Ramblings on Lost

"They elected a black guy?"

Having watched the first four episodes of Lost’s fifth season, here are a few random thoughts:

- I think I might be the only person in the known universe to prefer episodes that deal primarily with the original castaways. That might have something to do with the exceptionally good actors, like Matthew Fox, Terry O’Quinn, and Josh Holloway – or, in the case of Kate-centric stories, with the fact that I am a sucker for a gorgeous face, and by golly, does Evangeline Lilly have one.

- Talking about Evangeline Lilly, was it me or did her Canadian accent sneak in during the scene in the hotel room where she tapped out Aaron’s ketchup. She can tap out my ketchup.

- I am still not exactly sure if I am happy with the way things are progressing. This time-travel schtick of a loose narrative with strands dangling in the air like Michael Bolton’s mane is all good and fine – and they seem to have an endgame in place, which will make the whole thing all the more rewarding eventually. But, still, the sense of a pervasive mystery has all but disappeared. Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse seem to be running the tightest of ships, especially when it comes to making sure everything has some sort of an explanation. In “The Little Prince,” the way they, and the writers, incorporated the batsignal from the hatch from the first season was a nice touch – especially the meta moment where the writers, vicariously through Locke, admitted that it was nothing but a cool gimmick to end the episode on at the time. Still, though, I get the sense that they are trying to explain too much. It’s as if Lindelof, Cuse and the writers realised they let way too much hanging in the second and third seasons, and now they are trying to literalise the fuck out of it. Some things should be left unexplained. What are the numbers? What’s the deal with the skeletons they found in the caves? What the hell was the black smoke? Oh, who gives a fuck! In the wise words of Mother Mary, let it be.

- Has Sun all gone all Sun-ti-Mental or is it just me? Will she try to exact revenge on Jack and Kate, and, god forbid, maybe Aaron? The scene where she was left alone with the kid was terrifying – harkening back to the former days of the show where, once again I must mention this, the mystery creeped the fuck out of you (Oh, I must say Microsoft Word's spell-check is just dying to replace “creeped” with “creped.” Yet people, like moi, still use it – go figure).

- Michael Emerson’s run in Lost should be analysed by all bit-parters/guest-actors as to how an apparently short gig can be transformed into a full-time position. The guy was signed on for a few episodes, but he was so fricking good, that the story was written around him. And now, Emerson is simply doing sterling work, rocking the house every time he’s on screen. He has become one of the core characters.

- Charlotte is Daniel’s daughter. Probably. If so…lame.

- Also rocking the house this season is Josh Holloway. He is simply brilliant. Just look at the aftermath of the scene where he witnesses Aaron’s birth – some of the best work he’s done on the show. I disagree that he was underused last season – he was merely unlucky in not being one of the six that got out. But, it just goes to show how great the initial casting was that you can leave one of your star players on the sidelines for an entire season, and yet, they bring in their A-game when it’s, once again, their moment. I’d like to think that it was Holloway’s sojourn to Turkey last summer to shoot an ice-cream commercial that brought out the best in him. I am nothing if not able to cite my country as inspiration for greatness.

- Jin’s comeback? How are they ever going to tie that in with the established mythology of the show? During the last four seasons, has Jin ever run into Rousseau? Has she ever recognised him? All questions waiting to be answered. Do I care? No, I do not. Still, it’s good to see Jin back.

- And talking about those people who believe in plans and all that shit, it was obvious from the get go in the first season that Jin was going to – SUDDENLY – turn out to be an Anglophone (which is a long word for having a telephone bought in England). Just look at the reaction shots. Anyway, I am so glad they ended up diverting from that route. Jin has turned out to be one of the most interesting characters.

- Wolverine Sayid of the past two seasons is a much better approach towards the character than the tortured torturer approach of the former seasons.

- This has nothing to do with Lost, but isn’t it funny how Heroes is so shit? It’s simply the worst show on network TV. When you find your audience preferring the delights of According to Jim to your show, you know you have messed up plenty somewhere (and it has some really likeable characters, and a few great actors, so what the heck’s going on).

- In the scene where Sawyer et al were being shot at by the other others in the other others’ canoo – am I right in thinking that the other others are the Oceanic Six making their way back?

- I still love this show, and think it even better than even Mad Men, which is my favourite show on TV right now. How is that for inverse illogic?

What?

No one has a clue what the hell is going on:

A Short Sabbatical

I am inundated with work these days. So busy am I that I can’t even find the time to reply to friends’ emails, visit my regular blog haunts, and wax poetic about film or TV. Things should calm down soon, but until then, you should check out the sterling work at the links provided on the right. Keep well, and regular updates should be back within a week or so.

Paradise? Lost!

The current season of Lost is proving to be the best one so far. That is a major feat for any network show, but it’s an even more impressive achievement for Lost, which has struggled with long bouts of mediocrity in the past (actually, I am being nice, most of the episodes from the second season, and the first half of the third season, were flat out terrible). It’s not that the show has been providing a lot of answers to any of the original mysteries, or even the newer ones (Then again, the revelations are incidental to the show’s true purpose anyway, and coming to terms with that point makes Lost an altogether more enjoyable show). Instead, it has built on the game-changing, and excellent, third-season finale, and has developed a concise and fairly tight-narrative with a constant array of surprises and cliffhangers in almost every episode. That they have a definitive end point has obviously helped the producers tremendously – not every episode is great, but the course is set. Even during its less accomplished episodes, the show no longer feels like an interminable ramble through sci-fi and TV drama clichés. For the first time since its debut in 2005, I actually love the show.

Which is kind of surprising if you know me. I am a fan of sci-fi and mystery and all that geeky crap. When I first heard about the show in early 2005 (as I was doing my military service at the time, I had missed out on all the up-front presentations in May 2004, as well as the initial reactions when the show first debuted in September), I could barely contain my excitement. A plane crash in the South Pacific – a ragtag group of survivors on a desert island – weird shit abound: SPLENDID! Just the kind of nerdy set up that gets me all giddy inside. Yet as I sat down to watch the first episode in September 2005, a year after its US premiere, I was underwhelmed. I liked the show, but it lacked that final oomph to arrest me fully. That first season did have a few excellent episodes, such as Walkabout aka Locke’s first flashback (even though it telegraphed the final twist), Solitary aka the one where they all play golf, Numbers aka the one where a math genius helps his detective brother solve crimes with the cunning use of algebra (oh, wait…), and Exodus Part II, featuring Michael’s infamous cry of “WAAAALT,” which, to this day, reverberates in my ear drums. It wasn’t a special show or anything – definitely not the best show on network TV like most of its fans claimed it was – but it had potential to develop.

The creative indolence that would plague the show had a lot to do, however, with one element introduced in the first season: the fricking hatch. My memory of the second season is hazier than that of the first, probably because I was bored shitless throughout most of it. That whole plot about pushing the button, and Locke’s lugubrious transformation from crazy island-nutjob to desk-bound, humourless douchebag, and his subsequent man of science/man of faith nonsense-a-rama with Jack were dull to the point of anesthesia, not aided by the second most boring sub-plot in the history of the show, the survivors from the tail section. I don’t know how you can go wrong with such a fount of untapped crazy, but the producers managed it with aplomb. Even though Ben’s Faux Henry days of captivity, and Michael’s gun-totin’ return, brought the show home for a while, Lost fizzled into an incongruous heap of pointless twists and turns by the end of the second season. “We have no idea how we are going to wrap this up, so here’s a giant statue with four toes (I never understood why this is so weird – it’s like looking at Guernica and saying, ‘wow, the guy who painted this must be an alien – look at the bull; it has two eyes on the side of its head’).”

And if the sophomore slump was bad, then the first ten or so episodes of the third season were truly abysmal. The demystification of The Others (probably inevitable in the long run), which had started in the latter part of the second season, continued with the revelation that they inhabit a suburban pleasantville in the middle of the fricking island – complete with book clubs, jungle gyms, and Tesco’s (probably). This domestication was offset in the later episodes of the season by the introduction of the Hostiles, or whatever they were called, but at the time, it felt like the worst creative decision ever. But it was nothing compared to the monotonous Jack/Kate/Sawyer crappola as they remained captives of The Others, doing nothing but eating bear biscuits, and looking stinky. It was only after the show came back from its ratings-killer mid-season hiatus that things started moving. Desmond went mental and travelled through time (or did he?), Charlie found out he was going to die, some other unforgettable crap happened to other characters, and, one of my favourite moments ever, the two random castaways who were awkwardly introduced at the beginning of the season, Nikki and Lauda (I might have the names wrong), got buried alive by their friends. Looking back, it was that very moment (Billy Dee Williams was in that episode, for god’s sake – BILLY DEE, BILLY DEE, BILLY DEE, Billy Dee Klump) that marks the turning point of the show. It was probably then that Damon Lindeloff and Carlton Cuse, showrunners and uber-geeks, threw up their hands in disgust and resignation, like a pair of pentecoastal cannibals, and said: “Fuck it! Let’s set an end date, and go all out mental.” The rest of the season was fast and fun. That was the one thing that had been missing in the show: fun. And the latter half of the third season provided that with style.

And then came the third season finale, Through The Looking Glass, which was probably the show's best episode since Exodus Part II, the penultimate episode of Season 1 (the two-hour season finale was shown as two separate episodes here, as Exodus Part II and Exodus Part, wait for it, III). It was suspenseful, action packed, and, at times, rather moving. The back-to-basics feel to the episode, with all the Lostaways finally together on some – probable – fool’s errand, and finally an interesting – and pertinent – parallel-plot elevated the show above the levels of most other mainstream dramas. Not just that, but it was also unsettling in a way few shows ever dare to be.

First of all, I had always liked Charlie, and that had a lot to do with Dominic Monaghan’s pitch-perfect performance throughout his run. Even though it’s a shame he had to die, I think it was understandable from a story-point of view as there was nowhere his character could go from there. His final self-sacrifice was very moving: a testament to the character’s growth while on the island, as well as underlining the show’s overall theme of redemption/damnation.

In fact, that Yin-Yang relationship was made more obvious than ever before in the latter part of the third season as demonstrated by, for example, the developments in Locke and Sawyer’s respective characters. Locke’s inability to kill his father, or himself, or, in fact, Jack showed that he might not be the hunter/hero that the Island seemed to have molded him into. This subtle emasculation was contrasted by Sawyer’s transformation from a joker/con artist to a murderer. Whereas he was haunted by the memories of killing the man in Sydney, he did not seem to show any remorse for strangling Anthony Cooper, as attested to by his shooting Tom even after the latter had surrendered. Locke’s confrontation with Jack and Sawyer’s with Tom in the episode three finale were linked stylistically (of course), and thematically. The Others probably wanted Locke to kill his father because they wanted to see if he would be able to kill one of his own men should it ever come to it. Obviously he failed – but Sawyer would not have. Sidelined for most of the second and third seasons, Sayid, too, had a return to form as a very, very dangerous man – it was moments like these that formed a coherent whole around the episode.

The redemption/damnation motif also forms the basis of Jack’s story. I know that he is despised more than any other character (apart from Charlie, I suppose), but Jack is one of my favourites. It’s an old caveat of – good – comic book writers that it is far easier to write Wolverine than Cyclops. Similarly, Jack - an uneasy leader whose decisions usually produce ambivalent results - with all his genuine goodwill, heroism, altruism as well as his almost psychotic obsessiveness, sins-of-the-father issues, and, err, voice-control problems, is a much more complicated character than many others on the beach. His arc is the show’s arc (if I have to use the horrible “a” word) – damnation or salvation. And Matthew Fox’s performance, which, admittedly, comes and goes, was fantastic enough in the last seven or so episodes to rise to that larger challenge. So it was a combination of all these factors that made the final revelation in his flashforward that Jack was not redeemed all the more shocking.

Oh yeah – the flashforward.

I can’t say I didn’t see it coming. When, last spring, we were talking about the show on an internet board, my good friend Graydon mentioned that he would like the series finale to be a slowly-revealed flasforward that would “flash back” to how the Lostaways escaped the island. I had entertained similar convention-defying possibilities before (not like that, you filthy heathens), and, albeit slightly similar to the Voyager finale, Graydon’s idea was great. A few days afterwards, I accidentally saw an avatar on another board of Leonidas/Jack, and, remembering the leap-in-time approach of the Battlestar Galactica third season finale (this is probably the geekiest post ever), I entertained whether a similar idea would be introduced in Lost. There were also a few tell-tale signs in the episode as well. The first one was the deliberate obscuration of the date of the paper, and the identity of the person who committed suicide. Another sign was Jack’s mobile, which was a Motorola Razr, and not released until 2005 (or, maybe, 2006) – having said that, I thought it might have been just an error (it obviously wasn’t, as proven by Jin’s bulky mobile in the most recent episode). Even though Jack’s mentioning his father threw me off at first, I thought it was too obvious a red herring, and that, if confronted, the producers could just write it off as Jack’s being high as a cloud at the time. Still, I was flabbergasted when Kate walked out of the shadows. It was such a bold, and imaginative move - setting up a great avenue to explore for the three seasons ahead. The fact that Jack had not been redeemed after all they went through (a line of Jack’s at which I raised an eyebrow) was an incredibly powerful way to end the show. It was like the producers’ saying: “Right, so you want answers? Here’s one: Kate and Jack get off the island, but they end up estranged, and, even better, Jack is more fucked up than ever! Happy now, bitches?” In one single episode, the show had managed to undo most of the effects of introducing The Others as regular characters, or the hatch, or, well, all the creative missteps of the past two seasons. Unlike the end of the second season, we were left with genuine questions. Who’s in the casket? What makes Jack go nuts? Whose boat is it? How do they get off the island? Why do they have to get back?

And it was with that new-found love for the show that I found myself counting the days to the fourth season premiere. Come back tomorrow for the second part of this post, where I’ll be reviewing the latest season so far, analysing the show’s technical aspects, and considering what might be in store for the last thirty-odd episodes…

The Barbers of Seville

I can’t watch football anymore. I mean, sure, I can; I am physically able to; my eyes don’t give when I sit down in front of the telly, or in a stadium, to immerse myself in the delights of 22 sweaty men charging after a ball. It’s just that whenever it’s a team I support, be it Fenerbahce, Turkey, Newcastle, or England (an embarrassment of riches, eh), I simply lose any sense of reality, betray all my convictions, lose all my mirth, forgo all custom of exercises. I get taken over by obsessive-compulsive idiosyncrasies, which hound me like the Furies did Orestes, and get reduced to an arbitrary combination of random ticks, routines, and chants. Double that, if you please, when what’s on the table is something that’s important. Say, qualifying for the last eight in the Champions League. Which, incidentally, is the predicament I found myself in on Tuesday Night, that glorious, beautiful, divine Tuesday Night. It was the second leg of the Knockout Phase to qualify for the quarter finals, and Fenerbahce were going in with a 3 – 2 first leg victory over Seville, UEFA Cup winners of the previous two years. For those of you who aren’t aware (and most of the readers of this blog are from the US and Canada so I feel I should explain), that’s not the greatest of results. It’s a victory, sure, but scoring two away goals would mean that a one goal lead at home would be enough to qualify for Seville. Within the first 10 minutes, they had two.

I wasn’t going to watch it. I’d stopped watching the first game after Fenerbahce’s hopelessly unlucky defender Edu tiptoed in an own goal in the first leg, only to wake up to go to work the next day, stop by at the cornershop for some gum, and discover Fenerbahce’s wonky 3 – 2 win. The thing is, the last 15 minutes of Pushing Daisies (a show I still like, but one that needs to get on with telling its weekly stories – I spent most of the hour worrying about Anna Friel’s complexion, for God’s sack) coincided with the first fifteen minutes of the game so I simply had to switch back and forth between the two. Fine. That wasn’t something I could help. To recap my reactions to those formative minutes of the game, I shall now refer back to my journal, in which I was taking notes on Pushing Daisies:

Hmmm, that wig, or wig-like hair do, on the lovely Ms Chenoweth is not that fetching – oh well – let’s see what’s going on with the game – CLICK – ooh, four minutes in and – Hell – Selcuk tackles Keita (or was it Kanoute) to concede a dangerous freekick to Seville, 25 meters from the goal. Right, not to worry. Volkan, the Fenerbahce keeper, should be ready for crap like this from their opponents – Or maybe not. Shit. We’re down one nil after Alves machetes the ball through Volkan’s fingertips and right into the goal. Great. CLICK.

I switched back to catch the remaining few minutes of Pushing Daisies, though exactly what the hell was going on, I couldn’t tell you. My ears were poised to take in the hysterical cries of victory that were sure to emanate from my neighbours. I live on the Asian side of Istanbul, close to Fenerbahce’s home ground, and it’s a positively fanatical neighbourhood. Thunderous, animalistic chants reverberate through walls whenever Fenerbahce scores a goal, which is exactly what I was anticipating. Alas, no joy – an eerie silence, and nothing else. Oh, sod it – I thought; everyone’s watching the game, I shall do, too. Ticks, tricks, warts and all…

Seville’s second goal arrived like a bolt of lightning a scant 30 seconds after I switched back to the game. A misunderstanding between Fener’s middling midfield and drowsy defense was spotted by Keita, who picked up the ball a good 30-meters from the goal, and thumped it with the drive of a thousand monster trucks towards Volkan, who gently caressed the ball into the back of the net. Fuck. I was distraught. “So this is as far as we can go,” I thought. But Fenerbahce had other ideas. The boys stuck to it, and I almost destroyed my vocal chords when, 20 minutes in, Deivid’s half volley bounced past Seville and Fener players alike to defeat the home team’s keeper. Get in! We can do this. Come on, lads. You can see how easily my opinion can sway…

For the rest of the first half, Fenerbahce had impeccable control at times – I counted 18 passes between the players before Kezman tested the Seville keeper (either just before the the Fener goal, or just after – don’t remember), and it felt to me like that most important second goal, which would have confirmed Fenerbahce’s place in the quarter-finals, was imminent. Shows you how much I know – just before half-time, it was Seville scored their third goal of the game, sending me into a lethargic acceptance of a grim fate that must now surely await my beloved team. I brushed my teeth, and got ready for bed, waiting to pounce into a depressed slumber after the fourth goal.

Oh, but wait – the second half started, but Fenerbahce had not given up. It was the industrious Alex who tested Palop first, and then Aurelio, and Ugur had a go, too. But, only fifteen or so minutes from the final whistle, Deivid scored his second goal of the match to bring the aggregate result to a draw, thus confirming extra time, which was lacking in decent football, but not in decent drama. By the time of the penalty shout out, I was a nervous wreck, unable to sit down, pacing round my living room, praying to all gods man had hitherto prayed to, and making up my own ones just for extra good luck. I can’t really recall what happened – I had my back towards the telly most of the time – but that final save by Volkan is etched forever to the back of my eyeballs, as well as his subsequent manic sprint around the pitch, chased by his jubilant team mates. Gosh – it was a sight to see.

Now this is actually not a huge thing to celebrate. Any of the other big teams in Europe, in fact the other six who have so far qualified for the quarter finals, would have been only mildly happy, already thinking of the next round. But not us. Fenerbahce have always had a chequered past in Europe, and this was a glorious victory for us to remember in years to come. I still don’t have all that much faith that we can go any further than this. If we do, that’s great. And if we don’t… Well, we’ll always have Seville.

(Photo Credit: UEFA.com)

Just Ask Don Cheadle: Jimmy Kimmel is F***ing Ben Affleck

Earlier this month, one of the funniest skits of the past few years was unveiled on Jimmy Kimmel Live. Sarah Silverman, Kimmel's long-time girlfriend, announced to the world that she was, indeed, fucking Matt Damon.

It turns out Kimmel had one particularly saucy skeleton in his closet, too. He's fucking Ben Affleck!

Enjoy!

House of Pants

I don’t know why I do it to myself (not that – you perverts). Every week I watch it, and every week I vow never to do so again. Yet there I am, the next Monday, with a cup of tea in hand, curled under a blanket, waiting for this week’s installment of House.

There was a time I really liked the show – namely, around the first season. Looking back, that entire season is a deft series of wonderfully compact teleplays, bookended with “You Can’t Always Get What You Want,” the famous chorus to which also serves to highlight the main theme of the show. It was formulaic even then, sure, but at least it had a certain panache to the way it told its stories. First of all, that’s what the show was about – the completely bizarre sets of ailments that plagued the patients (one of whom literally had the plague, I believe), and the way House and his cronies tried to solve the case. Character development was reduced to the purely Aristotelian conceit of the revelation of decision – habitual action, as they call it in the trade. The show had none of the usual vicarious indulgences for the audience in the form of inane dialogue between characters, which was no mean feat in a medium that’s usually defined by exposition. The one truly outstanding factor was Dr Gregory House, and literally everything centred around him. Now this is a fine line to tread because the central performance would have to be truly captivating for such an approach to succeed (case in point, CSI: Miami and David Caruso’s Horatio Crane, who is the antichrist), yet the producers had, in the unlikely Hugh Laurie the best man for the job (even though his accent is at times all over the place). Like Lost’s first season, House, too, had an incredible penultimate episode (Three Stories – brilliant beyond measure), and again like Lost, it suffered from a tremendous sophomore slump. But unlike that show, House has never recovered from the terrible two’s, and has instead kept on slumping. It’s somewhere around the earth’s core at the moment.

The first reason is this: the show can’t do sustained storylines. I wish the writers would face the facts and realise that, and just try to find another way to keep the show fresh. The end of the first season saw the introduction of House’s ex into the equation, and the show spent the first half of the season dealing with that. The more we found out about House, the less intriguing he became, naturally, and his acerbic wit less and less funny. The third season had the “cop-out-to-get-House” arc for the first ten or so episodes, and that, too, just dragged on ad infinitum (and ad nauseaum). And now the fourth season has House looking for new colleges, which is only marginally more interesting than the previous season’s arc. Who will he hire? Who will get fired? Who gives a shit?

If there was one thing that the second season managed to achieve (and I think there is actually only one thing), it was the organic, intrinsic development of the main characters, and their relationships with each other. The three doctors were much less intimidated by House, who, in turn, appeared far more confident in their abilities to not fuck up completely. That welcome development was summarily thrown out the window in the third season, and instead, all the characters ended up where they were at the beginning of the series. You can’t build characters and rekationships, and then just wipe the slate clean to inject the show with artificial drama.

Aside: The second season, and parts of the third season, were very much like Voltron. In the cartoon, the pilots never formed the damn robot until the very end of the episode as they got their asses kicked by the Robeast of the Week. And even then, they would be within inches of their lives before they decided to use Voltron's massive sword to cut the requisite enemy in half. It's the same in the second and third seasons. The colleges never used the lombar puncture until the last ten minutes of a particular episode, which sometimes worked, and sometimes didn't; but they used it every single week anyway. If I were them, I would lombar puncture the crap out of everyone in that hospital the moment they stepped into the building. I have no idea what a lombar puncture is (I don't particularly care).

The show has become repetitive and boring. I know my complaints are paradoxical, in that I said I preferred the episodic first season, yet now lament that the patient-of-the-week storylines are dull. But that has more to do with the show’s arcs, which always have me on the edge of my seat with ennui, and the cases, which seem to venture more and more into the downright bizarre and unbelievable. So now we have continuing storylines that no one cares about, and medical mysteries that are not really mysterious so much as ways for different guises for House to insult people. The thing is, ironic misanthropy works best when we don’t know anything about a character. Looking at House, and knowing all that we know about him, what he displays is not wit – it’s simply a ruse for more ratings.

Having said all that, come next Monday, I will be right there, in front of the telly, watching what Greg and his mates are up to. After four years, it's still a joy to watch Hugh Laurie, and, what can I say, I like Jennifer Morrison and Lisa Edelstein. They can puncture my lombar anytime.

On Frasier

I am currently toiling away on two essays, one on the evolution of the characters in Frasier, and the other on arboreal imagery as catharsis in The Sopranos. And that's not counting the regular updates I'm working on (the posts on taste I promised will start appearing by the end of next week). Anyway, going through some old writings on Frasier, I ran into a few thoughts, which I thought I'd share with you.

Now, for those of you who don't know me (and I don't mean just biblically), my love for Frasier knows no bounds (what The Sopranos is for television drama, Frasier is to me for sitcoms). I feel beholden to that obsessive passion to share my thoughts with you. Some of these points are a bit too inside, and I pray you indulge me.

On Shark Jumping:

I am a Frasier apologist, and even though Season 5 onwards is pretty much downhill until Season 11, I don't think the show ever jumped the shark. Jumping the shark is not a dip in quality, which the show obviously suffered from Season 6 onwards. It is rather a culmination of all those cynical attempts the show gets suckered into in order to try and lure/entice more viewers, or retain the already existing ones. As such, I don't see, for example, Roz's pregnancy as a stunt at all: it was an interesting choice to see how this emancipated, obviously single character would deal with having a kid. It was a secondary plot line anyway; no one got out of their way to see a Frasier episode because of a more prominent Roz storyline.

There is one possible "shark jumping" moment in the show's entire run; and that is Niles sleeping with Lilith. The episode itself is well handled, funny, and has a bitter-sweet ending, but I don't like the concept behind it. However, that is one single instance, and never really affected the show (it was briefly mentioned in the episode Star Mitzvah).

On the Fat-Camp storyline:

With regards to Daphne's fat camp plot line, one can't overlook the influence of the real world on any given show. Jane Leeves was pregnant, and the producers had to find a way out of it; and they took a road less travelled. It wasn't particularly funny, but diminishing returns had already been the trend of the show by then. It was not a milestone of shark jumping by any means: rather, just another sad instance of mediocrity in an already underwhelming season (compared to the better days). The problem was that when she got back from the fat camp, she turned into pod-Daphne, and became an insufferable bitch until Season 11. That was why their chemistry looked a bit off with Niles. They had perfect chemistry again in Season 11 once writers with at least a modicum of clue into the character started writing Daphne.

Frasier's Relationship with Martin:

In the rather underwhelming 7th season episode, Out with Dad, Martin ends up pretending he's gay in order for Frasier to score. It is a crappy episode, but arguing that the Martin of The Good Son would never have behaved that way is both a moot and an interesting point (I put the moron in oxymoron). Sure, the Martin we first met in 1993 would never have done what he does in the former episode. But that's the point. The character, as did Frasier and everyone else, grew thoughout the years, and a gesture like the one Martin does for Frasier at the end of the episode is intrinsic to his character's overall arc, as well as that of his relationship with Frasier. The Martin of the first episode could not even thank his son face-to-face for taking him in. But, having made his son wait for 11 years, Martin's thank you in Goodbye, Seattle was that much more meaningful and earnest than anything Frasier could have asked for. People did act differently in this show, but it was all a part of their character's growth.

On whether Frasier (the character) became more pompous as the series progressed:

Even though I can see arguments for the previous points I've recanted, I can't, for the life of me, see how one can draw a conclusion that Frasier's pomposity in the latter seasons outshone the former ones. He was always a buffoon, always a show off. Sure he knew a lot, but he thought (as did Niles) he knew much, much more than that. Just a case in point is The Crucible from the first season, where Frasier invites Martha Paxton, "the preeminent Neo-Fauvist," to his flat for a cocktail party where he intends to unveil his latest purchase, a Paxton, to his guests, whom he is trying to further impress by having the actual artist talk about the painting. Here's how the scene goes:

Frasier: Oh God, I've waited so long for this moment - I'm just going to stand back and let you describe your work - "Elegy in Green" in your own words. The way you insinuate the palette but never lean on it, you capture the zeitgeist of our generation.
It is the most perfect canvas it has ever my privilege to gaze upon. I mean, one can only imagine what inspired you to paint it.
Martha: I didn't paint it.
A murmur passes through the crowd.
Frasier: [fighting panic] Of course you didn't. You-you created it, you gave birth to it.
Martha: [walks to the painting] I didn't do anything to it - I never saw this painting before in my whole life.
Martin: [leans into Frasier's ear] And you thought I was gonna embarrass you!

Hell, the show's third episode, Dinner at Eight, is marked by Frasier and Niles acting like such arseholes at a favourite steak house of Martin's. He's an insufferable and immature buffoon later on in the season in Author, Author. What about Focus Group of the third season where he ends up burning an immigrant's kiosk (played by Tony Shalhoub - the immigrant, not the kiosk)? And the less said about his treatment of Martin's heartfelt present in Our Father Whose Art Ain't Heaven, the better. What I am trying to get at is that he was always a jackass, and even though it was accentuated further in some latter day episodes, I think that, too, was character driven. He was lovelorn, yet desperately wanted to be loved, and his pomposity was the only way to channel his frustrations (now that he and his father got along much better).

On the Farce Episodes:

I loved the farces when they were done right. Many of them were reminiscent of Moliere; and that is a spot on description of the better farce episodes like The Matchmaker (generally regarded as the best Frasier episode), The Innkeepers (Frasier acts like an arsehat in this Season 2 classic, too), The Two Mrs Cranes, Ham Radio, To Kill a Talking Bird, Merry Christmas Mrs Moskowitz, etc. The key to a decent farce is this: A woman is cheating on her husband. The husband walks in, the lover hides in the closet. Here's the kicker: the husband MUST get into that closet. It's a life and death situation; and, obviously, the wife cannot let him. There is the crux of any given farce. There is always a party involved who must do or say something, and another (maybe more) who must not let them for reasons the former does not know. Of course, there will be a surprise for the audience, too, when the whole thing's over (so we feel part of the whole shindig as well). The show's writers, and especially Joe Keenan and Christopher Lloyd, knew this, and made it work. There were times when the farce episodes did not work, like in the beloved (not by me) Ski Lodge, which just does not do it for me, but those were few and far in between.

My five favourite episodes in ascending order:

5) Episode 1.17 - A Midwinter Night's Dream

This is brilliant for showcasing, both for the first time and so brilliantly as well, the complete nonchalance that Daphne has towards Niles' sexual "non-advances" and histrionic desires. It also has such a great ending, showing a brilliant side to Frasier and Martin, as well as a beautiful production design. Frasier's all-too-familiar look at Niles following the episode's final line is still a sight to behold, after so many, many years.

Favourite Line:

Frasier: You're a complex little pirate, aren't you?

4) Episode 4.18 - Ham Radio

I love the farce episodes of Frasier, as do all Frasier fans I suppose but this one was one of the best. It has all my favourite supporting characters; Bulldog, Gil and Noel and they are all given such great material ("it keeps my coffee warm") to work with. The principals are great, too, of course but for me, Frasier and Niles are the centrepieces as you know that bottled up anger of Niles's is going to explode soon in the face of Frasier at his most domineering.

Favourite Piece of Dialogue:

Mel: I've done that accent both on Broadway and the London stage!
Frasier: Yes, well, perhaps, they have different standards than I have.

3) Episode 6.10 - Merry Christmas, Mrs Moskowitz

First of all, Amy Breneman is hot, hot, hot, so the gonads are doing some of the thinking here. Secondly, I have a fascination with everything Jewish and especially the humour that derives from that in sophisticated comedies. Finally, both those factors are combined in this wonderful farcical episode with, for me, Niles stealing the show when he is trying to be more Jewish than Jeff Goldblum. The road to the ultimate, painfully funny conclusion is both witty, and spectacularly silly.

Favourite Piece of Dialogue:

Helen: Who has a nice toast? Niles?
Niles: Oh, all right. L'chaim! Mazel tov! Next year in Jerusalem!
Frasier: Take it down a notch, Tevye.

2) Episode 1.19 - Give Him The Chair

Sure, it is not the funniest of episodes but it has one of the best writings of not only this particular sitcom but any TV show, ever! I have always loved Frasier for being able to go on for five-ten minutes without a belly laugh (out of the question for any other successful sitcom) but Frasier always managed it with aplomb; and in a show that values farce as one of its highest assets too. On paper, it would just scream out a balance problem but it works so well. This is a great episode, devoted mainly to Frasier and Martin's relationship, and Martin's speech is probably the finest the show has ever produced.

Favourite Piece of Dialogue:

Martin: Okay, I'll tell you what chair I want. I want the chair I was sitting in
when I watched Neil Armstrong take his first step on the moon. And when the U.S.
hockey team beat the Russians in the '80 Olympics. I want the chair I was
sitting in the night you called me to tell me I had a grandson. I want the chair
I was in all those nights, when your mother used to wake me up with a kiss after
I'd fallen asleep in front of the television. You know, I still fall asleep in
it. And every once in a while, when I wake up, I still expect your mother to be
there, ready to lead me off to bed... Oh, never mind. It's only a chair. Come
on, Eddie.

1) Episode 2.03 - The Matchmaker

As far as I am concerned, this is easily overall the funniest Frasier episode ever. I am not sure if it can be topped in a conventional sitcom. The episode starts promisingly with an obvious set up that one can see miles off, but that promise is fulfilled and then some with the scenes during the dinner party with Tom at Frasier's. I am not sure what is funnier, Frasier's earlier ignorance of the fact that he is on a date; Niles's taking the the piss out of his brother once he finds out or Frasier's childish embarassment at the end. Simply put: magnificent.

Favourite Piece of Dialogue (There are too many):

Frasier: Oh my God! Niles, do you realise what this means?
Niles: Yes,
you're dating your boss. You of all people should know the pitfalls of an office relationship.
Frasier: Yes, but he... he just never mentioned the fact he...
Niles: I'll call you tomorrow. But not too early, of course.

Other notable favourites:

1.24: My Coffee With Niles (For that beautiful ending to the first seson)
2.20: Breaking The Ice (Father-Son stuff turns me into a soppy goo)
2.23: The Innkeepers (A brilliant farce)
3.03: Martin Does It His Way (Honour Thy Father)
3.13: Moon Dance (Grammar's brilliant direction and the postcard gag!)
3.15: A Word To The Wiseguy (Niles acting tough - a sight to behold)
4.01: The Two Mrs. Cranes ("Now, now, Daphne. You are eating for two")
4.03: The Impossible Dream (I love Gil, what can I say?)
4.14: To Kill A Talking Bird ("Birds Today!" What a line - What a delivery!)
5.20: First Date (Niles and Daphne sitting in a tree and that song)
6.03: Dial M For Martin (It ain't paranoia if they're really after you!)
6.08: The Seal Who Came To Dinner (Go Keenan, It's Your Birthday!)
7.01: Momma Mia (The three of them watching the video at the end of the episode!)
7.10: Back Talk (The Revelation!!!!!!)
7.22: Dark Side Of The Moon (She loves him too!!!!!)
7.23: Something Borrowed, Someone Blue (Niles: “How do you feel about me?”)
8.14: Hooping Cranes (Frasier the Interpreter)
8.15: Docu.Drama (John Glenn in the booth!!!)
9.02: The First Temptation of Daphne (The Lizard Harness!)
10.06: Star Mitzvah (Noel is my hero!)
11.03: The Doctor Is Out (A welcome return to form)
11.23: Goodnight Seattle (“Though we are not now that strength, which in old days moved earth and heaven…”)

“My son has an office on the right hand of Jesus”

The sixth season of Curb Your Enthusiasm finished here last week, and I had been mulling over a review/recap of it when Edward Copeland beat me to the punch with a DVD review of the season. I agree with Edward that the fifth season was mostly uneven, though our opinions differ as to that season’s finale, which I thought was terrible. Thank god it didn’t end up being the series finale like Larry David originally planned.

Among my real life friends (all three of them), I am universally alone in my unabashed enthusiasm for Curb Your Enthusiasm. The show had slipped under my radar in the UK, where Seinfeld has never been a hit (and had been condemned to the graveyard slot during its initial run), which, subsequently, meant that Curb’s launch never had the kind of in-built momentum as it had in the US. Incidentally, a pet peeve of mine is the way many Brits dismiss American comedy, especially sitcoms, as nothing more than workmanlike series of sappy family humour or frat boy-friendly histrionics (not that there’s anything wrong with that). But that’s an unfair simplification of a genre, which is most natural to American television, and in which it clearly thrives. In fact, it is British sitcoms that are generally dreadful, and The Office and The League of Gentlemen and Phoenix Nights, all of them sublime, are all but oases in the barren Sahara that is British television comedy.

Anyway, back on topic: Larry David is one of the great storytellers currently working in television. I’ve been watching the fourth season of Seinfeld these past few days – the break-out season, and the first one with an overwhelming arc ("The Jerry Show"). Although Seinfeld would use arcs in its later seasons, to varying degrees of success, The Jerry Show arc is the one that is closest to the way Larry David has fashioned all seasons of Curb Your Enthusiasm after its debut season. In fact, the clockwork precision of the second, third, fourth - and now the sixth - seasons, the way the episodes, and the overall arcs, inexorably lead to an ineluctable outcome, and yet still manage to be supremely surprising once they get there, is a testament to David’s perfect grasp of screwball and farce. The show’s cinema (or television) verité style and its indebtedness to such disparate influences as Moliere, Alan Ayckbourn, Phil Silvers, Mel Brooks, Joe Keenan etc only serve to highlight David’s tremendous achievement. The style complements the substance – the apparent haphazardness of the single-camera approach and the mainly improvised dialogue the yin to the yang of the plot’s labyrinthine machinations.

The main arc of the show’s sixth season finds The Davids’ “adopting” an African-American family who’ve been left homeless in the wake of a Katrina-like Hurricane. Fortuitously enough, they happen to be called The Blacks. It’s these too-on-the-nose set-ups that I love about David’s comedy. You know that something most awkward is going to happen with a combination like that – but you just don’t know exactly what. Leon Black, the up-to-no-good, plebian, loud-mouth nephew could usually be interpreted as an attempt to extend a show’s appeal to different demographics – but not in this one. Stereotypes are introduced in an off-handed way, and then subsequently demolished with the same ease. The second arc involves Sheryl dumping Larry when the latter prefers to deal with the TiVo guy instead of talking to his wife, who’s called him from her plane that’s seemingly about to crash. (There is so much I can relate to in that particular plotline – I’ve had an ex who used to call me only three-minutes before The Sopranos would start, and then complain that I wasn’t paying her any attention. Don’t make me choose between you and Tony, hon. Yes, I am a moron.) All the actors do sterling work – the veterans have grown into their roles, and you can see affectations, and lines coming to them naturally. Watch as Larry David tries to stay “in-character” after Jeff Garlin’s adlib at the Laundromat: “At home, I keep photos of all my dry cleaners on the wall.” The additions to the cast, JB Smoove (best. name. ever.), Vivica Fox, Ellie English are equally great.

And then there’s the finale – which comes completely out of left field, and is in such contrast to the general cynicism of the show that it’s not just an artistic non sequitur, but almost Lynchesque in its weirdness. Truly, truly a work of genius.

Postscript: The show had an 11.00PM slot here, which is now occupied by Californication. I suppose the thinking was that, sometimes, just before you go to bed, you want to see a bald man make a tit of himself. And other times, you just want to see tits. Fair enough.

Bootlegs: What to do? Part II

An exceptional quality of the internet is the unprecedented way with which it’s ushered in an era of global popular culture on a real-time basis. Anything that’s celebrated anywhere in the world instantaneously becomes a global phenomenon provided people are interested in it. Since that interest - or consent, as that most self-righteous of linguists calls it - is something that can easily be manufactured, it stands to reason that the global marketplace is of utmost importance to mainstream products of pop-culture, the only true core of which is the United States. In fact, that’s not an astute observation more than it is an undeniable fact that most Hollywood products - tv shows, or, more so, films - are tailored more and more with the global marketplace in mind. And it’s impossible for studios to keep tabs on their products, and control their release schedule to optimise income, when there is such an easily accessible nexus of piracy that is the interwebs.

Yesterday, I tried to outline how this is an ethical dilemma for someone, like yours truly, who is against the idea of piracy, but who is also a pop-culture hound. It is impossible to keep away from spoilers on shows like Lost or Heroes (even though the only spoiler for that show is that it’s rubbish) when their terrestrial premieres in the rest of the world are bound to be much later than in the US. A quandary exists for Oscar nominated films, too. As it currently stands, No Country For Old Men, There Will Be Blood and Juno, best picture nominees all, are not set to open in Turkey until late February, early March. Even if one manages to keep one’s innocence towards them for a while, that will be a hopeless feat come Oscar time. And it’s not just about the internet either. Even if one can avoid TV or newspaper reports, and tries to turn a blind eye towards features on said film on internet journals and blogs, there is always that one guy waiting in the wings to rub salt on the wound that is the films’ late release by spoiling them at most inopportune moments.

And people don’t even have to look hard for them anymore. Like I mentioned yesterday, there are shops galore all over Istanbul, not to mention other European cities, that sell pirated films, and do so with not only impunity, but apparent gusto (A pirate copy of Juno had a pitch-perfect DVD jacket presentation, with quotes from critics, technical aspects and, bizarrely, details of fictitious extras). The Thursday before I Am Messiah Metaphor opened in the US, for example, a colleague of mine had already seen the film on a bootleg DVD, which, apparently, was a top quality screener copy. Now that was not a film that I was anticipating with fervour, but No Country For Old Men is. When that film is only scheduled to open a month after the Oscars, the temptation to watch a pirated copy is all the more tempting. Even though I won’t have to do that (an upcoming independent film festival in Istanbul seems to have all three in its line-up), I can’t say that the choice to watch bootleg copies is a clear-cut case of black and white. While it must be mighty comfortable on that high horse, campaigners against piracy have to face the reality of the facts. You can’t create an instantaneous media event out of your product, only to keep the latter away from the global public. Not only is it morally dubious, it doesn’t make great business sense. Either the studios get into the piracy business, or they find a way to roll-out their films globally. The two options are not mutually exclusive.

(Sidenote: Even the eventual DVD releases pale in the rest of the world compared to the ones in the US. Not only are they technically inferior, but, most of the time, also lack all the extra bells and whistles. The classics, basically any film that was made before 1969, get hardly any releases in this country[Try to buy the complete catalogue of Ozu and see how far that gets you in Istanbul]. It’s extortionate to order them from the US, or even the UK. I bought the box sets of the first four seasons of The West Wing two years ago, and ended up paying half as much as I paid for the DVD’s at the customs.)

What makes a great sitcom?

A lot of things, really, and most are very obvious to recount. This morning, however, I realised one of the most important factors: a great theme tune. A drama doesn't particularly need one because the audience expects to feel the whole gamut of emotions. I hate the credit sequence for House, for example; in fact, that trend of morbidly detached credits, which started with Six Feet Under, is equal parts annoying and hilarious. Yet I enjoyed House's first season immensely (not so much the latter two, and the fourth is, so far, pure wank).

That's not the case for a sitcom where its only objective is to make people laugh, and the best theme tunes also give an idea of what to expect in the storylines. So you have "Thank You for Being a Friend" or "Moving on Up" or "Where Everybody Knows Your Name." They don’t have to be catchy tunes either – Frasier and Seinfeld both have minimalist theme tunes, yet both are equally memorable. Arrested Development’s was almost elusive, yet it stuck with the fans (all four of them). Of the recent crop of shows, 30 Rock and The Office have excellent theme tunes, too. You hear any of those, and you are well on your way to giggle at the kerazee shenanigans awaiting your heroes. Conversely, a crappy theme tune gets you off to a bad start to begin with, and it's very difficult to shake off that initial disappointment.

Case in point: Mad About You. I really should have loved this sitcom: it had Paul Reiser, who was an idiot but my kind of an idiot, it had Helen Hunt, who was hot, hot, hot (at least before Pay it Forward), it was loveably low concept and had a Seinfeld crossover episode, for god’s sack. But I loathe that show. This morning, as I was watching the last episode of the show's first season, I realised why: I can't fucking stand that fucking theme tune. It's depressing and annoying and it’s just plain bad. That show could have brought about world peace and proven intelligent life existed outside this solar system, and I still would have hated the living fuck out of it. Just thinking about it now makes me want to get baptised and convert to Catholicism (and practice the teachings of Cathol) only to then rush to the nearby church for penance.

And talking about great theme tunes:

Update (01/02/2008) - How could I have forgotten about this gem:

Bootlegs: What to do? Part I

In a recent Answer Man column on Roger Ebert’s site, a reader raised an interesting point regarding bootlegs that got me thinking:

Q. After reading Jake Ochoa's question about Satyajit Ray's "The Apu Trilogy" and your comment about it being a hard-to-find masterpiece, I of course had to find it and see it. I don't know your feelings on file-sharing, but the entire trilogy is readily available on file-sharing sites such as [site names deleted]. I am tempted to defend file-sharing in this circumstance, but I'll only go so far as to say that this is a good option for those interested in seeing it, even if the video quality isn't terribly good.
Aaron Martin-Colby, Saunderstown, R.I.

A. It sure isn't, and the original U.S. videotapes are only good to fair. You can buy a DVD boxed set from Amazon.co.uk for about $85 and watch it on one of those all-zone DVD machines, which start as low as $60. Kino, Facets or Criterion, are you listening?

I empathise with the bind that the North American fans of Satyajit Ray have found themselves in. But my dilemma goes deeper (doesn’t it always). Apart from blockbusters with simultaneous openings in 10, 000 cinemas globally, Turkey tends to get most films much later than their US releases. The wait is around 6 months for a studio film, and, if they are lucky enough to get a cinema release, independent films might take the better part of a year to make it to this side of the world. The same is true for TV shows, with the more popular fare tending to take 8-12 months to make it on Turkish telly, and the rest a good while longer. I am not an advocate of bootlegs, and I don’t understand how people can watch a movie recorded on a mobile phone! Still, there are grey areas, and I am not sure how to handle them.

The main reason I thought of the above question, and the issue in general, is tomorrow’s Season 4 premiere of Lost on ABC. Coming off the heels of an excellent season finale (in fact, the last 10 episodes were the best since the first season’s Exodus: Part II – and the way the show managed to find its form after such a lackluster first half to the season, not to mention the dreadful second season, is beyond comprehension), and thanks to the ongoing writer’s strike (which, according to reports, might very well end tomorrow), there is not another single TV event about which I am more excited. The show is hugely popular in this country as well, and the 4th season will debut here on 27th February. In the age of the interwebs, that is a very long time to wait. Keeping spoiler free will be impossible until then, and however much I try to stay away from news or reviews, there is bound to be that one arsehole behind me on the check-out lane going on about the awesomeness of the season premiere that I won’t help overhearing. It seems the best way out for a pop-culture whore like yours truly is filesharing sites.

But I don’t want to do that, and that’s not just because I have no idea how bit torrents or other file sharing sites work. Still, it wouldn’t be too hard to get my hands on a bootleg version, be it from friends, or from dodgy DVD stores about town. Aside: there is a large shopping mall in a fairly busy part of Istanbul, the second floor of which is filled to the brim with DVD shops flooding with bootlegs. Their conspicuousness extends beyond bravery to achieve a sort of Zen-like defiance against authority.

It’s a problem nowadays that various pop culture events have become so big that, thanks mainly to the internet, anyone trying to keep spoiler free will find it extremely hard to do so. An example is The Sopranos’ finale: even though I still hadn’t seen any of the sixth season, it was impossible to stay away from all the buzz that was raging around the interwebs once the finale had aired. I still haven’t seen the episode, but I have read all about it, seen clips on YouTube, and partaken in enough discussions that the actual experience of seeing the episode now seems bizarrely like a footnote (or an afterthought) to the event itself. Being part of a global information network means to take part in things as they are happening now. It seems perverse for any pop-culture event to become a real-time global phenomenon, such as Lost and all the bells and whistles that go with it, yet strictly insisting on national boundaries with regards to the latest product, which, in this case, is the season premiere.

More on this tomorrow.

Random Musings from the Weekend

· I saw I Am Legend this weekend. Turkish cinemas have allocated seats, a practice I abhor, and I try to stick it to the man by sitting in whatever seat I damn well please. Power to the people! Anyway, it’s usually not a problem as I see films at relatively unpopular showings, and everyone sits wherever they want (most couples sit at the back for a few rounds of tonsil tennis, and one particularly vocal pair made the already lugubrious The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford all the more unbearable). It turns out the performance was almost sold out, and my usurping someone else’s seat threw the whole auditorium for a loop - so great was the mess that no one could pinpoint how or where it started. I should feel bad about it, but I don’t, because allocated seats are stupid.

So, I Am Legend: I liked it. Spoilers Ahoy – The deviations from the book were wise, especially the decision to do away with the lame “still-livings (in the book, there is a relatively harmless third-group of pseudo-zombies, who have retained some of their humanity, and not resorted to vampirism/cannibalism – Neville ends up hunting them, and, in their eyes, becomes a legend – hence the title).” I also enjoyed the “cancer cure becomes societal cancer” angle, and the more realistic portrayal of the vampires/zombies/mutants/whatjamacallits. Still, it would have been interesting to incorporate the luddite elements of The Omega Man, but that is a creative angle I would have liked to see explored, and should not be regarded as criticism. The flashback sequences are finely incorporated into the main narrative: in fact, not since the 1930s-1940s has the flashback been so elegantly used in mainstream American cinema (and television). These are good times for fans of the technique.

The film does have its fair share of problems, mind. Robert Neville, the eponymous legend of the title, is far too sane during the in-door scenes, which is relatively incongruous with his wacky eccentricities when he ventures out. I could buy that anyone would go a bit loopy faced with solitude of such great magnitude, not to mention the hordes of vampires lurking in the shadows, but I couldn’t do the same for the scene where Neville stumbles upon his own trap. Maybe one of the mutants/vampires set the trap? That is an even greater leap of faith.

Which brings me to the most jarring aspect of the film: Neville as messiah metaphor. The film is ridden with Messiah/Christ imagery, and that is even before the last 20 minutes: the possibility of the cure’s having to do with Neville’s blood, or his bringing his captive back to life, not monuments to subtlety themselves, are overshadowed once Anna and Ethan arrive at the scene. With the delicacy of a televangelist marathon, the film bombards the audience with heavy handed Eucharistic symbolism, and that is before Neville pays the ultimate price. As if that wasn’t enough, the final shots of the film show a community of survivors, who, over a truly terrible voice over by Anna, welcome her and Ethan into a seemingly idyllic paradise dominated by a church. Over the final credits, Bob Marley sings Redemption Song: because the previous 20 minutes were far too illusive. If it were up to me, I’d cut before Anna and Ethan make it to the camp, and have Highway To Hell play over the credits. You know, for shits and giggles.

(There is an inherent creepiness to the film’s final action sequence, where, essentially, hordes and hordes of mindless white mutants are hunting down a black man, and trying to burn his house down. I am sure it was not unintended.)

· VH1 had a “Three From One” theme this weekend, where they played three consecutive songs by one artist or group. I had it on in the background while I cooked, and it slowly dawned on me that my musical taste has started to mellow. I found myself enjoying the shit out of the trio of George Michael songs, namely Freedom ’90, Fast Love, and I’ll Be Loving You Always, and thank god I didn’t come across any Dido while I had the telly on, because enjoying that piffle would be unbearable. What next? James Blunt? They did follow George Michael with Eagles, Led Zep and the Stones, mind, so not all hope is lost.

· I revisited a few favourites: The Long Goodbye, Day For Night, and The Wicker Man. I hadn’t seen any of them for years – especially The Long Goodbye was an interesting experience. I found myself remembering entire passages of dialogue, which is doubly impressive considering I’d only seen it twice before. That says more about the film, than it does about my memory skills. I also saw Downfall for the first time since it was released. The film is bookended by documentary footage of Hitler’s secretary essentially saying she had no idea what she was getting herself into, but that she is full of regret. Such display of apparent honesty does not ring true. Being in such close contact with Hitler, she would have known about everything, including the Holocaust (Similarly, Leni Riefenstahl also claimed ignorance, but that, too, is dubious). In an otherwise confused essay on Philip Lopate’s books on American movie critics, Clive James has an insightful observation about the film, with which I am in total agreement: “Similarly, if you know too much about the movies but not enough about the world, you won't be able to see that Downfall is dangerously sentimental. Realistic in every observable detail, it is nevertheless a fantasy to the roots, because the pretty girl who plays the secretary looks shocked when Hitler inveighs against the Jews. It comes as a surprise to her. Well, it couldn't have; but to know why that is so, you have to have read a few books.”

· Six seasons in and Curb Your Enthusiasm is as great as ever. The Tivo Guy, the episode where Cheryl leaves Larry is both funny, and, uncharacteristically, genuine and touching. It is one of the show’s best episodes. Conversely, one episode in, and I can safely say I won’t be watching Samantha Who ever again.

· I am enjoying Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy. It’s a shame there won’t be a film version. Even though I haven’t even started the final book, I can safely say that Pullman’s trilogy is far more enjoyable than The Lord of The Rings, which I have never really liked in the first place (I do enjoy The Hobbit, though).

· I managed to catch the last ten minutes of Chaplin’s Limelight, which I must have last seen 15 years ago (maybe more). Anyway, here is the famous scene with Chaplin and Keaton sharing the same stage:



· I’ve been humming this since yesterday:

Laters, skaters...

Ratings, Schmatings...

I've bitched about this before, but having run into the very same episode of The Sopranos a few days ago, and confronted with the very same labels, I thought I'd bring it up.

Our version of the FCC (who also won't won't let me be or let me be me so let me see - I hate myself) have recently introduced these tv warning labels. Before every show, these signs come up to inform the viewer whether the show that follows is:

- Suitable for a General Audience,

- Suitable for Ages Seven and Above,

- Suitable for Ages Thirteen and Above,

- Suitable for Ages Eighteen and Above,

- Includes Elements of Violence or Horror,

- Includes Elements of Sexual Nature, or

- Includes Elements that might set a bad example to the impressionable young (whatever that might mean)

Imagine my delight when I sat downa few nights ago to watch Boca, the ninth episode of The Sopranos' first season. For those who don't know or don't remember, the episode revolves around a child molesting girl's football coach and how cunnilingus is Uncle Junior's particular forte in bed. Of course, the episode has all the usual violence or threat thereof, as well as other, assorted mob-related crap.

Anyway, I sit down, waiting for the theme tune to kick in when the signs on the screen inform me that the following programme is suitable for ages seven and above and that it includes elements of violence and horror. I almost pissed myself (not literally, of course; I haven't done that in weeks).

Here is a show about the mafia; very gritty, incredibly violent with one especially disturbing theme particular to this episode and the powers that be here deem it perfectly suitable for an eight year old. It's their hypocrisy I find ridiculous, you understand. They have no idea what the show is about, are most likely oblivious towards the general theme and the episode in question but they see a mafia show and arbitrarily assign it a label.

Conversely, they must have but a vague awareness of South Park as they, once again, randomly deem it suitable for audiences 18 and above just because it's "controversial."

I do see the necessity of having a guide of sorts but I hate such slapdash labels. Besides, I believe that this sort of decision belongs to the parents and not the government anyway. My parents let me watch whatever I wanted to and look how healthy I've turned out. Harvey says hi, by the way.

Is There a Chance the Track Could Bend?

You've got to read this story: http://www.hurriyet.com.tr/english/5971163.asp?gid=74

Does it remind anyone of a particular episode of The Simpsons?