Dollhouse Season 2 : Vows

The naysayers should have long been converted, but to be specific it should have been clear around A Say in the House of Love, even after Man on the Street and Needs, that Dollhouse was the the boldest piece of network television on air(along with Lost of course). This was the episode where Dollhouse truly showed it could more then match it's conceptual ambitions. Later eps like the two partner Brier Rose and Omega, underscored this and then came along Epitaph One which raised the bar even higher. So there was a lot riding on this second season premiere, to see if Whedon would compromise his vision, or if he would go full on with what had been developed to date.

Well it should be said first off that Vows is the best season premier under Whedon's producer/director eye since the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode Anne, and so it goes without saying that it's vastly superior to the C Grade ep Ghost which officially opened the Dollhouse season earlier this year (as well it was the worst episode of television Whedon has ever directed). But it should also be said that Whedon and company weren't going to dive deep down in the rabbit hole of Epitaph One just yet, just part way with regards to that eps revelations of character. Vows is at once a standalone Dollhouse episode, in theory the type which was so botched and lacking in originality for the first 5 episodes of Season 1, but Whedon has improved his game since, so what we get is a well developed idea involving Echo evolving within the field due to her circumstances(and Eliza Dusku matching it). The client here turns out to be Ballard himself using the Dollhouse as a necessary evil in order to take down a top arms kingpin played by fellow BSG alum Jamie Bamber. Bamber bringing genuine menace and a human side in the face of betrayal despite what could have been a one note role (see most of the first haft of last season for examples of "the evil male client"). In a sequence that lives up to Epitaph One aesthetic break off, we witness Echo 's imprint on her wedding night making passionate love while Ballard listens in, sexually and emotional shaken by the whole incident. It's one of the series most striking set pieces to date, with out of focus framing and tight close ups, sharp inter-cutting between both Ballard and Echo, a poignant musical accompaniment, conveying the degrees to which Ballard has become emotionally involved with Echo/Caroline.

Taking this even further is the post credits scene with Topher where we begin with him waking from his bed, then the camera follows him out of the barren room and halls out into the bright reds of the Dollhouse proper. This scene underlines how Topher has no life outside of his work here, his involvement with the rest of the human race mostly consists of programing them to be who he/client/Rossum wants them to be. It's a striking moment that lives up to Topher's unexpectedly moving scenes from Epitaph One where we witnessed a man's sanity having collapsed under the crushing guilt of what he had done. The smirking jerk still exists, but he's been given depth now (one of the few letdowns from Season 1 was how they gave Dewitt and Dominic greater complexity and empathy but just disdain for this character). With these two eps I can see Topher becoming one of the great Whedon sociopaths, up there with Spike, Lindsey and Jane.

The most important development in the episode however (and it ties in nicely with Topher and Boyd) is with the character of Dr Saunder's/Whiskey, and it should be mentioned that Amy Acker continues to show that's she's one of the most criminally unappreciated actors around (no actor perhaps except Garrieet Dillahunt in Deadwood has manged to convey two separate characters so convincingly like Acker did as Fred/Illeria in Angel), here Acker plays as women who's own grasp of self is falling apart, she wants to an individual, and not an active and yet on some level she yearns for that simplicity, on another level she's disgusted that Tohper whom she despises was responsible for creating her personality. In the episodes key scene Whiskey puts the moves on Topher to prove a point about her individuality, however ends up feeling worse cause she isn't really herself just filling a body with another person's personality. The whole scene takes place in Topher computer backroom with both characters have an involving if sad discussion about the nature of human indentity and what it means to evolve from your initial programing. We see two characters who have felt self loathing for so long yet haven't really shared it, they come together even in their dislike of the other.

Whedon has started off his season on a striking high note with these scenes, but also of note is the introduction of Alexis Denisoff as a crusading senator (and Boyd's dress down of his origins), Boyd's interest in Whiskey and his concern over Ballard; Ballards conversation with Dewitt (honestly I love it when these characters discuss moral fine points), a nice touch with Sierra and Victor joining together with both dolls drawn to each other despite attempts to keep them apart and yes again Echo and Ballard. Be it the great moment when Ballard called up Echo's memory's from the great fight scene in Man on the Street, which in turn led to a pretty decent action sequence. But best of all was where both characters make a pact to help Echo get back to her identity as Caroline. In this powerful closing sequence we witness what's promising to be one of Joss Whedon's most moving love stories (and one that's cirtainly filled when some interesting grey areas for Ballard), two people choosing to stand against a wall of corporate indifference and greed, to help her rediscover her singular identity.

Mad Men Season 3 Recap

***Spoilers Ahead***


It still shocks me that there are people who don't like the third season of Mad Men, I mean to be fair to date there hasn't been an episode as complete as The Jet Set or Three Sundays or the first seasons Marriage of Figaro, but you can't say that there have been any weak episodes either. Indeed these episodes are in their way as ambitious as their predecessors. Personally My Old Kentucky Home would be my favorite to date, and I have high regard for the others as well. The comedy has been more pronounced and finds it greatest release in the cultural/business war between the British and Americans at Sterling Cooper, and it gets progressively more hilarious with each episode. Other achievements of the season to date have been the development of Sally Draper as a character, the arrival of Betty's father and his subsequent demise, the use of social touchstones like the self immolation of the Buddhist monk in Vietnam and the death of Medgar Evers, and Weiner and company's continued fascination with the identity's people construct privately and socially to deal with everyday life. Simultaneously Mad Men's rich gallery of female characters Joan, Betty and Peggy have taken fascinating developments, with Joan's realization that the American dream she's acquired is a trap, Peggy's further exploration of sex and self, and Betty becoming stronger if more superficial in her family life, while her and Don try and repair their marriage.

One quip it's that Bryan Batt hasn't been given enough to do after his excellence start in the premiere Out of Town, still his jaw dropping moment of fey to his wife in The Arrangements and his subsequent conversation with Don were excellent scenes. As well Betty's holy shit I'm stoned moments in My Old Kentucky Home were a little too on the nose, although her realization from the experience was wonderfully written.

Jet Set and Out of Town director Phil Abraham did some expressive work in The Fog, especially with Betty's hospital experience and that final shot was devastating. My Old Kentucky Home took brutal look at the sycophantic nature of Manhattan social life, with Roger's attempts at entertainment offensive and blatantly disregarding of the social changes he can't grasp, and Pete and his wife making a moving if ultimately sad attempt at showmanship with their Charleston. Guy Walks into a Bar was the perhaps the boldest in terms of plotting to date, with writers Robin Veith, Matthew Weiner and director Lesli Linka Glatter making the biggest and boldest attempt at historical/cultural symbolism to date with bloody black humor in tow. Of course in the end it's not Mad Men's social commentary be it subtle or broad that strikes me about the series as it's universal portrayal of human beings trying to adapt to cultural shift. Sometimes it's hilarious(Paul Kinsey being the most pretentious and pathetic example) and sometimes the way the individuals walk that line between self and their own social constructs is brilliantly realized(Don and Peggy). In the end perhaps the most painfully tragic characters are either the people who are out touch completely (Roger), or the ones who have the potential for more but whose fear and immaturity won't allow it (Pete).

There's much to look forward to with Don's continued relationship with Conrad Hilton to be developed, the Sterling marriage and it's likely ruin, Sally Draper's potential intellectual awakening or psychological destruction depending on her parenting, and the potential release for Salvatore whose own heterosexual persona is on the brink of collapse. But it's Don and Betty's attempts are reconciliation that are the most moving, as two people despite their relative unhappiness try to achieve success in the marriage by means which will never truly be compatible with who they really are. They both love each other, but in truth they don't know each other and for every affirmation of love(the ending of My Old Kentucky Home) there is also the sad fact of his past failures(the ending of Out of Town) but beyond that Don's attempts at spiritual fulfillment in Love Among the Ruins, where in place of his philandering, shows a character trying to make his life work and finding some degree of satisfaction.

Ali: Fear Eats the Soul

There are some films you just have to call perfect, among them Earrings of Madame De.., 8/12, McCabe & Mrs Miller, An Autumn Afternoon(sadly still the only Ozu I've seen), Rules of the Game etc... they're perfectly constructed in every respect, in the direction, in the scripting and above all when you experience them you've witnessed something of an encapsulation of the human experience. Sure there are great works that for all their brilliance and depth of feeling are not perfect (Vertigo isn't the most perfect in terms of script construction, not that I care it's the work of film that speaks strongest to me about the nature of loneliness and love) but those other works are the ones you have to look at in complete awe.

Which brings me to Rainer Werner Fassbinder's Ali Fear Eats the Soul. Every shot has a purpose, every movement of the actor's holds a weight, every line uttered holds a simple yet complex poetry about the truths of human nature. I've rarely seen a film with such confidence, with such understanding of the mediums potential. Ali a loose remake of Douglas Sirk's 1955 work All That Heaven Allows, resolves around similar truths with regards to society and it's cold oppressive constraints, but Ali is bolder not just in it's subject manner post war racism, general xenophobia and class envy, but in the way it says more with even less stylistically then it's inspiration. It goes beyond that film with Fassbinder completely exposing the sad truth of these characters lives with a compassionate for those characters at it's center(although Sirk ever the mater of irony recognized that truth in his own way with his glossy portrait of life looking in on human beings). It's Fassbinder's complete grasp of his medium, something he achieved so early in his career, that create a work that managed to even surpass his mentor.

The opening scene is so strikingly theatrical, as Fassbinder cuts to the cold stare of apathy towards lead character Emmi (movingly realized by the great Brigette Mira), an alien among another generation, who's seeking refuge from a rain fall(or in terms of great melodrama a life of loneliness). These are two shots that communicate a sadness, that show how people cut themselves off from others, in this case creating barriers based on age, class and race. The dialogue plainly reinforces these truths without needless underlining. Later when Emmi wakes up, and turns around shocked to see Ali in her bed the horror, surprise, and joy in her face is powerfully conveyed in several shots, subsequently when they embrace in the same scene, I can honestly say I've never seen the human desire for companionship as beautifully realized.

When Ali and Emmi are lunching in the park alone among the yellow chairs, a color which highlights their displacement in German society, Fassbinders dolly's around his character's isolate them from the world as they cope with the wave of disdain directed at them. The sad truth throughout Fear Eats the Soul is that prejudice pierces their honorable and sincere desire to be happy, sometimes in ways that neither of them grasp. When they come back from vacation Emmi is more then happy to accept the way people have put away their extreme prejudice to curry favors from her. Her son who had preciously acted out against her for her marriage to Ali(in an devastating scene which I'll get to later) wants her to take care of his child in the afternoons, the local shop owner does so to get back her business and her neighbors and friends do it when they realize they can use Ali as a workhorse and as a object of sexual desire. In a span of a evening, Ali is completely distraught by the way Emmi has slowly begun to unknowingly dehumanize him in the face of society's fake acceptance of their relationship.

Earlier in the film when they both go to their wedding supper, Ali's racial status in Berlin is clearly called to attention when Emmi carelessly brings him to Hitler's favorite dining spot, a distinction he doesn't grasp either beyond it's source of national pride for her and not the xenophobic legacy she unintentionally celebrates(she mentions her party status earlier in the film to Ali). When they go into the restaurant Fassbinder shows their separation from the rest of society once again by showing them cut off by a door frame(a recurring visual motif), then when he cuts to the inside of the room we witness the cold stare of the waiter who later brutally dissects her lower class by inquiring medium or rare to her dish, a difference she doesn't grasp. When Fassbinder cuts back to the same shot of them from the door frame, they seem even more removed, and not only from the rest of the world but strangely from each other.

When Ali and Emmi announce their marriage to her children, the dolly across their faces creates a wall of indifference, Fassbinder brilliantly cutting away any individuality or empathy from them. When her son acts out by smashing in her television(doing so in just the right manner of childishness and rushed aggression) the effect is brutal, the mood of discomfort and disdain made so vivid. Few directors in history can go for such a broad portrayal of prejudice(Sam Fuller and of course Sirk where two such directors), call attention to it and then make it dramatically powerful.

When Ali looks for comfort in the body of the local bartender, Fassbinder again uses a door frame to center him while he sits on her bed, he's completely removed from the outside world, even in this one place he comes to find a degree of comfort against his feelings of shame and anger.

Fassbinder powerfully captures moments of realization and reflection from his characters, as well as using the camera to capture their isolation from the surroundings social stratus. Using the length of a bar room to convey emotional distance, the use of a mirror to reflect how the world views their relationship, a window to convey the fear that Emmi feels after hearing her friends racist remarks against foreigners.

In the end when Ali and Emmi reunite, they engage in the same routine they used when they awkwardly held each other for the first time on that dance floor. But Fassbinder isn't above using a dramatic convention as a means to an end. So when when they find each other at the end, the stress that the past events of the film have had their effect on Ali as he collapses in pain from his ulcer. It's with this narrative turn as well as the brutal and tragic final images that you realize for all the love these characters hold, the cruelty of the world will never let Ali live, and will never allow Emmi to stop crying.

Faces

**Spoilers Ahead"

In Faces the characters are exposed for all their pretenses, with their masks on, or as in the title "faces" barely composed, each close up capturing a flinch, a sigh, the movement of the eyes, at the instance of social awkwardness or emotional take over.

The first scene establishes the arena where these characters will navigate, the upper middle class. Post title we're witness to people trying desperately to have a good time, to feel young again, to hold away the pain of their emotionally stunted lives.

Faces revolves around a series of such scenes, people trying to find composure through drink or sex, through bluster and laughter to feel something other then sadness. They put on smiles, they act out like children, they say "I like you, and ""I love you", but it's never taken seriously.

Usually silence communicates true feeling, or in Faces most striking moments where inane chit chat is abruptly taken over by impatience, fear, or anger, and when the characters finally say what the feel. The most powerful instance is in the final scene with Lynn Carlin and John Marley where she tells him she doesn't love him, all the play acting and put on's, are cut to the bone.
All there is are two people both long experienced in the others ways, who accept the plain and sad truth of their lives.

Like John Cassavettes A Woman Under the Influence, Faces revolves around a dysfunctional marriage. But unlike that masterpiece the real power comes when we see the characters go their own way by mid film, Richard Forst to his prostitute lover, and Mrs Forst out on the town with her other stuck up friends, each one of them as sad and lonely as her.

Cassavettes is one of the most generous directors in film history, he gives to each of his characters and consequently his actors, be they the two johns that take up at Jenine's place( striking in their similarities between Richard and his friend Fred Draper from earlier in the film) and between Maria and her friends, the saddest being Florence the middle aged woman who hangs herself over Chet in the most embarrassing and desperate way.

Cassavettes draws out scenes with his characters engaged in endless chatter, trying to be polite, until someone goes to far or someone just loses patience. The social fabric breaks, if only later to be repaired. When Fred Draper attempts to dance with Jeanne, he realizes slowly that Richard and Jeanne are with each other in the moment, the haunting look on his face when he realizes he's been left out, the festivities broken up by the realization of one mans loneliness throws the whole scene in a new direction.

Cassavette gives more weight to the close up then the occasionally over rated Ingmar Bergman, as well Cassavettes unlike Bergman has a way of making his characters neurotic struggles compelling, largely because unlike Bergman he doesn't has his characters discuss psycho-battle or resort to over wrought symbolism to achieve his points. He provides his actors with room to maneuver yet even the most stretched out scene ultimately has a purpose with respect to how he views his characters and their milieu.

When Maria and her friends talk with Chet at her place, it doesn't play as a cross cultural comedy with the unhip ladies and the cool player, but women either middle aged or on their way there, feeling very uncomfortable in their own skins. Cassavettes is a master at creating unbearable tension between his characters in these sequences. They'll digress, the tones will change, but the underlying feelings for them remain, despite how they try and hide them. When Richard is faced with his double in the harem, his insistence on his youth and his individuality against the bourgeois establishment he belongs is forced.

The whole encounter he has with Jeanne is just a reprieve, in the morning he's willing to go home to his wife, but his actions have had massive consequences for her, and she has found a way out of their destructive lifestyle.

Alphaville

**Spoliers**

Alphaville is Jean Luc Godard's deeply felt and poetic vision of the arena between imagination and logic, between emotion and the cold of death, between conformity and the boundlessness of the intellect. Lemmy Caution (film icon Eddie Constantine) the hero of Alphaville works his way into a society which has been removed of any semblance of humanity, wherein Godard lays waste to notions of modern propriety with a moral force that few directors could ever match.

Godard presents the perils of a sterile existence, specifically the death of art as a fact or even it's existence as an idea in the mind, and with it the possibility of human expression. It's demise is what fills Caution, Godard's proxy, with such sadness and anger.

Aided by long time collaborator Raoul Coutard, Godard sees the industrial and chic landscapes of mid 60's Paris for their sterility, and loss of human potential. He takes these existing buildings and views them as an outward extensions of society's own desire for order. Alphaville, like it's central character, is a work of intellectual caution, but from Godard it never hits you over the head with his central ideas, indeed for the melancholy that pervades every inch of this film and for it's clear political intentions, it is like the best of his sixties films an active engagement of ideas, images and words, brimming with a vibrancy even in it's stark black and white palette. Even that horrific image that pervades the film, the ever consistent flashing light, uniform in it's need to solve human problems the best to rid itself of them, allows Godard to playfully pull at our relationship to technology and our very illogical desire to be logical above all things.

Like his best films Alphaville is a work where human truths are engaged, where art becomes the best tool against fascism, and in tune with this period of Godard's career, it finds it's inspiration in American noir and gangster cinema, where pulp violence becomes a tool of rebellion, and literature the source of the spirit and it's renewal among the "mutants." In Caution's engagement/interrogation with Alpha 60, there lies the debate of society between moral truth and simple societal order, with him displaying his humanity and his biography for all it's human flaws, intricacy's and contradictions against Alpha's need for clarity and the absolute.

When Caution engages the daughter of Alphaville's creator (played by Anna Karina) we see the artist trying to bring life to the mind, to speak truth in the form of art and through art the overriding desire to love and feel empathy. In this scene Godard engages the notions of romanticism, sensuality and their place in love as he cuts between a series of gorgeous two shots of Karina and Constantine, as man and woman, of both mind and body. When Caution sparks her sense of identity with reflections on poetry and the cultural significance of certain cities, Godard's engagement on the nature of memory(both personal and cultural) is as powerful as it has ever been.

The most horrific yet powerful images in Alphaville come when we witness the core truth of this society, that human inspiration or feeling is rewarded with a bullet to the back, and as people fall into the blood soaked pool with the politicos of Alphaville in attendance, we witness death treated as sport, as national pastime. We witness human history in this striking bit of satire, and the areas of time where mankind has occasionally rid itself of the constraints of that true absolute, human conscience.

Publish Post

The Tall T

In the opening shot of The Tall T we're presented with Randolph Scott, the most compelling vision of laconic masculinity in perhaps all of American film (his only equal being John Wayne). He's navigating the barren terrain of the American west and in the films of Budd Boetticher this is without question the most brutal place a man can find himself in. It's where the ugly side of human nature comes out, divorced from the trappings of civilization, and where men work it out physically and psychologically with their counterparts.

Seen in the distance, the owner of the farm Scott's character is riding towards, mistakes the man for a negative force, something which he's been conditioned to do having lived in this area for so long. It's only when he gets closer does he recognize a friend, something his son recognizes from his horse. . Burt Kennedy's script is full of such moral allowances, where characters are regarded as one thing only to be revealed as something else. These shadings add up to one of Boetticher's best works, one which characters placed in a circumstance that allow them to act according to their own natures and not by the conventions that we the viewer or the other characters place on them.

The trio of villains are the most fascinating in this respect, especially Richard Boone's reluctant sociopath, a man who yearns for a more law biding life, but doesn't know anything else but being an outlaw. It's classic Boetticher, Kennedy and yes story author Elmore Leonard (Leonard's 3:10 to Yuma story also revolved around the mutual respect of a outlaw and a rancher). The characters are allowed to breathe, to exist in their routines and then they fall into each others stratospheres. Each one of them playing a game of brinkmanship with the other, who can shoot the best, who can ride faster and yes who has a greater lease on life based on their choices. His characters are either outlaws, lawmen or cowboys but regardless the men in the films of the Boetticher/Kennedy body of work are among the craftiest men to ever appear on screen.

Kennedy's screenplay revolves largely around a series of conversations between Scott and Boone as both men come to respect each other on some level they can't quite admit(at least not fully in Scott's case). They occupy a brutal battleground of wills, where the threat of physical violence hangs strong over everything, and where the right use of words can be as deadly as any bullet. In the end the hero and his new found woman are faced with the need to survive by any means if only for survivals sake and the "villain" faced with a new chance, knowing nothing else rides to his death here coming in the form of a shotgun blast to the face.

Through the Olive Trees

Abbas Kiarostami's 1995 film is a work fascinated by landscapes be they hills, fields, patches of trees, roads and paths. Specifically to the roads, this film like his later work Taste of Cherry takes place on the road, from the POV of the truck, or cutting between two people talking or simply from the side mirror witnessing people and things pass by. Occasionally his camera simply observes a vehicle moving from point a to b, around one side of a hill to another, from one turn of the road to the next. Kiarostami finds poetry in the process of moving, the way a vehicle will appear from a field in the distance largely hidden but occasionally seen from the trees. Most of the central conversations of this film occur on the road in some form or another, and the filmmakers shown here utilizes the displaced community for their film by stopping to talk or offering rides to the residents.

In the scene following the credits Kiarostami points to his film Where is My Friends Home, which is the first part of a trilogy that includes this film and Life and Nothing More. The shot seamlessly travels one section of the area to next, and the film is a series of travels from one place to the next, from the home of an actor, to the set they're shooting on, to the tents they're staying at etc. There are three sections of the film which plays divorced of this, most strikingly when the lead actor Hossein goes looking for the women he loves in a local graveyard filled with people still grieving over loss of life that came from the earthquake. He's denied her hand by her grandmother due to his social status, and for this village it refers to his lack of residence.

In the films gorgeous opening sequence, Kiarostami's film proxy is in the process of auditioning young women to play a young villager who was displaced in the earthquake. The camera moves from face to face, cutting from the director making assessments of their features, their residence, and they naturally perform for the director and in effect for Kiarostami camera as they want to part of the film experience.

Most everybody encountered here is displaced and the fictional director himself keeps making the gaffe of asking people for their address when they live in tents or in the fields. In one striking shot from the inside of a truck, two school boys tell the directors assistant that they're going to school and they don't need a ride as it's just up the road. When the vehicle moves forward we first see the child running along caught in the side mirror, by the time they're past the camera viewpoint, in the same shot(now a long shot going from a medium shot) we see the local school children gathered near a tent. The social makeup for this community is important part of the films fabric, the fictional director(and consequently Kiarostami) are fascinated by the people and their rural customs, to better capture in his film, dealing with the same subject. He's auditioning non professionals for their experiences, and here in the final scenes life and art really do coincide to comment on each other.

In the meantime human experience gets it's place in the camera, with people describing custom whenever inquired to. In many ways this is a comedy of persistence, but manages to be funny and sad right up to it's triumphant final shot, one which captures the human will to find happiness against the forces be they nature, or in the case of Hossein, class and education or lack thereof.

In the films most moving scene, which manage to provide one of the most fascinating depictions of film making that I've ever seen and show the lead actors mirroring their fictional characters in a life that could be. Through the Olive Trees is as much about the power of cinema to communicate the degrees of human experience as it is about what the camera cannot capture, the mystery of human interaction divorced from the visual or simply again as in the final shot, from afar.

Kiarostami's rejection of standard film narrative is as always exhilarating, moving a length of a scene in long shot then abruptly moving to medium shot, or documenting social details like the great ice tea scene, or simply denying the viewer the needed close up to go along with interesting voice. He's an artist who can command the viewers attention of his actors by not even showing them, by not even providing us what we think we want to see with a conditioned ways of watching film. Like Rossellini, Cassavettes, or Godard, Kiarostami is an artist who reinvents the film lexicon for his own purpose and as always with these artists it ends up being a rewarding experience.

Primer

Shane Carruth's admirable mood piece mines the paranoia inherent in the idea of time travel, it presents the concept in a real world base where he can evoke the feelings of entrapment that come from these characters, when faced with moral choices and revelations that ultimately leave them little room to live their lives. The most powerful scenes usually involve what we can't even see, what remains described or just off screen. Unfortunately Carruth's narrative turns, specifically where the universe keeps folding onto itself for these characters, ultimately comes off as ineffective. Carruth's perspective is cold and insular, which is in tune with the world these characters exist in yet lacks dimension.
He manages to effectively detail this world of middle class educated engineers but his own perspective on their abilities and the ultimate trials they face seems removed of depth. He manages to show the weariness and numbness that go with working a 9-5 while trying to pursue your interest, but his central characters ultimate Machiavellian plots run pointless. This is Carruth showing the destructive path that unethical science can lead to, but it loses impact in it's final scenes. What hurts the film above all is the loop of a-b that one character describes, something which also applies to the execution, as in the end the films various permutations on the central idea are devoid of real emotional resonance. It's interesting in the abstract but Primer, however conceptually original as science fiction, is ultimately lacking.

Farmington Favorites : Top Five Shield Episodes

***SPOILERS AHEAD***

The Shield wasn't as seamless with it's narrative as The Wire, and it didn't carry quite the same aesthetic shock of Homicide or Hill Sheet Blues when those shows first aired, however by series end it had more then matched those works. Alot of it had to do with the great performances of Michael Chiklis, Walton Goggins, Jay Karnes, Benito Martinez, Michael Jace (the most underrated member of the cast) and the wonderful CCH Pounder, as well as strong guest work from Forrest Whitaker, Anthony Anderson and Glen Close. Aided by these actors, and strong direction of Guy Ferrnland, Dean White, Scott Brazil and Clark Johnson and the teleplays of Kurt Sutter, Glen Mazzara, Scott Rosenbaum and creator Shawn Ryan, you had a television narrative that charted the effect of corruption on one police district over a four year period(or seven seasons). The brutality of the violence depicted never once came off as trivial or casual, and Ryan had an eye for the ugly social truths of low end LA, be they class, race and drugs. Like The Wire, The Shield dealt with the nature of the American bureaucracy, it's just that it's wasn't the central subject just one of the sad realities that kept a corrupt cop on the street for 4 years past his end date. Despite dealing with The Barn, The Shield was very much about Vic Mackey and his Strike team and how for seven seasons while other cops were trying to exercise the law, Mackey and his borderline goons are attempting to bend it to their own means. Of course it started simple enough, the goal keeping the streets safe by making massive moral compromises, but by the end of the pilot we know these characters(Vic and Shane anyway) were only trying to save their necks and even profit from their actions. From Pilot to Family Business The Shield told a story of how your sins will always haunt you, and the fallout kept getting worse and worse with each consecutive episode. The Strike Team characters have no escape only reprieves from the inevitable. Of course in the end The Shield showed how the good cops kept doing their job, from tolerating the corruption to finally speaking out and doing something about it. For all the tragedy in the Shield there is the affirmation that things can work out for those who do the right thing.

Mum S3Ep5

At it's center is one of the most shocking scenes in basic cable history, with David Aceveda being sexually assaulted by a low level gang banger. It's an act that in true Shield fashion was the end result of the selfish actions of the Strike Team, in the process of covering themselves from the fallout of the money train. Also in true Shield fashion the sub plots play nicely onto the central arc, in one old women are being assaulted by a serial rapist and based on their understandable shame choose to keep it to themselves (this paralleling Aceveda's own refusal to report his rape), and a uni case involving a stalker whose has been allowed to practice his form of assault though several relationships due to the silence of the victims and the ineffectiveness of the bureaucracy he was working within. Both plots serve to underline how silence in the face of
corruption only cause it to keep getting worse, in this case the actions of the Strike Team contaminate every inch of The Barn and the consequences here brutally land in the face of their Captain.

Patricide (S7Ep8) - The bottom finally falls out in the most intense way possible here in Patricide . All bets are off for these characters as self-preservation is set out once and for all as the order of the day. Mackey doesn't have the law on his side by episodes end , Shane is a fugitive, and the truth is this close to coming out for all to see. Of course it's not the first time these guys have been on the precipice (and season 7 from the very first episode made us aware of how drastic things had become) but you knew there would be no wiggle room here at least not in this Barn for Vic or Shane. No amount of intimidation, charm, or street smarts will save them now, they're without a country. In one of the those holy shit moments that The Shield has always done so well, Shane sees his number his up and makes a run for it out of the Barn, with Vic, Julian and Ronnie in fast pursuit. The dirty laundry here has never been so far out there as in this moment. So in the final moments when Claudette makes her feelings on Mackey's actions clear, her physical position up on high really does carry it's weight. Things are really going to change, but we still have half a season to go.

Pilot (S1Ep1) - I should start with the end, which laid out for the viewer exactly who it was we the viewer was going to be watching on an 24 minute basis. Not good cops making ambiguous choices, but cop killers and drug dealers. With that final image of Mackey over the body of Terry Crowley, you know the man behind the mask.Of course after several seasons you'll care about him for all his flaws, and you'll enjoy the bad ass moment or two, but beneath all that ,the show never gave up on this central truth regarding his ultimate character. But along with that awesome moment of truth, we also see the show expertly establishing several of it's central themes, the first how good cops co exist with corrupt cops, and how their function is utilized whenever the law is out of reach, and how they are regarded with either silent approval and/or disdain. David Aceveda makes a compromise here, one which he'll continue to make in one form or another in the series, just as the after effects of the Strike Team acts will affect each character negatively right until series finale Family Business.


Postpartum (S5Ep11)- Season 5 masterfully built up to this powerful final episode, where tragic misunderstanding and fatal character flaws lead into perhaps the defining incident for the Strike Team. The death of Curtis Lemansky at the hands of Shane Vendrell is simply put the most emotionally devastating moment in television history (up there with the GREAT scenes from Deadwood, Breaking Bad and The Wire). Shane's choice, one based on misinformation, carries with it a crippling guilt even before the devastating explosion that tears Lem apart, and although we all knew Walton Goggins was an excellent actor to that point, he even blew Chiklis away, in Shane's reaction to the act, as he cries and shouts his self justifications to a man on the verge of death. This was the moment we were waiting for in the series, for the characters own distrust and self preservation to kick in full time to the determent of the Strike Teams most honorable character. As mentioned above, Postpartum shows the mechanism of justice finally closing it's grip on the strike team, and it's looks like it's curtains for Lem even before it's curtains. We're not even sure how far Mackey would have gone if he thought Lem had turned, that's the power of this show, creating multi-layered characters who are loyal one minute and concerned with survival the next. The sins of Vic Mackey had a true and close to home casualty, not something to be swept away, but a stain of guilt to haunt both Shane and Vic in the series final moments.

Possible Kill Screen (S7Ep12) - Now most people would put the final episode of the extraordinary final season here, and it goes without question that Family Business is a great ep, from it's opening scenes set to X's Los Angeles, to it's haunting final moments with Vic faced with a life of loneliness and bureaucratic stifling. But it's Possible Kill Screen that is the seasons and the Shield most perfect and powerful episode, and what makes it that(for me anyway) is it's centerpiece scene, the confession of Vic Mackey. Of course it's not a confession based on guilt, or fear, but one solely based on this character defining trait, self preservation. It's the theme that keeps coming up in this piece, but if you thought Victor Emmanuel Mackey was just a good guy simply misunderstood who just happened to be a cop killer, thief, and occasional drug lord, this scene set out once and for all that he was a closet sociopath. Of course it was never that simple, in tragic Shield tradition Vic's deal for immunity is based on a misunderstanding of epic proportions, immunity for him and his wife to join ICE. But he needs to tell it all, and tell all he does. He thinks about it, and what follows from the most powerful sigh ever uttered by a actor on television, slowly and calmly as if describing a minor league game detailing how he killed Terry Crowley, the money train, etc. So that's the episodes peak and it must be said that Michael Chiklis is extraordinary here, bringing great depth with little more then body language, along with the scene mentioned above in Postpartum it's one of those scenes that leaves you gasping for air, lying awake at night in reflection on how great art can say so much about the human condition with so little. That being said there is so much to take note of in Possible Kill Scene. From Shane's horribly botched robbery attempt, with Maura's horribly injured and him drugged out still the finale, perhaps the horrific instance of his bad judgment since killing Lem, and Claudette to her horror learns way too late of Mackey's deal, to Mackey seeing his wife arrested, and seeing how his actions have hurt the one he loved, in any case justice of the legal kind has clearly failed here. Possible Kill Screen shows the characters at their bottom and it will come to a boil in Family Business, but here we're only left with Shane and Mackey and the horrible truths of their characters left exposed for all to see.

Germany Year Zero

**Spoilers Ahead**

Germany Year Zero presents the viewer with a generation of Germans struggling aimlessly to deal with the reality of 1948. Director Roberto Rossellini sees the adults who experienced Berlin in it's financially prosperous days (however morally corrupt) and prior to that the depression of the Weimer Republic, as floundering as leaders of this society. The shadow of Nazism still hangs heavy, the young men are mostly gone from the streets, left are the elderly women and kids who grew up in a social universe totally devoid of pity or absolute bottom line morale in terms of it's national character.

In the key scene of the film the young pan handlers sell the recent legacy of Hitler and his then legendary bunker suicide. They sell it without feeling the novelty of German pride in the visible wake of it's devastating effects on the city. Yet it sells, and the young people seem to miss the horrible truth of this recent past, the willingness to overlook a great evil to sustain one's life. Edmund Keller the central character doesn't recognize this truth, and for survival's sake however selfless his motivations may be he makes a horrible choice which shocks the rest of his family awake in their post V Day disillusionment.

Rossellini is fascinated by Edmunds travels through Berlin, hoping from a mob tearing to cut up a dead horse for food, seconds later capturing his character picking up fallen food for a passing cart which several other vagabonds rush to as well. Rossellini constantly captures Edmund in medium shot, insistently moving from one target to the next, money, food, opportunity, all in a days work. He can't even relate to the kids as they play on the bombed out statues. When he gets home he insistently attempts to play decision maker and the indecision and compromise of his family gives him the leeway to do just that, with only his grandfather seeing the sad truth of it, punishing Edmund with a slap to the face.

Rossellini documents the way the people of the multi-family apartment have made decisions based on the need to survive, but none of them are in the thick of it like Edmund, they're all in some way playing out the hand that post war has brought, the women going out at night to hook up with officials and foreign officials, the men bitter and guilt ridden over their inability to contribute. The adults in the street are either moving for one place to the next, or are brazenly working their lies on the young boys like Edmund getting their schemes in play and unseemly longing for more for their prospects. But by films end even the pedophile seems to recognize the horror at what this innocent has done.

This is a film about moral decay, how a city has had it's feet swept from beneath it and yet history still hasn't taken it's hold. In the films most powerful scene Edmund plots to kill his grandfather as a social necessity as his parents can't afford to have him there or at the hospital. It's not an act of malice, but one of moral relativism a truth that Edmund has come to in his recent exploits, but he underestimates the underlines morality in him. Despite the universe he's now a apart of there exists overriding truths, and while Rossellini shows him trying to connect this truth, to find closure and reason with kids his own age, through his mentor, through the simple act of being a child, the stain of his act will not be removed. In another striking moment Edmund comes upon a church, inviting in among the bleakest of environments with it's pipe organ causing the broken citizens to stop at it's grace. But Edmund can't face this truth, and the camera shows him in long shot walking away.
Rossellini's portrait of guilt here is especially powerful, with Edmund trying to take his mind off his actions and then faced with the naked truth of his life represented by his home, itself a ruin offering no possible redemption, takes his life. To speak plainly, Roberto Rossellini is one of the great directors of cinema and his films be they Rome Open City, Stromboli or The Private Life of Louis XIV manage to capture the human struggle in the face of overwhelming social and spiritual barriers and Germany Year Zero clearly deserves mention among those works.

Sgt Pepper

Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band has lost some stature over the years, and I can even remember how the albums grip over me loosened by the time the mid album tracks came into play. However despite it's second tier place now among some audiofiles (with Rubber Soul, Revolver Mystery Magic Tour and Abbey Road taking critical laurels among their late sixties albums) you can't bar Sgt Pepper from it's place in pop music history. Cirtainly it's a place that was over hyped for a long time(Velvet Underground and Nico has long since surpassed it in terms of influence) and yet you can't deny the excellence of the craft displayed here. Sgt. Pepper is Lennon and McCartney during their peak, they were already proven popsmiths but Sgt. Pepper was further proof of their musical sophistication (as well as the brilliance of producer George Martin.)

Right now I'm not listening to the new reissues, the new box set is something I may or may not pick up(and the mono's recordings do sound gorgious), instead listening to the album on stereo vinyl, where despite some worn grooves, Martin's expansive production plays beautifully. Sgt Pepper's opening salvo of tracks, the title track, With a Little Help From My Friends, Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, and Getting Better is perhaps the most perfect track sequencing on a Beatles album, each song seamlessly moving into the next, each lyrically and melodically playing off each other. Sgt Pepper's dirty guitar solo still sounds striking up front, as it's the antithesis to everything the record achieves a work of glistening pop music, but it helps sets out the conceptual business out front with the fab four's camaraderie most prominent, if Sgt Pepper is indeed a concept record it's a bearable one largely due to how it's thematic tie in never plays as heavy handed or silly (although they intentionally are). In short Sgt Pepper is a playful rocker first and foremost. Then comes With A Little Help From My friends which again reminds me (shameful) why the Beatles harmonies have been so influential throughout the decades. This is gorgeous pop music, unwavering in it's good will yet tinged with melancholy (something McCartney's does nearly as well on his haunting She's Leaving Home) and you have to hand it to Starr's vocal performance, a limited voice but questionably touching in execution. Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, drugs or no drugs, Lennon's delivery of the opening verse is dreamy in a way that never hits you over the head, his imagery and the music crafting the most playful mind capes imaginable, it's music that glistens and gleams yet never once is it merely pretty, especially by the time the anthemic chorus comes into play rising up then falling back down into Lennon's word play. Getting Better with it's striking guitar chime, as sweet as any of their great hooks and the bands harmonies coming up front to pronounce an affirmation of well being. Fixing a Hole is both musically playful and sad, with the central character going about the humdrum as McCartney throws up his witty plays on his emotional dilemma. She's Leaving Home finds great use of Martin's able hand in using strings in an expressive way (something he'd been doing well since Yesterday), and McCartney crafts one of his unsung masterpieces here, taking sides with the older generation as they witness their daughter grow up. It's a touch sentimental but that's not a criticism in this case, as it's ultimately a beautifully realized ballad touching on fear, sadness and hope without stumbling.
Which brings me to the stumbling block and while Being for the Benefit of Mr Kite and Within You Without You are noble efforts, they never really gel, stopping the albums in it's tracks twice. Mr Kite's music hall aspirations sound nice but never really develop into a song and Within You Without You is striking with the tabla, sitar parts, it's interesting but Harrison's sole track here never jumps off from being just a experiment.

There was a time when When I'm 64 was too much for me, it seemed to be placed to much on the hokey side, but McCartney's whimsy here is pitch perfect with the harmonies never going overboard, with McCartney upfront with the jaunty piano. Then follows Lovely Rita again finds McCartney at his peak harmonically, with Lennon's lilting backup again sounding gorgeous. McCartney's romanticism here is working counter point to the song own lustful intentions. However the next track Good Morning Good Morning, although striking on the surface quickly wears out it's welcome, it's one of the albums half baked works(in line with Mr Kite and Within Without You), still there's nothing wrong with Lennon's brutal guitar solo, or the percussive power of the track, it's just as a whole the shifts are merely jarring and not challenging in any lasting way, with George Martin's sound collage here going all over the place. The revised return to the Sgt. Pepper and Ringo's awesomely insistent drum line makes up for it, as far a concept tracks like this go, as mentioned above both the Sgt Pepper Tracks are among the better of their ilk. Then we go into perhaps the finest song Lennon wrote, A Day in the Life with Lennon's expressions of modern alternation particularly devastating, of course in the end in the brilliant cross cutting of the dreary and the sunny, the profane and the profound and the apex of both Lennon and McCartney's harmonic fascinations that make this work. Martin's production in particular with it's rising orchestrations leading to false climax morphing into McCartney playfully run on observations about daily life. In the end though it's the overwhelming paranoia that's drives this track, it's power only matched by a few tracks off of Lennons Plastic Ono Band in it's emotional nakedness.

Overall Sgt Pepper is above a near great work, that tries too hard on several occasions(although they are interesting failures), but not enough to take away from it's overall power.

Shock Corridor

In the three central scenes of Sam Fuller's Shock Corridor, the films opportunistic reporter Johnny Barratt (played by Peter Breck) witnesses the ultimate toll for society's ills. Fuller provides the viewer in your face presentations of social paranoia, racism and the inevitability of the bomb. His character's sane response is solely to his own ends, finishing his story, while the horrific truth of the world he's a part of imprints it's own effects on his psyche.

Each encounter is a masterful piece of cinematic hysteria, playing out as a brutal melodrama on how a man's own worst fears and desires ultimately take him over. Fuller reaches broadly in his
portrait of insanity, and it's the only way this artist could operate. Subtleties were not in his nature and here his visual expression of the mental environs of this messed up world are displayed in acting histrionics, surreal moments where the film stock changes to documentary color, superimposed images of Constance Towers taunting her lover while he dreams,
and the most bold and shocking, the way Barratt's own mental universe finally opens the floodgates above, his anguish felt in every image of him pounding away at the doors and walls of his prison.

Throughout the film, Fuller presents the viewer with the interior voice of the character as he reasons his way through problems, manipulates the patients to his ends and ultimately copes with the fear of losing his own physical and mental capabilities while the hospitals inmates and the treatment have their effect.

Fuller's targets here are the sensationalism of journalism (a field he knew well), the limited and superficial nature of psychology as a practice (something his other films actively worked against) and ultimately the hidden social ugliness that this world seeks to hide away from the public. The sad joke in the film is Barratt never sees the real story/problem, and hauntingly in the final scenes becomes it's latest victim.

McCabe & Mrs Miller

In Robert Altman's 1971 masterpiece(and for my money his greatest film ), the title loser utters his deepest joys and fears to a world he doesn't quite grasp. He's the catalyst for a community, it's de facto leader, but his ideas regarding capitalism are limited by his own romantic self delusion, one that most of Presbyterian Church seems to share of him for the films running time. Of course minus the bluster (hilariously and touchingly done by Warren Beatty) there lies a naive soul who only wants to be loved and to be happy in his environment. Despite having perhaps the most vivid milieu in cinema's history, McCabe played by that most star like of stars Beatty, is the films most naked creation.

The style of Robert Altman isn't about establishing key relationships or the narrative focus, he lingers on space and people living their lives without larger motives, they build a bar, they play music, they screw, they eat bad food, are amazed at the simplest example of human ingenuity, and when they can't connect with others they drink or in Mrs Miller's case get stoned. Every frame of McCabe & Mrs Miller shows life, even at it's most still, in the process of coping, not against a foe (not literally until the end anyway) or a social change (same) but simply against the boredom of mountain life. So when the camera pans across the wide screen frame in the haunting opening shot, it's not announcing the arrival of a force, but observing social interaction right down to the moment McCabe sees the wilderness surrounding Presbyterian Church. Altman's camera is all about capturing this interaction, specifically within groups of people, with his pan and zoom style and his soundtrack where characters converse over each other with no real end or beginning. An abrupt end to a scene is never seemingly cued it simply ends then jumps ahead in without narrative hand holding.
But what makes McCabe & Mrs Miller one of the most beautiful films in my opinion is the way Vilmos Zigmond's camera captures the low light of a dampened room, the autumn sun against the trees, or the harsh winter light pouring into the empty buildings. Wetness and coldness has never been so realized by the camera, you get a feel for how people lived in the 1800's in a way no other Western had or still has quite done(although many have come close). Altman's goal isn't realism, but a dreamy haze that watches how the natural and social worlds co existing in seemless fashion. It's a portrait of a community trying though it's own pace to develop through whatever means. In the end Altman was interested in portraying the compromise with the social realities be they racism, class, or simply the power that wealth brings over the weak.

For a film largely about how a whore house put a community on the map and for all the selling and buying of women here, the women of Presbyterian Church seem to ultimately accept their own place within the community as equals. Miner or whore, bar keep or cook. It's the "leaders" who often come off a outsiders like McCabe or Mrs Miller(brilliantly realized by Julie Christie) or the Reverend who at films end never witnesses the event of the townspeople coming to the rescue of the church he labored long over, he only experienced despair at the acts of sin around him. In fact they all miss it, with McCabe trying to save himself in the haunting final "shoot out" and to hold up his self image and Mrs Miller losing herself in the warm funk of opium. Commenting on the sadness of it all is the haunting music of Leonard Cohen whose three tracks The Stranger Song, Sisters of Mercy and Winter Lady, not only touch on human myths and characters, but evoke the loneliness that comes with never truly being a part of the universe that you put so much into.