An Open Letter

As I'm sure many of you are, I've been worried by the recent revelations about what our government is doing. I wrote this letter to my Senator, and I hope that you can use it (or a variation of) to communicate to our government that this is not okay.

As many Americans, I'm disturbed and worried by the recent news of PRISM. While our beliefs on economic issues differ, I've been impressed by your dedication to maintaining the individual rights of Americans and keeping government accountable for its actions. PRISM, in my eyes, is an egregious violation of the rights of Americans and non-Americans who have been victims of this program. In writing this letter, I reviewed the Bill of Rights, which I consider to be the most concise, pure statement of what we are guaranteed as Americans. PRISM stands to tear this document apart. President Obama has said that we must make choices as a society in regard to liberty and safety. To that, I say I choose liberty. Terrorism can be combated without the relinquishment of our natural rights. We refuse to lay our lives bare to a government that refuses to show itself to us. I urge you to make fighting these intrusive policies a priority, and I ask your counsel on what we, the American people, can do to show that we will not submit to such violation of our rights. I may only have one voice, but I can make it heard on the same mediums that the government patrols now, and that is why I want it to remain free.

Netflix Purge-- "Raising Arizona"

I've long been an admirer of the Coen Brothers. I'm sure that you've heard the reasons for their praise-- idiosyncratic humor, biblical imagery that doesn't impugn or glorify the source material, colorful characters, and a thousand other things. I haven't seen as many of their films as I'd like, and when various of their films appeared on Netflix instant, I jumped at the opportunity. I'm not sure why I chose to watch Raising Arizona first. The main reason is stupid and nostalgic-- I grew up in Arizona. This was the first plus of the films for me-- this movie really feels like Arizona. The beauty of the desert is encapsulated in a way I haven't seen in contemporary films. I felt like I've driven past Hi's trailer umpteen times. People have weird accents that don't feel totally authentic. Arizona has a bit of an identity crisis, and the overall wackiness of characters such as Nathan Arizona and Gale fit right in to the Arizona I knew, once you got out of the suburban sprawl.

Raising Arizona works for two reasons: it's weird, and it's funny. Nicholas Cage soars as Hi, a recidivism--addled man in love with Ed, the cop who takes his mug shots. After he gets out and cleans up his act, they get married and try to have a kid. As they discover, Ed can't conceive, but that's no issue, as Nathan Arizona, the furniture magnate of the state, has just had quintuplets. They won't miss just one, right? In typical Coen fashion, things go to pot after their master plan is executed. Gale and Evelle, two of Hi's prison buddies, tunnel out of jail and take residence with Hi and Ed. Hi's supervisor creates problems when he comes to visit. And one of the horsemen of the apocalypse (albeit on a motorcycle) pursues them with a greasy motivation that would be enough to alarm even the most hardened criminal. The movie is as far out of reality as possible without it being totally distracting. The Coens are masters at walking along this edge, and the absurdity of the film allows for it to be iconic and hilarious.

Raising Arizona works as well as it does because it's rooted deeply in sentimentality and heartbreak. The shortcomings of Hi as a husband and person allow for tethers that let the film explore its sheer absurdity. He's instantly sympathetic whenever his charisma runs out, and his longings for a peaceful life are ever the more poignant when his darker desires come out. The film runs a basic trope: repented man runs into old hoodlum friends and has to make a choice between his old life and his new responsibilities, but Raising Arizona runs it very well through the strength of performance and pathos. John Goodman and William Forsythe excel as the cons, and their scenes bring some of the strongest laughs of the film. A particular car chase, masterfully filmed and edited, had me rolling on the floor.

The strength of the film is its characters. I was amazed at how emotionally invested I was in the film, even with all its quirks and absurdity. Along with wondrous cinematography and iconic dialogue, Raising Arizona cements the Coens as some of the strongest filmmakers of the past 25 years.

Final Grade: A

TV Time-- "Pilot" Arrested Development

Arrested Development is unlike anything else I've ever seen on TV. Its endless in-jokes, ridiculous story lines, and bizarre satire of the wealthy morph into a smorgasbord of riches for TV nerds. With shows with such complexity, the pilot is a beast: how do you set so many moving parts up while maintaining interest? Arrested Development's answer is to be really damn funny.

The pilot of AD is nowhere near one of its strongest episodes. It's merely funny instead of uproarious. The plots aren't as absurd, and the characters are a bit too broad in order for subtle jokes to work. That's not to say that it's not enjoyable. The dialogue is clever, the editing is sharp and timed to maximize the value of every joke, and the unique musical cues are always opportune (the one when George Michael finds out he'll be rooming with Maeby is particularly apt).

The episode accomplishes what it needs to: it introduces the lunacy that is the Bluth family. The obvious protagonist is Michael, the beleaguered son. It's clear why he wants to leave: his family is self-obsessed and crazy. Jason Bateman exudes quiet frustration. He's the straight man to the craziness around him. The pilot doesn't really head-dive into how completely insane the Bluths are, but their misguided antics get laughs, especially Buster's various forays into academia. I particularly enjoyed Tobias auditioning for a musical immediately after listing his medical credentials. The characterization is split fairly equally between the rest of the Bluths, and it works well. Arrested Development is a complicated show, and it's at its best and funniest when as many Bluths as possible are involved.

This episode feels like the pilot of AD's dramatic counterpart as the greatest show of all time: The Wire. It's a very good episode of television, but it's only a shadow of what's to come. The tracks are laid for inside jokes and ludicrous plotting. It's a necessary evil, but the pilot has enough humor and exposition to trick (err... illusion?) people into watching more.

Final Grade: B+

TV Time: "The Ladies' Room"

Betty Draper is one of my favorite characters on Mad Men. She's icy, superficial, probably a bad mother. She's also parts responsible and not responsible for her fate. These proportions shift every time a new revelation or plot development moves forward on Mad Men. This is what I love about the show-- conceptions of characters can change drastically, and it never feels forced. The show has evolved with few hiccups over its run-- but let's stick with this episode.

Betty is fleshed out as a character here. It starts out at dinner-- one of the ubiquitous restaurants where Don Draper is expected to be. It's glamourous, but Roger still gets his fried chicken. This is another area where Mad Men shines: every little thing can be thrown against the wall of symbolism, and somehow it sticks. Can you imagine how heavy handed and obnoxious this would be if it didn't work? It would be the ultimate pariah of "intelligent" television, a shining example of how literary profundity cannot be fabricated and assembled. But dammit, somehow it works. Mad Men is LOST for English majors, and we can't help but get sucked in.

I just got a paragraph out of a nice set design and a food order. Of course, it may be a load of drivel, but for every crackpot observation there is out there, there's one that works.

Moving on to the plot of the episode, Betty has a crisis. Who would have thought that housewifes in the 60's had psychological issues? Betty is a mirror of all the flawed values and standards for women. She is perfection, and it cripples her. The seams unravel as she loses control of her hands-- the most important part of being a housewife. No errands, no lipstick application, no control. Betty is given control, but over a small world of her house and social life, and even that goes to hell in a very oddly edited car crash scene. Up to this point, none of her ambitions have been revealed. She's perfectly happy to stay at home and watch the kids, or at least that's what she thinks until her body betrays her.

This episode focuses in on what makes people happy. It's a tough question, and one that's been asked umpteen times. Mad Men makes it work through its setting. It was America in 1960-- as Roger says, "how can anyone not be happy with all of this?" Roger isn't quite figured out in the first episodes, but this was a strong scene that contrasted him with Don. Don isn't sure that material wealth or psychiatry is the answer. Mental health is touched on in this episode-- Roger considers psychiatry a passing fad, and if it makes his wife happy, fantastic. Don thinks that it's a scam. Why can't people manufacture happiness? That's what he does for a living. One of Don's worst qualities is brought out here-- he has no idea what it's like to not be him. For a man who could sell anything, he doesn't bring that charisma to personal understanding. Sure, he's charismatic and a good lover, but he belittles any potential problem and only relents when Betty shows real desperation. He's the perfect man to Betty's perfect woman. (I felt a little dirty writing that, even with the irony).

The other major story is about Peggy and the Junior Account Boys. They are sexist and crude and they make her uncomfortable. The show still didn't have the correct level of subtlety. It was absolutely necessary to show that men did not treat women in an acceptable manner, but the first few episodes crank it so much that it's almost farcical. Peggy is more astute here than in the pilot, deftly maneuvering away from unwanted advances and refusing to be broken down by the office's wiles. It was weirdly heartbreaking to see her friendship with Paul dissipate as her novelty overcame amicability. Her position as the new girl contributed to the overarching theme of happiness-- do we only love things that we don't know? Don certainly follows this ideology, even if he doesn't want to admit it. His fling with Midge shows fizzles as she settles down with a television. You can see the wonder leave his eyes as she describes the banal shows she loves. Don isn't a materialist, but he understands the system that has relegated him so much happiness, and he's stuck in between two worlds. As the divide starts to increase, so does his insecurity.


Final Grade: A-

The Great Netflix Purge of 2013-- Primer

Over the past few months, I've accrued a large list in my Netflix Instant Queue. I really dislike clutter (and I really like watching movies), so I'll be making the effort to clean it out and watch what's in there. It's an eclectic group, so I hope to have fun with it, and improve my writing and criticism in the process. Except for one exception, I have not seen any of these movies, so this should prove to be an adventure.

The first movie I picked was Primer, a 2004 independent movie produced, directed and written by Shane Carruth. The movie had a budget of $7,000. It is also the most confused I have ever been in a movie.

The movie is about time travel. Now, with time travel being so prominent in science fiction, I felt confident that I would be able to grasp this film pretty easily. I've watched all the seasons of LOST (I've watched season 5 twice, which is the time travel-heavy one), I loved Looper, and I've rolled my eyes at the Time-Turner in Harry Potter. Hell, I've even read 3/4's of From Eternity to Here, a fantastic book about the nature of time by Sean Carroll, a physics professor at Cal Tech.

I had no idea what happened in this movie.

That's a lie. I drifted in and out of the various timelines that are set up. The pieces are accessible. It's the assembly that is complicated. The premise of the plot is this: two scientists discover that they can make close looped timelines through which they can manipulate events in time. They can store "doubles" of themselves in the box (the time machine) which move forward, then backward in time at a much more rapid rate than they do. As can be imagined, this gets convoluted. The doubles interact with the originals in fascinating, bewildering ways.

The film, due to its low budget, sinks down into a common-man's science that adds to its integrity-- two stressed-out scientists accidentally discovering time travel in a garage is not a bad guess to how this will happen in real life. The characters speak like scientists speak-- meaning that I didn't understand what was going on 80% of the time they were speaking. If anything, this is the film's flaw-- it doesn't provide any handrail. I felt like I did in Calculus at about minute 40 when the professor had lost me at minute 15. This would derail any interest I had in the movie if the premise wasn't so intriguing. I had never seen time travel tackled in this way before-- the creation of the double is something that I still don't fully understand, but it was totally novel to me, and it may actually inspire me to read some scientific articles.

This is why the film works: it presents its material in a manner that, even though you don't understand, you desperately want to. Time is something that's just there for most of us. I had never really thought all that much about what it meant to be moving through time before reading Carroll's book. Even thought I understood very little of what he said, it shifted my views of the universe. This film does that. It's an immense challenge, but I will definitely revisit it with the help of charts and timelines to dissect the 4 other movies enclosed within.

The movie also presents some weighty themes of obsession and human daring. I won't go too much into detail in order to avoid spoilers in any timeline, but the philosophical points of the film are just as strong as its scientific ones.

I don't know how to review this film. It's a textbook, shoestring indie masterpiece, and mindwarp all in one. Its strong story pulls the viewer along while the time travel blindfolds it and beats it over the head with a baseball bat.

Final Grade: A-

Next on GNP2013 (there's a terrible acronym for you): Raising Arizona. Considering that I am from Arizona, I will be overly critical about this film. Just kidding, it's the Coens.

TV Time-- Mad Men: "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes"

In my escapades into pop culture, Mad Men has struck me more than just about anything
Mad Men  is a show that's had a lot of things said about it. And why not? It's unlike anything else on television. In a Golden Era filled with meth cooks, drug dealers, spies, and medieval naked people, it stands alone in the sense that no one is really doing anything illegal. The characters interact in a framework that doesn't create drama by breaking the law. The plot, when it's there, creeps around while it explores all the corners, until some catalyst comes along and shoots everything into a jumbled mess. The best description that I've heard of the show is that it's a collection of short stories about the characters. Large gaps of time go missing, major characters disappear for episodes at a time, and the tone and pacing change as much as the facial hair. Detail is immaculate. Every camera angle or background prop has a place in Weiner's tapestry of what it was like to be on Madison Avenue.

As far as pilots go, this is one of the best that I've ever seen. It hits all the right notes-- it's sexy, it introduces the characters in clear terms, but allows them to grow, it sets the environment with shocking confidence. Mad Men goes on to establish itself as one of the most confident shows on TV, and in its earlier run, most of that has to do with Don Draper. He's on top of his game for most of this episode-- pulling out brilliant ideas on the fly, putting subordinates in their place, gently chastising new employees. He struggles with coming up with his idea for a cigarette campaign-- the meeting with the tobacco executives is brutal for him until the advertising gods smack him over the head. He offends the head of a department store with his singular vision. And to further throw his character into morally dubious territory, he's cheating on his wife. This is another one of the pilot's strengths-- it's able to seamlessly weave new revelations and developments into the story without feeling forced. Pete calls on Peggy? It works. Peggy, the shy secretary, gets birth control? It makes sense.

Don, Pete, and Peggy are the three main characters in the pilot. Their perspectives (established, on the come-up, and brand new) make Sterling Cooper the fascinating place that it is. Don rubs shoulders with clients, drinking and making innocuous chatter. He brushes off a PhD because he simply doesn't believe what she has to say. And he triumphs. He has it all, but he's not going to relent. He's ambitious, but he doesn't look it, he just looks so damn good at not trying that it's pissing poor Pete Campbell off.

Pete has to insert himself into every situation possible just to get noticed. He hasn't realized that this isn't always in his benefit, and this leads to a great scene where Don lays out a dire future for him if he doesn't stop trampling everything in his path just to get ahead. The frustration over his lack of power culminates when he calls on a girl he had previously derided for her physical shortcomings. Pete isn't sure of what he is, and while talented, his ambition almost swallows him whole in this episode. Mad Men is a show about desires, and Pete is one of the most honest about what exactly it is that he wants. This is clever writing on Weiner's part, and it becomes more evident as the series moves on.

Peggy is brand new, which puts her at a very different place than Pete and Don. Then there's the other obvious difference--she's a woman in a man's world. Joan's office tour is one of my favorite things in the episode. Joan controls her world as much as she can, and she tells Peggy exactly what she needs to do in order to do the same. Joan is the perfect mentor, but Peggy doesn't follow her advice to a T, and that gets her in trouble when she makes some inappropriate advances on Don. They would have worked on almost anyone else in the office, but this is Don Draper, the handsome enigma with a purple heart. Who knows what goes on in his head? Is Peggy going to have sex just because it's what's expected of her? There was at least an inkling of passion in the scene with her and Pete. Elizabeth Moss is fantastic as a timid woman who reveals moments of mystery, even if it's only with a glimpse or smile.

My favorite scene of the episode is the dinner between Don and Rachel. Yes, Don's quasi-philosophical thoughts are intriguing. They made me challenge my ideals and my actions. Am I doing this just because it's expected of me? Why do people act in certain ways? If that's all that it is, it's a beautiful scene. But this is Don Draper. I have no idea if Don fully believes what he's saying. Why is he saying it? Does he want to mend his cracked reputation? Get Rachel in bed? Seal the deal with their respective businesses? Jon Hamm sells the hell out of the character. Every look and facial tick is measured and thrown into a Draper equation of effectiveness. In the quick glances of the pilot, it appears he wants two things: clients and sex. A few key scenes add some depth: the dinner scene, him sharing a quiet moment with his Purple Heart, a tender kiss with his wife. The series asks the question: who the hell is Don Draper? He's one of the most enigmatic leads a drama has ever had, and his ups and downs are a mirror into a country torn apart by social change.

I did have a few minor complaints with the episode. It was very willing to show how racist and misogynistic the time period was, and while this was necessary, it turned into a theme park attraction at some points (although I did laugh at them finding a Jewish guy in the mail room, and Don thinking he was the Menken's exec). The music of the episode was also overly eager to provide anachronism. I would have been fine with only the opening and closing scenes having music, but maybe I'm a minimalist.

Final Grade: A-

I'll continue with this, and hopefully edit better in the future. I recognize that it's a bit of a mess as is, but I'm a neophyte to this. I used that word mostly to prove that I'm smart. And with that last sentence, honest.

More Soap, More Opera

I've dedicated a lot of time to thinking about whether or not fictional characters act in a realistic way, probably more than the time that I've dedicated to thinking about whether or not real people act in a realistic way (if my Econ classes have taught me anything, it's that they should, but they don't). I've excluded things that blatantly go over the top to entertain-- and do it well. Thomas Pynchon is my favorite writer, but most of his characters are devices to foster his intricate worlds and themes. What I want to do here is look at complex characters and their motives, and see how they function: whether they seem natural or fabricated for drama.

I've read a few articles on how Game of Thrones (there will be spoilers here, so watch out) has elements of a soap opera, and I wondered about what that meant. Obviously, there's the sex, the intrigue, the unexpected. Lots of TV shows have that, and they work with varied success. Why would I single Game of Thrones out? Its setting isn't anything we're familiar with in the real world-- I, for one, have never seen dragons hatch out of stone eggs because a young widow tried to burn herself with them. I picked it because its characters are complex. Nothing is black and white in Westeros. Throughout the series, characters who started out as villains become tragic heroes, the heroes get killed, and people's passions generally screw them over. While there are characters that are easier to root for than others, everyone can have dubious motives at times, and for the most part, they make sense.

The framework of Game of Thrones provides for really interesting conflicts between these characters. One of its main themes is who deserves to rule-- (once again, spoilers. Do not spoil it for yourself) Stannis, the true heir, Renly, not technically the heir, but who's visibly seen to be a better ruler? Jeffery, as he's already there? Does Robb have the right to break away? And does Balon have the right to be a brutal asshole (I really, really do not like the Greyjoys)? And then there's Dany, a remnant of the true ruling house of Westros. Along with that, there's issues of family, religion, warfare, economy, politics, and trust.

So where the hell is there room for a soap opera?

Well, first off (dude, I'm not going to tell you again. SPOILERS) a young child gets paralyzed because an incestuous knight throws him off a tower to hide his illicit relationship with his sister. How does this plot-line work? Well, to start off, it kicks off the events in all of ASOIAF. What if Bran hadn't gone climbing that day? Ned would've still been the Hand, Jon Arryn's death wouldn't have looked as suspicious (the note from his widow Lisa notwithstanding) and Cat wouldn't have taken as much time to evaluate what exactly had happened, considering no assassin would have tried to kill her son. The argument could be made that under the circumstances, Jon would not have joined the Night's Watch. Cat would not have taken Tyrion hostage, and the war between the Lannisters and the Tullys wouldn't have happened.

See what extreme behaviors do to a world?

Had Cersei and Jamie not been discovered (this is a big enough jump, so I won't consider what would have happened if they never had slept together), Ned would have investigated Jon's death. He would have discovered Robert's bastards, and that they all have black hair. But where to then? Without the blonde hair found in the tower, how long would it have taken him to realize that Jamie and Cersei were more than just brother and sister? That's what soap opera elements do in an otherwise realistic world: they're catalysts. They speed up things in ways that are entertaining and realistic.

These things happen in the real world too-- people act irrationally to gain what they think is in their best interest. The world of Westros is wide and sprawling, and focusing in on the Faceless Men or the Dothraki, as interesting as that may be, isn't going to tell as good as a story as the War of the Seven Kings. As long as we realize that these people behave consistent with their personality and motives, these plot catalysts are fine.

And for those who just don't understand:

 
... she actually does make a very good point.