Thursday, March 11, 2010

Man Up or Puss Out

I love Breaking Bad.  

I'm finished with Season 1 now.  The last two episodes do not disappoint.  After a bit of necessary family drama, we've returned to the pulp dreamscape that has defined the best of this series.  

[Don't get me wrong- it is the family twist that makes everything else important, but it is the everything else that we're all watching for.]  

Season 1 ends on the greatest note possible.  

Who is going to save your soul now?

I'm halfway through Season 2 and am happy to be along for the ride.  I don't feel like writing about each individual episode, but maybe I'll write something up when I'm done with Season 2.

Lost continues to generally disappoint.  I'm still hooked until the end.  Go smoke monster!

This is the first season in a few years that we've watched the show as it was broadcast.  I wonder how much commercial breaks (something I have not dealt with in many years) and waiting a week for each new episode are screwing with my enjoyment.  Even so, this season just seems unrewarding so far.  Go smoke monster!

Three Sheets continues to be good fun.  Who knew that Lithuania was the last European country to embrace Christianity?  And that their drinking culture is still tied up in its latent paganism?  I'll never make it to Lithuania, but I've now said a prayer for the country as I bring this blessed malt beverage to my lips. 

The Office season premiere was decent.  I'm not half the fan that Abby is, but I enjoyed it all.

I do hope that commercial-based TV dies.  Watching any show without commercial breaks is so much more enjoyable.

I wish TCM would start broadcasting the station, maybe modeled after PBS' member support.  Without a doubt, I'd become a monthly supporter.  I just can't justify the evils of cable/sattellite enough to embrace these formats for the sake of TCM.  More realistically, I expect TCM to develop some sort of Internet subscription channel within the next decade.  It doesn't make sense to stay as a part of a cable package when the capability exists to stream content directly to end-users.  But, what do I know?

So, I've been watching a lot of TV shows, but I've still caught a few films.  

Show People is a celebration of Hollywood.  I know I love a comedy film if there's at least one moment in which I absolutely lose it.  The moment in Show People is when, in a film within the film, Marion Davies (or maybe a stunt double) rides off on a large pig.  Followed by a reaction shot of the director enjoying his film.  Simply wonderful!  And that's only one among many.  I really loved the ending, so predictable, but utterly clever and thoroughly delightful.  The film shines in its self-aware cameo moments:  Chaplin, Fairbanks, and even King Vidor himself.  1928 has the reputation of being a magic year for silent film in which the form had reached its peak.  Show People is among the best from that great year.

The Princess and the Pirate also has plenty of laughs even if it's not half the film that Show People is.  The girls and I watched it projected on the wall upstairs.  More than a few times, I had to shush their raucous laughter so that we could hear what was happening next.

As snow in summer, and as rain in harvest, so honour is not seemly for a fool.   -Proverbs 26:1

The Biblical proverbs are often as funny as they are wise.  

The above could describe Bob Hope's hopeless actor, but I think that it better describes the protagonist of Rohmer's first Moral Tale, The Bakery Girl of Monceau.

Operating under a moral code of his own devising, ? is nothing more than a scoundrel justified in his own mind.  In other words, a man.   

It's a sad confirmation when this man gets the girl he wants and the happy ending.  It's also really funny in a way and we can rest relieved that the bakery girl had her heart broken, all for the best.
  
It is exquisite and an instant favorite.  

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