Suffering from a summer cold this weekend. It started out with a scratchy throat—a familiar warning symbol. Then my voice turned basso profundo. It’s amazing how little it takes to throw me off my writing schedule. Sore throat and phlegmy throat—that’ll do it.
Eureka is a whimsical little TV show that never fails to amuse me. The show wears its heart on its sleeve, and the “big mystery” about what’s behind the strange goings on each week is never much of a puzzle. This week, for example, when the ditzy girl sprayed a new invention on Carter’s sleeve, it was pretty clear that it was going to be the cause of some hijinx—and it was. The real story of the episode, though, was the interactions between two parents and their respective children. Allison was trying to figure out how to relate to her son, who was autistic in her former reality but isn’t any longer. Carter, on the other hand, is afraid to visit his daughter at university in case she’s changed, too. She has…but not because of the alternate universe—simply because she’s getting older and becoming her own person. It’s not rocket science, but it’s charming.
Haven, on the other hand, is now canceled in my mind. It’ll probably lumber along, but it’ll do so without me. The show is simply silly and lame with bad acting and a derivative concept that’s been done far better by other shows. It’s not enough for a show to rely on weird goings on. There’s no marvel in the characters. A guy’s rage causes food to go bad. Surely that requires a certain degree of amazement from the people around him, even if they’ve seen other strange things before. But everyone just accepts this weirdness.
We watched The Greatest, an indy film starring Pierce Brosnan, Susan Sarandon and Carey Mulligan. Brosnan and Sarandon play the parents of a college-bound teenager killed in a car accident shortly after sleeping with his new girlfriend (Mulligan) for the first time. The movie is a study in grief. Sarandon is devastated and becomes obsessed with finding out everything she can about her son’s final moments. Brosnan is determined to hold it together for the sake of everyone else, including his other son, so he doesn’t ever process his own grief. One of the movie’s most daring scenes is a very long, uninterrupted shot that holds on Brosnan’s face while he sits in the back of the limousine after the funeral, his wife on one side, his son on the other. I don’t know exactly how long it lasted, but it felt like two or three minutes. He goes through a whole range of emotions—it’s an impressive performance, but it calls a lot of attention to the fact that it’s a performance, so I’m not sure it works all that well. Mulligan enters the family when she shows up at their door three months after the accident, announcing that she’s pregnant and has no where else to go. She is the story’s catalyst, causing changes in the parents’ grieving processes. Sarandon wants nothing to do with her and Brosnan is charmed by her. There’s a subplot with the surviving son, who goes to grief counseling because it’s the thing to do. He meets and becomes close to a girl who delivers an odd surprise late in the film. Mulligan, I believe, has the potential to be a fine actress. She already is—her delivery is so natural and credible—but it will be interesting to see her in a different kind of role. Perhaps in Wall Street 2.
The Rubicon launches on AMC tonight. I saw the sneak preview of the first hour a couple of months ago and quite liked it. It’s a conspiracy thriller where the conspiracy is very real and very convoluted. I watched another conspiracy thriller on Encore yesterday afternoon: The International, with Clive Owens and Naomi Watts. Nice, international settings (Berlin, Milan, Istanbul) and a great shootout scene in the Guggenheim that lays waste to the famous museum, but a little over-convoluted and murky. Watts is absent from the movie for huge chucks because her character isn’t a gunslinger—and kudos to the writers for acknowledging that fact and not sticking a Glock in her hands anyway. There’s a nice turnaround at the end when the clock starts running against the bad guys instead of the heroes.
