Now With More GRAVITAS: 24, Studio 60 Rant, and LAST KING OF SCOTLAND Review - + MORE

TWENTY FOUR:

So yeah, the last two weeks or so of 24 have been uneven to say the least. Sure, there were moments of Jack-Bauer infused awesomeness, but just about every other subplot was suffering from an extra dosage of LAME, with things increasingly feeling like retreads of all-too-familiar 24 subplot standbys.

Last night, however, the 24 of old returned. In the first hour especially, I was left with an animalistic urge to raise my head to the heavens and scream "DAAAAAAAAAMN!" Because 24 was back, and it kicked seven kinds of ass.

Let's see, we had:

- Nonstop action? Check.
- Classic Jack disarming (nuclear) bomb scene? Check.
- Great little moments between Jack and Chloe? Check.
- Sufficiently EVIL terorrists barely escaping capture? Check.
- Newer supporting characters like Morris and Milo having their best scenes on the show yet? Check.
- Papa Bauer increasingly showing his Palpatine-esque true colors? Check.
- Stuff Blowin' up real nice-like? Check.
- Gravitas by the boat-full? Check.

What we didn't have:

- NO Regina King as Annoying Palmer Relation #458
- NO internment camp subplot
- NO Karen Hayes angst
- NO "Is there a mole at CTU" subplot
- NO "CTU employee held back due to Arab nationality" subplot

So basically, all of the lame subplots from the last few weeks were practically nonexistent this week. The only holdover was the obligatory "clandestine conspiracy to overthrow / murder the President" angle, but even that got more interesting as the stakes became raised and more cards were layed on the table. It will be interesting to see, for one thing, how or if this Patriot's group ties into the Bluetooth Brigade / Papa Bauer conspiracy. I'm thinking that connection will have to become apparent sometime soon, or else all we have is simply another Right-Wing zealots in the whitehouse subplot which has been done on 24 ad nauseum (anyone remember Walt Cummings?).

In turn, everything with Jack was great - pure action mixed with little chunks of humanity that were much-missed in recent weeks. I loved Jack's little acknowledgment of Chloe and her subsequent smile - a nice nod to the history between the two. Jack and Rena Sofer (she of both HEROES and 24!) have a nice chemistry though it makes me wonder if Audrey Raines will show up at all. And Jack's dad was really vicious as a guy willing to do anything to preserve what he's built- plus, it was cool to see Jack really be in the dark about his dad, for once a step behind. And yes, we've seen Jack disarm a bomb multiple times on the show, but still, the nuke disarming scene was just ridiculously intense - shot and paced to perfection. Also, didn't I call it? Morris stepped up this episode and finally cemented his place in the 24 universe. Great scenes with him held hostage in the car.

Still, a few minor quibbles:

- How the hell did Fayed escape on a helicopter after all air-traffic was blocked?
- How did Morris return to work mere minutes after getting a giant hole power-drilled into his shoulder?
- How is Jack's dad allowed to make unrestricted cell phone calls at CTU? Security there really is atrocious!
- How many times is Jack going to say "I can't do this anymore" and then proceed to kick unholy amounts of ass seconds later?
- I miss ACH-meht!
- Come on, they're really going to kill the prez the day of a nuclear attack?
- Damn, the preview for next week showed a MAJOR scene! Cut that out ...

Overall, this was a highly enjoyable 2 hours of 24 that reminded me why I love this show. Sure, people manage to get from place to place in LA traffic in under 5 minutes, CTU has the worst security ever, terrorists have more escape techniques than David Copperfield, and the President has to stop attempted assasination plots by secret conspiracies every other week ... but dammit all, how can you not love it?

My Grade:

Hour 1 - A
Hour 2 - A -

- Have not yet seen this week's ep (and not sure if I want to ...), but this weekend I came to a realization while watching my recorded STUDIO 60. I pretty much hate the show. I love the show as it was established in the pilot - a biting, scathing, stylized look at showbiz and comedy, with an all-star cast and sharp writing. I hate what the show has become -- a self-important soap-ox for Aaron Sorkin in which he's somehow managed to make EVERY CHARACTER an unlikable, preachy jerk. How is it that the one character I can still tolerate on the show is Stephen Webber's nework chief, whose whole MO is that he's SUPPOSED to be an asshole? Well, I guess that's the point. Stephen Webber makes that character work because he's the one character who is SELF-AWARE that he is an unlikable idiot. Every other character seems to screm "Love me! I'm a witty, interesting person who takes myself very, very seriously!" I mean, the moment that killed me was Timothy Busfield ending his scene going into a commercial break on this big, weighty, dramatic note. The subject of all his melodramatically-delivered dialogue? Animal control in the studio. An attempt at a comedic subplot by Sorkin that became almost unwatchable due to its amazingly self-serious lack of humor. Everyone on this show speaks the same way - jaw jutted out, brow furrowed, poised for an argument about the nature of comedy, same-sex marriage, religious politics, relationships, whatever. It's just so preachy and flat-out off-putting. There's nary a character here who doesn't seem to beg the viewer to jump into their TV screen, punch them in the face, and sentance them to a life of coal-mining or something. I mean I HATED the whole Simon storyline from last week, which COULD have worked had the show not portrayed Simon and his "writing rules" stance as being in the right. A show about narrow-minded, stubborn idiots being right and getting their way might be an accurate reflection of Sorkin's jaded worldview, but good television it does NOT make. Any more episodes of this show that I watch will be purely from a "watching a trainwreck in action" point of view. But even The OC is a fun trainwreck. This is just painful.

- I did see last week's SMALLVILLE, which I thought was probably one of the stronger episode of the season. A lot of the same old angst and silliness, but this one had some real tension and drama to it, and had some of the best acting from its leads I've seen in a while. Also, great music by the legendary Mark Snow that evoked his classic work on The X-Files - its amazing how much drama and intensity a good score can add to a show like this. There is still plenty of room for improvement if the show wants to recapture its Season 2-3 magic, but this was a marked imporvement over the mediocrity of the last few weeks.

My Grade: B+

- FOX's Sunday night lineup was a pretty big disappointment this week, however. The Simpsons was just terrible, with a contrived, absurd plot about Bart dating an older (and pregnant!) girl. Honestly, I don't think I laughed once the entire episode. This was really bad. King of the Hill, the one FOX animated show that can still bring it, was decent but not as good as the previous week's great premiere. The episode had some great character stuff as per usual but the plot felt kind of thin and pointless. Tom Petty as always was great in his all-too-brief cameo as recurrign character Lucky. Family Guy had one or two decent jokes (the old guy next door singing lusftfully with Christopher was kinda hilarious, the Robert Logia gag was also pretty good), but ultimately fell pretty flat - not as good as last week's ep by a long-shot. How many episodes are they going to do about Peter discovering his heritage? Now he's Irish? However, I did find the whole Stewie as sado-masochist storyline pretty hilarious. Not enough to outweigh the rest of the episode's "meh" factor, but funny enough that I still checkle when I think of Baby Stewie having fantasies of his mom spanking him in dominatrix gear.

My Grade:

The Simpsons - D
King of the Hill - B-
Family Guy - C+

- I also finally caught last week's HEROES over the weekend. I won't speak too much about it until I've seen this week's ep, suffice to say I'm liking the direction of the show and have seen some noticable improvements in the acting and plotting. Overall, it was probably one of my favorite episodes of Heroes to date, which warrants an A- from me.

THE LAST KING OF SCOTLAND Review:

I had been meaning to see this one for a long while, and I finally got around to seeing it this weekend at the very cool Laemle theater in West Hollywood, which has a great selection of smaller-release movies, and is currently showing many of the more independent Oscar-nominated movies. I wasn't sure what exactly to expect from this movie other than a great perfromance from Forrest Whitaker, but what I got blew me away. This was a tour de force of a film. Not only is Forrest as good or better than what you've heard - but, as a whole, The Last King of Scotland does an incredible job of immersing you in its world - a 1970's era Uganda that is both brimming with potential as a breakout nation of the African world and the site of indescribable violence and wholesale slaughter. The brilliance of the movie is that it starts out as one thing - a slow, picturesque, often humorous look at a young Scot's journey to Uganda in search of fun and adventure. But by its finale, the movie has morphed into a nail-bitingly intense, balls-to-the-wall action-thriller that will have all but the least squeamish people watching nervously through half-closed eyes. This transition closely mirrors our perceptions of Whitaker as Ugandan President Idi Amin - who walks a tightrope between teddy-bear goofball and sadistic, paranoid, ruthless violent warlord.

To sum up the premise, mostly steeped in actual recent history - the movie follows Nicholas, a young Scottish guy, just out of medical school, who, disturbed by the notion of living a sedentary life of domesticity, heads to the developing African nation of Uganda, where he works in a medical mission. By chance of fate, Nicholas meets the newly-installed President of Uganda, Idi Amin, who takes a liking to the boy and quickly offers him a job as his personal doctor. Caught up in the high-living and power-trip of being Amin's right-hand man, Nicholas enjoys the ride, until he begins to realize just what kind of man Amin is and what kind of government he's actually working for.

The first thing I need to point out here is: yeah, Whitaker really is that good here. He completely transforms himself in this role and becomes Amin, to the point where real footage of Amin shown at the film's end blends in seamlessly with Whitaker's performance. His Amin is at times so friendly and appealing that you want to go fishing with him, at times so violent and erratic that the sheer intensity is almost overwhelming. And Whitaker so fully forms this character that you are never sure what he'll do at any given moment. Every single scene with him as Amin is completely captivating, unnerving, and fascinating.

Meanwhile, James McAvoy is really excellent here - this is undoubtedly his breakthrough performance. McAvoy's character rings 100% true as a young guy completely in over his head, a guy who set out for some adventure and suddenly found himself the unlikely confidant of a man who was quickly becoming one of modern history's most evil political leaders. This is definitely an actor to watch in light of this performance.

There are also a few nice supporting roles here, my favorite of which was Gillian Anderson as a married doctor tempted to the brink of an affair with Nicholas. The woman who mader her mark as Agent Scully has a pretty small, but still crucial role. Mostly though, it was just nice to see one of my favorite actresses again.

Really though, this movie belongs to McAvoy and Whittaker, and the sweeping direction and cinematography which really paints a vivid picture of Uganda as a mix of old-world African tribalism, rampant poverty and sickness, and thriving European modernity and excess. This really was an amazingly-shot movie with a number of montage sequences that really had me marveling at the power of the images on screen. And as I mentioned, the last half hour or so of the film is sheer intensity - a breakneck series of violent and action-packed scenes that had me holding my breath and on the edge of my seat. This is a portrait of a man in Idi Amin, yes, but it's also one heck of a political thriller, with plenty of intrigue surrounding Amin and the various factions that seek to overthrow him.

In the end, I'd recommend this as a must-see movie featuring a performance for the ages from Forest Whitaker. Intense, violent, disturbing, and fascinating - this is not one to be missed.

My Grade: A

- So after a small drought of quality flicks in the last few weeks (Epic Movie and Norbit #1's at the box office? Really?), a ton of much-anticipated material is set for release soon. On my must-list for the next several weeks:

1.) 300 (this could very well be an early Top 10 of 2007 candidate - this will own)
2.) Black Snake Moan (another one that seems poised for instant-classic status)
3.) TMNT (yeah baby, let the late80's / early 90's revival begin!)
4.) Ghost Rider (may suck, but come on, it's Ghost Rider!)
5.) Blades of Glory (figure skating = inherently funny)
6.) Reno 9-11 (anything featuring any members of The State, let alone all of them = I'm there)
7.) Sunshine (a space epic from Danny Boyle? Could be awesome)
8.) Breach (it's Universal so I'm supporting it - good cast, David Palmer, could be sweet)
9.) The Astronaut Farmer (could be pretentious drivel, could be great ... but I'm curious)
10.) Zodiac (new thriller from David Fincher ... heads will roll)

11.) The Wind That Shakes the Barley - okay, this trailor actually looked pretty cool, but the ENTIRE audience burst into laughter when the name was revealed. Sounds like something Ricky Gervais might have come up with for Extras. Say it over and over with an Irish lilt. It's fun.

- Okay, that's about all I have for now ... in general things are good with me - I'm officially GE now - that is, if my drug test results ever get received by HR! But in the last few days I've been swamped in doctor's appointments, HR forms, benefits packages, et all. At least I have some direction and momentum. I'll try to write more about all this stuff later. For now, I'll just quote Jack Bauer and demand MORE CC'S~!

You heard me. MORE. C.C's.