Box Watch: The Killing (US) and Forbrydelsen (DK)

Last year, we took a gamble and tried out the first season of Forbrydelsen, a Danish police procedural. It’s twenty eps long and some licence is taken with the genre but hey, y’know, it’s European and there’s quite a bit of slack I cut for product from that part of the world. It was a satisfying watch. There’s a second season lying in wait somewhere within the keep (it might have to wait until we’ve done Engrenages) – and then we heard it was being remade.

Yep: the almost inevitable American remake, The Killing, from one of the Cold Case writer-producers. We watched the pilot and second ep and were hooked. It was the same, but different. It had brains and paid the audience the compliment of being subtle.

Things began to slip away from the third ep onward, until the credits rolled on the season finale and The Goddess and I looked at each other in silence, unable to quite formulate our thoughts without lapsing into potty words and descriptions/threats of GBH.

Some internet trawling tells me that the perpetrator won’t be revealed until the end of the second season. Closure after twenty six freakin’ eps? Not even Murder One took that long. Suggesting Twin Peaks invites potty words and threats of physical harm.

The New York Times captures my thoughts exactimundo: “What we’ve been watching is actually a 26-hour-long episode of Law & Order, and we’re only halfway through it.”

Thank you, but no.

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2011 in Print

Comics

A nice mix of mainstream, European and indy this year.

  Asterios Polyp – David Mazzuchelli
  Britten & Brulightly – Hannah Berry
  Chance in Hell – Gilbert Hernandez
  Doing Time – Hanawa Kazuichi
  Fun Home – Alison Bechdel
  Hellcity: The Whole Damned Thing – Macon Blair and Joe Flood
  The Lagoon – Lilli Carre
  Maybe Later – Dupuy & Berberian
  Powers: Z – Brian Michael Bendis and Michael Avon Oeming
  Shaolin Burning – Ant Sang
  The Third Musketeer – Jason
  Walking Dead: No Way Out – Robert Kirkman and Charlie Adlard

Scripts

Hm. According to my reading diary, I read the average annual amount of these this year but very few have wowed me like I want to be wowed.

  Billy Elliott – Lee Hall
  The Good Wife: Pilot – Robert King and Michelle King
  Lone Star – John Sayles
  Manhunter – Michael Mann
  The Straight Story – John Roach and Mary Sweeney

Maybe it’s just me.

Books

Some ah, research led me to more non-fiction reading that I would previously readily admit.

  Armageddon – Max Hastings
  Nemesis – Max Hastings
  Striptease – Carl Hiaasen
  True Grit – Charles Portis

I’m tempted to try the Demi Moore vehicle that started out once upon a time as a film adaptation of Striptease but… ‘m afraid I mayn’t survive it.

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2011 on Screen

These are straight from the viewing diary. Those that I remember with a smile get some link-love.

Features

  13 Assassins
  Animal Kingdom
  Another Year
  Born into Brothels
  Buck
  Chugyeogja
  Contagion
  Frozen River
  Get Low
  Leaves of Grass
  Please Give
  El secreto de sus ojos
  The Social Network
  The Women on the Sixth Floor

Television

  30 Rock: Season 1
  Go Girls: Season 2
  Breaking Bad: Season 4
  Downton Abbey: Season 1-2
  The Good Wife: Season 3
  Justified: Season 2
  Monroe: Season 1

There were some shows that were real… curate’s eggs that I wanted to try and be objective about but then I remembered that Sunday School chestnut about pointing fingers and the other three pointing right back at you. (Yeah, I chickened out.)

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IMF

The latest Mission: Impossible instalment is around the corner and I’m kinda interested, kinda excited, though not because I’m a fan of either the franchise or Tom Cruise hisself – it’s for the directors who’ve gamely signed on (and the first one doesn’t count because Nobody knew)*:

  –  M:I-2 by a post-Killer, pre-Paycheck John Woo;

  –  M:I:III by the insanely prolific J J Abrams;

  –  and now Ghost Protocol from Iron Giant and Incredibles maestro Brad Bird.

… Yeah, I’m in.

Although somehow, somewhen along the way, whenever I think of the M:I franchise, I always flash on this:

* Disclosure: I’ll watch anything by Brian De Palma. Anything.

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Make ‘Em Care

One of my wonderful Imaginary Readers wondered how on earth I could get hooked into a show when they kill off a cool character – was/am I a sick perv for getting hooked so?

Back in the day, I was an occasional watcher of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Thanks to Wiki, I know that I started watching from the middle of season two onwards, and I don’t know whether it was the vampire killer schtick, the witty asides and/or the realistic interactions that kept me tuning in.

And then… a character who seemed established and part of the Scooby Gang freakin’ died. I hadn’t experienced that in serial television in, like, forever.

What. The. Frak?

As I found myself mourning the loss of a character along with the characters on the little screen, I realised a couple of things:

– there’s some serious shit you could do with television drama (and a horror fantasy to boot); and

– they made me freakin’ care.

WTF, indeed.

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See What You Like

The first sex scene does not begin until twenty minutes into the episode. Its a lesbian scene, and it only lasts one minute and ten seconds. The next sex scene happens some minutes later. Its a boy/girl scene and it lasts two minutes. Both sex scenes are shot and edited like an action scene from a Michael Bay movie. Nothing graphic happens. In fact, besides the nudity, they are just as tame as what you’d see on network television.

From a user review of Femme Fatale, a 21st century version, it would appear, of Red Shoe Diaries.

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Box Watch Update

With winter tapping politely on the windows and sliding leaves under the doors, it’s that time of year when the Fortress Mamea’s viewing statistics increase dramatically.

We’ve a terrible backlog of films and shows, but we’ve begun scraping away at that mountain.

In Plain Sight Season One is interesting in that it doesn’t really work for either myself or The Goddess but I’m still watching it (alone from ep five onward). Nope, it’s not the blonde lead (hey it’s Whatshername from The West Wing!). I think, for me, there’s comfort in the cop show formula, and the twinkly dialogue between the marshals is sometimes entertaining. I’ll see it through to the end of the season at least.

Sopranos Season One is a cracker. Someone has very generously lent us all six seasons of this sucker, and it’s great television. But not exactly must-see telly. I suspect the fact that the boxset sat almost forgotten under my desk for three months has given us a certain complacency in getting around to watching it.

Go Girls Season Two is a hoot. Two years ago, if someone had listed the component parts of this show to me and told me that I would like it, I would’ve broken both their legs and laughed uproariously while doing so and yet… rarely an ep goes by without me chortling happily beside The Goddess. A great New Zild show. I’m looking forward to the third season which finished screening recently.

And that’s just the legit stuff. Speaking of which, I shan’t be listing any more shows which haven’t been officially made available in New Zild. Probably at year’s end as part of the annual round up, but day-in, day-out, as a citizen, It’s Not Really Legal, and as a scriptwriter, It’s Not Right.

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How We Got Here

The latest abridged script‘s opening made me laugh out loud:

EXT. LOS ANGELES

LOS ANGELES is getting ASS-FUCKED by ALIENS.

VARIOUS MARINES IN HELICOPTERS

(shouting)

OO-RAH! LET’S GO GET THOSE ALIENS!

AUDIENCE

Yay, they’re getting directly into the action! Maybe this will do that good-movie thing of jumping right in and cleverly filling us in on the backstory as we go along.

(pause)

Or it might do that bad-movie thing where...

TITLE CARD: “36 HOURS EARLIER”

AUDIENCE

Fuck.

Once the chuckles abated, I had to search hard to find out what kind of storytelling device this is: a how we got here trope.

I used to think this device/trope was a nicely grabby way of starting off stories until Battlestar: Galactica killed that enjoyment with overuse in its second season.

I inwardly groan whenever I see such a title card now. For me, it’s become an unnecessary obstacle a film or show has to overcome for me to continue watching. Grinning and baring it has been occasionally rewarding – Breaking Bad and Band of Brothers come to mind – but for the most part, deservedly or no, a time-travelling title card provides an excuse to stop watching and move on to the next show.

And how would yours truly do it?

In film, Memento and 21 Grams have shown the way in forcing your audience to work without title cards.

As for TV, I wouldn’t use it in a pilot*. I was going to say it’s been done to death but I’ve gone back three years in my viewing diary and haven’t even been able to make a list of five. I blame BSG for my sensitivity.

And as for Battle Los Angeles, I enjoyed it immensely despite health advisories from Mr Ebert and Mr Slevin. Maybe my low expectations carried me over that title card hurdle.

* And yet… a pilot script of mine starts just like this – though, in my defence, it doesn’t have a title card.

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Homegrown Drama

Sitting down to watch homegrown drama is fraught with the negative reinforcement of many earlier disappointments and – let’s be honest – more than a smidgen still of cultural cringe, all of this tempered by the hope that a) the show’s maybe even half as good as our favourite, and b) we can enjoy it at some (any) level rather than endured as some kind of national duty.

I’ve huzzahed those that we’ve enjoyed. And I haven’t named names of those we haven’t – hey, I’d like to keep my options open on working in this town, thank you very much.

There were some New Zild titles I looked forward to last year:

— The uninspiringly titled This is Not My Life sits unwatched on the harddrive – pushed aside I suspect by the international film fest, getting The Goddess hooked on The Wire, and feeding another addiction*.

Go Girls‘ second season came and went unwatched – but again: thank goodness for voluminous harddrives.

— Yes, it was Outrageous Fortune‘s final season, but we’d tried the series way back when and we hadn’t clicked. (Snippets caught in the intervening five years whilst channel-surfing have provided intriguing glimpses of the chances they’ve taken – chances I’d like to watch; luckily the local have the full run.)

— I have seen something homegrown: I’ve finally just started watching Rural Drift – it jumps the abovementioned queue ’cause there’s personal connections there.

Sooo… what’s there to look forward to this year?

There’s The Almighty Johnsons but I’m struck by the similarity of it’s promotional photo with another production’s pic I bitched about, and I’m not talking about the trees.

… Um.

There was a point to this post.

Can’t for the life of me remember it now.

* I’m a bit gutted it hasn’t been renewed for another season. Where’s the love, hm?

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