Tag: AV Club

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Box Watch: The Good Wife

The Good Wife Logo.png
By Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=21898254

I was looking forward to the week’s viewing when I realised that The Good Wife ended last week.

Hard to believe it’s been seven years since housewife Alicia Florrick (Julianna Margulies) stood by her husband, disgraced and jail-bound state’s attorney Peter Florrick (Law & Order alum Chris Noth). At first I was rather leery of Ridley Scott and Tony Scott‘s involvement as executive producers: purveyors of loud and unsubtle big screen epics and extravaganzas, I assumed they would overwhelm creators Robert and Michelle King‘s kickarse pilot script with Sturm und Drang — but no. They provided awesome production values and produced consistently entertaining television for 156 episodes.

While reviews of the series finale ranged from “contorted” (Variety) and C+ (AV Club), to “single-minded” (Hollywood Reporter) and “the right note” (Salon), I thought it did an okay job of closing the show. Sure it felt a bit like a slave to its pilot but it made sense, it was true to character, and left an opening for a sequel, The Good Lawyer was sufficiently satisfying while still leaving the audience wanting more. Not so sure about the creators’ farewell letter to fans — I’m a believer in if you’re explaining, you’re losing — but it’s their show.

So. That’s that, then.

What do I watch now?

 

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Point & Click

A bit of a backlog of a collection, attributions for which I can’t remember, sorry – though a pretty good bet would be the sidebar, but.

    • There are such things as happy endings for screenwriters in Hollywood – just ask Robert Mark Kamen.
    • Thanks, I suspect, to Nick Grant of Onfilm, I have discovered The A.V. Club‘s excellent The New Cult Canon series, in particular this article about the commentary between The Limey’s writer Lem Dobbs and director Steven Soderbergh.
    • Another Kiwi screenwriting blog! Lyse Beck gives us Birds With Nuts. There’s a nice thread about Watchmen here.

And speaking of the Minutemen, after all my build–up, The Goddess and I went to see Watchmen a week or so ago. She enjoyed it; I hankered for some interpretation rather than faithful replication. Thanks to Mr Slevin I’ve read people who can say what I’m thinking much better than I could here, here and here. (And no one’s mentioned it’s been two whole decades since Tim Burton gave us Michael Keaton as Batman – didn’t that kickstart the mainstreaming of comic-book adaptations?)

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