Friday, June 29, 2007 Rant Archive
Tonight on a very special STUDIO 60 … Jordan survives. Tom’s brother survives. Harriet and Matt get back together. It’s the series finale, folks!
Even though Aaron Sorkin likes to hit us where it hurts with the serious stuff, the man likes a happy, satisfying ending. Tonight’s episode definitely hit a couple of melodramatic (as in music swelling, people cheering) bumps, but overall, I’ll stand by my claim that this show is damn good television. Why? Mostly because of two amazingly well-written, well-acted scenes.
The first is between Jordan (Amanda Peet) and Danny (Bradley Whitford). For the past three weeks, we’ve been waiting to find out if Jordan would live or die; if Danny would lose his new daughter or not. On tonight’s episode, Danny has finally given in and decided to get Jordan to sign guardianship papers. While having an awkwardly funny argument (awkward in the good, too-nervous-to-stay-serious way) with the nurse, the doctor comes out to give him some news. The camera pulls back to the waiting room where Harriet (Sarah Paulson) says a quick prayer. I’m just waiting for the overdone moment when a person crumbles to the floor after hearing bad news, but no. Of course, now is a perfect time for a commercial.
Mark Wahlberg has tried to hit big as an action star and has failed mightily with the misguided PLANET OF THE APES remake and the plain silly FOUR BROTHERS. With SHOOTER, he finds the right combination that had previously missed the marky mark.
SHOOTER is adapted from the Stephen Hunter novel “Point of Impact.” In the film, Wahlberg plays Marine marksman Bob Lee Swagger. The opening sequence shows Swagger on a mission that will lead him to self-imposed exile. It is a covert operation in Africa that goes horribly wrong and ends with his spotter/buddy meeting a gruesome, bullet-riddled end. Once the buddy shows his pocket-sized picture of his sweetheart back home, he might as well hold up a sign that says “I’M ABOUT TO DIE!”
Three years after this, Swagger is recruited by a Col. Johnson (played generically by Danny Glover) to lend his expertise and help capture someone who has threatened to assassinate the president of the United States. Of course, Swagger is being set up as the patsy; in the ensuing escape, he stumbles over and disarms FBI agent Nick Memphis (Michael Pẽna). Separately, the two pursue the real perpetrators of the assassination attempt, and eventually their path re-cross and they team up for the last hour of the movie.
There are movies, and then there are films. Movies get made to make money, pure and simple, and other concerns — acting, writing, the numerous and myriad processes of art — are secondary to that. Films, on the other hand, are primarily intended to express a vision or tell a story of importance to the artist or artists behind the project, although they can and often do get tweaked along the way to improve their chances of making money. BLACK SNAKE MOAN, the most recent effort from writer/director Craig Brewer, is a film, and by Hollywood standards, a damn strange one.
Our story opens with the not-so-subtly-named Lazarus (Samuel L. Jackson), a former bluesman who has turned to raising vegetables and stewing over being abandoned by his wife for his brother. This would seem like a perfect time to bust out the guitar and write a couple new blues songs (or murder ballads), but Lazarus doesn’t turn to music, or God, like he once did.
On the white-trash side of town, renowned “loose woman” Rae (Christina Ricci) has drunk and doped herself into a tizzy after her beau, Ronnie (Justin Timberlake), ships off to be in the Guard. In short order, she gets used, abused, beaten and left for dead on the side of the road. Lazarus finds her and takes care of her, providing a safe place and medicine, but he quickly realizes that she needs more help than cough syrup and Band-Aids. Using his awesome blues powers in conjunction with the Bible, Laz decides some tough love, and perhaps (although he never calls it this) an exorcism, are in order. Then, he remembers the 40-pound chain he keeps in the barn…