My Kind of Town

I didn't get to visit The Town opening weekend, so I won't spend too much time adding my praise to the pile – except to say that it's well-deserved. Ben Affleck not only directs a terrifically tight crime caper, he gets the best performance yet out of... himself. And while it's good to see Jon Hamm and Jeremy Renner outside of the roles that made them, the real revelation is Blake Lively. Best known for lightweight roles like Gossip Girl's Serena and wearing the Traveling Pants, the drugged-up and desperate performance she turns in as Affleck's ex is terrific.

It's a little early for full-out Oscar bait, and I'm not sure that Affleck should be making space next to his Good Will Hunting statue just yet, but The Town is a really impressive achievement. In short, I like these apples.

Mr. & Mrs. Alias

While Undercovers isn't technically a reboot a la Hawaii Five-O and Nikita, there's definitely an Alias: The Next Generation feel to it. J.J. Abrams has assembled similar elements: sexy married spies, grizzled shadowy handler, wacky techie geek, etc. Not necessarily a bad thing, as Alias was great fun before getting bogged down in Rambaldi mythology and the similarly-themed Mr. & Mrs. Smith has some moments that got lost in the Brangelina Mania. Undercovers built buzz due to its diverse casting, but does it handle the hype?

Based solely on the pilot, pretty well. The two leads, the improbably named Boris Kodjoe and Gugu (short for Gugulethu) Mbatha-Raw have genuine chemistry – their banter comes off as actually marriage-y as opposed to just tightly scripted TV talk. Much has been made of casting two black actors in roles that didn't specify race; the best compliment about that choice is that you completely forget about that while you're watching it. Also kicking around is Gerald McRaney in older Major Dad mode as their handler, and Ben Schwartz (a Letterman and SNL writer) takes on the Marshall role from Alias, providing tech and jokes.

You've seen this story before – retired spies brought out of retirement for one last job that, in fact, is the first of hopefully several seasons – but it's generally well-executed. The action scenes are nothing to write home about, which is somewhat surprising given the fact that Abrams directed the ep. And while there may be some stories that span a couple hours, the showrunners have said that Undercovers will be generally mythology-free. After Alias went out with whimper instead of a bang and Lost almost crumbled under its own weight, making the show a bit more accessible may be a good thing, altho it does all feel a little "lite."

That said, there's definitely decent potential here – once freed of the expository needs of the pilot, it'll hopefully develop into a breezily fun little adventure hour. Worth a watch.

Hawaii I-Dunno

I never watched the original show, altho I assume that like many 70s cop dramas, it was pretty bad. Regardless, I didn't bring much baggage to this reboot's pilot, save for the fact that I don't get CBS' fascination with Alex O'Loughlin – his acting's as flat as his abs.

So while I was open to the idea of Hawaii Five-O, I dunno that it's worth adding to your regular rotation of channel surfing.

The plot can be summed up pretty quickly: buddy cops meet cute and start off squabbling before bonding over bullets. In what I suppose amounts to a twist, this time neither one goes by the book. O'Loughlin's character ignores rules in an attempt to avenge his father's murder, and Scott Caan smartasses his way through pretty much every situation. While their banter's nothing you haven't seen before, the two leads do have decent chemistry – Caan's casual spin on his Entourage and Ocean's characters help liven up the proceedings. Also milling around are a pair of buddy cop cousins: one a disgraced former cop played by Daniel Dae Kim, lucky enough to land another show that shoots on location in Hawaii, and a freshly promoted junior cop played by Grace Park, oddly enough cast in another show where she takes over a role previously played by a man.

They spent a bunch of money on the pilot, and it shows – great locations, lotsa explosions, etc. And they must've spent a bunch of money on the script, as Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci (Transformers, Fringe, Star Trek) don't come cheap, but it doesn't really show – it's literally "you killed my father, prepare to die." Supposedly there are some multi-ep arcs in the works, which could help, otherwise it's a by-the-numbers procedural. Overall, It's like a throwback action movie every week: a few funny lines, some glimpses of skin, a torrent of bullets that somehow don't hit the main characters, etc...

Worth a watch if you like that sort of thing – entertaining but inessential.

Boredwalk Empire

Look, I know I'm way in the minority here, but I found HBO's latest triumph lacking a bit of oomph. I know, I know – critics are hailing it as the greatest thing since The Sopranos. And the pilot was a rare opportunity to see Martin Scorsese work in TV.

I just wish I gave a damn.

To its credit, Boardwalk Empire is terrifically well put together. The combo of extensive sets and CGI extensions that re-create Atlantic City in the 20s are absolutely beautiful. The cast is first-rate. It's sumptuously shot and richly staged. And so on. But for me, it never really added up to anything past an expensive exercise in putting on a period piece.

It's Mad Men Syndrome again – a series of artfully arranged set pieces and lingering glances that are supposed to stir your soul because the lighting's so exquisite but in reality left me completely cold. The protagonist's also part of the problem – while Steve Buscemi's built a career on scene-stealing characters chock full of quirks, here it means that the main man in almost every scene is an off-putting creep with a grating whine and deep-set dead eyes.

If you're a huge Mob guy, the exploits of real-life characters might carry the day – hey look, it's Arnold Rothstein! Hey look, it's Lucky Luciano! I'll admit I got a kick out of the introduction of an up-and-coming Al Capone – if he was the star of the show, you might have something, but at this point Boardwalk Empire feels as flat as the pier it's based on.

Pass.

There once was a spy named Nikita

If you feel like you've seen this before

It's because it is time number four

That they've made Nikita

The killer Lolita

You're forgiven for asking "what for?"

To stick with this blog's gimmick, I title posts with the classic limerick opener whether it fits well or not. In this case, it's definitely not, but "There fourth was a spy named Nikita" doesn't really work from a grammar standpoint. Regardless, this "new" show is hardly that – it's the latest iteration of the revenge story of a criminal-turned-assassin-turned-spy-turned-on-her-makers. The first two were films – La Femme Nikita from Luc Besson and the American remake starring a seriously miscast Bridget Fonda called Point of No Return. It moved to TV in the late 90s with Peta Wilson on USA, and now the CW's hoping the fourth time's a charm with the singularly titled pilot, Nikita.

This one stars Maggie Q, a Jackie Chan protege who plays Nikita as sort of the offspring of Michelle Yeoh and Sydney Bristow – if the pilot's any indication, the primary element of most of the plots will involve either getting dressed or punching people in progressively skimpier outfits. When she's not doing that, Nikita's main mission is to take down "Division," the shadow government organization that created her. We learn why through the eyes of Alex, an apprentice assassin played by Lyndsy Fonseca with a brooding stare that's likely due to the missing and/or misplaced vowels in her name. They're going up against Shane West, Melinda Clarke and Xander Berkeley, of ER, OC and 24 fame respectively, who at this point are fairly standard bad guys/girls in suits and pantsuits.

"Fairly standard" turns out to be a pretty apt description, based purely on the pilot. We've seen a lot of this before... and not just because it's the fourth version of this story. It's more that many of the pieces of the pilot feel put together from other shows – a training sequence here, a gravesite visit there, etc. None of it's bad, but it's not particularly compelling yet. The one element that does stand out is Maggie Q, even when she's not dressing or punching. While the series is being sold on her looks, she shows glimpses of a wry sense of humor that could eventually elevate Nikita above its somewhat generic status of "Sexy Spy Show."

Here's hoping that happens, because there's definite potential kicking around the corners of the pilot – an appealing cast, solid (if well-worn) premise, etc. Freed of the expository tasks that weigh down most pilots, the next few episodes will show whether Nikita can develop an identity of her own. Worth a watch.

There once was a teen girl named Katniss

Despite her unfortunate name

This heroine isn't too lame

Altho much of the bulk

Of these books is her sulk

Ing because she's forced to maim.

The Hunger Games trilogy is the latest "OMG are you Team This Guy or That Guy?" sensation that the kids (and a bunch of their parents) are all atwitter about. As young adult books go, it's somewhat standard – plucky heroine, love triangle, teen angst, and so on. What's not standard is the premise: it takes place in a post-apocalyptic America that's been divided into Districts that are forced on an annual basis to enter two teenagers into a March Madness of sorts where they kill each other for sport. So... not the cheeriest premise, but does it hold up through three books?

Almost.

The first two books are grim little page-turners. Katniss Everdeen (I know – perhaps the dictionaries of our far future have her picture next to the words "trying too hard") is a seventeen-year old girl scratching out a meager existence by sneaking through the walls surrounding her coal-mining District 12 to find food for her family armed only with a bow. Foreshadowing alert! That bow comes in handy when she gets swept up in The Hunger Games, the somewhat ill-defined tournament that the government created as punishment for a decades-old rebellion that wiped one of the Districts off the map.

The first book plays out sort of like The Running Man meets The Most Dangerous Game with a dash of Twilight thrown in. Amidst the remarkably gruesome slayings of teenage children, Katniss meets the men that will mold her future – Peeta, another contestant who she gets paired with and Haymitch, a former winner of the Hunger Games who serves as her mentor. And is almost always drunk. There are several other kids competing in the Games, but I won't bother describing them because, well, they pretty much all get killed. The offhanded brutality woven through the entire series never stops being an odd tonal element – in our world, where the Hunger Games haven't been running for seventy-five years, it's somewhat jarring to watch your heroine put an arrow through a stranger's eye without blinking hers, considering the combined age of those involved probably doesn't total thirty. They're in the process of making a movie of the trilogy and one wonders how they're going to make bleak tween killings work on screen.

I'm trying to stay relatively spoiler-free, but hopefully it's not a shock that Katniss survives her first Games to make it two the second book, Catching Fire. Here's where the requisite love triangle really gets going – between the aforementioned Peeta and Gale, the childhood friend Katniss used to hunt with. Also, the road to another rebellion begins to be paved, as the government contrives to draw former contestants back into the Games. A la Empire Strikes Back, the sequel's an improvement over the original in that we start to get a window into a larger world and the author's writing style smoothes out a bit. Powerful prose isn't exactly Suzanne Collins' strong suit, but she seems to be guiding the action with a surer hand in book two.

Unfortunately, sticking with the Star Wars metaphor, the threequel is the weakest of the trilogy. Mockingjay suffers from a rigid adherence to theme; rather than watching Katniss evolve from an overwhelmed girl into a confident leader, much of the book is spent hiding and bemoaning her fate. It's a problem with the protagonist throughout the series, actually – while Katniss does get older, she doesn't do a whole lot of growing up. It doesn't doom the books, but her increasingly introverted inaction does begin to wear thin. Part of the problem is the present tense the books are written in. It helps amp up the immediacy and sense of danger, but relegates many of the major developments to offscreen action. Huge cultural shifts take place between the pages, meaning Katniss (and consequently the reader) only hear about how the world gets reshaped, rather than experiencing it.

So it ends with a bit more of a whimper than a bang, but overall it's a good ride. Don't go into it looking for a fully-realized Harry Potter world, or the purple prose of Twilight – think of it more as a bleak beach book and enjoy.

There once was a Pilgrim named Scott

Unless you played video games

You might think this is pretty strange

It's anime meets

The Rage of the Streets

And within Michael Cera's range.

They've made movies that are slavishly devoted to their graphic novel source material before – sometimes you score a 300 and sometimes you get stuck in Sin City. Fortunately, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World is way more of the former, as it's full-tilt fun from the first minute on.

The movie sums up a series of graphic novels by Bryan Lee O'Malley, hitting the high points of the six-book cycle. It's the oldest story in the world: boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy has to fight girl's seven evil exes, evil exes explode into coins when boy punches them, and so on. That's right – in addition to other visual flourishes like captions appearing on screen and cartoon hearts appearing over characters kissing, Scott Pilgrim comes off like a slacker version of Super Mario Bros.

Michael Cera delivers another patented performance as the sorta-nerdy-sorta-cool-vaguely-effeminate-emo-type-guy, but in this case it's pretty much perfect casting. The rest of the cast scores, too, particularly a couple cameos by Chris Evans and Brandon Routh. And director Edgar Wright steps outside of his previous parodies to deliver a film with similar visual sizzle but a different kind of emotional connection. At heart, Scott Pilgrim is a fairly standard twentysomething story, but the inventive style, videogame trappings and underlying sweetness elevate it to another level.