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DEADWOOD R.I.P.

July 16th 2009 02:36

Just finished watching the whole deadwood series on DVD. Heard there was a bit of an outcry amongst the intelligentsia when the series was axed by the number-crunchers at HBO (the story goes that HBO didn't 'own' the series, it was produced by Paramount and HBO were apparently hardly making a dime off it).

What happend? Was it really all down to the bean-counters? Certainly if Deadwood had been a hit of Sopranos type proportions they never would have axed it. There must have been other factors. Was the show too challenging for audiences unaccustomed to scenes with multiple layers of psychological insight and subtext concealed beneath the expletive filled ornate 19th century english?

It may be hard to figure out what's going on a lot of the time, but that I think is a good thing. I don't know why audiences want everything telegraphed and spelled out for them. Surely it is more realistic to have things ambivalent, subtLe, think of the 'scenes' of your life, or other lives you observe, a lot of the time you don't know precisely what's going on, what people are thinking, what their motivations are. I think it's good that David Milch forces the audience to actively participate in the narrative, rather than instructing us how to feel every single moment.

Another criticism: in yet another departure from the traditional panoramic cinemascope Hollywood Western, visually it looks, well, horrible. I wonder, was the atmosphere of claustrophobic isolation down to budget limits and shooting on a studio backlot? In any case, great writing will only only take you so far. If the The Searchers had been shot on digital with a TV aesthetic, with horrible focus pulls, garish lighting, no locations, would it still be a classic?

So are any of the above quibbles the reason it got axed? Perhaps they contributed, but what really happened I think is that most of the audience got lost in season 2, which, truth be told, was unbelievably boring. I mean, absolutely nothing happened. I finished the second series and had to force myself to get on with season 3. After a couple of episodes of season 3 things quickly pick up again as the power struggles and intrigues between Swearingen, Bullock and Hearst build to a satisfying finale, but by this point I figure Deadwood had lost a lot of viewers won over by the terrific first season, and probably gained very few new ones. By the time Season 3 came around to redeem things, the opportunity had been lost.

Don't want to come down too hard on Deadwood, in a just world David Milch would have seen his vision through to the end, and it's a crime that we'll never get a season 4.

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DEXTER Season 2

April 29th 2009 06:30

Enjoyable as Season 1 was, I couldn't see anywhere for Season 2 to go without retreading the same old ground. But maybe that is precisely the point of Dexter, nothing changes for him, there is no escape, he will keep doing what he is doing until he gets caught. The first few episodes are surprisingly engrossing, subtly continuing to expand and explore the same themes of Season 1. Lila is a welcome addition to the cast, asking Dexter all the questions we ourselves would ask him, and refreshingly devoid of the standard knee-jerk righteous revulsion to murder exhibited by every other character in the series. This is a nod to realism, not indecency, because like it or not, in real life there would be no shortage of whack-jobs who would be glad to befriend Dexter.

The introduction of Lila pushes the show in the right direction, but unfortunately her character arc follows the typical guest role trajectory: crash in, get under everyone's skin, shake things up, then suddenly burn out before the season's end. What makes her role interesting is that even though she accepts Dexter's dark side and helps him come to terms with it, the central charade remains: Dexter's girlfriend still has no idea that he is a serial killer. That she doesn't care when she finds out is further proof that she is a far more interesting girlfriend than Rita. What a pity they had to stick to the formula and suddenly and inexplicably turn a realistic and complex character into a cliched deranged psycho girlfriend, conveniently writing her out of the series.

The second half of the season gets a bit silly, stretching the credibility of the show as Dexter repeatedly gets out of sticky situations through nothing but sheer luck, and any character that presents a problem for Dexter meets an untimely and morally convenient demise (Rita's boyfriend, Doakes, Lila), always at precisely the point where things threaten to get interesting. The only place left for this show to go is to force Dexter to break his code, or rather the writers' own code of censorship, and be forced to do something that really makes us not like him. I don't think I could sit through another season of the writers tying themselves in knots trying to get Dexter into as much trouble as possible while at the same time making sure he doesn't have to do anything truly despicable. So even though season two ends like season one, with Dexter forced to kill someone close to him, and even though Lila's murder feels somehow worse, more unnecessary and undeserved, than that of Dexter's brother, the danger doesn't feel real anymore, because we know that a) Dexter will never be caught, and b) he will never do anything really reprehensible like kill an innocent person or sympathetic character.

There are other weaknesses: the eccentric FBI investigator is a blatant Twin Peaks rip off. And Dexter's sister is becoming increasingly annoying. Where to from here? The only way forward is to end this show is with an ugly, confronting final season.

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UNDERBELLY: Like Neighbours, but with guns.

February 24th 2009 03:17

Based on the 1994-2005 gangland killings in Melbourne, this is a rare Australian attempt at big-budget 'world-class television'. Season 1 is an entertaining, addictive series, if you can get past the numerous flaws.

Problem number one is the dreadful Aussie TV production values, complete with overwrought, distracting music, heavy emphasis on melodrama, and cinematography that knows only two modes: crazy shaky zoomy for the action scenes, and endless slo-mo for other dramatically 'important' moments. The aesthetic is that of a soap, or a commercial, or a music video, with little interest in the subtle or cinematic. Witness, for example, what should have been the series most disturbing moment, the murder of Jason Moran at a kids' footy clinic, as it is all but ruined by some whacky student-film like mise-en-scene.

The stylistic hotchpotch is echoed in the show's confused narrative outlook, as it lurches from one tone to another trying to make up it's mind whether it's a hard-edged no holds barred gangster show, or an attempt to explore the soft human 'underbelly' of the criminal world. Probably the writers should have gone with more of the former, because the latter is done in the most clumsy and cliched way, deflating the tension by prefacing nearly every murder with maudlin scenes designed to make us feel for the victims before they are murdered; you know someone is about to be offed when they all of a sudden get a melancholic scene of domestic bliss where they are telling their wife/girlfriend/family how much they love them. The show works best when the murders come as a shock (Alfonse Gagitano, Benji), and are presented with scant motivation beforehand, and no examination afterward. It's at its worst when the writers do the opposite, telegraphing every plot twist and murder well in advance (occasionally, and most unforgivably, through the completely superfluous voiceover), or showing a killer's remorse after completing a terrible deed, such as Benji's contrived tears after killing one of his mates.

Having said all this, there is an undeniable pleasure in watching the revolving door of gangsters lie, cheat, trick, double-cross, and muscle their way into the spotlight, only to get knocked off within an episode or two of their introduction. This is what's fun about this show, and what sets it apart from previous gangster experiences. Before, we always knew that no matter how dangerous the world they lived in, James Gandolfini, Al Pacino, Ray Liotta, whoever our big stars were, they were always going to make it through to the final reel. But in Underbelly, because the writers are (loosely) following real events, characters are set up and offed almost immediately, no matter how much the writers/producers/audience have become attached to them. Were it not for this, one gets the feeling that Vince Colosimo would still be strutting around at the end of the series doing his Robert De Niro impersonation.

The acting is uniformly excellent, despite the clunky lines the actors are frequently forced to deliver. The obvious standout is Kate Stewart's supremely vitriolic Roberta Williams, who so steals every scene she is in the viewer is left wondering why she isn't running the Melbourne underground herself. It's hard to believe how her goofy bogan of a husband could become king of an empire, offing everyone around him without ever being touched himself. No wonder the real Carl Williams complained about his character being a "brain dead goose".

But the part of the show that seems least credible is everything related to Task Force Purana, portrayed as a team of disciplined and determined public servants, religiously following Sergeant Garry Butterworth's 'Professionalism, Integrity, Tenacity' (who comes up with this stuff?) watchwords. There's some major dissonance here as we're shown the cops acting all efficient and dedicated, while at the same time failing to make any investigative headway into the gangland killings. Despite all the dignified posturing, the only thing they actually do is turn up at the scene every time Carl Williams leaves a body in a pool of blood. So either the writers have failed to capture the full complexity of the Melbourne gang world, or the real story behind this is one of corruption and incompetence, which, this being a high-profile Nine Network production, there was no way we were ever going to be shown.

Underbelly is a fun show (the real Roberta Williams was reportedly offended by it until she realized it was a "comedy"), based on some fascinating source material, even if none of it is handled with anywhere near the sophistication of the show this is clearly in thrall to, The Sopranos.

So anyway, now that we've seen gangster movies or TV shows from the US, Italy, Australia, when are we going to see something based on events where the real action is, namely Mexico and Russia/Eastern Europe?

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IRON MAN: The Playboy Years

January 5th 2009 06:13

Heard Kevin Smith raving about the Iron Man movie so decided to check it out at the cinemas.

This adaptation is a letdown, mainly because they got the Tony Stark character totally wrong. Did these guys read the comics at all? Have they at least read some recent stuff, like Civil War? Tony Stark is a guy without a sense of humour, someone who takes himself and his view of the world way too seriously. His stubbornness and penchant for a drink comes from this, not, as the movie would have it, from some decadent hedonistic streak

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WANTED: A Hollyood action movie that won't insult the intelligence of a 12 year old

December 16th 2008 10:48

Most reviews warn that you need to check your brain in at the door for this one, and after viewing it I must say they really weren't kidding. This is quite possibly the stupidest action movie I've ever seen.

I have a theory about the dumbing down of American cinema and the rise of comic book movies. I consume a lot of both, so I figure I'm entitled to a theory. Most mainstream comics are incredibly silly. You can throw the most ridiculous things in there, and there will be no shortage of comic book geeks ready to lap it all up. In the past, a pitch about a secret 'Fraternity' of assassins who get their targets from a secret code woven into fabric made by an old supernatural textile machine called (what else?) 'The Loom of Fate', would surely have been laughed out of Hollywood. But in this new era of increasingly mindless entertainment, all of a sudden the kinds of ridiculous premises that are the comic industry's stock in trade are now all ripe for big screen adaptation

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Why THE DARK KNIGHT is not half as dark as it thinks it is

December 10th 2008 01:56

Is it just me or was The Dark Knight just another big dumb blockbuster disguised as an intelligent arthouse film?

I hear a lot about the dumbing down of American cinema, but I think things are worse than is generally recognized when even the movies that claim to be smart and arty and made by one-time indie directors (Sam Raimi, Christopher Nolan, John Favreau) turn out to be just as insultingly stupid as the rest of the teen fodder churned out by Hollywood

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What's Right and Wrong with DEXTER

September 25th 2008 04:25

Been reading a few posts going around complaining about how Dexter is a rip-off and pale imitation of genuinely edgy HBO shows such as The Sopranos and Six Feet Under (from which actor Michael C Hall was blatantly stolen to play Dexter). Chief concern seems to be that the Dexter character doesn't revel in his 'outsiderness' and is an 'insipid, nerdy vigilante desperate for a white picket fence'.

Here's what's wrong with that

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American Psycho

August 17th 2008 05:05

After watching The Dark Knight I decided to watch American Psycho - another film which features a very buff and naked Christian Bale.
The film is disturbing, but more disturbing was the fact I was laughing during some of the more violent scenes. I have no idea how Christian Bale managed to play a psychotic serial killer and make the audience laugh. I suppose its the fact he plays such a superficial, inane, psychopath who analyzes the music of Huey Lewis when he's hacking someone to death.

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The Counterfeiters

August 17th 2008 04:47

Apologies for the hiatus.

I've been incredibly busy with life. A life that allowed almost no time for movie viewing! But I am back

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Lust Caution

March 22nd 2008 03:51

I finally got around to watching Lust Caution which was directed by one of my heroes Ang Lee.
The story is about a group of students who form a resistance and plan to assassinate Mr Yi, played by Tony Leung, a Japanese collaborator. The film is based on a novella by Chinese writer Eileen Chang.

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