So if you are a fan of either Barack Obama or President Bartlet (and what right thinking person can't be) then you will laugh yourself silly at this genius discussion that Aaron Sorkin penned between the Democratic Candidate and the "Greatest President Ever" from the "Greatest TV Show Ever":
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/21/opinion/21dowd-sorkin.html?_r=1&ref=opinion&oref=slogin
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Californication, 4 out of 5
I really did consider giving this 3.5 instead of 4 as its guilty of exactly the same crimes as Heroes season 2. Its a little too polished and a little too clear about its intent to be truly great. But despite itself it manages to carry off its entertaining premise.
So if you fancy kicking back and watching Hank Moody, the stereotypical haunted novelist who's struggling with selling his soul to the man whilst torturing himself with a diet of easy sex and cheap drugs to allay the guilt for a failed relationship with the mother of his daughter, then this is the show for you.
As you might predict with such a ripe premise its pretty funny stuff, however the writers do well to keep it fresh throughout the season. You'd have thought such a premise might become a little strained 12 shows in. Although saying that I think they may struggle to make the second season as entertaining?
So if you fancy kicking back and watching Hank Moody, the stereotypical haunted novelist who's struggling with selling his soul to the man whilst torturing himself with a diet of easy sex and cheap drugs to allay the guilt for a failed relationship with the mother of his daughter, then this is the show for you.
As you might predict with such a ripe premise its pretty funny stuff, however the writers do well to keep it fresh throughout the season. You'd have thought such a premise might become a little strained 12 shows in. Although saying that I think they may struggle to make the second season as entertaining?
Heroes Season 2 - 4 out of 5
So not a great by the same standards as the West Wing and The Wire. But enjoyable none the less I think of Heroes as a guilty pleasure with enough artistry to it to not feel like a complete indulgence.
I actually think I prefered Season 2 to Season 1 although from a quick few google searches it seems I'm in the minority re this. The digressions of season 2 and the lack of telegraphed plot lines and resolution that are often criticised in the reviews Ive read are what I find make the season interesting and little less linear. There are, whether deliberate or not, some interesting questions posed by the story, some examples being mans quest for immortality, and exactly what does does saving the world really mean?
If your looking for some good entertainment with high production values that doesnt tax the brain too heavily then Heroes Season 2 is your gig.
I actually think I prefered Season 2 to Season 1 although from a quick few google searches it seems I'm in the minority re this. The digressions of season 2 and the lack of telegraphed plot lines and resolution that are often criticised in the reviews Ive read are what I find make the season interesting and little less linear. There are, whether deliberate or not, some interesting questions posed by the story, some examples being mans quest for immortality, and exactly what does does saving the world really mean?
If your looking for some good entertainment with high production values that doesnt tax the brain too heavily then Heroes Season 2 is your gig.
The Wire - 5 out of 5
So if you havent already heard of the TV series The Wire then I come bearing great gifts, and gifts you are going to want to thank me for.
If you are the kind of person who raises a suspicious eye brow when you hear the phrase "greatest show on television" then you are like me, particularly if that charge, draws you in and forces you to watch said programme just to prove it wrong and ridicule such an outragous claim. Unfortunately for both you and I if you watch just one series I'd bet a weeks wages you won't have the will to argue with such a statement.
So whats the best way to give you an idea of what the Wire is? Well to all intents and purposes its a cop show. Not just any cop show however as its as interested in the criminals as it is in the cops. And it is unflinching - not that Ive ever experienced any of these things directly - I havent ever been to Baltimore - but it tastes 100% real and authentic.
I guess the best and most succinct way of positioning what the Wire is about is to say it's Barrack Obama's favourite TV show:
http://www.motherjones.com/riff_blog/archives/2008/01/6933_barack_obama_sa.html
http://slog.thestranger.com/2007/11/obama_loves_the_wire_i_now_love_obama
And what I'm trying to say by that is its real, its authentic, its complex, its ugly, its sometimes slow, sometimes addictive, sometimes viscous, sometimes funny, its intelligent, its thought provoking and its a million miles away from being definitive about anything apart from making clear that things are broken in America, people are easily corrupted. But still over riding all of this hope somehow seems to battle through. Just like the plagued characters of the wire. All have their cross to bare.
If you are the kind of person who raises a suspicious eye brow when you hear the phrase "greatest show on television" then you are like me, particularly if that charge, draws you in and forces you to watch said programme just to prove it wrong and ridicule such an outragous claim. Unfortunately for both you and I if you watch just one series I'd bet a weeks wages you won't have the will to argue with such a statement.
So whats the best way to give you an idea of what the Wire is? Well to all intents and purposes its a cop show. Not just any cop show however as its as interested in the criminals as it is in the cops. And it is unflinching - not that Ive ever experienced any of these things directly - I havent ever been to Baltimore - but it tastes 100% real and authentic.
I guess the best and most succinct way of positioning what the Wire is about is to say it's Barrack Obama's favourite TV show:
http://www.motherjones.com/riff_blog/archives/2008/01/6933_barack_obama_sa.html
http://slog.thestranger.com/2007/11/obama_loves_the_wire_i_now_love_obama
And what I'm trying to say by that is its real, its authentic, its complex, its ugly, its sometimes slow, sometimes addictive, sometimes viscous, sometimes funny, its intelligent, its thought provoking and its a million miles away from being definitive about anything apart from making clear that things are broken in America, people are easily corrupted. But still over riding all of this hope somehow seems to battle through. Just like the plagued characters of the wire. All have their cross to bare.
The Diviners by Rick Moody (2 out of 5)
I generally have a rule about books. If I get bored reading the first page I put it down. If I get bored in the first chapter I put it down. If I get bored at a point beyond that I put it down. Most books fail to get past the first step. Those that do, probably 50% fail the second step. But as a rule if you manage to write one good chapter then most generally keep me going to the end. However for my latest read, The Diviners of this blog entries title, I went against that rule and here I am sat here now trying to figure out why I've waisted those hours of my life reading a book that cheated me from the start.
You see the first chapter was good. It was original in concept and interesting in execution. The opening of the book started with the sun rising in California and then for the entirety of the chapter it follows the sun as it breaks around the world. A neat little set piece. But having read it and now the rest of the book I'm frustrated as its nothing but a fraud. It has no or little bearing on anything that follows.
I'd read one of Rick Moody's books before. His book "Garden State", which I originally thought had something to do with the quite entertaining film. I'm not sure which I saw/read first but the film is definitely the better. However there was something about the book that I liked. Its kind of off kilter, slacker prose seemed original and pretty unique. Like a drop out version of Douglas Coupland.
The reviews on the book cover also lured me in:
"A sweeping, dramatic, intelligent and utterly absorbing state of the nation satire" Tim Teeman, The Times.
I say to this hang your head in shame Tim Teeman. The "sweeping" comment leads me to suspect he's just read that same first chapter that foxed me and stopped there. Intelligent here basically means non-sensical in the same way that sometimes great artists moments of obscurity are held up to be something a lot more impressive than they are. And "utterly absorbing" it definitely isn't. However saying that there was something strangely compelling about it. The only thing I can really compare it to is the film Southland Tales that I recently watched. For both are terrible works of art in their own right. But the more watch or read either the more your compelled to see just how bad things can get. This particular fascination of course relies on the auteur having had some previous moment of greatness. For Rick Moody this was probably his novel The Ice Storm, which Ive not read but seems to be held up as a great. For Southland Tales it was the director and writers first movie, the often well over rated Donnie Darko. Both fall into the crate marked car crash art. Although Southland Tales for me is by far the more pleasurable experience as all its weirdness is wrapped up in little more than 120 mins and within it there are some incredibly strange - and in some ways fascinating things - although I suspect this is unintentional. I may come back to this in a later Blog entry.
As for Henry Sutton from Esquire who claims Moody to be "America's greatest prose stylist" then I think we might as well shut the door and turn out the light on any ideas we have about The Great American Novel TM.
The book is lazy, lazy, lazy. If you cant be bothered to write meaningful characters these days it seems if the critics are on side this just gets called satire. Likewise if those 2d characters that you sketch are so uninteresting that you the writer cant even be bothered to stay with them for more than a couple of chapters then this gets labeled a "sweeping narrative". It doesn't so much have a narrative ark as a narrative stumble. We meet characters who are lightly sketched and we get the sense of an interesting premise and then nothing really goes anywhere. And then we move onto another set of equally unsatisfying characters who are in some way tenuously related and they don't really go anywhere either. Now I'm a huge Raymond Carver fan so I don't need simple A to B plots and resolution. But if your not going to tell a story or have any form of narrative progression you are going to have to, a) be a great writer to get away with this and b) make me care about the characters. Moody fails on both counts by some margin.
So there it is. My spleen is vented. I can now move on to the next book which will hopefully be a great deal more satisfying.
You may be wondering why I gave it 2 out of 5 and not just 1 out of 5. And the only reason I can come up with is that the book to me seems like its fuelled by either lazy bravado (let me just knock this together) or a novelist who's lost all complete confidence in what he's trying to do. Either way there's something about either option in our car crash world that somehow makes us want to read on regardless.
You see the first chapter was good. It was original in concept and interesting in execution. The opening of the book started with the sun rising in California and then for the entirety of the chapter it follows the sun as it breaks around the world. A neat little set piece. But having read it and now the rest of the book I'm frustrated as its nothing but a fraud. It has no or little bearing on anything that follows.
I'd read one of Rick Moody's books before. His book "Garden State", which I originally thought had something to do with the quite entertaining film. I'm not sure which I saw/read first but the film is definitely the better. However there was something about the book that I liked. Its kind of off kilter, slacker prose seemed original and pretty unique. Like a drop out version of Douglas Coupland.
The reviews on the book cover also lured me in:
"A sweeping, dramatic, intelligent and utterly absorbing state of the nation satire" Tim Teeman, The Times.
I say to this hang your head in shame Tim Teeman. The "sweeping" comment leads me to suspect he's just read that same first chapter that foxed me and stopped there. Intelligent here basically means non-sensical in the same way that sometimes great artists moments of obscurity are held up to be something a lot more impressive than they are. And "utterly absorbing" it definitely isn't. However saying that there was something strangely compelling about it. The only thing I can really compare it to is the film Southland Tales that I recently watched. For both are terrible works of art in their own right. But the more watch or read either the more your compelled to see just how bad things can get. This particular fascination of course relies on the auteur having had some previous moment of greatness. For Rick Moody this was probably his novel The Ice Storm, which Ive not read but seems to be held up as a great. For Southland Tales it was the director and writers first movie, the often well over rated Donnie Darko. Both fall into the crate marked car crash art. Although Southland Tales for me is by far the more pleasurable experience as all its weirdness is wrapped up in little more than 120 mins and within it there are some incredibly strange - and in some ways fascinating things - although I suspect this is unintentional. I may come back to this in a later Blog entry.
As for Henry Sutton from Esquire who claims Moody to be "America's greatest prose stylist" then I think we might as well shut the door and turn out the light on any ideas we have about The Great American Novel TM.
The book is lazy, lazy, lazy. If you cant be bothered to write meaningful characters these days it seems if the critics are on side this just gets called satire. Likewise if those 2d characters that you sketch are so uninteresting that you the writer cant even be bothered to stay with them for more than a couple of chapters then this gets labeled a "sweeping narrative". It doesn't so much have a narrative ark as a narrative stumble. We meet characters who are lightly sketched and we get the sense of an interesting premise and then nothing really goes anywhere. And then we move onto another set of equally unsatisfying characters who are in some way tenuously related and they don't really go anywhere either. Now I'm a huge Raymond Carver fan so I don't need simple A to B plots and resolution. But if your not going to tell a story or have any form of narrative progression you are going to have to, a) be a great writer to get away with this and b) make me care about the characters. Moody fails on both counts by some margin.
So there it is. My spleen is vented. I can now move on to the next book which will hopefully be a great deal more satisfying.
You may be wondering why I gave it 2 out of 5 and not just 1 out of 5. And the only reason I can come up with is that the book to me seems like its fuelled by either lazy bravado (let me just knock this together) or a novelist who's lost all complete confidence in what he's trying to do. Either way there's something about either option in our car crash world that somehow makes us want to read on regardless.
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