John Oliver's new show, Last Week Tonight, on HBO is so great.

It is on HBO most every Sunday evening.














--Ardent (mds)

The DVR Might Explode

Sundays right now are just an unbelievable bounty of riches.  Renee has a program she is recording, and then, there will be Girls, True Detective, Sherlock, and Downton Abbey.

What? You did not really think he was dead, did you?

Downton Abbey has been an enormous guilty delight so far.  I adore Lady Mary and Lady Isobel walking around their rooms like wraiths, so wracked with grief over Matthew's death.  All the Abbey team need to do now is add some Smiths songs underneath.  (And Abbey directors! Please stop shooting profile shots of Lady Mary -- Michelle Dockery - -because as much as I love her, she has got to have one of the most unflattering profiles I have ever seen on film.) The whole gramophone scene last week was too much campy goodness.  Downton is great right now.

Girls last week was meh to me.  The Wife was much more impressed.  I did like that they threw a nod to Orange is the New Black, though, with Jessa's "romantic encounter" at the rehab clinic. And, Withnail was in it.  (I will write about the whole nudity controversy next week.)

Sherlock starts tomorrow, and I am definitely looking forward to that.  I read in the NYT that Watson is getting married (!) Interesting.

True Detective is a new series on HBO, and it is fantastic.  The Wife and I both love it despite it being yet another brooding serial killer psycho drama.  It stars Matthew "El-eye-vee-eye-en" McConaughey and Woody from Cheers.  More importantly it is directed by  Cary Joji Fukunaga, who directed one of my most favorite films of the last five years, Jane Eyre.

McConaughey is on absolute fire right now.  He has always been one of my favorite actors, but now he is picking superb projects, and delivering fantastic results.

If there are future seasons of True Detective (trust me, there will be) there will be an all new cast and a different mystery in a different part of the country.  The current one is set in Louisiana.  And McConaughey plays a mopey weirdo detective from Texas.  (Shocker!)

All my love,
Ardent

They Call Me Mr Pitiful

Alright.  Here comes Mr Crab.  Here comes Mr Pitiful.  Here comes Mr No Fun.  I have just about finished watching The Sopranos with the Wife, and after watching over fifty or sixty hours of this legendary cable series, the series that ushered in the glorious new Golden Age of Scripted Television, I can report that I do not like it.  I do not like it one whit.  I really can not see what all the fuss is about.  I understand that it was the first.  That it was the (god)father of all the great television shows that came after it (although I disagree with some critics who insist that The Wire does not happen without The Sopranos.  I disagree because David Simon had already produced a groundbreaking television show on commercial teevee, Homicide:  Life on the Street), and that for that alone it deserves some serious respect.  But, to this reviewer, not respect enough to call The Sopranos a rich or rewarding or enjoyable or profound television experience.

Let us get down and dirty, here is why:

• None of these characters are likeable.  Okay, maybe Meadow.  Or, Ginny Sac.  But that is it.
• These asshole mope hoods are really just a bunch of screaming baby spoiled New Jersey Housewives, "He didn't invite me to the barbecue, I'm gonna blow his head off!"
• This show also inspired a whole crappy media blitz subculture of New Jersey shows about crappy spoiled New Jersey people.  Basta! I have had it up to here with New Jersey! Go away!
• My goodness, there is so much violence towards women on this show.  It seems that every other episode one of these spoiled baby hoods is beating the crap out of his goomar or wife.
• The heavy handed dream sequences and heavy handed metaphors about animals.  You know, the stuff with the bear and the coma dream.
• Honestly, The Sopranos has not aged well.  Not in a way that The Wire has, which seems as fresh upon rewatching as anything on television now.  Watch the first few seasons again of The Sopranos, and see if I am not right.
• Dr Melfi is an awful therapist.  Her character is totally a stretch for me to believe.  And, what is Bogdonavich doing in there? How annoying.
• That The Sopranos (and Mad Men, for that matter) owe as much to Twin Peaks as they do to the other obvious influences they have.  Twin Peaks is another insanely overrated program that was art for art's sake and ultimately a waste of everybody's time.  Heck, Chase, worked on The Rockford Files and Northern Exposure.  Why did he not take more from those programs?
• (By the way, Chase and I share a name.  Chase is the anglicized version of his real Italian name, DeCesare.  My ancestor peeps from Abruzzo in Italy were named DiCesare, which got pronounced in Oklahoma as DUH-sair.)
• That there was one brief stretch of programs in the sixth season where Vito was outed and we followed his arc for three episodes or such, where the show was so good.  Everything clicked.  The writing was great, the setups were gorgeous and thoughtfully composed, and it really appeared as if the show had finally found a voice, and spoke about issues that I cared about.  Then Vito gets whacked and the show went back to its crappy ways.  Live Free or Die from season six is the only episode of The Sopranos that I can say I would ever like to watch again.  The show's finest hour as far as I am concerned.  
• That Chase (and Matthew Weiner, too) oftentimes seem to have contempt for their audience.
• That the show is so depressing.  Everyone has cancer.  Everyone ends up in the hospital or the old folks home.  So much death.  Ugh.
• And, finally, that what it boils down to is, I do not like mafia stories.  I see no great nobility here.  I am a bit disgusted in the glorification of these murdering thieving philandering wife beating criminals.  Man, I am always cheering for the DA when I am watching these mafia tales.

So.  There you have it.  Had to get that off my chest.  Mr No Fun is done.  You can go back to your normally scheduled program.











Ciao,
Ardent

What a ruddy good little tetralogy you are.

I am about one third through the first Parade's End book; first novel, Some Do Not ... And, at this point my only complaint thus far is the wretched title.  How frickin pretentious can you get, Mr Ford?

But from there on in it is an absolute masterwork.

You Tory genius you!

It is actually a service that I have seen the HBO miniseries first.  The brilliant playwright, Tom Stoppard, has put, in his adaptation for the miniseries, everything in chronological order, whilst still maintaing Ford's faintly surreal, stream of consciousness method of writing, wherein major plot points are ever so barely alluded to, and then forgotten about for scores of pages or so.

Ford's style for these novels is one I am so envious of.  Perhaps I could write like this.  But it is a style so dedicated to precision and discipline that I fear I would not have the muster.

Each roman numeral part of a major section of each novel is dedicated to describing just one short period of time in the current day of the characters involved.  And, then spinning off in to the memory and recollection of each of those characters, forgetting timelines, jutting back and forth, dropping clues forward in time that mean something later (flash forwards! In the Twenties, dangit!) The style envelops you and sucks you in.  Refreshes you, leaves you wanting more.

And, then there is the language.  Strictly, majestically colloquial in dialect, dialogue and prose, yet sumptuous in descriptions of garments, furniture, makeup, landscapes, dales, etc, ... Ford seems to straddle to the greatest effect the worlds between the Victorian novel, and Hemingway or Fitzgerald.

My favorite character so far is the General, though Sylvia is a close second (she just does not give a farthing what anybody thinks or says about her, a supreme contrast to her last Tory husband, who thinks he is like her, but cowers along behind, always doing the right thing, "Yes, Dear.")

The General is so officious, and correct, and indignant, and loud, and well-spoken, and circumspect, and so wrong about every single thing.

(The Wife picked up on this fabulous creation of Ford's while watching episode four of the miniseries, perhaps my favorite.  Episode four was the Apocalypse Now of Parade's End, the episode that best illustrated the surreal madness of stupid wars, i.e. all wars.)

Just fantastic rich stuff, this thick little paperback.

I wonder what Pynchon thinks of these novels, and Ford.

Stoppard, and the Beeb, and HBO, and Cumberbatch, and Hall, have all done us a great service here.

It will be exciting to see how many people on the subway trains, buses, coffee shops, and elsewhere are taking up the book like Nick C and I are.  (Nick just got his copy on his kindle app on his iPad.  Cool.  He is up to page twenty something, just started.)



Mwah, ...

I was not exactly super looking forward

To the Girls season two premiere last Sunday.  In fact, I was a tiny bit bummed that I would have to wait until April for season two of Veep.  Oh well, that will make for a nice birthday present for me from HBO, Armando Iannucci, Jesse Armstrong (also co-producer and co-writer for Peep Show), Julia Louis-Dreyfuss, and the rest of the gang.

Hannah! DTMFA!

Plus, I have desperately been trying to get the Wife all caught up on Downton Abbey.  (I will have a post on DA for you on Monday next.) We nearly watched Girls off-handedly, as a throwaway.

But Girls was superb, and I am all psyched up again for this new season.  There was a lot of sex in the opener, natch, but I loved a lot of the dialogue, and the fact that Ms Dunham is not afraid to shoot interior scenes in close to natural lighting.  The whole episode was particularly dark in terms of light and palette, which is refreshing because those are the kind of settings these twenty somethings would be living in.

And, of course, episode one would have been worth it for the character Adam's immortal quote, "When you love somebody, you don't have to be nice to them all the time."  This was a big favorite at our house, and has prob been Tumblr'd to infinity by now.

I still hate Adam.  I still hate Marnie, and I am not looking forward to her ensuing reconciliation with her old boyfriend, either.  And, I am still rooting for Shoshanna.

There will be ups and downs for me and Girls over the next two months, I am sure, but I am, looking to forward to the ride, nonetheless.

************

Looks like it is Girly Night Part Infinity times seven tonight! With Meghs and the Wife.  Woo-hoo!










Love you all,
Ardent

Real quick here

(I have got to go to bed.  I have to be at work so early tomorrow.)

I just do not know a better period for me, these last six weeks where I have seen so many earth-shattering, game-changing films.

Completely just stumbling around, idly looking for things to watch, I came across Vito, a doc about Vito Russo, gay activist -- founding member of the Gay Activist Alliance, GLAAD, and ACT UP -- and famous author of The Celluloid Closet (one of the first power points ever, really.)

Vito is a stunning, wonderful documentary that I supremely recommend everyone to witness.

More on all this w/ my big movie recap tomorrow and Wednesday.

Thank you HBO and the filmmakers who produced this extremely touching and inspiring documentary about a great great man.

Here is the trailer for Vito.

All my love,







Mwah, ... 




















Michael









Good night, ...

David Thomson's recent post in The New Republic

Re Lena Dunham's HBO series, Girls, is a fantastic read.  Here it is.  And, apparently, he has the same itch wanting to be scratched that I do.  That is, that these times are desperately crying out for our version of Citizen Kane.  His suggestion that Ms Dunham be the one to do that is shrewd and more than just a good idea.  Thomson is also correct that Girls simply can not sustain itself for any serious length of time.  The subject matter does not allow it.  They should wrap it up after two (or maybe) three seasons.

The "It" girl.

And, I would just like to say, with the caveat attached that Veep and Girls are by far the best things on television right now, that I did not like the turns both programs took last Sunday.  I thought Girls went sappy and cheap, and that Veep just is not as good when it becomes too serious.  (Though the last shot/scene of Veep was an absolute masterstroke last week.  So, there is hope.)  Actually, both programs will be fine, and I will seriously be suffering from withdrawal in a few weeks when they wrap.  (Plus, we have Sorkin's The Newsroom to look forward to!)  So, remember the caveat.

************

Today is going to be a wonderful day.  I can just feel it.  And I do not even care that the Rangers lost 21-8 (!) yesterday.
















xxxoooxxx

I thought Veep was very good

Last night.  It is an American version of The Thick of It, with all the bungles, swearing, and incompetence.  And I thought they made the switch across the pond seem seamless.  And, it is just going to get even better.  A lot of people were probably scratching their heads.  They are not familiar with these In the Loop/The Thick of It guys.  It will grow on folks, and should prob be a cult-y sort of hit for HBO.

Mark my words, most of the lefty political blogs that are bitching about Veep now, will be posting scenes and quips from it themselves in a few months from now.

I had nothing to fear, after all.  Veep is going to be one of my all-time faves.  (And Sorkin's new show, The Newsroom, happening in June, looks dynamite, too.  HBO are Kings.  But when do we get the third season of Treme?)

Being a "boy", as it were,

And a nice boy, I think it is fair to say, my favorite story arc of Lena Dunham's new series for HBO, Girls, is going to be the one involving Marnie and Charlie.  Charlie is obviously the sweetest guy in the world, affectionate to a tee, and perhaps a little too sweet to his Sweetie.  Naturally, in Dunham's Universe, Marnie is "repulsed every time [Charlie] touches me" and presumably will be threatening to end the relationship once or twice every episode.

The Marnie/Charlie arc is an opposite twin of the Hannah/Adam arc, and some in the audience are left to wonder, Is there no "boy" out there who can fit the (Mythical?) Happy Medium?

"Mom, give Jess a chance.  He understands me."

(When Renee and I first started going out, one of the things she said she liked best about me was that underneath my sensitive, feminist, nice guy exterior I was "still just a dude."  High praise, indeed.  And I completely mean that.)

It was the first episode of Girls last night, so, sure, some of the writing seemed a little show-offy, and some of the pop culture references fell flat. (And speaking of which, why is it that no one seems able to drop facebook in to the conversation of a film or teevee show without embarrassing themselves? Or is it just me? The only time I have seen facebook successfully incorporated in to conversation is when Anna Chlumsky does it in In The Loop.  But of course, those guys have a writer who's only job is to add pop culture references and swear words to the finished scripts.  *sigh*  More on the In The Loop/The Thick of It/Veep team in a minute.)  But despite that, it is plain to see that Girls is going to be the teevee event of the Spring and Summer, and will be a fine addition to Blockbuster Sundays, alongside Mad Men and Game of Thrones.

It is especially nice to see that Whit Stillman's lovable, difficult cad, Chris Eigeman, now has credits in both Gilmore Girls and Girls.  I have a really decent Gilmore Girls joke here but no one outside of a few people at the Food Hole Walnut Creek would get it, so, I am going to skip it.

************

Man, does Veep look awful, or what? My heart sinks and I cringe every time they show those crummy clips.  I will be there, seven PM on Sunday, but I am really expecting the absolute worst. (At least Girls is on right after it!) And, I think I have figured out why Veep is going to stink.  Peter Capaldi.  The Thick of It and In The Loop are completely hung on Peter Capaldi's character, Malcolm Tucker.  (And Malcolm Tucker is based on Tony Blair's infamous Press Secretary, Alastair Campbell.)  It is not just a cultural barrier, moving from UK politics to US politics, it is the fact that without a US Malcolm Tucker equivalent the show will fail.  Plus, you have Capaldi's talent to match, as well.  Capaldi's performances in The Thick of It and In The Loop make for an absolute tour de force.  Malcolm Tucker completely overshadows Capaldi's entire career.  He will always be known as Malcolm Tucker now, full stop.

I would love to be pleasantly surprised on Sunday but I am doubting it.

************

Meanwhile, the Rangers are an American League wrecking crew with a four game series with the Tigers in Detroit this weekend.  Fabulous stuff.

And my staycation is over.  It is back to work tomorrow.





All my love,
Michael

I am very excited

About the new upcoming HBO series, Veep.  Renee is wary, not excited.  I think she is worried about Julia Louis-Dreyfuss being the star, or, maybe she does not think that that swear-y The Thick of It/In the Loop style will translate well to American audiences.  In the Loop was a considerable cult hit here in the US (it probably helped that James Gandolfini starred in it, too) but most Americans have no idea about The Thick of It.  And I do not think The Thick of It would be a massive hit here if shown on Sundance or IFC or whatever.  The Thick of It is probably too English for a regular (whatever that is) US teevee audience.  Of course, I would dvr every episode and watch them over and over again, myself.  And re Ms Dreyfuss:  No, she is not one of my personal faves, but when she had excellent material in Seinfeld, she was very good.  And, the writing team for Veep is the same folks who did The Thick of It and In the Loop, including the one writer whose job it is to add clever swearing and hip pop culture referenced insults.  (Wow, what a job, right? Why can not I get paid to loll around the house and add snappy clever insults to great scripts?) I could be completely wrong.  Maybe Veep will be a disaster.  We will see.

************

I am less excited (but keeping an open mind) about the new upcoming HBO series, Girls.  Girls is the baby of Tiny Furniture writer/director/star, Lena Dunham.  And it looks to be, the film, Tiny Furniture, stretched out to series length.  Tiny Furniture was not my cup of tea, for sure.  But, my favorite part was Jemima Kirke's fabulous creation of her character, Charlotte.  Charlotte is by far the best thing in the picture; a cynical, drug-addled, lazy, insanely sexy, spoiled rotten twenty-something City-girl going on forty-five, who affects a ludicrous sort-of English accent all the time for no reason at all, naturally.  Love it! Give me more!

And, good news, Ms Kirke looks to be playing a character like Charlotte in Girls.  (Just watched trailers for Veep and Girls, and it looks like Renee might be right.  Veep looks empty and quiet. Girls looks fresh and fun.)

If Veep stinks, I will always have The Thick of It on YouTube.

Mwah, ...