dogbreathcanada

The Wire: Season One, Two and Three (HBO, 2002 - 2005)
*****
One of the greatest television shows ever created. It's a visual novel. Each episode a chapter in a grander palette. This series requires intelligent viewing. You have to pay attention to the details, the show doesn't spend time explaining away everything, it involves the viewer in the process of the storytelling, much as a good novel does. The opening episodes of each season might seem a little slow for those groomed on network television cop shows such as CSI, the opening episodes introduce the themes, add colour to the palette, before application of the first brush strokes. This is not so much a cop show as it is a story about the city of Baltimore. West Baltimore is the main character here, there are no other main characters, everyone else are supporting actors. Yes, there are recurring characters, but those characters rarely get time above and beyond any other character or story element. It's Baltimore and the variety of social structures that make her tick that is the focus. In the first season the theme is the drug trade, the interrelationship between the police force and the drug traffickers. The second season focuses on the waterfront, the unions, the politics, and the police. The third season is about reformation, how a city might change and does change, how people change as well. (The fourth season, currently airing is about education, the inner city school system.) Stories from previous seasons carry-over into succeeding seasons, as do characters. Each season is not a universe unto its own, and the series builds a broader palette, a series of novels, all of which build upon each other. If you've not seen The Wire, you're missing one of the truly rewarding viewing experiences. (Beware, the show does not gloss over finality, there aren't life affirming moments for the sake of them, they either exist or don't, all part of a realistic picture of Baltimore.) (Factoid: Baltimore has the highest murder rate in the United States, perhaps the world. It averages over 275 murders per year. If Baltimore had the population of New York City, extrapolation would give it 4000 murders per year.)

United 93 (Paul Greengrass, 2006)
****1/2
I enjoyed Greengrass' Bloody Sunday, but disliked his Bourne Supremacy (mainly the action editing with this one, since the story was solid). United 93 is what Paul Greengrass does best, pseudo-documentary filmmaking. This isn't exploitative. This film doesn't dwell on character. This is about events, built around the 9/11 Commission Report on what was known about the flight and the morning before. The strength of this film is that it doesn't devolve into disaster movie tropes, the film doesn't open on characters leaving their homes, kissing their wives and children, dealing with their morning issues, in an attempt to create false sympathy with the audience. The characters barely have names in this film, we don't spend time with them in a personal manner. The film moves between three main sets, the airplane, the air traffic control centre, and NORAD. It basically recounts the confusion on the ground the morning of 9/11, and then tries to piece together those events into a whole that explains why United 93 went undetected for so long. And then pieces together what might have went down on the airplane itself. A really good film and powerful in its telling. Requires careful viewing, since little is explained as the story is told. This is no World Trade Center Oliver Stone horseshit.

X-Men 3: The Last Stand (Brett Ratner, 2006)
***
I thought the story here was better than the second film, and key characters given more to do (and say) this time around. The story stands together about as well (or slightly better) than X-Men 2, but nowhere near as well as the X-Men 1 (and I'm not huge fan of the franchise having found all the films to be pretty unfocused patch jobs ... too many characters, not enough minutes in a film). I wasn't particularly surprised when Xavier was taken out of action early, since that seems to be what happens to him every film (I guess because his power isn't action oriented, writers just don't know what the hell to do with him, so best to knock him out of the majority of a story.) It's an easily watchable comicbook film, and even though directed by a hack like Ratner, it's really no better or worse directed (writing is another matter) than the previous two films. At least Ratner doesn't resort to fast-cutting of action, so in the action genre he's bearable. About the only failing of the film are the "two" endings, both of which really weaken everything that came before. This is film, a trilogy, so there's nothing wrong with finality. Hell there's finality in the film's title alone -- "The Last Stand". Finality affords impact, gives extra punch to the story. Pulling the rug out of that finality, as they did with their endings, is both cheap and demeaning, especially to the audience. Those "holy shit" moments afford no reflection afterwards.

The L Word: Season Two (Showtime, 2005)
*1/2
A huge disappointment from the first season. Boring would be the best way to sum it up. The characters have become wholly uninteresting. Their problems and relationships mediocre. The storytelling clichéd (if you have two characters who've broken up, everytime you show one of those characters hooking up, you don't have to immediately cut to the other at home, alone, being mopey and sad ... that sort of storytelling is so network television ... if you're attempting to do something different Showtime, then try to do it in how you tell stories too ... take a page from HBO ... please.) Oh, and the character of Jenny ... please get rid of her. A character who cries in every single scene in which she appears in hugely fucking annoying, scratch-your-eyeballs-out annoying.. Involve her in a car accident in the third season, please. But if you don't, at the very least, drop the whole pretentious carnival dream shit and stop involving her in storylines that allow the actress to showcase her skill of shedding a tear at the drop of a penny. Not much else to say about this, not even sure it's worth the effort. I barely made it through the season. Not even sure if I'll bother checking out Season Three (even though I've heard it's a vast improvement over the second season). I'm not looking for murder plots and whoredom out of L Word, that's not a requirement for absence of boredom, I'm just looking for characters I can invest some emotion in. This season I could have cared less about any of them, especially the ones I really liked from the first season.