Proud To Be A LAMB

I've recently become the 81st member of a wonderful movie bloggers' community named LAMB - The Large Association of Movie Blogs.

I had been searching for groups like these for months but it seems I wasn't looking hard enough. I came across their links on Film For The Soul totally by chance and I have been enjoying the large selection of movie blogs to choose from and read ever since.

The diversity is wonderful. I still didn't have the time to check all the entries, especially the older ones, but it seems like a great place to celebrate differences. Also, there are many fun attractions going on like the LAMMYs (the most prestigious awards in the movie blogging business), Lamb Chops (Editors' picks from the numerous blog posts) and Sirens of the LAMBs (One on one duels between movie characters). If you have a movie blog, want to read good stuff on cinema or want to have some fun from time to time (or maybe both) it's a place you want to be.

Once (2006)

'Best Original Song' Oscar Has Never Been More Meaningful

...or rather, closer to the importance of 'Best Picture'.

It was roughly the middle of the 4-hour marathon when two young faces, Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova, took up the stage to receive the Oscar for 'Best Original Song'. "This is amazing" Hansard said, "What are we even doing here, this is mad." He was right. Once is shot on two handicams, made 2 years ago with merely a 100 grand. It has everything that a movie should have if it wants to be ignored by the Academy. Yet they won.

Just like 'Best Original Screenplay' Oscar is the equivalent of 'Best Picture' for many indies, I believe this award meant the same for Once. Not just because the composers of the song are also actors nor because the film tells the story of two musicians singing and writing together, but also because Once takes most of its power from the subtle competence of the songs themselves. And without doubt, the point where we hear 'Falling Slowly' for the first time is the film's climax. That scene shines from within and has an inexpressible charm to it. It's hopeful, yet melancholic; amateur yet beautiful; the song stumbles a lot, but eventually works. This simple song achieves much more than the emotion-packed theatrical love scenes that we're used to seeing in typical romantic films.

Not to say that the other songs in the film are ordinary - if you're into singer/songwriter stuff, I have reasons to believe you'll like them. Are they sophisticated pieces? Hardly. With just a guitar and a vocal (and occassionally an accompanying piano) the songs are as conventional as they can get. But they're effective. Touchy lyrics and simple melodies are good fit for the overall atmosphere of the movie. Besides, would it make sense for these two amateur spirits to compose musical masterpieces and still be singing on the streets, selling flowers and fixing hoovers?

Unfortunately, the film's virtues are also its only vice. From time to time (and this happens fairly often) the film gets too involved with the songs to the point of forgetting that it's essentially a movie and not a random compilation of video clips for these certain songs. This is a significant limit to what the story can deliver to the audience. Remember the scene where the guy watches old home movies and remembers his ex, or the scenes taking place in the recording studio. The story starts to feel stretched and dragging after the first half; and I would've preferred a more impulsive feel (like in the song 'Hoover Fixer Sucker Guy') than a movie that looks like the film adaptation of an album. It would've had more room for depth that way.


'Falling Slowly' plays twice in the movie. The first one is the magical scene that I already mentioned. I won't give a spoiler by telling where you hear it the second time, but it's towards the end and in such a context that takes away the whole drowsy feel inherited from the previous songs. It's easier to forgive faults when the finale is powerful enough. That, and when the leading female has a smile that makes you want to be a better person.

8/10

Top 50 Cinematical Wonders

-Movies are like people. Some shine and some don't.

I have finally added my own 'Top 50' list to The Long Take. On the left bar, you can see the 50 movies that I think are the best ever, and in order. The list changes, of course, as I see new movies all the time so I'll reflect all the changes here as well.

At the end of every year, you can see numerous top 10 lists of critics, magazines, audience polls and websites. My own top 10 of the year will be in the 'Best of' section again at the left, continously updated as I see more movies that year. In order to qualify to be placed here, a movie has to receive a 7 or greater rating out of 10. However, my dearest favorites will receive special attention under 'Cinematical Wonders' labels which will be seperately posted for each year and will include the films which I think are perfect. So a year might have 10 Shining Films, maybe more or maybe less. Maybe even none.

On a side note: Instead of taking into account the actual year I saw a certain movie, I will regard the date that is specified on its IMDb page - sometimes I tend to see movies later than their actual release year, which might complicate things. It also prevents the 'Oldies but Goldies' that I come across occasionally from entering these lists and spoiling them.

I don't think these lists will please everyone but that's not really the point. As long as you're aware that tastes differ greatly and that film reviews are always partially subjective no matter what, you'll perceive 'Cinematical Wonders' simply as a statement regarding my own movie tastes. And as something to be discussed.

27th International Istanbul Film Festival - Full Coverage Vol. 2

DAY 1

The first day started off with a misfortune: I was made aware that I had to skip The Orphanage (El Orfanato) because of a recent deadline of one of my projects. Pity. The name Guillermo del Toro looked promising even though he only presents it; and one of my friends, after seeing the movie, described it as the cinematic equivalent of the video game Sanitarium. Creepy indeed. Maybe she can contribute using the comments section.

Anyway, to the movies.

Elite Squad (Tropa de Elite) , my very first film in the festival, was like a welcome gift. I had my expectations fixed on a slow-paced semi-documentary film about police corruption (which isn't necessarily a bad thing) but instead I was greeted with one of the bravest movies I have ever seen with the complexity level of The Departed and the same dynamism as City of God (Cidade de Deus). It tells many parallel stories that eventually wind up at the problem of illegal drugs and drug trafficking in Brazilian slums. It's insoluble, we see, because the police force is a part of the problem itself. Among them bribery, extortion, cooperation with dealers, manipulating evidence and numerous other shenanigans that I won't give away here are common. While Rio de Janeiro is a perfect setting to tell this story for obvious reasons, (like the considerably high crime rate) Brazilian police is not presented as an exception but rather as an example. The target of criticism is the police, regardless of the nationality. The message is universal.

Enter BOPE, 'Special Police Operation Batallion', an infamous military-like organization that has but one purpose: to eliminate drugs and dealers from the streets of Rio de Janeiro. As opposing to the intricate police force schemes we have seen in roughly the first half of the film, BOPE officers are like cyborgs without emotions, malfunctions or pity. We watch them being trained in a series of boot-camp sequences that closely resemble the first half of Full Metal Jacket with less humor and more shouting, and in the end we see them come out as cold-blooded maniacs. At times, the whole thing looks like an anti-militarist critique but the camera's admiration towards these characters is undeniable. It's this contradiction, along with the bravery with which the idea (and facts) of police immorality is handled, that saves Elite Squad from being 'just another cop movie' and pulls originality out of a typical concept.


The visual quality also helps. The shaky camera, focusing more on closeups than wider shots puts us right in the middle of all the violence and action and creates a unique sense of thrill. Some scenes are especially effective; like the controversial torture scenes or final scene where the gun seems to be mercilessly pointed at the audience itself. Hard, even to look at. Captivating and disturbing. The cinematography is stark and realist, somewhat inferior to the stylized visuality of City of God but powerful nonetheless.


It's interesting to observe the filmmakers in certain countries to focus on national issues and then channel those common concerns into new cinematical styles. Recently, Romanian directors, knowingly or not, created something that can be called the beginnings of a 'Romanian Neo-realism' when they all started telling stories from the reign of Ceaucescu; stories they were not able to tell back then. Their styles were surprisingly similar. Brazil's problem seems to be crime and violance and that's what the best works of Brazilian cinema seems to be revolving around nowadays.

8/10


DAY 2

There's nothing like a lively Friday evening with two wonderful movies and good food in between them (Actually, even without the movies, good food is a miracle by itself. Salutations to the first chefs of the world, who transformed a primary human need into a respectable art form. Also to the inventors of fire. And the wood ovens.)


An American Crime from 'American Independents' is a truly disturbing movie to say the least. It tells the story of a real American crime that took place in the state Indiana in mid 60s, in which a young girl was tortured to death by a mentally unstable woman and not far away from the eyes of everybody else who lived in the same neighborhood.

The idea that "a lot can happen in the middle of nowhere" proved to be quality thriller material when Fargo came out in 1996, which was also telling the story of a real but hard-to-believe crime. Indeed there are lots to explore in seemingly desolate parts of America, and 'what' happened in this specific story is indeed 'a lot'. But to me, the key scene in the whole movie is when the prosecutor asks one of the children from the same neighborhood why they too were torturing Sylvia Likens to which the child replies "I don't know". What makes the story (and therefore the movie) so uniquely disturbing and horrifying is not the psychopathic mother (let's face facts, we have many psychopaths today and many slasher movies to match them), nor the specific details of the torture she implemented but the fact that everybody else went along with it. It happens in a small neighborhood, probably suburbs where nearly everyone is aware of what's going on but choose either to ignore or to participate. Why? Tough question. It definitely has some links to the Milgram Experiment: 'obedience under pressure' conducted in Yale University also back in 60s, because it's mostly children or younger adults who contribute to the tortures; individuals to whom Gertrude Baniszewski is an authority figure. They comply, because they believe responsibility for their actions are not theirs but Gertrude's. But that's not really enough explanation as to why these normally peaceful characters turn into torture machines when they are together and have a common victim.

It's partly because the victim is 'legitimate'. Gertrude feels she doesn't have to look after her anymore since her family failed to send the payment she supposed to receive for it. Others feel it's legitimate because Gertrude says so. It's also because they see the reflections of their own sins on Sylvia Likens, who is as pure and guiltless as a young girl in her age can get. Their unorthodox sexual desires, insecurities, jealousies or maybe the inner evils that I fear is present in everyone surface as she enters their lives. Her calm, obedient and solemn character makes her even more vulnerable and expedites her abuse. The fact that she's an outsider is another factor, which inevitably reminds me of the xenophobic and abusive townsfolk in Dogville. There should definitely be a name for this syndrome.


The motives of those who choose to ignore are much easier to explain: They simply don't want trouble.

If the film would realize that its power lies within this idea of inner evils and not lose time with other drama conventions (like the confrontational scene at the end or the escape sequences) it would've been remarkable. Then instead of watching a solid movie about a disturbing crime, we would've watched a unique masterpiece that tells the story like no other. The experience would be similar to that of Requiem For A Dream, 2:37 or even Dogville. But from time to time, it lingers too much around side stories (such as the high school romances) that are not really related to the real horror that took place in Baniszewski house. Characters also aren't really well done, with a Sylvia Likens that appears to be the dictionary definition of 'innocent'. Same with Gertrude Baniszewski for 'evil' and Jennie Likens for 'victim'. No real dimensions for any of them. Still, it's much superior to the likes of The Girl Next Door by Gregory Wilson which also tell the same story (or a similar one) in an even more conventional way.


We were fortunate enough to have the director Tommy O'Haver with us in the screening . He was asked why the movie's name was 'An American Crime' to which he replied "Because it's a crime that took place in America" A more serious and less smartass answer would be "Because it's just a crime and not really an exception which makes it even more frightening". When you call the movie 'An American Crime' instead of something more fancy, you reduce the whole thing to ordinariness. Another commentator had focused on the word 'American', which was stupid, and accused Americans for "making the world a weird place to live in". Thankfully, some of this uncontrolled anger was lost in translation and O'Haver answered calmly that every nation has their own psychopaths and United States unfortunately is not short of them.

7/10



Sukiyaki Western Django from the 'Mined Zone' was a bag (or rather a sack) full of surprises, twists, turns, homages and hilarity, loosely based on the 1966 spaghetti western Django by Sergio Corbucci. It marks my first time with the cult director Takashi Miike and I can say that the whole experience has been overwhelmingly fun. It's basically a western flick with Japanese actors, talking English with Japanese accents. Even if you laugh at nothing else (which is quite improbable) their Johne Wayne lines will get you. The script, which is full of "ain't"s, "come again?"s, "mighty fine"s and many other classical western phrases, is also suitable for making a serious American western without changing anything in the dialogue. When a comedy material is that restrained and downright funny at the same time, you can't help but admire.


One of the biggest credits should go to Quentin Tarantino who, with flawlessly hilarious acting, sets the perfect tone for the movie at the very beginning and puts you in the right mood to absorb all the jokes that the film has for you later on. His persona as a cult director who is fond of B movies, westerns and films from far east also contributes. His interest in this film is not surprising, considering his fondness of the genre, director Takasi Miike and of Django, from which he himself was also influenced when directing the infamous ear-cutting scene in Reservoir Dogs. After bringing two far eastern movies The Protector (Tom Yum Goong) and Hero (Ying Xiong) to the attention of the western world, it's interesting to see him acting in one, instead of presenting.


Absurd comedy seems to be getting more and more dominant as 21st century progresses. The genre has its roots in legendary films like Monty Pythons, El Topo (which is another film I've seen in this festival), Brazil, Blues Brothers and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Unfortunately, the late absurd comedies seem to splitting into two opposite directions. On one side you have the quality material that is closer to British humor (i.e. Hot Fuzz, Shaun of the Dead, Breakfast on Pluto, Me and You and Everyone We Know, Palindromes) and on the other you have the countless number of movies that assume they are being hilarious by making fun of certain genres or classics without realizing how big failures they themselves are (i.e. Austin Powers Series, Johnny English, Epic Movie, Date Movie, Scary Movie, Meet the Spartans). Despite the endless homages present in Sukiyaki Western Django, it falls under the former category because of the quality and maturity with which these amusing reverences are presented. The difference between parody and mockery, between homage and farce is the fact that former ones tend to love the material they are satirizing instead of looking down on them. The recent Robert Rodriguez & Quentin Tarantino collaboration Grindhouse works uniquely because of the very same reason.


Sukiyaki Western Django is always smarter than you, especially if you are a movie buff and thinking you've seen them all. After Tarantino's 'introduction', the movie opens with a scene ideantical to the opening of Yojimbo (or For A Fistful of Dollars) with the rival gangs and a silent, charismatic hero character stuck in the middle of them. That caused an instant disappointment in me, because I'm into neither Kurosawa's nor Leone's version of the story and I thought I had stumbled into another unnecessary remake; only to be silenced when one of the gang leaders shouted "Don't play Yojimbo with us!". I won't give away anything else in order not to strip you from the joy of discovering them yourselves; but I can say this: whatever films you might have seen, the characters in this movie have seen them too. It's an interesting dynamic to watch.


Miike obviously doesn't care about the rules of the convention and tells the story in the way he thinks is the best. The result is a monument of originality and a hurricane of laughter that does not calm even after the end.

8/10

Oldies But Goldies

And Some Outdated Classics

It's always a hot debate, how to evaluate old movies. You'll often hear the words "good for its time" or "a timeless classic" as opposed to "crude" or "outdated". Some will think the recent exploitative horror cinema is inferior to its ancestors while the others will find the old ones "not scary enough". It's like a generation gap in cinema. Younger audiences tend to be upset by the lack of certain things from movies, such as computer generated imagery, actors they recognize, actors that are alive, non-theatrical acting, passionate french kissing etc. The shortage on colors and sound doesn't help the situation either. Therefore they are often blamed for not paying enough attention to the likes of Orson Welles, Federico Fellini, Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick, Akira Kurosawa and many others. The older generation on the other hand, is commonly accused of being conservative and close-minded about recent movies.

I am not capable enough to solve this eternal problem with a few words I scribble on my blog so I won't try. But as someone who reviews movies, I think I must make clear where I stand as far as old movies go. Should they be judged solely by the period they were made? If they're "good for their time" is that good enough? Or is it wiser to compare them with their latter cousins of the same genre? Can their "crudeness" be ignored?

I have a simple and not-so-surprising answer to this question, which eliminates all my hopes of winning a nobel prize for it: Both. My explanation is also simple: I think ignoring the context of a movie is the critical equivalent of anachronism. Watching something that belongs a few years (or even decades) before our time and than comparing it to what you see today is like saying bell-bottoms were stupid because it's not fashionable to wear them anymore. You're missing the whole point. Imagine stumbling upon the remnants of an old treasure chest. The values of the coins inside would be so high that the change in currency would scarcely be the point. One should simply be prepared to explore the riches.

That being said, one should not ignore the great speed with which the art of cinema is maturing every year. A certain subject or genre might have been explored in greater detail and depth with a new movie; a specific story could have been told better or even a remake can be more sophisticated than the original material. Sticking to what's 'old' even in these cases and no matter what is pure bigotry. Unfortunately, that's what most veteran critics seem to be doing at the moment. It might be getting harder to accept and digest new things after certain age so maybe I shouldn't judge them too harshly; but the internet is indeed filled with top lists which rarely include a movie that was released after the fall of the Soviet Union. Now that's really not my cup of tea either.

There goes my stance. The original idea behind this post was to announce that from time to time I will also review the older movies that I happen to watch and see something worthy enough to write something on. Look for the label 'Oldies' for those ones. We'll see how it goes.

27th International Istanbul Film Festival - Full Coverage Vol. 1

Introduction

Other than the beginning of the short spring and somewhat more consistent temperatures throughout Istanbul, the beginning of april also announces the arrival of the most important cinematic event: the biggest film festival in the city. Films of almost any kind are sprinkled throughout the old and traditional theaters in Taksim (the regular hosts of the festival) for 2 weeks and 3 weekends. Films with such diversity that picking the ones you'll see is a major pain in the eye. Scheduling the selected ones is another.

It's a major attraction not only because of the high number of films and screenings involved but also because of the high and constantly-increasing attendance rate and numerous side events that heats the whole city up for a short time. Tickets for more than half of all the films are sold out pretty early and it's not uncommon to see additional screenings organized for the festival's 'hit' movies because of this early sell-out. Some of these 'hit's even make it to a wide commercial release throughout the country and up until the beginning of summer season and blockbusters, these are the movies that dominate the theaters and provide them quality material.

It's always interesting to observe the concepts that they come up with every year. Aside from the regulars like 'International Competition', 'National Competition', 'Human Rights in Cinema', 'From the World of Festivals', 'Documentary Time with NTV', 'Mined Zone', 'Midnight Madness' , 'Young Masters' and 'The World of Animation', this year the festival includes other interesting subjects such as '1968 and Its Heritage', 'Turkish Classics Revisited', 'American Independents', 'Lost in Illusions with Marc Caro', 'Glorify the Rebel with Milos Forman', 'From the Caucasus to the Mediterranean' and 'Woman is Her Name'.

This has been my fourth Istanbul Film Festival and will probably be the last for quite some time. After spending an entire night for selecting the movies I wanted to see, another for reducing the number from 68 to something more reasonable and another for scheduling them, I ended up with more than 20 movies from all around the globe and from nearly all the concepts that I mentioned above. I had originally intended to write short reviews for these movies just after seeing them every day, but it was when I returned after midnight at the very first day of my program that I realized this wasn't going to work out. After running around in Istiklal Street and seeing 3-4 movies in a row, I had not enough strength left in me to type let alone to think and gather my thoughts.

So here I am now, after a week full of movies and stuffing food in between them and nearly nothing else, ready to compress and type my humble opinions about everything I saw in the festival. The next entry will start from Day 1.

Cannes vs. Oscars

Let The Race Begin!

It's been a while since I completed my collection of all the movies that won Palme d'Or in Cannes Film Festival and Best Picture Oscar in Academy Awards. It's a good collection and I'm proud of it.

I am fond of creating long-term campaigns for myself, which is fun. Following a list of movies which are 'best' according to some authority which I trust to some extent (is a complete trust even possible in this case?) is also educative in the long run because the more you see, the better you judge what you see next. Or so I believe. Seeing the movies that are claimed to the cornerstones of this fairly young art form is always rewarding.

That being said, my two year campaign of seeing all the movies in IMDb Top 250 list was about to come to an end when I decided to obtain these collections. I guess my primary motivation was the thrill of showing them to my friends and hear them gasp, rather than actually seeing the movies. To be honest, I was feeling a bit too idle after IMDb to think and act in a reasonable way.

But then, I had this exciting idea that saved the day: Why not compare every year's Best Picture Oscar and Palme d'Or Winner beginning from 1946, the year when the first Palme d'Or was awarded? (Oscars go way back to 1928 which should automatically give them a head start in this race) These are two of the most prestigious movie awards we're talking about here. Two distinct symbols for two different approaches to the nature of cinema in two distant continents. On the red corner we have the Oscars which represent Hollywood, movies for the masses and art also as a form of entertainment. On the blue corner we have Cannes, the heart of Europe, fighting in the name of 'art for art's sake'. Eternal enemies if you ask me, which makes the race all the more exciting! (and my idea all the more bright)

There are some slight technical difficulties though. First of all, I don't have subtitles for some non-English Cannes movies which says one of two things: 1) I should be prepared to pay to a professional translator a sum that would be adequate for organizing a film festival in my name without the need for any sponsors 2) I cannot watch these movies yet. On the bright side, I don't plan to go in a certain order (because doing so would be boring) therefore I can start off immediately with the pairs that I can watch. We'll see about the rest once I am done with what I have.

Also in Cannes, a tie occurs much more often than it does in Oscars. There are several years where more than one movie won the hearts of the Cannes jury while only one movie was praised by the Academy. I could very well comment on all three movies in these cases without making a final judgement but without reflecting the result on the overall score, it's not really as fun. Therefore I think I'll have to compare the Oscar winner with the arithmetic mean of Palme d'Or winners (whatever that means, we'll find out)

I'll have a scoreboard to record the overall situation of the match for fun, but also I'll try to come up with serious articles that compares and contrasts these movies not only as two random films that I happened to watch one after another but also within the context of which award they won. I'll try to save the final judgement regarding the very nature of these awards to the, well... final. Making generalizations before even seeing the movies doesn't make sense.

In the name of honest blogging, I hereby promise to you that I won't accept bribes of any kind.

Let the game begin.

Is Nancy Botwin Not A Desperate Housewife?

on Housewives & Weeds

When Mary-Louise Parker won a Golden Globe for her performance in Weeds a few years ago, the other four nominees (all of which were Desperate Housewives title characters and were considered heavy favorites against her) stood up and gave Parker a standing ovation. Teri Hatcher even made a short worshipping gesture to the young actress who surprisingly emerged from among award show regulars like herself and Felicity Huffman.

I remember her speech being short, sincere, kind of unusual and lots of fun.

In a sense, Parker's Botwin is very much similar to Hatcher's Susan - or to Frances Conroy's excellent Ruth Fisher in Six Feet Under or even Joely Richardson's either overwritten or overplayed Julia McNamara in Nip/Tuck. American suburbia seems to be the new popular target for artsy critism - a trend going as back as Alan Ball's 1999 masterpiece American Beauty. On TV today are many clueless, neurotic and deprived (sexually and otherwise) housewife characters that are branching from Annette Bening's memorable and Oscar-nominated performance. Not only these characters but also plots of these shows seem to be feeding from the same material; all wandering around the concept of how nothing is what it looks like in the rich suburbs. The idea of American dream and the struggles to reach it has been criticised numerous times but satirizing the artificiality, uniformity, hypocrisy and imperfection of the privileged few who were actually able to achieve this dream is new.

I think it's safe to say that in 2006 Globes, not four but five housewives were nominated for 'Best Performance by an Actress in a Television Series - Musical or Comedy'; and that one of them was simply from a different show. Nancy Botwin's problems regarding her family, her friends, her unorthodox occupation, her affairs that never seem to work out, her financial adversity that eventually works out and her always-present helplessness, failures and amendments create all the suspense and keep the show going. You don't need to look real deep to see the measure of her desperation - it's right there all the time. Through Nancy and her problems (and of course Parker's flawless acting skills) we are able to survive the endless tides of caricaturized characters, plot twists that take the show too close to an actual gangster flick, hasty climatic sequences or simply the moments when the show tries too hard to appear hip but ends up being hopelessly cheesy. It's how we connect. And it was this same strength that had made Desperate Housewives a smash hit from the very first season, after which it lost this tone and turned into a series of thrillerish events inelaborately lumped together, failing to impress even the most devoted fans.


On the other side of all these similarities, we have a gigantic difference in the way these shows approach their title characters. In Desperate Housewives, Susan, Lynette, Bree and Gabrielle are guilty as much as they are desperate (this depiction holds maybe for the first season only, which is the only one worth discussing). They are contributors to the phoniness and insincerity of Wisteria Lane; and they are the primary subjects to criticism. The fact that audience sympathizes with them doesn't necessarily mean they are being backed up; it's possible to make people sympathize even with criminals as long as they are presented as the main characters in a movie or a TV show. In Weeds however, secondary characters like Celia Hodes (which bears a striking resemblance to Bree, who is only less of an asshole) are under this spotlight and the desperate housewife Nancy is praised for representing uniqueness in a neighborhood where everyone 'came out just the same'. With who she is and what she does for a living, she is one of the few colors in a black&white world. The four housewives appear to be randomly selected from among Wisteria Lane residents while Nancy shines in Agrestic (or later Majestic) and we feel like her story had to be told. That's why the critique of suburban life, which was the whole issue in Desperate Housewives, seems to be a secondary motive in Weeds when compared to the plot of weed-selling business and its absurdities. Two seemingly irrelevant issues -weeds and suburbs- are joined by the contrast between Nancy and her environment.


In the middle of the fourth season, I gave up all my hopes and stopped watching Desperate Housewives. I don't regret that decision, since the TV show version of American Beauty which had captivated me once, turned into something unrecognizable afterwards. I can say Weeds has been increadibly more consistent. And Mary-Louise Parker, by whom I was first impressed in Angels in America, makes smaller flaws more tolerable.

For An Enlightened Blog

I was thinking, why not TV series be a part of cinematical discussions?

They represent a much different format with much different concerns, true, but aren't they sophisticated enough to be taken into consideration as much as arguably the most prominent art form of the 21st century?

Why discriminate the small screen while it constantly proves to be a promising medium? (Well, not constantly maybe, but sometimes)