BuysOk, after a couple weeks of frugal existence, I got loads of stuff this week, mostly DVDs. There's the UK version of House of Cards, Three Days of Hamlet, Disciples of Shaolin, Pina, Tai Chi Zero, Doctor Who's The Visitation Special ...
BuysOk, after a couple weeks of frugal existence, I got loads of stuff this week, mostly DVDs. There's the UK version of House of Cards, Three Days of Hamlet, Disciples of Shaolin, Pina, Tai Chi Zero, Doctor Who's The Visitation Special Edition, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, Detachment (see below for these last two), the complete K9 series from Australia, and Warehouse 13 Season 3. Books too: I'm well into A Feast for Crows, the fourth volume of The Song of Ice and Fire (Game of Thrones to some of you), so I got vol. 5, A Dance with Dragons. Annnnnnd Cubicle 7's print version of the First Doctor Sourcebook arrived in the mail. It's awwwwesommmme!"Accomplishments"DVDs: Kiss Kiss Bang Bang is Shane Black's directorial debut, and after Iron Man 3, I was curious to see his first pairing with Robert Downey Jr. The result is a film noir comedy that gets amusingly meta about the genre's narration, and pleasantly surprises with its character choices. The Hollywood setting made the idea of characters knowing they're in a film justifiable, and the story came off as something that might take place in the Elmore Leonard universe. Val Kilmer's Gay Perry steals the show, and is probably the most memorable character Kilmer has played since Doc Holliday in Tombstone. And I've loved Michelle Monaghan since I saw her in Source Code, and would definitely like to see her in more films (not romcoms, please). I did find the casual nudity on the exploitative side, but I've otherwise got no complaints. The DVD includes an amusing commentary track with Black, Downey Jr. and Kilmer, and a gag reel.Detachment tells the story of a long-term substitute teacher who spends a month in a school with more than its fair share of problem kids. But this isn't Dangerous Minds. The kids won't be saved by discovering dance or something. No, this is the opposite picture. There's a bleakness to Detachment that's rather poignant, and you'll only find hope in small, fleeting, even ambiguous moments. Though sometimes openly "art house", most of the film is in a "cinema vérité" style that's only broken by the fact we can pretty much recognize the school's entire staff - Andrien Brody (amazing performance), Christina Hendricks, James Caan, Lucy Liu, etc. - not that I'd get rid of any of them. The kids aren't just unknowns, they're somehow unknowable. Detachment is told from the teachers' perspective, and addresses the educational system's many problems. I have a number of friends who are high school teachers, and though Detachment seemingly presents an extreme, these problems have come up in conversation. No easy answers in this, and I'm not even sure I agree with its representation of the modern classroom, but I think what it does best is open these questions up for debate. I recommend this film to any teacher OR parent without any reserve. I think it should be part of the conversation many of our countries should have about education. The DVD has no extras, so the film must stand alone and its questions remain open.Though I'd seen the pilot and the Eureka crossover episodes, I finally sat down to watch the whole of Warehouse 13 this week. I don't know why I waited so long. After all, the year before it premiered, I was running a GURPS campaign with almost exactly the same set-up (though the Warehouse number was 23), and Joanne Kelly was someone I was tapped into since she appeared in the superlative Slings & Arrows. Perhaps the premise reminded me too much of the old Friday the 13th TV series, and I feared the show would quickly become formulaic, with its artifact of the week, and all that. I shouldn't have worried. Like its cousin Eureka, the writers change things up a lot, introduce a recurring villain, delve into the characters' back stories, and lay in several mysteries over the course of Season 1's 12 episodes. And like Eureka, they thread the line between comedy, drama, and genre quite effectively. I'm sorry if I have Eureka on my mind, by the way, but W13 sort of asked for