Mar

27

Mad Men

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Poor Eric.  Last night when I came home from work, instead of sitting back and sharing tales of our days, I just went on and on about how I don’t know what I’m going to do to replace Mad Men in my life.  Mad Men and I didn’t have a very long relationship, it only has one season which is only 13 episodes, but it was a nice one.

I’ve been incredibly lucky when it comes to television during the strike.  I’ve been catching up with series I never got around to seeing and it’s been almost better than having actual new shows.  There was Big Love, Freaks & Geeks (possibly the best show ever), Veronica Mars, Dexter, and now Mad Men.

Mad Men is set in 1960 and centers largely around the employees of an Ad agency in New York City.

I’m sure Mad Men must have been pitched to the big cable networks, HBO and Showtime, and I think they were completely crazy to turn it down.   I was trying to explain to Eric just what it was about the show that pulled me in so completely.  Part of it is the shock of the first few episodes, when you see a pregnant woman drinking and smoking.  There is constant drinking, constant smoking, it’s everywhere.  But much larger is the change in gender roles.  Even though women have entered the workplace, they are there as secretaries, whose job is not just to type and tidy for their bosses, but also to cover up their indiscretions.  They are treated like second class citizens by the men in the office, except for when they’re fresh meat.  Then there are the wives, who don’t seem to know what to do with themselves at all and are completely oblivious to the inner lives of their husbands.

The characters on the show are wonderful, well-drawn with interesting stories.  The ongoing feud between hero Don Draper and scheming Peter Campbell is fascinating.  But nearly every main character has their own place in the herd and watching it all pan out over the season is wonderful.  Not to mention looking at all the costumes.

One notable thing is that it’s not the kind of show where you can relate to the characters in any meaningful way.  I like Peggy, the new secretary, but I don’t see our lives as similar.  Mostly this is because I don’t know what kind of woman I would have been in 1960, whether I’d be one of the wives locked at home or one of the secretaries trying to avoid some junior executive.  None of them feel like any kind of woman today.  And really, that’s one of the show’s chief pleasures, seeing just how far we’ve managed to go in 50 years.

But with it now over, I don’t really know where to go next.  I’m hoping to find some new great series that I can get into, one of these I haven’t had time for.  I’ve added Homicide to my netflix queue.  And I’m going through Prime Suspect as well, even though it’s not a traditional series in any way.  All these great shows are spoiling me.  I’m having trouble with everything else.  24 is a joke, I can’t get through an episode.  Lost is perfect, but is now on a month-long hiatus.  It is quite a dilemma.   I guess I could start watching those movies in my netflix queue, but there’s something so nice and digestible about the one-hour drama.

Mar

18

Currently…

Filed Under Books, Movies, TV | Leave a Comment

Lately I find myself unable to write posts about any one particular thing.  Instead I have to write about 10 things at once in little blurbs.  I’m not sure why this is.  But here’s what I’ve been reading and watching and thinking lately.

Last night Eric had a meeting that lasted so long that I was able to watch an entire Merchant Ivory film and have a little time to spare.  I watched A Room With a View, one of those movies I’ve postponed for no real reason for years.  And watching it, I got that feeling of nostalgia a lot like the one I got from I Capture the Castle.  The feeling that my sixteen-year-old self would have Adored this movie (Adored with a capital A).  That doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy it as my current self.  I liked it quite a lot.  But I could see just how much younger me would have swooned over it.  And I wish I could have taken it back to her.  After all, it was around when she was only 6, it wasn’t like it wasn’t accessible.  Still, my sixteen year old self probably wouldn’t have found appropriate the scene where three naked men run around a pond over and over.  She found nudity very troubling and distracting from the story.  I have lightened up, though, and thought the scene pretty hilarious and while unexpected, fitting with the story.

And can I say how strange it was to see such a young Helena Bonham-Carter?  I’m so used to seeing her in her more recent roles.  I’m glad she still gets work, but she does tend to like the dark stuff, doesn’t she?  Here she was all scrubbed and sweet, like Daisy Miller or something.  (The whole thing was a lot like Daisy Miller, except British and romantic.)   Her voice was high and young and so different from that throaty voice she has now.  But I thought she was marvelous, I must say.  In looking through the various awards and nominations it received, I think she was criminally overlooked.

After watching it, I was so sad to see it was over that I went to the computer, pulled up the library catalog, and immediately reserved Howard’s End on audio.  I’ve seen the movie and wanted to read the book, especially since I read On Beauty last year and loved it so much.  (On Beauty is basically a big homage to Howard’s End.)  And since I’m going to need lots of audiobooks in the future, it seemed like a good one.  (My new job has a significant commute a couple days a week.  Lots of audiobooks will be heard.)

One of the podcasts I listen to, Filmspotting, is having an Almodovar marathon and I’m following along.  It gives me the chance to see some of his older films that I’ve never seen.  Last week I watched The Flower of My Secret.  I enjoyed it a lot, though it doesn’t quite reach the level of his later films.  The last 4 have been completely phenomenal.  This week is Live Flesh, another I haven’t seen.  I probably won’t re-watch All About My Mother, I’ve seen it several times.  But I will definitely rewatch Bad Education and Volver if they get into the marathon.  I may even pull out my old VHS of Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! since most of his early stuff hasn’t made it to DVD yet.

My current audiobook from Audible is Lush Life by Richard Price.  I think Price is great, truly a master of the real gritty urban novel.  Normally I’m not much for grit, but Price’s characters are pitch perfect.  Clockers is most likely his best and most famous, though I liked Freedomland and Samaritan a lot, too.  Lush Life is his newest book and while it covers familiar territory–kids from the projects, cops, a murder investigation–it also takes a different look at things.  The book is in large part about gentrification of sorts, a neighborhood on the lower east side of Manhattan, near the projects, where young hipsters are starting to take over from the immigrants that used to make up the area.  Having never really been a hipster myself (hipsters don’t allow you to join their crew if you have an advanced degree in something practical) I am enjoying the knocks they’re taking in Price’s book.  It’s not that Price really seems to hate them, but he’s certainly harder on them than some of his other characters.  I read one criticism that said the book had too many characters, and I agree to an extent.  The audiobook requires strict attention.  If I tune out for a couple seconds, I could be in a completely different story than I was moments ago.  But I like all the different points of view Price offers.  I like how he doesn’t treat his cops as saints.  Another review I read compared him to Tom Wolfe, and I think it’s a fitting comparison.  They both have a real eye for people, places, and language.  Price doesn’t have the comedic elements that Wolfe does, his satire is much more reigned in, and their subject matter differs.  But I enjoy their books for many of the same reasons.

On a side note, the reader of Lush Life, Bobby Canavale, isn’t an audiobook reader but a legit actor.  The reader of my last audiobook, I Am Charlotte Simmons by Tom Wolfe, was another actor, Dylan Baker.  Both are really great and I’m enjoying them thoroughly.  Sometimes the professional book readers get a little boring.  Both these guys have kept me very in the story.Hopefully my upcoming free time will give me time to read my big book, Team of Rivals, about Lincoln.  I need more nonfiction.  But I admit it’s intimidating when the book is so fat.  Definitely going to have to renew this one before I finish it.

Watched Half Nelson last week.  Expected to like it much more than I did.  Didn’t like it much.  I’m tiring of meandering Indies.  Also watched Syriana, which led me to the conclusion that Clooney won an Oscar for his beard and gut.  That and that everybody really liked Good Night and Good Luck.  The Academy has a tendency to reward people after the fact when they’re not quite as deserving.  (Case in point: Russell Crowe winning Best Actor for Gladiator the year after he lost for The Insider.)  The one thing that drove me crazy was that the subtitle weren’t working.  So I didn’t understand any of the many Arabic scenes.  I’m assuming this was our mistake, since I haven’t seen any references in reviews to the scenes not being translated.

I miss Veronica Mars.  Since ending, I’ve been stuck watching Dexter.  Also a good show, but not as consistently enjoyable to watch.  Sure, it’s better than 90% of what’s on tv, but I still think it has flaws.  Am looking forward to regular television coming back on.  If it weren’t for Lost, I’d be dying.
I’m about to have a lot of time on my hands and I’m not sure how I’m going to use it yet.  I’m not sure quite how I’ll be organizing my time and how much reading and watching will be squeezed in.  I guess I’ll start figuring it out soon.