Tag: Mad Men

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2014

Goodness gracious, that’s 2014 done already.

Boring stats first. My exercise diary is a little depressing: less than half the number of runs this year than I would/should have on average (see here for where it all began) — but if I add the number of brisk walks and bike rides, too… total mileage is only a third of my annual average. Goodness gracious me. Future selfies for the blog will be from the chest upwards only. (Update: 2014’s mileage was actually two-thirds annual average — human error in the spreadsheet formulae.)

On to what this post is really for: what I watched on big screen and small. 128 titles were watched, equating to just over 500 viewing hours — and here’s what stuck:

Features

  • Enough Said
  • Monsters, which made me want to see Godzilla (which did not disappoint)
  • a dead heat between 20 Feet from Stardom and Fire in Babylon
  • The Grand Budapest Hotel
  • Ida
  • Wreck It Ralph, with runners up The Lego Movie and Despicable Me
  • The Rover
  • The Lunchbox
  • Guardians of the Galaxy, with runner up Edge of Tomorrow
  • The Dark Horse

Television

Happy New Year!

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Bittersweet

I realised with a bit of a shock that 2013 is the year in which two must-see TV shows end their runs: Breaking Bad and Mad Men.

Salon has a nice piece by Joe Winkler on the impending departure of 30 Rock and The Office. It’s about sitcoms but the sentiments are similar:

In the most recent episode of “30 Rock” — there are only two more remaining in the series — Kenneth Parcell and Tracy Jordan discuss the reason behind Kenneth’s childlike love of television. Tracy guesses: “Despite cellphones, iPads and computers, they are still the most effective portals for poltergeists?” No, Kenneth tells him, It’s “because nothing ever really changes, the people you care about never leave.”

Even though it hurts like hell, good things do come to an end – how else can we remember them with fondness?

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2012 on Screen

I’ve seen more titles this year than in any other since official records began in 2003. I’d like to think the year’s expanded viewing-slash-research goes some way toward explaining why posts on this blog have tended towards commentary rather than craft.

Features

Drive
Tropa De Elite (Elite Squad) and Tropa De Elite – O Inimigo Agora E Outro (Elite Squad – The Enemy Within)
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
The Avengers
Safe
Never Let Me Go
Armadillo
The Angel’s Share
Dredd
This Must Be the Place
La Jetee
End of Watch

Yes, that’s more than ten for the year but those 2011-and-earlier titles were just so damned good that I had to name-drop them.

Television

Panama-hat-tips to The Good Wife, Mad Men, Justified, Nurse Jackie and Breaking Bad for continuing to be must-see telly three or more seasons into their respective runs. It’s sad that Mad Men and Breaking Bad will finish in the coming year but all good things do come to an end.

Hung – Season 2
Justified – Season 3
The Good Wife – Seasons 3-4
Smith
Inside Men – Season 1
Dirk Gently – Season 1
Game of Thrones – Seasons 1-3
Mad Men – Season 5
Nurse Jackie – Season 4
Hounds
The Newsroom – Season 1
Hit & Miss
Longmire – Season 1
The Golden Hour
Breaking Bad – Season 5
The Bletchley Circle
Last Resort
Monroe – Season 2
Boardwalk Empire – Season 1
Vegas – Season 1
The Sopranos – Season 1

Late adopter excuse/s for ‘discovering’ Smith, Boardwalk Empire and Sopranos.

A great year for UK telly with The Bletchley Circle and Hit & Miss.

And sun-hat-tips to the excellent The Golden Hour that almost, almost, made me want to watch the Olympics, and the lamented Hounds.

Theatre

Leilani Unasa’s His Mother’s Son
P-Lab’s Hypothesis One
Louise Tu’u‘s Gaga: the unmentionable

Disclosure: All three pieces are by Banana Boat colleagues,

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Point & Click

Greetings earthlings.

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Box Watch – “Mad Men”

When watching movies, I know I’ve found a new personal favourite when I’m grinning from ear to ear as the credits roll. It’s a recognition of the craft – the art – that went into what I’ve just witnessed. It’s the realisation of how slickly I’ve been played as an audience member. And the jaw-stretching grin is all the more sweeter if my expectations were pretty high beforehand.

In the last five years, that credit-roll grin has been hurting my face after just an hour – sometimes only half that – of television drama. From the oh-my-gods-I’m-exhausted elation/relief of The Shield and Bodies, to the what-the-heck-happens-next-gods-dammit addiction of The Wire and Sports Night – and let’s not forget the hot-damn!-that-was-good enjoyment from The Closer, The West Wing and the occasional Burn Notice episode.

So what is it about Mad Men that makes me griiin and whine cry out Finished already? each week?

Nothing happens. It’s about relationships – between a bunch of distinctly unlikeable rogues bastards in an era where women were little more than chattels, blacks were invisible, and every damned one of the characters smokes.

It’s those very things that I savour about Mad Men.

Nothing much may happen in an ep but we’re learning more and more about Don and Peggy and company – and what we learn not so much answers questions about them but deepens what we know about their characters. Where most other television dramas would portray the dick-swinging camaraderie with a post-Top Gun homoeroticism or symbolic gunfights and car-chases, the male relationships in Mad Men are so finely detailed that even The Goddess is forced to ask me What was that all about? And as for the show’s portrayal of the time and place: I salute creator Matthew Weiner‘s unflinching lack of gloss or veneer – ‘S how it was, baby.

In portraying a period of history as unflatteringly as one might cover current events, Weiner’s genius is in showing us that the more things change, the more they stay the same. Where the choice on the box is usually between procedural (or procedural with a twist) and soap (or soap with a twist), it’s great to have a drama that – just like its characters toil at in advertising – gives more of the same, but different.

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