Gossip Girl

Ed Westwick and Leighton Meester aka Chuck and Blair,  Gossip Girl's best couple

4 episodes into the fourth season, GG seems to be on a roll. i've always liked it, but the episodes seem to be gelling more, with more action, fashion, drama, and stories actually combining, which it sometimes has a hard time with. it's been much easier to stay involved in the show than certain others (like The OC) which burned out really fast, and had characters that got too annoying or bad storylines that lasted too long. GG occasionally has the opposite problem, with its plots being WAY too short, just 2-3 episodes per storyline. a decent nighttime soap has to have longer lasting arcs, and Gossip Girl sometimes seems like a daytime soap. but recently i've decided maybe that's a good thing, because i always watch and enjoy it while i'm watching it, but don't really think about it when it's over. my favorite shows of all time have always been the ones that consumed my thoughts during the season, where i HAD to know what was going to happen next, obsessed about it, vigorously researched spoilers and was basically always let down by the eventual resolution, thinking i could have written it better (Veronica Mars being the prime example). but i enjoy GG just about the right amount, where i don't miss an episode, yet even a bad twist (like last year's god-awful season finale) won't prevent me from watching the rest of it or thinking it jumped the shark. it's perfect popcorn TV.

OSCAR season is here!

so, starting this weekend, i'd say the official kick-off to the Oscar season starts. The Social Network is the first truly buzzed about movie opening this year, it's already up to 55 reviews on Rotten Tomatoes and it's still 100% fresh. people think i see a lot of movies in theaters, but in reality that's not true. i've only seen 3 movies in the theater this whole year, Kick-Ass, Toy Story 3, and Inception. the studios save the good movies for fall and winter release, in time for their Oscar campaigns, and i don't like to sit through crap movies and pay $10 for it. So i'll be keeping tabs on any oscar-worthy movies i see this fall, and these are the ones i'm most looking forward to:

1. The Social Network (David Fincher directing, Aaron Sorkin writing, can't wait)
2. 127 Hours (Danny Boyle, director of Best Pic winner Slumdog Millionaire, one of my faves)
3. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (ok, not an oscar flick, but i am a true devoted fan and i WILL be finishing the series)
4. The King's Speech (Colin Firth as the King of England, practically made for awards)
5. Black Swan (Darren Aronofsky; Natalie Portman is supposedly AMAZING)
6. True Grit (new Coen Brothers film! also with Jeff Bridges, remake of old John Wayne movie)
7. Another Year (Mike Leigh, love his films)
8. Somewhere (wild card, but i have actually liked every single one of Sofia Coppola's movies)
9. The Town (already in theaters, will probably end up seeing it, not sure on its oscar potential, but maybe)

and there's a couple indies i'm gonna need to catch up with on Netflix: Winter's Bone and The Kids Are All Right. as for the ones i've already seen, i'm gonna bet that Inception and Toy Story 3 end up as Best Pic nominees, since they're holding on to the 10 nominee thing that they did last year.

Midterms

politics drives me crazy these days, so i'll limit any entries about it to once a week. but it's old news that the democrats are going to lose at least the House in november, much to my frustration. do people not remember where we were two years ago? this mess that we're in now is not the fault of the present administration, OR the democrats. the economy is still bad and unemployment still high, but the only thing republicans have done since the election is try to ensure it STAYS that way so that voters blame the dems for it and they regain the majority. despite the fact that they, you know, caused it in the first place. and people really want to go back to that? after just 20 months? when obama took office we were losing jobs at a rate of 700,000 a month, due the Bush administration. the stimulus package he signed stopped the job losses, while not being big enough to push us into a self-sustaining recovery. a lot of economists thought the depth of the hole requires over a trillion dollar stimulus, and not 775 billion, which is what we got. the admin thought it wouldn't pass congress, and they were probably right (only 3 republicans voted for it at all, unbelievably). what the economy needs is more government intervention, more stimulus. it stopped the losses, and the recession "officially" ended in 09, but it wasn't big enough to provoke high enough hiring rates to bring down the unemployment level. so it feels like we're stuck in neutral, after before being in a freefall. and despite the positive growth we've had all year, it's just not enough to keep up with people entering the market, on top of everyone who lost their jobs. that's the recipe for more spending, if jobs are what's most important, but the political will isn't there to do it. the GOP has painted the spending process as having "failed" even though it unequivocally DID stop the freefall and prevented another Depression.

Despite the economy, the democrats have passed two major bills in this congress, health care reform and wall street reform. these are two HUGE progressive achievements, even if it didn't have everything a lot of liberals wanted. even without a public option and the breaking up of the big banks, the stuff that both bills do is on the level with anything the democrats have passed since the era of FDR and LBJ. social security wasn't perfect at first, it didn't include african-americans or farm workers in the original legislation, believe it or not. but big social legislation like health care tends to be improved over time, once it's established that everyone has a RIGHT to healthcare (which is a major thing the bill did), that will not be taken away. when entitlements are written, they never are. so i think the base really should come out and vote this year, and not be apathetic because of the economy. we're moving in the right direction and 20 months just isn't enough time to completely turn things around. if the financial crisis had happened a year before the election and not basically during bush's lame-duck session, i think obama could be blamed more for the status of the economy, but this mess that we're currently sitting in is NOT their fault, and that have taken steps to get us out. they just need more time. the republicans had 8 years to fuck up the country, i think the dems deserve more than 20 months to get us out of their shit. and why would you ever want back what put us here in the first place? not to mention these guys now are actually WORSE than what put us here, when you look at how radical the right has become. they're just insane now, with these teabagger people? i mean come on! you can't put into office as a protest vote, people who dabbled in witchcraft and oppose masturbation! or more seriously, have zero policy solutions and spout just complete and total nonsense, like saying they're for cutting the deficit but wanting to add 3 trillion dollars to it by giving tax cuts to rich people. that makes NO sense. these people are hypocrites and frauds.

you may not be happy with where we're at right now, but do the country a favor and vote democratic anyway. staying home allows the teabagger idiots to take over and stifle ANY chance at improvement. we have to give them more time, at least as much as the other side got to run things into the ground.

Glee

Glee premieres pretty soon, and i think i need to say- and i say this as a fan of the show, i actually watch it- but it is VASTLY overrated, in my opinion. i was glad Jane Lynch was the only person to win an emmy for it- she's deserving, but the show itself did NOT deserve those 18 other nominations it got. it's really not THAT good. in fact, to me it's sort of a guilty pleasure, because what i think is good about it is the singing. that's fun and i like hearing the covers of songs i know and everything, and Jane Lynch IS hilarious.....but the rest of it (meaning the acting and the storylines) kind of sucks. seriously, i have big problems with almost everything ASIDE from the singing. i think the majority of the students are terrible actors (not to mention that they look about 30) and while that could be forgiven on a show where most of the time is spent singing, what is NOT acceptable is for them to also be terrible singers. and they kind of are. the main girl (Lea Michele, who plays Rachel) came from broadway and she's great, along with the coach Mathew Morrison, but everybody else really isn't. and they get a lot of solos. and i have to say this, because it drives me absolutely nuts, more than anything else on this show. EVERY SINGLE EPISODE ends with a moral lesson to be dispatched to the kids and thereby, the audience. something along the lines of "you're beautiful as you are" or "be nice to disabled people" or "don't do drugs." it reminds me of those old "very special episodes" they would do on bad sitcoms in the 80s and 90s, in order to try to teach teens a lesson. i was horrified when i began to realize that's what they're doing, because it's AWFUL. i thought TV was past that kind of preachy phoniness, and this show is corny enough as it is with all the singing! but the singing is a good kind of corny, basically like American Idol-type cheesiness. why in the world do they need to push it even further with these horrible morality pleas without a hint of irony, when the show itself is perfectly capable of ironic jokes in a given episode. it'll spend an episode being funny and savaging pop culture and then turn around and preach this fake "lesson" at the end (and it's sincere i think, which makes it worse). it's so uneven in tone sometimes and the awful phoniness just makes me cringe in anticipation.

so, yeah it's not nearly as good as everyone thinks it is. i couldn't even recommend it to people, it's like my secret guilty pleasure (on the basis of the songs only). but they really need to quit that preachy bullshit and i fear it's only going to get worse because i hear they're cutting down the songs from 8 per episode to 5, in order to "focus on the storylines and characters." wonderful. the storylines and characters SUCK so they really shouldn't do that. unless they're going to completely change the tone of the show and get some better actors, which i doubt. they should get rid of all sincerity whatsoever and keep the whole thing completely ironic. that's when it's the best anyway. sincerity just makes it unbearable. and pair up lea michele with a better singer, the guy (Cory Monteith) who's her main love interest and partner is a triple threat FAIL. he can't sing, he can't act, and he looks 35. they brought in a guest star actor to pair with her for a few episodes (who also happened to be from broadway) and the difference in quality was just painfully obvious. get rid of Monteith, for the love of god.

Top 5 Film Noir

Mildred Pierce (1945)

Joan Crawford's greatest role, and the one she won Best Actress for. she plays a doting mother who's willing to do anything for her daughter, even murder. this film also sports one of the greatest villains in film history, i won't spoil it by telling you who it is. i first saw this movie in a film history class- it was used as the example for the whole genre of film noir, and it has all the classic elements. the story in narrative flashback, the dark shadows with all scenes set at night, the mystery. it's a great movie and i cannot WAIT to see the HBO miniseries remake next year, with Kate Winslet in the title role.

Double Indemnity (1944)

This is a close second for the best example of a film noir. the same history class showed clips from this one as well. Fred MacMurray is an insurance salesman who falls for classic femme fatale Barbara Stanwyck (from The Lady Eve). together, they conspire to murder her husband. the plotline is probably the template for every similar film that came after, and this shows why Barbara Stanwyck was one of my favorite golden age movie stars. she could do everything, from screwball comedy to melodrama to murder mystery, and all with ease. 

The Big Sleep (1946)

My personal favorite Bogie-Bacall pairing, this is the classic detective noir. Bogie is private eye Philip Marlowe, hired by a rich family to find a blackmailer, but drawn into an infinitely tangled mystery involving murder, drugs, money, and adultery. this movie famously has one of the most complicated plots of all time, and you really do have to pay attention to all the twists and turns, but it has a great climax and i'd say it's Humphrey Bogart's second best show of his classic "persona," after Casablanca of course.

The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946)

I love this movie and i'd say it was another perfect example of a noir, because it's structured in voiceover narrative again, this time from the guy's point of view. John Garfield is a drifter who has an affair with Lana Turner, the wife of a diner owner. this may have been the first film to take off of Double Indemnity, because again they're plotting to get rid of her husband, but the story takes it a bit further in this one. Garfield and Turner have great chemistry, which is probably why this was remade in 1981 with Jack Nicholson and Jessica Lange, a version that included a ton of graphic sex scenes.

Sunset Boulevard (1950)

William Holden stars as a man who gets involved with Gloria Swanson, an aged movie star from the silent era, who lives in a creepy old mansion and draws him into her web. this is the one with the famous opening of him lying dead in the pool, while beginning to narrate the story from beyond the grave. Billy Wilder wrote and directed this one, one of many in his resume of great films (he also did Double Indemnity, Some Like it Hot, Sabrina, and The Apartment, to name some of my favorites).

*I have to put a disclaimer here that this entry might change, because i haven't quite seen every film noir i need to yet. i still have to see The Third Man, Laura, Out of the Past, and Pick-Up on South Street.

Mad Men

Mad Men just won its third straight Emmy for Best Drama Series, but this was also its third year in a row where none of the actors won.  every year more of the actors from the show are nominated, yet they never win. why is that? this year they had Jon Hamm, John Slattery, January Jones, Christina Hendricks, Elisabeth Moss, and Robert Morse up for individual acting awards, but they all went home empty-handed. trust me, i think this show deserves to win the Best Drama award every year but none of it would work if they didn't have good acting. Jon Hamm in particular was born for the role of Don Draper and has dominated every episode since the first season. he should have definitely won by now.

MM continues to be on a role midway through its fourth season, as the show progresses into 1965 and starts to get into the period most people tend to think of as "the 60's." it was wondered how the show was going to handle the transition into this much parodied (and much filmed) era, because it's so drastically different from the late 50s, early 60s time period that it encapsulates so perfectly right now. that remains to be seen for me. how realistic would it be to turn one of these established characters into a hippie or an activist for example? and i've waited years now for them to introduce a minority character for even a guest starring role, in order to note the civil rights progression, which by now is in full effect. so far, nothing. actually, i've suspected that the lack of attention paid to those major changes is due to a lack of any black writers behind the scenes. they have plenty of female writers though, which is why gender issues has always been a huge theme of the show and has been done so well. i wonder if they're just afraid of somehow "doing it wrong" in the area of civil rights, so they stay away from it completely. occasionally i have wondered if the show should have just been set in the late 50s to begin with, that way it could end its run in the same era, but i have to think the reason they've skipped so much time in the first place was because they wanted to show the characters go through that major social change. so we'll see how they handle it (and i've been SEVERELY disappointed in the lack of Beatles references, come on people!)

Top 5 Screwball Comedies

The Lady Eve (1941)

This is an amazing movie, one of my all time favorites. Barbara Stanwyck is a con artist and card shark, trained by her father to rob rich guys out of their money. She targets adorably naive and gullible Henry Fonda for her next scam, and ends up falling for him for real. Writer-director Preston Sturges only did a handful of movies in the 40's, over a span of 5 years. He burned out quick and died penniless, but the films he left behind showcase what a true talent he was. The screenplay is perfection, with an absolutely perfect semi-twist ending that i NEVER saw coming. 

His Girl Friday (1940)

Probably the fastest spoken dialogue in the history of movies, it still amazes me to see how they did it. It's hard to pick between this and The Lady Eve for my favorite, but i'd have to say this one is probably funnier but less romantic (hence, why Eve just edges it out for me). Still, this movie is HILARIOUS, i don't think i stopped laughing the entire way through it. Cary Grant has his funniest role ever here, as a newspaper editor who tricks his ex-wife Rosalind Russell into sticking around for a murder case story in order to stop her from getting remarried.  Love this one.

It Happened One Night (1934)

 One of the earliest screwball comedies ever made, and one of the best. I think it's actually Frank Capra's least sentimental work as well. Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert are on the road, running from society girl Colbert's father, who's forcing her to marry a guy she doesn't love. Gable is secretly a journalist out for the story (kind of a precursor to Roman Holiday). This also has one of the most famous and influential runaway bride scenes of all time, you'll know it when you see it. Swept the Oscars in 1934, winning Best Picture, Director, Actor and Actress.

Bringing Up Baby (1938)

This is usually the one people reference when they're trying to come up with an example for the definition of a "screwball comedy." Ridiculous plot, rapid-fire dialogue, absurd situations, fast pace, etc. In my opinion it's not as funny as His Girl Friday, but you should definitely see it anyway. Cary Grant is lampooning Harold Lloyd with his nerdy paleontologist, and this is definitely one of Katharine Hepburn's best and most different performances.

My Man Godfrey (1936)

Starring William Powell (from The Thin Man, one of my favorite movies ever) and Carole Lombard (one of the few star comediennes in all of film history), this is a great one just as much for its snapshot of America right in the midst of the Great Depression. Carole Lombard is a rich airhead who picks up a homeless bum to come home and be the butler for her insane family. There are quite a few movies in the 30's that loved making fun of the wealthy, showing them off as buffoons and crooks who don't deserve what they have. (It's a theme that's brought up in The Lady Eve as well).