tipsy televisualist: Your Oscar/Leap Day 2016 Edition!

How long has it been since I did a tipsy televisualist post?  Hannibal was still on the air & inspiring cocktail creations.  While it will be sorely missed, we should focus on the good things that Saint Chiara, the patron saint of Television (yes, really), brings us.  

Like the Oscars!  Which, for as much as I snark on them, I do actually have a great deal of affection for them and the telecast as it was basically the equivalent of Christmas Eve/Day in my house, with my parents letting me stay up as late and as long as they ran.  Plus? Sometimes deserving stuff actually wins!  Or someone has a cool dress!  Or makes a good speech!  Yes, they're horrible and awful and silly, but once you accept that they can be both silly *AND* sublime, watching can be a great deal more fun.  Why not have a little bit of faith that the Leap Day lining up with the end of the festivities and AMPAS making membership changes might help us make a leap forward in terms of representation in the nominated films?  And, if they don't, we always have snark and a stiff drink to cope. 

So no matter who you're rooting for or how they turn out, you will either need to drink from joy or to drown one's sorrows, so let's break out our best mixologist outfits and hit the red carpet stumbling.  The following cocktails should help you endure however long the telecast runs over and might help make you the host/hostess with the drink mostess of any Oscar Party you're throwing:

What You Need:

• A Publicist
• A thoughtful speech that you wrote down and pretend to have forgotten while acting fake humble
• A Bottle of Gin
• A Bottle of Grand Marnier
• A Bottle of Cuervo
• A Bottle or Two of a dry-ish Prosecco/Cava
• A Six Pack of Kaliber, by Guinness
• Sugar Cubes
• Bitters - Orange, but pick up Angostura while you're at it
• Fresh Lemons/Limes (or the Real Lemon/Lime Juice bottles)
• A Cocktail Shaker - the Metrokane Bullet is the one I swear by

Optional:

• "The Perfect Drink For Every Occasion" by Duane Swiercynski
• A lovely Champagne Pommery tray, to remind you of one of cinema's greatest drunk/hungover performances - Hepburn in "The Philadelphia Story"
• F. Scott's "On Booze" - to remind you to moderate yourself, lest you end up as a dead failed alcoholic screenwriter 

The Drink: Kaliber Beer, by Guinness:

inspired by: Brooklyn, Sobriety

        

the backstory: I know you're thinking "wait a minute, Hunter, the first tipple you're 

recommending is non-alcoholic beer?"  What the heck?  So I've been on new anti-depressants these last few weeks and have been trying to take it kinda easy,  drinking wise.  During this time, I've gotten to know and loathe many a N/A beer.  This?  Is different. Makes you feel like you're actually drinking a real beer.  It has the weight/heft and taste profile of Guinness, not sad malt flavored water.

drink whenever: Brooklyn is mentioned/wins, someone thanks their sponsor/etc., someone mentions on the red carpet that their fur/jewelry is faux, a celeb's substance abuse issues are joked about by a presenter/host/etc.

The Drink: French 75:

the recipe:

• 1.5 ounces of gin
• one sugar cube
• 3/4th ounce (fresh, preferably) lemon juice
• Put the above into a cocktail shaker with cracked ice, shake vigorously to chill the mixture and to dissolve the sugar cube, pour into a champagne flute and top with the Prosecco/Cava.

mixologist note: While the stars may be sipping Veuve & Cristal, you shouldn't be.  It is foolish to waste a good champagne on a champagne cocktail that is gonna add sugar & gin to the mix.  Stick w/ a moderately priced decently dry bubbly.

drink whenever: a European wins or presents, a non-American name is mispronounced/mangled, the award is given to such an undeserving winner that you wish to throw your hands up and surrender, as the French are wont to do.

The Drink: the Leap Dave Williams:

the recipe:

• 2 oz. gin
• 1/2 oz. sweet vermouth
• 1/2 oz. Grand Marnier
• 1/4 oz. lemon juice
• Shake and strain into a chilled cocktail glass, along with a citrus twist.

mixologist note: this recipe is adapted from the aforementioned "Perfect Drink for Every Occasion" - which states its origin as the Savoy Hotel in 1928.  I've renamed it in honor of one of 30 Rock's most delightful spoofs.

drink whenever: you escape from Mickey Rourke's sex dungeon, the sight of Julianne Moore or Boston being mentioned (re: Spotlight) triggers terrifying flashbacks to her accent, you find yourself thinking wistfully about Tracy Jordan's EGOT, someone does not employ the correct pronunciation of the word "camera," someone is being played off:

         

The Drink: Cuervo with No Chaser:

the recipe:

• duh

drink whenever: #OscarsSoWhite has you so exasperated that you find yourself turning to praying to Queen Bey to give you/us strength so that we can get in formation.

Not a cocktail person?  More of a wine guy?  Well, there's only one to serve.

Find out who your true friends are.

 

personal best: TV dramedy: the unbearable lightness of bunheads

[Formatting note/advance precaution: all links open in a new window.]

"I think that the film Clueless was very deep. I think it was deep in the way that it was very light. I think lightness has to come from a very deep place if it's true lightness." – Alicia Silverstone

“A person who longs to leave the place where he lives is an unhappy person.” ― Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

“It’s just that a mantle of sadness hangs over this most stylish of comedies — weightlessly, like a silken web — and afterward, I always feel as if it’s quietly drifted onto me, too. “Holiday” never cheers me up, but it always opens me wide.”

-Stephanie Zacharek

Not to take away from the excitement from the next phase of Lorelai squared, but someone has to…years from now, after Netflix informs us of those four words, when Dean and Jess and coffee-cubed are nothing but dust…

‘Bunheads’ will stand as Amy Sherman-Palladino’s masterpiece. If there is justice. Which there is not always.

The biggest compliment I could pay to the show is that I don’t have words to do it justice. I mean, I’ll try, but if the excessively verbose banter at the speed of Sorkin-squared dialogue of the gals of Stars Hollow could always be summed up as such, the Bun Broads always add up to more than the sum of their quips.

This has become a cliché in the Tumblr era, but I mean this as sincerely as possible – Michelle is my spirit animal.

I don’t necessarily mean that in the aspirational way – if Lorelai was the mother we always wanted to have or to be, Michelle is the – well, not a mother, exactly.  Or a daughter. Or a teacher.  Or…she’s not anything but being. 

Becoming.  It would be easy to sum up Gilmore Girls as Rory’s coming of age story, but Bunheads dares to ask – how long can one still live in that story?  At what age are we really grown up?  And, most importantly, what happens when the stories we tell ourselves to survive differs from the narrative hand we are dealt?

As Carrie Bradshaw might put it – Bunheads can’t help but wonder – when can we say “get me rewrite?” And what happens when we do?  What does it look like to transverse the hundred decisions and revisions that we can’t quite reverse?

Kushner said the world moves in only one direction – forward. But that’s a lie.  Zacharek cautions us against the desire to rewind and rewatch a perfectly choreographed combo move – Bunheads shows us the steps behind it.  How we run to stand still.  How a double pirouette is, itself, a thing of beauty. Even if one only makes it to one and a half turns.  How sometimes, when one runs out of words or excuses, it’s time to dance.  Even if that dance, like Robyn's, that dance is entirely on one’s own.

All these grand pronouncements might make it seem important.

But Bunheads never pretends to be a great drama.  It has nothing but quips, nothing but low stakes, nothing but moments.  But those moments become…well, everything. 

If Mad Men is the one prestige drama I could live with for the rest of my life to endlessly rewatch as it illuminates how life actually is versus how life is on prestige shows, Bunheads is the only comedy/dramedy I’d put beside it. 

As James Poniewozak stated in Time Magazine:

"[Gory Prestige Dramas think] you need "stakes" to hook viewers.  You need, that is, a sense You need, that is, a sense that that the characters stand to gain or lose something important, and in the “important” sweepstakes “getting violently murdered” generally trumps everything.

That’s understandable, and it’s at least somewhat related to real life. You, I, and everyone will die someday–though probably not at the hands of a biker gang or zombies. But death is not the only thing that makes your life worthy of your attention. There’s growing up, finding your limitations, learning who you are. There’s being grown up, being forced to reassess your life, figuring out who you still can be. There’s wanting things and pursuing a calling–which does not always have to be building the largest meth operation in the Southwest."

Growing up, learning who you are, figuring out who you can still be.  Even in episodes where nothing, narratively, seemingly “happens,” what could be more valuable as a mirror to our lives?

[Look how it echoes Zacharek’s love letter to Holiday, the most under-rated of Grant and Hepburn’s films:

"With characteristic ease, director George Cukor poses some big questions — What do you want out of life, and whom do you want around you while you do it? — but he’s so nonchalant about it, they dissolve like cigarette smoke in the air."]

Also, more than any show in recent memory, Bunheads demonstrates the value of the pleasures of music and pop culture and dance and MAKING art and living through the crappy day to day minutia and trials of life being totally intertwined.  Which is to say, it shows that sometimes art for arts’ sake gives us enough to live.  There are no ‘Glee’-like narrative build-ups over a season to regionals, no reality show-borrowed episode long ‘challenges.’

The only challenge is living. And dancing.

And accepting that sometimes having the audition is enough.

Even if one never gets a callback.

That even if one leaps into one’s dream ballet to express oneself to “Istanbul,” one’s toe shoes always have to crash down on Constantinople’s earth.

This makes Bunheads seem WAY more depressing than it is. But it is precisely the opposite – it’s a filigreed and engraved gossamer-silked party invitation.  Yet paper cuts hurt deep.

More than any show in recent memory, Bunheads doesn’t switch between the two modes of comedy and drama – rather, like the ideal romantic comedies of the 30s and 40s, any sweetness is made more valuable by the underlying darkness and vice-versa.

I am trying my best to avoid spoilers, as I was, and this show is best experienced blind, so…

Let’s focus on the pilot, in parts, then:

Michelle gets quickly engaged. She is sent to ‘Sparkles’ by her mother-in-law and everything plays out as a comedic scene which it still is until… :

“YOU TOOK THE ONLY MAN I EVER LOVED IN MY LIFE SO THE LEAST YOU CAN DO IS WAIT…HERE.”

And it’s a laugh line because Truly is telegraphed as a kinda crazy person but…

It’s also not.  It’s also so real it hurts.

Then there's, well, the "fat" girl, going to her ballet mentor/teacher (KELLY BISHOP IS QUEEN YASSS) for advice:

- Madame Fanny?

 - Yes, boo? 
 -Um, about the Joffrey auditions next week, I was thinking I was going to try out, so I just wanted to ask you should I? 

- Well, it certainly can't hurt.
- I know but should I? I mean, am I wasting my time? I mean, I know that if I could dance like Sasha And I know that I can turn and I can jump, but I'm not a boy, so I just wanted to ask you should I try? 

-Ballet is very hard, boo.  And a lot of it does depend on how you're made.   You have to be realistic.  You're a big-boned girl.  You have a tummy.  Your waist is very short 

- Okay, thank you.
- But none of that means you shouldn't try.  Right?

I am not remotely joking when I say that this devastated me more in the pilot than 2.5 seasons of Emily and Lorelai fighting.  Because with Gilmore, Emily and Richard are OBVIOUSLY the most perfect actors but they are written as villains...

Actually, that's not the most amazing HOLY SHIT line in the pilot:  It's Fanny SNARLING
"OH MY GOD THE QUIPS THE CHATTER DON'T YOU EVER JUST SHUT UP!?"

(Imagine a Sorkin character yelling: "OH MY GOD THE MISOGYNY THE TERRIBLE WRITING OF WOMEN THE ANNOYING MONOLOGUING THE STRAW-MANNING THE WASTING OF SARAH PAULSON...")

Bunheads is what happens if Lorelai gained self-awareness - genuine, actual, human self-awareness rather than "look at me, ain't I cute!?" self-deprecation.  And if all the Rories could actually act.

Minor dialogue spoiler for episode 2:

Truly: "I blame you"

Michelle: (genuinely, not quippy) "Me too."

Again, Zacharek: "It may be that “Holiday” scares me a little: I love it not just for its wit and its tenderness, but for its ruthlessness."

This is...my perfect show,  The quips function as barbs, the barbs function as quips and everything is bittersweet.  Not too bitter nor too sweet.

Again, to paraphrase from Stephanie's Holiday essay - one day, I'll ask someone for another Bunheads and they'll say, "there isn't one, sweetie."

It isn't like another show that has ever been on TV.  It's a dramedy.  It's a musical.  It's serious and sweet.  Bittersweet.  It's a high school show, a gilmores spin, a soap, a melodrama.  It's sublime and it's ephermal and it's lasting.  It is about being a teacher and student and mentor of...well, as Chaz and Roger taught us.  Life itself.

I once pitched it to Zacharek via Twitter as "Pitch-Perfect's snark with a Jacques Demy heart."

MEANWHILE, THE TOP TV MOMENT OF THAT YEAR FOR NUSSBAUM,
FUCKING ISTANBUL Y'ALL:

Oh, God, I'm in a college town and everyone wants me to play beer pong

‘It’s not a game.  It’s not something you play.’ - George Clooney as Jack Foley in Out of Sight 

Beer pong.  Quarters.  Flip cup.

Amateur hour.  Totally gauche.  Dude, seriously?

Do you know what my favorite drinking game is, kids?

DRINKING.

Of all the aphorisms we could apply - and we live in a world of easy slogans and ready aphorisms and jaunty rhymes - beer before liquor, liquor before beer.  One in the pink.  Two in the stink.  Cooking is an art, baking a science.  Spielberg’s WW2 film is prose, Malick’s poetry.  Truth is stranger than friction.  At night all cats are fifty shades of gray - and so forth and et cetera.

Of all of them, the answer to the riddle that is ‘what is drinking?’  - by which, it must be noted, we refer to proper cocktail culture.  Artisan alcoholism.  Learned lushness - the answer to that riddle. my friends, is simple.

Drinking is alchemy.  A cocktail worthy of being dubbed, as Don Draper once put it, simple but significant?  It’s fucking alchemy.  (And any worthy cocktail should first and foremost meet those two qualities before any others.)

The transformation of earth into gold.  Fire into air.  As the strict dictionary definition puts it, a psuedoscience.  But it still has the word ‘science’ in it and, despite what a large portion of the country would have you believe, the word ‘science’ means it FUCKING WORKS.  Even if some of the finer details remain a mystery, it’s still fucking science, Mr. White, and therefore can be intelligently designed.

Let’s go with one of the most classic of classic cocktails, the Little Black Dress of things served stiffly and up - a Manhattan.  

Now, every bartender, every bar, every region, every state will have its variations.  But there is still a fundamental original recipe we must refer to.  As Julie Andrews once put it, let’s start at the beginning, for it is, a very good place to start.

In the beginning, man created whiskey.  And it was good.  And from whiskey’s rib was borne forth bourbon.  And it was good.  Some would even say better.  

The bourbon is the base.  The pillar.  

And, lo, from a land shaped like a boot came to us vermouth.  Varied.  The variety in this case is sweet.

Those two basic ingredients.  Strong.  Sweet.  Less of the latter than the former.  Then a bit of bitters.  Ice.  Stir, strain.  A cherry.  That’s it.

So simple.  Becoming something so significant.  

I can explain it.  Give ounces.  Brands.  Numbers.  Labels.  Exact stirring times - a minute at minimum to maximize the magic - but because this is alchemy, a pseudoscience, there is still something mysterious and divine and unknown as to how those pithy parts creating something so much greater than their sum.

Go ahead.  Play your quarters.  I’ll be over here practicing alchemy.

And, kids, when you want to experience one of the true pleasures in life - and, like any true pleasure - eating, fucking, verbally jousting - the most important thing is to do it with passion and with abandon because it will all be over in an instant, not an Instagram - have a sip of her - of my Manhattan.  On me.

As someone smarter than me once put it, ‘a thing of beauty is a joy forever.’

And as those shills at Stella put it to sell you, ‘she is a thing of beauty.’

Ain’t she?

it's a mad mad mad mad mad mod world...

UGHHHHHHHHHHH STUPID BLOGGER ON PHONE EATING MY POST.

Was in the midst of taking a friend's MM cherry by showing him the pilot...this post is going to be  even more impassioned due to anger caused by post-eating.

And also the passion of OH MY GOD ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME DID THEY REALLY JUST FORESHADOW AND HINT AT THIS ENTIRE FUCKING GODDAMN ENDING IN THE MOTHERFUCKING PILOT.

DID A FEMALE DOCTOR JUST APPEAR - one specifically who has a degree and specialty in psychiatry/psychology - show up to tell Pete and Don pre-the Lucky Pitch - that while SMOKING WILL KILL YOU, due to the writings of MOTHERFUCKING FREUD, we know that the psyche/id has a death wish.

Huh.

Betty begins pursuing a degree/doctorate in psychology.

We see her reading Freud, specifically.

She gets FUCKING LUNG CANCER FROM SMOKING but the death wish is so strong that she FUCKING LIGHTS UP in the motherfucking car right after she gets her diagnosis.

She actually GETS HER DEATH *WISH* - emphasis on *WISH* - BY *CHOOSING* HOW TO DIE?!?

Didn't the black waiter in the show's very first scene of the show respond to Don's "Readers' Digest says [smoking] will kill you!" with a dismissive "[You know] *women* love their magazines," thus telling us slyly RIGHT FROM THE BAT that the character who would perish from lung cancer in the show would be female?

Is one of the FIRST bits of wisdom dispensed to Peggy, Don Draper's new secretary, from Joan, "they say they want a secretary but what they *really* want is something/somewhere between *a mother and a waitress*."

Secretary.  Mother.  Waitress.

Did that seriously just foreshadow Don's endless cycle of running toward/away from and mixing up himself with and mixing up the roles of secretaries, mothers (ummm...oh right, *what* was the moment when Don knew he wanted to marry Megan?) and WAITRESSES.

DID WEINER SERIOUSLY MOTHERFUCKING SLIP FORESHADOWING TO DON'S DUMB VISION QUEST WITH DEBBIE DIANA DOWNER THE DINER WAITRESS IN A SINGLE FRICKING LINE IN THE PILOT?

SHOULDN'T THAT LINE *ALONE* HAVE TIPPED US INTO KNOWING THAT PEGGY WAS GOING TO END UP A MOTHER?

Isn't this episode set on the eve/day of the Campbell's wedding night and day...

Isn't the brochure Peggy is reading while at the ladyparts doctor to sort out contraception an informational pamphlet about sex entitled, "On Your Wedding Night?"

I mean, right there we're tipped off to Peggy and Pete banging and the conception that is about to take place on his Wedding Night.

Pete tells Trudy, "Of course I love you, I'm giving up my life for you."

Isn't this stripper/burlesque dancer at Pete's bachelor party performing in front of a curtain in front of a group of leering men seemingly *remarkably* similar to the gal at the vets' party?

An affair.  

A conception of a bastard/illegitimate child.

A wedding night.  A wedding day.  A marriage.  

The birth of the bastard child.

The abandonment.

A honeymoon.  A Campbell child.  A divorce.

A job.  A promotion.  A partnership.

The end of the affair.

After everything, seven seasons later and where are we?

Walking away from the other woman.  Women.

Away from the office.

Taking care and custody of the Campbell child.

Heading towards Wichita.

But heading towards Trudy.

All so he can say to her, after everything...

Only to have the meaning be reversed, to be true, to be new but the words are the same.

"Of course I love you.  I'm giving up my life for you."

Soon there will be another Pete and Trudy Campbell wedding day.

All the DB Cooper speculation, all the theories, all these seasons and years later, why did we ignore the only way it could end?

They told us right from the end how it would start.

They told us right from the start how it would end.

Spinning back to the beginning.  Traveling along Don's Carousel into the past.

What's the last scene in the pilot, again?

Oh, right, the reveal of Don's family.

Or, in other words: "Surprise, it's Betty."

Where are we right now?

SURPRISE.

It's BETTY.

It was going to be Lucky and cancer and Don and dying and Betty all along.

She was there right from the start.

Every new beginning is some other beginning's end.

the tipsy televisualist: The (Hanni)Blooming Rose

So...in case you haven't heard me talk non-stop of late about how Hannibal is the best show on television, let me say it once again: Hannibal is the best show on television.  To the point where I attempted to throw a brunch/viewing/pool party - which, I know, you're thinking Hannibal + food = EW!, but trust me - that sadly had to be delayed.  However, my neighbors ended up coming over the next day for a GoT-viewing fest that got, well, a bit cray. So, in the spirit of #honoreverypart , I decided to make use of the leftover fruit and wine.  While dicing up strawberries and sloppily pouring wine, I found that my kitchen was beginning to resemble a crime scene.  Which led to one of those flashes of inspiration - hey, why not create a Hannibal-themed cocktail, esp. because 'The Bee's Knees' factored into Cleo's 'Takiawase' recap?

So. I give you, The Blooming Rose.  Or the (Hanni)Blooming Rose, if you prefer.  Which, while I don't necessarily approve of #hannibloom , I do certainly understand why it is happening. Alana has her reasons.  

[I can't quite figure out how to do accent marks on this new macbook yet, but one is supposed to be there. As in, rose, the wine between red and white.] 

You will need the following:

• A large carafe, that holds between 2 and 3 liters of liquid.
• 2 cartons - usually one pound per carton - of Strawberries.
• 1.5 L of red wine. So, two normal bottles. Or a magnum/large bottle/box.
• Sugar Cubes. 
• Peychaud's Bitters.
• Orange Bitters. [I used Fee's Bros., though there's a variety available.]
• Ginger Ale.
• Adorable Fox Basket from Target. [Optional.]

Let's take a look at our set-up, shall we?:

Some notes before we get to step one:

First, a note on the wine.  While Dr. Lecter would probably devour me for using BOXED wine, it makes absolutely NO SENSE to break one's budget for any wine that one is using for Sangria-ish purposes. Think about it - are you really going to make a Mimosa by cutting Dom with OJ?  Of course not.  I went with Target's Vitner's Red (a) there's a Target within stumbling distance of my house, so 'hey, let's go get wine!!!' after [SPOILER EVENT] on GoT seemed like a good idea at the time and (b) I think the Target-brand wine is pretty decent, for what it costs.  If you want to be apropos and break out a Chianti, do so. And you could make this incredible fava bean-containing braised chicken dish.

Next, sugar cubes are a MUST for cocktail crafting.  I always have some in the bar. Some recipes may call for a (tea)spoonful of sugar , but it's a HELL of a lot easier to just rely on cubes.  Plus, it's more fun to watch cubes dissolve. 

Finally, if you do not already have bitters on-hand, you might as well pick up Angostura bitters along with the Peychaud's and the orange.  Those three bitters are used in an infinite variety of cocktails, so they're handy.

Now, to the actual recipe part:

• Dice and de-stem your strawberries and place them in the carafe.
• Pour the wine in the carafe, completely covering the strawberries.  Not enough?  ADD MOAR WINE.
• Soak a sugar cube in Peychaud's. Soak another in the orange bitters. Toss them both into the carafe and shake until they dissolve.
• Place the carafe of the boozy strawberry mixture in the fridge and leave it there overnight, if possible.  At least let them soak for a good 6-8 hours.

NEXT STEP:

[Since Fuller did 'Mockingbird Lane' and we're crafting a pop-culture-themed cocktail, I thought displaying @TimFederle 's awesome book would be apt.]

Grab a champagne flute and toss a Peychaud's-soaked sugar cube into it. Muddle it, pour a dash of Ginger Ale to dissolve it or simply leave as is. Fill the flute up halfway with the strawberry-infused wine. Top off with Ginger Ale. Garnish with boozy berries, as desired.

[Sidenote: I initially decided to go with Ginger Ale rather than topping with champagne or citrus-y sparkling water simply because it is the secret ingredient in one of my favorite sangria recipes. Since, I've tried it with Lemon Perrier instead, which makes a delicious yet significantly lighter variation.]

VOILA!: We have a beverage that, like Hannibloom itself, is complex.

A Peychaud's-soaked sugar cube may look pretty in pink or simple and sweet.

But, like Alana and Hannibal coming together, what happens when pink meets blood-red results in the sum of the parts being far more intriguing.

'girls' on film.

Quick question: have you seen both episodes of Girls?  Second question: if no, has that stopped you from writing/blogging/snarking about Girls?  Yeah, that's what I thought.

(If not, you can watch the entire first episode on YouTube here.  HBO is worried that job-challenged 20something women might not be premium cable subscribers, so they're trying new things.)

Here's the thing - as the Firewall & Iceberg Podcast so brilliantly put it recently, this is what happens when a niche show gets hyped up beyond belief.  Despite what the bloggers and the NY echo chamber and everyone else has been writing about for MONTHS (seriously, when it finally premiered, wasn't it a letdown because you thought it had been on for a season?), this is NOT a show for everybody.

But that's okay.  It clearly is not being conceived or made as a show for everybody.  HBO shows are automatically not 'huge' hits in the way network shows can be.  It's a different model.  And within that model, there is going to be a range of shows - from 'it's not TV, it's HBO' to 'it is TV, only with more tits and ass and blood' (hey there True Blood!) to 'we don't know what this is yet but let's put it on.'  Girls, IMO, falls into the last category.  Which is fine.  And totally okay.  What is totally not okay is rather than saying 'oh, this isn't for me but I can see how it can be for someone' is to say 'UGH, LENA DUNHAM IS FAT AND WHITE AND DUMB AND PRIVILEGED AND THIS SHOW DOESN'T DESERVE TO EXIST.'

Firstly, if Lena Dunham is 'fat,' I am going to go up to every single woman whom I am friends with and give them a hug.  Then I am going to take a long hard look in the mirror.  I'm not going to lie - I used to be a lanky bastard, now I'm more Jason Segel-ish.  (I love you antidepressants but I hate your weight gain!).  I'm blessed-ish with a good face and a sense of hunor.  I might not have a six pack.  Neither does Lena. But, odds are, neither do you.  Here's the thing, saying "I didn't get a boner when she showed her tits" is not an adequate or appropriate dismissal of the show itself because she is NOT showing her tits so you can get a boner.  Based on how the sex scenes are written/staged/acted/etc, it is safe to say that titillation is not on their agenda.  How often did you complain about Turtle and Drama pulling in extremely high quality poontang despite their less-than-conventionally-attractive looks?  Oh, you didn't?  But that's different, Entourage is just a fantasy, just a TV show or whatever.

Well, my dears, so is this.  It might be in a more indie mode or hailed differently but all art is artificial.  Taking an insular view of a certain demographic of Brooklyn girls in their 20s is not far removed from an insular view of Hollywood Brotastic-ness which, despite SEVEN SEASONS, never achieved the level of satire it promised.

Which is where we get into the 'white and privileged' criticism.  Yes, Girls is.  And so?

It is beyond disingenuous for white liberal writers to pull out the 'UGH, it's a portrait of NY without (m)any people of color and therefore it is BAD and SHOULDN'T BE ON TV!'  if they have remained silent about, say, How I Met Your Mother.  Or Bored to Death.  Or Friends.  Or SATC.  Or Louie.     This is entirely different than, say, looking at it in a larger perspective of TV's lack of racial diversity.  Or people of color wondering when the show that's 'the voice of a generation' is going to come along for them.  Is Girls racist?  Uh, maybe.  Depends on how you qualify 'racist'.  But as Maureen Ryan brilliantly put it - "Girls Isn't Racist, Television Is Racist (and Sexist)."  This is a conversation that needs to be happening, definitely.  But it is unfair to use the lack of diversity to dismiss the show offhand - without engaging with the show's content itself - and not condemn a bazillion other programs.

And here's where the show's content becomes crucial - that issue of privilege.  Firstly, being the daughter of the drummer of Bad Company is NOT the same thing as being Chet Haze.  I will pay 30 bucks cash money if you can find me ANYONE in the midwest (outside of film geeks) who knew who Lena Dunham's parents were before the coverage of this show/the press for Tiny Furniture.  So can it with the "this was greenlit because of nepotism" shit.  Seriously.  Going back to the aforementioned Firewall & Iceberg Podcast, they pointed out that NO ONE disses J.J. Abrams or Joss Whedon on being able to work in the industry because their parents did.  More importantly, this show is not acting as though the issue of privilege isn't an issue.  Quite the opposite.  It is, somewhat, the entire point of the show.  These people are, without a doubt, privileged.  And yet they think they are worldly and cultured rather than insulated.  They have 'first world problems' and yet, to them, their problems are so overwhelming and the end of the world.  That's the central conflict.  That's the satire.  That's the point.  You can dismiss it as being upper-class or Brooklyn or overly white or whatever.  But the show is aware of that.  So are the characters but not nearly as self-aware as they'd like.

Bad sex?  Struggling between ideals and reality?  Thinking one's worldliness is greater than it is? Welcome to being in your 20s.  Yes, it spoke to me.  As a white gay dude.  Not a fat rich NYC nepotist chick.  But if it didn't speak to you, that's cool.  But say that.  Or say 'I thought this scene was bad' or 'the acting didn't do it for me.'  Don't say "THIS FAT RICH WHITE CHICK DOESN'T NEED A PLACE ON MY TV."

Art earns itself the right to exist by the virtue of the content itself.  Not whatever qualities the artist has.  Or, in other words, if you have ever watched Chinatown and thought 'damn, that's a good movie' rather than 'Roman Polanski is a rapist and a horrible person and I must dismiss this now,' then shut your face.  That 'right to exist' can be granted by many things, but one of the main ones is, as they told us in screenwriting classes, 'having a voice.'  Which this does.  Clearly and distinctively.  It may be drawn from Woody Allen or Whit Stillman or whatever, but it is still a unique voice.  I picture that in a year or two or five, film types will know what you mean by 'Lena Dunham-esque' or 'get me a Lena Dunham type' as well as 'Wes Anderson-y.'  You don't have to like her voice.  You don't have to listen.  But you shouldn't try to silence it for reasons that have nothing to do with the show or the voice itself and have everything to do with white liberal guilt/hating fat chicks/etc.  If it speaks to your experience, great, but if it doesn't, that's okay.  But you can't dismiss that experience itself anymore than you can condemn the works of Spike Lee for being 'too black' or Hitchcock for being 'too British' without coming up with an actual criticism about the work itself.

Is she the voice of our generation?  Doubtful.  Is she a voice of a generation?  Definitely.

oy, these shadows BE DARK.

My reaction to the Dark Shadows trailer. I'm not going to link to it because if you're reading this on the interwebs, you've seen it by now. Firstly, the music cues are really lazy to me. 'Superfly' is an awesome song but it's as fresh as using 'White Rabbit' during a 60s psychedelic scene. Actually, firstly, WTF? Secondly, really lazy music cues. Thirdly, this is going to be lengthy because I am going to get into not just the trailer itself, but cinema at large.

For me, what's so frustrating is that I genuinely WANT the Goth Trio to be better. They are all genuinely talented individuals and were once actual iconoclasts. But they frequently default to all the depth of, as someone at the pink place so brilliantly pointed out, cosplay.

I think Burton is many things - criminally overrated. Stuck in a weird developmental phase like some sophomore who took a class on existentialism and went to Hot Topic to express his pain and then never left. The man's films aren't directed so much as they're production-designed. Which, hell, Wes Anderson is guilty-as-hell of at times, but I also think his films, for all the actors-in-a-dollhouse-under-glass, almost always break out of that dollhouse for portions of their running time to deliver an emotional wallop. If you can think of the scene where Ritchie slits his wrists in the Royal Tenenbaums without being torn to shreds inside, I don't know how your heart works, man.

Most importantly - I don't think Burton, as a filmmaker, has shown much growth for such a long career and for so many films. The fact that his next project is literally remaking his first film, for Disney, when the result of the Frankenweenie short film in '84 was that Burton was fired from Disney for being too weird says *everything.* I know few people in this age think it, but selling out is still possible.

Seriously, think of the massive leap in, say, Fincher between Se7en, Zodiac and TGWTDT. Or Anderson from Rushmore to Tenenbaums. Think of Marty and his sweet, glorious Hugo. Which was the work of a man smarter, faster, better, stronger at filmmaking than the one who made The Departed or The Aviator. Or, if not better, different. I am not sure how much the Burton of 2012 is *different* than the one of 1984. Except, if anything, more cynical. More commercial. More satisfied to slap a crazy wig on Johnny Depp and call it character development and call it a day and call up Buena Vista for his big fact check.

Also, I know that my generation has known nothing BUT post-modernism but, I'm kinda sick of it being the default mode. I don't want an ironic detachment or distance all the time. Why can't I simply have a dumb teen party movie rather than a dumb teen party movie done as a fricking youtube video? How awesome - and rare - would a genuinely gothic or supernatural film or a feature of a daytime soap be that actually nutted up and was like "yes, we are actually taking this seriously." And not by claiming to be "based on a true story" shakycam mockumentary.

Saw what you will about the Pirates films but I do feel that the people behind them started out with an attitude of "hey, let's make a pirate movie!" - "like, a full-blown Captain Blood old-school swashbuckler?" "yes" - "even though that hasn't been done in years and kids might find it dated Cutthroat Island bombed hardcore and this is based on a themepark ride?" "Yes. PIRATE MOVIE. FULL STOP." Captain Jack might have been wacky but the film, to its credit, treated the Will/Elizabeth plotline - both action-wise and love-story-wise - for what it was. Swashes, they were buckled, as they darn well should be.

This feels to me like Burton took a look at the source material (which I just found out is indeed streaming and will watch as my BFF is a hardcore fan of the show and I have to see this Burton craziness due to allegiance to her) and instead of wondering, "I wonder what about this genuinely appeals to people" said "FUCK IT, I'll do it for the LOLZ" and then winking "Isn't the very idea of a melodramatic vampire soap opera HILARIOUS!? Isn't this premise essentially ludicrous!?"

Which is kind of annoying and patently offensive to anyone who has ever been a fan of melodrama or the supernatural or daytime soaps.

No. No premise or genre is, essentially ludicrous. A lot of people find musicals off-putting or stilted or dated but that doesn't mean that the genre itself is OMG PEOPLE SINGING AT RANDOM WTF HA.

Disclaimer: Because I am so torn by Luck's end - absolutely deserved due to the horse deaths and yet also JUST as I finally nutted up after 6 unseen episodes and started watching them on the DVR - I went into classic 'avoid promising shows I actually enjoy watching because all you will get is CANCELLATION and PAIN' mode by revisiting my favorite bad televisual boyfriend on Hulu Plus.

Yeah, you know I'm talking about Glee. What absolutely floors me about the show - to the point where I simply can not look away but must bear full witness to the trainwreck - is how often it FAILS outright at being a musical. Or, simply, frequently, doesn't want to be a musical. A musical has characters burst into song to express what they can not say. That is what it is. That is what it does best. And yet 80-90% of the time, there are these blah, samey, stagey production numbers - this is not Idol or the Voice. This is not supposed to be a talent show. It's supposed to be a musical. Or worse, literally spelling out in the most basic expository way what the purpose of the character singing the song is in dialogue moments before they sing it. Imagine Tony turning point-blank to a character or camera and announcing, flat-out, "I am now going to demonstrate my love for Maria by singing this song about her, called Maria." Good job, champ, but now you no longer need to sing this song because you just said it. Or, god, the absolute worst, doing virtual shot-by-shot remakes of iconic music videos. (Yes, I just finished the MJ episode.) I love Jane Lynch as much as anybody but a carbon copy of her as Madonna via Fincher is as semiotically and spiritually empty as Vaughn as Perkins by way of Van Sant by way of Hitch.

That makes no sense. Stop couching it. Stop distancing it from the thing it needs to be. Look, Milch could blow the Western's conventions to hell and back again, reinventing it and becoming something new and classic at the same time. But there were times when Deadwood, being a Western, needed to have a saloon, some whores and some guns.

Ditto Buffy's breathtaking implosion of pop-culture meets high-school meets horror cliches. Ultimately a show about a blonde Van Helsing (obligatory sidenote of: TWO. HUNDRED. MILLION. DOLLARS) needs to shove some stakes in some undead hearts.

Because Glee, when it actually IS a musical? When it actually does that thing that it is supposed to do? And, frankly, should be doing all the time since highschool is the emotional equivalent of a Michael Bay movie with even the most banal of things exploding into fireballs because so much hormones? When it lets the characters dream? When it lets them sing what they cannot say? It is glorious. Think of "Loser." Think of Kurt's beautiful, epic "Rose's Turn." Beiste doing 'Jolene.' Basically, think of any number that was born out of a need greater than "this is MJ week" and "we need to sell songs kids like on iTunes so MOAR KATY PERRY." It is astoundingly rare that more than one or two of these numbers happen per episode. And yet - they are what a musical is. Emotions can not be said and so they must be sung.

Don't be afraid to be what you really are, Glee. It's the irony of ironies that you keep telling that to the characters, to the audience, CONSTANTLY. To the point where it is literally the only "theme" in the work, displaying it with as much insight as "Free to Be You and Me." But the show can't tell that message to itself.

a cinema on a desert island

So, the fabulous Matt Zoller Seitz wrote an article recently for Salon in which he asked us, what, if we could somehow take a perpetually functioning DVD/Blu-Ray player to a desert island -- one run by solar power or coconuts, one presumes - we would be watching.

He allows for a single short film, one self-contained season of a television show and ten films. However, the last part has a caveat -- for example, because "Carlos" played Cannes as a single five-hour film from the the French TV miniseries, it qualifies as a single film. However, film trilogies, franchises and whatnot do not. The first two "Godfathers" are separate works.

Part of this is easy - one simply thinks of what films one has watched the most. But the other part -- I am shutting myself out from all future works, from all the films and shows yet to be made, from all the ones I have not yet seen - is hard. The question, quite simply, is what can I watch over-and-over that still has hidden depths I have not yet seen? Once the novelty is gone - once the third-act twist has been revealed, once the dialogue has been memorized - what remains?

So, with that in mind:

Short: Hotel Chevalier

Season: Twin Peaks, Season Two

Films:

1) Beyond the Valley of the Dolls

2) Bringing Up Baby

3) Citizen Kane

4) Fanny & Alexander

5) Gone with the Wind

6) Lost Highway

7) Out of Sight

8) Umbrellas of Cherbourg

9) Vertigo

10) Zodiac

Look for justifications to appear shortly. For now, I will merely say that several on this list fall into the "stop whatever I am doing and watch them in their entirety, should they appear on TV, despite the fact that I have seen them all before and own them on DVD."

(Honorable mention using that criteria: Bring It On. It is a constant delight.)

Runway Recap: S9, Casting Special - "Road to the Runway"

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.