(no subject)
My regular movie/DVD round up is pretty thin on the ground this month mostly because I spent the majority of April doing other time consuming things.
It breaks down like this.
We watched 3 full seasons of The Wire. I read the last 3 Harry Potter novels. I started, worked through and completed all of the Tiger Challenges on the 2008 Tiger Woods PGA game for the Xbox. So I'll break down my April review in 3 parts. Luckily I have stuff to say about all of them. My time devoted to these tasks were well spent. I got a lot out of all of them.
Tiger Woods 08 PGA Tour: I got obsessed with getting to Tiger Woods and beating his sorry ass. It took days. Full days on the weekends or the evenings if Ed wasn't around. I wanted to become the best drummer ever on Rock Band and then my back got all fucked up again, so I had to abandon my dreams of rock superstardom. But golf I can play fully reclined with my feet up and it satisfies all the needs a person has for playing a video game. I'd tried to take on Call of Duty and Halo and Bioshock on my own and just found myself, while fully engaged, also really tense and nervous and frustrated. Which, you know, isn't really how I like to spend my off time. Golf is relaxing, it requires some analytical thinking, there's a clear beginning, middle and end, a clear advancement in skill and success and clearly defined goals to reach. It's crazy fun. I never would have pegged myself a golf game fan, but I stand corrected. So I'm at 110 on all the attributes, I have all the magical clothes and I've gotten silver medals or better on all of the Tiger Challenges. In short, I'm a total bad ass when it comes to video game golf. Who'd a thunk it?
Order of the Phoenix, Half Blood Prince, Deathly Hollows: I've been putting off reading Harry Potter for years after I ended up fully obsessed and read the first 4 novels in a week while I was on vacation with my sister several years back. I just knew that if I picked it up again I'd be sucked in and need time to devote to reading all of them. I read these 3 final novels in 2 weeks. To be more accurate, I read these 3 novels in what adds up to 4 days over the course of 2 weeks. Turns out I'd already read Order of the Phoenix, but it was a long time ago and I'm glad I read it again because I'd forgotten a lot of it and it definitely got me primed for the last 2 novels. It's impossible to accurately explain how satisfying I find these books. They're pristine. Easy. Engaging. Riveting. Detailed. Scary. Funny. Touching. Dark. Romantic. Beautiful. The last book was the best of the series I thought. I read it in one day. I don't want to give away any plot details or anything, but it was deeply satisfying and I ended up thinking about the whole thing for several days after I was finished. I'm really glad I only ever bothered to see the first of the film adaptations, because the people and the places I have up in my own imagination are far, far more real and cool and full than the glossy, weirdly impersonal half-representations of those same things in the movie(s). I really enjoyed how the whole cycle of the story wrapped itself up. How Harry and his friends grow up together over the course of the books. And how these hugely intense and ambiguous things like destiny and choice, good and evil, love and hate all are presented and reflected in various ways in all of the character's journeys through the story. How they're all related and interdependent. Such fun reading these books. Locking myself away to climb into another place that's a totally different process than watching a movie or a TV show. I'd decided I wanted to read more at the start of this year and these books have spring boarded me into a place where all I want to do is read. I'm reading another book now and have at least 4 others on my list for things to read coming up. So I guess it's safe to assume that coming months wrap ups are going to include book reports as well as movie and TV show reviews. Apparently I like a good story. It doesn't matter what form it takes.
The Wire: It's been said before and I'm going to say it again. The Wire is one of the best shows ever in the history of serial drama on television. I keep coming back to this idea that the whole thing is so Shakespearean. On so many levels I can see the parallels. How all of these huge themes are played out in all of the different groups that are represented. The idea that belonging to any sort of organization, be it the police, politicians, drug dealers or dock workers, at a certain point every individual in that organization has to make a choice about their own identity and how much of it they are willing to sacrifice to belong to the group they identify with.
And then there's the writing and the acting. I mean, these great sweeping themes and elaborately intricate interpersonal relationships are one thing. But the words and the way they're said just takes a great thing and turns it into a masterpiece. The fact that everyone speaks in such a true voice and that you can SEE how much fun the actors must be having in getting the opportunity to embody and speak these words, be these people, be involved in telling these stories. We just started season 4 last night and I'm already completely engrossed in it. It's bleak. Bleaker than any of the previous, totally bleak seasons have been. Probably because the organization being scrutinized in season 4 is the education system and these fucking kids who are wrapped up in something so much bigger and uglier and more broken than they are. At least with the game, the cops, the politicians and the union men it felt like they'd arrived at this place in their lives because they'd made certain choices long ago that got them where they are. Watching these young kids making these huge choices, existing in this broken place that they didn't create but have to endure. It's just harrowing. And so, so, so well done.
For the record, Omar's my favorite character although I love that Bunk gets all the best lines. I can't get over how pristinely perfect and exact and right on every single actor is in their ability to embody their characters motivations, drives, reality. There are SO MANY characters over the course of 3 seasons that you'd assume there'd be a miff here or there, a foul, some sort of weak link that isn't as real or outstanding as the others. But I can't think of any character or actor from the top down who aren't brilliant. Bubbles. Herc. Avon. Stringer. Greggs. McNulty. Marlo. Brother Mouzone. Carcetti. Prez. Ziggy. The Greek. I could be here all day.
I don't know when Season 5 is coming out on DVD but I'm working hard not to expose myself to any spoilers about how the show ends. The end of Season 3 was crazy as fuck enough. I can't imagine what they have in store for the end of the actual series. But I'm definitely amped to watch it because I've heard that the final organization that goes under The Wire microscope is the media. Which, you know, if you want to talk about well intentioned bureaucracies that have been poised and shriveled up and are rotting from the inside out, that one's definitely a spectacular choice.
It's as good as, if not better than, The Shield. Yes, I just said that.