Battlestar Galactica: 2x08-2x10

After a bit of a hiatus, I'm back moving forward with Battlestar Galactica. I just finished the first chunk of the second season and, while it took a little bit, I'm right back on board with the show, and excited to see where they go from here.

'Final Cut' and 'Flight of the Phoenix' both fall prey to a bit of excess sap. They're not bad episodes, and the twist at the end of 'Final Cut' makes things more interesting, but ultimately they're a bit too much in the celebrate our characters mode. The most interesting stuff is Helo's struggle to reintegrate himself into the flight team, his fight with the chief is a great scene, but on the whole, each episode smooths over the tensions for a happy ending.

At the time I watched these two episodes, I was feeling a bit down on the show, like most of the tension had been defused and there was a bit of a loss of direction. However, in light of 'Pegasus,' it's pretty clear that those episodes were explicitly designed to focus on the ways that the crew has formed themselves into a fully functioning unit. They've solved most of their issues, and despite some lingering unease, they're generally moving forward.

So, 'Pegasus' engages with this, and brings in an outside force to challenge the status quo that our heroes have set up. It comes at just the right time, almost all the original characters have been made likable, so we need some sort of outside force to challenge them. Kane is a lot like Adama was back in the early days, before he got softened and found a way to compromise with the president. The basic problem of every TV show is that your characters inevitably become more likable as time goes on, and their more extreme traits get smoothed down. Witness the path of Bobby Briggs on Twin Peaks for an example of how this can go bad, or Spike on Buffy to see how it can work to the show's advantage.

Kane's presence makes the military stuff more interesting than it's been for a long time, the final moments when Adama sends his fleet out to attack her are fantastic. This also leaves us with a lot of potential drama in the second chunk of the season.

However, what made this episode great was the stuff involving the cylons. The scene where Sharon is nearly raped was really visceral and made you hate the guy 'interrogating' her. When Tyrol rams his head into that nail, it's very satisfying. Sharon's one of my favorite characters on the show, and it's tough to watch her go through such an awful experience. The way the scene was staged also makes us totally sympathetic for Helo and the Chief, justifying Adama's decision to attack the Pegasus at the end of the episode.

In the story with Baltar and the prisoner Six we see what could happen to Sharon if she's left at the mercies of the Pegasus crew. They seem to have repeatedly raped her, and the locker room talk indicates that they find it totally acceptable to treat her in that way, ignoring the fact that she's a conscious, emotional person. It definitely calls back racial abuse through history, particularly plantation life, where masters felt it was perfectly alright to rape black slaves.

The episode exposes the way that the Galactica crew's idea of the cylons has evolved. After the business in 'Flight of the Phoenix,' they see Sharon as a real asset, and they know that even though they may be enemies, the Cylons are still sentient beings. The way the Pegasus crew treats their prisoner is abhorrent, and I'm guessing this will become a big issue in the second chunk of the season.

There's a lot of potential in having Baltar rehibilitate Six. I think they recognized the limitations of having him constantly interacting with her hallucination, and this will give them the potential to rekindle the relationship they had on Caprica. His soliloquiy about their relationship was beautiful. I think Batlar and Six have fantastic chemistry, but he hasn't had much to do this season, and getting him a prominent plot next time is a good idea.

So, I'm really psyched to see where things go from here. I hope they keep the focus on cylons, rather than on random problems on the bridge. The real philosophical meat of the series is with the cylons, so I hope to see more of Sharon on the Galactica, and more of the cylons in their own world.

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Seven Soldiers: #0

With the final trade getting released in July, I decided it was time to begin reading Grant Morrison's Seven Soldiers series. Morrison's probably the best creator working now in any medium. The Invisibles changed my life, and every book he's done is completely pop, full of crazy new ideas and concepts.

With one issue, Grant creates a fully realized superhero team, and then tears them down, setting the stage for the events of the maxi-series. This issue is one of the most convincing takes I've seen on the reality-based superhero. However, rather than being set in our reality, this story examines what it would be like for an ordinary superhero in the DC Universe. This is a world where the JLA are like gods, Superman isn't your average hero, he's someone who's really special, like the best baseball player in the majors, while these guys are people who've been kicking around single A level minors. They have the fundamentals, but are all aware that they're never going to be getting the headlines.

The first couple of pages are a throwback to Swamp Thing, Alan Moore's legendary series, one of the first really notable revamps of a character to change him from a children's book hero to a more adult character. Tommy goes through a similar revamp, controlled by these mysterious bald guys, who seem to be some kind of cosmic agents, controlling reality from behind the scenes. So, they're like John a Dreams in The Invisibles, manipulating reality from behind the scenes to bring about a specific end. Here, they're locked in some kind of eternal battle with the forces of darkness who turn up later in the book.

The two page sequence with Tommy's transformation is classic Morrison. The colored liquid is a lot like the stuff that turned up in The Filth, which woke Greg up from his cover identity and turned him into Ned Slade. On a narrative level, the bald guys are rebuilding Tommy to serve in this superhero team, on a meta level, Tommy is going through the process of reinvention that countless superheroes have gone through, getting updated to be cooler, with more attitude. So, his old personality is washed down the drain and he's got a different temprament when we see him later in the book.

Next, we meet up with the main character, The Whip. She went into heroing as a gimmick to get a book written. I love the title: "Body Thunder: How I Turned My Body Into a Weapon to Beat the Twenty-First Century Blues." If you're living in a world where someone like Batman exists, clearly there's going to be imitators, and every person bored with their mundane life is going to long for his exciting existence.

There's a lot of references to previous superhero comics in the issue. The Whip herself is clearly a Frank Miller heroine, "the girl with no fear" being a direct reference to his Daredevil. She's a masochist, dressed up in a full on fetish outfit, but the pain just isn't enough for her, she needs something beyond just day to day crime fighting. Grant frequently talks about wanting to restore the cosmic grandeur of the Silver Age to contemporary superhero titles, and her line about exhausting the possibilities of the "morally ambiguous urban vigilante" is a clear reference to this.

She goes on to talk about how she needs more, she wants a memorial to her carved into the side of the moon. This seems to be a throwback to the Phoenix saga, she wants a grand sacrifice that will make the world remember her forever. This is tragically ironic in light of what happens later on, when she dies out of the spotlight, likely forgotten soon after.

The whole theme of the issue is contained in the line "How do you know when you've become a superhero and not just a crazy fetish person with a death wish?" In their world, you can dress up in a costume and fight crime, but there's always the spectre of people like Superman, you'd just come off as a pathetic echo. That's why she wants to save the world, doing so would prove her legitimacy.

This theme also ties into the very reason why we read superhero fiction. Reading these power fantasies is a way of transcending the "twenty-first century blues." Rather than the conformist, structured world we live in, superhero fiction is a place where people can dress up in crazy outfits and battle all manner of cosmic foes. It's that search for meaning, if your day's work is saving the world, you can go home happy, if it's just working in an office, or busting a couple of petty crooks, it's tough to consider yourself fulfilled.

Thematically, this ties back to Watchmen, particularly the stuff from Hollis' book. He talks about how it was only when the criminals started to dress up that they felt comfortable, if you're the only one in costume it seems ridiculous. There's an inherent self consciousness for these people, and for Shelly, that insecurity leads her to try to find a team of people, a place where she can feel comfortable.

If The Whip is the archetypal 80s heroine, Greg is a throwback to the Golden AGe. He's inherently outdated, a cowboy hero in today's world does not fit. He's a guy who felt more comfortable in 1875 than in the present. I love the idea that the JLA would go track this guy down from the past and bring him back, a mere chore for them, but a huge event for this guy. That's the essence of the miniseries, on the cosmic scale, these characters are unimportant, but because we get into their lives, their triumphs seem massively important, and their demise is disturbing.

This goes back a fiction theory that I've talked about before, the "Personal Apocalypse" concept, which was basically that a work needn't exist on a cosmic scale to feel important, what it needs to do is focus on the most important moment in the characters' life, the moment where the world as they knew it ends and they come out reborn. Magnolia is a great example of this, are nine random people in the Valley important on the grand scale of things? No, but because we care about them, it feels more important than an asteroid hurtling to destroy the whole world in Armageddon.

The heroes on Greg's team all draw on archetypes from superhero comics past. This is reminiscent of Warren Ellis' Planetary series, which functions simultaneously as a great adventure series in its own right, and as a history of genre fiction in the twentieth century. Gimmix is a throwback to 50s female heroines, most notably with her "Everything a Girl Needs" spray, Boy Blue is the post comics reader, who experiences superheroes via video games and movies, and Dan is a prototypical fanboy. His character design is basically the stereotypical "fatbeard." Most interesting is Tommy, who's come back in the style of late 90s Authority superheroes, a guy who's so cool he doesn't even know what he's doing with this bunch of losers. The transformation process with Tommy earlier in the book is designed to resemble the way that writers can remake characters to suit their own ends, modernized to suit the new times.

To some extent, they're all hero-vestites, except for Greg, but he's clearly too old to fight at the level he used to. In the page where they're asleep, both Gimmix and Dan look utterly mundane stripped of their hero gear. They're dressing up as heroes, it's not something inherent to themselves. Shelly's got some masochistic tendencies, and sleeping with Tommy, a guy she hates, is part of that. She likes to put herself in danger to feel alive.

Because they're only "playing" superheroes, there's always a self consciousness to their behavior. However, when they take on the spider, there's a collective transcending of this mental state, and for a moment they become real superheroes. Fighting as a team, they defeat the spider, and in those moments of fighting, they lose touch with all their earthly worries and become something greater. They are no longer self conscious about it, they have become real heroes.

After that, it's quickly down to Earth, realizing how close they came to dying, and the scars left by the battle. And after this momentary peak, they are quickly reminded of their utter insignificance. Some kind of superior force breaks through reality, and in a harrowing double page spread, everyone's killed. I love The Whip, screaming as she looks straight out at the reader. I'm not really sure what's going on here, but it's definitely disturbing. From there, the mysterious bald men pack things up and prepare to assemble another seven to fight this threat, which presumably leads in to the seven individual mini-series.

I think this issue is a masterpiece. Basically everything Grant writes is great, but this is his most insightful exploration of superhero archetypes since Flex Mentallo. That book dealt more with our perception of superheroes in the real world, this is all about how the average superhero lives in the DCU, toiling in the shadow of the big guns like Superman. I love the ways that the superheroes themselves are equated with superhero fans, Dan is like the fanboy who got a chance to write the titles, and Gimmix is the writer who wrote a couple of issues back in the 70s and is trying to live on that fame for the rest of her life. The whole book has that sort of run down, sleazy vibe that's present at a lot of cons.

Morrison writes superhero fiction better than anyone else, even Moore. Moore can do great work, but recently is often too eager to go towards pastiche over real emotional involvement. I've said it before, but with stuff like Tom Strong, Moore writes Silver Age comics as they actually were, while Grant's Flex Mentallo is like your nostalgia altered memory of a Silver age comic. This doesn't reach the manic pop heights of Flex, but it's a fantastic, more subdued exploration of similar themes.

Aiding Grant in this is the brilliant J.H. Williams. His work on Promethea is arguably the greatest comics art of all time. Here, his work is essential in establishing all these characters in such a short period. He's able to handle the Morrison craziness of the opening, as well as the kinetic action with The Whip. I've heard that Grant and J.H. are working on a creator owned series soon, and I'm eagerly looking forward to it. J.H. is one of those artists like Frank Quitely who's so good, I feel like he's wasting his time if he's not working with someone as good Alan Moore or Grant Morrison.

So, this was a great opening to the series, and I'm looking forward to the rest. I'll be doing in depth reviews as I go through, perhaps not this in depth, but if you've read the series, you'll have plenty to ponder.

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Vital

Vital is a film by Shinya Tsukamoto, the man behind two of the craziest films I've seen, Tetsuo: The Iron Man and A Snake of June. Those films all took place in surreal worlds, heavily color tinted and based around symbols in a dreamlike haze. It's difficult to find any sort of character or narrative reality in either of them. The really heavy tinting makes them totally unique films, I've never seen another feature like them.

Vital's still an odd film, but it's much more mainstream than Tsukamoto's other stuff. The film is about Hiroshi's struggle to come to terms with his girlfriend's death. The narrative structure's odd because the entire film is about him letting go, but we start by having him lose all his memories. What this does is align the viewer with Hiroshi, dropped in to this world, unclear about what's going on, and gradually realizing what happened.

The film has a number of incredible editing bits. The opening with the smokestacks is frenetic, and the music used builds up anticipation despite the fact that we're not sure what's going on. The other really cool sequence is when Hiroshi remembers the car crash and his memories flood back in negative.

The film has a few layers of metaphor working. In the real world, Hiroshi is dissecting Ryoko's body and through the process is rediscovering his relationship with her. At the same time, he's living in a dream reality, where he can spend time with Ryoko, but always has to leave at some point, return to the real world.

The film has a heavy layer of sadomasochism, with the choking. When Hiroshi sees Ikumi choking herself, he finds an echo of his relationship with Ryoko. Ryoko clearly shares this self destructive streak, so by forging a relationship with Ikumi, Hiroshi has a chance to atone for Ryoko's death. I like how Hiroshi forgres a relationship with Ryoko's parents, his rediscovery of his memories allows them to rediscover her as well. This relationship was the most emotionally real in all of Tsukamoto's work.

As things end, we realize that Ryoko was aware that she was going to die, but she didn't mind because she had experienced a moment of perfect happiness with Hiroshi. She'd be content to relive their time together all her life, even as she's aware that Hiroshi has to move on to other things.

The film's much more straightforward, less experimental than Tsukamoto's work. It was a lot easier to follow, and was also more emotionally engaging, however it's also less unique. I'm not saying that Tsukamoto should only do really out there stuff, but this is the equivalent of something like Wild at Heart for David Lynch, a film that's about half totally unique and half fairly standard. It's a lot easier to watch this than Snake of June, but it's ultimately less invigorating.

Tsukamoto's work reminds me a lot of Miike's, in the way that more than any American directors he emphasizes image and dream logic over coherent narrative progression. Even though I'm talking about this film like it's a standard film, it's still very ethereal and drifting. I feel like both of these directors are students of psychology, Freud in particular, because they draw on a lot of knowing sexual symbolism. In some respects, the lack of narrative cohesion can be frustrating. Lynch does some crazy stuff, but most of his films can be straightened out into a fairly linear narrative if you work hard enough. However, I would hesitate to come up with a definitive explanation for Gozu or Tetsuo, they're films that don't take place in our world, films that are more about the journey, the image at the moment, than any particular destination.

This film is successful in that it does have a strong emotional closure, and a sense of character and narrative. However, the images and construction just aren't as overwhelming as in Tetsuo or Snake of June. But, I imagine the vast majority of viewers would enjoy this a lot more than either of those two films.

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Goldfrapp @ Irving Plaza

Setlist:
Utopia//Lovely Head//Tip Toe//Train//Koko//Slide//Never Know//Deer Stop//Fly Me//Satin Chic//Beautiful//White Horse//OOh La La
Encore:
Black Cherry//Number One
Strict Machine

I've been to a lot of rock shows, but I've never seen any electronic pop groups perform live. It's tougher to do a show where much of your sound comes from electronic elements, it can be tougher to reproduce the elements that make the record great. Goldfrapp proved that it is possible to make do electronic keyboard based music live and make it great. This was a really cool show, one I'm really glad I got to see.

First off, the crowd here was really into it. When she first came out on stage, there were huge applause and after every showy moment there was a major crowd reaction. This reaction was one of the most enthusiastic I've ever seen, and Alison seemed to really be enjoying it. During the breaks between encores, the crowd was really emphatic in demanding a bit more show.

The show started off with two songs off of Felt Mountain. I figured that the dance/glam stuff off of the later albums would play better live, but those first two songs were the highlight of the show for me. Alison's vocal range was ridiculous, going off into this siren-like high pitched wail on 'Lovely Head,' augmented by the theremin and vocal distortion. I think they placed these two songs first because they were so vocally demanding, it would be difficult to hit those notes at the end of the show. The band backing her was a mix of keyboard, violin and guitar, and they turned the ethereal whispher of Utopia into a heavy stomp, completely remaking the song into something that worked as a rocking live number. If you hear the songs on record, they don't sound like they'd translate well live, but she totally disproved that here.

I think some of my enjoyment of the show was hindered by the fact that I didn't get a good spot until near the end. I got there ten minutes before the show started, and was really happy not to have to wait. But, the problem is I wasn't up in the front, where the really intense fans are. It's a hassle to have to wait, but the shows where I'm in the front, like at Phoenix last week are much more enjoyable. There, you get immersed in the performance, rather than struggling to see over the crowd. So, in the future I'm going to try to get there a bit earlier and get a good spot before the show starts.

Anyway, my issues aside, she kept up a really high energy level throughout the show. Train was an early highlight, the first of her dance songs to get played, and also notable for her theremin solo, a theremin that she got very comfortable with. Train also saw the first appearance of her masked dancers. They were quite odd looking, and worked well to augment the songs. Visually, the show was fantastic. The lights helped build the song's mood and the band's glam rock attire helped build the mood. I believe it was Will Gregory playing keyboards on the left in a full on Velvet Goldmine outfit and makeup.

The closing run of songs was all fantastic. After the heights of 'Utopia' and 'Lonely Head,' there was a bit of a break, but things came back at the end with the fantastic, driving 'Satin Chic,' and then her two big disco songs off of Supernature, 'Ooh La La' and 'Ride a White Horse.' I was surprised to see those two back to back since they're similar songs, and one of them could have probably gone over better during the middle of the show. But, it did have the effect of building great momentum for the finale, and into the encores.

'Number One' is my favorite song of theirs, and it worked really well live. 'Black Cherry' was a return to the feel of 'Utopia,' and was quite good. 'Strict Machine' was a fantastic finale, with Alison marching and saluting.

So, a really good show. I wasn't sure how they'd convert their stuff to live performance, but it went over seamlessly, and quite a few of the songs were even better live than on the record. I would love to see them again, this was a "Special" show, so hopefully they'll do another round through New York promoting this album. And next time play 'Lovely 2 C U,' that's the only song I was missing.

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The Sopranos: 'Moe and Joe' (6x10)

This episode felt like a throwback to the early season episodes that dealt explicitly with Tony's youth, I was almost expecting a flashback with young Tony and Janice. Thankfully we didn't get that, but in some respects, the episode felt a bit constrained by having to look backwards. Still, there was a lot of progress in the overall storylines, as everything continues to fall apart.

The development of Vito's storyline in the past few episodes has given us our first glimpse of someone who might find a way out of the mob world. Vito seemed to have wound up in the perfect town and met the perfect guy. However, he's still drawn irrevocably back to Jersey and the world of the mob. At first this is played with a blend of nostalgia and humor, Vito annoyed that the firefighters are going to sleep at midnight, and the dinner as an attempt to recapture the cooking he misses.

For the past few episodes, the threat seemed to come from outside, the issue was who would find Vito, and whether or not Tony would let them kill him. The twist is that it turns out even the perfect life isn't enough for Vito, he'd rather take his chances at home than live out an ordinary life, doing ordinary work. Coming from a culture where going to work means playing poker in the back of a pork store or sitting in folding chairs on a construction site, it's difficult for Vito to get used to the idea of actually doing work. The scene with the voiceover was a stylistic departure for the series, but I think it worked to show just how alien the concept of an actual day's labor is for these guys.

I didn't love the episode, and I think that's partially because it's so unrelentingly pessimistic. It's tough to watch these characters continually fail, and certainly Vito's arc is an example of that. This is a guy who had everything set up for him, he just needed to work, and he couldn't do that. It's similar to Long Term Parking, where Christopher sees a white trash 'ordinary' family, and chooses to kill Adrianna rather than go down that path. Vito chooses the same, he can be happy for a time in New Hampshire, but he's got to return to Jersey eventually, even if it means death.

I enjoyed the momentum of the "My Way'" car ride, and the starkly shot murder announced that Vito is definitely back. He must be aware that he can't just walk back in to their world, and I'm not too sure what he plans to do. I suppose he could claim that the rumors were all lies, and go back to living with his wife, swearing off the gay clubs, but I still think it would be hard for them to accept him. In the previous episodes, I would have been really angry if Vito ended up getting killed, but with this episode, he basically gives himself over to die. He passed on his chance for an escape, so there's really nothing else to do but end him.

This episode doesn't really evolve Janice, but the whole point of her character is that there's no evolution. Be she new age or mob wife, she's still the same self centered person. So, this is more about touching base with her, and reaffirming what we've already seen. Janice has basically become her mother, and that's what makes Tony scared of her. What this episode adds is the notion that even when he was a kid, she was treating him like Livia did. So, Tony's always been scared of her on some level.

The scene with Bobby Jr. is great because it lets Tony observe someone who's essentially a younger version of himself, it's even stronger than a flashback. Tony chooses not to talk to Janice about it, likely because she'd just ignore him and complain about it. Bobby is trying to advance to impress her, but ends up only getting himself hurt worse.

One thing I've been wondering is whether Bobby has gone to see Junior in prison. I'd imagine Tony wouldn't sanction it, but they were together for a long time, and I don't think he would be happy that Junior's been essentially abandoned. One of the toughest moments of this season is Junior's extreme happiness when he sees AJ, only to be quickly deflated when he finds out that his only visitor has come to kill him.

This episode effectively marks the end of Johnny Sack. By pleading guilty, he alienates himself from everyone else in the mob, it will likely be a chilly reception when he gets out of prison. But, he really had no choice, he made the deal that worked best for his family.

This plotline fits in wonderfully with the theme of erosion that the whole season has been about. All the characters are increasingly aware of their own constriction, and both Christopher and Vito's attempts to find a way out have failed miserably. The characters are going down the ship, they're not willing to work to find a new life, and that means just trying to grab the biggest piece possible as everything falls apart.

Carmela this season is becoming more and more aggressive in trying to claim a space for herself. She's desperately jealous of Angie, who's the woman she wants to be. She leans on Tony to try and get her work started, and blames him when her building fails. She's so stuck in their mindset that she never thinks to actually make a building that could pass inspection, rather she looks for the easy way around the rules. No one's willing to do actual work, and that's the big problem. The mob prays on actual businesspeople, best dramatized in the David Scatino arc back in season two, they siphon from the labor of others, and contribute nothing themselves.

With two episodes left in the season, I'm assuing we'll see some resolution of the Vito issue. I hesitate to predict anything plotwise since Chase always comes up with something unexpected. But, tonally it's pretty clear that we're looking at the continued gradual breakdown of the mob system. Paulie's got cancer, Christoper's losing his car, no one is doing well, and I'm guessing that the end of the series will be a fade out not a bang.

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McCabe and Mrs. Miller

I've enjoyed a lot of the Robert Altman stuff I've seen, but I've always felt like he keeps a bit too much emotional distance between his characters, and sometimes his relaxed, rambling pacing can make a film feel a bit too long. However McCabe and Mrs. Miller doesn't fall into any of these traps, and it's easily my favorite film of his.

McCabe is in some respects a Western, but it doesn't focus on the violent aspects of the genre, rather it covers the life of a town, as it is built and ultimately torn from the people who built it. One of the most remarkable things about the film is the way that it depicts the building of McCabe's town. When he first gets there, it's a few tents, and as the film progresses, we watch the skeletons of buildings rise up, and get fleshed out until this is a fully functioning town, and that makes the events at the end, when McCabe has not only his town, but his life taken from him, tragic.

If McCabe is the town's father, Mrs. Miller is its mother, only through the union of their sensibilities can they find success. Despite his money, McCabe doesn't have much ambition. He sees no reason to build beyond the tents for the girls, to build a bathhouse or to decorate the prostitute's house. He thinks in terms of short term gains, rather than possibilities of future investment. Mrs. Miller seeks to recreate the luxury of an urban area, and seems to be using the town as a way to get money to open her own place in San Francisco. So, her ambition brings them success beyond what they could have possibly expected.

The film has a pessimistic view of American business. McCabe is an entrepreneur who seems to have acheived the American dream, but there's always someone bigger out there who will not allow him to continue his business. McCabe thinks that big business will play fair, and that he can get more money out of them. However, when they don't get what they want, they don't mess around, they just kill him.

Mrs. Miller is aware of McCabe's naivete, and that's why she leaves. He just can't figure it out, $6250 really is their final offer, if he doesn't pay that, they'll just take the town. That's where the Western attitude really comes out, because this is an essentially lawless territory, the big corporations rule, and McCabe's lawyer can't stop them when McCabe happens to end up dead. It's a situation similar to Lando in Empire Strikes Back, an independent businessman wants to stay under the radar, once he gets too big, he becomes a target.

So, it's appropriate that the killers announce their presence by killing the cowboy. This was a guy who came to the house because he heard it was the biggest around. Once word like that starts spreading, it attracts attention to McCabe and ultimately causes his death.

The end of the film is stunning, McCabe's pursuit is played out with virtually no dialogue. I love the moment where McCabe guns down the huge guy, but it doesn't make what ultimately happens to him any better. Then, there's the haunting final image of Mrs. Miller lying in the opium den. McCabe's decision not to sell means that she is left with nothing, and if she stayed behind, she would probably be treated as nothing more than a common whore. So, she flees, and, distraught, drifts off into an opium haze. Even though she's still alive, her prospects aren't much better than McCabe's.

The film is different from most Altman movies in that there's a stronger character center. There's some of the overlapping dialogue ensemble stuff, but we really get to know the two title characters, and that makes the end of the film quite emotional. Another thing that contributes to this is the score of songs by Leonard Cohen. Having a singer/songwriter score your movie seems to have been quite the trend in the 1970s, and it works really well here. Also, I loved the use of zooms here. That's something you don't see much today, but here it did a great job of emphasizing certain things within the frame.

So, this is a really great film, easily the best Altman I've seen, and one of the best films of the 70s. It's a film that's innovative and really exciting to watch. I'm hoping Altman recaptures some of this quality with the upcoming A Prarie Home Companion.

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Phoenix @ Bowery Ballroom (5/10/2006)

Phoenix's second album, Alphabetical, is one of my all time favorite albums, ridiculously smooth, warm keyboard based dance rock. Every song on there is great, so I was rather annoyed when I missed the shows they did for the album because I was up at school. So, I was really happy that I was able to get to yesterday's show, and it did not disappoint. About half of the show was really good, and the other half was one of the best performances I've ever seen.

What was responsible for this divide? It's the fact that about half the songs they played were off their new album. I don't want to be that guy, but in this case, the new album is significantly weaker than their previous stuff. It's still good, but much less unique. United or Alphabetical are albums no one else could make, the keyboard textures and warmth of the music were something I'd never heard before. It's Never Been Like That is more standard rock. It's still good, but compared to the greatness of their previous stuff, it was a bit of a letdown. I think the primary reason for that is that I was attracted to the band because they were like a more rock version of Air, but with this album, they drop most of the electro, and become more like countless other indie bands out there.

If I'd heard the third album first, I'd probably like it, but wouldn't have the extreme love that I did for Alphabetical. A lot of bands seem to stumble with the third album. On the second, you can usually get away with just developing ideas from the first, but with your third album you've got to do something different, and that can either cause a good band to leap to greatness or a great band to stumble a bit. I'm hoping they bring back the keyboard for their fourth album.

But, enough on that. The songs from the third album sounded pretty good live, particularly 'Long Distance Call,' 'Lost and Found,' and the closer, 'Second to None,' which was extended into a lengthy jam session. All the third album stuff was solid, but nearly every song they played from the first two was a mezmerizing experience.

On the album, most of the songs are pretty lowkey, smooth, controlled and short. Playing them live, they turned to extended jams, moving effortlessly between heavy and softer sections. The second song they played was 'Run Run Run,' which was probably the highlight of the night for me. It's one of their best songs and it was pushed in a really different direction from the album. Other highlights were 'If I Ever Feel Better' and 'Funky Squaredance.'

I like the concert experience to be different than the album, and I don't think there's much virtue in just playing a tight version that replicates the record. I prefer the messy, sprawling approach they took, drawing different nuances out of the song. Because the audience already knows the song, it's smart to play with expectations of how things will go, and the longer versions of the songs allowed them to do that. Most of the songs they treated this way were the older ones, and I'm hoping that at future shows, they'll do more improv and variation with the new stuff. I'd be curious to find out if at the first Alphabetical shows, they played things pretty much straight ahead, or if they did the long improv versions then as well. The fantastic 'Second to None' showed that the new songs could be as good as the old stuff if they were transformed in the same way.

The crowd at this show was one of the most invovled at any show I've been to. There was a lot of dancing in the crowd, and a lot more women than at most shows. They all seemed to be gazing up adoringly at Thomas Mars. I was hoping that Sofia Coppola would be at the show, since she's dating Mars, but there was no sign of her. Rumor has it that she's pregnant, and their kid may have the ultimate indie genes. If their kid was to direct Maggie Gylenhal/Peter Sarsgaard's kid in a film, the indie universe would probably implode, it would just be too much.

While Mars was certainly the center of the show, I was a huge fan of their drummer. He was doing some really heavy drumming, but it always remained melodic and danceable. He also seemed to be having a lot of fun back there, tearing things up.

While I would have liked a bit more from the first two albums, the show was still fantastic, and Phoenix definitely lived up to their live reputation. They took their songs in a different direction live, and that was rivetiing to watch. At a lot of shows, by the end, I'm pretty much ready to go. Here I was wishing that they'd drop one more song, and I didn't want the epic finale, 'Second to None,' to end. That's the sign of a great show.

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Gilmore Girls: 'Partings' (6x22)

This episode was an interesting watch for a number of reasons, but before going into the actual stuff that happened I've got to comment on the ridiculousness of the episode promo. I can understand wanting people to watch the episode, and I will admit that I'd vaguely heard about the big plot twist online, but it's one thing to skim over some spoilers on a message board post, it's another to see the whole episode condensed into thirty seconds in the episode trailer. Some of the previous trailers had done an interesting job of misleading the audience, notably "I'm pregnant" from last week, but here there's no twist, we get everything except the last thirty seconds of the episode, and that kills a lot of the dramatic tension. It's the show's season finale, people are probably going to watch, there's no need to give away the entire episode, quite literally in this case.

So, that colored my viewing. Most of the stuff from the trailer was in the last fifteen minutes of the episode, so I was pretty much waiting for those. It's tough to watch this stuff, if you watch on DVD, a lot of the spoilers are out there, so it's tough to avoid them, but if you watch on actual TV, you get them in the promos. Even if I hadn't watched last week's promo, they replayed it right before the episode. Ridiculous stuff, WB, hopefully your spawn the CW will do a better job of keeping secrets with its promos.

Anyway, on to the episode itself. I think it's tough to objectively evaluate season finales, particulary when I knew this was the last Palladino episode. So, there's this impending sense of doom, I was checking the clock a lot, watching it tick down and wishing that this would end up being a two hour episode. I remember watching the final episode of Twin Peaks and just sitting there stunned at the end, wihsing that I could get just a little bit more, and I had a similar feeling here. The troubador stuff would have been a fun bit in any other episode, but here I desperately want to see more with Lorelai, and they're taking screentime that could be spent on that. So, the episode has the obligation of being not only good, it's got to the absouletly best hour of story that could be told. In that respect, it doesn't quite measure up, but those final fifteen minutes were brilliant.

The opening scene was striking, and I love the way it came back at the end. Lorelai is in such a funk by this point that she's barely even to wake up. The scene with Patti at her house was probably the best demonstration of this, she knows Luke is looking for her, but she's still avoiding him. This was also a nice example of melding the usual town comedy bits with the heavy drama. So, we get the typical Patti innuendos, but are more focused on the fact that she's covering for Lorelai, who is right there, but won't go to Luke.

From there, we head off to the lengthy Emily and Richard scene. The fact that Emily is trying to set Christopher up with someone implies that she does legitimately believe in Luke and Lorelai as a couple, and her talking last week wasn't implying that Lorelai should actually get together with Christopher. She's now trying to set Christopher up with Lorelai present. This scene had an odd dynamic, I feel like we'd seen the dinner table bit in a bunch of previous episodes, and doing this extended comedy riff felt a bit out of place in the context of the whole episode. Obviously, it was designed to set up what happens with Christopher and Lorelai later, but I think the seeds of that had been set up sufficiently in previous episodes, and we didn't need such an extended scene to do that.

So, before I head into the rest of the stuff with Lorelai, let me take a quick detour to go over the rest of the stuff. I really liked seeing Mary Lynn Raskjub guest on the show, and on the whole, I really did like the troubador bit. I don't think any of those scenes should be cut, it's just that I feel like we could have used a bit more with our core characters. This was an episode that demanded an extra ten or fifteen minutes.

At this point, Lorelai is a totally dominant character, and Rory is almost like Lane, existing off in her own little subplotverse. Side note, I would have liked to have seen Lane's take on the troubadors, though this certainly wasn't an episode that needed any additional material. Back in the show's early days, it was a pretty much even split between Lorelai and Rory, and it was their connection that was the show's main focus. After they had to split up in season four, Lorelai has gradually become the dominant character on the show. I don't think Rory has ever developed the complexity of Lorelai, I really enjoyed her 'Dark Rory' arc earlier this year but since then, she hasn't had much of anything to do.

So, her stuff here is pretty solid, but nothing that unexpected. The Mitchum scene was the high point, as he makes her aware of something she probably already knew, that Logan does need to grow up, and going to London coul be good for him. So, she agrees to make the personal sacrifice and spend some time without him. The scene where Rory breaks down crying as he's about to go was arguably her best acting in the show's whole run, her break into tears felt totally real and gave the scene a poignance that the events themselves did not automatically justify.

So, back to Lorelai. I think something like the psychiatrist scene was a long time coming. I've mentioned this before in relation to this show, but when a show runs for a long time, you're inevitably going to repeat plot lines, you can either choose to ignore that, or use it as the basis for the characters' flaws. Once they have these flaws, it's logical to make them self examine. So, here we find out exactly how Lorelai feels about Luke, she thought he was the one, and this may have created a distance in all her other relationships. If he's the one, the ultimate destination, it's logical that she would fall into depression when things aren't working out. If things don't work out with Luke, is she destined to live the rest of her life alone?

The scene with Luke was great, the culmination of everything this season has been leading to. Lorelai finally lets him know how she was feeling and he remains unable to see how much she's hurting. Lorelai's desperation reaches its culmination here, everything she's been wanting to say spills out, but it's too much for Luke to take all at once and he freezes up. One could certainly say that Lorelai may have been too aggressive in springing all her problems on Luke at once, particularly after avoiding him for so long. But, at the same time, Luke is pretty stupid here, particularly in letting her go when she's so clearly angry. During that long lingering shot on the band, I was hoping to see Luke at least attempting to pursue her. However, there was nothing.

And that leads us to the final moments. The previews pretty much spoiled this, but it's still an interesting development. The final scene shows Lorelai still looking dazed and out of it. So, it's not like she's recognized that Christopher is the one and decided to be with him, her justification is just what she says, that shecan't be alone tonight. This season has spent a lot of time flirting with the idea of Christopher and Lorelai has a couple, be it through Lorelai taking care of Gigi, or attending the wedding together. So, I feel like Lorelai and Christopher could easily work as a couple, something that's been aided by the fact that we've barely seen her with Luke in the second half of the season. So, we've lost track of the basis of their relationship.

It wouldn't be that tough to reverse things. Certainly, last year's business with Christopher and Richard and Emily made him into quite the villain, but the agenda last year was different. That was when the goal was to make Luke and Lorelai into a working couple. Even as things were going bad with Rory, Luke was the rock for Lorelai, and she likely would have suffered much more during that time if Luke wasn't there for her. Lorelai's biggest problem now is that she has no one to turn to, and that's plunged her into this extreme depression.

While I've generally loved the way things went this season, I do find the way Luke has been portrayed to be inconsistent with what he'd done in previous years and even earlier this year. The Luke of season five would have done anything to help Lorelai, and the guy who said "Yes" to her marriage proposal a few seconds after she asked him would not have been so wishy washy here. The obvious explanation for the change is the demands of being a father. But the business with Lorelai and the party seemed to resolve that issue, and he saw a way that the two of them could work as a couple.

The way I read his response here is that he doesn't want to do something rash that could lead Anna to believe that he'd be an inappropriate influence on April. Running off and getting married on a whim coul be read like that, and I think that's what he's trying to articulate when he's talking to Lorelai. However, he ends up sounding like he's just trying to come up with an excuse. Thinking of April's feelings isn't really a valid excuse, considering the fact that she really likes Lorelai. Luke has been manuvered into a difficult place, and the fact that we've barely seen his point of view has made it difficult to sympathize with him. However, he has been the one reaching out to Lorelai, while she ran away from him. It's a bit inconsistent to not be there at all for many days, then all of a sudden ask to get married.

But, Luke is pretty stupid not to see how much Lorelai is hurting, all season this is true, but now she comes right out and says it, and he still can't get it. He has to get over the idea that April and Lorelai are seperate parts of his life, that will doom any potential relationship. His bristling at the fact that Lorelai went to see Anna is ridiculous because she did it to help him.

I guess my biggest gripe with the arc is that I wish we could have seen more of what Luke was going through. That would make it easier to understand the character's changes. Lorelai's arc this year was wonderful, really well executed and culminates in a logical low point for her.

This season, like Buffy's sixth, was by far the show's darkest, and also its most criticized. In light of this, Buffy and The Sopranos, the sixth season seems to be all about malaise and depression, exhaustion with life. I guess by this point, the characters have been through so much bad stuff, they're bound to get worn down by it. For Lorelai, this entire season has seen her at odds with the two people she cares most about, and that's exhausted her. Lauren Graham has owned this year, doing by far her best work in the show's whole run.

This episode has the odd feeling of being simultaneously a cliffhanger finale leaving you wondering what's going to happen next, and a series finale, because we'll never know what the characters' creators intended to have happen next. The Palladinos leave the show with everything in meltdown and a completely open slate for next season. There's definitely enough drama here to start a season off with, and that'll probably be helpful to David Rosenthal. Of course, any resolution is going to bother a lot of people, so it's not going to be easy.

Everything really depends on whether they choose to bring David Sutcliffe on as a regular. He's certainly more important to the show than a lot of people in the opening credits, so I would say give him the bump up. Regardless of whether he and Lorelai end up together, having him around would be a good idea. If Michel has to go to do this, we'll go on somehow. Considering Luke's reaction to the fact that Christopher left Lorelai a phone message was pretty intense, he's probably not going to be happy to find out that they slept together, and considering the state of their relationship, that might be the final break for the two of them. If Luke does find out, Lorelai will either have to reach out to him, or they'll be done.

They could easily do a sort of mutual assured destruction arc where Lorelai embarks on a relationship with Christopher, while Luke begins one with Anna, all the while still in love with each other, a messed up quadrangle of affection. I'd love to see Sherilynn Fenn come on as a regular as well. There's a lot of potential, but I can't shake the feeling that Gilmore Girls without the Palladinos is going to feel like fanfic.

It's basically wide open now. If Rosenthal wants to return the show to its roots, he could have Lorelai regret what she did, get back with Luke and then focus on the joyous adventures of Stars Hollow. Or, he could throw everyone into even more messed up situations than they were in before. If he follows the path of Buffy, season seven will lighten things up, but if the show's meant to run indefinitely, things could fall further into chaos. I think his greatest challenge will be reconciling the darkness of the stuff with Luke and Lorelai with the goofy stuff with the town. Even the Palladinos have been having some trouble with it lately, and considering what happened here, it's not going to get any easier.

There's talk of having the Palladinos come back to write the finale, but once Rosenthal takes over and commences his own plots, that will mark the end of the show as we know it. So, it's not like the Palladinos could just step back in and try to resolve everything that's been done. Unless there was some kind of jump into the future episode that's a more general show wrapup than a tieup for specific plot threads, it's pretty much over for the Palladinos. I think they created a fantastic show, one that has only gotten better as it's gone on. I may be in the minority, but I would consider seasons five and six easily the high point of the series.

I suppose that's my personal taste, I do enjoy the dramatic breakdowns rather than generally humorous stuff. It's the same with Buffy, the darker the show got, the better it got. With such strong, developed characters, it's a lot easier to relate to their emotional traumas. I think everyone did great work this season, and Lorelai's meltdown arc leant things a poignancy and power that the show never had before. It's been a fantastic journey, and I only wish the Palladinos could stay on to see it through. I'll still be watching next season, but it won't be the same.

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The Sopranos: 'The Ride' (6x09)

This week's episode focuses on the boredom and ennui that our characters are feeling. Life just isn't that exciting and they're taking whatever they can as a way to change things.

The most notable example of this is the opening scene, where Christopher decides to get married. This is treated as something that's less about love than it is about a desire to change his life, and maybe find some purpose. It was jarring to see Christopher decide to marry someone we hadn't even seen on the show before, and that was clearly the intention. If this episode, and Christopher's behavior earlier in the season prove anything, it's that he's never gotten over Adrianna's death, and he's using this marriage as an attempt to fill the emptiness in his life. The scene isn't about Kelli, it's about Chris dealing the memory of Ade, he basically tells her that he's marrying her because she's pregnant and Adrianna couldn't have kids.

As the episode progresses, Christopher is positive about his domestic life, but we never really get a sense of who this woman he's marrying is. The whole point is that she's not someone with a strong personality, she's just there. So, presumably there was a scene where Christopher introduced her to his crew and to Carmela, but we never see it. Coming so soon after the Sacrimoni wedding, we're not going to do another episode focusing on a wedding. So, this episode becomes more about Christopher being torn between his old life and this potential new life.

That tension is never more apparent than in the brilliantly executed scene where Christopher is in the car with Corky, talking about his house and how he's going to raise his son, while in the background of the shot, we see Corky preparing to shoot up. Christopher tells him that he should get rehab, but we can tell that Christopher doesn't really believe what he's saying, or at least he doesn't have the conviction to follow it through. He may say that he wants to put his effort into raising his son, but as the scene progresses, he gives into the temptation to fix, and goes through heroin fueled hazy journey through the carnival. I really liked that sequence, it had such a melancholy about it, you really got the sense of where Christopher was, choosing to inject because it allowed him to detach from the world for a while.

Christopher's gradual path towards relapse was accelerated by Tony. The scene in the restaurant reminded me a lot of the episode in season five where Tony and Tony B. rag on Christopher for not drinking. Clearly, Christopher values his relationship with Tony and the fact that Tony is constantly pressuring him to drink is going to make it difficult to maintain sobriety. The scene outside was sweet, but the real notable thing there was the flashback.

I don't think the show had ever done a flashback like this, and it was a bit jarring. However, seeing that moment filled in something that had been blank since the end of season five. Seeing Christopher break down made it clear just how emotionally attached he was to Adrianna, and also how shrewd Tony is in running the business. He had strong feelings for Ade, but when it came down to it, he was more concerned with his own safety than protecting her. As he proved with Pussy back in season two, if someone betrays the family, they have to go.

In the present, Christopher is clearly on a path towards disaster. He gets married on an impulse, and doesn't love this girl. His initial attachment to "stately Wayne manor" will likely fade, and then he'll be left with someone who's a mere shadow of what he loved in Adrianna. I think he'll always be haunted by guilt over what he did, and considering he's using again, I seriously doubt that things will go well when his son is born.

The final scene between Christopher and Tony was brilliant in showing how hollow both their lives are. They're retelling the same story, but it's just going through the motions. I'm not sure why Christopher actually went over there, the initial awkwardness felt a lot like the pregnant silence in the Adrianna scene, so I'm guessing he was planning to tell Tony that he had started to use again, but ultimately decided not to.

The episode returns us to Bobby and Janice for the first time in a while, and Bobby is still being pushed around by her. At first, he recognizes that the problem with the ride was something out of their control, but Janice is not willing to let that stand. She intimidates him into action, and instigates the conflict with Paulie. Janice is a virtual replica of her mother, only her husband has very little actual power. So, she winds up frustrated by his lack of action. At this point, she's compeletely abandoned any aspirations to artsiness or spirituality, she's totally entrenched in the Jersey mob world.

This week, Tony finds himself drifting into malaise. He got some cheap thrills from the wine heist, but he's ultimately finding it difficult to keep his enthusiasm about life. The routine of day to day life wears him down, and he's still clearly attracted to the excitement that Julianna offers, regret lingering about his choice to not sleep with her last episode.

While he insensitively sends Christopher on the road to relapse, he does offer Paulie some good advice. I'm a little uncertain about why he would be such a negative influence on Christopher when he, more than anyone, is aware of the potential dangers that would arise if Christopher went into a full on relapse. So, it's almost a self destructive streak that drives him to treat Christopher that way, like he's asking for his business to be disrupted.

One of the strongest scenes in the episode was Carmela's meeting with Adrianna's mother. There's so much tension there. For the viewer, the primary issue is how much Carmela knows. We know that Adrianna was killed, and even though Carmela fiercely defends Christopher, she is clearly feeling uneasy about that. When she asks Tony later in the episode, he doesn't come up with an entirely convincing denial. I'm glad that they haven't just let Ade's death go, because it was one of the most emotionally wrenching moments in the series' run, and it demands exploration.

The other big thread here was Paulie's issues. He's one of the most selfish characters in the show, but I always end up feeling sorry for the guy after his spotlight episodes. Unlike most of the other characters, Paulie doesn't have much of a personal life. He's not married, and doesn't seem to have any long lasting relationships. His only personal connection is with his mother, and that fact is what made his treatment of her back in The Fleshy Part of the Thigh so tough to take.

The major theme of the season is the idea that the mob is becoming obsolete, that traditional practices just aren't acceptable anymore, and the first scene at the church makes that clear. It's a nice followup to the stuff with Starbucks last week. Nobody's really responsible for what happened with the tea cups, but Tony's speech to Paulie in the bathroom makes things clear. At this point, they can't afford to take risks, they are on the verge of extinction and one major error could bring about the end of their whole organization.

The ending deliberately leaves the question of Paulie's biopsy ambiguous, but what is clear is that Paulie recognizes how alone he is. His friends are turning on him, and business is going poorly so he retreats to the one woman who has always been there for him. I loved the fact that she was watching the Lawrence Welk show, and that closing move out onto the autumn leaves perfectly captures the feeling of death that hung over the episode.

This episode couldn't match last week's masterpiece, but it gave us a lot of insight into where Christopher is right now. However, with only minimal Tony and Meadow and no Vito, we didn't get much from the most interesting plot lines. It's tough to think that there's only three episodes left this season and eleven total.

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Gilmore Girls: 'Driving Miss Gilmore' (6x21)

After the building emotional intensity of the past few episodes, most of this episode was a bit of a letdown. It was entertaining, but there wasn't much of note going on. It was like they had a few plot ideas that they wanted to get out of the way before the season finale.

The subplot I did enjoy was Sookie and Jackson's struggle to get rid of the 68 pounds of marijuana. It was such an out of nowhere happening, and watching them deal with it produced some funny moments. The scene with Doyle and the penguins was pretty funny as well.

I feel like Rory's grievance with Mitchum was a bit odd. I could see why she'd be annoyed, but I don't think it's the sort of comment that would have her newspaper sidekick bracing for an emotional breakdown. If anything, he should have been expecting her to be really excited that Rory's name was in the Wall Street Journal, and then be surprised when she was annoyed. I guess it's possible that she discussed the whole Mitchum issue with him, but it seems odd that he would be so aware of her negative feelings towards Mitchum. Plus, it's odd that they kept Logan and Rory apart for the whole episode. That seemed designed solely to save them discussing their issues for the season finale.

As per usual, Lorelai's stuff was the most interesting. The bits with her mother were funny, but what was paramount was her unease at the way things were going. It's unclear why Anna's comments last week have driven her away from Luke. If anything, they should have made her reinforce her bond with him. I think what she's feeling is that it would be impossible for Luke to maintain his relationship with his daughter and his relationship with her, and that, combined with her general paranoia about being unable to commit to a relationship, has pushed her away from Luke.

The great irony for Luke is that he's now lecturing TJ on how to deal with women, when he's so clearly failing on his own. If he took his own advice, he would realize that he needs to talk to Lorelai about what's going on between them, but he is apparently oblivious about her internal conflict. Of course, he is the one reaching out here, and Lorelai still hasn't been able to talk to him about what's going on.

There were two really interesting scenes between Lorelai and her mother. One was in the car, when they're talking about Christopher. In light of the fact that she has decided to buy a house for Luke and Lorelai, it's odd that she would be talking up Christopher. It may actually be that Emily is legitimately trying to help Christopher, and isn't just hinting that he and Lorelai should get together. However it's clear here that Lorelai still has feelings for Christopher, and even though she may not openly want him, she clearly doesn't want anyone else to have him either.

The other critical scene was the breakdown at the real estate office. This scene made the episode. Again, Lorelai has been keeping her emotions under wraps and finally breaks down here. The fact that her mother seems to really believe in the engagement, while she herself can't see it happening is what does it. That Emily would pick out a house that Lorelai likes is touching, but it only underscores Lorelai's sadness that the wedding is in jeopardy. It's odd that she so quickly said that it's not happening at all, which would imply she's breaking up with Luke. Emily going over to comfort Lorelai was a really good moment, showing how they've both let down their usual antagonistic personas at this moment.

The final scene and line were a great capper to the episode, keeping up the melancholy feeling that broke in with the real estate scene. Going into the Palladinos' final episode, things are not looking good for Luke and Lorelai. As this season has progressed, Lorelai has become more interesting than ever, and Lauren Graham is doing her best work in the show's entire run. However, the quality there only makes the other plots seem more out of place. Even Rory's stuff seems like filler, only Lane is really able to support interesting stuff on her own. It's not that those plots are any worse than they were in the past, it's just that the Luke/Lorelai stuff has gotten so good, it makes the other stuff look a bit weak. But, I would argue the show's as good as it's ever been right now.

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Summer Movie Preview

One of the greatest achievements in the history of cinema will be happening in May of this year, but it's not going to be on the big screen. I can almost guarantee that none of the film released this summer will match the quality of The Sopranos. But, that doesn't mean we might not get some good stuff. So, rather than go through the blockbusters, here's the stuff I'm actually interested in seeing.

May 5
Art School Confidential - Ghost World is one of my all time favorite films, so a follow up from the same talent has a lot of potential. Early reviews indicate that the film is funny, but not as emotionally intense as Ghost World. So, it's more along the lines of Zwigoff's Bad Santa, an entertaining, but somewhat hollow film. Of course, I do have a soft spot for poking fun at pretentious art students, I actually liked that stuff in Six Feet Under season four. So, I'm all over this.

The Promise - I wasn't a big fan of Farewell My Concubine, but I usually enjoy these ornate martial arts spectacle films. It should be visually astonishing if nothing else.

Mission Impossible: III - I'm sort of torn on this one. On the one hand, I did really enjoy Alias for the first two years, but everything that JJ Abrams has done since then has been pretty weak. However, I'll probably end up seeing it, if only for the Magnolia reunion between Cruise and Hoffman.

May 12
Down in the Valley - This revisionist Western is notable for being an actual independent film, and I'm hearing it's a refreshing change from the quirky indies that make up so much of the art house market. It seems like a throwback to grittier 70s films, and if reviews remain strong, I'll probably check it out.

May 26
X-Men: The Last Stand - Having just read the Chris Claremont run, I feel obliged to check it out. I haven't been as into the films as some people, probably because they can't live up to the scope of Claremont or Morrison's work. But, the addition of Six Feet Under's Ben Foster and Kelsey Grammer as The Beast should be interesting.

June 9
A Prarie Home Companion - I usually enjoy Altman's stuff, and the presence of Paul Thomas Anderson as "ghost director" puts it over the top. It's been a long time since we got some new PTA, so this'll at least be a little something. Plus, it's an amazing cast.

June 30
Superman Returns - I'm looking forward to this the most of any of the big blockbusters. The first trailer looked amazing, yesterday's not as good, but there were still some amazing visuals. Unlike Batman, I feel like there hasn't been a definitive film treatment, so Singer can claim the character for his own here. I'm a bit worried that he'll pull a Peter Jackson and go overboard with homage to the original film, and lose sight of making a great film in its own right.

July 7
A Scanner Darkly - I've been waiting for this one for a long time. This will be Linklater's first significant followup to his best film, Before Sunset, and also his first foray into sci-fi stuff. I feel like this will be the first film to really capture the feel of a Philip K. Dick novel. Plus, it's got Keanu as a stoner, clearly that's how we all want to see Keanu.

July 21
Lady in the Water - I soured on M. after Signs, but with Christopher Doyle shooting the film, it could be worth returning. Doyle always elevates the game of anyone he works with, and M. still has one of the most distinct voices in Hollywood. If reviews are good, I'll check it out.

July 28
Miami Vice - Michael Mann's one of my favorite directors, and this is first serious return to the cops and criminals world since Heat. His visual energy should make this more than just a buddy movie. Plus, it's good to see Gong Li getting more American work.

August 18
The Science of Sleep - Gondry is probably the most visually exciting director in film today, and the prospect of an entire film at the level of his craziest videos is very appealing. If he can capture the same emotional feeling of Eternal Sunshine, this could be a masterpiece.

Clerks II - I'm trusting Smith on this one. He's always made his best films in the indie world, and if the failure of Mallrats produced the brilliant Chasing Amy, the colossal failure of Jersey Girl will hopefully create an equal and opposite reaction. If this film fails, Smith's career is basically over, so hopefully he'll bring the A game.

Trust the Man - The trailer's pretty solid, and the prospect of Julianne Moore and David Duchovny in the same film is very intriuging. I'd like to see Duchovny get some success, he was brilliant on The X-Files, but hasn't found a film role that allowed him to use his talents in the same way. Plus, Moore hasn't made a particularly good film since The Hours, so I'd like to see her bounce back.

August 25
Idlewild - This is another film that's been delayed countless time, but it seems to be set for release now. I loved Speakerboxx/The Love Below, and Outkast's videos have always been fun and inventive. If they can capture that in a film musical, it should be a really entertaining film.

So, it's not the best season, but there's some potentially great stuff here. As long as A Scanner Darkly doesn't get delayed yet again, it'll be cool.

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2006 Film Preview

The Sopranos: 'Johnny Cakes' (6x08)

The first episode of this season was fall of action and change, and since then there's been no major events on the scale of the shooting. However, there's been a lot of character changes and this episode shows us a lot of new things. For me, the most interesting plot threads this season have been Tony's new outlook on life, Vito's struggles, and Tony's relationship to his kids, and this episode develops all those plot threads.

Ever since he's emerged from the coma, Tony has been involved in this moral journey, struggling to reconcile his new outlook on life with the necessary posturing of being a mob boss. In this episode, Tony returns to sexual activity, and his old ways don't match too well with his new morality. I loved the way the scenes with Julianna played, Tony's always been attracted to independent businesswomen, from Melfi to the Italian mob boss to Gloria Trillo. Carmela is very much a domestic woman, someone who's wholly dependent on him to support her. She nags him because she relies on him, the idea of an equal woman who can support herself and match him intellectually is clearly attractive to Tony. The attitude difference was summed up in the scene where Gloria drives Carmela home from the BWM dealership and basically points out her total dependence on Tony for survival.

Julianna is another woman in this mold. When Tony was at her apartment, and we were led to believe he was going to sleep with her, I thought that this would be the most painful betrayal of Carmela because Julianna is in a lot of ways, the woman that Carmela wants to be. She works in real estate and is able to support herself in a man's world. However, Tony's inaction is hindering her from acheiving her goal of financial independence.

Julianna is someone who knew how to play to Tony on his own terms, I loved the way that she walked into the Bing and conducted a business meeting without acknowledging the stripper behind her. The scene in which Carmela buttons his shirt so he can go out and see Julianna is wonderful because we can sense Tony's tension. He feels obligated to Carmela because she cared for him during her illness, and even now we get that dynamic, when she buttons his shirt and says, "My handsome man," she's acting more like his mother than his wife.

I was disappointed in Tony when it looked like he was going to go through with the affair, then the moment when he stopped her was a huge surprise for me. In terms of the overall season arc, it's a great choice because it shows us just how much Tony has changed. He's gotten exactly what he wanted and now he passes on it. The lingering question after this scene is did Tony stop because of his conscious and the recognition that what he was about to do was wrong, or is it guilt about betraying Carmela after she cared for him?

In the Melfi scene, he says "You can't blame a guy for seeking an extracurricular outlet," but that sounds more like he's trying to justify it to himself than an actual moral judgment. In light of the final scene, it seems like Tony is frustrated by having a conscious. He can no longer go out and sleep with someone, then come home like nothing happened, and adjusting to that is a big thing for him. He's angry that he feels guilty about hurting Carm, and he turns that anger onto her with the comment about the smoked turkey.

At the same time as his conscious is hindering him at home, it's causing major issues in his business. Everyone is on him about killing Vito, it's only Tony who's providing a dissenting voice. Because this is being dwelled on so much, I'm assuming we're building to a moment where Tony has to choose whether to give the go ahead on a Vito hit. That's another situation that will test his morality, clearly he wants to just let Vito go do his own thing, but is he willing to risk his leadership position to do so?

At this point, Tony is the only member of his crew who is able to move beyond the traditional mobster mentality. This is emphasized by the bookend scenes with Patsy, showing that traditional shakedowns don't work so well in a chainstore world. He's being left behind, and Tony seems to be the only one equipped to make this jump. At first, he waxes nostalgic about the old neighborhood, speaking about character and tradition. However, when he does encounter that character it's in the form of an old woman spouting racist rhetoric. Is this the kind of person that is worth keeping around?

When Tony decides to sell the store, I think it's largely influenced by the realization that sometimes things changed for a reason. He waves to the old woman right before he makes the call to sell her out, and if he chooses Vito over the rest of the crew, he's basically making the same choice, choosing someone who can change with the times over people who are on the way out. The whole narrative of the show is about the fact that the mob is basically unnecessary, the golden age is past, and the people who are left are no longer about trying to help the community, they're just exploiting it.

In Tony's talk with AJ, he explicitly punctures this romantic view of the mob, and the old neighborhood when he tells AJ "It's just a movie." He's spent his whole life trying to live up to this myth of The Godfather and now he's recognizing the falseness of that myth.

Of course, no matter how much Tony grows as a person, he's still on shaky moral ground as long as he remains a mob boss. This is why he's trying to keep his son out of the mob world, he knows that it would turn a "nice guy" like AJ into someone like Benny. Going back to last season's "The Test Dream," it's clear that Tony feels he disappointed Coach Molinaro by entering the mafia. In that episode, Molinaro tells him he could have been a leader on the field, a coach rather than a captain. The dream represents his guilt about the path he chose in life, and this is a recurring dream.

In some respects, I feel like I'm giving Tony too much credit, but looking at the arc since he's been out of the coma supports the idea that he's become enlightened. He hasn't done anything violent, other than the carefully chosen decision to beat up his bodyguard to assert his control, he's defended Vito to his crew, and here he's unable to cheat on Carmela. It's a revisitation of the original Gloria Trillo scenario, and this time he chooses a different path.

So, at the same time we see Tony becoming increasingly distant from the mob world, we're watching AJ get drawn further into it. AJ has always been an essentially weak willed kid, with no drive or ambition. So, when he starts hanging out with Anand, it's probably because Anand sees his name as a way of getting them access to exclusive nightclubs. As he moves through these circles, people are only attracted to AJ because of his name, and every conversation seems to end with AJ being asked to talk to his dad about something. At first, he exploits the family connection as a way of meeting girls and gaining power, but as the episode moves on, he becomes aware of how much he's being used.

This is partially a result of his parents lecturing him about his lack of ambition. I loved that there was another callback to the event planning line from the end of season five, though that moment of humor didn't puncture the harshness of their conversations. In some respects, it's clear that AJ is just trying to cover up for the fact that he's involved in drug dealing, but at the same time, I felt sorry for him, he's getting no support from his parents. Clearly, he feels entitled. If they have so much money, they should set him up with something. Tony would probably attribute this to the change in parenting styles, his parents were harsh and forced him to be independent, whereas Tony and Carmela provide him with all the basic necessities, meaning he never really fails. As long as he can withstand their criticism, he knows he'll always have food and a place to live.

When he's talking to the girl massaging him, AJ comes up with some macho talk about how his father will probably rely on him to kill Junior. This is a great contrast to the scene on the Stugots where Tony says there's no reason to do anything to Junior, he's already gone. Yet, AJ decides he must live up to his image as a gangster's son, and decides to go to attack Junior. This is a completely illogical decision, because if he did succeed, he'd have killed Junior in a federal mental institution, and he'd obviously be caught. But, he's thinking in old school terms, that the wrong against his father must be avenged.

In classic AJ fashion, the attempted hit quickly fails. The buildup to this scene was quite sad, Junior's lost control of his mental reflexes, and doesn't even seem to remember shooting Tony, and that shooting has left him totally alone. His happiness when AJ enters is quickly undercut by the dropped knife and the quick subduing of AJ. Chase always builds up our expectations for a major confrontation, only to undercut them and this is a great example of that. This confrontation has been brewing since episode two, and when it finally happens, AJ drops the knife.

The subsequent scene in the parking lot tells us a lot about AJ's sense of obligation. As a Soprano, he feels like he has to live up to this mythical image of the gangster, when in fact, his father wants the complete opposite. I think old Tony was sort of conflicted on whether he wanted AJ to follow him into the business, however post coma Tony realizes that the mob world is no place for AJ. He's always justified his dirtier deeds by claiming that they were done to help his kids, it's something of a martyr complex, that he's sacrifiicing his morality for the next generation. So, if AJ were to go into the world, it would make all his work for naught.

The scene is notable for being the first time that Tony really tells AJ that he does not want him to follow his path. Following this scene, AJ becomes more aware of the fact that people are just using him to get to Tony, and this fear about his station in life leads to a panic attack. I feel like AJ always sort of assumed that he'd wind up in the mob, and the idea that his father doesn't want him to forces him to contemplate a new future.

And apart from all this, up in New Hampshire, we've got the continuing saga of Vito. Fate seems to have intervened to land Vito in the perfect town for him, a place where everyone accepts homosexuals, and he's able to find an ideal mate. In some respects, it feels a bit contrived, but I think it works primarily as a contrast to the world in Jersey. Vito clearly still has some self loathing issues, and I was really glad when Jim kicked the tire iron out of Vito's hand. The way things played out was much more interesting, as Vito finally seems to accept the truth about himself and engage in a relationship that's about more than just sex. I think he could accept the idea of sexual attraction to men, but he didn't see himself as gay. That's the lingering effect of mob morality. Once he thinks things over, he recognizes that he's got the chance for a real relationship here and pursues it.

I loved the fact that Vito stole a cellphone to call home. There's still some of the old mobster left. And clearly there's still a lot of unresolved business in Jersey, it may be his attachment to his wife that eventually leads Phil and the crew to New Hampshire. I'd love to see a showdown between the mob crew and the gay firemen. So far, Vito is the only person who seems to have found genuine happiness over the course of the series, the only one who's been able to even temporarily escape from the mob world.

And I'm assuming that that happiness will at least be in jeopardy as the season progresses. I thought this episode was one of the best of the season, a really layered and thematically rich piece, that was also a lot of fun. I've mentioned it before, but I've got to stress again that the overall development with Tony this season has been phenomenal, it's rare to see a character go through this kind of moral exploration and so far, it's been a really rewarding journey.

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The Sopranos: 'Luxury Lounge' (6x07) (4/25/2006)
The Sopranos: 'Live Free or Die' (6x06) (4/18/2006)
Mr. and Mrs. Sacrimoni Request...' (6x05) (4/11/2006)

Ridiculous Release Schedule

This weekend marks the US release of two amazing films, Clean and Sympathy for Lady Vengeance. I'd highly reccomend checking them out, and while I'm glad they're getting released, I do have a major issue with the release, namely the fact that these films are not new films. I saw Clean back in June, and the film was actually finished back in May 2004.

It's absolutely ridiculous that the film's coming out now, if the film had come out in May, or even just sometime before the foreign DVDs were available, I would have been right there at the theater. But, you can't expect me to hold off on buying the film when it's unclear if it will ever even be released in America. It's just not acceptable to wait two years to release a film. Same thing with Lady Vengeance, the film was out in Korea in July, and was on DVD in Korea in December, I'd love a simultaneous release, but if that's not doable at least get me the film within a month or two of the original country's release. Chanwook Park may not be a mainstream director here, but he's got a lot of passionate fans, and they're the sort of people who are going to seek out the bootleg rather than wait for a theatrical release.

Changing gears, today I read that Sofia Coppola is pregnant, and the father is Thomas Mars, of the band Phoenix. The genetic combination there gives the kid quite the advantage. I've only seen it a couple of places, so I'm not sure if it's true, but if it is, good luck to them.

So, on my search for information about that, I came across a new trailer for Sofia's Marie Antoinette. The film looks great, most period pieces are pointless because the characters don't feel emotionally real. The most successful period piece was Kubrick's Barry Lyndon, and this film seems to capture that film's feel of real characters in a past setting. The modern score is part of that, and I was excited to read that she does use rock songs in the actual film, but it's also the way the characters behave, the choice to cast Kirsten Dunst and Jason Schwartzman and just the way the characters behave, there's a sense that they're just playing dress up, aware of the ridiculousness of their world. I read a negative review that said it was just people sitting around the palace, basically slackers in the past, and that made me even more excited to see the film.

The end of the trailer reveals that the French release date is May 24, shortly after it plays at Cannes. Now, I was mad that it played Cannes and wouldn't be released here until October, but when I found out that virtually every European country is getting the film before we do, I was really angry. The film is finished, and stupid Oscar season politics will keep us from getting to see the film. It's hard to deal with art cinema when films just sit on a shelf for six months before getting released here, if it's done, let's get it out in the world.

I guess I'm just bothered by the fact that smaller films can slip through the distribution cracks. Art School Confidential and A Scanner Darkly were both supposed to be out last year, and are finally trickling into theaters this summer. The worst situation is with foreign films that aren't Asian because it's tougher to find DVDs, which means you've got to wait the ridiculous amount of time until the American release happens. Studios wonder why people don't go to the theaters, maybe it's the fact that they're actively making it difficult for you to see anything other than the big blockbusters.

Gilmore Girls: 'Super Cool Party People' (6x20)

Been this week's episode and last week's, a major change hit the Gilmore Girls universe, and that's the news that show auteurs Amy Sherman-Palladino and Dan Palladino are leaving at the end of this season. Being someone who views TV and film from an auteur-centric perspective, it's difficult for me to separate Gilmore Girls from its creators, it's their universe, and they're as integral to the show as Lauren Graham. So, it's difficult to consider it the same show without them. It might still be good, but it's not the story they set out to tell.

However, the Palladinos themselves had a perspective that's not quite in tune with most of the TV world. It's now generally accepted that shows don't just run until their cancelled, particularly in serial dramas, the show eventually reaches an end point, when the story is over and there's no more to tell. Frequently this can make a series much stronger, witness the emotionally potent final year of Six Feet Under versus the good, but meandering fourth season. It's always good to build your show towards something, and even that ultimate destination is a ways off, the fact that it's there at all changes the storytelling.

So, the fact that the Palladinos wanted the show to run indefinitely is a bit odd. I'm always torn when I hear that a show I love is ending, on the one hand I would love to be getting new Six Feet Under episodes this summer, but I also recognize that if the show was to go on, we would never have had its greatest moments. So, the prospect of Gilmore Girls running indefinitely gets a mixed response from me. It's true that peoples' live go on forever, so in theory these characters could, but characters are also designed with arcs in mind. The TV series should capture the most interesting period of their lives, and without an ending, the story doesn't really have meaning.

But, clearly they perceive the series differently, and there's always been a conflict between the idea of the show as a wacky comedy about a small town and the idea of it as a character based family drama. This is all moot at this point, because the Palladinos are leaving the show. I'd rather have seen them do one more great year than try to press for two and then abandon it, but it's their choice, and I'm sure it was much more painful for them to let go than it will be for me as a viewer.

As for the episode itself, this week we finally got Luke's reasoning for not introducing April to Lorelai, and I think it makes a lot of sense. Basically, Luke is self conscious about his lack of likability, and as he's making his first breakthroughs with April, he does not want Lorelai to come in and forge a stronger relationship with her. So, Luke clearly fears Lorelai developing a Rory-like relationship with April.

Does this imply that Luke is jealous of Lorelai's relationship with Rory? I would say yes, it wasn't until Rory was off at college that he could finally make a move on Lorelai, and throughout their relationship, there's the clear feeling that he's second to Rory. I think he can respect that, but it also means that Lorelai has something with Rory that he could never have. So, when his daughter appears, he imagines he's got the chance to forge his own private relationship with her. I think that's logical, and it reinforces the fact that the major issue between him and Lorelai wasn't the actual issue, it was the lack of communication about the issue.

When the April storyline first started up, I thought it was contrived and ridiculous, but as it's progressed, it's done a great job of mixing up the character dynamics. Both in terms of personality and physical appearance, Anna is very similar to Lorelai, and in the final scene of the episode, Lorelai confronts a more extreme version of herself, a single mother who's deeply protective of her daughter and unwilling to put her at any emotional risk. Now, I think it's a bit contrived that Anna would put such an emphasis on the distinction between being engaged and being married, which is clearly designed to play on the insecurities that Lorelai expressed last week.

Still, Anna's basic reasoning makes sense, and is the kind of thing that Lorelai had talked about back in the early days. She tried to keep Lorelai from becoming attached to anyone she was dating, fearing the inevitable break of that emotional bond. Luke is now caught in the middle, and it seems like we're building to a choice between Lorelai and his daughter.

Backtracking a bit, I did really like Lorelai running the party. This gives us a sense of what she was like back when Rory was younger, and also shows us Lorelai and Luke as a family for the first time. The fact that Lorelai could so easily form a bond with April makes it tougher when Anna refuses her the chance to do so.

Over with Rory, we've got more issues with Logan. I think Rory's storyline is rather uninteresting now because Rory is always better when she's being tempted to be bad. The most interesting moment for the character was when she decided to sleep with Dean back in season four, and then later on when she rejects him for Logan. The end of that season was all about her pushing the limits and doing the wrong thing. Now that she's got things together, she's basically lecturing Logan on his problems and that's not too interesting.

Rory always has a moral superiority, a belief that on some level she's better than everyone else. This isn't particularly interesting for a viewer, the scene where she got the job at the newspaper and went back to school in about five minutes was boring because she succeeded through being annoying. However, when she's doing bad things, Rory finds her basic belief that she's a "good girl" challenged. If she's having an affair with a married man, it's not a bad thing because she actually loves Dean. It's like she's exempt from the consequences of her actions, and this has led to a lot of casual cruelty, to Dean in season two and season five, as well as to Jess in season six.

So, until Rory is doing bad stuff again, her stories aren't going to be that interesting. Her relationship with Logan is about Logan pushing Rory out of her personal limits, not Rory lecturing Logan for doing bad stuff.

I'm sort of ambivalent on things moving forward, because in some respects we've got two episodes of the series left, and there's clearly not going to be any sort of resolution. The show will go on, but is it really the same show? I'll hope for the best, but in a lot of ways, these two episodes are the series finale.

The Sopranos: 'Luxury Lounge' (6x07)

This episode puts most of the major plot threads on hold for a little bit, to deal with Artie Bucco's issues. I was missing Artie in the first chunk of this season, but I don't know if I needed to get this much of him to make up for it. This was certainly a good episode, but it was also clearly the weakest episode of the season so far.

The most relevant stuff to the overall story arc were the two meetings between Tony and Phil. Phil is not taking the Vito revelation well, and we're clearly building up to a confrontation between Phil and Tony over the issue, and it doesn't look like Tony's going to have the support of his crew, even Christopher who's been generally loyal in the past gives him no support here.

But that seems to be the big issue next week, this week chronicles Artie's issues. Artie is the one character on the show who has remained out of the mob world. He's forever on the periphery, an observer. And seeing these guys get whatever they want without working hard for it has worn on him. He expresses this in the scene at the Bing, where Artie talks about how Tony could have sex with the stripper, while he can only look. Constantly seeing a world where people can do whatever they want without any consequences has made it difficult for him to live an honest life, and that's dropped him into this constantly self pitying state. On the boat he talks about he's lost faith in the American dream, the idea that if you work hard enough, you'll get what you want. On this show we've frequently seen people who worked hard get mixed up with mob and wind up destroyed. The credit card scam at Artie's recalls the stuff with David Scatino's sporting goods store back in year two.

Artie's frustration leads to a series of violent acts. His increasingly diminishing business makes him angry at Benny, who is able to cheat on his wife with Martina, something Artie couldn't do. When he assaults Benny, it's both because he's jealous of him and because Benny makes a mockery of all his work. Not only does Benny takes his women, he also takes the money that Artie worked hard for. This leads to a feeling that everything he does is pointless.

Tony didn't have too much to do in the episode, but the scene with Artie gives a lot of insight into where he is now. Tony is by far the smartest one on the show, and he recognizes that Artie is in much the same place that he was back at the beginning of the series, frustrated with growing older, unable to control his violent outbursts, and constantly blaming his problems on other people. So, he does something genuinely nice and refers Artie to Dr. Melfi.

Ultimately, Artie seems to find refuge in returning to what he was genuinely passionate about in the first place, cooking. At the end of the episode he's got some peace, but will cooking rabbit for his customers lead to success? It's unclear, but Tony's words clearly meant something to Artie.

The other major storyline of the episode was both hilarious and frustrating. Christopher is a character who's been something of an enigma this season, and here he starts to fall apart. Clearly he's still got major issues from Adrianna's death, frequently bringing it up as an excuse for any bad behavior. He's back on drugs here, and more importantly, again does something stupid and thinks of short term goals rather than long term priorities. His attempts to intimidate Ben Kingsley are likely what ruin the film project. He's unable to deal with a world where he's not at the top of the food chain. So, seeing Kingsley get given thousands of dollars worth of merchandise is painful for someone who loves to get stuff without working for it. Kingsley's celebrity status is something he can't get, and unlike most of the people he deals with, Kingsley isn't going to be intimidated.

The show always does great celebrity cameos, Jon Favreau's appearance back in season two was a large part of why 'D-Girl' was my favorite episode of the whole series. This doesn't reach that level, but Kingsley is fantastic. Considering he appearance in "BloodRayne," it's not unrealistic to expect him to sign on to this film, but apparently the tactics that work in Jersey don't work out in Hollywood. This leads to the hilariously bizarre scene where Christopher mugs Lauren Bacall. This is the sort of high profile job that Christopher should know is stupid to do, but he lets his jealousy overwhelm his logic.

Things with Christopher are building towards something, he's very resentful about the Adrianna thing, and we've got the continuing development of this plot with the Arabs. It's great that we've got an Orthodox Jew helping out people who are potentially Arab terrorists, and that was a nice throwback reference to early season one.

This episode had some good stuff, but at this point the really interesting thing is the continuing development of Tony's morality, and we don't get much of that. I'm really looking forward to finding out what happens with Vito next week, and hopefully we'll get some followup on Meadow and Finn as well.