2 posts tagged “the simpsons”
I was watching an episode of Friday Night Lights with my wife. The Dillon Panthers were engaged in another clear-eyed, full-hearted battle against a particularly formidable opponent. I noticed something odd and asked the question, "Why is the quarterback on the sidelines?"
"Because they're on defense, hon."
"Wait... what?"
She proceeded to explain some football basics to me. This was halfway through the first season. Later on in the season, after the Panthers' quarterback was "blitzed" (or "sacked", I can't remember), I asked, "Why don't they just do that every time?"
"They try. There are people who stop them."
"Oh."
I don't know football, and judging from the behavior of the locals after last weekend's Giants win, that's fine with me.
That said, I like Friday Night Lights. I like the cast, I like the way it looks, I think Kyle Chandler is the most endearingly grumpy TV dad since Cliff Huxtable sweatered up. All in all, a fine TV program.
Last night's episode (which I haven't yet seen) might be the last Friday Night Lights ever, though. And now a campaign has begun to save it from cancellation, which it confronts due to a combination of low ratings and the cost of coming back from the writer's strike. The snark-merchants over at Best Week Ever have gotten an online petition going, and are encouraging people to send light bulbs to NBC as a means of protest and solidarity.
Look, I like the show, but this is idiotic. Let it die, people.
- The second season has been markedly shittier than the first, with so many implausible storylines (most notably, mild-mannered Landry killing a guy and covering it up with no consequence) and the distinct feeling of treading water. I mean, how many times can Tim Riggins realize that he's in love with Lyla Garrity? And isn't one of the show's main foci supposed to be the relationship between the football team and their paralyzed quarterback? He's been all but absent from the second half of this season, except for the ridiculous episode in which he (surprise surprise!) finds that selling used cars isn't all it's cracked up to be.
- What are these people trying to accomplish with their petition? It's a question I don't think they're asking themselves. How long do they want their beloved show to continue? Do they want Friday Night Lights to run until it's merely a parody of itself, or until every character enrolls in the never-before-mentioned Dillon University? The ungrateful fans who campaigned for Arrested Development (another ratings-challenged critical darling), for example, got three solid seasons out of their favorite program. That's not only more than the ratings warranted, but it's enough for any show to run its course. Ricky Gervais knows that television is a game of diminishing returns, and he's used that fact to create two really beautiful series (each totaling only seven hours) that never jumped the proverbial shark.
- Believe me, if Friday Night Lights goes away, you'll find something else to watch. You always do.
- The ratings sucked last year, too, but NBC brought it back anyway. That's a crazy amount of charity coming from a network, and Friday Night Lights failed to deliver with the viewers. Sorry, you're gone.
- Half of the pleasure of FNL (and of most things that people who think of themselves as "cultured" enjoy) is the fact that it's not Lost or Heroes or American Idol or Grey's Anatomy, or some other garbage that everyone watches. No, it's something you share with a few people, and let's be honest with ourselves about how important that is to our opinion of something. I'm thinking of my inability to enjoy Juno, here.
As I said, I like the show, and if it comes back I'll watch it. If it doesn't, I'll move on. Let's not forget, it's just TV.
Pan's Labyrinth
(Guillermo Del Toro, 2006)
Marge: Did anybody see that new Woodsy Allen movie?
Flanders: Y'know, I like his movies, except for that nervous fella that's always in 'em.
To say that I would have liked to have seen Pan's Labyrinth in the hands of another director is not fair. Written and directed by Guillermo Del Toro, it is his story to tell. Who am I to take that away from him?
Some asshole with internet access. That's who.
I am told that Pan's Labyrinth is the most beautiful, wrenching film of the year. And I see how it could be. In war torn Spain, Ofelia (Ivana Baquero) accompanies her widowed mother to the outpost of Captain Vidal (Sergi López), Ofelia's new stepfather and a herald of the newly empowered fascist regime. As Vidal quashes a noble rebellion, Ofelia becomes embroiled in the magical world of the forest around the outpost, in which a woodland faun tasks her with proving herself the heiress of a fantastical birthright.
Intellectually, I love this film. What's not to love? It's got beautiful production design, fine performances, it respects the intelligence of its audience (and by intelligence, I mean ability to watch people get stabbed), and it's all in the service of decrying blind obedience. Sold!
I'm torn, though. I wonder if the film is too territorial about its R rating (or the Spanish equivalent). This is fantasy strictly for adults, made so by the gruesome nature of the war around Ofelia. Vidal smashes skulls in, defiles corpses, and uses his pistol as casually as a flyswatter. Kudos for pulling no punches in a film that's about the brutality of fascism, but there is little here in the way of economy. When we are shown Vidal's violence once, it is all we need to inform the rest of the piece. But Vidal never stops, and he is dangerously close to becoming cartoonishly evil throughout, even tinkering in his lab like a mad scientist. The film seeks to take fantasy out of the realm of children, and it is often succesful. But the brutality of the film sometimes feels like its overcompensating, replacing a psychological depth that would truly speak to the adult viewer with the gratuitous violence that only adults are allowed to watch. "This is for adults! Of course it is, can't you see all the blood?"
I think I would forgive all of this if the film were a little less clean. From a design standpoint, the Faun is a complete triumph. But in terms of cinematography, the film is just... there. Here is a film that is being hailed as the most visually inventive fantasy film since The Wizard Of Oz, and to me it looked like it was shot by CSI's 2nd unit crew. (This is also a criticism I would level against Del Toro's Hellboy, which took a gloriously murky comic book and turned it into a slick, Hollywood shell of a film). In a year in which Children Of Men shows us just what a dynamic camera can do to an audience, Pan's Labyrinth doesn't even opt for an minimalist cinematography; it's too clean and self-aware to be invisible, too boring to be evocative.
I'll say this; it takes a special filmmaker to make his or her own film exactly the way he or she wants to make it, based on no pre-existing properties, strictly from his or her own mind, and make a film that is not a failure but a disappointment. If that makes any sense. I think it does.
Note: The film is being sold on the back of Handsy Eyes, that ghoulish imp who shows up in all of the press material. And Handsy Eyes is terrifying. That is not in question.
