Netflix Diary
a) Iron Man 2
I really enjoyed the first one and thought this pretty much matched it, not so thrilling that I'd probably want to watch it a bunch of times but entertaining enough the first time. Also really enjoyed the swapping out of Terrence Howard for Don Cheadle, and Mickey Rourke wasn't as eye-rollingly campy as I feard, but ScarJo seemed a little underused. The action scenes in this one worked a little better than in the first, too.
b) "30 for 30": The Band That Wouldn't Die
Since I've been on a little Barry Levinson kick I was excited to learn that he recently participated in a series of sports documentaries for ESPEN, and his installment was about the Baltimore Colts marching band, which kept playing for 12 years after the team left for Indianapolis and then became the Ravens band. It's a really amazing story and I don't know how I'd never heard about it before. I was just a little kid when the Colts left town and grew up hearing about what a huge deal the Colts were for my dad when he was young, so it was cool to kind of see the city's dedication to the team documented with this really inspiring story. Also loved the amazing collection of Balmer accents among the various interview participants.
c) "Breaking Bad," Season 2
I liked the first season of this, but a few episodes in I'm having a really really hard time wanting to go forward with the rest of the second season. The Tuco character was just so hammy and contrived, and the whole protracted thing with him just underlined how outright stupid the plots are on this show sometimes. Maybe it gets better?
d) Dead Like Me: Life After Death
This was just kind of depressing to watch, and not in the gallows humor way it was intended. "Dead Like Me" was cancelled after two seasons, and five years later they threw together this TV movie, but instead of wrapping up storylines or even continuing them in any interesting way, they just kind of threw together most of the original cast, with a different actress playing one major character, and no Mandy Ptinkin at all, with Desmond from "Lost" playing his weird eveil replacement and most of the plot ultimately centering on that. It was bad enough how much this show lost its way after creator Bryan Fuller left, but this movie is just totally unnecessary.
e) Zodiac
I generally like David Fincher and thought that this was, most of the time, typically well executed and involving. But I don't really think it totally justified its length, and the kind of wide swath of tones and narrative approaches it took was admirable but highlighted the weaknesses in some of them more. The movie's full of great supporting performances, but the leads are total weak sauce; Jake Gyllenhaal half-heartedly, incompetently trying to communicate the interior life of a man obsessed, Mark Ruffalo doing a weird distant Brando thing as a curmudgeonly cop. Jake Gyllenhaal and Chloe Sevigny are the blandest, most ineffectual pair of actors to have ever attempted to depict a couple meeting, starting a family, and growing apart -- they may as well have just gone from one scene to the next saying "oh hi, I like you...oh hi, we've got kids now...oh hi, I'm losing patience, I'll be at my mother's house." Plus the story spanned so many years and the attempt to be 'subtle' with the period elements and only minimally aging the actors (Gyllenhaal's only transformation over the course of a decade was from two day stubble to four day stubble) knd of made it seem kind of ridiculous, like the clock was racing forward 10-20 years but barely anything was changing in any distinguishable way. Still, there were some pretty damn haunting scenes here and there.
f) "Deadwood," Season 1
I was always vaguely skeptical of all the praise for this show, much in the same way I think more recent period piece cable dramas like "Mad Men" and "Boardwalk Empire" are a little overcooked and overrated. But people who makes shows like "Lost" and just about every show on FX seem to be big fans of "Deadwood" and always casting people from it on their shows, so I decided to give it a shot, and the cast really is great, just a ton of people I've liked in other things. And the flowery profane dialogue is sometimes a little over the top, but stylized and unrealistically articulate dialogue is generally one of the things in movies and TV that I'm more than happy to suspend disbelief for for the sake of my enjoyment. I just realized while putting together this entry how death-obsessed it seems..."Deadwood," "Dead Like Me," The Band That Wouldn't Die, plus a movie about a serial killer and a show about a guy dying of cancer. Weird.
I really enjoyed the first one and thought this pretty much matched it, not so thrilling that I'd probably want to watch it a bunch of times but entertaining enough the first time. Also really enjoyed the swapping out of Terrence Howard for Don Cheadle, and Mickey Rourke wasn't as eye-rollingly campy as I feard, but ScarJo seemed a little underused. The action scenes in this one worked a little better than in the first, too.
b) "30 for 30": The Band That Wouldn't Die
Since I've been on a little Barry Levinson kick I was excited to learn that he recently participated in a series of sports documentaries for ESPEN, and his installment was about the Baltimore Colts marching band, which kept playing for 12 years after the team left for Indianapolis and then became the Ravens band. It's a really amazing story and I don't know how I'd never heard about it before. I was just a little kid when the Colts left town and grew up hearing about what a huge deal the Colts were for my dad when he was young, so it was cool to kind of see the city's dedication to the team documented with this really inspiring story. Also loved the amazing collection of Balmer accents among the various interview participants.
c) "Breaking Bad," Season 2
I liked the first season of this, but a few episodes in I'm having a really really hard time wanting to go forward with the rest of the second season. The Tuco character was just so hammy and contrived, and the whole protracted thing with him just underlined how outright stupid the plots are on this show sometimes. Maybe it gets better?
d) Dead Like Me: Life After Death
This was just kind of depressing to watch, and not in the gallows humor way it was intended. "Dead Like Me" was cancelled after two seasons, and five years later they threw together this TV movie, but instead of wrapping up storylines or even continuing them in any interesting way, they just kind of threw together most of the original cast, with a different actress playing one major character, and no Mandy Ptinkin at all, with Desmond from "Lost" playing his weird eveil replacement and most of the plot ultimately centering on that. It was bad enough how much this show lost its way after creator Bryan Fuller left, but this movie is just totally unnecessary.
e) Zodiac
I generally like David Fincher and thought that this was, most of the time, typically well executed and involving. But I don't really think it totally justified its length, and the kind of wide swath of tones and narrative approaches it took was admirable but highlighted the weaknesses in some of them more. The movie's full of great supporting performances, but the leads are total weak sauce; Jake Gyllenhaal half-heartedly, incompetently trying to communicate the interior life of a man obsessed, Mark Ruffalo doing a weird distant Brando thing as a curmudgeonly cop. Jake Gyllenhaal and Chloe Sevigny are the blandest, most ineffectual pair of actors to have ever attempted to depict a couple meeting, starting a family, and growing apart -- they may as well have just gone from one scene to the next saying "oh hi, I like you...oh hi, we've got kids now...oh hi, I'm losing patience, I'll be at my mother's house." Plus the story spanned so many years and the attempt to be 'subtle' with the period elements and only minimally aging the actors (Gyllenhaal's only transformation over the course of a decade was from two day stubble to four day stubble) knd of made it seem kind of ridiculous, like the clock was racing forward 10-20 years but barely anything was changing in any distinguishable way. Still, there were some pretty damn haunting scenes here and there.
f) "Deadwood," Season 1
I was always vaguely skeptical of all the praise for this show, much in the same way I think more recent period piece cable dramas like "Mad Men" and "Boardwalk Empire" are a little overcooked and overrated. But people who makes shows like "Lost" and just about every show on FX seem to be big fans of "Deadwood" and always casting people from it on their shows, so I decided to give it a shot, and the cast really is great, just a ton of people I've liked in other things. And the flowery profane dialogue is sometimes a little over the top, but stylized and unrealistically articulate dialogue is generally one of the things in movies and TV that I'm more than happy to suspend disbelief for for the sake of my enjoyment. I just realized while putting together this entry how death-obsessed it seems..."Deadwood," "Dead Like Me," The Band That Wouldn't Die, plus a movie about a serial killer and a show about a guy dying of cancer. Weird.
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on Sunday, January 02, 2011 at 11:58 AM.
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