Check out this article on the “20 Greatest Extended Takes in Movie History.” Two of the takes really stood out for me. These were fight scenes from two action movies, Oldboy and The Protector.
Most fight scenes these days seem to be shot in the Bourne Identity style, featuring quick cuts and a shaky camera. I actually enjoy this style in movies where the fighting is supposed to be brutally realistic. It can capture the confusion of a real fight. But in some films, like the Batman movies, the quick cuts just annoy. The movie is about a guy who wears a cape and rides the Batmobile, for God’s sake! Show us what is going on.
Words cannot express how much I love this scene from Oldboy:
The camera slowly drifts down the hallway as Min-Sik Choi’s protagonist battles his way through multiple protagonists to reach the elevator at the end. But this isn’t your typical martial arts movie where the bad guys considerately charge at our hero one at a time. No, Choi must fight his way through the whole crowd over the course of three solid minutes. It's exhausting. Even the music sounds tired. Just a terrific scene.
The other extended take I wanted to point out is from The Protector:
In contrast to the scene from Oldboy, this camerawork here is almost playful, occasionally leaving Jaa to glance down at the people streaming through the lobby below, and allowing Jaa to slip behind a wooden screen, revealing his location periodically by shoving an unfortunate guy’s head through the carving. I say playful, but a lot of work went into this shot. I can’t even imagine how difficult it must have been to film. According to the article, this take took one month and five takes to shoot. If there’s one flaw, it’s that Jaa never really confronts more than one guy at once. Not a surprise—Jaa has never been like Jackie Chan, who likes to choreograph elaborate fight scenes with multiple opponents.
John Scalzi wrote an interesting article awhile back that argued that Bourne-style jump-cut scenes may become less common as more and more action films are shot in 3D. In Avatar, you may have noticed that Cameron shot a lot of long takes and avoided quick cuts as much as possible. That’s because rapid cuts in 3D require your eyes to repeatedly refocus. Think Transformers gave you a headache? Believe me, it would have been much worse in 3D.
30 Rock producer Robert Carlock stands behind Julianne Moore's Boston accent, claiming: "I know people who sound like that. Take the train." [Hat tip to my friend Laura for the link.] Um.... no. Let's go to the tape:
I'm a Boston native, and I have NEVER heard anyone who sounds like that. It's like she's an alien from another planet, dropped into Boston and trying desperately to imitate a Boston accent, but failing miserably because her mouthparts just can't handle human language. For a real Boston accent in a movie, look no further than Matt Damon in Good Will Hunting (he lays the verbal beatdown around the one minute mark):
How do you like THEM apples?? Anyway, Moore's accent is like Peter Sellers' French accent in the Pink Panther movies: hilarious despite (or perhaps because of) its complete disconnect from reality.
For some reason (*cough*procrastination*cough*) I’ve decided to rank what I believe are the best drama shows currently on television. Note: I haven’t seen Mad Men yet. From everything I’ve heard, it would probably make this list.
Except for Breaking Bad, these four shows may not be on the same rarefied plane of television greatness as The Wire or The Sopranos. But they’re not far away, and they’re definitely on a whole different level from every other drama on TV. They’re also all deep enough to reward repeated viewings. Here we go:
1. Breaking Bad
High-school chemistry teacher Walt Whiteman starts cooking meth to pay the bills after he is diagnosed with lung cancer. Sounds like fun, huh? Believe it or not, this HBO show is the best program on television. There’s a surprising amount of dark comedy here. So many people knock their roles out of the park in this show: Walt’s younger, pregnant wife; his disabled son; his foul-mouthed DEA agent brother-in-law; and his drug-dealing sidekick Jesse (who Walt flunked out of chem class back in the day.) But at its heart, Breaking Bad is a character study of one person, Bryan Cranston’s Walt. Quiet, mild-mannered Walt appears at first to be a weak man. But every episode strips away another layer of his personality to reveal the steely core beneath.
Favorite Episode: Season 1, Episode 3. “… And the Bag’s in the River.” Walt bonds with Krazy 8, the meth dealer he and Jesse have bicycle-locked by the throat to the pillar in Jesse’s basement.
Here’s an amateur trailer for the first season I found:
2. Lost
Lost is a sprawling epic, flawed but wonderful. Among its many strengths: a non-linear plot, enduring mysteries, and more fascinating characters than you can shake a stick at—as well as an admirable willingness to kill them off. Of course, these strengths are also Lost’s weaknesses. If you like tidy resolutions at the end of each episode, stay far, far away. Lost often wastes episodes on story arcs that go nowhere andfail to expand our understanding of the key characters. Season 3, in particular, was such a wandering, pointless mess that I gave up on the show for a year. That being said, Lost offers great rewards to those with patience. Seasons 4 and 5 are serial drama at its best, so I recommend sucking it up and forging through the annoying tangents. In some ways, Lost reminds me of Deadwood, another great but flawed show that featured an abundance of characters and meandering plotlines. I’m just glad that Lost, unlike Deadwood, has survived long enough to work out the kinks.
Favorite episode: Season 1, Episode 4, “Walkabout.” John Locke’s origin story. Key quote from the wheelchair-bound Locke: “Don’t you tell me what I can’t do!”
Here’s the clip:
3. Friday Night Lights
I was having trouble putting into words just how good Friday Night Lights is, so just go read the impassioned plea Bill Simmons wrote back in 2007 to save FNL from cancellation:
On Aug. 28, NBC released the American DVDs with a "satisfaction guaranteed" gimmick. Now if you continue to ignore FNL, it's only because you're trying to hurt me. If you do give it a shot, let me recommend the impeccable acting, the lively football scenes (although they tend to go overboard on exciting finishes), the risky story lines and especially Coach Taylor's family, the most authentic household in recent TV history. Every nuance is nailed, every hug seems genuine, every fight makes sense, every sarcastic barb and flustered reaction ring true. If there are better TV actors than Kyle Chandler (Coach) and Connie Britton (Mrs. Coach), I haven't TiVoed them. Pay particular attention to the astonishing two-parter in which an older assistant sets off a racial powder keg before a big playoff game. If FNL were Michael Jordan, Lyla Garrity's slam-page episode would be the 63-point game in Boston (the coming-out party), and the two-parter would be the 1991 Finals (the moment considerable potential is realized).
What he said.
Favorite Episode: Season 3, Episode 13 (season finale), “Tomorrow Blues.” I can’t say too much without spoiling a key plot twist, but never have I wanted to scream louder at a television character than I did when Matt Saracen walks in the door to his grandmother’s house at the end of this episode. “Noooooo! You’re making a mistake!!!” Just devastating.
A nice little bonus when watching FNL is how much music it uses from one of my favorite bands, Explosions in the Sky. This promo offers a little taste:
4. Dexter
I wasn’t quite sure about including Dexter on this list. Don’t get me wrong, I love it.Michael C. Hall turns in an A+ performance as Dexter Morgan. It’s not easy to play a sympathetic serial killer. And the show is tightly plotted, with strong supporting characters like David Zayas’s Angel and Julie Benz’s Rita. I just can’t shake the feeling that Dexter isn’t nearly as substantial as it seems at first glance. Will people really be rewatching Dexter twenty years from now? Maybe it’s just hard to care about a main character that rarely feels human emotion. Still, I decided that Dexter merits inclusion for its amazing consistency, if nothing else. I can’t think of a single bad episode.
Favorite episode: Season 1, Episode 10. “There’s Something About Harry.” Sgt. Doakes, who has always been creeped out by Dexter, finds himself imprisoned in a cabin in the woods after confronting Dexter with evidence of his killings.
Coming up in a week or so: the runner-up dramas and why they didn’t make the list. Also, top comedies.
CLEVELAND—Cavaliers center Shaquille O'Neal suffered a frustrating setback during his team's victory over the Toronto Raptors Tuesday night, when he was sidelined for the entire second half of the game with a pulled pork sandwich.
O'Neal, who scored 12 points and grabbed three rebounds during the first half of the game, returned to the bench at the beginning of the third quarter, clutching at the pulled pork sandwich and informing trainers that it was incredibly tender. A member of the Cavaliers' medical staff said that when he attempted to examine the pulled pork sandwich, O'Neal flinched away and grunted sharply.
Jay Leno will host the next White House correspondent's dinner. You know what you're going to get with Leno: a safe, bland speech with a few chuckles here and there. Ugh. I guess they didn't want to risk another Colbert situation:
Hilarious, but Colbert's 2006 speech pulled no punches. It made some people at the dinner a little uncomfortable. So the next year they brought in a guy named Rich Little who specializes in Richard Nixon and Johnny Carson impressions. Not exactly the cutting edge of comedy. 2008 and 2009 were a bit better with Craig Ferguson and Wanda Sykes. But now it's back to bland with Leno. You know what the weird thing is? Leno used to be funny too. Don't believe me? Check out this grainy video from 1992.
This Sunday, I will celebrate my last day of freedom before classes begin by watching playoff football. Sadly, my beloved Patriots will not be playing. But that doesn’t mean that I can’t enjoy watching the games. In particular, I’m looking forward to the Vikings-Saints game, featuring the legendary Brett Favre. As you may have heard the football announcers mention once or twice, 41- year-old Favre has basically been a god among men this season. Seriously, check out his statistics: 4000+ yards, 30+ touchdowns, the highest completion percentage of his career, and the fewest interceptions, by far. It’s no stretch to say that Favre is having the best season of his career.
I cannot emphasize enough how sure I am that Favre has achieved this remarkable feat by purely NATURAL means, COMPLETELY UNAIDED by any sort of “performance-enhancing” substance. That is not to suggest that Favre’s historic season can be explained merely as the result of better teammates, playing all his home games in a dome, or a desire to show the Packers that they were wrong to let him walk. No, chalk this one up to genetics. Favre is the greatest athlete since Barry Bonds, the “late bloomer” who put on forty pounds of naturally occurring muscle in his late thirties. Favre, too, has undoubtedly reached peak physical condition at age 41. All it took was a relaxing summer trucking around the ol’ Missouri dirt farm, interspersed with the occasional workout, and boom! Nature took its course. If there’s one thing I’ve learned following sports over the past few years, it’s to be completely unsuspicious of middle-age professional athletes having historic seasons.
Just saw the pilot episode of Human Target on Hulu. Not bad. The highlight for me was Jackie Earle Haley as a professional investigator/hacker/all-around creeper named Guerrero. You may recall Haley as Rorshach in Watchmen, where he turned in an A+ performance in a B- production. In this show, too, Haley seems far more interesting than the rest of the cast. Let’s hope that this doesn’t turn into a Zachary Quinto-in-Heroes situation, where diehard fans suffer through scenes featuring the rest of the cast while waiting for serial-killer Sylar to appear and punish the other characters for their wooden acting and poor comedic timing. If you’ve ever seen Milo Ventimiglia attempt to display an actual human emotion other than “pissed off” or “pouting,” you know what I mean. Left: Ventigmiglia tries to achieve a non-annoying facial expression. Fails.
