like a human iPod on shuffle, it could all go any which way.

Reign Over Me (2007)

The artistic response to 9/11 and its aftermath has been somewhat hesitant in coming, perhaps because we are still very much in that aftermath and a coherent response will be easier when distance lends perspective.  This strangely compelling film betrays some of that confusion.  It stars Adam Sandler as Charlie Fineman, one-time New York dentist, now deep in the throes of post-traumatic stress, his wife and family having been on one of the 9/11 planes.  He whiles away his time roaming the city on a motorised scooter, headphones clamped on.  One day his old college roommate Alan Johnson (Don Cheadle) spots him, catches up with him, and tries to re-engage him with the world.  Johnson, with a beautiful but somewhat controlling wife (Jada Pinkett Smith), initially finds Fineman’s freewheeling lifestyle superficially attractive, and the two of them start to hang out, playing computer games and jamming to Springsteen records.  As might be expected, though, while Fineman’s problems take a lot of solving it gives those around him an opportunity to look at their own lives.

Don Cheadle is understated and excellent.  Adam Sandler is an actor I detest in his comedies - his persona there is charmless and repellent, and he’s responsible for some of the most appalling comedies in the history of cinema (I’m thinking here of ‘Billy Madison’ and ‘Happy Gilmore’ in particular.  No doubt you will have your own candidates).  But as he showed in the wildly exciting ‘Punch-Drunk Love’ he’s got some game when it comes to serious roles, and he’s good here, resisting the temptation to overplay the shambling Fineman.

This film has a lot of strengths but it’s flawed, and one of its major problems is that it appears unsure of its tone: it veers wildly between comedy and drama, with some significant plot threads sitting uncomfortably in the middle.  Now let it be said that I love “dramedy” - but dramedy must be secure in its identity to work, and I was never convinced that writer-director Mike Binder (responsible for the screenplay of the wonderful ‘Coupe de Ville’) had made up his own mind what he wanted to do.  And into that is dropped a major miscalculation in the shape of a plotline about Johnson being wrongly accused of sexually harassing a patient (Saffron Burrows).  The way in which Burrows’s character is used throughout the film is a precise illustration of the uncertainty I’m talking about, and the culmination of that is so absurd that it threatens to unbalance the whole film, particularly given that the big set piece ending - a courtroom scene - feels a little forced.  On the whole, though, this is a thoughtful and modestly optimistic film which is well worth a look.

TV Festival Round-Up: Terrestrial TV Talk

TV bigwigs have been out in force at the Edinburgh International TV Festival over the weekend, with the ITV director of programmes picking a fight with Ofcom, C4 announcing a raft of theoretically worthy programmes I don’t want to watch, and Five going all serious on us, all of a sudden.

The oddest piece of juxtaposition though came from BBC1 and BBC2.  BBC1’s controller declared that it should be aiming for a “contemporary and modern” feel, while BBC2 is clearly untroubled by such concerns - it announced it was bringing back Rab C Nesbitt.

MTV’s Model Maker

Girlfriends.  This show may be a good idea for ratings, but it’s a bad idea for us and our health.  Let’s not, eh?

The West Wing: The Santos Administration

I’ve never come across The Onion before, so for a moment, I thought this was true.   My joy was brief, but boundless.  Then I noticed the “story” at the bottom of the page about “Michael Phelps return(ing) to his tank at Sea World”, and I caught on.  Now, I’m disappointed.

But….um, could somebody make the cartoon anyway?  Please?  I really want to see it now, and it’s cruel to dangle that dream in front of me and then SNATCH it away.

The Olympics

Everyone I know, nay, everyone in the tv-watching world seems to be obssessed with the Olympics. 

People keep asking me did I watch so-and-so win this-or-that.  BBC1’s ratings have hit the roof as a result of its coverage.  And yet I find myself completely uninterested in the prospect of watching folk run, jump, row, swim or whatever it is they happen to be doing really fast at any given time.  I just don’t DO sport, tv or otherwise.  Never really have, never really likely to.  Sure, there was the odd flirtation with Wimbledon when I was young enough to be proud of understanding the scoring system (you know, calling 0 “Love”, and 40-40 “Deuce” is actually just a little odd), but since then, my lack of interest in anything involving races, balls or training shoes is pretty comprehensive. 

I know I’m in the minority here, but attaching a snazzy five-ring logo to it and broadcasting it in the format of a never-ending school sports day is not going to draw me in.

People keep pointing out to me the hard work of the runners, swimmers, cyclists et al.  People keep suggesting that I should take pride in their achievements.  People, I am not their mother.  Well done to everyone who’s doing well in their chosen field, I don’t doubt you have worked really hard, your events are really gruelling, and you deserve all the credit in the world, you really do, but it’s still sport.  I understand sport has a great capacity for bringing people together, just as much as dividing them, but essentially, to me, it’s people doing extreme P.E.  I spent far too much time doing my best to get out of it as a child to enjoy watching it now.

Without a Trace s6 ep 12

The sight of various disembodied limbs at the start of this episode gave me a bit of a shock, but the threat of gruesomeness receded very quickly when it became clear these were prosthetics and this was a mystery centred around the disappearance of a woman working in an army veterans’ hospital. 

This was well-plotted with some interesting themes, but I did feel that the big emotional moments fell a bit flat.  The guest characters just seemed a bit too much like symbols, all there to make a bigger point, rather than characters in their own rights.  The missing woman, her Vietnam vet father, and the soldiers being treated in the hospital she worked in, were all used to trot out messages that plenty of shows, and indeed WAT itself, have conveyed in the past to stronger effect.  Perhaps because of that, my understanding of the missing woman in particular suffered more than usual from the plot twists - the different motivations attributed to her at different points made it quite difficult to get a handle on her “true” character, if she had one, and much more difficult to empathise with her. 

A little distraction was provided by Vivien’s ongoing sub-plot involving the hunt for the sex-trafficker/serial kidnapper, with Viv’s task-force partner Detective Grant Mars, played by recurring guest star James Marsters, giving her some grief.  Viv is not a woman to take this lightly, but Det Mars is not a man to take a telling either.  I don’t know if Mars will be back, but as I’ve said before, I hope this story will.

The Woodsman (2004)

This chamber-piece of a film is not an easy sell, but I’m going to try anyway.  Walter (Kevin Bacon), freed prisoner, arrives in a low-key, unglamorous, blue-collar Philadephia community and gets a job in a woodmill.  He embarks on a tentative relationship with Vicki (Kyra Sedgwick - low-key, unglamorous, blue-collar).   It transpires that Walter served twelve years in prison for sexually abusing children; he confesses this to Vicki, who, perhaps sensing some capacity in him for good, does not abandon him.

Lucas (Mos Def), a local cop, doesn’t let him forget his past, and a diligent employee at the woodmill unearths it, telling her co-workers; meantime, part of Walter is still drawn to children, much as he tries to resist it, and from his window he can see another man (who he names “Candy”) apparently trying to tempt children away from a nearby school.  There is a dreadful sense of impending tragedy throughout the film, and while I won’t say too much about the ending, I will say that a scene towards the end in which Walter converses with an 11 year old girl called Robin (played with heartbreaking perfection by Hannah Pilkes) is one of the most heart-stopping, tension-wracked scenes I have ever viewed.

The acting throughout is sensational.  Bacon’s performance feels both miraculous and real: brimming with self-loathing and wrestling with temptation, he resists the easy option of making an unsympathetic character too likeable or diabolical.  The way in which the hunched, monosyllabic Walter seems to open up when in the company of a child is both harrowing and astonishing.  Sedgwick, married to Bacon in real life, makes the most of her part; Mos Def is electrifying in his handful of scenes.

There’s only one misjudgment of tone: when ”Candy”’s  attempt to get a boy into his car is given a sporting-commentary voiceover.  Otherwise,  first-time director Nicole Kassell’s handling of difficult material is flawless, and the camerawork superb without being flashy.

Without an obvious audience ’The Woodsman’  didn’t make much of a splash at the box office, but one would like to think that all responsible will be able to look back on it with pride.  They should.  This is a fantastic film.