I wrote earlier that the second season of Weeds left me chilly. Well, buckaroos, have I got some good news for you! It gets all crazy and super-well-put-together again!
The premise is imaginative, zany, and impossible, but not impossible enough to fall outside the realm of some alternate universe naturalism. All of this is relatively unimportant. The pay-off, for me at least, is straight-up whimsy, that bizarro varietal of comfort which convinces, however briefly, that anything is possible.
They put together this ass-kicking montage of Nancy--suburban mom turned drug-lord protagonist--and her new reality: working retail in a maternity store, the legit front for a drug business over which she no longer has control. The execution was completly outside the normal mode of the show--the use of voice-over; the faux-conclusiveness; the solemnity--and you could just feel Nancy drying up, the intensity of her frustration. Moments like that make you realize how deep she got into it, what a terrible, corrupt person she is, but also how much she loved it, nay! how much she needed it. Cut back to the present, as Nancy closes up shop, and there's a thumping in the back room. Nancy enters to find... a man emerging from a tunnel to Mexico, trapped under a pile of boxes. He yells in Spanish, telling her not to put boxes there, ever again, and the camera follows as he walks back into the tunnel. We see crews of filthy diggers, lanterns, and drugs in maternity store bags as the guy walks back yelling instructions. Cue some awesome, kind of bubbly imagination land music and Nancy, that adorable risk-junkie, goes straight down the all but literal rabbit hole with only a moment's pause for wonderment, sticking her head in where she doesn't belong all over again but knowing, a little better this time, exactly what that may entail.
Awesome character moment, awesome music (you just have to trust me), and a perfect example of a show being true to its fundamental roots as an experiment in fantasy.
Monday, July 28, 2008
Friday, July 11, 2008
Door-A
Ok ok ok ok ok ok ok ok ok ok ok ok ok ok ok ok ok! Ok!
Long time no chat, compatriadres, and what a sad state of affairs THAT is. I laze, I neglect, I dance, I watch, I yoga... why do I not BLOG (or WORK)?
But really, the why's don't matter. The world is just going to end up covered in massive landfills, anyway... or so PIXAR's new feature Wall-E would have you believe! Much like this guy, no this guy, up top! I found something a little bit OFF with the whole project. Now, I like me a flick that champions the finer sentiments as much as the next guy--finer sentiments in this particular case being, well... sentimentality, musicals, pluck, and hand-holding ("If you want to communicate something to the proletariat, dress it in sequins and make it sing!")--but really? A dystopia of fat people floating around in chairs, sucking on nutrish-o shakes and dependent on robots, it smacks of a lack of originality to me. People don't just sit around. We make stupid choices and exercise rampant disregard for our environment, perhaps even possess a lemming-like quality of two, but we do stuff. You can't just lazy-boy out the curiosity factor.
The love story is classic. For reasons we can not understand, be they spiritual, chemical, or mechanical, Wall-E makes a choice: he wants to hold the probe's hand. Obstacles are placed in Wall-E's path, but his faith and determination not only grant him love's desire, they change the entire face of the earth!
Cool. And very sweet because Wall-E has an awesome apartment and is a real trooper. But wait a second... they're androids! Did anybody else get heeby-jeebied when they smooched and we got nothing besides a metallic clank and happy robot faces? Funny, or not? How about when Wall-E, like some twisted Frankenstein, tore the feet from his fellow trashbot and sutured them to his own determined little gears?
Ok so the whole thing is kinda meta, but that eery tone (oh super sweet! but, uh, is that supposed to be sweet? is it just a bad joke?) gets lost in the context of the 'fat humans are dumb but not beyond redemption' B-story. It's a film about learning to be human, but frankly I'd rather take the lesson from some talking penguins.
Yes! Headstands!
Long time no chat, compatriadres, and what a sad state of affairs THAT is. I laze, I neglect, I dance, I watch, I yoga... why do I not BLOG (or WORK)?
But really, the why's don't matter. The world is just going to end up covered in massive landfills, anyway... or so PIXAR's new feature Wall-E would have you believe! Much like this guy, no this guy, up top! I found something a little bit OFF with the whole project. Now, I like me a flick that champions the finer sentiments as much as the next guy--finer sentiments in this particular case being, well... sentimentality, musicals, pluck, and hand-holding ("If you want to communicate something to the proletariat, dress it in sequins and make it sing!")--but really? A dystopia of fat people floating around in chairs, sucking on nutrish-o shakes and dependent on robots, it smacks of a lack of originality to me. People don't just sit around. We make stupid choices and exercise rampant disregard for our environment, perhaps even possess a lemming-like quality of two, but we do stuff. You can't just lazy-boy out the curiosity factor.
The love story is classic. For reasons we can not understand, be they spiritual, chemical, or mechanical, Wall-E makes a choice: he wants to hold the probe's hand. Obstacles are placed in Wall-E's path, but his faith and determination not only grant him love's desire, they change the entire face of the earth!
Cool. And very sweet because Wall-E has an awesome apartment and is a real trooper. But wait a second... they're androids! Did anybody else get heeby-jeebied when they smooched and we got nothing besides a metallic clank and happy robot faces? Funny, or not? How about when Wall-E, like some twisted Frankenstein, tore the feet from his fellow trashbot and sutured them to his own determined little gears?
Ok so the whole thing is kinda meta, but that eery tone (oh super sweet! but, uh, is that supposed to be sweet? is it just a bad joke?) gets lost in the context of the 'fat humans are dumb but not beyond redemption' B-story. It's a film about learning to be human, but frankly I'd rather take the lesson from some talking penguins.
Yes! Headstands!
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