"A Discovery of Witches" Year One

As an alternative to continuing the "Twilight" series, I decided to try out a recent television show that I'd seen described in a few places as "Twilight" for grown ups.  "A Discovery of Witches" features an alternate world where witches, vampires, and demons live among us, hiding in plain sight.  The heroine, Diana Bishop (Teresa Palmer), is a historian from a witch lineage, but has never developed her powers.  Her love interest is a vampire biochemist, Matthew Clairmont (Matthew Goode), who she meets when visiting Oxford.  

The worldbuilding of the series is promising at the outset.  This is a world where "creatures" are slowly losing their powers and dying out, and there's a long history of animosity between the different species, the only exception being a nine-person Congregation of leaders from each group.  Of course, interspecies relationships are forbidden.  Diana sets off a new round of political intrigue when she discovers a long-lost magical book, known by its catalogue designation Ashmole 782, that everyone wants for various reasons.  She attracts the attention of Matthew, the bigoted witch leader Peter Knox (Owen Teale), and many others.  This also starts to awaken her dormant witch powers, and sets her on a journey of self-discovery.

The series quickly establishes the patterns of a typical melodrama.  The romance between Diana and Matthew is fairly rote stuff, and there's not much chemistry between Palmer and Goode.  Goode makes for an excellent vampire, but is much less interesting as a romantic lead.  Palmer is a little flat, as the academic side of her character disappears almost immediately, leaving her to be yet another generic Chosen One who has to uncover mysterious things about her past.  The big cast of supporting characters, fortunately, offer some welcome distractions.  As a centuries-old vampire who is part of a powerful family, Matthew has loads of baggage, including a protective mother, Ysabeau (Lindsay Crouse), an evil ex, Juliette (Elarica Johnson), and a brother on the Congregation, Baldwin (Trystan Gravelle).  The witches are a machinating bunch, and Knox has recruited a new Congregation member, Satu (Malin Buska), who is set up as a rival to Diana, and is using Diana's gal-pal Gillian (Louise Brealey) as a spy.   More helpful characters include Matthew's lab minions Marcus (Edward Bluemel) and Miriam (Aiysha Hart), and Diana's lesbian aunts, Sarah (Alex Kingston) and Emily (Valarie Pettiford).

Still, while the Venetian setting is lovely, and the ensemble is generally more talented, I had a hard time seeing "A Discovery of Witches" as anything else than "Twilight" with more complications.  The story beats are largely the same, and Matthew Clairmont practically has the same dialogue as Edward Cullen regarding dire warnings of vampire bloodlust.  Diana Bishop, though a mature adult with a lot more on her mind, is prone to making the same rash decisions and pronouncements of love as any lovestruck teenager.  I have to wonder if this is just what comes with the genre territory at this point.  The historical fiction elements are nice, and some of the show's mythology around its supernatural creatures is fun, but these are ultimately disappointing.  The references to figures like Ashmole and Gerbert D'Aurillac are very surface level and unremarked upon.  The mythology is very incomplete, and after the first season I still have no idea what distinguishes a demon in this universe.  I also find the series much too quick to get into wilder concepts like visions and time travel. 

In the end, I think that straightforward fantasy romances like this just don't have much appeal for me.  I was waiting in vain for some meta-humor, or really any humor at all.  Though set in the modern day, it doesn't feel like the characters are part of the modern world - which I guess is by design - and they come across as very flat and distant.  The weaker actors are unable to keep the material about prophecies and curses from sounding silly, and it didn't help that I had a hard time telling some of them apart.  Even if the usual makeup effects have been dispensed with, you'd think that demons, witches, and vampires would at least have different fashion sense.    

"A Discovery of Witches" has been renewed for two more seasons, but I think this is where I leave it.

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An Election Season Recap

The 2020 U.S. presidential  election is about three weeks behind us at the time of writing, and I want to put down something before it recedes too far back in my memory.  After all, this was an historic election, held during a pandemic where much higher numbers of voters voted early and by mail, where the results were too close to call for several days, and the cultural divide was so pronounced that protesters showed up to vote counting centers in some states.

I'm about as liberal as they come, and was among those hoping for a "repudiation" of the Trump administration at the polls.  So, election night was a disappointment to me.  I went to bed after Florida and Texas were called for Donald Trump, fully expecting the announcement of his second term in the morning.  That didn't happen.  The "red mirage" and "blue shift" predictions proved to be correct, and it was clear that Biden had won by Friday.  On the other hand, the Democrats lost several Congressional seats and the control of the Senate is still up in the air.  

I mostly stayed away from the news coverage, especially as the days after election night were a waiting game.  Social media was more helpful, pointing me to sites where I could look at the raw data from incoming vote counts without any accompanying commentary.  While I felt it was important to be informed of Trump's antics during this time - trying to claim victory, trying to stop the ongoing vote count, and riling up his most unstable supporters - I also thought that the increased media attention was just encouraging bad behavior.  Even now,  Donald Trump refuses to concede, and has left the country in a state of limbo with Biden's transition on indefinite pause.  There's a definite endpoint - January 20th - but the waiting is not easy.  There's still the worry of more violence and more turmoil as Trump digs in his heels and the conspiracy theorists become emboldened.  

The scrutiny of the situation might be greater if it weren't for COVID ramping up again for the holidays, and the country in the middle of the worst surge of cases yet.  Lockdowns are on, and holiday plans are being cancelled.  We're currently eight months into the ongoing crisis, and this may be the most challenging phase yet.  The good news is that vaccines are being approved, so there's an end in sight, but it's much farther away than most people think it is.  Only frontline workers will be getting the first batch of doses expected to arrive in early 2021. Everyone else is going to have to wait until spring or later.  So, we're all still waiting.    Still trying to distract ourselves.  Still trying to ignore the crazies and doomsayers.  Still waiting for everything to go back to normal someday.

In the end, I don't think that anybody is going to walk away from this one happy.  The Republicans will be ousted, and Trump himself is in deep legal and financial trouble.  The Democrats will have won, but not by much, and the Senate will probably still be a major obstruction to actually getting anything done.  Meanwhile, thanks to heaps of misinformation, there's a significant chunk of the American public that thinks the election has been stolen, or will be keen on blaming Biden for the actions of the Trump administration.  This won't be the Darkest Timeline situation I was steeling myself for on election night, but it's a long way from good.

Looking at election-related media, I'm happy to report that by staying away from broadcast and cable television, I was able to avoid most political advertising.  Some still got through via the radio and increasingly through my podcasts - those automatically inserted ads are awful.  Social media was also pretty bad - I have my Facebook settings calibrated pretty well, but Youtube was pretty obnoxious and had a clear, sustained rightwing bias for the last few weeks.  I had to suppress laughter when it tried suggesting me Dinesh D'Souza "documentaries."  Regulation of election content is still woefully out of date when it comes to the internet.

As usual, it was the late night comedians I enjoyed the most, though some were clearly showing signs of fatigue from all the outrage, John Oliver and Stephen Colbert most prominently.  I'll be happiest for them, to be able to talk about other terrible things for a while, and not to have to think about Trump so often.

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My 2020 Holiday Wish List

Let's get right to it.  This year for Christmas I want…

For the theaters to come through the pandemic with as little damage as possible, and for the normal practice of theatrical moviegoing to resume as soon as it's safe.  Small indie theaters in particular need all the support we can get.  As much as I'm enjoying the pivot to streaming, the sudden loss of such a massive revenue source for the entertainment industry has been a real eye-opener.  We're not going to be able to gage the full effect of this for a while, but the longer the shutdowns go on, the worse it's going to be for everyone.  But...    

For a Netflix film to win Best Picture already, because this is the most fitting year for it to happen, and it really does need to happen to reflect the economic reality of how the entertainment industry works now.  Heck, I'm half convinced that Netflix's spending on their campaigns are propping up the whole awards season at this point anyway.  I know Hollywood is all about showing solidarity with the theaters this year, but mucking around with eligibility dates and delaying the ceremony really strikes me as bad sportsmanship. 

For "Venture Bros." and "GLOW" to get some form of an ending, be it specials, movies, or farewell miniseries.  Of all the COVID cancellations, these are the two that really hit me where it hurts.  They both seemed to be on the verge of ending on their own terms, only to be cut short by bad luck and bad circumstances.  "Venture Bros." in particular has weathered so many ups and downs over the years, I hate to see it go out like this, so close to the finish line.  I need more Dr. Henry Killinger, dammit!

For all the new streaming services to find their groove.  We're still in early days, and there's a lot of instability - see the Paramount+ rebranding efforts in the works - but I'm hopeful that most of the bigger streamers will survive in some form so that we have a real a la carte system to replace pay cable.  This means HBO Max needs to fix their carriage issues, AppleTV+ and Disney+ had better sort out their content deficiencies, and everybody needs to stop playing musical chairs with a few big blockbuster franchises.  Seriously, what are the Harry Potter movies doing on Peacock?  Right now, whoever can put together a reliable programming guide/content finder site is probably going to be the biggest winner of the streaming age.  And related to that...

For more classic films on streaming.  It's long been a complaint of the classic film fans that older titles are so scarce on the major streaming sites.  The HBO Max and Criterion Channel selections are certainly nice, and Tubi has come through a few times for me, but there are still so many, many titles that seem to be stuck in perpetual digital limbo.  To be fair, a lot of the old obscurities have been coming out of the woodwork and enjoying more of the spotlight thanks to increased online presence, but I think there's still a long way to go.  And while we're on the subject…

For more content licensing and less exclusivity.  The big selling point of many of the streaming services is that they offer exclusive access to certain content, like the "Peanuts" specials on Apple TV+ or the Ghibli films on HBO Max.  This often means that the content disappears from other platforms, like "A Charlie Brown Christmas" leaving broadcast television.  And this sucks, obviously.  Frankly, the "Disney vault" model has always been awful, and easier access usually turns out to be better for everyone in the long run.  In fact, kudos to Disney for the rerelease of so many of their library titles last year to help out theaters.

For the new "Dune" to be good, and to make enough money that they can get a sequel greenlit with this cast.  I'm dying to see who they'd cast as Feyd Rautha in 2021.   

And finally, for all the new films and television shows coming out next year to exceed my expectations, and for those that didn't to improve.  Yes, even the Snyder cut.

Happy holidays!

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The Curious Case of "Waiting for the Barbarians"

Ciro Guerra is a newly emergent arthouse favorite, easily the most prominent Colombian director after the success of "The Embrace of the Serpent" and "Birds of Passage."  He's worked on shows for Netflix and Amazon Prime, and toyed with Hollywood projects.  His English language debut, "Waiting for the Barbarians," features a handful of very recognizable actors, but otherwise follows his usual themes and aesthetics - namely an unsparing examination of the effects of western colonialism on indigenous peoples.

This time out, however, Guerra is far from Colombia and the cultures that he's featured in the past.  Instead, he's adapting J.M. Coetzee's novel "Waiting for the Barbarians," which is about unnamed groups of oppressors and natives.  Guerra's adaptation was filmed in Morocco, and uses a mix of different ethnicities and locales, with clear visual allusions to various real world actors.  Taking place two or three centuries ago, the story features a Magistrate (Mark Rylance), who heads a remote outpost somewhere in Central Asia, at the edge of the desert.  He owes allegiance to a vast, unseen Empire, but has been largely left alone to govern his little corner of the world as he sees fit, and has achieved a peaceful coexistence with the native populations.  This includes the Asiatic Nomads, who populate the desert and largely keep to themselves.

The peace is disrupted by the arrival of the sinister Colonel Joll (Johnny Depp), who  immediately starts accusing the Nomads of crimes, capturing and torturing them, and becomes obsessed with the idea of an impending "barbarian" uprising.  War is expected, and more soldiers are brought in to prepare.  The Magistrate, a good and gentle man, takes pity on one of Joll's victims, an unnamed girl (Gana Bayarsaikhan) who has been crippled and blinded.  He nurses her back to health and falls in love with her.  However, at her request he takes her back to the Nomads, bringing the wrath of Joll on himself, and sparking further resistance.  Among Joll's underlings are soldiers played by Robert Pattinson, Harry Melling, and Sam Reid.

I doubt that "Waiting for the Barbarians" would be getting much attention at all, if it weren't for the likes of Depp and Pattinson playing the vicious antagonists.  It's a curious film, with an epic sweep and an approach toward European colonialism that is very reminiscent of Werner Herzog's cinematic adventures in foreign lands from the '70s and '80s.  But for all of Guerra's efforts to evoke the era of the misguided Imperial conquerors, so much of the story and circumstances are clearly invented, specifically the Magistrate himself.  He's a wildly unlikely creature -  a sensitive, morally forthright, romantically inclined middle-aged man who is put in sharp contrast with the cruel, rapacious newcomers who supplant his authority, and are clearly the true "barbarians" of the title.

So, we have to treat "Waiting for the Barbarians" as an allegorical story, about a good man espousing the ideals of the wrong era, struggling to stay good and protect his neighbors in the face of encroaching systemic evil.  And, despite some pacing issues, the film does a decent job of relaying this idea.  Rylance's performance as the Magistrate is very strong, the cinematography is gorgeous, and Guerra uses instances of violence and abuse very effectively.  I also appreciate the complicated relationship between the Magistrate and the girl, which is very one-sided and fraught with ambiguities.  Even when he has the best of intentions, and behaves honorably, he still inadvertently harms her.    

Where I think the film runs into some trouble is with the agents of the Empire, who are almost cartoonish in their villainy.    Frankly, it's distracting to have recognizable Hollywood stars playing the agents of oppression.  Johnny Depp, who I love in many films, sticks out like a sore thumb here.  Pattinson less so, though he only shows up in the third act and really doesn't have much to do.  They're all dressed like French Foreign Legionnaires and speak English, and it's all frankly a little too dehumanized and weird.  The soldiers' totally unscrupulous mistreatment of the locals, and pillaging of the landscape, however, ring all too true.          

      

I'm looking forward to more from Ciro Guerra, though I'd prefer if he stayed as far away from Hollywood as humanly possible.  

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Into the '50s

I've been making much more progress on my Top Ten project than I expected I would be, and I thought it would be a good time to write up a little of my experience working through the films of the late '50s.  

If I was unfamiliar with the water while wading into the '60s and the '70s, I'm even more unfamiliar with the '50s.  I realized that so many of my cultural touchstones came out of the '60s, from the James Bond movies to "The Twilight Zone."  With the '50s, it feels like I'm exploring a new continent.  Though I'm familiar with many of the Golden Age stars of the time, like Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly, and Marilyn Monroe and Elizabeth Taylor, it's very rare that I come across anyone still active in films now - I spotted a very young Tsai Chin in "The Inn of the Sixth Happiness," and Richard Beymer in "The Diary of Anne Frank."  

You definitely get a sense of the film world narrowing down a bit this far back in time.  There were fewer films made, and from fewer sources.  Looking at foreign films, there was almost nothing coming out of South America and  Africa, while other countries' film industries were still in their nascent stages.  However, the '50s were when Akira Kurosawa and Satyajit Ray were making some of their best work, and Alfred Hitchcock really got going.  I keep coming across wonderful experiments like the Czech sci-fi film "Invention for Destruction," that uses elaborate sets and animation to bring a world of vintage Jules Verne illustrations to life.  In Hollywood, the studio system was in full swing, and the major genres of the day were musicals, westerns, and melodramas.  Epics were also popular, including many war films.  In the wake of WWII, there was a lot more military presence across all genres, and heroes were often former soldiers of one kind or another.  

As I've mentioned previously, I've been reluctant about getting into '50s films because the social mores are so different, especially when it comes to race and gender.  Pre Civil Rights era, the mainstream studio films were fairly awful at portraying anyone who wasn't white.  Blackface was out, but there was still plenty of brownface and yellowface in use.  And pre "The Feminine Mystique," somehow I'm not surprised that the big female star of the era was sexy airhead Marilyn Monroe - who I know wasn't really an airhead in real life.  And yet, the late '50s had several movies about interracial relationships that were very progressive for their time.  The goalposts were in a very different place, but the basic outlines of your standard social justice picture advocating for more tolerance and acceptance are very familiar.  And once you got away from the big, expensive spectacles, you could find films like "The Crimson Kimono," where James Shigeta gets the white girl in the end.  And alongside Sidney Poitier, Harry Belafonte was a legitimate leading man in films like "Odds Against Tomorrow" and "The World, the Flesh, and the Devil."  

That said, the biggest smash hit of 1958 was "South Pacific," and I can't begin to describe all the ways that "South Pacific" is utterly deplorable from a modern POV.  I couldn't even enjoy Ray Walston in the film, and I love Ray Walston.  When it comes to adventures in foreign lands, especially in the East, the white savior trope is everywhere.  Well-meaning pictures like "The Inn of the Sixth Happiness" are wildly inaccurate and condescending.  And romance really isn't what it used to be - and thank goodness.  After sitting through a string of musicals with bad boy heroes like "Kiss Me Kate," "Pal Joey" and "Jailhouse Rock," the predatory, patriarchal nonsense can really start to grate.  Elvis and Frank Sinatra's music were a big part of my childhood, but I doubt I'll ever look at either of them the same way again.    

I have turned up a few new favorites and films worth seeing, that couldn't be made today for one reason or another.  I prefer 1958's "A Night to Remember" to "Titanic."  I love Gregory Peck making a stand for nonviolence in "The Big Country."  And even though the film is a highly, highly misleading account of actual facts, "I Want to Live!" is one of the best film noir I've seen, and a scathing takedown of the tactics of the press, right up there with "Ace in the Hole."

I've got an awful long way yet to go, but the mountain doesn't look as insurmountable as it once did.  Happy watching.

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"The West Wing," Year Three

Moderate spoilers ahead.

Well, the early phase of the Bartlett administration is over. Season three has made some adjustments, and feels more like the television dramas of the last decade - more serialized, featuring thornier conflicts and imperfect characters, with no clean and tidy resolutions. Starry-eyed idealism has largely been replaced with more cynical politicking as Jed Bartlett's re-election campaign is in full swing. His staff is screwing up more often and facing harder challenges. Bartlett himself is clashing more frequently with them. Josh and Sam are still arrogant jerks from time to time, but there are more repercussions for their behavior.

The third season started out pretty shaky, with all the flashback episodes I wasn't very interested in, and the scandal over the President's multiple sclerosis secret taking up so much of the narrative. As much as I enjoy Martin Sheen as President Bartlett, I like "The West Wing" much better as an ensemble show, and the first part of the season is awfully Bartlett-heavy. It's not that I'm opposed to learning more about Bartlett's past and psychology, but it comes at the expense of everyone else around him. I'd have loved to get more of Sam's background, or CJ's. Charlie is easily the most underutilized of the regulars, and only gets something substantive to do at the very end of the season. When we do see more of the staff, the humor is dialed way, way down, and there are several episodes that are very issue-focused, and don't make the best use of the characters as characters. Instead they sometimes feel like mouthpieces for political views that are randomly assigned. CJ is against affirmative action in one installment, and this is conveniently never mentioned again.

Still, Sorkin is at his best here, holding his characters to account for their mistakes, setting up higher stakes, presenting compelling moral dilemmas, and getting the audience invested in larger themes and issues. The season finale, unlike previous years, feels like less of a stunt and more of an organic endpoint to several ongoing storylines that have been properly developed over the course of the season, CJ's romance with Mark Harmon notwithstanding. Bartlett feels more humanized and less infallible, which is preferable to having him on a pedestal. I miss some of the cozy camaraderie of the earlier seasons, but I also appreciate the more realistic depiction of a political system that is constantly getting bogged down by special interests, bad faith actions, and plain, old fashioned political maneuvering. One of my favorite moments of the season is watching Sam getting totally outplayed by a rival working for the opposition.

There aren't many prominent new characters this season. Josh's newest love interest is women's rights lobbyist Amy Gardner (Mary-Louise Parker), and I hope that she stays around for the long haul. She's by far the most interesting and personable of all of Josh's love interests so far, and Parker has a fantastic onscreen dynamic with Bradley Whitford. I wonder if Mandy would still be around if Parker had been given her role at the start. And we need more Ainsley, who only makes a handful of special appearances. And more Abby Bartlett. I'm even warming up to Donna more, now that she's not always orbiting Josh.

The show's success is also clearly having an impact, with a mediocre special dedicated to real life White House staffers, with the participation of Presidents Ford, Carter, and Clinton, and a post 9/11 bottle episode that didn't really work. It was a valiant effort at a mature response to still-unfolding events (at the time the show was originally aired), but it didn't work. The self-importance of "The West Wing" has never been more pronounced, with guest stars like Lily Tomlin, getting bigger, and Sorkin clearly addressing criticisms of the show's first two seasons in various forms.

I admit I nearly gave up on "The West Wing" entirely after the first few episodes of this season. The twenty-plus episode seasons are starting to wear on me, and the filler hasn't been great. However, I thought the show recovered nicely toward the back half, and I'm looking forward to the presidential election and the further events in the show's universe next season.
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"Weathering With You" and "Promare"

I've been neglecting the anime world recently, and COVID has given me a rare opportunity to catch up. Here are some quick thoughts on the two major titles from last year.

First, Makoto Shinkai's "Weathering With You" is one of the more entertaining titles in his catalogue. I'm not very fond of Shinkai's teen romances, especially the ones that get super introspective and angst-ridden. "Weathering With You" stays fairly light and humorous throughout, even though it features a needlessly Hollywood-style action climax. The characters are better defined, and the fantasy elements are more interesting, occasionally veering into Miyazaki territory in a way that none of the other Shinkai films have before.

Hodaka (Kotaro Daigo) is a runaway teeanger who is having a hard time surviving in Tokyo, but he's taken under the wing of a disreputable publisher, Suga (Shun Oguri), and his assistant Natsumi (Tsubasa Honda). He then befriends a girl named Hina (Nana Mori), who turns out to be a "sunshine girl." Her prayers can temporarily stop the unusual torrential rains that have been plaguing Tokyo for months, and Hodaka helps her turn this skill into a little business. Hina and her younger brother Nagi (Sakura Kiryu) have been recently orphaned after the death of their mother, and are also barely scraping by.

As usual, the biggest selling point of Shinkai's film is its gorgeous visuals. A larger budget has given him the ability to do fuller, smoother animation, and multiple scenes full of rain and cloud effects. The weather is like another character in the film, often driving the plot along and playing a big part in the film's ending. The pace is very lackadaisical, often just following how Hodaka is enjoying his life and finding his tribe, which makes for a very pleasant watch. I like "Weathering With You" more than most of the other Shinkai films because it has a very strong supporting cast - rough-edged Suga, precocious Nagi, and hot-blooded Natsumi are a lot of fun to watch. The specificity of the modern Tokyo setting is also a plus, giving us meticulously detailed beauty shots of busy streets and neighborhoods. So even if Hodaka is the usual romantic idiot teenage hero, and the love story is paint-by-numbers, there's a lot more to see and enjoy.

Now, switching gears entirely, we have "Promare," the wild new action film from Studio Trigger about a dystopian future where the emergence of the pyrokinetic Mad Burnish terrorists has created a world where the fire fighting force of Burning Rescue is treated like a celebrity superhero team. One member of Burning Rescue in particular, Galo Thymos (Kenichi Matsuyama), is deeply committed to his cause, and to protecting the city of Promepolis and its leader Kray Foresight (Masato Sakai). The trouble is, the Mad Burnish are actually being persecuted by Foresight, and in danger of being further victimized as part of his dastardly plot to escape the impending apocalypse. Galo and the Mad Burnish leader, Lio Fotia (Taichi Saotome), have to put aside their differences and team up in order to save the day.

The clear precursor to "Promare" is "Gurren Lagaan," the Studio Gainax adventure series with which it shares key members of the creative team, including director Hiroyuki Imaishi. This isn't just because Galo Thymos is a dead ringer for "Gurren Lagaan" hero Kamina, but because the two anime share a very similar visual sensibility of incredibly kinetic animation, highly stylized designs, and action sequences of epic scope. So much of "Promare" is action scenes, these hugely ambitious scenarios that mix 2D and 3D animation to create impossible, colorful clashes to fill the screen. The bombastic, over-the-top opener was so overwhelming, I was a little worried that "Promare" wouldn't actually have a comprehensible story. Instead, it turns out that "Promare" is a perfectly good science-fiction fable at its core, with a passel of fun characters. It's very comic book level stuff, where every new revelation is underlined several times and adorned with exclamation points, but very enjoyable if you can get on the same wavelength.

I want to emphasize that this is some of the best animation I've seen come out of Japan in a long time. The momentum of the action, and the energy coming out of it is incredible. It's also beautifully designed from top to bottom, utilizing these minimalist shapes and searing neon colors to keep expanding and expanding the scope to the point of ludicrousness. Eventually there are spaceships and trans-dimensional flame aliens involved and the whole planet gets set on fire. It's beautifully bonkers and so much more than I was expecting from a film billed as being about superpowered fire-fighters.
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Meet "Madoka"

Spoilers ahead.

The "Madoka Magica" anime franchise is one that I've been meaning to watch for a long time. When I was in my full-time otaku phase, I had a special interest in the "magical girl" genre, shows about girls who used magical powers to fight evil. "Madoka Magica" has gained a reputation for being a notable title in the genre, because it crossed over the typical, cutesy,"magical girl" story with more disturbing horror elements. It marks the inevitable culmination of a couple of 2000s era trends, the most important being that most of the "magical girl" shows were no longer aimed at little girls, a shrinking audience, but at adult anime fans, and catered to their tastes.

I decided to watch the "Madoka" movie trilogy. The first two installments, "Beginnings" and "Eternal," are made up of re-edited footage from the twelve episode "Madoka" series - with some tweaks and improvements. I was familiar with compilation films from other anime, but I'd never used them as a starting point before. Watching the first two "Madoka" films back to back felt like I'd binge-watched the entire series, which was perfectly fine. In fact, given the nature of the show, it turned out to be the much better option for me, because it meant I could skip opening and ending sequences, recaps, previews, and filler. However, I made a mistake in choosing the original subtitled versions to watch. Madoka is a "moe" heroine, whose chief defining quality is being innocent or cute. I find "moe" heroines tiresome, and Madoka is the most insufferable variant too - the whimpery, helium-voiced, super-empathetic sad-sack who is perpetually on the verge of a tearful meltdown. Aoi Yuki's performance as Madoka was incredibly hard on my ears.

Fortunately, Madoka is only one of five girls who feature in the show, the others being her bestie Sayaka (Eri Kitamura), older mentor Mami (Kaori Mizuhashi), a brash delinquent, Kyoko (Ai Nonaka), and a sinister transfer student, Homura (Chiwa Saito). The story starts with Madoka and Sayaka being approached by a cat-like creature called Kyubey (Emiri Kato), who offers them a deal to become magical heroines and fight evil witches, in exchange for having a wish granted. And because "Madoka Magica" is a subversion of the typical "magical girl" show and aimed at grown-ups, the deal turns out to be a terrible trap. Homura is eventually revealed to be the show's real protagonist, and her goal is to keep Madoka from taking the deal and becoming a magical girl, no matter what. The situation becomes more and more dire, and all the girls either end up dead or terribly traumatized - though there are certain metaphysical workarounds to counteract this.

"Madoka" largely sticks to the "magical girl" formula. You have the glitzy transformation sequences, the battle costumes, the magical weapons, and in the end, female friendship may be everyone's salvation. However, creators Gen Urouchi and director Akiyuki Shinbo, deviate from form in significant ways. Common "magical girl" tropes, like the talking animal mascot/sidekick and the magical totems become scary and harmful. Personal issues like disillusionment and possessiveness are no longer minor hurdles to overcome, but magnified to the point of out-and-out soul destroying horror. And it's the horror anime like "Elfen Lied" and "Higurashi When They Cry" that I found myself comparing "Madoka" to, though "Madoka" doesn't go nearly as far as those titles do in the shock and gore department. Still, there's often the same queasy sort of mismatch between the cutie characters and the horrible things they're exposed to.

Stylistically, "Madoka" looks like just about every other show from ten years ago featuring "moe" girls. The designs are so derivative (busty sempai, childish heroine, delinquent with a fang), you can tell a girl's personality type before she even opens her mouth. It makes the show look pretty blah, and this is a shame, because there's a lot of creativity at work in "Madoka." The action scenes and monsters incorporate a lot of collage art, putting the girls into these surreal landscapes of paper figures and found objects. Bits of design work and illustrations from many interesting sources find their way into the backgrounds. The animation is pretty basic, but it's evocative and does the job of making the girls feel emotionally relatable. The third and final movie, "Rebellion," has better production quality all around, and is able to manage a few impressive fight scenes.

It's also in "Rebellion" that "Madoka" really becomes a subversive work. The original resolution of the series was a hopeful one, negating much of the terror and darkness wrought by the villains. "Rebellion" delivers a nihilistic twist ending that uses the "love conquers all" theme to doom one of the characters instead of saving her. It's not handled in the best way - think "End of Evangelion" levels of apocalyptic imagery and narrative obtuseness - but it's a gutsy move and helps "Madoka" to leave more of an impact.

In the end, I came away respecting "Madoka" more than I enjoyed it. There are just too many creative choices I couldn't get behind, from the weepy heroine to the character designs that make even the adult women look like owl-eyed toddlers. But, all props for trying something different, and committing to the idea.

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Summer 2020 Box Office Wrap-Up

I was poking around The Numbers' website, now the default box office stats website after Box Office Mojo went south.  I'm still getting used to the interface, but I'm grateful to have it.  And I started thinking about past summers playing the Summer Movie Wager, and the prediction list I'd had in the works for 2020, which had "Wonder Woman 1984" in the top spot.  And I wondered what the 2020 box office results actually looked like after all the COVID cancellations.

Some quick comparisons of the relevant charts and available numbers got me the following list of the Top Ten domestic summer grossers (released May 1st or later), as of Labor Day, 2020:

1. Tenet - $20,200,000 (est.)

2. The New Mutants - $12,453,322 

3. Unhinged - $11,835,640 

4. The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge on the Run - $3,655,445 

5. Bill & Ted Face the Music - $2,373,914

6. The Wretched -  $1,814,193 

7. Words on Bathroom Walls -  $1,614,184

8. The Rental - $1,589,020

9. The Personal History of David Copperfield -  1,088,815 

10. Relic - $1,046,976 

The $20 million total for "Tenet" represents its opening weekend, beginning September 3rd.  To date it's made roughly $52 million, good enough for eleventh place on the yearly chart.  "New Mutants," "Bill & Ted," and "David Copperfield" were in their second weekends, romantic comedy "Words on Bathroom Walls" was in its third, and "Unhinged" and "Spongebob" were in their fourth.  From May through July, most theaters in the U.S. were closed, and the tiny box office was lead by a handful of low budget horror movies like "The Wretched," "Relic," "Becky," "Followed," and "The Rental." "The Wretched," which held the top spot through the entire month of May, for five weekends straight, premiered in eleven drive-in theaters.   

As a point of comparison, "Avengers: Endgame" won last summer with $858 million.  In tenth place was "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood" with $131 million.  Even more sobering, "Tenet" has been out in theaters at the time of writing for two months, and hasn't been able to match the domestic total of "Onward," which made $61 million in its two weeks of release before theaters were shut down in March.  The top grossing film of the year remains "Bad Boys for Life," at $204 million.  "Tenet's" healthy international earnings have alleviated some of the pain, but it's clear why the rest of the 2020 slate is empty of major studio films.  The theaters will be struggling with their bookings well into 2021.    

This is a historic year for a lot of reasons, and the summer of 2020 is sure to be an outlier when looking at box office trends in the future.  Even if the pandemic continues on to affect the summer of 2021, I expect we'll all be better prepared for it.  There's a lot of gloom and doom in the exhibition industry right now as theater owners struggle to muddle through another long stretch with no new blockbusters in sight.  We're likely to see a lot of venues shuttered or sold before restrictions are lifted.  However, in spite of the lengthy pause, the big screen experience is not going anywhere, and they're not going to run out of movies to show.  

If this pandemic has taught me anything, it's that we're never going to be short of movies, period.  There are going to be fewer new releases, sure, but after months of lockdown with VOD and streaming as my only source of new titles, big budget spectaculars are the only thing that really seems to be missing, and Netflix and Disney+ are starting to make inroads in that category.  I'm actually kind of enjoying the quieter lulls before next year's inevitable glut.  And they're still filming more - "Mission: Impossible," "Batman," and all those Marvel movies are barreling towards us, and lockdown is only going to keep them at bay for so long. 

If all goes well, the summer of 2021 is going to be crazy.  And if it doesn't go well, 2022 is going to be even crazier.  I hope all you movie people are prepared for this, because once the floodgates open, we're not going to see anything resembling normal for a long time to come.

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"Katamari" Times

My latest distraction in the Corona times has been the acquisition of a used PlayStation 2 gaming system.  I haven't had access to a real gaming system since the mid-90s, so this was a considerable novelty for me.  It came with a motley collection of games, but there was one specific title I took the trouble to acquire separately - Namco's "Katamari Damacy."  Despite not having actually played the game, I already counted myself as a fan.

Timelines are a little fuzzy here, but way back around 2006, I was a post-grad with way too much time on my hands, and "Katamari Damacy" and its sequel were seeing healthy sales, and carving out their own little niche in the popular culture.  I saw a few commercials, and read a few articles about the game, which was enough to get me intrigued.  However, I wasn't about to go and drop a couple hundred on a PS2, plus more for the actual games.  There was, however, the newly emergent Youtube platform for video sharing, where gamers were starting to upload playthroughs of every game you could imagine.  I spent hours and hours watching playthroughs of the "Katamari Damacy" games.

The gameplay of "Katamari Damacy" scratched some sort of psychological itch I didn't know I had.  This was significant, because I didn't like the gameplay of most of the games of that era.  The low polygon graphics of the mid-2000s struck me as ugly and awkward.  Navigating a virtual environment was disorienting - sometimes watching someone play through certain games will still make me nauseous.  However, there is something fascinating about "Katamari," where you don't have to fight or shoot anything.  Instead, the whole game is built around the act of rolling up random objects by getting them stuck to a "katamari" ball, gradually increasing its diameter until everything - including wiggling animals, people, and chunks of the landscape - are massed into one, giant, spherical, blob.  A real life version of this would be potent nightmare fuel, but in the highly abstracted world of the "Katamari," where everything looks like it's been constructed out of Lego blocks, there's something fascinating about seeing a cluttered world get tidied up in such a fashion.

I think it's the simplicity of the game that appeals to me the most.  The different levels ask you to increase the size of your katamari to a particular diameter in a certain amount of time, collect up certain special objects, or just as many objects as possible from a particular setting.  However, the gameplay never really changes, and it's always the same gag - wouldn't it be funny to roll up a bunch of crabs, with all those flailing legs?  Or furiously flapping and honking swans? Or people? Part of the fun is finding out that you can roll up just about anything you can see, from a blazing campfire to a chalk drawing off a sidewalk.  The laws of physics don't matter in this universe.  In the end credits, you even get to roll up all the different countries of the world.  United States, Canada, Mexico, Panama...

There's an absurd story to follow in "Katamari Damacy," involving the buffoonish King of the Cosmos accidentally destroying all the stars, and needing the protagonist, his puny offspring, to go to Earth and roll up some new replacements.  There's also a side-plot involving a hapless family of Earthlings who become aware of the alien activity.  I have no interest in these parts of the game whatsoever, especially since they're all told through a series of still pictures and dialogue boxes.  It's very Japanese.  I haven't tried any of the multiplayer options yet either, where you can swap out the lead character with one of several "cousins."  

I'm finding "Katamari Damacy" a little frustrating to play because I'm really only starting to get a handle on the controls.  It can be very awkward to steer the katamari, and it took me several sessions to get the hang of changing direction.  I have a tendency to get myself stuck in places I don't want to be, including becoming totally blocked into a closet toward the end of the crab collecting level.  I can't play for more than an hour or so without my thumbs feeling sore.  However, I get such a thrill every time the katamari hits another diameter benchmark, and suddenly the scale of everything in the environment changes, letting me roll up a different set of objects or explore a new part of the terrain.

And in 2020, the game only cost me eight bucks.         

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"Swallow" and Cringe

Despite all the critical kudos, I was deeply, deeply wary of watching the psychological horror film "Swallow."  It has so many elements that set off my alarm bells, with a premise built around the body horror of its heroine, a pregnant woman, who develops a condition called pica - where she compulsively swallows non-food items.  I was intrigued, but so unnerved by the gastrointestinal abuse that I put off the film for months.  However, I kept reading the reviews and recommendations, and getting more and more interested.  Finally, I went as far as to read the entire plot synopsis (with spoilers) on Wikipedia to steel myself for the film's content.  

Haley Bennett plays Hunter, a young woman recently married to a wealthy young man named Richie (Austin Stowell).  Her life looks perfect from the outside, but Hunter feels stifled by expectations.  One day, shortly after learning she's pregnant, she impulsively swallows a marble.  This is followed by other objects, many of them larger and more dangerous.  Soon Richie and his parents (David Rasche, Elizabeth Marvel) are forcing Hunter to see a therapist (Lauren Velez), and have hired an intimidating Syrian man, Luay (Laith Nakli), to keep an eye on her.  Still, her condition worsens, prompting Hunter to take matters into her own hands.  

What I had expected from "Swallow" was queasiness and gore.  However, writer/director Carlo Mirabella-Davis provides something far more measured and complex.  Hunter's condition is a product of her environment and upbringing, which is slowly revealed through her conversations with other characters.  The film is very good about keeping its cards close to the vest.  Haley Bennett turns in an excellent performance as Hunter, a quiet, deferential young woman who keeps insisting that she just wants to make her husband happy.  Her disappointment and unhappiness with her life is plain, but she seems to have no idea how to express what she actually wants.  We only see her happy in her moments of self-harm, which take on a ritualistic quality.  She fixates on everyday objects - a thumbtack caught in the vacuum cleaner, a handful of potting soil, a battery - which become important and exciting under her gaze.  The physical swallowing scenes are difficult to watch, but also have a hypnotic quality to them.

"Swallow" has been described in most of its press as a horror or thriller film, but it rarely follows the conventions of these films.  It's primarily a character study of Hunter, exploring the ins and outs of her psyche as she struggles to understand her new urges and desires.  The threats to her well-being are in plain sight, but are nonetheless difficult for her to spot.  I should caution that the film is in no way a serious examination of pica or the associated mental disorders.  It's also not really a story about pregnancy or motherhood either.  Rather, these elements are used in a symbolic fashion to bring certain truths about Hunter to light.  It's not until the final scene and the final things we watch her swallow that the allegory becomes clear. 

The film's production design, full of opulence and bright colors, is a marvel.  There's a dated dollhouse quality to many of the visuals, especially the interior decoration and Hunter's doll-like appearance.  Everything looks so beautiful and so perfect, you don't realize how oppressive the environment is until the characters finally venture out of these spaces.  Mirabella-Davis mostly plays it straight, but I do appreciate the little touches of absurdity that find their way into the narrative - Richie's appalling insensitivity, everything that shows up on the television screens, and all the business involving the potting soil.

There were enough moments of sensitive content, however, that make me pause when considering who I would recommend this film to.  Horror audiences shouldn't have a problem with it, but I don't think that's who "Swallow" is aimed at.  The strong heroine and feminist vibes would surely be best appreciated by female moviegoers.  On the other hand, I know I'd have trouble getting many women in my social circle to take a look due to the subject matter.  I suspect that "Swallow" is destined to become a cult film, beloved by cinephiles with strong nerves, and stronger stomachs. 

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My Top Ten Films of 1962

Ivan's Childhood - The first Andrei Tarkovsky film remains a stunner, looking at the Soviet experience of WWII through the eyes of a jaded twelve year-old who is driven to fight out of a passionate desire for revenge.  It's a thoroughly miserable and at times transcendentally beautiful piece of filmmaking that delivers an emotional gut punch.  At the same time, there's a mournful lyricism and a stateliness to the filmmaking that leaves a much deeper impact.   The black and white cinematography is compelling and uncompromising, presenting images of the horrors of wartime that are impossible to forget.  

The Trial - Orson Welles' work got more formally inventive in his later years, even as his budgets and filmmaking resources shrank.  "The Trial" is an ambitious film, based on a Franz Kafka novel, and obviously compromised by Welles' limited resources.  However, it still expresses its creator's vision of paranoid totalitarianism through some stunning images and sequences.  My favorite is the brief visit with the artist, where a life of fame is depicted as being trapped in a room full of holes, where a horde of vicious, giggling little girls are constantly looking in and tormenting the celebrity.  

The Exterminating Angel - A group of partygoers are trapped in an unexplained existential quandary.  They are stuck in a room and cannot leave it.  Through this simple premise, Luis Bunuel creates an absorbing allegory about the breakdown of social conventions and niceties in the face of crisis.  As our civilized upper crust descends into mindless savagery, Bunuel takes the opportunity to send up some of his other favorite targets.  Though the symbolism is purposefully left ambiguous, many observers took it as a criticism of various political and social forces involved in the Spanish Civil War.  

Lawrence of Arabia - One of the most astounding pieces of epic cinema ever created, filling the screen with scorching images of the desert and Peter O'Toole at his most charismatic.  This was one of the films that made the best use of the widescreen format, to the point where it's a very different experience seeing "Lawrence of Arabia" with the correct aspect ratio compared to anything else.  For four hours, the audience is totally immersed in the world of T.E. Lawrence.  With a canvas so large, a complicated man is allowed to remain complicated, with many of his mysteries left unsolved.     

To Kill a Mockingbird - One of the better social dramas of its era, highlighting small town dynamics and racial injustice in the Depression era American South.  The performances are excellent, especially from Gregory Peck as the forthright lawyer, Atticus Finch.  Much of the film's power comes from being told from a child's perspective, which helps to elide some of the less plausible parts of the story as well.  The courtroom scenes are especially telling.  As memorable as Peck is as a powerful legal orator, his Atticus Finch leaves a far more lasting impression as a good father and pillar of his community.

Harakiri - One of my favorite Masaki Kobayashi films depicts a challenge to the Edo era power structures of the feudal lords and samurai with a bloody tale of revenge and dishonor.  With a fantastic Tatsuya Nakadai performance, and a script that unfolds in a series of twisty reveals, "Harakiri" demystifies the concepts of the warrior's code and ritual suicide, revealing the ugly realities of their practice.  It doesn't hurt that the samurai clashes are great action set pieces and very compelling to watch.  Their horror and futility, however, ensure that "Harakiri" is far more sobering than celebratory cinema.        

L'Eclisse - Monica Vitti and Alain Delon play a pair of beautiful young people who engage in a love affair, but alas they are inhabitants of a Michelangelo Antonioni universe, full of alienating landscapes and brutal civilization.  We watch the characters struggle to connect and stay connected, their moods and emotional shifts reflected in the environments they inhabit.  The depiction of the stock exchange as this frenzy of human activity and crashing sounds verges on abstraction, while the ending montage of empty places seems keen on emphasizing that the humans in the film may be secondary after all.  

The Manchurian Candidate - The John Frankenheimer conspiracy thriller is completely implausible by today's standards, but it remains so enthralling to see play out.  And Frankenheimer's conjuring of this surreal, paranoid atmosphere of anti-Communism where nothing can be trusted is a delight.  The line between what's satirical and what's supposed to be taken at face value gets very blurry.  The performances are a lot of fun, but I especially enjoy Angela Lansbury as Raymond Shaw's poisonous mother.  She makes for one of the best evil matriarchs to ever grace the silver screen.  

Cape Fear - Gregory Peck and Robert Mitchum face off in a high octane thriller, with Mitchum giving one of his best performances.  Here, he's the evil Max Cady, a repugnant creature who inexorably forces the confrontation between the two men.  The entire film is really one, big buildup to the final action finale, ratcheting up the tension scene by scene.  I vastly prefer this version to the 1991 Scorsese remake because it keeps things simple and straightforward.  And as much as I enjoy Robert DeNiro in the remake, when it comes to menace and vileness, he's no Robert Mitchum.   

Knife in the Water - One of Roman Polanski's early films is a taut little psychological melodrama about three people and a boat.  It starts out as a study of power dynamics, as the two men fight over the attentions of their female companion.  Jealousy, cruelty, and betrayal arrive in short order.  "Knife in the Water" is a relentlessly tense film, quickly moving from one moral dilemma or difficult situation to the next, examining conflicts between all the characters in different combinations.  I especially appreciate the careful use of violence - the threat of which is so much more potent than the act.

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Youtubery Part 8

My yearly Youtube playlist is mostly made up of media ephemera that's difficult to categorize, and the only thing they really have in common is utilizing a strong musical element. Still, I think that they're worth recommending and writing about. This batch includes more tie-in music videos, award show hijinks, and oddball musical numbers you probably forgot about. 

The Spectrum Song - From "An Adventure in Color," the first episode of 1961's "The Wonderful World of Color" that introduced us to  beloved scientist, lecturer, and world traveler Ludwig von Drake.  The song was written by the Sherman brothers and sung here by Paul Frees as von Drake.  The song recently popped up in an episode of the "DuckTales" reboot when von Drake made a guest appearance.

Streets of Philadelphia - The tie in music video for the Bruce Springsteen song, written for the 1993 film "Philadelphia."  Jonathan Demme, who directed the film, also directed the music video with his nephew Ted Demme.  Springsteen would win a Best Song Grammy, and a Best Original Song Academy Award for "Streets of Philadelphia," beating out Neil Young's "Philadelphia" for the latter.   

Les Moulins De Mon Coeur - Michel Legrand appeared on RTS's Spécial Cinéma program in 1976 to perform the French version of "The Windmills of Your Mind," which was made famous by "The Thomas Crown Affair" in 1968.  The French version has lyrics by Eddy Marnay, and the title was adjusted slightly to "The Windmills of My Heart."  Legrand, of course, composed the music.   

Wild Wild West - I think that we can all agree that the best part of the notorious "Wild Wild West" film was the Will Smith tie-in song (a collaboration of Smith, Rob Fusari, Stevie Wonder, and Kool Moo Dee) and music video (directed by Paul Hunter).  It's got the Fresh Prince at his coolest, cameos by Stevie Wonder and Alfonso Ribeiro, a giant W on fire, and one of the most perfect costume changes ever executed.  Sometimes I really miss that era where giant action blockbusters came with a hit single and the wacky accompanying music videos like this.    

Ladies Who Lunch - So, Stephen Sondheim had a milestone birthday recently, so a bunch of stars were recruited for "Take Me to the World: A Sondheim 90th Birthday Celebration," a free online concert.  The clear highlight was Meryl Streep, Christine Baranski, and Auda McDonald singing "Ladies Who Lunch" from "Company" together, while all dressed in bathrobes and downing alcoholic beverages.  

Get off the Stage - At the 76th Academy Awards, Will Ferrell and Jack Black helpfully let us know that there are words to the music that plays you off the stage if your acceptance speech goes on for too long.  I have not been able to confirm the identity of the lyricist.

Equal Rights - This is the longer version of the Lonely Island song from "Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping," with a couple of additional reaction bits.  It's a spoof on Pink's "Same Love," so of course they had to get her to cameo.  Watching Andy Samberg go through that ever-expanding list of straight male signifiers, from sports to "Predator" to Lynyrd Skynyrd, just kills me.  And Pink gets to ride the unicorn.   

Thriller Haka to Poi E - This is the closing sequence of Taika Waititi's 2010 film "Boy."  The story is about a Maori kid growing up in poverty in the '80s, and his relationship with his loser father.  Michael Jackson is a big thing for all the characters, so it's very fitting to have the movie end with a Maori take on "Thriller," featuring the whole cast.  It's worth watching just to see Taika Waititi getting goofy in the iconic red Jackson outfit.

English Country Garden - Rowlf the Dog and Fozzie Bear perform a piano duet from a second season episode of "The Muppet Show."  This was one of the little extra sketches that were created to fill in a few extra minutes of broadcast time in the UK.  

Walking in the Air - "The Snowman," an animated Christmas cartoon that first aired in 1982, is one of my favorite Christmas specials.  However, it seems to be very much a UK thing, and isn't really known in the states.  It's an absolute masterpiece of hand-drawn animation, directed by Diane Jackson and based on the Raymond Briggs picture book.  The highlight is the flying sequence, which is absolutely breathtaking.  The accompanying song was written by Howard Blake and sung by Peter Auty. 

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"Band of Brothers" is Still a Stunner

One of the biggest blindspots in my viewing history has been the beloved HBO miniseries "Band of Brothers," created in 2001 to dramatize the experiences of an American paratrooper company, nicknamed "Easy Company," during WWII. Shepherded by Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg in the wake of their success with "Saving Private Ryan," the miniseries was event television on a scale that had never been seen before. HBO spent over $12 million on each of the ten episodes, and won praise for the production's unusual historical accuracy and epic scope.

The series has become a benchmark of sorts for WWII media since, and greatly beloved by an ardent group of fans. It's not hard to see why. "Band of Brothers" is centered firmly on the experiences of its heroic soldiers, every step of the way from training in England under a much-hated commander, Captain Sobel (David Schwimmer), to the final days in Austria after the declaration of victory. We watch them land at Normandy, participate in the doomed Operation Market Garden, struggle through the Battle of the Bulge, enter Germany, and finally make their way to Hitler's Eagle's Nest compound in Berchtesgaden. It's ten very eventful hours of painstakingly recreated wartime conditions and clashes, largely based on first person accounts by the surviving veterans who actually participated in the depicted events.

One aspect of the show that sets it apart from other WWII media is that it features such a large ensemble, and resists elevating any of them to outsized, mythological status. The closest thing "Band of Brothers" has to a central character is Major Richard Winters (Damian Lewis), but there are only two episodes told from his POV. Other installments follow regular enlisted soldiers like Staff Sergeant Buck Randleman (Michael Cudlitz), Private Webster (Eion Bailey), Private Blithe (Marc Warren), and a medic, Doc Roe (Shane Taylor). Other prominent characters include First Lieutenant "Buck" Compton (Neal McDonough), Captain Nixon (Ron Livingston), Technical Sergeant Malarkey (Scott Grimes), Second Lieutenant Lipton (Donnie Wahlberg) and Technician Perconte (James Madio). In hindsight, the biggest names in the cast are those in minor parts who hadn't gotten their big breaks yet - it's fun spotting then unknowns Tom Hardy, James McAvoy, Simon Pegg, and Michael Fassbender.

The constantly shifting POV and focus on different characters keeps "Band of Brothers" a chronicle of Easy Company rather than its individual soldiers. The ten hour length, covering their advancement through six different countries, provides plenty of time and opportunity to see smaller stories play out, and to get a better sense of the impact of experiences on the men over several years. It can afford to go in depth on very specific events, while retaining a macroscopic view of the entire war. I appreciate that the series spends so much time on institutional and systemic problems like leadership gaps, supply shortages, mental health issues, and what happens when soldiers suddenly find themselves with too much free time. The featured American paratroopers use rough language, tell off-color jokes, and occasionally partake in morally gray behavior, though their depiction is largely positive. A nice touch is that each episode opens with interview footage of some of the real soldiers from Easy Company offering snippets of their reminiscences.

Of course, realism takes a back seat to entertainment, and "Band of Brothers" is one of the most successful war spectacles I've ever seen. Nearly every episode features huge action setpieces, some with enough explosions to rival Hollywood blockbusters. HBO was prescient enough to shoot the entire series in widescreen, and clearly no expense was spared in the production, so it still looks fantastic two decades later. "Band of Brothers" also pulls off the more sobering moments, notably Easy Company's long winter in Bastogne, and the horrific discovery of a concentration camp late in the series.

I'm glad that I finally had the time to watch "Band of Brothers." It's hardly aged a day, unlike "The West Wing," which was airing at roughly the same time, and feels more relevant than ever. And it also remains about the best argument I can find for long form television having surpassed films as the most powerful storytelling medium of the past two decades.
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