Wednesday 13 May 2009

TV

Broken Saints
Chapter 24 Truth [finale episode]
See here for my thoughts on this chapter.

The No.1 Ladies' Detective Agency
1x04 Problems in Moral Philosophy
For a programme that's so perfect for Sunday night -- genteel, funny, nice -- the episodes seem to go by awfully quickly. Which is a good thing -- Lark Rise..., for example, does drag so.

The Wire
2x05 Undertow
The Wire hasn't gone totally off the ball, but some scenes in this season lack the could-be-a-documentary realism of the first. And I'm not talking some shaky handheld style thing here (thankfully, the makers of The Wire seem to know about tripods and Steadicams -- perhaps they could lend some to J.J. Abrams), but the dialogue and performances. It's not throughout, but just occasionally it feels much more 'fictional' than before -- no problem in much shows, but it belies what made this series so different and so good.

Articles

Cannes 2009: Up first reaction! by Jamie Graham
(from Total Film)
"Pixar's latest opens Cannes to eye-popping effect" say Total Film. Sounds more promising than it looks.

How To Cheat A Reboot: Star Trek's Kobayashi Maru Solution by Dan Jolin
(from the Empire Blog)
Far too much has been written about Star Trek now, but this article's different perspective makes it worth bothering with.

Review of Fast & Furious by gproject
(from Slate Scrawl)
Sounds about as good as I hoped (I say hoped -- I wasn't actively wishing it would be any good), which does increase my chances of seeing it as I thought it would probably be worse.

Vindictive Movie Studio Threatens To Make Coyote Ugly Sequel
(from the Onion)
Don't worry, it's a spoof. (To all teenage boys thinking, "what do you mean 'don't worry'?! I'm upset it's not real", you can just go watch the DVD of the first one again. Or try Bring It On.)

Broken Saints - Chapter 24: Truth

24 episodes, 10½ hours, 5 months of my time -- I've finally reach the end of "The Animated Comic Epic"!

The final certainly has a lot to live up to, especially as it makes up about 13% of the series' length. It does its best, tying together a lot of complex plot strands and information to round off the plot and offer some deeper meaning -- or at least, try to. Some of it is borrowed heavily from elsewhere -- most obviously Watchmen, from which several elements are taken -- and this can be distracting. A sympathetic eye can easily easy to see why those bits were selected however.

Some of the usual flaws are still evident -- an over technical bit of hacking from Raimi is particularly irritating, slowing the otherwise well constructed pace (a welcome change). On the other hand, he pretentiousness finally seems grounded in something worth listening to -- some of it, anyway.

It's difficult to say if Broken Saints is worth all the effort. Some will love it, especially wannabe-philosophers, whereas others will unquestionably hate it. I'm somewhere in between, as usual, but can say that I will at some point watch it again, and see how much more (if anything) can be gained from watching it all knowing how it ends.

For all my posts related to Broken Saints, please look here.