Gilmore Girls: 'I Get a Sidekick Out of You' (6x19)

This season's primary focus has been long festering disagreements between characters, in which neither will budge to admit their fault and reconcile. In the first part of the season it was Lorelai and Rory, neither of whom would reach out to each other, and thus let their disagreement linger for much longer than it should. After they resolved things, new problems emerged, most notably Lorelai's issues with Luke.

Even though the two of them aren't actually together in the episode, their issues underline everything that occurs. For Lorelai, the happiness Lane has on her wedding day is cutting, magnifying her insecurities about the overall direction of her life. The opening comedy bit, with Mrs. Kim implying she'd be seen as a hooker, plays on this, and even though she jokes about it, you can tell that it really bothers Lorelai.

Even though things go bad later, the first chunk of the episode had some pretty funny stuff. The funniest line was definitely "Your daughter's about to see Richard Gere's penis," though the whole bachelor/bachelorette party bit was a bit too consciously quirky. I'm not a big fan of the characters in the town, and it's a bit odd that Lorelai would be in change of Lane's bachelorette party. But, she is the star of the show, so I guess you've just to accept it.

Throughout the whole run of the show, Christopher has been an omnipresent force in Lorelai's life, and the way he's been perceived has fluctuated. In season five he was used as a heel, placed between the true love between Luke and Lorelai. However, back in season two, you're set up to really like him, and when he finds out that Shari is pregnant, it's devestating. The episodes that closed the season were some of the series' best, and the loss that Lorelai had then, of the chance to finally form a "traditional" family clearly lingers.

This season, Christopher has been used as a contrast to Luke, who's been very evasive and avoidy in his relationship with Lorelai. Because Christopher has hurt her so many times before, he's very conscious of the fact that he needs to treat her well, and he's become a much more likable character as a result. if Lorelai does have some kind of breakdown with Luke, Christopher is likely the person she'd go to to talk about it.

At the wedding, Lorelai and Christopher are again put in the role of a couple, and the unspoken idea is that what Lane and Zach have is what Lorelai and Christopher should have had. Chris makes this clear when he says "They've still got time to mess it up," even the best relationship can be destroyed through a bad deed, or inaction.

And for Luke and Lorelai, it's that inaction that's dooming them. Last week, Emily yelled at Lorelai, telling her to talk to Luke about April, but she already knew she had to do this and hasn't. Neither her nor Luke will budge and that's destroying their relationship. When Lorelai finds out that Rory met April, it makes things even worse. The previous week, Emily made a concerted effort to reach out to the girl she thought was Luke's daughter, something that Lorelai never did, and Lorelai can't really criticize Rory for having contact with April, it's only Lorelai's issues that make it wrong.

So, all this bad stuff leads up to her disastrous toast. This was a really tough scene to watch, since she's so clearly saying stuff she shouldn't say, and you're just stuck there watching her fall deeper and deeper into her own problems, threatening to ruin Zach and Lane's happiness with her own issues. They don't seem to be bothered too much, but for Christopher and Rory, it's disturbing to see Lorelai like that.

At this point in her life, she's lost so many relationships, and there was the sense that Luke was the ultimate destination, the one guy who really loved her and with whom she had no problems. However, it's become clear that they do have some major issues, and if things don't work out with Luke, she feels like that's the final proof of her inadaquecy in building relationships.

In doing a long form series, you're bound to repeat certain plots. Lorelai couldn't get married to Max in season one, or to Christopher in season two, but because the Palladinos continually use marriage as a way to build the importance of storylines, you're bound to end up with a lot of broken engagements. So, rather than running from that, they use it as Lorelai's character flaw, it's not that the series structure won't allow her to be married, it's her own problems that cause this, and thus, the plotting is turned into a character flaw, and can then be interrogated within the narrative. So, a potential weakness is turned into a strength. It's the same thing that Joss Whedon did with season six of Buffy, where all the character flaws that were under the surface came to a head and caused major problems.

Lorelai's problems aren't quite on Buffy season six level yet, but there's definitely the possibility of things going there. She's got major issues, and seems unwilling to reach out to Luke to resolve them. I'm hoping that next week's episode picks up where this one ended and we get to see Christopher and Lorelai review the events of the wedding. If he's aware of just how bad things are with Luke, it could give Christopher hope that he could finally get together with Lorelai, and if Luke didn't work out, he'd certainly be her top option. As the toast shows us, Lorelai is clearly lonely and that could drive her back to Christopher.

Even though I'm really liking Lorelai's breakdown storyline I do find it odd how the entire narrative of the series has been altered this season. Everything seemed to be leading up to Luke and Lorelai getting together, the seeds of the relationship have been there since the beginning, and Luke's realization that he was in love with her at season four was one of the best moments of the series. So, what happened to change things for him?

On one level, it's the need to keep the series going, but within the world of the story, we've got something of a Nate/Brenda season five dynamic. Luke always knew he loved Lorelai, so he didn't allow any other relationships to progress, assuming that when he did get together with Lorelai, then he could settle down. However, like Nate, he got together with her and is now realizing that the problems might actually be with his own independence. He's not ready for a relationship, hence the use of April as a way to get out of committing to Lorelai.

I do think that we need to explore more from Luke's perspective. It's possible that he resents Lorelai for pushing him away during the Rory exile period, and is now punishing Lorelai for doing that. It's unclear what he's thinking, he must have some idea of what keeping April from Lorelai is doing.

I'm psyched to see the last three episodes. Things seem to be headed for a major meltdown and that's always interesting to watch.

Lost Highway

Lost Highway marks a critical turning point in David Lynch's oevure, moving towards an even more abstract narrative structure than he used in Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me. FWWM, Lost Highway and Mulholland Drive all tell very similar stories, chronicling their protagonists' acceptance fo death. In FWWM, we see a clear delineation between reality and other worlds, Laura quite literally walks througha picture, out of our world and into the alternate reality of the black lodge.

Lost Highway features less overt weirdness than FWWM, the film that sees Lynch engage in his most purely abstract filmmaking since Eraserhead. You could watch most scenes from Lost Highway and get the impression that this is a fairly normal movie. However, the narrative is a radical departure from what he'd done before. Lynch's movies always took place in a slightly askew universe, but usually proceeded through a fairly standard narrative structure. Lost Highway throws out traditional ideas of narrative by placing the film entirely within the mind of the protagonist. In Mulholland Drive, the finaly forty or so minutes of the film seem to exist in an objective reality, even if we're still experiencing Diane's perception, it's her direct perception of real events, rather than a fantasy construction.

In Lost Highway, everything in the film is a subjective experience, seen through the lens of Fred's mind as he's being electrocuted. The critical line in the film is when the Mystery Man says that "In the East, the Far East, when a person is sentenced to death, they're sent to a place where they can't escape, never knowing when an executioner will step up behind them and fire a bullet into the back of their head." So, the entre film we're watching is waiting for the bullet, with Fred constructing elaborate scenarios to escape from death, only to find that he can keep running, but death will always catch up.

When the film starts, we're watching a fairly close approximation of his actual life. He's married to Renee, but is deeply suspicious of her. The film has a very deliberate pace at the beginning, and in a few spots is a little bit too slow. However, I do love the scene where he's playing the sax, the strobing lights and wildness of his playing set up the fact that his mental state is a little bit off. The performance scenes in Lynch films are almost always a highlight, and this one is strong even though it doesn't have the emotional pull of Club Silencio or Dorothy singing "Blue Velvet."

This first chunk of scenes sets up that Fred and Renee are rather distant from each other, barely speaking and not engaging emotionally with each other at all. Things start to pick up when the videotapes turn up. Fred says that he doesn't like videotapes because he prefers to remember things how he remembers them, not how they actually were. This pretty accurately sums up the film itself, rather than admit the reality of what he's done, he constructs an elaborate fantasy scenario to distance himself from the horror of what he did. The videotapes are like messages from his conscious, real memories breaking into the fantasy world, and understandably he's freaked out by the videos, because they're puncturing his reality.

His suspicions come to the fore during the party scene. Here, he sees Alice being outgoing and jovial, as opposed to her somber demeanor when she's alone with him. On top of this, Fred encounters the Mystery Man. I love the phone call bit as a cool concept, but it also further elucidates the film's overall plot. The Mystery Man is representative of evil, of sin. So, if the Mystery Man is already in his house, it would imply that he's already committed an act of evil. Considering that the Mystery Man is with him when he commits murder at the end of the film, we can assume that he's sort of an embodiment of evil, who urges people on to do bad things.

Lynch has said that his film takes place in the same universe as Twin Peaks, and that would put the Mystery Man in a similar place as BOB, the entity that possesses Leland and forces him to kill his own daughter. BOB can be thought of either as a supernatural entity, or as the capacity that all men have for evil. So, Leland's own innate problems manifest themselves in this BOB persona. Similarly, the Mystery Man works either as an actual supernatural entity or as a manifestation of Fred's jealousy, urging him to do bad things. He is the evil that men do.

The party brings Fred in touch with his guilt and the reality of what he did. Both the discussion with the Mystery Man and the subsequent discussion with Renee on the way home, in which he tries to find out more about how she met Andy see him getting close to the mindset he was in when he killed her. So, shortly after they get back he wanders into the shadows, and moves closer to reality.

If there is one sequence that takes place in an objective reality, it would be the stuff at the police station where Fred is interrogated and experiences migraines in his cell. You could even argue that the entire film to this point is reality, but I think the Mystery Man and the videotapes would discount that theory. Considering the Mystery Man is the one holding the surveillance camera at the end of the film, the discovery of the videotapes is like a broadcast from his subconscious, disrupting the fantasy world.

The exact nature of the reality of the prison scenes is irrelevant. What is clear is that the fantasy world is breaking down and Fred is moving closer and closer to death. He's sentenced to the electric chair, seemingly with no way out. However, in his migraine haze, he peers up into the light and moves into another world.

What struck me on this viewing was the similarity between this and the Costa Mesa stuff in The Sopranos. Tony also constructs a fantasy world for himself, in which he can live a new life, but that world gradually breaks down, returning him to his real life. Both work use the bright circle of light as a transition betweeen worlds, the lamp in LH and the helicopter searchlight in The Sopranos.

The transition sequence between Fred's story and Pete's is interesting. Pete seems to be literally plucked from his world and moved into the cell. This would imply that Fred had constructed this fantasy persona before, and now he becomes him. However, it could also be read as Fred trying to build up some kind of justification for why Pete is in the cell. Even in this mental realm, certain rules of cause and effect must be obeyed.

Pete is a fictional construction that Fred uses to escape from all the problems he accrued in his adult life. Trapped in a loveless marriage and plagued by jealousy and guilt, he decides to revert to his teenage years and escape all that. The life he builds for himself is interesting, in some respects, Pete is a failure, he's 24, but still lives with his parents. The way I read it, Fred was lonely and decided to construct an identity where he had people who were looking out for him and caring about him. So, this guy who seemed connected with only one person, his wife, builds a world where he's got friends coming over to visit him, parents who look out for him, and a girlfriend who's deeply in love with him.

So, this world seems to be completely removed from who he was before, that is until he encounters Alice, a different version of Renee. Lynch loves to do the blonde hair/dark hair contrast, it turns up in nearly every thing he's done. Alice is an interesting construction because she's simultaneously everything that Fred wanted Renee to be and everything he didn't want her to be. Alice is passionate about Pete, their sex is a major contrast to the pained groping of Fred and Renee. As Pete, Fred is able to recapture the fire he once had, another reason why he chose this younger persona for his reinvention. Clearly there's a fantasy element to this, since both Alice and Sheila are desperate to spend time with him. As the policeman says "This fucker gets more pussy than a toilet seat."

The first time I saw the introduction of Alice, where she walks into the car, backed by Lou Reed's cover of "This Magic Moment," I felt it didn't quite work. The punk or alternative covers of 50s pop songs frequently come across as cheesy, and it's odd that Lynch would choose to use an updated version of a 50s pop song when he's usually interested in contrasting the sordid world of his films with sappy 50s pop songs. But, watching it this time I liked it more. The way he films it makes you see Alice through the eyes of someone who's completely drawn to her. Patricia Arquette's certainly attractive here, but the way it's shot pushes it beyond just the surface.

That scene actually gets to one of the key issues with the film, the idea of male possessiveness. When Pete sees Alice, he views her as an object, a point of view that's Fred's fatal flaw. In creating Alice, Fred flips the dynamic of his actual relationship with her, splitting himself into two people. I already covered Pete, who Fred actually identifies with. However, with Mr. Eddy, we see someone who represents the other side of Fred, all his bad traits.

Considering he murdered his wife, Fred clearly has some anger issues, and in the driving sequence, we see that Eddy has a similarly short fuse. Eddy also has jealousy issues, he's the old guy, who apparently does not satisfy his wife sexually. Fred has all these problems, so he makes his problems into his enemy and constructs a fantasy persona for himself.

However, the very presence of Alice represents a break in the fantasy persona. What started as a total break is gradually returning to the reality of Fred Madison's life. This is accelerated with one of the most striking sequences in the film, Alice's strip at gunpoint. Considering this sequence is seen through Fred's own perception, it's clear that even though he killed her because she was fooling around, on some level he's also turned on by it. That's why he'd construct this elaborate scenario.

The scene simultaneously exonerates Alice and revels in her betrayal. He can justify her adultery by saying that she only did it so save herself, she had no choice, but at the same time, he eroticizes the scenario. It's the Madonna/whore idea, and that's Fred's ultimate downfall. It's likely that what drove him to actually kill her was not so much the actual fooling around, but the fact that he liked to think of her in that way, as an object.

This leads into the phone call sequence with the mystery man and Mr. Eddy. This features the essential "Far East" speech, which basically explains the film. I love the end of the scene where Mr. Eddy says "Pete... I just wanted to jump on and tell you I'm really glad you're doin' okay." It's simultaneously hilarious and menacing.

The objectification continues with the sequence at Andy's house. This is where the film starts to get really good. It's unclear who Andy is in reality, if he's a big porn mogul, or if he's just a guy who Renee was attracted to. That's irrelevant in the overall scheme of things. What Fred does is turn her ambiguous relationship with Andy into this elaborate porn ring.

The porn film loops are quite different from the videos we saw earlier. The videos are clearly shot by the mystery man, on the security camera he's carrying with him. They're as close as we get to objective reality. The porn videos are most likely a construction of Fred's mind. They're omnipresent in his mental world because they're the best evidence of what drove him to kill her. He was always imagining these scenarios and their intrusion in the fantasy world is another indicator that it's about to collapse. Pete seems unphased by their presence, but the very nature of the videos, their extreme sordidness would indicate that they're Fred's ultimate nightmare.

And yet, at the same time he imagines Mr. Eddy, the side of himself that killed her, turned on by the videos, and watching them with Alice. This again ties into his conflict about his feelings, on one level he hates her for making them, but part of him wants to revel in it, and use her sexual exploration as part of their relationship. It's notable that Mr. Eddy and Alice at the video screening are much more passionate than Fred and Renee in their bedroom. That scene can also be read as Fred's ultimate fear, that Renee loves making these videos and having sex with other men, while she won't give him any passion. So, Eddy is another fantasy figure, once again Fred gets to be in sexual control of Alice rather than being pathetically unequipped to please her.

After the business at Andy's house we get my favorite scene in the film, the sex in the headlights. This scene pushes the visuals to an extreme, I love how the characters are virtually white silhouettes against the black background. They move in slow motion, abstracted, to the incredible sounds of This Mortal Coil's "Song to the Siren." I hadn't noticed it before, but the song appears briefly earlier in the film when Fred is first having sex with Renee. So, its presence would indicate the collapse of the fantasy world, once again we get the light motif, the same transition that brought us Pete sends him away, and brings Fred back. It was the rebuilding of the house that allowed Fred to escape himself, but now back at its site, in the presence of the Mystery Man, his guilt, his true self returns.

Alice says "You'll never have me," which is literally true, since she's dead, but also plays on Fred's insecurities. Even though they were married, they weren't connected, he can make these fantasies, but he'll never have the same passion that she had with Andy or Eddy/Laurant. Of course, he can only imagine that passion, so in a sense what she's saying is that the real her will never live up to the mental image of the woman he created. This is an especially apt comment in light of the fact that Alice is an entirely fictional construction.

From here the film takes off into the sort of abstraction that Lynch excels at. I love the idea of the Lost Highway hotel, a stopover for Fred on the journey through his subconscious. Here he sees more distorted images of Renee, and ultimately finds Mr. Eddy. Aided by the Mystery Man, he drags Eddy out into the desert. At this point, Fred has basically accepted his guilt. If we're to take the Mystery Man as a physical embodiment of that guilt, the fact that he's working with him would indicate that he's moved beyond trying to come to terms with the murder and instead is embracing his identity as a killer.

If we're to read Eddy as Fred's own jealous side, then murdering him would seem to lay to rest the trauma surrounding Renee's death. He confronts him with the porn images on the TV, then kills him. The basic point is that Fred has accepted the truth, the fantasy world is crumbling and falling into chaos.

This is partially manifested in the cleanup scenes at Andy's house. Previously we had two seperate sets of cops for Pete and Fred. Now, they're working together, and where once we had two women in the photo, there's now only one. The entire Pete identity has collapsed, and Fred has come to terms with the fact that it was only one woman all along, a further breakdown of the fantasy.

We come full circle when Fred speaks into the intercom. This may be a tie in to the idea of the Far Eastern purgatory, that he will continue in this loop forever, another Fred Madison will hear this message and take the journey one more time, even as this one goes off to death. Either way, it's a nice bit of narrative symmetry leading us into the final scene.

Having accepted guilt for the murder of Renee, and possibly the murder of Andy and Eddy, Fred flees from the police. I'm not sure whether he killed Andy in real life, I would say it's unlikely. He is reluctant to engage with the moment where he actually killed Renee, but he dwells on the death of Eddy and Andy in the dream. So, I would think that's another example of the fantasy construction, this time he gets revenge not only on his wife, but also on the men that she was fooling around with.

And then he's off on the Lost Highway, fleeing the police. Throughout the film we've seen moments of intense light and heat that are used to signal major transitions. The final transition for everyone is death, and here at the end, death comes to Fred Madison. The lighting bolts as he's driving is the charge from the electric chair being pumped through him. He's created this elaborate fantasy scenarios throughout the film to avoid the truth, but now the police are catching up with him, he's got nowhere to go, for him the road has ended.

Lost Highway is an essential Lynch work, paving the way for a film that uses very similar structure and themes, but in a more cohesive, stylish way, and that's Mulholland Drive. Lost Highway is a tougher film to engage with because it's a dirtier film. MD has a sheen, so that even if you don't follow the plot you can enjoy the Hollywood glamour, humor and wacky characters.

Lost Highway is in some ways the least Lynchian of all his films. Most of his movies take place in a world that's slightly askew, usually thrown back towards the 50s. Lost Highway has some over the top characters, but other than the Mystery Man, no one who's weird in the way that the Log Lady or Frank Booth is. It's a much more modern, reality based film, despite taking place entirely in this guy's head.

This modernity actually makes it seem more dated in some ways than a lot of Lynch. Blue Velvet, TP or MD take place in a time warp that's part 50s, part present day, and that makes it timeless. Lost Highway is very tied to 1997, particularly in the soundtrack. This is the only Lynch film to make extensive use of contemporary recordings, I'm not sure if that was a studio choice or his own, but it gives things a different feeling than other Lynch movies. This certainly the most rock Lynch movie, and even though only a small bit of his music was used, the film does have the feel of a Trent Reznor song. I love the typical Angelo Badalamenti Lynch music, but it is good to mix things up. One of the flaws of MD is that it uses so many of Lynch's previous tricks, Lost Highway is much more groundbreaking for him.

In terms of music, besides the afforementioned brilliance of "Song to the Siren," I love the David Bowie track that bookends the film. It fits so well with the image of the lights on the road, and its return at the end creates another piece of symmetry to compliment the "Dick Laurant is dead" repetition. You get the sense that you could start the film again right there and things would still work. I also love the Rammstein tracks, their German vocals lending a bizarre grandeur to the proceedings.

If Lost Highway has a flaw, it's that the pacing is so deliberate the first half of the movie suffers a bit. It's necessary to lay out the themes, but watching it again, I found myself waiting for the cool stuff from the second half, there's not as much visceral entertainment in the first chunk of the film.

But that doesn't stop it from being a great film. This is such a thematically complex film, I love the fact that Lynch won't give a definitive interpretation. I feel like I got the film, but there are other, equally valid interpretations. The film gives you a basic design, and you're allowed to fill in the details for yourself. I'd consider this, Fire Walk With Me and Mulholland a thematic trilogy, and those three films are some of the richest, most complex films ever made. Lynch's subconscious motivated filmmaking creates consistently confounding and demanding narratives, where the film is just the start, the real fun comes afterwards, trying to turn the pieces into your own whole. I love this kind of filmmaking, it makes the typical three act narrative look positively boring, and with the exception of Miike, I can think of no one else who's doing movies that challenge you in this way. Watching the film again has made me even hungrier for Inland Empire, it's been too long since I've had some new Lynch to contemplate.

The Sopranos: 'Live Free or Die' (6x06)

This episode marks the halfway point of the season and the themes are becoming clearer and clearer. The first episode focused primarily on the story of a guy who wants to retire from the mob, and gradually realizes that, for him, there's only one way out. That storyline was clearly meant to be an overture for the entire season, setting out the themes that we'd explore later on, and that main question seems to be, can you get out, or will they always pull you back in?

In this episode we see that idea explored through two seperate storylines, Vito's and Tony's. Vito got the idea that it was basically over for him back in Jersey and decided to make a run for it and try out life somwhere else. Vito is so constricted by the societal restrictions of his world that he literally has no other option. If he stayed, he'd be ridiculed and possibly killed. Now, obviously he made the wrong choice going out to the bar, in his line of work, being spotted at a place like that is a career killer and sooner or later, it was going to catch up with him. However, that doesn't undermine audience sympathy for the character. This episode marks the first time we've seen someone actually leave mob life behind. Christopher has contemplated it on a number of occasions, but Vito is the first to leave Jersey and possibly find a viable life somewhere else.

His flight had a weird quality. Clearly there was some playing with the idea that he was going to crash his car and die, the greasy chicken, cellphone and torrential rain all set us up for the inevitable skid into a pole. But, it's not inevitable and Vito makes it, only to be stranded in the rain. There's some interesting symbolism in Vito's car being destroyed, leaving him with virtually nothing. With the destruction of the car, any easy way to return home is taken away, he has no choice but to stay in this town.

The whole sequence seemed to call back to the Costa Mesa stuff from Tony's dream sequences. In both cases we get someone who's stranded in a strange place with no way out, separated from their usual identity. Vito's walk towards the hotel echoes the end of the Costa Mesa sequence, Tony was not able to go into the hotel and completely remove himself from his identity. However, Vito does enter the hotel, and as the episode progresses, he moves further and further away from who he was.

This town is something of a utopia for Vito. A gay couple isn't considered strange, and the lady at the hotel does him a favor with no expectation of anything in return. By the end of the episode, Vito is liberated enough to walk into the antiques store and no longer mask who he really is. He is a "natural" for the first time in his life.

So, things are looking up for Vito, but on the home front his departure is causing major problems. I liked the way that Tony and his crew found out, another example of the vast gossip circles these gangsters have. It was nice to see another Westchester mention, with this guy from Yonkers playing such a critical role in the episode. I also really like the way the whole thing starts out as something humorous, but as the episode progresses and the full consequence of Vito's sexuality becomes apparent, things turn very serious.

Tony himself is still struggling with reconciling his newfound joy at just being alive with his continually difficult day to day existence. It's something that's nicely expressed in the opening scene, where he is just trying to relax, but the ventilator keeps making noise. And as the episode goes on, he'll have a lot worse noise than the ventilator.

I'm loving the direction that Tony is going in this season. For the entire run of the show, we've had the sense that he's different than the other mobsters, more intellectual and introspective. The shooting put him in an entirely different world for a time, and that has heavily influenced the way he perceives his existence in the present. He no longer accepts the customs of the world, just because they've always been that way, he questions things and that makes it difficult for him to be a mob leader.

His scene with Melfi was one of the best Melfi scenes in the show's entire run, functioning as a forum for Tony to essentially debate himself. Tony is torn between the values that have been culturally instilled in him his whole life and what he actually wants to believe in, but feels he can't. The scene with Meadow is troubling to place because it shows Tony being very much old style Tony. This may be a tie in to Chris's claim back in episode two that Tony takes terrorism very seriously, so he's not willing to give Arabs the benefit of the doubt.

However, with Melfi he's clearly torn on the issue of homosexuality. He recognizes that it could damage his organization, and claims to be disgusted by it, but at the same time, he's inclined to just let people do what they want in their personal life, basically his own don't ask, don't tell policy. This is how it is with prison sex, and apparently how they treated previous gay mobsters, as he alludes to Sil during their final scene together. Melfi rightly points out that Tony is conflicted on the issue, he's by no means progressive, but next to his crew, who feel that it's a crime worthy of death, he's positively welcoming.

The meeting with Finn was a really well done scene, showing us a wide variety of perspectives on the issue. Finn is very disturbed, as he makes clear in the final scene. Considering that Tony brought Finn in to "testify," he's clearly not actively looking out for Vito, but at the same time, he doesn't want to send out the death squad right away.

By the end of the episode it's apparent that Tony's going to have to make a choice. The scene with him and Silvio was brilliant. The lingering shot on Tony in the foreground, Sil in the background sets you up for some kind of conflict between the two of them, and you're just sitting there, waiting for someone to speak. Silvio makes it clear that to accept Vito back would undermine the order of their world. He addressed the kissing issue, which I discussed last week. Even more than upsetting their business world, admitting Vito back into the circle would destroy their "social club," and create a lot of internal angst. If Tony let Vito back in, it's a potentially suicidal move, but the question arises, is that what he would want, to get out of the mob world any way he could.

The essential problem for Tony right now is that his business is inherently immoral and will always create noise to distract him from his relaxation. We're left wondering if Tony is really committed to changing his life, or if, as he tells Melfi, the troubles of everyday life will eventually return him to the way he was.

Off in the subplots, we get some interesting stuff with Carmela and Meadow. When Carmela agreed to take Tony back, it was partially, if not mainly, motivated by the desire to use his money to start her own business ventures and eventually find some form of self reliance. In the first episode of the season we saw her jealousy of Angie, who has become totally self reliant, and in this episode has taken total control of her life and work. In the terms of their society, she's become a man, throwing the women a check rather than helping them with the silent auction, much as their husbands would. And she's running operations on the street through members of Tony's crew. She's acheiving her dreams as Carmela's are falling apart. The men in her life won't take her seriously, but without their help she can't get started. Hence, she's locked in the cycle of dependency she's been in for all her life.

Meadow, like Tony, is put in some compromised positions this episode. In arguments, the position you argue largely depend on those you're arguing with. So, talking to Tony, she's railing against the mistreatment of Afghanis who came to America, a classic liberal cause, yet under this, she's becoming more and more loyal to the family, something that's enhanced by Finn's increasing unease. So, like Tony, she finds herself sometimes arguing the conservative position, sometimes the liberal.

I'm guessing that things won't go too well with Finn. I think he's always been aware of the violence of the Soprano family, but what unnerves him is the fact that Meadow is becoming an apologist for the family. She's still never been exposed to the real horror of what they do, as Finn has been on a number of occasions. He's seen these people basically condemn Vito to death just for being gay, something that Meadow can't seem to process.

All she sees is the injustice done unto Johnny, something that apparently pales in comparison to the white collar criminals. This is a line of argument Tony himself has used quite a bit, in one episode he mentions that the Enron guys are worse criminals than he is. Meadow sees only the injustice, not the fact that Johnny Sack clearly is guilty of murder. I hesitate to make predictions, but I'm thinking that this law firm internship could go bad when the lawyers make fun of her for her family connections, something that would drive her even closer to the family. Could we see Meadow turning into a mob lawyer, aiding her father? I'm not sure it'll go that far, but clearly she's been moving closer and closer to the family, in both senses of the word.

One little thing I really liked about the episode was the subtle callbacks to last week. Watching it weeks apart, I allow for some gaps in action, so if the beatdown at the end of the last episode wasn't addressed, I would have assumed that it happened between episodes. However, when watching the show on DVD, those little callbacks to the previous episode work wonders to create the sense of a consistent world, smoothing the transition from episode to episode. And here it does give us some nice insight into the fact that Tony's ploy did work, because Christopher admits he was wrong about his plan for the Rusty hit.

So, another bold change of direction. Vito is give the chance for a better life, but will he be able to remain under the radar, away from Paulie and the others who are looking for vengeance. I loved Chase's little nod to certain elements of the fanbase, with Tony complaining about how some people can't wait to whack somebody, but I will say that between the open insolence this week and the Barone issue, Paulie's future does not look bright.

The Thin Red Line

One of my favorite films from last year was Terence Malick's The New World. So, having enjoyed that film so much, I decided to revisit the first film of his that I saw, The Thin Red Line. I'm not usually a big fan of war movies, more than any other genre, it's very limiting, there's only so many different ways you can set up the platoon of archetypal characters, all longing to get home. Earlier this week, I watched the Korean film Taegukgi which was well shot, but I'd seen the characters and situations in many other movies. Jarhead basically admitted that there was nothing left to do with the war movie and did a meta take on the genre, where no one actually fights, the only action we see is when they're watching Apocalypse Now. This film seemed to signal the total exhaustion of the genre. Unless you do something set in the future, there's very few interesting directions left for the war movie to explore.

With The Thin Red Line, Malick approaches war in his traditional style, a dreamlike, poetic haze, with lots of voiceover and editing that connects images and feelings rather than plot points. The film is about half masterpiece and half good, but flawed. The parts that do work are primarily the ones away from combat, where we focus on what the soldiers are thinking and feeling.

The opening is incredible, with gorgeous visuals showing Whit's sojourn in the native peoples' village. The joy he feels here hangs over the rest of the film, which generally does not go well for any of the characters. You can see a lot of the roots of The New World here, Whit is basically John Smith, a soldier trying to assimilate into a peaceful village, finding a utopia only to be pulled away from it. The way nature is shot, particularly the underwater swimming scenes, is replicated almost exactly in the latter film.

The basic theme of the film is that war destroys all around it. So, Nick Nolte may express ambivalence about his role as commander, but during the fight, he's still yelling at his troops, ordering them into dangerous situations. The film doesn't give us any sense of satisfaction from the victories, there's no clear line between the battles, so everything just blurs together, and even though progress is made, we know that this island isn't of particular strategic importance. It's just people killing other people. And, like a virus, the corruption spreads to the native people, who are fighting each other at the end of the film, and won't allow Whit back into the village.

The major issue with the film is that there's so many characters, and not that many of them are really developed. There's a few people, Whit, Staros, Jack, whose storylines we can follow, but they'll disappear for a while and we'll just have other people showing up and doing stuff. In some senses this is the film's strength, rather than having cliched archetypal characters we get people who are just there, however, it makes it hard to get emotionally wrapped up in the story. In The New World or Days of Heaven, the limited casts allow for more direction emotional involvement with the story, we know everyone's basic desires and as a result can sympathize with what's going on.

I guess the major issue for me is that Whit and Jack, the two most developed characters, look so much alike, I was constantly trying to keep track of which was which. They're all dressed the same and have the same hairstyle, so it's hard to follow things. I'm hoping if I watch it again, I'll be able to better separate the two of them, I remember the first time I watched it I had an even harder time telling who was who.

The story of Jack and his wife was one of the strongest parts of the film because of the way it was told. By keeping everything visual, we see her through his eyes, the beautiful photography capturing this idealized image of her that he's created. The scene where she's on the swing, or the later scene where she looks out the window are both incredibly striking matches of editing and composition. It's devestating when we find out she's left him.

That plays out in the downtime between the taking of the ridge and the final battle, the best section of the film. The combat scenes are shot in an interesting way, but ultimately it's something we've seen before and doesn't allow Malick to play to his strengths. It's during the downtime that we can explore more of what the characters are feeling. Whit's return to the village encapsulates the theme of the film, and positions it closely with the rest of Malick's oeuvre.

All of his films are about the corruption of Eden. Here it's the war turning this natural community into a battleground, a graveyard. Whit chooses to die at the end because he's seen too much, and can't go back to the way he was. The light he carried is gone, and without that, he doesn't want to live.

So, I think the film is successful on the whole, there's some amazing parts, but the combat scenes don't match up to the non-combat stuff. It may have been Malick's intent to make the combat less engaging than the rest of the film, but as a viewer, it means that about half the film is spent on less interesting material. However, Malick is able to reimagine the war movie and create something that I'd place alongside Apocalypse Now as the only essential war films. I'd rather see someone try something radically different, like Malick did here, than just churn out a formulaic combat melodrama like Taegukgi.

Malick is a master filmmaker because he is uniquely committed to working with what only film can do, using images and music to build connections rather than relying on dialogue or plot. And without this film, I don't think we'd have seen the even more experimental New World.

The Sopranos: "Mr. and Mrs. Sacrimoni Request..." (6x05)

This week, the show tackles the issue of masculinity in the mob world, examining what behavior is acceptable and what isn't acceptable. This is done through the three primary stories, Tony's, Johnny's and Vito's. The opening of the episode, with the six week gap announced by a title is unlike anything they've done, but I guess it was necessary to explain Tony's recovery.

That said, I'm glad that they're continuing to dwell on the effect that this experience has had on him, both mentally and physically. Last episode I was a bit disappointed that he seemed to be pretty close to normal mentally, considering all the warnings the doctors had given about how he wasn't going to fully recover. So, clearly there's been some major physical deterioration, which is a problem in his circles. But more interesting is the mental transformation. He's stepped out of his world, and as a result finds it hard to adjust to being back in it.

Throughout the episode, we see how Tony is now being treated like a weak person in need of help, not unlike Junior back in the early seasons. When Carmela sends him off to work, she says "I feel like a mommy," and once he gets there, it's clearly all about making Tony comfortable and keeping things easy for him. The poker scene is wonderful because it marks the reunion of the family, with Tony taking his place at the head of the table, but also shows how far removed Tony is from their world. Despite the respect they initially show him, when he starts talking about the surgery, Silvio cuts him off and restarts the game. There is no place for that sort of introspection in the mob world.

The episode did a great job of conveying Tony's physical exhaustion. He can barely make it up the stairs, and his greatest pleasure seems to be collapsing in bed. One of my favorite scenes in the episode was Tony's discussion with Meadow in the kitchen, where he presents himself more and more as someone on the way out. He just wants to spend some time with his grandkids before he dies. When Junior shot Tony, he basically turned Tony into him, the boss, but someone whose time has passed. This weakness is wonderfully conveyed during the entrance to the wedding, where just the act of walking into the wedding is too exhausting for him.

One interesting bit in this scene was Meadow's claim that what the government was doing was absurd, further emphasizing the way that she's being drawn more and more into the family. She does seem very unsure about the marriage to Finn, and we haven't gotten a sense that they have any kind of strong rapport. The closest they come to a major moment is when Finn is about to say something to her at the wedding then stops. That was a great moment, the lack of words saying a lot more than any actual comment would.

Leading up to the wedding, we get some strong scenes with Johnny Sack. The whole opening of the episode was very funny, I particularly liked Johnny's thin daughter lamenting the fact that all anyone talks about in their family is food. Another good bit was Johnny's disgust at the patent leather shoes.

After Tony's near collapse, we get a lot of strong comedy bits at the wedding. AJ's date claiming that she wouldn't eat fish because of the toxins, while at the same time smoking a cigarette. Vito's awkward compliment to Finn. Tony and Johnny talking business with the old people was another hilarious bit. But the funniest thing was when Tony tells AJ he should be observing things if he wants to be an event planner, then AJ goes around and says "An event planner? Where do you come up with this shit," effectively puncturing all the speculation that line in the fifth season finale prompted during the off season.

Side note, that "High ho the merry-o" song had to be one of the most annoying things ever composed, yet as it went on, I couldn't help but enjoy it. Just the guy's sincerity in delivering the lines, like each time he was discovering the "merry-o" for the first time, you just believe in him completely.

However, as things progress, it starts to get sad. We're aware that this could very well be the last time that Johnny will ever see his family outside of prison, so the idea of "giving away" his daugther has a deeper meaning. We start to see the cracks during the "Daddy's Little Girl" song, where Johnny starts singing along, reluctant to let his daughter go. Here we also see the close bond between Meadow and Tony, which seems a lot deeper than what's going on between her and Finn. And another side note, the whole song is a bit creepy.

I was really feeling for John when the marshalls said he had to leave, the moment when the federal jeep pulls up to block the wedding car mars the happiness of the wedding. Johnny tried to give her a perfect day, which his prison stay would not prevent, but in its final moments, the reality of his sentence becomes clear to everyone looking on. And knowing that this is probably the last time he'll see his daughter outside of prison, he starts to break down. Clearly, this is a tough situation and the fact that the marshalls couldn't wait a couple of minutes puts a mar on the whole day. So, John is carried off crying, perhaps aware that even though he claims to have done all this for his family, wouldn't they rather have a less lavish wedding, and actually have him around with them after?

The Johnny Sack crying incident effectively ruins his credibility as a mob leader. While Johnny's fall is sad, it's mainly interesting in the way it relates to Tony's progress. Tony tries to defend Johnny, clearly aware from his own experience of the fleeting nature of life. For Tony, every day may seem like a gift, but for Johnny those six hours literally were a gift, and when it ran out, he had nothing left. Tony is the only one of his crew that can relate to that complete despair. He's got a depth of emotion and intelligence that far exceeds any of the other mobsters, and that's what makes him such a fascinating character. Throughout the show's run, it's been the moments where the characters strive for good, and ultimately fail, that are the most compelling. In their world, doing the right thing is rarely an option, because to help someone else can make you seem weak.

That's the basic lesson that Tony learns when he hears them talking about Johnny. Even though his crew may be helping him out while he's there, they're almost definitely talking about how weak he is when he's gone, and the open insolence that Christopher displays is a clue to him that things aren't like they used to be. If he wants to avoid Johnny's fate, he has to change things.

Melfi's role here is interesting, once again she provides him with business advice, as was the initial conceit of the show back in the first season, but she must be aware that what she's doing is going to lead to violence. In the mob world, reasserting power isn't done through words, it's done through action, and I'd be interested in seeing where she is morally on Tony right now, because in that scene she was pretty much saying "go out and hurt someone." In a lot of respects, the show has outgrown Melfi, we're so aware of Tony as a character that he doesn't need to explain things for us to understand what he's feeling. There's certainly good things that can be done with those scenes, but they don't feel essential to the narrative, as they once did.

She presents him with the idea of the alpha male, and when he goes to Satirale's he literally acts the concept out. He seeks out the strongest male, pretty easy to spot considering the rather shoddy physical state of most of his crew, and beats him up, thus asserting his own dominance, and letting his crew know that the old Tony is still present.

If the episode had ended with that fight scene, I wouldn't have been thrilled with it, it's the subsequent scene in the bathroom that makes it effective. Here we see that even though Tony may be able to win the fight, he's far from the man he used to be. He looks at himself in the mirror, with an expression that says "I've still got it," but then quickly collapses to the floor to vomit. So, we're more aware than ever of the facade of manliness. Tony may have won back his crew's adoration, but he knows that his body cannot afford to do that anymore.

The fight scene is also interesting in how it shows that Tony has changed. He has definitely cooled down, as evidenced by the early scene with the truck, so it becomes difficult for him to find a reason to actually beat someone up. He invents this completely fictitious refrigerator door incident, clearly playing the role of the guy who will snap at anything. He's not that guy anymore. The question that now arises is, if Tony is putting on his old persona while he is at work, will he eventually revert to being that guy again, or will the disconnect between who he really is and who he's pretending be cause him to become more revoled at the world of the mob?

The other major plot thread of the episode involves Vito's troubled life as gay man in a straight world, he's living his very own Brokeback Mountain, and I imagine if these episodes were filmed a few months later, we'd definitely be catching some references to the film. The episode starts out with a number of coded references to his sexuality, not unlike stuff we've seen earlier in the season, however apparently the wedding frustrates him and prompts him to head out to the gay club circuit.

The scene in the leather club may not reach the bizarre heights of "Le Rectum" from Irreversible, but it's still a pretty weird scene. It's certainly not going to pick up any GLAAD awards, but considering the world Vito comes from, it's pretty likely that he'd end up at a place like this. When he first appeared in the leather outfit, I was cracking up, it was such a ridiculous visual, he looked like an S&M Mario.

I read the two guys who saw him were from New York, and it's pretty clear that word about what happened hasn't made it back to Jersey. We saw this in the great scene in the hotel room. So, either word got back to Phil, and he's going to talk to Vito about it next episode, or maybe Vito has killed the two people who saw him. Or it's possible that he killed himself in that hotel room. I will say that seeing drive into a motel alone with that gun was not what I expected to happen. It's harsh, but in his world, it might make more sense to kill himself than to let his secret get out.

If Johnny's crying was a major faux pas, then actually being gay would probably be the greatest social breach, somewhere right around being an informant for the government. Besides the obvious societal prejudice, I think homosexuality is so threatening for these mobsters because their world is such a closed, masculine one, with a lot of open physical affection. They're always kissing and hugging each other, and that's acceptable because they're all so staunchly heterosexual, so if one man turns out to be gay, that makes it difficult to keep up the physicality of the relationships.

I'm surpised that Vito was outed this way, through a random interaction, they had been building up the Finn angle for so long, I assumed that's what would set things off. However, Chase always deviates from the expected, and now I'd guess that the stuff with Finn will be used in some other way. Regardless, Vito's return is going to create some major issues.

Along with this, we get our first idea of what's up with Junior. He's apparently fluctuating between lucidity and total mental detachment, and doesn't remember what happened with Tony. The episode represents a new low for Junior, placed in an institution, begging to go home, even as we know that he's likely there for the rest of his life.

And the one scene that leaves me wondering is Christopher's interactions with the Arabs. Clearly they're setting up that these guys aren't from America, hence the credit card joke, and I'm not sure what kind of family dispute requires a Tek-9 to resolve. Clearly, the Agent Grasso's talk with Christopher a few episodes ago is still on the table and could lead to something down the line.

This was another fantastic piece of work, they've got more complexity and thematic layering in a single episode than nearly any film you'll see, and I'm really eager to see where things go from here. The only bad thing about the show right now is the one week wait between episodes.

The Umbrellas of Cherbourg

SPOILERS: Don't read until you've seen the film

This is a French musical from the 60s, about a pair of star crossed lovers, Genevieve and Guy. This film acheives what Scorsese's New York, New York and Coppola's One From The Heart attempt to do, namely make a film with all the glamour and style of a classic Hollywood musical, but also place the characters in a world that's more emotionally real. While those films poured on the nastiness, and thus undermined the essential pleasures of the genre, Umbrellas tells a more realistic story, but still keeps the fun and style of the best musicals. It's basically got all the things you'd want from a musical, while telling a story that doesn't hew strictly to the happy ending setups favored by Hollywood.

Unlike a lot of musicals, this one is entirely sung. A lot of contemporary audiences seem to have issues wth musicals, but when done well, it can create uniquely powerful cinema. The combination of music and visual is the most cinematic construction, and this film takes full advantage. The production design is great, making a world that's more stylish than reality, but doesn't cross over into fairy tale excess, and you never question the fact that all the characters are singing. A part of that is that the film doesn't do big production numbers, so you never get the sense that they're putting on a show for you. This is just the way they live their lives.

The really interesting thing about the film is the way it plays with your emotional attachments. In the beginning of the film, it seems like Guy and Genevieve are made for each other, and it's tough when Genevieve's mother is trying to keep them. Side note, but the mother acted and looked exactly like Emily Gilmore. I doubt there was a direct inspiration, but it was quite striking. Anyway, so you're initially attached to these two, and the news that Guy is going to war is quite sad.

Once he's gone however, Roland gradually develops as a character and, like Genevieve, we start to forget about Guy. In most romance films, you've got the true love and the guy she'd settle for. Normally this is done to build narrative tension, if you've got a woman with an abusive boyfriend or her true love, it's not much of a love triangle. However, when you've got the good, reliable guy, or the fiery, passionate love, it's tougher to decide. So, you're expecting Roland to be someone who's just there to bulid the tension, will she get together with this guy, or will she wait for her true love, Guy?

But, as things progress, Roland seems more and more like a good choice for Genevieve. One of the character types I've seen a lot in fiction recently is the ultra self deprecating guy, who is constantly insulting himself, seemingly as a way of ingratiating him to the audience. They first did this on Buffy with Riley, and then later with Ben. Veronica's cop boyfriend on Veronica Mars was a similar type. However, I wasn't really with these characters because the self deprecation seemed more like an act. With Roland, this is a guy who really is socially inept, and as a result you want Genevieve to be with him. When he agrees to raise her child as his won, you know that this is a great guy, and even if it's not a passionate love, it will probably be the best life for Genevieve and her daughter.

By the time they came to the bridge scene, where Roland says he will still marry her, it was pretty clear that she couldn't just abandon him to go with Guy. We've become emotionally invested in their relationship, so leaving him would mean losing any attachment to Genevieve. The thing that's brilliant about this segment is that the audience is going through the same thing as her, so when she looks at the picture and can barely remember Guy, we're feeling the same thing. Whereas once we really wanted the two of them together, now that is a distant memory.

But it's not for Guy, who returns from war to find his whole world shaken up. Initially he despairs, but gradually he too realizes that it might be better to go for a relationship with the person who clearly loves than to try and recapture something that was once, but now is gone. In his case, it means Madeleine. When the two of them sit together at the funeral, they're posed and shot in the same way that Roland and Genevieve were at their wedding, indicating the creation of a significant bond between them. I was definitely rooting for them to get together, and it was satisfying when he committed to a relationship with her.

Everything builds up to the fantastic last scene. Here we see how Madeleine and Guy's life has turned out. It's almost exactly like the life he imagined with Genevieve, and he seems quite happy. And then Genevieve drives up to get some gas for her car. Earlier in the film, we're led to believe that in some respects, both Genevieve are settling for someone else when they choose to get married, and that the real love they have is for each other. So, are we looking at a Before Sunset situation here, one last chance to recapture their true love?

Not quite, the ending of the film leaves us with the feeling that even though they were in love once, that time is passed, and each of them is happy with the life they have. I'm sure they both wonder what could have been, but when Guy's family returns, it's pretty clear that he's moved on from Genevieve and is fully committed to his marriage and his son. The film seems to be a direct reaction against the traditional musical ending, the young lovers find out that maybe passion isn't the only thing and when they settle, they've actually found people who they can love and share a life with. Genevieve's mother's claim that people only die from a broken heart in the movies is apparently true, though she lost Guy, she can move on and make a happy life for herself.

That final scene is a masterful fusion of music and visual. The snow falling at night is beautiful, and the large window in the gas station makes for a wondeful contrast of inside and outside. And the final pullback shot gives us wonderful emotional closure. The pullback shot is backed by a magnificent score cue, full of orchestral swells that build up the power of the moment. It reminds me a bit of the end of The Empire Strikes Back, in the way that the score builds up the emotion of the moment to this massive level, providing a fitting closure to the film.

This film really brought back the merits of the orchestral score for me. Moments like the ending and Guy's departure at the train station feature huge cues that make the moments really work. It's used in the manner of a lot of classical Hollywood scores, but unlike those scores it's not intrusive. Rather than trying to tell you how to feel, it's creating an external representation of the characters' emotions, and drawing you into their emotional world. Used poorly, a score like this can become almost comical in its excess, but when you're caught up in what the characters are going through, it serves to dramatically deepen your experience of the film. I'd rather see a film that goes for the emotional heights, and risks looking bad, than one that just sticks to easy, noncommital territory. This film goes for broke, and generally succeeds.

By subverting our narrative expectations, and not giving us the typical happy ending true love message, this film stands out as one of the best musicals I've seen. The characters feel very real and the story is emotionally compelling. This does pretty much everything you could want from a musical, and the final moments give it an emotional weight that few films acheive.

Serge Gainsbourg: "History of Melody Nelson"

Over the past few weeks, I've been getting into Serge Gainsbourg's music. I'd always heard his name mentioned as a major influence on stuff that I liked, most notably Dan the Automator's Lovage, one of my favorite albums of all time. And I really liked his stuff as I got into it. "Je T'aiem...mon non plus" is an incredible song, definitely an inspiration on Lovage. "Bonnie and Clyde" I had heard in Irma Vep, but I was surprised to hear that it was his song, since it sounded very modern.



I really liked those two songs, and the other stuff on those albums was pretty good, but I wasn't prepared for just how good the album "History of Melody Nelson" would be. The album is unquestionably his masterwork, one of those albums where the songs on their own are good, but working together they form one cohesive, album length work. This is partially due to the fact that, like many great albums of the 70s, this is a concept album.

I think the concept album gets a bad rap, if it's an excuse to write a bunch of poorly conceived songs that tell a story, then it's bad. But, if you use a concept as a way of building themes and cohesion within the album, that's a good thing. Even more than a story, I like concept albums because they frequently are structured with themes and motifs repeating, something that this makes use of, and is also prominent in "The Wall" or Green Day's "American Idiot." It's always good to make the album into a larger work than just a bunch of songs, and even if there's not a coherent story, the grander ambition is usually evident. In the case of "Melody Nelson," I don't speak French, so I couldn't really follow the story, but I was still able to follow the emotions and instrumental motifs.

However, the basic concept is quite notable. The album chronicles the story of a man who hits a 15 year old girl, Melody Nelson, with his car, then begins a sexual relationship with her until she dies in a plane crash. This is odd territory for an album, but it fits perfectly with Gainsbourg's dirty old man persona, and I'd imagine that the concept was likely a bit less troubling in France in 1971 than in America in 2005. And of course being an album, you don't really have to deal with any of the moral consequences of what's going on.

Even without understanding the lyrics, you can get the idea of what's going on. Jane Birkin guests as Melody, and the interplay between her and Gainsbourg during her cameos is fantastic. I love male/female interplay within songs, it works great here and on "Je T'aime," and is one of the crucial elements to the success of Lovage.

Gainsbourg uses a mainly spoken word style, which reminds me of Isaac Hayes' "Hot Buttered Soul." That's actually the album that this is most reminiscent of, both have really dynamic bass lines, slowly building songs and a blend of spoken word and sung vocals from the performers. Both albums draw a lot of on prog rock and psychedelic funk references in building their sound. Hayes turns this into the epic 12 minute version of "Walk on By," one of the greatest songs ever recorded.

For Gainsbourg, it turns into two stunning tracks, the opener, "Melody" and the closer, "Cargo Culte." They're variations on the same theme, each starting with a funk bassline, then slowly building with screaming electric guitars and great drum work. On "Melody," Serge's vocals are backed by a string section, while "Cargo Culte" brings in a choir.

I love how audacious these tracks are, each over 7 minutes, full of gorgeous instrumental sections that you just don't hear anymore. People may crack on the excesses of 70s rock, but listening to a song like "Melody," you hear a grandeur that just isn't present in rock today. At this point there wasn't the strict line between genres, so within one song Gainsbourg goes between funk, rock and orchestral arrangements. Right from the opening notes of that bass line, I was in love with the album.

I focused on those two songs because they're the most impressive, but the stuff in the middle is pretty impressive as well. "Ballad of Melody Nelson" is a catchy, more straightforward pop song, again featuring some great interplay between Birkin and Gainsbourg. "En Melody" was the other highlight for me, a fantastic instrumental which builds up, accompanied by Melody's moaning.

It's a short album, but I feel like Gainsbourg accomplishes everything he sets out to do, and because of the cohesion of the album, it feels more substantial than his albums that are just a bunch of tracks. This is a more ambitious work and one that is a complete success.

The album still sounds fresh, if someone told me it was recorded last year, I'd believe it, and that's probably due to the fact that it's an extremely influential album. Lovage was a clear antecedent, and in this album you can hear a lot of where Air came from, particularly with Moon Safari. That smooth, lounge rock mixed with strong backing bass is something Gainsbourg had all worked out here.

After listening to the album, I checked out the English translation of the lyrics, and they're quite good. I wish I knew French so I could really understand what he's saying, but even in the translated version, you can get what he's going for. One line, describing Ms. Nelson from the end of "Melody" pretty much sums up Gainsbourg:

"Melody Nelson has red hair
And it's her natural color."

Serge, you can sing about whatever you want as long it's housed in the incredible music that makes up this album.

Three...Extremes

Three Extremes is an anthology film featuring films by two of my favorite directors: Chanwook Park and Takashi Miike, as well another film with cinematography by the world's best cinematographer, Christoher Doyle. It's a really good film, but one that reveals some of the problems of the anthology format. Unlike Eros, this is a case where all the films are pretty successful, but it's exhausting watching them all in a row.

The first film is the one I'd heard the most about, Fruit Chan's Dumplings. The basic premise here is fantastically nasty and is played out in an interesting way. The film goes into issues surrounding aging and through the use of a genre twist, is able to comment on the absurdity of plastic surgery and the ridiculous lengths that people will to to keep looking young.

I loved all the stuff with Bai Ling. In America, she's primarily known for her ridiculous VH1 karaoke appearances, but in this film she plays a witchy character who seems right out of a fairy tale. In fact, the whole short has a very fairy tale, be careful what you wish for quality. So, Bai Ling's character is that crazy woman in the woods offering our innocent heroine what she wants, ignorant of the potential moral consequences that it could have.

The film isn't as explicitly disturbing as something like Oldboy's graphic torture scenes, the content is more about being conceptually uncomfortable. There are some very nasty scenes, most notably a bathtub abortion sequence that's equally disturbing for its visuals and the narrative implications of what's happening.

The interesting thing about the film is the way this deviant behavior seems to bring this woman to life. She starts out wanting to become younger so that she can keep her husband's attention, however by the end he is secondary and it's her own appetites that take precedence. This brilliantly articulated in the scene where she licks the blood off her face. By the end of the story the roles are reversed and she has total power over her husband, which is conveyed in the fantastic long take of the two of them in the bedroom. As always, Christopher Doyle shoots a really dynamic film, his camera bringing beauty to even the most grotesque of moments. And big props to the sound effects here, they're critical on selling the nastiness of the dumplings.

The second film, Cut, is by Chanwook Park, who's directed two of the best films of recent years, Oldboy and Sympathy for Lady Vengeance. However, this film seems to be a bit of an autopilot exercise, playing on the same themes as his Revenge trilogy films, but without the narrative depth. The film is basically one lengthy sadistic torture scene, and while similar scenes worked as part of his other films, to make it the entire movie is a bit excessive.

Visually, this is still a striking work. The black and white floor and elaborate net of wires holding his wife to the piano were great visual touches. I also really liked the moments of comedy sprinkled throughout the film, the excessiveness of the opening vampire segment was a particular highlight.

However, the film ultimately doesn't really end up going anywhere. It presents the basic idea, lets it play out for a while, then ends with a somewhat nonsensical twist. It seems to imply that this guy's son, through his desire for revenge, is able to affect the director's perception and cause him to kill his wife. I do love the buildup to that with the scenes that seem to flip around each other in a surreal 2-D way, but that doesn't make up for the fact that the conclusion goes for shock value at the expense of any kind of logic. Maybe there's a better explanation that I missed, but as it was, it took me out of the story.

The final film, Miike's 'Box' is my favorite of the three. However, I wasn't able to fully enjoy it because I was pretty worn out by the time we got to it. It was almost 90 minutes into the film, which isn't the ideal time to enjoy a slow paced, contemplative film. I think this would have been better suited as the first film, lulling you into a calm, making the extremes of the other two even more notable.

But even with that, this is still a fantastic film. Miike's films almost always take place in a world that's on the border of dream and reality, not quite sticking to either one. Here, we've got a woman who's haunted by dreams of her sister's death. Visually, this is one of the best things I've seen by Miike. It has the restrained pacing of the first half of Audition, but an even greater focus on the beauty and power of the images. The performances they do exist in that Club Silencio style world, performing for the viewer rather than a physical audience, and that gives Miike more excuse to mess around with form in depicting the performance.

It's a very quiet film, most of the drama between the twins and their father is played out silently, using the visuals to build the drama. This works really well in setting a mood, which is punctured by the ignition of the box. That was the one moment in the film that actuallly made me jump, because it was a sudden burst of violence after all this quiet.

Miike can go to excess with the best, but here his restrained approach comes off looking great next to the more obvious nastiness of the first two films. This is a more psychological piece and Kyoko's troubles are quite interesting. She is in an odd relation to her trauma because it simultaneously haunts her dreams and provides her with the material for her novels.

This film was pitched with the tagline: "From the Nightmares of 3 Horror Masters," and with this story, Miike seems to be explicitly commenting on the idea of someone using their own traumas to construct a story. I think this is easily the best of the three films and I'm going to check it out on its own, apart from the anthology to really evaluate it.

I've seen a bunch of Miike recently and he's consistently impressed it. For a guy who's so notoriously prolific, all his films have a unique feel and are skillfully crafted. I'm definitely going to check out more of his stuff soon.

In conclusion, I'd say that Three Extremes was a pretty successful anthology film. You didn't get the sense that these guys were phoning it in, all the films were gorgeous and had something to say. The Box in particular lingers with me of a wonderful example of how to use the limitations of the short film to your advantage.

The Sopranos: 'The Fleshy Part of the Thigh' (6x04)

SPOILERS: THE WHOLE SOPRANOS SERIES


While this episode wasn't as conspicuously emotional or mindblowing as the last two, it does take on a structure unlike any episode the show has ever done, simultaneously functioning as a street level gangster tale and a philosophical discussion of faith, science and the nature of existence. Only one show can fit all of this into an hour.

The main plot has a lot in common with previous "Human Tragedy" episodes of the series, in which we see an innocent figure get caught up in the mob world and burned by their involvement. One of my favorite arcs that the show ever did was the David Scatino storyline back in season two, and the Jason Barone arc is a similar story of someone who's not aware of how to do business with the mob and winds up getting burned as a result.

It's not explicitly commented on in the episode, but I feel like Jason Barone's experience shows us a vision of what could happen should AJ get involved with mob life. Like Barone's parents, Tony and Carmela have tried to shield AJ from that world, and he would probably have a similarly difficult entrance should he go the gangster route. Tony does make the parallel explicit when he tells Jason that he's more whiny than his son.

And the Jason arc is a great continuation of the generational conflict that is at the heart of the series. Unlike his father, Jason does not know how to conduct business, and as a result things go to hell once the older generation is gone. Will Tony's crime family have a similar meltdown once he's gone? Even though the Barone thing is going over some territory we've seen before, it works because it's easy to empathize with this outsider who's thrown into the middle of this criminal world, with no idea of how to handle himself.

While the storyline clearly has some major implications for the NY/NJ relations, the primary emotional pull comes from how the story is played against Paulie's troubles. The brilliance of the Paulie storyline is the way that it plays our logic against our attachment to the character. In theory, Paulie should just be able to recognize that even though Nucci isn't his biological mother, she's taken care of him all his life, and the circumstances of his birth shouldn't change his affection for her.

However, so much of the mob world is based on the bond between family, and the loss of his throws Paulie into chaos. The justification that a lot of the mobsters use for their actions is that they're just doing it to provide for their families. Tony said this to Melfi on multiple occasions, and for Paulie, he could justify anything by saying that he's doing to provide for his mother, and make up for what he put her through when he was younger. And, in theory, there's no reason for that to change.

However, Paulie is also a guileless business man, and the idea that he's spending $4,000 a month to put someone who's not his mother in a nursing home doesn't work. He seems to feel that he's been scammed into providing for her, and all the luxuries in her room are a mockery of the life he's leading. I think Paulie always felt superior to Tony in that he respected his mother and was able to provide for her, and now he finds that completely shattered.

So, when he sees Mrs. Barone's outpouring of love for her son, it doesn't make him realize that Nucci has that same feeling for him, instead it makes him want to destroy that love. Occasionally the show goes out of its way to remind you that these are bad people, and the episode's finale was certainly an example of that.

The other major thing going on here was Tony's intellectual exploration. I thought this storyline was brilliant, a wonderful followup to the Kevin Finnerty stuff. Tony has always been way beyond his fellow mobsters intellectually, something that's rarely been more apparent than in this episode.

It's still early to speculate on how much Tony has been changed by the coma experience, but if this episode is any indication, he seems to have become a bit more understanding when it comes to dealing with others. His encounter with mortality has put him above the fray, able to see the consequences of his actions rather than just the emotion of the moment. This is what separates him from Paulie, who does something that could get him in huge trouble with Tony just to satisfy his emotional need for revenge.

I saw two scenes as really critical to the episode. One was the scene with Hesch, Chris and Pastor Bob. First off, it was hilarious to see Aaron back. I was seriously not expecting that and his Terri Schaivo Vigil t-shirt was hilarious. It's astonishing the way the show is able to weave really hilarious bits of comedy into all the darkness. This scene was interesting because Tony doesn't outright dismiss Bob's offer of prayer.

Tony's experience in the Kevin Finnerty world seems to have opened up to the idea that there's more to life than just the physical world we live in. As the scene opens, Tony is talking about the insignificance of humanity in the overall lifecycle of Earth, and Christopher responds "I don't feel that way." We still haven't gotten that much insight into where Christopher is this season, clearly he's got some major issues still lingering from the death of Adrianna. And that comment would indicate that he sees a significance to what we're doing, he's not ready to write off his existence as merely a drop in the ocean of existence.

Later in the scene, Pastor Bob is talking about faith, and Tony says "Must be nice to have something to hold onto." We cut to Christopher who looks really uneasy. He's got a lot of ill feeling towards Tony because Tony took away the one thing that he did have to hold onto, Adrianna. I'm really interested to see where Christopher goes, and just from his demeanor this season, it's clear that he's a bit darker, more mature, but also sadder.

Speaking with Pastor Bob, Tony seems genuinely interested and open to his message. Before the coma, Tony would not have been willing to flatter this guy, he was never one to put up with religious figures. In some ways, the scene is undercut by the extreme ridiculousness of Bob's idea that the dinosaurs were on Earth the same time as Adam and Eve. Considering how well Bob was selling things before, it's clear that he took too big a leap in telling Tony that, and undermined his sales pitch.

My favorite scene of the episode was the Da Lux's room scene. There's so many layers here, on the one hand you've got Paulie's sullenness, and inability to even contemplate any of the ideas that Schwinn is talking about. He's completely set in his ways, choosing to bask in his own problems rather than overcome them. This ties into the Ojibwe quote that Tony continually mentions throughout the episode.

But the really interesting thing is what Schwinn is talking about Tony's reaction. Schwinn brings out the quantum mechanics idea that on a base level, we're all just a collection of particles, and there are no boundaries between an individual and the world around him/her. It's like air, some may be moving quickly, some moving slowly, but it's all part of the same thing. This is a favorite idea of mine, one discussed a lot in Grant Morrison's work, with his idea that human beings are basically cells within a larger organism and once we get beyond our petty differences and recognize the unity, we'll cohere and form a larger mind, like the individual cells within our bodies become something greater than the sum of their parts when they work together.

So, Tony entertains this idea as part of his spiritual journey. He's aware that he was in touch with something larger during the Finnerty sequences, and he's not sure whether it's Schwinn's scientific view of a unified plane or the Pastor's Christian idea of God's hand at work. These two conceptions are not mutually exclusive.

When Tony gets out of the hospital, he seems genuinely thankful to be alive, and even says "Every day after this is a gift," a sentiment that he would surely have ridiculed had he heard it before being shot. It's interesting that he says to Janice, someone who used to be really interested in this sort of spiritual exploration, but now seems to have become completely bogged down in her own issues as a mother. She's become strictly of the physical world, as nearly all of Tony's circle is.

I'm really interested to see Tony back at therapy with Melfi because we haven't gotten a full idea of what this experience has meant to him. The scenes with Schwinn give us some idea, but only in the Melfi sequences can we get a relatively unfiltered view of his mental state. If Tony really is changed, how long can this new attitude last in the business he works in. Dealing with Johnny Sack is going to cause him a lot of trouble and I don't see his zen management style helping his crew in the long run.

The close of the episode was fantastic, with the seamless intercutting of Tony's bliss just observing and Paulie's utter selfishness in attacking Barone. At this point, Tony would rather just be sitting outside, appreciating the day, than having to deal with the turmoils of everyday life.

This was largely a two character episode, but we do get some interesting bits along the way. AJ's part time job at Blockbuster is clearly not a career, and it'll also be tough for him to adjust to actually working after a life of basically being served. And if things go south at Blockbuster is he going to seek out another real job, or perhaps look to his father for some connections? I still feel like we're headed down that road with AJ, it's just a question of how soon we'll get there.

Despite barely appearing in the episode, there was a lot of interesting stuff going on with Carmela. In the hospital, she warns Tony about Vito, the first time we've seen her give him guidance on his business. It's notable that during this scene she's wearing a business suit and her hair is tied back. It's a much more authoratative, business look than we're used to seeing from her, and I'll be interested to see if this is indicative of a major role change from her. Is she going to move from trying to distance herself from the mob completely to becoming Tony's second in command?

This episode also gives us our first glimpse of Tony's feelings about Junior. It's astonishing how much power single lines can have in this show. Tony's authoratative claim that he never wants to see Junior again has deep power. If Tony doesn't want to see Junior, is he basically gone from the show? If Junior were to be released from prison, that could put a further divide between Tony and Bobby. I'm guessing that Junior will be released fairly soon, so that we can see some follow up on AJ's promise to kill him.

On the whole, it's a fascinating episode, full of a lot of really interesting concepts and ideas. The stuff with Tony and Schwinn was a highlight, forcing Tony to examine his existence in ways that he never has before gave us a lot of strong material and much to ponder for the future. This is our first glimpse of the new status quo for the rest of the series, but next episode should really let us know just how changed Tony is, and how those around him react to his return.

The New World of TV and Film

SPOILERS: A couple of things for the first four seasons of 24

Writing about the first season finale of Battlestar Galactica, I started to explore the idea that TV has supplanted film as the premier visual storytelling medium. The thing that really prompted me to address this is that so many TV shows are hailed for being "more like a movie than a TV show," with seasons made up of a bunch of "little movies." However, the way things have gone, saying that a TV show is like a movie isn't so much of a compliment, I think we've reached the point where the best movies should be hailed for their TV series like complexity.

Now, the thing about evaluating television is the fact that everything on it is grouped into one catergory. So, you get a lot of people who look down on TV, witness the classic Onion article: Area Man Constantly Mentioning He Doesn't Own a Television." Yes, the vast majority of stuff shown on TV is crap, but saying you won't watch television because of reality TV is like saying that you won't read a book because of The National Enquirer.

That said, I think peoples' perceptions are changing. The most important development in affecting peoples' view of television has been the start of TV on DVD. I remember back when the first season of The X-Files was coming out, it was this completely unprecedented thing, that you could easily go back and review the series in order, without having to tape episodes and wait for each episode to air. It's a lot easier for people to appreciate a series without the commercials and seeing everything in sequence.

Concurrent with this was the rise of the internet, which made it a lot easier to keep track of series and find other fans to talk about stuff with. The internet is much more suited to television than film because TV series have a lot more content, and on top of that, there's speculation about the future of the series to talk about. I have no data to support this, but I think reading internet reaction to shows changed the way producers perceive the audience. If you're not getting any real feedback, it would be tough to tell how much of the show people really did remember, but when the fans are calling the producers of the show on continuity mistakes, it becomes clear that fans are able to keep up with even the most continuity intensive plot lines.

Twin Peaks was a critical innovator in bringing an unprecedented artistry and style to television. Following that was The X-Files, which effectively shows the world of TV in transition. On the one hand, it's a standalone procedural series, you can tune into most episodes and get everything you need to know from the hour. However, with the mythology arc, the show engaged in an extended, longform story that took roughly 60 episodes to complete, many dependent on your knowledge of what happened in earlier seasons to understand.

And at the end of the 90s, two shows emerged that forever changed television: The Sopranos and 24. The Sopranos was notable for many reasons, for one it started the pay cable original series trend. This was a show that fully exploited its freedom from network censorship, with all kinds of violence and sex.

However, the greater impact was that the show was just so good, even people who usually dismissed TV had to take notice of it. The Sopranos completely raised the bar on what was possible to do on TV, and other shows struggled to catch up. It was also one of the first shows to consistnetly present a morally ambiguous universe. Our hero made a lot of bad decisions, you don't like him, it's more that you're fascinated by him. If previous TV shows used their characters as an idealized alternate family for the viewer, The Sopranos was one where you love to watch Tony, but have no desire to run into him in real life.

24 brought a lot of what The Sopranos did to network TV, and thus democratized it. HBO's whole slogan was "It's not TV. It's HBO," which appealed to those people who considered themselves above television. 24 showed that a network show could do extreme serialization and still be successful. This is a show where you don't miss an episode, you're either watching the whole day or you're not watching, and that was a new way for network shows to work.

The other change was to bring the morally ambiguous hero to network TV. I think TV changed forever with the second season premiere, when Jack asked for a hacksaw to cut the head off a man he'd just killed. Jack was a guy who didn't care if you didn't like him, he was going to do whatever it took to acheive his goals. And as part of the stories, you frequently saw problems with no easy solution, where Jack would make a huge sacrifice to get something done. Witness the killing of Chapelle in year three, or the Paul Raines vs. terrorist emergency room scene in year four.

Many shows since have taken on the violence and anything could happen feel of 24. Battlestar, particularly in the miniseries, does a lot of those no easy choice decisions. The scene with Roslin leaving the little girl behind to die would not have happened if 24 didn't exist.

And both series are examples of longform storytelling. On The Sopranos, there's almost always a followup on what happened the previous week, and when there's not, we know that it's still affected Tony. Everything that happens is part of these characters' lives and factors in the way they live. So, the TV series became less a bunch of episodes and more one longform work, broken into chapters, rather than just a bunch of episodes.

So, while all this was happening we've seen people talking about the artistic bankruptcy of Hollywood filmmaking. When a movie like Crash wins best picture, it's clear something's wrong with Hollywood's definition of quality. This has prompted people to lament the fact that Hollywood has fallen so far from its creative golden age in the 70s (including me). And I would stand by the idea that the American film scene is nowhere near as exciting or innovative as it was in the 70s.

But, looking at the situation, I realized that in thirty years, they're going to talk about today's TV like they're talking about the films of the 70s. What are the similarities? For one, both eras came about as a result of the easing of standards. It's mindboggling to think that into the 60s, the production code was still strictly regulating the content of films, and for a long while, those same standards were held on television. The emergence of cable shows has completely changed the game, allowing for shows that have even greater boundaries than most film, and even on the networks, there's room for a lot more sexuality and violence than would have been possible earlier. There may be some groups trying to stop that, but for the most part, there's more room for developing stories than there was before.

What was the other big development of the 70s? Auteur filmmaking, and on TV we're beginning to see the emergence of a class of auteur showrunners, who have near total control over the content and direction of their series. Because shows became more longform, the guiding hand of the showrunner became more apparent. In the 70s, filmmakers were given a lot more freedom to do what they wanted without studio interference. With TV, it seems like most of the showrunners are being given a free hand to do what they want now, certainly more than filmmakers today. The reason for this is if your show gets high ratings, you've basically proven that what you're doing works. So, the network has no reason to mess with it.

Obviously, some people have more autonomy than others, but I get the feeling that David Chase has become the Kubrick of television, doing whatever he wants whenever he wants it. If Chase was doing a film, there's no way he'd have the autonomy that he does on The Sopranos because there'd be no guarantee that it'd be successful. People aren't watching The Sopranos for David Chase, they're watching it for Tony and his family. Like in film, very few TV people have become brands unto themselves, Joss Whedon is probably the most notable example, though his fanbase clearly wasn't large enough to support a show on its own.

But as long as you stick with the main show, you can do whatever you want. Chase may take heat for his dream sequences, but people are still watching the show. TV gives you the ability to experiment with an almost guaranteed audience, and the critical reason why that's possible is the emotional connection to the characters. David Lynch's most abstract work is in the last episode of Twin Peaks, a piece that can simultaneously be completely symbolic and abstract, and still be emotionally affecting. Because we know the character so well, when Cooper goes through the lodge world, we don't watch with a detached perspective, we're on that journey with him. Similarly, Joss Whedon's experimental episodes, notably Restless and Once More With Feeling, work because of what we know about the characters. If he was to just write an original musical, it'd probably be good, but in combining the musical with the existing TV universe, it becomes great.

Over the past few years, as I've watched a whole bunch of fantastic longform TV shows, I've also become increasingly disenchanted with traditional Hollywood films. The depth and nuance of the characters on a Buffy or Six Feet Under makes the plot-serving people in most films seem utterly contrived. Compare Firefly the show to Serenity the film. In Firefly you've got a large ensemble cast of people, all doing their own thing, living their lives as the show goes along. Sometimes big stuff happens to them, sometimes they just coast. And even though Mal may be the leader, everyone has an equally interesting and developed life.

In Serenity, Mal is clearly front and center, and a lot of the supporting cast is defined by just one trait. They all have their own little goals, and they're so resolutely focused on them. It's the necessity of the film to fit everyone into an arc, and Whedon does an admirable job of it, but it feels contrived. Compare the tentative dance of the developing relationship between Simon and Kaylee in the show to the very clear she wants this guy arc in the movie. In the film, that goal is her sole characteristic, the thing that defines her. In the film, you get a much clearer main character/supporting cast divide, whereas the genius of Buffy was that we got just as much insight into Xander or Willow as we did into Buffy. The main character is usually the least interesting, Han Solo trumps Luke Skywalker and Willow or Xander trumped Buffy. But if Buffy were a movie, even one true to Joss' vision, Xander and Willow would have been little more than one note comic relief, and Buffy herself would never have the depth that she did on the series.

Up until recently, most TV people talked about using it as a way to get into films. David Chase made it clear that he'd rather be in films and Joss did as well. Recently, Chase seems to be acknowledging that what he's done in TV goes beyond what could be done in a film. Alan Ball also made it clear that Six Feet Under was his greatest creative achievement, and he's already jumped back in to work on a new pilot for HBO.

Joss remains pointed towards features, and that's not something I'm thrilled with. I would guess part of that is the fact that his two most recent shows were cancelled, but I'd rather see him try to get a pilot on HBO than go forward with Wonder Woman. I'm sure personally it's a terrible grind doing a series, but creatively, Buffy or Angel make nearly every feature film ever made pale in comparison.

The way I see it now, TV has raised the bar for film to a different level. Serenity is a perfectly entertaining movie, a well told story, but that's all it is. Compared to Joss' TV work, it's pretty insignificant. The films I'm most interested in seeing now are the ones that do what TV cannot, namely focus on style and the art of filmmaking. TV, for all its merits, still suffers from the fact that it must be filmed so quickly. Even the best directors can't make every shot great when you're shooting an episode in eight days.

What films can do is make those perfectly constructed, really artistic pieces. Wong Kar-Wai is a perfect example of this, a guy who creates films where each image is a beautiful work of art unto itself, films that are more an atmosphere, a feeling than a story. I want films that you get lost in.

That's not to say you can't still make a good film that's a straightforward narrative, just you have to raise the bar. Magnolia is an example of a film that is simultaneously a wonderful piece of visual/sonic fusion and also creates characters with a depth of a long running TV series. It's a movie I would say is more like TV than cinema and mean it as a great compliment.

And finally, much like the creators of the show, a lot of TV actors used to see it primarily as a stepping stone to films. So, Sarah Michelle Gellar left Buffy for the "greener pastures" of cinema. Now, from a money and time point of view, film is much better for an actor than TV, but from an artistic perspective, the best TV shows offer actors so much more than films.

As Buffy, Gellar got to do everything, from really broad comedy to painful drama, often within the same episode. Watching her in The Grudge, she didn't even have a character. She was just a person who stood there while stuff popped out. I think she spent more time promoting The Grudge than she did actually acting in it.

For an actor, doing a TV show is a risk. You could end up in a show that fails, which would tarnish your reputation and hurt your chances of getting future film roles. Or you could end up on a show that gets enough ratings to keep going, but no buzz. The actors in Lost may get written about now, but come season six, will anyone still care? And more importantly, you'd be past your prime and thus unlikely to get any good parts once the show finishes. And even in the best of cases, you're still stuck in one role for many years.

However, the best shows give actors possibilities they would never have in a film. James Gandolfini is a prime example, this is a guy who's been in a bunch of movies, supporting roles. Then he does The Sopranos and creates one of the most compelling characters ever seen. Alyson Hannigan is another prime example, seeing her in something like Date Movie is painful because on Buffy she showed such varied potential, and post Buffy she's just doing one type of role.

In a lot of cases, the acting on these shows is so good, people forget that these people aren't just playing themselves. I was shocked when I heard James Marsters or Alexis Denisof's actual speaking voices, you completely believe that they're British. Same thing with Gandolfini in the two most recent Sopranos episodes, it's not until you're aware that this is in fact a performance that you can appreciate what they're doing. This is where the fear of typecasting comes in. When someone is so good, it becomes tough to see them in another kind of role. I've talked to multiple people who were really surprised to learn that neither Michael C. Hall or Matthew St. Patrick were actually gay.

Ultimately, I feel like this is what real acting is about, totally becoming a character. The Academy Awards usually award showy performances, where the performance is an attraction in and of itself. It's like special effects, the Academy is going to award the shot that makes you go "whoa, that was an awesome effect," whereas the best effects are the ones you don't even know are there. And that's the best kind of acting. You never say, "wow, Peter Krause is great as Nate," you only see Nate.

So, what's the conclusion? Basically that the most exciting and innovative storytelling right now is happening in TV. If I had the choice between having the chance to make a big studio movie or an HBO series, I'd go with the series, and an increasing number of creative people are making that choice as well. We've been so conditioned to think that two hours is the time that a story must be told in, it's liberating to have the chance to see something that goes into more depth. Conventional wisdom holds that The Godfather is one of the top five movies of all time, and if The Sopranos does everything The Godfather does and goes way beyond it, doesn't that mean that The Sopranos is better than any movie ever made?