Poem: Pretty as a Picture (2013)

My best attempt to describe aesthetic attraction.

*          *          *

Pretty as a Picture

You’re van Gogh lovely,

A living Starry Night;

Your smile curves like moonlit breeze,

And your eyes blaze with astral swirls.

Van Goghs are built for my gaze,

Made to enter the soul

Through the windows.

With coy discretion,

My eyes take you in.

But any museum of good standing

Will tell you

The cardinal rule

Of painted beauty –

Look,

But don’t touch.

And why would I?

Your roughly-swathed strokes

Would merely scrape

My unseeing fingers,

And to my tongue,

You’d taste of oil and canvas alone.

It is only in my eyes

That you twist into color

And motion and magic,

So only with my eyes

Will I take you in.

Relationship Spotlight: Tom Branson & Lady Sybil Crawley (Downton Abbey)

This isn’t a fascinating relationship, a narrative treat for viewers to ruminate over, but it’s a lovely one, and I’m fond of it.  It has some serious missteps – Sybil and Branson are particularly hurt by series 2’s time jumps, where  they seem to speak once every six months and have the same conversation in which Branson comes off as a jerk – but in the end, it’s a fine connection between two characters I like.  In light of Tom’s less-than-compelling entanglements of late, I thought I’d look back on better times.  Spoilers for Sybil-Branson plots ahead.  (Note – though he’s called Tom now, I’ll refer to him mainly as Branson, since that’s what the show uses for most of the pertinent storyline.)

From the start, it helps that both Sybil and Branson are engaging and rootable in their own right.  Sybil is so sweet and conscientious, and I like that she not only sees her privilege relative to those around her, but she actively tries to help others improve their situations.  Her efforts to help Gwen find a secretary job are a highlight of series 1, and I still wish we were able to see more of her nursing work during the war.  She doesn’t see inequality and just sigh about an unjust but immutable world – she rolls up her expensive sleeves and gets her hands dirty.  Branson, as a socialist in favor of Irish independence, is a bit notorious among the Downton staff, he’s not the typical image of a revolutionary out for blood.  He hates the system of unbalanced power that perpetuates his people’s subjugation, and he speaks against those who prop it up, but he doesn’t indiscriminately hate all members of the ruling class.  He judges individuals on their merits and ultimately wants change through demonstration and free speech, not violence. 

It’s impressive that, for a socially-verboten upstairs/downstairs romance, their relationship is built on friendship and shared interests.  It’s not an overwhelming onslaught of sexual desire that makes them fly in the face of society’s expectations and taste forbidden fruit.  Rather, they initially connect when Branson is driving the family somewhere and overhears evidence of Sybil’s interest in politics.  He later strikes up a discussion with her, giving her pamphlets on political topics and encouraging her independent streak.  I love that he watches outside the house when she models her new harem pants for her family.  It may not be love yet, but it’s clear he’s enchanted by this young woman who won’t simply accept the rules that are prescribed for her.

This is how they begin, by talking to and supporting one another.  Love comes slowly, with acknowledgment of the upheaval it requires.  Like I said, it squanders a good chunk of its potential in series 2; it seems at least 80% of their conversations there involve Branson wanting Sybil to run away with him and acting like she’s a snob when she points out that marrying him would likely mean saying goodbye to everything she’s known in her life to date.  However, the ship rights itself, and what little we see of them as a married couple stays true to the start of their relationship.  They look out for each other, they talk through their disagreements, and each loves the other at their best and worst.  Though it’s been interesting to explore Tom’s uncertain position at Downton since Sybil’s death, I definitely would have preferred more of their marriage than we got.  I won’t dwell on the sad ending, though.  Instead, I’ll leave you with another favorite Sybil/Branson moment of mine from series 1 – when Branson rushes into the garden party to tell Sybil that Gwen got the job she’s been trying for.  As their mutual excitement and happiness takes over, there’s a moment where both of them have entirely forgotten that they’re a chauffeur and an earl’s daughter.  I love that.

Selma (2014, PG-13)

Selma is unusual in that it’s nominated for best picture and only one other award, best original song.  It’s as if voters felt they couldn’t not nominate a film centering around Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights movement, but at the same time, they didn’t want to give it more than a token nod.  I don’t know why that is.  Did they think an MLK picture was too obviously Oscar bait?  Were they put off by the controversy over the dramatic licenses the film takes (not that Selma is alone in that, of course)?  Did they feel they did their duty, black-history-wise, with 12 Years a Slave last year?

Whatever the reason, it’s a shame, because it’s a pretty excellent film.  All three best picture nominees I’ve seen so far have been true stories, and this one has the tightest focus.  Rather than trying to cover the whole civil rights movement or large swathes of King’s life, it only examines the SCLC’s time demonstrating for voting rights in Selma, Alabama, culminating in the march from Selma to Montgomery.  It doesn’t shy away from the violence and hatred of the era, directed towards black would-be voters and demonstrators as well as white allies, and it also shows the conflicts within the movement itself.

I really like that – the film allows King to be a great man, a courageous, impassioned, historically vital man, without deifying him.  Most prominently, we see the friction between SNCC, the activist group doing grassroots work in Selma at the start of the film, and King’s SCLC.  In the eyes of SNCC, the SCLC rolls into a town, stirs up a lot of trouble and attention, takes credit if things go well, and then leaves everyone else to deal with any fallout from their actions.  On the subject of King, SNCC’s leaders are divided as to whether he’s a visionary leader or a headline-chasing glory hound.  King himself pushes on in his attempts to shake white lawmakers out of their complacency and stop ignoring the issue of equal voting rights, but while his conviction in his cause is unwavering, his belief in his own involvement isn’t so solid.  We see his moments of doubt, his fears about the danger he’s subjected his family to, and his arguments with those who don’t understand his methods.  It’s a complex, nuanced depiction; the story explores these falters and uncertainties, but they only serve to humanize King and his mission without diminishing his strength of character.  David Oyelowo’s performance is more than up to the task of matching the powerful storytelling.

The film features a handful of familiar faces:  Oprah, Tom Wilkinson, Giovanni Ribisi, Tessa Thompson (Jackie from Veronica Mars), Lorraine Toussaint (Vee from Orange is the New Black), Dylan Baker (William Cross from Kings), Tim Roth, Stephen Root, Cuba Gooding Jr., and Alessandro Nivola (who I know best as Henry Crawford in the Frances O’Connor Mansfield Park.)  I also want to single out Henry G. Sanders as an elderly man still fighting for his right to vote, as well as Nigel Thatch for his very good, if brief, appearance as Malcolm X.

Warnings

Harsh violence (not as graphic as a lot of movies, but highly affecting,) language, brief sexual content, and strong thematic elements.

Favorite Characters: Seymour Birkhoff (Nikita)

I’ve already talked about Birkhoff’s relationship with Nikita, one of my favorites on the show, but I figured the man himself deserved a separate post.  There’s no doubt that Birkhoff is a well-trod archetype – the vast majority of genre shows have a tech genius, and Birkhoff’s mix of extreme nerdiness and unrelenting snark is particularly reminiscent of Topher from Dollhouse.  However, despite the familiar ground, he never feels generic.  Here’s a closer look at this supremely entertaining character (includes spoilers.)

As I’ve said before, I like that Birkhoff is relatively amoral, pretty selfish, and a more gradual convert to Team Nikita.  I like that there’s some bite to him; while his pre-Division crimes aren’t as lethal as those of most fellow agents, he’s still a criminal.  He was recruited by Division (presumably to escape life in prison) after hacking the Pentagon, and he uses his computer prowess for other unscrupulous purposes at different times in the series.  At the same time, though, at the start of the series, he’s not as outright ruthless as dyed-in-the-wool Division folk like Percy or Amanda and shows periodic misgivings about some of their less conscionable operations.  This more middle-of-the-fence approach to morality gives him ample opportunity to defy expectations.  When he’s at Division, he sometimes circumvents the nefarious marching orders, and when he joins Nikita and the good guys, he sometimes turns to his old wayward tricks.  Throw in his strong rebellious streak, and you have a character with lots of potential for shaking up the story.

Like most characters on the show, another big draw is his extreme capability.  Again, his skillset is different – less ultraviolence, more hacker-fu – but even though it’s not as visually satisfying to watch Birkhoff type as it is to watch Nikita lay an epic smackdown, he’s still remarkably impressive.  His unprincipled background gives him a knack for sniffing out technical traps, and he pulls off some crazy stuff both in and out of Division.  He has such a high opinion of his own skills that he’s generally the first to point out what an incredible job he’s done, and that’s always good for a laugh.  Additionally, while he’s more of a physical liability than the likes of Nikita, Alex, or Michael, he’s not just an incapable weakling.  His Division combat training doesn’t get as much regular use as the others’, but in a fight, he can at least keep himself alive and only occasionally needs saving.  (I always love it when the techies can look out for themselves.)  However, he’s not as accustomed to fighting and killing, and when he does get into the fray, it tends to affect him more than it does the other characters.

And really, you can’t go wrong with such a genuine geek on a TV show; Nikita doesn’t call him “Nerd” for nothing.  There’s his tech knowhow, of course, and his hyper-intelligent tendency to treat others like troglodytes, but more than that, he’s a huge, unabashed fanboy.  Throughout the series, he tosses out casual Star Wars references, he quotes Lord of the Rings non-ironically, and when he hacks into the control system of some serious weaponry, he does his best Dalek impression.  Not only is it super-fun, but it also helps ground the show, which can sometimes veer into awesome-yet-outlandish, in the real world.  When the show offers up triple agents, shadowy conspiracies, brainwashing, faked deaths, and organic prostheses, it’s good to come back to Earth with the thought of Birkhoff watching X-Men in his safe house.  Not to mention, few of the characters seem to have many hobbies outside of field missions and pondering their own tragic backstories, so Birkhoff’s cornucopia of geek interests rounds him out nicely.

The Bletchley Circle (2012-2014)

Here’s another strong entry for my collection of female-led TV shows, of a very different sort than Nikita.  With only two seasons and seven episodes (those British, I tell ya,) it was easy to fit in and well worth it.  When I was anticipating The Imitation Game, it definitely scratched my itch for code breakers who are badass and awesome.

The eponymous circle is made of four women whose intelligence and ingenuity saved lives during World War II.  Along with the other bold, brilliant men and women of Bletchley Park, their actions had a real impact on the world.  Now, however, it’s 1952; the war is over and the boys have long since come home.  The women who cracked the codes that moved armies have been expected to quietly pack up everything they were, everything they can do.  Now, their world isn’t meant to extend beyond hearth and home, and they’re meant to know their place in it.

Total lives-of-quiet-desperation situation, right?  That’s where Susan finds herself.  She loves her husband and children, of course, but it doesn’t feel right for them to be her entire life.  When she gets restless, her husband offers up the crossword to pacify her – since her days at Bletchley fall under the Official Secrets Act, he doesn’t begin to imagine how much more her mind longs to do.  Unquenchable, it latches onto news stories about a mysterious rash of killings in London.  Where others only see the tragedy or the grisly details, Susan sees patterns that can reveal information and could even lead the police to the murderer.

But it’s a big puzzle and she’s only seen the pieces of it that made the newspapers and the wireless reports.  It’s 1952, and the wives of respectable civil servants don’t tell the police they’re looking in the wrong place.  When she’s unable to prove her theories to the authorities, Susan enlists the help of her wartime friends and colleagues.  Susan’s gift for recognizing patterns is married to practical Jean’s talent for acquiring buried intel, independent Millie’s flair with maps and numbers, and gentle Lucy’s eidetic memory, and the four women set out to catch a serial killer.  His movements and actions, the backgrounds of the previous victims, and the details of the police and coroner’s reports become codes for them to crack, and they’re amazing.

I’ll admit that the second season isn’t as good as the first.  It has two mysteries rather than one, and neither has as much emphasis on the code-breaking aspect, which makes the show feel a little more like a standard crime procedural.  Granted, it’s still a period piece led entirely by women, so it’s not that standard, but if series 1 is a 10, series 2 is maybe a 7 or 8.

Susan is played with beautiful restraint by Anna Maxwell-Martin, who I mainly know as Sookie in Who’s “The Long Game,” Millie is the exquisite Rachael Stirling from Tipping the Velvet, and series 2 also features Hattie Morahan, who was Elinor in the 2008 Sense and Sensibility.  We also get Steven Robertson (Michael from Rory O’Shea was Here,) and Eighth Doctor Paul McGann makes a brief but important appearance.

Warnings

Violence (including serial killings and domestic violence,) some language, drinking, smoking, sexual content (including assault,) and some seriously dark themes.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: Sidewalks of New York (1931)

Yep, it’s time for another Buster Keaton MGM talkie.  Despite a fine performance from Buster, I can see why he didn’t like it – the plot is sloppy and overly complicated, and pretty much every scene not involving Buster just isn’t funny.  It’s not aggressively bad, but it’s incredibly “meh,” far below Buster’s talents.

Basically, the story is that Buster’s Mr. Harmon is a wealthy man who, having fallen in love with a woman who lives in a tenement he owns, sets out to improve the lot of the guttersnipes of the city.  This involves, variously, a public gymnasium, a boxing match, and a ridiculous play, and there’s a bungled-yet-inventive proposal thrown in for good measure.  (Harmon is interesting in that he’s really not like any of Buster’s rich dandies.  He’s a little naïve and misguided, but he isn’t entirely dependent on servants to get by – while he relies a lot on his subordinate Mr. Poggle, it’s more because he gets tongue-tied or bewildered than because he doesn’t know how to fend for himself.)

The Good – There’s some decent physical comedy from Buster, nice tumbling and a few lengthy routines.  I especially like the extended chase/fight sequence at the end, and I always love the muay thai-ish move where he launches himself at someone to kick them in the chest.  There are funny gags outside of the slapstick as well – there’s a great scene of Harmon trying to carve a duck and some excellent laughs when he takes the stand in a court case.  Harmon and Poggle (Cliff Edwards, who had a similar sidekick role in Doughboys) make an amusing team, and I like that Harmon is decently industrious.  He often gets things wrong, but he never really stops trying.  Also, while I’m not crazy about Margie as a love interest, Harmon’s reactions to her are terrific.  Buster always plays smitten so well – really funny and sweet.

The Bad – Like Parlor, Bedroom and Bath, this film feels, tonally, like two movies stitched together, but while the former combines slapstick with bedroom farce, this one seems to combine slapstick with melodrama.  There’s this whole big subplot with Margie’s younger brother as a hoodlum getting swept up in a life of crime, with Margie of course desperate to save him.  These scenes are big and overwrought, and they feel out of place beside Buster’s comedy.  Also, the narrative feels really cobbled together.  Lots of stuff appears to happen just cuz, with no logical purpose.  For instance, this isn’t the first Buster film to feature a disastrous theatrical performance, but these sequences fit organically into movies like Back Stage, Spite Marriage, and Speak Easily.  The films build up to them such that the onstage hijinks are the natural conclusion.  Here, the play is shoved in so haphazardly that I honestly don’t know the in-story reason that it’s happening.

The Ugly – Like I said, Harmon shows some good initiative and drives a solid chunk of the action, but there a few scenes that veer uncomfortably into the dopey persona that started in this era.  I mentioned that Harmon taking the stand is greatly comedic, but Harmon on the stand isn’t much fun; he’s way too dumb, and since he’s not characterized that way for the brunt of the film, it’s more aggravating when the script starts knocking off brain cells at random.

Top Five Big Damn Hero Moments: Rose Tyler (Doctor Who)

Who is a show filled with extraordinary things and, as such, it often gives its characters the chance to do the incredible.  They’re flawed, as they should be, and so they make mistakes, but they also get to be brave, clever, and strong.  I’ve already spoken generally about Rose.  Today, though, is about her biggest, best moments as a companion (spoilers ahead.)

Saving the Doctor from Himself (“Dalek” – Series 1, Episode 6)

I love that, although Rose has thrown her lot in completely with the Doctor, she doesn’t shy away from arguing with him when he’s wrong.  This is especially prevalent with Nine, no more so than in this episode.  It’s not so much that the Dalek doesn’t deserve to die – rather, it’s about waking the Doctor up and helping him remember that he’s not one to kill without question.  Plus, the experience helps him open up to her about the Time War.

The Bad Wolf (“The Parting of the Ways” – Series 1, Episode 13)

No question about this one.  Sent away from the Doctor for her protection, Rose tears a panel open in the TARDIS and looks into its heart.  I love her determination to get back to the Doctor, not just to try and save him, but because she can’t stand by while people in other times and places are suffering and dying.  The first time I saw this episode?  Chills.

Confronting the Sycorax (“The Christmas Invasion” – Series 2, Episode 0)

It’s interesting; while I like Rose and Ten together, I find that her strongest moments in series 2 are often without him.  Here, she steps onto a hostile alien ship and tries one of the Doctor’s go-to moves, bluffing herself some extra time while attempting to come up with a plan.  It’s true that the Sycorax aren’t terribly impressed with her, but as far as she knows, the Doctor is down for the count at this point and she still faces them.  The woman’s got guts!

Taking the Domestic Approach (“The Idiot’s Lantern” – Series 2, Episode 7)

This is maybe an odd inclusion, but I really like it.  I enjoy Rose’s cleverness in this episode, spotting the people with the best intel and putting together the little things.  While the Doctor is off investigating something else, she works on a hunch of her own – a correct one, as it happens.  Also, who doesn’t love her giving Mr. Connelly attitude for hanging the Union flag upside-down?

Rallying the Troops (“The Satan Pit” – Series 2, Episode 9)

At this point in the season, Rose is pretty deeply tied to the Doctor, and though she tends to think of herself as lesser or incapable without him, this episode once again shows what she can do on her own.  With the Doctor unreachable, the base under siege, and everyone freaking out, Rose takes charge and helps everyone focus on the problem at hand.  True, she doesn’t work out how to stop the Ood or get safely through the base, but she identifies the people who can figure these things out and keeps them on task.  It’s a pretty Doctory move, and a great one at that.

American Sniper (2014, R)

My second of this year’s eight best picture nominees (it was nine last year – are they gradually working their way back down to five?)  Right off the bat, I’ll cop to some strong cognitive dissonance when I started watching American Sniper.  Don’t ask me how, but I’d managed to get it in my head that the film was about the DC sniper, so imagine my surprise when the previews finally ended and the film got started.

Nope – American Sniper is also a true story, but a very different one.  It focuses instead on Chris Kyle, an aimless cowboy who finds purpose in the SEALs.  He becomes “the legend,” a sniper with an unprecedented kill record over the course of several tours in Iraq, and starts to lose himself in the process.  He’s uncomfortable in the skin of his civilian life, and his wife feels him slipping away as he throws himself time and time again into danger.

This, I think, is where the film best succeeds.  It’s a complicated but ultimately sympathetic portrait of a man changed by his war experiences.  The growing stateside evidence of Chris’s PTSD – his reaction to loud noises, or the tense, vigilant eye he keeps on cars in his rearview mirror – are effective, as is Chris’s the-gentleman-doth-protest-too-much insistence that he’s all right.  War has crawled inside him.  He’s risked so much, seen such horrors, and done unspeakable things (his first kill isn’t anything like he would have envisioned,) but he feels this panicked need to brush aside his trauma and justify all he’s experienced.  It’s why he dismisses any talk of therapy and raises his hackles whenever anyone questions the uprightness of the war.  He has to remain fit for duty, and his war has to be just, or else what was the point of staring into the abyss until it stared back?

If the film does well with its theme, it’s not as careful in its storytelling.  There’s an odd, staccato feel to the pacing, like we leap from scene to scene with little to show the passage of time.  There isn’t much sense of transition, which makes it hard to settle into and be submerged in the world of the movie.  It feels jarring to me, and surprisingly lax for such a high-profile film.

Bradley Cooper does a fine job with Chris’s journey; it’s a large, impassioned performance that really shows the changes the character undergoes.  Siena Miller is nicely affecting as Chris’s wife Taya, and though I’m not familiar with most of the ensemble, their performances help you invest in the film.  However, I did find a few recognizable faces:  Leonard Roberts (D.L. from Heroes) and Kyle Gallner (Beaver from Veronica Mars,) and Jonathan Groff appears in one strong scene that I thought was really well-done.

Warnings

Strong graphic violence, language, drinking/smoking, sexual content, disturbing images, and dark thematic elements.

Assassins (1990)

Strange as it may seem, this was actually my first Sondheim show.  Not Sweeney Todd, not Into the Woods, not A Little Night Music, not Sunday in the Park with George, but Assassins, the darkly comic musical about America’s actual and would-be presidential assassins.  During the 2004 Tony Awards, I fell in love with the Broadway cast’s performance and shortly thereafter bought the CD for the revival.  I discovered that Sondheim is tricky but supremely rewarding, that Doogie Howser has a nice set of pipes on him (this was pre-How I Met Your Mother – that’s weird to think,) and that, if Raúl Esparza couldn’t win best supporting actor in a musical for Taboo, the award was safe in the hands of Michael Cerveris as John Wilkes Booth.

The musical itself is deliciously theatrical.  It’s not so much a concrete story as it is a series of vignettes that flit through time, framed in a strange sort of limbo in which notorious figures from different points in history can interact.  It opens with a vaguely sinister carnival proprietor trying to entice assorted malcontent oddballs to try their luck at a game of chance:  “Shoot a prez, win a prize!”  It’s an interesting device, giving a festive backdrop to such awful events.  And yet, we lurch with the chaotic whirl, and we see the dark undertones behind the lights.

And really, the classic Americana imagery of the carnival motif also strikes an unsettling discord with the story of these assassins, regarded as some of the least American people in U.S. history.  The show’s other main narrative device, an itinerant balladeer who spins the assassins’ tales into song, is similarly all-American.  As the assassins try to speak for themselves and get us to understand their reasoning, they get increasingly frustrated with the balladeer’s tuneful interruptions.

Much of the music combines folk with Sondheim’s usual style, and the result is an intriguing musical potpourri.  All of the ballads are catchy, clever, and all-around fantastic, especially “The Ballad of Booth.”  In it, Booth rails against the balladeer’s more cavalier version of his story and tries to explain “why [he] did it;” it’s a song with a lot of depth, one that unflinchingly examines what can cause a man to turn to unforgiveable actions.  “Unworthy of Your Love” – a duet between John Hinckley Jr. and Squeaky Fromme, respectively directed to an absent Jodie Foster and Charles Manson – is as creepy as it is audacious.  I also love “Something Just Broke,” in which a collection of ordinary citizens recall what they were doing when they heard news of a president’s death by assassin.

Not to mention, this show makes for a great history lesson.  I’d never even heard of Leon Czolgosz or Charles Guiteau before Assassins, but now I have a good understanding of all four presidential assassinations and five unsuccessful attempts.  I’ve learned more about the history behind them and interesting bits of trivia related to each one – plenty of truth-is-stranger-than-fiction moments!  I know that it doesn’t approach Sondheim’s greatest works, but I’ll always enjoy it as my first, and I’ll always appreciate it for its boldness, originality, and instructiveness. 

Warnings

Dark subject matter, violence, swearing (including one N-word,) and sexual references.