Bryan Zepp Jamieson: 2008

2008

Personal Bright Spots in the Media

© Bryan Zepp Jamieson
http://zeppcommentaries.com/12/19/2008

This isn’t a typical “best of” end-of-the year throwaway. This is more
along the lines of “stuff I liked and want to share” and maybe some
“stuff I hated and suggest you avoid if you have a brain in your head.”
For example, my choice for “most enjoyable movie” for this year wasn’t
the best movie I saw, but rather was the one I got the biggest kick out
of and wound up watching two more times – and will probably watch again
at some point in the future.

Oh, the usual caveat obtains. There’s no guarantee you’ll like these, or
any of them. In fact, I doubt any of my readers will like all of them.
My tastes are…scattered.

Oh, and I’m out in the sticks, and not the type who has to run out and
see the latest release just so I can brag to everyone on my street that
I saw it first. Most of my neighbors already know my politics and
consider me demented as it is; no point in making things worse. If I
mention a movie or something and you go, “Wait a minute; didn’t that
come out the year before?” I’ll just point out that I usually run six
months to a year behind because I usually wait and rent the DVDs. At
least we have a DVD player. Cheaper to replace a DVD when the dog eats
it than it was with the old VHS tapes. Of course, DVDs are made of hard
plastic that shatters into sharp shards, which means we end up having to
replace the dog instead, but there’s always a downside to everything.
The ongoing survival of dogs is proof that humans trump evolutionary
selection.

So, having libeled my poor dog, let’s start with movies.

My favorite movie this year was one I wasn’t even planning to see
because it sounded boring as hell. To me, a musical based on Beatles
tunes sounded like just another lame attempt to suck up to that
lucrative baby-boomer demographic with yet another witless evocation of
the Sixties, the summer of love, and all that dated rubbish. That it was
-covers- of Beatles songs made it sound even less promising. So: a bunch
of jaded 21st century poseurs trying to make a buck by trying to
recreate the sixties for those remaining baby boomers not yet in
walkers. Boy, I was so ready to slap my money down for that.

But then one of our neighbors popped by with the disk in hand, and said,
“You guys have got to see this!” Since our neighbor isn’t the sort to
get misty-eyed every time she hears “All You Need is Love”, I figured it
couldn’t hurt to at least look.

The movie is Julie Taymor’s “Across the Universe”, and I’ve now watched
it three times. It doesn’t have a profound plot – a love story between a
working class Liverpudlian kid named Jude, and a upper-class American
girl named Lucy (all the characters are named for people in Beatles
songs, hence Sadie, Dr. Roberts, Mr. Kite, Prudence, Eleanor, and so
on), and the acting, while decent, isn’t incredible. What it does have
is marvelous direction, amazing stagecraft, and some of the most
remarkable visuals you’ll ever see. While leaving no cliche of the
sixties unturned, it manages to avoid the ponderous
my-weren’t-we-special tone that most dramatic productions about the
sixties carried. The result is simply a lot of fun to watch. Oh – and
the covers range from acceptable to brilliant. A couple of unknowns are
becoming major singing stars as a result.

I had three television shows that I absolutely loved this past year. Two
were from the BBC, and both were genres I normally ignore – cop shows
and teen dramas. The first was a limited series (16 one-hour episodes)
called “Life on Mars”, named for the David Bowie song. The plot device
seems ridiculous enough: a 2006 chief detective named Sam Tyler is hit
by a car and somehow wakes up in the year 1973, where he is a staff
detective under the authority of one Gene “Genie” Hunt. The cultural gap
between Manchester, England, of 2006 and that of 1973 is even broader
than is seen over the same time frame anywhere in America, and the
coolly professional Sam finds himself dealing with a rogue cop who is
only roughly honest and very effective, and counters this with
scientific meticulousness and a firm knowledge of basic police work
considered revolutionary in 2006. Imagine asking a “bird” her opinion on
something! At no point does it become a “buddy cop” movie in which
opposites attract. The two learn to respect one another, but it never
becomes a friendship. In the meantime, Sam also has to confront the fact
that he appears to have moved 33 years back in time (he meets himself as
a child a number of times) and ponders whether he is insane, in a coma,
or has actually traveled back in time. There is a new series, “Ashes to
Ashes,” being broadcast on the BBC which is described as a sequel, and
an American version of the show is on ABC. The US version isn’t bad, and
most people will find the accents easier to follow.

The other show was “Skins.” It’s about a group of 17-year-olds in
Bristol, England. It’s the first teen show I’ve seen in which the
characters aren’t in a constant social struggle to be the coolest or
flaunt the most wealth or whatever, and you get a solid, heartfelt look
at their developing humanity. The series (19 episodes) moves smoothly
from intelligent farce to intense drama, based not on teenage angst but
on very real problems faced by people in a very real world. As with
“LoM”, great acting and writing make the series special, and the
dialogue and drama match the best work of Aaron Sorkin (first three
years of “West Wing”). The series wrapped up this week, but a new season
is coming with an entirely new cast next fall.

An American television show which is unique is “Pushing Daisies.”
Remember the narrator on “Rocky and Bullwinkle”? Well, everyone on the
show talks like him. The result is high-end slapstick, gleefully
ridiculous and slyer than hell. Last week’s episode featured a team of
Norwegian Private Detectives (yes, you read that correctly) who stand to
reveal the central character’s (“The Pie Maker”) deepest secret – that
he can bring dead people back to life. They had a high-tech RV loaded
with the latest in forensic equipment and surveillance that they
unaccountably referred to as “Mother” – unaccountably, at least, until I
noticed what the acronym for the Mobile Intelligence & Logistical
Forensics unit was.

I like good animation, and my favorite animated TV show, “The Avatar”
came to an end this year. It very nearly didn’t make it, since at the
start of the third and final season, Mako, the unmistakable voice of one
of the central characters, died, which required major rewrites of the
plot line. It’s available on DVD, and while the target demographic is 6
to 11 year olds, it’s sophisticated enough and well enough done that
adults will enjoy it enormously. It is going to be a trilogy of
live-action movies (“The Last Airbender”, I, II & III), with the first
slated for release in July 2010. The director, however, is M. Night
Shyamalan, so I’m not getting my hopes up.

My favorite book this year was “Life of Pi”which was actually written
and published in 2001. Remember, this is based on when I saw it, not
when it actually came out. It’s about an Indian boy named Piscene who
ends up on a lifeboat with a full grown Bengal tiger as his companion.
Um, nice kitty? Well, not exactly. The tiger is not exactly Calvin’s
buddy: this is a real tiger who is looking at Piscene and feeling a bit
peckish. The book is by Montreal native Yann Martel (who was in the news
lately when it came to light that he had been sending books to Prime
Minister Steven Harper about once a week in hopes of improving the man’s
mind. The evidence suggests that he was not successful). Even though you
know Piscene survives the encounter (he is telling his tale to the
author as the device) the ingenious ways in which he does so and the
philosophy underlying it make it a great read. At one point, the author
states boldly, “This book will make you believe in God.” Well, no. But
it will reaffirm your belief that great literature can be entertaining
as hell.

Best comic book: yes, comic book. “The Boys” by Garth Ennis. Never mind
that it is ribald, raucous, cynical and with an inverted sense of
morality. Bad writing or artwork could have ruined all that, but it has
brilliant writing and some of the best artwork I’ve ever seen. It
features five characters (Mother’s Milk, who keeps the office going and
orders the best coffee and ale to be had; Frenchie, who is psychotic and
has a sense of smell a shark would envy, The Female, who is even more
psychotic and likes to hurt things, Wee Hughie, who is a combination of
brains and gofer, and Butcher, who runs the show). These characters
exist to destroy or at least harass superheroes. In this world, there is
a potion called “Blue” that can turn any asshole into a superhero, and
it has turned hundreds of thousands of assholes into superheroes. The
best of the superheroes is incompetent, and the worst…well, it gets
pretty bad.

If you can find The Boys, it’s well worth the read. Lots of mindless
violence and mindless violent sex, just as a added attractions.

I was going to mention bad things I encountered, but in a way I’m lucky.
I tend to forget the bad movies right away (“North of Eden” being the
exception because it was so incredibly bad) and bad TV shows rarely last
on my screen more than a few minutes. We had a really bad President, and
further north, a pretty bad PM, but you probably already heard about that.

So: on to 2009. There’s one movie I’m looking forward to: The Watchmen.
If it’s like the graphic novel, it will sort of combine all of the
elements of the things I’ve listed above.

Trust me. That’s a good thing.