Thursday

Dawn was dead to begin with. Escape From The Dragon House (beautifully titled), was last night's fourth installment of True Blood. Just when we thought we have the stylistic idiosyncracies of the show worked out, we are surprised yet again. Here's why:

For the first few episodes of the show, I felt that the vampires 'coming out of the coffin' was a parallel to the struggles of homosexuals in modern society (bare with me, guys). Slogans such as 'God Hates Fangs', talk of vampire rights, visits to illicit vampire bars all clearly supported this theory. However, last night it also emerged that race was on the True Blood agenda. Tara had two great scenes in this episode: the speech to the policemen about their surprise at a black woman knowing about the law, and her other conversation with Sam about the 'separate but equal' debate. Both provided an interesting parallel to the show's vampire rights angle. On the gay culture front, Sookie and Bill's visit to Fangtasia, the vampire bar, seemed eerily familiar to anyone who has ever spent any amount of time immersed in gay culture. (NOT gay community - I hate the use of this word to describe gays, blacks, jews, Abba fans etc. It seems to suggest that everyone in the world is white, straight and middle class, and that anyone who is perceived as 'other' lives on one single street somewhere they don't need to interact with real people. It must be comforting to some, but not entirely representative, unfortunately.)

Also, the sexual content of the show, and, in particular, Jason Stackhouse, moved up a gear. Now, Jason has spent most of the previous 3 episodes half naked, fully naked, about to have sex, having sex or having just had sex. So, last night, we have Jason engaging in a ridiculous amount of furious masturbation, and resultant penile welts, after drinking an entire vial of vampire blood. This, of course, was provided by Lafayette, who is rapidly becoming on of the show's biggest scene stealing characters. However, such is the genius of this show that this seemingly inconsequential, comic plot thread, actually provided us with an insight into the motivation behind Tara's attachment to Jason - a quick flashback scene revealing to us that, as children, Jason used to protect Tara from her abusive, alcoholic Mother.

And, what en ending - Sam breaking into the room where Dawn was murdered was creepy enough - but to sniff the sheets and roll about in them ecstatically? Great, twisted cliffhanger. 8 more episodes of this season. Fantastic.

I like the fact that both seasons of True Blood are only 12 episodes long. There are very few shows that sustain their quality and originality across a 24 episode season. Even Desperate Housewives gives a 'churning it out' feeling by mid-season. Hence why we get needless and frankly bizarre storylines to fill the time - such as the paedophile in season 3, and practically the whole last 13 episodes of season 5. Which is why the show's greatest season was undoubtedly it's 4th. Cut short by the writer's strike down to a leaner 17 episodes, we still managed to fit in Lynette's cancer, a tornado, the excellent Dana Delany season-long mystery, and even enough screen time to win Kathryn Joosten a second emmy. Quality over quantity.

Similarly, NBC's unwillingless to pay CBS for more than 16 episodes per season of Medium could be viewed as a blessing in disguise - though I will stress that a police procedural has fewer of the season-long mystery and character arcs of a show in more of a soap opera tradition like Housewives. Therefore, the pendulum at times may swing too far in the opposite direction and become repetitive, as I have said before about Medium. But to episode 5, Baby Fever. I think this season may shape up to be one of their strongest - though I may have changed my mind by episode 22. Firstly to Allison and the main plot thread of the episode. The baby kidnap was handled in an unusual and interesting way. I thought we were going to spend a whole episode looking for a baby. But Brice appeared safe and sound pretty swiftly and we were suddenly pulled into a rabbit hole whereby the actual mystery was not what we had originally thought. And it was great to catch up with Lee and Lynn and their trials and tribulations with their brand new baby.

The opening dream sequence deviated from the usual murder plots, which was fun to see, and I loved the way that some of the more interesting crime solving devices from earlier seasons were recycled. One of my favourite dreams, and favourite overall episodes, is the season 2 The Song Remains The Same, wherein Allison wakes up with a song in her head that directs her to a clue which leads to finding a missing girl. In Baby Fever, Allison followed the sounds of baby cries emanating from a photograph to locate the missing child. This was a classic device that, thankfully, hasn't become overused in the show.

However, as is so often the case with Medium, the process was more interesting than the result. Allison's dreams, her almost obsessive attachment to the baby and the way it affected everyone around her was far more engaging than the clunky exposition scene near the end of the episode.

As I mentioned in my last post, the increasing use of the Dubois children in the show is always a delight, and in this episode we got to see some great acting from Maria Lark, and more scenes than usual from Madison and Miranda Carabello. Their's was a strong subplot with a mature, nuanced performance from Maria Lark. Lark has always been a great comic presence on the show and I looked forward to seeing her emerging talent. In Baby Fever, she proved she could nail drama as well. She was absolutely heartbreaking in the scene where she confessed to Joe about what she felt were her inadequacies. This kid could act most adults in television right off the screen. She was genuinely moving.

I look forward to the rest of the season.

More tomorrow.

Peace x

Wednesday

First, to reviews.

Now, I had some really high hopes for Fantastic Mr. Fox. Visually, it looked glorious. And any film that invites me to nod off to the smooth tones of George Clooney and the lilting whisper of Meryl Streep is absolutely welcome to. There's no need to completely rehash Wes Anderson's back catalogue here; suffice to say The Royal Tenenbaums and The Life Aquatic were both interesting, quirky, and at once dramatic and humorous.

Unfortunately, even from the outset, I found the film quite alienating. Fox-ified, hippy Meryl announcing her pregnancy to a strangely unanimated George. Odd. A bizarre lack of any real through line of action for the plot. Which was really strange seeing as there really is a lot going on. A number of bizarre writing choices: why on Earth did Mr. Fox make a toast again and again? What the bejesus was with Mr. Fox addressing a wolf near the end? The animation of the wolf seemed as if it was from a completely different film. Why did Mrs. Fox and the kid keep waving their arms and talking about strangeness? I half expected there to be a gay subplot with the kid. Instead, it came to nothing.

And that was the trouble. The whole film really came to nothing. It wasn't particularly gripping or funny. It wasn't a cuddly kid's film or a tongue in cheek child-adult hybrid. Which is a shame, as I really wanted to like this film.

Oh, and this was the first film I've ever seen where it feels like Meryl Streep phones in her performance. I mean, I know they recorded her dialogue from France, where she was filming Julie and Julia, so she literally did phone it in, but still - the greatest actor of her generation sounded bored with this role. Not a good sign.

So, on to Medium. Episode 4 of the 6th season, and another strong episode - though probably my least favourite of the season so far. I liked the fact that, once again, the procedural drama was linked into the development of her recovery from her stroke last season. Same with Pain Killer, where Allison began to dream about her friend in the hospital who she suspected was murdered by the same Doc that saved her life.

My favourite episode of the four so far was Who's That Girl? Medium has always addressed the children's burgeoning psychic powers, and one of the highlights of last season was an increasing number of interesting sub-plots for Ariel. They beefed up the drama of the show and kept it from feeling as repetitive as it started to feel by season three. Hence, this episode felt like something of a coming out party for Sophia Vassilieva. She had a wide range of emotions to communicate with not one, but two characters to play with. I think the result was spectacular. Hurrah. Episode five tonight...

True Blood tonight also. This show is so much fun. I'm not a big vampire/zombie/horror/sci-fi person. But this has some cracking characters and brilliant dialogue. Oh, and the sex. There's some hotties on this show. Brilliant.

I thought it was too bloody good to be true when the Daily Fail showed such solidarity in its outrage of Nick Griffin's dick-headery on Question Time. Alas, this was not to last. Apparently they are now spear-heading the hate campaign against the BBC for alleged tampering with the show. It's strangely comforting that some things never change. At least not with the mail anyway. We must keep fighting the fight. We must.

Continue to have doubts my friends. Such doubts.

Peace x