The Stand Episode 1: The Plague
The end of the world is just the beginning.
I’ll try to keep spoilers to a minimum, but … no promises. : )
In June, I read The Stand (my review of the book is over here, and kept remembering the little bit of the miniseries that I watched back when it aired. I’m a wuss: I can’t do horror. Can not. That might be why I never watched the whole thing back in 1994.
At the moment (up till my next payment is about to go through and I change my membership) Netflix is still including free streaming with their subscription (*grumble*), and The Stand is available …
It’s faithful, as is only to be expected given that Stephen King wrote the teleplay. There goes Campion and family; and there goes 9/10 of the population … I was right, it was all a great deal quicker on TV, as, again, is only to be expected. There goes New York. (*shudder*) There goes the Vermont Center for Disease Control … There are the first cornfield dreams, creepy as only cornfields can be (though the color in Stu’s dream was just odd). This first episode does a very nice job of creating likeable characters to kill off. These deaths are (as, yes, is only to be expected) considerably neater than in the original – genteel small pools of liquid (some of which turned out to be spills, not vomit), very little blood, just a horrible mottling of the skin and some random sores. We don’t see the rotting bodies of Campion’s family, nor the one that will haunt Larry (yet, at least – I just realized that might be to come); there is no corpse with his face in a soup bowl (though there was “Is that Hungarian goulash?”) … There have been no pants-wettings so far, though there was ample opportunity for at least one, for Dr. Dietz.
I’ve read scoffing comments about the conceit that a dead person looks like he’s sleeping; death isn’t sleep and doesn’t resemble it, they say. It certainly doesn’t look like sleep in The Stand. Each time someone dies, there is a remarkable transformation: a stiff relaxation of the body, not that that makes much sense, and a striking change in skin color … it’s horrifying. It’s very well done.
The cast is a kind of mixed bag:
Gary Sinise is great; he’s so young. I enjoy him, and he’s managing the East Texas shtick well enough. I doubt I’m going to have any problems with Stu Redman. It does help that I had him in mind while reading the book.
Molly Ringwald … dark hair doesn’t suit her. I’m not overwhelmed with her performance, positively or negatively – my attention, to be honest, was on her belly in her first scenes and on her hair throughout. We’ll see. There’s much more to come.
Miguel Ferrer seems too strong an actor, too strong a personality to play Lloyd Henreid; I’m not sure I believe him as the character I remember. Richard Lineback, the actor who played Poke (briefly), would have been ideal, I think. Again, we’ll see.
Rob Lowe is Nick Andros. My main thought is that I hope to all the saints that he changes clothes soon; he spends most of the first hour and a half dressed in a plaid shirt and khakis that look too big for him, cinched in at the waist and just … ultra nerdy. And to reverse the Molly Ringwald quibble, he looks better with darker hair. It’s early to tell on the performance, as with most of them; he’s pulled out a couple of great expressive expressions. I’ll reserve judgment.
Apparently he was first considered for Larry, and I think I kept picturing him there (to the extent that even though I said “Hi, Larry” when the car with the DIGYOMAN license plate showed up, I kept thinking who’s that? when Adam Storke was onscreen.) (With Rob Lowe, Adam Storke, and Gary Sinise (at least), someone should suggest that gorgeous bright blue eyes might be related to survival of Captain Trips…) (The
y didn’t help the uncredited Ed Harris, though.) (That was a rather big role to have uncredited…) Adam Storke has an excellent Elvis lip curl, and may well be perfect for the part; even without more detail on his troubles in California, it’s clear that he could go either way, to Mother Abagail or to Flagg. But he is a boy who loves his momma. (Loved.)
Ruby Dee as Mother Abagail … shouldn’t she have been aged upward a bit more? “I’m a hundred and six years old, and I still make my own bread” – Mother, you don’t look a day over 80. There’s nothing not to like, but…
Corin Nemec as Harold is … not fat, for one thing. He’s a dweeb with thick glasses, lank hair, terrible acne, and a jogging suit. It’s probably because of the book’s influence that I can imagine he smells – but then again he’s the kind of kid you tried not to sit near in school because he did smell. He’s pompous, he’s verbose (hey, I don’t talk like this (usually), so I can say that), and Frannie can’t stand him. Okay then.
It was a nice treat to see Kathy Bates as Ray (Rae?) Flowers, also uncredited as the radio host who defies the army. (I wonder if Ray was one of the immune? She didn’t show any sign of being ill, though that might have just been due to location and successful avoidance of others.)
And as for Randall Flagg … Hm. I very much hope that he isn’t one of those Bruce-the-shark-like things which are much more effective when left to the imagination. The book’s Flagg was terrifying, though never as scary to me as the man-made plague. Psychotic, more than human (and less), unpredictable, as a book character he could do anything and be anywhere and be frightening. In the miniseries, he has been … a skinny guy (played by Jamey Sheriden, mostly in silhouette so far) in tight jeans with too-long hair (a mullet?! Oh, I do hope not) and eyes that sometimes glow red. That part was pretty well done. The moment when Lloyd sees him sitting up on top of the telephone pole in place of the crow was very well done. The “AAAH” moment with Stu in the cornfield …. Meh. I’m not optimistic.
Cast that is yet to appear: Matt Frewer as Trashcan Man. All right then. That should be good. Should. However, Ray Walston as Glen Bateman doesn’t sit well with me at all. I pictured him as someone like Kelsey Grammer – longish curly hair, tall and solid, bluff. Ray Walston is none of the above. Ray Walston is a pillar of American television and film, so don’t get me wrong – he’ll be wonderful, and will assuredly capture Glen’s intelligence. It’s just going to be a challenge to fit him into the role in my head. He’s one of my favorite characters, so I’m a little worried. The other one I really, really am looking forward to is Bill Fagerbakke as M-O-O-N spells Tom Cullen. Yay. I hope. I don’t have good memories of Laura San Giacomo as Nadine Cross (whose character is blended with … oh dear. *search* Rita Blakemoor), but I like her as a rule, and also didn’t think I saw that far into the miniseries – so, here’s hoping.
It was a very good start, this. It’s a masterful job of compression of time and plot and characters, a wonderful abridged version of the book – I wish Stephen King would consider screenplays of books other than his own, he does such an excellent job. (‘Course, he knows his own book better than anyone, but still.) This first episode laid out many of the threads that will be braided together. I look forward to seeing the interactions as threads twist around each other, and as new threads are woven in. My instinct is that it will not compare to the book – but I still need to see it.
It Happened One Night
Clark Gable & Claudette Colbert, directed by Frank Capra
What a movie. It’s one of the beautiful classics I saw eons ago and not since. Claudette Colbert is Ellie Andrews, who has run off and married King Westley, a world-famous pilot – and her father doesn’t like it. He has grabbed her up and stuck her on a yacht and is taking her home.
This ties in to “The Popcorn Dialogues”, a podcast which I’ve just discovered, which is two writers looking at romantic comedies and how they convey the story, whether it’s done well, and how, and why. This was, coincidentally, the first movie they tackled. At the beginning of the podcast they talk about how someone tweeting during the film said they didn’t like Ellie – but as the ladies and Ellie herself point out, she’s not a spoiled brat. She’s bursting out because she’s never had her own way, and she has decided that she is going to do this dammit, because after all she loves her pilot – doesn’t she? I thought the beginning was wonderful: she is refusing to eat, and so the father orders food brought to her cabin and goes to see her. When the stewards bring the food in Ellie yells at them – she told them not to bring any more food! – and they cower before her. The father makes them put it down, and as soon as it’s down they scamper. She’s a terror, she is.
He provokes her, so she jumps off the boat and swims for it – and manages to evade the men Dad sends after her. A telling detail: right then he’s angry, and frustrated, and kinda proud of her: “She’s too smart for you!” Nice character development. Next time we see Ellie, right after a moment with either detectives or reporters (sorry – can’t remember) talking about how she would never travel by bus, she is paying off a little old lady who went to the ticket counter for her for a ticket to New York. Ellie very sweetly thanks her and tips her.
We are introduced to Peter Warne in that station, on the phone with his editor being thoroughly fired. Again, nice character development – he is hung up on, and, since he has an audience, creates a new ending to the story. On the bus – to New York, of course – he can’t resist getting into a battle of wits with an unarmed man – the conductor. “Oh yeah?” It could be a revelation of an ugliness in him, baiting a poor stupid Neanderthal in front of an audience, but the Neanderthal is so very stupid he hasn’t the least idea that he is being baited. He is probably certain that “Oh yeah?” is all the witty riposte that is needed. And Peter isn’t cruel about it – he surrenders, and the conductor never sees the mockery.
He turns to his seat, and finds it has become occupied while he fenced: Ellie. And she’s tired, and not in any mood to yield. And so it begins – - and as it begins so it continues, bristly and funny and growing quickly warmer. Their relationship was genuine – they’re on the same level, intellectually and in terms of understanding, and it looks like a keeper. They’ll wear well.
Image via Wikipedia
One apparent bone of contention is that people think she’s extremely bratty because she expects the bus to wait for her – but she simply doesn’t know any better. It isn’t as if she’s ever been on a bus before; she asked nicely – it wasn’t as though she came back late and expected them to have waited. She let the driver know she needed to go somewhere (they never did explain why she needed to go to that hotel), let him know about how late she would be, and had no frame of reference to know that that wasn’t the way things work.
Image via Wikipedia
I love the tidbits some of the hosts – on Reel 13, and on TCM (On Demand in this case) (I swear, I want a quarter every time I mention On Demand or Reel 13). This time I learned: Claudette Colbert didn’t want to hoist her skirt and “hitch-hike”; she didn’t think it was funny. He said that was fine; they would bring in a leg double. Claudette changed her mind. And, to her surprise, from that moment on she was mentioned any time gorgeous gams were listed: Betty Grable, Marlene Dietrich, and Claudette Colbert. Hee.
I’ve said it before about other movies – it won’t be nearly as long till I see this again.
Roxanne (Earn more sessions by sleeving!)
I’ve been listening, off and on, to a podcast called The Popcorn Dialogues: two writers of romantic comedies (novels) who decided to do a review of movies in their category across the decades to try to learn from them, what works in storytelling and characterization and dialogue and what doesn’t. What makes a good rom com, and can a novelist (or two) learn from the good and the bad and the
ugly of film? It’s a great idea, and the two ladies are charismatic and (usually) fun to listen to (not so much when they’ve had a little extra wine or when they repeat their conclusions for the 83rd time in a 45-minute podcast – which two things often go hand in hand). (I may have to crib off the idea of the podcast: what can I take away from a movie in terms of storytelling – maybe it’ll make me review more films.)
I only listen off and on because I have seen remarkably few of the movies they’re talking about. It isn’t 
as though they choose obscure little films – all of the original movies are considered classic rom-coms, and most of them are pretty big. I just don’t get out much. Or something.
One I did see long long ago, and not since, was Roxanne. I listened to the podcast for it, and they adored it (except for Darryl Hannah), and that made me want to see it again, immediately. I bumped it up the Netflix queue, and watched it over the weekend.
The ladies were right, as was my memory of having loved it forever ago: it’s wonderful.
The cast, aside from being a proverbial blast from the past, was excellent:
- Rick Rossovich as Chris is (to quote Frasier) “Cute but stupid”: a truly nice, and truly adorable, boy with no self-confidence. The only story-telling flaw I can think of in this was that it might have been nice to know why he’s so phobic; was he a late bloomer, and still getting used to being a hottie?
- Shelley Duvall as Dixie was perfect, warm and strong. She’s the kind of friend everyone needs.
- Fred Willard as Mayor Deebs – Fred Willard!! Enough said.
- Michael J. Pollard as Andy was just adorable. And his history in Star Trek (“Miri”): bonus. I’m a fan.
- Damon Wayans as Jerry – wow. I forgot he was in it. And I never noticed him. Not what you expect from Damon Wayans.
- Shandra Beri as Sandy – one of those actresses who was in everything in the 80′s, from commercials up, and whose name I never knew. She was beautiful and really quite good – great chemistry with Chris/Rick Rossovich; why didn’t she become a household name?
- Blanche Rubin as Sophie, Jane Campbell as Dottie, and Jean Sincere as Nina – three of the elderly ladies who provide lovely grace notes throughout.
- Daryl Hannah as Roxanne … Hannah was hot right then, still riding the (pardon the pun) wave from, among other biggies, Splash. And she was fine; I loved what she did with the last scene. The PD ladies weren’t enamored of her; they didn’t feel she quite filled the role of beautiful geek. And while adding glasses to her boho look didn’t quite cut it as indicator that she’s smart, she did a nice job in the role – she had several good moments, and none that were outright bad.
- Steve Martin as C. D. Bales. All hail Steve Martin. I love Charlie – I’m in love with Charlie – and considering Steve Martin wrote Charlie (wrote the screenplay), I’m a fathom or two deep for him as well. He’s sheer joy to watch; he’s completely unafraid to make an utter fool of himself. He is bloody brilliant. And Steve Martin’s fantastic too.
I’m not as intimate with the details of Cyrano de Bergerac as I could be (he was real???) (and he wrote science fiction – in 1662! “Cyrano travels to the moon using rockets powered by firecrackers and meets the inhabitants. The moon-men have four legs, musical voices, and firearms that shoot game and cook it” – wow), but I love the use of what I do know. “C.D.” for Cyrano de; Chris for Christian de Neuvillette; a firehouse instead of a corps of the French army (still a brotherhood). From what I’m reading it follows the story faithfully
(except for the ending) – and does it with joy.
In terms of storytelling, there was one scene that was to me a gorgeous little model of efficiency.
We see Roxanne seeing Chris in a bookstore
Chris: Hey, did that copy of ‘Being and Nothingness,’ by Jean…
Clerk: Jean-Paul Sartre? Yes, it did. I got it right here! It’s all paid for.
Chris: Great! Okay, thanks a lot.
Clerk: De rien. Il n’y a pas de quoi.
Chris: All right, okay…
Clerk: It ain’t nothing, bro!
Chris (reading as he goes back out on sidewalk): “… Therefore my body is a conscious structure of my consciousness…”
Andy: Yeah. Thanks, Chris. I was too embarrassed to go in there and ask for it myself.
Chris: A little light reading, huh, Andy?
In nine lines, 77 words, here’s what we get from that scene:
- – Roxanne takes away the impression that Chris is a reader; I’m not sure whether she overheard what he was picking up, but even if not – well, he’s only been in town a few days and he’s already in the bookstore? This is a definite plus in a man.
- – Andy is more than just the sweet and kind of dim guy he appears to be, but not very confident in being more – which might be why his appearance is deceiving
- – Chris not only doesn’t speak French, he doesn’t know Jean-Paul Sartre from Jean-Luc Picard, and a bookstore is actually very much not his natural habitat. And he does not speak French.
- – While Chris is sweet and kind of dim, he’s also a very nice guy, willing to do a favor for someone he’s only worked with a couple of days, and refraining from teasing him as some of the other firefighters probably would have. He seems a little impressed at the end – as he should be.
Bravo.
The movie was written by Martin, which makes me very happy. It’s beautiful.
C.D. Bales: I really admire your shoes.
Drunk #1: What?
C.D. Bales: I love your shoes.
Drunk #2: What do ya mean?
C.D. Bales: And I was just thinking: as much as I really admire your shoes, and as much as I’d love to have a pair just like them, I really wouldn’t want to be IN your shoes at this particular time and place.
The firehouse scenes (Operation Snowball!) were sweet; the old ladies were wonderful (I can’t do the alien sound effect); taxidermy-man (“All Things Dead”) was perfectly creepity; it was just grand. The story ran a beautiful course to a satisfying ending (happily not the original). It won’t be as long again until I watch Roxanne again – that was just too much fun.
Remembering
William Campbell, beloved to Trekkies everywhere as “The Squire of Gothos” and Koloth in “The Trouble with Tribbles’”, died on Thursday. May his afterlife be tribble-free.
Castle just gets better
It is nothing short of miraculous when a tv show is good, stays on, and can boast not only a truly magnificent lead actor and really nice writing, but a truly brilliant production crew. Nathan Fillion - the marvelous Nathan Fillion – is the magnificent lead; his Captain Malcolm Reynolds of Firefly is one of my favorite characters in all of tv, movies, or print, as Firefly itself is one of my favorite entities in all of tv, movies, or print. Well, not movies. Not the movie. No.
The amazing thing is that someone in charge of Nathan Fillion’s current series Castle, long may it wave, knows this. Not about me – I assume – but about all the other geeks who started, as I did, watching Rick Castle because they loved Mal Reynolds. Above is the costume Castle wore for the first Halloween episode, “Vampire Weekend” in 2009.
Alexis: What exactly are you supposed to be?
Castle: Space cowboy.
Alexis: Ok, A: there are no cows in space. B: didn’t you wear that like five years ago?
Castle: So?
Alexis: So, don’t you think you should move on?
Castle: I like it.
I love it.
I had a fair-sized conniption that night. Bought the episode on iTunes.
Another mini-conniption:
Castle (in Chinese): My partner is crazy and may start firing at any moment!
…
Beckett: Semester abroad?
Castle: No, a TV show I used to love.
Every now and then they toss one out. It’s nothing that will get in the way of watching the show if you never saw Firefly - but if you did, it just makes for the happy.
Tonight’s episode, “Setup” not only is using a song by Pink Martini in the background – bravo – but involves Martha wanting to take Alexis off to a spa where she will shed her ego in preparation for teaching the students who will be flocking into her acting school. Richard never heard of the place. Martha’s response?
“You haven’t heard of the Serenity?”
There’s no way that was accidental.
To whomever it is responsible for the recognition of your geek fan base - I love you.
You too, Mr. Fillion. You too.
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The Wire in the Blood
For a while now, two or three (or four) at a time on the weekends, I’ve been watching the British drama Wire in the Blood, streaming on Netflix. I’ve just finished watching the fourth season of the six produced (the show having been canceled after 6, in 2009, because it was “too expensive”. Really? How?). It’s based on the novels by Val McDermid, of which I have the first, and haven’t gotten to it yet; I don’t know if the books are going to go on my List, as I gather they’re far more graphic than the serial, and the serial is quite graphic. (Being British, it has far more leeway in that area than American tv.) It’s a bit Criminal Minds, a bit Mentalist, a bit Monk, a bit Sherlock Holmes, and all excellent. (Oh my God – from Wikipedia: “An adaptation for U.S. television is being developed by CBS Television Studios and DreamWorks Television.” For the love of heaven, people, come up with your own damn shows instead of messing with British ones! I wonder if it’s still in the works, and when it might show up on the schedule.)
Dr. Tony Hill is a clinical psychologist who is better working with information than people; his forte is to examine the details of a crime and interpret the characteristics of the person who committed it. In other words, he’s a profiler - but he always corrects people who label him as such, so I’ll respect his preference. He is a unique individual, is Tony, socially inept, more likely to tell the unvarnished and perfectly blunt truth than to take into account the feelings and sensitivities of the person he’s talking to, and to all appearances uninterested in pursuing a personal relationship with anyone, male or female. He’s brilliant, almost Holmesian brilliant, and this is part of what makes him so very impatient with ordinary dull mortals – when he knows he’s right, what difference does a lack of evidence make? In lieu of anyone of his intellectual equal with whom to work through ideas, he often talks to himself – often dividing himself in two, roleplaying a conversation with the unknown subject in question. In other words, to the casual eye he’s completely barmy, and doesn’t try to disguise it; he’s straightforward and unselfconscious in his barminess - but he makes himself indispensable to the (fictional) Bradfield police.
Another reason I’m hesitant to approach the novels is Robson Green’s stunning job of portraying Tony. His depiction is ingrained now, and it will be difficult if the Tony Hill of the books is very different. He presents a character who is deeply alone, deeply damaged, deeply vulnerable and yet very very strong – but whose strength has limits. He is confident in his abilities to the point of an appearance of arrogance, but acutely aware of the consequences if he is wrong, or slow, or unable to force action to find or to stop the people he determines are guilty. It was, I’ll admit, Robson Green’s bonny blue een which were a draw in the beginning, but he’s a gorgeous actor in more ways than just that – the writing and the cast as a whole kept me once I’d been caught. Green has managed to make Tony Hill a hugely sympathetic character with whom I’m delighted to spend a couple of hours on a weekend night, but with whom I’m very happy not to have to deal in person.
The series starts him out partnered with D.I. Carol Jordan, played by Hermione Norris. She presented a Place the Face moment – I knew her, I knew I knew her, I could not for the life of me figure out where I knew her from; I had to resort to imdb.com for the answer: she played the horrid, adulterous, and much frillier Mrs. St. John in Berkley Square. I truly hated Mrs. St. John, which means Ms. Norris is a very gifted actress, because Carol Jordan is fantastic. She starts off the series completely unwilling to depend on Tony Hill – until he is able to prove to her that he is as good as he thinks he is and says he is, and her case closure ratio
increases dramatically. She’s much like Tony, in a way – alone, and strong-yet-vulnerable, with the added necessity of proving she’s not just a good cop but a good woman cop. She and Tony have what is usually called chemistry, in spades – there is always a cloud of will-they/won’t-they/did-they trailing along after them, and on that subject I’ll say no more. (I do wonder what goes on in the books; from what I’ve seen, the series of books and the series of tv programs begin at the same point, but diverge rather drastically.)
Put it this way – the show is so well done I only barely scoffed at Carol’s brother Michael, just enough for form’s sake. (In case I’m less than clear, they have the same last name. The result was not a problem in the UK, apparently, though somewhat more to be avoided when possible here.)
The rest of the cast is excellent as well:
Doreene Blackstock is Annie, often in the background and not used as much as she might be, but enjoyable when she is – and then gone after the first season.
Alan Stocks plays D.S. Don Merrick, an older detective (older than the kids Annie and Paula and Kevin, anyway) for whom the first adjective that springs to mind is “reluctant”. He is slow to accept Tony Hill’s help, in general and on specific cases, unwilling to diverge from procedures he’s used to, and at times downright sullen or obstructive – but I liked him. He still made a good cop, and someone you’d want at your back, while still showing the strains of the job: the constant barrage of evil and pain get to him.
D.C. Paula McIntyre (Emma Handy) joins the squad in the second season, and while she still isn’t being given a great deal to work with her role has (happily, in part) expanded a bit by the end of the fourth season. She’s solid, and while it might be a good thing for the series if she were to show some effects of what happens to her in one episode, then again Tony never does either, so we can just assume it all goes on behind the scenes.
One character I never expected to like is the ambitious and not always bright D.S. Kevin Geoffries (Kev – played by Mark Letheren). He’s not stupid on the job – Kev is a damn good cop. He can just be a right moron at times. He does something appallingly stupid in the first episode, but works his way back to a second chance – which he almost blows by doing something almost dumber at the end of season 2 – and yet when all’s said and done I really like him.
And despite the violence and the long hard look at depravity, I really like the show. I like it for many of the same reasons I love Criminal Minds: the fight against evil, intelligence pitted against horror – and, of course fine writing and acting. I’ll miss it when I’ve gotten through the six seasons.
As to what the title means … It comes from T.S. Eliot’s “Four Quartets”: “The trilling wire in the blood/sings below inveterate scars/appeasing long-forgotten wars.” Meaning? Who knows? “Robson Green said the phrase ‘wire in the blood’ was taken to mean a genetic kink, something impure and unusual in the blood, that leads to the kind of psychosis Hill might deal with.
“Val McDermid says: ‘Who knows what Eliot really meant by that line? Robson’s explanation is as good as any… For myself, I’ve always taken it to be a metaphor for the thrill of adrenaline surging through the bloodstream. But we’ll never know for sure.” OK.
My impression of the title is of something alien and electric running in the veins of the unsubs the show deals in, something which shouldn’t be there, and the presence of which creates the sort of – yes, thrill a psychopath feels with a kill. The imagery it gives me is of a literal, very fine wire inserted by some means through the vein of the arm, jolting like a needle hitting the side of a vein (nasty feeling), coloring the perceptions and reactions of the owner of the arm.
***
****Spoilers****
***
I was glad, for once, to have been accidentally spoiled for the information that Carol Jordan inexplicably leaves Wire in the Blood after Series 3. There is a rather feeble excuse given that, while Tony was away from the force for a time, not only did the Bradfield police offices move, but … so did Carol. All that was ever said was that she was offered a job she could not turn down – in South Africa. Whatever happened – whether Hermione Norris left for another role or the producers decided to replace her, the switch was made in a horrible fashion; not only was there little explanation for the viewer, but Tony was never told until he showed up at the station and found D.I. Alex Fielding (Simone Lahbib, who was apparently Isobel Anderson in Monarch of the Glen, though I have absolutely no memory of her) in Carol’s office. She just left without a word. And that’s terrible. Poor Tony.
And it’s part of what I mentioned above, about the tv serial diverging from the books; on paper, Carol never leaves. As usual with any change like this, I wanted to hate Alex Fielding … but she’s very good, is Simone Lahbib, and the character is, well, perhaps too much like Carol, but good nonetheless. Her soft brogue is delightful, and she put up a hell of a fight to making use of Tony’s skills – although she might have capitulated a little too quickly, still, he proved himself.
Again. Poor Tony.
They start Alex out in season 4 with a very interesting mystery about her: she does not work over. She is always available, always conscientious, probably works more than an 8-hour day – but where Carol was at the office first thing in the morning and well into the evening, Alex seems to leave promptly at the inner limits of her job description. It was pretty clear that she had somewhere important else to be, but we aren’t shown why until the very end of the episode, when we – very briefly – meet her young son. He is given a couple of scenes – his first being with Tony, to boot, who is bemused by the presence of a child in his new partner’s life – but is rarely otherwise mentioned; Alex is apparently one whose personal life is just that, and if we ever find out who and where the father is it could well be in the course of a case. That’s my prediction, anyway: we’ll see if I’m right.
Another casting change was the – also unexplained – disappearance of D.S. Don Merrick (Alan Stocks) a season before Carol’s departure. It can be explained logically within the show’s universe as a result of his attack on Kev at the end of season 2, with good reason; but it very simply never is mentioned, much less explained. Paula and Kev simply gain rather larger roles, and that’s about it. It was a shame, but they do well making up for his loss.
Did I say “poor Tony” up there a couple of times? Make it three, because what they do to him in the third season is beyond the rest: brain tumor. In the end of season 4 there’s the possibility that it has returned – and in the end he is distraught and depressed and considering death, and berates himself, something about how he’s so full of himself that he thinks a migraine is a brain tumor … Which wasn’t fair. There’s the old Arnold Schwarzeneggar line “It’s not a tumor!” Well, in Tony’s case, it was a tumor, and if it was me every twinge I would immediately think “it’s back”. Poor, poor Tony.
I look forward to the remaining two seasons… And, as I said, I’ll miss it.
The Prestige (recycled review)
Are you watching closely?
While I had bronchitis a while back (as I said in the last post), I rented The Prestige and The Illusionist at the same time. On The Illusionist, I was … meh. The Prestige, though… I loved every minute of The Prestige. While I’m not a fan of Christian Bale, he was extremely good in this – and: Hugh Jackman! Andy Serkis! Nikola Tesla (played by Bowie!)! Michael Caine!
Every great magic trick consists of three parts or acts. The first part is called “The Pledge”. The magician shows you something ordinary: a deck of cards, a bird or a man. He shows you this object. Perhaps he asks you to inspect it to see if it is indeed real, unaltered, normal. But of course… it probably isn’t. The second act is called “The Turn”. The magician takes the ordinary something and makes it do something extraordinary. Now you’re looking for the secret… but you won’t find it, because of course you’re not really looking. You don’t ant to know. You want to be fooled. But you wouldn’t clap yet. Because making something disappear isn’t enough; you have to bring it back. That’s why every magic trick has a third act, the hardest part, the part we call “The Prestige”.”
It was the slow spiral downward of the rivalry which started as just that: a simple professional rivalry – but which developed into a hate-filled pattern of revenge and retribution… it was dread-ful and fascinating to watch. I’ve been a proponent of Tesla (and a despiser of Edison) since Spider Robinson brought him into my life, and that made this a sheer geeky joy. Any time Andy Serkis is on screen in any role is marvelous – and I had no idea going in that he was in this. I loved the portrait of magic in the time period (poor doves). I loved that a key to the whole movie is given to you, gratis, when you least suspect it, and you don’t know it till the end – but it’s not the only key. I loved that the very last shot of the film simultaneously answered all the unanswered questions and knocked the viewer sideways – well, it did me at any rate; I walked around for an hour with a slightly stunned look on my face randomly saying things like “Holy crap!” Eloquent, I know, but – wow. Wow. Loved it.
I mentioned in the last post that after I talked about these two movies on TBWSRN, ugliness ensued; it was particularly odd, because I also talked about Stranger Than Fiction and other things 
as well (I was sick, and watching a lot of movies). But once I had brought them up, many of the posts that followed seemed to consist of “oh, I figured out the twist to The Prestige before it was half over, and my kids got it before me”, which I found just rude – or of expressed opinions that while Illusionist was beautiful and wonderful, Prestige was nasty and sordid, with an underlying cargo of “therefore anyone who liked the latter better than the former must be twisted and nasty too”. And – though I loathed the manner in which it was said, and loathed the sentiment expressed – there was a nugget of truth to the hateful opinions: the two protagonists in Prestige do fall very low. Once they were friends – - and by the end of the film it looks like if they both survive it will be a minor miracle. But that was a part of why it was so fascinating. The story of two men, both decent though one started out on somewhat higher moral ground than the other, knocked down by a terrible event, and never able to forgive or be forgiven, interwoven with illusion and deception – it was gold. Two men for whom magic is a science, and one man for whom science is magical: I found The Illusionistto be utterly lacking in passion, and perhaps it was because The Prestige used up the season’s quota. I couldn’t entirely buy into the deep love Ed Norton’s Illusionist was supposed to harbor for the girl he sought after – but Hugh Jackman’s insane grief for his wife was believable, as were both his and Bale’s characters’ obsession with their art.
Despite the ugliness of the battle between the two performers, the element of real magic in The Prestige was what drew me and kept me, and left me rocked at the end. The Illusionist was coy and stand-offish, and gave the appearance of dangling its secrets just out of reach – when really it never intended to give anything away at all. Here, though – The Prestige may not, in the end, have divulged as much as it appeared to – but it was in its way a more honest story, and if the story wasn’t as pretty or didn’t turn out the way I wanted it to … that was because the truth was not pretty, and couldn’t go as I wished.
And I really am a huge fan of Tesla.
Hotel Manager: I thought they might work for the government.
Robert Angier: No?
Hotel Manager: Worse. They work for Thomas Edison.
The Illusionist (recycled review)
A few years ago, in one of those odd little quirks of Hollywood, two films were released almost in tandem which echoed each other’s themes and settings; this happens now and again, and I wonder if it’s coincidence, and if not which came first, and why this would be thought to be a good idea… Regardless, in 2006 (so long ago?) both The Prestige and The Illusionist came out, each focusing on magic real and stage and its practitioners.
While in the throes of bronchitis a while later, I rented and watched The Prestige and The Illusionist together. I am now able to find it funny that a passing remark on TBWSRN about how much more I liked The Prestige led to one of the ugliest episodes I witnessed on the board – something that could have been avoided by more thought put into any number of posts, including a couple of mine – though I still don’t think I was entirely in the wrong …
Anyway. What I said at the time – which seemed to be part of why I ticked off a few people – was that I didn’t much care for The Illusionist. I thought it was fascinating, and beautiful, but it left me cold. The acting - from a cast headed by Edward Norton as Eisenheim (the Illusionist), Paul Giametti, Jessica Biel, and Rufus Sewell) was fine (in the better sense of the word), the story was good, but I didn’t much care what happened to the Illusionist, and I found the extreme passion he had for his lady a little hard to swallow given the almost entire lack of passion he showed everywhere else. It was a clever film, and I felt like I should have seen the ending coming (I figured part of it out, but not all), but it seemed a little too clever for its own good: it archly declined to explain anything at all, circling around its own myths, and ended up coming off as more fantasy than it seemed to be intending to. It reminded me strongly of Big Fish, without the sense of fun that film had.
I would like to see it again – and at one time I wanted even more to see The Prestige again, but scars from the flamings made it less desirable. It’s been several years now, though, so maybe one day soon I can watch them both sometime this year, and see if I still feel the same.
