Mildred Pierce

I wouldn't have been interested in watching a 5-part mini-series about the depression if it didn't star two of my favourite actresses (Kate Winslet, Evan Rachel Wood) as mother and daughter, plus Hope Davis, whom I always felt was an underrated actress. So I was excited to see this, but I was a little worried that it might be boring and melodramatic. Instead, I found myself completely hooked.

I never saw the original movie or read the book, but this version, at least, is like a classic tragedy. Mildred (Winslet) is a strong, driven woman and easy to like, but her tragic flaw is an excessive love for her daughter Veda in spite of the fact that she is a spoiled, pretentious, ungrateful brat. I don't condone child abuse, but there were a couple of parts where Mildred gives Veda a good slap, and I had to cheer because she really, really deserved it. But the heartbreaking thing about this mini-series is watching Mildred revolve most of her life around Veda - starting up an entire restaurant business just to cover up the embarrassing waitress job she had to take which her elitist daughter would've looked down on - when we know Veda isn't going to appreciate any of it. Because of this, and the fact that she is played by two different actresses at different ages, it seems as if young Veda is the fifth business of this story, while older Veda is the antagonist.

While all of the writing kept me interested, I think it sealed the deal that Kate Winslet is one of those fantastic character actresses who has no trouble being believable, and the actresses playing Veda were so annoyingly condescending and pretentious with their diction that it was never hard to hate the character, and the more I hated Veda, the sorrier I felt for Mildred being unable to see who she is. I enjoyed this way more then I thought I would, and on an unimportant side note, the Blu-ray/DVD combo packaging is really beautiful and classy. Well played, Mildred Pierce. Well played.

Best Episode: I think all five parts were equally good, but if I had to choose I guess I'd go with Part Two, in which Mildred teaches herself to be a better waitress, starts setting up her own restaurant, meets Monty Beragon (Guy Pearce), and suffers a terrible tragedy.

The Tree of Life

Impressions before seeing it
From what I'd heard, it was either going to be a beautiful epic or a pretentious piece of nonsense. Superficially, it was the title that intrigued me.

How was it?
The beginning and end of The Tree of Life are hard to swallow, because they fall into the "pretentious piece of nonsense" category. Especially the beginning, because to me it felt like a full 30-40 minutes before the movie actually began. The sequences are assembled in a way that are meant to be poetic even though it's too early in the film for them to really have any meaning, we get some snippets introducing the characters but not giving us any clues as to their personalities, and then we get a straight 15-minute self-indulgent sequence of nothing but nature shots and special effects (including, for some reason, dinosaurs) set to operatic music. In the film's defense, they are among the most beautiful shots in the movie, but otherwise I saw no reason to include them. I think 15 minutes is a fairly long chunk of time to make your audience sit and watch while absolutely nothing happens, and putting those 15 minutes at the beginning of the movie when nobody has any clue what is coming afterwards, and very little clue as to what they saw before it, is a real test of one's patience. I was thinking to myself that if the rest of the movie is like this, I didn't know if I could handle it for nearly two more hours. And I've sat through Last Year at Marienbad more than once.

But eventually that stuff ended, and there actually is a movie in the middle of the artsy crap. From my views of the family snippets at the beginning, I was worried this movie would actually have no humanity in it due to too much focus on the poetic, but, again, after the drawn out opening sequences we finally get character development. I was going to add "and a story", but it's mostly the former: a family with three boys in the 1950's, mainly from the point of view of the oldest son. We're just seeing moments in their daily lives, and rather than following a significant plot we're just tracking character progress as the oldest son deals with parental issues (a strict father and passive mother) and begins a rebellious phase. I don't know how to make it more interesting than that, but it actually is interesting and the performances very solid. So I did like this middle part of the movie, and it could have easily been its own movie without those big unnecessary chunks of cinematographic flaunting at the beginning and end. And for Sean Penn fans, don't waste your time. His total screen time is probably under 10 minutes in a 140-minute film, and he hardly even says anything. As you can see, being the industry that it is, they still put his name on the poster.

Recommendation
The Tree of Life will probably pick up the cinematography Oscar, and perhaps other technical ones, and I'd say well deserved, but not if it wins Best Picture. The family scenes in the middle are very good, and if Malick had kept it to that I would've like the film a lot more, but all of the stuff around the edges feels like a blatant attempt to instill an abundance of meaning and beauty in what is just a simple family story. If you're going to watch it, I'd say skip ahead about a half hour, then turn it off when you see Sean Penn. Not Penn's fault, that's just when the content goes back to being less than relevant.

This Week in Television - Feb. 6-11, 2012

Smash
Well, it's a lot less flawed than Glee, but then practically everything is. It seems Katharine McPhee is actually a capable actress, so she was a good choice for the lead role (or maybe not lead, because Debra Messing got just as much screen time, if not more). Ivy - the blonde antagonist - was instantly annoying to me, because she is the type of performer who always goes too big in order to show off. There actually can be such a thing as too much talent, and when you go over the top it ruins a role. While I find Broadway music to be bland, I do appreciate that the music was more seamless and didn't feel like song after song was being crammed down my throat, as is sometimes the case with Glee. My one little nitpick - and it's not just Smash that did this, but a lot of movies and shows do - is the representation of Youtube (or whatever resembles Youtube when copyright is an issue). They always do it as if anything you put on Youtube automatically gets millions of views just because it's on the internet. Unless you have a famous channel with tons of followers, the chances of someone stumbling on your video and then sharing it enough to make it a hit - and in a short amount of time, no less - are about the same as stumbling on a raisin in the sand while walking along the beach. And I doubt that assistant's mother is an internet superstar. But anyway, in spite of an abrupt ending (maybe I'm just too used to cliffhangers) I didn't mind the pilot, so I'm going to keep watching.

Glee
How do they expect us to care about the Sam/Mercedes relationship when 90% of it happened off camera? I don't even care about Finn and Rachel, and they're all over this show. And if Mercedes likes Sam so much, why has she not broken up with her boyfriend? I know we see that kind of behaviour all the time in adults, because sometimes certain circumstances keep you from leaving a person you're not satisfied with, but that does not apply to high school students, because there are no circumstances where it would. I don't think artificial insemination is a fitting storyline for Sue, and I hate that this new coach is still around because she's just an unfunny version of Sue Sylvester. As much as I enjoy Sue, we don't need two of her, especially if one isn't funny. And Santana was right: Mr. Schue's Latino Elvis remix was awful and offensive.

New Girl
Though it may have been a bit of a stretch, I laughed at Jess charming the angry driver with the gun, and Nick and Jess playing chicken with the landlord threesome (is "Underpants Captain" a real thing? ...Never mind, I don't want to know.) The joke about the guards thinking Schmidt was raping his boss in the parking garage didn't quite work, because the view on the monitors just looked like exactly what it was: two people making out. She wasn't struggling, he wasn't restraining her, and they were both standing up. The ending with the Japanese conference call was even worse because it was so predictable and an overused joke. But I really liked the Jess/Nick/Landlord portion of the episode, that stuff was fun.

30 Rock
I like Mary Steenburgen, but I think it was obvious she and Jack were going to develop feelings for each other as soon as she showed up. Their scenes together weren't hilarious, but they had chemistry - probably actually more than Alec Baldwin has with Elizabeth Banks. As a character, Lutz works best when he is the butt of a small, quick joke. When a story is centered around him, like in this episode and the one with everyone catering to him for security in the event of an imaginary apocalypse, it's just more uncomfortable than funny. I don't get the Ikea observational humour because it's not something I've experienced or heard about, but the flashbacks to Liz's bad Valentine's days were fun.

The Office
I liked this one because it seems like it's been a really, really long time since we actually saw anybody working. Dwight trying to put together a team and fighting with Andy about who he's allowed to bring was fun, and it was a nice touch when the final team, whom he despised, surprised him by taking the project seriously and actually contributing good ideas. The way they pulled out those setups at the end, though (Erin claiming she won't return, Cathy hinting that she's going to make a move on Jim), it made this feel like the second last episode of a season.

Up All Night
I know this was a Valentine's episode and all, but I don't think it's necessary to end almost every episode with Chris and Reagan realizing how much they love each other. The show is about a married couple raising their new baby. We know they're not about to get divorced anytime soon, because their marriage is part of the show's premise. I like their characters and it's nice that they're in love and all that, but it doesn't have to be a romantic comedy. It's allowed to be just a comedy that is sometimes romantic. You have to ration those sweet moments or your show just gets too mushy.

Fringe
For characters who are way smarter than I am, they should have figured out before me that two universes were blending together. They did not, but I guess the writers had to drag it out a little for dramatic purposes. It was a cool episode, though, and the ending with Olivia raises some interesting questions. For instance, if Peter's Olivia is blending into this one, does that mean both will be destroyed? If not, will he even want to go home if he has Olivia back? Or are other things/people going to follow suit?

Saturday Night Live
I don't always watch SNL, and I never write about it, but I'll make an exception because this week it was hosted by my future wife Zooey Deschanel. Now there are times when some of the hosts (probably more often the female ones) get stuck playing the straight man while the cast has all the fun playing their wacky recurring characters, but I was glad to see them allowing Zooey to be funny, because she does have that comedic talent. I don't understand the appeal of those "Les Jeunes de Paris" sketches. I've seen them do it a few times, and I get the references to French culture and French cinema, I just don't see how it is potent as a comedy sketch. Abby Elliot's Zooey impression was fairly good, as was Zooey's Mary Kate Olsen impression, and Taran Killam's Michael Cera impression had the perfect enunciation, but was about three octaves too high. I'm not sure if the squeaky voice was a joke or if for some reason he just can't do it any lower. Bill Hader's Clint Eastwood is also great, but most of his impressions are. I was excited by the return of the technology humping sketch, because it was my favourite part of the last Emma Stone episode. It wasn't as good as the first time, but I enjoy that it can be so filthy while also remaining completely G-rated. The crab sketch was, like the content of it, a predictable build-up to pretty much nothing, and while I liked the fast-talking 1940's sketch, its ending felt weird and abrupt - or, in other words, non-existent. But overall it was a decent episode; I've seen far worse. And we even got a surprise cameo from Nicolas Cage!

Hero of the Week: Zooey Deschanel on Saturday Night Live, for not being the unfunny one in ANY of the sketches.

Douchebag of the Week: Coach Roz from Glee, because there's only one Sue Sylvester.

Curb Your Enthusiasm - Season Seven

I was excited to see this season, because this is the one with the much anticipated Seinfeld reunion. However - and this is only good news in retrospect after watching the entire season - it sort of takes a back seat to the regular Curb shenanigans. It wouldn't be entirely accurate to call it "The Seinfeld Season", because the reunion stuff is only present for about half of the episodes, and the reunion itself is seen in maybe two of them. But that is the very nature of the concept; Larry wanted a unique way to do a Seinfeld reunion without it being exploitative and lame like other reunion shows are, and so while it is a running storyline throughout the season, it's not the focus of it.

To me, season five has been the funniest season so far, but this one comes very close. While I am a Seinfeld fan, I thought all of the non-Seinfeld segments were funnier than any of the Seinfeld ones, but I can't say it wasn't cool seeing the characters back again. No reference was made to their time in prison, but the new scenes were perhaps meant to serve as more of a finale replacement, even though they do take place many years later. The original finale served as a better ending to the series, though, because the Curb one just felt like a regular episode done in modern day, and not an ending at all. Anyway, apart from that, this season was more of Larry's mistakes, misunderstandings, and offenses, which is always comedy gold. I don't recall it in previous seasons, but they seem to have started an arc where Jeff is regularly cheating on Susie. It makes me like him less, but then it is Susie. And I wasn't really a fan of the scene with Larry trying to convince Michael Richards to do the reunion while Michael is distracted by nude artistic photos on the restaurant walls, because it didn't seem to really go anywhere other than later having Michael be slightly surprised that a reunion is happening. It was an anticlimactic payoff. But it was fantastic to see Phillip Baker Hall return as Larry's doctor, Catherine O'Hara as Marty Funkhouser's crazy sister, and a really pointless but funny cameo by Ben Affleck in a role that would have been played by an extra, because all he did was walk by.

Best Episode: I think the first two episodes were among the funniest ("Funkhouser's Crazy Sister" and "Vehicular Fellatio"), and I really enjoyed "The Black Swan" for its crazy murder cover-up story, but I'd say overall the most satisfying was probably "Officer Krupke", in which Larry has his pants stolen, offends some kids who make bad lemonade, covers for Jeff with a silly lie, suspects Cheryl of participating in a threesome without him, and encounters a cop named after a character in a musical. Also, Ben Affleck walks by.

Weeds - Season Four

After compelling second and third seasons, season four receded back to the quality of season one. This wasn't necessarily due to poor writing; it was more to do with the direction they chose to take the story. Having Nancy and her family skip town and go into hiding in a nice little beach town by the Mexican border just didn't offer much in the way of excitement, tension, danger, plot twists, or cliffhangers. In general it was still entertaining and funny, and they managed to keep most of the characters in the show (except for Conrad and Heylia, but I don't particularly miss them), but it feels like a let-down when the last two seasons were hitting their stride with constant cliffhangers. It may also be that Nancy's new boss, Guillermo, is not as intimidating as U-Turn was last season, and her relationship with Mayor/Kingpin Esteban didn't have the same sense of underlying danger as her secret marriage to the DEA agent in season two. I think the season picked up slightly after Albert Brooks's character left, because until then it focused too heavily on the Botwin family.

But there were still fun moments to enjoy. Nancy uncovering the secret tunnel under the maternity store (blurting "What the F?", which somehow was funnier than actually swearing) was a landmark moment, and Doug and Andy starting an immigrant-smuggling business was great because those two doofuses work well together comedically. And I was a fan of the title sequences this season (no more awful theme song covers!), from the classic one in the premiere shown one last time - but with everything in Agrestic now on fire - to the new format, which is to write the title on a significant object from the episode and have something in the image morph into a marijuana leaf. I'm a nerd for that kind of thing, so I actually looked forward to those titles each episode.

Best Episode: "No Man is Pudding", in which Celia comes to stay and the Botwins have a family dinner where everybody looks less than healthy, Andy realizes how poorly the illegal immigrants are treated, and Guillermo gives Nancy a seemingly boring and average job with more to it below the surface (literally).

This Week in Television - Jan. 29-Feb. 3, 2012

Once Upon a Time
I don't know how we were supposed to sympathize with the genie when he seemed to only love the queen for her looks. I felt worse for the king because he was nice enough to free him and it got him stabbed in the back. I saw Emma's failure coming; it was too easy (and, in the series, too soon) for that to be able to stop the mayor. I'm wondering if this mysterious writer guy was the original author of the fairy tale book and has come to finish it or something.

Glee
Rather than go on another rant, perhaps I should just say this: Worst. Episode. Ever. And that's saying a lot when it comes to Glee.

New Girl
I thought Julia was a more fun person in her scenes with Nick last episode, but this week there weren't any signs of that as her being mean was a driving force behind the story. It didn't quite feel consistent, but I did laugh at the bathroom-crying jokes. Winston's storyline was a little dull, but at least it was a bit of character development for him. Schmidt's parts weren't so much a storyline as one very simple joke, which worked best at the end when Nick revealed how little he washes things.

30 Rock
I don't think anyone will disagree that the best line in this episode was "It's the ultimate game... Jack Donaghy playing with himself... It's a Jack-off." I thought Liz using Jack's negotiation tactics against him was an awesomely fun episode idea, and it didn't disappoint. However, Tracy and Jenna at the bar mitzvah didn't work as well for me. It just felt like one joke gone on too long, and a potential platform for character growth that probably won't actually result in any growth from either of them. And I was actually kind of looking forward to the possibility of Kenneth having a different job at NBC, just to change things up, but I guess that was a cop-out, too.

Parks and Recreation
I almost thought this episode was a rerun when it opened with "Galentine's Day", which a season 2 episode also did, but then Leslie mentioned that April was married and my confusion became delight at the show's continuity. Sometimes when The Office does a certain event like that, we never see it again even if it's supposed to be happening regularly. Chris DJing the party with sad music was predictable, but it was interesting seeing him in a depressed state because it's so contrary to what we're used to from him. Ron, Andy, and Ben as the clue-hunting team was awesome; especially Ron's transition from hating riddles (or at least pretending to) to outright loving them and having so much of a blast that he requests a clue hunt from Leslie for his birthday. I kind of hope we get to see that now. Ann and Tom was a pretty big surprise; I know they were using the idea of Ann and Chris reuniting as a red herring, but because it seemed apparent so early in the episode I thought it was just going to be a very predictable plot point. I like being surprised, so that was an interesting twist, and while it was unclear whether that relationship will continue (it ended with Ann remarking that it was a mistake, but that could be interpreted as a joke), it might be fun if it does. Also very interesting that we've had two episodes in a row where April shows compassion for someone who annoys her. Something's going on there!

The Office
I think the whole jury duty thing was a little over the top, and the web of lies became excrutiating rather than funny. The better part of the episode was actually Angela's baby, with Kevin gleefully calling it "Little Kevin" and Oscar being so amused at her being involved in two shams at once (the gay senator husband and the non-premature baby) that he didn't know which thread to follow first.

Up All Night
It's always fun to see Dennis Duffy from 30 Rock, but once again this show still has trouble making their guest stars funny. The brotherly competitiveness is nothing remotely new to television, and I think I've clarified by now that extended jokes lasting the whole episode are a big drag unless it's a really, really funny joke. This show is only bringing the occasional laugh now, but when it's not funny, it's not excruciatingly unfunny, so I still find it watchable because I enjoy Arnett and Applegate. But I do wish it were funnier than it is.

Fringe
I can't believe it took them four seasons for Astrid to be so heavily featured in an episode, but I'm glad that episode now exists. It was oddly fascinating seeing Alt-Astrid as something of a semi-autistic, semi-childlike savant with no apparent dark side to her, and Jasika Nicole killed that performance. But the scenes with Walter and Fauxlivia felt off. He has no reason to despise her in this timeline if she couldn't have seduced and deceived a non-existent Peter. With two death prediction cases in a row, I thought they were going to come back to Olivia's impending death, but instead they showed us a piece of Observer technology and revealed an Observer's name. I'll take it.

Hero of the Week: Jack from 30 Rock, for both winning and losing the "Jack-off" with grace.

Douchebag of the Week: No one really stood out, but I guess I'll say Dwight from The Office. His glee over the possibility of getting Jim fired was a little annoying.

50/50

Impressions before seeing it
I like Seth and Joseph, and it looked like one of those nice feel good comedies.

How was it?
I don't know how well it goes over when people refer to this as a "cancer comedy", because it's a delicate subject for some. If this movie took it too seriously, it might be considered too morbid, and if it didn't take it seriously enough, it might be considered insensitive. Much like the title, it appropriately balances that tone somewhere in the middle. It doesn't make fun of cancer - in fact I think it illustrates well how downright scary it is when your chances don't look good - and it's not a film about being optimistic in spite of it. Nor does it blatantly try to shoehorn jokes in just to spread funniness around an unfunny subject. It's just here to paint a picture of what someone might go through, and the funny situations that, strangely, do arise from having cancer. For the most part, it's not a laugh out loud comedy, but more the kind that makes you smile because you believe it. Ultimately, I think what really makes this worth watching is the chemistry between the characters. Rogen and Levitt made for fun BFFs (though I often find Rogen fun to watch anyway), and Levitt's scenes with Anna Kendrick, who plays his quirky, inexperienced therapist, had even more charm to them. Anjelica Huston was a tad annoying as the overprotective mother, but it was an entirely truthful character.

Recommendation
For anyone who went through a cancer struggle, 50/50 might feel too close to home for them, which could be good or bad depending on your attitude. But personally I think the movie's tone is perfect for its subject matter, and it's very enjoyable and heartfelt without having too much emotion at either end of the spectrum. How it didn't get a Best Picture nomination at the Oscars this year (they only picked 9, it's not like they didn't have room for one more!), or at the very least Best Screenplay, is beyond me.