Screens behind the Screen

Vendredi 13

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 19:46:02 GMT

I was a bad girl. I went to the movies instead of marking papers. Perhaps I should have marked papers...

So I went and saw 2012...just because Chiwetel Ejiofor had a major role in it. I'm sure he'd manage to act his way through the crappiest movies and yet would remain somehow untarnished because he's just a classy talented actor, and I hope this big movie would help his career but it's probably the worst film he has played in.

Don't get me wrong I like me some disaster movies from time to time– for example I actually enjoyed The Day After Tomorrow despite a certain formulaic storyline (the brave daddy turned into a hero!)– but in this case the suspension of disbelief was really really impossible and I didn't think it was possible to write more clichés and more predictable scenes!

When I see a big Hollywood crap like that on the silver screen I love my tv shows even more.

Now it's Rugby time, we're playing South Africa for a test match!

ETA: They did it! They ruled the game and beat the world champions 20-13!

As usual it's a fact that we can beat any team during a test match but we can't do it when it's the world cup. Go figure.

ETA 2: I am not alone! via whedonesqueI found this article! I can't help quoting the ending:

"The movie's most spectacular special effect is an actor. As far as I can recall, Ejiofor has never given a bad performance, although near the end of "2012" Emmerich, surely unwittingly, challenges that record by saddling him with an overwrought and overwritten speech about how necessary it is for human beings to treat one another with kindness and compassion -- otherwise, why save the human race at all? Ejiofor delivers this tin-can dialogue, which probably took Emmerich all of 12 minutes to write between bites of sandwich and phone calls to his agent, as if it were the St. Crispin's Day speech: With his perfect and yet wholly human enunciation, he turns a few dumb words into a tone poem of deep emotion and conviction. I leaned forward in my seat, gladly buying every syllable of this godforsaken baloney and then, when it was over, wishing there were more. The Rockies may tumble, Gibraltar may crumble, but Ejiofor, thank God, is here to stay."

One word only

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 22:45:52 GMT

BUGGER!

The sins of the fathers

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 14:20:43 GMT

Yesterday I saw Das Weisse Band , Le Ruban Blanc, which got La Palme d'Or in Cannes this year. I usually don't like Haneke's films for I think that, since Funny Games, he has just made films for the shock-value, to hurt the audience, to punch them in the face with the unbearable violence showed on screen, as if the film and the actors were just a tool used to cause a reaction. I don't mind violence and shocking scenes in movies as long as they mean something, and make sense story-wise, even if what it means is that some time violence is meaningless and just happens in the most cruel, uggly and gratuitous way, but Haneke always made me think that he didn't care much about his work, or at least cared less about it than about the uneasiness it caused. I'm sure it did it with the best intentions, to educate the viewers, just like the parents showed in Das Weisse Band.

So I used to consider Michael Haneke a perverse film-maker rather than a film-maker interested in perversity; I found his films gratuitous and unhealthy, especially La Pianiste which I hated.

However this film is different, and for the first time, I saw a movie that has a true aesthetic side, and I saw Haneke examine the mechanism of perversity rather than being perverse himself. In a way, I could write now a review that would draw a parallel between what happens on screen in this movie and what Haneke used to do with his previous films (well I already kind of did above).

In Das Weisse Band the cinematography is great (white and black movies always are), the kids are fantastic, the atmosphere is heavy as it should be. Haneke took care over his film.

The story takes place in a small village in Germany during the year prior to the launching of the Great War. The date is significant of course, firstly because WWI would be a first outlet to extreme violence, secondly because the children showed in the film would be adults in the 30's as NSDAP would take the country. In many interviews Haneke has talked about how much he wanted to suggest the connection between the society portrayed in his film and the rise of nazism in Germany. I wish he hadn't because of course his point of view bothers me as a historian –as explanations go, explaining nazism and the Third Reich with psychological trauma, with the violences and abuses that their future followers underwent as children is rather questionable and a simplistic short cut– and because the film doesn't need that light. Actually the film is better than the way his maker talks about it.

So let's forget about the subsequent events and let's focus on that village in 1913. It revolves on the concept of Pater Familias, either it's the Baron who rules the whole village, or the minister who rules the souls, or the father who rules his family. It's also about a society that works on tensions, frustrations, abuses and humiliation, but craves for purity and absolute.
It's about chirldren who suffer, desperatly want to fit in their fathers' vision yet are everything but innocent. It's about how violence fathers violence, and how the thirst for purity leads to harm and sadism. It's about authority figures, how they failed at living up to their speech and the principles they violently instilled into their children, and how their sins would be punished through their children.

Everything starts with a first act of malevolence when the doctor is sent to the hospital after his horse fell on a wire. The crime remains unexplained. Other crimes ensue, a spiral of violences unfolds under our eyes, among those crimes the kill of a caged bird with a pair of scissors, the attempt at murdering an infant with opening a window in the cold and the torture and mutilation of an handicaped child. The weak must pay for the failed leaders. The film doesn't really solve the mystery, the Baron can't suss it out despite calling for informing and the police investigation comes to a dead, end even though it's pretty obvious who did what and that the teacher (who narrates the story years after the facts) dares to voice his own conclusions. But this isn't a truth that can be heard.

It's harsh and dark in spite of a few moments of light and sweetness, mostly thanks to the love story between the teacher and young Eva, but also through moments of kindness from the children(Anna with her little brother, or the paster's young son when he genuinely offered a little bird to his strict father). The torturer do have a heart too, or did once upon a time.

You fell for the minister's children who are the victims of a rigoristic upbringing and have to wear the white ribbon (or have to sleep with their hands tied up to the bed to prevent masturbation!), for the doctor's daughter who looks too much like her late mother, for the vulnerable boys who got tortured (the baron's little boy first, then the handicaped son of the midwife) but the children of the film send shivers down your spine at the same time, especially the blonde Klara.

So yes this is a film by Michael Haneke that I rather liked. Not sure I would have given La Palme d'Or to it, for I found it sometimes too obvious and too long and I couldn't help feeling that something was missing, but it's an interesting movie with a few moments that are brilliant.

Did they really have a plan?

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 13:50:25 GMT

I mean the BSG writing team, not the cylons...

Because I've just watched "The Plan", that BSG movie that was supposed to reveal a lot of things thanks to the Cylons' point of view. Well...I feel underwhelmed, to say the least. I didn't have high expectations, but since I had been pleasantly surpised by the pilot of Caprica I thought that maybe "The Plan" was worth watching.

Alas, this movie was disappointing and unnecessary. It hardly added stuff to what we knew. It's the first time I'm so negative about BSG but this tv movie didn't live up to the series. Compared to "The Plan", even "Razor" was a masterpiece.

"The Plan" is like a collection of deleted scenes put together in bonus features on a DVD.

The whole thing looks cheap with the mixing of too much old footage as padding and new shots with available actors(btw EJO looked really younger in the old footages), the editing sucked and the writing was rather weak even though I liked the idea of all skinjob models having second thoughts, dilemma and being somewhat "contaminated" by humanity.

The missing scenes about Boomer as a sleeper were interesting but Sam's life on Cylon-occupied Caprica was boring.
The most moving moments were about number Five, aka Simon, whom has been underused on BSG until then. I liked the final scene betwen Simon's wife and Tyrol too.

I also enjoyed the metaphor of the little kid (young John)haunting Brother Cavil on the Galactica until he finally gets rid of that "human" part of himself –the best part Boomer would have said– while his twin on Caprica gives up on killing Sam or Kara. It foreshadowed his final suicide in "Daybreak" and it reminded me of what Ellen said about him in season 4, that he was "a little boy". The airlock scene with the two Cavils arguing with each other echoes his inner repressed struggle.

I enjoyed seeing Leoben again too. He's just so sexy. There should have been more of him.

Now I hope they won't screw up Caprica the series. .

Purgatorium Sancti Jossii

Sat, 24 Oct 2009 15:45:03 GMT

Watching yesterday's episode of Dollhouse, "Belonging", I kept thinking:

- the actors are great but Enver is fabulous. How cute Victor is!!!!
- where's Tahmoh? Do handlers get a day off when their dolls don't have any engagement?
- if Joss Whedon is not God, he is really an unconscious Catholic! Well, sort of.

Because now we know that, no matter how paradise-like the place may look and how painful the engagement may turn, the dollhouse is neither Heaven nor Hell, it's just a Purgatory. Yes, after the palimpsest on Chaucer's tales, now the show plays on Dante's territory. Once and again, it's all about the journey.

Adelle stated it last night. The people who belonged to the Dollhouse– who were "chosen"– had their morals compromised in one way or another(which makes you wonder about Boyd's past), something we could already have guessed from Paul's journey. The actives and the Dollhouse staff were in the same boat, so to speak. There was no chance, they are all there for a reason.

Sierra's storyline told in "Belonging" was quite touching and horrible because Pryia was a bird, or an angel, a "free spirit", and she wasn't supposed to be in the dollhouse, she didn't belong there, she didn't choose to go there...until Topher ~~gave her the apple~~ woke her up and then she sinned in the worst way, and had no longer choice than to atone for her crime, being brain-washed back into Sierra's skin...The once "freen spirit" has been boxed up again.
T
opher's storyline turns out to be quite interesting too. According to Adelle, he was chosen because he had no morals at all; in a way he didn't realy belong to the Dollhouse either, or at least not the way the other did, he was God's fool and tool, a little demon whose devislish skills were necessary to create the perfect illusion.

In the XIIth Century the notion of a place called "Purgatorium" slowly came out, even though it didn't become a Catholic dogma before the Council of Trente. One of the first uses of the word "purgatorium" occured in letters between benedictine monks but the term spread out with Henry of Saltrey's book, Purgatorium Sancti Patricii, a story that told the journey of an Irish knight named Owen. His quest(actually a pilgrimage) turns out to be an ordeal to save human souls. St Patrick asked God to open a path towards the Beyond in order to convert the Irish people, who at the time were refusing to believe in Heaven and Hell. The ordeal consisted in going down to the Purgatory during the night, undergoing pains and temptations made up by demons in order to get a foretaste of Hell (after all "did I fall asleep?" is the ritual question the dolls ask, and Pryia said that her time as a doll was a "nightmare" which is what Purgatory is in Saltrey's story, abad dream that is supposed to convert people).

Basically that purgatory was a place for torture(and what else is Topher's chair?) and temptations (like Mrs Lonely Heart aka Adelle's indiscretion...), filled with tormented people, but wherein the pain was downplayed compared to "real Hell" and wherein the journey-goer was also told that there's a way out (the kingdom of heaven) provided he/she had faith in Jesus, so he/she would be impressed and scared and, at dawn, he/she would go back to the world to live a sinless life.
Because it wasn't about possible punishment, the purpose of the place was also, and above all, to show that there was hope, that even the tormented people in there knew that they would go out, that a kingdom of heaven was waiting for them, which made things somewhat bearable. Those dead were even seen praying for the salvation of the living...which makes me think of Paul Ballard of course and how he did pray the powers That Be, or made a deal, for Madeline's sake. In Saltrey's story, Owen makes his way back through the Purgatory, after he's been showed the gate of Heaven, encountering no trouble, and goes out of the well on Station Island. From there he lives a pious life.

I don't think that Joss has ever been interesting in telling the story of one living a pious life, and his versions of Hell have always been plot devices more than anythting else, but he keeps telling stories of people struggling their way through a lot, possibly redeeming themselves in the process, no matter how low they once sunk or the bad things they might have done. He likes making up purgatories for his characters.

Angel was the first obvious example. Angel was a vampire cursed with a soul, so he was bearing his own private purgatory inside of him; the soul of a dead man being tormented and tempted which feels like Hell, except that it isn't Hell. Angel was supposed to suffer, alone in his basement apartment, to purge his numerous sins; no heaven for him...no happiness, but one moment of happiness("Innocence") would lead him to "real Hell" eventually("Becoming Part II"). No wonder Liam was Irish! On Ats Angel's journey was even more Purgatory-like, there were new temptations, new pains, and there was the Shanshu prophecy, that hope that even the tormented dead could cling to.

So the Purgatory, invented in the Middle Ages, has always been both a sort of "preview from Hell" and a path of redemption, a place of pain and a place of cleansing. In Dante's Divine Comedy, the Purgatory is a Mount that leads to Heaven, which isn't a bad metaphor either. If you ever climb mountains you know how tough and purgative it can be! On Ats Angel's location was higher than on BTVS, whether it was his hotel or Wolfram&Hart building.

It's interesting to see that the Dollhouse mixes the metaphors, it's both underground and connected to a high building. Those who think they are in charge, who think they have power, live upstairs while the dolls sleep underground, in coffin-like beds. They are all in purgatory though. The "real Hell" might be the attic that, of course, we'll never see.

On BTVS Spike's storyline was the epitome of the redemption journey, from Scourge of Europe to slayer of Slayers to gallant knight (making promise to a lady)to tormented lover to soul-winner to hero; Sunnydale with its Slayer, its Initiative, its chip, its Glorificus goddess and its First evil, was his little purgatory. All the characters actually tasted the same medicine at one moment or another, but Spike's journey was the most flamboyant. Funnily enough it ended in a pit...before it continued on Ats.

It's less epic and poetic on Dollhouse, but Topher is becoming a new example of the redemption road. Thanks to "Epitath" we know he will lose his mind in the process which recalls Spike's madness at the beginning of BTVS season 7. Topher had no morals to begin with but has been growing a conscience since a little while. He keeps making mistakes though and has to face the consequences of his actions. Sometimes the purgatory is paved with good intentions. He meant to help Pryia both times, at least the second time for sure. Spike already knew about consequences in season 6 (he warned Willow about it), so I think that Spike was ahead in terms of moral development. Once upon a time he used to be sweet William and something has stuck, and perhaps he learnt an essential lesson, during his first vampire hours, when he turned his mother.

So "belonging" was moving but has also depth, and I really liked the parallel between Pryia, the fallen angel, and Topher the reformed sociopath. It seems that while she's sinking, he's going the opposite road. They first "met" in a mental institution, as she was a patient, but he is the one who will become insane eventually. Now they have reached a meeting point in which they are both in the purgatory. As Pryia said, once sane again she killed a man which brought her back to the dollhouse. The forces of Fate were at work.

By the way a certain state of insanity that goes with crazy talk is a recurring motive in Joss work (Drusilla of course, but also River Tam in Firefly/Serenity, Buffy in "Normal Again", Spike in season 7) and always seems to be a cathartic experience, an ordeal, or connected to something pure or enlightening. Is losing one's mind a form of salvation in the Jossverse, or at least a redeeming feature? Here I can't help thinking of Jesus' word about the simple-minded and the kingdom of heaven.

Anyway Topher was heartbreaking in "Belonging". I also loved Boyd, how cold-blooded and professional he was, something between a fierce archangel and a demon with hellish tools. His character is becoming more and more intriguing. Adelle was more ambiguous than ever, in her relationship with Topher, and above all in the last scene when she was on the phone with Boyd. By the way I loved how Adelle's touching Topher's shoulder foreshadowed the way she would care of his broken self in the future.

Dichen was perfect in the episode telling the tragic destiny of Pryia, especially in the scene when she sat down in Topher's chair, still Pryia and still crying, closed her eyes...and held her head up very few seconds later as Sierra, her cheek still wet but her expression so pain-less and doll-like. Great performance there. The complete transformation added in contrast to the anguish on Topher's face. More than ever he seemed to realise what he was doing. She was on the chair but he was the one undergoing torture there. Like in Saltrey's tale, purgatory was painful but was not the same as hell because there was hope, something Pryia guessed when she saw Victor and recognized him as the man whom she loved. And Topher strengthened that hope saying that it was real, a true love this time(unless the fantasy love he had built for Nolan, and that she had felt as an Active), something pure and genuine; Topher assured her that she did love this Victor guy and he loved her back.

Enver shone in every little scene he was, either as the Italian guy whom Pryia met ( "After my treatment, I'll find you" he prophetically said) or as sweet concerned Victor picking up the colours that Sierra didn't like ("there are in my shirt" is a line that nobody else could deliver that way!) or as playful Victor in the shower suddenly having a flashback from his military past. I can't wait to see the Victor-centric episode that will focus on his background story.

The guest-stars were good. Keith Carradine's character gave me the chills. I can't believe we're going to wait until December now. Grrrrr...I want more! And I don't want Dollhouse to end too soon.

So yes I think that there's a Catholic in Joss Whedon, or rather I think that Joss Whedon is part Catholic part Greek, for he also knows how purgative a tragedy is supposed to be, according to Aristotle. The tale must purge the audience from its passion. He gives us what we need. Perhaps he's a bit more Catholic than he is Greek, for in spite of the pain, the horrible things and the grey material, there's always hope, purity and love in his work. It was the ending message of Serenity, and it was the ending message of the episode with the last picture showing Victor and Sierra sleeping together, like the promise of a possible Earthly paradise.

I also believe that Joss keeps giving to himself the same medicine he makes us undergo; he entered his own tv Purgatory by dealing with Fox again, instead of taking the shiny road of the cable network. Perhaps it's bearable because there's hope still in the Internet, where the Paradise(and the awards if Dr Horrible is any indication) might lie.

Middle evil, not advanced evil !

Sat, 10 Oct 2009 19:00:28 GMT

First off, may I have a marking doll, please?

I should be marking instead of posting about Dollhouse but I have to write down some thoughts before I forget them. I usually use my Paul Ballard icon for such posts but my Medieval Demons icon seems to fit in today, since Tim Minear's script could be read as a palimpsest from The Canterbury Tales.

The episode worked because it was a lot of fun while being a lot of smart. There were good lines, amazing performances, depths, and of course a daring way to revisit the Whedonesque theme of Female Empowerment. Does female power lie between their thighs( "The same power all women have", as Professor Gossen says...)?

Paul's reaction when seeing naked Echo in the shower seems to confirm it. He's left powerless. Fortunately there are serial killers!

Why did Fox not respect the order of the episodes? "La Belle Chose" made sense after "Vow"!!! Showing this episode after "Instinct" was stupid. Firstly because the prologue of "The Wife of Bath's Tale", is about marriage (Alisoun has been married five times and stands as an authority on the matter) so this episode of course had to follow "Vows", secondly because the beginning deals with Paul being Echo's new handler and how he is new to the job, how awkward and ill at ease he is about it (hence his difficulty to voice the "would you like a treatment?"question). Seeing "La Belle Chose" after "Instinct" makes no sense at all in terms of narrative!

Anyway this episode is tied in to the great scheme of Dollhouse things with the remote wipe that Topher performs, but it's mostly an episode that moves Paul's journey on. At the end of "Vows" he made an oath. But does he live up to the job? So far he's been mostly following his own agenda, his own demons. Does he really know what Echo wants, what women want? In a way he is the knight from The Canterbury Tales, the one the queen sent on a mission in the" Wife from Bath's tale". The queen here is of course Adelle...

I like the Chaucer stuff, not only because I'm a medievalist but also because during season 1 there was a controversy on whether Dollhouse was antifeminist or not, especially given Whedon's notorious feminism. I believe that the Wife of Bath chapter raises similar questions. Like Joss, Alisoun the storyteller uses anitfeminist material in her tale but she also attacks antifeminism through her behaviour. In Chaucer's time, readers were supposed to see her behaviour as the opposite of the proper one. Was she really an anti role model in Chaucer's mind?

I think that Dollhouse has been playing with ambiguity from day one, when it comes to feminism, but Joss might be doing the exact opposite of what Chaucer did. Tim Minear delivered a twisted script here by switching the imprints.

I loved the continuity element when Kiki and her teacher are talking about female power and being "the whippe"(from the famous passage in which Alisoun points out that she rules in the bedroom). In season 1, Echo had an assignment in which she was a dominatrix and held a whip.

I loved that Victor, as he has been switched into Kiki mode, recited the "wicked filthy" bit from Chaucer : "As help me God, I laughe whan I thynke/ How pitously a-nyght I made hem swynke!"

The imprint-swap had a twist value in terms of narrative, when Echo stabbed the professor it wasn't somethingt he audience was supposed to expect, and it added to the drama angst given that we know that Echo keeps all the imprinted personae inside of her (something that the final scene and her " goodness gracious" had to recall), but I think more interesting and ironical the fact that suddenly it was a male Active, the vaginaless but penis-owner Victor(for whom the phrase "man reaction" was created on the show!), who suddenly embodied "La Belle Chose". By the way Victor makes me think of another Alison from the Canterbury Tales, the one from the Miller's tale, innocent and joyful, showing her booty through a window.

And speaking of continuity, here I can't help quoting another extract from the tale myself, in which Alisoun talks to one of her five husbands: "Is it for ye wolde have my queynte allone?/Wy, taak it al! Lo, have it every deel!/For if I wolde selle my bele chose/I koude walke as fressh as is a rose;/But I wol kepe it for youre owene tooth."

Of course this is the origins of the episode's title, "La Belle Chose" meaning the female genitalia, and in this extract from the Wife of Bath's prologue it is about the matrimonial duty –herein perceived as a "deal" and therefore compared to a sort of legal monopolistic prostitution which is connected in the episode to the essay on "the economics of love" for which Kiki got a F that she could turn into a A (inside irony!)–but above all, for me, it echoed a conversation between Paul and Echo in "Vows"!

For the Active hired by Paul as a FBI agent, helping Ballard to catch a gun runner, sleeping with her fake husband was just sex, it meant nothing, she walked from it as fresh as a rose indeed. Of course it also echoed the fact the dolls often have sex assignments, and Adelle is nothing but a pimp (something that Paul hinted at when interrogating Victor/Terry).

Apart from the Canterbury Tales reading there are many things I liked:

-the scene in the makeover area, with the supervisor being a sort of Topher's counterpart. They share the same sort of humour/dark irony and he talks about his art the same way Topher praises his own genius. The waiting area wherein the handlers seat and read magazine made me smile too and there's the "I was trained at Quantico" line.

-anything Victor did from his first line when he hears the name of Dr Saunders to point out that there's a man "who isn't his best", to his final "good day". Of course he was so convincing as Terry and hilarious as Kiki. Enver deserves an emmy, period.

-seeing Michael Hogan on screen again, especially with Tahmoh. I realised how much I miss Saul Tigh and Karl "Helo" Agathon, two of my favourite tv characters.

- the way Paul behaves in the shower scene and how he is relieved when he finally gets it right and Echo tells him "yes I enjoy my treatment". Tahmoh managed to convey Paul's awkwardness and his newbie's tentative steps. It isn't only that he is troubled (maybe aroused) by Echo's nudity, he is also lost and trying to learn his job as a handler. He used to be a FBI profiler!

-"Serial killer? Thank god!" was perfectly delivered by Tahmoh.

-Ivy saying aside "she is not wrong" when Kiki points out that her "body is sort of programmed to do this"

- Echo/Kiki bouncing near Ballard and saying "Thanks Paul!" which sort of foreshadowed the nightclub scene with Victor throwing himself in Paul's arms. Plus Eliza looked so short next to Tahmoh. But who wouldn't?

-"You need to free Victor of him". It wasn't only about preventing a new abduction, the way she phrased it...Adelle everybody is going to notice how much you care about Victor!

- Victor/Kiki knocking out the guy on whom he had hit and who tried to hit him! Victor is a pretty thing but isn't a helpless damsel in distress. Wicked indeed!
-Victor's "Oh Paul. Paul!" and Ballard's "you got a problem" after Victor/Kiki buries his head in his chest, and how Paul strokes Victor's head. Priceless.They were soooooo cute together!

- Boyd repeating Topher's name after saying "Topher has ethical problem". By the way, until now Topher has often been called a sociopath so it took a real serial killer to point out that he may not be empathy-deprived. Of course the Topher/Claire scene from "Vow" had already set that path of humanization. .

- Adelle asking Boyd not to translate everything she says. Well, actually the episode was all about translating or decoding stuff. This is meta television my friends!

- the croquet scene at the beginning.It was creepy and a nice variation on the doll theme. The croquet game also makes me think of Alice in Wonderland, Terry being like the Red Queen, but for using the mallet instead of yelling "head off". Joss has always borrowed from Lewis Carroll and Dollhouse makes no exception.

- and my favourite scene of the episode: Paul interrogating Victor/Terry. You can tell he feels at home this time. Tahmoh was wonderful in that scene and even more gorgeous than usual, if it's possible. Enver rocked of course, but he nailed every character he has to play. "The Terry Marion Karrens- any part of it a boy's name?" line was a good one but takes even a new sense when you think of what happens to Victor later...and that Terry, the woman hater, will find himself in Echo's body eventually.

What I love the most was Adelle watching the scene on screen, the look on her face, the fact she seemed to understand that Paul might be talking about her actually(and about himself!), alienating everyone in her life, making copies of real persons, being the one in charge, controlling fake people around her. She was sort of fascinated by Paul's way too. I'm sure she wouldn't mind enjoying some time with both Paul and Victor/Roger. Alas, I'm afraid that, even though he was quite flirty with Adelle (saying how smart a move her sending uncle Bradley downstairs was!) Paul is a bit too prim and proper to consider such a threesome though.

Things I didn't like much:

- Terry's victims delivering anvil (we're people, not his toys etc), and the one playing the mother suddenly using the croquet mallet as if she has been activated by Willow's spell in "Chosen". Female empowerment needs more background.
- Echo's glitches and the flashes during the scene with the victims. It's getting old and boring.

Those scenes looked forced and lack subtlety.

- I assume that Paul followed Adelle's wish and unplugged Terry so he wouldn't wake up. I don't like that. Not sure that Paul's journey needs that kill in cold blood on top of everything.

PS: Echo sounded like a possessed person, fearing that one of the voices in her head would overcome when she asked the victims to kill her in order to stop Terry from doing it again. It reminds me of Alia aka The Abomination in Dune.

Fabliaux and serial killer

Sat, 10 Oct 2009 12:18:39 GMT

I will write about "La Belle Chose" later but I saw it and I needed to squee right now!

Victor-Chaucer-Paul is the best trio in my book. I've been saying for a year that Enver Gjokaj is an acting wonder and he was again fantastic! That man is a gem. What an amazing versatile actor! Tahmoh was also VERY good in the episode (he got the chance to show his skills at last), and extremely handsome. And tall!

Enver and Tahmoh are a great team, they both owned the episode.

After that one, I'm still torn between being a Paul/Adelle 'shipper or a Paul/Victor supporter. Perhaps Paul/Victor/Adelle is actually the right combination(and Adelle can watch, just like in my favourite scene from "La Belle Chose"!).

Joss, what you do to me!

Basic Instinct

Sat, 03 Oct 2009 14:00:29 GMT

I've just watched "Instinct", an episode I was ready not to like, given that it was Echo-centric, but actually I enjoyed it.

Looks like that after all those years of letting us pondering the soul issue, Joss has finally given an answer: the soul lies in the milk !!!!

I enjoyed the episode even though it looked like a "Echo'sengagement of the week" type of episode, because, unlike the first episodes of last season, it was daring and deeper. It twisted clichés(playing with the codes of the thriller involving a crazy nanny, a knife, a dark house, a storm) in the Jossian fashion, and it revisited an earlier type of engagement (the one from "Man in the Street
") in which a wealthy widower hires a doll, and Echo takes the place of the dead wife except that this time it wasn't about romance and fantasy at all.
I loved the idea of Topher changing the body on a glandular level and triggering lactating, and the fact that the Dollhouse clients are a sort of new aristocracy, hiring a wet nurse to take care of their children. Wet nurses didn't only feed the children with the milk in their breasts, they usually cared for the kids too, often loving them more than their biological parents.

In other words, Topher's super advanced technology allowed old ways to be followed again.

I also liked the conversation at the police station between Emilie and the female police officer, and how things were deliciously twisted when she said that she couldn't recognise her husband, that it was like he was a stranger who took the place of her husband!

Miracle Laurie was gorgeous and I think that Madeline wouldn't mind coming back to the Dollhouse again if she kept running into that tall dark haired hunk. Basic instinct again?

Also besides the obvious parallels between oblivious Madeline and awakening Echo(the loss of a child, the distress and its apparent cure), I saw a very interesting parallel between Echo and Adelle. When Mrs DeWitt pays a visit to the former doll seh has released, she clearly says that the bond between them isn't cut off, even though Madeline's contract is complete. Adelle still cares about her, just as Echo still cared about baby Jack even after her treatment. Echo's assignment actually echoed Adelle's situation. She's the "Mère Maquerelle" of the Dollhouse but she also has maternal instinct when it comes to her Actives; she must think that she wasn't enough of a mother for Alpha hence his becoming a sociopath! He was her first born and she couldn't love him, he lacked that feeling of being love that must be "imprinted" in infants!

There was also a parallel between the widower and Paul Ballard, and it isn't the first time that Paul's situation echoes a client's. Both thought that the goal justified the means, but in the end they felt guilty and responsible for putting Echo through Hell, they made amends. Paul said he could deal with the situation alone, and we can reckon that the father will deal with his infant on his own from now on.

In the end Echo states that she doesn't want to go to sleep again, and that feeling pain is better than not feeling anything at all. It echoed Claire Saunders' choice (keeping her scars, her pain, her life). Looks like that Echo may be following a similar journey, not wanting to lose herself into oblivion. Is it Caroline bleeding out or Echo turning into a new person (not a doll, not Omega but someone else)? By the way I couldn't help noticing that Paul called her Echo and not Caroline, in the end, in a way that sounded like he was aware that Echo might be becoming a person.

Afterall, anyone can happen.

Little women

Fri, 02 Oct 2009 20:06:03 GMT

Today I saw another of the Cannes films that won a prize. It's the British Fish Tank, and again its Prix du Jury is well deserved. That portrait of a teenage girl won't be forgotten.

Mia is a rebellious British teenager whose life isn't a piece of cake. Actually it sucks a lot. You wouldn't want to live in that Essex housing estate that is her fish tank. As for her family, it sucks too, her mother (the wonderful actress that starred in Loach's Its a Free World) wouldn't get a prize in parenting, and her little sister has a filthy mouth(yes the film is filled by bad language from all the female characters but the little sister delivers a very creative coarse language and is hilarious). The three females basically keep insulting each other all the time. Mia doesn't go to school anymore and she doesn't have any friends left. The 15 year old Mia is alone, feeling awful –she hides her body beneath shapeless sportswear just like she hides her softer side–reckless and restless.
The fish tank is the metaphor of the many cages Mia wants to escape. One of the them is her own body, hence her drinking booze (something her mother must have passed on her), her practicing hip-hop dance when nobody watches, and her trying to free a white horse who's chained up by some gypsies in a wasteground. One day a man shows up in the flat and sees her; Connor a hunk whom Mia's mother has brought back. His arrival leads to new possibilies, hope and, perhaps, disappointments.

When I read that Mia had a secret passion for dancing and dreamed of becoming a hip-hop dancer, I was afraid that Fish Tank might be some sort of female Billy Eliott, a politicaly correct feel-good movie that would turn into a fairy tale, but it is not. The music has a role to play but Mia's passion isn't the stuff the film is made on.
Also even though the film obviously belongs to the "social realism" family like the ones by Ken Loach or Mike Leigh(the plot takes place in a dirty and hopeless neighbourhood), it has its own style. It doesn't shy away from the ugly truth but it doesn't convey a political message, doesn't make a social statement. It's definitely a woman film, not only because the lead character is a 15 year old girl or the director is a woman(Andrea Arnold), but also because it's about the birth of a woman and about female desire.

There's such a sensuality in the way the camera films everything. It makes the audience feels what Mira feels, the breath she tries to catch, the fragrants she inhales, the skin that is touched, whatever Mia smells or tastes.

Michael Fassenber, who plays Connor, is again terrific (that actor never ceases to amaze me) and he's quite perfect as the male object of desire, so nice a guy but oh so disturbing. In the first scene he appears in, you can't help feeling like Mia and staring at that half-naked body. The sexual tension between Mia and Connor is really well done, not in the usual cliched way. Not many films have been made on female desire and even fewer have been made on a teenage girl's sexual awakening (I can think of Splendor in the Grass but Nathalie Wood's character was older, I guess), on the burgeoning female sexuality. Because in this film, even though it's obvious that the attraction and feelings are mutual(Mia and Connor do like each other) to the point of their crossing the line one night(while the pastered mother has passed out), it isn't much about a forbidden love nor about a man falling for his mistress' daughter, it's about Mia becoming a woman, about her leaving the fish tank.

Of course things aren't that simple and Connor isn't the key of her freeing for he isn't as nice as she(we)'d like him to be; he is just a tool in her metamorphosis, of her moving on past her chrysalis state.

What I enjoyed in the movie is the lack of over-simplification. We get to see the dirty and the beautiful, the light and the dark side of every character, their strength and weaknesses. Anyway the film always avoids the easy route.

So definitely not a fairy tale but not a depressing movie either, there's tenderness still and some sort of moral code remains, even there, even then.

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"You are touching my face"

Sun, 27 Sep 2009 11:31:46 GMT

Season 2 of Dollhouse has begun at last! "Vows" didn't blow me away but, as premieres go, it was a rather good episode. Much food for thoughts.

As usual I found Echo to be the least interesting character and Eliza the weakest part acting-wise, compared to the rest of the cast, and like probably many other viewers who hoped for an ensemble show this year I'm disappointed that the credits still focus on Eliza only. On the other hand, what I really like on Dollhouse is what I call the Echo Principle. It's just the way the show is written and the characters work. Dollhouse is a cavern filled with echoes, whose walls are covered with mirrors. So I've decided that Echo is nothing but an allegory. The credits make sense then.

On the show there are the obvious echoes and the less obvious ones, the A-plot/B-plot ones and the ones that lie in details.

In "Vows" we had the obvious mirror between Whiskey's identity crisis and Echo's confusion. Amy Acker stole the show, but perhaps her part was easier to act, her distress easier to convey than Echo's fragmented persona. I can't help thinking that Joss gave Amy a showcase to shine through, while poor Eliza got herself trapped in a pool too big for her(I found her final lines "we are lost but we are not gone" a bit anvil-like and therefore annoying). The episode clearly showed that, no matter how empty Whiskey was, no matter who the real Dr Saunders was, Claire Saunders does exist now and she doesn't want to die. She is a person.

I also liked the "Vow" theme that contained more subtle echoes this time. Echo's engagement was about deception; the active got married, taking a vow that meant nothing because the person who took it was not real. Paul Ballard also took a vow, first as a FBI agent, then as a wannabe knight in armor who dedicated himself to finding and shutting down the Dollhouse...to end up as a client of the Dollhouse! He wanted to save Caroline but ended up using her as an Active to con a bad guy, and he even turned Echo into a weapon (a neat scene by the way)...which kinda echoed the way Adelle triggered November into killing the deposed handler in Ballard's apartment. At the end of the episode, Paul seemed to fell lost in self-reflection and ashamed; he apologised and finally took another vow, binding himself to her mission. The episode started with a fake marriage and ended with a true union.

What about Dr Saunders' vow as a physician? Just an illusion since Whiskey was a doll and the real doctor died a long time ago. The oath he took should mean nothing to her. Yet she kept behaving like a doctor, especially in the scene with Victor in spite of feeling jealousy and bitterness. Looks like some vows bind more strongly than others.

Speaking of Victor, Enver had little exposure but was wonderful. I think he managed to convey a new facial expression in the scene with Adelle. "You're touching my face" . He was innocent and yet not quite as childlike as usual when he said that. He could feel that Adelle was lingering on.

Later Sierra echoed Adelle's gesture, touching Victor's face.

The Dollhouse's money and technology confuse the echoes, cloud the reflections. Sierra telling Ivy about her xenophobia against Asian people was a comic relief but I couldn't help recall that Topher used to hire Sierra to be his game buddy. Ivy is his assistant now, basically she is his real Lab buddy.

There were many other echoes of course. Adelle told Paul that the Dollhouse activities were involved in the Rossum's research programm. Basically the dolls were Lab Rats, and Topher's lab was invaded by white rats thanks to Dr Saunders! Topher's mickeyphobia (an echo to Anya's bunnyphobia?)must be a metaphor that he has a love-hate relationship with his job –and we know where this will lead him in "Epitath One"– which echoes his love-hate relationship with Whiskey/Claire. By using his fears and desires, Claire tried to mess with Topher's head. Messing with heads is what Topher does for a living.
By the way Topher is turning into a somewhat tragic figure, not only because he's forced to face the consequences of his actions and morally growing through it (a bit like sociopathic Anya in BTVS) which humanizes him and makes the audience feel for him, but also because we already know that he is doomed. Same with Claire/Whiskey who said she couldn't go out and yet seemed to escape the Dollhouse for at least a little while at the end of the episode, except that we already know that Whiskey will be bound to the Dollhouse until its end and that Claire Saunders is doomed as well. Joss Whedon knows better than any other tv man the true essence of tragedy.

And there are the echoes between the Alpha males. In Adelle's office, Paul and Boyd stood face to face, which emphasized the fact they mirror each other, rival each other and are about the same height, echoing Boyd's line "I'm very tall". Yes you are baby, but you aren't the only one, Tahmoh is a frakking giant too (Jamie Bamber must hate being on screen next to him)! A few seconds later Paul literally echoed another of Boyd's lines "Nice suit". The whole episode looks like a shift work. Boyd had to give up on thinking as Echo's handler, Paul slowly became Echo's handler(and he did handle her in the fighting scene!).

Adelle pointed out another echo, this time between Paul and that handsome senator Perrin who could become a threat and therefore is taking the place of agent Ballard as the Dollhouse's nemesis. By the way I felt a certain sexual tension between Adelle DeWitt and Paul Ballard. Those two definitely have chemistry, they should hook up. I think they both need it.

And of course there's the echo between the villain and the noble knight. The villain has sex with Echo while the Paul can only wait and work out(not my favourite scene, I found it too obvious and a bit ridiculous). The villain viciously hit the woman he married, Paul ended up hitting Echo as well, to trigger previous imprints. The villain was an arms dealer and Ballard weaponed Echo up! As he told Topher it was a much worse plan, morally speaking, even though it worked.

As for the rivalry thing, the show seems to play that card a lot. Fortunately it isn't done in the usual clichesque triangle way that so many tv shows indulge in. So far the Mellie/Paul/Caroline, the Alpha/Echo/Paul and the Boyd/Echo/Paul storylines were nicely written.
Having said that I bet that Paul isn't done with November/Madeline yet and that Miracle's return will affect his relationship with Echo. The Boyd/Claire/Topher angle was definitely interesting in "Vows", but my favourite triangle might be Adelle/Victor/Sierra.

It must be because Victor is my favourite doll and I think that Enver outacts everybody. Give me more Victor! Paul's storyline is quite interesting and Tahmoh does well, but his character isn't really touching, and I don't think that pairing him up with Echo will change that. Definitely not Helo.

Victor, on the other hand, you just want to touch his face.

Checking in before leaving

Tue, 25 Aug 2009 20:53:18 GMT

I'm off to Brittany tomorrow morning for five days, I don't know exactly when we will drive back on Monday, and then school is starting again so this may be my last post for a while.

I've seen the premiere of Dexter (yes it has leaked!) and the latest True Blood (not a masterpiece for sure but a lot of fun). We're close to the season finale, but fortunately there's the new season of Dexter and Dollhouse to be aired very soon. I mostly rely on streaming sites now for I can no longer play the videos that are saved on my computer (must be the driver because the bug happens with every software I try) so downloading is useless. :-(
Anyway the DVD box of BSG 4th season should be released at the end of September.

Also I'm becoming quite obsessed with Caprica. I guess it's both Bear's music(I'm currently in love with the track "A Tauron Sacrifice") and the ~~Eric Stoltz~~ Daniel Graystone effect....

Something struck me during the second viewage but I wasn't sure so I re-watched Blade Runner for the 3333333th time and...bingo!!!!
The heavy glasses that the defence minister wears in Caprica are the same as Tyrell's in Blade Runner. I love little details like that. The pilot of BSG was already filled with references to Blade Runner and they did it again with Caprica. It makes me happy.

A new website is born

Tue, 18 Aug 2009 14:47:43 GMT

If you are interested in tv, there is a new the place to go so you can check on your favourite tv shows(True Blood, Dollhouse, Lost, Caprica, you name it!) and leave comments to share your interest with other tv addicts.
Ian, whom I've known for years thanks to the Internet, started a blog that will give you the lastest news and info while avoiding spoilers so make sure to bookmark the TV LOWDON.

http://thetvlowdown.com/

When a personal story meets a people's history

Fri, 14 Aug 2009 18:49:56 GMT

Today I was at the cinema and saw the original and beautiful Elia Suleiman's film, The Time That Remains. It's a shame it didn't win anything in Cannes Festival.

It's a semi-autobiographical chronicle that follows Palestinian people, especially the director's father, in Nazareth from 1948 to nowadays. I wonder if the title has something to do with Pauline Epistles given that Elia Suleiman used his father's notebooks and his mother's letters to exiled relatives, to tell the story.

There are very few dialogues and the film mostly consists in saynettes that play on the absurd which may put off some viewers but it is beautifully shot, and the humour is irresistible.

I had rarely seen a Palestinian's movie that talks about the situation of Palestinians(or rather Isreali-Arabs) who remained in their homeland and have been living, as a minority, in Israel since 1948 while being that funny, poetic and tragic at once. Suleiman is a mixing of Jacques Tati and Buster Keaton...there's even a little bit of Chaplin in him.

The Time That Remains isn't perfect, the choregraphed playlets may annoy eventually and some viewers may prefer more pathos, political message and less distance. Personally I enjoyed the style and the way the director shows the everyday life of the Suleiman family and its neighbours in Nazareth, even though I'd rather have less Elia Suleiman in front of the camera in the long last 15 minutes(he portrays himself observing life around him).

At the end of the day it's a must see. Besides the actor playing Elia's father, Fuad Suleiman, is really handsome. I mean, really.

My American heroes Part Two

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 21:17:28 GMT

Part One about Daniel Mendelsohn

My second American hero is a genius whom it's difficult not to admire. I've been marathon-reading Richard Powers' s work for about a year now, starting with the widely and rightly acclaimed The Time Of Our Singing –I reread it after Obama won the American elections, which added to the emotions the story and the characters convey, and I've failed to post about it since then but I will some day because it deserves a post of its own–going on last Autumn with the wonderful The Eko Maker that convinced me that Richard Powers was one of a kind, and perhaps the best American writer alive. So I've decided to explore Powers' s bibliography before.

Galatea 2.2 destabilized me first because of its pseudo-autobiography side but eventually amazed me. Plowing The Dark was everything but an easy read. To say the truth, the novel didn't really catch my interest until p 238 (about halfway), despite some killer pieces that thrilled me here and there like little rewards to enjoy on the way.
The novel followed a double thread, like often with this author: At the turn of the tide – the late 80's and early 90's – as History may end, the world is on the verge of being changed, new fights begin and ancient wars remain.in the western Puget Sound, the Cavern–-a room that can become anything, is built by Virtual Reality researchers and disillusioned artists converted to the wonders of computer science; meanwhile in Beirut, an English teacher is held hostage. Two narrative threads that mirror one another until the distance vanishes and they merge in pure poetry.

At first the two plots although they had obvious connections seemed too different; above all, the Virtual Reality plot and its rather virtual-feeling characters didn't captivate me much, while holding me captive, the language barrier feeling even higher than usual. The hostage plot with its short chapters was a breeze of fresh air everytime it was its turn to move the story forward. I realised later that Powers must have done it on purpose. Taimur's tragic story in Lebanon gave him flesh while Adie and her workmates' journey in Seattle did feel wordy, data-filled and, at the end of the day, flat and cold...until it shifted. Also page 238 the Berlin Wall fell and broke my own defences against the Cavern characters as every Vi R worker provided their take on the event. From then on the magic worked and I understood the architecture of the novel better; I could make out connections and layers beneath layers; somehow I had broken through the wall. The book itself is like the Cavern that can create numerous universe, shelter infinite false-distances and contain world-wide places, actually it is like the Doctor's tardis: bigger in the inside!
As usual, Powers turns everything into meta, sometimes revealing it sometimes concealing it. Because of course there's much more in that book than an exploration of Virtual Reality provided by either high-technology and computing or imprisonment. Both plots tell us about Art and its purpose, about solitude, about modern disconnection, about love, about the sheer joy of reading, and the double-storyline provides a perfect looking-glass. It is also a way to revisit the old Plato's allegory reminding us that we often are still sitting in a cave watching shadows on a wall. At some point the novel becomes a retelling of the Arabian Nights, Taimur turning himself into his own private Shaharazade. And as everyhting merges, the story becomes about telling a story, about literature itself.

There's a key moment when Taimur Martin remembers a story his Persian mother used to tell his brother and him. I could quote much more from that fascinating novel but I think this one is relevant and I wanted to quote it today as events in Iran are a weight on everybody's mind. In Plowing the Dark it's a pure mise en abîme of the book, of both Adie's and Taimur's:

"She tells you her favorite again, the story she always had to give you from memory, out of her best Farsi children's book, lost in the violence of repeated exiles. She improvises, embroiders by word of mouth, adeeper archaelogy, the far-off lands even more suggestive in their state of ruins.

There was and there was not a great nature painter who painted a landscape so perfect it destroyed him. Each person who looked at the scene saw somehting different. But all saw envy, and all wanted what they saw. And those who wanted the painting most decided to kill the maker and steal the thing he made.

Each time she tells you, the story ends differently. Some trick of memory, either yours or hers. In one, the man's painted creatures warn him of the danger and foil the plot. In another, the painter's murder returns the beautiful landscape to overgrown weeds. In the ending that two small, stunned boys loved most, the painter evades his killers, who arrive at his house only to find the abandoned painting, now with a figure running through its farthest, faintest hills."

Now I'm reading a fifth novel of his. I've found the spring of his career, reached the spot where everything began, Richard Powers's literary debut: Three Farmers On Their Way to A Dance. I started reading it on Tuesday morning as I was invigilating a 4 hour Mathematics test. The writer I've come to love is already there: fantastic and creative story-teller; clever thinker and astute thought-provoker; novelist and multi-talented man with a background on Physics and an appetite for all things literature and music and science and language; gifted writer whose elegant and musical style makes you want to read out loud. It's a shame that such a brilliant novellist isn't more known over the world, especially over here in France. Perhaps he hasn't found a good translator yet. Anyway I can't imagine reading Richard Powers's novels in another language but his now.

I will review it when I'm done but so far I'm intrigued by Three Farmers On Their Way to A Dance. Everything starts with an old photograph showing three innocent young men on their way to a dance in 1914...

To end this already too long post here's a quote from the second chapter:

"In five seconds, the music–whether it is Bavarian Beer Hall or Viennese Woods–travels 5645 feet, the little over a mile that the three boys are from the site of May Fair.
Five seconds at eighty five quarter notes a minute means the waltz they hear is already two measures in the past. The few notes that do make it this far are long over by the time they make themselves known. Modulation replaces modulation; in two measures' time the song the boys hear is no longer the song being made. The boys have only outdated music with which to create a belated present.
The stars on a clear winter's night have perhaps novaed a thousand years back, but persist as an undeniable current event. The realities of the past become true only when they intersect the present. Then, only, do they become present, knwon, regardless of what has happeend to them since. Only when griefs sets in–grief, like sound, that varies with the temperature of the air–does the past in fact die."

My American heroes Part One

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 20:42:10 GMT

No this entry was not prompted by a documentary about WWII GI's; it has nothing to do with movie stars and I am not particularly into those superheroes born in comics of which Americans are so fond either. Actually I guess it goes against a lot of clichés but my American heroes are writers.The more I read Daniel Mendelsohn and Richard Powers the more I adore them.

Perhaps you remember how I fell in love with the former while reading his The Lost. I have read two other books of his since then, and I'm still under Daniel Mendelsohn's spell.

So a few days ago I finished reading How Beautiful It Is And How Easily It Can Be Broken which is a recollection of critic essays Mendelsohn wrote years ago for the New York Review of Books before he made his literary debut with The Elusive Embrace.

Of course I haven't seen the theatre productions he talks about, and there are a few books or movies he mentioned that I have neither read nor seen, but I enjoyed his reviews nonetheless, and I loved reading his take on movies I had seen like Volver, The Hours, Troy, Brokeback Mountain, Marie-Antoinette, etc. Mendelsohn is a well-read and intelligent man and his writing as a critic is high quality but he doesn't show-off; he makes you feel smarter as you read his words while touching and entertaining you. I do enjoy how he manages to easily mix scholarly rigour and references– often using his background in the Classics– casual conversation manners, humour and sensitivity.

In the introduction of the book, wherein he explains his "method", he reminds the reader of the etymology of the word "critic" that is krinô, "to judge".
This pleases me because we live in a world where judgments aren't easily accepted. For instance I'm used to watch a programme(a sort of talk show) on French tv in which two journalists are often accused of being mean and cruel, or of trying to make a name for themselves by tearing guests to pieces, only because they tell their mind and aren't lenient. They simply are professional critics, they point out the qualities and they also point out the flaws and weaknesses. They aren't afraid to say to writers(or songwriters), sitting just in front of them on the set, how badly written or how pointless their book is, or to an actor how much the film sucks. They are especially frank and savage when it comes to books whose authors are celebrities and wannabe/fake-writers, probably because they are fed up of having to read such terrible "literature".
More than once the guests got really upset (some even cried because it's quite violent and humiliating to be called an impostor in front of the camera, or perhaps it's just that they were delusional and didn't get that their work was indeed bad) and told them "You can't say that! You just can't! Just say that you didn't like it but don't say that it's bad". It's quite revealing a social tendancy implying that everything is on the same level, that it's only a matter of taste. Everybody can sing, act, write books...Basically it's refuting the meaning of the word, and therefore the job, that is "critic". A critic isn't someone who tells us what they like or not, but a person who makes judgements(which doesn't mean that strong feelings aren't involved).

By the way Mendelsohn writes: " Critic, then, is a word with a rich and suggestive pedigree. As, indeed, are other words derived from krinô, words like criterion (a means for judging or trying, a standard) and–a word that you might not have suspected is even remotely related to "critic"–crisis, which in Greek means separating,a power of distinguishing; a judgement, a means of judging; a trial. For what is a crisis, if not an event that forces us to distinguish between the crucial and the trivial, forces us to reveal our priorities, to apply the most rigorous criteria and judge things?"

Farther, explaining that the title of his book is borrowed from Tennessee Williams, he adds: "But to my mind Williams' s haunting phrase illuminates not only the nature of certain works that have preoccupied me, but also something about the nature of the critics who judge those works. For(as strange as it may sound to many people, who tend to think of critics as being motivated by the lower emotions: envy, disdain, contempt even)critics are above all, people who are in love with beautiful things, and who worry that those things will get broken. What motivates so many of us to write in the first place is, to begin with, a great passion for a subject (Tennessee Williams, Balanchine, jazz, the twentieth-centry novel, whatever)that we find beautiful; and, then, a kind of corresponding anxiety about the fragility of that beauty."

Here I feel the need to cut through the quote and say that his view on critics does resonate with me. Also I'm thrilled to see him use the "not only (...) but also" structure because it is so Latin ("Not solo/ sed etiam") and a writing tic that I thought I was the only one showing when writing in English. Actually I was quite convinced (and ashamed)that it was a very un-English way to write, a sort of "Frenchism" even, and I have been cautious for a while, trying to suppress the habit. But hey Mendelsohn does it too! See that is the evidence he is my soul mate. Now if only he could move in France, settle in Paris...and give up homosexuality for at least bisexuality!
But let's back to the quote:

"Many of the reviews here are, in fact, judgments about the success of contemporary attempts to interpret, or adapt, or reexamine subjects about which I have deep feelings: the grand and gliterring Homeric epics and Virginia Woolf's gossamer Mrs. Dalloway; the comedies of Mel Brooks or the tragedies of Euripides; the Classics as a symbol, now being used and abused by this or that faction(the gays, the neocons) to score points in the Culture Wars. And those pieces that are about new work for which there is no original still seek to make use of standards, of criteria, that like so much of contemporary culture are, in fact, rooted in certain ancient traditions which are themselves beautiful–and fragile. If I mention Aristotle's or Horace's theories of poetry in my review of Troy, it's not out of some kind of loyalty to my subject–product placement for the Classics–but because no one has ever stated as crisply and usefully just what it is that epic is supposed to do for its audience.

Respect for the integrity of the original stems, indeed, not from some blind curatorial reflex(hence my conclusion, in one of these pieces, that Aeschylian tragedy is better served by productions that put, say, a bathtub and some circulat saw blades onstage than by "authentic" stagings complete with ancient-looking muslin cloaks and sandals), but instead precisely from a sense that the classics of any genreare classic in the first place precisely because they have always been, and will always be, deeply relevant to, and incomparably illuminating of, human experience. that relevance, that ability to enlighten, are themselves rather beautiful; they are the ultimate standrads, kriteria, by which any work is judged."

I could go on and on but that is enough. I highly recommend reading that book. Mendelsohn's essays are insightful, articulate; sometimes moving and funny. Simply brilliant.

PS: I'm spamming(yes there's a Part Two coming soon) today but since the History & Geography test took place yesterday morning and given that this afternoon I went to Saint-Cloud to picked the Baccalauréat papers, that I'm supposed to mark in the 7 upcoming days, these entries are probably my latest "big posts" for a while. Marking Hell begins tomorrow morning so you won't see a lot of me until I'm done, unless I need a place to rant and whine from time to time...which might happen.

"One more mile is all we have until the lost become the found"

Sat, 16 May 2009 12:57:26 GMT

The words are from Tom McRae's song, "One more Mile", but this isn't about Tom(I suppose that the icon gave it away!). Instead of one more mile we actually have a few months to wait now, until the last season of Lost.

The 84-minute finale felt too short but gave me enough food for thoughts. So here we go...

Lost is often very good with opening scenes. The opening scene reveals a fair haired man, wearing a white tunic, spinning threads like the Parcae – and making a tapestry. I'm sure that fans are going to analyse the tapestry for weeks to seek meaning in motives, as for me I must say that I just enjoyed the metaphor. We know he's got the fate of the characters in his hands, that everything is connected thanks to his craftmanship. The tapestry was a great way to represent it. The mysterious man weaved the tapestry, like a tv creator, spinning thread after thread. I'm more than ever convinced that J.J Abrams used Jacob to represent his own role. Also the tapestry echoed Penelope's work on Ithaca while she was waiting for Odysseus. Of course Penelope undid at night what she had weaved the previous day so she could extend her wait and avoid choosing a new spouse among her suitors. At the end of the episode we could see that the tapestry was finished.

The same man is showed on the beach, collecting a fish and cooking it. Another man appears, dark haired and wearing a black shirt. Not very subtle, very Judeo-Christian but I can live with that. We can see a ship approaching. The Black Rock, probably. The two men argued about what happens when people come to the island. Man in black accuses man in white of bring them there. Suddenly our Penelope becomes a Siren. Man in white believes in progress and free will, man in black thinks it always ends the same, that is with "corruption and destruction". He adds that he wants to kill his counterpart and will someday find a loophole, then he leaves after calling man in white by his name, Jacob.

The white &black thing that seems to rule the world, the fight betwen good and evil isn't my cup of tea but I liked the recurring theme of dualism, the idea of the game between a character and its nemesis, the archetypal value of the opening scene and the Russian Dolls structure and echoes Lost is based on. For a while we had thought it was a game between Jack and Locke for leadership, then we learned more about The Others, we discovered Dharma, and the island was at stake in a match between the science people and the Richard Alpert's hostiles...Ben was used as a pawn then, and after he killed everybody in Dharma village he became the leader of the hostiles...until Locke came and won the title at the end of season 4. By the finale of  that season another and possibly bigger player had been revealed: Richard Widmore.  From then the main chess game seemed to be between Ben and him But there's always bigger players. Also I liked the fact that the island seemed to be a place Jacob and his unnamed counterpart use to study and test people, and make a point about human nature. It echoed the Dharma's experiences.

The Flashbacks were well done most of the time, even though their logic sometimes fails me. We saw Jacob visiting our main characters, and touching them. The kids were very well cast. Little Kate did look like a mini Kate, not only because of her features and freckles but thanks to the way she moved with her backpack. Little James has beautiful green eyes. What does it mean that he didn't visit the others as they were kids? Jack was already a surgeon, working with his father, having issues about himself. At least it was prior the Oceanic flight but Sayid had already left the island and married his Nadia when Jacob met them, just before Nadia got killed. Same with Hugo whom Jacob met very late when he's released from prison, but soon enough to make him go back to the island.

I suppose that meeting Jacob was significant in the characters' journey. For Jack it could occur before the island because his issues were daddy-related and were about his worth as a doctor. For Sayid, Nadia's murder changed his life and turned him into a cold-blooded killer; for Hugo who felt guilty because of the cursed numbers, responsible of so many deaths including the murders of the guys Sayid killed, it made sense to meet him at that moment. Besides it was a plot device to explain the reason he went to the airport and joined the other on the Ajira flight 316.

Sun and Jin mostly have a journey as a couple so Jacob being at their wedding makes sense. As for John Locke, the scene was brilliant. Jacob was reading a book on a bench and poor John fell in the background after his father threw him from a window! A fall like that should have killed him, but Jacob touched him and John opened his beautiful eyes. I guess it was a clue telling us that John Locke was not supposed to be alive.

I understand that in James' case the funeral of his parents was a key moment, a turning point in his life but I don't see the reason concerning shoplifting Kate except that it would be her criminal debut?

And there are two flashbacks that don't fit and lessen the writing consistency:Juliet's and Ilana's. The first one has everything to do with her journey but nothing to do with Jacob and seemed forced on us to foreshadow the ending. As for Ilana, it was also a way to explain her role, as Jacob's agent, but we couldn't care less about her journey since we barely know her. By the way am I the only one who thought that she was a victim of Chernobyl's incident?
Well, at least there are two of them so there's a symmetry! ;- )

As for the incident itself and the encounter with Jacob thirthy years later, I have less to say. Jack was again the weak element in there. Juliet's change of mind was annoying and so was Kate backing Jack up in the end. Sawyer broke my heart though and when Juliet fell in the hole, he made me cry.

Highlights of the episode: Miles' sarcastic line when he asked the group whether they have considered they might cause the incident instead of preventing it (gotta love Miles and his take on time travel!) and Vincent running on the beach!

The Rose and Bernard thing seemed a way to tell the fans that the writers hadn't forgotten about them, but also, as usual they were the couple archetype and a sort of standard to which other pairings can be compared. They are the achievement of Jin/Sun vows, the road Jack and Kate didn't dare to take. Seeing them must have been a trigger for Juliet. They embodied what her parents couldn't become, and what she thinks Sawyer and she would never have.

30 years later, nice detail of Sun finding Charlie's ring in the deserted crib. By the way we still don't know whether Claire is dead or not...but we know that seeing someone doesn't mean the person is alive still.

The Locke/Ben conversation about killing Jacob was well done. First it was still possible that Locke was Locke for it echoed how John manipulated Sawyer into killing his father, something that Ben demanded at the time if John wanted to join his people. So it wouldn't have been the first time Locke would make someone else do the dirty job in his stead. But the memory of the threat in the opening scene and the way Terry played got me thinking. He had such a hard look on his face when he told Ben he would have to convince him, a look that was so not John-like. Besides there was Ilana and her big box. Boxes have always been connected to John Locke, so no I wasn't surprised to see his corpse in the end. Sad but not surprised.

The unnamed man from the opening scene obviously found his loophole and checkmated...but then Juliet hit the bomb and everything went white. Corruption and destruction indeed.

What was the loophole that allowed him to take John's guise? Why couln't he find Jacob before that? Was finding jacob's lair the only way to win? I don't think that the bomb was the loophole he used. Perhaps it was the fact that Ben killed John and came back with Jack/Kate/Hugo and Sayid while he had been bannished? Ben was a pawn, an anti-Job whom Satan manipulated in the end.

But in chess, you must foresee the moves of your opponent. Jacob may have done it hence his visiting  Ilana and asking for her help. She is his white queen. Also Ben tells Faux!John he is Pisces which may recall Jacob's fish from the opening scene.

Many questions remain. About Claire and Christian the ghost. About the Sobek-like four-toed statue. About Ilana looking for a "candidate". About the aftermaths of what Juliet did in 1977. About Penny and Desmond and what will happen to them given that Desmond is SPECIAL.

I must rewatch the episode now because I'm sure that there are many things I didnt' notice!

A week of finales

Fri, 15 May 2009 16:49:32 GMT

What am I going to watch now that Dollhouse and Lost are over? There's still Ashes to ashes but brit series are very short and we're nearing towards the end...

I watched Dollhouse's finale on Saturday evening, before going to see Wolverine, and I haven't rewatched it yet so my review might be rather fuzzy. First off, I must say that I prefered episode 11. "Omega" didn't seem as well written, and there was something in the pace that didn't work, especially towards the end. Of course compared to Wolverine, the scenario was a masterpiece!

Things I liked:

- Paul and Adelle arguing.
- Paul and Boyd teaming up.
. The Whiskey sub-plot and how it gave an unexpected depth to Topher eventually.
- Victor, as usual. Enver is always stellar!
- Paul's "sacrifice" and how November turned out to be the princess he woke up. He saved the girl but didn't get her. Their last scene together was touching. I think it was a great way to end Paul's journey no matter if we get a second season or not..
-Alpha threatening Caroline's wedge with his gun instead of aiming at Echo.

Things that I didn't like:

- the Omega stuff even though the idea of the Frankestein's monster wanting a fiancée like him was a good revival of the story. Unfortunately it was rushed and the scenes in Alpha's lair, with poor Wendy, didn't work for me. Alpha's exit was quite convenient too.

- the Caroline in Wendy/Omega scene and the line about Obama. I'm sorry but that was cheap and not Whedon quality.

- Alpha's criminal background and what it means in terms of nature vs nurture debate.

-Paul using the S word...or was it a wink at Buffy fans?

- Paul saving Caroline's wedge. It was phoned and Echo shouldn't have needed him. The wedge thing was a good device to allow the princess to save herself as the little girl hoped so in the previous episode. I wish that Paul had saved Echo but that she had saved Caroline.

My shows have layers

Sat, 02 May 2009 22:52:48 GMT

With Joss, there's always the obvious, the less obvious and the least obvious. Dollhouse deserves a second season!

Having known for a while which role Alan Tudyk had been cast for spoiled my pleasure a little bit but there was enough in the episode to make me enjoy it still.

First the acting. It was good. Even Eliza Dushku.!
Alan quite overplayed his part as fake Steven Kepler, but I enjoyed Tahmoh's gravity, how serious he was during all the scenes (and his wonderful smile when he saw Echo!) and once again it's Enver Gjokaj who won the acting prize, either as Mr Dominic in Victor's body or as Victor. That actor is magnificent!!! "There were people fighting on me". He nailed the child state like nobody else! Tahmoh and Enver should have had more scenes together!

There was some humour despite the darkness. I loved the "Coffee from Hell" mug for instance. Alan Tudyk seemed to have borrowed some of Topher's mannierisms and gestures when he was playing Kepler, it was distracting. Sierra was again glamourous and effective, her line about smells seemed to echo Kepler's line. Much less glamourous. Joss clued us in...he was going to ruin the fairytale, to twist it big time: "everybody farts"!

I loved the recurring ankles stuff and the stairs joke, and how it foreshadowed the fight between Boyd and Paul. Everybody's got a talon d'Achilles!

And there's the Briar Rose plot and the various parallels. Who's Sleeping Beauty? Who's the Prince? Of course there's the obvious and the less obvious.

Echo was sent as Suzanne to help Little Suzanne(ETA: yes I spelled it the French way!)...basically Echo was her prince, getting closer and closer to her, not giving up, getting over invisible barriers, triggering her out of sleep. Except that she was also named Suzanne and Topher told us her imprint was similar to little Suzanne's, only healthier. Echo woke up from her Suzanne-imprint eventually and again we heard the line "Did I fall asleep?". She could have slept a hundred years, she wouldn't have known the difference.

Topher felt pride, showing off for Ivy. Topher is the sorcerer who hypnotizes the beauty yet he's also the misunderstood prince who never goes and fights in the field, but he is ALWAYS there when the Dollhouse Sleeping Beauties wake up, asking how they are feeling.
But who was the client here? Who provided the imprint Topher used to make the improved one, the grown-up Suzanne? Perhaps I missed something.
What I didn't miss was Echo saying that Briar Rose made the prince, and that as Suzanne, she often pretended because it was easier, and she sometimes felt like a big liar, maybe an accomplice in a crime. Joss, Joss you're playing with fire here, but you do it well! Victims and criminals, pride and guilt may be closer than one think.

Things are complicated and dialectical. I can't wait for Paul and Boyd to have another heart to heart about slavery, right and wrong, and such stuff.

Paul fought for a cause, he fought for a girl, like a champion. He saw himself as the prince showing up in the castle to free Sleeping beauty, but was he the prince?
He did what I'd expected him to do for a while: he followed Mellie, after he broke up with her, to find out the Dollhouse. By the way Mellie broke my heart when he broke hers. Didn't he get that he was indeed killing her?

Mellie considered committing suicide until her handler showed up, saving November from throwing herself from a bridge. Are the handlers the true princes in this story? Boyd might think so.

November is safe, but Mellie is dead now.

November was the first sleeping beauty Paul saw in the castle– and she did look like a sleeping princess, just as Echo did, but Paul didn't kiss November. It was predictable, but I enjoyed the scene nonetheless. It was necessary, as Adelle would say. Paul is a failed prince, he missed his chance, and he must know it now.

Maybe Paul Ballard was not a prince but was a Sleeping Beauty himself and that episode was his big awakening: "My whole life isn't real"

Echo woke up in her pod but she didn't trust Paul, and might have been waiting for another prince, less charming.

Prince Slashing enters. Poor Victor! I hope Alpha will bite the dust for hurting Victor. But as a doll wasn't he Sleeping Beauty too? A doll is like a child after all. Wasn't he like little Suzanne who suffered from abuse? A little Suzanne who didn't grow up well. I think that the most interesting parallel was there. Little Suzanne used to hide knives, she tears and strikes the pages of the fairytale book just like Alpha slashed faces. We saw her giving up the blade she had on her, but Alpha found Dr Saunders' blade. ETA: By the way I loved the fact that little Suzanne played the storyteller for us as Paul was breaking in the Dollhouse. Sleeping Beauty made the prince, creates the story. There's something meta again about the episode, soemthing dealing with storytelling.

Which imprint did Alpha use on Echo? Caroline's mind? I think it's unlikely since Echo is our heroin. I guess that they shared an engagement once upon a time and it backlashed. Victor and Sierra were not the first Adam and Eve in the new Eden. Alpha tasted the apple and got knowledge. Did Echo hand it out? Here enter Bonnie and Clyde. Did Alpha free Echo or did he just imprint her with the imprinted persona he fell for?

Sleeping Beauties should beware of princes (especially when they like playing with blades or make them sit down on certain chairs) for they just want to enslave them for ever.

By the way, Joss is recycling: there was something of Spike& Dru in Alpha & Echo in the end.

And there was Lost

Thu, 30 Apr 2009 19:12:33 GMT

I'm glad that I was unspoiled for that one!

Widmore being Faraday's father was not a big surprise though. Eloïse and Charles living away from each other, but being still in touch really echo Heloïse and Abelard now. They had a son together two (before Abelard got emasculated).

The group scenes didn't interess me much but I liked Hurley's line about Fonzie time. I don't usually enjoy the geek in him but that one made me smile. We needed some smile in the middle of Faraday's tragedy. We already knew that Eloïse was merciless, she was the one who convinced Desmond to leave Penny after all, but I really found her cruel when she told young Daniel that he had to quit playing the piano! Poor boy!

"I can make time" was a terrific line, given the context.

Poor Daniel again for experimenting on himself and hurting Theresa in the process, and damaging his own mind enough to have memory loss. Poor Daniel again for believing that he could change things. Of course because he believed so, he ended up telling little Charlotte what he was supposed to. At the end of the day what happened happened remains the truth. Poor Daniel for understanding that his mother sent him to such a terrible fate, knowing all along what would happen to him. HE wanted to believ he was a variable but realised he was not.

Is Daniel dead? He seemed dead at the end of the episode and his death would make sense. But Desmond being his constant could "save" him. Where was Daniel during the 3 years he was away? What did he do? How did he get the info about the "catastrophe"?

In 1977 Miles was a baby, Charlotte was a little girl, young Daniel must have been about her age or so. Where is he? He must have been in the Others' village. Did Ellie left the island with him after she shot old Daniel? Where does the last name Faraday come from? Or is it Hawking that isn't Eloise's name but perhaps the surname of someone she married later? Or perhaps she just changed her name.

At least Desmond is fine!!!Desmond and Penny are the cutest couple ever, even though I liked how James looked at Juliet. Kate and Jack can go to hell!

Tv stuff

Thu, 30 Apr 2009 16:11:13 GMT

I'm going to watch Lost but first, I need to write down a few thoughts...Spoilers under the lj-cuts of course!

The tenth episode of Dollhouse, "Haunted" was promising. The concept was fascinating and thought-provoking. One of Adelle's old and wealthy friends, and a usual client of the Dollhouse, suddenly died, so Adelle uses the Dollhouse technology to bring her back through Echo's empty body. It pointed that the Dollhouse technology could give immortality, the person could be saved and downloaded in another body (Joss is a fan of Battlestar Galactica after all!)but it also meant several interesting things:

1. The Dollhouse people somehow keep an imprint of their clients...just in case. Maybe I missed some info about the way they had access to Maragret's memories but could it mean that some clients might have used Topher's chair to become someone else for a while which would have left an imprint of their personality (they need to save it in order to restore it) in the Dollhouse data storage? ETA: Thank you flist for pointing out that I did miss something!!!!
I said it before and I'm saying it again, becoming an Active could be a fantasy too, Total Recall-style. Who said that clients only hired dolls? I already suggested it about Paul Ballard...who, by the way, commented on his own behaviour with Mellie, coming to the bitter conclusion that, since he had sex with her while knowing her doll status, he was a client. "I had found one" he said in the shower (are we feeling dirty Paul or is it just a convenient way to show off your sexy body?).

2. Adelle is again using the Dollhouse for her personal benefit. There's no client here, no payment. The only way Adelle found to deal with her grief was to bring her friend back, and send her to a mission, that was to find her murderer. It revived the theme of the ghost haunting the living one, and the theme of the ghost solving its murder. Besides in a way Echo was possessed by a spirit who knew what it was doing to the body it has invaded. Sci-Fi obviously flirted with fantasy in that episode, and the Adelle/Topher pairing looked like a couple of sorcerers or of shamans. Usually the ghost of a murdered person haunts the living ones until its soul finds peace, and it's usually the truth that releases the soul. ~~Adelle decided that her friend's soul needed to find peace by solving her own murder, but actually it's Adelle hersef who needed to find peace. Echo was nothing but a convenient vessel.~~

3. Joss gave a new meaning again to the "ghost in the machine" phrase. Margaret was dead, but her ghost was in Topher's machine and could possess any doll any time as long as Topher could work his magic. This idea was nicely echoed in the episode by the scene in which Paul found a second ghost in another machine, when using the FBI ressources and Mellie's DNA, he made out a ghost on a computer screen, the girl November used to be. But the apparition quickly vanished like any spectre must do.

4. At last, the episode explored again the dialectics of identity vs alienation; fantasy vs reality and immortality vs mortality.
Was Margaret still Margaret when in Caroline's body? Isn't the body part of someone's identity? Margaret's son (am I the only one who thought he kinda looked like Nicholad Brendon? Really it was distracting) ended up recognizing his mother –not too soon though, otherwise we would have missed the oedipean scene in which he tried to kiss her. But the ungrateful son turned out to be Margaret's murder, swapping Oedipus' shoes for Orestes! Please don't blame me for liking my Greeks!
We've been told that, unlike Margaret's ghost, Actives' imprint is usually the result of various mental bits Topher's genius gets to combine (we even saw him make his cuisine in on episode). Basically an imprint is a sort of mental version of the Frankenstein's monster! In other words, a constructed persona. So usually imprints don't mind the body they have, because it isn't a new body for them. Their persona never owned another body. It was quite different this time. Margaret's persona was used to another body, yet she seemed to feel at home in Caroline's. I know there was a line about her joy to possess a younger body but I don't think it was enough. I spotted some laziness in the writing there. There were things that Echo said that didn't sound at all like something Margaret would have said, even though they showed her correcting her daughter's language once. And I'm afraid that again the acting was not up to it.

As for me I didn't see Margaret at all, I kept seeing Eliza Dushku as usual, and it bothered me, it prevented me from being sold. Yet, because her son could tell it was her, the episode seems to tell us that Margaret was still herself, would still have bene herself in any body. But in this case it means that the body doesn't matter that much, and the persona lies in the mind, which is always a construct in one way or another(Stephen I'm stealing your words here, but I don't feel guilty for you stole The Bard's by twisting the line from The Merchant of Venice!). So Mellie, while being an imprinted version of November, is a real person. She breathes, she eats, she feels and, above all, she thinks. She is in love with Paul, she has fears, she worries and gets upset. What would happen to Mellie if the personality of the girl November used to be were to be restored? She would disappear...she would die. There's a dilemma in here, and I think we should feel for Paul Ballard who must have sensed it if not really thought it through. On the one hand, he knows that Mellie is a fantasy neighbour whom the Dollhouse made up and sent to keep an eye on him. On the other hand, he sees her feelings, cares about her and doesn't want to hurt her.

So did I like the episode? It works on the intellectual level; I like its depth and I like that it made me think. But the main plot with Echo's scenes didn't work for me. Victor was once again credible, so was Sierra as Topher's buddy, but ED can't play such a difficult part. As for the C-plot, whenTopher's actions echo Adelle's self-gratifications– and there's a double parallel since lonely Topther used Sierra to be his buddy while Adelle as Madam Lonelyheart had used Victor in the previous eppy– it was fun, and worked on a meta level (but one would say thta the whole show is meta-fiction rather than science-fiction). Topher the geek playing Sci-Fi games with a doll seems like a commentary of Joss' own actions as the producer of Dollhouse(and before that of Firefly).

It was a funny coincidence to watch the finale of Heroes just after having seen "Haunted". I almost said out loud "Hey Sylar got dollhoused!"Parkman's power added to the shape-shifting caused the ultimate alienation that Sylar had been struggling against in the previous episode. Sylar became a vessel for a ghost, just like Caroline' s body was for Margaret's spirit. It's really all connected!

Last but not least, I finally saw the second episode of Ashes to ashes.

I am not too hot on the Mason stuff, it seems a bit easy, but perhaps it works given that it's all about symbols and metaphors.

I'm sad for Raymundo whom I've come to love. I want to redeem Ray, and I loved how he turned into a Blade Runner last week, finding the reflection on the photograph (Chris compared him to Harrison Ford in case we hadn't spotted the allusion). Now he seems lost again.

The episode deals with esotericism anyway, with the old Fortune Teller. I noticed that she said to Alex things that could be interpreted in different ways. No doubt that Alex believed she meant that she was about to die, that her life line was fading. But she never said "your", she said "the life line".

As for Gene in front of the Fortune Teller who wnated to read the cards for him, it was priceless. "Read a magazine, I'm busy!" cracked me up.

Also Alex' hallucinations were well done.

I'm intrigued by all the references to Lady Di. Last time it was about The Pont de l'Alma, this time there's Gene's line when seeing the car crash "the death of a princess" and there all are the allusions to Sam. First Hyde, now Tyler...I'm torn between two explanations. The references to Diana are either about Sam or about Mollie (isn't any daughetr her mother's princess?).

Last week I thought that the devil taunting Alex was Super Mac, but it seemed too obvious and now I wonder.

In this second episode, the scene in which she talked to "the devil in uniform", after she witnessed the masonic ceremony, left me suspicious. It could be Gene ..because he "looked and sounded like" Sam, and basically Gene is supposed to be a part of Sam Tyler. That scene is significant, I guess. It's a clue.

Anyway Alex' "I thought I'd lost you" line was adorable. I wonder if it might echo some other loss that Alex deeply feared. Yes I'm still thinking that Mollie might be the one who took a bullet. Anyway the point of the episode seemed to be that Gene is HER hero and could not become Mac's hero, because "her world" would come to nothing if Gene weren't the shining knight in armour she's made out of him. She needs him to be the Gene Genie. She needs him to be the one who saves little girls. He even named a new baby girl!

Gene was the opposite for Sam. He was the dark side, the Hyde part of him, he was a "tumour", the inner demon.

It's an interesting twist.

My favourite doll

Fri, 24 Apr 2009 18:17:59 GMT

I found, via whedonesque , this interview of the actor playing Victor on Dollhouse.

I guess that the show has grown on me for I missed it last week and I look forward to watching the new episode.

There was no Lost this week and I've been feeling tv show deprived even though I watched of course the first episode of the second season of Ashes to ashes.

I don't have much to say about it, not sure about the Super Mac' stuff –it looks like a rehash of Life on Mars season 2 (the episode with that adorable ending scene between Sam and Gene) – but the Gene Genie is back so I'm satisfied. And he was so moved by that poor Manchester gal...because she was from Hyde like Sam!
I liked the Princess Margaret thing (she was such a naughty girl in the 80's), the Molly show and that Alex talked back to the human talking dog until Gene told her to stop frigthening the dog!

I'm still pretty convinced that Alex is not in the same situation as Sam Tyler was in LoM, and that she is just imagining the bullet-induced coma. I think she is either Sam's new alter ego, and her whole pre-80's background is a figment of his imagination, or , and it's more likely, Alex is real but in some catatonic state, taking refuge in the Gene Hunt's world she read about because it's better than facing reality.

Artificial Intelligence and connections

Thu, 16 Apr 2009 18:00:42 GMT

A few days ago, I heard about Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles' fate as I was finishing Richard Powers' Galatea 2.2, and I watched Caprica pilot thanks to the Internet fairy.

When I first heard that there would be a the spin-off, I was rather skeptical. I didn't really see the point of telling the story of what happened some fifty years before the Cylons destroyed the colonies, so I wasn't sure I would watch the 82 minute movie, less alone like it, but I thought I could give it a try, and honestly I did enjoy Caprica. It is quite different from BSG even though there are connections through Bear McCreary's music, the Adama family (William isn't Bill yet but he's there as a young boy) and the "birth" of the first "cybernetic life-form node" that is a CYLON. The line "A Cylon? Interesting." was a killer.
I spotted flaws here and there, and yes there was some stuff that bothered me but I was left wanting more, wanting to know what would be going to happen next. I guess it's a good thing given that Caprica is a prequel! The Greystones are really intriguing and touching, especially Daniel. Eric Stoltz was simply amazing.

Also looks like Ron Moore and Joss Whedon keep giving nods to each other's work. I couldn't help noticing that two characters have names that connect them to Buffy: Cyrus Xander and Clarisse Willow! It can't be a coincidence! Or was it Jane Espenson's wink at her former boss?

So I recommend Caprica to anyone who likes intelligent Sci-Fi. You don't even need to have seen BSG in order to understand it. But it's better to see to pilot, unspoiled!

The opening scene in the virtual club was surprisingly crude and well done. I really liked the scenes between Zoe and Virtual Zoe too, or between Vi Zoe and Lacy or Daniel. The show raised good questions about reality vs virtuality, about identity, but also about sacrifice, family and loss and the way we deal with it, themes BSG has already played with.

There was definitely a bit of "Frankestein meets Faust" in the making of the first Cylon.

The only bit that the show didn't deliver well, was the STO stuff. It seems forced and botched up. It was nice to see Polly Walker again though.

Eric Stoltz shone in every scene he was in. I liked the actress who played his wife too. The scene, towards the end, when Daniel thought the data was lost for ever because of the error that occured after he downloaded Vi Zoe into the Cylon body, was poignant.

The first cylon shooting the domestic robots was a brilliant scene but chilling, especially the execution of the last little robot laying on the floor, ana execution that echoed the murder of the minister by the Tauron mobster and even recalled the human sacrifice we saw on the opening scene in the Vi club. Zoe waking up in her new brand non virtual body and seeing her reflection on the table was something we could see coming but it was efficient and quite terrifying.

The pilot gave new meaning to the phrase "the ghost in the machine"!.

Richard Powers' Galatea 2.2 is terrific. I loved it. I can't believe that there isn't a lot more fans of Powers out there. He is a genius and manages to move me every time (I cried reading certain pieces from The Time of Our Singing!). For anyone interested, Galatea 2.2 tells the story of a writer anmed Richard Powers, who's going through a life crisis and gets involved by acognitive neurologist in a crazy project: building an intelligent machine, a machine who can read and comment on the readings in question. Here is what I wrote about the novel on my Goodreads account.

Joyeuses Pâques !

Mon, 13 Apr 2009 18:04:52 GMT

Le chocolat se déguste comme du bon vin, on y met le prix, on le garde en bouche et on le laisse libérer sa chaleur, ses arômes et ses saveurs. Le chocolat séduit par son éclat, s'offre à la dent comme à la langue, s'adoucit, se transforme, se répand. Il épouse les parois qui l'accueillent et fournit une ultime caresse orale en fondant sous le palais. Corsé ou élégant, il déborde de sensualité et peut même vous tourner la tête!

Chaque année, à cette date, les plus grands chocolatiers parisiens rivalisent de créativité pour rendre hommage à la déesse Cacao.
La maison Hévin joue l'audace, habille son poisson d'un noeud pap', et s'inspire des célèbre statues de l'île de...Pâques!

Hermet lui façonne des masques rappelant les arts premiers:

Pendant ce temps La Maison du Chocolat se la joue champêtre...

Pour ma part, n'ayant pas les moyens d'acheter ma drogue noire chez ces nobles artisans qui sont aussi des artistes, je me fournis près de chez moi à la Confiserie du Maine . C'est déjà bien cher, mais c'est si bon...

It's time for a resurrection

Sun, 12 Apr 2009 19:41:13 GMT

for Dollhouse and Terminator:The Sarah Connor Chronicles for it's likely that these tv shows won't get another season. Joss himself is quite pessimistic about a possible season 2 for Dollhouse and TSCC's final episode looked like a series finale.

It saddens me for I've come to like TSCC despite some stuff that bothers me, and the last two episodes of Dollhouse were good, not perfect but clever the way Joss can make a tv show clever, you know. *sigh*

First off, the episode had a good title. BTW the house of love sounds like the name of an Asian brothel! But it fitted in Sierra's engagement and it echoes Boyd's comment on "prostitution".
Secondly its structure that tells the story from four sides or the four main dolls' point of view(Echo's at the beginning and in the end, Victor's, November's and Sierra's) was well done.

I liked how the dolls reveal stuff about all the people around them. Through Victor, wonderful Victor (the actor is just so brilliant), we learnt a lot about Adelle. I liked how the concepts of pimp/client/doll got turned around. But there was more. There were little details connecting everybody and playing with things that appear, things that could be, things that might be...A doll could hide another one as Paul found out when Mellie switched onto November mode; a client could hide another one, like Mrs Lonely hiding Catherine hiding Adelle Dewitt; a handler could take the place of another handler; a spy might conceal another spy too...

Sierra's sexy shoes echoed Adelle's line about wearing them; Roger, not knowing he was Victor the doll, imagined that he could be a client or made a doll after Catherine/Adelle because she was perfect. The reversal thing was a bit heavy, the irony was obvious but there was a more subtle reversal going on. Echo's wip was echoed by Catherine's foil. BTW the fencing scene looked like an illustration by example of Echo's speech from the opening scene. Adelle, the usual dominatrix, needed to let it go. Victor/Roger played Echo's role. When job got tough Catherine trusted Roger...to hug her, to handle her. Nothing was real but Catherine did trust Roger with her life. Adelle seemed to play the role of the client but her true fantasy was to be a doll. Caring Victor was perfect. BTW his taking care of her seemed echoed by Echo's initiative and Adelle's last line about Echo protecting the Dollhouse.
Also in a way her talking to Roger about the Dollhouse reminded me of Echo or November "discussing" the Dollhouse with Paul. The cleverness made me forget the sooo cliche way the end scene was shot (yes I mean sheet being always there between the bodies, Adelle hiding her breasts afterwards, the usual silly stuff you always see on American mainstream networks when it comes to sex scenes).

Through Echo's we got bits about all the Dollhouse team–nice Doctor Saunders remains a sort of mystery though– and the final revelation about Dominic (my less favourite part of the episode btw). He was a spy but was he the inside person who has been passing messages to Paul?

"Born to run" was really entertaining despite its flaws. The show doesn't always satisfy me intellectually but it works on an emotional level. That finale worked even though I much prefer the way Lost deals with time travel (by the way "What happened happened" was the rule on which the first Terminator movie was based ages ago). The Cameron/John scenes could have been better written(yes that sex scene that wasn't really a sex scene except that he was on top and inside her...), but the actors did their best and delivered.
I liked the eel being part of the T1000 and rejoining the Weaver body eventually. I liked how the show kept playing with religious hints...Catherine Weaver's "our son" was spot on. Ellison should have been more shaken by the revelation about her not being human but well...they were in a hurry. Both John and John-Henry were born to run, and they both cut the cord here. Catherine followed her god-son. The parallel with Sarah who kept saying that her son was dead still worked. Except that Sarah stayed behind. She was already renouncing in jail. Did she let him go eventually, as any mother must do someday, or was she somehow abjuring the John Connor religion, thus foreshadowing the ending? I didn't like seeing that boy Kyle again but I enjoyed the idea of breaking the myth of John Connor the Messiah with a future where his name meant nothing to nobody. The ending scene pulverized the very core of the Terminator movies and of the tv show (since it was no longer a Sarah's chronicle) but it was daring.

At the end of the day I think they found a finale that worked very well to end not only the season but also the show, in case it is cancelled. After this finale a third season is possible...with Summer playing a real girl this time, the girl Cameron's body was made after, Allison, the girl whose memories wonky Cameron had (or did she mistake data for memory because she was damaged?). It could even have a slashy subtext about the relationship between John and John-Henry if the latter has somehow made Cameron's chip part of himself. It could be interesting to see John torn between the body (Allison) and the chip he both loves!

I would like to see that, but I find this episode satisfying as a series finale as well.

To the underworld

Thu, 09 Apr 2009 17:21:19 GMT

I don't know if I should be punished but, instead of marking papers in the afternoon I downloaded the last episode of Lost, "Dead is Dead" and then I watched it...

Here comes a long review with a lot of Egyptian stuff.

At least we know about Penny! I mean I couldn't believe that she was dead and I was sure that Desmond was the one who had beaten Ben to a pulp but I needed that scene. Thank you Lost.

It was a nice echo to the night when Ben took baby Alex – little Charlie playing her role as the innocent baby while Penny played both her role as the potential murdered daughter and Rousseau's role as the mother who had to be spared– and it added to Ben's character study. We were told in the previous episode that young Ben must have lost his innocence, yet he showed mercy and didn't want to kill mother and child. I think that Alex, because she was a harmless and vulnerable baby, represented his lost innocence, something he couldn't help but clinging to. It made sense that the smoke monster took her shape eventually. In a way young Ben left his "soul" in the underworld where Richard Alpert took him to save his life. There's always a price to pay, according to some balance that the Island borrowed from the Classics(the Greeks but also the Egyptians, hence the hieroglyphs, Anubis facing the monster). Alex had to die because Alex embodied the sacrifice that the island asked for when Kate and Sawyer made the decision to save Benjamin. She was Ben's heart. By the way the theme of sacrificing/saving a baby has been used on the show before with Aaron, recalling Abraham's trial and the Old Testament this time. It's also a tropes in Greek Mythology and tragedy...especially when it comes to daughters(Iphigenia for instance).

So under that temple, Ben has been facing his greatest sin but also showing his inner goodness, in a travesty of a trial that looks like the Egyptian weighing of the heart (Ib). The episode works like the book of Dead.

I really like the fact that Ben is both instrumental to the other characters' journey (something that "What Happened Happened" pointed out) and a true character himself, with weaknesses, emotions and a kind of a journey.

John Locke was uber cool again. Terry O'Quinn never ceases to amaze me. He is such a talented actor! I like self-confident Locke as much as I like vulnerable Locke. And he still wanted to help Ben in the end. There's something very pure in Locke. If I wanted to connect his journey to ancient Egypt again, I'd say it is his Ka or rather his Akh (which is the Ka released by death plus the Ba), a sort of ghost living in afterlife– that is seen walking around.

Or perhaps Locke is Osiris himself...except that the role kinda suits Richard Alpert, the man who wears khôl and never ages!

Also what Ilana (whom I recognised at least as the bitch Gaia from Rome!) asked Lapidus before hitting him was quite intriguing: "What lies in the shadow of the statue?". Well, the shadow (sheut) was one of the various parts of someone's "soul" (along with Ib, Ka, Akh, Ren and Ba). Nobody could exist without a shadow for it contained something of the person it represents. The shadow was represented graphically as a small human figure painted completely black, as a figure of death.

Isn't Ben supposed to become John Locke's shadow now, following him everywhere?

But there's more. Ba was everything that made an individual unique, similar to the notion of "personality'", so it struck me that John Locke insisted in telling Sun that, despite having died and then being back to the living(or so it seems), he was still the same man he has always been. He also pointed out that Ben following and asking questions he had no answers to, was a way for Ben to know what it was to be him(that is John Locke).

So actually many scenes of this episode recalled The Book of The Dead.
The Book of the Dead, is the collection of spells that helped a person in their afterlife journey, had the Egyptian name of the Book of going forth by day. It was about avoiding the perils of the afterlife so it contained spells to assure "not dying a second time in the underworld".

What did John Locke say again to Ben when they arrived on the main island's dock? That there would be no point for him to die a second time!

And the ghost of Alex warned Ben against not trying to kill John Locke again. The spells from the Coffin Texts were also there to "grant memory always" to a person, so I wonder if there's a connection to what happened to young Ben when Richard Alpert brought him to the temple and if it could somehow explain Ben's memory loss.

Speaking of docks, I liked the parallel between the Locke/Ben scene on the island and the marina scene, with Ben being trown this time off the dock and into the water after Desmond beated him. Little details like that make me love Lost.

Speaking of little details I'm wondering whether Rousseau's music box that the camera showed when Ben stole Alex, was supposed to establish a connection to Sun and her ballerina.

On a last and more shallow note, the way Ben summoned the Smoke Monster made me laugh. I mean, it was like flushing the toilet or rather emptying the very dirty water ouf of a bathtub/basin and it reminded me of the French phrase "ne pas jeter le bébé avec l'eau du bain!" which fitted the episode. But I guess it's simply a metaphor about the muddy waters of one's subconscious and about clearing up one conscience.

In other news I really hope that Fox isn't going to cancel Terminator:The Sarah Connor Chronicles. It has flaws but I'm hooked, and it's funny to watch the birth of A.I on that show especially since I'm reading Richard Powers' Galatea 2.2 .

Did I say how much I love Richard Powers? He's really becoming my favourite American writer, along with Daniel Mendelsohn.