Reviews

Yesterday my depression reached its nadir (I had to think for about 30 seconds before remembering that word! I checked it; it's right!) and now it's swung back around to a general goofiness characterized by a fixation on things I find amusing, such as this article in today's Free Press:

If you follow me on Twitter, you probably know by now that the idea of the man who knows himself only as "Dennis" fills me with glee, although I acknowledge that the man's situation is probably pretty distressing in real life. I want to make a series of comics all about Dennis' adventures. He will have the same bland but haunted expression on his face throughout.

My mood has also been buoyed somewhat over the past few days by getting hooked on Villagers via NPR's Tiny Desk Concerts. They're an exceptionally listenable Irish folky alt-something group in the vein of Grizzly Bear or Fleet Foxes. Conor J. O'Brien, the band's frontman and creative powerhouse, has a truly gorgeous voice. They seem to be touring the West Coast this coming week, so if you're out there, check Villagers out. For the rest of us, I would highly recommend watching the aforementioned All Songs Considered performance or just buying their album outright.

I don't know if I can describe it any better than that. A conventional critical analysis of the film would be tricky. It's immaculately constructed. Other than some over-long, disorienting chase scenes and some clunky dialogue here and there, it borders on technical flawlessness.

I don't want to pose this as a criticism because I don't mean it as such, but it is a curiously humorless and emotionless film except for the very palpable longing Dom (Leonardo DiCaprio) feels for his family, represented beautifully by the motif of his children's backs. Inception presents the viewer with this powerful emotion, but for the most part does not allow us to experience it. We are held at arm's length, observers in the layers of dreams the characters traverse.

I guess this aspect of the film surprised me because one expects any movie about dreams to be immersive and subjective. Inception is most definitely experienced objectively. Rather than being immersed in the action, we are reminded of all the steps that must be taken to complete the process. Something at the complete other end of the spectrum but the same genre (roughly) would be Ocean's Eleven, where the viewer knows almost nothing about how the heist will happen and is swept up when it does. In Inception, the viewer is watching from the perspective of the mastermind, aware of every step.

Again, all of this is largely observation, not criticism. I thought the film was a masterwork. It's incredibly original. It's like nothing I've ever seen, and that's certainly saying something.

Highlights were Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Tom Hardy, who added really the only wryness and humor in the entire film. Ken Watanabe also got to be pretty fun. Gordon-Levitt's anti-gravity fight scenes were amazing. Cillian Murphy did an admirable job considering he wasn't given much to work with. DiCaprio, although very restrained, communicated Dom's tragedy perfectly.

I'm going to see it again tomorrow, so I may amend this entry if I have any other insights, but I felt I had to get out my thoughts right after the first viewing.

So, what did you think of Inception?

The show revolves around the employees of the IT Department of Reynholm Industries. In what has since become kind of formulaic (see The Big Bang Theory), the department's two geeks, Roy (Chris O'Dowd) and Moss (Richard Ayoade) chafe under the management of Jen (Katherine Parkinson), a technologically-impaired female stereotype. This set-up could have yielded a fairly dull multicamera sitcom, but creator and comedy impresario Graham Linehan keeps it fun, intelligent, and absurd.

The first series, all the way back in 2006, took an approach that was in many ways dependent on geek-oriented jokes, lampooning the technological ignorance of the general populace. I think it's since become a little passe as more and more people become at least functionally tech-savvy. Either that or it didn't ring quite true since there had to be a delicate balance struck between making the jokes accessible to a general audience and true to character.

In the more recent seasons, I think The IT Crowd has become more about the relationships between the characters, which is ultimately what every TV show--comedy or drama--has to have at its heart. It still remains a nice little homage to geek culture and showcases a lot of very strong comic acting. Matt Berry, playing Douglas, Reynholm Industries' oblivious, womanizing CEO, is always a joy to watch.

There are still things that bother me about it, though. While a studio audience and the laugh track that comes along with it is a mainstay of the traditional sitcom (a genre that still seems to have a lot more popularity in the UK), it gets pretty grating, especially as the percentage of the show shot as single-camera inserts increases. Would it really be that bad to make it all single camera and ditch the audience? 

I also appreciate that they've put some effort into making Jen geekier as the show progresses, but the concept of a slightly dumb, attractive woman placed in contrast to nerd guys is annoyingly stereotypical. Doesn't any show creator ever think about all the new dynamics and possibilities that would present themselves if these gender roles were inverted? Is it just that an audience would be too resistant to the concept of a female nerd, or even any female character not presented first and foremost as being attractive?

Anyways, despite all that, The IT Crowd is worth watching. May it be a stepping stone into the many other fantastic projects the talented comedians that make up its cast and creators have worked on, including The Mighty Boosh, Nathan Barley, Garth Marenghi's Darkplace, Man to Man with Dean Learner, Snuff Box, and Black Books.

I've been prodded toward this British pseudo-sketch comedy group a couple of times, first by Max a few years ago, and more recently by Mandy, a Twitter friend who first contacted me for the sole purpose of recommending LoG to me. Since I was swamped with school work and completely anxiety-ridden over my various exams and research papers, I decided it was a wonderful time to become fixated on something new. I poked around on YouTube, watching clips, decided I liked what I saw, and procured the series.

It straddles a fine line between sitcom and sketch comedy. The episodes all take place in the fictional northern-England village of Royston Vasey. Almost all the characters are played by Mark Gatiss, Steve Pemberton, and Reece Shearsmith (Jeremy Dyson writes for the group, but doesn't act), and their storylines are episodes or seasons long, not just one sketch.

The most interesting thing about the show is not that its humor is groundbreakingly unique, but rather the way in which that humor is mixed with tragedy and darkness. Characters that seem initially to be one-sided when they're introduced are then revealed to be far more complex as the series progresses. Power structures are constantly inverted. Characters that are initially villainous are later the sympathetic victims.

This not only indicates an intellectual appreciation of comedy's workings on the parts of the creators, but also an immense affection for their characters. In their universe, stories can be absurd and slightly terrifying:

Or spot-on mimicries that turn tragic:

Just that alone would be reason to watch and enjoy the series, but in addition, it has fantastic production values for a BBC comedy and Gatiss, Pemberton, and Shearsmith's ability to commit dramatically to their characters, both in comedy and tragedy, is remarkable.

Once you finish watching all 18 episodes of the TV show, their Christmas special, the feature-length The League of Gentlemen's Apocalypse,  and their two live shows on DVD, I recommend you move on to Psychoville, which is what Pemberton and Shearsmith are working on currently. It has a lot of things in common with LoG, including the special dance of comedy and drama, and makes you feel a little bit better when you realize you can't go back to Royston Vasey.

It's unfortunate that Terry Gilliam's newest Faustian dreamscape of a film is best known as "Heath Ledger's last movie," because there's so much else actually within it for people to know it for.

The premise is this: Doctor Parnassus (Christopher Plummer) is a former monk who began making wagers with Mr. Nick (Tom Waits), the Devil. By winning these wagers, he managed to extend his life for thousands of years. Flash forward to the present day--Parnassus has a beautiful daughter, Valentina (Lily Cole), and travels through London in a horse-drawn traveling theater with her, his faithful friend Percy (Verne Troyer), and a boy named Anton (Andrew Garfield) whom he'd rescued from the streets as a child. The show they put on is always the same, and one viewer at a time is welcomed to enter their mirror into the imaginarium, in which they are faced with a choice between baser pleasures and higher aspirations (for example, a seedy bar or a twelve-step program). If they choose the former, Mr. Nick wins their soul. If the latter, Parnassus. The show is not very popular.

It turns out that Parnassus has made a wager that gives Valentina's soul to Mr. Nick on her 16th birthday. Knowing Parnassus wants desperately not to have this happen, Mr. Nick offers a bet wherein the first of the two to win five souls will get Valentina. Parnassus agrees. Valentina saves the mysterious, charming Tony (Heath Ledger), who allegedly can't remember his past, and he joins their troupe and agrees to help gather the five souls.

That's pretty much the simplest I can put it, although there's paragraphs and paragraphs more to write. It would be easy to say that the story is as simple as "man makes an ill-advised deal with the devil," but that's really not true. This isn't a film of simple, clean-cut morality. All of its central characters are at times ambiguous or duplicitous, and the eventual outcome is hardly what you'd expect going into the film. I love its story because it's not similar to how people remember Faust, it's similar to how Faust actually is. Mephistopheles is a friend as well as an antagonist, and Dr. Faust is no saint. Plummer's Parnassus is a weak-willed, blubbering drunk as well as a noble, god-like figure. And all of the people Mr. Nick wins seem to end up happy, despite their apparent damnation.

Visually, the film is gorgeous. There's tons of Gilliam's typical stylized decay, as well as the lush, bright fantasy world inside the imaginarium. Its visual effects are obviously artificial, but the characters still seem to physically inhabit them as much as they inhabit the gigantic, dingy wagon that holds the theater.

I bet you're dying to find out what I thought of Heath Ledger and his three all-star stand-ins (Johnny Depp, Jude Law, and Colin Farrell). In short, they blend into the narrative beautifully and unobtrusively. There's only one scene where I found myself wishing that Heath Ledger were playing the role when he wasn't. Happily, Ledger has a lot of screen time in the movie, and he does a very good job. It's no Joker performance, but certainly one of the best roles of his short career. The other three do a fantastic job of adopting his mannerisms and voice, and  you can clearly imagine that they're just Tony with a different face.

All in all, this movie comes highly recommended. As Adrian commented to me after it ended, "That totally makes up for Avatar."