"Welcome To The Suck"
Wednesday
The day in the above subtitle is officially (once again) the best night on New Zealand network television. On 3 we have the 7:30-8:30 line-up of Everybody Hates Chris and My Name Is Earl, both of which I tape in favour of watching Two & A Half Men & it's-really-not-that-bad Joey on TV2. Then of course Lost completes the lineup of three-good-hours-in-120-minutes at 8:30. Yes! Lost is back Finally!
After Lost we now have Invasion, a new series which debuted yesterday and seemed... somewhat intriguing if completely and utterly unimaginitive. The promo said "the perfect companion to Lost" which may be true if you consider into the equation what they should have added, that "opposites atract." It's completely nothing like that-show-we-all-love when it comes to class; while Lost in a cut-above mystery/adventure/drama/whatever driven by it's character revelations as much as it's plot twists/surprises/mysteries/whatever, Invasion is a run-of-the-mill sci-fi-ish drama mystery which has, by the looks of the pilot, failed to adapt into anything beyond your "typical" kind of American TV fare. It doesn't have it's own "voice" and doesn't stand out as anything special - and it comes to me as no surprise that it's on the verge of being cancelled after just one season in the States. Still, it lasted longer than a lot of new shows in getting 22 episodes made.
Lost
Dennis was right about the start of this year's season opener being awesome - at first I thought it was maybe a Sawyer flashback or something only for the banging to start... then the mirrors and the camera rising up... and it all slowly brings about this realisation that: holy fuck, we're looking at what's inside the hatch. And... it's like, some guy working out and listening to music. I assume how he's alive, how he has electricity, and whether or not he was linked to the Island when he met Jack back in America will be revealed at some point in time, in the meantime I can only wait and ponder.
Actually that's not true, I could probably just look it up in the net and find out within half a minute.
But that would ruin it.
I think that, although the climax of the episode was designed to make you eagerly anticipate tuning-in next week, the show could have done with a two-hour return. We didn't really get too much of a dose of the usual character stuff we normally get, with the show in the process of attempting to tie-up its plot-related loose-ends from last season, so I guess we have to wait a bit for everything to die down (comparitively of course, I wouldn't want the suspense & mystery to drop off completely at this point just as a few pieces of the puzzle are starting to reveal themselves).
Movies
Today I watched Walk The Line & Jarhead, both of which have just been released in cinemas across the country. I can't tell if I spelt "across" right, both c and cc look wrong for some reason.
I think that in many ways the two films are actually quite similar, though I can't quite place my finger on why I get that feeling. Maybe it's the way they both only gradually reveal what they're really "about" (if that's the right word, and I admit I don't like using it because it simplifies a film way too much), with Walk The Line emerging not merely as a by-the-numbers "then this happened" biopic like it appears to be at the start, but rather very much "about" the love story tied into it all that helps Johnny Cash through a tough time in his life.
Jarhead on the other hand could be mistaken for being without any focus or direction for those looking for the film's "message" like all great war films are of course supposed to have as the mixed US critics reviews of Jarhead would have you believe, when the reality is that it is the story of a man and his experiences and the experiences of those around him in a war in which he and his colleagues never even fired a shot in combat. It's "about" smaller things if I had to pin-point it, not a "big picture" critique on war itself; what the men end up doing, how they change, how things are changing for them at home while they're stuck out in the desert as it all passes them by - these are what Jarhead looks at, and it does so without any real "plot" driving it all. For the last reason especially - the changes back home - it invokes elements of The Deer Hunter, for it's first-person account on the war around that person one may be reminded of Platoon, for specific things like the bootcamp drill-sargent and chants at the start to the transition from this to a warzone, there are superficial traces of Full Metal Jacket though certainly without the drive of Kubrick's clear vision of madness in Vietnam. And finally in the scene in which the men cheer watching the Flight Of The Valkyries action scene of Apocalypse Now only to be interrupted before getting deeper into the "reality" of the war and what Coppola is really saying, all later in that film, it adds to our understanding of what these men want from this war and how far removed their ideas about it are from the reality of what they're actually going to end up facing. This movie is very realistic in it's portrayal of Swofford and co.'s involvement in operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm and its genuinity is part of the reason it works so well. Also part of the reason is that the music rivals a Cameron Crowe soundtrack - it's always perfect at the right moments. And overall the mood especially I think carries this film, with some great shots added to the mix including one in which Gyllenhall and Saarsgard's characters travel by night on the desert's sand dunes, lit by the giant glow of the burning oil fields nearby as the wind blows the sand across the desert's surface like a golden sea.
I'll give Jarhead a B+ or 4 out of 5. It isn't a classic like those 'Nam movies I mentioned it being reminiscent of in parts, but it's certainly a fucking good movie. Jamie Foxx is impressive in his supporting role and deserved at least some attention at awards time even if he wasn't nominated. Walk The Line, meanwhile, is a film that the academy got right - they awarded it acting nominations, but no nods came when they announced the Director and Picture lists. It's a solid bio-drama, better than last year's Ray, but what makes it shine are the performances of Reese Witherspoon and Joaquin Phoenix. Walk The Line gets a strong B or 3.5 out of 5 from me.
The day in the above subtitle is officially (once again) the best night on New Zealand network television. On 3 we have the 7:30-8:30 line-up of Everybody Hates Chris and My Name Is Earl, both of which I tape in favour of watching Two & A Half Men & it's-really-not-that-bad Joey on TV2. Then of course Lost completes the lineup of three-good-hours-in-120-minutes at 8:30. Yes! Lost is back Finally!
After Lost we now have Invasion, a new series which debuted yesterday and seemed... somewhat intriguing if completely and utterly unimaginitive. The promo said "the perfect companion to Lost" which may be true if you consider into the equation what they should have added, that "opposites atract." It's completely nothing like that-show-we-all-love when it comes to class; while Lost in a cut-above mystery/adventure/drama/whatever driven by it's character revelations as much as it's plot twists/surprises/mysteries/whatever, Invasion is a run-of-the-mill sci-fi-ish drama mystery which has, by the looks of the pilot, failed to adapt into anything beyond your "typical" kind of American TV fare. It doesn't have it's own "voice" and doesn't stand out as anything special - and it comes to me as no surprise that it's on the verge of being cancelled after just one season in the States. Still, it lasted longer than a lot of new shows in getting 22 episodes made.
Lost
Dennis was right about the start of this year's season opener being awesome - at first I thought it was maybe a Sawyer flashback or something only for the banging to start... then the mirrors and the camera rising up... and it all slowly brings about this realisation that: holy fuck, we're looking at what's inside the hatch. And... it's like, some guy working out and listening to music. I assume how he's alive, how he has electricity, and whether or not he was linked to the Island when he met Jack back in America will be revealed at some point in time, in the meantime I can only wait and ponder.
Actually that's not true, I could probably just look it up in the net and find out within half a minute.
But that would ruin it.
I think that, although the climax of the episode was designed to make you eagerly anticipate tuning-in next week, the show could have done with a two-hour return. We didn't really get too much of a dose of the usual character stuff we normally get, with the show in the process of attempting to tie-up its plot-related loose-ends from last season, so I guess we have to wait a bit for everything to die down (comparitively of course, I wouldn't want the suspense & mystery to drop off completely at this point just as a few pieces of the puzzle are starting to reveal themselves).
Movies
Today I watched Walk The Line & Jarhead, both of which have just been released in cinemas across the country. I can't tell if I spelt "across" right, both c and cc look wrong for some reason.
I think that in many ways the two films are actually quite similar, though I can't quite place my finger on why I get that feeling. Maybe it's the way they both only gradually reveal what they're really "about" (if that's the right word, and I admit I don't like using it because it simplifies a film way too much), with Walk The Line emerging not merely as a by-the-numbers "then this happened" biopic like it appears to be at the start, but rather very much "about" the love story tied into it all that helps Johnny Cash through a tough time in his life.
Jarhead on the other hand could be mistaken for being without any focus or direction for those looking for the film's "message" like all great war films are of course supposed to have as the mixed US critics reviews of Jarhead would have you believe, when the reality is that it is the story of a man and his experiences and the experiences of those around him in a war in which he and his colleagues never even fired a shot in combat. It's "about" smaller things if I had to pin-point it, not a "big picture" critique on war itself; what the men end up doing, how they change, how things are changing for them at home while they're stuck out in the desert as it all passes them by - these are what Jarhead looks at, and it does so without any real "plot" driving it all. For the last reason especially - the changes back home - it invokes elements of The Deer Hunter, for it's first-person account on the war around that person one may be reminded of Platoon, for specific things like the bootcamp drill-sargent and chants at the start to the transition from this to a warzone, there are superficial traces of Full Metal Jacket though certainly without the drive of Kubrick's clear vision of madness in Vietnam. And finally in the scene in which the men cheer watching the Flight Of The Valkyries action scene of Apocalypse Now only to be interrupted before getting deeper into the "reality" of the war and what Coppola is really saying, all later in that film, it adds to our understanding of what these men want from this war and how far removed their ideas about it are from the reality of what they're actually going to end up facing. This movie is very realistic in it's portrayal of Swofford and co.'s involvement in operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm and its genuinity is part of the reason it works so well. Also part of the reason is that the music rivals a Cameron Crowe soundtrack - it's always perfect at the right moments. And overall the mood especially I think carries this film, with some great shots added to the mix including one in which Gyllenhall and Saarsgard's characters travel by night on the desert's sand dunes, lit by the giant glow of the burning oil fields nearby as the wind blows the sand across the desert's surface like a golden sea.
I'll give Jarhead a B+ or 4 out of 5. It isn't a classic like those 'Nam movies I mentioned it being reminiscent of in parts, but it's certainly a fucking good movie. Jamie Foxx is impressive in his supporting role and deserved at least some attention at awards time even if he wasn't nominated. Walk The Line, meanwhile, is a film that the academy got right - they awarded it acting nominations, but no nods came when they announced the Director and Picture lists. It's a solid bio-drama, better than last year's Ray, but what makes it shine are the performances of Reese Witherspoon and Joaquin Phoenix. Walk The Line gets a strong B or 3.5 out of 5 from me.
posted by Steve @ 3:34 PM
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