Veep, Season 1

Veep, season 1

Medium: TV
Created by: Armando Iannucci
Network: HBO
Dates Aired: April 22 - June 10, 2012
Consumption completed: June 11, 2012
Genre: Comedy
Rating: 7.5/10

It's difficult not to compare a new TV show from Armando Iannucci to his earlier work as the creator of the Brit satire The Thick of It and directing its spin-off film, In the Loop. The latter is one of the funniest films of the past few years, and the former is almost as good. With Veep, the scathing satire is toned down in favor of character. 

We spend much more time getting to know Vice President Selina Meyer (Julia-Louis Dreyfus) than we ever did anybody in the first two series (I haven't seen the third one yet) of The Thick of It. And the same goes for her whole staff. by its second episode, Veep has created a nice, little ensemble to work with. 

The show is very funny throughout its first season, but completely avoiding any series discussions of policy may have detracted from the season more than added. It's missing the sharp teeth Iannucci's other work has so prominently featured.

The season ended, quite abruptly, with the lowest Selina Meyer has fallen yet. I don't know how she'll bounce back, but I'll definitely be around when Veep returns next year.

Mad Men, Season 5

Mad Men, season 5

Medium: TV
Created by: Matthew Weiner
Network: AMC
Dates Aired: March 25 - June 10, 2012
Consumption completed: June 11, 2012
Genre: Drama
Rating: 8.0/10

Another really good season for Mad Men, with a few absolutely great episodes. 

This show is exhausting. It's considered one of the two best shows on television by most people I know, and seemingly all critics, for good reason. It is often fucking masterful.

But it's shit like Don seeing his dead brother that I can't stand. Weiner seems to love his symbolism, and he's often less than subtle. Don has an ache from a rotten tooth, Don sees Adam Whitman, Don's tooth isn't what's rotten. I get it!

Anyway, that's from the finale, and the finale might be the worst episode of the season.

Cougar Town, Season 3

Cougar Town, season 3

Medium: TV
Created by: Bill Lawrence and Kevin Biegel
Network: ABC
Dates Aired: February 14-May 29, 2012
Consumption completed: June 11, 2012
Genre: Comedy
Rating: 8.5/10

That show I still can't get any of my friends to watch. Critics have finally caught on, but I still get made fun of. But I don't care. I have as much emotional investment in Jules and the Cul-de-sac crew as I do any other comedy characters on the air.

Courteney Cox continues to walk both sides of the line between endearingly overbearing and crazy as the center of a group of best friends who drink a lot of wine and hang out with each other. 

Apparently, you're on board with Cougar Town's brand of mixing deeply emotional character interaction with wildly funny broad and physical humor, or you're not. I very firmly am on board.

Like season 2, season 3 ended with a humiliating experience for Travis. I really hope they find a way to give him some sort of break next year.

Whooo! We're moving to TBS! I'm sure we'll see a witty title card about it next season.

Prometheus (2012)

Prometheus

Medium: Film
Director: Ridley Scott
Country: United States
Released: June 8, 2012
First Consumed: June 8, 2012
Format: Theater
Rating: 6.5/10

Well, the prequel to Alien is exciting, beautiful, stupid, and unusually thought-provoking.

Normally I say thought-provoking as a good thing. Here, not so much. 

I don't want to devote too much time to a movie I found decent with 1 really great performance that was betrayed a couple of plot contrivances, and a third act that threw away much of the more cerebral aspects of the first two, but screenwriters Damon Lindelof and Jon Spaihts really annoyed me with a couple things. I love a good ambiguous ending, or mysterious plot-dangle, but the plot holes or questions in Prometheus that many of my friends keep asking and conversing about don't feel mysterious or intriguing. They feel like they were introduced to look cool without a second thought given to what the answers would be. The black goo in the cave does look cool, but it also reeks of lazy writing. As lazy as that storm that separates 2 crew members? No. But lazy nonetheless. 

Again, Prometheus was a fine piece of entertainment. But it should be taken only as seriously as you would take any other summer blockbuster. 

But hot damn, it looked good.

Another Earth (2011)

Another Earth

Medium: Film
Director: Mike Cahill
Country: United States
Released: 201
First Consumed: June 7, 2012
Format: Blu-ray
Rating: 5.5/10

A planet is discovered out of the blue that is a mirror of our own Earth. On the night of its discovery a young girl (co-writer Brit Marling) celebrating her acceptance to MIT slams her vehicle into a family, killing all but the father, William Mapother. Four years later, the world is still trying to deal with the discovery, and trying to communicate with the other planet. Marling is released from jail and sees the new planet as a potential new beginning. To make amends for her crime, she goes to Mapother's house to apologize to him. She instead tells him she's from a cleaning service, and becomes his house cleaner.

Tell me if this sounds ridiculous. I think it does. I don't mean the new EarthAll the Earth 2 stuff is really interesting, and the film follows through with some of the more sci-fi elements that it introduces. But they're never to the focus of the film. I'm talking about the other stuff. the real focus belongs to the weird relationship between Marling and Mapother; initially employee and employer, then friends, then sort-of lovers. It's groan-inducing stuff as it plays out. The house cleaning set up never feels better than a plot contrivance, and the escalation of the relationship never becomes believable.

Marling rarely delivers more than a few words at a time, and she gets great mileage out of her expressive eyes and facial expressions. When the time comes for her to deliver the climactic monologue, she doesn't totally deliver, but again the writing does her no favors (even if she likely wrote the scene).She's likely the only piece of this film I'm interested to see more of, especially as her latest film, The Sound of My Voice, has recently garnered strong reviews.

'Celebration Rock' (2012) by Japandroids

Celebration Rock

Medium: Album

Artist: Japandroids
Label: Polyvinyl Record Co.
Country: Canada
Released: June 5, 2012
First Consumed: June 6, 2012
Genre: Garage/Punk/Noise/Indie Rock
Rating: 9.0

It's a smaller sample size than normal, but the past month has been ridiculous with musical treasures. Celebration Rock is the third album in 3 weeks to enter my top 3 of the year. It falls right behind El-P's Cancer 4 Cure, and just ahead of Killer Mike's R.A.P. Music. 

Simple songs of girls and youth and drinking might sound easy, but I'd argue otherwise. I haven't heard any other band pull off such a minimal set up with such sincerity as Japandroids. This album builds upon 2009's Post-Nothing by being clearer, louder, and tighter. Otherwise, it's the same blue-print. A guitar, some drums, and two guys wailing "Oh!"s into the night.

"Nights of Wine and Roses" may be their best song yet, and doubles as an anthem for, I'm sure, much of their listening demographic. Including me.

This is get up, dance and scream along music. 

Star Trek: The Next Generation, Complete Series

Star Trek: The Next Generation, complete series

Medium: TV
Created by: Gene Roddenberry
Network: First-run syndication
Dates Aired: September 28, 1987 - May 23, 1994
Consumption completed: June 5, 2012
Genre: Sci-fi, Drama
Rating: 7.5/10

About a year and three months ago, a friend and I, casually drinking and watching crap on Netflix Instant, got sick of watching episodes of various Power Rangers incarnations. He made me try out TNG, and much to my annoyance, made me watch an episode from the second season. He assured me it would be a much better introduction to the crew and their universe than the actual pilot episode would be. I thank him very much for that. The episode was "Q Who", and it served as the introduction to the Borg. And not only that, it was fantastic. The borg were scary as hell, and I could tell the crew of the Enterprise thought so, too. Jean-Luc Picard (an always on his game Patrick Stewart) didn't save the day or outsmart their foe; they ran away. I found it all very exciting. I was hooked.

The pilot episode, "Encounter at Farpoint", has very little in common with "Q Who" aside from the characters. It's long and bloated, the dialogue is atrocious, and the initial conflict (Q kidnaps Jean-Luc and puts him on trial for humanity's crimes) is a silly, stupid way to ease us into what was the new era of Star Trek.

But I knew it would get better. With only a couple exceptions, "Q Who" is really the first notable episode of the series, and it falls about midway into the second season. From there, the show takes off. The four-season stretch from 3 to 6 features some of the best science fiction television I've seen (as well as a few terrible episodes). No season of TNG ever was perfect.

But in its prime,even when it could be lazy and crummy, the crew of the TNG Enterprise was always a joy. My father says they were boring, but that's only because they were a bunch of (mostly) level-headed and stable, nerdish workaholics. Jean-Luc was a man in love with the idea of exploration and discovery, and he made his crew care about it as well. Worf was often the brunt of jokes, but episodes focusing on him and his Klingon culture were some of the series' best. Geordi Laforge and Data  had a great working chemistry that the show often exploited to great effect.

The female characters were less well-served by the scripts, but by season 6, even Deanna Troi was put back into a normal Star Fleet uniform and given meaningful things to do. Beverly Crusher never got as effective of a development, but she character was rarely an issue, just often under-utilized.

Oh, and Commander William Riker. He so rarely got to be the focus, but he's a total badass of a supporting character.

TNG is far from a perfect show, but it is a very good show. And a classic one, too. I'm excited about delving into Deep Space 9, just as soon as I've finished Babylon 5 (I have four and a half seasons left).