Category Archives: Pop Culture

Criminal Negligence for “The Wire”

The WireOn the advice of readers a few months ago, I decided to sample HBO’s urban crime procedural series, “The Wire,” reaching back in time to 2002 to start with the first season on DVD, courtesy of Netflix. Almost immediately, I understood what everyone was raving about. My reaction: “Oh, so this is what the best episodic television ever written looks like.”

“The Wire” is an embarrassment of riches. It’s full of pitch-perfect storytelling, methodically and confidently strewn across long, ambitious story arcs and populated with vivid, complex characters. Its attention to detail, and its inconspicuously accurate and unflinching realism are everything I’d ever hoped for in a dramatic series. The erratic and usually rare appearance of those virtuous traits in supposedly superior shows has frustrated me so much after years of TV viewing that it’s simply astonishing that this show has been able to sustain them so uniformly and effortlessly. The series also happens to be the best acted show I’ve ever seen — if there’s a more scarily commanding performer on television than Idris Elba as Stringer Bell, then I haven’t seen him. That guy should be a superstar by now.

Continue Reading …

+

The YouTube Aesthetic

YouTubeIt’s still too hard to locate online versions of recent television commercials. When McDonald’s, say, runs an ad that I want to talk about here, I don’t know of a particular place where I can go find a link for it. Sure, the more notable ones make it to YouTube, but sometimes it’s the mundane ones that don’t that are more interesting to discuss.

There are two that I have in mind: one, from McDonald’s, features two young, college-age guys, beatboxing some ridiculous rhyme about Big Macs or something. And there’s another for Oreo cookies that plays like a home movie in which two pre-adolescent girls sing the praises of Oreos. If I could find them to show you, I would, but maybe you’ve seen them already.

They’re both cute enough, but what struck me was how thoroughly they ape the ‘YouTube style.’ Which is to say, they are shot on digital video (though at a higher grade of quality than most of the source material at YouTube) in a cinematographically naïve manner; they feature pronouncedly offhand, amateur and somewhat embarrassing performances from purportedly ‘real’ actors; and they are ostensibly improvised — or at least they go through considerable effort to obscure the influence of any sort of director behind the camera.

Continue Reading …

+

Robots, Rats and La Ragazza con la valigia

I’m back from my miniature sabbatical and rested up. What did I do on my time off? I took a lot of walks with Mister President, hung out a lot in my new neighborhood with various friends, and managed to catch a movie or two, including one that was on my list.

Here’s my advice on seeing “Transformers”: if you find yourself falling asleep in the middle of its two-plus hours running time due to the movie’s crushingly dull story line, monotonously unrewarding visual pyrotechnics, and director Michael Bay’s apparent disinterest in characters, don’t fight the feeling. Instead, just do I what I did and let yourself nod off. You won’t miss a thing.

Continue Reading …

+

Transform Hard with a Vengeance

Optimus PrimeThe forthcoming movie adaptation of the toy franchise “Transformers” has somehow climbed to the very tippy-top of my summer movie-going list over recent weeks. I don’t know how it got there, because like many people, the esteem in which I hold the previous work of director Michael Bay can be best described as ‘minimal.” Still, it looks like the most promisingly satisfying of a sorry summer lot, even if the core of its offering is only a momentarily satiation. I’m really excited to see it. Oh, and I’ll go see the apparently not-badly-reviewed “Live Free or Die Hard,” too.

I just wanted to come out and say that. No more secrets, people.

Continue Reading …

+

And the Answer You’ve Been Waiting for Is —

The SopranosIf you watched the series finale of “The Sopranos” tonight, then you know by now that creator David Chase has the sense of humor of some kind of sadistic auteur. The heavily anticipated denouement was startlingly, almost hilariously abrupt and unformed. If you haven’t watched it, no need to worry: there are no spoilers in this post — as if spoilers would have made any difference with this episode, anyway.

The only interpretation of the events that I can muster after recovering from my dumbfounded shock is: life goes on, and a series finale, while tremendously weighted with the audience’s expectations, is nevertheless only an arbitrary stopping point. The series ended just where it happened to end, outside of dramatic logic. Or at least, it ended according to the logic of Chase’s final, defiant assertion that this show was an artistic endeavor, not an entertainment enterprise — and in accordance with no other agenda.

That this complex and engrossing series could end this indiscriminately is undoubtedly a let-down to millions, but at least someone had fun. That someone was Chase, who in the final minutes seemed to delight in sending up the idea of nail-biting suspense, of an operatic climax that would bestow meaning on much that had gone before. We all wanted that, but it’s clear that’s not what Chase wanted at all — tomorrow’s New York Daily News might as well read “Chase to Fans: Drop Dead.” Me, I happen to think he got a huge kick out of sending countless people home from “Sopranos” finale-watching parties all over the country in a state of stupor, disappointment, even anger… if you ask me, that’s the kind of behavior that suggests the guy could use some therapy.

Continue Reading …

+

Countdown to Finale

The SopranosDepending on how “The Sopranos” concludes its eight-year, six-season run in next week’s series finale, it will rank somewhere in the top three of my list of the best television shows of the past decade. Which is to say that it’s up there for sure, just not necessarily in that top spot that so many television critics almost reflexively assign to it.

I’ve been watching “The Sopranos” faithfully for years, enjoying it the vast majority of the time, and remaining highly invested in the show’s motley band of indelible characters throughout. But I admit that, over the course of its eighty-five odd installments, it’s had its share of digressions, missteps and shark skipping, if not outright shark jumping. Let’s not mince words: there have been awful, tone-deaf episodes and ill-advised plot lines (though the good ones have far outnumbered the bad ones).

Continue Reading …

+

Moviegoing in the Thirties

Hot FuzzA friend of mine who teaches film told me once not to misinterpret how often I went to the movies in my twenties as a sign of how frequently I’d be seeing them in the decades to come. Rather, the frequency of my moviegoing in my early thirties would be a more useful indicator, because it’s at that age when people start to form habits around whatever particular balance of responsibility and recreation suits them.

That advice is bearing itself out. Where I once saw, at a minimum, one or two movies a week, now at age thirty-five I can barely make it to the movie theaters more than once or twice a month. (I also currently happen to have two rentals from Netflix that have made themselves at home on my coffee table for more than two weeks now, unwatched, but that’s a digression.) The equilibrium I’ve achieved between responsibility and recreation tends to favor the former, and I find myself too busy to sit still for the hundred minutes or more required to properly view a film.

Continue Reading …

+

Three Things I’m Late On

Round-up time. If only each day was a few hours longer than twenty-four, I wouldn’t be so behind in posting these three items. If only!

First, I was lucky enough to be sitting about fifteen rows back from the third base line at Yankee Stadium on Saturday afternoon when Alex Rodriguez hit that game-winning grand slam against the Baltimore Orioles — in the bottom of the ninth inning with two outs and two strikes. I acknowledge that even an event as unique as that is flirting the edge of what readers of this weblog are generally interested in, but I just wanted to say it was one of the coolest, most exhilarating things I’ve ever seen.

As it happened, my Saturday turned out to be a great day for seats at live events. Later that evening my girlfriend and I had front-row seats to see “Jack Goes Boating,” a two-act production from Philip Seymour Hoffman and John Ortiz’s LAByrith Theater Company — both actors appeared in it as well. It’s currently in its original run right now at The Public Theater in downtown Manhattan. Even if it’s not a groundbreaking entertainment, John Ortiz’s confident, commanding and highly watchable performance reaffirmed my contention that he’s currently the best kept secret going in the world of acting.

Finally, I’m very, very late to the party on this one: Wow, have you seen “The Shield”? I’d completely missed this FX Network original series until now, but it’s unbelievably good. Oh, and while we’re talking television, one more thing… Sci-Fi Network’s Battlestar Galactica is the most overrated television show ever.

Continue Reading …

+

Radio Free Pledge Drives

My local public radio station, WNYC, is in the midst of its winter pledge drive. You know, that all too familiar time of year in which they interrupt “Morning Edition,” “On the Media,” or any of my other favorite radio programs to ask for financial contributions from listeners — over and over and over again.

Ever since I was a kid, when I was watching “Sesame Street” on PBS, I’ve lamented the necessary but irredeemably boring nature of public broadcasting’s pledge drives. I find them incredibly difficult to listen to, and I often turn off the television or radio entirely during the weeks when they’re on the air.

A while ago, I had this brainstorm: once a viewer or listener makes a pledge, the station ships out a special gadget that tunes into a members-only frequency — one in which the station broadcasts without the interruptions of its pledge drive. Parallel programming, in essence. If that option were available, I’d pledge money on the first day of the drive, for sure, and I bet lots of other people would, too. The ability to forgo the tedium of a week’s worth of nagging shouldn’t be underestimated.

Continue Reading …

+

Bowled Over by Cuteness

Puppy Bowl IIII don’t watch much football, and by “much,” I mean any. Come Super Bowl time, I look for alternative programming on the television set. This year, for the third year in a row, I find myself tuned into Animal Planet’s suffocatingly adorable “Puppy Bowl.”

Some programming genius got a big promotion for this brainstorm, I’m sure: Puppy Bowl is three hours of aimless and irresistible lingering over puppies wrestling, jumping over each other, chewing toys, and just being plain ol’ cute inside a miniature football stadium. It’s also disturbingly pornographic — not libido-wise, you sicko, but rather in its plotless, sensationalistic ability to titillate your innate powerlessness before pure, unadulterated adorability. “Puppy Bowl III” runs back-to-back, apparently, throughout the evening, so you can tune in at any point and discover for yourself just how much of a softie you are.

Continue Reading …

+