Top 5 Reasons why you need to be watching Breaking Bad

Top 5 Reasons to watch Breaking Bad

As a man who is psyched for July 15^th when part one of the final season of Breaking Bad debuts (the season is split into two eight episode chunks in order to keep the show on air longer) it’s time to convince others to watch the best show on television (or at least in a tie with Mad Men for best show on television). Because of that (and the fact that the show gets only average cable ratings) it’s time to give the skeptics and the people who have never heard of the show five reasons they need to watch the show.

#5. The Look

Breaking Bad’s look is fantastically cinematic. It’s one of the only shows left that is shot almost completely with film and it definitely shows. It’s big, bright, and colorful, really accentuating the look and feel of the place Walt and Jessie live in. My favorite example of how well this episode is shot is in the late season 2 episode “4 Days out” in which Walt and Jessie are trapped in the Desert when the RV malfunctions. The color palate used in the desert shots is simply stunning to look at. The look is definitely one of the most fantastic things about this amazing show.

#4.  The Risk Taking

One of Breaking Bad’s most defining features is how many risks it takes. Things that feel like they should happen way later in a series like this happen way sooner than expected. Also the show has not and continues to not be afraid to constantly rip all the morality and “good” out of the main character Walter White. His transformation (more on that in a few secs) has been one with many twists and turns that not many people saw coming and that is a magical thing that very very few shows can achieve.

#3. The Tension

If there’s one thing Breaking Bad knows how to do for sure it is great suspense film making. Each episode has a constant tension to it whether it’s a slower character building episode or a fast paced season ender. Especially throughout the last two seasons there have been moments where I’m so far on the edge of my seat and I forget to breath. We can site “Crawl Space”, “Box Cutter”, “One Minute” and so many more for unbearable moments of tension that haven’t really been achieved on any other modern television show.

#2. The Characters

Walt, Jessie, Skyler, Hank, and the rest of the cast are such brilliantly complex characters; every last one of them! Walt goes from good old relatable under achieving Chemistry teacher with lung cancer to hardened criminal in such an amazing and full transformation that it is mind blowing. Jessie has gone through so many amazing arcs it’s insane. Skyler is one of the best handled female wife of an anti hero characters it’s amazing. Hank goes from being a character that many thought would be simple and one dimensional into one of the most complex characters on the show. That’s not even mentioning some of the most compelling villains (everyone say Gus with me) and most interesting side characters of any show. Characters are what make or break television shows in this era and Breaking Bad has some of the best.

#1. The Acting

No other show on television has the sheer amount of great actors and acting moments as Breaking Bad does, period. Brian Cranston currently gives the best performance on any television show, period (and he has three straight Emmys to show it). Cranston and his supporting man Paul (more on him in a moment) make the show (that admittedly on paper sounds a tad over the top) make the show entirely believable and compulsively watchable. I mean Cranston isn’t just acting as Walt; most of the time Walter White just feels like an extension to Brian Cranston’s personality (which is frightening considering how evil this man becomes). Aaron Paul is equally as amazing as Jessie and plays all of Jessie’s various forms with such believability that it’s scary. That’s just scratching the surface as well as Breaking Bad’s entire crew is simply amazing at every possible turn.

The Newsroom: “The 112th Congress” Review

Charlie seems confused by a Rocky 2 analogy in The Newsroom

That’s much better. After a little bit of a misstep last week the Newsroom returned to a much higher level again this week. The pace was the winner this week as the show moved lightning fast in only the way Aaron Sorkin can. There were still some problems in the episode but overall this episode was mostly a fun, positive experience.

Let’s start with the pacing and time displacement, which was the both the best part of the episode and the missed opportunity of the episode. On the positive side the episode did ton of amazing fast paced newscasts over the course of six months. Newscast has rebooted starting with an apology from Will to his audience for the newscasts of the past and ends with the election for congress in 2010. The structure of the episode was wrapped around Will’s boss Charlie getting reprimanded for some of the things said (which led to a fantastically funny scene with a really strange analogy to Rocky 2). Jane Fonda played the station president who, quite fantastically, stayed quiet to the last moments of the episode allowing for her speech to have more of an impact. The big wigs weren’t happy that Will and Mac have been spending most of their time on the newscast bashing the tea party (which despite the potential to offend people made for some really great moment). For the most part it worked well despite the fact that it pretty much removed the tension established between the characters. Aaron Sorkin likes a well oiled machine to work with but the character tension was almost completely gone this episode; it was essentially reduced to the small yet kind of fun date fu that Will and Mac played throughout the episode.

The political commentary was much betters this episode as well as despite really going after the tea party Sorkin did it in a way that worked well. None of the characters had future vision this week (despite Sloan coming very close) and overall it was mostly done through successful newscasts that are the high part of the show. The episode didn’t have the same clumsiness that “News Night 2.0” had and overall all was smooth in the land of political correctness.

So back to the plot of the episode; Charlie not telling Will about the meeting could be problematic (ie Jane Fonda saying “I’m going to fire him if he doesn’t tone it down”) and Charlie nerves about doing the right thing may back him into a few corners. As mentioned briefly earlier Mac and Will played date fu that had some fun dialogue but really didn’t move their characters forward (despite Will really being damaged by Mac having a boyfriend after he had several young girls meeting him). The corporate discussions were well done (Rocky 2 for the win) and was solid for Charlie who hasn’t had much to do (PS on that point apparently from my readings Charlie is very similar to Aaron Sorkin characters of the past. While I never watched any of the other Sorkin series I do find that to be an interesting point). The only frustrating character point of the episode was Maggie who had a really odd panic attack that continued to demine her character which is a sad thing.

Overall “112^th Congress” set The Newsroom back on track. No truly infuriating stuff and the episode had a reboost in quality. So far I have liked this show, despite its missteps, and I’m hoping the show will continue down the path of the pilot and this episode and not the one set out by “News Night 2.0”.

Other thoughts:                                                                         

• What’s with the whole Don and Maggie thing. They break up every week according to this episode which continues the trend of making their relationship underdeveloped and weird (although considering how Sorkin has handled Maggie I don’t know if I want more development in their relationship…)

•   Seems Will has gotten a connection with the crew now. This was another thing that felt unearned because of the episode moving very quickly, but hey if it’s a well oiled machine he wants it’s a well oiled machine he gets

•   Oh and ROCKY 2! So strange yet so awesome.

That’s just me though what did other folks think?

The Halftime Top 5

Halftime Top 5

            So were just over halfway through the year so it’s time to check up on how were doing so far. This year’s first batch hasn’t really done that much for me despite the many anticipated releases. This is expected though as lately all the really good to great films are all piled up in the winter “Oscar” season. So on to the list; this list contains my top 5 movies of the year so far which includes the last couple of leftovers from last year that I didn’t see in time for the top 10 last year (don’t worry this will be the last time you hear from these). So without further due here is the top 5 films of the year plus leftovers…

5. Prometheus

Prometheus was Ridley Scott’s big comeback to Sci-Fi that was, for the most part, a huge success. Even if the characters where the most part dull, the film still delivered when it provided great tension and fantastic action sequences. Despite not being as great as Scott’s past Sci-Fi masterpieces Prometheus still managed to be a dark, entertaining film and one of the best of the year.

4. The Avengers

Action and explosions turned up to eleven that is what the Avengers brought to the table. The Avengers is the film that will change all expectations for superhero films that don’t have the name Christopher Nolan attached to it as now every film with giant monster action scenes needs to be at this jaw dropping level. The Avengers is one of the most entertaining experiences that I’ve had all year and I’m glad to have it on this list.

3. Shame

A 2011 leftover, Shame is one of the most brave and impactful films I have seen in a while. The power of Shame lies in the grit (this movie isn’t afraid of confronting the brutality of sex addiction) of the material and the absolutely jaw dropping performances by Michael Fassbender and Carey Mulligan. Shame is one of those haunting films that stays with you for a long time and it’s defiantly one of the best films I’ve seen all year.

2. Moonrise Kingdom

Now we move from one end of the spectrum to the other. Moonrise Kingdom is a whimsical adult fairy tale that features the joys of young love and the evil of the adults who try and stop it. This film is such a joy to watch as it’s filled with colors left and right, an amazing cast, and lovely story which makes it one of the absolute best of the year.

1. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Look I tried to take it away from this spot I tried but David Fincher’s adaptation of the popular Swedish novel is simply so fantastic I couldn’t. As I said in my review if I hadn’t seen this until later on in the year this would have been a strong contender for number one on my list last year. The tone, the editing, the music, the script, and the sheer knock out performance by Rooney Mara made this film a near perfect thriller and yet another amazing adaptation of Steig Larson’s fine novel.

Quick TV Mentions

Mad Men and Luck

            

 First off Mad Men had yet another amazing season this year proving that yet again it’s one of the best ever television shows. Acting, character, and just the sheer amount of surprises kept this series on an amazing level. The other show well worth mentioning is the now canceled (due to horse dying) HBO drama Luck. The show turned from a show I couldn’t understand (literally, good job horse racing lingo) to arguably my favorite season of television so far this year. Episodes four to nine where just simply spellbinding with fantastic performances, good old David Milch writing, and the most well directed episodes on television this year (or any) period. When the series comes to DVD (hope and pray) give the series a shot (getting through the first two is a bit of a drag but then three sets up the rest of the series which is well worth watching especially the horse racing sequances). Luck along with Mad Men form the best TV of the year so far (until Breaking Bad hopefully…).

The Newsroom: “News Night 2.0” Review

Olivia Munn makes an appearance in the Newsroom

 Spoilers ahead for this weeks episode

I shall preface this week’s review by saying that I didn’t feel that I gave enough props to last week’s episode in last week’s review. The episode worked on so many great levels and was the best pilot of the year so far. That being said let’s move on to this week.

“News Night 2.0” was plain and simply a frustrating hour of television. The episode relied on barley established relationships and poorly handled political commentaries to move the episode forward. It also mangled characters that could have been way stronger.

Speaking of, let’s start with Mackenzie, who made the jump from being strong powerful woman to bumbling idiot this week. The first problem was that she was going around telling the entire newsroom that Will was the nice guy even after he threw things at her and blew two segments of the newscast on her on purpose just to spite her. Yet she feels so bad for cheating on him in their past relationship that she is delusional to the fact that he’s a total jerk. That and Sorkin made her so inapt with technology that she can’t even send a private email without sending it to absolutely everyone (which wasn’t funny by the way). 

Which leads right into the main problem of the episode; the plot is moved forward through underdeveloped relationships. Will and Mackenzie and Maggie, Jim, and Don took center stage in what was a frustrating way to move the plot forward. The Will/Mac relationship feels so recycled from so many different shows (even from Sorkin’s past) so when a whole episode moves in relation to their relationship, while not really making it deep and complex, it's just frustrating. While the banter between Jim and Maggie was great the screw up of not getting the Governor on the show felt just like a way for Sorkin to make some really obvious and bad political commentary (more on that in a second). The characters didn’t get stronger thought and despite the big screw up on the newscast felt more like a chance for Sorkin to jab right wing extremists instead of move forward the plot.

So now to the political commentary; the episode had two very clumsy ways of calling out Republican extremists, the Arizona immigration law and Sarah Palin. Instead of getting the Goviner of Arizona to comment on the issue (due to a past relationship of Maggie’s getting in the way), we got a militia member a University of Pheonix professor and a pagant second runner up. This started off as a way of showing the characters screwing up and then eventually turned into a clumsy comment on right wing extremists. Same thing with Will trying to lamely defend Sarah Palin’s ridicules screw up regarding the oil spill at the end of the show. This magnified the main problem of the pilot – setting the show in the very near past – to really frustrating levels that detracted from the enjoyment of the episode. The show has to find out how to balance its political commentary and its drama without them clashing. That sure didn’t happen this week.

Even so the Sorkin banter is still a ton of fun featuring again a number of great descriptions and conversations (including Maggie describing how she hid under the bed while her then boyfriend was cheating on her with his ex). Also we got to see Olivia Munn this week as the economist who I’m assuming will become more important throughout the season.

“News Night 2.0” was a messy and frustrating hour of television that magnified the show’s problems (politics and relationships). Hopefully a bounce back to the quality of the pilot is an order next week as it would be sad for a show with such a great look and sound to go down this road.

That’s just me though, what did everyone else think?

The Amazing Spider Man Review

Andrew Garfield as Spider-Man in Amazing Spider-Man

 

The Amazing Spider-Man

B

A Review by Frederick Cholowski

After just ten years it’s time to reboot the money making Spider-Man franchise. This time Andrew Garfield is behind the mask and indie director Marc Webb is behind the camera. The tone is darker and the cast is new, but Spider-Man manages to play by pretty much the exact same rules and regulations as the prior films.

The Amazing Spider-Man hits all the basic points as one would expect from a Spider-Man origin film. Peter Parker (Andrew Garfield), a nerdy/outcast high school student who lives with his Aunt and Uncle (Sally Field and Martin Sheen), gets bitten by a radioactive spider and gains supernatural, spider like powers from the bite. At first Parker uses it for selfish reasons aka getting back at the school bully Flash Thompson (Chris Zylka) but after his Uncle Ben is murdered by a low league thug Parker decides to use his powers for good under the alias of Spider-Man. Of course not all people like this as police chief Captain Stacy (Denis Leary) wants him off the street. This makes things complicated Peter is romantically involved with Capitan Stacy’s daughter Gwen (Emma Stone) who so happens to know his secret. Oh and there is good old Dr. Curt Connors (Rhys Ifans) who’s experiment, which Parker himself helped create, goes completely wrong and he turns himself into an angry lizard who wants to “cure” New York City.

           

I’m really torn about this film. On one hand the film is better cast, acted, and directed than the previous Spider-Man films. Webb, who previously directed the fantastic low key romantic comedy “500 Days of Summer”, does a great job with the smaller romance scenes between Peter and Gwen. The scenes are fantastic and Garfield and Stone (who are a real life couple) have wonderful chemistry together. Two of the other things that this film gets right are tone and action sequences. The tone of this film is a lot darker (more remnant of the Nolan Batman films than the Rami Spider-Man films) and it allows for the storyline to be more impactful than before. The action sequences can be dazzling, especially when Spider-Man is swinging through the city. These again allow for a more impactful film than the original Spider-Man films.

On the other hand this film basically tells the story that the original Spider Man film told ten years ago. There are plot points that pretty much play out shot for shot like the original film. This makes the film feel lazy and uninspired and that is disappointing. The worst offender of this is the very uninspired villain Reptile. His origin is so similar to Goblin’s from the original Spider-Man that it feels like the screenwriters are just trying to take the quick way out on the front of making a villain and so they decided to make a familiar one. The filmmakers try to do something interesting with Spidy’s origin but it falls flat leaving all the familiar, lazy bits front and center.

As mentioned earlier the acting here is quite good. The main problem with earlier Spidy films was that Toby Maguire always felt miscast as the web slinger. This is not the case in the reboot as Garfield is perfect as both Parker and his alter ego as he can be very awkward as Parker as well as being smart and witty behind the mask. The other main Player Emma Stone fits Gwen Stacy very well and, as mention earlier, her and Garfield have fantastic chemistry. The other fantastic player here is the great Martin Sheen as Uncle Ben. Sheen provides basically all the momentum for the first hour of the film and fits the character of Uncle Ben perfectly. The only miscast in the film is Sally Field as Aunt May. Never, especially after Rosemary Harris’s performance was so perfect in the originals, could I wrap my head around her playing May.

With the progression of special effects technology The Amazing Spider-Man is a much prettier film than the originals. The final fight aside, the action scenes in this film are stunning; especially when Spidy is swinging through the sky. The 3D is well implemented I these scenes as each action scenes have a depth in the screen that helps give a great look to the scenes. When the film zooms into first person the CGI really dazzles as these scenes are breathtaking and fantastic. The score is normal superhero affair and overall never left me impressed or disappointed, it’s just for the most part there. Overall though the cinematography and action scenes help elevate the film.

The Amazing Spider-Man is a mixed bag. On the one hand it is a very well produced film; while on the other it’s revisiting old concepts in the almost the exact same way. Despite its problems The Amazing Spider-Man ends up being a solid piece of summer entertainment that is fun and definitely worth the price of admission.