Music is better with friends

I wish I could but I can't write about everything.

So I'll let other people pick up the slack when it comes to the two fantastic concerts I saw earlier this month:

Helen took some great photos at the Coldplay show and she does a good job of describing the fun of the show itself (the band's anthem-heavy latest album may not have won raves from music critics but it makes their show pretty damn enjoyable) and the hell that was the drive home.

And I shared Kevin's delight at the brilliant pairing of Ben Folds and Rufus Wainwright. You owe it to yourself to check out his clips of their awesome cover of Careless Whisper.

Ben, Rufus, Wham!, Perfect.

Better Late Than Never

(I'm trying to write this post as general as I can to preserve some of the unique surprises present in the finale, but there are minor spoilerish elements anyway. It's simply too difficult to avoid...)

It's been over a week now since HBO and Alan Ball buried the Fisher clan on the Six Feet Under series finale.

And man it was awesome.

At least it was in the eyes of this loyal fan. Over the past five seasons I've had some (minor) quibbles but I've always felt that Six Feet Under consistently delivered some of the best television I've been lucky enough to see. The acting, writing and filmmaking was far superior to the vast majority of what the networks, and most of cable, have ever produced. I'm not sure the show was ultimately a classic for the ages in the way The Sopranos clearly is, but it certainly raised the bar in its own way.

For one thing, the show celebrated the contradictory nature of human beings with an almost fetishistic relentlessness. Some viewers found that maddening. There were many complaints about the characters' "inconsistent" behavior over the seasons (one late breaking criticism even came from the show's star), but how many real people have you known who behave in a "consistent" way? These characters were written and performed as real, flawed, people. They may not have always been easy to embrace but, to the show's great credit, they were also never beyond redemption (even in death). Which brings us too...

This ridiculous notion that the show had become "too dark," "too morbid," "too bleak" etc. etc. Those complaints did a great disservice to the complexity of work the cast and crew delivered for 63 (only 63!) episodes. (Not to mention they fail to acknowledge the rich humor present in nearly every episode.)

I always found the show to be life affirming. It was a passionate reminder of how precious life is, how important family is and how people, and relationships, are far more complicated than we can ever really understand. I think the finale underlined all of that and more. (For a more detailed take from a passionate fan check out this Salon article. There were also great post-mortems in both the New York and LA Times).

Obviously I'm attached, but I was still shocked at how moved I was by the final three episodes. It may sound ridiculous but I'll say it anyway: I didn't really watch them, I felt them.

I've seen some online complaints that the finale was too soft, that it didn't stick to the show's core "shit happens" philosophy. I can buy the argument in respect to many of the characters' ultimate fates (everyone lived so long...) but not for the episode itself. After five seasons of drama it only makes sense to leave the characters in a place of peace. And I don't interpret that as a suggestion that they all lived happily ever after. There are clearly hard times still to come, but right there in that moment there was resolution.

And I can't imagine a better place to leave the characters I've come to love, in all their perfect imperfections.

Fall TV: Prison Break

I kinda want to like Prison Break, which premieres tonight on Fox with back-to-back episodes, but I'm not entirely sure how much I actually do. It's the first of the new fall series to hit the air and, of the pilots I've seen so far, it's one of the best. But in this season, which lacks an immediate stunner like Lost or Desperate Housewives, that's not saying very much.

At least Prison Break has a high concept: the show promises to follow a prison breakout over the course of a single season. Our hero, Michael Scofield (well played by Wentworth Miller) gets himself arrested... on purpose. He knows he'll end up in the same jail where his brother is currently on death row. His mission is to break both himself and his brother out of jail before his brother is due to be killed.

How exactly they will break out is only one of the show's initial intrigues. There are also problems with other inmates (including a mini race war and a former mob boss) and a shady conspiracy involving the crime Michael's brother supposedly committed (assassinating the Vice President).

That's enough plot but so far I can't really find a compelling hook. Michael's brother isn't a very interesting character in his brief time on screen, the prison elements feel like warmed over Oz (or, in some cases, Shawshank Redemption) and everything that happens outside the prison is pretty dull.

After the first two hours Prison Break has yet to demonstrate what makes it truly unique. This kind of serial storytelling is worth rooting for. It has been generally successful on shows like Lost and 24 (it's no coincidence that Fox gave Prison Break the 24 timeslot until the ticking-clock action hour returns in January), but both of those shows had more instantly addictive pilots.

Still, considering its serial format, and assuming the show builds significant momentum as the breakout comes closer, it's possible Prison Break will become more interesting with each new installment. I'm just not sure how long I'll be watching.

The two hour premiere will also repeat on Thursday night and a marathon of the series' first seven episodes is scheduled to run on FX in October.

Showtime aims high

Tonight Showtime offers a "preview" of Weeds, a new half-hour dramedy starring Mary-Louise Parker as a recently widowed mother of two who becomes the neighborhood pot dealer in order to support her family (the same episode airs tomorrow night at 10, the timeslot in which future episodes will premiere, in addition to numerous rebroadcasts throughout the week).

Yeah it's another suburban satire and sure it can be compared to Desperate Housewives but as usual with Showtime the real goal seems to be launching a show that HBO would actually be jealous of. I'm not so sure they've succeeded just yet.

The pilot feels more like a quirky indie film than a television series. It was directed by Brian Dannelly who was responsible for the smug indie Saved!, but the show's writer and creator, Jenji Kohan, has worked exclusively in television. The good news is that, according to several early reviews, the show gets better as it goes along, especially when Justin Kirk (Parker's co-star in Angels in America) joins the cast in episode four. A half-hour cable show actually improving as it continues would be a refreshing change of pace considering the recent creative implosions of Fat Actress and The Comeback (which were content trying to rework the same increasingly tired joke over and over with each new episode).

The supporting cast includes familiar faces like Elizabeth Perkins (who gets to be very nasty) and Kevin Nealon (who gets to smoke a lot of pot). They're both pretty good in the first episode, as is guest star Justin Chatwin (who went on to make a name for himself in War of the Worlds after filming this).

But if there's an immediate reason to tune in it's clearly Parker, an actress who has found television to be more receptive of her quirky charms than the film world has been (she took home a well-deserved Emmy for Angels in America and was also nominated for The West Wing). There's every indication that her character will offer opportunities worthy of her talent.

Also airing tonight is the first new episode of Six Feet Under since the big event last week. Although it's easy enough to find out what happened I don't care to spoil it here for anyone who hasn't seen it. I'm just glad it has people buzzing about this show again, which inexplicably became fashionable to bash in its previous season. This most recent development is of course perfect for a show grounded in the exploration of mortality and I'm eager to see what happens next now that there are only three episodes left to air.

Don't miss this movie

The only new wide release opening this weekend is The Dukes of Hazzard and I have a feeling that reading review excerpts is probably a lot more entertaining than actually watching the movie.

But it's an unusually strong weekend for limited releases if you're lucky enough to live in one of the cities they're opening in: the Jim Jarmusch-directed Broken Flowers, starring Bill Murray, and Wong Kar-Wai's 2046, featuring Zhang Ziyi and an all-star Asian cast, both hit theaters today. (This is still summer, isn't it?) I haven't seen either film yet but I have seen another limited release, one which unfortunately may not get as much attention.

Junebug is one of those small character-driven indies that doesn't have any major stars, doesn't have a premise that can be summed up in a single sentence and needs all the help it can possibly get in order to reach an audience.

Hopefully Junebug will find that help because it's the best movie I've seen so far this year.

At the risk of diminishing the qualities that make this such a unique film I'll try to boil down the premise as simply as I can: a Chicago art gallery owner travels with her new husband to North Carolina to meet with a local artist, and while she's there she meets her husband's family for the first time.

This kind of idea can go in all sorts of directions but Junebug isn't a sentimental movie about Blue Staters experiencing a grand awakening in a Red State and it's definitely not a movie that's content to portray the South as a parade of caricatures and cliches (maybe it's sort of perfect that the movie opens the same week as Dukes of Hazzard).

Saying the movie is about culture clash of the North and South is like saying You Can Count On Me is just a movie about a brother and a sister. The beauty of the movie isn't in the concept, it's in the details.

Character-driven movies work best when the characters actually come across as believable people, and that's exactly what happens in Junebug. Inhabiting credible, well-rounded characters provides the actors a chance to shine and they do, starting with Embeth Davidtz (whose strange career includes performances in Schindler's List, Army of Darkness and Bridget Jones's Diary) in the lead role. I don't think Davidtz has ever been better on screen.

But the movie truly belongs to Amy Adams, her performance is guaranteed to be among the year's very best. Adams is blessed with one of those scene-stealing roles that endears her to the audience while allowing the actress to show her skills at both comedy and tragedy. Her character, Ashley, has married into the film's central family just like Davidtz's character has. Even though their similarities end there the women forge a unique bond and the special, but largely unrecognized, role Ashley plays in the family becomes apparent.

You don't even need to have an awareness of her filmography to suspect that Adams recognized what a gift this role was, and was determined to make the most of it. She already won an acting honor at this year's Sundance film festival (a festival which doesn't routinely hand out such prizes) and there should be more coming her way.

In praising Adams I don't mean to ignore the rest of the film's excellent cast, most notably Benjamin McKenzie, Alessandro Nivola, Celia Weston and Scott Wilson. Together the six main actors drive the movie, in ways big and small, and all of their work is vital to the film's success.

And of course it needs to be mentioned that the film's director, Phil Morrison, is making his feature directing debut with this movie. He's directed music videos and did some work on the TV sketch comedy Upright Citizens Brigade but I don't think those credits actually reflect his work here, which is deliberate and carefully observed. The film was written by Angus MacLachlan, a playwrite and longtime friend of Morrison's. As usual in the indie world they spent several years developing the project before they were finally able to get it made.

It may be a struggle for movies like Junebug to get made, and sometimes to find an audience, but obviously when the finished product is this good the struggle was well worth it. Now, go do your part and see this movie.

Sampling the new series on FX

FX has established an excellent reputation in edgy, original cable entertainment. Now the network is introducing three new series and I've seen the first three episodes of each. Right now I'd say only one of them is an immediate keeper.

Surprisingly it's not Over There. The military drama set primarily in contemporary Iraq is already on the air and debuts its second episode tonight. The pilot was confusing and cliched but the second and third episodes do show some promising growth.

Yet so far I can't shake the feeling that much of the show's appeal stems entirely from its setting and genre. Probably because the narratives of this Steven Bochco production are so conventional. And, as with most military dramas, the show is so ensemble-driven that no characters manage to truly break out of the large cast (and without breakout characters it feels a little less at home in the world of FX).

Over There is worth checking out if for no other reason than it's far more interesting than most of network television, but its military melodrama is a little too familiar for the show to immediately be declared great. That's a disappointment, especially considering the topical subject matter it's dealing with. (However, nothing about the show is quite as bad as its truly horrendous theme song which was composed and performed by the show's co-creator, and primary driving force, Chris Gerolmo.)

But Over There is a homerun compared to Starved, one of two new comedies the network will premiere tomorrow night. One of the most singularly unappealing shows I've seen in a long time, Starved is the brainchild of Eric Schaeffer.

Schaeffer's baffling Hollywood career has included six films that he's directed written and one previous television show he created. None of them achieved any significant critical or commercial success, yet he always manages to reappear with something else.

I think he's really outdone himself with Starved, a Seinfeld-esque comedy with a high concept: all of the friends have an eating disorder. The show tries to deal with America's seemingly contradictory obsessions with food and body image in a humorous way but the result is dark, dark stuff. And when it's not dark (depressingly dark) it's usually gross. If you find vomiting, colonics and genital shaving hilarious then you'll love Starved! (No doubt some people do, and will.)

The only true bright spot of the show is Laura Benanti, a Tony nominee and frequent stage actress who has a beguiling comic delivery. The two other major players, Sterling K. Brown as a bulimic police officer and Del Pentecost as a novelist and compulsive eater, are both alright but can't quite transcend the awfulness of the material.

Starved is paired with the awkwardly titled It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia and this one is the best of FX's three new shows. Sunny, like Starved, is clearly inspired by Seinfeld with its three guys and a girl ensemble. But Sunny also adopts Seinfeld's show-about-nothing approach and mixes in a little of Curb Your Enthusiasm's freewheeling comedic vibe. Most importantly, it's funny.

The show's unknown cast also serves as its primary creative team, all three guys are executive producers. The only exception is the only girl, Kaitlin Olson (who Curb fans may recognize as Cheryl's younger sister). They all do a good job at creating distinctive characters, most of whom are selfish and self-absorbed in the great Seinfeld/Curb tradition.

If there's a drawback so far to Sunny it's the show's relentless commitment to building episodes around "edgy" subject matter (probably to please the network). The first two episodes are titled "The Gang Gets Racist" and "Charlie Wants an Abortion" and the third deals with underage drinking. The show can also veer towards the shrill when the gang inevitably begins to argue about the current week's debacle.

But even with its flaws Sunny has the makings of a great sitcom: it creates an instantly inviting and accessible comedic environment. With enough care and intelligence it could develop into something special.

No, it's not worth the trip

Now that I've seen The Island I can properly appreciate its perplexing box office failure. I'm one of the few people who contributed to the film's second weekend gross of $6 million (which was a 52% drop from last weekend, not that awful of a drop all things considered).

I knew from the start I'd get burned on this one. I just couldn't resist the pairing of Ewan McGregor and Scarlett Johansson in a big shiny sci-fi/action summer entertainment, even if it came from director Michael Bay whose filmography is nothing short of craptastic (although apparently plenty of people could resist).

It's been a while since I've seen a Bay film. After the abomination that was Armageddon I skipped out on his bid for James Cameron-style credibility (Pearl Harbor) and the carbon copy sequel of a movie I disliked enough the first time around (Bad Boys 2).

I remembered his distinctive "visual style" (after the movie my girlfriend, less educated in the ways of Bay, asked why everything looked like it was shot at sunset), his inability to create a single convincing human emotion and, of course, his fetish for destruction.

I'd forgotten his leaden touch with comedy.

Not that Bay is an ideal director for romance, drama or anything else that doesn't involve blowing something up, but for a director so intent on making his movies jokey and "fun" it's shocking how cringe-inducing the humor in his movies is. Just check out the scene with the sassy black receptionist, or the cranky overweight food service worker, or the Jesus-referencing black construction worker. Oh yeah, it's all kind of offensive too.

Bay does stage one great action scene in The Island. Most of the movie is surprisingly dull, especially considering Bay's documented obsession with rapid-fire editing, but eventually there's a remarkable display of unbridled destruction on a freeway. But even that sequence succumbs to overkill once Ewan and Scarlett are hanging off the side of a building (yes, it starts as a car chase and ends up on the side of a building).

Actors are pretty much secondary in this kind of thing, but even though McGregor and Johansson don't have much time to embarrass themselves to any significant extent I still ended up feeling sorry for them. They make The Island more bearable than it would be otherwise but still... the movie deserves a previous Bay collaborator like Ben Affleck, Josh Hartnett, Nicolas Cage (in his dumb movie mode) or Will Smith in the male lead. And I have no desire to support Jessica Alba's delusions of being a thespian, but if she must make movies then she's an appropriate fit with this kind of material.

Damn, I think I just solved both DreamWorks' anguish and my own. If only Will Smith and Jessica Alba starred in The Island it might have actually made money, and I never would've had to see it.