Catching Up

It's been a while since I stopped in here to talk about what I think of what I've been watching. Let's catch up.

Battleship - I honestly don't know why this movie didn't do better at the box office. I suppose maybe it came out too close to Avengers which was a better movie and which most people chose to see 3, 4 or 10 times instead of seeing anything else. But Battleship is a really decent summer blockbuster movie.

Taylor Kitsch is believable as a fuck-up-turned-hero and while the supporting cast is a mixed bag (yay Jesse Plemons, John Tui, Liam Neeson, Tadanobu Asano; boo Brookly Decker and Rihanna but mostly Rihanna), for a movie based on a board game, they pulled the connection off pretty brilliantly. They found a way to incorporate the grid from the game as well as to keep the fight between a small number of ships and the aliens instead of a full-scale war.

My one problem with the movie is that it's too long by at least 30 minutes. The movie begins with a fairly long sequence of events designed to inform the viewer that Taylor Kitsch is a fuck-up who is so persistent and charming that he manages to win over the daughter of an Admiral and is forced to join the Navy by his brother who's sick of supporting his (hot) loser ass. But if they'd cut out the entire chicken burrito business and started with the soccer game we would have known all of the same things and saved ourselves 15 minutes. Later in the movie there is a long sequence where these spinning alien destructo thingies are fired out of the giant ship and proceed to make a fucking mess out of Hawaii as they take out a Naval base, highways, buildings and generally anything that isn't people. The entire thing was unnecessary as we'd be treated to the spinning destructos doing the exact same business to the USS John Paul Jones toward the end of the movie anyway. With those two cuts alone the movie would have been 20 minutes shorter, lost nothing and played a little crisper.

Length aside, I recommend this as a fun, pretty, explosion-heavy way to spend a couple hours of your life.

Prometheus - Judging this as a singular movie I would say it's well put-together, well acted and decent. But judging it in comparison to its predecessors in the Alien franchise (of which I have only seen Alien and Aliens) it doesn't fare as well.

Ridley Scott's original Alien is a great movie but, in my opinion, it was vastly improved upon by James Cameron when he made Aliens which was compelling, claustrophobic, exciting, scary and loaded to the gills with a "fuck yeah, Ripley!" intensity that kept me on the edge of my seat start to finish. Prometheus is quieter, slower, more build-up, less fight and the result is a movie that looks amazing but didn't stick with me at all. Michael Fassbender was outstanding as David but very few of the other characters got any sort of development and I didn't care about any of them, except maybe the pilot but that's just because Idris Elba can get it.

After watching this movie, all I wanted to do was go home and watch Aliens again to get that "FUCK YEAH, RIPLEY!" feeling that I'd been hoping for going into Prometheus.

This Means War - Why this movie didn't get better reviews is beyond me. It's fun and silly and the chemistry between all three leads is great. In particular I thought Chris Pine and Tom Hardy had AMAZING chemistry with each other. So much chemistry in fact that I think they should be required by law to do 10 movies a year together. And to show how reasonable I can be, they would only have to make out with each other in 1/2 of them.

Since first watching this on demand a couple of weeks ago, I have purchased this movie on DVD and watched if 4 more times. I love it to bits and think you should all watch it immediately.

Saving Hope - Would I be watching this series if Daniel Gillies wasn't on it? No, I would not. Is Daniel Gillies a good enough reason to watch this series? Yes, he is. I don't really care about the ghost in the halls, Erica Durance's relationship or grief issues, the constant lens flares, and the medical cases of the week. But Daniel Gillies looks like he looks and talks like he talks and last week he took off his shirt and had sex in an empty exam room so this show can be as boring as it wants to be and I'll still watch.

Bunheads - Amy Sherman-Palladino has a very distinct style and Gilmore Girls was a perfect representation of that style. I'm not going to sit here and tell you that Lauren Graham was what made ASP's dialogue brilliant or that Sutton Foster can't pull it off because neither is true. Lauren Graham is amazing but she wasn't the only thing that made Gilmore Girls a great show. Sutton Foster is a terrific actress and I believe she can handle dialogue written by anyone. The problem is that everything everyone in Bunheads says sounds like something ASP wrote for Lorelai Gilmore but Lorelai Gilmore is nowhere to be found. Bunheads sounds and feels like Gilmore Girls rebooted into Bizzaroland.

I loved Gilmore Girls and I miss it but I don't want to watch another thing that sounds like or tries to be Gilmore Girls. I want to watch another show that has the same wit and heart and feeling that Gilmore Girls had but is a different thing entirely. Bunheads isn't a terrible show but it isn't Gilmore Girls.

It also isn't Dance Academy which is a whole other problem. I've watched a show about ballet students that ended up being perfect and watching this show where the bitchy girl is no Abigail, the free-spirit is no Kat, there's no Sammy at all, and the neurotic girl is no Tara (how disappointing must the situation be if "she's no Tara" is a BAD thing?), just makes me wish that I could Eternally Sunshine myself and rewatch Dance Academy for the first time.

The show is about the dance TEACHER here so I get that it's different but the differentness doesn't negate the inferiority of it. Bunheads isn't a bad show but it's not a great show and as long as it's so similar to shows that were great, I will compare it and it will not measure up.

You're Meant To Dance And Cry

Dance Academy will fool you. As the series begins it seems like something cheesy and soapy and inconsequential. An incessant voice over that's treacly as often as not leads you to believe that the series will focus entirely on the many embarrassments of a country girl trying to make it in the big city, and her struggles as the worst dancer at the prestigious National Dance Academy. It tricks you into thinking that it's small. 

It is not small. One by one seeds are planted with no apparent rush to amp up the drama or speed through the story. Seeds that, before you know it, grow and blossom into stories that have been done before but are rarely treated with the level of sensitivity and grace that they're treated with on Dance Academy. 

Eating disorders, teenage rebellion, fist love, coming out, triumph over adversity - these are stories that are well-worn on TV, especially in shows that focus on the lives of teenagers. We've all seen them played for laughs or shock value. We've seen them rushed through and overblown. We've seen them done well and we've seen them done badly. We've come to expect them all. What I didn't expect was the delicacy with which they handled every aspect of every trope they trotted out. 

Each story had ample time to develop at a natural pace over multiple episodes. The writing never tried to outsmart itself or the audience and it never tried to be clever. It gave the characters room to breathe and grow in their moments without asking them to behave or speak in a way that would require the viewer to suspend disbelief. When one girl struggles with feelings of inadequacy, some of her classmates try to help. Some say the right thing, others don't. Nothing anyone says fixes her, she has to fix herself. When a student wrestles with a realization that he may be gay, he has a hard time accepting himself and settling into the new reality of his life but he has friends who give him the time to figure things out without insisting he define himself. 

The actors never seem to be forcing emotion out of themselves or the story. When someone cries, I believe that they are crying because they're overcome with emotion and not because the script called for it. The plot rarely requires the actors to make fools of themselves in service of delivering a flashier story and in turn, the actors never fail to give the story punch with their quiet, thoughtful, honest performances. Even those who were clearly cast more for their dancing than for their acting have, by the second season, risen to the occasion and settled comfortably into a rhythm of acting instead of over-acting. 

And make no mistake, the kids on this show were cast in part because they could dance. The dancing is as important to the story as anything and they've clearly taken great pains to make sure that the audience can see them dance. No tricky edits or tight closeups of only feet and faces. We can see these actors dancing in wide shots in every episode. The actors are doing the work. 

Every character is interesting in his or her own way and everyone adds something to the story - from the core group of Tara, Kat, Abigail, Sammy, Christian and Ethan, to second season additions Ben and Grace, and the secondary cast of Miss Raine and the parents. It's only a half hour show so lingering shots of contemplative faces are used sparingly and they move from one plot to another economically while never feeling choppy. The direction doesn't get fancy, just unobtrusive and seamless and the pacing is brisk but never rushed which results in 24 minute episodes that feel neither too short, nor too long. 

I keep trying to pinpoint the exact moment that Dance Academy went from being a show I enjoyed somewhat ironically, to being an excellent show that I loved on its merits. Was it the second season? The coming out? Sammy and Abigail's relationship? But it wasn't one moment. It was the way the show did all the small things; the way it hinted at something rather than coming right out with it; the way it cared enough to subvert your expectations without waving your expectations in your face first; the way it embraced subtlety even while sticking with a voice over that bordered on the obvious. I don't think the show was ever small. I think it was just carefully laying the foundation for the exquisite show it was always meant to be and I deeply admire not just what they built but how they built it. 

I spent a lot of time on Twitter this week comparing Dance Academy and its characters to other shows - Australian Pacey, Australian Maureen, Australian Dawson. It's a lot of fun to find the similarities between a new favorite show and those that have come before but the truth is, this show is something unique unto itself. Someday I'll watch another show and dub someone the American Sammy or the American Kat because these characters are more than just the Down Under versions of great characters who've come before. They're important, interesting, wonderful characters all their own. And I love every one of them.