The New World: Redefining Cinematic Language

To celebrate thanksgiving, I rewatched Terence Malick's The New World. I saw the film last New Year's Eve and loved it. I was really disappointed to see the film get critically savaged, but thankfully a small online cult of admirers has risen up, and I think future viewers will rank the film right alongside Malick's 70s work. I think it's easily his best movie, and also one of the greatest films of all time.

The thing I love about the film is the way it thoroughly immerses you in a world. Most films are designed to tell a story, and they use a language that was codified in the classical Hollywood era. Films may be paced faster and less narratively cohesive than they were then, but it's still the same basic structures, shot/reverse shot dialogue, and all style and technique designed to move the narrative forward. It's like this is what film must do, and you very rarely see films that manage to tell a story in a totally different way. The New World is one of them.

Days of Heaven was Malick's first masterpiece, a film that was revolutionary in its focus on visual storytelling. There's very little dialogue in his work, rather, he uses music and voiceover to convey meaning. He's at his best when working with very simple stories, one of the reasons The Thin Red Line is his weakest film is that there's too many characters and events, no chance to just get lost in the emotion of the moment. In The New World, the story is a simple cultural myth, and that means most of the basic work is done for him. Doing a straight adaptation of the Pocohontas story would be horribly misguided because we already know what will happen. To try to build tension in traditional ways just wouldn't work. Because we already know what happens, Malick chooses to focus on immersing us in the world, and making us feel what these characters felt at the time.

In doing so, Malick helps to pioneer a new time of filmmaking that has emerged in the past ten years or so. I think the originator is Wong Kar-Wai, a director whose mid 90s work uses incredibly over the top stylistic techniques to construct uniquely emotional moments. I think Fallen Angels is the most beautifully shot movie of all time because not only are the shots well composed and aesthetically pleasing, each frame illuminates the characters' emotions. The best moments in film are almost always about a fusion of visual and music, and virtually every moment in The New World is just that, a visual narrative with musical accompaniment designed to create an emotional reaction. This is his goal with every moment of the movie, to make you feel. The voiceovers aren't so much about conveying information, it's a spell designed to immerse you in the world the characters are experiencing.

As the film opens, Pocohontas says "Come spirit, let me sing the story of this world," invoking a mystical storytelling power to help create a reality. This is very much in line with what Alan Moore or David Lynch talk about, the idea that the storyteller is a vessel through which some the collective unconscious expresses itself. The editing of the film makes you feel that you're being taken on a kind of hallucinatory journey, experiencing many years of history in a state of reverie. It uses dreamlogic or drug logic, moments stringing together outside of time, rising and falling like music.

The best example of this is near the beginning of the film, after Smith is spared. We experience the essence of his relationship with Pocohontas through a series of perfectly chosen moments. What makes it different than a typical montage is the way the characters seem to step outside of time. The events are arranged into a beautiful pattern of rising emotion, culminating in the unbelievable shot in which the camera rotates around Pocohontas, lightning crashing on the shores behind her. To watch the sequence is like experiencing a compressed dose of pure love, the sequence is a dream of a world that could be, and we spend the rest of the film wanting to return to this pure state.

We finally return there at the end of the film, when Pocohontas comes to terms with the loss of the life she had. The film is largely concerned with growing up, and in her son, she sees the same sense of wonder that she once had. Running through the garden, she rediscovers the passion, culminating in the fantastic scene where she cartwheels across the grass in her formal dress. With the music swelling, we experience her death not as sadness, but as passage, a return to whence she came, and it is good. The editing returns us to that moment we thought lost.

A lot of complaints about The New World claim that it was all style, no substance. In cinema, style is the substance. No other medium can so thoroughly affect your perception and immerse you in a completely different world. This film made me feel like I was there at the birth of contemporary America, and through it, I understood the conflicting emotions they felt at the time. That is a more substantial experience than comes from passive engagement with a traditional narrative. Most films are concerned with making you feel for the characters. This film makes you feel exactly what the characters are feeling, and I think that's a more valuable endeavor.

There are moments in this movie that are among the most beautiful in cinema history. They are beautiful not only from an aesthetic point of view, it is also an emotional beauty. Q'orianka Kilcher in particular conveys such pure joy, it doesn't feel like acting at all, she is completely in that moment. Seeing her joy is infectious.

So, I feel like this film is creating a new cinematic language, one that relies on visuals not words as the foundation point. Film was at first inspired by theater, and then by novels, but in recent years we've seen movies that are not governed by traditional scripts, rather they're governed by the possibilities of visual connection. This film, Wong Kar-Wai's work, Miami Vice and David Lynch's Inland Empire all function in this respect, neglecting traditional, outmoded forms of characater development, preferring instead to focus on putting you in a world and making you feel that way. This film has images so powerful, they touch something primal. It is one of the greatest films of all time, and a critical moment in the evolution of this new cinematic language.

Babylon 5: 'The Gathering'

Back in 2003 when I started watching Buffy on DVD, I'd seen very few long form TV series, but over the past few years, I've gone through pretty much every show I really wanted to see, the shows that were considered essential works of longform television storytelling. However, there was one still out there that I'd heard great things about, and that's Babylon 5. The thing that stopped me from watching it before was the first season's bad reputation.

Most shows today are able to start off strong. For whatever reason, the medium has evolved to the point where a show like Six Feet Under or Lost can come out with a first episode that instantly places you in a specific world, with developed characters and strong style. In the case of Lost, this first episode turned out to be the best moment of the series, but back in the early 90s, it seems like it took longer for shows to find their voice. Buffy's first season is decent, but almost embarassing compared to the greatness that would shortly follow. The same thing is true for The X-Files, which took a season to really find its voice. If I was watching Buffy as it aired, I'm not sure if I would have made it through the first season. And, in the case of Babylon 5, I'm pretty sure I would not make it past the pilot. But, there's an advantage in knowing that something will get better and that means that I'll stick with the show despite the very weak opening.

The first thing that stands out watching the show today is the pathetic effects work. At the time, it was apparently groundbreaking, but most videogames today have better stuff than what we've got here. Particularly coming off of a show like Battlestar Galactica, it's jarring to see stuff that doesn't even come close to reality. As the episode went on, I got more used to it and was able to accept that this is just how it is and I can't ask for more. It does hurt though because any time we're presented with something that's supposed to be dramatic happening in space it has to overcome the hurdle of the blatantly unreal effects.

But, that's not my major problem with the episode. In sci-fi, there's an inherent ridiculousness to the material, and it's up to the actors to make the world into a place that's emotionally real. Someone like Patrick Stewart or Edward James Olmos brings the gravitas you need to create a believable world. Alas, our captain here feels more like a game show host or used car salesman, you get no sense that he's invested in the world, it's more like he's trying to avoid being embarassed by working on the show. His second in command, the Asian woman, is even worse, delivering every line with the same b-movie mix of anger and disinterest. The alien actors are much better, when they're on, it's easier to believe in the reality of the world.

The acting is my main issue with the pilot. I'm not expecting much from the first season, but I just don't see most of these actors ever doing something great. Now, I also couldn't see most of the Buffy actors ever doing the stuff they would do over the course of the series, but most of them were at least alright in the first season, not actively bad.

What's most exciting about the pilot is the glimpses of the larger world in which the series takes place. It seems like the series' overall arc will revolve around the difficulties that the various alien races have in co-existing. Presumably they'll move towards the goal of a universal peace, but constantly be undermined by individual jealousy and selfishness. There's certainly potential in the premise, and pieces of the episode are good, but generally speaking the acting and effects prevent the series from creating a believable reality.

It's always unfortunate to watch a show like this after seeing what it spawned, in a Battlestar Galactica or Firefly. The latter have access to so many more resources in creating their effects, it's very difficult to compare. Yet, you don't really have a choice, and rather than BSG being a pleasant surprise in the growth in quality of its effects work, Babylon 5 winds up looking far below standard.

But, I will be sticking with the show, at least through the first season because I would love to see something as good as people say the later seasons of the show are.

The Fountain

I've been looking forward to The Fountain for a long time, a really long time. I remember reading about it in 2001, a "post-Matrix" sci-film that would change the genre. As time passed, the project went through a lot of tumult, and it's great to see a director who sticks with his vision and gets it made, making some budget sacrifices, but keeping the essence of the piece intact. After such a long wait, the film itself wound up much simpler than I was expecting. The triptych narrative structure adds a lot of layers, but at its core this is a film about life and death, and the inextricable bond between the two.

The film opens with a striking battle sequence. I love the moment where Tomas is taken by the Mayans and carried to the edge of their pyramid. The flaming sword he encounters later is another really powerful visual, and then it's a jump cut hundreds of years into the future. I wish I knew nothing about the film going in because I'd imagine that cut would be absolutely mind blowing. As was, it's still pretty shocking to plunge into the future like that, into an entirely different world with its own rules.

I don't think there's one definitive interpretation of what is 'real' in the film and what's not. The way I saw it is that the present day stuff is what is real, and the present/future stuff is a mental construction, built by the two characters to allow them to deal with Izzi's cancer. This is made explicit in the fact that the Spanish stuff is connected to a book Izzi wrote. She has imagined herself as Queen Isabella, commissioning her love to find a cure for her disease. At one point, she refers to Tom as a Conquistador in the present, reinforcing this conception of him. I love the moment where she gives him this mission. The way she's lit with glowing white, asking him to make her "his Eve." The Spanish stuff is all very striking, the way we see Isabella hidden behind the grate at first, only gradually coming into view.

Understanding the film requires coming to terms with the way narrative progression proceeds across time. Tomas' quest for the fountain of youth is the same thing that Tom is seeking in the present. It's also the same as the man in the bubble, forever seeking the secrets of the tree.

While Izzi imagines Tom as a conquistador, he prefers to see himself as a Buddhist from the future, but the constant is that he's seeking that which will allow him to overcome death. In the early part of the film, the editing connects the Tom of the bubble with the Tom of the present, fitting because it's his hallucination. This is how he imagines his scientific work, part of an ageless quest for immortality. He knows that Izzi will die, and he sees himself continuing to work far into the future, until he finally finds a cure. The tattoos equate him with the tree, the rings representing the passage of time, from the one dot in the present to the whole covered arm of the future.

The film works in a different way from most movies. I didn't find myself with a deep emotional connection to the characters, the film may be about these two people, but it's concerned with bigger themes. We don't need to understand them as real, developed characters, and we don't get much of a background on either. From their subjective mental constructions, we can gain a better understanding, but the first half of the movie only gives us enough to care about them, and make the second half of the movie work. I think the telescope scene is sweet and sad, but I'm not desperately caught up in this love.

As a filmmaker, Aronofsky is not interested in creating traditional emotional reactions. Rather, he shows you things that are affecting on an intellectual level, you're moved emotionally. The visceral violence of the end of Requiem is designed to overwhelm you on a human level. It's not the fact that this is happening to characters we know that makes it awful, it's the fact that the stuff is just so awful, you can have no other reaction. Similarly, this film taps into imagery with a primal power, and creates emotions through engaging with the universal human interest in issues of life and death.

As the film progresses, Tom's obsession with stopping death begins to cause more and more problems with his life. We see this at a number of moments, when he doesn't go for a walk with her because he's working. In trying to save her, he winds up missing the last moments he could share with her, something that's reinforced when we see her with Ellen Burstyn, sharing real emotion. He can not live in the moment, see past her impending death and appreciate the last of her life.

When Izzi dies, the audience is placed in Tom's mindset. What makes it hurt so much is the fact that he just found out the solution is making the cancer recede. He could have saved her, but it's too late. His grief is mixed up with his failure as a scientist. At her funeral, Ellen Burstyn talks about her life, but Tom can't listen to it. He only sees his failure to save her, not the moments that came before.

This leads us into the mindblowing finale of the movie. The first hour or so is really well done, but I felt like it never took off into the realm of greatness. I've talked before about the idea of the moment in film, that the best films are the ones that feature moments where you just gasp, awed by the convergence of visual, sound/music and narrative to create a singular emotional reaction. I watch movies for those moments, to be awed and humbled, and that's what the end of this film does.

Before the end of the film, the Spanish sequences were Izzi's vision, her conception of Tom, an explorer seeking to help her. However, when she dies, the last chapter remains unwritten. It is up to Tom to imagine the finale, and that means the intrusion of his mental motifs, most notably the tree. Pi makes frequent reference to the Kaballah, and it clearly informs this film. My knowledge of the Kaballah comes primarily from the journey up the tree of life sequence in Promethea. I'd imagine you could easily map the stages of this film to the nine stages of the journey up the tree. The basic idea is to pass through the human world, and up towards enlightenment. To reach enlightenment, you must pass through the land of the dead and at the end of the journey, you are reborn.

One of the best moments in the film is when we see Tom in lotus position suspended over the Mayan guardian, prompting the Mayan to tell him he is the father of the world. This is Tom's fantasy, the idea that he could be the person to give eternal life to the world, and in the process, save Izzi. So, he proceeds out and finds the tree. While the tree is a reference to the Kaballah, it is explicitly name dropped as the tree of life from the garden of Eden. Tom seeks eternal life for himself, but when he greedily drinks the tree's sap, which looks not unlike sperm, an inseminating force taken into the vessel of his body. Tom is shocked when trees begin to grow out of him, he wanted eternal life for himself, ignorant of the fact that the act of giving life inevitably means giving up a part of yourself. The moment is a reenactment of the Mayan creation myth, Tom's death giving way to a new world. The moment also refers to Izzi's discussion of the man who had a seed planted on his grave so that a piece of him would be carried out into the world after he died.

These events are paralleled in the progress of the future version of himself. He moves out of his bubble, the prison in which he seeks a cure for death. He moves beyond this limited thought as he journeys towards his own symbolic death. I love the visual of him moving through the trippy environment, zen like in the bubble. He finally reaches the white, and everything goes black except for a small white dot on the screen. Then, in a phenomenally dazzling moment, all of reality rushes in, ripping his skin off and pouring him down into the cosmos. That is the moment I was waiting for, utterly overwhelming me with the power of the visual imagery. This is the same as the trees coming out of Tom, his life essence dispersed to create something new.

This leads us back to the past, where Tom is again offered the chance to walk outside with Izzi. Rather than work, he chooses to spend the moment with her. Then, he is left standing outside, looking at her grave, into which he puts a seed, acknowledging the reality of death and the fact that the end of life is actually an opening to rebirth, a passage into something new rather than a concrete ending. Earlier in the film, Tom was not content with the fact that they were improving Donovan's mental functioning, he worried only about his impending death. Now, he recognizes that it is more important to live life in the moment than to worry about the inevitability of death. He is out of his bubble and open to a larger world.

The thing I love about this movie is the way it tackles these massive themes that are very rarely explored in cinema. I've heard the film compared to 2001, and while I don't think it's quite that good, it stands with that film in terms of being a piece of visual philosophy, using the possibilities of the medium to make you experience an entirely other world, and attack a human truth in the process. The person whose work it most reminds me of is Grant Morrison. The cut to a bald man in lotus position instantly conjures GM, and his bubble is very reminiscent of Zatanna. But, more than that, the film fluidly moves between different realities, demanding the audience to accept everything as real rather than seek some kind of trick to read things. It's much like Flex Mentallo, in that you can arrange it into a linear story, which I did, but also look at is just a flowing experience of different worlds. Just because the Spanish stuff is a story doesn't meant that it's any less valid than the so called 'reality' of the film, and that's a very Morrison thing.

And the central theme of the film goes right along with The Invisibles. In The Invisibles, we are told time is soil for us to grow in, and this film sees death as a seed that will give birth to new life. They each answer the critical question of why do bad things happen to us. It turns out they happen because the bad things make us stronger, bad experiences are the fuel for creation, we can use the negative as a base for something new and good.

Morrison talked about the fact that people have trouble processing metaphor, and I think that's a large part of why the film isn't connecting with a lot of people. It's easy to dismiss this and say that the characters aren't particularly well developed and the multiple time periods are pointless and confusing, but that's to ignore the fact that it's all real. It's not easy to see beyond our world, but when looking at a film, or life for that matter, it's important to accept movement between realities and understand that what is real is not necessarily that which is physical. Anything that affects you emotionally is 'real,' and that's why fiction is important. Fictional characters can do more to change the world than real people. In the case of this film, the themes are important and central to the human experience. Aronofsky should be rewarded for challenging the audience with an unconventional structure and a surplus of ideas. I would heartily recommend this film, if you're interested, please go see it in the theater and tell the studios that unique, visionary films like this are appreciated and wanted.

Michael Richards, Borat and the Limits of Shock Comedy

Over the past couple of days, Seinfeld star Michael Richards has gotten into a lot of the trouble for his racial invective filled rant at a comedy club. All the info is here, including videos of both the moment itself and the incredibly awkward six minute apology on Letterman. Obviously he said some really awful things, and I doubt he'll ever be able to shake the stigma of this, nor should he. If you're a public figure, no matter what you actually feel, you just don't say this stuff in public.

When I first heard about the story, I saw it as just another Mel Gibson type situation. The quotes from articles were horrible, and at first, his apology is a fairly standard "I didn't mean it" kind of thing. However, as he goes on, he talks about what led him to say these things. Basically, as a performer, he uses a lot of free association to move deep into character. His comedy is entirely based on stripping off self consciousness and getting lost in the material.

If you watch the video, it becomes more clear that what he's saying is to some extent a performance. After the initial comments, he steps back and says something like "Ooh, this shocks you?" After this, he goes even further and loses the audience in the process. The whole thing raises the question of where performance ends and where actual racism begins. If he's trying to maintain authority as a performer, he's going to want to prey on his hecklers and use their comments to his advantage. So, he plays on the easiest target, their race. The question is, is he entering into the character of a racist at this moment or is it is his own beliefs coming out?

I can't say for sure, but I think it's interesting that this controversy occurs only a few weeks after everyone is lauding Borat for supposedly exposing the below the surface intolerance of Americans. With Borat, Baron Cohen enters into a character and utters a consistent stream of hate speech, directed at blacks, Jews and others. To the people in the film, there's no indication that Borat is a construction, or that his beliefs are any less than genuine, he is using this character to create a safe space for people to express their hate.

But, at the same time, he is saying very hateful things. What makes his constant jokes about Jews different than what Richards does here? The obvious answer is the distinction between Borat and Cohen. Every review seems to mention the film's antisemitism, qualified with a remark about Cohen's own Orthodox background. It's easy for us to laugh at Borat because we're aware that he is poking fun at this point of view. The actual man is far removed from the character.

However, with Richards, there's no clear line between the character and the performer. It's quite possible that in that moment, he saw entering this racist persona as the best way to grab the crowd's attention and counter the hecklers. At first, he seems to enjoy the fact that his words have created such shock, and only after does the crowd turn on him. If you read Borat without the distance of knowing he's a fictional character, it'd be very easy to have the same reaction.

In the end, I think the difference in reaction comes down to three things. One is insider status. Seinfeld itself actually commented on this phenomenon when they had Tim Whatley convert to Judaism for the jokes. An oppressed group can make fun of themselves without consequence, but it's a lot tougher for someone outside the group to make those same jokes. Richards crosses an unacceptable social line by invoking actual hate speech.

The second major difference is the tone. Borat gets away with a lot of what he does because he's such a genial guy. There doesn't seem to be genuine malice behind what he's saying, whereas Richards, by his own admission, is fueled with rage and as a result, stops being funny. On Seinfeld, Kramer could get away with a lot of insensitive things because there was an innate innocence/naivete to the character, and Richards had none of that on stage.

I'm not going to pass judgment on Richards, but it's clear he crossed a line in the performance. I suppose that's the danger of being such a free performer, that you'll channel something you don't want out into the world, and I'd imagine we're not going to see him doing standup again.

But, so much of what is hailed about today's great comedies are their willingness to tackle taboo subjects. Shows like Arrested Development and The Office frequently use race in their humor, and it's notable that at first the audience on Letterman treats Richards' apology as a bit, with sporadic laughter until Jerry says "Stop laughing, it's not funny." Apparently, the show was taped before the scandal broke, and if you didn't know it was real, it'd be pretty easy to think that Richards' apology was a gag, pushing awkward comedy to its limits. Just the other day, I was saying the American Office didn't work because it wasn't painful enough. Well, this apology was painful and not very funny at all.

Gilmore Girls: 'Introducing Lorelai Planetarium' (7x08)

Last week's episode saw a major, and rather inexplicable development in the Gilmore Girls universe: the wedding of Lorelai and Christopher. This isn't the first time that Lorelai and Christopher have been close to getting married, at the end of season two they were engaged, only to find out that Sheri was pregnant with Gigi, throwing their plans awry. The moment when Lorelai finds out was the most wrenching emotional moment the series presented until the end of season five. Lorelai is so desperately close to getting what she wants, and then has to just stand by and let Christopher do 'the right thing.' If she is selfish and makes him choose her over Gigi, she puts Sheri in the situation that she was with Rory, and she can't do that.

Throughout the series, we've frequently seen Lorelai teased with the possibility of getting married. It happened with Max in season one, with Chris in season two and then in season five with Luke, she finally takes the initiative and reaches out for what she wants. That was a great moment, and the gradual break apart over the course of season six is painful to watch. This culminates with the most excruciatingly painful moment of the series, when a drunk Lorelai walks up to the mic at Lane's wedding and laments the fact that she wont' get married, that it's not for her. It's so sad to see all her fears pour out there, and it makes something that the plot necessitated, Lorelai not getting married, a critical piece of her character arc. She's created this independent, hyper-chatty persona partially as a defense mechanism. She claims that she's living the life she wants, but part of her longs for a more traditional life. Particularly with Rory leaving her, the loneliness comes to the fore.

That's what I love about season six of the show, the way it shows Lorelai's life in transition. As she loses everyone she cares about, the old ways just don't work anymore, and it's this very personality she's constructed as a defense that winds up driving Luke away from her. He fears that she will eclipse him in April's affections, that is why he pulls away from her. It's critical to note the lack of Rory/Lorelai interaction in late season six. As Luke is getting closer to his daughter, Lorelai is losing hers.

What this sets up for us is the importance of marriage in Lorelai's life. Her persona is largely defined in relation to the idea of marriage, so getting married should be a major deal. However, rather than honoring her character we get a sweeps month gimmick cliffhanger in which she all of a sudden marries Christopher. I don't think the choice to have them get married is necessarily a bad one, it's just the presentation puts the emphasis on shock value, I think it's a huge mistake to not see Lorelai's reaction in the moment.

Now, to some extent we can see it all in this episode. Lorelai is clearly uneasy, but wanted so badly to be married that she put her fears away and created justifications in her head. However, I feel like this just isn't a smart road to go down. Lorelai's unspoken pain was the whole point of season six, and it feels a waste to do a retread of that storyline one season later. It's the same dynamic as Luke last season, with her not speaking up about her issues and suffering in silence. I think it would have been more fruitful to have Lorelai really commited to the marriage and gradually bring in her discontent.

Plus, the way it's presented now, there's basically no chance that the marriage will last. The episode even goes out of the way to draw attention to Luke in a really odd scene. On the one hand, the show is all about building gimmicky tension, yet it passes up the chance to show a potentially interesting scene where Christopher asks why she's going to see April in the hospital, or even why she's the first person Luke calls. The way it is now Christopher is just too perfect. He's got an unlimited bank account and total optimism about their future. The problem with that is that it makes Lorelai's discomfort solely personal, and more difficult for the audience to side with her. Chris has always been something of a bastard, why not bring that side out and push the relationship to an uncomfortable place? That way you'd get more tension than just waiting for whatever event will occur to break up the marriage.

The way it plays now it feels like a betrayal of Lorelai's journey. The whole point of season six was for her to finally speak up for herself, and now we've got her suffering in silence again. That journey is the critical component of the series, and without it, we've got nothing more than a soap opera drifting from plot to plot.

Elsewhere, I'm glad to see the show actually interrogate the wealthiness of its environment. I was just thinking, wow, everyone's got a ton of money. So, it was good to see Rory write the piece. However, I feel like that scene played too much like a caricature, it would have been more cutting for Rory to find fault in less exaggerated characters. I did like the conflict between Rory and Logan, which gets to the core of her arc. Is she like her mom, a small town self made girl, or is she like her grandparents, Gilmores? In one of the series' best moments, we see Dean standing outside a party at her grandparents' house, knowing that she has crossed over. So, it's good to interrogate that again.

It's also good to have Logan back in the US. He's a character who forces tension into scenes, and I'd be curious to see more of Lorelai's reaction to the life that Rory is entering into. Is she proud of Rory for moving back into high society, or resentful? Clearly, Rory is not going to live in a place like Stars Hollow, or hold values like her mom's. And how will her unease mesh with the fact that she married this ridiculously rich guy? Is she too betraying her values?

This episode was more entertaining than a lot of the recent ones, but the construction of the series is still deeply troubling. Lorelai's been crippled, and Lane, my other favorite character, was completely assassinated. If you have a character who's unique because she has a band, and unlike most of the supporting cast, actually has an arc that's moving forward, why saddle her with a lame stock plot in the pregnancy. Note that Lane hasn't played any drums since being pregnant, is that part of her life done? That's a complete betrayal of everything the character was about for the first seven seasons of the show.

So, it's looking more and more like the end of season six was the 'series finale' for the show. It's still entertaining most of the time, but most of what was built has been neglected and we're just spinning wheels, not moving forward.

Robert Altman

Sadly, Robert Altman died today. Over the past year, I've seen a whole bunch of his films and come to appreciate what a distinctive voice he was in cinema. He's one of the few directors unique enough to earn his own adjective, Altmanesque. I'd always thought of Altmanesque as realistic, big cast films featuring meandering art cinema style narratives. Nashville and Short Cuts are the archetypal examples of this, though McCabe and Mrs. Miller and a bunch of his other films that I haven't seen, like A Wedding or Pret a Porter, fit that description. However, watching his stuff I saw many different sides of Altman, a guy who can go from the observational realism of Nashville to the intense subjectivity of Images or 3 Women and also into genre work, be it the crime film in The Long Goodbye or the musical/childrens' film in Popeye. Not all his films work, but that's the consequence of being a guy who makes a lot of movies. Altman is in the mode of someone like Fassbinder, who seemed driven to make as many films as possible, maybe never finding the perfect polish of someone like Kubrick, but in the time it took Kubrick to make one film, Altman had already made five great ones.

One of the things I admire most about Altman is how he was able to keep his universe evolving as he got older. So many directors of his time burnt out and were reduced to directing crap. However, he made it through the dark time of the 80s without compromising his artistic vision, and came out the other side with the chance to make the films he wanted to make again. I think his 70s work is the best he's done, but it's very rare that you see someone remain artistically vital for so long. I love that he was still making films right up until he died and I hope that I can keep the passion and commitment that Altman had when I get as old as he was. It's great that Altman received an honorary Oscar earlier this year, and A Prarie Home Companion was a nice note to end his career on. The film is not a hugely significant entry in his canon, but it was sweet, and knowing it was his last film makes the countdown to the end of the show all the more poignant.

There's a general feeling that artists have at max ten years relevance, after that they descend into repitition or irrelevance. In film, I feel like a lot of directors lose touch with real life. When all you do is work on set filming movies, you're bound to lose the sense of what life is like for people outside the industry. This means that it becomes more difficult to find personal fire to fuel your films. Directors like Scorsese and Coppola both started with very personal, passionate projects and gradually became work for hire directors, making well made movies, but no one thinks that The Aviator has the same fire as Mean Streets. With Altman, you never got the sense that he had been absorbed into the industry. He kept a distance and that allowed him to remain personally vital, to keep bringing passion to the variety of projects that he took on in his later years. And his style never stagnated, A Prarie Home Companion is a dynamic and exciting a film, using camera movement and scene construction in unique, groundbreaking ways.

If you've only seen the big Altman films, like Nashville, I'd highly reccomend checking out 3 Women and Images. These two films are unlike most of the stuff in his oeuvre in that they're intensely subjective. Both are concerned with the restrictions placed on women by society, and use dreamlogic storytelling to explore the issue. Mulholland Dr. and Inland Empire both have a lot in common with these films. 3 Women in particular is a lot of fun to analyze, full of psychological loose ends and mysteries that make it great for repeat viewing. I'd consider Nashville his best film, but it's a crime that 3 Women hasn't received more support from the critical community. But, there is a great Criterion DVD out, definitely worth a look.

I've written a bunch about Altman's work over this past year, here's the links.

3 Women
Images
McCabe and Mrs. Miller
Nashville
Short Cuts

The Office (US)/Knowing Me, Knowing You

Recently, I've been watching the the American version of The Office, through episode 2x06. I watched the first episode when it aired and was pretty unimpressed. It felt like a community theater group ding a take on a show I'd just seen on Broadway, the lines were the same, but something was off. However, watching the first twelve episodes on DVD, I've seen the show grow into its own thing, a thing that is good, but nowhere near the quality of the original.

My major issue with the show, particularly in the second season, is that every episode seems to be scrambling to get the characters out of the office. The whole point of the show is to dwell on the mundane realities of day to day life, and find humor in the interactions between people at work. Sure, the British version had the club episode and a couple of other field trips, but generally speaking, most of the plots revolved around goings on in The Office itself, and the difficulty of navigating the office social scene.

However, with the American version, there's all kinds of outside plots being brought in to punch things up. David Brent didn't do much work, but at least he was in the office, Michael Scott is out all the time, and seems to make no effort to do anything. I could believe that Brent didn't get fired, but it's hard to imagine they're happy with what Michael's doing. Now, I think the character does work on some level. The second season premiere found that perfect awkwardness when the people make fun of Michael's song parodies. That scene was tough to watch, and emotionally satisfying when the others stood up for him. However, having Michael crank call Ryan as Michael Jackson is more absurd than sad. He's a less believable character then Brent, because with Brent you got the sense that he was trying to hard to perform for his office mates, while Carrell seems to be trying to hard to perform for us, the viewers. His acting is so over the top it takes me out of the reality of the show, the one thing the British show never punctured.

The American version frequently makes note of its status as a documentary, but it feels much more artificial than the raw British version. A lot of that is simply due to the sitcomy nature of a lot of the plots. Dwight in particular feels totally removed from reality, whereas Gareth seemed like a believable loser. Pam and Jim do the best in translation, but I don't feel the investment in their relationship that I had for Tim and Dawn. That's largely because I've already seen the resolution for their counterparts, and that relationship has been mythologized in my mind, standing over the Pam/Jim dynamic. I think the most fruitful territory there is in seeing both Pam and Jim's defensiveness about their flirting. The moment where Angela tells Pam about her game is fantastic, as is the unease when they have their mock fight in the dojo.

I think the major problem is that the show has to sustain an indefinite length. As any comedy goes on, the plots get more and more outlandish and the rough edges are hewn off characters. The UK Office is like the first two or three seasons of Seinfeld, painfully sharp in its distillation of human interaction. The US version is like the later years, still funny, but much broader. Because the UK version had so few episodes, we never had to delve into the issue of where David lives or who Gareth's sensei is. Instead, we only see the characters in the work environment, and as viewers, we are immersed in that world. Some of the most memorable moments in the UK version are those quiet shots of stuff printing and people working, downtime that is allowed because of the longer running time of UK episodes. The eight additional minutes per episode gives them the chance to have a slower pace and give a better sense of actual work going on.

And ultimately I feel like the UK version told the story. Despite the growth, the basic plot arcs still draw from the British series, and I've already seen Brent redeemed and Tim and Dawn united. I don't know that I really care to see it happen again. Plus, I tend to find British restrained pompousness funnier than the American outright stupidity when it comes to comedy.

That's a good segue into the other show I've been watching, Knowing Me, Knowing You. Ah ha. I first heard about this show from Tristram-Shandy, and now I get the contsant references to Knowing Me whoever, Knowing You Steve Coogan. I'm sure in the UK this was played out as an Austin Powers quote in 2000, but it's just so fun to say. And, luckily, this is not the UK. The downside is that no one would have any idea what I'm talking about if I reference the show. Anyway, I read an article that talked about how "I'm Alan Partridge" focused on the character after his show had ended. I love works that explore multiple layers of a piece of fiction, and I think it's a fantastic conceit to position Alan as a real person outside of the show. This intrigued me enough to give Knowing Me, Knowing You a look.

This show was made in 1994, and its style of awkward embarassing comedy clearly went on to influence many other shows, particularly The Office. Like The Office, this show focuses on a man who's got a massive ego and no clue about the total disdain or indifference others feel towards him. Coogan plays the character in such a way that there's very few explicit jokes. For the first few minutes of the first episode, I wasn't laughing too much because it just felt like a standard, uninspiring chat show. However, once you figure out this guy, his rampant egotism becomes increasingly hilarious. I love the way he constantly says his own name and forces everyone else to adopt his catchphrase, even a widow standing over her husband's coffin.

As the series wears on, bits like his constant punning on chat and his antagonism with Glen Ponder yield many laughs. The series also perfectly captures the dynamic of banal chat shows, with Alan constantly trying to control the dynamic of the conversation, but frequently finding himself losing power. Much like Brent on The Office, the humor comes from watching someone who thinks he's much funnier than he is come up against the reality of the situation and struggle to deal with it. Partridge is essentially a conservative guy, and he can't deal with the people he's forced to work with on the show.

The show works best when everyone plays things straight and lets Partridge simmer in his own issues. A bit like the Kojak Slaphead scene at the end of episode five goes too over the top, out of the realm of reality. Of course, a lot of my criticism of both this and The Office is based purely on personal taste. A bit like the jacuzzi scene at the end of episode four could be criticized as equally ridiculous, but it's funny, so I forgive it.

I also like how the show does give Alan the chance to be right occasionally. By making the French designer's clothes so ridiculous, we can easily agree with what Alan's saying. There, the humor comes from Alan's tactless treatment of his guests more than his innatte wrongness. And he also gest some nice moments, like the Abba medley, which is played for laughs, but ends up being pretty sweet and entertaining on its own.

It's pretty easy to trace a line from this show to the comedy of Borat or Stephen Colbert. If the show was done today, we'd probably see the Partridge character interviewing real people and provoking them in the same way he provokes the fictional people here. The show is a critical step in creating a style of comedy with few overt jokes, that instead presents a character who is inherently ridiculous and lets the audience laugh at his behavior, to the point that his attempts at humor become funny because of how they fail as jokes, rather then their actual value as humor. It's a complex blend of fiction and reality, and I'm excited to see it further complicated with "I'm Alan Partridge."

Casino Royale

I've never been a huge fan of the Bond series. Goldfinger's a fun movie, as is Goldeneye, but each movie has a similar formula, and the more you watch in a row, the more the similarities become apparent. So, the producers are faced with the problem of keeping things fresh film after film. With the latter Brosnan films they tried to do this by raising the stakes, making bigger and bigger setpieces until we got the invisible car and ice palace laser destruction sequence of Die Another Day, a film in which nearly every piece of dialogue was a cheesy line. After the excess, they smartened up and decided to scale things back and return some humanity to the character. It was a smart choice and works really well, resulting in the best Bond film ever made.

The opening sequence announces the change in intention. Rather than the increasingly massive setpieces used as the series went on, we get stark black and white and a cold Bond gunning his enemy down before he can complete his cliche. This is intercut with some nice, grainy shots of a nasty fight in a bathroom, Bond's first kill. This segues brilliantly into the classic gunsight opening and a very nice opening titles sequence. Now, some of this restraint and grit is undermined by the lengthy, over the top chase sequence that follows. It's a cool sequence, but indicates a bit of a compromise, reassuring the action audience that there's plenty for them here too.

This opening section of the film is solid, but in light of the quality later on, I think it could have been trimmed a bit. Having both the first chase action sequence and the plane/truck sequence pushes things too far in the not forwarding the plot spectacle department. The second sequence came too early in the film for such an extended setpiece, it would have been better to tighten it a bit. That said, I think the film gives you a better sense of Bond as a great agent, rather than a superhero. He's trained well enough that jumping over all those buildings doesn't drain him, but he's not able to do it with much style either. This Bond is all about just getting the job done, no matter the violence that's involved in doing so.

Now, a grittier Bond isn't necessarily a huge jump beyond what we've seen before. It makes the action sequences more tense, because Bond has to prove himself, but that's not enough to make the movie works. The biggest success is in finally giving Bond a foil who's an equal, not by trying to make a rival for Bond's action prowess, but giving him someone who's equally good at hiding her emotions and placing 'the mission' over personal interest. In most Bond movies, there's the 'good girl' and the 'bad girl,' and a clear delineation between the two. Usually, Bond will sleep with the bad girl, but eventually reject her and wind up with the 'good girl,' the one who gives him some assistance in his mission, but is more an object to be saved.

What Eva Green's Vesper does is fuse the two archetypes. For most of the film, she seems to be Bond's ally, and despite her initial resistance, quickly succumbs to his charms. However, for the first time, we see Bond as the one who's getting played. He lets down his guard and falls in love with her, and when he finds out she's betrayed him, it hurts him both as a man and a spy. He's let his emotions weaken him, and from this betrayal, we can see where the man who exists in the later films comes from. Bond doesn't trust women and won't get close to them because doing so means opening himself up to the betrayal he experiences here. The only way for him to ensure that this doesn't happen again is to never let his guard down, to put the man away and be only the spy.

It's not evident the first time through, but looking, Vesper goes through the same process. She is a professional spy, and does not want to fall in love with Bond. When she does, it presents awful complications for her, unlike MI6, her crew will not let her leave so easily. The parallels between the two characters are set up from the beginning, the fact that they're likely both orphans, who have had to shield their emotions. Vesper also had the troubled breakup with the Armenian guy, Bond is her way to overcome that hurt. In Venice, they both saw a future with the possibility of real emotional attachment. There's a brief moment of happiness before it all goes awry. Since Vesper was bringing them the money to pay for Bond's life, it means that Bond's spy instincts, his lack of trust for her, was what messed things up for both of them. Now, we don't know if M was lying to him when she said that, but I believe that Vesper was trying to save James. It's more poignant that way. The spy returned and that meant the end of James as emotionally open man.

The end of the film functions sort of like the end of Revenge of the Sith. We've been waiting the whole time to see James Bond, badass, emerge. But, like the revelation of Vader in Sith, the 'birth' we've been looking forward to turns out to be a death. Bond's theme song heralds the birth of the cold, professional, emotionless man who we see in the other films of the series. It's a fantastic moment, the slow build of the theme song as Mr. White climbs up the stairs, culminating in the shot of Bond holding an automatic and delivering the line. But, there's a sadness in it too. His brief respite from the life is over and now we know he'll be 007 for life.

The end of the film also sets up interesting sequel possibilities, as Bond will presumably investigate the organization that Vesper worked for. I heard that they were planning to do an actual continuation with the next sequel, which would be cool. However, it does raise the issue of how to avoid the character problems that the other films were plagued with, this one was all about bringing Bond to that point, how do they keep him interesting after he's been emotionally shut down here.

And, I'll definitely miss the presence of Eva Green, who did fantastic work here. Her performance in The Dreamers is one of the most raw, emotionally vulnerable I've seen, and she brings humanity to the character here. Her and Craig make what could have been a somewhat cliched relationship really work, and that emotional base is what makes this one of the best action films of recent years. All the special effects in the world can't replicate an emotional engagement with characters, and this film had that.

So, I was really happy with this film. It got a lot of critical praise, and deservedly so. I think a bit of tightening on the top end could have made it a better film, but I'm sure a lot of the audience was there for the action setpieces, and the franchise needs to fulfill that demand. The Bond franchise is about beautiful people in beautiful places doing ugly things, and this film delivered on that better than any other in the series.

Weekend Update

This Week's Films

I just saw Casino Royale, but I've still got a bunch of films to get to. On Wednesday, The Fountain is finally released. I've been waiting for this film for over five years, and everything I've heard is encouraging. I'm just trying to keep expectations from getting too high. We've also got a new Richard Linklater out. Linklater's work for hire stuff isn't as exciting as an original script, but I'm sure it's still good, and I'll be seeing it next week when I'm back in New York. We've also got new Tony Scott, with Deja Vu. Reviews are indicating that this is a retreat from the insane style of Domino. I'm one of the few people who thinks this is a bad thing, but Domino and Man on Fire were so good, I'll give it a look. I also want to get to Babel, Little Children and Volver.

Uninspired Watching

I still haven't seen last week's Studio 60 or Veronica Mars. Both shows are drifting in my attention. I already dropped Nip/Tuck, though I was intrigued by word of a flash to the future episode. But, S60 and VM are right now at just good enough to keep watching, but a further decrease in quality could knock them out. In terms of retrospective viewing, I've got one more season of Rescue Me to go through, then I'm going to start watching Babylon 5. This is a series I've heard a lot about, and I'm hoping it will live up to the hype. I could really use something Buffy level, I haven't seen a truly great series in a while. I'm worried that I've seen so many the fresh novelty of a really long story is gone. Back with Buffy, I marvelled at the fact that they were able to develop lot threads consistently over so many episodes, but that wonder is gone and now I'm starting to see more patterns between series, the seams behind TV structure in the same way I can see the seams on three act film structure.

New Air Album

This week, Air announced that they've got a new album out in March and will be touring the US in May. I'm excited, I love all three of their previous albums, and I actually think they've gotten better with each one. I'm also really curious to see them live, I was just getting into them when they toured Talkie Walkie, so I've never seen them play. Next year, we'll also get the new Polyphonic Spree album. I'm really looking forward to the songs and to a new tour.

Window in the Skies

I downloaded the new U2 song, Window in the Skies, off their recent singles compilation and it's fantastic. While I loved their 90s experimental period, it's undeniable that they can put together a rock anthem better than anyone else, and this song matches right up with Beautiful Day, Walk On or City of Blinding Lights for anthemic greatness. The track quickly builds to a soaring chorus that's backed by a nice string line. That addition makes it more than the usual U2 song, where that role would be taken by guitars. The song ends with a great call and response song with Bono singing over the previous chorus. It's a really catchy, majestic song and boads well for their upcoming album.

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Battlestar Galactica - 'Hero' (3x08)

I read the basic description of this episode online a couple of days ago, and instantly my expectations declined. The long lost friend returns storyline is in the same family as the lost lost sibling returns bit I discussed yesterday in my review of Rescue Me. And it always feels off when they try to retroactively insert said character into the show's continuity. This episode wasn't as bad as I feared, but it didn't transcend the premise.

The weird thing about BSG is how it often feels like multiple different shows. During the dark times of season two, all we got was the Lee show, about a heroic soldier fighting to save people despite his personal issues. I'm not a fan of that show, nor am I a fan of the military procedural that many episodes fall into. Scenes in the CIC are rarely memorable and I really hope we never see another botched Viper training mission. I'm generally indifferent towards this stuff, but when the show focuses on the cylon ship, or Sharon's troubles aboard Galactica, it's riveting. The New Caprica storyline worked so well because it cut out the fat of the boring procedural stuff and made every single moment of each episode into something exciting. But, now we're back to the divided structure, and that means that each episode is less satisfying.

Now, I do think this standalone story was well done. I was caught up in what was happening and all the emotional beats worked. The best part was the glimpse at the fleet pre-cylon invasion. Because the Galactica is all we've seen, it's tough to get a feel for how retro this technology is. But, seeing the Valkyrie brought things into contrast, that was a much nicer ship. And it was interesting to explore the mindset of pre-invasion humanity, tiptoeing around the sleeping giant that is the cylon fleet.

However, these good bits don't make up for the fact that this isn't particularly unique or compelling subject matter. The show has done stuff that's so much better, it's a bit disappointing to resort to a tired cliche like this. And, the cylons' plan relies a lot on coincidence. It's one of those things that makes sense as it unfolds, but retroactively is pretty questionable. Maybe they just got tired of keeping him on board so they decided to give this a go.

I do like the comment the show made about military heroism, the fact that every soldier has to do awful things, but they must leave this behind and present a heroic front for the public to believe in. However, I take issue with Adama's resignation attempt, which was way too melodramatic. And, combined with last week, we're getting into a pattern where the show threatens to disrupt the status quo, then Roslin and Adama get together to make this problem go away and return everything to normal. Consequences are the stuff that serial drama is made of, we need some more on the show.

While this took up the vast majority of the episode, it was all eclipsed by the thoroughly bizarre and fantastic storyline on the cylon ship. D'Anna's first dream had me pondering "What the fuck?" and the wakeup into an apparent threesome with Baltar and Six did not stop that pondering. I'm unclear what exactly was real, but I take it that was and it's a fascinating development out of last week's stuff. I get the feeling there was more sex in there, but it was deleted. It's notable that she seeks Gaius's love, but he remains curled up with Six. She is still outside of that.

When she dies, I believe she returns to the space that Gaius and Six were at in the first season finale. IIRC, the music in that scene was the same as we hear here. If that is the same place, that would imply that head six hails from the place that exists between cylon life and death. This would further the idea that she is a messenger from God, or at least from the cylon God.

Beyond the plot stuff, these scenes were some of the most exciting filmmaking I've ever seen on television. The dissolves and disorienting subjectivity are near avant garde in their devotion to pure emotion and image over narrative comprehensibility. Inland Empire is the only thing I've seen this year that matches the craziness of the cylon ship sequences.

I really hope there's more of this storyline next episode. With no lines for Baltar, Six or Sharon this week, the show's definitely at a disadvantage. I just wish Ron Moore could better see where the show's strengths lie. Olmos may be a great actor, and maybe this was the attempt to give him an Emmy episode, but forget about that, this was a tired plot and even well done, it didn't feel fresh. I believe it's a week off next week, but I'm excited to see what the show will be up to when it returns, hopefully not more standalone.

Rescue Me: The Second Season

I finished watching this today and it's pretty undeniable that this is a well put together, compulsively viewable series. However, it's one of those things that doesn't have the after viewing appeal of a truly great series, like a Buffy or Six Feet Under. The best works are ones that live on in your head after the episode and demand analysis and discussion. I enjoyed all the episodes of the show, but I never felt a compulsive need to see more. It's certainly a good series, but it never quite makes it to great.

My big issue with the show is that I've seen so much longform TV, I'm starting to get immune to the tricks that every show seems to use, and one of the primary ones is to heap catastrophe after catastrophe on its main characters. The end of this season is emotionally engaging, but feels a bit excessive, having one person get what they want would have provided some contrast, and made what the others go through even more painful. If you just keep making things bad for your characters, there's nowhere to go. Nate in Six Feet Under went through some awful, awful shit, but this was mixed up with some triumphs for the other characters, and an awareness in the character of his bad fate. Using the flaws inherent in long form storytelling to a show's advantage is always a good move, but here, we never make that leap. Instead, the characters remain trapped in patterns of crap and never really look back or forward to reflect on it. It's not that there's no history, it's more that things are forgotten easily once the next plot comes along.

The final episode is a multi-layered assault on everyone in the cast. The most obvious being the inexplicable death of Tommy's son in the penultimate episode. The writers had put themselves in a corner by having Janet and Tommy back together in a happy marriage. I liked the idea that they're both unashamedly using drugs to make the marriage work, and I think there's a lot of dramatic potential in exploring the conflict there. That's why the choice to have their son randomly die doesn't really work, rather than let the characters face the consequences of what they're doing, an outside force comes in and disrupts everything.

This season used a lot of three storytelling devices designed to cheat a story into being special. The child's death is one. This story uses our conception of what it would be like to lose your child rather than any actualy work done on the relationship between Tommy and Connor to get our sympathy. It's a cheap device because they don't have to earn it, all the drama is inherent in the action. It becomes a cure all to throw chaos into the status quo they'd built over the course of the season and an easy way to spin Tommy's arc in a different direction. Does it work at being dramatic? Yes, but that doesn't really excuse it.

Another cheap storytelling trick is the use of a newly discovered sibling. How many sitcoms have had the roguish brother comes to town, and he's gone straight, but just needs to borrow a little money to get his new plan off the ground storyline? Maggie's bit has some of that, but the bigger offender is the Father Murphy storyline. Clearly they wanted to do a story about a pedophile priest, and make us care about the character. Rather than earning a relationship through character development, they do the cheap trick of having Tommy magically have a long lost half brother. This is the same as the return of the old childhood friend, it's a way to circumvent actual storytelling work and instead let the storyline coast on audience assumptions. We accept Tommy caring about the character because of the familial relationship, and I'll admit that the resolution of the storyline is affecting. Yet, it's so exploitative it's hard to endorse it as quality work.

Yet another cheap trick is the pregnancy storyline. Why do shows think it's a good idea to make a character pregnant? That's the ultimate sign that a character has nowhere left to go and the writers decided, hey, why not? See the last two seasons of The X-Files. The pregnancy here isn't as bad as that, but the whole thing with Sheila still felt rather manipulative. I suppose she was meant to be manipulating Tommy through the pregnancy, but it seemed like a hollow way to extend their relationship, and then it disappeared at a time convinient to the plot.

I was about to ponder, why does Sheila stay with her girlfriend despite how bad she's being treated, and discuss this as a plot flaw. But, I think it's intentional and Sheila is the type of person who's totally dependent on her significant other for support. She cannot be alone and she's drawn to very strong people who will direct her life. She loves Tommy more, but stays with Debbie because she is a surrogate. One of the rawest, most powerful scenes is Sheila's tearful crying to Tommy in the street. That's earned emotion. I find the character very frustrating, but there are people like that, so it works.

Anyway, on a more positive note, Tommy does go on a fascinating journey this season. I love his surface cynicism about AA, and the way he actually does accept what they're saying. The scene with Johnny where he's holding the drink is really tense and I like that they didn't go the sensational route of having him go right back to drinking.

Elsewhere, the episode provides more dark times. I think they left a bit too much to the finale, which gave it a car pileup type feel, where you keep getting slammed with plot points and no time to absorb them. Laura's exit felt very abrupt, I would have liked to see more hints of her unhappiness earlier in the season. After the 'twat' incident, she seemed to gain the acceptance of the guys, and it strikes me as cowardly for her to disappear without even saying goodbye. The conflict is always there, but it wasn't played on the surface for a while. To me, it felt like the actress all of a sudden said she wanted off the show and they had to hastily write her out. Again, it makes for an emotional scene, with Franco's crying, but it feels a bit manipulative because it's so quick.

The Lou/Danni plot is also full of issues. Watching this, I immediately thought "she's using him." Then, for a few episodes I was wondering "Is she using him?" Then it was confirmed in the finale. I don't know if the best way to do a plot twist is to make it so obvious the audience questions whether you'll actually go that route. It would have been more interesting, if a bit unrealistic, to have them actually try to have a relationship, and see if Lou could get past her history. Instead we get a scorched Earth approach, clearing all the plot threads out of the way.

I think the show works for the same reason that Garth Ennis' stuff does. It's all about exploring this hyper-masculine world of people who are very tough on the surface, but have feelings underneath. In Preacher, Ennis uses the same ridiculous humor that Leary indulges in, masking the actual melodramatic underpinnings of the narrative. This is a soap opera, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but the gruff surface can mean that the frequent use of stock plots is not as obvious.

The show raises the question, how is it possible to do an ongoing drama series without resorting to layering pain on the characters week after week? It's obviously not easy. I feel like this show needs to let the characters have some more good times and mix in some up stuff with some of the bad stuff. Because bad stuff happens every week, the season finale needs to put things on a ridiculously bad level to stand out. If you let the characters have some good times, the hurt stiings even more.

Even though I criticize the show, I still really enjoyed it. Ongoing stories have the advantage of character familiarity. I like these people and want to know what happens to them, that can outweigh the sometimes cliched plotting. When I lose interest in a show is when it becomes so over the top that any sense of reality in the characters is gone. That hasn't happened here, and I'm hoping that season three will refine things and resolve the issues present here.

Wild At Heart

I first saw Wild at Heart on an old VHS copy, and I didn't particularly like it. It dragged quite a bit, and I never got caught up in the world of the film. I saw it again last year on DVD and liked it more so I bought my own copy and rewatched it again yesterday. My initial opinion has been radically revised, it's a great movie, though a minor work in Lynch's overall canon. Looking at the overall progression of Lynch's career, there's a pretty clear line from Blue Velvet->Twin Peaks->Fire Walk With Me->Lost Highway->Mulholland Dr.->Inland Empire. We see his themes evolve and him move from a straightforward narrative to stories based entirely on dream logic. Wild at Heart has a lot of Lynchian stuff, but feels more like a one off fun project than a critical personal statement.

Wild at Heart is notable for being one of the least complicated Lynch films. A lot of bad stuff happens along the way, but there's very little of the extreme psychological angst that plagues the characters in his FWWM, MD or IE. Sailor and Lula are anchored by their love, and that allows them to pass through their various trials relatively unscathed. It's notable that Lynch basically skips over any sections where they aren't together. Sailor's two prison sentences pass quickly, we never see Lula suffering with her mother, or Sailor's trials in prison. Considering how evil Marietta seems, those six years that Lula is living with her must have been awful. However, that's never even mentioned. The way the film plays, it's like they don't even exist when they're not with each other.

The emotional lowpoints occur when Sailor leaves Lula, trying to do what he thinks is right for her, ignorant of the fact that all she really wants is to be with him. His epiphany at the end is that they're both wild at heart, Lula doesn't want an ordinary, reliable guy, she wants the fire that she and Sailor shares. That fire is wonderfully visualized in the numerous extreme closeups of matches being struck. The fire imagery is some of Lynch's most powerful, and the sound design maximizes the impact. The titles are overflowing with visual and sonic input, I love the way the words Wild at Heart fly towards us and land with a thud in place. It's always interesting to follow directors' font choices, and the font here is the same as in Fire Walk With Me.

The film has an episodic structure, and that structure contributes to most of the issues with the film. Everything up until Big Tuna is really well paced, the editing working on a free associative level, connecting images and characters in a subconscious kind of way. There's so many brilliant moments in the opening, the color drenched sex scenes, the strobe light backed opening of the dance scene and the excessive mise en scene of the Mr. Reindeer scenes. More than any other Lynch film, I think you could criticize this for being weird for weird's sake. The Crispin Glover episode has no particular reason for being in the film, but it works because of the narrative flow. The intercutting between Marietta, her associates and Sailor/Lula means we're not in a strictly organized narrative. I'm still not sure who all the people on the periphery of the story are, and there's no particular reason for them to be there, other than the enjoyment we get from watching the weirdness of the interactions. Harry Dean Stanton's death scene is great stuff, and I love Francis Bay instructing the prostitutes on how to best serve Mr. Reindeer.

The best moment in the film is when Lula and Sailor are cruising down the highway, listening to Chris Isaak's Wicked Game. They encounter Sherilynn Fenn and watch her die. It's very sad and captures the mystery of driving down the street at night. One of Lynch's favorite recurring images is a pair of headlights speeding down the highway, illuminating the yellow lines on the road, and seldom has it been used to better effect than here were the road at night becomes a world isolated from the rest of reality.

The film loses a bit of energy once they got bogged down in the stuff at Big Tuna. I really like the night gathering scene and Bobby Peru's entrance, but after that, Peru becomes too obvious an antagonist. The joy of the film isn't in seeing the characters tested, it's more just being with them on the ride. The scene where Bobby forces Lula to say "Fuck me" is the ultimate violation, with Lula's positive sexual energy being used for destructive ends, however there's no particular consequence to it. Plus, it's tricky moral territory when a scene walks the line of implying that she might actually want to be raped by him. The way it's played, you could easily interpret it that way.

I love the image of Bobby with the stocking over his face, but other than that the robbery sequence feels like something I've seen in a whole bunch of other movies. The other element of the film that feels cliched is the Wizard of Oz references. I get that it's a major film for Lynch, but with the arguable exception of Star Wars, it's the most cliched movie to reference. I suppose one could argue that it's transcended to the level of cultural mythology, but if that's so, we probably don't need the constant verbal references throughout, just the glass ball and Good Witch appearance at the end would work.

The film stumbles again with the structuring of the finale. All the momentum in the film comes from being on the road, and the release from prison stuff just takes too long. It feels like the movie's over, then there's another ten minutes. I don't think this kills the film, it's just that most Lynch movies end on their best moments, and this one burns out before it reaches the finish. But, I think that's an inevitable consequence of the road movie. It's about the journey, so the destination is always going to feel a bit underwhelming. I want to see Lula and Sailor flying down the road, not hanging out with their kid, stalled in traffic. Like Blue Velvet, the ending affirms the American ideal of the nuclear family, but I think it would have been better to drop the kid from the plot.

Jeffery in Blue Velvet is clearly an analogue for Lynch himself. Is Sailor as well? I see him as a fantasy persona, again drawing on 50s mythology, he's the ultra cool greaser, sort of like James from Twin Peaks, only actually cool. He's a juvenile delinquent who's allowed to grow up and actually get a happy ending. So, the film is removed from the stifling morality of most actual road films in the 50s. That's because the world around them has shifted. They're the most normal ones, it's the rest of the world that's totally insane and evil. The film is structured to emphasize the us vs. them quality, it's Sailor and Lula versus this massive conspiracy designed to keep them apart. However, they overcome it and are united together in the end.

The film features a lot of Lynchy moments, the cabaret singer in front of blue curtains, strobe lights, characters representing the essence of evil. However, it's somewhat removed from most of his stuff. The film it's closest to is The Straight Story, which also has a road movie structure, though that one is significantly less Lynch than most of his other stuff. I see Wild at Heart as Lynch at his least serious. Having proven himself with Blue Velvet and Twin Peaks, he was ready to just cut loose and do whatever he wanted, forsaking the heavy themes of those two films for just pure adventure. Of course, being David Lynch, his idea of a fun romp is quite different from your average movie like this. There's plenty of great stuff in here and it succeeds in being a wonderfully entertaining movie. Coming off of the heaviness of MD and IE, going for something like this again, a lighter, but still offbeat movie, could be the best way to keep his art moving forward.

David Cronenberg's Crash

This film has the unfortunate fate of always having to be qualified as "No, not that Crash, the other one." Why is this film "the other Crash"? A large part is because it's one of the odder films you'll ever see, taking Cronenberg's fascination with the fusion of the body and technology to an interesting extreme, erasing the boundaries between the act of driving and the act of having sex.

I haven't seen that much Cronenberg, but the man has a very specific style of directing, and all his films could easily fit into a meta-Cronenbergverse. His shot choice isn't immediately distinctive, but watching this, there was a certain similarity to his other works. His characters frequently have an odd way of interacting with each other, and the people here almost never have a normal conversation. Ballard will say a line and Catherine will say a line, but it's more like seperate monologues than dialogue.

The thing that makes the film work is the same thing that makes Videodrome a success, the way that Cronenberg gradually draws you into a world of deviant behavior. You don't view the film in the way you watch most films, empathizing with the characters and sharing in the struggle. Here, it's more like you're just offscreen, in the same room with the characters, hanging out with them, but still uncertain of why they're doing what they're doing. Much has been made of the idea of the gaze in film, and this certainly emphasizes the voyeuristic. All the characters play to the camera, most notably in the scene with Rosanna Arquette in the car dealership, where she becomes an exhibitionist for all of us. This is made explicit with the dealer's presence, but it's not even needed, we're forced into his role through the construction of the film.

Basically, the characters are all about extremes. Ballard starts out in an odd, but still somewhat conventional relationship. For Catherine, it's at first enough to have sex on a stationary plane, but as the film rolls on, she needs more, and so does James. Here it's the car crash subculture that becomes that obsession. As the film progresses, it's all about raising the stakes, and that means that, for them, sex is all about danger. In the end, her car crashes and rolls over, but the fact that she's still alive means they didn't go far enough. That's why James says "Maybe next time." Vaughan makes the parallels explicit when he says the car crash is not a destructive event, it is a fertilizing one. The ultimate climax would be to die in a crash and experience a brief moment of perfect transendence in the process.

The thing that makes the film odd is that it's completely implausible. Vaughan would almost certainly have died from what he's trying to do, and I don't really see anyone getting a sexual charge from a car crash, at least not for long. So, the entire film is based on a metaphor, substituting car crashes for any sexual hangup. It's also tough because Cronenberg never gives us an outside point of view, no one questions what they're doing, no matter how ridiculous. A normal plot would have Catherine mad at James for what he's doing, but she gets drawn in without a big to do. The characters all connected through their fetish, and it's up to the viewer to judge them.

This subject matter is perfect for Cronenberg. His films almost always deal with the fusion of technology and the human body. So, the medical accsessories, notably Rosanna Arquette's leg braces become more about fetishistic presentation than medical assistance. It's a weird film, and that's a good thing. Watching this, you drift into their world and get lost in something completely other.

Battlestar Galactica - 'A Measure of Salvation' (3x07)

This episode has some issues with its overall narrative construction, but it was incredibly entertaining while I was watching it, and I think that overwhelms the problems that emerge with the ending. And regardless of the specific issues with what went down at the end, the general direction of the series is still very strong, and I'm optimistic about the future.

There were two strands of this episode that I loved. One was Baltar's interrogation stuff. Baltar's stay on the cylon ship has given new freshness to his mental interactions with Six. Last season, they had pretty much exhausted both the comedy and drama of doing scenes that juxtapose Head Six's words with whoever Baltar was really talking to. However, here we see a really striking juxtaposition of pleasure and pain that completely blurs the lines between what's real and what's not.

Watching, we don't know what Baltar is feeling. From doing audio work myself, I know out of context, it becomes pretty easy to confuse cries of pain with cries of sexual pleasure, and this scene makes expert use of that fact. When Baltar's in the chair, he's yelling, but that could just as easily be in reaction to what Six is doing in his head as it is to the pain that D'Anna is inflicting on him. I still love the look of both the ship and the beach in his mind. The color correction maximizes that, a stark contrast between cold blues and rich, warm reds.

These scenes further the idea that this Six is a benevolent force, and once again Baltar is confronted with the will of God. I love the philosophical stuff here, and D'Anna's expression at the end, when she is confronted by Baltar's declaration of love, is great. I love all this cylon basestar stuff and I'm really curious to see how it develops.

The other great element of this episode was the stuff with Helo. There's a lot of dramatic potential in his relationship with Sharon, but we haven't gotten a chance to explore that in a while. This brings it to the forefront, and we see each of them at cross loyalties. Sharon has chosen to serve on Galactica, and will not betray that oath. She would rather let her entire race die than betray Adama. That's only going to make it even more crushing when she finds out what Adama and Roslin did to Hera. I'm guessing that scene will be in episode eleven, and incite some kind of clifhanger for the brief midseason break.

I think this episode works very differently depending on how you feel about the moral question of what to do with the diseased cylons. I've always sympathized with the cylons, and the idea of exterminating them with this bio-weapon is morally objectionable. The thing that most of the human characters on the show won't admit is that the cylons are virtually identical to humans. The differences they have are more cultural than biological. There's more difference between primitive humans and the people on Galactica than there are between the cylons and people on Galactica. To destroy all the cylons might be the prudent military choice, but I would agree with Helo that it's crossing a moral line, and should not be done.

He gets his best material in a long time. I love the difficulty he has dealing with both Sharon's seeming indifference, and the fleet's strong stance in favor of extermination. He's a wild card now, and even more than for Sharon, the knowledge that Adama and Roslin took Hera could destroy him. I'm really curious to see his reaction, will he and Sharon leave Galactica and go to the cylon ship? Hera is there, so it would make sense. And, we would get an interesting reversal where Helo would be forced to decide just how much he really can accept cylon culture.

The show always poses really interesting moral questions. The problem with a really tough moral conundrum is that solving it requires major consequences, or a copout ending. And this ending feels a bit lacking in consequences. Even if they're not going to discipline Helo, there should have been a scene where we get some sense of where Adama and Roslin stand on the actions. I do find it interesting how they have switched roles from where they were at the beginning of the series. Adama's work with Sharon has forced him to reassess the cylons, while Roslin remains generally removed, willing to give the go ahead to exterminate the whole race. I would have liked to have seen some followup on how she feels about making that call.

However, I don't think the lacking ending doesn't preclude this from being a really strong episode. I love the way this season is developing, it's easily the best series on television.

Heroes - 'Nothing to Hide' (1x07)

I think one of the things that hasn't been written about enough concerning the recent emergence of the serialized television drama as novelistic form is its unique narrative structure. Until the late 90s, virtually all shows, except for sensationalistic soap operas, were based on a standalone episode structure. Each week would have a new event, and sometimes those events would tie in with the past, sometimes they'd just happen. Even shows that became very serialized as they went on, like Buffy and Six Feet Under, began with a standalone structure. Usually there would be an A plot and a B plot, and they might have parallels in some way, each episode functioned as a statement in and of itself.

That's why shows like Lost and Heroes represent a new paradigm for TV, one where the whole thing is one giant story, and there's no real differentation between the episodes. It's just the overarching story, spread across a bunch of hours. Back when I was watching The X-Files, I was incredibly frustrated by the lack of continuity and longed for a show like this. However, I think there are limits to serialization. In a show like this, or Rescue Me, there's no real distinction between the hours. That means you rarely get a bad episode, but you also don't get something as great as Buffy's Restless. Instead, you get exactly what you expect every week, and that makes it a bit difficult to review Heroes on a weekly basis.

I enjoyed this episode, and it's a necessary piece of the overall story, but it didn't do anything that particularly surprised me. I'm starting to feel that a bit less serialization can work well for a show. I think Six Feet Under season five is a fantastic model, it was very continuous emotionally, but would frequently present the characters with something different from week to week to test them in different ways. An episode like Dancing For Me, in which Nate meets up with an old friend from high school does a great job of forcing the character to assess his life.

However, Buffy and Six Feet Under have a fundamentally different core than Heroes. They are based around character development, so the plots are designed to test the characters and expose their feelings and flaws. Heroes is a mythology based show, and as such, the characters are subject to the narrative. To some extent, they are all manipulated into situations demanded by the story. I think mythology can work really well if it's tied in with the characters' emotional experiences, as in the best moments of The X-Files. However, I think a character based show can get away with a lot more. Buffy could do really risky shows because we had the character attachment to keep us engaged.

Now, that's not to say that Heroes needs to become more character focused. I think they're doing a good job of telling the story they're setting out to do. It's just that they could eventually run into the Lost problem of being all about teasing answers for the audience, while moving the plot slowly along. In Buffy, the plot couldn't move slow because our enjoyment didn't hinge upon narrative development.

I think Heroes could benefit by adopting a bit more Claremont X-Men model, and using the superpowers as a way to test the characters' emotions. I'm not sure what the long term plans for the show are, but I would love to see a third or fourth season do a storyline like The Mutant Massacre, in which there is a massacre of super-powered people, prompting the X-Men to become an underground strike team.

I'm guessing we'll get a big payoff at the end of November sweeps, and most likely a major cliffhanger as well. I do like the way the narrative strands are gradually converging, but I think we're getting less each week than we were before. It's like those Buffy episodes in the 19-21 run of each season, where there's just a lot of plot machinations to set up the big finale.

Well, I don't know if I made enough references to other shows in this review. But, I'm still liking Heroes, and I'm looking forward to seeing what's up next.

Weekend Update

Stormwatch

Now that I'm done with Seven Soldiers, I'm going to take some time off from Moore/Morrison stuff. Right now, I'm reading the first volume of Warren Ellis' run on Stormwatch. I know it picks up a little later, but it was jarring reading that first issue. Coming from the brilliance of Seven Soldiers, it was jarring to go to a book that has so many basic storytelling flaws. The cast is massive, and as a result, we're forced to endure a ton of expository dialogue like "Don't fuss Jackson. You know my energy absorption talent took the sting out of all that." Anytime you have a character say "As you know..." it's a sign of bad writing. There are some interesting ideas there, but Ellis, particularly Ellis circa 1996, doesn't even touch Morrison's superhero work. Reading the issue does give me a better idea of how big a deal The Authority was. Coming off this constant exposition, narrative caption Claremont X-Men style stuff, the widescreen superheroics were positively revolutionary. I think Claremont's work is fantastic, but the quality of his characters allowed him to get away with a lot of flaws that others couldn't pull off.

New Music Video

This week, I finally wrapped up my music video for Nepo's Yer Warpin' Me. It's a great song and I think the video turned out really well. The 35mm lens adaptor is just fantastic and I love the colors and quality you get from the DVX camera. Anyway, you can get more info here, which also has a download link. Or, just watch the Youtube below.



TV Reviews

I've fallen a bit behind on doing weekly reviews of Heroes, Gilmore Girls and Veronica Mars. I'll be bringing those back with prompter reviews. The issue is that in ongoing series, a lot of episodes are designed solely to move the story forward and don't have as much to analyze. Shows that have been on longer usually have more to discuss, because you have the weight of the characters' background. That's part of why I always have so much to say about Battlestar Galactica, you're better able to position the developments within the existing story. That's true for some of Gilmore Girls, but in the case of Heroes, after most episodes I think that was pretty good, I want to see more. However, with a show like The Sopranos, there's so much quality already out there, even an episode where virtually nothing happens has a ton of material to analyze. Same for Six Feet Under last year. The closer a show gets to the end, the clearer it becomes what the overall story of the show is.

Lost Girls

Earlier this week, I bought Alan Moore's Lost Girls from Amazon. Normally I'd be all over a new Alan Moore book, but I was a bit uncertain about getting this one, due to its self professedly pornographic content, and its price. But, I decided that new Alan was worth it, no matter what subject matter he's tackling, he's interesting. So, I'll probably be reading that after Stormwatch.

Tiranti Transit

Tiranti Transit is a short film by Italian director, Alessandro Fantini. It was interesting approaching this film because I can see so much of my own work in the film, both the triumphs and the failures.

The film's in Italian, and I didn't have access to the English dialogue, but I think it's so well made that you don't even need to understand the dialogue. The primary concern is building a mood, and what lingers with me after viewing the film is not the story, it's more this feeling of melancholy and warmth. In that respect, it's a very prototypical European art film. I haven't seen that much of his work, but it's reminiscent of Antonioni, with a decentralized narrative and a focus on aesthetic qualities.

I think that's what makes cinema so powerful, a Wong Kar-Wai film wouldn't work in any other medium because it's not solely about the story, or solely about the aesthetics, it's about the fusion of music and visual to create a singular feeling. The score in this film is fantastic, moody and Blade Runneresque, it's a large part of why the short works as well as it does.

The best moments in the film are at the end. There's a fantastic shot where the woman opens a door inside and there's a cut to a wide open road, which we then see her standing on. It's a great moment of surreal cutting, using editing to make a transition that's not possible in reality. This leads up to the really nice ending of the film.

My big issue with the film, something that's true of a lot of low budget, digital works, is that some shots just feel like home video, and that takes you out of the story. It's the biggest concern in working with digital, I absolutely love DV and would gladly shoot it over film, but it means that you need to better, to ensure that each shot has the care you would spend for a filmbased take. Even David Lynch had some really sloppily composed shots in Inland Empire, it's tough to nail every shot and a few here just didn't quite work. But, it didn't fully take me out of the story's mood, and I was able to quickly shift back in and reengage with the story. Maybe some color correction would resolve that issue, or more likely, just a higher end camera.

The other thing I wasn't sure about was the zooms. Some of them were great, but some felt a bit arbitrary. Some filmmakers use the zoom lens in great ways, most notably Robert Altman. I feel like with the zoom you either have to be really slow, or really fast. If you use the default camera speed, it can feel rote. But, I'm not sure if I'm reacting that way just because I know about cameras and can see how it worked. However, I'm still glad that he tried it, because some of those zooms made for great moment.

I'd rather watch a film like this than a polished Hollywood movie that doesn't have any energy in the shooting. I'd rather have a few shots that don't quite make it if it means having some of the fantastic compositions that appear throughout the film. As I've said many times before, I'd rather see a film that aims high and doesn't quite make it than something that has no ambition and nails it. So, the flaws of this film don't mean that it's not a great viewing. This film is a world you can slip into, and I really enjoyed my time there. And, the ending had a primal power that I found very affecting and well done.

If you want to view the film, it's online here, and there's more information on Alessandro, including some fantastic art, right here. at his site.

Battlestar Galactica - 'Torn' (3x06)

I was definitely premature in claiming that it was all going to be downhill from New Caprica. I still think last week's episode was underwhelming, but this week, Galactica dropped another phenomenal hour, one that came pretty close to matching the heights of New Caprica, but in a totally different way. If nothing else, this episode demonstrates the show's versatility. After the brutally real world New Caprica stuff, we move back into sci-fi territory, and the creation of an entirely other social system on the cylon ship.

The most unique thing about this show is the cylons, and it was great to see them get the spotlight more than ever before in this episode. Downloaded gave us some insight into cylon culture, but was primarily from the perspective of outsiders, malcontents within the system. Now, we are experiencing total immersion in their culture and it's fascinating to watch. Baltar's always been an outsider within the human fleet and I think it was a great choice to put him over with the cylons.

Visually, those sequences were fantastic. The dissolves and dreamlogic cutting created an immersive mood, conveying Baltar's difficulty in comprehending what's going on around him. I love the design of the ship, those colored lights are gorgeous. The hybrid was another visual highlight, a mix of technology and organic material, perfectly encapsulating the essence of the cylons. I like the idea that they can build their own reality on the blank slate of the basestar walls. So, when Sharon was doing Tai Chi, she wasn't in a blank room, she was probably in a vast forest, totally at peace. The scene may still have been a bit gratuitous, but I'm not complaining.

I'm wondering how this vision of the basestar matches with what we saw back in the first season finale, when Sharon went to a very organic looking port and saw many naked clones of herself. I'm assuming there's a more organic part of the ship, and the part we're seeing in this episode is the command center. The port that Baltar went into on the diseased baseship seemed to have more in common with the ship that Sharon went to. But, that's still ambiguous. Maybe Sharon went to some kind of birthing ship.

That scene where Baltar went to the diseased ship was a fantastic bit of horror. The device there may be some kind of mythological weapon, and if the humans find it, that would be their ultimate way to defeat the cylons. If they did acquire it, it would radically alter the power dynamic of the series to date. I feel like the series should eventually build to peace between the cylons and the humans, but with no strict endpoint set, we're not likely to get there soon.

And back on Galactica, stuff has picked up too. The training accident has happened way too many times, but after that we get some more interesting character stuff. Tigh has really lost it, and I'm curious to see how his arc resolves itself. Right now it looks like he can only spin further out of control into total meltdown. I don't know of anything that would bring him back, as he says when he leaves Adama.

However, Starbuck is trying to resolve her issues and return to her old self. The first scene with her and Kasey is pretty harsh. At the end, it's clear that she's still not totally back. However, unlike Tigh, she's going to make an attempt.

The ending here sets us up for the presumed confrontation between the humans and the disabled cylons. Will this only wind up messing up Baltar's status in the cylon world even more? Again, in this episode, the fact that the cylons and Baltar are such interesting characters screws with the human good/cylon bad dichotomy. I think part of that's intentional, but I find my reactions more slanted towards the cylons than I think was intended. They're just such great characters, I want to see more. Much like Spike in Buffy, the fact that they're so good makes it easy to gloss over their more morally objectable actions. As a viewer, I have a disconnect between my anger that Tigh and Kara were so abused and my total support for the cylons whenever they're on.

This issue was most prominent in season two, where the show was clearly saying Baltar would be a bad president and his plan to settle on New Caprica will lead to catastrophe, but the fact that he's a more compelling character than Roslin meant I was really mad when she tried to steal the election, and happy that Baltar won. It bothers me that Roslin and Adama never have to face up to their misdeeds, a bigger deal could be made of the fact that they claim to stand for democracy, yet disregard it whenever it suits them. Why should Roslin just become president, she just uses the military threat to back up what's essentially a coup against the peoples' vote.

So, this episode gets things going on the right track. This season has raised the bar for visual possiblities on television, and the exploration of cylon culture is phenomenal. I wasn't so sure about things last week, but I'm totally confident in the series' future now, and really excited to see the next episode.