Dexter, Season 5

TV show, 2010-11 season

Do any of you have Showtime?  Calling all premium cable owners.  I need a friend with Showtime so I can watch season 6 when it starts in October.

I've been a Dexter fan since Netflix had the first two seasons streaming about two summers ago.  Since then it has been an arduous process of waiting for each DVD by mail.  It's always worth it, though, because Dexter never disappoints.

This is Dexter. He kills people.

If you haven't seen the show at all, read this paragraph and then stop.  If you have seen the show, jump ahead if you like, where I will go more in depth about the particulars of this season.  Gone?  Ok, noobs.  Dexter is not for the faint of heart.  It's about Dexter Morgan, who is a serial killer.  But he's the good guy.  See, he only kills other killers.  Vigilante-like.  By day, he's a blood spatter analyst for the Miami Metro Police, so he's an expert in forensics and murder, a handy combination.  The series follows his close calls as he takes down one baddie after another, and also follows his family and friends--his potty-mouthed tough cop sister Deb, his girlfriend Rita and her kids, and his intriguing mix of police coworkers.  Each season has a driving plot arc that usually has to do with a tough-to-catch serial killer and how Dexter and the cops are both going after him/her.  The pace is good--early and mid-season episodes sometimes lose steam as they set up the big reveals to come, but those last few episodes are always a good payoff.  I recommend this series highly--to adults only--and only those adults who can handle copious fake blood and bad language.

Dexter with Deb.  They were married in real life. Gross.

Now for you veterans.  Note: spoilers throughout for this season.  I heard some of you didn't like season 5 as much as some of the previous seasons.  I agree that it can't top the Trinity killer, but I thought it was still a good to very good season.  I think its major weakness was that the bad guys (all of them up to and including Jordan Chase) were just not as deliciously maniacal as, say, Trinity or the Ice Truck Killer.  These were just some perverts.  So when push came to shove at the end of the season, it wasn't as fun when the bad guy went down.  I thought Julia Stiles held her own, though--that was one thing I was worried about when I heard she was in this season.  Lumen was an interesting enough character and Stiles played her just right.  The end of her plot line felt a little abrupt, and I was pretty heartbroken for Dexter.  He had what might be his only chance ever to share his lifestyle with someone he loves, and it didn't work out.  That makes me sad.  Leave it to me to get caught up in the romantic subplot of a serial killer show though.

Speaking of which, how about Quinn and Deb, huh?  What's up with that?  Like Deb, I came around on Quinn by the end of the season, after he stopped being a giant jerkface (he also stopped being a good cop, but whatever).  I was pulling for her to get her butt in gear and return his affection.  I hope that Deb has a least a few episodes of solid happy romance in the next season, but I'm not holding my breath.

Get out of my show, you baby.

I was also happy that we managed to ditch Astor and Cody.  They are always just in the way of more important plot lines.  And Astor still managed to get her drunk emo butt in the way of an entire episode.  Harrison was annoyingly both over-involved ("too many nanny stories") and under-considered ("now that I think about it, where is Harrison anyway?  still with the nanny?  that's weird")  I guess part of the draw of the show is trying to figure out how this guy can be a family man and a serial killer at the same time, but I feel like we kind of played that one out back when Rita was still around. I really just want some more creepy crime scenes and Dexter sneaking up on terrifying serial killers.  Also Deb.  I do like Deb.

Seeing Lumen let go of her "dark passenger" (I really hate that phrase) at the end of the season made me wonder if they are setting up the series finale.  Now that they've proven it's possible for a killer to come back to the light, they're allowing for Dexter to do that too.  I hope that we get some more good murders in before then though.  So, who's hosting me for season 6 watching parties?

Some Like It Hot

Film, 1959, dir. Billy Wilder

Random Bonus Review not mentioned in recent check-in!

AFI named this movie the funniest of all movies of the 1900's.  Let me go ahead and say off the bat that you will not laugh harder at this movie than you did at whatever your current favorite comedy is.  That being said, it's a fun little movie and a "classic" that you probably ought to have seen.  (Actually, it's not really a "little" movie--more on that later.)

It's about these two musicians, Joe and Jerry, who witness a brutal gang killing (seemingly the St. Valentine's Day massacre in Chicago) and need to run away so they don't get taken out too.  The only gig they can get at the last minute, though, is with an all-girl band.  So of course they dress up in drag, go by Josephine and Daphne, and get the heck out of Dodge.  They meet Sugar, the band's singer (slash ukelele player?), and Joe tries to win her heart in a complicated clothes-and-gender-switcheroo plot line that rivals Mrs. Doubtfire in quick-change dexterity.  Meanwhile, Jerry/Daphne buddies up with all the girls and ends up showing an old millionaire a good time.  Hilarity ensues, as well as a chase scene when the mobsters of course catch up with the band.

Joe and Jerry deciding how to portray women is what makes this movie funny.  I can't help but imagine that if the movie were made today as a screwball comedy, there would be a lot of gay jokes and unfunny stereotypes about women.  This movie manages to stay away from that, and it's funny because of the characters that they create.  Then there's the lovely Marilyn Monroe as Sugar, who gets some laughs here and there for her antics in trying to find a rich husband (which, of course, Joe is trying to portray).  She won a Golden Globe for her performance (as did the film itself for Best Comedy and Jack Lemmon as Jerry for Best Actor), and she is certainly magnetic on screen.

A few minor issues.  One, it's too long, as I alluded to in the opening paragraph of this review.  The amount of time it takes to set up the whole gangster plot at the beginning is disproportionately long.  Two, looking back from the future as we are, there is something uncomfortable about watching Marilyn be the dumb blonde without any apology.  She calls herself "not too smart" several times in the film for allowing herself to be drawn into affairs with no-good men, and dreams of a rich man to take her away to her dream life of luxury.  Oh, Marilyn.  I just want more out of my female icons sometimes.  But, she is beautiful and luminous and we manage to love her anyway.  Wilder certainly doesn't have any compunctions about showing off her assets with the costume choices, either.

Here is a longer and smarter take on the whole thing by Roger Ebert.  Try to ignore the fact that he talks about Monroe's breasts in detail, but otherwise a good read.  As he points out at the end of his review, you've got to watch this movie if you don't know the last line.  It's a classic.

Checking in!

Hey friends!

Sasha reminded me that I haven't posted in a while (visit her very popular blog at http://sashandem.blogspot.com), so here's an update.

• Movies: I saw The Help and it lived up to my expectations.  It might be one of those rare movies that I like better than the book--the book was good, but there were so many great performances in the movie...it's a tough call.  I didn't even know my perennial favorite Allison Janney was going to be in it!  Best surprise ever.
• Books: I've been reading Dracula (Bram Stoker) for like three weeks.  It's long.  And kind of slow.  But I do like it.  More on that later.
• TV: Finally caught up with season 5 of Dexter.  Have seen all but the last episode.  More on that later too.

I'll get on the ball trying to finish that book and be back with a real review soon.  Until then, here is a picture of a kitty:

Milk

Film, 2008, dir. Gus Van Sant

I always meant to see this movie, but then never did because I was afraid it would be too sad.  So we put it on the Netflix queue somewhere, and lo and behold it showed up in the mailbox one day.  Then it sat on top of our DVD player for the next two months.  (Granted, it was high wedding season at the time so there wasn't a lot of movie watching going on, period.  But still.)  Finally we watched it the other night because the new season of Dexter is finally on Netflix so we had to send the old DVD back.

Well, I'm glad we watched it.  It's a very well-made movie, visually pleasing and with great acting.  Sean Penn was phenomenal as Harvey Milk, the first openly gay official elected to public office--he completely brought the character to life for me, from the accent to the mannerisms to the individual dynamic he created with each character.  I guess that's why he won the Best Actor Oscar for it.  I also really felt like I learned a lot about a story I knew next to nothing about before seeing the movie.  It was a fascinating look (although I can't attest to how accurate) at the rise of political activism in the gay community in San Francisco while also being a compelling character narrative about Harvey.

Yeah, it was sad, but it was also uplifting to see the progress that Harvey and his colleagues made for the gay rights movement.  The film did not shy away from the characters' gay lifestyles (appropriately), and I thought it treated every character with great respect.  I don't really have any drawbacks to this movie, except that it's a little bit emotionally draining, like many great films, I suppose.  So check it out if you didn't see it when it made a splash 3 years ago.  And don't ignore it on your Netflix queue.

World War Z

Novel, Max Brooks, 2006

This is a unique book.  If you are looking to try something a little different, here it is.

World War Z is a series of interviews about what happened when the Earth that we know and love was overcome by a devastating zombie apocalypse.  It's implied that this happened right around our current time (2000s ish).  The "editor" interviews people from all around the world about their experiences and thus chronicles the initial outbreaks, the ensuing chaos as more and more people are infected, and how humans eventually rally to fight and bring about the resolution of the war against the zombies (this isn't a spoiler--the opening pages let you know it's been about ten years since the end of the war).

Brooks works very hard to capture the details of what it would really be like to have an all-out zombie apocalypse on our hands.  The interviews show how different countries' militaries were prepared (or not) for the formation of active armies and massive stocks of weaponry, what strategies civilians took to try to save their own lives, even what happens to the economy in a state of global warfare.  It is a truly impressive feat of imagination, and Brooks' interviewees are fully-fleshed out to deliver all his horrifying details--even requiring footnotes where the "editor" explains the acronyms and other post-apocalypic-critical knowledge.  (Side note: this footnote business was very annoying on my Kindle--I recommend picking up a hard copy.)

Some of my favorite interviews were with an American business tycoon who invented a "cure" for the zombie disease and then moved to Antarctica with his riches, a Japanese computer nerd who has to rappel his way down his high-rise building to escape, and a man who runs a shelter for the dogs who were trained for zombie combat.

As much as these individual and widely varying interviews are fascinating, they also create the book's major weakness--it's very hard to build momentum or engagement in the novel as a whole when it functions more a a series of short stories.  There starts to be a certain dreariness in hearing about the same thing over and over again even though the telling varies each time.  About 75% of the way through the book I had to drag myself through each interview, even though if I had been reading them as stand-alone pieces I probably still would have enjoyed them.  (It did pick up again towards the end, happily.)  There's also a lot of technical military talk that's a little dry for my tastes, but I'm sure other people enjoy all those details.

Still, definitely worth a read (or a skim, if you get bored partway through).  And, in continuing with the theme of every book I read these days, it's going to be a movie in 2012!  With Brad Pitt!  And that girl from The Killing!  I do like her.

Thoughts about The Help

The movie version of Kathryn Stockett's 2009 novel opens today, I believe.  My mom gave me this book last year, and I read and enjoyed it.  There were some interesting writing techniques too--Stockett uses three different first person narrators, which I found entertaining but some people apparently found annoying due to the dialect she employs.  I recommend it for a fun read, but it's not the Best Book Ever and I think it was way over-hyped.

The plot is that a young white woman in the South interviews several local black maids about what it's really like to be them and work in white ladies' houses (not naming names of course).  The story follows her difficulties getting the book written and the controversy it causes when she publishes it.  Spoiler alert: it's mostly uplifting.

There's a lot of jibber jabber floating around about whether or not The Help is politically correct (see this article on Slate for a nice summary of the various opinions).  It does bother me when white people seem to drop in to save the day for black people in popular fiction/movies (see The Blind Side for another example).  But, as Slate says, you can argue that that's not exactly the situation here, which leaves me free and clear to be really excited to see this movie.  I'm getting good vibes from all the actresses (Emma Stone, Viola Davis, Octavia Spencer, Bryce Dallas Howard) and it seems be holding strong in the 70s on Rotten Tomatoes.

So who wants to go see it with me?

Cowboys and Aliens

Movie, 2011, dir. Jon Favreau

The key to enjoying this movie is managing expectations.  I went into this movie expecting something akin to Snakes on a Plane in terms of tongue-in-cheek-itude, and was pleasantly surprised to find it was a fun little Western instead.

If you are expecting something new and genre-bending a la Black Swan (dance/horror!) or anyting by Tarantino, you will be disappointed.  It's basically just a standard Western, but the shoot-outs happen to be with aliens.  And the Indians are the allies.  I was sort of hoping that we would get the aliens' perspective on things too, but it was indisputably good guy = humans, bad guy = aliens.

Here's Harrison Ford's third appearance on my short blog, and probably my favorite of the three.  He's great as a tough guy cowboy (what?? Ford as a tough guy?? inventive casting!) who is the big man in town because's he's rich, but has to deal with the tomfoolery of his weirdo son (the teenager from Little Miss Sunshine, who was also good) and the arrival of a new tough guy in town--Daniel Craig.  They don't get much touger than Daniel Craig, so that's a definite challenge to your manhood.  Luckily Craig and Ford band together to work on the movie's central plot--chasing down the aliens who have abducted some of the townspeople.

It's worth mentioning that there are some great supporting actors as well--Sam Rockwell and Keith Carradine were both good, but they played a distant second fiddle to the leads in terms of material.  The male-dominated theater I was in on Friday night approved highly of Olivia Wilde as well.

A warning to all you sensitive types: this movie was, for lack of a better word, scarier than I was expecting.  There are a few make-you-jump moments, and a lot of loud noise and generally startling fight scenes.

The bottom line on this one is that if you're looking for a fun summer shoot-em-up, you'll be satsified.  If you were hoping for more, lower your expectations.