Dexter – Season 1 (spoiler-free)

I don’t blame my foster parents for that. Harry and Doris Morgan did a wonderful job raising me. But, they’re both dead now. I didn’t kill them. Honest. Dexter.

As a general rule, for movies but especially also for TV shows, voice-overs should be on the “to avoid” list. Show, don’t tell, after all: it’s a difficult rule to follow, but that doesn’t mean you should give up and resort to a cheap trick. Sex and the City, Desperate Housewives, Grey’s Anatomy… All of these shows use prominent voice-overs, and all of them would be better of without them. After all, the only use the voice-overs serve is to make themes -that usually worked perfectly well as an undercurrent- dreadfully explicit and unevocative.

However, there are exceptions to every rule. And when your show revolves around a main character who fakes all his emotions, who lives his entire life hiding who he is and what he’s thinking… a voice-over starts sounding like a reasonable thing. And luckily, in Dexter, not only is the voice-over pretty essential, but it’s also really well executed. For instance, it’s not particularly literary: it doesn’t have the pat, too rounded style many TV-voiceovers do, and it isn’t filled with cringe-worthy puns. It’s just a man talking to himself, to an audience he sort-of wished he had (and which, of course, he in fact does have in us).

Of course, I let my original thought take me on a wild rant, so let me get back to the basics: a plot synopsis (spoiler-free, as promised).

Blogging Buffy: 2.06-2.08

2.06 Halloween

Those wacky vampires! That’s why I love ‘em! They just keep you guessing! Xander

This episode is Joss Whedon at his expectation-subverting best. Some of the subversions are mostly funny: in the Buffyverse, as it turns out, Halloween is traditionally the night vampires stay in and do nothing. But the funniest thing is that in this world, confirming to gender roles is the subversion. All of a sudden, Buffy is a damsel in distress and Xander is the tough guy who has to defend here, and… it feels strange. Out of whack.

That’s why this episode had to be in the second season, after the show was established. After we’ve come to accept the show’s tenets, after we’ve accepted that in this show, girls can beat guys up. So that when it goes back to how things are in most movies and shows, it feels wrong.

2.07 Lie to Me

Yes, it’s terribly simple. The good guys are always stalwart and true, the bad guys are easily distinguished by their pointy horns or black hats, and, uh, we always defeat them and save the day. No one ever dies, and everybody lives happily ever after. Giles

Bonus double feature: Quentin’s gals

The advantage of having a rather sizeable DVD-collection is that nothing is easier than organizing an impromptu movie night. The recipe: just invite a bunch of people (say, some housemates) into your room, tell them to pick whatever they like, and watch it.

By sheer accident, this meant that on two consecutive nights I watched Death Proof and Jackie Brown, making for a neat Tarantino double feature. Arguably, these two are at the opposite ends of Tarantino’s work, two films as disparate as you can pick them. Still, they share a lot of themes, and maybe even more.

Youth Without Youth

Youth Without Youth: an ironic title for a movie so obviously made with an old-man’s perspective, and all about the fear of growing old, the fear of slow, inevitable decay. “Youth is wasted on the young”, says the cliché, but the movie suggests it might be wasted on the old, too.

This movie is an intriguing creature, more poetry than narrative. It’s meant to be philosophical but ends up as more of a dream on philosophy than a true exploration, flitting from one thought, one question to the next without even attempting to find answers. It is, in some ways, a mess, but what a gorgeous, evocative mess it is, from the old-fashioned opening credits to the sad, resigned finale.

Sydney Pollack is no more

Every morning, my radio switches on for about ten minutes, and it’s the news that wakes me. Usually it flies right past me: the sound is enough to wake me, but I’m still too groggy to pay attention to all the horrors happening daily in this world of ours. But every once in a while, a headline will wake me right up.

“Sydney Pollack overleden”

My first reaction was “nah!”. It just didn’t seem possible: to me, Sydney Pollack was, and always had been, about 65, perpetually the slightly dodgy older guy with a glint in his eye and a skeleton or two in his closet. I’ll admit he wasn’t a must-see director for me – I really like Three Days of the Condor, for example, but his later work seemed well-crafted, but not particularly exciting. As an actor, however, he was always a welcome presence. His part in Eyes Wide Shut was both amusing and more than a little sinister. And I’ll remember him not by his very last acting performance, but rather by one from 2007 that slyly nodded to the films he directed in the 70’s:

Sydney Pollack: 1934 – 2008

Weekend Double Feature: Double Bogie

I know, I know, I promised a Gloria Grahame double feature. But that was before I’d seen In a Lonely Place. Now that I have, I realize that it’s more interesting to pair it with another Bogart movie I saw recently, rather than with the Big Heat. Don’t worry, though: I’ll get to the Big Heat next week. I even already know what movie I’ll discuss alongside it. But for now: a Bogie double feature it is.

The movie I chose to pair In a Lonely Place with instead is one made by Bogart in a very different stage of his career: High Sierra. Bogart made many, many movies before High Sierra, and quite a few (including the one that would win him a little gold man, The African Queen) after In a Lonely Place, but there are some interesting similarities and differences between the two, and they can be seen as bookends to his career.

Sunday Reading #1: the Indy issue

What’s this I see? A new feature? Brand spanking new?

You are correct, reader. As you might have noticed, posting frequency has been below optimal, for various reasons. And to get it back up, what better than a) making a new feature, b) putting a day in the title to force me to get to it more or less weekly, and c) giving me something to post when I can’t think of any original content.

So yes, I’ve avoided linkage so far, only sometimes posting articles of interest on my tumbling log, but I do come across quite some interesting stuff you might be interested. You might, of course, also have seen it already. But who know, I might be able to provide some interesting reading material for your lazy Sunday. Sometimes, like today, the articles will have a common topic, sometimes it will be a random assortment. As for its weekliness, I make no promises, but I will do my best.

Now, what is there to read about Indiana Jones and related topics on the interwebs? My job was made easy for me thanks to a blog-a-thon, but still, I have some more surprises.

Quick Thoughts about Indy

Ah. The hat that first gets tossed out of the truck. Then the man. We see the man’s shadow on the car as he puts on his hat, revealing his immediately recognizable profile. Then the camera swivels around like it does so much in this movie, we see the man’s back…and then finally, his face is revealed.

“Russians”, he says with disgust.

I really am easy. I had a grin pasted to my face from the moment the paramount logo dissolved into a mountain like in Raiders, only to be revealed to be a molehill instead, and things like the introduction of our hero above just made it widen. The familiar beats of it delighted me: the action opener, the betrayal, the ludicrous escape, the scene at the university…

Ludicrous really is the operative word here. But to explain that, I’ll have to go into SPOILER territory.

Acting the chanteuse

Actors who sing, singers who act… there are plenty of them, and there always have been. The latter category is interesting because, while most singers aren’t the greatest actors, they bring a certain personality and star wattage to the screen. In that category, we’ve recently seen Norah Jones try her hand at acting in My Blueberry Nights, and while her acting chops weren’t anything to write home about, her melancholy presence was instrumental in the film’s mood. Another actress, Chan Marshall, made an impression in just a few minutes of screen time.

In the former category, two young actresses decided to let us hear their singing voices. Scarlett Johansson just unveiled Anywhere I Lay My Head, an album of Tom Waits covers produced by Dave Sitek, and last March, Zooey Deshanel’s voice could be heard on the album she made with M.Ward under the wonderfully simple name “She & Him”.

Weekend Double Feature: All is Love, Actually

I promise, the rash of girly posts will come to an end, soon. But if the Filmspotting guys can review Love, Actually and admit they kind of liked it, and if it then airs on TV on a night I have a friend over and nothing else to do…who am I to still refuse to watch it? And then, the next night, why not watch the Dutch movie inspired by it, Alles is Liefde ?