Don’t Wanna Play That Part

We’ve all heard the phrase: “Men are simple.”  Men have said it, women have said it, and I’m sure no one has ever meant for it to encompass all men at all times.  Recently, Lena Dunham said it in reference to writing male characters for her HBO series, Girls.  Dunham has been hailed by critics and fans alike for writing complex, multifaceted female characters, girls who aren’t reduced to one stereotype or another.  But her male characters have been criticized as being one-dimensional, men without ambition or goals other than to impress (or even just fuck) a woman.

I watch Girls and for the most part, I like it.  It’s weird and gross and often makes me uncomfortable but somehow, all at the same time, it is bizarrely appealing.  I would agree that the female characters are more fully developed than the male characters but I wouldn’t go so far as to call the men stereotypes.  At least, not male stereotypes.  Oddly, they seem to me to fit stereotypes more typically associated with women.  Charlie is so lovesick for Marnie in season one that he fails to notice how much she doesn’t want him around.  Even after she humiliates and breaks up with him, he gives her one chance after another to get him back, alienates his new girlfriend and eventually cheats on her with Marnie, and when Marnie finally admits that she loves him too and wants to be with him again, all he can say is, “That’s all I ever wanted.”

Adam, who I’ve always found more than a little scary, reluctantly falls for Hannah, then pines for her endlessly, never letting go of his adoration for her even after she treats him like garbage.  And when she calls him in a pathetic appeal for attention, does he tell her to fuck off, he’s got a new woman now, one who doesn’t mess with his head and call the cops on him for no reason?  No.  Instead, he drops everything and literally runs across town (shirtless, no less) to save her.  Save her from what, you ask?  Her own insanity.  That’s right.  She wasn’t actually in danger of anything except indulging in her obsessive compulsive disorder.

And Ray, the male character who showed the most promise as far as depth and range were concerned, has been written into a lazy slacker who lacks the drive to do anything with his life until he falls for Shoshanna and suddenly, wants to be a better man so as to keep her from leaving him.

We’re used to seeing women in these roles – desperately seeking the object of their affection despite obvious signs of said object’s indifference.  (There are so many of these women, in fact, an entire book has been written and published to snap them out of it.)  And it is refreshing not to see women in these roles but it would be even better to see no one in them.  Not that Dunham’s men are complete caricatures; there are moments wherein they display real depth and honesty.  And, of course, I’m not suggesting that no man should ever be depicted as lovesick.  Personally, I don’t think Dunham has done quite as bad of a job with her male characters as some do.  But she is a woman and for that reason alone, I’m sure it’s easier for her to write women.

Nor do I think that her comment about men being simple was intended to deride men as inferior creatures.  She spoke specifically of the relationships men have with women in comparison to women’s friendships with each other, which she believes are more complicated because they aren’t based on sex or romantic love.  I can’t say that that’s always true but I’m sure it is some of the time, especially for women and men in their twenties when so many of their relationships are about figuring out who they are and who they want to be.  What I find more special about Dunham’s Girls is that her characters are as (or more) tortured over their troubled friendships as they are over their sexual relationships, which isn’t something we’re used to seeing in female characters.  And I think that’s actually her point.

~Nikki

Across The Harlan County Line

The concept of duality isn’t new to storytelling, nor is it played out.  When used effectively, it can draw together characters and opposing plot lines and provide them with a kind of symmetry that enriches every aspect of the story.  From its pilot episode, Justified has been an example of duality done well with main character Raylan Givens and the character who has grown into a second male lead, Boyd Crowder.  (Side note: the character of Boyd Crowder was originally intended to die in season 1 but fans and critics alike found him so irresistibly appealing – due in no small part to Walton Goggins’s brilliantly charismatic portayal of him – that Justified’s makers rewrote his story arc and invented a new, much larger purpose for him.  To the folks who made that decision, I say: thank you.)  Raylan and Boyd each have opposing goals; one is a man of the law, the other a determined outlaw.  Their paths continually cross, their lives invariably intertwine and while they claim to be more enemies than friends, there is no mistaking the connection that exists between them.

Boyd and Raylan have had a kinship from the start.  They “dug coal together” and apparently, formed some manner of unbreakable bond while doing it.  Raylan proved incapable of killing Boyd in season one and has found himself defending or helping him in one way or another since.  Despite Raylan’s interference in Boyd’s illegal affairs, he has voluntarily saved Raylan’s life a time or two as well.  But in season 4, the connection between these two reached a new depth, their lives and characterizations so intricately paralleled, it now feels as though one cannot exist without the other.  This 4th season of Justified hasn’t intertwined their plot lines as much as mirrored them, giving us viewers the gift of perfectly executed duality in its telling.

At the season’s start, both Raylan and Boyd were planning for a bright future, taking extra work and storing expendable cash, all the while keeping their eyes on the endgame.  Raylan has a baby on the way and wanted more than anything to be a better father than his dad was (to his bitter end).  Boyd wanted to rid himself of the illegal, seedy business he inherited from his father.  You see, not only do their individual characters alternately mirror and oppose each other, but within each man opposing forces exist, good and evil fight to gain ground.  Raylan and Boyd come from the same stock of hardened criminals, men who earned their living in illegal and violent ways, men who lived and, as it turns out, died by the sword.  Raylan tried to break the cycle when he became a deputy U.S. Marshall and focused his efforts on capturing criminals but has struggled with dark impulses all along.  As Nicky Augustine pointed out in the season’s closing episode, he “hides behind his badge” but it’s murder all the same.  Like Raylan, Boyd’s history is full of back and forth between the good and bad within him.  Sometimes it’s hard to remember him as the thieving white supremacist he was in season one, that is, until we see the word SKIN tattooed across his knuckles.  He found God and changed his life, genuinely reformed until his followers met their untimely end thanks to Boyd’s family ties, a tragic affair that shook him to his core and sent him back to a life of crime, this time determined to be smarter, better, determined not to lead innocent men to their slaughter but instead to profit from the wicked and eventually build a gateway to a better life, a legitimate life with limitless possibilities for the future.

But by this season’s end, both Boyd and Raylan had failed.  Boyd couldn’t climb out of his daddy’s shadow any more than he was able to climb the social ladder in Harlan county, just as Raylan failed to shake off Arlo’s legacy of morally bankrupt rationalizations and violence.  They began the season full of hope and promise, looking forward to the future.  Each ended it with their eyes on what lay behind them, consumed with the sins of the past, haunted by loss.

~Nikki

5 Reasons Why Jimmy Fallon Is The Best Talk Show Host In Recent Television History

I’ll admit that I rarely watch late night television.  If I do happen to stay up past 11pm, I typically favor reruns of “30 Rock” or “The Big Bang Theory” over talk shows.  But one very special TV host has begun to turn those tides, to make me want to watch his late night talk show over the tried and true episodes of my beloved TV series.  I’m sure you know who I’m talking about.  Here are five examples of why he’s the best late night talk show host in my lifetime:

All of the “History Of Rap” segments.  This is the most recent (and every bit as good as the others):

This little piece of hilarity:

He’s so fun and charismatic, he even convinced the FIRST LADY OF THE UNITED STATES to participate!

And one of my personal faves, an oldie but a goodie that combines a little ditty about my favorite holiday with a spot-on impression of one of the best songwriters of all time:

~Nikki

Putting This Place In My Rearview

It’s snowing where I am.  Yes, you read that right.  The kids in the neighborhood are on Spring Break and it’s snowing right now.  I’m watching it gently fall as I type this.  That’s what I get for living in Ohio, right?  I know, I know.  And usually around this time every year, I try to talk my husband into moving out of state.  The only problem is, we don’t know where to go.  Setting aside the obvious economical issues of the day (crappy housing market, limited job possibilities, etc.), there are a great many things to consider.  For example, my hubby and I actually did move to coastal Virginia after graduating college.  We found jobs, got an apartment and for the most part, settled into the area.  And there were several aspects of Virginian life that suited us, not the least of which was living within 20 minutes of the ocean.  The weather was perfect – never too much below freezing in the winter and keeping the changing seasons.  Since fall is my absolute favorite, I don’t know that I could live without it.  But I also need hot summers.  In fact, the hotter, the better.  In those ways, Norfolk, VA delivered.  What we didn’t care for was the rather extreme congestion of the area, the somewhat higher cost of living and the slight but significant cultural differences.  I won’t get into detail but I will say that I never felt like I quite fit in with the people around me.  For the first time in my life, I understood the differences between a “northerner” and a “southerner.”

So, we returned to Ohio and got new jobs and a house and six years later, here we still are.  Not committed to staying, per se, but without a clear picture of where it is we’d like to go.  We’ve traveled a bit in recent years and found things we’ve liked in several cities.  I love Boston, for example, and my husband fell for San Francisco, which also impressed me.  But the outrageous cost of living there keeps me grounded in reality.  We both enjoyed Seattle and plan to return for an extended visit as soon as time and means permit.  We had a blast in Moab and the two Portlands, Oregon and Maine.  Vermont’s lush vegetation took my breath away and Sacramento’s sunshine made it hard to leave.  I didn’t see nearly enough of Colorado  - both it and the Black Hills of South Dakota have been calling my name for too long.

All things considered, I don’t think I’m suited for the South or the cold Midwestern states (North Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin) but the Pacific Northwest, California, Colorado, and the New England states seem like real possibilities.  I’ve never been to Arizona or New Mexico but I don’t know that my husband would like the extreme summer heat.  So, today I offer you a poll.  Click on the place you think is most suitable for us given all I’ve mentioned above (assuming we’d be able to find jobs, that is) and if you’d like, leave your reasons in the comments below.  Feel free to be specific; on this fine, snowy spring day, I’m open to suggestions.

~Nikki

I’ve Seen The End, I’ve Seen The Beginning

The title sounds promising, am I right?  Intriguing and odd, appealing to fans of offbeat indie flicks and hipsters who pride themselves on thinking outside the box.  I admit the name caught my attention (no, I’m not a hipster, thank you for asking), much more than the title of the short story on which it’s based: “Kneller’s Happy Campers” by Etgar Keret.  But, while it is everything the title suggests, and is mildly entertaining, I can’t come up with a good reason why it’s on Entertainment Weekly’s “The 50 Best Movies You’ve Never Seen” list.

Wristcutters: A Love Story is about a young man, Zia (Patrick Fugit) who commits suicide after his girlfriend breaks up with him.  Once deceased, he resides in a particular place in the afterlife reserved for people who’ve committed suicide that is just like life, “only a little worse,” where he works at a pizza joint and becomes besties with Eugene, a Russian musician who “offed” by electrocuting himself onstage immediately following a gig.  Shea Whigham plays Eugene and he and Fugit have reasonably decent chemistry as two very unlikely friends.  When Zia learns that the girl who broke his heart and led him to slit his wrists, the lovely Desiree (Leslie Bibb), subsequently killed herself and is now looking for Zia, he and Eugene set off in Eugene’s pos car to find her.  Along the way, they pick up Mikal (Shannyn Sossamon), a beautiful girl who claims she’s landed in suicide purgatory by mistake and is seeking the “People In Charge” to appeal her case.  They cross paths with a few unusual characters and eventually find something better than what they originally sought.

It’s a good premise and an effective hook but the problem is, once it has you, it doesn’t exactly know what to do with you.  Patrick Fugit is damned delightful (why isn’t he in more things?) and the performances are good enough but the story itself leaves much to be desired.  Tom Waits has a small but seemingly significant role – I say “seemingly” because he plays Kneller, leader of a sort of commune called “Kneller’s Happy Campers,” who eventually helps Zia find Desiree and even inadvertently helps Mikal find the PIC but his character and place in the story is so bizarrely surreal, it feels much less important than it should.  Mark Boone Junior (of Sons of Anarchy fame), Nick Offerman and Will Arnett all have cameos but even they fall relatively flat.  The humor is mediocre, the plot weak and the resolution, while not exactly disappointing, is far from gratifying.  And that’s the biggest problem with Wristcutters: it never gets you invested enough in either the story or its characters to evoke any real emotion.  It’s just merely okay.

I’ve certainly seen worse movies and at 88 minutes in length, it won’t waste much of your time.  But I can’t say I recommend it.  There are many more satisfying ways to spend an hour and a half.

~Nikki

Break My Heart And Bare My Soul

I watched the first two seasons of Breaking Bad more than a year ago on Netflix and became instantly hooked.  Nevertheless, after finishing the second season, I had to walk away from it.  Not forever.  And certainly not because of any defect with the series itself.  Quite the opposite, in fact.  I needed a break from it because of its commitment to realism, which is far superior to any television show or film I’ve ever seen that deals with addiction.  There isn’t the slightest bit of romanticism or glamor.  It is pure, stark addiction in all its ugly glory.  And because of that, it actually got so painful to watch that I had to step back and breathe for a bit.  Thankfully, I’ve never battled addiction (other than a few years spent nursing a nicotine addiction which I’ve long since given up and a current love affair with dependence on caffeine which I believe to be relatively harmless) but I have been close to a few who have and listen, if you know nothing of it, count yourself lucky because it is one of the most grotesque, heartbreaking and utterly useless experiences to have ever plagued humanity.  I’m speaking specifically of drug and/or alcohol addiction which is particularly abundant in Breaking Bad (season 2 especially).  Hence, my year-long respite.  Finally, a couple of weeks ago I returned to the phenomenal series, ready to brave whatever cold truth it had to throw at me.  And folks, let me tell you, it is so worth it.

I am now nearly all caught up.  I have but one more episode to watch before the final eight episodes air this summer and all I can say is that this show is one of the smartest, well-planned and superbly executed shows ever created.  EVER.  No exaggeration; it is nothing short of extraordinary.  The growth and changes (some evolve, some devolve) in every character are stunning and even though some major major major shit happens – I’m talking insanely tense, gripping shit – the show’s pace is expertly managed.  It doesn’t rush anything.  Not in the smallest, slightest way.  Which adds to its realism because it feels like the pace of life.  There are these moments that are kind of slow and calm and at first you think, why are they dwelling on this?  And then you realize – it’s because this is just like life.  Those quiet moments in your life during which you actually get to pause and think about your own problems, recent events, the world around you or even just take stock.  They never last too long and that’s probably a good thing but they do crop up now and again and the writers of Breaking Bad not only perfectly depict them but they carefully weave them throughout to lull you the way those moments do – those brief periods in your life that very slowly enfold and evolve, making you forget just how quickly time is passing and how much of the world is changing and then all of a sudden you’re waist-deep in it and everything’s happening so fast, you barely even understand and suddenly it’s over and you remember to breathe – that is exactly how this show is!  Never have I seen such an eloquently paced series.  The balance they have struck makes Breaking Bad feel more real than anything else on TV, certainly now, maybe ever.

Not that its pace is the only thing that makes it so utterly real.  The characters themselves could be anyone – you, me, your neighbor, your sister, your brother-in-law, that guy you chat with in the break room every morning.  Watching them as individuals and their relationships to each other progress, change and evolve (or sometimes collapse) over the course of five seasons feels wholly natural, as honest and organic as the memories of your own personal relationships.  The outstanding acting by the entire cast, and the two leads in particular, give their characters a depth that’s far from standard.  Bryan Cranston deserves ALL THE AWARDS.  He and Aaron Paul will blow your mind and break your heart again and again and again.  And again.

Breaking Bad is a dark and heavy series and surely not for everyone.  Nor is it the kind of show you can put on and watch in marathon fashion.  It’s too intense for that.  I can stand only two episodes back to back before I need a break but that speaks more to its merit than anything else.  Because just as if it were real life, the shit they get into will wear you down.  You’ll find your heart racing, your palms sweating, your breath staggering and your chest aching as you watch and more than once, you’ll thank the universe that this isn’t your life.  Simultaneously, you’ll thank it for giving you this show.

~Nikki

More Than Words

How does one find the words to discuss the film, The Words?  This is a tricky one to talk about, as the good and bad cancel each other out to equal my least favorite of all emotions when it comes to entertainment, the dreaded “MEH.”

Bradley Cooper and Zoe Saldana star as Rory and Dora, a young (and ungodly beautiful) couple trying to make ends meet in NYC, while Rory fulfills his dream of becoming a published author.  This is no easy task, and the strain takes its toll on them both.  Dora is crazy supportive though, and before long, they get married.  They shoot off to Paris for a honeymoon (despite the fact that narrator Dennis Quaid – in a moment that perfectly exemplifies where this flick fails – just finished explaining how poor these two are), where Dora finds this gorgeous old leather case that she buys for her new husband as a kind of wedding present.  Some time later, back at home, Rory discovers a weathered-looking, typed manuscript in one of the folds of the case, clearly overlooked by Dora and the shop owner who sold it to her.  This film’s greatest success lies right here, in these moments of wonder and discovery wherein Rory, the writer struggling tirelessly to find his voice, to come into his own and gain success at his chosen craft, becomes so captivated by this hidden work that he decides to preserve it by typing it all out on his computer.  At this point, his intentions are only to see in on the screen and to keep it from being lost again.  A day or two later, he enters his apartment to find an emotional Dora who showers him with praise for the beautiful work she saw on his computer and read without his permission but it was so compelling she couldn’t help herself and finally! it’s the kind of story she always knew he had in him, the depth and beauty she never doubted was there and now he finally released it onto the page!  Rory begins to contradict her, to explain that the work isn’t his, but who can resist such ardent enthusiasm?  In a moment of profound weakness, Rory allows her to believe the story is his.

Dora eventually convinces Rory to submit it to his publisher and he foolishly gives in.  Somehow, Bradley Cooper and directors Brian Klugman and Lee Sternthal manage to convey Rory’s insecurity and doubt, his being swept away in the search for recognition and success.  Because he isn’t just some schmuck who steals someone else’s work and passes it off as his own.  Yes, he does present this work by an unknown author as his story and he does gain tremendous success from it but his drive for doing so – his longing for the success he never reached on his own and the years of relentless hard work without reward somehow make it seem understandable.  That is, until the day an older gentleman approaches him in the park and begins to tell him a story, his story, in fact, that so closely resembles the one Rory printed and published and for which, he is now famous.

Jeremy Irons plays the nameless old man whose work is ripped off and he is such a captivating presence on screen, Cooper’s performance suffers by comparison.  Anyone who has seen Silver Linings Playbook knows that Bradley Cooper is capable of truly great acting but in The Words, he doesn’t quite deliver.  The real defect of the movie, however, lies in the third layer of this story, the one containing the narrator.  Remember the narrator?  The famous, adored present-day author Clay Hammonds (Quaid) tells us Rory’s story and it quickly becomes obvious that Hammonds is the real-life Rory, telling his story to a star-struck lit student, Daniella (Olivia Wilde), making this a story within a story within a story, which sounds so much more interesting than it is.  It would have been leaps and bounds more enjoyable without the Quaid-Wilde layer, which added nothing to the story itself and whose scenes felt like filler, a useless distraction.

The Words isn’t a total waste of time; it’s just one of many films that aims higher than its reach.  Much like its leading character, it wants and strives for a level of greatness that simply isn’t there.

~Annie & Nikki