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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